Matthew-074

 

Today, I would like to continue where we left off yesterday. The Word of God is so rich, that I am just going to have to select some of the main points.

 

Choose: the broad road to destruction, or the narrow road to eternal life?

The Christian life, as we have seen, is a matter of making choices. And in all of life, you have to decide whether you are going down the broad road that leads to destruction, or the narrow road that leads to eternal life. Anyone who tries to go on both roads at the same time will discover that it’s impossible. There is a kind of “Christianity” today that wants to tell us there are no two roads to choose. But through this message, I have to show you from the Word of God that you have to choose one or the other all the time.

Yesterday, we saw that you cannot have both this world and its riches and the kingdom of God at the same time. The Lord Jesus told us that we have to make the choice, and the stakes are very high, the consequences are very serious, because one ends in death and the other ends in life. The only way to spiritual abundant life is that you have to make a choice: If you want to save your life in this world, you lose your life as far as eternal life is concerned. But if you are prepared to lose your life in this world, the world and its riches, then you have eternal life. See the two choices before you and ask God for his grace to choose wisely and decisively.

 

Not making a choice is to choose the broad road to destruction

Let me always remind people that not making a choice is already having made a choice not to choose. Every day that you don’t make a choice to take the narrow road to eternal life, you have already made that choice to stay where you are now, on the broad road to destruction, to stay in the path of loving riches in this world. To say, “I don’t choose” is to make that choice because you are already there. Let us remember this fact.

 

If we are not in the state of being saved, how can we save others?

During Christmas, we had a camp in the west coast of Malaysia called Port Dickson, and when I could find time, I read the newspaper because I like to keep up to date with what is going on in the world. Amidst all the other world news, I read a very tragic story, and I kept thinking about the tragedy of this story.

It was a story about a father and a son. The father is an excavator, operating a big excavating machine which can dig very deep holes. At the mining site where he was working, there were a lot of big holes from all the digging. That afternoon, his son who was 13 years old, decided to go and watch his daddy working. It must have been a very happy afternoon for the boy, who did not have to go to school but go and watch his daddy working the big machine, and play in the mine site. It was after lunch time, the father had started his work again, and his boy was playing around the site. After a while, he heard his boy screaming, even above the noise of the machine. He realized there must be big trouble. He jumped out of his machine, and rushed in the direction of where the screaming was coming from. It was one of the big pits that the machines have been digging, and it was filled with rain water. The newspaper reported that the water is 13 meters or 40 feet deep, more than the height of this building. When he saw that his son was drowning in the pool, he quickly emptied his pockets of his wallet and other things, threw off his watch, and dived in to save his son.

At home, his wife is waiting for her husband and son to come home, but it was already 6:30 in the evening, and they still had not returned. So she realized something was wrong and informed the police. They rushed to the work site and found the big machine was still running! He had jumped out of the machine so fast that he never thought of switching off the machine. And they searched around for the two of them. Eventually, they found the father drowned in the pool. But where was the boy? Since they could not find him, they had to bring in the frog man. Thirty-five minutes later, the frog man found the body of the boy in the deep water below.

What is tragic about this story? It was such a happy day, especially for the 13-year-old boy. He was going to have a good time. He never thought it would end in death. I was trying to think about the father. What kind of feelings must have been going through his mind as he saw his son drowning in the deep pit of water? If you were the father or the mother, what would be your feeling? Looking at the facts, it was clear he would do anything but anything to save his boy! Obviously, his boy could not swim, so he drowned. Could the father swim? I really wonder. Maybe he could swim a little bit. Maybe he could not swim at all. But in his desperation to save his son, he dove into the 40-feet-deep water. I think it’s only about 25 feet at the most from the floor to the ceiling in this room. So you can imagine how deep the pool is. He was so desperate to save his son that he did not think whether or not he is able to save his son. He simply dove in. In the end, he died and his son as well. We certainly understand the father’s heart. He could not just stand there and let his son drown. No one was around to help. So what could he do? He jumped in.

