95-61 – Wisdom Breakers – Divided Loyalty

This sermon is Part 5 of the series "Wisdom Breakers" by Dr. Chuck Betters.

Wisdom Breakers is a study of the book of James. James tells us that as long as our faith is weak and if our faith is wavering, then we can never possess wisdom. When God calls us to fulfill his purpose, HE does not rescind that calling. Often times we can distracted or sidetracked with living out our mission. My identity in Christ is directly related to whether I understand what it means to be a bond servant of Jesus Christ. This is how James identifies himself in the opening of this book. Dr. Betters is about to explain that if we understand that our identity in Christ is that of bond servants to him, that is when we become a threat to the powers of Satan. Because then our identity is clear and we can serve the Lord to our fullest.

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_01 0:07

Welcome to In His Grip with Dr. Chuck F. Betters, produced by Mark Inc. Ministries. Each In His Grip message is designed to help turn your hearts toward Jesus and equip you to walk by faith. Let's join Dr. Betters as he preaches today's message.

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Let's take your Bibles, please, and turn to the book of James, chapter 1. For the past uh four weeks, we have been talking about this first chapter, these first eight verses. I'd like to read them for you once again. James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes scattered among the nations, greetings. Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. Now, in the first message in this series, we looked at those first four verses. That message was entitled Pain as Your Friend. And James, the half-brother of the Lord Jesus, sending this encyclical letter out to the churches made up primarily of Jewish converts who were experiencing significant persecution, seems to be out of touch with the reality of the harshness of life and the painful circumstances these people were experiencing. Because he says, count it pure joy when you face trials of different kinds. See pain as your friend. Trust in the sovereignty of God because God has a purpose. There is a purpose clause in verse 4. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. And so we dealt at length with what it means to experience pain, but to do so within the context of the sovereignty of God. To see the telos, that's the word that we use, that's the Greek word that's used here, that speaks of purpose. What is the purpose of suffering? God does not allow us to suffer without a purpose. And yet God's purposes cannot be fully realized apart from suffering. So pain becomes our friend. But in typical James fashion, he ends verse 4 and picks up in verse 5 with seeming contrast. He ends verse 4 by speaking of not lacking anything, but opens verse 5 by saying, But if you lack wisdom, if you lack wisdom, you should ask of God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord. He is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does. Over the past three weeks, we have been looking at wisdom breakers. What are the things that hinder us from receiving what God in James 1 clearly promises? That if we lack wisdom, wisdom defined as how I regulate my responses to God's interruptions in my life, how I regulate my response to when God operates or does something in my life, specifically when I am experiencing pain or heartache or grief or suffering in some way, shape, or form. How am I to regulate? How am I then to act in light of the intervention of God in my life? That's wisdom. Wisdom is seeing things from God's perspective. Wisdom is responding according to the perspective that God gives. Now I told you then and I tell you now, these are principles that although you may not need them at this point in your life, you will someday need. You will someday need to have to come back to this and say, this is how I am to respond. This is a wisdom breaker. This is something designed to destroy my faith. And I asked you specifically to carefully analyze and weigh where you are in the context of these wisdom breakers. The first one was we say the pain is too great. That what we are experiencing is too much, that what God told us in 1 Corinthians 10, 13, that he would not allow more than we could bear, that he will with the temptation also make a way of escape that we may endure, that God lied to us when he said that. That is always a wisdom breaker. Secondly, the disciplines in my life are too inconsistent. I am not allowing the word of Christ to dwell in me richly. I am not praising and worshiping God. I am not experiencing fellowship and intimacy with his spirit. And the inconsistency is reflected in the way in which I handle the word, in the way in which I pray, the way in which I worship. The disciplines are too inconsistent. Thirdly, or a third wisdom breaker, is there some ruptured relationship between me and God because of some unconfessed sin? I'm asking God to give me wisdom, but God is seeking repentance because of unconfessed sin in my life. So God is not going to give me his perspective until I first make confession of sin. The question becomes: is there any unconfessed sin in your life? We asked you to examine both your known sins and your unknown sins. That is, things that you don't know are causing the rupture. Ask God to reveal those. Unconfessed sin or a ruptured relationship will always breed a faithless heart and will always destroy the flow of wisdom. Number four, pride. Who is in control here? The control factor. Who is going to be the one in control of my destiny? Do we believe God is both sovereign and all good? If he is sovereign, then