Father, thank you again for this opportunity to
study your Word.
And we ask again for your help.
Your Word says, If any man lack wisdom,
let him ask of God.
We come asking of you to give us
wisdom and direction, by the Holy Spirit, for
Jesus' sake.
Amen.
Continuing the study in the second of a
series on the subject of counterfeit conversion.
And the Lord Jesus told us, in the
book of Matthew 24, what the sign of
the last days would be.
And before he gave all the stuff about
wars, and rumors of wars, and famines, and
pestilence, and earthquakes in diverse places, and all
of these things.
The very first thing he said, when the
disciples said, What shall be the sign of
your coming, and of the end of the
world, or the end of the age?
Jesus said, Take heed that no man, what?
Deceive you.
So we could write this down.
The chief sign of the last days will
be religious deception.
That is the major sign of the last
days.
It's significant also, that Jesus gave a parable
of the fig tree, as the sign of
his, when you see the fig tree, beginning
to put forth the leaves, know that summer
is near.
So, when you see these things come to
pass, know that the end is near, even
at the door.
So, what is also interesting, is that in
the scriptures, the fig, and the vine, and
the olive, have symbolism to do with Israel
in three different ways.
The vine is a symbol of a national
history of a country, the secular history of
a nation, we could say.
A vine's territorial plant, it grows by reaching
out this way, and it needs pruning, constant
pruning, which is a function of government.
And then the olive is a symbol of
the spiritual history of a nation.
But the third tree, the fig, is the
religious history of a nation, which often parallels
the spiritual, but is not the same thing.
The religious history of a nation is what
the secular world most notices when they study
a nation's history.
But the spiritual history of a nation is
usually either not given publicity, or hidden.
This is the real spiritual life of a
country.
This is the religious trappings.
And it's significant that the fig, out of
all of the trees that I know of,
has a fruit that appears before the leaves.
And God is trying to say, I think,
is this, there should be character before you
get your religious trappings, or I'll cut you
down.
And it is the fig tree that is
given as the sign of Jesus' second coming.
When you see religious awakening, when you see
a widespread interest in religious things, not necessarily
in spiritual things, but in religious things, now
the end is near.
And we could go right through the Gospels,
and we could say this, that it is
possible to be religious, to be deeply religious,
we could say to be evangelically religious, to
be charismatically religious, or Pentecostally religious, or fundamentally
religious, or any other way religious you like,
and still not be a Christian.
Because I have ministered in all kinds of
different places in these last 20 odd years
of missionary evangelism, and I've seen people get
saved out of all of them.
I don't care what kind of religious you
are.
The fig is all right.
But it's interesting, that can be laid waste.
See, this can be cut down.
But the olive never does, never in Scripture.
It has branches broken off and other branches
grafted in.
The olive remains.
All right, you olives.
Olive is not a popular name, except olive
oil, and no wonder I like Popeye.
The Gospels are full of warnings about counterfeit
conversion, the epistles continually exhort us in words
like this, to examine ourselves, to see whether
you be in the faith.
Remember this, Timothy was told, study these things
and preach them, and in so doing you'll
both convert yourself and them that hear thee.
Strange word.
And Revelation warns us, that only those who
overcome will inherit the promises of God.
So the whole New Testament is loaded up
with this thing.
And now, we are studying at the moment,
the parable of the hard ground.
And we've mentioned two things.
First, that this ground has heard, but there
is a lack of understanding.
Now you all remember the, in the 60s,
now some of you were not Christians in
the 60s.
Some of you just got saved, sort of
young punks.
You only came in the last 10 years
or so.
You know, I was on the streets in
the 1960s, and this is how a lot
of Christians used to witness.
This is our famous fried egg on the
head, Paul Little illustration.
Paul Little used to use this, that great
IVF guy.
Guy comes up to you and he's got
a fried egg on his head, see.
This is how they used to witness in
the 60s.
And he goes, oh wow, something really heavy
happened to me.
You look at him and you go, what?
He says, you know I used to be
lonely, and I used to use drugs and
stuff.
You go, hmm.
Somebody told me if I put a fried
egg on my head, I would have happiness,
peace, joy, and love.
You go, really?
Because I know you're skeptical, but you don't
want to knock it until you've tried it,
man.
Listen.
I used to be an eggtheist myself, but
I did.
So I went, I got this egg.
Any egg will do.
There's many paths to this truth.
And I took a frying pan, and I
put a little bit of margarine in the
bottom.
You can use Crisco.
And I broke this egg in the pan,
and as I put it on my head,
this lovely, warm feeling began to...
You got an experience?
That's fine.
Is the Christ you've had an experience with
the Christ of Scripture, the Christ of history,
the real one?
