In July of 2003, a mentor of mine said to me, people
have a love affair with salvation in America. I didn't grasp exactly
what he meant at the time, but through the years I began to
see That people have a love affair with their salvation experience,
with the thing that they call their salvation, and in turn,
their focus was not on the Christ who is Savior. I will glory in
my Redeemer, but I have glory in my redemption. I will glory in my salvation,
not I will glory in my Savior. Hi, this is Pastor James Tippins
with Grace Truth Church, and I wanted to thank you for listening
to this message today. And I want you to understand
that before I preach, Brother Jesse Bates will be reading the
entire chapter 16 of Matthew's gospel. To give us sort of the
feel for the reality that part of the depravity of man is that
we seek out signs, we put provision in the flesh, we give opportunity
for our own reason and understanding to take precedence over God's
wisdom. And so please listen carefully to the reading of this
text prior to the sermon. Because it will just the Lord
will use it in such a way for you to see and hear. And it is
the text that I'll be speaking to and from throughout the entirety
of this message. God bless you. It says, And the
Pharisees and Sassacedes came to test him. They asked him to
show them a sign from heaven. He answered them. When it is
evening, you say it will be fair weather, for the sky is red,
and in the morning it will be storming today, for the sky is
red and threatening. You know how to interpret the
appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of
times, and an evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign,
but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah.
So he left them and departed. When the disciples reached the
other side, they forgot to bring any bread. And Jesus said to
them, watch and beware of the levity of the Pharisees and the
Asses. And they became discussing it
among themselves, saying, We brought no bread. But Jesus,
aware of this, said, O you of little faith, why are you discussing
among yourselves the fact that you have no bread? Do you not
yet perceive? Do you not yet remember the five
loaves for the five thousand? How many baskets you gathered?
for the seven loads for the four thousand and how many baskets
you gather? How is it that you fail to understand that I did
not speak about bread, but beware of the levy of the Pharisees
and satanists? Then they understood that he did not tell them to
beware of the levy or the bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees
and satanists. Now, when Jesus came into the
district He said, his disciples, who do people say that the Son
of Man is? And they said, some say John
the Baptist, others say Elijah, others Jeremiah, one of the prophets.
And he said to them, but who do you say that I am? Simon Peter
replied, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God. And
Jesus answered him, Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, for flesh
and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is
in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter,
and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell
shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the
kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound
in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that
he was the Christ. From that time, Jesus began to
show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many
things from the elders and the chief priests and the scribes
and be killed. And on the third day be raised.
And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying,
Far be it from you, Lord. This shall never happen to you.
But he turned and said to Peter, Get behind me, Satan. You are
a hindrance to me, for you are not setting your mind on the
things of God, but on the things of man. Jesus told his disciples,
if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take
up his cross and follow me. Whoever would save his life will
lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
But will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, but forfeits
his soul? Or what shall it give a man in
return for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to
come with His angels in the glory of the Father, and then He will
repay each person according to what he has done. Truly I say
to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death
until they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom." Let us
pray. Oh God, it truly is. a gift from
God that we know that You are the Christ, the Messiah. And Lord, I just pray that since
we truly have believed this with our hearts, that we will every
day pick up our cross and follow You. Lord, that we would follow
You at all costs, whether it costs us relationships or friends
or money or our jobs, Lord, or even our life as it has cost
some of our brothers in other countries their life to follow
You. Lord, I pray that we would follow you to the very end, that
we would endure to the end because you have started a work in us,
which you have promised to finish. Lord, I pray that you'd be with
the men of our church and the women of our church, Lord, that
they would live Christ-like lives among the worldly people in this
world. That people would see a difference
in the way they talk and the way they carry themselves. And
Lord, that they would spend the rest of their lives glorifying
you. And Lord, I pray for the children of our congregation,
Lord, that you would raise them up as vessels of honor. Lord,
that some of them would be missionaries and some of them would be witnesses
on colleges, campuses. And Father, that you would just
use them for your glory, Lord, that they would be your mouthpiece
for your Son, Jesus Christ. Lord, I just pray and thank you
for all that you're doing in our lives. Thank you for what
you have done in treating his dad's life and healing him, Lord, and
getting him out of the hospital have him able to come in and
have fellowship with us. And Lord, I just pray you continue
to work in his life and continue to keep him healthy for your
glory. And Lord, I just pray that you be with our pastor as
he comes forward and preaches your word this morning, Lord,
that it would bless our ears, Lord, and bless our hearts, Lord,
and cause us to bear the fruit of it. And I ask all this in
Jesus' name. Amen. In July of 2003, a mentor of mine said to me, people
have a love affair with salvation in America. I didn't grasp exactly
what he meant at the time, but through the years I began to
see That people have a love affair with their salvation experience,
with the thing that they call their salvation, and in turn,
their focus was not on the Christ who is Savior. I will glory in
my Redeemer, but I have glory in my redemption. I will glory in my salvation,
not I will glory in my Savior. Some would argue in a fallacious
manner that we're just talking semantics. We're not talking
semantics. We're talking truth. John Huss, at the day of his
death, spoke these words. My Lord Jesus Christ was bound
with a harder chain than this for my sake. And why then should
I be ashamed of this rusty one? And in an attempt to save his
life, they pleaded with him to recant his faith in the gospel,
to come away from his reformed teachings, from his ideals that
were so anti-church, anti-culture. And he said these words, and
what I taught with my lips, I now seal with my blood. an area where we really don't
know much church history, there were several men arrested, three
of them arrested for having copies of scripture and copies of some
of the Reformers' writings, one of them by the name of Cumans.
