Yahweh’s Probationary System

Lord, I just echo what everything that's been said already in this meeting that being a genuine believer doesn't mean we walk in flawless perfection, but it does mean that we are growing in our likeness to you. It does mean we are heading in a direction. It does mean that there's a reality of God in our lives.

It's not just some fake thing we come up with and put on for as a show for others. To be your follower means, Lord, we are following you literally, really in life. I just pray, Lord, that you'll help me share this message that you put in my heart.

In Jesus' name, amen. So, the title of my message is Yahweh's Probationary System. The word probation isn't in Scripture.

I mean, maybe one of the looser translations might have it in there, but the theme of it is certainly woven throughout Scripture everywhere. It's there. Earth life is the proven ground for the realm of eternity.

God has given mankind a limited time on earth to choose whether we are going to live in obedience or rebellion, holiness or sin, whether we're going to end up in life or death. These contrasting themes are presented over and over in Scripture. You can't get around it.

Eternity hangs in the balance with the choice people make. The time that we have on earth is to determine what we do and what we become. That's really what it's all about.

The reason I'm giving this message today, you can relax a little bit. I'm not going to be railing on about sin today. I'm not going to be blistering you with what terrible sinners you are.

The reason I'm giving this message is because this foundational truth that I'm talking about is under tremendous attack in the church, in the church, maybe in your church. I just finished filming a series for YouTube, teaching series entitled Resisting the Rise of Lawlessness. And the theme verse that I'm using comes out of Hebrews 1, where it says that Jesus loves righteousness and hates lawlessness.

Do you believe that? Not sure. Do you believe that? Okay, then I want you to repeat it with me, okay? Jesus loves righteousness and hates lawlessness. He hates lawlessness.

He hates lawlessness. He loves it when his people are kind to each other, are humble with each other, do good deeds to each other, live merciful lives to each other and to others. He loves that.

And he hates it when we give over to sin, when we pursue the things of the world, when we align ourselves with the enemy. He hates that. That's basically what that series is all about.

The premise of it is that the spirit of lawlessness is growing stronger and more prevalent in the world as we go. It is much stronger now than it was five years ago. It's getting stronger.

It's becoming more pervasive, this attitude of lawlessness. The Apostle Paul really perfectly described the church culture of our day when he told Timothy, for the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. Paul sitting in his prison cell would have these sights of sometime in the future, way off in the future to him.

And he had a number of these visions where they're in that dark, dank cell. All of a sudden, these things are alive and real to him. You can see it in 2 Thessalonians 2. You can see it in 2 Timothy 3 and other places where he gets a sight of the church, but heading into a time of great apostasy.

For him, it was far off in the future. For us, it's now. It's the reality of our lives in this church culture.

Not that we're all all the way into the great apostasy. That's not what I'm saying, but we are well on our way there because this foundational truth that God loves righteousness and hates lawlessness is constantly under attack. And the reason that so many people in the church are this way is because they have ears that itch for teachings that will tell them it's okay the way they're living their lives, regardless of how they're living.

Basically, they're saying, give me teachings that allow me to pursue the lusts of my flesh and still go to heaven. That's what I want. That's the church I want to go to.

This is reality. You know, and the enemy has carefully conceived a doctrinal system that allows for this to take place. We have to be able to justify what we're doing.

And I think I talked a little bit about this in the past. I don't remember, but basically, much of it is, it's like a convergence of different movements and thoughts that have arisen in the church over the decades, over the last maybe 100 years or more. It's grown in strength.

And much of it that gives it the force that we see today is in the church growth movement. That mindset is being taught in all of our seminaries and Bible colleges. Church growth.

It's all about being bigger. That's being taught. And if not overtly, then at least covertly.

The message, if it's unspoken, it's usually just, they come right out and say it. But if it's unspoken, the inference is, the bigger your church, the more important you are. It's a system that is relying on man's ego.

It's in us men. Very powerfully, it's in us to want to be something. And in the church world, the way to be something is to have a big ministry.