Because in the 60s, people were having experiences
with Christs all over the place.
Janice Ian talked about the new Christ cardiac
hero.
She said, I'm not talking about God, because
some of my best friends are gods.
She said, it's about a new Christ cardiac
hero that is the latest leader and the
latest hero of the younger generation.
That was the 1960s.
And we had, remember Jesus Christ Superstar?
The East came in with, you know, Hare
Krishna and Hallelujah at the same time.
There was a whole bunch of new Christs
that were introduced in the 1980s.
So not enough for people to say they
haven't had an experience with Christ.
Which Christ?
The real one?
The Bible one?
1970s, everybody started making sure that their experience
matched this.
That's where all the Bible studies came.
That's where all the, you know, the videotapes
and the Christian books began.
All of these people with experiences got hungry
for some content in those experiences.
So we have, in effect, a neat opportunity
to correct the imbalances of the 60s only
experience thing.
Don't lose that though.
Don't come up with, here are 800 facts
and you go away, no he's smart, he's
not saved, but at least he knows why
he isn't.
In the scriptures there is content in 2
Peter 1, 3 to 4, according as his,
2 Peter 1, 3 to 4, just scribble
it down, according as his divine power has
given unto us all things that pertain unto
life and godliness through the knowledge of him.
See?
Through the knowledge of him.
That's content.
That has called us to glory and virtue,
whereby are given unto us exceeding great and
precious promises that by these we might be
partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the
corruption that is in the world through lust.
How do you become a partaker of the
divine nature?
By taking the promises of God into your
own life.
That's content.
That's facts.
Another one, 1 Timothy 2, 4, who will
have all men to be saved and to
come, what?
Into the knowledge of the truth.
So God puts that fact right in there
with the experience.
Now, 1 Peter 1, 22 to 25, seeing
you have purified yourselves in obeying the truth
through the Spirit.
See?
How do you purify yourselves?
By obeying the truth through the Spirit.
The Spirit of God gives you the truth,
God's word, you obey it unto unfeigned love
of the brethren.
See that you love one another with a
pure heart, fervently, being born again, not of
corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word
of God which lives and abides forever.
The grass withers and the flower, the flower
fades away, but the word of God endures
forever.
And this is the word which by the
gospel is preached unto you.
God always has to give that content in
there and people get saved.
And we're going to look in a second
now at the difference between, let's just call
it a legal experience and a gospel experience.
All right?
We're looking at counterfeit conversion, we're looking at
people who are religious without being Christian.
And there are three kinds of false experiences
in these three kinds of soil we've looked
at.
So I want to look at a little
detail at the first kind, this hard ground.
A couple more quick scriptures.
Psalm 19, 7.
The law of the Lord is perfect, converting
the soul.
The testimony of the Lord is sure, making
wise the simple.
See the two facets of truth?
The law of the Lord is perfect, converting
the soul, changing it around, altering it.
Psalm 19, 7, that was.
John 8, 31 to 32, an often misquoted
scripture.
John 8, 31 to 32.
Here's the way it is usually quoted.
You shall know the truth and the truth
shall make you free.
That is not what it says.
It says, and you shall know the truth.
And the and refers to the verse before,
and the verse before says, if you continue
in my word, you are my disciples indeed,
and you shall know the truth, and the
truth shall set you free.
So the receiving of the truth that sets
you free comes from continuing in the word
of God and being indeed a disciple of
Jesus.
Not being anybody's disciple.
And then 1 Timothy 4, 16.
Take heed to yourself and unto the doctrine.
Continue in them, 1 Timothy 4, 16, for
in doing this you shall both save yourself
and them that hear thee.
That is a good little verse for those
of you who are going to be missionaries.
John Wesley probably read that verse in his
early days and didn't know what it meant.
All right.
Now, let's just say this.
What is the essence of the gospel?
It is a plain message.
It is a simple message.
It's not complicated.
It's not eight million things you have to
know in order to be saved.
Can you lead somebody to the Lord and
you've got 30 seconds left, and he really
wants to be saved, God's dealing with him.
Could you do it?
You have to go through your 29,000
laws of how to...
Well first, God loves you, and the guy's
gone.
See, can you lead him?
Can you lead him to the Lord?
It's a plain message.
It's simple.
Paul might have said some heavy things, explaining
stuff.
You don't need to know all of that.
It's more important that you know when you
say to somebody something, what is needed, then
they know.
Do you see what I mean?
In order to teach a dog tricks, you
have to be smarter than the dog.
Right?
So, you don't have to put it complicated
to people.
They can get the end simple product.
The study and the background on it can
be as sophisticated as you like, because it
comes from God's heart, and He is pretty
smart.
