With a Broken Heart...

...I sat on Tuesday Night and watched an interview with the man who pastors the largest church in America. It is rare that my wife and I sit down together and watch television but we happened to be flipping through the cable news channels and Larry King was interviewing Joel Osteen. This was the second time in the week he had been interviewed on television and out of curiosity we tuned in.
From the moment I first saw Osteen on TBN, I'll have to admit a red flag went up. "Something is not right with this guy," I would think to myself. The quick sinner's prayer at the end of the broadcast with the words, "If you said that prayer, we believe you just got born again" made me extrememly skeptical right off the bat. I began to dig and found some of what Mr. Osteen believes and decided that his message was not one I wanted to hear.
Well, Tuesday Night I was aloud to hear from his own mouth what confirmed that Joel Osteen's Gospel is not the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The God he preaches is not the God of the Bible, though his speeches are sprinkled with Scripture.
Osteen's approach is very subtle, responding to his critics with Scripture, experience, and a Texas smile that no one would want to argue with. When asked how he responded to those who say his message is theologically light (or watered down), he and his wife responded with examples of so many people being helped by their ministry.
No one can argue that people are being helped. I am just afraid that the help people are receiving is superficial and temporary at best. When asked questions that a pastor should have been able to give clear Gospel answers, responses were made that were cloudy, and for the here and now. And I shouldn't have been surprised, for that is his focus. His message has nothing to say of sinners who stand condemned before God and pointing them to their only hope in Jesus Christ Who bore God's wrath for their sin. His message is a Jesus who saves you from low self esteem, makes you successful, and helps you to have a good life and become a better person. Honestly, if motivational speeches is what this man wants to give and not preach the Gospel, I wish he would put down his Bible, get a couch, and go on national television beside Dr. Phil and help people get their lives straightened out. I would have no problem with someone trying to make a difference in the world by helping people be successful, but I do have a problem with someone who twists the message of the Gospel to that aim.
While I sat and watched, my stomach churned and at times I felt tears beginning to well up in my eyes. I pray for Joel Osteen. I pray that as he opens God's Word the power of the Gospel Truth would open his eyes and shine light into his soul, because clearly he misunderstands the message "For whosoever shall save his life shall lose it: and whosoever shall lose his life for my sake shall find it" (Matthew 16:25).
Osteen's message would be like sending out missionaries to third world countries to feed the poor and build hospitals and fail to give them the Gospel of Jesus Christ. These are wonderful things but they will profit nothing for eternity. If we give them the whole world and they die without the Gospel, what have we profited them? "For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" (Matthew 16:26)
What will it profit, if everyone under Joel Osteen's voice becomes a better person, has great self esteem, and lives to be successful, yet dies without Jesus.
Many joke and mock Mr. Osteen but I find it hard to laugh when there are as many as 50,000 people who come to their three services each Sunday. That doesn't count all the people reached by television in the US or the 100 or so countries the broadcast is viewed in. That is a great amount of people listening to a distorted message.
Not everything he says is false, and there are some good things that come from his mouth. But as I told our people Wednesday Night: I hope we as Christians have enough spiritual discernment and knowledge of the Bible to see clearly that his message is not the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
There is a famine in the land; a famine of the preaching of the Word of God.


---Josh