God's sorrow and broken heart over sin.
The picture of God as presented today by
evangelists is that of an optimist.
A positive thinking good old boy who lives
in heaven high above the trouble on earth,
where everything is rosy and the skies are
not cloudy all day.
But how could anything bother the living God?
He isn't really troubled by all this mess
down here.
He has everything under control.
But again, the Bible paints a different picture
of our King.
Just look at Jesus weeping over Jerusalem.
Luke 19.41, or the pleadings of God
with the nation Israel through the prophets Isaiah
or Ezekiel.
This God, the one in the Bible, is
continually striving with men through his spirit.
It says in Proverbs, the eyes of the
Lord are in every place watching the evil
and the good.
That means that God, now dig this, you
imagine this.
God saw every rape committed today.
He saw it, according to that scripture, that
his eyes are in every place.
He saw every murder, every person that starved
to death, every pornographic film and book, every
abused and battered child, every teenage prostitute, every
wife that was beaten, every person that was
mutilated in some death or torment camp in
the eastern countries or the Russian bloc, or
anywhere where they're tormenting people, whether it be
in Uganda or Cambodia or anywhere else.
He was right there watching it and saying
and doing nothing outwardly, but inwardly, I believe,
bursting at the seams.
How can anyone believe that he sees this
and does not grieve?
Now what I usually ask Christians is, do
you think God sees all the wickedness?
They invent some really stupid doctrines.
People just, well, God doesn't really look upon
sin.
I don't know where they come up with
that.
The Bible specifically says, God, the eyes of
the Lord are in every place watching the
good and the evil.
How much more black and white and explicit
can you get about his view of the
world?
Isn't God everywhere at once?
Doesn't he see everything?
Isn't he the all-knowing and the all
-seeing God?
And how can we be so numbskulled to
believe that he overlooks the sin in the
world?
The Lord is in every place watching the
good and the evil.
How much more black and white and explicit
can you get about his view of the
world?
Isn't God everywhere at once?
Doesn't he see everything?
Isn't he the all-knowing and the all
-seeing God?
And how can we be so numbskulled to
believe that he overlooks the sin in the
world?
Of course God can grieve.
Doesn't the Bible implore us not to grieve
the Holy Spirit of God?
You see, God is the most hurt and
dishonored being in the universe.
He could stop all this mess and all
this perversion and crime and corruption at any
time he wished.
But he doesn't.
And every one of you right now I
know is saying, why doesn't he?
Sometimes I say that, God, why don't you
just step on the stage and say the
play is over?
That's what Winky said.
When the author walks on stage, the play
is over.
He cannot intervene in the world affairs until
he says, that's enough, curtain closed.
When he comes in, when he intervenes, the
play is over.
Everybody's got to go home to heaven or
hell.
The judgment begins.
He can't intervene on this earth in any
magnificent way except when Jesus came.
And when he comes again, without declaring all
the rules and all the void, all the
people taking part in the earth must stop
and give account.
He can't just come in to one instance
and say, hey, you know, you're bad.
Because who does God love more than anybody
else?
Nobody.
God doesn't love anybody more than he loves
anybody else.
He's no respecter of persons.
I believe he loves every man, woman and
child in the face of the earth with
the same fatherly loving heart as you would
if you had five children.
You might have a special child, one that
you're hoping will do great things.
You might have one that you like to
look at more because they might be prettier.
But you won't love any one of them
anymore.
You won't care about their eternal destiny any
more than each one.
And the reason I'm saying that is because
people go, well, why didn't God intervene when
Maggie had her accident or when my mother
had cancer?
Because why should he intervene when your mother
had cancer when there were other mothers that
had cancer?
Now, he will intervene when his people ask
him to, but that is according to the
rules.
Ask and ye shall receive.
Knock and the door shall be opened.
Seek and ye shall find.
That's part of the rules.
Part of the rules is if you're a
believer and you ask, God then has the
ability to intervene.
But if you don't, then God must sit
back and wait for the judgment or if
something is totally coming against his plan, then
maybe he might be able to intervene.