And so what they are taught, what we have been taught, preachers, people have told me this. If you want people to listen to you, don't preach against sin. Don't preach against carnality.

Don't preach against worldliness. If you want to gain and attract followers, give a softer, more positive message. That's the secret to church growth.

So combine that aspect of it with some doctrinal stuff. Just one of these systems, I'll focus on this one. I don't have time to do everything, but there's a movement called the hyper-grace movement.

And let me just read to you, I asked AI, not for truth, teach me how to be a Christian. No, I'm not going to go to AI for that. I asked AI to give me a description of this errant teaching.

Okay, and listen to what AI says. Hyper-grace is a theological concept that emphasizes an extreme or exaggerated understanding of God's grace. It suggests that God's grace is so abundant and unconditional that it covers all sins, leading some to believe that individuals can live without the need for repentance or moral accountability.

Proponents of hyper-grace argue that believers are fully forgiven and do not need to worry about their sins as they are already redeemed through Christ. That's actually a pretty good description of it. It really is a pretty good description of that movement, but there's just one thing I would qualify that I don't totally agree with.

How could anyone overemphasize the significance and value of grace? It's not possible. It's not possible. Our very eternities rely on God's grace.

It's His grace that allows Him to forgive us of our past sins. It's His grace that covers the faults and errors that are common to even the most sincere believers. It's His grace that actually provides the repentant Christian the strength to overcome his sinful tendencies.

His grace does all that for us. We can't overexaggerate that. We don't talk about that enough.

No, the problem isn't exaggerating grace. The problem is undervaluing God's holiness. That's the problem.

The call to holiness comes from God's character itself. He is absolutely pure, morally perfect, and completely separated from everything that is sinful. For good reason the angels cry out what we just sang a little while ago, holy, holy, holy.

William Barclay wrote, grace is not only a gift, it's a grave responsibility. A man cannot go on living the life he lived before he met Jesus Christ. He must be clothed in a new purity, and a new holiness, and a new goodness.

The door is open, but the door is not open to the sinner to come and remain a sinner, but for the sinner to come and become a saint. That's why you're in this program. That's why God brought you here, man.

Those doors were open to you to come into this place, not to learn how can I get by and keep my sin, but how to become a saint of the living God. But this kind of teaching isn't in vogue in the current church culture of tell me what I want to hear. You know, the only ones who chafe against this are rebels, who do not want to come under God's authority system.

That's the ones who rebel against this, or have a humanistic concept of mercy, that they think they're being merciful to whitewash the gospel, the strong message that Jesus Christ brought. They think by whitewashing it and removing any mention of, you know, anything that could cause people to feel guilt or sorrow over the sin, just get that out of there, because we want people to be happy. We want people to be positive, to enjoy the things of God.

Well, yes, I want that too, but you can't enjoy the things of God while you're still in sin. It's not possible. So, I want to look at three aspects of this, and just because I, you know, guys, the reason I'm giving this message is because I know what's out there.

I know what awaits you. If not in your church, praise God, I hope it's not. When you go home, I hope it's not in your church.

I hope you have a pastor who is a man of God, who stands for truth, whether people like him or not, and is going to love you enough to give you truth. I hope that's what you have waiting for you at home. They are out there.

They're out there, but there's many, many out there who are doing what I've been describing. And so, what I felt led, when I felt led to give this message, to put this together, the purpose of it, again, wasn't to rail on about sin today. The purpose of it was to cement it into your hearts and minds, because you're going to go out there into a church culture that this is very, very, very weak, if you hear it at all.

And I'm hoping that it will be just, the Lord will get it lodged into your heart, that you'll never forget it, that God loves righteousness, and he hates lawlessness. All right, so let's look at these three aspects. The first is this, Yahweh's probationary system was established from the beginning.

All right, so go all the way back to the Garden of Eden. You have this lush, beautiful place. Who knows, who can imagine what that was like? But it was beautiful, and at the center of it, the most beautiful thing in that garden was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

I mean, it stood out prominently. But, you know, God told Adam and Eve, you can eat of any of these trees, no problem. Eat as much as you want, just don't eat of that tree.

