Matthew-057

 

Preach the Word of God without compromise

Today, I trust that the Lord has something to say to all of us through these words. Believe me, anyone who is determined in this age, in this generation, to preach the Word of God without compromise, will pay a very high price. I have gone ahead in this path, and you will be surprised who your enemies will be – not the unbelievers but the established church, the established institutions of the world to which the church, especially in North America and Europe have become firmly wedded.

In Europe for example, the church is paid by the government, by the taxes of the people. It is therefore in the service of the state. Their pay is so high that some of us are tempted to become members of the German State Church! Frankly, the pay of the clergy is in the highest category that anyone can earn in any profession in Europe. Whether it be the medical or legal profession, none can excel the income of the state church pastors in Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, or anywhere in Europe.

But when the church is allied to the state and serves the interests of the state, you are going to have problems when you preach the Word of God uncompromisingly. The situation is not much different in North America, even though we don’t have a state church. Behold! The Canadian flag is flying in the church! Without even noticing it, the state is here. I have nothing against the state. I am not preaching rebellion. But very subtly, church and state begin to be interwoven and their interests become inter-related. When you go into a court of law in North America, what do you swear on? On the Bible. It boggles my mind to think that every unbeliever who goes into a court in Canada puts his hand upon the Bible and swears by it, and the majority are unbelievers. Once the church can no longer see where its true loyalties lie, then that compromise becomes essential to maintain the interests of the church.

We don’t even have to talk about the world and the state, we just talk about our own nature, which is a reason why we have to compro­mise the Word of God. My nature, my flesh, my carnal being rebels against the Word of God. Don’t you believe it? I’m going to try to prove this to you today in a short while. That is my exhortation to the brothers and sisters who are going to be ordained: Never compromise.

When I first began my ministry in Montreal, coming over from my pastorate in England to minister in Montreal, my first words to the congregation in Montreal were, “I will preach the Word of God here without compromise, and if none of you like to hear the Word of God in this uncompromising way, I promise you, I will still continue to preach this Word of God without compromise even if you can’t stand it, you don’t want to listen to it, and you don’t want to come back again.” Believe me, many people left never to come back again. Did I change my message because I want people to come? No way. As God is my witness, to this day, I maintain I have one commitment, and that is, to preach the Word of God as he requires me to preach it in all faithfulness, whether anybody wants to accept it or not. Our message will not please the carnal man, but those who seek the truth. They will be drawn, even by this repulsive—let’s not mince our words—demanding, almost tormenting Word of God, because they will realize that only this Word can set them free. And those who want to go to churches where they have a message so nicely suited to their tastes, will find after many years that they have been lulled to sleep, or left to wander in the wilderness. My conscience would not allow me to do something like this, and I cannot stand before God on the Day of Judgment if I did.

The apostle Paul would not for any reason compromise the gospel. Let me read to you a few verses from the apostle Paul to show you that is why God used this great servant of his. Let me read to you for example, from 2 Corinthians 2:17, he writes this:

So many people are simply peddlers of God’s Word. Peddlers are hawkers, are salesmen. They are there to sell God’s Word for profit.

As Paul says in Philippians 3:19, in his usual, uncompromising way, “their god is their belly.” They sell the gospel to fill their own belly. The gospel becomes marketable, provided you dilute or compromise it, changing it a bit here and there. And how many have made their profit from the Word of God! “We are not peddlers of God’s Word like so many. But in Christ, we speak as persons of sincerity, as persons sent from God and standing in his presence” (cf. 2 Cor. 2:17)

How many preachers of God’s Word do you know who refuse to use sales techniques? Do you know what is being sold in a Christian bookroom today? I feel ashamed to look at the books that are being sold there. They sell books on sales techniques of how to propagate the gospel, how to have “an evangelism explosion.” Peddlers of the Word of God! It’s not for me to judge their motives. Maybe they think this is the way to preach the gospel. But we don’t use sales techniques.

Look a little further on to 2 Corinthians 4:2a, and what does Paul say here?

Now you have to be cunning in selling things. Once, someone came to our house wanting to sell us a vacuum cleaner. By the way they described this vacuum cleaner, it was a piece of technological won­der that could do just about everything! They were telling me, “This vacuum cleaner can do this and that.” The salesman sounded so convincing, and he demonstrated to me how marvelous this vacuum cleaner was. I said, “This sounds good, but wait till tomorrow. Give me one day to think about this.” And as I thought about it for another day, I saw through every trick in there. The demonstrations were calculated to deceive. When I thought them through and analyzed them a little bit, I realized this is all very cunning. This vacuum cleaner could actually do very little more than the one we had. But it was guaranteed to do marvels at the price of nearly $400, while ours only cost about $100. I thought that at $400, it must be able to do a lot more. After I finally analyzed it a bit further, I saw through the cunning. It could not do much more.

