What is True Christianity? (Episode 2)

Welcome to our Tuesday's broadcast of the Gospel Truth. Today I'm going to continue what I started yesterday talking about what is true Christianity. What does it take to be a Christian? And I tell you this is something that a lot of people think they've got nailed down and yet when you look at scripture there are some things that Jesus said in scripture that are contrary to the way that true Christianity is presented today. And so I gave an introduction to this yesterday. I'm going to talk about it again today. I've got this little book entitled The New You which the first half of this book is talking about what it means to be born again, become a new person. The second half of this book is the Holy Spirit and it'll talk about what is the baptism of the Holy Spirit, includes speaking in tongues and things like this. And we've given away hundreds of thousands of these to people all over the world. And so this is our offer today. We have this in English and in Spanish and we'll be giving out more information at the end of the program. But I tell you it's absolutely essential that you get it nailed down what is truly a Christian. Your eternal salvation depends on it. And yesterday I was using this passage out of John chapter 8 and in verse 30 it says, and as he spake these words, talking about Jesus, as he spake these words, many believed on him. But look what he went on to say in verse 31. Then said Jesus to those Jews, which believed on him, if you continue in my word, then are you my disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. He was saying it's not enough just to believe that Jesus was the Messiah. You have to do more than just believe that he was the Messiah. You have to do more than just believe that Jesus is the son of God. The scripture says in James chapter 2 verse 19, you believe that there's one God, you do well. The devils also believe and tremble. But won't you know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead. That's about as clear as you can make it, that you have to do more than the devil has done. You have to do more than just acknowledge that God exists or even acknowledge that Jesus is the son of God. You have to commit yourself. There has to be action on your part. And so this is what Jesus said. If you continue in my word, then you will truly be a disciple. Boy, there is so much I could say about this. You know, let me read another passage of scripture to you. This is over in Matthew chapter 28. And this is the last thing that Jesus said to his disciples before he was received up into heaven. It's often called the great commission. But in Matthew chapter 28 verse 19, it says, go ye therefore and teach all nations. If you look this up in any of the modern translations, it'll say, go and make disciples because the word for teach there is to talk about, uh, make a disciple is what it's talking about. So it's go therefore and teach all nations or make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the father and of the son and of the Holy ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever. I've commanded you in low. I'm with you all way, even unto the end of the world. Amen. And so Jesus said not to go and make converts, but to go and make disciples teaching them to observe all things. Did you know somewhere down the line, I don't know how it happened, but people have changed what we call the gospel. And there are many people that say, well, the gospel is just telling people about heaven and hell and that you have to accept Jesus and make him your savior to get into heaven. Now that's the gospel. Now beyond that, you can talk about prosperity. You can talk about God healing. You can talk about God giving you peace and solving marriages, you know, problems in marriage and dealing with your children and all of these other things. But that's not the gospel. The gospel is telling people just about that they are sinners and that they've got to repent or else turn or burn heaven or hell. And you got to make a decision right now. Well, I believe that those things are involved in it. Yes, there is a heaven and yes, there is a hell and that we deserve judgment. And Jesus took our judgment so that if we receive him, we can be born again. I actually believe that that's a part of the gospel, but specifically the word gospel means good news. Matter of fact, I actually read one commentary that they said that out of all of the writings that we have in Greek, you know, from back during the time of the Bible, that there was the Greek word, I can't pronounce it, but it's translated gospel. It was only used twice outside of the Bible. And the reason is because it meant good news, but actually more than just good news. It was nearly too good to be true news. It was such a superlative. It was such a hyperbole that people didn't use that word very often because in this fallen world, there's very little that's nearly too good to be true. But when it came to Jesus, they started using this word all of the time because this is exactly what Jesus did. Yes, there's a heaven and yes, there's a hell. And because of our sins, every one of us deserve to go to hell. But the nearly too good to be true news is that God himself became a man and he lived for 33 years on this earth and