Eventually, he could neither save his boy nor even himself. We don’t know if he could swim a little bit, or not at all. But to save a person, you have to know a bit more than swimming because when a person is drowning, he is panicking, so he grabs everything, and he can easily drag down and drown the person who is saving him, even if the life-saver knows how to swim. That is why a life-guard has to be trained not only to swim but also to save people who are drowning. Sometimes, the person who is drowning is in such a panic that the experienced life-saver will have to knock him out first in order to save him.

I thought a lot about this tragic incident. As I think about the churches today, if we ourselves are not even in the state of being saved, how can we save others? I see many so-called “Christians,” who don’t even know what it is to be saved, but they want to go out to evangelize. While I appreciate their heart’s desire, I wonder how they can tell people about the Way of life which they don’t even know, because they have not made the choice to walk in the Way of life? What is going to be the outcome of all this? In the end, not only they themselves are not saved, they are going to “drown” others, for not being able to rescue them from sin. My heart is filled with com­passion and sorrow. To tell you the truth, I have no critical feelings towards these people any more than I have a critical feeling towards this father. He tried to do what he could, and many Christians try to do what they can, but that does not prevent the end from being disastrous.

 

Make the right choice to be saved now! Then save others

I was thinking that if the father were a little calmer and had the presence of mind, he should have rushed back to drive his machine to the deep pool, put the excavating arm into the water to lift his son out. He did not have the power to save his son but there was the power available which he did not use. You can say, “All right, you are sitting there calmly reading the newspaper, of course, you know the answer to the problem.” That is true, and that is why I said we are not criticizing him. Had he remained calm and thought about it just for a moment, perhaps he could have saved his son. He was too panicked to make the choice.

While you are sitting here calmly in these days at camp, you have the time to think carefully. Once you go back to the pressures in your job and routine, you don’t have time to think what is proper to do in the circumstances. Even worse, if you leave it to the last moment, you won’t be able to make the right decision.

When I was in Malaysia, some people asked me, “What do we do about this particular case?” A woman had been listening to the gos­pel, perhaps attending some camps like this one, for at least 12 years. Then one day, she discovered that she was dying. In her critical condition, she gained consciousness for a little while, and the family members rushed to their mother and pleaded, “Please, please, now is the time to commit your life to God! Now is the time to be saved before it’s too late!” All she did was to give some kind of nod with her head. So the family thought, “Doesn’t the Bible say if you believe and are baptized, you shall be saved? Although she didn’t make any confession, she sort of believed by nodding her head. But she is not baptized! What should we do?”

So they rushed to the pastor in the church and said, “Our mother believed but she’s not baptized. Can you baptize her?”

The pastor said, “Is she still alive?”

“No, she’s dead.”

The pastor said, “Do you want me to baptize a dead person? No way! I’m not going to baptize a dead person!”

“Oh please, pastor! Unless she is baptized, we think she is only one half saved. What about the other half?”

The pastor said, “No, I can’t baptize her.”

They thought this pastor is unreasonable, and they ran to look for the pastor of another church. They said, “Pastor, please, please, bap­tize my mother!” The pastor said, “All right. Bring her to the baptis­mal pool.”

“No, she’s dead.”

“Do you want me to baptize a dead person? No way!”

“Oh, please! Have mercy!”

“But the Bible doesn’t teach anything about baptizing a dead person.”

In utter desperation, they rushed the pastor of another church. And do you know what? This pastor agreed to baptize the dead person! I think this must be a record of all time! I have never heard of this! I think he just could not say no to all these begging relatives. He went to the hospital and put a few drops of water on her head. Maybe the idea was just to comfort the relatives so that they would stop crying their eyes out in front of him.

This is a true story. I’m not making it up. There are two roads, and if you leave it to the end, you will not be able to decide.

Someone said to a Jewish rabbi, “Is it all right if I repent of my sins before I die?”

The rabbi said, “Oh yes, that’s fine. When do you want to get bap­tized? When do you want to repent?” Actually, the Jews do practice some form of cleansing, of baptism.

He said, “I just said before I die.”

So the rabbi said, “Yes, that means you better get baptized today because you don’t know what will happen to you tomorrow! That would mean you’d better repent now.” There is wisdom in those words.

