Let's open up our Bibles to Ezekiel, chapter
36, Ezekiel, chapter 36.
I'm going to try to cover many different
aspects of salvation and the working of God
tonight and genuine conversion.
We're going to begin here.
Ezekiel 36, verse 23.
But before we read God's word, let's pray.
Father, I come before you in the name
of your son.
And I know, Lord, that apart from him,
I would have no part with you.
It is upon his merit and his virtue
that I stand.
And Lord, I boldly come into your throne,
grace your throne room.
And I ask, Lord, for these bones that
they might live.
Lord, would you please grant my request for
the sake of your own glory?
To vindicate your own name, take out these
hearts of stone and replace them with hearts
of flesh.
In Jesus name, amen.
We'll begin in verse 22 of chapter 36.
He says, 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.
There are several things that can be said
about this passage, but we don't have time
to stay here and dwell on a passage
that's worth weeks of preaching.
But I will say a few things about
this that are extremely important.
First of all, everything that God does, he
does for the sake of his own name.
Everything that God does, he does for his
own glory.
And you say, well, I don't like that.
Men don't like that.
Men will stand up and say, well, I
want God to do something for me.
I want God to do something because of
me.
And that is your greatest error.
The one thing that we must understand that
I have been hammering out this week and
that your pastor has spoken about much is
this.
The only thing that your character, your nature,
your deeds could ever motivate a holy God
to do would be to come with judgment
and wrath.
If God were to take a lantern and
to search the world through every heart, every
soul, every mind, he would not find one
man among us worthy of saving.
And that is why we rejoice when we
truly understand the sinfulness of man.
We rejoice in the fact that God does
what he does for his own glory and
for his own namesake to go out there
and get a name for himself among the
nations.
He has done this work of salvation.
Another thing that you need to understand about
God when he is working salvation is what
is said here in verse 23.
Then the nations will know that I am
the Lord.
And God truly saves an individual or a
nation.
It is a testimony to his power and
a testimony to the truth that he is
definitely the God of the universe and the
God of the nations.
Let's go back to Egypt for a moment.
When you look at Egypt over and over,
God could have brought the children of Israel
out of Egypt with one swift move of
his hand.
And yet he brings plague after plague and
demonstration of his power after demonstration of his
power.
Why?
So that in the salvation of Israel, the
nations would know that Yahweh was the Lord
of glory and the King of nations.
Now, let's take this for a moment and
take it to modern day preaching and apply
this to modern day preaching.
Because of the way that preachers are preaching
today.
Because the gospel has been reduced down to
four little laws that do not deal with
the important factors of salvation, the sin of
man, the holiness of God.
And because we introduce people into the kingdom
by getting them to repeat a little prayer.
And because the great majority of them are
never changed.
The world looks at our converts and never
does it declare, behold the power of God.
But instead we hear what we hear in
the book of Romans because of you.
The name of God is blasphemed among the
nations.
When a church is gathered together as a
converted church.
When every member in the church can walk
up to this platform and give testimony with
their life and their word to how God
has changed their life.
It is in that that we are a
demonstration to the world.
Christianity in America today, many churches in America
today are nothing more than a six flags
over Jesus.
A machine that must keep going and going
and going.
By organization, by management, by activities and by
entertainment.
But when God is truly moving among a
people, even the scoffers will turn to see
the fire that burns.
Even scoffers will turn to see the fire
that burns.
When God moves on behalf of a people,
he does it for his own glory.
And when it is truly God, no one
can deny that it is the work of
God and not the manipulation of men.
He goes on and he says in verse
24.
And I want to read this and I
want to put special emphasis on the personal
pronoun I.
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.
And I will put my spirit within you
and cause you to walk in my statutes.
And you will be careful to observe my
ordinances.
Do you see even the smallest measure of
doubt in these words?
It is very popular today to teach a
salvation in which God does all he can.
But if you don't cooperate, well, the whole
plan of God goes down the tubes.
Or God does all he can to get
you saved.
And he so much wants you to be
holy.
He so much wants you to love him.
And he so much wants you to turn
away from all your idols.
But he can't make you do that.
That's what's being taught today, but that is
not biblical.
Let's look at this text.
He says, I will take you from the
nations.
He doesn't say, I have a wonderful plan
and I hope you will join with me.
And he doesn't sit up there on the
throne, twisting his hands and weeping, saying, there's
so many wonderful things I want to do,
but I just can't possibly do them because
I can't get anyone to cooperate.
No, God says he stands there at the
edge of the universe, at the open door
of heaven, and he swears by his own
name, lifting up his own right hand, saying,
I will do a work of salvation in
this world.
I will get glory for myself.
I will call forth a people and they
will come.
He says, for I will take you from
the nations.
That means that God throughout the world is
calling forth a people to give them to
his son for the glory and good pleasure
of his son.
That also means that when God has truly
saved an individual, he also has the power
to separate them from the world.
This idea of the continuously carnal Christian, that
a man can be born again and yet
live in carnality for 30 years of his
life and then go on into heaven is
an absolute abomination theologically.
