{Sermon Transcript}
Alright … Matthew, chapter seven.
We are going through the book of Matthew and we are in the Sermon on the Mount, getting closer and closer to the end of the Sermon. We are going to start in verse 21.
We talked a couple weeks ago about the narrow and wide gates. Last week we talked about the idea of prophets and fruit-bearing, and I took that to mean beyond just the prophetic realm to leadership in general. And with that, I wanted to make a couple quick clarifications before we read the text. One: somebody was concerned because they know people that are struggling in the church and I want to clarify again – I think I tried to make it clear last week, but maybe not clear enough — there is an expectation on leadership that is not on everybody else. By the way, as a leader, I have an expectation of you; but God puts a greater stress upon leadership in any church or city or whatever the case may be. There is a judgment for leadership that is going to be greater, according to the Scripture; and I take that seriously. So when we were talking last week, I wasn’t talking necessarily about the people who are coming to hear the Gospel, or people that are newly born again, or anything like that. I realize we are all going to struggle; we are all going to miss it. We are hoping, though, as we grow in Christ, we get better and better at walking out the Chrsitian walk. And more important than that, just better at loving Jesus Christ.
The other thing was: I made a mention of the Didache, which is basically a rule-of-conduct book that I think came about around 150 A.D. In regards to the Didache, we were talking about prophets and I mentioned that it stated that one of the ways in which you could tell a prophet is false is if he asks for money. I wanted to clarify that a little bit; a couple people approached me about that one, and I want to make it clear. Again, like I mentioned last week — I’ve stood up here before in the past (not very often, but a few times) and said, ‘This is where the church is at.’ We do have needs and that conversation may come about in the future, too. But we are not talking about the day-to-day operations of a church, or how the people of the congregation come together to fill in needs financially, and those kinds of things. We are talking about somebody who is actually using the church as a means either to build himself up, or to gain wealth in his own kingdom — his own little “fiefdom.” And this week, somebody was at Sehnert’s … and I’ll just say who it was — it was my daughter, Sara. She sent me this text. And I will get a little weepy, just because it’s sad. I’ll just read the text:
”I’m sitting here at Sehnert’s editing your sermon. Next to me is a couple of pastors and from the bits I can hear of their conversation, one pastor is bragging about how much money he has brought in due to his good business sense and he is giving tips to the other pastor on how to get more money from the congregation; encouraging him to preach more frequently about stewardship, and how to leverage other things to bring in more money. My gosh I am almost beside myself with sadness and indignation.”
So, just to clarify; THAT is what I’m talking about. When we think that our congregations are simply a tool to provide for our own selfish needs or, worse yet, just to make us seem like we are better than we really are. When she sent that text I thought, ‘I think I’m going to mention that this week. It’s a great picture of what I was talking about.’ The purpose of leadership is not to get money from a congregation. The purpose of leadership is to teach them to be lovers of Christ and to grow in Christ. So, by the grace of God, that’s the way we’re going to be.
Now, moving on. Paul talked about the false prophets; and we’ll know them by their fruits. We talked last week a little bit about fruit and what that might mean.
For me, as I mentioned, some of the fruit I would recognize is their words; or their theology — what they believe about Jesus Christ and how they then convey that.
Also, their disciples. We tend to, especially over time, have people hang around us who think like us, at least to some degree. I don’t mean they think in every way like us. One of the blessings, to me, about having you people in this congregation is you have no trouble challenging me on things; you have no trouble disagreeing with me. And I have no trouble with that. I’m blessed, as a matter of fact, because it’s challenging and I appreciate that. But oftentimes, disciples tend to mirror their leaders over time. When you watch disciples of a man — especially those closest to him — and you see character flaws in them, there is a chance that those flaws may exist also in the man. And again, like I mentioned last week, we are talking about things that have nuances; every situation is different. It’s not about a rule, it’s a way for us to be careful. What my daughter experienced this week — I would say that is just somebody with low character.
And then, the family. I’m a family-watcher. More than kids, (because I know kids have to grow up and ultimately give their life to the Lord, and they are going to have to make a decision about who Jesus is and what they will do with Him) I watch most pastors around their wives because you can tell a lot about a person in how they treat their wife. Or, in how their wife is to them.
When Jesus is talking about fruit, those are some of the things that come to my mind.
One thing that is interesting that didn’t come to my mind, and it doesn’t come to Jesus’ mind is: the miraculous. And that is what the Scripture text is talking about today.