Paul says, “We refuse to practice cunning or tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God.” Notice, previously in 2 Corinthians 2:17, he said, “in the presence of God,” now he says in 2 Corinthians 4:2, “in the sight of God.” He says that there are many who peddle the Word of God, who falsify the Word of God. That is alarming!

As though all this were not enough, let us read on a little bit further to Galatians 1:7. The apostle Paul says here:

These are daring people who want to distort the gospel of Christ. The word “distort” in the original Greek is the simple word which means to change. By compromise, by falsification, the gospel has been changed. It has been changed in very many ways. We thought that it was the Pharisees, the hypocrites, the Sadducees, the religious leaders of Jesus’ day who did this kind of thing. I think you have known enough about TV evangelism of recent time to know about the distortion, perversion, change, the falsification of the gospel.

I want to stress this to those who will receive the laying on of hands through Matthew 15:6, where the Lord Jesus says to the Pharisees and the religious leaders of his day:

It means you have emptied it of its contents; you have emasculated the Word of God; you have weakened it.” What is left, if you make something void, is that the shell is still there but the substance is gone. You have the form but not the substance.

How do you empty the Word of God of its substance? But Paul is so concerned about this question that he keeps coming back to this theme again and again. Let me just read to you one last word. There are lots more but I will just read to you this constant concern—whether in the Lord Jesus’ teaching, or in the apostles’ teaching—of the changing, the distorting, the emptying of God’s Word, which is going on all the time to a greater or lesser degree. Let us read 1 Corinthians 1:17, just so that you see I am speaking to you the Word of God and not speaking my own ideas, theories, argumentation (apologetics) with human wisdom.

For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

Unfortunately, today, that is precisely what has happened. The gospel has been emptied (made void) of its power. You listen to soothing messages coming from the pulpit, which would go better with the counseling room of a psychologist. Messages like: “You are wonderful people. You are lovely people.” The technique of sales­manship begins with flattery, with the exploitation of the ego, with telling you what wonderful people you are. Who wants to talk about sin? No. “You are wonderful people! You make a little bit of mistakes, and for those little bit of mistakes, God has provided a great solution upon the cross.”

I am going to tell you nothing at all that is soothing. I am going to tell you like it is. The gospel is emptied of its power because our carnal nature cannot stand the Word of God which comes across like a two-edged sword piercing into your heart (cf. Heb. 4:12).

However, remember, it cuts in order to heal, like the knife of a sur­geon. No tumor will be soothed away by nice music alone. A tumor must be removed with a knife and the tumor of sin must be removed with the sword of the Spirit.

 

Hate is: Honor, but reject if not follow Christ’s teaching

Let me give you one example of how offensive the teaching of Jesus can be, and see if you can stomach it. The Lord Jesus says in Luke 14: 26-27,

Hate? No, this cannot be! Jesus cannot speak of hate. He only speaks of love. It must be a misprint! What have you got in your Bible? Have you got “hate” there? I have read some Bible versions where the word “hate” has been removed and changed to “love less.”

In Matthew 10:37, it is “if anyone loves father or mother more than me,” and we hope that the Lord Jesus is saying the same thing in Luke as he is in Matthew, but he is not. Do you like this saying? The Lord Jesus is saying unless you hate father, mother, brother, sister, wife, children, everybody, including your own life, you cannot follow him to be a Christian. Many Christians think: “That is too much! I can’t cope with this. Loving, gentle, meek and mild Jesus could not have said this.” But he did! I am not about to dilute it.

Once, in Taiwan, I preached exactly on this verse and everybody was offended at me. I am guaranteed not to be invited back again. My job is to put myself out of business, hoping that they will not invite me back again. Unfortunately, next time I go, I will probably be invited back, but I don’t know why they are so tolerant of my message. The Lord Jesus says, “Unless you hate,” and the word “hate” here is not an emotional word; it is a decisive word. “Hate” means to reject and cannot be diluted to mean anything less than reject. “Unless you are prepared to reject everything and your own life, you cannot be my disciple.” Do you hear any TV evangelist preach on this? Of course not! Do you know why? It’s because the contributions will not come in and he will have to close down his station. He cannot preach this. I am one of those people who preach this kind of message. When I preached on discipleship, people said to me, “You are making the gospel so difficult. It’s so hard to become a believer.” I said, “I didn’t make it difficult. I’m simply preaching Jesus’ words. I don’t have the right to make it more difficult than it is, and I don’t have the right to dilute it.”