So there are two things. First, all of us must make a choice. Secondly, if we have made that choice to be Christians, we also have the responsibility to save others. We are not saved for our own sake. We don’t ask this question, “What must I do to have eternal life?” just so that we can have eternal life. Rather, it is so that when your son, or your mother, or your family is drowning in sin, you can save them with the power of God. Let it be absolutely clear that you cannot do this unless you yourself have chosen to commit your life totally to God, unless you clearly understand how to transmit God’s life to others.

 

“Believe in Jesus and be saved” – is it true, false or partially true?

Let us come back to this realization that we are in a sad situation in the church today. In yesterday’s message, we said that the rich young ruler asked the question, but he did not want to hear the answer. The church listened to the answer and also did not like it. They were even more daring; they decided to change the Lord Jesus’ answer. I want to warn you that to distort the Lord Jesus’ teaching intentionally or unintentionally, will result in total disaster!

For example, if we simply say that to be saved is a matter of believing in Jesus, which is what the church usually says, is that statement true? Or is it false? Or is it partially true? I said that a partial truth is much more dangerous than falsehood. If your son, or your mother, or someone else is dying and said, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” And you say, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved,” is that statement true, false or half true? It all depends whether you understand what “believe” means.

Most Christians don’t know what “believe” means. They don’t know how to swim any more than that man who tried to save his son does. They don’t know how to inherit eternal life. If you ask them, “Do you believe?” They will say, “Yes, I believe. And since I believe, I have eternal life.” It’s not that simple. I am saying this because you wonder how you reconcile the message you have heard in the churches with the Lord Jesus’ teaching in my message yesterday. We must think very, very clearly on eternal matters. We must not be like this father, who in a panic does not know what he is doing. In my task of teaching people the Word of God, I have discovered that most people’s think­ing is very muddled. Perhaps it doesn’t matter if you are muddled in some things, but you cannot afford to make a mistake in the matter of eternal life and eternal death. How many times have you heard: Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved? If you are the one saying it, ask yourself what do you mean by “believe”? Give me a definition.

 

Does the rich ruler’s “believing” in Jesus save him?

Let me ask you, did this rich young ruler believe or didn’t he believe in Jesus? Don’t say no so fast. Think carefully. Put the three accounts side by side and look carefully. If you don’t believe a certain person, would you have approached him in the way the rich young ruler did? He did not come up to the Lord Jesus and say, “I’ve heard something about you. Tell me, how do you think I can get eternal life? I’ll consider your opinion.” Look at his attitude. He comes humbly to the Lord Jesus. Mark 10:17 says he even kneels before the Lord Jesus. He has the greatest respect for the Lord Jesus. He trusts this great teacher. He is the only person in the Gospels who addresses the Lord Jesus by a unique title, “Good teacher.” He doesn’t just mean, “You are very good at talking.” He knows that Jesus is good. Do you believe in what is good? Do you think he believes in what is good? Do you come to any preacher and say, “Good preacher”? And when the Lord Jesus said to him, “Only God is truly good,” did he say, “Excuse me, I said the wrong thing”? No, he did not take back his statement. He means to say, “You are the good teacher, the teacher come from God.”

Let me ask you again, does the rich young ruler believe in Jesus as good? Certainly he does! So he believes in Jesus. Who dares to say this man does not believe in Jesus? He may believe in Jesus more than most Christians today. He trusts Jesus. What is the point of calling someone good and coming to him unless he trusts him to speak the truth? “Good” means speaking the truth. If believing in Jesus means to be saved, he is already saved. What more is there?

Of course, you have been reading your Bible! You will say, “The Bible says you’ve got to believe that Jesus died for you and rose again.” Let me ask you, did the apostles believe that? Of course not, because Jesus had not died and had not yet risen again, so how can you use those events to measure faith? In fact, when the apostles were told that the Lord Jesus was going to die, the Bible tells us they did not know what he was talking about. In other words, the rich young ruler believed in Jesus in the same way as the apostles did.