he is in control of even the minutest details of my life. If he is all good, then everything that comes, even the things that we perceive to be evil, all things truly work together for good to those who love God. But pride says, No, Lord, I'm in control. This is too evil. This is too wrong. This is too painful. This is too critical. I cannot trust you for this. Therefore, you are not all good. I am in control. I will take control of my happiness and my peace. That will break wisdom every time. Fifth, a hardened heart that has refused to heed the call of God in their lives. Oftentimes God gives us specific direction and we commit ourselves to that direction. But then because of hardness of heart or because we sell out to something else, we are detoured. Many of us for years go down a path that God never intended us to go. He called us at a certain juncture in our life, called us to ministry, called us to reorder our priorities, called us to the mission field, called us to a specific task. We answered the call short term, but then abandoned the call when the heat was turned up. And that heart becomes hardened over time, and we never have wisdom from God because He's still back where He called us. He's still back here calling us to a renewed commitment to the things that He says are our first love. Sixth, we talked about self-advancement in our pain. That is, we have a wrong motive in suffering so that others may see our pain and glory in us rather than glory in God. In other words, we want to become examples or testimonies, or we want to be seen as credible Christians or Christians to be honored, and so we glorify ourselves even in our pain and we fail to see our pain as emanating from a God who is sovereign and all good. Seventh, we talked about satanic oppression. Surely Satan is going to seek to destroy wisdom. He cannot possess a Christian, but he can oppress a Christian. He can indeed launch a counterattack, and he can block us from understanding the mind and the heart of God, especially as he begins to throw in our pathway many satanic obstacles, and we talked at length about some of that. Eighth, we talked about lack of discipline in non-related areas. In other words, we may be struggling with problem A. And we may not understand why we are not having any victory over this area, or why we do not have God's perspective, why we have no wisdom over here in problem A. And the reason may be because there is some overflow, there is some spilling over of some of the garbage in non-related areas in our lives. We may be struggling with things over here in area B, C, D, and E. And that garbage that we have never contended with may spill over into problem A. And we'll never have perspective, we'll never have wisdom because there's so much garbage in these other areas that needs to be cleaned up first. Ninth, we talked about the failure to take the long view of suffering, to see that all things indeed work together for good, but they work together for good in the eternal scheme of things. We are to be a people of faith and hope. We will never ever experience in this life, never in this life the fullness of all that God intended for us. That can only be realized in the life to come, and so our focus must not be this world, but it must be that world. We must take a look at the long view of suffering. And then, tenth, we talked about our loss of identity in Christ, resulting in a failure to accurately comprehend the meaning of the abundant life. Remember the last time we were together, we talked about the three circles. We have casual longings. All of us long for certain things in certain circumstances of life. How's our job going? What's our health look like? Do we have a home? Are we experiencing the material blessings that we ought to experience? Are we experiencing some of the physical blessings we ought to experience? All of us struggle with casual longings. And then there are the critical longings, the longings of relationships. And we try to illustrate for you that nothing in terms of fulfillment in those first two areas will ever bring you peace with God. No matter how good the blessings in the casual realm are, no matter how good your relationships might be, no matter how solid your marriage, no matter how much in love with your spouse, no matter how submitted your children are, no matter what blessings your children bring you, no matter what your casual, no matter what your critical longings, they cannot satisfy that inner circle. The crucial longing of a man's heart is to have peace with God. And that peace passes all understanding, and that can only be realized as we are drawn into an intimacy with Him. The problem is that in evangelical circles for years, we have equated blessings in those first two circles as the same as the abundant life. The question becomes when everything goes awry in those first two circles, we can and must enjoy the abundant life. And that can only come when we have that inner circle filled, that crucial longing that we have in Jesus Christ, when we are changed, as Larry Crabbe calls it, from the inside out. When we are experiencing the blessings of God from the inside out. Well, now I want to give you three more. And they're all related, by the way. I'd like you to turn to Mark's gospel, chapter 8. I want you to look with me at verse 14. Mark 8, 14, Jesus has just fed the 4,000 miraculously. He has just multiplied the loaves and the fish. And then in verse 14 it says, the disciples, this is after all of that has transpired, verse 13, he left them, got into the boat, and crossed to the other side. The disciples had forgotten to bring bread, except for one loaf they had with them in the boat. Be