See, but on this end, it's really simple.
It asks us to do two things.
Give up our selfishness, and give up our
stupidity.
That's it.
God is out to do two things.
Save you from selfishness, which the Bible calls
sin.
And all the 9 and 13 words, all
the New Testament words for sin, could be
reduced down to that independent heart and spirit
that comes out in a self-centered life.
We'll call it death style, shall we?
I won't call it a lifestyle, because it's
hardly a lifestyle.
Stand before God.
What was your lifestyle?
Wasn't it death style?
God wants to save us from selfishness.
He's the only one who can do that.
Karl Marx came along.
He said, the problem with man is that
they are selfish.
So, what we have to do is get
rid of selfishness.
So, if we can only get rid of
the self, that would be it.
You want to bring people into profound unity?
They don't agree?
Shoot them!
Boil them down, dehydrate them like Folgers coffee
crystals, shake them together in a centrifuge, and
you have profound unity on a molecular level.
You lost the self, that's the only problem.
Now, there's got to be a better way
of dealing with selfishness than losing the individual.
That's why Marxism gives meaning for society and
for history, but none for the individual.
And Buddha came along and others and said,
the problem with the world is selfishness.
So, let's get rid of the self.
We'll only have ishness.
Get rid of that ego, that response.
See, so let's...
Problem is, we respond to desire.
And unfortunately, the desire to be free of
desire is desire.
And that really gets you after a while.
I desire to be free of desire.
Paul ran into that in a religious situation
in Romans 7.
Wretched man.
You know, he said, I wouldn't have known
that I was wrong except the Lord said,
don't covet.
And I covet to be spiritual.
How do you get out of that?
I want to be!
No way out of that thing, see?
It's an endless cycle.
Get on the wheel, boy, you'll never get
off that thing.
So, he said, take what that individual...
Drop into the ocean of nothingness.
Be swallowed up in the allness.
And you lost the person again.
That is not wise.
So, great thinkers from the East and the
West have recognized the problem.
Selfishness.
But you go to most countries today, there
are statues of Buddha.
How embarrassing!
Buddha would turn up in his grave if
he found people making statues of him.
Worshipping them!
He tried to get rid of the individual.
People make a statue of him with a
big belly and everything.
And poor old Marxists put a movie out
called Reds.
There's one person in the world that can
take selfishness out of the heart of man.
And he's the one who is not.
His name is Christ.
You shall call his name Jesus.
For he shall save his people.
Not in, but from, their sins.
That's what he can do.
No other leader in the world can do.
He can take selfishness out of a person's
life.
He can forgive and cleanse from sin.
Second thing is he can give you wisdom.
A lot of people make mistakes.
They're not only bad, they do dumb things
too.
It's one thing to be bad, it's something
else to be dumb and bad.
I've met kids, junior high school kids, they're
so dumb, it's hard for them to get
saved.
You know, they're standing, it's like they're putting
a gun in their mouth, going, hey, this
is fun, boom, boom, you know, and pulling.
One of these has got an empty chamber,
pew, like that.
And you think, you can't do that, you'll
kill yourself.
Oh, it's fun, see.
I've learned something, and that is this, sometimes
really smart people who have honest hearts get
saved quicker, because they realize the consequences of
what they're doing faster.
A guy comes up with a crazy philosophy,
he goes crazy immediately because he's brilliant.
See, he goes, hey, if I follow this
through, I should be crazy, and he is.
So he kills himself immediately.
Now others read his books, hey, this is
really heavy, they don't understand it.
So they only kill themselves 40 years later.
Do you understand?
The quicker you see consequences, the quicker you
go to judgment, or the quicker you go
to the realization you're really lost.
And one of the things God does is
enlighten.
He brings wisdom in in people's lives, and
that's one of the reasons why we preach
the gospel.
A lot of people know they're lost, they
don't know how to get saved.
They don't know how lost lost is.
They think you're only lost if you're crawling
around vomiting with VD and you're a hooker
for 40 years and you've run out of
veins and now you're shooting in your eardrums.
They don't know how lost you can be.
Tell me, what kind of ground was this
again?
Hard ground.
The hardest people in the world to win
are religious people, I believe.
No thank you, I've got my own religion,
I don't need that.
It's nice for you, whatever turns you on.
If you're into that, that's beautiful.
I'm personally into bananas.
What does God have to do?
He's bring holiness and happiness back into his
universe.
Happiness is a byproduct of holiness.
Holiness comes when people become wise and good
again.
We use this often.
Many years ago in a second university on
the west coast, I was speaking and a
guy stood up, he said, Why Jesus?
Why not?
I said, Well, who else?
He said, Well, why not somebody else?
Why should we follow Jesus?