As he was tied to the stake and the straw was laid around his
feet, he was there with two other brothers and they asked him, Would you
die? for the reformed faith you profess.
And he says, I quote, and I'm not only willing to die, but
I shall suffer the most excruciating torments for it. After which
my soul shall receive its confirmation from God himself in the midst
of eternal glory. And London, a priest by the name
of Anthony Parsons was also being burned with fellow believers. As he stands there, tied to the
stake, he asked for a drink. They gave him a drink and he
drank to his fellow martyrs. He says, Be merry, my brethren,
and lift up your hearts to God. For after this sharp breakfast,
I will, I trust, I shall have a good dinner in the kingdom
of Christ our Lord and Redeemer. One of his fellow condemned began
to pray to God and look up, and he drew the straw closer to him
and to his brother, and he drew it up high as he could with his
bound self. And he says, this is God's armor.
And now I'm a Christian soldier prepared for battle. I look for
no mercy, but through the merits of Christ, he is my only savior. In him do I trust for salvation. I don't know if you've ever read
The Martyrs. Six thousand pages of very succinct
history by Fox on The Martyrs from the
first century to his time. And these are just the ones we
know. Now, my question is this. How
do men in their dying hour, if given a chance to live in this
life, just forsake that which they call true? Why do they not
do it? Because they glory in that which
is impossible to see with the eyes of men. They glory in that
which is not an argument distinction, not an argument of academics.
It's not an argument of proper philosophy, but it is an absolute
reality that is beyond the physical. That God has established a covenant
with them through the person of Jesus Christ and that God
became like us, lived among us and lived in place of us as holy
and then died for us. It's justice. My thoughts are today as I preach. I'm preaching to share with you
that there is an idolatry among the Church of America. And it's an idolatry of salvation
experience. So as we begin to look at these
things, I would say to you that if there is an experience that
is true to the Christian faith in a salvific way, if there's
something that you must know or do or experience in order
to secure your salvation, then why, oh why, do the martyrs not
go there in their time of need? I'll tell you that they don't
go there because such thinking is idolatry. It is spiritual
adultery. And it is condemning. It's condemnation
to put our faith in anything but Christ, to put our hope in
anything but Christ, to put our glory in anything but Christ,
to rest in our being in anything but Christ is death. And there is one measure, one
measure. that should shake you to the
core of your soul if you sit here today with some little small
inkling of frustration or yet worse anger at the idea that
your salvation may be in question. You, my dear brother, my dear
sister, are lost. God's Spirit does not produce
anger in His children when they are called to proclaim and reclaim
that which saved them from death. They rejoice in the opportunity.
They rejoice at the stake. They rejoice at the sword. They
rejoice at the call to proclaim and share the gospel of Christ
that gives life to dead men. Be merry, my brethren. What is an idol? See, in Matthew
chapter 16, that whole, of course, I'm not going to exposit all
that, I'm going to use the chunks of it. In Matthew chapter 16,
what we see is in two different distinct people groups, three
actually, the Jews, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and Peter. Two groups, the Jews and Peter. Peter being of the twelve, the
disciples of Christ, who had just professed by the Spirit
of God that He is the Christ, the Son of the living God. And this is after the feeding
of the five thousand and the feeding of the four thousand.
One with five loaves and soup fish and one with seven loaves.
Jesus alludes to both of those miracles. And they had forgotten
bread. See, we forgot bread. The Pharisees and the Sadducees
are looking for a sign. They're looking for a physical
result. They're looking for a man-centered expression. They're looking for
the outcome of something natural that happens supernatural. They
need to see it. They want to look behind the
curtain and see the mechanics. And walk out and say, see, I've
got it figured out. They put glory in the flesh. They put
provision in the flesh. And they could not believe that
Jesus, though everything within all of them knew without any
doubt, Jesus was Messiah. But the Messiah they saw with
their eyes is not the one they had created in their hearts.
Don't fall prey to the idea that the Jews didn't believe Jesus
was Messiah. They most certainly knew He was,
but they refused Him. So it's not just going, I know
he's the Messiah, has no bearing on your salvation. The devil
knows he's the Messiah, too, and the devil knows every jot
and tittle of the scripture better than we could ever do it. And
he teaches it from the mouths of pastors all over the world. People sing songs to a false
god by the name of Jesus. And people pray prayers to some
false idol and call it salvation. An idol is anything that steps into the
shadow of the light of Christ. Anything that casts a shadow
between us and Christ is an idol. Anything that we would want to
shine our light on that would cause any kind of direction that
would interfere into the perfect light of Christ. An idolatry is false worship.
It's putting hope and esteem and affection into something,
someone, some idea, some practice other than Jesus. Exodus 20,
verse three, God says you shall have no other gods before me.
And I'm here to tell you today, church, is that in our country,
in our city and sometimes in our own lives, we have the God
of salvation. the God of salvation experience,
the God of our own choosing as an idol against the God of heaven. John reminds his readers in the
first epistle, chapter 5, verse 21, keep yourselves from idols,
dear children. How does something step in? What happens? Just as these Pharisees,
they looked for signs. What does Jesus tell them? I'll
give you a sign. There'll be one sign that I will
give you and it's the sign of Jonah. What does he mean there?