But that's when the people are praying, thy
kingdom come, thy will be done on earth
as it is in heaven.
The spirit of that prayer is God intervene,
intervene, intervene.
Help Reagan make good decisions.
Help the Russians, keep the Russians from coming
against Israel for a little longer.
Whatever, whatever you might want to pray as
God leads you to intercede.
Very rarely in history that I can even
think of will God ever intercede in anybody's
life without somebody asking him to.
Either the person himself or the prayers of
a good old mother or grandmother.
God appeared to him on the road to
Damascus, right?
Do you think God was just walking along
one day and said, hey, there's a guy,
hey man, he's really a rotten sinner.
Look what he's doing to my church.
I think I'll appear to him.
What was the teaching of Jesus?
Love your enemy.
Bless those who curse you.
Pray for them who despitefully use you.
Don't you think that the early church following
the teaching of Jesus was lifting up Paul,
who was the greatest breather of threats and
murder against the church.
Every day saying, God, save this guy.
Save him, God.
Convert this madman.
Turn this maniac around for you.
Look what he can do for you.
He's brilliant.
He's zealous.
He's purely following what he believes is right.
God, turn him around.
When God answered their prayer, they wouldn't believe
it.
They wouldn't even associate with it.
I believe Paul was converted as a direct
answer to prayer from the early church, following
the command of Jesus to pray for them
who persecuted him.
I really don't think God ever intervenes, even
though he loves.
Nothing can stop his love.
I don't think he intervenes without the church
asking.
And that ought to spur us on to
a little bit more of a prayer life,
I think.
Let your petitions be made known before the
Lord.
You see, God is the most hurt and
dishonored being in the universe.
He could stop all this mess, all this
perversion and crime and corruption any time he
wishes, but he doesn't.
Why?
Because he waits for the souls of men
and women.
Regard the patience of our Lord to be
salvation.
Peter said that the church, which doesn't have
a millionth of the compassion that God has,
has turned around and created a God in
its own image and likeness.
That's a heavy statement.
A carefree, cheerful, above-it-all God, just
like the church.
And then the church is conveniently removed from
the gospel.
It presents all references to the pain and
sorrow in God's heart.
The church doesn't want a God who's grieved
with sin, because then this God would be
grieved with their sin.
And he is.
So, you know what?
I've always said this, that if you can't
get the kind of counsel you want at
one church, you'll go to another church until
you find it.
It's true.
A stubborn, rebellious-hearted person will go from
ministry to ministry, from preacher to preacher, from
counselor to counselor, until they find the person
that will tell them what they want to
hear.
And believe it or not, Christians and denominations
and groups of Christians will go from doctrine
to doctrine, theological school of thought to theological
school of thought, until they find the pattern
and the package of beliefs and doctrines and
sliced-up scripture, pasted together, that fits what
they need from God.
There's a story of this preacher.
He's a famous preacher in many circles today.
I'm not going to mention his name or
give you any hints.
And the guy has been recently preaching what's
called ultimate reconciliation.
It's a heretical doctrine that teaches that eventually
everyone will go to heaven.
It's kind of like a Protestant purgatory.
That at the judgment, people will go to
heaven and people will go to hell, but
hell will burn away their sins, purge them
away, and eventually, because a loving God would
never send people to hell forever, according to
this series of doctrines, then they will go
to heaven.
Okay?
It has just come out in the past
six months, and this guy has bothered a
lot of people.
He's a loving, loving guy.
And he's bothered an awful lot of people
with this doctrine.
It just came out that he's been having
homosexual encounters with some of the young students
that he studies under.
For 20 years, he's been having them.
He's hated it.
He's confessed it to his wife.
He's tried to repent and get over it,
but he's still conducting it.
He's just been asked to step down from
the ministry.
Of course he believed in ultimate reconciliation.
Of course he believed that hell wouldn't be
forever, because he needed a hell like that,
because he was living in hell now, and
he couldn't bear to believe in a hell
that the Bible taught about that would last
for eternity.