Hate is not emotional. The Lord Jesus said that we are to honor our parents (Mt. 15:5), we are to love our wives (Mt. 19:4-6), but there comes a stage when in following him we must reject them. I am also a parent, and I would say to my daughter, “If I don’t follow the Lord Jesus’ teaching, I require you as a disciple of the Lord Jesus to reject me. The Lord Jesus commanded it. Reject me!” I say this to all those in our trainings. Don’t accept the teaching because I taught it. If anything I say is not in accordance with the Word of God, it is your duty to reject it. Don’t believe it because Eric Chang said so. Believe it only if the Lord Jesus said so. I laid this charge upon you even during the training, as those who were in training can testify. They are duty-bound to reject anything I say that is not in line with the Word of God.

I also have some sense of humor. If you don’t know me, you might think this guy is very serious. He doesn’t have any sense of humor. What I mean by sense of humor is that sometimes, I deliberately say something entirely wrong and then I sit back and wait. Then I carry on saying some more things that are wrong, and no one says anything. Then I will say, “Everything I said up to now is wrong. Why didn’t any of you say anything?” Then people would say, “Oh yeah? You said something wrong?” I would say, “Everything was wrong! And I was waiting for you to correct me. And none of you did. That is where your failure is. You must realize that what I said was wrong but you didn’t see it. And in future, be alert. This is just a test. Next time, if I really did say something wrong, jump on it.”

The reason why the gospel is often emptied of its content is because we cannot swallow it. The good medicine is too bitter, therefore, we have to dilute it, sugar-coat it to make it acceptable. Once you do that, you have reduced or completely cancelled its effect.

 

The message of the cross in 4 points

1. You can never separate Christ’s cross from the cross he calls you to take up

Just now we were looking at Luke 14:26 where the Lord Jesus was speaking about hating or rejecting all those who are dear to you including your own dear life, then in verse 27, he goes on to say, “Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” Now these same words appear in Mark 8:34. I particularly want to concentrate on the references to the cross because it is precisely on the point of the cross that the gospel becomes bitter in our mouth. We can cope with the gilded cross that we see in the churches, but we wouldn’t be able to stand the blood of Jesus covering that cross. If we cannot stomach the cross of Jesus as it was originally, much less can we stomach the cross when it refers to us! For many of you who are not familiar with my preaching, I am going to tell you something surprising. The fact is, the Lord Jesus spoke about the cross many times in his teaching, but never once did he use the word “cross” in relation to himself. Did you know that? He never spoke about himself taking up the cross; He always used the word “cross” referring to us. We have this in Mark 8:34,

Crowds like to follow Jesus. He was a very charismatic figure. He did a lot of amazing and wonderful things. They knew he was the kind of person who could meet their needs. But now he is going to tell them how much it was going to cost to meet their needs. Jesus is saying quite simply, “You’re only going to follow me in one way, and that is take up your cross.”

Today, we want to have evangelistic campaigns, rent a football stadium and get the crowds in by bus, or by whatever other method, and then you tell them about following Jesus. Then at the end of it, you ask them to raise their hands, come forward and make a decision. What happened to the cross that Jesus taught? Jesus did not speak about his cross, he spoke about your cross. What happened to that? We have emptied and changed the gospel. If you talk about taking up your cross, who is going to raise their hands? Certainly not five thousand, ten thousand, maybe three or four. But we want the crowds. Who is going to pay for the stadium?

Then the Lord Jesus goes on to say in Mark 8:35-38:

Notice, we are ashamed of these words. These words are embarrass­ing. Hate father, mother, children, and your own life? For us from Chinese culture, we respect our parents. How can we hate them? Let us change the translation quickly. The Lord Jesus says, “If you are ashamed of me and my words, I tell you that I will also be ashamed of you when I come again at the Judgment.

That is the absolutely uncompromising preaching of Jesus. He says, “Do you want to follow me? I’ll tell you how. You must do something active. Reject yourself.”

You will say, “Reject myself? What have I got except myself?”

The Lord Jesus says, “You have God. You follow me to my God and Father. You either keep yourself and you don’t have God, or you have God and you don’t have yourself. Make up your mind!”