I'll give you a sign. I will raise from the dead on
the third day as Jonah was given life on the third day out of
the belly of the fish. That's what he means. It's a
metaphor. As Jonah was in the belly of
the whale or the fish, so I will be in the heart of the earth,
in the grave. And I will give you the sign
of Jonah. When I raise in glory from the dead, you will see and
you will have no excuse. And it gives them a foretaste
in John 11, doesn't it? Because he loved Martha and Mary
and their brother Lazarus, because he loved them, when he found
out that Lazarus was ill, he stayed several more days, so that the Son of Man may be
glorified. Because Jesus goes to the rotting corpse of Lazarus
and says, Lazarus, come out. And then he tells them, unbind
him and let him go. And right then, the scripture
says in John 11, that then the Jews plotted to kill Jesus and
Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. They planned it. He had to die. Caiaphas, the
high priest at that time, prophesied, saying, it is better for one
man to perish than for the whole nation to fall. Jesus proved who he was. There is no sign who Jesus is,
except that he is the Messiah, the redeemed, risen Savior. And
there is no sign that you need to be seeking for your salvation,
except that same risen Christ. Idolatry is seen in our affections,
what we love. Idolatry is seen in those things
that we hold dearest, that step in the light of Christ, that
cast a shadow. And I'll tell you, as parents,
the greatest idol that we struggle with in our lives is our children. I would give up my salvation
for the salvation of my children. I would give up my salvation
for yours. For anyone, if I could, but I
can't. Maybe it's sort of lip service because we know that
we can't so we can say it without grief. I sort of like someone
saying, hey, just a minute. Think if you only had one more
thing to say, what would it be? Well, that's interesting to hypothesize,
but we know it's not right. How ironic if that were the case.
Well, I think I would say an evil. What is it that we love the most?
How about what we give our attention to? I believe idols also step
in the light of the glory of Christ and the things that we
not necessarily love greater than Christ, but give more time
than Christ. Give more time and attention to in our matters of
mind, in our matters of money, in our matters of motive. What
are we giving our attention to? How about our assertions, where
we put our power, where we put our drive, where we put our passion?
Those things can be idols. Our skills, our intellect, our
job, our hobbies. Are they wrong? No, but they
can become idols. They can't stand in the way.
How about the things that we accept passively, the things
that we just sort of let go, the things that we sort of have
no opinion upon, those apathetic ideals that we just, oh, OK,
it doesn't really affect me. I'm going to let it go. We see
suffering in the world. We take for granted, we make
an idol of our lack of suffering when we just sort of sit there
with no burden. We make an idol of our easy believism. We make
an idol of our easy way of life when we see our neighbors perishing.
But yet we're not at least at the minimum. And I would say,
which is the maximum, compelled to pray for their souls. Friends, the writer of Hebrews
chapter 4, you know what verse 12 says, for the word of God
is living and breathing and sharper than any two edged sword. And
it cuts marrow and soul and flesh. Separates, verse 13 says, and. It lays us out exposed to God,
to paraphrase here. To whom we must give an account.
And who sees all? You know, the interesting thing
about idols that hide in our closets, they're not hidden. Friends, let me tell you something,
when it comes to your salvation, if your salvation experience
is an idol to you, it is not hidden to your heavenly father,
if he is your father. Idols are seen. And they're not
only seen by God, but they're seen by his children. When our
idols are pointed out, see the idol, our heart rejoices and
that it's part of us being sanctified in this life to be more like
Christ, to put away those things which stand in the way of the
perfection of our treasure. Who is Jesus? And it's and it
gives us a greater reward in heaven. I don't have time to expound
upon that, but it is a dear project of mine. The reward of heaven
is not physical, tangible, material, anything. It's not even relational. The reward of heaven is not even
to see those who have gone on before you. And I like to suppose
that if those who I love so much who have died are in between
me and my Lord, they will get stepped upon in some ferocious
way. Get out of here, Grant. Jesus. You're in the way of Jesus. I'm being funny. That's not the
reward of heaven. The reward of heaven is the overwhelming
reception of a great, glorious, joyous anticipation of receiving
that which we love greatest. Do you see that? Have you seen
the clip on the Internet with the children who are sitting
in the back seat and they're thinking of going to school and the parents
say, hey, let's just not go to school right now. Let's go to
Disneyland. Have you seen that? And the girl
starts to weep uncontrollably. She just can't compose herself.
Eight year old girl. She just weeps and weeps and
weeps and weeps because the anticipation, the desire, the affection to
go to Disneyland was revealed to her out of the blue. And it
was something that she was not expecting. But the day that she
could think about being there was overwhelmingly joyous. How do we weep at weddings and
weep at graduations and weep at Disneyland and we don't weep
with joy over the anticipation of receiving the fullest reward
that can ever be given, the greatest satisfaction of every thirst,
hunger or dream, the greatest treasure that trumps every wealth
of all nations? Jesus Christ. Idols get in the way of that.
Don't let them. especially in the foundation of God's salvation
to you through Jesus alone. Period. It is not yours. It is his. And he gave it to
you and you worship him because he gave you the heart, the eyes
and the mind to behold and be and be in love with the greatest
treasure, Jesus. So, idols are sent out. We know,
as Jeremiah says in chapter 17, verse 9 and 10, that the heart
of man is intrinsically deceitful. We know in Proverbs 12 that the
wise person loves discipline and loves knowledge, but the
fool, the idiot, the stupid person hates correction. Friends, do
not hate the correction of your idolatry, for that is foolish. Sin is an item in the life of
the believer. So ask yourself about your heart.
