It's a great privilege for me to be
here this evening with all of you, and
it was a privilege to hear the worship
as you sang in the special music.
It was very, very beautiful.
It's one of my favorite songs, of all
the songs, I would suppose.
Tonight, we're going to turn in our Bibles
to the book of Ezekiel, the book of
Ezekiel chapter 36.
One of the things I dislike about being
itinerant preacher is this.
Almost in every place you go in America,
the problem is the same, and so I
find myself with a great deal of frequency
preaching on the same things.
What are the greatest problems in America today?
First of all, very poor understanding of the
gospel of Jesus Christ.
The gospel of Jesus Christ has been reduced
down to nothing more than four spiritual laws
or five things God wants you to know,
with a little prayer at the end that
if you pray correctly, you will go to
heaven.
None of that is biblical.
None of it.
We are not saved by praying a prayer
and asking Jesus for
a place where America is with regard to
assurance of salvation.
People believe themselves saved because one time in
their life they prayed a little prayer and
asked Jesus to come into their heart, but
that is not the evidence of salvation.
The evidence of salvation is the fruit that
one bears.
We are not saved by works at all,
but the fruit of our life is evidence
that God has done a genuine work of
conversion.
Another place where Christianity has gone awry in
America is understanding the idea of conversion.
Isn't it amazing we almost never use that
word anymore?
When someone describes their salvation, they'll say something
like, well, I was saved, or I asked
Jesus to come into my heart, or something
like that.
But very rarely do we hear people say,
I have been converted, because converted not only
implies, but demands change.
And the evidence that someone has truly come
to know the Lord is that their life
changes, begins to change, and continues to change,
and never stops changing.
Finally, one other thing that's necessary to say
is this, a very poor understanding of ecclesiology
or the doctrine of the church.
Let me give you an example.
Have you ever heard someone say, the church
in America is just is just horrid.
It's going through so many problems, the church
in America.
I mean, it is so sinful.
It is so dark.
There's just as much adultery in the church
as outside of the church.
There's just as much lying and immorality in
the church as outside of the church.
The church in America is in a terrible
state.
That's a lie.
It's not true.
If it is true, then all the new
covenants in the scriptures, in Ezekiel and Jeremiah
are false.
It's not true.
The church is not in bad shape in
America.
In America, the church is broken and humble
and following her master.
And although she sins, she confesses her sin
and she is growing in holiness.
The problem is this, what you're calling the
church is not the church.
There's recently been a panel put together of
so-called evangelical experts to explain why so
many young people who are Christians, when they
make it to college, they abandon the faith.
That statement in itself is asinine.
It is not biblical.
Because if they abandon the faith, they are
not Christian and they never were.
Twenty-five years ago, discipleship, personal one-on
-one discipleship became tremendously important in the church.
People began to talk about, we need to
personally disciple people.
And why is that?
Because we've got as many people going out
the back door as we have coming in
the front door.
And the reason why they're leaving the church,
the reason why they're leaving Christianity, the reason
why they're not growing is because they're not
being discipled.
That's not true.
That's not what the Bible says.
Jesus said, My sheep, they hear My voice
and they follow Me.
Paul said, He who began a good work
in you will finish it.
You see, the problem is this, we don't
understand conversion.
What we've done is we've basically taken a
supernatural work of God, whereby more of the
power of God is manifest than in the
very creation of the world.
We have taken the supernatural work of God
in converting sinners and reduced it down to
a mere human decision.
Decisionism.
The problem is most of the people getting
saved under the preaching of most evangelists are
not getting saved.
They're just being manipulated into some silly, humanistic,
superstitious decision.
Let me give you an example.
And this is not made up.
This is true.
The evangelist, after coaxing several people forward, he
says something like this to one individual.
Would you like to go to heaven?
The person says, well, yes.
All right.
Then would you like to ask Jesus Christ
into your heart?
And the person said, well, I guess so.
Well, if you do, then ask Jesus to
come into your heart.
The guy says, well, I feel kind of
uncomfortable saying that in front of everybody here.
Well, then ask him silently in your heart.
Well, I really don't know how to pray.
Well, OK, I will pray and you repeat
after me the words.
The guy says, well, I just don't know.
And then the evangelist says, well, I'll pray
to God for you.
And if it's what you want to say
to him, squeeze my hand.
Behold the power of God in modern day
evangelism.
My dear friend, listen to me.
In so many places around the world, places
where I have served in South America, everybody
thinks they're Christian because when they were infants,
they were baptized.
Well, I want to tell you something.
The evangelical community in the United States of
America is no better because the vast majority
of people in America believe they were Christians
because one time they repeated a prayer.
Let me just give you an example.
Someone says, let me just give you an
example of modern day evangelism.
Sir, do you recognize that you're a sinner?
Guy says, yes.
So what do you do?
You go on to the next question.
Well, would you like to go to heaven?
Person says, well, yes.
Well, you go on the next question.
Would you like to pray and ask Jesus
to come into your heart?
Well, yeah.
OK, did you pray?
Yes.
Did you mean it?
Yes.
You're saved.
OK, now let's just look at that biblically.
Sir, do you know that you're a sinner?
He says, yes.
So are you ready to go on to
the next question?
That answer of his means absolutely nothing.
Go ask the devil if he knows he's
a sinner or not.
He will say, well, yes, I am.
Thank you very much.
The question is not, sir, do you recognize
you're a sinner?
The question is this, has God done such
a work in your heart while you were
listening to the preaching of the gospel that
the sin you once loved you now hated?
You now hate.
That's the question.
Has repentance been wrought in your heart?
Not just do you recognize you're a sinner,
but has God done such a work in
your heart that you now hate the sin
you once loved?
That's the question.
Second question, do you want to go to
heaven?
Have you ever had anyone say, why no,
I would rather go to hell, to be
honest with you?
Have you ever heard anyone say that?
My dear friend, everybody wants to go to
heaven.
They just don't want God to be there
when they get there.
Really?
It's not a question, do you want to
go to heaven?
That's very humanistic.
I mean, everyone wants something good for themselves.
Everyone wants to be saved from judgment.
I mean, you catch a field on fire.
Every copperhead and water moccasin in that field
will flee from it, but they're still vipers
when they come out of it.
The question is not, do you want to
go to heaven?
The question is this, the God that you
have hated and ignored, do you now love
and cherish?
Do you desire the Christ you have spurned?
Has God done such a supernatural work in
your heart that you now desire Him?
And then, would you like to repeat a
prayer and ask Jesus to come into your
heart?
You would be very hard-pressed to find
anything like that in the Bible.
You don't find it anywhere.
You don't.
Honestly, you don't.
It's just not there.
What is there?
God commands all men to repent and believe
the gospel.
That's what's there.
And you do not have the authority to
tell someone they're saved, just because you've walked
them through that little Roman road of yours.
You have authority to tell men how to
be saved.
You do not have authority to tell them
they are.
Only the Holy Spirit has that authority.
Men are walking around assured of their salvation
because some preacher who should have spent a
whole lot of, should have spent less time
preaching and more time studying his Bible told
them they were saved.
They believe they're saved and they know more
bare fruit than a goose.
But they know they're saved and you couldn't
convince them otherwise because some preacher told them
they were because they repeated a prayer.
That's pathetic.
The evidence that one is a Christian is
that they enter into a process of sanctification.