The God who has the power to create
the world and the God who has the
power to defeat his enemies and to bring
about salvation, that same God has the power
in conversion to change a man and to
make him new and to change the desires
of his heart because he has changed his
heart.
And he brings that man out of the
nations.
He calls him out of the world and
the man willingly follows.
He says, for I will take you from
the nations and gather you from all the
lands and bring you into your own land.
Not only does God have the power to
save, not only does God have the power
to separate the true believer from the world
and bring him out, but God also has
the power to introduce that new believer into
the promised land, into a life of the
Spirit, into the life of bearing fruit, into
a life of a godly, godly, happy, joyful,
full believer in Christ.
There's a scripture that I've been memorizing for
a while.
It takes me a long time to memorize
scripture.
It's in Jeremiah chapter 2.
It says, what injustice did your fathers find
in me that they went far from me
and walked after emptiness and became empty?
If I were to describe the professing church,
and I'm not saying the converted true church,
but those who profess to be part of
Christianity in America today, I would say that
the great majority of them are empty, and
I can prove it by all the books
on emptiness in our Christian bookstores.
The great majority of them are empty.
And why are they empty?
Because they walk after emptiness.
And why do they walk after emptiness?
Because they have not truly been converted.
Because the God who has the power to
put away sin through the death of His
Son, and the God who has the power
to bring about repentance and faith in their
heart, also has the power to remove them
from these worldly carnal things and bring them
into a land of fruitfulness and blessing and
wholeness.
Many people don't need counseling.
They need conversion.
Many people do not need discipleship.
They need salvation.
Now we go on in verse 25.
Absolutely phenomenal promise of the new covenant.
He says, then I will sprinkle clean water
on you.
Now look at this.
And you will be clean.
He doesn't say, I will convert you and
then I hope you cooperate with your sanctification.
No, the Bible says, pursue peace with all
men, and the sanctification without which no one
will see the Lord.
If God is not doing a work of
sanctification in your life, it's because you are
not born again.
If you do not desire holiness, it's because
your nature has not been changed.
Because he says, then I will sprinkle clean
water on you, and you will be clean.
And he is not speaking simply of positional
righteousness before God.
So many people will say, well, you know,
the true Christian positionally is righteous before God
because of the blood of Jesus Christ, but
in practice, they're not righteous.
And that's OK.
That's the doctrine of the carnal Christian.
But that's not what God says.
Because he goes on to explain what he
means by sprinkling and making clean with the
next phrase.
I will cleanse you from all your filthiness
and from all your idols.
Do you know one of the greatest evidences
that you have truly been born again?
Now listen to me, young people.
Listen to me, old people.
One of the greatest evidences that you are
truly born again is that you can see
throughout your life, God faithfully working to cleanse
you from all your filthiness and to tear
all the idols out of your life.
I have been preaching now for over 20
years.
I have been feebly walking with the Lord
for over 21.
If I were to describe my life, it
would be a life of discipline, not my
own, but God's loving discipline on my behalf,
constantly working in the life of Paul Washer
to cleanse me from all my filthiness, my
carnality, my worldliness, my self-centeredness, and to
tear away all the idols in my life
so that now I find myself after 20
years, like Jacob coming back into the promised
land, limping, that God has wrestled me.
Have you ever read, Jacob have I loved,
Esau have I hated?
Now that word hated there means hate.
If it meant something else, they would have
translated something else.
Jacob have I loved and Esau have I
hated.
Now, in what way, I ask myself, in
what way did God love Jacob, and in
what way did the hatred of God manifest
itself towards Esau?
Well, if you look at Esau, he was
blessed by God, tremendously blessed by God, to
such a point that when Jacob came back
into the promised land and wanted to give
Esau a gift, he needed no gift.
God had so prospered Esau that he needed
no gift from the one upon whom the
promise rested.
So God took care of Esau.
God blessed Esau.
He protected him.
He fulfilled the promises he made concerning Esau.
So how is it that God hated Esau,
and yet loved Jacob?
They were both blessed.
The only difference between the two is this,
there is never even a sentence or a
word in Scripture that indicates that God ever
disciplined Esau.
He cut the rope on Esau and he
let him run.
He let Esau do whatever his wicked heart
desired.
God is faithful, though all men be liars.
God fulfilled his promises with the man, but
God touched him not.
Well, how was the love of God manifested
towards Jacob?
Every day of Jacob's life, God beat him.
Every day of Jacob's life, God disciplined him.
Every left turn Jacob made, God was there
bringing discipline.
Bringing discipline.
To the end that he wrestles with God
and God touches his hip and he comes
back into the promised land, how limping and
broken and contrite, no longer trying to manipulate
his own fortune, no longer trying to manipulate
God, no longer boasting of great things or
trying to steal anything from any man, but
just recognizing that God is his God.
So many people today profess to know Jesus
Christ as Lord and claim the Father of
our Lord to be their own, and yet
when I look in their life, I see
no working of God's discipline.
