Bringing in the Sheaves 1987

I'd like to start by reading from 2 Corinthians 5, verses 16 and 17. From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view. Even though we once regarded Christ from a human point of view, we regard him thus no longer.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come.

If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. She is a new creation. The old has passed away.

Behold, all things have become new. Most of us can testify to the truth of that from our own experience. We have seen the old pass away.

Old habits, old attitudes, old compulsions, old fears, old anxieties, old addictions, gone. Washed away in the blood of the Lamb. And we have also seen the new come in.

We have been able to taste the breath of God in the power of the Holy Spirit. Receiving the strength to walk in the footsteps of Jesus in our daily life. But we also know, from our own experience, that time has a way of testing that change.

We have seen in ourselves, and perhaps in others too, that with the passing of time, with the coming of storms, heat, cold, dry seasons, all kinds of temptations, how that first zeal, that strong confidence, that single eye, that pure heart, that burning passion for the Kingdom of God and for Jesus, has a tendency, after a while, to compromise, to settle down and become lukewarm, and after a while, to draw back from that original radical commitment to Jesus. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has passed away, behold, the new has come. To say that two weeks after our rebirth is great.

But to be able to say that ten years, twenty years, thirty years down the road is far greater. Because for every ten people who begin to walk with Jesus, reborn, new creations in the army of the Lord, six or seven, sometimes even eight or nine, and after a period of time, begin to kind of dull out, the vision begins to become vague, the commitment begins to kind of settle down, and they find themselves walking, after a while, on a path which will take them far from the Kingdom of God, even if it's a religious path. Now how does this happen? It happens when we take our confidence in Jesus, confidence in Jesus, and then slowly mix it in with confidence in a few other things.

So that now, I'm depending on Jesus, plus this and this and this. Then one day we wake up and discover that we've lost our nerve for the Kingdom of God, that we're not quite sure whether we can trust Jesus all the way. And then, we find ourselves just drawing back, shrinking back from the road of discipleship, and pretty soon we're walking on a much more comfortable road, but another road entirely.

From Hebrews chapter 10, verse 32, But recall the former days when you were, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with suffering, sometimes being publicly exposed to abuse and affliction, sometimes being partners with those so treated, for you had compassion on the prisoners, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one. Therefore, do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward, for you have need of endurance, so that you may do the will of God and receive what is promised. For yet a little while, and the coming one shall come and shall not tarry, but my righteous one shall live by faith, and if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him.

But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and keep their souls. He's writing to people who are committed followers of Jesus, and who began, you know, walking with him with souls on fire for the Lord. But now, they're tempted to begin to compromise that confidence, that faith.

They're beginning to just feel tempted to take their confidence in Jesus and spread it out over here to other things. See, and when we begin to mix our confidence in Jesus with other things, to place it over here a little bit, what we're doing is throwing it away. So he says, do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward.

You have a need of endurance, and he's putting his finger right on it. Now, we will endure as disciples of Jesus only if our confidence is exclusively in Jesus himself. When we mix it, when we begin to spread it around a little bit, sooner or later we're going to find ourselves shrinking back to be destroyed.

Where is your confidence, is the question he's asking. And this really is the question the Spirit of the Lord is also asking us, as individuals and as a body, where is your confidence? Halfway through the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus begins to deal with just that question, and for the rest of the Sermon on the Mount, he stays on that issue all the way through to the end. He begins asking the question or dealing with the question in Matthew 6, verse 19, when he says, do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal.

But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not consume, where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. And what's your treasure? It's the thing we trust, the thing in which we put our confidence, whatever that is, that's our treasure.

He goes on to say, the eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is sound, your whole body is full of light. If your eye is sound, it means your eye is looking with confidence toward God.

But if your eye is unsound, and that means your eye is looking with confidence really toward things, then your whole body is full of darkness. And if the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness? No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. Therefore you cannot serve God and mammon.

Either your confidence is in God or it's in mammon, money and things. Then, over in the seventh chapter, he deals with this at some length, but in the seventh chapter Jesus says, Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You'll know them by their fruits.

What's a false prophet? A false prophet is a prophet who demands your confidence and does not deserve it. A false prophet is one who is desiring to take your confidence off Jesus and get it on himself or herself. And then finally, he ends the Sermon on the Mount with these words, Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house upon the rock.

Built his house upon the rock because he has confidence in that rock. And the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat upon that house, but it did not fall because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house upon the sand.

Built his house on the sand because he has confidence in the sand. That's great. I'm going to put it right there.

It'll be easy. And the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat against that house and it fell. And great was the fall of it.

So Jesus is really singling out three specific temptations that we have to deal with. Temptations to throw away our confidence. First, the temptation to put our confidence in money and things.

Money, basically. Second, the temptation to put our confidence in some kind of false prophet. And third, the temptation to put our confidence in sand.

Okay, the first is a temptation to put our confidence in money, manna. And this really is the path which the world at large takes. And there are tremendous pressures on every one of us to take that path because money is something you can see and touch.

Money is something that gets instant results. Jesus says you cannot serve God and manna, money. You can't serve them both.

And when money becomes your treasure, when money becomes the thing on which your heart rests its confidence, you've already thrown away your confidence in God. Now, we all have to handle money. We have to deal with money.

You can't just say, well, I'll go off in the woods and live on nature. We're going to live, we're going to handle money. But see, we need to now handle money with our eye on God, as his servants, as his stewards, under his guidance.