I said, Who did you have in mind
as an alternative?
He said, Well, why doesn't everybody follow me,
for instance?
Being modest and proud and humble and unassuming.
Why doesn't everybody follow me?
I said, That's easy, you're not smart enough
and you're not good enough.
Sit down.
He's the only one wise enough to run
your life.
He's the only one with enough power to
give you genuine virtue.
Now it's simple, it's not complicated.
Now, Ah!
27 minutes and 50 seconds.
All right.
I want to now give you quickly some
little outline.
It's very brief and later on we'll try
and make available for you some study sheets
on this so you can look in detail.
Over a hundred and something years ago, there
were, in the time of the second great
awakening, there were up to 10,000 people
giving their lives to the Lord a week.
And they were really getting saved.
I mean, they weren't just signing rolls or
being bussed in, you know, because they were
promised a living Bible in denim and a
lollipop if they attended church that Sunday.
They were really getting saved.
They were, bars were closing down with big
signs on it, closed forever, hallelujah, you know,
and stuff like this.
So it was a wild time in those
days.
During that time, one of my favorite guys,
of course, out of all the revivalists is
the guy who's been called America's greatest revivalist,
the one we mentioned earlier, a religious guy
that went to church and got saved, and
that was Phinney.
And what we've done is reprinted three of
Phinney's messages on counterfeit conversion.
He called them true and false conversion.
And we'll try and get copies of all
of these for you.
Also try and get some printed up.
But he listed three different kinds of counterfeit
conversion.
Now, I'll tell you how radical this is.
I've taken this at different times and preached
it.
We won't do it here.
I'll just outline it for you.
But to take this and preach it is
like throwing in 40 grenades into the middle
of a youth group.
It has the most interesting results.
In the mid-sixties, when the Jesus movement
was peaking and there was all kinds of
people experiencing things, I dug out these old
messages and preached these things.
And it was the wildest deal.
I had youth ministers get saved and pastors
get saved and all kinds of wild things
happened.
And the last time I preached this set,
I was kicked out of one of the
largest churches in Texas.
So here we go again.
I preached a message on carnal Christianity.
This large church and the secretary, who was
a lesbian in this church, got so mad
she resigned.
And that didn't make the pastor happy at
all.
Do you want to know why, in Wesley's
day, they wouldn't let him preach in his
father's church?
Do you want to know why, in Finney's
day, 500 ministers met him and said, if
he comes into our city, we'll meet him
at the gates of the city with cannon?
It wasn't because they didn't like their suits.
I preached a gospel of holy living.
Both of them did.
You can go back to Jonathan Edward.
You pick them up, boy.
You will not see the gospel we preach
today as a whole in the Western world
in church history.
It is a new gospel.
It's one we've put together with our own
genius.
And that is why God will not release
His power to disseminate this gospel through the
world and hurt what He's doing there.
We clean our act up and we get
back to what they did in the scriptures
and what they did in history and we'll
start seeing the same kind of results.
And I promise you this, it is not
that that thing has changed.
My friend Tony Salerno once met a pastor
and he said, Tony said, I want to
preach just like Jesus.
And the pastor said to him, I don't
want to preach like Jesus.
He wasn't very successful.
And he had 12 disciples and he lost
one of those.
No, he was a liberal.
No, he wasn't.
He was an evangelical.
Fundamentalist.
Pastor.
That's inverted commas.
No fun, too much damn and not enough
mental.
Here, would you scribble these down?
These are some signs of what we could
call legal experience.
I want to give you first the big
picture of it.
All right?
There are two fundamental ways of ruling people.
One is legal.
There's nothing wrong with it.
It's quite legal.
These are, we'll call these moral ways.
There's another way of ruling people.
That's short by physical violence.
You want to make somebody do something, you
just pick them up and beat them over
the head.
Hold his hand and make him do it.
I mean that's, we're not talking about that.
We're talking about moral means.
There are two methods, legal, gospel.
One is the way you deal with selfish
people.
If people are selfish, then who is at
the center of their lives?
Themselves.
So what do you do?
You either make it difficult for them to
do bad things or make it pleasant for
them to do nice things or the things
you want them to do.
Reward and punishment.
Okay?
So you design an environment or you give
them rules that hopefully tie in with true
rights and true wrongs.
Fortunately nowadays, these methodologies are separated from the
content of true right and true wrong so
that now you just make things unpleasant for
people if they don't do what you want
them to do and what you want them
to do may be arbitrary.
See?
Or determined by statistics.
If 51% of the population vote that
such and such a thing is true, it
becomes true statistically.
No connection to true absolutes.
See that?
Now what?
We could take this out and make it
into two extremes.
This is called threat.