That is why even in our church, you know the teaching, but many of you have not accepted it. You have accepted it in your mind, but not in your heart. Let’s be honest. You know you ought to accept it, you know you might want to accept it, but in truth and in practice you have not accepted it. And that is why you have many spiritual problems. You suffer defeat in your everyday Christian living. You realize that you are powerless. You realize you can’t follow Jesus because he already told you only on these terms can you follow him. You don’t experience God leading you. To follow the Lord Jesus is to be led by the power of the Holy Spirit of God. Your Christian life is devoid of the experience of the living God. In other words, by emptying the gospel, you have emptied your own spiritual life. When the church emptied the gospel of its power, it emptied the power in the life of the church.

I see our dear brother Robert and his wife here. He invited me to preach his wedding sermon, and I remember how uncomfortable I made everyone present by my text. I preached on Philippians 2:12, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” We want to talk about peace, joy, love, but not fear and trembling! If you don’t work out your salvation with fear and trembling, you don’t arrive. God gives you salvation as a gift, but you have to work it out. I have never preached salvation by works. We never have. Salvation is the grace of God. The problem is not that it is the grace of God but it is what you do with that grace. And Paul is saying, when you receive that gift of salvation, you have to do something with it. You have to work it out. And how do you work it out? With fear and trembling. Do you know what is fear and trembling? I will translate it for you. It is the cross – not Jesus’ cross, but your cross. The great thing about the apostle Paul is that he takes the teaching of Jesus and translates it into other words. What is the symbol of fear and trembling? The cross.

Today, we don’t know what a cross is except what stands on top of the roof of a church, on top of the spire as decoration. Paul wrote to people who understood that the cross was the emblem of fear and trembling. Do you know why? Because they have seen people crucified. There was once a rebellion called the Rebellion of Slaves, where the slaves rose up in arms in Italy, and the Roman army crushed the rebellion of the slaves led by gladiators. So many people were crucified at the time that the crosses on which hung the crucified people stretched out for miles and miles from the city of Rome. Paul is saying exactly the same thing as the Lord Jesus is saying in Mark chapter 8, and the parallel passages of the Gospels. You cannot have God’s salvation at the end of the road if you don’t work it out by means of the cross that determines our lives. Taking up the cross means that it determines your life, the way you live, because if you walk around carrying a cross, you will see that it determines your every movement. The cross symbolizes fear and trembling.

I ask you to go to any church and ask any Christian, “What does ‘work out your salvation with fear and trembling’ mean?” You will find that not one person can answer your question. If you want to win a Bible quiz, just ask this question. You will win for sure because not even the pastor can tell you, because he has never preached on the subject. He wouldn’t be able to tell you what “to work out your salvation with fear and trembling” means. And when I finished that message, the pastor of that church where the wedding was, was very anxious to carry onto the next part of the verse, and said, “Yes, and it goes on to say, ‘for it is God who is at work in you.’ Amen!” But I would like to continue asking him, “Do you know how he is at work in you?” He is at work in you precisely to make the cross effective in your life.

Today, I am basically giving you an exposition of Mark 8:34-38, a passage that is of exceeding great importance that you should remember. I would like you to look at Mark 8:31 again.

Notice the word, “rejected,” that he is hated by the elders of the religious establishment. Jesus was hated by the religious establish­ment and so will you if you preach the cross. Through all of his teaching, he says he will die for our salvation, for the atonement of our sins, but in speaking of all this, he never once refers to the cross. Having spoken about his own death, he immediately relates the salvation that he will accomplish for us to how we are going to receive that salvation, and that is where we come to verse 34. It can be done in only one way: We take up our cross and die with him.

If anyone preaches anything else to you, he has preached to you a lie. I say this categorically, and I know that there is no one capable of contradicting me from the Word of God. They might not like it but no one can contradict it. It is the absolute truth. This means that anyone who preaches about the cross of Christ without talking about the cross that you and I have to bear, has preached a lie because the two cannot be separated. They are one and the same if that salvation which Christ accomplished for us is to be effective in our lives. If you don’t follow this, you will find that salvation does not work in your life. Do you experience the power of God’s salvation in your life? The answer I can guarantee you is “no.” You can testify from your own experience. There is no other way unless you yourself have been crucified with him by taking up your cross.

The apostle Paul preaches exactly the same thing. He says, “I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless (I physically am still alive) not I. Christ now lives in me” (cf. Gal. 2:20).

By rejecting myself I have Christ. By keeping myself I don’t have Christ. It is only when I am dead that God’s Holy Spirit can live in me to mold the life of Christ in me, so that Christ lives in me. It’s amazing! Paul speaks exactly the same thing.