So he, in his sickness and his sin,
was turned over to a deceptive mind that
believed eluding influences and a wrong doctrine and
found a doctrine that would give him comfort
in his sin, rather than turn and repent.
He could say, well, I'd like to turn
and repent, but I don't really need to
because I'll just go through that Protestant purgatory,
burn away some sin, and I get to
go to heaven anyway like everybody else.
Hallelujah.
Praise God.
It's true.
I believe it's true.
Well, it's not.
You can bet that whenever somebody believes false
doctrine, it's because they need to believe that
false doctrine to have false peace, to avoid
the cross, to avoid the sword of the
Lord.
They develop even the stupid divorce doctrines that
are going on in the church.
Doesn't matter.
If you don't get along with your wife,
it's okay.
God forgives you anyway, blah, blah, blah.
The abortion doctrines that are going on in
the church, well, in some cases it's okay.
Believe me, if my wife got raped and
got pregnant, it wouldn't be easy.
I would almost wish at that case that
abortion was alright with God.
Sure I would.
If Bethany got 11 years old and got
raped and got pregnant, I would wish that
abortion was okay.
I'd love the easy way out.
Anybody would, but that doesn't mean we should
take the easy way out.
Even Jesus asked God to make it easier
on him when it came to the cross.
Can you let this cup pass?
There's any way possible.
I don't want to go through this.
That's only human.
That's only natural to want to get out
of suffering.
But it's wrong to avoid the suffering that
God has called you to.
Okay.
The next thing that's been removed from
the modern gospel is the necessity of holiness
to please God.
Hebrews says, without holiness, no one shall see
the Lord.
The actual quote is, without sanctification, no one
shall see the Lord.
The words sanctification and holiness are interchangeable.
The reason I don't use the word sanctification
is because nobody but a theology student really
knows what it means.
It means to be set apart for God's
service, to be cleansed, to be pure.
It is true that Jesus commands us to
be perfect.
In Matthew 5.48, it is also true
that you most likely have never met a
perfect person, nor do you probably ever expect
to be perfect yourself.
Nevertheless, we still have those uncomfortable words of
the Lord, be perfect as your heavenly Father
is perfect.
Now because of our dilemma in finding ourselves
to be such numbskulls and seeing the demands
of Jesus, we have invented some pretty interesting
and crazy doctrines.
Some Christians have said, well, when God looks
at us, he doesn't really see us anymore.
He sees Jesus instead, and when there's ever
sin in our hearts, if God should happen
to be looking at the wrong moment, he'll
see a smiling face of Jesus there instead
of seeing our sin.
So God sees me as holy, even though
I'm not.
But, well, I really am, or well, you
know what I mean.
I don't happen to believe that God is
that easily fooled, not even by Christians.
That's the doctrine I was talking about before.
The guy doesn't see sin, and especially, you
know, remember I told you in another study
that little children see things graphically.
They see things three-dimensionally.
They see, when you say, Jesus came into
my heart, they see a little valentine with
a door on it, you know, and they
see, you know, Jesus going, whoop, and shutting
the door.
That's the way kids are.
Well, we're all kids, you know that.
We're all kids that grew up a little
bit, and we're trying to play the adult
game, and that's what happens to old people
when they go senile.
They just quit trying to play the game.
Really, it's true.
It's true.
Kids are, adults, we were up there, and
on the computer, somebody had, they put a
Monopoly game, okay, and all the kids, all
the guys on Sunday were sitting around playing
Monopoly on the computer, and they were all
into it, you know, and I walked in
there, and I said, Man, isn't it amazing
how people never outgrow liking to play games?
I mean, their games might get a little
more complicated to match their mind, hopefully, but
nobody dislikes a challenge of trying to get
more points than the other guy.
It might be hard for you to see
the disciples playing touch football, but, you know,
I think that God put it in the
heart of man to have recreation and frolic
and have exercise and enjoy each other's company
out in the sunshine or behind the computer
board.
But people are kids.
