Matthew-115

Beware! Being religious leads to murder in God’s name

As I was preparing this message, the Lord God kept bringing to my mind Brother Shaul (the Hebrew way of saying Saul) in Israel. Brother Shaul is in charge of the Messianic believers, that is, the Jews who believe that Jesus is the Messiah in Tiberias. Tiberias is the city on the west side of the Lake of Galilee. It is named after the Roman Emperor Tiberias, and that city still stands today. And God kept bringing back to my mind our visit to Tiberias, our fellowship with the brothers and sisters among the Jews, and particularly the family of Shaul in Tiberias. He took us to see a Christian factory which pro­duces electronic equipment, particularly very sophisti­cated anten­nas for radios, for commercial and any other use. If you are known to be a Christian in Israel, you will have a hard time getting a job. Since some of the Christians were skilled electronics engineers, they got together and set up a factory to produce particu­larly high sensi­tivity radio antennas. As we were driving towards the factory, we came up to a cross-road, and a car went by, and Brother Shaul said, “That’s the car!” Then he shared with us his testimony.

He was walking along the road one day, when suddenly the voice of God said to him, “Shaul, jump to the side!” So he jumped in imme­diate obedience to the word of the Lord that came to him. In that split second, a mustard-colored Volvo missed him by just a few inches! It was no accident. The drivers of this mustard-colored Volvo were out to kill him. The people in this mustard-colored Volvo were not unbelievers in the sense that they had no religion, but they were members of what is called in Israel, Yad Ahim, which means “the arm of the brother”; maybe they should say, “the fist of the brother.” It is the militant arm of the Jewish Orthodox faith, and their task is to literally destroy the Christians, and in this case, to kill their leader, Shaul, by running him down and make it appear that he was killed by a car by accident. If it were not for the fact that he was tuned in to the Lord, he would have been dead, and his 7 children would have been without a father. Now I would like to draw your attention to the fact that the people who wanted to kill Shaul are very religious people – the most religious wing of the Orthodox group of Jews in Israel. Isn’t it something to think about, that in the name of religion, they were willing to commit murder? I would say to you that religion is an exceedingly dangerous thing.

It is already dangerous enough to be a Christian in Israel, and you would be in even greater danger if you were a leader. There are about 120 or 130 people who meet together in Tiberias, and you might say it is a tiny number that you could ignore. Yet, the Orthodox Jews recognized that this little group of people posed a serious threat and danger to them because the spiritual power that is in this little group is out of all proportion to their number. There is a bitterness which was reflected by a campaign at that very time, and posters were stuck all over the city with Brother Shaul’s name and address on it, saying, “Watch out for this very dangerous man with this name.” Well, the only danger about Brother Shaul is that he believes in Jesus as the Messiah. He doesn’t carry a submachine gun, he doesn’t have any weapons, he is a threat to no one, but the Orthodox Jews fear him exceedingly. That is why they tried to kill him that day. And isn’t it remarkable that mustard-colored Volvo went by as we drove up to the cross-road in a rented car that day!

Then, as we drove to that Christian factory, Brother Shaul began to pray, because not only is he in danger but also his home – his wife and children were at home. He began to pray for his wife and children immediately, pleading that God would protect them while he was out of the house, as there was no-one to defend them. I was touched that this dear brother had to rely on the Lord moment by moment for the safety of himself and his wife and little children. Do you know this kind of life? What do you and I suffer for the Lord? Very little, if anything at all. Yet, we find it so difficult to be Christians, so hard to stand up for God.

When we arrived, I saw the factory in a compound with a fence around it, and there were holes in virtually every single pane of glass of that factory. They have been attacked with stones, so that not a piece of glass was intact. Such was the bitterness and hostility, and I repeat, not from unbelievers who don’t believe in God, but they are attacked by the most religious people in Israel.