careful, Jesus warned them. Watch out for the yeast or leaven of the Pharisees and that of Herod. Now the disciples were very confused by all of that. They didn't understand what he meant. They thought he was criticizing them for refusing to bring bread along on the trip. Now he has just fed 4,000 people miraculously. He didn't need them to remember to bring the wonder bread along. He didn't need them to remember to pack up the bags, to make sure they hit the grocery store before they got on the boat. Immediately, the movement of thinking among the disciples is to go to the material. Immediately they think about their casual longings. Immediately they proceed to think about what we forgot to do. What did I forget to do? We forgot to bring bread. But he is talking about a different kind of bread. He says, Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod. They discussed this with one another and said, It's because we have no bread. Aware of their discussion, Jesus asked them, Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not see or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes but fail to see, ears but fail to hear? And don't you remember when I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, and how many basketfuls of pieces did they pick up? Twelve, they said, and I broke seven loaves for the four thousand, and how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up? They answered, seven. He said to them, Do you still not understand? I'm not talking about bread here. I'm talking about something that goes much deeper than whether or not your belly's full, much deeper than your casual longings, much deeper than your critical longings. I'm talking about the longing of soul. And he says, now there's a danger. There's a danger there, and that danger lurks inside of your spirit. It's a subtle danger, it's an invisible danger. You can't see it because it's all mixed up with the loaf. It's all mixed up in there, and you're not going to be able to detect it easily. He says, Beware of the leaven, beware of the yeast of the Pharisees, and beware of the yeast of Herod. Now let's go over to Matthew's gospel, and we're going to look at the same context. Because when you put Matthew and Mark together, you're going to see he adds one other here. Matthew chapter 6. Matthew chapter 6, verse 6. And if you could drop down, by the way, to verse 11, within the context of the Lord's Prayer, he says, Give us today our daily bread. Our daily bread. He says in verse 5, but when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. When you pray, go into your room, close the door, and pray to your father who is unseen. Then your father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. When you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your father knows what you need before you ask him. And then he says in verse 16, When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show men that they are fasting. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you fast, put oil on your head, wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to men that you are fasting, but only to your father who is unseen, and your father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. Now, standing there during all of this were the Pharisees. The same ones Jesus said, Beware of their leaven, beware of the infection of the Pharisees, beware of the subtleness of the Pharisees that's mixed up in the loaf. Because you see, when they fasted, everybody knew they were fasting. When they prayed, everybody knew they were praying. When they gave alms, everybody knew they were giving alms. When they went to church, it was announced. When they tried to convey a relationship with God, they were public in it, in the sense that they wanted everyone to see what they possessed. I want to give you an 11th principle. Divided loyalty due to the presence of Pharisaic leaven. Divided loyalty, Jesus says, beware of the presence of the leaven of the Pharisees in your life. Now, if you look up the word Pharisee in the dictionary, guess what you're going to find? A Pharisee is a hypocrite, right? That's what they say about the Pharisees. Now, when you look at the Old Testament, as the Israelites were supposed to prepare for holy feasts, one of the things they had to do for these holy feasts was they had to go into their homes and remove all of the leaven. Every piece of leaven had to be taken out of their homes. The big pieces, the little pieces, the crumbs, they literally were instructed to clean their closets. They were to pick up the rugs, make sure there was no leaven there. Go into the corners of the closet and make sure there was no leaven there. Before they could enter into the presence of God at these holy feasts, all of the leaven had to be removed. There was a ritual they had to go through to get that leaven out. Now, of course, that leaven represents sin. That leaven represents infection, a subtle infection. An infection that causes a divided loyalty. In other words, there are certain Pharisaic tendencies that I have and that you have that will cause me to put a foot over here in this camp and a foot over here in God's camp, and I will become divided in terms of where my loyalty rests. Because that infection, that leaven, that yeast, eventually blows up into a full loaf. You don't know any leaven is there until you bake the bread. And when you bake the bread, at the end you will be able to tell whether or not it is unleavened bread or whether or not it possesses leaven. If the leaven is present, it is because early on it was not removed. Jesus says, Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees. How am I infected by Pharisaic