Rookie Mistakes Series: #1 Withholding the Gospel (Part A)

These standards must come with convictions. A conviction is something you are convinced of. You believe it.

You don't have standards and rules just because you're told to have them. You have them because you believe them. And if you don't understand them, you believe them because of the one who gave them to you. And then the doors open up for exploration and development.

These are natural processes. So even if they resent that your standards are different from theirs, they will respect. For more information about Cross Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. But for now, let's join Pastor Rick in Matthew Chapter 7 as he begins his message, Withholding the Gospel. If you have your Bibles, please turn to Matthew's Gospel Chapter 7, the Sermon on the Mount. That means buckle up, because the Sermon on the Mount is not very kind to the flesh. Our carnal nature, that part of us that wants to sin and will sin if it's given the chance. Verse 6, and if you would stand for the reading of God's Word, we will read Matthew Chapter 7, Verse 6.

Do not give what is holy to the dogs, nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces, withholding the gospel. That is the title of consideration. But let's define what I mean by rookie mistakes. We all make mistakes.

There's no way around that, and there's no mistaking that. But it is our high task to drastically reduce the amount of mistakes that we make. Now there are amateur mistakes, and again from time to time we make them, but not so much if we work hard. We do eliminate the amateur ones.

They're the easiest to avoid. But a rookie mistake is one that is made by someone who is experienced and knows better, and yet they do something that they knew they should not have done or should have caught. And we can hear ourselves say, when we make a rookie mistake, I knew better.

I can't believe I did that. If you look online and you see the poster that we have on Facebook for this series, it is accompanied by the Leaning Tower of Pisa, because that is a rookie mistake concerning civil engineering. Somebody made a basic mistake. It took advanced engineers to correct or stabilize the mistake, but if you're going to build, all builders know you have to have a solid foundation all the way around the structure.

And they failed there, leaving the builders saying, I can't believe we did that. And as a Christian, I hope that I reduce the rookie mistakes. It matters. It matters very much, especially when you attach it to the text that we just considered a moment ago. We do not want to justify criticisms. We don't want someone to say, you should have known better, and we say, you're right.

Although, again, it happens from time to time, it should not happen all the time, but unfortunately, in Christianity, too many of us make the rookie mistakes routinely. And there are several reasons. Some of it is pride.

Some of it is self-stubborness, insistent and stubbornness. Some is ignorance, and hopefully these are the things that we correct in our lives when we are exposed to the preaching of the word. Jesus said to them, do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all parables? In other words, he wanted his disciples, his followers, those who loved him, to understand him enough.

That's what he was looking for. So when he says, again in John 6, he says, the words that I speak to you are spirit and they are life. When I talk to you, when I'm telling you things, this is all about man and God, you.

And it is the right way. It is life, not death, not destruction. The thief, he comes to steal and to kill and to destroy, but the word of God comes to bring life. And sincerely wanting to save souls is no excuse for violating the rules that the soul saver, that is the Lord, has established.

He does the soul saving. We are to do the obeying and not take things upon ourselves. If I'm going to get these lives around me saved, I must be bound by rules. I must know what works and what does not work.

I must consider who tells me it works and does not work. I must obey the Lord. You want to save souls?

You should. If you say you are a born again Christian, if you say you are a believer in Jesus Christ, I don't think there's any way you can say, I have my salvation, I don't care about anybody else. I think it's the other way around. I think we say, I have my salvation, I care about everybody else. I want to be used by God to reach as many people as I can. All right.

The formula is, to me, not very complicated. If you want to be used to save souls, be blameless enough. We all cannot be blameless. None of us can, completely.

But we can be blameless enough. Be approved by God. Follow His word. Rightly divide His word.

Open it up. Don't just take things upon yourselves by presumption. Be a student of scripture. Listen, pay attention, develop what you believe and learn how to articulate it. That will make you ready. Be blameless enough. Be approved unto God. Be ready.

In season, out of season, that pretty much covers all the time that we have here in this life. Knowing our message. Knowing it enough. The Gospel is not this deep, deep complicated thing to share. The Bible can go deep as you want it to go.