suffered temptation and all of the things that we are subject to, but he did it as a sinless person. And then he offered himself to God as a sacrifice and all of God's judgment, all of God's judgment, not some of it, all of God's judgment against mankind's sins came upon Jesus. John chapter 12 verse 32. And when that happened, all you have to do is just believe that Jesus took your sins and you have to believe and receive his grace and you access it by faith. I quoted that verse yesterday, Romans five, two, that we have access by faith into this grace, wherein we stand. Grace is what God did for us through Jesus, but it doesn't just automatically work in our behalf. You can make void the grace of God. You can make it in vain is what Paul said in Galatians chapter two, verse 21, first Corinthians chapter 15. Paul said in his grace, it was bestowed upon me was not in vain. Did you know God by grace has provided for every single person's salvation, but you've got to access that grace by faith. Grace is what God does. Faith is our positive response to God's grace. And it's how you reach out and take it. You know, when I was just eight years old, I remember being in vacation Bible school in the Baptist church. And we had like 600 kids in this vacation Bible school. The auditorium was full and they marched us in according to the classes that we were in. Normally I sat on the second row. We, my family were like skunks. We had our own pew, amen, in church. I mean, this was our pew. Nobody sat there. We, that was our place and it was right on the front. But when I came in with all of these other kids into vacation Bible school, they sat me on the very back row and that's, you know, where I was sitting. So this man stood up and he took a dollar and he held this dollar up and he said, I'll give this dollar bill to the first kid that comes up here and takes it. Did you know back when I was eight years old, a dollar was a lot of money and man, we, everybody wanted it. And I thought of all times to be sitting on the back row, this was just terrible. And I mean, instantly he had 20 or 30 kids around him just saying, I want it, I want it. And he just kept his hand in the air like this, like he ignored everybody. And he kept saying, I'll give this dollar bill to the first kid that comes up here and takes it. He must've said that three or four times. And I was sitting there on the back row thinking, well, what's he, what's he doing? You know, every one of those kids wants it. And finally it dawned on my lightning fast mind what he was saying. And so I got out from the back row, ran all the way to the front, pushed through all of those kids. This guy had his arm up like this. And I reached up and grabbed his arm and climbed up his side. And I grabbed that dollar bill out of his hands. And did you know, he looked at me and he said, now he looked at all those other kids and he said, all of you wanted it, but that's the first kid that came up here and took it. And he was using this to illustrate that God has provided salvation. He has already paid for the sins of the whole world, but you have to take it. You can't just acknowledge it. All of those kids wanted it, but they didn't take it. There's a lot of people. I assume that if you're watching a Christian broadcast, you have some interest in God, some acknowledgement that God exists, but that doesn't mean that you have taken advantage of his offer. Let me go back to this passage of scripture right here. It says that these people believed on him, but he said, if you continue in my word, then are you my disciples? Indeed, Jesus in Matthew 28, 19 and 20 told us to go and make disciples, not to make converts, but somewhere down the line, Christians got to thinking all it counts is just getting people born again so that when they die, they'll go to heaven. And because of it, we haven't been teaching them to observe all things. We haven't been teaching them to be disciples. Did you know, it's hard to tell if a person really has committed their life to the Lord by just them saying that they're a Christian. It's as simple as that because on the cross, Jesus was hung in between two thieves. One of the thieves railed on him. The other one defended him and finally said, master, remember me when you come into your kingdom. That's all he said. He didn't pray a sinner's prayer. He didn't have time to go to church. He didn't go through any sacraments. He didn't get water baptized. He just said, remember me when you come into your kingdom. And Jesus told him today, you will be with me in paradise. That man didn't go through any of the religious things. So I'm not saying that you have to do all of these things to earn salvation. It's as simple as that thief who just said, remember me. It's that simple, but you can't tell whether a person is really meaning that from their heart or not. But you know what? You can tell if a person is a disciple. I believe that there's lots of people who maybe have made a commitment to the Lord and are born again and headed to heaven because they don't know what the word says. And the Bible says, you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. If you don't know the truth that God has delivered us from sickness and from poverty and from depression, and that God will supply all these needs. If