All right, so that's what he said. And I think that when he said that to them, it just got like, okay, yeah, it's a beautiful tree, but he said, don't eat it, so I'm not going to do it. And it just never even occurred to them to go against that, because that's what God told them.

Until the enemy came slithering in and said, did God really say that? And started inferring that that's not exactly what he meant, you know, and all the other stuff. You know, that tree was put there for one purpose only, as a test. Will you obey me, or will you disobey me? That's the only reason it's there.

And of course, we know what happened, and the whole human race became corrupted from there on forward. And so now we face a vast arming of spiritual beings bent on destroying us with sin. A world system locked under the control of demonic beings that's there for the purpose of getting you to buy into that mindset and fallen natures that want what's being offered.

That's the test. God purposely set it up the way he did, because the only people that are going to end up with him are those who long for it, for him, for his righteousness enough to go against the stream of the world. Psalm 14, it says, the Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God.

You know, those who show no interest in the Lord, he doesn't bother with. You know, I mean, I don't know exactly how all that happens, but I'm thinking back in those early days, you had whole people groups totally given over to pagan idolatry and all of that. Primarily, God's focus is on those who have an interest in him.

That's where his focus is. And people who have an interest in him, he is going to start testing them. In Genesis 22, it says, now it came about after these things that God tested Abraham.

In Psalm 105, we're told that Joseph was tested. In Deuteronomy 13, Moses told the Israelites, the Lord your God is testing you to find out if you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. In Judges 3, we're told that the Lord left the pagan nations in Palestine to test Israel.

In Psalm 11, David said the Lord is in his holy temple. His eyelids test the sons of men. The Lord tests the righteous and the wicked.

Every Jew of the Old Testament went through this testing process, for sure. And it continued on into the New Testament. You think things just changed in the New Testament? Like God suddenly feels like, oh, now that we're in the New Testament, the Messiah has come, you can live like you want.

You can join yourselves with those who hate me. Everything's cool now. No, that is not what happened.

What happened was the fire of God came through the Messiah, and his teachings became much more intense than what was in the Old Testament. And he was the first one that was tested by the devil out in the wilderness, and every Christian after. In fact, Paul told the Corinthians, test yourselves to see if you're even in the faith.

So this theme continues throughout Scripture. And as you guys saw in 1 John, it's actually throughout the book of 1 John, there are a number of passages or verses in there. I gave you a couple of them, but there's actually quite a few, a number of others in there.

And it's all about testing to see if you're a true believer. You can't get away from it. It's just there.

And it's one of the main purposes the Lord had that epistle put in the Bible. If you love the Lord, you will love others. How do you love others? I'm actually asking you this question.

You guys know the answer to this. How do you love others? Huh? Through mercy, right? That's what you're being taught in this place, to learn to get out of yourselves and not just always think about self, to actually start seeing needs around you and to actually want to be a vessel for the Lord to work through you, to love other people, right? You're being taught that here, right? And if you're of the Lord, you're not going to continue in ongoing sin. Says it black and white.

But you know, when you've created a doctrinal system, that doctrinal system takes precedence over the Word of God itself. That's not what I wanted to mean. So here, you read it through this lens.

That's not really what it's saying. I'll tell you what, I will never be guilty. I'm not going to have to stand before God one day and say that I twisted His scriptures because I wanted people to like me.

But there are many who do. And if you're of the Lord, you will not love the world, nor the things of the world. This just couldn't be more clear.

Number two, Yahweh's probationary system determines where we go, determines our eternal destiny. You know, this is the wonderful thing about what the Lord did with the way He created things. We actually have the right to make that decision for ourselves.

That's an awesome thing. You know, what if it was like the old hyper-Calvinists believed back in the day in Holland, where they wore, the women all wore black dresses, and the men, I don't know what they wore, but they had this rigid religious system. And, you know, the only way you went to heaven is if you happened to be one of the ones that God chose, and you had no say-so in the matter.