I see not God breaking them.
I see not God molding them.
I see not God hemming them in on
every side, before and behind, beside, above, below.
I see not God.
They run unrestrained.
They live in the world and they love
it.
They do the things of the world and
then they practice their religion on certain days
and God touches them not.
And yet I see saints of God who
for one moment steps off the path of
righteousness and God is there to meet them.
And to bring them back.
The one thing that a true Christian will
say about himself is that he will often
feel to be a prisoner of love.
A prisoner of the concern of God.
Now he says, I will sprinkle clean water
on you and you will be clean.
He promises here in the New Covenant that
there will be a work of sanctification and
it will be successful.
He who began a good work in you
will finish it.
If there is no finishing to the work
that began, no work ever began.
He says in verse 26, Now how will
all this happen?
What is the basis for all this great
work that God will do?
It's 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 I will give you
a heart of flesh.
Now usually when we hear the word flesh
in the Bible, especially in the New Testament,
it is referring to carnality of men.
But not so here.
It's used in a positive manner.
He's drawing a contrast between a heart of
stone and a heart of flesh.
Now what's the meaning here?
Take the strongest man among you here, the
tallest, strongest, bravest man.
Let's say that we make a statue of
him.
Make the statue out of stone and we
place the statue right here.
Right here, beside me in the pulpit.
This magnificent granite carved into the image of
this man.
And I reach over and I grab him
by the sensitive part under the arm and
I twist with all my might.
What is that statue of stone going to
do?
Absolutely nothing.
I pull out a sharp blade and I
poke him under the arm or I cut
him deep.
And what's he going to do?
Absolutely nothing.
Why?
He is stone.
He is an inanimate object.
He cannot respond to stimuli.
There's the word.
He cannot respond to stimuli.
Why?
He is inanimate.
He is dead.
And so no matter what you do, you
can prod, cut, insult, no matter what you
do to this man, nothing will happen because
he's nothing more than a statue of stone,
an inanimate object that cannot respond to stimuli.
But if you bring the man himself up
here, the man of flesh, no matter how
muscular, no matter how strong, no matter how
enduring, if I grab him in the sensitive
part under his arm and twist and pinch
with all my might, you'll hear him scream.
Why?
He is alive.
He can respond to stimuli.
You cut him and he bleeds.
You poke him and he screams.
There are so many people here today in
our country that call themselves Christians, and yet
they show no ability whatsoever to respond to
divine stimuli.
They can hear a thousand sermons on holiness
and yet live in sin as comfortably as
a fish lives in water.
They can continue attending church Sunday after Sunday.
They can say all the right things, but
they can go to their home and they
can do all sorts and all manners of
evil.
They can live with the wicked and enjoy
their company more than the people of God.
They can watch things they shouldn't watch.
They can do things they shouldn't do.
They can wear things they shouldn't wear.
They can go on and on and be
just as much a part of the world
as someone who claims to be a part
of the world.
And when they sit under preaching, they respond
not at all.
Why?
Because God has never done a work of
salvation for them.
They still have a heart of stone.
And what must happen to them?
God and God's supernatural power, working out in
salvation, must remove that heart of stone and
give them a heart of flesh.
And every person on the road to heaven,
every person who is truly a believer, every
one, every last one of them, if any
man be in Christ, he is a new
creature.
If any man, every one who is truly
a Christian has undergone this supernatural work of
God that demonstrates more power than creation itself.
Of taking out the heart of stone and
giving them a brand new heart that responds
to divine stimuli, is sensitive to the Word
of God.
One of the tests in 1 John to
true conversion is this, that a man will
acknowledge his sin and confess it.
That's one of the greatest evidences of conversion,
is a recognition of sin and the confession
of that sin.
Now, all the pastors that are here tonight
will nod their head and understand the truth
of what I am saying.
In every church I have ever been in
where the Spirit of God has truly moved,
it is amazing.
When we begin to speak about sin and
holiness, it is amazing what happens every time.
And what happens every time is this, the
most devout, most holy, most dedicated, most Christ
-like people in the church are the ones
who come forward weeping over their sins, broken,
and openly confessing their need of grace, while
the most wicked, carnal, worldly people in that
congregation sit there as cold as a stone.
That is frightening.
Well, it is frightening for some, because for
some it's a sign of condemnation and death,
but for others it's a joy.
If you're a Christian who breaks at the
slightest crack of God's Word, if you're a
Christian who mourns over their sin, if you're
a Christian who finds yourself contrite and broken
over your need of grace, then rejoice!
Not only are you not far from the
kingdom of God, you are in the kingdom
of God.
And he says here, he says, 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 I will give you a heart of
flesh.
And then he says, I will put my
spirit within you.
Now look at this.
I will put my spirit within you.
How is it, as I'm going to share
later on, how is it that so many
people can claim to have had an encounter
with God, and yet the God with whom
they have had that encounter seems to have
no power?