The most dangerous thing is: to be religious, and not spiritual

The message that God lays upon my heart to share with you today is: the most dangerous thing is to be religious and not spiritual. I have touched on this subject before but at a much more superficial level. It is necessary to go a lot more deeply into an analysis of the difference between being religious and being spiritual. I will be sharing from Matthew Chapters 23 to 25, in a kind of a sweeping survey. Often in my preaching, I take one particular verse and I analyze it in depth. This is called exposition of one particular verse. This is very important, but sometimes, we may be in danger of missing the woods for the trees, that means we are so concentrating on the tree that we don’t see the entire forest. Sometimes, it is important to stand back and to have a panoramic view of Scripture. It is like in photography, you take a close-up detailed photograph of something, but there are other times when you stand back and take a wide-angle lens, sometimes even a fish-eye lens, as it is called, so that you don’t only see the individual details but you also see the whole panoramic scene. We will do this from Matthew chapters 23 to 25, which have a very organic connection within it. We cannot read through 3 chapters, but we will read the first couple of verses in Matthew chapter 23, which deals with the very problem of being religious without being spiritual. I will give you a survey of this, and you would need to read these chapters for yourself, and think through this message again, and God will speak to you.

Matthew 23:1-3

There were three major parties in Israel in the New Testament period. You read of the Sadducees and the Pharisees and the Essenes, who were not mentioned by name in the New Testament. The Pharisees were the largest and the strongest group, but the Sadducees were the ones that held political power. The third group were the Essenes from whom we have the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Dead Sea Scrolls come from the Qumran sect. Qumran is the place by the Dead Sea where one of the Essene headquarters was located.

When the temple was destroyed in the year 70, and when the final Jewish revolt was crushed by the Romans in the year 135, the nation of Israel was destroyed. As well, the Sadducees who were in political power and the Essenes were wiped out by the Romans. That left only the Pharisees. So there was no need to distinguish the Pharisees by name anymore, because they were the only surviving group left. The Pharisees are the forerunners of the Orthodox Jews in Israel today. That is something that most people are not quite aware of. The Orthodox Jews, the very people who tried to kill Brother Shaul, are in the spiritual line of descent from the Pharisees. The rabbinic teaching that has come down until today, held by the Orthodox Jews in Israel, is from the Pharisees. The rabbis were in fact the great teachers of the Pharisaic sect. There is one mentioned in Acts, who was called Gamaliel, and his name is mentioned in the rabbinic teaching that we have today.

Hypocrisy is false spirituality

Look at Matthew 23:37 and you will immediately see this connection that the Orthodox Jews who were trying to kill Brother Shaul, were doing exactly the same thing the Pharisees were doing in those days:

They were the same people who killed the prophets, who stoned to death the preachers of God. Those who remained faithful to God were stoned by them.

Earlier on in verse 29, the Lord Jesus says, “Woe to you scribes and Pharisees,” and scribes were simply the scholars or theologians among the Pharisees, some of them belonging to the Pharisaic sect, others belonging to the Sadducees sect. They were later called “rabbi,” which simply means teacher. The fact that the Lord Jesus addressed the theologians together with the Pharisees would indi­cate that they were of the Pharisaic sect.

He says,

We need to try and think it through a little more clearly. How is it that the Pharisees, the most religious people, who were separate from the crowd, who held to the Bible as the Word of God, would kill God’s prophets just as their ancestors did? Does that sound familiar to you? We hold to the Bible as the Word of God, and so do they. And in their zeal in the defense of the Word of God, they were willing to kill Brother Shaul, leader of the Tiberias group, in the same way as they killed the prophets. How dangerous is religion!

In this passage, Matthew 23:13-33 you will see every paragraph begins with these words of the Lord Jesus: “Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” I want to give you a very simple definition of “hypocrisy” in the teaching of the Lord Jesus. In one word, it is “false spirituality.” There is a vital difference between true spirituality and false spirituality. If you and I think we are spiritual, I would like us to be open to the Spirit of God to check our hearts to see whether this spirituality is a true spirituality or a false spirituality. If your spirituality is false, one of these days, you might commit murder in the name of God! Just as the Lord Jesus said to his disciples, “They will kill you and think that they are doing service to God.” That is how dangerous false spirituality is!