They're just children, and they see things like
this.
Well, they hear these doctrines about Jesus lives
in your heart, okay?
Now, he doesn't live in the thing that
pumps blood, you know.
That's not your heart.
Your heart is your spirit or your will
or the place where you live, okay?
So, Jesus lives in your spirit through the
Holy Spirit.
That's the correct doctrinal way to say how
Jesus comes into you through the Holy Ghost.
The Holy Ghost indwells at your temple, okay?
And they say, Well, Jesus is there now,
so when I sin, God looks at me,
and they see this kind of like big
Jesus cardboard thing, you know, and, Oh, there's
Jesus, and you're behind the cardboard, you know,
doing whatever you want to do.
Well, that's not true.
The eyes of the Lord are in all
places watching the good and the evil.
Don't think that God's blind.
He ain't blind.
He's ready to forgive you.
Once he does forgive you, he says he
doesn't remember your sins anymore.
He has the magnificent power that we don't
have in our own selves to erase his
memory of our sins.
But I believe that God definitely can see
us when we blow it.
I think it's an unbiblical doctrine to believe
he doesn't.
Now, that doesn't mean that he accounts us
or holds us accountable for sins that we
either do, that we do, we fall, and
we get back up, and we say, God,
instead of saying, God, you didn't see that,
so I don't have to repent for it.
See, if you don't think he sees it,
why repent?
See how stupid that doctrine is?
When you fall, it says we have an
advocate.
An advocate is not a blind man.
An advocate, Jesus, is our lawyer.
He stands before God, and if Satan accuses
us, he says, look at Keith.
See that Christian?
Look at that in his heart.
Look at that reaction he had.
Listen to the way he talked to that
person.
Jesus can go, Dad, he's mine.
He belongs to me.
Let me deal with him.
It isn't, don't worry, Dad, he is mine.
And you don't have to worry about it,
because it doesn't matter what he does, because
he's mine.
That's not true.
We belong to Christ, and Christ is our
sanctifier.
He's our sanctification.
He wants to cleanse us.
It doesn't mean, it isn't imputed righteousness, it's
imparted righteousness.
Imputed means, you're not really righteous, but God
considers you righteous.
Imparted is, you're not really righteous, but God
wants to make you righteous.
There's a difference between making us and making
believe that we're righteous.
You know, here's a guy, he's a good
kid, you know.
Oh, look, Keith, you know.
Gee, look at Keith, he's been really good.
Whoa!
Dum-dums for Christ.
Okay.
Another stranger than true doctrine is that blessed
refuge of backsliders called the carnal Christian.
I had fun writing this.
In this example of pretzelogic, we are led
to believe that any believer, who isn't really
walking with the Lord at the present time,
and is indulging in the things of the
world and the lust of the flesh, can
still be considered a Christian.
But not a Christian of the first class.
No, no.
A Christian of the second class.
Find that in the Bible.
A carnal Christian.
Here we have a case of the believer
who doesn't believe.
Oh, he still believes, in quotes, that God
is God, and that there is a heaven
and a hell, and so on.
But don't forget, the devil believes all these
things, too, according to James 2.19. Now,
he's not going to heaven.
He knows all the right things to say
to convince Granny and the pastor and his
Christian friends that he's still hanging in there.
He even sort of believes it himself.
Seems he's got everybody fooled.
Everybody, that is, except God.
The Bible is clear that if we say
we have fellowship with him, and yet walk
in the darkness, we lie and do not
practice the truth.
It's what we practice that proves who we
serve.
Today, possibly the greatest insult to the gospel
has been the almost total neglect of the
preaching of holiness for the Christian.
Jesus doesn't want to make believe that we're
holy.
He wants to impart his holiness to us
by the Holy Spirit.
But because people are not being driven to
the cross, convicted by his latter penance and
real rebirth, then we have to spend hours
in our seminaries trying to find suitable, complicated
ways to explain away the obvious meanings of
Scripture.
Let's do the scriptural twist.
Around and around and up and down, and
it goes like this.