Then he says, “I glory in the cross of Christ” and the effect of Christ’s cross upon him is this: I am crucified to the world and the world is crucified to me” (cf. Gal. 6:14).

If I ask you, “Is this true in your life? Raise your hand,” I wonder how many of you in good conscience dare to raise your hand. Be honest. If you dare not raise your hands, and you hope to be saved by the cross of Christ, you’ve got yourself into a delusion! The cross of Christ has been emptied of its content by a preaching which sepa­rates the cross of Christ from our identification with it by our taking up the cross. So the first principle is this: The cross of Christ and our cross that the Lord Jesus has called us to take up can never be separated.

 

2. We must take up the cross of Christ by our own decision

Secondly, understand that the Lord Jesus is speaking about a cross that we must take up. It’s not a cross that happens to us like some illness that happens to us and we say, “Oh, I’ve got to carry my cross.” No, notice the active form. The cross here is something that we take up deliberately of our own free choice, but only by the enabling of God’s grace. It’s not something that happens to befall us like some car accident, and you are crippled and you say, “This is my cross.” Today, the church and the world use the word “cross” in a sense which is not the Biblical sense at all. That is another way it has been perverted, changed, emptied of its content. “My mother-in-law is my cross. I have to bear with her every day. She gets on my nerves. She’s a pain in my neck.” Maybe she is a cross to you but that is not the cross the Lord Jesus is talking about. The cross is not something that happens to you inevitably. Here, it is you either take it or leave it, and most Christians leave it. “I will sing the praises of the cross just as long as you don’t ask me to be crucified with him. I don’t want that.”

 

3. The cross separates us from the world

The third thing we must understand about Mark chapter 8 is that the cross separates us from the world. It creates a partition. This is what the apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 6:17-18,

In other words, unless you separate from them, God will not welcome you. You must separate from the world – that whole way of thinking, that whole structural institutional organization of the world that is opposed to God or rejects ignores, despises, or makes use of God, whichever serves their purpose. Are you listening to what the Almighty is saying? He is saying that unless the cross separates you from the world, you will not be his sons and daugh­ters.

We saw already from Galatians 6:14 that Paul says exactly this, that the cross of Christ and the cross which he himself has taken up has separated him from the world. That is the reason why Paul calls every Christian a “saint.” Today, Roman Catholics call people who have been canonized by the church “saints.” That is not the Biblical meaning at all. Every letter that Paul writes, is addressed to the saints – the saints at Corinth, the saints at Philippi and so on. This is the key idea of a Christian for him, because for him, the cross of Christ has separated you and me into a people distinct from the world.

Why do we need to be distinct? Because without being distinct, we are no different from any non-Christian. And if we are not different from a non-Christian, how can we fulfill our saving mission to them? Being distinct does not mean that we feel superior. On the contrary, being distinct means we are separated out to serve the sinners, to lead them gently into the path of salvation. But you must understand that we do not compromise the Word of God.

Let me summarize. The first principle is: You cannot separate Christ’s cross from your cross. If you do that, you are holding onto a false idea of salvation that cannot save, and you will know it from your own experience.

Secondly, we saw that the cross of Christ is something that we must take hold of by our own decision. It’s not something that befalls you like some misfortune in life. You decide to take it or not to take it. But if you don’t take it, you will not see the kingdom of God. You will not experience God’s power.

Thirdly, the cross of Christ separates you from the world in which you used to live, the world in which you used to feel at home, the world of sin, corruption, deceit, falsehood and false religion. Most religion is false, so don’t ever become religious, I have said time and again, become spiritual but never become religious. We don’t want religion; we want spiritual life. Those are two different things.

 

4. Without the cross, there is no vision

I come to my fourth and last point. Without the cross, there is no vision. There is no vision. Look at Mark 8:34-38 and see the connec­tion here. Having said all these terrible things about the cross, the Lord Jesus says in Mark 9:1,

And he said to them, “Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power.”

When you read your English Bible, please understand that chapter separations are entirely arbitrary and are man-made. They are not in the original. The original has no chapters and no verses. And someone, a few hundred years ago, decided for the convenience of reference, put in chapter and verse. The chapter position here is entirely wrong because it goes straight on to say “and.” If you have Bibles with paragraphs like mine, you will see that the paragraph just carries on ignoring chapter 9 and actually goes straight on because the Lord is continuing his teaching, and chapter 9, verse 1, cuts it at the wrong place.