Ask yourself about your mind. What do you really want? What do we hold as the highest
treasure of our lives? You want to know why so many
books, thousands and thousands of books have been written on
different subjects about how to assimilate and acclimate and
integrate people into the church of Jesus Christ? It's because
the church has a double door in the front and a quadruple
garage in the back where people just file out. And the way of
man is, let's see what's going on, that we might actually fix
this problem. Why men don't go to church? Well,
because there's not a lot of manly stuff to do. Baloney. Men go to bars. That's not very
manly. That's really childish. Hang
out, drink, stay out all night and wonder when they're 75. They
can't remember what they did yesterday. That's what they love. For men to come to church because
they want to be in charge of stuff. Who's in charge of anything? You want to be in charge of wiping
down the podium or turning on the sound system? Go. It's all
you. There's a guitar sitting there
someone could very well be in charge of and a microphone here
someone could sing through. I would love to sit there. Be in charge. We don't give people a piece
of something so that we can make them feel a part of something.
If you're not a part of the church because you've been paid for
by the blood of Jesus, you're not a part of anything. If there's not a spontaneous
supernatural affection for the people of God, then either they
or you are not in Christ. What do we want? How can my salvation
be an idol, you might ask? Well, I don't know how many things
I've got for with about 50 sub points. Four main things, your
salvation can be an idol when you consider something, when
you consider something that you secured. Here is Jesus, not a lot of specific
things in 16, but here's Jesus telling his disciples and the
Sadducees, that the sign he gives is the sign of Jonah. And then
he comes around and the disciples, when they reach the other side,
they start being frustrated. Oh, man, we forgot to pack some
bread. So what? Dude, if you didn't bring food,
you didn't eat. There wasn't the Kwik-E-Mart. No 7-Eleven. There wasn't a Halil cart sitting
over there. There just was not a way to go
just get bread in every place. And then secondly, you had to
have money to buy it. So if they forgot to secure bread, they didn't
have anything to eat. And what did Jesus say to him
in chapter 16, verse six, Watch and beware of the leaven of the
Pharisees and the Sadducees. Isn't that interesting? They're
discussing among themselves out of Jesus presence about the fact
they forgot bread to eat. And he says, beware of the leaven.
What is leaven? It's bacteria. It causes dough
to rise. It's where most people are allergic
to if they have a wheat allergy or a grain allergy. And it doesn't store. Why does
bread mold? Because it's got leaven in it. Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees
and the Sadducees. And they begin discussing among themselves,
saying, we bought no bread. And they're still thinking. So
they're selling bad bread? That's what they thought. They're
thinking in a natural way that Jesus means that they're selling
them some janked up bread that's got leaven in it. Beware of the
bread that you bought from the Pharisees and the Sadducees.
And they're thinking, we didn't buy any bread. We didn't buy any bread. But Jesus, who was aware of this,
said these things, O you of little faith, why are you discussing
among yourselves the fact you have no bread? Do you not yet
perceive? Do you not remember the five
loaves for the 5,000 and the baskets that you gathered? Do
you not remember the seven loaves for the 4,000? How many baskets
you gathered? Do you not remember what I can
do with a crumb? With nothing? Do you not remember
what I preached to the multitudes, to the tens of thousands who
had followed me for a month, when I said, do not labor for
the bread that perishes, but labor for the bread that endures
to eternal life? And they said, give us this bread.
He says, I am the bread. And they're like, we're out of
here. What must we do to be doing the works of God? Jesus says,
this is the work of God that you believe on the Son whom he
has sent, the bread that comes down from heaven that gives life
to all men. Why are you concerned about what you don't? There's
enough bread in your teeth for me to feed you for years. I think
about it. You just need a toothpick, you
don't need bread. You've forgotten already what
I did with nothing. I'm talking about life. And they're
thinking about these temporal, mortal, manly provisions. Friends, we believe on our salvation
this way. We are lacking faith. We have
faith. No faith in salvation is no salvation. Or faith in a broad salvation
in some sense, in a synergistic salvation, is no salvation. It's
not an academic argument. It's an absolute biblical truth.
And anything that squares away from this or squares up to this
with even a match is a heresy. It's a heresy. It leads people
to a false god, a false gospel, a false life, a false hope, a
false satisfaction. And it puts them in sin. It keeps
them into the judgment of God, as Jesus says in John 3, for
God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever
believes in him will not perish, but has eternal life. But whoever
does not believe in him is condemned already. You don't remember what
I did? How is it that you fail to understand
that I did not speak about bread? Beware the leaven of the Pharisees
and the Sadducees. Then they understood that he
did not tell them to beware the leaven of bread, but the teaching
of the Pharisees. I'm telling you today, the religious,
the greatest, the largest, the most vocal. You think it's the
pure gospel that gets more airtime? No, never going to happen. If every person sitting in a
pew right now in this area were truly born again, we'd live in
a better society. We'd live in a more moral society.
We'd live in a society that contemplated persecuting us because of our
life and our affection for the gospel and each other. When they came to Caesarea Philippi,
he said, who do people say that I am? Here's this reality that
Peter is about to say you are the Christ. You know, Christ
is not his last name. It's the office that he holds. The holy, anointed one of God. Christos. Transliterated, Christ. It means holy one. It will be an Old Testament reference. And he says, You have believed,
Peter, son of Jonah, but it's not man who has revealed
that to you. Guess what? It wasn't you that
came up with that answer, Peter, but my father. How do you know that, Peter?