You would say, “It’s a different level of believing.” You are catching yourself in the problem. I asked you, what did you mean by “believe”? Suddenly, you tell me there are different levels of “believe.” Tell me, at which level do you become saved? Supposing we are doing an examination on believing, how many marks do you give the rich young ruler? If you say, “Give him 45%.” Then how many marks do the apostles get? “They just pass. 55%.” But I don’t read in the Bible that you have to get 55% before you can be saved. When you tell people, “Believe in the Lord Jesus and be saved,” why don’t you tell them, “Believe in the Lord 55%, then you’re saved”? You just say, “Believe in the Lord Jesus.” And he said, “I believe in the Lord Jesus.” And you say, “Fail, not yet 55%.” So they ask you, “Please tell me how to get 55%. Be my tutor and tell me how to pass the exam.” Now you begin to see that we might end up talking nonsense. By the way, how many marks have you got? Are you sure you have 55%? Are you sure that your faith is greater than this rich young ruler’s?

I ask you to go to the churches and ask, “Do you believe in Jesus?”

They will say, “Yes.”

Then you will say, “But you’ve only got 45% so you fail.”

They will say, “Why did I fail?”

You will say, “Because the apostles gave up everything to follow the Lord Jesus, but the rich man did not.”

Are we just talking about the difference of marks, or are we talking about a totally different kind of faith? Look at the people in the church. Let me ask you how many of them have sold everything to follow Jesus? How many of them are on the level of the rich young ruler? Next time you tell someone, “Believe the Lord Jesus and be saved,” you had better think carefully what that means.

 

Satan also believes. Why isn’t Satan saved?

The apostle James put this in another way: Do you say you believe in God? Congratulations! Let me shake your hand!

You will say, “Why do you want to shake my hand?”

“Well, because you are in good company – Satan also believes! If we are saved by faith, then why isn’t Satan saved? The Bible tells us that Satan also believes. And anyone who believes in Jesus is saved. So, is Satan not anyone?”

You will say, “He is Satan! I don’t want to belong to his company!”

We have a wonderful time playing games with the Bible, isn’t it? Sometimes, when I discuss the Bible with Christians, they are so confused that they don’t know what is happening. The confusion is because they have mostly unintentionally distorted the Scriptures. When you distort the Scriptures, you only confuse yourself. In the end, when you cross-examine their answer, they are so confused they don’t know what the answer is anymore.

 

Just have a different attitude towards money?

Let me come back to one of the confusions concerning the passage of the rich young ruler. I’m sure that you are already very used to hearing the standard answer. When the Lord Jesus said to the rich young ruler, “Sell all you have and give to the poor,” the preacher will comfort you so that you don’t all run out of the church and leave him standing by himself, and then he has no more offerings to collect!

So when the Lord Jesus says, “Sell all you have and give to the poor,” and the preacher says, “No, don’t be scared. Don’t go away. Stay and I will explain it very reasonably to you. The answer is very simple. What the Lord Jesus wanted to say is you just have a different attitude than before.”

“Oh, that sounds reasonable. Does it mean I don’t have to sell all I have?”

“Of course you don’t need to! The Lord Jesus is just using extreme language. You just say in your heart, ‘I don’t love money very much.’”

Of course, you love money a little bit. Who doesn’t love money? If the preacher loves money a little, how can I not love money? I’m not a preacher so I have the right to love money a little bit more. It’s only a matter of attitude. If you start messing around with the Word of God like this, when I ask you the question, what does “believe” mean, you will be utterly confused!

All I have to ask this preacher who says this kind of thing is: “Please answer me: When the rich young ruler said, ‘What must I do to inherit eternal life,’ how come the Lord Jesus did not think of saying to him, ‘All you have to do is to have the right attitude’”? Then the rich young ruler will be following the Lord Jesus, just like you and me! Why did the Bible say that he turned away feeling very sad when he heard the answer of the Lord Jesus? The Lord Jesus does not give that “reasonable answer.” Let’s not mess around with his teaching. If we try to suggest that the Lord Jesus said something that he did not say, we are guilty of dishonesty. Surely, our attitude towards money is very important, but we cannot use “a right attitude” to write off the requirement that the Lord Jesus laid down here.

