The stadium where the Dallas Cowboys ply their trade is a 1.15 billion (with a b) dollar state-of-the-art palace, capable of holding 110,000 of the finest football fans in America, all thirsting to watch America’s Team win.  But the slaking of their thirst is not without cost.

If you were to decide to attend a Cowboy’s game, taking your spouse and two children, you’d have to make an immediate decision: dig deeply into your wallet or dig deeply into your bank account. When you drive to the stadium, you’ll have to make another choice: park your car in Lot B for $50 which will put you a quarter of a mile from the stadium, or park in Lot A for $60, ten yards closer.

Then there’s the matter of buying tickets for the four of you so that you can sit with all the other fine fans.  Supposing you bought the average tickets, then Cokes for four, and a couple of Cowboy caps for the kids, your total cost would be $758.58!

Say what? Yes, Virginia, $758.58 is the average cost to attend a game at the home of the Cowboys.  But who wants to be average?  One may also indulge himself in the Cowboy Taj Mahal with a sweatshirt ($50), a T-shirt ($22), a chicken sandwich ($8), and a bucket of popcorn ($10).  This would add to your average $758.58 price tag.  (We’re inching closer to a thousand bucks here.)

If you wish to indulge in a more hedonistic experience at Jerry’s World, there are the $500,000 luxury boxes, or you could sit next to a man from Maryland (this is “America’s Team”) who paid $24,000 for 30-year rights to two seats in the upper tier and an additional $2,500 per season for the seats themselves.  He’ll leave such football feasting to his descendants when he writes his will.  But hey, like they say, “The Dallas Cowboys are a clean and family-oriented entertainment.”

Economist John Kenneth Gailbreath would go absolutely, positively, stark raving nuts.  He’s the one who railed against “conspicuous consumption.” The Dallas Palace is that and more.  It is both consumption and it is conspicuous.

A man observed those who had dug deeply into wallet and bank accounts as they exited the plush environs which are home on the range to the Cowboys and wrote, “As hard as I looked, I didn’t see a dissatisfied face.” To a man, woman, and child, they loved it.  Who wouldn’t?

Are there those who would call such extravagance “sin?”  Maybe.  Maybe, if the fellow took the mortgage money and plunked it down on a Cowboy’s game. Maybe, if his wife and kids did without medicine or shoes, just so he could enjoy the experience of a lifetime.  Sounds like sin, doesn’t it?

Let’s suppose, for the sake of discussion, that what he’s doing with the money is sin.  Does he have to give up the Cowboys, pay the mortgage, buy the medicine, and take care of his family to be saved?  (This sounds like sermon fodder, doesn’t it?)

A preacher, engaging in a bit of bragamony, writing to other preachers, wrote, “I preach against watching television – do you?  I preach against birth control – do you? I preach against alcohol – do you?  I preach against women wearing pants – do you?  I preach against mixed swimming – do you?  I preach against women working – do you?  I preach against any secular music – do you?  I preach against fornication – do you?”

Now, we’re out of the Dallas Palace and on to other “sins.”  Let’s again say, for the sake of discussion, that we would classify all or some of the above as sins. (Debatable, but we’re only doing so for discussion purposes.)

Billy Sunday, the premier evangelist of the early 20^th century, made a career out of preaching against alcohol, playing cards, and dancing.  On many occasions, he would serve up such salty sermons and then ask those thousands in attendance to stand, vowing to either give up or never take up such vices.  One may search Sunday’s salty sermons in vain for a bit of Scripture here and there, but there are none; one, at the most in the title.  One may search for Christ and Him crucified, but not find one word about Jesus and the cross.

What Billy Sunday and those who follow in his train are doing is to make salvation depend on giving up TV, birth control, women wearing pants, and a host of other “sins” and making that synonymous with preaching the gospel.

That’s good news?  Hardly.  How different is biblical evangelism.  Biblical evangelism knows that the sinner certainly has to be aware of the guilt of his sin.  (99.9% of people will say, “Yes” to the question, “Have you ever done anything you know to be wrong?”  They know they’re sinners, maybe they don’t realize the seriousness of it, but they know.)

Biblical evangelism knows that there’s only one sin preventing the sinner from entering the grace of God.  The one and only sin isn’t wearing pants, playing cards, drinking, fornication, or watching TV and it’s not spending the rent at the Dallas Palace.

John 16:8ff: “And when He [the Holy Spirit] comes, He will prove the world wrong concerning sin and righteousness and  judgment — concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me . . .”  Jesus is saying that there’s one sin that keeps the unsaved from entering the grace of God, the sin of unbelief in Jesus.

Therefore, the unregenerate can swear off the Cowboys and every sin in that bragging preacher’s list, and still be lost.  Giving up sin, some sins, or a host of sins doesn’t save.  Such giving up sin comes under Romans 10:3-4: “For ignoring the righteousness that comes from God, and seeking instead to establish their own righteousness, they [the Jews] did not submit to God’s righteousness.  For Christ is the end of the law, with the result that there is righteousness for everyone who believes.”  The Pharisees were great at giving up some sins and loved to tell the tale.  Giving up all sins is an impossible achievement for the unbeliever, but giving up some sins are the bricks by which one builds his own righteousness when what’s needed is the perfect righteousness of Christ credited to the unbeliever who trusts Christ as Savior.  One’s efforts to give up sin are one of the rags God declares “filthy” in Isaiah, for they are part of his, not Christ’s righteousness.

Billy Sunday wasted hours and hours of pulpit time ranting, albeit colorfully, against playing bridge and yes, even square dancing instead of preaching the gospel.  He spent whole sermons trying to get people to promise, “I won’t dance; I won’t drink; I won’t play cards,” and no time, absolutely not one minute, displaying Christ and Him crucified, which Paul says is the saving message.

In I Cor. 1:21, 23, what do we read?  “For since in the wisdom of God the world by its wisdom did not know God, God was pleased to save those who believe [not “those who believe and give up square dancing”] by the foolishness of preaching . . .  but we preach Christ and Him crucified. . .”

Billy Sunday should have noticed what Paul said; he wrote that God was pleased to save people “by . . . preaching,” so what did Paul preach  —“Christ and Him crucified.”  Such sermons of Billy Sunday are tragic and therefore he falls under Galatians 1:6-9, “If anyone comes to you preaching another gospel than the one we delivered to you, let him be accursed.”

If we give the unsaved the idea that if he pays the mortgage instead of going to see the Dallas Cowboys, then we haven’t preached the gospel.  If we preach to him that he must give up something he likes to do, such as going to see the Dallas Cowboys instead of going to church, we haven’t given him the good news of the gospel.  If we give the impression that to become a Christian one must stop doing the no-no’s, then we haven’t preached the gospel.  In fact, we’re like the Pharisees who made their proselytes more of a child of hell than ever because now, having given up this or that he thinks himself “saved,” when he is not because he’s depending on things he’s done.  Such “give-it-up-and-come-to-Jesus”-preachers are a plague in the pulpit, Elmer Gantrys run riot.

The gospel focuses on what God has done, not on what we should do, not what we should give up.  What God has done is to send His Son to die for our sins, to rise from the dead, and to guarantee everlasting life to anyone who trusts Him alone for it.

Giving up the Dallas Palace has no more to do with salvation than giving up tipping the bottle, giving up tripping the light fantastic, or giving up shuffling and dealing the deck.

The Dallas Cowboys aren’t the issue, Christ and Him crucified is.

Dr. Mike Halsey, Pastor

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