Salvation, as I said in the first sermon
I preached in this church, is not simply
you getting a ticket to heaven.
Salvation is not simply you stepping out of
the line going to hell and deciding to
step into the line going to heaven.
Salvation is a supernatural work of God through
which the very nature of a person is
changed.
And not only that, but the spirit of
Almighty God, the very same spirit that hovered
over the waters, is now hovering in your
heart, dwelling there with the fullness of his
power.
And yet he has not power to change
you?
That's not what Scripture says.
It says, I will put my spirit within
you and now look closely at this word.
I will put my spirit within you and
cause you.
That word can be translated make you.
These preachers that God can't make anybody do
anything.
Isn't that amazing?
He's the only sovereign Lord of glory or
the only sovereign Lord anywhere who doesn't have
power to rule over his subjects.
Isn't that amazing?
The way he is preached today.
He's Lord!
The same preachers that will stand there and
give you a discourse on the sovereign Lordship
of Christ will turn right around and say,
but he can't make anybody do anything.
Now you don't have to study the law
of non-contradiction and classical logic to understand
that's just simply not right.
He is the Lord of glory.
He has called forth a people not for
them, but primarily for himself and for his
own glory.
He has done such a work in them.
He has put his spirit in them and
he says, I will cause them.
I will cause them.
I will exercise my sovereignty over them.
You see, don't use words like sovereign if
you're not going to bite the entire apple.
If you're not going to take the entire
truth in.
Don't turn attributes of God into nothing more
than cliches you sing about in contemporary Christian
music or cliches that you write on the
back of Christian t-shirts.
He says, I am sovereign and I will
call forth a people and I will put
my spirit within them and I will cause
them to do what?
He says, I will put my spirit within
you and cause you to walk in my
statutes.
Now look at this next verse and you
will be careful to observe my ordinances.
It says you will.
The people I save will follow me.
The people that I save will be obedient
to me.
And God says, I will see to it
because I will have glory even out of
the nations that hate me and I will
have glory when they see my people because
in my true people the power, my power,
will be manifest.
Now having said that, I want us to
go to Matthew chapter 7.
Enter through, verse 13, the narrow gate for
the gate is wide and the way is
broad that leads to destruction and there are
many who enter through it and the way
is narrow that leads to life and there
are few who find it.
The one thing that I can say about
my denomination, of those who in the denomination
claim to be conservative and believe the Bible,
the one thing I can say is that
we have held up and been ridiculed for
holding up the fact that we believe that
Jesus Christ is the only way.
We have done that as Southern Baptists in
Judea.
We have done that.
We say it's not multiple choice and not
all roads lead to Rome.
Jesus Christ is the only gate.
The only door through which a man may
pass into eternal life.
We have done that.
But my dear friend, to only teach half
a truth is more dangerous than teaching an
out and out lie and we have taught
this as a half truth that the gate
is small but he says the way is
narrow.
If I were to look at my own
denomination today and many leaders would agree with
me, I would have to say this.
What would I have to say?
If I were to rewrite this verse based
on what I see in Southern Baptist life,
evangelical life in America, I would say this.
The gate is small and the way is
broad but
I'll tell you something.
I'll tell you why.
Because many of them are building their visions
on the bones of unregenerate church members and
if they were to start preaching the truth,
they'd have a mass exodus from their congregation
and all their little plans, hopes and dreams
and little kingdoms would fall down in the
dust.
I would like to say to those men,
I'll show you whom you should fear.
For the gate is small and the way
is broad.
Few who find it.
That's terrifying.
Few who find it.
Oh, if I could hire an angel that
would fly from one side of this earth
to another and I could give him one
message, I think I would tell him to
cry out, few are those who find it.
Few are those who find it.
Oh, that an angel or a demon would
come to you tonight and scream out your
name and say, few are those who find
it.
Few are those who find it.
Now, let's interpret this passage correctly lest we
grow dull.
What do I mean?
When this passage is taught, even the way
I have taught it, for the most part,
men will say this and believers or the
church will think this.
Yes, that's true.
There are few who find it.
I mean, there's those of us who congregate
in Jesus' name, those of us who call
ourselves Christians, we're the few, and then we
look outside at the world and those who
do not profess faith in Jesus Christ and
those who do not claim to know Him,
and there are so many of them and
so few of us who profess to be
disciples.
That's what this text means.
No, it most certainly does not mean that
at all.
What does it mean?
It means this in the context.
Among those who claim to be my disciples,
among those who profess me to be Lord,
among those who call me Savior, few of
those will find it.
That's what the text means.
How do I know that?
Just look in verse 21.
Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord,
will enter the kingdom of heaven.
You go on down, verse 22.
You see, religious people, many will say to
me on that day, Lord, Lord, verse 23,
then I will declare to them, I never
knew you.
Depart from me, you worker of iniquity.
Jesus is not setting the professing church over
here and saying that it's a few in
number and that all the world over here
is going to hell and those who profess
him to be Lord are OK.
