In the final chapter of Steve’s Faith Seeking Understanding, we take a look at fake vs real gospel. “You discover that a beautiful vase of flowers is not real. It is FAKE. It is not the real deal. There has always been a similar problem in the church.
We may hear lots of talk about God, Jesus and the Gospel but it is FAKE. The Double Dipstick Test is a great tool to find out if the Gospel you are hearing is the real deal or simply fake.”
Steve (00:00):
Here I am on a beautiful spring day. Everything is green and there are flowers popping up all over the place. Beautiful spring flowers, great to look at and great to smell. What? Oh, these are fake. These aren’t real flowers. They’re great to admire, not much to touch, and absolutely nothing to smell really fake. It reminds me of something else we hear a lot of in our culture today and our world. Fake news. You ever heard of fake news? Heard about fake news? Got to to live in America these days without hearing about fake news. And what’s fake news? I mean, ITT pretends to be news, but it’s not real. It’s not true. It’s less than the real thing. It’s not the real deal.
(01:11)
And we have that same problem in the church. In fact, it always has been a problem in the church, probably from the very beginning. It was especially troublesome at the time of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century. It still is, to a certain extent, a problem today in the church. Oh, we hear lots of talk about God and Jesus and the gospel, but if we really look closely, it’s a fake gospel. It’s not real. It’s disappointing. It lets us down. There’s no real good news. How do we tell if it’s the real deal, the true gospel, and not the fake one? The Lutheran reformers devised a simple test for that. I think they got it from the New Testament. You could find examples of it, especially in the Book of Conquer, the apology and the apology to the Augsburg confession and writings of Martin Luther. It’s what again, a
(02:21)
Sainted friend teacher of mine, ed Schrader once coined as again, many of his students are familiar with it. It’s called the double dip stick test. It’s the real gospel if it passes the double dipstick test. Now, if you’re my age or older, you remember the days when you used to actually maybe enjoyed changing the oil in your car. I mean, today, it’s almost impossible to do that without going to a mechanic. Essential to that process was taking that old dipstick out from the crank case and putting it back in and bringing it out and measuring and seeing testing where the level of your oil was and how dirty it was. The same thing for the double dipstick Test. The double dipstick test to see if it’s really the gospel or a fake one. And it’s very simple. First test. It’s about the content, about what you hear, namely, does Jesus get all the credit?
(03:24)
Is Jesus the one who’s totally responsible for us getting God’s love? It’s not that we got to do something. It’s not that we have to add something or contribute something from our part in order to be really a Christian or really deserving or to show that we are really loved. No, it’s all about Jesus. It’s not Jesus plus anything else. It’s not conditional. It’s not if then, no, it’s not up to you. It’s all up to Jesus because of what he does. Therefore, you are forgiven and you get it on the goodies. Number one, the first part of the double dipstick test, does Jesus get all the credit? And secondly, the marvelous thing that happens when this is always done in the proclamation of the good news, it always calms across to the hearer as comforting, assurance, encouragement, good news, relief, freedom, consolation.
(04:28)
But if you ever hear that there’s something we got to do because Jesus didn’t do enough, then suddenly everything is up for grabs. Then the good news becomes qualified. It’s somehow conditional. I got to contribute my part. I got to do something. And we hear that all the day, every day from our culture around us. Lots of good words, lots of fake gospels, but always saying, but you got to do something. And when you listen to that and try doing it, it gets very tiring, very burdensome, very exhausting, very incriminating. Because the law has become the gospel. I mean, the gospel has become the law.
(05:15)
The double dipstick test is a very simple test that I have always remind members of my congregations to use when they move. And our mobile society, people are moving all the time. And so when you go to such and such, Jerry Abbey, great if you went to a Lutheran church, but go and listen to what you hear. Do you hear the gospel? Does it pass the double dipstick test? Has Jesus done it all for you? And is that a comforting and liberating news? Does he get all of the credit? And when you hear that, you can be sure. It’s not the fake gospel. It’s not fake news. It’s the real gospel. It’s good news. That’s really good and really new.
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