To all this you might be saying, but
what about all the people getting saved by
the efforts of good men and ministries out
there?
They're not preaching the way you say they
should, and they still have converts.
Well, the immediate answer to that question is
the people are not getting saved because of
their messages, they're getting saved in spite of
them.
But unfortunately, according to recent statistics, it is
estimated...
Well, let's stop there.
They're getting saved in spite of them.
If you're a hunter, and there's four million
deer out there, you can put on a
blindfold and start shooting.
And you're bound to hit something.
You can pick out the Bible and start
preaching this and this, and Judas went out
and hanged himself, and all this stuff, and
every now and then, because it's the Word
of God, you're going to come on something
that gives you some life.
Plus, I believe that the people who get
saved under that Mandy Pandy preaching are people
who God has already been doing a work
in.
It's like a fish that's just jumping out
of the water going, You know?
I believe that it's fruit that's just waiting
to fall off the tree.
It's like the guy going by the pear
tree, and the pear's about to fall off,
and he's going, He didn't pick it at
all.
It fell off the tree into his hand.
Do you understand what I'm talking about?
I believe that God called them to be
farmers, and they need to learn how to
plow their fields, and fertilize, and prune, and
cultivate.
And even if they don't do that, they're
bound to pick something out there.
There'll be some wild berries or something they
can pick and go, Look what we made.
Look what we've got.
Look at the fruit of our ministry.
Now, you look at the people that are
on the earth today, the four billion people.
When was the last time you heard of
3,000 people actually getting saved?
Really?
Saved?
Well, 3,000 in those days was probably
about one-tenth the whole population of the
city.
There wasn't even a billion people on the
earth when Jesus walked.
And when thousands, and thousands, and thousands got
saved, that's when the Holy Spirit was moving.
Today, you know, 500 people got saved here,
and 10 people got saved here, and who
knows if they're really saved.
We're going to get to that in a
minute.
And we think, man, it's the second Pentecost.
If a real revival ever broke out on
this earth, there wouldn't be a church big
enough to hold even the ushers meeting.
But our vision is so small.
I don't expect to change the world through
my crusades.
I expect it to maybe just make a
little bit of an inroad into the lost
community.
I'm only one man.
I can only do so much.
God isn't waiting for, you know, Charles Spring
to rise from the dead.
He's not waiting for your pastor to go
door to door.
He's waiting for every one of you, every
Christian in the world, to get alive so
that they can save the people around them.
If that happened, the whole world would at
least have a chance to get saved, would
have a chance to be confronted with the
gospel.
As I said before, these good men in
ministries, so-called, are having fruit only because
there's so much fruit out there, they're bound
to have something.
Not because of what they're preaching.
And because this Bible, you know, even the
cults, even the cults, when they use a
little bit of this truth, get resolved.
The Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses and the Moonies,
they quote from the same book that you
and I love.
And that's power, man.
That is power.
This has got power in it.
You take a scripture, even twisted, it still
works somewhat to entice somebody, to draw them.
That's why the devil quoted scripture to Jesus.
He didn't bring out the Bhagavad Gita, the
Quran.
He brought out the Bible.
He knew if the only way to trick
God is with his own word.
Didn't succeed.
Hallelujah.
But unfortunately, according to recent statistics, it is
estimated that up to 97% of the
people who make decisions for Christ, through most
large evangelistic crusades, do not even attend church
regularly five years later.
And as you can probably well know, attending
church regularly does not guarantee that one is
a true believer.
But leaving statistics behind, let us take a
closer look at what kind of converts today's
gospel usually produces.
Okay.
What's specifically wrong with our modern gospel?
One, it's me-centered instead of Christ-centered.
First and foremost, it is the gospel that
appeals to the selfish.
Instead of honoring God, it places the sinner
in the center of God's love and plan.
But the Bible places Jesus at the center
of God's plan, not the sinner.
That doesn't need any explanation.
One of the most well-known phrases of
modern evangelism is, God loves you and has
a wonderful plan for your life.