You may not go around committing murder yet, but the symptoms of your disease of false spirituality will soon begin to emerge. For example, it will be seen in a critical attitude towards your brothers and sisters. It is this critical attitude that grows in size and scope until one day, you will think you are doing service to God by just eliminating that person altogether. Right now, the thought may be unthinkable in your mind, but one of these days, it is going to be thinkable if you still live in false spirituality.

False spirituality dominates the Church by doctrinal controversy

We are going to look in depth at some of the symptoms of this exceedingly dangerous false spirituality. As I shared in my last message, Luke 21:24, the times of the Gentiles is coming to an end, therefore, we must live in the fullness of the Spirit. Do you know why? As we come towards the end of this particular age, and the end is very near, false spirituality will become more and more dominant in the church with the most harmful results. Brother will go against brother. Father will send his child to death. The child will send the parents to death. You will see all this in Matthew chapter 24 as also in the parallels, Mark chapter 13 and Luke chapter 21. How is it possible to come to a situation in which brother will kill brother? Or if not kill him, actually hand him over to the authorities? It will start with doctrinal controversy. When you become more and more religious, you will move more and more in the direction of false spirituality. One strange symptom is an insistence upon your particular brand of doctrine in such a way that there is no more love for someone who doesn’t agree with you. It’s a very dangerous thing!

“Sickness and poverty have been removed by the death of Christ”

Before we went to Tiberias in Israel, we visited some brothers and sisters in a city called Naharia. Naharia is on the Mediterranean coast near the Lebanese border of Israel. In fact, it is so very close to the Lebanese border that Russian katusha rockets are sometimes fired by the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) right into Naharia. We saw a very sad situation among the believers in Naharia. They were in such conflict with one another that they split. They would not even talk to one another. What was their bone of contention? They quarreled over a particular doctrine which comes from the extreme wing of the Pentecostals.

It is the doctrine that if you are a Christian, God will certainly heal you of every and any sickness that you may have. It is the doctrine of healing so common among Pentecostals, but taken to an extreme. Coupled with that was the doctrine that if you walk with God, you will always prosper materially. In other words, according to these Pentecostal brothers and sisters, when Christ died, sin is removed, so illness is removed, because sin is connected to illness. They also see a direct link between poverty and sin rather than an indirect one, and that is where the exegetical error is. According to them, there is a direct link between sin and poverty and between sin and disease, therefore, when Christ died, he removed sin, sickness and poverty. Therefore, once we become Christians, we should not be poor, but live in comfortable circumstances. Moreover, you should never be sick. If you are sick, it’s because you don’t have faith in the saving work of Christ. You should be ashamed to call yourself a Christian.

So if you are sick, you dare not admit it, because immediately, brothers and sisters will say, “What? You don’t have faith to be healthy? If you don’t have faith to be healthy, how can you have faith to be saved? What? You are poor? Shame on you! Our God owns the cattle on a thousand hills. He owns the gold in every mine, not to mention platinum and diamonds. My heavenly Father is rich, and we are sons of the King. We are “King’s kids”, to use a popular American phrase. How can a King’s kid be poor? It’s because you don’t have faith so you are poor. If you had faith, you would be rich.”

How do you fight an argument like this? This is the kind of doctrine that literally destroyed the Naharia Fellowship.

To put it in another way, to become a Christian is to have the best health insurance in the world. No government in the world can give you this type of insurance. You don’t have to pay your insurance premiums anymore because with God, you will live in good health. Now if you don’t get sick, I’m not quite sure how you will die. Maybe the only way is to get killed in a car accident! But it should not be like that either, because God watches over you as the apple of his eye! Since when would God allow a car to run into the apple of his eye? I wonder exactly how these Christians are going to die! If you die of a heart attack, that’s a disease, isn’t it? It has to do with blood clots and hardening of arteries and other such things, and surely, if you have a heart attack, you cannot say that indicates a healthy condition of heart. And if you have a cerebral hemorrhage, there must be some problem in your arteries. How exactly do you die?