That's what they actually taught. I mean, I guess there's still people around who teach that. But it's not like that.

We have a free will, and we have the right to make our own decision. Well, you heard it from my wife. You heard it from Pastor Nate.

I want to follow God. I want to follow the Lord. I want to be with the Lord in heaven.

Therefore, they live their lives in a way that shows that. So it really is a blessed thing to have the right to decide. It's not our words that determine where we go in the hereafter.

It's our actions, the way we lived. Ecclesiastes 12. Fear God and keep his commandments, for God will bring every deed into judgment.

Jeremiah 17. I, the Lord, search the heart and test the mind to give every man according to his ways. Romans 14.

For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. 2 Corinthians 5. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due, whether good or bad. Hebrews 9. It is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment.

These are just a few. There's actually quite a few others that talk about the judgment that everyone will experience after death. The point of our time on life, again, is to give us the opportunity to obey God and to enjoy the rich blessings that go along with that kind of a life.

That's why we're here. Richard Baxter said, this life is your preparation for eternity. Now, listen to this.

This was really a pretty astounding statement. The image you die with, that you will rise with. That is quite a thought.

You know, man was created in the image of God, but that became marred and disfigured, and we lost, mostly lost, the image of God in sin and so on. So he's made a way that by following the Lord and saying yes to the Lord, just like my wife was describing, by going in that direction, over time, little by little, we grow in likeness to Jesus Christ. In other words, the very image of God is being reconstructed in our inward life.

You have the right to that if you want it. John Newton said, time is short, and the consequences of our few uncertain years will be felt forever. This life is the season of sowing for eternity.

You know, usually when we think of Galatians 6, where it's talking about sowing and reaping, we tend to usually think in temporal terms, and it's certainly true, you know. If we sow to a certain kind of behavior, that is going to grow up into what, plant life or something in the future. And so you're walking along in your journey through life, and you look down and you see this ugly, horrible-looking plant, and you think, where did that come from? Well, just backtrack, go back down the path, and you'll find that it was some thought or something you gave over to, some seed was planted into your being and started that thing growing right then.

So, you know, it's certainly true in the temporal life, but more than that is the eternal, really. That's the big picture. And someone said, sow an act, reap a habit.

Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap an eternal destiny. Yeah.

And that's what God's changing here for you guys. You've been going in one direction of self-will, giving over to every whim of the flesh, doing all the things you've done, and yeah, okay, sexual sin is part of that, but the bigger picture, the most important thing is being in rebellion to God's authority. That's the bigger thing.

And the Lord brought you here to turn that around. So, you know, you come in here, you're living here for some period of time. How many guys have been here less than a month? Raise your hand.

So a handful of you guys. God bless you guys, I'm glad you're here. Anyone tell you you're in the right place? You've heard that, right? Do you believe it yet? Yeah.

You are in the right place because the Lord wants to give you a wonderful, wonderful life. He wants to give you a life that's free from the the misery of sin. He wants to give you a wonderful life.

Albert Barnes, speaking of a man who deceived himself into hell, this is what he said, soon he will be at the judgment bar. And from that high and awful place, when they said awful back in those days, you guys understand, I didn't mean awful like we think of something awful. It was like full of awe.

That's what that word meant. And from that high place full of awe, look on the past and the future and see things as they are. But alas, it'll be too late then to repair the errors of a life.

And amidst the realities of those scenes, all that he may be able to do will be to sigh unavailingly that he prepared himself to be deluded, deceived, and destroyed in the only world of probation by the trifles and baubles which the great deceiver placed before him to beguile him of heaven and to lead him down to hell. I mean, that's, wow, that's a pretty condensed look at what people face. But also true, just as true, is that those who love God have a completely different thing to look forward to.

A place, you know, I talked about it. This is this book here. I'll of Eternity.