And you know what's crazy? Two breaths later, Satan speaks
through him. The Spirit of God just spoke
through Peter. And then two breaths later, the
spirit of the devil speaks through Peter. And on the rock, the rock
of what? The rock of the gospel that my
father gives. Hell will not prevail. And Jesus says to them that he's
going to be killed. And he's going to be. Raised,
he's already said on the third day, he's already proven what
he can do, says he's going to be raised and Peter took him
aside. See, Peter's that he did an intervention,
but it was a problem. It's like, hey, Jesus. You know,
I know I know you're my rabbi and all, but he said, look, we
got your back. You don't you don't have to die.
We can usher in this kingdom without you dying. You don't
have to be a martyr for the cause. You can stay with us. What is
it? That's a fleshly provision. It's
a it's a it's a physical understanding of blindness. It's a it's part
of depravity. Even when we know the truth by
the Spirit of God, we oftentimes struggle with these other things. When we think we have done something
to secure our salvation by our decision, by our declaration
of what we say, by dictation of what we repeat, that's witchcraft,
folks, that's divination. If you say these words, you'll
be saved. That is witchcraft. Anywhere in the world is witchcraft.
Any religion in the entire world is witchcraft. Everywhere, all
over the Old Testament is witchcraft. We don't do incantations. How
dare you ever tell somebody they're born again because they said
the words. That is Satanism. Why are you so passionate about
this? Because I'm sick and tired of people leading people into
continual condemnation. It's time to draw the line with
either being in the side of God or the side of the devil, because
there is no middle ground, there is no fence, there is no bridge.
And you know who the people of the devil will be? Those who
in absolute anger refuse to hear the warning of idolatry in their
hearts. What's our response? We weep and pray. We weep and
pray and plead. Oh, God, if he would give us
the spiritual preaching of Jonathan Edwards, who could barely compose
himself, who could barely keep himself together as he prayed
with tears, saturating the papers on his podium. Of whom George
Whitfield said was the most passionate preacher ever. It blew his mind. who preached this gospel, Edwards
who preached this gospel, Spurgeon who preached this gospel, through
whom God, through the apostles, sent the gospel to these men
who brought it to us, foreigners in another man's land, immigrants
who came in and robbed and stole and destroyed, people who, by
God's grace, were not annihilated. as we entered into a place that
was not ours. And then God, in His mercy, sent
the gospel to a godless nation. The preaching of Reformed preachers,
of gospel-filled, Spirit-filled, passionate preachers. The second way your salvation
can be an idol is when your heart is put at ease. when you consider
your thoughts and actions. Oh, I'm okay. Because I, because
I, because Because I, because I, you show me one place in Scripture,
one pretext. I'll let you twist it and take
it out of context. You show me one place that you
can argue actually, argue with itself where that's true in any
example, any teaching, any nuance or innuendo. I will eat this
Bible one page at a time. It is not there. And I dare you to try. There
is nowhere in Scripture where it talks about this, considering
your thought and placing your decisions to follow Jesus as
your hope. You can't follow Jesus if you
take up your cross and die. That's what he says. If anyone would come after me,
let him deny himself, not trusting himself. Not trusting his thoughts,
not trusting his choices, not trusting his actions, not trusting
his walking. You can't walk to Christ. Christ
isn't here. Christ is there. Christ is in
glory. Christ is with the Father. interceding
for the sake because he paid for the sins of all who will
believe. Anyone who believes on Christ
has eternal life. Anyone who does not believe on
Christ is condemned already. Are you believing on Christ right
now? Or are you believing on your
belief in Christ? Do you have faith in your faith
and your faith in Christ? This is an amway. It's not just
like a little trickle down. I don't get as much as the people
up here make. It's either salvation or none. Thirdly, your salvation is an
idol when it becomes a personally relative experience or personally
relative to your experience. That's back to what I was saying.
I know. I did. I said. I believe. It's
a humanistically subjective experience. Because I experienced this, therefore
I'm safe. Not that I necessarily agree
with putting pictures of people and their thoughts on the internet
when we witness to them. Without their permission, there's
a legality there. But it burdens me when I see
all my brothers in arms who are out street preaching all over
the world, different countries, all over the world. And you see
these people and the ones who come up to them nine out of ten
times, maybe not a great statistic, but most of the time the people
who come up to them are those who profess to be Christian and
they're offended that they hear the words of their Savior. They're
offended when someone reads the Bible. This isn't the place for
that. You shouldn't read the Bible.
Faith comes through what? Hearing. Hearing comes through
what? The words of Christ. How are they to believe if they
do not hear? How are they to hear if no one
goes? Blessed are the feet who take
the gospel. Well, I know I'm born again,
somebody would say, because I, because I, because I, I've been in church my whole
life. I prayed to receive Jesus 20 years ago. I joined the church. I was baptized. I hear that a
lot. Good. What's that got to do with
what we're talking about? Well, that's just the way we
know, that's the way we've done things for a little less than 200 years.