If you have not been found faithful in the unrighteous manna, money, who will entrust you the true riches? If you have not been faithful in that which is another's, who will give you that which is your own? Don't throw away your confidence, which has a great reward, Jesus says. Don't exchange your confidence in God for confidence in money. And that's certainly a message to us and to the Church of Jesus Christ, at least in this country.

Many, many times we think that money's going to do it. We're going to have to have money and money's going to come. He says we'll have it if we seek his kingdom.

But our confidence is in God, it has to be there. Then comes the temptation to put our confidence in a false prophet of some kind. This is the path which is taken by the cultists and the revolutionaries.

And before we all say, well, I'm not affected by that, I'm not a cultist, I'm not a revolutionary. The truth is that in the body of Christ and in every one of us, there's a tendency to move toward some kind of false prophet. Here's an example.

Among many of us Christians here, we know that there should be more evidence of the power of God. And the promise is that if we seek his kingdom and walk in faith, there will be signs that will follow our faith. But these signs must be connected to the person of Jesus.

What's happening in large segments of the professing Christian church in this country is that people are going off chasing after signs and wonders as if they were something separate from Jesus himself. And we tend to do that too. Now, when I become caught up with signs and wonders and spiritual experiences apart from Jesus, I'm just caught up with those things.

These things then become, for me, a false prophet. And they will destroy me. And this is what Jesus has to say about that.

Also in the Sermon on the Mount, he says in Matthew 7, 22, On that day, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, cast out demons in your name and do many mighty works in your name? And I will declare to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers. We call him Lord.

We did mighty things in his name. Now he says, I never knew you. Any doctrinal position any point of view any teacher or any leader that occupies the focus of our attention, our center, the center of our hearts instead of Jesus becomes for us a false prophet.

It may be just a very subtle thing, but now on our lips and in our minds and in our hearts, we're all the time talking about this thing or this person or this particular book, you know, really to the exclusion of Jesus. That false prophet will devour us like a ravenous wolf. Where is your confidence? Is it in Jesus? Or is it in some hot doctrine? Some new kind of worship? Some marvelous experience? Some wonderful new author or old author? Example, even good authors.

I can remember there was a man who is, I think, in California, who knows where now, but was with us for a while. And we have a lot of Oswald Chambers on our shelves here because we believe Oswald Chambers has a powerful message to us. This man could almost quote Oswald Chambers, you know, by memory.

And he was just full of Oswald Chambers. Everything you had to say, he had an answer back from Chambers. And I asked him one time, a brother so-and-so, do you read the Bible? No, I don't read the Bible, I get it from Chambers.

What he did, when he did that, he turned Oswald Chambers, for him, into a false prophet. Oswald Chambers in himself is not a false prophet, but he made this man into such a thing because he was getting away from Jesus. You know, he was getting something in between here.

We all have a tendency to do that. You have need of endurance. And he says, you know, don't throw away your confidence, which has a great reward.

Don't exchange your confidence in Jesus for confidence in some shortcut false prophet. And then there's a temptation to put our confidence in Sam, which is a path taken by American evangelicalism when it knows but does not do. The temptation to think that because I understand the doctrine and I subscribe to it with my mind and my mouth, I can tell you all about it, that I'm safe.

For instance, I believe that Jesus died for my sins. I believe that Jesus rose again for my justification. Now, when this Jesus, in whom I believe, commands me to deny myself, take up my cross and follow him, I go blank.

Don't hear it. I don't know what he's talking about. When Jesus commands me to walk as he walked, to walk in love, to walk in mercy, to walk in holiness, to wash feet, to bring the law sheet to the father's table, to spend my life doing that, I go blank.

I don't know what he's talking about. When I'm doing this, I'm building my house upon the sand. See, I'm building my life not on Jesus and his word to me, but on the fact that I heard what he said and I understood it.

And I said, Amen! Marvelous! Gee, that was a great word. Everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house upon the sand and the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat against that house and it fell and great was the fall of it. Do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward.

Do not exchange your confidence in Jesus and his word for confidence in sin. When you first began to follow Jesus and he said, Go and be reconciled with that brother, you did it. Right away you did it.

Now when he says, Go and be reconciled with that brother, you say, Amen! Praise God! That was a wonderful message. I'm going to give it some thought. I have to make some changes.

Weeks have gone by and you haven't done it. Where is your confidence? It's in the sand. There was a time when Jesus could say to you, Repent of that attitude.

Repent of that double eye. Repent of that double mouth. And you did it.

Now you say, Wonderful message! Hallelujah! That's great! I'm going to give it some thought. When things settle down, get a little more quiet. Months go by.

No change. Where's your confidence? It's in the sand. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he or she is a new creation.

The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. The old has passed away and the new has come only when our life, the life we live, the words we speak, the attitudes we hold as individuals and as a body are built on the rock.

Based in confidence, not in money, not in some false profit, and not in sand of shallow profession, but in Jesus. And what he tells us to do. There are specific acts of obedience, acts of repentance, deeds of mercy, deeds of love, steps of faith, which he is calling each of us to take.

If we're building our life on him, we're going to do it. He's going to make it clear and we're going to act. We're going to act on it, not tomorrow or next week, but now.

Therefore, do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward, for you have need of endurance, so that you may do the will of God and receive what is promised. Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house upon the rock, and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat against that house, but it did not fall, because it was founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house upon the sand, and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.

Let's give that some thought for just a moment.