If you don't do it, I'll bash you
so hard on the head you have to
unlace your shoelaces to blow your nose.
That's called threat.
And bribe.
Would you like a big fat duplex in
heaven?
I call this Frankenstein and Santa Claus evangelism.
And this one, it helps if you're skinny,
have a black suit, foot and a half
long bony finger, and burning laser beam eyes.
You say, some of you are going to
die.
I saw a movie once advertised.
They had some pretty scary movies.
You know, they have Jaws 2, Alien, some
of these basically scary movies.
You know, like on a scale of 1
to 10, Jaws is 3 and Alien is
14.
Now they have some basic scary movies, but
I don't know anyone scarier than this thing
was called The Burning Hell, was the name
of this movie.
And it had as advertising, see the flames,
hear the shrieks.
That is called threat.
Now is there a hell?
You bet your booty there is.
You don't believe in one, you'd change your
theology when you die.
And are there rewards for following Christ?
Yes, there are.
But that is not the gospel.
That is the bare minimum morality requirements and
any old religious person can be like that.
In other words, I will do what is
right, so I won't get punished, and I'll
do what is right, so I'll get some
rewards.
Now we have that as the gospel today.
Isn't that gospel?
The gospel proposes a radically different method of
change.
It starts with the heart.
It alters the heart.
It has a man die to himself and
lay down his life like a seed that
falls into the ground.
It says, nothing in my hands I bring.
Where the person gives up their life to
Christ and begins, and we have to put
it in this negative way, though it's not
really a negative word, well, unselfishness.
Virtue would be another.
True virtue.
A person gives up their life to God
and God changes their life supernaturally by the
Spirit of God.
A work is wrought to give up their
selfishness.
Paul said, I am crucified with Christ.
Nevertheless, I live.
Yet not I, but Christ lives in me.
I have a desire to depart and be
with Christ, which is far better.
Me to live is Christ and die is...
Again, what are these guys talking about?
Giving up their self-centered lifestyle.
They changed heads from headship of their own
lives to Christ being their head and their
boss and their Lord.
A simple, but a profoundly different change.
And the base then is no longer this,
but this.
How does love come out?
It comes out in a glad, happy obedience
to God.
Jesus said, If you love me, finish it.
If you love me, keep my commandments.
If you love me, you'll do what I
say, in other words.
Not this.
Not, if you want to be loved, then
do this.
Not that.
The other one.
If you love me, you'll do that.
See the difference?
This thing here can just simply be a
religion of works.
It can have no place at all.
I know people, I think they're Christians.
They're working hard so that God will bless
them doing this and that.
See?
They're avoiding this and that, but their base
is wrong.
Their base is not that.
Their base isn't faith and love.
Their base instead is threat and drive.
And they're working their fingers to the bone
and what do you get?
Bony fingers.
What do you think the strength of the
Reformation was?
What is the one great thing that guys
like Martin Luther, for all of the weaknesses
that early Reformation had, what is the one
great thing they brought in?
They came from a world that was filled
with this, of indulgences and this and that
and when the coin in the copper rings,
the soul from hell springs.
You know, they came from that kind of
world where you earn brownie points for God.
And that wasn't it.
It was not the gospel.
So was John Wesley.
What do you think he did all that
stuff?
What do you think he got up in
the morning and studied all these great...
Because he wanted God to work with him.
Now, nothing wrong with discipline.
Is there anything wrong with this?
No, it's legal.
It's not...
It's legal.
It's not illegal.
It's not the gospel.
Gospel is like a marriage.
Remember the story, apparently a true story of
a lady, she married a pig of a
man.
A man who was a pig.
Beat her up and he did all this
stuff.
He was such a hard dude.
He used to give her a list every
morning of what he wanted and expected accomplished
and completed by the time he came back
that night.
And if it wasn't finished, he'd beat her
up again.
Well, God doesn't like people like that.
Killed him.
He died.
Heart attack or something.
I don't know.
Anyway, the lady was so hurt of marrying
this guy.
She just didn't want to get married again.
She was so freaked out about old men
in general after marrying this guy.
She didn't want to marry anybody at all.
She eventually met a really nice guy.
He loved her and he spent a year
and a half gradually winning her affection and
her trust again.
And finally she took the big plunge and
she got married to him.
And what a difference, man.
I mean, he still went out to work.
She got into the job she had and
it was a joy.
It wasn't a drag.
It was a joy.
And one day she was cleaning up and
she thought, it was real spring clean now,
no little, she was getting really behind things.
She stuck her vacuum cleaner down the back
of the sofa and pulled out a piece
of paper.
And the piece of paper was one of
the old lists her husband had given her.