 

You are a fool to twist or ignore the Lord Jesus’ teaching

Then what do we mean by “I have the right attitude, so I don’t need to sell anything?” Why do people want to twist the words of the Lord Jesus all the time? His words teaching us God’s requirements are like a fishbone sticking in our throat; we can’t swallow them. The apostle Paul also says in 1 Corinthians 1:18, “The way God does and says things is foolishness to the natural man.” It’s sheer foolishness! The Lord Jesus should have gone to one of the modern institutions and studied psychology. Here is a young man, who is intelligent and capable, and that is why he is rich. Even though he is young, he is already a ruler. It’s wonderful to have him in the church! But the Lord Jesus tells him he has to do this and that, so he leaves. This is not psychology.

When I preached at the camp in Canada, some Christian from another church said, “Yeah, this pastor doesn’t know psychology.” The reason why he thought I didn’t know psychology is because I preached the words of the Lord Jesus: Unless a man take up his cross and be willing to suffer, he cannot be my disciple. He said, “Maybe there’s some truth in this, but you don’t have to say it. If you say it, people will run away. This pastor doesn’t know psychology.”

Perhaps I don’t know psychology, but I know the way to life. The strange thing is that after this good man had said these things, he died only a few weeks later. He was a very rich man. He thought that this kind of answer is bad psychology; it is foolishness. I thank God I am willing to be a fool.

When I first started to preach the gospel in Montreal, there were only a few people in the congregation. It was a new church. I said to them, “In this first message, I will declare to you where I stand. I will preach the words of my Lord Jesus with no compromise, and if every one of you leave this church and don’t come back again, I will stand here and preach the Word as God wants me to preach it.” Since then, I have seen the transforming power of God change the lives of people one after the other. I don’t want to be like that father who could not save his son. I don’t want to be the preacher who not only cannot save the others, but he himself will also perish.

Preaching the gospel is sometimes like what the doctor has to say to the patient. The patient comes in and he has serious heart trouble, and having examined him, the doctor established his condition and says to the man, “From now on, no more ice cream, no more Black Forest cake, no more fatty pork, no more Kentucky fried chicken, no more butter or sugar.”

And the patient says, “What do you want me to do? Do you want me to starve to death? I like to eat all these and you tell me I can’t eat them? This is foolishness! I thought I was coming to a highly-qualified doctor, and the only thing he can tell me to do is not to eat ice cream plus all the other good food I want to eat. This doctor must have had a bad day and he is taking it out on me. This doctor is no psychologist. He tells me all this and expects me to come back again and pay him medical fees?”

That is the way the preacher feels. You tell a sinner that he must now put aside all the things that he loved before, and he says, “This man is a fool!

You have to make the choice just like this patient: Do you want to live and not eat all these things? Or do you want to eat all these things and die? You take your choice. The Lord Jesus has made it perfectly clear to us: You cannot have the world and its riches and soak yourself in them, and also have eternal life. You must choose whichever you want. Anyone who tries to ignore his teaching and thinks that he will get by is the fool.

 

Jim Bakker is a warning to us!

A deep impression has been made on my mind by a TV preacher when I was in North America. There are a lot of TV preachers in North America and they make a lot of money. That makes good incentive to be a TV preacher. Perhaps I should try that some time! As I listened to this preacher on TV who was supposed to be expounding Matthew 7:2, “Give and it shall be given to you,” I realized that he was preaching a gospel which is exactly the opposite of what the Lord Jesus preaches. He was not talking about love or mercy, but about money. So with all the TV cameras focused on him, there was a huge basket full of green American banknotes on the platform. And every few minutes he was saying, “Give, and it shall be given to you,” he picked up this money and let the green banknotes fall. Then in the TV cameras, you could see that every eye was looking at this money! They were hoping the wind will blow some of it to them! Of course, the TV crew made sure that no wind was blowing! This act was intended to convey the idea, “Give to me, give to our church, and God will bless you with buckets of dollars!” As I was looking at the TV I thought, “This is the gospel?”

Who was this? Jim Bakker. You may have read about him in the newspapers and in Time magazine. Do you know how much this man is paid in six months? According to Time, he received US$ 1 million in 6 months. None of us, not even the rich young ruler can compare with this. The standard joke is that even his dog had an air-conditioned kennel! I think some of us would like to apply to be his dog! He had many luxury cars. How can anyone who is a preacher of the gospel, who reads about the rich young ruler preach this kind of thing? It’s sickening!

