Sixth indictment. Ignorance regarding
the nature of the church. God has only one religious institution,
it's the church. It's a church. And our ultimate
goal and the ultimate product of revival will be the planting
of biblical churches. I have the greatest fear that
the local church today is despised. Tell somebody you're an itinerant
preacher that you have a worldwide ministry and they all bow down.
Tell someone you're a pastor of a group of 30 and they make
you sit in the back during the conference. He's not the prince
of itinerant preachers. He's the prince of pastors. Several years ago, Bill Clinton
had a slogan during the election. It's the economy, stupid. My
pastor, Jeff Knoblet, one of the elders in our church, the
primary teaching, preaching pastor, He said to me one day, he goes,
you know, I'd like to have a bunch of shirts made up. What would
they say, Brother Jeff? It's the church, stupid. Jesus
gave His life for the church. A beautiful, virgin, pristine
church. And if you want to give your
life for something in the ministry, give it to the church. to a church,
a body of believers, a local congregation. It's the church. Now let me say this about the
church, and I want you to listen well. There is not a remnant
of believers in the church. We all know about the remnant
theology. Throughout all the course of
Israel, there was Israel, the people of God, and a remnant
of true believers. That's not true about the church.
There is not a remnant of believers or a small group of believers
inside a larger group called the church. The church is the
remnant. I want to say this. If pastors
have ever come close to blaspheming, it is with regard to this. I
hear theologians, itinerant teachers, pastors, this and that, saying
these sorts of things. There's just as much sin in the
church as out of the church. There's just as much divorce
in the church as out of the church. There's just as much immorality
and pornography in the church as out of the church. And then
preachers saying, yes, the church is acting like a whore. I want
you to know this. You ought to be very careful
calling the bride of Jesus Christ a whore. I'll tell you what the
problem is. Pastors and preachers don't know
what the church is. I want you to know that the church
of Jesus Christ in America is beautiful. She is frail at times. She is weak. She is buffeted. She is not perfect. But I want
you to know she is broken. She is humbly walking with her
God. The problem is you don't know
what the church is. Today, because of the lack of
biblical preaching, the so-called church is filled up with carnal,
wicked people identified with Christianity. And then because of all the goats
in the midst of the lambs, the lambs are blamed for all the
things the goats are doing. And then the name of God is blasphemed
among the Gentiles because of us. Have you ever read? Listen, I
know we're running out of time, but just go quickly with me. Just go quickly. I want to show
you something. Go to Jeremiah 31. Jeremiah 31, thank you. Verse 31 of Jeremiah 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.
I do not want to take away anything from the people called Israel,
but this text is also applied to the church. Understand that.
Don't want to get any battles on eschatology, but in the Bible,
in the New Testament, the book of Hebrews, it's applied to the
people of God. Not like the covenant which I
made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to
bring them out of the land of Egypt. I hear preachers saying
all the time, well, when you look back and you see Israel,
you see a bunch of godless, idolatrous people, and in the midst of them
there was a tiny remnant of true believers. That is true, but
don't apply that to the New Testament church. Because He says, He says,
I am going to do something different. Not like the covenant which I
made with the 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. But
this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel
after those days, declares the Lord. I will put my laws within
them. He hasn't just given you, if
you're converted, He hasn't just given you His own tablet of laws. He has supernaturally, through
the doctrine of regeneration, written those laws in your hearts. And because He has done that,
I will be their God, and they shall be My people. And look
what it says. 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. For I will forgive
their iniquity and their sins I will remember no more. Again,
the doctrine of regeneration. God is doing a new work these
last 2,000 years. We don't have a lot of churches
in America. We have a lot of really nice
brick buildings on finely manicured lawns. Just because someone says they're
of the church or they're Christian, doesn't make it so. Look what he says. They'll not
even have to teach one another. And that doesn't mean there won't
be teachers and preachers. But there will all be an outstanding
knowledge of God among them, particularly with regard to their
sins having been forgiven. Quickly, just look at chapter
32, verse 38. They shall be my people
and I will be their God. He doesn't say, I hope so. Maybe
if I get lucky, oh, if I can get enough evangelists to work
with me, maybe this will all come out right. He says, I am
going to pull a people for me. A people that I'm going to give
to my Son. And he says, they shall be my people and I will
be their God. Look at this, and I will give
them one heart and one way. Now don't be angry with me. Any angrier than you already
are at least. But listen to me. The seventies
and eighties and all the Jesus marches and everyone weeping
and crying. The church is so divided. The
church is not one. My dear friend, let me tell you
something. If the church is not one, there is a prayer out there that
God the Father did not answer for his son. And this new covenant
promise has failed. So I want to redirect you a little
bit. I want to submit to you the church is one. She's always
been one. Have you ever sat down on an airplane or maybe met someone
in a marketplace you didn't even know? And you being maybe Baptist
or Mennonite or this or that, but truly evangelical, truly
Christian, you talk to them for no more than a few minutes and
you discover, BAM! It's a believer. This is a live
one. And at that moment you'd give
your life for them. You'd give your life for them. I remember
one time we were in Departamento Amazonas in Peru, and it was
during the time of the Sendero Luminoso and the civil war that
was going on there. We rode 22 hours up in the back
of a grain truck under a black tarp, and at about midnight,
we pulled the tarp off, the truck stopped, and we jumped off into
the jungle. We stayed the night just at the edge of the jungle
and made our ways up to a place called Ingenio in Tambolique.