A real recognizable process where little by little
they begin to change and become more and
more like Jesus Christ.
Desiring the things of God and following the
things of God.
Now, what we're going to look at tonight
is conversion or a very important term, regeneration.
You've heard the term in John chapter 3,
being born again.
That word means born again or born from
above.
But I'm afraid to use that term nowadays.
Why?
Because what we have is born againism.
Sixty-five percent of America claims to be
born again.
And how'd they get that way?
They prayed a prayer during an evangelistic crusade,
went home and were not changed.
But they're born again because they made their
decision.
Being born again is not a human decision.
It is a supernatural work of God.
And the fruit of that supernatural work is
repentance and faith.
Regeneration, to regenerate, to make alive that which
was dead.
The Scriptures say that all men are dead
in their trespasses and sins, spiritually dead.
And for them to respond to God, they
must be made alive by His power.
There is no other way.
So let's look at this passage.
Ezekiel chapter 36, verse 22.
Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus
says the Lord God, it is not for
your sake, O house of Israel, that I
am about to act, but for my holy
name, which you have profaned among the nations
where you went.
I will vindicate the holiness of my great
name, which has been profaned among the nations,
which you have profaned in their midst.
Then the nations will know that I am
the Lord, declares the Lord God, when I
prove myself holy among you in their sight.
For I will take you from the nations,
gather you from all the lands and bring
you into your own land.
Then I will sprinkle clean water on you
and you will be clean.
I will cleanse you from all your filthiness
and from all your idols.
Moreover, I will give you a new heart
and put a new spirit within you, and
I will remove the heart of stone from
your flesh and give you a heart of
flesh.
I will put my spirit within you and
cause you to walk in my statutes and
you will be careful to observe my ordinances.
Now let's look, starting in verse 22.
Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus
says the Lord God, it is not for
your sake, O house of Israel, that I
am about to act, but for my holy
name, which you have profaned among the nations
where you went.
Why does God save men?
It's a good question.
Sometimes I hear misguided singers singing songs like,
I don't understand why He loves me.
What worth did He find in me that
He would save me?
Well, let me give you the answer.
He found absolutely nothing in you that would
cause Him to save you.
As a matter of fact, the only thing
He ever found in you was reason to
condemn you, because you have broken every law
He has ever made.
The only thing an unrighteous man or woman
or child could ever motivate a holy and
just God to do is to condemn them.
That is another great problem in American Christianity.
We don't want our gospel to be offensive
to men.
As a matter of fact, we almost market
churches by saying, we're not offensive.
The fact of the matter is, men are
born depraved, void of a love for God,
void of a love for His commands.
Men break all the laws of God.
Everyone is guilty.
God is holy and God is just.
And the only reason that a holy and
just God would save wicked men is for
His own namesake.
He says it in this passage.
It's not for your sake, O Israel, that
I've saved you, but for my holy namesake.
If I were to look deep into the
counsel of God in the Scriptures, I would
see two primary reasons why God saves men.
He does it to demonstrate His glory, His
goodness.
He does it because He is love.
Not that man somehow evokes that love, no.
Man only evokes the wrath of God upon
himself.
God loves because He is love.
And it does not spring forth from anything.
It is not drawn out by some inherent
goodness or worth in you.
I know men hate that.
I know no one likes to hear that.
I rejoice in it.
I rejoice in it because it tells me
what kind of God I have.
You would have to be blind or hypocritical
in the innermost part of your heart not
to recognize that the only thing you've ever
done against a good God is sin.
It is a delight for a man like
me to hear that there is a God
who loves because He is love and needs
no motivation coming from me.
Because I would be destitute and without hope
if God did not love in that form
and in that way.
He says, not for your sake have I
saved you, but for mine.
That's another reason why when God begins a
work of salvation, it will never fail.
It's the reason why He who began a
good work will finish it, because His reputation
is on line, at stake.
Now, it goes on and He says this.
Verse 23, I will vindicate the holiness of
My great name, which has been profaned among
the nations which you have profaned in their
midst.
Then the nations will know that I am
the Lord, declares the Lord God, when I
prove Myself holy among you in their sight.
This is very important.
Whenever God truly does a work of salvation,
even the unbelievers who do not understand that
work, but witness that work, recognize the power
of God.
God says, when I save you, even the
unbelieving nations will recognize that I am the
Lord and I do mighty works on the
earth.
When He saved Israel from Egypt, why did
He go through all that He went through
with all the plagues and everything else?
So that Egypt would know who God is.
Not Ra, not Pharaoh, but Yahweh.
When someone, listen to me, this is very
important, when someone in our modern day context
is truly saved, although the unbelievers around him
might mock, might misinterpret what's going on, at
least they will recognize something real, unexplainable has
happened to their friend.
But not anymore, not in America.
And you know why?
Because of the preaching that goes on in
this country.
If Jesus Christ came back today, He wouldn't
cleanse the temple, He'd cleanse the pulpit.
Why?
I'll tell you why.
Because we're always telling people they're saved when
their lives never change.
And Christianity is a mockery among the unbelievers.
Is it not true?
Now look at the church, it's full of
hypocrisy, it's full of this, it's full of
adulterers and liars and thieves.
And it is.
Why?
Because preachers are more worried about building gigantic
churches on the bones of unconverted church members
than they are serving Jesus Christ.
That's why.
Church discipline, unheard of doctrine nowadays, isn't it?
Oh, that's because we love.
Yes, we don't obey Jesus' commands because we
love people more than He does.
Have you ever looked at the nation of
Israel and see how much they suffered, how
much they were bruised, how much they were
persecuted?
And you want to scream to them through
the pages of the Old Testament and say,
Can't you understand?
You suffer like this, you look like this
because you don't obey the Lord.
Can't you see you can't do these things?
And I want to cry out, Physician, heal
thyself, because I say the same thing to
America.
Why is the church in such a state?
Why is this going on and that going
on?
Because the very fundamental, basic doctrines of Christianity
are no longer being taught.
We're placed with little gimmicks and little tracks
and five things someone's supposed to do.
Now, we go on.
And he says this, in the beginnings of
his work, in verse 24, he says, I
will take you from the nations, gather you
from all the lands, and bring you into
your own land.
I will take you from the nations.
When God saves a man or a woman
or a child, what is one of the
first things that you will see?
Separation.
Unheard of word, I know, nowadays.
Most of the good doctrines of Scripture are
unheard of.
Separation.
I will take you from the nations.
I will separate you from the unbelieving world.
It doesn't mean that when someone's saved, they
go out from among everybody and go to
live on a mountaintop somewhere with their legs
crossed singing a mantra.
That's not what he's saying.
What he's saying is this, when someone is
genuinely saved, you will begin to recognize a
work of God separating them and making them
holy.
Pulling them out of the fallen world and
the fallen ideas and its fallen doctrines and
its fallen attitudes and its fallen actions and
behavior.
Separating them from things.
And it is the separation in which the
person is so changed in their heart that
they don't grudgingly say, oh, I've got to
leave the world now in order to follow
Jesus because I don't want to go to
hell.
No, they've been changed in such a supernatural
way that they look at the world that
they once loved and they now hate it
and they walk away from it willingly.
He says, I will separate you from the
nations.
But not only that, it isn't that when
God saves a person, He simply separates them
from all the things they should not do.