leaven? Remember now, leaven acts invisibly, it's undetected until there is a full-blown infection. This is going to require some serious soul searching. The Pharisees were very popular among the common folks, more so than the Sadducees. You see, the Sanhedrin or the governing body of Israel was made up of Pharisees and Sadducees. The Sadducees were the aristocrats, they were the wealthy ones. They were the ones who were in charge of all of the chief priestly duties. Most of the chief priests, when you read the Bible, it says the chief priest and the Pharisees plotted together against Jesus. The Sadducees mostly constituted the chief priests. Now there were some priests who were Pharisees, but for the most part, the Sadducees were the aristocrats, they were the wealthy people. They really didn't believe anything. They were the rationalists of their day. They didn't believe in the supernatural. They didn't believe in a heaven to be gained and a hell to be shunned. They didn't believe ultimately in a resurrection. The whole of life for the Sadducees was a rationalistic, existential approach to life right now. Now the Pharisees, on the other hand, were more religious. They believed in all the great doctrines of the Bible. They believed in a resurrection from the dead. They believed in the authority of Scripture in their lives. They were the guardians of tradition. They were the guardians of religious values. They were the guardians of religious truth. And for that reason, they were more popular with the common folk. The problem with the Pharisees is that their orientation was flawed. They became bitter enemies of Jesus and they became bitter enemies of his disciples. And the reason they hated Jesus so much is because Jesus represented a threat to their status. They were status people. They were concerned about their standing with the people, that the traditions be safeguarded, that the law be safeguarded. They saw themselves as the protectors of the common folk. They were going to represent the peons and the downcast of society, although they tended to lord it over those very same people. Why is the leaven of the Pharisees that which creates a divided loyalty? Because it's status. Status means everything. In fact, I'll help you out a little bit here. If you really want to know how subtle the leaven of the Pharisees can be, take that word status and write it down. S-T-A-T-U-S. That's what a Pharisee is. Let me tell you what the S stands for, and it's discrete, it's hidden. Let me tell you in theological terms, and then I'm going to explain it to you. You know what a Pharisee believes? Because status is everything to a Pharisee, because his image is everything, a Pharisee believes theologically, sanctification can produce justification. That's what a Pharisee believes. You say, what do you mean? How I act can determine my standing before God. If I act good enough, then God will accept me. If I can be holy enough, somewhere down the road, God is going to say, because you are so holy, because you have kept the law, because you have been the guardian of truth, because you have preserved the traditions, because you have practiced your religion, somewhere down the road, you are going to become so efficient at practicing your religion that I am going to say, your position before me now is secure. In other words, I become progressively more and more holy with my life, so that somewhere down the road, God is going to say, you now have crossed over from being unsaved to being saved. You say that's absolutely ridiculous. Who would ever think such a thing? The largest, quote, Christian body in the world preaches and teaches that doctrine. The largest, quote, Christian body in the whole world is the Roman Catholic Church, and that is predominantly the theology of justification within the Roman Catholic Church. The whole of Protestantism, the whole of the Reformation is rooted in a rebuttal of that doctrine of sanctification leading to justification. The whole of the Reformation rests on sola fide, faith alone. Justification comes by faith alone. It is by God's grace, sola grazia, grace alone. Through faith in Jesus Christ, we are made right with God, not because of inherent merit, but because of God's grace we are saved through faith in Christ and Christ alone. We are judged in Him and not in our works. Sanctification then follows as the fruit or the proof that my standing with God is right. I become more and more holy because my heart has been changed, because I have been justified by faith, not the other way around. A document recently was signed by ten leading evangelical Protestant Christians and a group of Catholic theologians. Now, I don't know, there might be some Roman Catholic people here. I was a former Roman Catholic. This is not meant to be a preaching and teaching ministry about Roman Catholicism. Because sadly, even though this Roman Catholic doctrine predominates the world's religious view, sadly, much of what they believe has filtered its way into evangelical Protestantism. So much so that recently evangelical scholars, whom I respect greatly, signed a document called Evangelicals and Catholics Together, ECT for short. And fundamentally, in that document, fundamentally, those who penned or put their signatures on this document started out by saying we are co-belligerents in certain causes. As Catholics and as evangelical Christians, there are certain social sins that we agree need to be fought. The sin of abortion, the sin of homosexuality, moral and social evils that are a plague and a plight on our society. That Catholics and evangelicals need to come together and we need to say to the world, abortion is not a Catholic issue. Abortion