It will always go deeper than we can go. But the basic message of evangelism, of saving souls, is very simple. And we must not feel that we have to go to seminary or have a commentary on every single book of the Bible before we are ready to share our faith. Sharing of the faith is sharing of the faith. You tell the people that are before you about the one you love and why you love Him.

It does not have to take long at all. I think many times we are afraid of their questions or their challenges. Which I would encourage you to not be too moved by because as a rule, those half-baked false defenses they will throw up, the Lord will help you with it. Now, I am not telling you things that I have not lived myself in this case. I have spent a good part of my life in industrial construction where I had so much opportunity to witness, to share my faith. In fact, as a pastor now, having somewhat a linear life from home to church and the stops that are associated with the church, I am almost always around believers now. And I look back at that time in my life and I say, I had so many lives to preach the gospel to.

And I did. God opened the door. Ninety-nine percent of the time, that one time, the one time that I recall taking it upon myself to share the gospel with somebody, as opposed to my standard method of waiting for them to initiate it.

The one time, it wasn't a disaster. The person did not get upset or anything like that. They simply just weren't interested and changed the subject. And I knew instantly, this was not the leading of the spirit, this was me.

I wanted to finish and follow up what I started the day before with this person and so I brought it up. But as a rule, the rule for me was, I will not preach Christ unless the door opens. And it would usually open with someone saying something like, what did you do Sunday?

I went to church. And if they said anything else about that, then I would then start sharing with them usually what the message was or other things about Christ. But I always was determined to not cast pearl before swine because I thought that was, and I still do, a principle of scripture. And we're going to open that up now, but before I do one more line, be blameless enough, be approved unto God, be ready, and be led because you're fed the word of God. Be led by the spirit of God that abides in you. If you believe the New Testament teaches this and emphasizes it, then you have to develop it.

It's going to take participation. You're going to have to adhere to what God says or at least desire to do it. I have learned that having high principles eventually brings unpleasant experiences because of those principles. You have a high standard, it's going to be challenged.

Satan's going to come your way at some point. As a pastor, you would like to have a pastor that sets policies because the Lord has directed him to set those policies in his particular field of ministry. In this church, for example, in the sanctuary, we try to keep the sanctuary as a distinct environment that there's no place like this on earth. We don't allow folks to bring sandwiches in, unless you're going to share them.

We don't allow people to bring water in. I mean, here a swig, there a swig, everywhere a swig, swig. It's a distraction to what's going on. Surely you can watch with me one hour. Jesus said, could you not watch one hour? Now, there are those that want to pass.

Well, I'm sorry, we give you a pass, we've got to give everybody a pass. You begin to erode the principles, the rules, the policies, the directives from the throne. We all, we all will have to have these principles in our life if we're going to be effective in sharing Jesus Christ, which we all want to do. So that one policy, okay, no water, the initial, you know, the core group of believers, all right, we're with you pastor. And then as time goes on, it's challenged because we want to bring people into the house of God. We want to feed them.

We would like them to stay if God is bringing them here. But another policy is we don't grow the church ever. That is the exclusive role of the Holy Spirit. We get these things in the mail, grow your church.

It's not, it's not a man-made enterprise. The Lord added to the church such as those who were being saved, not men added to the church. Now we have to be blameless in this before the Lord. We're not trying to dismantle the church either. But we have our directives, we follow them, and we should have this as individual Christians, rules of sharing the faith.

But we make these rookie mistakes and the whole thing falls down. Matthew 26 verse 33, Peter answered and said to him, Even if all are made to stumble because of you, I will never be made to stumble. What a high and noble cause, Peter.

Amen, brother. If everybody falls, 10,000 at my right hand and 1,000 at my left, if they all fall, it shall not come near me. Well, Satan hears that, he says, we're going to see about that. We are going to see. And of course, Peter did, because it was pride-based, Peter did stumble. Isaiah the prophet had to deal with those who did not want the rules, they did not want the precepts, they mocked the prophet, they mocked the Bible teachers, our precept must be upon precept, line must be upon line, here a little, there a little, is he going to talk to us like little children?

That's what they said. The prophet called them out on it. It is precept upon precept, it is rule upon, because what is the antithesis, what is the opposite?