It says, starting in verse 21:
“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.’ ”
This text is one that had always been, to me as a young believer, actually confusing. And I’ll maybe explain that a little more as we go on; but it’s a text that has always brought to me a consideration of caution, in terms of what I’m looking at and how I’m focusing my attentions. As hard as it is to face, as human beings, most of us would be drawn to (or are drawn to) the miraculous in some way, shape, or form. If I had a child that was sick, and I took that child to a healing ministry, and that child became well — I for sure would feel close to that guy or that woman or whoever it was that prayed for my child. I mean, the miraculous brings about those emotional things in us that cause us to want to see more. And as a congregation, we are charismatic, generally speaking; although you could come here for years and years and not know that anybody speaks in tongues, unless you maybe come to a prayer meeting. But we believe that all the gifts are available. I believe that they are exercised by all of you, actually, on a daily basis, in some way, shape, or form. I have a larger view of the gifts than some people, who place them only in a meeting atmosphere — I think we exercise them a lot. But, that said, we are not a typical Pentecostal or charismatic church in that you would not necessarily see this evidenced on a regular basis. But I think probably there are people in this room that actually need to experience the power of the Most High God in a way that will cause them to rid themselves of their false views of who He is. You do that by experiencing Him, oftentimes within the realm of these gifts that God has given to us.
But Jesus says, ‘I want to caution you that there will be people out there that actually exercise the gifts, but they will not be part of who I am.’ And in our minds, we can’t comprehend that. It makes almost no sense to us. So the church has taken one of two steps, generally speaking.
1.) We disconnect from the miraculous. Some church leadership has chosen not to go into that realm and would say that the gifts are not for today. That is a doctrinal view that they have, with reasons for it that they can lay out for you Scripturally — reasons that I would disagree with, obviously. But, my contention has always been that much of the reason we don’t believe in the miraculous, in a doctrinal sense, is because over time and in past history, we didn’t see it. For whatever reason it was shut off to us; something happened and the church stopped functioning that way. You think about the Methodist church, for instance. The Methodist church cut its teeth on this type of thing. The Methodist church came from a group of people who were very theologically solid, and they were also very much emotionally- and experientially-based. But in the Methodist church today, you would not find that. (And that is the church I grew up in, so to speak, though I quit going after I was 11 or 12.) I think we oftentimes, then, disconnect from that because of scriptural texts like this. We are so afraid of missing it that we would choose not to let anybody function in the Holy Spirit. We don’t allow people to cast out demons. We don’t allow healings to happen. We don’t allow prophecy. And if, as a church congregation, we don’t allow those things, we will never be wrong — in terms of a false prophet being able to come in and do things.
2.) What other churches do, which is just as bad, is accept the miraculous wholeheartedly, but discount character. They choose to discount the character, which is what Jesus Christ is talking about: ‘Are you going to be obedient to me?’ and ‘What kind of fruit is born in a man’s life?’ They discount character; cast it out as a non-factor. And so your preachers or leadership or people within the congregation can be immoral, but because the miraculous is happening in the church, there is a constant making-of-excuses for that immoral action. History, especially the last 50 years, has shown this a lot. People tend to move immorally into things and finally get caught; and it used to be that when you got caught and all got revealed, everybody backed away. But we don’t do that much anymore, and now people are blatantly saying, ‘It’s none of your business.’ So, if I have an adulterous affair, or if I see prostitutes — as a minister of the Gospel — and miracles are happening within my church; my personal life is none of your business. And that is so against all that the scripture teaches. Especially these verses we are talking about.
So, as saints of the living God we have to be careful. We want miraculous things to happen, but we do not measure people by their miracles, we measure them by their character. It’s actually a very simple thing to do; but, for some reason, we have difficulty doing it. I think we get confused because we do see other examples. Jesus said, at one point, ‘If you don’t believe me for the words that I speak, believe me for the works that I do.’ [paraphrase, John 10:38] In other words, believe the miracles you are seeing. The apostle Paul said, ‘The works of a true apostle were done among you.’ [paraphrase 1 Corinthians 12:12] And he meant: the miraculous happened among you; this is how I’m proving myself to you. And so people stand up and they do miraculous things and they say, ‘This is my proof to you that other stuff — my faults — aren’t an issue here.’ But, again, Jesus is saying to his disciples, ‘Don’t go down that road.’ Seek the miraculous, but do not let people manipulate you into thinking that because they are doing miraculous works, everything is okay between them and God Most High — or even that they are believers in general, which brings us to the most difficult question about this: How in the world do leaders in the church do miraculous things if they are not living with Christ? How in the world does this take place?
I’m going to give you the three possible things that could happen. Maybe all three are true, maybe none of them are true; this a world that we struggle to understand. But Jesus has given us some very easy guidelines to follow to make sure we don’t go down the wrong path, which is what we need to focus on.
