What could be more deadly than diluted cancer medication? May be placebo pills for a cardiac patient. Or diluted insulin for a diabetic.

Actually, the most deadly medicine is a watered-down gospel - because the tragic results are eternal.

Jesus says there will be two groups in the end times. One group He calls few, the other He calls many.

"Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? . . . and . . . done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity." Matthew 7:22,23.

Evidently, the majority of Christ's professed followers are self-deceived. They know His name. Their religious activities seem to have the marks of genuine ministry, but Jesus, with a broken heart, will declare to them, "I don't know you."

Why?

Because they live a compromised life full of sin.

This is a popular characteristic of people in the last days. They are "lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, ... haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God." 2.Timothy 3:2-4.

Of course, when the Apostle Paul describes the last-day conditions above, he is describing what has always been typical in the world. But here he is saying that it will infiltrate the church. All these lawless behaviors so prevalent in the world are going to be common in the church. Christians will have all the "form of godliness" but lack the power, 2.Tim. 3:5.

They have a medicine bottle and a label, but they are taking diluted drugs that can never heal them.

Sin Is Not A Case of Sniffles

Perhaps you know somebody with hay fever. Maybe even you.

These are some over-the-counter pills you can take to fight the symptoms. Sometimes, depending on the pollen, you can take half a pill and be okay. Sometimes, though, you have to take the entire pill. If you do not take the right dose, you might leave the house thinking all is well, but then later it hits you: Your eyes start itching and your nose starts running. You are feeling miserable. You just cannot wait until winter arrives.

Getting the right medicine in the right dose makes a world of difference.

So it is with the gospel. If we do not get the full strength, we could be deceived into thinking we are really healed when we are actually getting worse. Likewise, the devil is mass-distributing a watered-down version among God's people. He is content to let you go to some churches because the medicine there is often so diluted it will not make any transforming difference in your life.

"For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away [their] ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables." 2.Timothy 4:3,4.

In this verse, the Apostle Paul describes a problem in the pulpit and in the pew.

You have preachers who are not sharing a straight message, and you have people who do not want a straight message. The people do not want to take anything that is hard to swallow. They generally want what is easy and sweet to the senses. They want someone who will give them a prescription for candy-flavored, chewable medicine.

"For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock." Acts 20:29.

The gospel gets watered down because preachers want to be popular and some, for pride or money, want to draw away disciples after themselves for power and influence.

"Because, even because they have seduced my people, saying, Peace; and there was no peace; and one built up a wall, and, lo, others daubed it with untempered mortar." Ezekiel 13:10.

Untempered Mortar

Instead of warning the lost to turn from their sins, false teachers tell people to be at peace in their sins because God is too full of grace to expect them to change. They give diluted medicine, which gives people a false sense of security.

The Scriptures refer to false teachers as those who build a wall and "plaster it with untempered mortar" Eze. 13:15. In Bible times, lazy builders would stack bricks with no mortar and then put a plaster veneer over the bricks to hide it. Without the mortar, there is no stability. (Today we use concrete to hold bricks together.) The wall might have looked solid from the outside, but a donkey could have kicked it over because it had no real strength.

More than 500,000 were killed or injured in the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti. One of the principal causes of these many casualties was untempered mortar. Greedy contractors skimped on the percentage of concrete they mixed into the mortar and expensive iron bar, which reinforces the concrete. It made for pathetically weak walls, and as soon as the massive earthquake struck, the fragile buildings crumbled.

There are walls for Christians too. The Ten Commandments are a wall, built to protect your freedom and happiness. When someone gets an STD because of promiscuous living, he reads the seventh commandment and understands that wall was put there to protect his happiness, not to prevent happiness.

The wall of obedience protects our lives, freedom, and contentment. But if the mortar gets diluted, whether from the pulpit or the pew, then, when the storm comes, like a house built on sand the wall implodes.

Diluting The Prosperity

Naturally, I and most pastors always want a big crowd in church. That is understandable, right? But this desire carries risk. In order to draw people to church, I will always be tempted to make my sermons as attractive as possible.

Marketers try to convince you that if you use their product, you will live longer, look better, have more money, and be more popular. Does the Bible tell us that is how we are to market Christianity? Does Jesus promise health and wealth and popularity? Is `prosperity preaching' right?