No, he's saying among those people who claim
to be my disciples, who call me Lord,
among them, among that group, few of them
will find eternal life.
That's what he is teaching, my dear friend.
You see, when you truly get into the
word of God, it's frightening.
When you truly get into the word of
God, you're standing there with your feet hanging
over the ledge, swinging out into eternity.
It's a frightening place to be, but better
now than when you stand before him on
that great day.
Now, he says in verse 15, beware of
the false prophets who come to you in
sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.
As I told the young people yesterday at
the school, your best friend is the one
who tells you the most truth.
Your best friend is the one who tells
you the most truth.
Do you want truth?
Because according to the scriptures, Romans, the first
three chapters, few are those who want truth.
The great majority of even professing Christianity spends
most of its time on purpose being so
active and so busy that it will no
longer have time to hear truth.
Now, he says, verse 16, speaking of the
false prophets in the immediate context, but in
the wider context, this refers to anyone of
the unregenerate.
He says this, anyone who is not truly
a Christian yet professes to be a Christian,
he says this, you will know them by
their fruits.
Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor
figs from thistles, are they?
You will know them by their fruit.
Have you ever heard someone say you can't
tell a book by its cover?
Jesus didn't say that.
As a matter of fact, I have to
believe that it originated with Satan because it
directly opposes what Jesus taught.
And he's the father of lies, and it's
a lie, so it must have come from
him.
Usually when I get to this text, someone
says, judge not, lest ye be judged.
He said, twist not Scripture, lest ye be
like Satan, because that's not what that text
means.
He said, you will know them by their
fruit.
You will know them by what they do,
not by what they say, not by what
they feel.
You will know them by the activity of
their life.
Now, I'll give you an illustration that I
give quite often.
Let's say that I showed up for preaching
looking like this, hair combed, clothes in order,
and I showed up an hour late.
And I run up here to the pulpit,
and all of you are put out with
me.
What, don't you appreciate the opportunity to speak
here?
What, you just treat this as something vulgar,
something common, you don't realize it's a privilege?
And I say, oh no, no, please, please,
don't take me wrong on this.
When I was coming here, I had a
flat tire, and as I was changing the
tire, well, a lug nut rolled out into
the highway, and well, thoughtlessly, I ran out
to grab the lug nut, and when I
did, well, I looked up, and there was
a 30 ton logging truck going 120 miles
an hour, 5 feet in front of me,
and well, it ran me over, and that's
why I'm late.
You would become more incensed and more angry
with that explanation.
You would conclude that I was either a
liar or insane.
And when I pressed you on the point,
no, that really happened, you would finally get
fed up with me, and you would say,
that can't happen.
I said, what do you mean it can't
happen?
It really happened.
No, it cannot happen.
You're either deranged or you're lying.
Well, why not?
I say to you, and you say, well,
it's impossible to have an encounter with something
as large as a logging truck going 120
miles an hour and not somehow be changed.
Then why do you profess to have an
encounter with God and you're not changed?
Has God become smaller than a logging truck?
Wake up, man.
This is heaven and this is hell.
Wake up.
You claim that God has redeemed you.
You claim that He's converted you.
You claim that He's regenerated you.
You claim that He's come to live inside
you.
Is there evidence of such an encounter?
Is there evidence of such a working?
Jesus was a master.
He was a master debater.
You want to learn how to debate?
Study Jesus.
He could catch men.
And He did catch men.
And He wants us to catch men.
He looked at them and He said, Figs.
You don't get figs from thorn trees, do
you?
And they answered, well, of course not, Jesus.
I mean, you're a carpenter, but everybody knows
that.
Well, then thorns.
You're not going to find them on fig
trees, are you?
There you go, Jesus.
You've got the logic.
You're right.
That's true.
Jesus, if anyone ever comes to you telling
you they've got a fig tree and it's
got thorns on it, or they've got a
thorn tree that bears figs, Jesus, they've got
something to sell.
They're either lying to you or out of
their mind.
Don't listen to them.
Then He looks back at them and He
says, Well then, anyone who claims to be
My disciple and doesn't bear the fruit of
a disciple, is either out of their mind
or a liar.
Now, in verse 17 and 18, is probably
some of the deepest theology in the entire
Bible on soteriology, the doctrine of salvation.
The deepest truths.
So then, every good tree bears good fruit,
but the bad tree bears bad fruit.
Now, what is this simply, is He saying?
You will know them by their fruit.
If their fruit is bad, it's because they're
a bad tree.
What is He saying?
If you do not have the fruit that
is described in Scripture as Christian fruit, then
you're not a Christian.
And He goes on in verse 18.
And this is incredible.
I mean, this is one of the most
phenomenal texts in the Bible.
A good tree cannot, can not produce bad
fruit.
Nor can a bad tree produce good fruit.
Now, as Southern Baptists, again, we teach half
of this.
We will tell lost people, until you're saved,
you can have no good fruit.
We tell them that all the time, and
we're right in saying that.
We're right in telling people, look, you can't
work your way to heaven.
You can't produce good fruit.