So this doctrine must mean not only will you have eternal life in the future, but you also have physical eternal life now! Hallelujah! This is a very strange situation, isn’t it? Of course, we should all want to rush to become Christians! I imagine the queue in front of such a church must be very long, as people are all applying to get baptized, because the quick way to get rich is to get baptized. This way, you adopt a heavenly Father who owns the cattle on a thousand hills. What kind of teaching is this?!

And yet, these brothers and sisters consider themselves to be “super spiritual.” It’s very easy to go from false spirituality to “super spirituality.” They are the only ones who have genuine faith. Would you be able to show them from Scripture that they were wrong? Would you be able to defend the truth? I wonder how you would protect the unity of the church in the bond of love. Not only this, these super spiritual brethren would immediately say, “You are the people without faith. We are the ones with faith.” Here are some of the signs and symptoms of how dangerous it is – divisions, dissensions, critical spirit, and finally, even murder in God’s name.

No Judgment for Christians?

Matthew chapter 24 tells us that “the times of the Gentiles,” that is, your time and my time is soon to be over. What does that mean in concrete terms? Why should we be concerned? What that means is the Judgment is at hand. You and I are soon going to have to stand before Christ our Judge.

In addition, there is a remarkable teaching among Christians today that Christians don’t have to face any judgment. Read Matthew 25 for yourself, and let no one tell you that there is not going to be any judgment, especially no judgment for Christians. What do you think is the meaning of the Parable of the Goats and the Sheep? Goats and sheep belong to the same family in some sense and yet they are very different. What do you think is in the Parable of the Darnel (tares) and Wheat? Darnel and wheat look very similar to each other. What do you think is the meaning of these passages? What do you think of the five foolish virgins and the five wise virgins? They are both virgins, the difference is one group is foolish and the other is wise. They are both waiting for the Coming of the Lord. Do you think the Lord Jesus is talking about unbelievers with lamps burning and waiting to welcome the Lord back? He is talking about two different kinds of believers. The one are the falsely spiritual, the goats, the darnel, whereas the other are the truly spiritual. Everything depends upon a clear distinguishing today, whether you are a genuinely spiritual or falsely spiritual Christian. You have to look out for these things, and it is so difficult to distinguish.

Biblical guidelines on the difference of being religious and spiritual

1. Concern with the superficial and external

One guideline from Scripture to distinguish the difference between being religious and spiritual is the difference between being super­ficial and deep. In a previous message, we have seen that the falsely spiritual people are the ones who are concerned with external things. As the Lord Jesus says in Matthew 23:23-24,

You pay tithes even for herbs whereas you neglect the important matters of obeying God in justice, mercy and faith. You pay so much attention to the gnat, the tiny mosquito and don’t notice the great camel that you are swallowing. This is the concern with superficial details and overlooking the deep, inward realities.

2. You don’t do the Word of God that you believe

That guideline is true but it is inadequate. And this is why I am pressing forward with this message today if the Lord permits. You can easily say to yourself, “I’m not superficial. I’m concerned about the deep things. I am a deep thinker, not like all those superficial people. Therefore, I can be assured that I am a genuinely spiritual man, not like all those falsely spiritual people.” It’s not so easy to tell. We need to have a sensitivity to the Spirit of God that is lacking in most of us, perhaps almost all of us. I don’t wish that any of you will sit back and feel complacent. Not even I myself dare to feel comfortable. Let me illustrate to you what I mean.

Let us take the attitude regarding the Word of God. Do you believe the Bible is the Word of God? I trust you will say, “I do, every bit of it! I believe in the inerrancy of Scripture. I believe that the Word of God is inspired by God. It is holy, unchangeable, incorruptible. Now you see how orthodox I am! My faith is very genuine!”