There are many blessings, but Jesus also says, "Take up (your) cross, and follow me," Matth. 16:24. Deny yourself daily - we do not hear that very often. Jesus said the real key to happiness is to put God and others first. Today, however, it is all about putting "me" first.

A lot of people hear this diluted version of the gospel and believe it is good medicine.

But good medicine is really just the beginning. Jesus said we are to be doers of the Word. A Christian is not defined by church attendance. A Christian is defined by a transformed heart that influences his actions. Jesus asked, "Why do you call Me, `Lord, Lord,' and do not the things which I say?" (Luke 6:46). We cannot call ourselves Christians if we do not do what He says. As we read, "Not everyone who says to Me, `Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven." (Matth. 7:21).

Part of the gospel we are not hearing today is that He wants us to be a people who obey Him. Giving the industrial-strength prescription of gospel truth will heal the symptoms of sin

We are not saved by obedience, of course. That is legalism. But obedience is not legalism if it is a response to God's love, a response to having already been saved. "If you love Me, keep My commandments." John 14:15.

One way the gospel gets diluted is when people are encouraged to have enough faith to believe God will forgive them, but not enough to believe that He will keep them from sin. It is a gospel that says God accepts you as you are and does not care if you change. The Bible says the gospel is not just about justification, but also about sanctification. You can come to Jesus just as you are. That is good news. But He loves you too much to leave you that way. That is good news too! You can be changed to be like Jesus. He can transform you so you become a new creature. "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new." 2.Corinthians 5:17. That is great news.

Show, Don't Tell

"Now to Him who is able to keep you from falling. And to present you faultless Before . . . His glory with exceeding joy." Jude 1:24. I want to have a life where I do not stumble all the time. How about you?

But Christians hear so little of that, and the results are obvious. People have to explain they are believers because they do not consistently live it. Instead, we ought to be lights on a hill so people say, "Wow, Her life is distinctly different." "He is not just like everybody else." "What is different about you?"

And we answer, "I believe in Jesus. He saved me. He changed my life."

Prior to the Dark Ages, the church thrived even though the Christian religion was forbidden. They were being thrown into lion dens and being burned at the stake. They could not practice it in the open, so they dug catacombs under Rome for the first 200 years of Christian history. You can still visit these Roman mines. Some Christians etched on the walls, "Vita, vita, vita," which means, "Life, life, life. I have life." They were suffering and dying in these dark mines - and yet they were joyful.

Then something happened in Rome. Constantine wanted to build his empire because of the civil war between him and Maximus. He claimed to have had a vision and was now supposed to fight under the sign of the cross. They did not know anything about Christianity, but his soldiers painted Christian symbols of their shields. They were all pagans, but they marched into the Tiber River for battle and called it a baptism, figuring they were Christians when they came out the other side. It became the in-thing to be a Christian, but they had not been taught the whole truth.

When the emperor made Christianity acceptable, pagans came pouring into the church. The leaders did not handle it well. They did not want to lose the new converts, so they began to dilute the message, just a little. The pagans would have to make a lot of lifestyle changes, and if they did not like it, they might go back to persecuting Christians.

One such problem was idols. One historian wrote, "There were more idols in Rome than Romans." These new Christians wanted to do what was right and asked the priests what they should do with their statues. Some of the priests said, "Throw them out!" But many of the pagans balked. So some of the other pastors suggested, "Ease them into it. Tell them to give Christian names to their idols and we will take care of it later." So they named their idols Peter, James, John, and Mary. Many pagan practices crept into the church so that in one generation Christianity became the commingling of paganism and Scripture. They diluted the gospel for the sake of having quantity instead of quality - and it ushered in the 1,260 year Dark Ages.

How to Grow the Church

It is a constant temptation churches face when measuring success. They ask, "Is it growing?" Very rarely do we measure the success of a church by how godly the people are. Instead, we measure success by numbers, and that can be a mistake. We are then tempted to make it easier to be a member. It becomes a mindset to just get them in the door and worry about the rest later. So we dilute the message little by little to make the medicine easier to swallow.

Even today, I hear pastors saying, "Don't insist they quit smoking or drinking before they join the church. Make it easy for them to come to Christ and baptize them. The Lord will deal with these things in His own time."

