The Decline of Full Service Stations
If you are over fifty years of age – maybe a little younger, you probably remember a common site I’ve talked about before which was popular in the 1950’s – they were called, “Service Stations.” Yes, these were the places people bought gasoline for their automobiles but the providers of the gasoline, due to the spirit of that age, thought it was important for a team of well-dressed men to surround your car, do the filling for you while filling your tires with air, checking your oil and washing the wind screen.
These service stations lasted close to thirty years before someone decided that all of it was overkill and began to phase the presentations out of the getting gas experience. But the full service didn’t automatically just go away but disappeared in stages. In the 50’s every station was a full service station, then in the early 70’s a person was given the choice – buy full service gas or self-service. In time full service sort of became dumbed down and instead of a team of men dressed in white and attending to all your automotive needs, maybe a couple nicely dressed guys would sort of meander out to help and then just a single guy and then a guy who also served as the mechanic, and then finally the gas prices were different because of premium content rather than service.
The Shift to Self-Serve
I doubt that there are many or any full service stations in the world today – with three to five men dressed in all white running out and checking things out for you as part of getting refilled with gas. Instead, most every station is self-serve today, where the customer has to fill and pay for the gas that they want – and to check their own oil, tire pressure and windshield for cleanliness. I miss the days of full service gas stations but I do wish, in the name of biblical truth, liberation and what God said that the world would rid itself of full service church.
Oh! Not that churches have ever really fully served the people. Not usually. No full service church refers to churches that demand the full service of their congregates! Those are what I hope to see phased out over time – beginning today. See, full service churches exist on the principle of the congregates serving them – their pastors views and vision for his church, with money and offerings, with time and with allegiance.
A New Covenant
In the case of the service stations of the 50’s, the churches would be the cars and the pastor would be the driver and his congregation would be the men dressed in white and attending to their every need. And it would be their reasonable duty to God to treat the pastor and his property with such devotion. Because to serve him is seen as serving God. But God established a much better way – a way that places nobody in servitude to another, but instead liberates them by the Spirit of Truth. In this setting, people realize that they are fully capable of filling their own spiritual tanks, and cleaning their own spiritual windshields, and checking their own levels of oil (the Holy Spirit), and the air in their tires (faith), and do not need a man or team of men running around to do it for them.
Three years ago we did a white board show called, Churches Will Eventually Have To Close Their Doors. This was pre-covid folks and we even warned a number of the Salt Lake Valley pastors that they needed to rearrange their demands and approach to playing church. This is the long show and I want you to review in 17 minutes what we said at that time – take a look: While some of these observances have already proven true, and some may prove to be false in the years to come, please understand that the central message of what we said in that show was a message given by God himself, albeit indirectly, all the way back in the book of Jeremiah chapter 31:31-34 when he said to True Israel, which is true for all by faith: Jeremiah 31:31 Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: 32 Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that they took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my
Covenant and Inner Transformation
covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the LORD: 33 But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.
Acceptance and Non-Judgment
It was a message central to what Paul wrote in Romans chapter 14 when he said Romans 14:1 As for the man who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not for disputes over opinions. 2 One believes he may eat anything, while the weak man eats only vegetables. 3 Let not him who eats despise him who abstains, and let not him who abstains pass judgment on him who eats; for God has welcomed him. 4 Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Master is able to make him stand. 5 One man esteems one day as better than another, while another man esteems all days alike. Let every one be fully convinced in his own mind. 6 He who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. He also who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God; while he who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God. 7 None of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. 8 If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's. 9 For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living. 10 Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of God; 11 for it is written, "As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall give praise to God." 12 So each of us shall give account of himself to God. 13 Then let us no more pass judgment on one another, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother. 14 I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself; but it is unclean for any one who thinks it unclean. 15 If your brother is being injured by what you eat, you are no longer walking in love. Do not let what you eat cause the ruin of one for whom Christ died. 16 So do not let your good be spoken of as evil. 17 For the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit; 18 he who thus serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved by men. 19 Let us then pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding. 20 Do not, for the sake of food, destroy the work of God. Everything is indeed clean, but it is wrong for any one to make others fall by what he eats; 21 it is right not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that makes your brother stumble. 22 The faith that you have, keep between yourself and God; happy is he who has no reason to judge himself for what he approves.
Liberty and the Spirit
Remember what Jesus came to do, as He said, citing Isaiah and assigning it to himself: Luke 4:18 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised. Remember that Paul spoke of the “glorious liberty of the children of God” Or in 1st Corinthian 10:29 where he asks, “for why is my liberty judged of another man's conscience?” Or when he writes in 2nd Corinthians 3:17 Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there
The Concept of Liberty
Is liberty. Or when he says in Galatians 5:1 Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage. Or when he adds twelve verses later (Galatians 5:13) For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another. The liberty that is spoken of in all of these places is established in the day when the writer of Hebrews says the following:
But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven, and to a judge who is God of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks more graciously than the blood of Abel.
The End of Material Religion
And then he recites the following – listen closely: His voice then shook the earth; but now he has promised, "Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heaven." This phrase, "Yet once more," indicates the removal of what is shaken, as of what has been made, in order that what cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe; for our God is a consuming fire.
The age of material religion ended nearly two thousand years ago folks. The Kingdom of God comes, as Jesus said when He walked the earth, without observation,” it is a Kingdom that is within a person, established when God writes His laws on their heart and mind.” Everything else has been shaken, and anything that stands is of man, of this world, is playing church, and not governed by the living God for His relationships, since Christ, are all direct, individual and subjectively lived.
Direct Relationship with God
Service station churches are over. They no longer function because in the end they were never supposed to be in the first place. God wants to relate to you – to your heart, your troubles, your mind. He wants to directly interface with you, and lead and guide you by His Spirit. He wants you to talk with Him, learn from Him, and follow Him as He leads – not a man, not a fallible system, not a set of religious laws.
Mormonism, Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Protestantism has never saved anybody ever – only God’s grace. Only His Son. Revealed only by His Spirit. We do not volunteer to anyone but Christ. We donate to none but Christ. We are responsible to no other than Christ. We are not members of anything but Christ and His body. The scripture teaches this plainly and in context with historical truths. And I challenge you to emancipate yourselves from the bondage of Man found in religion and to go to Him – and to live in a liberty unknowable in any other way.