Let me also tell you this: Sins don’t come alone but as a crowd. If you commit one sin, you will soon commit a second and a third, a fourth; they all come together. If you get one sin through your door, soon, the whole house of your being will be full of sins. Finally, this scandal came out that he had been fooling around with a woman as well. Even in a very tolerant and corrupt American society, they could not stand that, so they kicked him out!

And yet, something interesting is happening: he is coming back again! He is going to start preaching about money, and the banknotes fall from his hands again. What kind of gospel is this? The church is in a mess! Unfortunately, there are a lot of those who stand in the so-called “reasonable middle,” not as extreme as this man, and not as absolute as the Lord Jesus’ teaching. I beg of you to clearly grasp the teaching of the Lord Jesus on riches and the world. At Judgment, the likes of this TV preacher will say, “Lord, Lord, we were preaching your gospel even on TV!” And I can assure you the Lord Jesus will say to them his words in Matthew 7:23, “Depart from me, you evildoers! I don’t know you!” Will he say that to us? Yes, if we also dare to twist his words!

 

Transforming faith is: Believe God can do the impossible in you!

What kind of faith is saving faith? There is only one kind of faith that saves in the Bible, and it is called transforming faith. There are only two kinds of gospel you can hear today: one is true, the other is false. And in these last days, listen carefully, because if you accept the false gospel, you are going to end up with this kind of people whose only interest is to get money out of your pocket. There are some preachers who are only concerned to get you into the kingdom of God, and there are not many of them.

What is transforming faith? The answer is in our passage: the camel has to go through the eye of the needle. What does that mean? It is impossible that even a fly can get through the eye of the needle, never mind a camel! The Lord Jesus compares the gate into the king­dom of God to the eye of a needle in Matthew 19:24 to illustrate how extremely narrow it is. Then in verse 26, he says it’s impossible for you, me, and everyone to get in, impossible only with man but not with God. So the transforming faith, the only faith that saves, is not just to believe this and that, but to believe that God can do the impossible.

If you think, “Of course, I believe that God can do the impossible! Hallelujah! I’m saved!” Not so fast. It’s not just that you believe God can do the impossible, but that he can do the impossible in you! We can all theoretically believe that God does the impossible, but do you believe that God can do the impossible in your heart? Do you believe he can so transform you that by his amazing power, you can get into the kingdom of God through the eye of the needle? Put in other words, this inheriting eternal life (the salvation the Bible talks about) is a miracle! As the Lord Jesus says, only God can do it!

 

Inherit eternal life is: God has power to transform into a new person

The strange thing about many churches today is that they preach about faith and grace, but when you examine their doctrine, there is neither faith nor grace. What they mean by “faith” is simply this: believe Jesus died, believe he rose again. And if you say, “Yes, I believe,” that is saving faith. That is not saving faith in the Word of God, let me assure you.

They also talk about “grace,” but when you examine their teaching, there is no grace to talk about. When you ask them to tell you what grace is, their answer simply is that God loves you. That is not the whole truth as far as the Bible is concerned. Even in the human courts of law, you are supposed to put your hand on the Bible when you testify and say, “I promise to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” But we find that the church may be telling the truth sometimes, but it’s not the whole truth, and it’s not nothing but the truth. So I would like you to understand that we inherit eternal life by a faith in the power of God that transforms you and me. I have to leave this important subject of transformation to some other time.

Through the whole Bible, the only true Christian is the transformed Christian. For example, Paul says in Ephesians 5:8, “Once you were darkness, but now you are light.” John also says in John 5:24 and 1 John 3:14, “you have passed from death to life.” That is really transformation! It’s the difference between day and night. It’s the difference between truth and falsehood. It’s the difference between being dead and being alive. That is transformation!

 

The rich ruler believed, but he was not transformed

It’s not just you believe this and you believe that. You can believe anything without being changed. That is what happened to Satan. He believes everything, but the problem is he is just the same as he was before. Once you are changed, something amazing happens. You become a new person, as the Bible says. The Christians who you know, do they look like new people to you? You say, “I knew you before, I know you now, but I can’t see any difference in you! If anything, you are even worse than before!” That kind of faith saves nobody. The rich young ruler believed, but he was not saved, because he was not transformed. He could not go through the eye of the needle.