Then they come in and years later they are still chained to these destructive habits.

Baptism represents a new beginning, a liberation, a changed life. It does not mean you are instantly perfect. It does mean addictions to sin should be repudiated and left behind. One of my favorite Christian authors said it this way:

"Men and women have many habits that are antagonistic to the principles of the Bible. The victims of strong drink and tobacco are corrupting body, soul and spirit. Such ones should not be received into the church until they give evidence that they are truly converted, that they feel the need of the faith that works by love and purifies the soul. The truth of God will purify the true believer. He who is thoroughly converted will abandon every defiling habit and appetite. By total abstinence he will overcome the desires for health-destroying indulgences." [Bible Teaching Training School, Juky, 1902]

As we learned earlier, Dark Ages were the result of bringing people into the church before they really understood, before they had surrendered their hearts. The church becomes diluted, enfeebled, weakened. The power of being a follower of Jesus loses its strength, and pretty soon we are coming together, going through a ritual once a week, and living like the world. Instead of winning souls to Christ and living godly lives, we are doing exactly what the devil wants in weakening the power and the efficacy of the gospel.

Gospel Light

The mega evangelical churches have something they call "gospel light."

They want visitors to be comfortable, so they make the worship experience as easy as possible. They offer coffee and donuts before and after service. They encourage relaxed dress, even just T-shirts and shorts. They have theater-like seating so you do not have to squish together in a pew with strangers. If you offer enough enticing perks, you can get anybody to visit for an hour. Then once you get them in, you cannot preach the hard things or rebuke their pet sins because they might not come back.

Feed them on clichés about the power of positive thinking. Entertain them with animated music, laser lights, and dramatic presentations. Then you think it must be the truth because after all you have 10,000 people coming to church.

But how many have repented of their sins and really know Jesus?

So how are you going to know that you are not getting a diluted gospel from your pastor?

John MacArthur says, "Watered down, diluted theology will fail to produce deep reverence, deep worship, deep repentance, deep humility, deep understanding of God's nature, His work, His ministry, His laws, His standards, principles. It fails to make people of God, people that are God-centered." He is right.

An undiluted gospel is going to involve real repentance for sin, a sorrow for sin, and a turning away from it. Repentance means "remorse, regret, contrition for past sin. To change for the better as a result of remorse or contrition for one's sins." The first thing John the Baptist said when he started preaching about the kingdom of God was, "Repent." The first thing Jesus said was, "Repent," and if He tells us to repent, it means we can and we should.

Jesus said, "I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance." Matthew 9:13.

The first church leaders said, "Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit." (Acts 2:38).

First comes the baptism of repentance, then comes the baptism of the Holy Spirit. The full-strength gospel medicine precedes reception and filling of the Holy Spirit.

Along with repentance must be restitution and reform. "If the wicked restores the pledge, gives back what he has stolen, and walks in the statues of life without committing iniquity, he shall surely live; he shall not die." Ezekiel 33:15.

In 1858 revivalist Jeremiah Meneely brought his preaching to Belfast, Ireland. He talked about repentance, reform, and committing yourself to the Lord. The men there worked in a shipyard and were so convicted of their sins, they repented and began to return the tools they had pilfered during the previous years. The response was so complete the shipyard had to build extra sheds to take in all of the returned tools! Eventually, the manager asked that there be no further returns of stolen property! You know the Holy Spirit is working in a community when people start living like real Christians and make tangible changes in their lives. This is the fruit of the real gospel.

What Gospel Do You Desire?

Is it your desire to be filled with the Spirit and to have an undiluted message in your life and in your church? Let us encourage one another to be real Bible Christians by studying for ourselves to know what constitutes having a relationship with the Lord and being saved.

I have a friend who is still crippled today from a small plane crash. While flying with friends in a South American country, they trusted a stranger to fill up the tanks in their aircraft. It turns out the gas was badly contaminated with water. Unfortunately, they did not discover the polluted fuel until they were 600 feet of the ground. The engine coughed, lost power, and they crash landed in the jungle.

Friend, do you know that you are getting the pure, high-octane, unadulterated, industrial-strength fuel of God's truth? Many will be deceived by bright lights and promises of wealth, but a few will study for themselves in the Word and be changed. Which one are you?