Lawlessness, helter-skelter, everybody's doing what they want to do. Impulse becomes a sacred cow in this Christianity that we know if the intentions are good. In other words, you don't have to wait for the Holy Spirit, if you feel it, brother, just do it because the cause is good.

That becomes a sacred cow, it takes many hours to bring it down, it is wrong, it is not scriptural. We're not commanded to be impulsive, we're commanded to be led by the Spirit. And that is not synonymous with being emotionally driven. No matter how good the cause is, it's going to take discipline. Well, what other kind of troops are successful against other troops who are disciplined? See, Satan's forces are disciplined. Jesus said a house divided cannot stand. Satan's not going to cast out Satan, he has his agenda, he's going to stick to it.

You better have yours then. If you're going to match what he is doing and be effective against it, you better have your principles in place. Casting out the Gospel without the Spirit is common and ill-advised. In fact, Jesus uses very strong words, we'll come back to our text.

Well, maybe now would be a good time to be reminded of it. Do not give what is holy to the dogs nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet and turn and tear you in pieces. I'd say he's pretty serious in that statement. I don't think he was saying, as he moved on with his sermon, forget about that point I made back then.

I didn't mean it. He meant every word of it and it is up to us to find out where it belongs in our lives. Precepts, rules, principles, they form within us our useful approaches to lost souls, to doing the business of the Lord. Without a purpose, without rules, without standards, without these teachings from the Scripture, can we count for anything in the world? What can we do for the kingdom if we have nothing that binds us? Scoffers, they will come along and they will encounter these high intentions that we have.

They will laugh, they will pretend to mock and they will sneer. But at the one that has standards, they will still respect nonetheless. These standards must come with convictions. A conviction is something you are convinced of. You believe it.

You don't have standards and rules just because you're told to have them. You have them because you believe them. And if you don't understand them, you believe them because of the one who gave them to you. And then the doors open up for exploration and development.

These are natural processes. So even if they resent that your standards are different from theirs, they will respect. They will in their heart respect and that gives opportunity for them to hear you when the Holy Spirit opens the door to share the Gospel. Again, I'm not sharing something that I've read in books as far as its application goes. This is something that I get from the Scripture and I've been allowed to apply it and I find that it works. And each individual has to make some adjustments, not violations, adjustments because of their personality, the circles that they find themselves in.

But the basic principles are the same and if you mess with the foundation, your tower will lean and fall. We get these things not from organizations or seminaries, higher education, theories, programs, activities. These can never make up or match the leading of the Holy Spirit. We know Billy Graham, that great evangelist, now in the kingdom. Billy Graham had a colleague in the faith, Charles Templeton, and they both were preaching the Gospel and saving souls. Templeton decided he needed higher education in the faith and he went on to Princeton University because it wasn't good enough being in the Spirit leading people to Christ.

I have to have an education, I have to have credentials, I have to be accredited. Someone bigger than me, in my mind, has to approve me. Well, be approved unto God. Well, he did go to Princeton and soon after became a flaming apostate. They stole his faith because having begun in the Spirit, he did not think it was worth being perfected in the Spirit.

It is a rookie mistake. It is right here in the Scriptures and it's been here in the Scriptures for 2,000 years. And yet it's ignored and passed by because of what?

I don't know. So effective is the Holy Spirit's work in our lives that Satan is devoted to hurling everything at it to stop it so that people don't get saved. Strengthen the saved pastor, reach for the lost.

That's true for the pastor and that's true for the individual Christian. Strengthen your own faith so that you can be a strength to others. Iron sharpens iron. What an abrasive process that is, iron sharpening iron. It can be painful sometimes. Billy Sunday, who was an evangelist many decades ago, I quote this often enough.

He says, settle the question very early, that your life shall be directed by principles and not by impulse. How accurate is that? I don't go by the impulse rack at the store. You know, right at the checkout. Ooh, batteries.

Ooh, another flashlight. Do you really need it? It's impulsive. Now they have popcorn, soda, candy bars, everything that is just going to appeal to the emotion. You didn't go to the store to get that. Who goes to the store and says, excuse me, what do you have on your impulse rack?