That's a play off of Joel Osteen's book, The Time of Your Life, and the whole context of that book. Does someone know? Who knows that? Who read that before? He's not going to cop to it. The Time of Your Life, that's what he's teaching.

His whole message is live it up while you're on earth. Okay. Your best life now.

Thank you. Your best life now. Yeah, well, that's about as good as it's going to get because where you're headed, mister, somewhere else.

I would not want to be in that man's shoes. But God can get a hold of him, whatever. But anyway, part of this, I've actually met that guy.

I had a talk with him many years ago. For those who love God, you are headed to a place where there is no more suffering, no disease, no death, no crime, no fear, no reason for fear, no more struggles in this world, no more struggles with temptation. All that's over.

Just unbroken fellowship with the Lord. Wow. A beautiful land of bliss.

We can't even imagine. I mean, even paradise was pretty limited, but heaven, you know, when he brings it down to earth, and he's going to remake this earth, the new Jerusalem. I mean, God is a creator, and there is no end to the tremendous things.

And I think he's going to keep creating throughout eternity. And we're going to constantly be, man, wow, you know, just that's what life is going to be like there. Imagine walking down the neighborhood of New Jerusalem, and you know, you're on the way to a coffee shop.

Gotta have coffee there. And every person you come across absolutely loves God and absolutely loves you. You know, no more like putting on a facade, I'm a tough guy.

You mess with me, and you're going to pay. And he's like, yeah, right. If he is a tough guy.

None of that. Just everyone you're around. I mean, to be honest with you, the staff here, we kind of have that a little bit, right guys? It really is that way.

And I'll tell you why. Not because we're glorious or something, but because we have established a culture here in the staff of being willing to humble ourselves with each other. If we, like Patrick said, you know, he walked away and said, um, well, that was prideful.

Well, you should have went back and repented. But that's what we do, including me. I probably have to repent more than anyone.

My big mouth. Well, I'm really getting off track here. We are headed, for those who love the Lord, into unspeakable joy.

Unspeakable joy. And your rewards, and you will be rewarded, every time you did some, you folded some guy's clothes. You took them out of the dryer, and you folded them up, left them there on the counter thing, and didn't tell him you did it.

You just wanted to do a mercy to him. Every time you do some little thing like that, you just, you walk by some guy at Walmart, and you just stop, and you just, in your mind, in your heart, you just spend a few seconds praying for that man. Maybe something about him just stood out to you, and you just felt this, um, God's passion for him.

Compassion. Or you say some nice thing to someone, or you just smile to someone. Things like that.

Every time you do something like that, it is being recorded in the annals of heaven. And it's true. If you have, if you truly are a born-again believer, and God has his hand on your life, yeah, when you make mistakes, you screw up, you think something bad, something like that, you know, the thrust of your life is heading in a direction.

That's the main thing. Well, yeah, the Lord is going to wash that away. That's what his grace is for.

But he is taking note of every single time you do some kind thing to another person. All right, number three. Yahweh's probationary system is used to prove his people.

Now, so far, we've been talking about the eternal implications of our actions, but I want to shift gears and look at another aspect of this probationary system, and that is that God employs processes of testing in the believer's life for the purpose of not to find out if he's going to send them to hell or not, no, for the purpose of developing godly character inside them, so that one day they will have a richer reward. There's a word in the Greek called, it's dokimazo, and it's usually translated as test or something around that idea, which is all about that. Let me give you a couple examples.

When Timothy was, had several small, probably home churches under his leadership, and Paul was writing to him and talking to him about developing people, you know, and so on leadership, and he said, before they are asked to be deacons, they should be given other jobs in the church as a test, dokimazo, of their character and ability, and if they do well, then they may be chosen as deacons. Paul wanted leaders with weighty character running those churches, and then he told the Romans, we can rejoice, too, when we run into problems in trials, for we know that they are good for us. They help us learn to be patient, and patience develops strength of character, dokime, in us.