The Second Great Awakening introduced something into this culture that
has gone across the world and out of the Second Great Awakening
comes decisional regeneration, baptismal regeneration, word
of faith. health and wealth gospel, all
this stuff. Because Finney, who is considered
to be the father of the greatest evangelical movement since the
First Great Awakening, by his own writing is unbeliever. Oh,
that's a hard one there. Read him. If you want to borrow
his works, I've got them. And when a man makes declarations
to say that I can take And I can create revival by my own decision,
by drawing a circle and saying, God, whoever I put in that circle,
I want you to say. And they're saying, you know,
that's where the altar call came from. Just come down here, standing
there, you don't believe me, look at it, know your history. Know
what you believe, especially you people who are Southern Baptists
who have been Baptist churches your whole lives. And don't read
an internet, don't read a blog, read the books that the people
wrote. I can go find somebody that writes something about anything
I want to know in the way I want to know it. That's why unless
it's a published historical record or a record referring to a published
historical record, it's not even looked upon in academia. You
can't use Wikipedia as a source. That's just not a source. Wikipedia
is an idea I had when I was 20. Just didn't have the chops to
do it. I know. I want a place online that has
information about everything. That's awesome. And they're broke.
They don't have any money. It's not like it's making them
a dime. The source is the source. You
want to know what Charles Spinney believed? Go read what Charles
Spinney believed. And he believed that he in himself
and anybody he trained had the power to persuade God to do whatever
he wanted. And if they followed the precepts
of these examples and said these words and came this way and were
sincere, God was bound to save them. But yet from that time
up until today, even through some of the greatest evangelical
movements that we've seen in history, ten, twelve, fifteen
thousand people coming to the decision of Christ, coming to
salvation of the Lord, and you can't find less than one percent
of them in a church in three months. You can't find any of
them with a Bible a year later. You say, how do you know that
you're born again? What's that? Do you believe in
the Holy Spirit? Who's that? Do you understand
that God is three persons and one God? What's that mean? And
we wonder why the cults can take Christians. Listen, a cult can't
take a Christian. A cult can take a false convert.
A cult can take a false Christian. A cult can take an Armenian who
believes you can lose your salvation. A cult nor the devil that holds
them. can take a child of God out of the faith. Are you angry yet? I pray for your sake, you're
not. So finally, what are some of
the practices that produce this type of false worship, this idolatry? Now there's a lot of them. I think just as we see here,
there's a denial of oneself. It's the perfection of Christ.
It's what he did unto salvation. It's not what anybody else did.
And it's not what you do. You see that Peter professes
Jesus as the Christ, and then in just a few words, he says
that he doesn't have to do that which is effective for salvation.
You don't have to do that which the Father sent you to do. And I would encourage you to
have questions based on today's sermon. Come Tuesday or Wednesday
and we'll talk about them. Here's the practices that produce
such false worship. Decisional regeneration. I mentioned
it already. Let's talk about what regeneration
is. In John chapter 3, Nicodemus comes to Jesus and professes
with a confession of faith that he believes he is the one come
from God. Who are we waiting on coming from God? Messiah. Nicodemus professes, not only
he, but we believe that you are from God, for no one can do the
things you do except God be with him. So, he says, just like the
rich young ruler, I know you're God. I kneel down before you
and I worship you and you're good. And Jesus rebukes him and
says, no one's good but God. The man maintains his posture
of worship and continues to worship Jesus as God, as Messiah. Nicodemus believes that Jesus
is Messiah in his mind. And Jesus immediately, because
he sees his heart, it's just said in the end of chapter 2,
many people believe in the name of Jesus because of the signs
and wonders. But Jesus in himself did not believe them, for he
knew what was in man. No one had to tell him about
the heart of man. Now there was a man, the Pharisee named Nicodemus,
who came to Jesus by night and professed, we know that you are
from God, for no one can do the things that you do except God
be with him. And Jesus sharply says these words with a double
verity, the double truth, truly, truly. Amen. Amen. It is so. It is so. I say unto you, except
the man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of heaven. Regeneration is the work of God,
whereby he, through the Holy Spirit, through the hearing of
God's Word, makes you into a new person, changes your disposition
from a lover of self to a lover of Christ, changes your heart
and your passions from a self-inflicted hedonism to a spiritual drive
to do that which is holy. He recreates you and the expression,
the outcome of the rebirth is faith in Jesus Christ forever,
not once. Decisional regeneration then
would be, I chose to allow God to make me a new creature and
I said the magic words and he did it. Baloney. Rebirth applies justification
to you by faith. Now, if you want to argue about
when that happens, to what extent, it doesn't matter. If God doesn't
break you into a new person and birth you anew, you cannot believe
on Christ salvifically. How am I to be saved? Hear the
words of Christ. Believe on Christ. In Christ. Fully. Alone. John 1.13 says it's not of human
decision, but of the will of God. Not of the will of man,
but the will of God. Those who are born of God. Friends, to teach otherwise,
to teach that someone decides to be born again is a perversion. I call that the triple X gospel.
It's a perversion. A perversion to tell someone
that they have to choose to be regenerated and to regenerate
themselves. And out of these things that
produce such false worship, this practice produces decisional
regeneration. Teaching that produces it. Another
thing is, because of that, we have what's known as decisional
evangelism. In other words, our evangelism is to say, Hey, y'all!
Hey, y'all! You want a better life? You want
to be born anew? You want to go to heaven? You
want to have a fulfilled existence? Who says no to that? Nobody. Nobody. Hard-nosed people don't
want it. They want to look tough. They
go back and go, I'm going to do it when they get home. So we need to make a decision.
You need to choose today. Follow Christ. Pray to receive Jesus as your
personal Lord and Savior. What are you going to do? What
is he there? Is he stomping at the door? Is
he kicking? Is he tearing at your heart and you just keep
on pushing? You whoosh and you come through and what are you
doing? You're trying to push him away and you finally go,
OK, go ahead. Is that the God of the Bible? Is that the Jesus
of the gospel? Is that good news at all? That
there is an ineffective, ineffective, unsatisfying, unpowerful God,
powerless Savior that just he hopes upon hopes upon hopes that
he saves a few. And what do we do when someone
does the little ropes, does the little char spinning barely ever
even in the history of Christendom is so small in its historical
application and use. You didn't see this for the first
or the second great awakening ever. Never. It's not there.