But He separates them from the unbelieving nations,
from the fallen world and its mindset in
order to bring them unto Himself.
I will separate you from the nations in
order to bring you into your own land.
Now, let me ask you a question.
Is that a reality in your life?
Is it?
I mean, don't just say yes or this.
Think about it.
If someone were to look at you, would
they say, even though they might not be
able to explain it, would they say that
something strange has happened to you?
That you are distant from all the things
that the world loves?
That you no longer think like you used
to?
You no longer enjoy the things you used
to enjoy?
You no longer revel in the same things
that the world revels in?
That it seems like you've been pulled away
from all those things?
And that your heart's been turned to new
desires?
And you desire and care about and seek
after new things that they do not understand?
Has that happened to you?
Is it a reality in your life?
You'd be surprised how many people attend church
every Sunday morning, every Sunday night, and it
is not a reality in their life.
They have no idea of God separating them.
Because they can go to church on Sunday,
and they can go right back home, and
they can live just like anyone else.
But God says, everyone whom He truly regenerates,
He's going to do a work of separation
in their life, separating them from the things
He hates, and bringing them into the things
He loves, and they are going to willingly
follow, and this is a process that will
continue on all the days of their life
until they step over into glory.
Is that a reality in your life?
Can you look back since your supposed conversion,
and see the hand of God separating you
from the things that contradict the Scriptures, and
drawing you into a new way of life,
a new land?
Can you?
Is it a reality in your life?
Now let's go on.
He says in verse 25, Then I will
sprinkle clean water on you, and you will
be clean.
Now look at that.
I will sprinkle clean water on you, and
you will be clean.
Do you notice anything here?
The divine initiative?
The divine fulfillment?
This is not hopeful speaking?
This is not divine wishing?
This is not some little God up there
on a paper mache throne with a tin
cap on His head, wringing His hands going,
Oh I saved them, if I could only
make them, if I could only change them,
but they just won't do it, they won't
cooperate.
We don't see any of that, do we?
He says, Then I will sprinkle clean water
on you, and you will be clean.
I will see to it.
See, it's amazing that God's the only all
-sovereign creator of the universe, and yet He
can't exercise His sovereignty over men.
Isn't that amazing?
Well, God can't do that because God can
do absolutely anything He wants.
Anytime.
Well, you know, He can't open up the
door to my heart because the handle's on
the inside.
He can kick that door down if He
wants to.
You see, you, like many others, have heard
so much contemporary.
If I could bring back the preachers from
a hundred years ago, they would storm the
pulpits of America with such rage that you
would be afraid to walk into a church
building.
Because the preaching of today is nothing of
the preaching of yesteryear.
And you say, Oh yes, those Baptists or
those Calvinists, or, no, listen to me.
I could bring back John and Charles Wesley
to Armenians, and they'll out-preach any preacher
today, and they'll agree with everything I'm saying.
All this twisted, little, pitiful preaching that's going
on today is worthless.
Preachers come on television to advertise their churches.
They're 40 years old, 44 years old like
me, and they got their hair moosed, and
they're wearing some kind of weird shirt because
they want to show everybody how relevant they
are.
You're not relevant because you're like the world.
You're relevant because you're not like the world.
You're not relevant because you've reduced down the
call of the Gospel, and the claims of
the Gospel, and the challenge of the Gospel.
You're relevant because you preach the truth, no
matter if it gets you crucified or not.
The power of the Gospel.
There is no power of the Gospel that's
preached in America today because the Gospel's not
preached.
We've substituted little church growth techniques, and manipulation,
and everything else to get people to come
into a building, but they won't make it
to heaven.
They must be born again by the power
of God.
And the power of God is revealed when
the Gospel of Jesus Christ is preached.
And that Gospel, in the Greek language, it's
called hoiskandalon, the scandal.
You go into a church where the Gospel
is not scandalous and offending people, you're not
hearing the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
It goes on.
He says, I'll sprinkle clean water on you,
and you will be clean.
Now, let's just go back for a moment.
I want you to look at something.
I want to give particular emphasis to the
personal pronoun, I, first person.
Verse 24, I will take you from the
nations.
I will gather you from the land.
I will bring you into your own land.
Then I will sprinkle clean water on you,
and you will be clean.
I will cleanse you from all your filthiness
and from all your idols.
Moreover, I will give you a new heart.
And I will put a new spirit within
you.
And I will remove the heart of stone
from your flesh.
And I will give you a heart of
flesh.
And I will put my spirit within you.
And I will cause you to walk in
my statutes.
And you will be careful to observe my
ordinances.
Do you see sovereignty in those lines?
They're everywhere.
God has ordained to call forth a people,
and He will do it.
And not all the powers in heaven, earth,
and hell can stop Him.
This God that's preached in America today, is
nothing more than a souped-up version of
Santa Claus.
But the God of the Bible, He's not
a tame lion.
He's not a tame lion.
Now, He says, then I will sprinkle clean
water on you, and you will be clean.
Now, a lot of people will take this
text and say, well, yes, this is referring
to our justification, our position before God, that
the moment we believe in Jesus Christ, we're
declared righteous, forensically, legally.
And that's what it means.
It doesn't mean that He really does cleanse
us in actuality.
No, my friend, it means both.
It means that, yes, by the blood of
Jesus Christ, you are legally declared righteous when
you believe in Jesus Christ.
And you have a right relationship with God
through the blood that was shed on that
tree.
But, the Bible does not separate positional sanctification
from sanctification as a reality in the believer's
life.
If He really has justified you and declared
you right through the blood of the Lamb,
He is also working to cleanse you, and
sanctify you, and change you.
That is why the Hebrews writer can say,
without holiness, no one will see the Lord.
Well, that's not preached very much, is it?
Because nowadays, you can see God, whether you're
holy or not.
He says, I will.
I'll do it.
Just like I always share that I was
raised on a farm, and you can always
tell a farm boy when he's little, because
every crevice of his body, there's dirt.
And I would come in playing after a
whole day in the field, and come in,
you know, late at night after capturing lightning,
bugs, and everything else, be absolutely filthy, and
my mom would always say, take a bath.
When I was feeling about eight or nine
years old, thinking I was pretty much grown
up by then, I'll never forget one day
I said, Mom, I'm just not going to
take a bath tonight.
And my mom, her voice changed entirely.
And she said, you will take a bath.
And that was back in the days when
it was still legal to kill your children.
She said, it's legal to kill your children
now, isn't it?
And she'd look at me and she'd say,
you will take a bath.
And the discussion was over.
You will take a bath.
Isn't that amazing?
My mother has more power over my human
volition than God, according to most preachers.
My mom can make me take a bath,
but God can't.
That's just absurd.
I almost said stupid, but I promised my
wife I wouldn't use that word anymore.
My mother, she worked on the farm.
She could haul hay like a man.
Her hands were so calloused and so tore
up that it was just like sandpaper.
I'd go in there and take a little
bath, and a little dab will do me,
and get a little water on me, come
out, the towel would be black, still have
just dirt running off of me, and my
mom would say, get back in there, now
I'm going to bathe you.
When my mom got done with me, I
came out of that bathtub like the Shekinah
glory of God upon me.
She'd take five pounds of skin off, and
you had been cleansed.
This poor deity of ours, so sad.
If his people don't cooperate with him, there's
nothing he can do.
What a pathetic God most people preach and
believe in.