is a life issue. And we as evangelical Protestants stand up and say, because our Bible affirms that life begins and ends with God, and because our Bible teaches that life is sacred, and that sucking babies out of the womb is a violation of God's order of creation, that we as evangelicals can join hands as co-belligerents with Roman Catholics and yes, even Mormons, and say, we believe that this social sin needs to be purged from our society. We can join hands with them and say, we agree. Now I would have no problem signing that kind of a document. The problem is that ECT went one step further and it recognized that as long as you live up to the best dictates of whatever the tradition is that you come from, we need to call each other brothers and sisters in Christ. As long as you are faithful to whatever organization or church body you come from, we are brothers and sisters in Christ. Essentially, what the document said was that because you are a Roman Catholic, or because you are an evangelical Christian, because you are a member of those churches, you are de facto Christians, and therefore, as Christians, we must join one another and say we are together in the body of Christ. Chuck Colson, J.I. Packer, Bill Bright, three of the most respected evangelical Protestant theologians of our day, signed that document sadly. Since that time, they have been confronted by the likes of D. James Kennedy and John MacArthur and R. C. Sproull and John Ankerbird and others who have sat down in private meetings to say to these men, are you abandoning the doctrines of the Reformed faith and the reformed tradition? Are you now in tolerance, buying into a system of religion that is anathema to the Bible? And they did everything in their power to get those men to expunge their names from that document. They refused to do so, instead, they signed another document stating their absolute belief in the doctrine of justification by faith alone. You say, why are you telling us all this? In an age of tolerance in which we live, the only thing that is not tolerated is intolerance. You following me? We live in an age where the message that's coming from the gurus of humanism is this: we must become tolerant of everyone else's belief system. We must become tolerant of what everybody else says the truth is. So we need to join hands with every other religious system and say there's truth in all of them, and those who are intolerant are not tolerated. John MacArthur had the audacity to stand up and say that the system of doctrine taught by Trent, which is the Roman Catholic basis of origin in terms of their doctrinal system, the Council of Trent, was the framework in which modern-day Catholicism still rests. John MacArthur had the audacity to stand up and make this statement that that system of doctrine that is taught by the Roman Catholic Church is apostasy. I heard a tape recently in which R. C. Sprohl stood up after that comment was made and said something like this John, we live in an age of tolerance. We are to be tolerant of everyone's ideas. And the statement you just made is incendiary and intolerant, and it violates every code of ethic that we have established in modern 20th century America. And then he goes on to say, and I agree with every word of it, and so do I. I make no apologies for the fact that as we stand here today, irregardless of Vatican I, irregardless of Vatican II, the doctrines of the Council of Trent still stand. The Roman Catholic Church still teaches, still maintains in all of their catechisms, in all of their literature, that a man can be justified by faith in Christ that works. In other words, not justification by faith alone. But man becomes justified as he is progressively sanctified. They tie the two together and say, you can't separate them ever, that justification is the result of continued effort on your part to be a good person. And that's what's so sad in the document. Because in the document, what all of the signers agreed to was a statement that says, Christians are people who believe that a man is justified by faith in Jesus Christ. You say, what's wrong with that? I could sign that, could you? Is a man justified by faith in Jesus Christ? The whole of the Reformation rests on the insertion of one very important word. One critical word. We do not believe that a man is justified by faith in Jesus Christ. We believe, and the framers of the Reformation believe, what caused Luther and Calvin and Zwingli and Knox and all the others to become anathema to the Roman Catholic Church. What was affirmed at Trent, what continues to be affirmed in the doctrines of Roman Catholicism today is this. And we take exception with it. One word needs to be added. One word that the Roman Catholic signers of that document could not sign. We are justified by faith in Jesus Christ. Here's the one word. Anybody know what it is? Alone. Alone. Sola fide, faith alone, sola grazia, grace alone, sola scriptura, scripture alone. And when we in evangelical Protestantism begin to make a break with those doctrines, we make a break with our roots. And as much as I respect and admire the work of these three men and the seven others who signed that document, they were dead wrong in putting their signatures to it. Why? Because that same theology has made its way into mainline liberalism, mainline Protestantism, most mainline Protestants would not have a problem signing that document. Now here's the sad part. You say, why are you preaching on this? Because I believe that the future of evangelicalism rests on whether or not we understand this. If in evangelical circles we abandon sola gracia, sola fide, and sola scriptura, then we have become the basis for