You surely didn't see it hardly at all until the 1930s, 40s,
and then it just became paramountly just, I don't know, like ants
by the 1950s. And then you say, now go tell
somebody what? What is the word? You know it.
Now go tell somebody what you did. How many of you have ever
heard that? Go tell somebody what you did.
Go tell somebody what you did to get saved. Go tell somebody
what you did. Must deny himself. Whoever would save his life will
lose it. It's not what decisional regeneration
is all about. It's not what decisional evangelism is all about. You
need to save your life. You better save your life. You
better save your life. Is that the gospel? No, the gospel
is God has saved your life because you deserve his judgment. You
are wicked and sinful and God is right to put you in the depths
of his judgment. But in his love for you, he put
Christ, his Holy Son on the cross and satisfied his wrath upon
you. Do you believe by faith that Jesus alone can save you? Well, how do I believe by faith?
God does that. If you're still figuring out
how to believe, you're still thinking about this initial man,
you believe, God gives you belief, you believe. But we're so conditioned
to have to do something about that. Yeah, you grow your affection. What happens if you love popcorn?
You eat it. If you like black shoes, you
buy them and you wear them and you show them off. If you like your hair flipped
this way or up this way or bold or green or orange or purple,
that's what you do. If you love it, that's what happens.
If you're born again and you have faith in Christ, then every
aspect of your life as you're given the opportunity to either
believe that Christ is sufficient or to walk in your own understanding,
you are toying with that and you know with the fullness of
your soul, by the power of God's Word, that you walk with Christ
and you walk there and you have victory in that moment. And the
one who has victory over all. Well, this type of practice produces
decisional regeneration, decisional revenge, and I would say decisional
results. We say, oh, look at the work
of God. Look at the work. You think the underground church
in China gathers round and prays for people to receive Jesus and
they get them all up and try to get them to come and make
a spectacle of coming down the aisle or professing or, whoa,
hey, worse. We made it even easier. Check
the box. And if you check the box last
week and you check it again this week, you're confused. You just
rededicated. Just rededicated. Wait a minute,
you rededicated. You must not amend it. Well,
I'm having a hard time. I can't really believe God's
with me in this. That's just the devil talking. No, that's
the truth coming out. You never believed. Never been
born again. Decisional results. Look at the
work of God. Look at all that God is doing.
You know what? If all it takes to see what God
is doing is a bunch of people wailing in an emotional state
and coming to do something that man has told them they have to
do, how is that God? If we take that same type of
logic, we can say that everywhere you stand in line at a restaurant,
we can say, look at the work of God. You go into that buffet, you
know, that's got the cattle poles and the ropes. You ever been
there and there's like four people in the line, but you got to go. I don't do that. I go up
there and I go up underneath the rope. I'm not going to walk
around like a cow going into that when there's nobody in front
of me. I mean, you look stupid like a bunch of robo. Hey, what's
going on? But the world tells you to do it. Man says to do
it. Do you walk into the interview? OK, well, a rat's in a maze. Ridiculous. That's what this
kind of stuff does. This is what you're supposed
to do. So therefore, we do it. We follow it along and then we
say, oh, I'm saved because I followed the rat trail. That's not the work of God, it's
the work of man. It's a manipulative issue that man does. It's what
we can portray and we call the work of God. Didn't George Whitefield
preach, he stayed around and watched people come forward?
No! He was like, now go! Live in peace! And there was a church there.
The church, not a specific, the church who grabbed hold of these
people. And how do they know that 3000 were added to the name,
to the, to the church of the day of Pentecost? Because the very next day people's
living rooms were full because people had a hunger for God's
word and they wanted to be around the Christians. They've been born again. The result of these decisional
results, we got altar calls and we say it's the work of God.
And because we have to continue to placate to unbelievers, it's
produced non-expositional preaching. It's not exposing the gospel.
It's not exposing the text. It's using the text, like I can
say, stir for three minutes and bake on 300. Go do it. What? What have you mixed up? What
have you stirred? The bowl of water? Some batter? What's the batter going to make?
There's a big difference in cornbread and pound cake. I don't think
cornbread and whipped cream would taste good. I don't say pound cake and butter,
but that is pretty good. That's what it's made of. You've
got to know what I'm talking about. And so because of all
these results, the results of having unbelievers is you can't
motivate them through the teaching of scripture. You can't talk
to them about denying themselves and taking up a cross and following
the Christ because they don't understand. It's like Charlie
Brown. So they don't know what to do.
So what happens is they just we have to start teaching scripture
as it applies to man. It becomes a spiritless people.
It becomes action contrived. And
in the end, it's unbiblical in every county, which produces
an unsafe people. I don't know how many times I've
heard, if you were sincere, God saved you. Have you ever been so sure of
something and found out you were wrong? If you were sincere. Sincerity doesn't make something
true. And when you realize it's not true, to continue to be sincere
in it is just stupid. In Mark chapter 4, Jesus talks
about the soils. And we realize that these are
not people who reject the gospel, but these four soils, three of
them, receive the word with joy. Receive the gospel in their hearts
and minds and with their actions. Oh yeah, we believe. But then
why? The fear, the frustration and the devil takes it away and
they're not saved. But the final soil, it says something
very interesting in the Gospel of James. Jesus says, but when
the Word of God comes to the good heart. He noticed it didn't
say it comes to the heart and makes it good. It comes to the
good heart, the good soil. The soil is good, therefore it
receives the Word. What's that? Rebirth. Regeneration. Salvation. God in His Holy Spirit
reverts a man who then can receive the Word. Ultimately, all of this is fruitless.