Because this God of the Bible, He says,
I'll sprinkle clean water on you and you
will be clean.
And then He says, exactly from what He
will cleanse us, He says, now I will
cleanse you from all your filthiness and from
all your idols.
I'll cleanse you from all your filthiness and
all your idols.
God in His wisdom has ordained to do
that through the full process of our life.
Many people ask me, well, when God saves
us, why doesn't He just all of a
sudden take care of the whole thing?
Because probably you would become the most self
-righteous human being on the face of the
earth and deny the grace of God.
It is a continuous process in our lives
so that even though as we age, we
grow more and more like Christ, we put
less and less confidence in the flesh.
And in the end of our days, we
are trusting in Christ and Christ alone.
And we acknowledge that all cleansing, all sanctification,
all growth is 100% a result of
God's grace and has nothing to do with
the human endeavor.
So in the end, we have nothing to
boast of except Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ
alone.
But He will cleanse you.
He will do it.
And He says, I will cleanse you from
all your filthiness.
Boy, I tell you what, He sure could
have used a more appropriate word, less offensive.
When was the last time you heard a
preacher say, you're filthy and you need to
be cleansed?
My goodness, we can't say something like that
nowadays.
God says, I will cleanse you from all
your filthiness and from all your idols.
What is God doing in the life of
the true believer?
Constantly working throughout the full course of their
lifetime to little by little cleanse them from
all their filthiness and from all their idolatry.
God will do absolutely everything necessary to work
this into the life of His child.
And regardless of what many TV preachers will
tell you, He will take away your health,
He will take away your wealth, He will
take away family, He will take away everything.
He will crush you and grind you into
a million pieces if it is necessary, but
He will cleanse you from all your filthiness
and all your idols.
The question is this, America, what would you
rather have, holiness or your comfort?
Everything that comes upon a believer is for
his good.
If through prosperity and health God can make
you for a time more like Jesus Christ,
He will grant that to you.
But if through taking it all away and
dashing you on the rocks, He can make
you more like Jesus Christ, He will do
it.
Because although it seems like Christianity America today
is all concerned about temporal happiness, God is
concerned about eternal holiness.
If His own Son was perfected through suffering,
how much more shall we be perfected with
the same?
Do you want that?
If you are a true believer, you will.
You may fear it a bit, you may
moan and whine a bit when it comes
upon you, but in the end you will
rejoice in His blessing and you will rejoice
in His discipline because you have a heart
after His.
You desire more than anything to be like
Christ.
He goes on.
Well, let's talk for a moment about idols.
He says, I will cleanse you from all
your filthiness and from all your idols.
What is an idol?
Well, simple question.
What do you think about most?
That's your God.
What enthralls you the most?
What's your passion?
Now, don't give me the spiritual answer.
If someone was looking at you from the
outside, what would they say was your passion?
Your delight?
What do you talk about most when you
get around your friends?
Behold, your God.
We have this terrifying ability to transform even
the best things into nothing more than idols.
We can take the very gifts that God
gives us and turn them into idols that
are more important than the one who gave
it.
We can even take God's law and turn
it into something of an instrument of sin
and death.
Now, just a moment here that's a great
encouragement.
I know this seems like a great conviction,
but he says, I will cleanse you from
all your filthiness and all your idols.
This is a great promise at the same
time.
Think about it.
Most of us who are believers, you know,
we can mark that we seem to have
overcome certain besetting sins in our life, that
we're making progress into holiness, but there just
seems to be some things we almost come
to the point where we think we're never
going to be free from them.
Well, it's just something I'm going to have
to live with.
But what does God say here?
I will cleanse you from all your filthiness
and all your idols.
Does that mean that God will make a
believer perfect on this side of heaven?
No.
But there is a great difference between struggling
with sin and having a besetting sin in
your life that conquers you and over which
you have no victory.
He is saying that He will work and
work all the days of our life to
free us from filth and idolatry.
And that no sin, no habit is too
strong for Him.
Now, He goes on.
The whole basis of everything that I've spoken
about thus far is found in verse 26.
Moreover, I will give you a new heart
and put a new spirit within you.
And I will remove the heart of stone
from your flesh and give you a heart
of flesh.
Now, what does this mean?
This is something that is so important to
understand.
Literally, if you do not understand the doctrine
of human depravity, rarely can you understand anything
in Christian doctrine.
Men are born depraved.
They are born with a spiritually dead heart.
They are born hating God.
They are born, as Martin Luther said, under
the bondage of their will.
Someone says, well, if that's the case, then
man's not guilty.
I mean, if he's born that way, how
can he be judged?
What you need to understand is this.
Men cannot obey God.
Why?
Because they hate Him.
Why?
Because their hearts are evil.
Let me give an example.
Joseph's brothers could not speak a kind word
to him.
That's what it says.
They could not speak a kind word to
him.
They had mouths, they had tongues, and they
could speak Hebrew.
It says they could not speak a kind
word to him because they hated him.
You ever heard someone say, I can't forgive
them?
Yeah, they could.
Why can't they?
Because of the hatred and the bitterness in
their heart.
Men cannot see God because they will not
see God because they hate God, and they
hate God because God is holy and righteous
and men are wicked.
That's the reason.
That is the reason.
And in order for a man to be
saved, something supernatural must happen to that man.
God must come and take out that heart
of stone that cannot, will not, respond to
God and replace it with a heart of
flesh that responds to divine stimuli.
Something alive, recreated according to the book of
Ephesians chapter 4, recreated in the image of
God in true righteousness and true holiness.
Salvation is not a mere human decision.
It is a supernatural work of God whereby
the very nature of a human being is
transformed in an instant and made alive.
That is salvation.
It cannot be manipulated.
It cannot be coerced.
It does not come from just getting someone
to repeat a prayer.
It is a supernatural work of God.
On par with the raising of Jesus Christ
from the dead.
Go to Romans 6, you'll see that.
If we had time, we would.
Now, I will give you a new heart
and put a new spirit within you.
And I will remove the heart of stone
from your flesh and give you a heart
of flesh.
Just use the example of a statue.
It's made of stone.
A statue of a man.
It's made of stone.
You can pinch it, prod it, kick it,
poke it, do whatever you want to it.
It will not respond to any stimuli because
it's stone.
It's inanimate.
It's dead.
But you put the biggest man in this
county up here on this platform with me
and if I grab him under the tender
part of his arm and pinch and twist
with all my might, he is going to
respond.
Why?
He is living flesh.
Some of you will recognize this in your
own conversion.
You sat in church for years, possibly.
You heard sermon after biblical sermon.
It never even affected you.
They could preach on hell, preach on heaven,
preach on the cross.
It's like you didn't even ever hear it.
And then one day or one night, a
message is being preached and it might not
even have been a message of that direct
with regard to the gospel.
And all of a sudden, it's like your
ears were opened up, your eyes were opened
up.
And not only that, you loved what you
heard.
You were so drawn to it, you couldn't
resist.
It's like, as I've said so many times,
I take this from Charles Spurgeon, if someone
were to have a pig in the back
here in the church and I put a
plate of fine food on this side and
a plate of garbage on this side and
someone loosed the pig, where would he go?
He wouldn't go to the fine food.
He would go to the garbage.
Why?
He's a pig.
That's what pigs do.
That's his nature.
He goes to the garbage because he's a
pig.