You can't change your life until you're saved.
Because only a good tree can bear good
fruit.
But what we don't tell them is this.
A good tree cannot produce bad fruit.
Because we're calling people good trees, and they're
constantly producing bad fruit.
Dissension, envy, decision, dissension, carnality, worldliness, sensuality,
fornication, adultery, pornography, all these different things.
And we call them Christians struggling with ethical
problems.
When Jesus would say that they should be
afraid, that they should go and make their
elections sure.
Because there is a great possibility.
They know not God, and God knows not
them.
We go into verse 19.
Every tree that does not bear good fruit
is cut down and thrown into the fire.
Look at what he's saying.
He doesn't say, everyone who does not profess
me to be Lord is cut down and
thrown into the fire.
No, that's not the test.
He says this, everyone who does not bear
good fruit is cut down in the judgment
of God and thrown into hell.
Then he says in verse 20, so then
you will know them by their fruit.
He repeats himself.
He's built a parenthesis here.
He begins by saying you will know them
by their fruit.
He ends by saying you will know them
by their fruit.
And why is that?
Because in Christianity we are so prone to
spiritualize things, to romanticize things.
Well, I feel in my heart that I
am.
Well, the Bible says your heart is deceitfully
wicked.
Who can know it?
Desperately evil.
Who can know it?
Well, in my mind, I know that I
know that I know that I am.
The Bible says this, there's a way that
seems right unto a man and it leads
to death.
Jesus said, you will know them by their
fruit.
Not by what they say, not by what
they do.
I mean, not by what they say, not
by what they feel, but by what they
do.
About hell.
Usually whenever I am at some academic, pseudo
-academic place and I begin to speak about
hell, people are appalled.
Do you actually believe in hell?
Yes, I do.
Or when I ask men, why aren't you
preaching about hell?
One man's response, a very, very well-known
TV preacher, has said this, well, we don't
preach on hell because we just want to
preach the words of Jesus.
We just want to preach the love of
Jesus.
We just want to preach what Jesus wants
to communicate to people.
You know, the person who said that is
either a liar or has never read the
Bible.
And I'll tell you why.
If you go through the entire Old Testament,
you will find very little on the doctrine
of hell.
If you go through the book of Acts
and all the epistles, you will find very,
very little on the doctrine of hell.
The Christian doctrine of hell comes almost completely
from the words of Jesus.
Isn't that amazing?
Jesus spoke more about hell than all the
other biblical writers and prophets and apostles put
together.
I have set it upon myself to preach
as a dying man to dying men and
to preach to them as though I shall
never see their face again.
I want eternity on my eyeballs.
I want men to look at me and
see.
I want them to think about the deep
things, the problems of life and sin and
holiness and salvation.
I will not stay up at night, as
I have said before, because your checkbook is
not balanced.
It will not bother me because you are
suffering from a low self-esteem.
The one thing that may keep me up
tonight is this, when you stand before Him
on that great day will you hear heaven
or will you hear hell?
Because there is a hell.
There is.
Verse 21, Not everyone who says to Me,
Lord, Lord, will enter into the kingdom of
heaven.
Now, when a Jew wants to emphasize something,
he repeats himself.
God is holy, holy, holy.
Here we see that Jesus is saying, not
everyone who says to Me, Lord, Lord, what
does that mean?
Not everyone who emphatically declares Me to be
Lord will enter into the kingdom of heaven.
Do you see what that is saying?
He is not talking about some shy person
who denies Christ.
He is not talking about some person who
never even mentions that Christ is Lord.
No, He is saying, not everyone among those
who emphatically and boldly and outwardly and clearly
declare Me to be Lord will enter into
the kingdom of heaven.
That is what He is saying.
He says, But he who does the will
of My Father, that is the one who
will enter in.
John MacArthur said this one time.
It struck me like a bolt of lightning.
He said this, Do you want to know
what your profession of faith in Jesus Christ
is worth?
He said, I'll tell you.
Absolutely nothing.
Because here we see people professing Jesus Christ
to be Lord emphatically, more emphatically than many
who claim to be believers.
Here we see people emphatically professing Him to
be Lord and He says, No, you will
not enter into the kingdom of heaven.
The test of discipleship, the test of conversion,
of regeneration, of salvation, my dear friend, is
not what comes out of your mouth.
The evidence of conversion is what you do.
The evidence that you have truly passed through
the small gate is that you walk in
the narrow way.
When I preach this often, people will say,
Well, my goodness, that Southern Baptist is teaching
a doctrine of works.
He's teaching that, you know, by staying on
the path, you save yourself.
No, I'm teaching you Southern Baptist doctrine as
it was before liberalism.
What I'm teaching you is this, salvation is
only by grace, by faith.
Only, only, only.
You are saved by faith in Jesus Christ
and Jesus Christ alone.
But, that salvation that is yours is a
supernatural work of God that changes your very
nature and you will, because you are a
new creature, you will walk in a new
path.