a one-world church. And when you have leading, leading and respected evangelical scholars, men whom I would have no problems fellowshipping with, men I would love to have stand behind this pulpit and teach you. When you have men like that watering down in the name of co-belligerency, sola grazia, sola fide, sola scriptura, in order to embrace Roman Catholicism, the chink in our armor has been found. And the pathway to liberalism within our own evangelical faith has been discovered. And we are just a short cry away from full-blown leaven within evangelical Protestantism. I told you this before, I'm going to tell you again, churches like this one are going to become more and more a minority. And the reason is because the message of tolerance today frowns upon the kind of preaching you're hearing right now. And what it says is that's intolerant. I get letters all the time. I think they're from visitors who come to our church. In fact, I'm pretty sure they are, who are concerned whenever I take some pot shots at liberal theology or pot shots at false doctrine. You know, I am commanded by the Word of God in my preaching ministry. Paul commanded Timothy to guard the gospel. Guard the gospel. What is the gospel? Sola gratia, sola fide, sola scriptura. We are justified through faith in Christ alone. Our standing before God is on the basis of Jesus' merit, not on the basis of my merit. If it's on the basis of my merit, I'll never make it. And that's why within the context of Catholic theology, you can never have assurance of your salvation. If you're good enough, you'll go to heaven. If you're bad enough, you'll go to hell. If you're not quite sure, you'll go into a temporary place where your sins can be purged away. This is anathema to the gospel of Christ. It is false doctrine, it is false teaching. You say, you mean to tell me there are no Christian people in the Catholic Church? Absolutely not. I never said that. In fact, there is quite a movement within Catholicism, quite a return coming from the layman back to the scriptures. There are many people within Catholicism today who are beginning to rediscover the Word of God, not filtered through the hierarchy of the priesthood, not filtered through Rome. But as we have said all along, the priesthood belongs to all believers, and there are many within the Catholic Church who are rediscovering what it means to have an intimate relationship with Christ. There are many who have been born again, many who are bloodbought believers, many who are living the faith. Leave as quickly as possible, you're in a false system. It's wrong. You say, Chuck, that's very intolerant. The gospel is intolerant. If this church, if this preacher ever begins to preach a message of justification, rooted in works or good deeds, justification that means if you practice your religion like the Pharisees, you can have a status with God. Leave this church, flee from it, get the leaven out. You see, the Pharisees had a self-righteous attitude towards salvation. They renounced God's plan of salvation by a religion of status. You see, status is a religion that seeks to control God. I'm in control of my eternal destiny. It's all up to me. So I will work my way to heaven. I'll chalk up two points here and dismiss one point there. I'll be good for three days and I'll commit sin for one. You say, I don't think that way, don't you? Check the leaven out in your own spirit. The Pharisees held a very high view of their traditions. That's what the T stands for. Sanctification that justifies, that's the S. T stands for traditions and religious practices that are devoid of purpose. The Pharisees held a very high view of their traditions, but there was no heartfelt burden to advance the kingdom of God. They believed in membership, they believed in lots of religious activity, they believed in plenty of Bible study, but they missed the vitality of life in the spirit. They were concerned more with their cause than they were the gospel. Now, having said what I've just told you about ECT, I want to remind you of how subtle Satan can become. You listening to me? Back in 1948, one of the great religious thinkers of our day, who is now with the Lord, Francis Schaefer, from 1948 to 1952, Francis Schaefer was in a real struggle against the forces of liberalism within the Protestant Church, especially within the Presbyterian Church USA. And there was a movement that was started within the Presbyterian Church USA. Francis Schaefer was one of the key leaders of that movement. That movement became known as the Bible Presbyterian Movement. And so the Bible Presbyterian movement of which Francis Schaefer was a part, they called themselves the Separatists. They saw the flow of Presbyterian Church USA, they saw the flow toward liberalism. As we stand here today, it is probably one of the most liberal denominations, mainline denominations in the world. But back in 1948 to 1952, during that time frame, Francis Schaefer was one of the pioneers of the separatist movement within the Presbyterian Church. And he became so absorbed in that movement, they called it the movement, the separatist movement. So absorbed that he found himself at odds with other brothers and sisters in Christ who were remaining faithful to the Word of God. You see, this is Phariseaism. This is what Satan does. Here was a man who was probably the spearheader of the movement. He took on some of the leading evangelical seminaries and institutions. Many names would be familiar to you because of their drift toward liberalism. And he was guarding the gospel. But suddenly, in that four-year period, something began to happen to Francis Schaeffer. God began to move in his heart. And he began