Have you seen the kingdom of God which has already come with power? “See” here means experience. Have you experienced the kingdom of God with power in your life? He said some standing here will. Not all, not many, but some. And who are the some? Follow the context, for the Lord Jesus has just told you. Those who have taken up their cross to follow him are the ones who, standing here will not taste death. They will in their life-time, indeed very soon, whenever it is they take up their cross to follow him, experience or “see” the kingdom of God with power. Notice the past tense, “has come,” the kingdom of God is already here, not in the future.

Have you experienced that kingdom with power? If not, I refer you back to the Lord Jesus’ teaching. The reason is quite simple. You have not taken up the cross. You are not led or empowered by the Spirit of God to follow the Lord Jesus’ example of life. Today, how are we disciples of the Lord Jesus? We are his disciples when the Spirit of God leads us to imitate Jesus’ life. When God’s Spirit is leading us, we experience the kingdom of God which has come with power. There is nothing very mysterious about this verse, Mark 9:1. It is very easy to understand if you see the continuation of the text. If you don’t do this, you will taste death. You will die and you will never experience the kingdom of God. But there will be some here, some even in this church, who will experience or have already experienced (have seen) the kingdom of God which has already come in power.

And as though to emphasize his point, you will see from the following verses 2-7, the whole account of the transfiguration. He is transfigured visually in the presence of those disciples of his who have already taken up the cross to follow him, to show them the kingdom of God has now arrived in power in Christ Jesus. Isn’t that beautiful? I have had so many experiences of God and his power, that I have shared from time to time, in various messages over the years.

I have summed up the message of the cross in four points. I have told you how to live in the power of being a true disciple, how you can enjoy the vision that a true disciple has of the kingdom of God.

When the Lord Jesus talks about seeing the kingdom in Mark 9:1, it will remind you of John 3:3, doesn’t it? What does John 3:3 say? The Lord Jesus says, “Unless you are born again, you cannot see the kingdom of God.” So seeing the kingdom of God has to do with being born again. But you have heard maybe many messages on being born again or regeneration, have the preachers ever talked to you about the cross? If they haven’t talked to you about the cross in talking about regeneration, they have preached a lie. They have emptied the gospel of its content. You have to take these verses and put them side by side.

How do you see the kingdom of God? Through regeneration. How are you regenerate? By taking up the cross. And that is what the Lord Jesus goes on to say in John 12:24, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” There is the cross again, in different words. When a seed dies, it rises again in regeneration. A seed comes back to life and this time in fullness, in bountifulness. But first, it must die before there can be a regeneration.

Or Paul uses the language of resurrection in Romans 6:5. Unless you die with Christ, you don’t rise with him. Without death there is no resurrection. Without passing away of the old, there cannot be the coming of the new, there cannot be a regeneration. The cross is the means to this. But why does no one talk about the cross that we need to take up?

I have had so many people come to me and say, “I don’t know whether I am regenerate or not.” They don’t, but they want assur­ance. What do they do? They just believe that they are regenerate. So you perpetuate the lie by some doctrine of assurance, which is going from disaster to disaster. Do we have assurance? Absolutely! We have tremendous assurance. But we must make sure that our assurance rests in the truth, and not in a delusion, in a lie, in falsehood.

 

Every follower of Christ can experience the leading of God’s Spirit

Finally, I want to remind you that being a follower of Jesus is to be led by the Spirit of God. I have shared many times my own experiences of being led by the Spirit. But as part of this exhortation, I want to conclude with these two brief illustrations. I want you to know that any person who takes up the cross can experience the wonderful leading of the Spirit of God. I will not talk about my own experience but about someone else’s experience, and I want to use this illustration from the life of a very ordinary person lest you think you have to be a spiritual giant to be led by the Spirit. Not at all! I will tell you about the case of a cosmetics saleslady. She makes a liveli­hood by selling cosmetics, which is not very spiritual, is it?

This saleslady had just recovered from the flu, and she just wanted to get home because she was feeling so tired after a day’s work. As she was walking home, the Lord spoke to her and said, “Visit Nellie.” And she said, “Oh Lord, I’m too tired. Maybe tomorrow.” “No, visit Nellie.” “All right, God. I will visit Nellie.”

Now Nellie was a retired schoolteacher and was one of her custo­mers, and she had actually ordered some face cream. So she went to Nellie’s place and knocked on the door. Usually, as soon as she knocks, Nellie opens the door, but this time, there was no response. So she knocked a bit louder and waited, and still nobody opened the door. Then she thought maybe Nellie was sleeping or has gone out, so she should leave. But she felt herself glued to the ground. She couldn’t leave. So she knocked the third time, and this time, the door opened and Nellie said, “Yes, come in, come in.”