I congratulate you. Your faith is indeed very, very much to be admired. But if you think that is proof that your spirituality is not false but genuine, you have not yet understood the teaching of the Lord Jesus. If you read the Hebrew Bible, you will see little hooks and dots, and little curves and corners, these are called “the jots and the tittles,” and the Pharisees believed that every jot and tittle is inspired by God, and they insisted on not changing one bit of it. If you think you believe the Bible to be the Word of God, you are in good company. The Pharisees also believe it with all their heart. Today, the fundamental test of orthodox Christianity is to ask a Christian, “Do you believe the Bible to be the Word of God?” If he can say yes, then you can say, “This is an evangelical Christian.” The statement of faith of most churches today will declare, “We believe in the divinely inspired Word of God. We believe in the inerrancy of Scripture.” Remember that the Pharisees do too, and you know what the Lord Jesus said to them, “Pharisees, hypocrites!”

You would say, “Hey, hold on. Please, be a little polite to me. I have just said that I believe in every word in the Bible and you call me a hypocrite?” That is what the Lord Jesus says. You are not going to be saved by believing that the Bible is inerrant. You will be saved only if you live by every word that comes out of the mouth of God. It is not that you believe the Bible to be of God and holy, but that you live a holy life according to the holy Bible. Does Matthew 23:2-3 not say,

Their faith is absolutely genuine and orthodox as far as the content of dogma is concerned. They are preachers, but when did you last preach the Word of God? You can’t beat them. The Lord Jesus says they are hypocrites because they believe the Bible and that is every reason why they should live it; it’s all the greater condemnation to them that they believe and don’t do it.

Have you read in the Bible about loving brothers and sisters? Do you read it? Yes. Do you believe the Bible? Yes. Do you practice it? Is there one brother and sister in this church that you don’t like, that you hate, that you don’t love? Then you are a self-confessed hypo­crite. There is one example of it.

What about this roommate that you find so irksome, so bothersome, so tiring with all her silly ways of doing things? You will say that you don’t hate her. The Lord Jesus did not say you shall not hate your brother; he says you shall love him. That is a lot more than hating. If there is someone in the church you don’t like, you walk past him. You would think, “I didn’t hate him, I just didn’t look at him.” I’m sorry, but you have broken the commandment to love. It didn’t say you shall not hate your brother; it says you shall love him. That is posi­tive. You have to look at the very person you don’t like and you are going to have to say, “Brother, I…. I was going to say I love you but it got stuck in my throat.” If you cannot say “I love you” by the power of God,” then you are a hypocrite. Your spirituality is false. Can you see what the Lord Jesus is saying?

Do you feel jealousy? When someone is praising another co-worker in your team, maybe another brother or sister in your group, do you think, “What about me? I’m a lot better than him. Don’t you have eyes to see?” Do you feel jealous? If jealousy arises in your heart, how can you say you have fulfilled God’s Word? I would like the Spirit of God to examine your heart.

If someone has offended or wronged you, the Lord Jesus doesn’t ask who is right, who is wrong. He says, “You must forgive your brother.” It doesn’t matter that you were right, and he was wrong. You forgive him. The Lord Jesus teaches, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” If you don’t forgive, you won’t be forgiven by God. Is there someone you haven’t forgiven? If so, your spirituality is false. That is how blunt the Word of God is. It is like a sharp two-edged sword that cuts right through us. It says, “Don’t congratulate yourself because you believe the Bible is the Word of God. You are a hypocrite if you don’t live according to the Word, if you try to water it down and say, “I have fulfilled it.” You cannot do this.

3. Evangelize with zeal as religious activity

What is another test of being a good evangelical Christian today? Another test is: zeal to evangelize. Some Christian will say, “That is surely a good test! I am commanded to love my brother; how can I love him better than preaching the gospel at him?! So I grabbed this person and said, ‘Do you believe the Bible? Do you confess your sins? Believe in God through Jesus today! What? You dare to talk back? This is the Word of God! Confess your sins! Kneel down now!’”

