You say, Brother Stuckey, why is the altar call so dangerous though?
Well, I want you to realize as we're looking at 2 Timothy 4 that when I preach most sermons,
I basically have two main goals.
We're going to see that in 2 Timothy 4.
I have two main goals.
2 Timothy 4 verse 1, I charge thee therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ who shall
judge the quick and the dead it is appearing in his kingdom.
Teach the word be instant in season out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long
suffering and doctrine.
The Bible says reprove, rebuke, and exhort.
Reproving and rebuking are negative, exhorting is positive.
Let me give you an example.
When I preach a sermon about reading the Bible like I did before January and I try to motivate
you, part of it is reproving and rebuking.
I try to make you motivated and feel guilty about not reading it enough, that we need
to read the Bible more.
That's the thing, you need to read it every day, make it a pattern in your life, but then
what do I do?
I give you an exhortation where I teach you how can you do this.
Put aside your cell phones.
Put aside the internet.
Have a Bible reading plan where you can make a check mark every single day.
I exhort you so you can actually do it.
I basically try to motivate you or feel guilty and then give you an exhortation in most sermons.
So here's the thing, if you're someone who does not read the Bible and I preach on reading
the Bible, I want you to leave this place with two things in mind.
One, I'm not right with God and I need to fix this.
And two, this is how I fix this.
Here's the problem.
If we have an altar call and I preach for one hour about why you need to read the Bible
and then all of a sudden you come down to the altar and get right with God, you leave
feeling like you're right with God.
It's the worst thing you can do.
I don't want you to leave here feeling like you're right with God if you've got sin in
your life.
They literally destroy a one hour sermon.
Look, if I preach a one hour sermon about why you shouldn't listen to rock music and
you're guilty of that, I completely destroy it in five minutes with an altar call.
It's not just something that's not biblical.
I destroy everything I did.
What's the point of spending hours working on this then?
If I'm just going to have an altar call here where you feel emotional and feel like you're
right with God when you're not right with God.
That destroys everything I worked on.
Look, if you preach a sermon on reading the Bible, you want people, including myself,
because I'm guilty of a lot of these things I preach on, I want to leave feeling, man,
I need to make some changes and here's how I do it.
I don't want us to all leave feeling, man, I was wrong with God, but now I'm right with
God.
Look, here's the problem with the altar calls.
It's the same people coming back every single week.
It's not working.
It's not working because you make people feel emotional and they haven't made real changes
in their life.