to see some things about himself that weren't too pretty. That the leaven of the Pharisees had made its way in, that he was more concerned about tradition and religious practice and the cause or the movement, that he had lost his vitality with Jesus Christ. I've been reading a book called Letters of Francis Schaefer. Whenever you want to understand how God moves, you want to look at the men and the women in whose lives God has moved, and you begin to study things about them. One of the letters that he wrote in this particular book, he calls it counterfeit spiritual reality. He wrote it to somebody whose name is not given here, and he corresponded extensively with this particular woman, especially after he resigned his post as a missionary to the independent board for Presbyterian World Missions. So here is a man on the mission field. He resigns his position because of the liberalism within that church. He is now spearheading a movement within that church called the Bible Presbyterian Movement, a separatist movement that originally was established to guard the gospel. And then after four years of this, he began to check out some things in his own heart. Listen to what he says here. He says, Miss So and so, we are increasingly convinced that the real problem in the Separated movement is a spiritual one. I am convinced after much thought and prayer that we are observing a tragedy, the magnitude of which we who are so close to it cannot yet adequately judge. He's talking about his own now. He's talking about the separatist within his own movement. I will tell you the depth of my own conclusion, though, as you can understand, I would not want it to have wide publication. Well, we're reading it. I believe that the tragedy is somewhere in the following direction. Listen, it seems to me that just prior to 1900, we can see an exhibition of New Testament Christianity, which was as close to the primitive church as can be found in any time since the days of the New Testament. Nearer to the primitive church than even the Reformation was. He's talking about the years right around 1900. I am thinking of something that was not an organization. It was not a movement, but a clear moving of the Holy Spirit in a number of his dear children. I am thinking of the Welsh revivals, the early English Keswick men, Mrs. Penn Lewis, Amy Carmichael, G. Campbell Morgan, F. B. Meyer, Andrew Murray, Miss Seltou in London, the China Inland Mission, etc. It seems to me, in having read with great care a great deal of the material flowing from these people, that they did understand the spiritual reality of the Lord's work done in the Lord's way, and a commitment in practical ways to the headship of Christ and the leadership of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. With this came a deep understanding that the battle is not against flesh and blood. That the real participation in this battle has to be through the practical, moment by moment leading of the Holy Spirit and with spiritual weapons. Thus the spiritual became central, the important thing. External results were seen to be only valid insofar as they flowed from the reality of this central communication with God. He goes back to these Welsh revivals. He goes back to the great men and women of God who were raised up during that time. And he said it didn't flow from an organization. It didn't flow from a cause. It didn't flow because evangelicals were fighting with each other. It flowed because the Spirit of God was in touch with human hearts. He concludes in this letter by saying, I must confess that my heart has become unloving and uncaring toward my brothers in Christ. I am more absorbed by the cause and by the movement than I am by the Christ. And it grieved him to see the direction that even his brothers and sisters in Christ were taking. Oh, yes, we must guard the gospel. We must guard the gospel. Sola fide, sola scriptura, sola gracia, we must never compromise on. And when it begins to slip its ugly head into the context of evangelicalism, we must stand up and fight it. However, the leaven of the Pharisees can be found in our traditions, in our religious practice, in what we get caught up in. The Pharisees were concerned about their cause, and anything that threatened their cause was put down. Jesus threatened their cause. His disciples threatened their cause. The question is, what are you absorbed in? I know as a pastor, it's very easy, very easy to get sidetracked. Very simple. I have a three-page document from our own denomination that was passed at the last General Assembly, a position paper that they took on ECT. Very firm position paper in which they renounced the signing of that document as an abandonment of those vital doctrines. Should we have done that? Absolutely. Should we take that stand? Absolutely. The question now becomes whether or not we become absorbed in a cause, in an institution, in a movement, or whether or not the crises and the doctrinal concerns that concern us drive us to the cross, drive us to see Christ anew, as it did Francis Schaefer. His whole life was revolutionized from that point on. God used the movement of the Spirit in Schaefer's life to see that there was an unloving and the non-Christian response to his own brothers in Christ that drove him to say there are much bigger issues, that Satan has used the subtlety of this leaven to drive me away from fighting the real enemy. You know what amazes me? How often Christians declare war on Christians. How often we are intolerant of the wrong things, and tolerant of the wrong things. What we should be intolerant of, we tolerate. What we should be tolerant of, we don't tolerate. How sad it is. How will we