And so she said, “Here are the cosmetics you ordered.”

Nellie paid her immediately and said, “Well, if you are not in a hurry, come into the kitchen and sit down for a moment.” Nellie looked a bit pale so she said she would go in and sit in the kitchen for a few moments.

Then Nellie said to her, “Here’s the money for the cosmetics.”

She said, “But you just paid me.”

Nellie said, “Oh, did I?”

The saleslady said, “Yes, you paid me just a moment ago when I gave you the cosmetics.” Then the saleslady realized something was not in order. She smelled something strange in the air, and she followed the smell to its source and she found that it led to the gas fireplace where the gas was on but the fire was not. The apartment was filling up quickly with gas. In a few more minutes, the woman would have lost consciousness and would have been gassed to death. But because this saleslady was attentive to the leading of the Spirit, even though she was very tired, God led her to save a life. She immediately switched off the gas and called the ambulance. The lady was hospitalized but she recovered. And afterwards she said, “How did you know that the gas was on with the fire being off?”

The saleslady said, “I didn’t know. It was the voice of God that led me.”

It was not some spiritual giant who was being led by God’s Spirit, but just an ordinary salesperson. Have you got this practical experience of the living God in your daily living?

 

Preach God’s Word as led by his Holy Spirit

There is another case where a couple’s marriage was falling apart. In fact, it had been falling apart for a long time. And the marriage had degenerated into a daily fight. Many of us are familiar with this kind of marriage. Those of us who are in the pastorate, whose job often is to rescue marriages, know that the fiercest, bitterest, most intense battles in the world that newspapers don’t often write about are at home. This couple’s marriage was falling apart. They had two children, the husband had a job in New York, but he decided to quit the job because he was commuting such a long way so he wanted to find another job. He could not find a job at that time, so although they wanted to separate, they had two problems. One is the two children, and the other was the financial factor, that the husband was out of a job. The wife felt that she should still keep him under the roof at least until he finds a job, otherwise he had nowhere to go.

But the fights continued and got worse, and both of them were tired with these battles, so she decided to go to church. She went to a church where she often felt out of place because it was a very lively church. She found the people had a lot of joy, but she dragged herself to church with a long face every Sunday. She felt the contrast was too great, and she felt very awkward. And yet, she felt she needed to go to church; she needed some kind of support. She tried to persuade her husband to go to church but of course he would not hear of this. He never went to church and he was not about to start going either.

One day, there was a fierce fight between the two of them and by this time they were not even sharing the same bedroom, because if one slept in the bedroom, the other slept on the sofa in the living room. So whoever got to the bedroom first got to use the bed, and the other one would use the sofa. That day, they had a fierce quarrel and the husband got to the bedroom first, slammed the door and locked it. So she was left outside on the sofa without even her pyjamas. So she said, “At least open the door and give me my pyjamas!” But the husband said, “No, you can sleep outside on the sofa.” So she had to sleep in all her clothes on the sofa that night.

She decided that she had had enough. She was going to quit and walk out. As she lay fully dressed on the sofa, she said, “God, I can’t take this anymore. I’m leaving in the morning. But where am I going to go?” She couldn’t sleep, and by morning, she got up and decided that she would get in the car and just drive although she didn’t know where to go. As she drove out and thought, “Where am I to go?” Then she suddenly remembered there was a meeting that morning in the church. So she looked at the time and saw that she could get to the church just on time. She might as well go to church first, and think about where she could go afterwards. She went into the church and sat down, and the pastor began to preach from John Chapter 14, that the Holy Spirit leads us, the Holy Spirit strengthens us, enables, comforts, guides us, and changes our lives. As the pastor was preaching, she was listening to this message and thinking, “I really need the Holy Spirit.”

Suddenly, the pastor stopped his message and said, “The Lord is saying something to me.” He was listening, and said, “There is someone in the congregation here, and the Lord wants to say to you that you have been trying to change your husband for the last eight years. You have been trying to change your husband into your own mold.” Notice, she was an occasional visitor to the church, so the pastor doesn’t know her.

“You have been trying to change your husband into your own mold.” Aren’t we all familiar with that? We are very good at that in marriage. We are all in the business of trying to change our partners to our own model and our own taste, and that is where all the trouble starts. We spend all our lives saying, “You are not the kind of husband I want. You must do this and that in order to become the husband I want. You’ve got to change this and that behavior.” And the husband says, “What about you? You’ve got to change a lot too.” So we have problems.