But if in one second I have the
power to transform that pig into a man,
what's going to happen?
The moment he is transformed into a man,
he's going to throw his head out of
that bucket.
The very thing that he was eating down,
he's going to puke up.
He's going to be disgusted.
He's going to turn around.
He's going to be ashamed.
He's totally transformed in his nature and a
man cannot, literally cannot eat what a pig
can eat.
I just described your conversion, if you've been
converted.
You loved sin.
You loved to eat it down.
Like it says in Job, drink down iniquity
like water.
Not only that, you boasted in it.
You were admired for it.
You were proud of it.
And then one day you heard the Gospel
of Jesus Christ.
Something happened to you.
You were awakened, your eyes, your ears, your
heart.
And the very sin that you loved, you
now hate.
And the very sin you were proud of,
you're now ashamed.
And even though a true believer can be
deceived and can go back and stick their
head in that bucket, the moment they do,
they will become so nauseous they'll be pulling
their head out of their vomiting and ashamed.
Why?
Because they just didn't make some human decision
to jump out of the line going to
hell in order to jump into the line
going to heaven.
They were transformed by the power of God.
Let me give you another example.
Men will say, well, if you have a
group of lost people, all you have to
do is preach the Gospel to them.
Well, that's all men have to do, but
that's not all God has to do.
How does it work?
Let's say that we had a large curtain
here and behind that curtain stood Jesus Christ.
Some preachers would say, and all of you
were unbelievers, let's say.
Some preachers would say that all we have
to do is pull the cord on the
curtain, draw back the curtain, and when those
unbelievers truly see Jesus Christ like He is,
they'll come to Him.
Not if everyone in the congregation is blind,
they won't, because they won't see anything.
So you say, oh, that's right.
Not only do we have to pull back
the curtain, but God has to give them
sight.
And if He gives them sight and they
see the beauty of Jesus Christ, they'll come
to Him.
No, they won't.
Because when they look at His holiness and
His righteousness and His beauty and see it
as it is, with that wicked, God-hating,
sin-loving heart of theirs, the only thing
they'll want to do is kill Him.
So it's not just we've got to pull
back the curtain.
It's not just that God's got to give
sight to the blind.
God has to take out that wicked, God
-hating heart that would do nothing more than
cry out, Crucify!
And replace it with a new heart created
in the image of God in true righteousness
and true holiness.
And when that brand new heart recreated in
the image of God sees the perfect image
of God, Jesus Christ, it is irresistibly drawn
to Him.
Because all they can see is beauty.
Do you ever wonder?
I hear people say, I just can't understand
why they can't see the beauty of Jesus.
For the same reason you would not be
seeing it if God had not done a
supernatural work in your heart.
Now, it goes on.
He says, I will put My Spirit within
you.
My, it's amazing.
I will put My Spirit within you.
Some theologians say, based on a few passages
in Ephesians and Colossians, that if the genuine
believer had not been truly, magnificently and supernaturally
strengthened by the power of God, the indwelling
of the Holy Spirit would kill them.
This is supernatural work that's going on.
Isn't it amazing?
I use this illustration quite often.
Let's say I arrive, you know, late.
The pastor's all mad.
He says, You just show up any time
you want?
Don't appreciate the opportunity to preach here?
I say, Oh pastor, my tire went flat
out on the highway and I was changing
the tire and a lug nut rolled out
of my hand and rolled into the middle
of the highway and I wasn't thinking and
I ran out and I grabbed the lug
nut and I stood up and when I
stood up, five yards in front of me
was a 30 ton logging truck going 120
miles an hour and it ran me down
and well, I just, you know, that's why
I'm late.
He could only come to one of two
conclusions.
I'm either a liar or I'm insane.
And when I began to wager with him
and debate with him and say, Why are
you saying that I'm a liar?
Why are you saying I'm insane?
Why are you saying these things about me?
He'll say, Don't you understand?
It is impossible to have an encounter with
a logging truck that weighs 30 tons going
120 miles an hour without being changed.
Then why is it so many American Christians
say they have an encounter with God and
there's no evidence of transformation whatsoever?
Again, behold the power of the Holy Spirit.
Well, He can't.
Yes, He can.
And I'll show you that.
Look what it says.
And I will put My Spirit within you
and cause you to walk in My statutes.
The Hebrew word here, make you.
I will make you walk in My statutes.
I'll make you.
No, God can't make me do anything.
I heard one man stand up one time
in the church where a man was preaching
that and he said, well, if God can't
make me be saved, He can't make me
go to hell either.
If your God is that impotent, then I
don't have anything to fear.
Look at what it says.
In some translations it says, make.
I'll put My Spirit in you and I
will cause you, I will make you.
The Hebrew word is very strong here.
I will make you do what?
This is what He says.
I will make you or cause you to
walk in My statutes.
Walk means a style of life.
Not just intermittent sort of obedience every once
in a while.
No.
I will put the power of My Holy
Spirit, the very indwelling of My Holy Spirit
in you, and you will walk in My
statutes and you will be careful to observe
My ordinances.
Here we're seeing a person who's genuinely been
regenerated by the power of the Holy Spirit.
And what happens?
One of the things you will note about
them is that they're walking as a style
of life in the statutes of God and
they're careful to follow them.
Jesus said in Matthew 7, depart from Me.
Speaking to people who professed Him as Lord,
depart from Me.
Depart from Me.
Those of you who practice lawlessness, lawlessness is
just the opposite of this.
This is saying that they will walk in
His statutes and be careful to keep His
ordinances.
Lawlessness is a person who lived as though
Jesus never gave a law to obey.
Basically, what He's saying there in Matthew 7
is depart from Me.
All of you who professed to be My
disciples and yet you lived as though I
never gave you a law to obey, you
lived as though I never gave you a
statute or wisdom to follow.
And again, He's not saying that salvation is
through works.
He is saying that salvation is a supernatural
work of God whereby the very nature of
a human being is changed, and that nature
will produce new fruit.
That nature will desire to come to Christ.
When the Bible, when theologians sometimes talk about
irresistible, that the calling of God upon His
people is irresistible, it doesn't mean that God
grabs someone against their will and He forces
them to come.
It means that God changes their nature by
His supernatural power and with that new nature
they have a new will and they look
upon Him as beautiful and they willingly follow.
You know, I hear people talk all the
time about free will, free will.
There is no such thing.
That is such a silly free will.
Or better yet, let's put it this way.
You've got free will.
If you're not a Christian, you have free
will.
The problem is, you don't have good will.
And with your free will, you only do
evil.
And until God changes your nature, your free
will will be nothing but evil and will
do nothing but reject God.
You say, well, I've never heard anything like
this because you do not read old books.
The theology of Christianity in America.
Let me just share something with you to
help you out because I think some of
you are kind of in shock.
If I stand up here and tell you
that I'm preaching to you the truth.
And a modern day preacher is standing over
here who preaches just the opposite of what
I preach tonight.
And he tells you, I'm preaching the truth.
And then I say, well, I'm preaching the
truth because this is what the Bible says.
And he says, well, I'm preaching the truth
because this is what the Bible says.
I mean, we could go on forever.
What do you do?
Well, here's one of the principles of hermeneutics
or Bible interpretation and it's this.
You always do your theology in the context
of the church.
Now what does that mean?
It means this.