 

Are you willing to let God transform you?

Are you willing to let God transform you? Are you willing to have that kind of faith that says, “God, I can’t enter the kingdom. I can’t go through the eye of the needle. But please, transform me.”? Do you know what will happen? You will experience the power of God.

We have so many Christians in the churches today who have never experienced God. I don’t know what they mean by being a Christian. They don’t even know who God is, but they can certainly tell you about God – God is everything, God is love, God is kindness. I’m not talking about knowing about God; I am talking about knowing him, experiencing his power in your life. That is the dynamic of a true Christian. Only this kind of disciple can say as the apostle Paul, “I know whom I have believed. Look! he has transformed me!” (2 Tim. 1:12)

When you get baptized, it is to symbolize to you the transformation from death to life! But why does the church not preach transformation anymore? I don’t understand! Perhaps the cost is too high. It’s like the rich young ruler, who turns away thinking, “It’s wonderful, but the cost is too high!” So we want to sell eternal life at a discount; we lower the cost. No, we cannot do that! This is the glory of the gospel, which I have the joy of preaching simply because I have seen how lives are changed!

 

Transformed by God after repenting of every hidden sin!

When I went back to Montreal last year, the co-workers told me that there is a sister in the church who has taken so much of their time, because she is always having problem after problem. So serious were her problems that she had to be admitted to the psychiatric ward, and then she came out always depressed. She is a Christian from one of the conventional churches. I’m sorry to say that the people in our churches who give us the most problems are those who come to us from other churches. She had been coming to our church for some years, but because of her past church background, she could not absorb the message. She was always depressed. So the co-workers asked me, “What are we going to do about this sister? She takes so much of our time and she never seems to get anywhere.”

I said, “Let me take care of the matter.”

So the co-workers said, “What are you going to do? We have tried everything and we’re going nowhere.”

I said, “I will see to it by the grace of God, that she will make a breakthrough. We are going to go for the breakthrough.”

And they said, “Really? How much time are you prepared to spend?”

I spoke to her, and like my style, I went straight to the point. I said, “Let’s not waste time. You’ve been coming to this church for quite a while. I want you to tell me every sin that you are hiding in your heart now. Tell me.” She was shocked. I said, “I’m listening.” So she told me one sin. And I said, “What else is there?” Then she told me some more. I said, “Not enough. There’s more you are hiding in your heart.”

So she thought some more and she hesitated. She said, “Well, there’s something I’ve not told anybody before.”

I said, “I know. That’s why I’m listening.” She hesitated some more, and I said, “Come on, just get on with it because you are going to be forever in this condition until you become pure in heart. You will never enter into eternal life. Now get clean of the sin.” So she told me bits and pieces, and finally, the whole story came together that she had been doing something illegal.

I asked her, “Did you tell your psychiatrist this?”

She said, “Oh no! Please don’t tell anybody else.”

I said, “I won’t tell anybody else but you must confess your sin before God. You have been hiding this sin in your life and that is why you cannot be transformed.” What does the Bible say? “Blessed are the pure in heart. Blessed are those who are poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God.”

When she had confessed all this, I knew that she had finally told me everything. She said, “Can God forgive me? Can he help me and heal me?”

I said, “Certainly, he can! But not until you have got the matter clean with him.” There was a matter with property too, and there were other matters all having to do with questionable actions.

When she had repented of all her sins, without compromise, without fooling around with the Word of God, God transformed her! She was transformed after all these years! Some of you who have been to Montreal will be surprised if I tell you her name. You would think, “This hopeless case cannot be saved!”

After this counseling session, I went to Israel with our Training Team, and when I came back to Montreal, I saw a sister in the church beaming with joy, and serving tea to everyone. Previously, she would sit in the corner, waiting for people to hand her the tea and cakes. I had to look a second time. She was going around serving everyone with joy on her face. The reason I could hardly recognize her is because I’ve never seen her smiling. I thought it was a different person when she is smiling all the time now. I had to look again to confirm if that is her. That is saving faith when a person can be transformed into a new creation, and not just believe this and that!

Are you willing to let God put you through the eye of the needle, and experience the reality of the living God to become a new person?