But the sober biblical truth that needs to
be presented to the sinner's mind is, you
have made yourself an enemy of God.
And in your present state of rebellion, there
is absolutely no hope for you.
Now, I'm not saying that that's the way
you're supposed to preach.
I'm saying that that's the truth that they
need to come up with when you're done
preaching.
It says that the biblical truth that needs
to be presented to the sinner's mind, when
you're done preaching to a sinner, they need
to realize that they have offended the living
God.
Not that you're supposed to say, Hey, you
rotten criminal, man, you better repent.
That's not love.
And I'm not trying to say that you
should be haughty or condemnatory.
You're supposed to be real, truthful.
You're supposed to let them know their position.
They're in trouble.
They're in danger.
Why?
Because they've offended God, and He's willing to
forgive them.
He's offering them clemency, but they must repent.
They must see that sin is ugly.
No matter how good it feels, it's ugly.
In fact, God's plan for the sinner at
this point in his life is to separate
him forever from his presence in hell.
That's a fact.
People need to know that.
However unpopular or unlovely that may sound, it
is the only truth and reality about anyone
who is an enemy of God through sin.
The whole line of reasoning in our modern
gospel continues on and on in this mistaken
way.
Quote, Sin has separated you from God and
His wonderful plan for your life.
Jesus came and died on the cross so
that you may experience His wonderful plan for
your life.
You must accept Jesus now so that you
will not miss out on His wonderful plan
for your life.
That's the way the gospel of today goes.
Word for word.
You, you, you, you.
It's all for you.
I'm not sorry to say this, but Jesus
did it all in obedience for His Father's
glory.
Not for you.
He did it for His Father.
And His Father did it because the world
was created for His pleasure.
Not for our pleasure.
For His pleasure.
And if we serve Him, then we have
pleasure.
We share His pleasure.
We share His love.
We share His life.
That's all I want.
I don't want my life.
I don't want my pleasure.
I want His pleasure because that's the only
thing that's ever going to make me happy.
The only way you're ever going to get
anything from God is to give Him yourself.
And that's not why you should give Him
yourself.
You should give Him yourself because you belong
to Him.
It's that simple.
And when somebody is where they belong, they
feel peaceful.
They feel joyful.
A child is much more happy when they're
obedient.
They really are.
We have three little ones.
When they're disobedient and you don't deal with
it, they become very unhappy.
If you deal with it, they may cry
a little bit, but they settle down and
they're at peace because they're right where they're
supposed to be.
Of course, it infinitely benefits those who love,
serve, and honor Him.
But that was a secondary consideration, not the
primary one.
By the way, that Ezekiel 36, 22-32,
when you get home, read it.
That says it better than...
In fact, I'm going to, real quick, I'll
just read one part of that, Ezekiel 36.
Right after Jeremiah.
Ezekiel 36, I'm just going to read one
part of this.
This is real.
"...but for my holy name, which you have
profaned among the nations where you went.
And I will vindicate the holiness of my
great name, which has been profaned."
Okay, so then he goes on.
What he says he's going to do, he's
going to take them from the nations and
he'll sprinkle clean water on them and remove
their filthiness.
He'll give them a new heart, put a
new spirit within them.
I will remove the heart of stone from
your flesh and give you a soft heart.
I will put my spirit within you.
It sounds like salvation to me, doesn't it?
If this ain't salvation, nothing is.
I will put my spirit within you and
cause you to walk in my statutes and
you will be careful to observe my ordinances
and you will live in the land that
I gave to your forefathers.
Moreover, I will save you from all your
uncleanliness and I will call for the grain
and multiply it and will not bring a
famine on you.
I'll multiply the fruit, the produce of the
field.
Then you will remember your evil ways and
your deeds that were not good and you
will hate yourselves in your own sight for
your iniquities and your abominations.
I am not doing this for your sake,
declares the Lord God.
Let it be known to you.
Be ashamed and confounded for your ways, O
house of Israel.
Now, if that doesn't curl your hair, nothing
will.
It would have did for me.