I remember counseling a marriage once, where the husband was trying to tell me how the wife needed to be changed, and she was deficient in this and that. The wife was too busy crying to talk. So I had to talk to him. I said, “What about you?”

And the husband said, “Me? Change?”

The pastor suddenly stopped his message and said this. He was led by the Spirit. He was one of those few pastors who was in tune with God. That is what I am saying to you. My exhortation is first, never compromise in the preaching of the Word of God, because only if you will not compromise, if you truly follow the teaching and the life example of the Lord Jesus, God will lead you, even down to knowing the needs of your congregation.

The pastor said, “There is this woman here who is trying to change her husband. Now I’m going to ask you to pray for your husband, and I am going to ask this whole congregation to pray for her husband, whoever she is.” When she looked up, she saw that everybody was praying, and thought, “They must be praying for me!” Then he went on to say, “You must let God change yourself first, and let God change your husband. You’ve got to do this by giving yourself here and now totally to God.” He never asked her to stand up; he never asked her to come forward. He just said those words. He was not doing any guesswork. He wasn’t talking about a husband. He was talking about a wife present who had problems with her husband. She was stunned!

After the service, she crawled out of the church back into her car, bowed her head and said, “God, I know you were talking to me just now. I yield my life to you. Please forgive me for the way I have dealt with my husband in the past. So much of the fault is mine.” She decided to go home. She drove home, and when she arrived at home, she saw her husband at the window looking out. So she gulped hard and thought, “How do I carry on from here?” She went into the house and said hello to her husband. Then she decided to make a nice lunch. And while they were having lunch, she did not know what to say. So she and her husband and the two children all sat around the table eating in silence. Nobody knew what to say. But she noticed something different about her husband too. Her husband kept looking at her in a sort of shy way, so she thought, “What’s happen­ing? How am I going to share with him about what God did in the church this morning?”

And while she was thinking about that, her husband said, “You know, I’ve got something to share with you.”

And she said, “What’s that?”

He said, “Well, after you left this morning, I suddenly had this need to find a Bible. I know you have a Bible somewhere but I don’t know where you keep it. So I searched around the whole house looking for your Bible and eventually found it.” Do you know where he opened to when he did not know where to read in the Bible? John Chapter 14, about the Holy Spirit. And he said, “As I read the Bible, I realized I need the Holy Spirit. I realized I need to be changed.”

She sat there in total disbelief, looking at him as though “What has happened?!” That was exactly the verse that struck her that morn­ing. And he said, “I think that I need to be changed.” Before they realized it, God just brought them together and they were holding hands over the table. Their lives were changed. They were led by the Spirit of God because there was a pastor who was led by the Spirit and spoke forth addressing their needs. This is the preaching of the Word of God as it ought to be done – led by the Spirit. Our God is the living God.

 

Serve God in the power of the Holy Spirit

I have seen the power of the kingdom of God. Someone applied for the 6^th Training, and I knew nothing about this candidate. I didn’t even remember how this person looked like because I only met the person once in passing at one of the camps. The person applied for full-time training, so I studied the assessments from the co-workers and I asked, “God, do I or don’t I accept this person?” And God said to me, “There is something in that person’s life that needs to be put right.” Now remember, I know nothing about the person’s background, I don’t even know what the person looks like. And God said to me there is something in that person’s life that must be put right first before that person can be considered for full-time training. So I sent the message to the co-workers overseas to tell that person the message I received from God.

A few days later, I received a phone call all the way from Australia. And the first words the person said were, “I am shocked that you know something that is hidden in my heart and nobody knows anything about it.”

I said, “I don’t know what’s in your heart but God does. If you put it right before God, I can accept you into full-time training.”

This time when I was in Australia, this person wanted to share with me exactly what was it that was hidden in the heart. I said, “I don’t need to know, but if you want to tell me, that’s fine.” The remarkable thing that stunned the person is that I am on the other side of the world and God could reveal to me something known only to that person alone. Nobody else knew anything about this. Our God is real. Our God is amazing! When we are led by him, it’s astonishing!

This is not the only instance. I have more than once called in some­one in training and I said, “You have committed a sin, haven’t you?” And the person would say, “Yes, how did you know?” I said, “God told me.” The person is shocked. You cannot serve God unless you are in touch with the living God. And the way to be in touch with God is through obeying Christ’s command to take up the cross as he did.

I close here, and these are my words of exhortation:

·        Serve God without compromise.

·        Serve him in the power of the Spirit. Be in touch with him, and he will tell you what you must do or say.

 

Let us be quiet before God in prayer.