I was sharing once with a friend. He had told me that I shouldn't be upset that my wife and I were never blessed with children, after someone had blabbed about that in front of me. He told me that I could have a second opportunity to have children......in heaven. At the time I thought for a little bit, and I asked him a question.

"If you were the devil, and you wanted to draw people away from God, what would you do?" I told him, "You would do the same thing that you had done in the Garden of Eden. You would tell people just exactly what they want to hear." I told him to think about that. He didn't say anything more to me.

When you're talking about temptation, these days are no different from the days in the Garden of Eden. Whether you're talking about birthing cults or being tempted to eat a second slice of double chocolate cake, the weakness of the flesh is being appealed to on a prideful, selfish level. The enemy isn't doing anything new, although some might argue that he is doing the same old thing in new and different ways. I don't know about that, but I do know that our Savior and His deity, and sin and its consequence are what the enemy tries to diminish in this process. If you diminish sin, you diminish the need for someone to save you from it.

That's evident in the way so many churches tip-toe around sin. Don't speak too long, don't say anything that could be construed as negative. There's many a church one can walk into and never hear the word "sin." Better not say too much about heaven either. That might be considered whacko. Does Jesus still value sinners? He must. He died for us, and he took our sin onto Himself when He did that, because our sin is so egregious. That's part of what's being ignored. Sin is being trivialized. Look at the growing attitude of universalism of the emergent church movement for example. There are an ample number of people hearing that they are going to heaven because they are a "good person." They will go to heaven because they work to give food and clothes to poor people and help to irradicate AIDS. These are great things to do in the name of the Lord. But they will not save you.

Sinners are being inoculated from the Gospel by what they hear from liberal pulpits, and some pastors believe they are performing real service to people. Their soft presentation draws people into the church, and somewhere down the road the notion that God might still get a little upset about a couple of things might come up. That doesn't sound like a very Holy God to me. It is the very holiness of God that made the Cross of Christ absolutely necessary.

We've probably all had someone apologize to us for a wrong done to us, where we've responded with something like, "It was nothing." When I apologized to my father one time after behaving wrongly, he didn't diminish my apology by saying that what I did was "nothing." He simply said, "Okay, let's just forget it." That's what God does when we apologize, confessing our sins. Because of what Jesus did, He just forgets our sin, but He would never say, "It was nothing." Our sins are a huge thing to God. His justice demanded that His only begotten Son pay the price for them.

Some churches today would have people think that words like "hell", "sin," "repentance," and "holiness" are just old-fashioned notions that are no longer relevant in today's world. They are seen as "legalistic" roadblocks to what is really relevant, what is really important. Nothing could be further from the truth. The most important thing that a human being can do is to come to know that they need to have their sins forgiven, then repent in faith and turn to Jesus Christ for that, because the fact is, people still sin, God is still just, perfect and holy, and people still need to have their sins forgiven. No amount of effort on the part of a clever wordsmith in a popular pulpit can alter these truths. But a clever wordsmith can hide them from people's hearts.

Church is for believers. It shouldn't be the way unbelievers are evangelized. Sure, ask them to come so that they can hear the Word. Sure, do alter calls and stuff, but actively work outside of the church to evangelize the world around us. We aren't supposed to sit in church and never do a thing to evangelize people until they come through the sanctuary doors. We are supposed to meet the world with the Word. And a church that loves God will be unashamed to open up His Word each time it meets and teach it. That's the deal. You don't need tricky stuff to draw people in. God's Word is sufficient. It's not embarrassing and it's not lacking relevancy.