If I interpret a verse a certain way
and then I study back through 2,000
years of Christian history and no one else
interprets it that way, interprets the Scripture that
way, as a matter of fact, they interpret
it just the opposite, who's probably wrong?
Me.
But if I interpret a Scripture a certain
way and then I go back 100 years
and see that's the common interpretation of all
the godly men and women who studied the
Scripture, and then I go back 200 years
and 300 years all the way to Augustine
and on, and the full course of Christian
history is agreeing with everything I say, I'm
pretty much probably OK.
I want you to know most of what's
in modern pop American preaching cannot be found
in Christian history.
It's true.
Because we've adopted this.
I don't want none of that theology stuff.
I just want Jesus.
The problem is, theology comes from two words,
theos and logos, a discourse about God.
You're saying I want Jesus, but I don't
want to hear any discourse on God.
Don't want none of that doctrine stuff.
Hebrew word leka means teaching.
I don't want to be taught.
My dear friend, there's wildfire out there today.
Noise.
Hoopla.
TV programs in churches, they look like the
six flags over Jesus.
It's pitiful.
The truth is scriptural, and it stings, and
it's offensive, but it heals and brings salvation.
It is true.
Now, I want us to look at the
last part of this text.
He says in 28, you will live in
the land that I gave to your forefathers,
so you will be My people, and I
will be your God.
He will make you His, and in making
you His, He will zealously and jealously guard
over you.
He will be an ever-present fire and
a pillar of smoke.
He will not let you go.
Have you ever seen people profess to know
Jesus Christ, and yet they can do anything
they want?
Live in immorality.
I mean, every sort of thing, and God
never seems to touch them.
Why is that?
According to Hebrews 12, it's because they're illegitimate
children and not true children of God.
If you're a true believer here tonight, you
will be able to say, sometimes God just
seems to hem me in.
He seems to cut me off in front
and in back and beside me, above me,
below me.
He's all over.
I mean, I step out of line.
He's right on me.
You ought to rejoice.
That is the sign of sonship.
God will not leave you alone.
Now, I want us to go for a
moment to Jeremiah 31.
And I want to show you some things.
Jeremiah 31, verse 31.
Behold, days are coming, declares the Lord, when
I will make a new covenant with the
house of Israel and with the house of
Judah.
This is talking about the new covenant.
It's talking about what He's going to do
at the advent of the Messiah, the coming
of Jesus Christ, His death on the cross,
His resurrection from the dead, His ascension up
into heaven, the pouring forth of the Spirit.
He says this, It's not like the covenant
I made with their fathers in the day
I took them by the hand to bring
them out of the land of Egypt.
My covenant which they broke although I was
a husband to them, declares the Lord.
God says with the coming of the Messiah,
He's going to do something so much greater
than what He did in the deliverance of
Israel from Egypt that it's going to be
called something entirely new.
Something spectacular, unheard of.
I want to tell you something.
You probably didn't recognize this, but this has
a lot to do with the Lord's Supper.
Jesus is sitting around there.
They're getting ready for the Lord's Supper.
They've made all the preparations for the Passover
and everything else.
And the disciples are there with expectation, wondering
what's going to go on.
And all of a sudden Jesus goes, This
is the blood of the new covenant.
Now that doesn't mean much to you.
When He said new covenant, I can assure
you those disciples began to tremble.
And one of them looked at the other
one and said, Did He just say what
I thought I heard Him say?
Do you mean what we've been waiting for
for 700 years?
He's come upon us this night.
This new thing that would so supersede the
deliverance of Israel from Egypt that that thing
would not even be talked about again.
Something so great that our ears would tingle
and our heart would burst.
See how much you miss in Scripture?
They were waiting for this for over 700
years.
And He goes on and He says this,
But this is the covenant which I will
make with the house of Israel after those
days, declares the Lord.
I will put My law within them and
on their hearts I will write it.
What did Israel have coming out of Egypt?
They had a tablet, two tablets, carved out
of stone, external and hard.
Rules, regulations, commands, cold, put your face to
a stone, you'll feel no warmth.
But He says in this new covenant, I
will not write My laws with My finger
upon two tablets of external stone, but I
will write My laws upon their very heart.
My law and their heart will become one,
intertwined.
They will be My tablets.
And I will write on their heart.
And because I write My law on their
heart, men will be able to read My
law by looking at their lives.
And then He goes on and He says
this, And I will be their God and
they shall be My people.
Many theologians, and I agree with them, would
say this, The whole story of redemptive history
is about this one thing.
I will be their God and they will
be...
And then He goes, And they will not
teach again, each man his neighbor and each
man his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for
they will all know Me from the least
of them to the greatest of them, declares
the Lord.
Now, listen to this.
What is this talking about?
This supernatural writing of the law of God
upon the heart of every true believer?
This indwelling of the Holy Spirit who according
to John 14-16 would be teaching every
believer?
What is it?
You take a brand new believer and he
knows a brand new, truly, regenerate, converted babe
in Christ, and he knows more about the
Gospel and more about the person of God
than the unconverted theologian who's been studying for
60 years.
And when that person hears truth, they just
respond to it.
I'll never forget a few days after I
was converted to the University of Texas.
There was this group and they came on
campus and I was just walking by.
I didn't even know where Philippians was in
the Bible.
I didn't know anything.
I was a brand new believer.
And I was walking by and they were
singing all the songs that we sang at
the church where I had been attending.
So I drew near.
Oh, my goodness.
It's wonderful out here in the middle of
campus.
Praise the Lord.
And as I began to listen to the
same music and then listen to some of
the things they started saying, I got so
afraid and I didn't even know why.
I just knew they were wrong.
And I ran back to one of the
young men who had been instrumental in teaching
me the Gospel.
I ran back and I said, this and
this happened.
Why am I so scared?
I mean, I weighed 235 back then.
I was pretty strong.
I wasn't scared of anything.
I was terrified.
I said, what's happened?
He goes, what group was it?
And I said, and they go, that's probably
the biggest cult in Austin, Texas.
I can turn on so-called...
this is an oxymoron, kind of like jumbo
shrimp.
I can turn on Christian television.
I can turn on Christian television and just
with a pad of paper out in front
of me, write down.
If you give me probably less than a
day and I sit in front of that
thing, I can write out every major heresy
in Christianity that has been known in the
last 20 centuries.
And yet people give their money and do
their stuff constantly.
Follow like sheep.
I'm not saying all.
There's some good Bible teachers.
You have your Charles Stanleys.
You have different men, yes, of course.
But I can turn on those things and
just start writing.
I mean, you can almost go...
Like if I'm teaching a group of seminary
students, it would like be, okay, we're going
to be working on this heresy that was
found in the 5th century.
It's kind of really gnostic.
Okay, normally we would go to the library
and look up some ancient manuscripts, but you
guys are really struggling with your Greeks, so
I want you to go to Christian television
today because there's this certain guy preaching and
he says the same thing.
The lie never changes.
It just evolves.
And he says this, that there will be
a knowledge of God among the people.
I was preaching one time at a First
Baptist Church and they asked me, they said,
well, would you maybe go to the youth
group and teach a bit?
Would you please do that for us?
I said, well, I would love to.
I mean, if I have time, just...
So I go in and I start teaching
and the young guy who was directing the
whole thing, he kind of left.
He looked kind of angry.
Then the pastor comes down and after I
get through teaching, he goes, Brother Paul, we
need to go to the office.