It's sinful. And it produces an unchanged
people who may or may not be moral, who may or may not be
within the church, they may struggle. They may not struggle. But one
thing's for sure is they have no truth. They have no faith.
They have no power. And they have a false assurance.
Peter was sure that Jesus didn't have to die. The Pharisees were sure that
Jesus needed to prove something else to them, but on what he'd
already proven to them, even after he raised Lazarus from
the dead. You've got to get some more. What else? A man cannot come to Jesus because
Jesus has to come to him. We can't come with our feet.
We can't come with our heart. We can't come with our mind,
nor our will, except that man be born again by hearing the
Word of God through the Holy Spirit. See, friends, the Gospel
is not an appendage at the end of something. The gospel is not
a process through which God will give you an opportunity to respond.
But I'll tell you that there is always a response to the gospel,
and it's either one of two things. It is a response that proves
that the gospel has transformed you, or a response that proves
that you're still blind. And I will submit to you that
holding fast to these New traditions of evangelism and teaching the
gospel and this decisional regeneration stuff is a blinding falsehood. This is the work of God. What
must we do to be doing the work of God, Jesus, they ask Him.
And He says, this is the work of God that you believe on Him. who He has sent. I believe the outward expression
ultimately is the proof that it's idolatry. This outward expression,
this outward action of salvation is proof of idolatry. Where do
you get that? Because I believe that the root
of it all, it's motivated in self-love. The sin of self-love. It's about
me and my hope and my salvation and my joy and my happiness and
my thing. Salvation isn't about me anyway. It's about the name of God being
praised. God didn't save a people so they
could clap for themselves. God saved a people that they
would clap for him. These practices are selfish,
wicked, idolatrous things. And they are bound up in the
heart of self-sufficiency, not Christ-sufficiency. What does
Paul say? Make no provisions for the flesh. Friends, that starts with salvation.
Make no provision. Don't set a table for your hope
in yourself and in your choices and in your decisions. Set your
table with Christ at the head. And when you sit at the Master's
table, Who, when you deserve not even the crumb as a dog,
he gives you the full meal as he takes off his clothes and
puts a towel around his waist and washes your feet when you
eat his kingly feast. That's beautiful. It's beautiful. Why would we
want anything else? How then have you come to Christ,
beloved? Have you come hoping to get the
death sentence taken off the table? Or have you come to Christ
as one who has no hope except Him? These children cry out,
2 Corinthians chapter 4, one of
my favorite places, one of many favorite places. Paul says that
people are blinded and they can't see the gospel. And he says, because they're
blinded, we don't twist the scripture. We don't play with the word. We don't use manipulation. But by bold statement of the
truth, we commend ourselves to your conscience inside of you
and in the sight of God. And if our gospel is veiled,
it's only veiled to those who are perishing for the God of
this world is blind to the eyes of unbelievers to keep them from
seeing the light of the gospel, the light of God. What is Paul? What's the remedy? God has shown
in our hearts through the hearing of the word. God has shown in
our hearts that brings us to life. God has shown in our hearts
to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face
of Christ. 2 Corinthians 4, 6. What do we do? What do we do
with people who seemingly don't care? We got to get them to respond
somehow. No, we don't have to at all. Gospel causes a response. Believe on Christ today. Believe
in the sufficiency of Christ alone. Your hope is in the work
of God to save you through the hearing of his word. And if you
feel the call and the draw of the Holy Spirit of God today
and you put water on it, that is your business. But there will
come a day when God will take your life from you. He will either give you eternal
life in Christ, or he will give you the just deserts, the just
earnings of the wage that you've lived for. He will give you the
just earnings of the wage that Christ paid for. No, he'll give
you the gracious earnings that we don't deserve. To the praise
of his glorious grace. What about those people who have
gone away? What do we do? Pray, what does Paul tell Timothy?
Pray that God may, what? Grant them repentance. That they
may escape the snare of the devil who has captured them to do his
bidding. How does that work? We pray and we preach. And God prepares the hearts to
receive the seed of the gospel. Let's pray. God, we thank You
for Your mighty affection. The Lord is such a polarizing
thing. The Scripture teaches us. Jesus
tells us that He is a sword. He's the Word. Help us to see
where we have fallen to the sufficiency of flesh. Help us to see where
we have fallen into the traditions of men. Help us to see that the practices
of the clear call of the gospel is what we're looking at and
fighting against. We're not fighting against the
gospel message, but by our practice, Lord, we are so easily making
a new message. Father, we pray for our brothers
and sisters who are caught up in it. We pray for those who
claim to be in us and with us who are blinded to it. Lord,
even as we all, each of us who probably had to work through
that reality, we don't put our trust, even if we did pray that
you save us. We don't put our trust in that
prayer, but we put our trust in your salvation through Christ. May we pray every day. to Your
holy ears through the sufficient salvation and redemption through
Christ Jesus, that You would hold us and keep us. And we don't
have to pray that You might, because You've told us that You
will. Give us the security of our hope in Your faithfulness,
not our faith. In Jesus' name we pray.