“Do you know how much money I give to the various missionary societies? Do you know how many tracts I have distributed? Do you know how many doors I have knocked on? I witness to my friends, my brothers and sisters, my parents. I leave tracts in strategic places. I even went for a training course on evangelism. Do you talk about practice? I really practice it! Surely, that is proof that I am a spiritual man!”

You are to be congratulated! You can pass the test as an evangelical Christian. And you find yourself in the company of the Pharisees again. The Lord Jesus says in Matthew 23:15,

You will say, “What?! Please, this is getting out of hand! You said if you don’t practice the Bible then you are a hypocrite. Now I am practicing it and you still call me a hypocrite, and not only that, you say I am a child of hell! I’m confused! I fulfill the requirements and I evangelize, and you say I am a child of hell?”

Notice, it is the Lord Jesus who says you are a child of hell. You believe every word, every comma in the Bible, but you are a child of hell. You want to evangelize the whole world, but you are going to make your convert twice as worthy of hell as you are. The Lord Jesus does not mince words, does he? What is wrong with evangelism? There is nothing wrong with evangelism. It is the person who is in the wrong. If by evangelism, we are talking about purveying our doc­trines, our ideas, you can evangelize for the perfectly wrong reason. We can’t even keep up with the evangelistic efforts of the Mormons and the Jehovah’s Witnesses. They can beat almost all of us flat in terms of evangelism. Do you think that they prove to be spiritual because they are so zealous in evangelism? Would you accept that kind of reasoning? If not, then why is it so difficult to see that evangelistic zeal is no evidence of spirituality? It is just the willingness and eagerness to pass on our particular brand of teaching and doctrine. The Pharisees were very anxious to pass on the Pharisaic teaching. They traversed land and sea; they were willing to travel as far as you can go to make one single convert. That is dedication. No expense is spared even for the sake of one convert.

Put in another way, church activity, Christian activity, which is all religious activity is no evidence of genuine spirituality. Don’t think because you are busy in the church, or you are in a leadership role, or that you are even preaching like the Pharisees, or you are evangelizing, that proves anything of your relationship to God. It doesn’t prove anything. That is why I spoke about fullness of the Spirit. Being spiritual has to do with a submission to the teaching of Christ, whom God has established as Lord, allowing God’s Holy Spirit to control your life. Does the Holy Spirit control your life? Or do you run your own life with your own religious programs?

4. Long, even intense prayers

Let us talk about another example, prayer. We won’t talk about evangelism and external activity, but about spiritual life. You would think: “This time I’m going to prove to you I’m spiritual. Do you know how much time I spend in prayer? I won’t tell you out of modesty, but it’s quite a long time. I won’t tell you how much time I spend to read the Bible. I’m a very modest person. Not only do I pray for a considerable time, but the way I pray would also impress you.”

I would like you to be able to go to Israel and see the Orthodox Jews in prayer. They would put you and me to shame in terms of the apparent intensity of prayer. Have you ever seen Orthodox Jews pray? At the Wailing Wall, the whole person is involved in prayer with such intensity that his whole body is swaying in prayer. No pop singer can compare with them. They sing with their whole body, and they pray with their whole body! They do the same thing at the synagogue. We stood in the synagogue and watched them pray. Christians are so formal. They just close their eyes, and they don’t even put their hands together. They are expressionless! For the Jews, the expression on their face shows intensity, the whole body is swaying, and the length of time is impressive. I lose on every count. They win! So how do you prove your spirituality?

If you think you pray for a long time, the Pharisees can keep up with you. We think it is being spiritual to pray a long time. We tend to say, “This great servant of God prays for 4 hours in the morning!” There is competition for length of time in prayer! But the Lord Jesus warns us about the danger of long prayers in Matthew 6:7,

How do they pray? Prayer becomes empty because you keep repeat­ing it. Some Christians pray “Our Father who are in heaven” five or ten times. You may say, “I don’t do that. I’ve got a long prayer list of people to ask God to bless. Is this the way to pray?