And the evidence that you have truly passed
through the small gate is that you are
walking in the narrow way.
And when you step off the narrow way,
God comes and disciplines you and puts you
back on the path.
But if you can claim to have passed
through that small gate and yet you wander
in the broad way all the days of
your life without biblical, godly, divine discipline, you're
lost.
And it's evidence that you're lost.
All these boys, they ought to spend less
time preaching and more time studying their Bibles.
They ask people if they want to go
to heaven.
When they say yes, they say repeat this
prayer after me.
If the person isn't bold enough to repeat
the prayer, they say, well I'll say it
for you and you repeat it after me.
If they're not, have enough gumption to do
that, they'll say, well I'll pray the prayer
for you and if it's what you want
to say to God, squeeze my hand.
And then after the prayer, they'll say, did
Jesus enter in your heart?
And the person will say, I don't know.
And then the evangelist will say, well either
he did or he's a liar because he
promised that anyone who called on his name,
he'd enter into their heart.
That's what he says in Revelation 3.20,
Behold, I stand at the door and knock.
If anyone hears my voice, I'll enter in.
So did you call on him?
Well, yes.
Well, then he entered in.
Would you call Jesus a liar?
No, I'd never call Jesus a liar.
Then you're saved.
Now what you need to do is you
need to go to the back of your
Bible, take an ink pen, I'll do it
with you right now, write your name, write
the date, and every time the devil comes
to you trying to make you doubt your
salvation, you show him the back of your
Bible.
That goes on in Southern Baptist evangelism every
day that we breathe.
It is pathetic superstition and nothing more.
And it keeps going because men desire more
the glory of men than the glory of
God.
They'll come here and preach for you and
150 people will be converted and they'll go
down the road and brag about 150 being
converted, but on Sunday, you won't find a
one of them.
My dear friend, it pains me to preach
like this.
I don't enjoy it.
But it's true.
And if I love you, I must say
these things.
And the reason why God wrote these things
is because He does love you.
And God does not desire the death of
the wicked.
Not at all.
And He says in verse 22, many will
say to Me on that day, Lord, Lord,
did we not prophesy in Your name and
in Your name cast out demons and in
Your name perform many miracles?
What evidence of unconversion here?
You say, in what way?
Again, God cannot deny His own.
He cannot.
He loves His people and He's faithful to
them.
But let's just give an illustration.
Let's say that a true, true Christian on
the day of judgment stood before God and
God said to him, depart from Me.
I never knew you.
Now that's not going to happen.
Again, this is just by way of illustration.
Would a true believer look into the face
of God and say, but Lord, I prophesied
in Your name.
I cast out demons in Your name.
I did many miracles in Your name.
I did all sorts of religious things.
Lord, I went to church.
I read my Bible.
I did this and I did that.
Lord, You have to let me in.
A true believer would never say anything like
that.
What would a true believer say?
But Lord, I have cast my hope upon
Your Son.
Nothing in my hands I bring.
But Lord, to His cross I cling.
Lord, I am desperately evil and wicked, far
beyond my own ability to know.
But Lord, Christ shed His own blood for
my soul.
I have swung out into eternity, Lord, on
that one scarlet thread that Christ shed His
own blood for my soul.
No boasting in religion.
No boasting in works.
No self-satisfaction.
Throwing themselves upon the mercy of God through
the blood of Christ.
Now we go on.
The most terrifying words in verse 23.
And then I will declare to them, I
never knew you.
If I were to walk up to the
White House tonight and try to get in,
and when they stopped me I said, Well,
I know George Bush.
It would do me very little good.
But if George Bush walked out of the
White House and said, I know Paul Washer,
I'm going in.
So you see, when these people tell you
the most important thing is that you know
Jesus, that's not really true.
The most important thing is that Jesus knows
you.
And this word know here, taking it not
so much from the Greek as taking it
from all the Old Testament.
This know is an intimate relational knowledge.
I know this one.
One of my favorite Old Testament passages.
This one was born in Zion.
This one I know.
This one walked with me.
And I walked with Him.
This little girl here, she would cling to
me by hope and by faith.
She would call on me in the night
watches when she was afraid.
True believer know this, that on that day
when you enter into glory and you look
up in that face, a face you have
never seen before, it will not be the
face of a stranger.
You will say, I have known this one
all my life.
And He knows me.
That's why all the terror will flee away.
But for you, who superficially claim to know
Him, who substituted deity with religion, who went
to church as a cultural duty, you will
look in the face of that one on
that throne and you will flee with terror.
You will cry out for the rocks to
come and fall upon you, to hide you
from the wrath of the Lamb, because He
will look at you and say, depart from
me.
I never knew you.
And then He goes on to say, depart
from me, you who practice lawlessness.
Now this word lawlessness comes from a negative
particle, ah, Greek word namas, no law.
Now I'm going to give you, now if
you miss this part, you've missed the entire
sermon.
I'm going to tell you something, that if
there is any sensitivity at all in your
heart, any spiritual life whatsoever, any drawing or
working of God at all, this will terrify
you.