And she read through the list and she
began to weep because she was doing everything
he had on the list and more.
And she was happy.
See the difference?
There are hundreds of thousands of people in
this nation who believe they are Christians who
are not Christians at all, who are only
legal, who are religious, but not Christian.
If you ask them, they've got the books,
they've read the things, they pray, they give,
they do this, that and the other thing,
but it's all over there.
They don't trust God.
They don't love Him.
They have not that affection that longs to
do.
This is what you have to do.
This is what you want to do.
You talk about poor pastors that have to
preach on giving to this legal bunch.
You have to threaten them.
If you don't give demission, the communists will
come and take over the nation.
Oh, we're not going to give demission.
How many of you want blessings?
Then put your money in.
Or you won't have a blessing.
I have a friend, he's got one of
these things that he talks about.
He said, if you give God a thousand
dollars, He will give you back ten thousand
dollars.
And then it said, we need ten million
dollars.
So this secular professor wrote and said, then
you give me one million dollars.
What is the problem here?
Is the problem that there is no hell?
Or is the problem is that there are
no blessings?
No, that's not the problem.
The problem is we've got religious people who
are not Christian trying to access divine blessing.
Or trying instead to threaten people.
And that's not going to cut it.
That's not the gospel.
That's not what God wants to send through
the world.
There is judgment.
There is real hell.
And there are real heaven.
But Jesus never said, look, anybody want to
come after me?
I got this dynamite chariot with prancing horses
and if you jump on with me, we're
going to have a great time as we
boogie on down the road.
He wants some signs.
Now, can you scribble these down?
Got eleven minutes and fifty-one seconds.
Let's call this the religion of fear or
the religion of hope or fear or legal
faith or anything you like.
But the point is somebody who's been run
like this.
Not like that.
First, they serve God like taking medicine.
Now you have a nasty medicine.
I mean some horrible tasting stuff.
And they have that.
In America they kind of put it in
some pink stuff so it doesn't taste as
bad.
In New Zealand we can't afford the pink
stuff so they just give it to you
straight.
They say, here, eat this.
It's horrible.
Why do they?
It will do you good.
Eat it.
And stick it down.
The counterfeit obeys God not because he loves
Him but because he expects to get something
good out of it for himself.
The child of God who is a real
child of God delights in doing God's will.
When Christ in the gospel is loved for
His sake or for their own sake there
is no weariness or struggle in serving.
If you make yourself do things you enjoy
doing them.
I'll just let you in the secret.
I like serving God.
I enjoy it.
People say, don't you have a holiday?
It's like, how boring it must be doing
all this.
I'm like a little kid loose in a
toy store.
When I take my little boy to a
toy store I don't have to say, now
I want you to enjoy yourself.
He goes crazy.
I've got to drag him.
Whoa, come away from me.
Like this.
The person in the religion of fear reads
the Bible and prays because he knows he
should.
It would not do to say you're a
Christian and not do those things.
They don't enjoy it.
If they do, go to prayer meetings or
other Christian things.
Now, I'm not talking about, some prayer meetings
are boring.
I don't go there because I just bore
the cheese out of me.
I believe, I believe in hanging around people
that love God.
That enjoy loving Him.
That enjoy serving Him.
And I don't like hanging around people that
don't.
Only for the purposes of seeing them saved,
all right?
So their chief enjoyment in the Christian life
here is of anticipation.
It's filled with things like, one day, one
day, or, never failed me yet.
Never failed me yet.
Maybe one day, he will, but the moment.
Two, they do what they have to, not
what they really want to.
Count of a convert is moved by convictions.
And I want to use convictions just in
a good sense.
I just say, it's sort of the, I
have to do that.
Something I've got to do.
Look, do you get this picture of the
disciples from some of the movies you see
of Jesus, right?
It's Jesus and the disciples.
Here's Jesus in front.
Here's the disciples after Him.
You know, it's like, grit your teeth, man.
That, I don't get that picture.
They lived on the edge of death, but
they were a joyful band.
Little kids don't come up to people looking
like this.
Mothers, you know, little kids flocked around Jesus.
The disciples, every now and then, they'd go
in there, stay away, little kids, don't.
No.
Jesus said, don't, don't do that.
That's like the kingdom of heaven.
You watch a little kid, that's what the
kingdom of heaven is like.
They don't, there was a playground, go, and
they're out.
Three, oh, can you put two, two more
other words.
Put purposes under this, under the has to,
not want to.
Put purposes and put prefers.
See?
Giving you a rather.
Purposes.
He put, I should do that.
I really need to do that.
Shouldn't get around to doing that.
This is prefers.
See, you shouldn't have to tell a real
Christian that he ought to do something.
You just need to tell him what there
is to do and how he can do
it.