And then some 30 years later, Peter wrote, these trials are only to test, dokimeon, your faith, to see whether or not it is strong and pure. It is being tested as fire tests, dokimazo, gold and purifies it, and your faith is far more precious to God than mere gold. So if your faith remains strong after being tried in the test tube of fiery trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day of his return.

I'll tell you this, guys, every single one of us, when we stand before the Lord, we are going to wish we had taken all this more seriously. I know for myself, I'm going to look back, the Lord's not going to let me, you know, beat on myself overly, but I'm going to look back and just have so much regret that I wasted so much time. I could have really been interceding for others, or doing more than I did, or whatever, you know.

I just think that all of us will wish we had taken these things more seriously. How much it's going to mean to you when you stand before the Lord, and your whole life is laid out exactly for what it is, in front of all heaven, how much it will mean to you on that day, if you had a life that was truly glorifying God. In 1 Corinthians 3, Paul paints a picture of the Bema Seat Judgment, which is just for believers, when we stand before the Lord to find out what kind of rewards we'll receive, and he says that the foundation of that person's life is going to be Jesus Christ.

You know, if you don't have the foundation of that, if he's not the reality of your life, then you're not even in that judgment. But he says, there's going to come a time of testing at Christ's Judgment Day to see what kind of material each builder has used. So he's painting it as a house that we're building, an eternal house.

Everyone's work will be put through the fire so that all can see whether or not it keeps its value and what was really accomplished. Then every workman who has built on the foundation with the right materials and whose work still stands will get his pay. These verses I've been sharing all living Bible, I'm using it because it's a paraphrase, but it really brings out the reality of these different things.

Let me just put it this way. If you've made a commitment to follow Christ, that commitment is going to be tested in this life. I promise you.

If you put your faith in Christ, that faith is going to be tested. And if you're on the narrow way, I promise you, you're going to run into times on your journey when you encounter temptations, trials, all kinds of different things. That's part of it.

The bottom line is that untested faith is worthless faith, but faith that has stood the test will be richly rewarded. All right, so I'm going to conclude with a little passage out of this book. Not your, what is it? What's his book? Your Best Life Now.

No, The Time of Your Life in Light of Eternity. So in there I say this, every human has been allotted a short probationary period on this earth. All of the trials and temptations of life are meant to bring to light what is within the heart.

Earth is where the metal of our character is tested, where we are afforded the opportunity to help the widows and orphans in their distress, to free the imprisoned, and to warn the perishing. In other words, we have this one chance to do something worthwhile, something which will follow us into the hereafter. At this point, it's still possible for you and me to obey God, live out his love to those around us, resist temptation, and do our utmost to please him.

But before we know it, the curtain of life will fall, the sun will set, and our earthly scenes will come to an end. The door of opportunity will be closed, and we will never again pass this way. Our character will be fixed, our destiny will be sealed, and eternity will be upon us.

When it's all said and done, what will we have to show for our time on earth? That's where we're headed, and it's absolutely, it is absolutely headed our way. So I'm not going to have an altar call. Well, I'll tell you what, I want you guys just go ahead and come on up here.

Reagan, right? You were the one playing. I will have this kind of an altar call. Let's go ahead and stand up.

I'm not really looking for repentance over sin and that sort of thing this morning. You have lots of opportunities to repent over that on a regular basis here. But if you have bought into this thinking that I've been describing here today, that it really doesn't matter if I sin because the blood covers me, I'm good, I'm going to heaven, I'm a Christian.

If you have bought into that and you feel like you're coming into the reality that that's not true, and you want to repent of that and pin it to the ground, then this would be a good opportunity for you to come and do that. So let's just go ahead. Do you have a song or something? Yes.

Sorry, I didn't give you a warning. We'll sing a song to wrap up, and after we're done with the song, just consider yourself dismissed. But like I say, you know, this message is very, very powerful out there.

And if you have bought into it in the past, and you want to put that behind you and make a consecration to God, I am not going to live my life that way. I'm going to live my life for you. Then take this opportunity to come up here and do that.

God bless you.