Some Christian may say, “Every missionary society sends me a prayer list, and I have so many prayer lists, I have to hurry! So I put my hand on all these lists and say, “God, I have no time to pray for them today, please bless them all!” It may seem funny to us, but I have seen it done. I have even seen it demonstrated on TV. There is a pile of prayer lists in a box and the man puts his hand on the pile of prayer requests, and he has prayed for all of them at one stroke. Didn’t the Lord say do not heap up empty phrases? It’s done all in one stroke. How do we judge from prayer that we are spiritual or not? If we cannot even tell from prayer, how do we decide this issue? What do you think? We are running out of criteria.

We looked at the inspiration of Scripture, and we found that Pharisees believed the same. They read the law but they didn’t prac­tice it, and neither do we even though we read our Bible. We looked at evangelism, we found that the Pharisees do the same. We look at prayer and we find that this time we are even worse off; we can’t even keep up with them! I’m not in the least exaggerating, brothers and sisters. You really have to see the Orthodox Jews in prayer to be impressed. And I’m not ridiculing them at all. The intensity, the sincerity, and the length of prayer, I honestly tell you, you can’t beat them. If you think that the Pharisees are just ridiculous, you haven’t understood the situation. The Lord Jesus says, “You hypocrites!” And you say, “God, I really give up. I don’t know where to go from here.”

5. Give money without love

Let’s talk about one more criterion: giving money. You said the Lord Jesus’ command is to love your brother as yourself, now I’m giving. Surely, we’ve got one clear proof that I am spiritual by the amount I am willing to give to the needy. Surely, I’m on safe ground. Even then, you’re not on safe ground. 1 Corinthians 13:3 says, “If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.” I not only give my possessions but also my very self, and yet if I don’t have love, it is futile. It’s not the doing but the motive for doing it.

Here we come to something that is exceedingly important to discern. It’s not the praying that matters. It’s the motive and the attitude in your prayer. It’s not whether you believe the Bible to be the Word of God but with what attitude you believe this. Do you take the Bible so that you hit someone over the head with it? I believe in this but you don’t. I’m better than you. It’s the wrong motive, the wrong reason for believing. Or you say, “I believe in evangelism.” What is your mo­tive for evangelism? We need to go deeper otherwise we are going to be trapped into a false spirituality which is going to destroy the church.

On the Day of Judgment, you might have the terrible shock, and this is the shock I want to spare you of, when the Lord says to you, “You are a goat. Stand to this side.” “I’m a goat? How come?! Why are you passing this judgment on us?” That will be a shock. Notice in Matthew 25, the goats thought they were sheep, didn’t they? Do you see what is the result for the goats? “Depart from me into everlasting condemnation.” It’s not a matter of losing some reward. The Lord Jesus is talking about eternal salvation. Read for yourself Matthew 25:46 We are not talking about whether or not you can win some reward from the Lord. It’s a question of being saved or lost. And we are too confident that we are not goats. The greatest sign of super­ficial spirituality is to have confidence that we are all right, and even to think that this kind of assurance comes from God. Paul says again and again, “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling.”

Have the spiritual quality of life of light that lasts until the Lord’s Coming

So how can we be sure? Are we left with no assurance? No, we do have a certain assurance even in the midst of fear and trembling. There is only one way to be sure in Matthew 25:1-13. We have no time to go through this whole parable, the Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins, but I would like you to let God speak to your heart from this. In this parable, you will remember that there are virtually no differences whatever between the wise and foolish virgins except on one point. The only difference was that in one case, the oil ran out, and in the other case, the oil didn’t. That was the only difference. What does that mean to you?