The first involves a misunderstanding of Scripture. When I say something like, “I really struggle with that ministry because the man has been divorced four times. I’m struggling with that. I’m not going to sit under somebody who can’t keep his own marriage together,“ they might say, “The gifts and callings of God are irrevocable…” (Romans 11:29) meaning, if he is called into the ministry — into these giftings God has given — then who are we to say that God is not going to use him? So that’s one way that people get around it: “The gifts and calling of God are irrevocable.” They are saying that what a man does — his character — doesn’t matter because God still loves him and God still is gifting him to do these things.
Secondly, Watchman Nee has a little book called The Latent Power of the Soul, and I’m going to share with you his view as expressed in the book, with the understanding that this is not necessarily something I absolutely believe, but it is potentially true. Watchman Nee believes that the soul itself has a power within it. When sin came, sin put the human being down with his soul needing to be reborn, but it didn’t mean that the soul was unable to be forceful. For instance, you’ll run across something like bending spoons (I think that’s the one he mentioned in his book.) There are people that you can watch do things like bend spoons without touching them, and we say, ‘How is that trick done? That’s gotta be a magic trick. How do they make that work?’ Watchman Nee thinks it’s very possible that somebody has tapped into that soul power and is honestly doing miraculous things based upon his own “soulish” ability. Whether that is true or not, I don’t know. But the possibility exists. We don’t comprehend the creation of God like we should. We look at a human soul as something that is invisible, inanimate, incapable of hardly anything. But God made man in such a way that he is a powerful person. As a matter of fact the Bible says, ‘He made him a living soul.’ [paraphrase, 1 Corinthians 15:45] We don’t think of ourselves as living souls anymore, we think of ourselves as living spirits or fleshly, whatever the case. But that is not how the scripture describes him [Adam]. So that is a possibility.
And then the last thing, and maybe the most likely: A demon will perform a miracle to move people away from the love of Christ. Absolutely true. In our mind we think that doesn’t even make sense. We don’t know how it works, but we know that if a demonic entity has put something on you, he’s very capable of taking it off you. And by the grace of God, what Jesus laid out for us wasn't an explanation on why this happens, but instruction on how to notice it. And we notice, again — by fruit.
And Jesus actually gave us another thing to pay attention to. He said, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter.” A key, then, isn’t the miracles; it isn’t even truly the character.
Working for UPS for all those years and considering the number of people I met; there is a whole lot of really nice people that have no interest in Jesus Christ. Super nice people. So, to say that niceness (or a specific aspect of niceness) is the key, is not true at all. Christians are a complicated bunch of people.
As we were worshipping, I wrote down:
“We are both sinners and saints at the same time. We love sinners, but we hate sin. We want to see the miraculous, but we want to be known by our fruit. We know God blesses with things, but we don’t want anything to possess us. We do many things by obligation, but what we really want is to do things freely.”
I mean, we are a complicated bunch of people; in process of working out a spiritually-understood truth and kingdom, in a physical and earthly body. Someday we all pass away. We all pass away. And at that day, when Jesus comes again and we’re risen from the dead, we are going to know. All of a sudden, these types of things will be clear. Right now they are a little muddy for us. And they don’t have to be quite as muddy as they are, because Jesus didn’t try to explain things as fully as we would like Him to. He explained what he felt we could understand, or what would benefit us. And the simple truth is: You are going to know prophets by their fruit. Just because somebody can do miraculous things doesn’t mean he is even a Christian. Even if he claims Christ, it doesn’t mean he is a Christian. But don’t throw out the miraculous because you are afraid you’re going to miss it. And don’t protect somebody who is going against all Scripture says about who Jesus is and who we are supposed to be in Him. It’s okay to accept the miraculous and reject the character of people. As a matter of fact, maybe part of our problem is that nobody challenges those leaders that are walking around doing all this stuff with low character. Nobody gets in their face. Nobody tells them, “That’s wrong,” because the churches are growing and really cool stuff is happening. We are missing the whole reason we are on the earth: to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
By the way, this passage where Jesus said, “Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you, depart from me you who practice lawlessness,” was a verse that always baffled me a little bit. I thought, ‘What does that mean, about knowing Jesus?’ And then one day, years ago, I ran across this verse and finally God slowed me down enough to really read it: “If anyone loves God, he is known by Him.” (1 Corinthians 8:3) “If anyone loves God, he is known by Him.” So, the condition on which God places Him knowing us, is our love for Him. The condition He places on our love for Him, is His love for us. Because without Him loving us, I guarantee you, we will not love Him. While we were yet sinners Christ died for us. For love, God came and saved the world. Christ came; He exhibited the love of the Divine Entity: God Almighty. And He said, “This is who He is. He IS Love.” We accepted that as love, and then — we didn’t reciprocate because reciprocation means ‘I have to do this’ — we responded to that love by loving Him back. And all of a sudden, we are known by God. We are known by God! Just because someone mentions the name of Jesus, or preaches the name of Jesus, or does miracles in the name of Jesus, doesn’t mean they are known by God. It doesn’t mean they love God. You could love yourself and do all these things. But I guarantee you, if your basis of love is yourself; over time that will crumble into an obvious distinction between Christian love and human love.