And I say, what's wrong?
He goes, well, you've been accused of teaching
heresy.
I thought, well, okay.
So we go in there and I sit
down and I knew the pastor, he knew
me, and the youth guy sitting there and
the pastor said, okay, what did Brother Paul
say?
And the youth guy, you know what they
look like, mousse in their hair and everything.
He goes, Pastor, he said that Jesus Christ
was God in the flesh.
And the pastor went, what?
He said that Jesus Christ was God in
the flesh.
And the pastor goes, well, He is God
in the flesh.
The boy brought up in church all his
life and I knew the pastor, good preaching.
But he'd gone through those evangelical hoops and
prayed his little prayer and got into kind
of a southern Bible culture in which everything's
going around the church and there's so many
wonderful activities.
Well, of course, it's going to attract young
people.
Isn't that what we want?
Without any knowledge whatsoever of God.
Can be promoted through the ranks, to be
a leader among the youth.
Doesn't even have a clue who God is.
But you'd never know it because of the
way the church is done nowadays.
It goes on.
What will be the greatest knowledge that these
people will have?
It goes on to say this.
I will forgive their iniquity and their sins.
I will remember no more.
Believers, even brand new believers, the one thing
that a brand new believer...
He might not be able to explain to
you the Trinity because, well, after 23 years,
I can't do that.
He will tell you this.
My sins have been forgiven.
My iniquities, my sins, He remembers no more.
And He'll tell you why.
Because Jesus Christ shed His own blood for
my soul.
And that is the only reason.
Nothing in my hands I bring.
Simply to the cross I cling.
I trust not in my church nor my
baptism nor my piety.
I trust in Christ and Christ alone.
Now, just quickly, over to the next expression
of the covenant in chapter 33 of Jeremiah.
And look at this.
Oh, I love this so much.
This is one of the most beautiful things.
He says in chapter 32, verse 37, Behold,
I will gather them out of all the
lands to which I have driven them in
My anger, in My wrath, and in My
great indignation, and I will bring them back
to this place and I will make them
dwell in safety.
Does that sound familiar?
Right up there with Ezekiel, isn't it?
They shall be My people and I will
be their God.
There we go again.
The great goal of God and His providence
in electing a people for Himself, for His
Son.
And then He says this.
Now look at this.
Look, I want to straighten you out theologically
tonight, okay?
And I will give them one heart in
one way.
And I want you to understand something.
You turn on modern pop Christianity and what
are you going to hear?
Songs and preachings about what?
We just all need to be one.
We just need to throw out all these
denominations.
The problem is when you throw out a
denomination and you start a non-denominational church,
you just started another denomination.
Did you know that?
We just need to throw out all this
stuff and we just all need to be
one.
The church is not one.
You know, we need the church to be
one.
Well, now I've got to make a decision
when I hear you say that.
Either God's lying or you are.
Because God said over there in John 17
when Jesus prayed, Jesus asked to make them
one.
Are you saying the Father denied Him?
And then here in the New Covenant promise
for the church He said, and I will
give them one heart.
Now what does that mean?
I'll tell you what it means.
Let me give an example.
Many years ago when I was serving in
Ceja de Selva in Peru.
Ceja de Selva is the eyebrow of the
jungle up in the north.
It was during terrorist times.
Sometimes the sendero luminoso had control.
It was a red zone.
We weren't supposed to be up there.
We smuggled ourselves up there in the back
of a grain truck.
We jumped out at night.
We made our way up into the jungle
because there was a church that was suffering
persecution and was scared and we knew we
had to get up there.
Alright, I make my way through.
I've got a poncho on and a big
hat.
Boy, did I look funny.
I've got this big hat on and I'm
trying to look really short.
And we make our way up this trek.
It's about 12 hours, like going up a
45 degree angle in two feet of mud.
It's horrid.
Just wore out.
We make it to this one town, but
we had to go to Ingenio and then
Tamboli.
But we couldn't make it that far, so
we stopped over in this one village.
We're waiting there, me and a guy named
Paco, there on the outside of the village
and I'm going, you're shorter than me.
You go in.
Because we didn't know if the terrorists owned
the village or not.
So we sat there.
Okay, we'll both go in.
We go in.
It's pitch dark.
It's about 10 o'clock at night.
There's no lights, no electricity.
We see this guy standing over there.
Paco walks up to him and goes, ¿Hay
hermanos por aquí?
Are there brothers here?
And the guy is kind of a little
bit drunk and stuff and he goes, ¿Por
ahí, vieja?
Over there.
The old lady.
So we walk over there.
Knock on the door.
Little old lady.
Nazarene.
Little old Nazarene.
She opens the door.
She sees me.
I'm about 8 feet tall compared to her.
She's about this big.
And I say, Somos pastores.
Necesitamos ayuda.
We're pastors.
We need help.
She grabbed me and Paco like this.
Pulled us in the door.
Run us down into this carved out piece
of like cave looking thing which was her
basement.
Stuck us down there.
Ran out.
Killed a chicken.
Cut up Yucca.
Called some other brothers.
They came over.
They're all looking out the windows and making
sure no one knows what's going on.
And they keep us down there all night.
And they feed us.
And they give us water.
And they care for us.
And they watch the house all night.
Now, theologically, me and the little Nazarene lady
would disagree on some things.
Okay?
We would.
But do you see what God's done?
She really is a Christian.
We had one heart.
Jesus' prayer was answered.
What you need to understand is I can
get on a plane flying to Romania, sit
down by a Calvinistic Baptist and talk to
him about Jesus and walk away thinking I
don't even think that guy's saved.
And I can sit down by some wild
Charismatic and talk to them and think that
guy's not saved either.
But I can go and sit down by
another Charismatic or Assembly of God or a
Baptist and sit down with them even though
I might disagree with a few things in
their life.
If they are trusting in Jesus Christ as
their Lord and Savior, if they are clinging
to Him, if they are loving Him, if
they are risking their life for Him, if
they adore Him, if they boast that all
their iniquities and all their sins have been
forgiven because Jesus Christ died for them on
a cross, we're just one.
We're just one.
He really did give His people one heart.
He really did.
And yeah, I can still be from a
different denomination and I can still disagree, but
I can't fight.
We really are one.
He gave us one heart.
And one of the ways in which we
have one heart, we know we have one
heart is because it also says He'll give
us one way.
That little woman was concerned about holiness.
She was concerned about doing what?
I was hungry and you fed me.
Let me just share with you something.
I'm going to run a lot of rapids
because I'm not going to be here.
I might not be here after tonight, but
I'm not going to be here very long.
Let me tell you something.
Have you ever heard that passage?
I was in prison and you didn't visit
me.
I was hungry and you didn't feed me.
I was naked and you didn't clothe me.
So we all decide we need to get
clothing ministries and prison ministries and everything else
going on.
Well, we need clothing ministries and we need
prison ministries and we need to feed the
poor, but that's not what that passage means
at all.
So stop using it out of context.
You say, well, it works.
Yeah, but you can't do that.
Just because it works doesn't mean you can
use it that way.
This is what it means.
Because Jesus tells people there, the sheep and
the goats, He says, I was in prison
and you didn't visit me.
I was sick, you didn't visit me.
I was hungry, you didn't feed me.
I was naked, you didn't clothe me.
You're going to go to hell.