people have never heard those truths, which there's a lot of denominations, Christian denominations today, who have chosen to reject and to say that those things don't happen today, that that was only in Bible days, but God doesn't heal today. God doesn't prosper. You've got to go through grief and sorrow and God puts problems on you to make you better. If you're listening to those lies, well, then you aren't going to have faith. And so you may not be experiencing any of those victories, but it's possible that you truly did make Jesus your Lord. And if you were to die right now, you would go to heaven, but you aren't experiencing the victory that he purchased for us. Galatians chapter one, verse four says that he came to deliver us from this present evil world, not just the one to come, but in this world. Jesus even said in Matthew chapter six, pray thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. You don't have to wait until heaven until you start experiencing victory and power. You can pray thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. In heaven, there's not sickness, there's not poverty, there's not depression, there's not all of these things. You can be delivered here to the degree that you renew your mind and become a disciple. But somewhere down the line, the church just chose to say, well, we aren't going to teach about total victory and all these things. We're just going to tell people how they can get born again, go to heaven. And I'm sure that there's some people that receive that and are truly born again. If they were to die, they'd go to be with the Lord. But there's also a whole bunch of people that have gone through the motions that I don't believe truly possess a relationship with God. Again, I'm not their judge. I can't say, but I can say this, that they aren't disciples. You may not be able to tell if you've truly been born again, because it's as simple as saying, remember me when you come into your kingdom. But I can tell if you're a disciple or not, because a disciple, it goes on to say, it says, if you continue in my word, then are you my disciples indeed. And that's not the end of the sentence. It goes on to say, and you shall know the truth. That's a disciple is a person that continues in the word until you know the truth and the truth shall make you free. If you are a disciple, it can be manifest in your life. You can see it in your life. There will be freedom in your life from depression, from sorrow, from bitterness, from unforgiveness, from sickness, from poverty and on and on. If you're a disciple, you will be manifesting this inner change on the outside. And so it's easy to tell if a person is a disciple. It's not easy to tell if a person is a convert or not. And the Lord didn't tell us to go make converts. He told us to make disciples. You know, when I first got really turned on to the Lord, I was raised in the Baptist church and the Baptist church was really pushing evangelism. Matter of fact, in our Baptist church, they very seldom taught you anything except how to be saved. I remember many sermons that they taught from Acts chapter three about Peter and John going into the temple at the hour of prayer. And they found a man that was lame from his mother's womb. And they said, silver and gold have I none, but such as I have give I thee. And they grabbed him by the hand and lifted him up and immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength. And he went walking and leaping and praising God. I heard that message who knows how many times. And then when I received the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit started speaking to me directly instead of just me listening to other people, but I started receiving from God. I was absolutely shocked to read Acts chapter three and think that this man was physically healed because it was always spiritualized. They would say we were like lepers before we come to the Lord, we were crippled and we weren't able to get through life. And so when Jesus comes, he forgives you of your sins and you begin to now start being a new person. They never took it and taught that there was healing and that there was power in the name of Jesus. They related everything to only being born again. And again, being born again is absolutely essential. I'm not minimizing that, but I'm saying that that's not what Jesus told us to go preach. He didn't tell us to go preach how people could just be born again and then get them saved and stuck. Man, we were supposed to teach people how to be disciples. And so, because that's what I was raised in, when I had this encounter with the Lord, I started going out and witnessing to everything that moved. I grabbed people coming out of a 7-Eleven and would witness to people. I'd stand in restaurants and stand up and pray loud enough for everybody in the restaurant to hear my prayer. And I'd tell them, you need your food blessed too. I was obnoxious, but that's the pattern that I was given. And anyway, a lot of things happened, but I began to be frustrated because I would pray with people, have them pray a prayer with me, and I'd go back and see them six months later. And if I hadn't been the one to prayed with them, there was zero evidence of any change in their life. I think many of them just prayed with me to get me