That's why one of the first questions a
real young Christian asks is, what does God
want me to do?
Because he wants to do it.
He just needs to know, is it God?
How do I know what he wants me
to do?
Look, why should I do it?
When you see people asking that question, why
should I do it?
Then you've got a person, basically, who's a
purposer, not a preferrer.
A counterfeit convert has a basic motivation of
fear, not love.
He's not only afraid of hell, but he's
afraid of punishment, he's afraid of judgment, and
he's afraid of disgrace in people's eyes.
He still lives for himself, thinks of himself,
and seeks his own happiness and safety supremely.
These fears keep him outwardly moral.
You see?
This person might be very moral.
Think of the Pharisees.
How moral can you get?
They grow a sprig of mint in their
garden.
It has ten leaves.
They pull a leaf off and drop it
in the collection plate.
One must tithe.
One knows.
Did they pray?
Yes!
Wouldn't be, wouldn't, wouldn't do to be known
as a Pharisee and not pray.
So they went out to the markets.
Oh God, I thank you I am not
as other men.
You know what Jesus said?
He said, You are like whitewashed tombs full
of dead men's bones and unclean on the
inside.
Now that really turns you on if you're
a Pharisee.
You're supposed to be the most religious people
in the whole nation.
And when people grabbed hold of you and
said, Hey, I might not make it but
perhaps you will.
And then somebody comes along and tells you
you're a bag of bones.
Why did they stay moral?
Because it was fear.
See?
Fear of what people would think of them
if they let down.
Fear, fear of disgrace.
Fear of not just judgment or punishment but
fear of letting down from their contemporaries.
You take a legal person out of his
legal environment and put him in an environment
where nobody knows him, where nobody will report
him, where nobody will do anything that will
threaten that which kept him in and he
will fall apart very quickly.
I see kids, they come out from their
home church or whatever, you know, they got
drafted maybe in the army or something, right?
And I'm flying on a plane and I
see this guy and I can tell it's
obviously the first time he's ever been out.
He's dressed up in his, you know, new
army uniform.
Wish I had enough.
Oh, yes I do.
Here it is.
He's sitting there at his first cigarette.
I get jammed in beside him and Stuart
says, any drinks?
He says, what is this?
He doesn't know the names yet, see.
He's a thousand miles away from his church
youth group and his mummy and daddy kissed
him goodbye and now he's going up the
army and we know he's going to see
him for four years and he's going to
be a man.
And he's sitting there and she says, well
we have this, that and bloody Mary takes
the ugliest hand and went, I said, I
see you going to the army.
He goes, yeah, what do you do?
I go, I'm a preacher.
I see a guy try to swallow a
cigarette and kick a bloody Mary under the
seat at the same time and he goes,
oh, well actually I got a youth group
too.
I go, oh really?
Why is he doing that?
You take him out of his environment and
he falls apart.
His Christianity is not real.
It's one of outward profession.
It's not internal.
As long as he's in a nice group
he'll be nice.
Now there's a spacious form of that and
we'll look at that later.
But anyway, do you know, this might sound
radical to you, you want to say it
anyway, I don't care because I've been kicked
out of better churches than you guys have.
Do you know that a Christian would be
even happy in hell if God sent him
there?
That might sound radical to you.
Well, are you saying that Christians go to
hell?
No.
I don't think they do.
At least it doesn't seem like they do.
But, in the scriptures, you see, doing God's
will is what makes this person happy, not
the place where they are.
You can shift their environment and it doesn't
care.
As long as they can serve God, as
long as they can please Him, that's it.
Now let me ask you a question.
First of all, how many of you deserve
to go to hell?
Put your hands up.
Okay, do you really believe that?
And if God gave you a whole life
of joy with Him and then said, okay,
that's it, you've had a good time, now
that's Him, would you deserve it?
Yes, you would.
It's a life of grace, it's a life
of mercy.
He doesn't have to save you.
He wants to.
Isn't that neat?
God isn't legal.
He's a gospel God.
He wants to.
That's why He does it.
You can't point anything, all the nice things
you've done, to earn you a brownie point
for heaven.
Can you name me any person in the
Bible that was willing to put his own
life on the line and go to hell
for others?
Paul did.
Moses did.
Of course, Jesus did.
It's good enough for Jesus.
Both of those guys, both Paul and Moses,
at times in their life, do you remember
Moses?
You can scribble these down.
You can look them up after.
There's about 150 scriptures here and I can't
give them to all because by the time
we read them all out, it'll be the
end of the tape.
But could you write this down?
Exodus 32, verses 30 to 32.
And you can look at Romans 9-3.
In Exodus 32, Moses stands in the gap.