About halfway up, we got lost in the dark the next day. So
we were praying, me and my dear friend Paco, we were praying,
oh God, give us some direction, we're lost. If we're found in
here, the terrorist owned the place, the military wouldn't
even go in. And we cried out, oh God, give us some direction.
Help us. We heard a bell. Then we heard
somebody talking. It was a strange conversation
at first, we thought. Then we realized it was a little
boy coming in from the fields with his burro, and he was talking
to his burro. And so we got behind him and
we followed, and then we stood on the edge of the town, little
village, huts, dobe homes. And I said, Paco, I said, you
know, if the terrorists own this thing, we're dead. Yeah, but
we got to go somewhere. So we got down, walked up to
a man who was drunk in the dark. and said, hay hermanos por aquí.
Are there brothers here? Because everybody knows what
that means in the mountains. It means a real Christian. And
he said, la vieja por ahí. The old woman over there. And so I went over there. It
was an old Nazarene woman. And I knocked on the door. I
said, I am an evangelical pastor. Please help me." And that old
woman reached out with that lantern, she grabbed me, she pulled me
inside, she grabbed Paco, took us down, her house was cut out
of a kind of a cliff in the mud, and took us down in the basement
where there was some hay and chickens and things, and she
sat us there and she lit a lamp, and then a little boy came in
and she called to him and said, go get the other brothers, and
they started bringing chickens and yucca and everything else,
risking their life. Why? Because we are one! Stop
saying all these silly things that you're saying, that the
body of Christ is divided and it's a mess and it's full of
sin. I would not talk about the bride of Christ that way if I
was you. What you've got is a bunch of
goats and tares among the sheep. And because very little biblical
compassionate church discipline is practiced, they live among
the sheep, they feed on the sheep and they destroy the sheep. And
those of you who are leaders in the church are going to pay
a high penalty when you stand before the one who loves them,
because you did not have enough courage to stand up and confront
the wicked. As a matter of fact, listen to
me. The average scenario in North
America with regard to churches, by and large, the churches are
democracies. And I don't want to get into
the ifs or pros or cons of that. But here's what happens. Because
the preaching of the gospel is so low, the church is basically,
the majority of it are carnal, lost people. And because it is
a democracy, they by and large govern the direction of the church.
And because the pastor doesn't want to lose the great number
of people and because he has wrong ideas regarding evangelism
and true conversion, he caters to the wicked in his church.
And his little group of true sheep that belong to Jesus Christ
are sitting there in the midst of all the theater, in the midst
of all the worldliness, in the midst of all the multimedia going,
We just want to worship Jesus, and we just want someone to teach
us the Bible, and pastors are going to pay for that! It's true! It's just true! You're saying, oh, you're just
angry. My dear friend, you know what it costs me to say this?
It's true. Trying to keep together. A bunch
of wicked people while a little flock in the midst of them are
starving to death and are made to go in directions they don't
want to go with the carnal majority. Listen to me. If my wife was
at Walmart late one night and you walked by as a man and you
saw that two men were abusing her, three, four, five, ten men
were abusing her, and hurting her, and you put your head down
in the name of self-preservation and you walked by, I want to
tell you something, my friend. I will not only look for those
ten men, I will look for you. It is the Bride of Christ and
she is precious to Him. It's going to cost you to serve
Jesus. It could cost you your church, your reputation and your
denomination, absolutely everything. But the Bride of Jesus Christ
is worth it. And look what it says. I love
this. Look at 39, I will give them one heart and one way. And
what is that way? It's Christ and it's holiness.
Every true believer I've ever met spoke much of Christ and
had a longing desire to be more holy than they were. more conformed
to Christ. And look, I will give them one
heart in one way that they may fear me always for their own
good and for the good of their children after them. Oh, what
a text that is. But let's just go on really quickly. I will
make an everlasting covenant with them that I will not turn
away from them to do them good now. We just read this and so many
people who are wicked, who are lost, they just go to church
on Sunday, they hear this verse, yes, God has made an everlasting
covenant with me. He will never turn away from
me. Never, never. I'm secure because of God's grace. But they fail to read the second
part. And look what it says, 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. The evidence that God's made
an everlasting covenant with you, sir, is that He's put the
fear of God in you so that you will not turn away from Him.
And if you turn away from Him and He does not discipline you,
and you continue turning away from Him, it is evidence that
He has not put His fear in you, you have not been regenerated,
and you have no covenant with God at all. It's true.