You'll find out, that's what they'll, you'll find out and I'm sure you'll get something. Impulse has something to do with why our text is violated and is a rookie mistake. And so we now go back to Matthew chapter 7 verse 6. Do not give what is holy to the dogs, nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet and turn and tear you in pieces. The thought of people responding to holiness or not responding to holiness as dogs and hogs has got to get anybody's attention.

I mean, when you first read this verse or you read it fresh as we're doing this morning, what stands out to you as you read this? Well, I don't want to be the dog and I don't want to throw to the dog. I don't want to be the hog and I don't want to feed the hog.

I don't want to be torn in pieces especially. Some might say this is harsh. But again, Jesus was not interested in appeasing anyone. He preached it, you took it or you left it, those are the terms then, they are the terms now. The gospel does not need any help from us except that we follow and share it and love it. So the thought of people responding or not responding to holiness and calling them hogs and dogs should alert us that this is a serious issue. That is not one you just dismiss. What if he said, do not give what is holy to the kittens and the puppies? Everybody would be happy with that. Unless they turn and snuggle with you.

He doesn't do that. To the Jews listening to this, dogs and hogs were unclean animals religiously speaking. That would have gotten their attention. But especially that part about them trampling the holy things and then turning on the holy people.

What am I supposed to do with this? Rejection and violence. That's what belongs to those words.

They get our attention and on purpose. The pearl of great price, not that parable because that has a reference to the church, bought with the blood of Christ. But the pearl that he is talking about, in those days pearls were harder to get than they are in these days and so they had a higher value. They were like diamonds.

They were precious. And for him to say, you take this thing that's rare, that's hard to find, that's expensive, no one would throw it to a dog or a pig. Why would you do this with the word of God, with the things of God, with the things that God has pronounced as holy and special? The pearl here is the work of Jesus Christ. 2 Corinthians 4, we have this treasure in earthen vessels.

How can you not like that? The treasure is the gospel. It is Christ himself. It is the Holy Spirit.

We have him. And he goes on to say that the excellence and the power may be of God and not of ourselves. That places dependency upon the Spirit of God and not my ability to articulate or to be a savvy Christian or to be just this excellent evangelist.

I look at somehow, they go around telling their testimony over and over. I couldn't do that. I'm here this morning to tell you what I just told them last week in a different place about my testimony. I couldn't do it.

I had to have something fresh. I want the word of God to be more part of it. I mean, there's a time to share your testimony. Here is not the pulpit. Though you get fragments of mine because I'm selfish like that, but I try to... Well, if I start using others, then all of a sudden I'm beating them up.

So I use me, and everybody's happy except me. Zeal for the causes of Christ is not good enough to serve him, is not good enough to want to do it, but it is critical that that be there. That is a critical ingredient. It's sort of like cake, making a cake. Butter is a critical ingredient, but alone eating a stick of butter, not appealing. So it is with sugar.

Though a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. So not only is it ineffective, but it is dangerous. That's what Jesus is saying.

We say, oh, it's dangerous to the individual? Yes, but it is also dangerous to the causes of Christ because the next guy that comes along, that may have been the one that you may have watered the seed or planted it, and the next one comes along, there's work, more work than should be before them because of the damage the last Christian did. Remember not too long ago there was the Christian that decided he wanted to paddle out to this island off the coast of India where there was an indigenous people there untouched by civilization pretty much, but he is determined to go to them and preach the gospel. They killed him before he ever got to say a word that they could understand concerning Christ.

What a waste. We're glad you joined us today to learn how to avoid some rookie mistakes in the faith. Pastor Rick will have more to share next time on Cross Reference Radio, a ministry of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia. If you'd like to listen to more teachings from Pastor Rick, or if you'd like more information about this program, we invite you to visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com. We also encourage you to subscribe to our podcast so you'll never have to miss a program. Just search for Cross Reference Radio in iTunes, Google Play Music, or your favorite podcast app. What a great way to keep God's word with you wherever you go. We hope you'll tune in again next time as Pastor Rick continues studying through the scriptures, right here on Cross Reference Radio.