off their back. I don't think they were truly born again. And then I came across a group that was teaching discipleship and they used two examples. One of those examples, they said, if you took a checkerboard, there's 64 squares on a checkerboard. And if you put a grain of rice on the first checkerboard and then doubled it on the second and then doubled it again, and you doubled it on every square. Did you know, by the time you got to the 64th square on that checkerboard, you would have enough grains of rice to cover the continent of India two feet deep. And people think that's impossible. If you were only halfway there on the 63rd square, it would double. That's the way that discipleship is. See, if you took a person that wasn't just leading people to the Lord and telling them how to get saved, which again, I'm not saying that that's wrong and I'm not minimizing that. You must be born again is what Jesus said. I'm going to get to those verses. I'm not saying that we shouldn't emphasize people being born again, but we shouldn't stop with that. We should go until they become disciples. And if you took a person that led a thousand people a year to the Lord, which would be exceptional. I don't know anybody who does that. Maybe some of these evangelists that have a thousand people born again in one crusade or something, but the average person, I don't know anybody that leads a thousand people a year to the Lord. That would be close to three people per day that you would lead to the Lord in a year's time. But at the end of say 35 years, a typical ministry for many ministries, you'd have 35,000 Christians. Did you know that that would be a drop in the bucket compared to the size of some of our larger cities? We probably have more than 35,000 Christians in most of these larger cities. And yet it's not changing our culture. But if you took the same person and instead of just trying to get people born again, and instead he would lead a person to the Lord and then shut himself up with that person for six months and make a disciple out of them and just teach them to observe all things that Jesus said. And if you poured yourself into that person at the end of six months, you'd only have two disciples versus 500 converts by the other method. And then at the end of one year, each one of those people see after they're now discipled, they would each go out and lead another person to the Lord and spend six months discipling them. At the end of one year, you'd only have four disciples versus a thousand converts by the evangelism method. But if you just continue to double every six months, did you know at the end of 12 and a half years, somewhere around 12 and a half to 13 years, you would evangelize more than the population of the world if you did it through discipleship versus just making converts. You know, if you would just think about it this way, how many of you have seen somebody who claimed to be a Christian and yet they did terrible things. Matter of fact, we've seen ministers who claimed to be a spokesman for God and then they wind up committing adultery. They wind up stealing money and going to prison, things like this. Because those people weren't true disciples, they were only converts, but they weren't observing all things that God told them. They've actually turned many people away from the Lord. Many of us have heard people say things like, well, I would have been a Christian if I hadn't meant one. That's what Mahatma Gandhi said. He was in exile in Africa and he read the new testament and he actually was convinced that Jesus was the Christ. And he went to a church to make a profession of his faith. But of course he was, uh, you know, his complexion was dark. He was black and he went to a white church where these white missionaries would not allow him into the church because he was of different skin color. And he said, I would have been a Christian if I hadn't meant one. And he went on to lead 750 million Indians to independence. And he could have influenced them for the gospel, but he didn't because he meant some people who were probably Christians. Maybe they were converts, but they weren't disciples. They weren't representing God correctly. And they turned a man who influenced 750 million people against the Lord. That's amazing. I'm telling you, we were, we are called to be disciples, not just converts. Christianity isn't just having Christian rules and regulations and code of conduct. It's about a personal relationship with the Lord, which begins with becoming a convert where you make your commitment to the Lord, but then you continue in the word of God until you get free. And if you haven't continued to the point that you're free, it's possible that you're a convert, but you are not a disciple. And the Lord called us to be disciples. He says, if you continue in my word, then are you my disciples indeed, and you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. I want to thank you for watching our YouTube channel and the programs that we have available. And I want to encourage you that you can get the materials that we've offered. Also, I'd like to encourage you to like our program and subscribe to what we're doing. We have a lot of material and I believe it'll be a real blessing to you. So thank you for being a part of it. God bless you.