Both groups are virgins, people who believe in, and are welcoming the bridegroom. They both wait; they both suffer the same weak­nesses and infirmities. In the long wait, both groups fell asleep. One group is not more righteous than the other. Both groups have the same sort of oil, yet one group was able to enter into the feast, the other group was excluded. The only difference was the oil ran out. Now this parable can only make sense on one condition: The only way to enter the wedding feast is to have the lights burning. No lights, no feast. It doesn’t matter whether the lights were burning before. It only matters that the lights are still burning when the bridegroom arrives. Do you see the point?

If it doesn’t matter whether you have a burning light or not, then when your light burns out, you don’t have to go and buy some more oil. Just say, “Lord, excuse me, I’m sorry the lights are out. It’s a small matter. I’ve come to attend the wedding. Do you want me to attend the wedding or not? I’m here. I’m not like those who made excuses, who did not want to attend the wedding. Do you remember the other parable that you told, Lord? Those people didn’t want to come to the wedding. Look, I’m here! I’m coming to the wedding. The only minor point is that the light has gone out.” If these virgins could enter the wedding feast without the light, there is no need to get more oil. I wonder if you are getting the message.

But why do the lights go out? Well, it’s simple. Why do you ask me such a simple question? The oil ran out. Well then, what does the oil signify? Oil in the Bible is a symbol of the Holy Spirit. The wise ones lived in the continual fullness of the Spirit. There is no change in belief on the part of the foolish virgins, but the oil ran out. They were no longer living in the fullness of the Spirit. The moment you don’t live in the fullness of the Spirit, you are going to sink into false spirituality. You will still be religious. As time went on, there was a burning up of that spiritual reserve that they have. It went lower and lower and finally, there is no more. When the Lord Jesus comes, we are still going to have to shine, and if your light is not shining anymore at that time, you are not going to enter. The Lord Jesus told us in Matthew 5, light is the spiritual quality of our lives manifested in the way we live, in the deeds that we do, by the power of God’s Holy Spirit. This sums up the true assurance we should have.

Live depending on the power of God’s Spirit moment by moment

There is the difference between the spiritual and the unspiritual man, or the falsely spiritual man. The religious man, the hypocrite, the man with false religion, does not live in the continuing mercy and power of God. He does not live as a beggar, poor in spirit, depending upon God moment by moment. Have you ever heard of a beggar who really knows his state, going around criticizing the other beggar? We are all beggars alike. He would not say, “How come you’ve got two patches there? You are a much worse person than I am. I’m better, I’ve only got one patch.” You would say this is ridiculous – one patch, three patches, five patches, you’re both beggars, what are you talking about? Why does the Lord Jesus say, “Judge not”? It’s because the moment you judge, you are no longer poor in spirit; you no longer depend on God’s grace. You are no longer living in the fullness of the Spirit. Can you understand this? That is why a person who lives in constant humble dependence upon the Lord has a quality of life that is quite distinct. When you talk with him, you notice a distinctive quality: he is humble. It’s not because he tries to be hum­ble, but because he knows he depends upon the mercy and grace of God every moment. He depends upon the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit. It’s the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit that makes you genuinely spiritual. But once you no longer depend upon the Holy Spirit, your oil burns out, your light goes out as far as God is con­cerned. You substitute this with more and more religious activity to cover your spiritual poverty. You become more and more dogmatic in your attitude. You become more critical of others. Indeed, you might even be willing to give more money because you are not giving spiritually. These are the things you must watch out for step by step.

I think of Brother Shaul and the other Christians in Israel, with their windows smashed, their church burned down. In Jerusalem, the Baptist Church today is a burned-out ruin. Who burned down the church? The religious people. They threw a petrol bomb into the church and burned down the whole building. They tried to burn down another church but that time, the fire did not catch on. I emphasize that it’s not unbelievers who are the most dangerous enemies of the spiritual people. It is the religious people. You and I have to make a choice as to whether we are going to be religious or spiritual in this much deeper sense; whether our hearts are totally open to doing God’s will by the power of his Holy Spirit.

Let us be quiet in prayer.