Does that mean if you don't have a
prison ministry or help the poor, you're going
to go to hell?
What's He talking about?
This is what He's talking about.
I understood this really well when I went
to Peru.
In most prisons around the world, when they
throw you into prison, guess what?
They don't feed you.
They don't clothe you.
They don't give you anything.
They don't even give you water.
Yeah.
And so if someone from the outside doesn't
come every day and bring you food, and
bring you water, and bring you clothing, you're
going to die.
And what Jesus is talking about is this.
He's saying, we've got these unbelievers.
They're meeting one night in the catacombs there
in Rome.
Roman soldiers break the door down.
They come in and they grab a few
of them, the two pastors, and they take
them and they throw them in the prison
there.
Now, the body of believers that weren't carried
away, that weren't discovered that night, they're sitting
there going, two of us are in prison
and they're going to die.
Okay, who's going to go?
The guy says, I'll go.
Alright, look, I'll go.
Look, you know, I have a wife and
two children.
So when I go, I'll go take care
of my wife and my children.
Okay.
Here's the food.
Here's the water.
Here's the extra clothing.
Oh, here's that ointment that the one needs
for the whip marks on his back.
Okay.
Goes up there, makes his way through all
the families that are visiting criminals, through the
bars and passing them food, and he goes
up to the two believers.
And he goes, brother, here's food.
And here's the clothing.
And before he gets to the eye salve,
he's hit in the back of the head.
He's struck down and he's drugged inside the
prison and he's thrown in because the Roman
soldiers that were looking at him, they said,
oh, we got us another one now.
What it's talking about, if you're not willing,
if you have sacrificial, even dying love for
someone suffering because of My name, you go
to hell.
And it doesn't mean, again, that you're saved
by doing sacrificial works.
What he's saying is if I have truly
regenerated your heart and given you a new
nature, if I have truly put My Spirit
in you, you will not allow another believer
to just rot away in prison, but you
will go to Him even if it costs
you your own life.
And that's the way everyone will know that
you are truly My believer.
See that little verse that you really like?
Everyone will know you're a believer by the
love.
It gets a little costly when you look
at it through the eyes of something other
than American, doesn't it?
It gets a little dangerous.
That's what he's saying.
And that's what is happening here.
What is that one way?
I'll tell you what that one way is.
Sacrificial love.
Washing the feet of the saints.
Caring for them.
Not robbing your brothers by all that you
own.
Living as a sacrifice.
Make my life a living sacrifice.
It's more than a song.
It's a verse.
And it's to be obeyed.
Now, look at this.
It's beautiful.
He says, and I will give them one
heart and one way that they may fear
Me always.
He'll give them a heart that will fear
Him always.
It doesn't say fear Him part of the
time and then fall away.
Fear Him always.
This new heart that a true believer receives,
it will fear Him always.
And it will be for their own good.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning
of wisdom and it is for our own
good.
But not only this, this is the only
promise in the Bible to believers who have
children.
They may fear Me always and for their
own good and for the good of their
children after them.
I don't know if my children will be
converted, but I do know this.
God has done good to my children by
giving them a father who has a new
heart and not giving them a father that
was like he was before he was born
again.
If your father and your mother in all
their perfection and everything else truly love the
Lord and truly fear Him, young person, you
need to get down on your knees and
realize that God has been good to you.
And then, this is my favorite part, verse
40, I will make an everlasting covenant with
them that I will not turn away from
them to do them good.
Okay?
Look at that.
And all the Baptists are going, yep, security
of the believer.
He's going to make an everlasting covenant with
us and he'll never turn away.
Guess what?
That's right.
That's what he says.
The problem is, Baptists always stop reading.
Look at the rest.
I will make an everlasting covenant with them
that I will not turn away from them
to do them good and I will put
the fear of me in their hearts so
that they will not turn away from me.
You see the difference?
Here's how God keeps a man saved.
It's not just by saying, okay, I've saved
you, now live like hell.
You know, like most Baptists say, I'm saved.
I don't go to church, I don't read
my Bible, don't care about missions, cuss out
the pastor, cuss out like a sailor, do
everything I want, I'm immoral, you know, Bubba
Christianity.
Bless God I'm saved because once saved, always
saved.
Well, once truly saved, always saved.
But the evidence that you have been truly
saved and He is keeping you is that
He puts His fear in your heart so
that you will not turn away from Him.
And every time the Bible warns of apostasy,
of falling away, it is a proper warning
given to His children.
They will not fall away when they hear
that warning because He has put His fear
in them.
You see, it's a beautiful text.
I make a covenant with Him, I will
not turn away from Him, but they won't
turn away from me either because I'll put
my fear in their heart.
Isn't that beautiful?
And then look at this, verse 41, my
goodness, we're going to stop here.
I will rejoice over them to do them
good.
You know the way this is used in
other places?
Like a bridegroom rejoicing over his bride on
the night of their honeymoon.
I don't know about you, but I was
pretty excited.
I don't think I've ever been so excited
in all my life.
I don't think I've ever been happier.
My beautiful wife.
I mean, to wait so long and there
she is.
Wow!
God says, I will rejoice over them.
And I will rejoice over them to do
them good.
People have this idea, you know, most Christians,
if I wrote a hymn about the way
most Christians think it would be to God,
You are holy and I am a worm.
Step on me and watch me squirm.
They have this idea that God just, okay,
I've saved you, but don't ask anything else
because really you make me sick.
I've saved you, but you're just a mess.
He says, I rejoice over you to do
you good.
I can't wait to do you good.
I'm excited about doing you good.
I live to do you good.
Nothing makes me happier than doing you good.
That's an exciting thing to know, isn't it?
And then he says this, and I will
faithfully plant them in this land, look at
this, with all my heart and with all
my soul.
It doesn't say that anywhere else in the
Bible.
I will faithfully accomplish absolutely everything I promise
to my child and I will do it
with all my heart and all my soul.
Every bit of divine being will be poured
into accomplishing every promise I've ever given you.
And that's why I dance.
That's why I sing because I'm happy.
I sing because I'm free.
One of the greatest revelations that I have
ever had regarding God, and I don't mean
that I saw anything, but in a battling
with massive depression years and years ago, working
18 hours a day as a missionary, just
hoping that somehow God would think I was
okay, that He would be proud of me,
and just literally running myself straight into the
ground where I...
In Peru one day, on the third floor
of an old building where we had church,
I just collapsed on the stairwell and actually
said this, God, I fear hell and do
not want to go there, but I have
failed You so miserably I am ashamed to
go to heaven.
If only You could prepare a place for
me where I would never have to look
at Your face.
The reality of being totally unable to please
God in my own power, and then like
light breaking through, all of a sudden, it's
like God...
I could imagine in heaven, okay, we finally
got Him where we want Him.
Now, open up the doors.
And to realize in one second that I
don't have to move one thirty-second of
an inch to the right or to the
left to be loved of God.
That the love of God cannot increase because
it is perfect, cannot decrease because it is
all powerful.
That He rejoices over me to do me
good.
That He loves me, and that in spite
of all my failure, in spite of all
the things that I do wish I had
not done, in spite of every weakness, in
spite of...
Believer, listen to this, because you don't really
know it, you don't really believe it, so
listen to it.
If you truly are born again and truly
are a child of God, the first time
you see Jesus, He will not have a
scowl on His face.