God is going to destroy Israel.
He says, stand out of the way, Moses.
I'm going to destroy you.
I'm going to raise you up and make
of you a new nation.
And Moses steps in the gap and he
says, it's a wild thing.
It's the only unfinished sentence in the Old
Testament.
There'll usually be a dash in the back.
But if you can't forgive this people, and
sort of implied, if not, he says, then
blot my name out of the book you
have written.
I'll go to hell for them.
I will stand in their place.
And God says in his beautiful words, him
that has sinned against me, Moses, his name
will I blot out of my book.
Do you remember Paul in that other passage
I gave you?
This is what he says, I would, if
I could be accursed for my brethren's sake,
the Jews.
You know what he's saying?
He's saying, I want, if necessary, if I
could, I'd go to hell in their place.
And that's, that's a true Gospel experience.
Here's Moses, the greatest lawgiver, understood the Gospel.
It's that.
You want, you prefer.
Don't you dare attempt, don't you dare believe
that all Christians go to hell.
I heard him say it.
Anyway.
Does it mean that true Christians enjoy serving
God?
Of course they enjoy.
If I have to tell you how fun
it is serving God, then I shouldn't be
talking.
It really is, it's neat.
I have to, I heard a guy say,
it's so much fun serving God, I have
to back slide sometimes to get to sleep.
They asked John Wesley, how is it with
your soul, brother?
He said, I forgot I had one.
He wasn't thinking about himself.
He was thinking about others.
The last three, just scribble them down really,
really fast.
They are more afraid of punishment than sin.
The real, the candidate keeps on sinning because
he really doesn't hate sin, he only hates
punishment.
He's more, the child of God is more
afraid of sin than of punishment.
Like Joseph, he'd say, how can I do
this thing and sin against God?
Sin is his implacable enemy.
He doesn't think, if I do this what
will happen to me, but if I do
this, what will happen to my relationship with
God and God's relationship with me?
Five, they have a spirit of get instead
of a spirit of give.
Get instead of give, it is a characteristic
of deception that it is filled with get.
It is covetous at its heart, whether it's
religious covetous or politically covetous or economically covetous
or sexually covetous or power covetous.
It's covetous.
True Christians enjoy giving and helping.
What does the Bible say?
It is more blessed to give than we
say.
We flip that and say, you want a
blessing, give.
It is more blessed, not you will be
more blessed.
Christians enjoy giving.
They look for ways that they can help
people and it's a pleasure to them.
But a man who is building his own
kingdom is threatened by anything that takes away
from that thing.
Do you understand?
If you are saving up for $10,000
to buy a car, every cent you could
scratch off to put towards that gives you
pleasure, even though you haven't got the car
yet.
But if somebody comes along and asks to
borrow $5,000, it's going to bother you
no end, because that isn't your end, it's
something else.
Now if we are saving up to put
into Christ's kingdom, everything we can do that's
an investment in that is a joy.
But if we are building our own kingdom,
anything that takes away from those resources is
a bother.
And that's why it's hard to get people
to give.
Poor pastors, they have to preach to unconverted
congregations.
It's embarrassing to preach to a congregation like
this.
If you say give, they do.
They go and sell everything and there's nothing
left.
You have to say, don't give today, please
don't, just keep it.
George Borla, head of Operation Mobilization, he's a
book freak like me, he loves books.
If you say to George, that's a dynamite
typewriter, here he says, take it.
He can go on, he keeps giving away
all the time.
I like that desk, you do here, carry
it out.
It's embarrassing.
Last, their prayers and cares for others are
chiefly born out of fear for themselves.
They will pray for others, they will even
care for others.
But it's basically for them, it's born out
of fear for their own lives.
He's afraid of all himself, and when he
becomes strongly convicted, he's afraid that others might
go there too.
And being afraid that they'll go there too,
and his thing tied in with that, he'll
threaten and scare the cheese out of them
too.
Now, out of these two forms of legal,
this is the one that everybody recognizes as
legal, right?
The punishment one?
Everybody recognizes that.
If you see a guy, you go into
the church all wearing jackboots and go, Hail!
Hallelujah!
Or something like that.
And you got to sit in those certain
places and you're scared to breathe in case
they kill you.
Now, everybody goes, Hey, that's a pretty legal
church.
They know that, right?
What we don't recognize is the Santa Claus
one is legal too.
And that's what the rest is infected with,
Santa Claus.
Not Frankenstein.
We've got a few Frankensteins around.
We've got a lot more Santa Clauses.
It is legal, legal, legal, and it's not
going to save you.
It can't take you into the promised land.
Anyway, time is gone.
We're shot down in flames.
So, we will stop here and we'll pick
this up tomorrow.