It is this.
Free translation, verse 23.
And then I will declare to them, I
never knew you.
Depart from me, those of you who called
yourselves my disciples, but you lived as though
I never gave you a law to obey.
I just described the great majority of professing
Christianity in America today.
They call themselves His disciples, but when I
stand before them and say, tell me the
law by which you live, tell me the
wisdom and the precepts and the commands of
God that direct your daily life, they don't
have a clue.
Depart from me, those of you who called
yourselves my disciples, but you lived your life
as though I never gave you a law
to obey.
You raised your families, but you never even
looked in my Word to see how I
commanded it to be done.
You went out and got for yourself employment
and spent your money, and you never looked
at what I commanded you as a disciple
in Scripture.
You watched things on television that I absolutely
loathe, and you loved it.
You never saw the commands where I told
you to take your eyes away from that
wicked thing.
You were sensual, and you were carnal, and
you were worldly, and you loved the world.
You never knew of my commands of piety
and holiness.
You never knew that I gave you commands
with regard to the way you're supposed to
speak.
You never knew that I gave you commands
with regard to the persons with whom you
were to have fellowship, and no one ever
told you I gave you laws about clothing
that you're supposed to wear and not supposed
to wear.
I said that because no one's saying it
anymore.
And many times I go into churches, and
as a man of God, I have to
go to the pulpit covering my eyes so
that I do not grieve the Holy Spirit
before I get there to preach.
Then he says, Therefore, everyone who hears these
words of mine and acts on them may
be compared to a wise man who built
his house on the rock.
And the rain fell, and the floods came,
and the winds blew and slammed against that
house, and yet it did not fall, for
it had been founded on the rock.
Everyone who hears these words of mine and
does not act on them will be like
a foolish man who built his house on
the sand.
The rain fell, and the floods came, and
the winds blew, and slammed against that house,
and it fell, and great was its fall.
If ever there was a verse twisted in
modern day preaching, it is this one.
You know how this passage is taught?
Preachers get up all the time, and they
preach it this way.
Now, Christians who hear the Word of God
and build their life upon it will have
strong and joyous lives.
But Christians who hear the Word of God
and do not act upon it will have
unstable lives and will not experience the joy
that God has for them.
That is not at all what Jesus is
saying.
Jesus is saying there is a group of
people who will hear His words, they will
act upon them, and when the floods of
divine judgment come in that final day, their
house will stand.
And there will be other people who claim
to be disciples, they will hear His words,
they will not act upon them, and when
the floods of divine judgment, when the fires
of wrath come, they will be consumed, and
they will perish.
You say, where do you get all this?
Again, from the context.
Again, from reading men who wrote books a
long time ago.
Let me just give you a clue to
understand the context.
In verses 13 and 14, what do we
have?
We have one small gate and many others.
That one small gate leads to heaven.
All the others lead to hell.
We have a narrow path that leads to
heaven.
We have a broad path that leads to
hell.
Then we have two trees.
A bad tree that bears bad fruit and
is cut down and thrown into the fire.
A good tree that bears good fruit and
brings forth fruit to the glory of God
and is saved.
Then we go on.
What do we have?
We have someone who says, Lord, Lord, to
Him, and yet there is no evidence of
that profession.
Their works are null and void and they
go to hell.
We have others who say, Lord, Lord, and
yet there's evidence of their profession that it
is true through what they do.
And then we come down to this.
There are those who hear the Word of
God and act upon it and they are
saved from divine judgment.
There are others who hear the Word of
God and only hear, but do not act.
And when divine judgment comes, they are destroyed.
Hear then, hear then, the Word of God.
Hear, people, the Word of God.
To some of you who hear this Word
tonight, it will confirm your salvation.
You will see the working of God in
all that has been preached.
You will see it worked out in your
life.
And you will leave here rejoicing.
Others of you will hear this and it
will make you angry.
And then you'll go out these doors and
yea, even before you reach those doors, Satan
will have come and stolen this Word from
your heart so that by the time you
get to the car, you'll be wanting to
go to Shoney's.
And eternity, heaven and hell will no longer
be in your mind.
Know that when that happens, it is a
fulfillment of what I've said.
Then there's others of you who are troubled
in your heart and you're saying, I know
not whether it is well with my soul.
I know not whether it is well with
my children.
To you, I will give this Word of
encouragement.
You are not far from the Kingdom of
God.
Because if this Word has struck your heart
and made you worried about eternal things to
the point of acting upon that worry, that
concern, then I would beg you to flee
from the wrath to come.
I would beg you to hearken to the
voice of your Master and run to Him
tonight.
Cry out to Him, Oh God, save me.
Oh God, I plead the blood of Christ.
I throw myself upon Your mercy.
I've lived a religious unconverted life and oh
God, if I died right now, I'd die
in my sins and I'd go to hell.
Oh God, save me.
And those who do call upon the name
of the Lord, they will not be disappointed.
They will not be disappointed.
Pastor.