And then Jesus said to us, “But he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven…” And we’ll just close with this. I was thinking about the idea of “will.” Ephesians 5:17 says, “So then, do not be foolish but understand what the will of the Lord is.” In my lifetime I’ve had numerous people say, “I don’t know what God’s will is for my life.” And if you mean, ‘I don’t know what lays in the future,’ I get that, because that makes sense. But everyone should know what the will of God is for their life. The Scripture makes things pretty plain. 1 Thessalonians 4:3 says, “…for this is the will of God, your sanctification.” God’s will for you is that you be sanctified. In other words, that you be set apart and made holy. 1 Thessalonians 5:18 is the other one; it says, “In everything give thanks for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” So let’s just take those two things; two very plain texts saying, ‘This is God’s will for you.’
1) Your sanctification. He has an expectation of you laboring to be set apart and right.
2) Thanksgiving. This is God’s will for you; that you live a life that is thankful. Especially in your prayers.
Those are two simple things for us to grab hold of. I’ve had ladies, for instance, come up to me and say, “I don’t know what God’s will for me is.” I say, “Are you a wife?” She’ll say, “Yes, I’m a wife.” I say, “Well then, God’s will is for you to be a good wife.” If you’re a mother, the will of God is for you to be a good mother. And men have come and done the same thing: “What does God want from me?” Do you work for somebody? Then the will of God is for you to be a good employee. If you’re a boss, then the will of God is for you to be a good boss; to take the principles of the Scripture and to make those who you are. If we spend enough time trying to get better at the things the Lord has us IN, instead of looking to be something else “out here”, we would be different people. The church would be different. Jesus has not given us something that’s difficult. It’s simple. It’s simple. If you want to know what the will of God is in your life… what are you doing right now? Whatever it is, even if it’s something you know is going to pass away in a year or two, do it to the very best of your ability and let Christ have His way in it within you. Let Him give you opportunities to share the Gospel. Let Him give you opportunities to pray for others. Let Him give you opportunities — and take them, by the way; so that the church can be the church that she is supposed to be.
Your love for God exhibited — because how else do we really know we love God unless we exhibit it? As I have mentioned many times before, it’s useless to tell Cherri how much I love her if I never do anything for her. I mean, what is the use of that? Or if Cherri is every morning, night, and day is sending me texts saying, “I love you, I love you, I love you” but then not responding to me at all; doesn’t care to be around me, doesn’t care about anything that I do, doesn’t want to talk to me — I’m not going to tell people, “My woman really loves me because she sends me texts.” We reveal that love by our desire, and in the case for God, our need to love Him. And I get it, some of you feel like you go through the steps; you go through the motions, you do the things you’re supposed to do, but you don’t feel like you’re doing it with the right motives. And you may not be. But all of us, by the way, are gaining ground in getting to the place where we are no longer doing things out of obligation, but we’re doing things because we freely want to do it.
For example: I’ve been a pastor now for 34 years or so, and I can tell you that for the first 10 to 12 years, I did not want to do this every Sunday. Oftentimes, on Sunday, I wished I could go golfing, I wished I could be some place else. I tried to do a good job of it, but I felt obligated to do it. I’d pray and ask God to help me with that; it didn’t seem right. But as time went on, I realized one day: I love doing this. And that sense of obligation passed away. It was sin in me, for sure. But it was God, ultimately, who got me to the place — not overnight — where one day I realized, ‘Man, I don’t like missing church.’ I don’t want to be away from these people. I don’t want to be away from preaching — I take that back; I even like it when somebody else preaches! I just want to be here.
We are on a road, all of us, to get rid of those things that are obligations, so that we can freely give. But I pray, in the name of Jesus, that you would give God the place and time to do that. And by the way, that doesn’t come with you doing nothing. Because you still have to do the work. You still have to put in the time and you still have to be prayerful that God is going to have His way.
Lord bless you guys.
Go in peace.