ever experience revival? I'm gonna stop here. Um I didn't even begin my sermon yet. I'm gonna stop here. And I'm gonna tell you something. I want to close with this. I have examined recently my own life, and I have found so many traces of Pharisaic leaven that it has become so, so convicting to me. In fact, I was sharing these things. My wife and I went to St. Michael's on Friday night, and just about all the way down, I began confessing to her the things that God has been showing me in my own life are Pharisaical. Things I didn't even know were there. Now, about a third of the way through this, she began to defend me. And I stopped her and I said, You're not doing me any good at this point by telling me what a wonderful person I am. These are convictions that God has given me, don't water them down. Because even in her life, she did not want to hear that these things existed in the man she loves. I didn't want to hear them. And I went back and I examined my whole life, mostly focusing on the time when I became a Christian up until the present. And I concluded, I read something in here that Schaefer wrote, he said, you know, all along in my life, God has been speaking to me through a gentle voice. And he goes on and he says, I'm amazed at God's gentleness in my life. And I realized that's good, but that was Francis Schaefer. In my life, it's taken a club. God hasn't spoken to me gently, he spoke to me with a club. And it wasn't until he invaded our lives, and the one problem that I have had in my life that I could not fix, I was faced with. Saddened me greatly. And the conclusion I drew from all of that is this. I am a Christian leader. I am a pastor of one of the most influential and powerful churches in this area. I am a spiritual leader to a thousand people. If all of those years I have not examined my heart for that kind of Phariseaism, if it took that kind of a club to cause me to become truly introspective and truly to examine where I am before God, then is it no wonder that if that's true of me, and more than likely true of you, and more than likely true of most pastors in most evangelical churches, is it no wonder why we have no revival? And I said to her as we were going down, can you imagine what would happen to our church if everybody in that church examined their hearts for this kind of Pharisaism, the way I am doing in my case, without having to be hit over the head with a club? What would it look like in our church community if the pastors stood up and said, I am Pharisaic, I am bound in pride, I am not humbled before God. I asked myself this question. And I listed certain things, I won't tell you what they were. If God came to me and said, Chuck, will you give this up, this up, this up, and this up for this? Would you relinquish these things for this? To follow me? And I listed some very, very critical things over here. My answer to him was a categoric no. I would not do it. And yet you call yourself a bond slave. You know what you really are, Chuck, is a Pharisee. I gotta tell you, friends, that wasn't pretty. That wasn't pretty. That cut to the quick. That sliced this old boy's heart wide open. And I'm telling you honestly and truthfully as I stand here today, there can be and there will be no revival until we all do that. And when we do that, when we are sliced open and say to God, Expose the hypocrisy, open it up to me, show me what's there in ways you've never shown me before, the subtle leaven that I have hidden in my heart for years, and I have built up my protection system so that even I can't see it, slice it open and expose it until we do that, there will be no revival. Until you do that, there will be no revival. Because you will always have a divided loyalty. And divided loyalty hinders the flow, the wisdom of God. He's getting me there, he's getting me there. And I, like Paul, will be able to say with you not that I've already attained, but I continue to press on to the prize of the high calling that is mine in Christ Jesus. I've not already arrived. But he broke through some very hard barriers in my life, very tough barriers. And for the first time, I verbalized them to the one person closest to me. And her response was to recoil and say, No, that's not true. And my response was to say, Yes, it is true, and you need to listen to it. That's it. The end. Let's stand. There is so much Phariseaism in us, Lord. We think other people are Pharisees, but we're the Pharisees. I want to invite you as we close this service to spend some time. I'm not gonna ask you to do anything special. Maybe you'll want to spend some time quietly in prayer. I'm gonna ask after the benediction that you all leave very quietly. Those of you who would like to stay, I'm gonna ask you to begin a process. I want you to say, Lord, is there leaven in my life? Hidden leaven that's affected the way I act. Things that I don't even see in myself. Oh God, would you open up my soul and purge me? Purge me. Expose me for who I really am and show me what it means to sell my life as a bond slave to the Lord Jesus Christ. I want you to take the time to do that this morning to at least begin the process, but it only begins here. Now may the grace of God, the love of our Lord and our Savior, Jesus the Christ, the very presence, person, and power of his Holy Spirit abide with each of you now until Christ comes again and forevermore. And all God's people said.

SPEAKER_02 58:35

You have been listening to in his script featuring the preaching and teaching ministries after justice letters and produced by Marcus' ministers. Marcus ministries exist to offer health and hope to hurt people by thinking the promises of faith and the comfort of his words.