Empty Words

Don't believe anyone who says it's easy to become a Christian. It costs God everything, including His own Son, and it'll cost you the same thing, including yourself.

It's not easy. And those who would offer us an easy believism, a cheap grace, do us no favor at all. They delude us. It is difficult to come to God on God's terms.

Matthew Henry said that it ought to be our chief and constant care to make our calling and election sure, to secure a title to heaven's happiness, and then get the evidence of it. Sadly, there are many today who are absolutely certain they've received salvation when the fact is they're deceived. They're going through the motions. They're fooling everyone, including themselves.

Might that describe you? What does the Bible say is the main difference between true and false Christians? Well, John MacArthur is going to take the next few days on grace to you, to walk you through what he calls a salvation survey. John, you've actually gone on record as saying that the passage we're about to look at is one of the most terrifying portions in all of the Bible.

So I want you to expand on that a little bit in order to introduce this series. Well, to be told when you think you're about to enter heaven, that you're going to hell, is the most horrifying shock that any human could ever experience. But that is exactly what Matthew 7 says. In that day, in that day when they finally face the Lord, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, we did this, we did that, we did it in your name. And he'll say, depart from me, you workers of iniquity, I never knew you. Now we know that there are many, many people who think they're Christians and they are self-deceived.

This is a massive number of people who are going to be in that crowd that say, Lord, Lord, it's us, don't you know us? And he's going to say, depart from me, I never knew you, you workers of iniquity. This is the horror of building your house, the religious house, Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, on the sand and not on the rock. So, this has to be the most frightening of all historic moments in all of redemptive history, when you think you're going to heaven and you find out you're going to hell. So, we need to confront this, we need to take a look at this, and that's why we're doing this series on Matthew 7, 21 to 29, Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven.

What a stunning statement. The series is titled Salvation Survey, Saved or Self-Deceived. If you've ever heard anything from the word of God, you need to hear this.

This is the most important study we could ever air. Nothing could be worse than thinking you're going to heaven, finding out you're headed for hell. From the response we received when this study was aired in the past, it is clear that many people have never considered these issues until they heard this series, and many people have come to true faith in Christ through this series. So don't miss the next four days on Grace To You and take the Salvation Survey. What does saving faith look like?

How will it change your attitudes, your actions, your affections? John has answers today, helping you know exactly where you stand before God. Now, to begin this Salvation Survey, here again is John MacArthur. Turn with me in your Bible to Matthew chapter 7, Matthew 7, 21 to 29. Let me read this to you as the setting for our day, and ask that the Spirit of God would speak to us in these tremendous truths. Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father, who is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name, and in thy name have cast out demons, and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you.

Depart from me, ye that work iniquity. Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man who built his house upon a rock. And the rain descended and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house, and it fell not, for it was founded upon a rock. And everyone that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man who built his house upon the sand, and the rain descended and the floods came and the winds blew and beat upon that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it, and the winds blew, And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine, for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes. Now all through the Sermon on the Mount, in chapters 5, 6, and 7, the Lord has been setting forth the divine standards of his kingdom. As the anointed Messiah, the Christ, the King, he has certain principles which he has demanded of those who desire to enter the kingdom. Now those principles occupy the thrust of this sermon, but they can all be summed up in one word. The requirement for entering the kingdom is that you be righteous, righteous.

And therefore, the whole sermon is summed up in chapter 5, verse 20. For I say unto you that except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of heaven is God's world, God's dominion, salvation, eternal life. An entrance into that kingdom is dependent upon righteousness. Now how righteous are we to be?

Well we're to be more righteous than the scribes and Pharisees. How righteous were they? Well they were as righteous as a man could get on his own terms. They had come to the epitome of human achievement in religion. They were obsessed with religious function. As far as the people around them knew, they were exceedingly righteous. They seemed to do all the right things like praying and giving alms and fasting.

They seemed to have all the right standards like not murdering and not committing adultery and making sure they maintained every minute element of the law. It seemed as though they were the ones who were exceedingly righteous, and yet the righteousness that Christ demands far exceeds theirs. In fact, our Lord is requiring a righteousness that is beyond man's capacity, a divine righteousness that comes from God, a standard that man himself is utterly unable to attain.

Now that leaves man with two options. You either live your life, you either invent your religion, or you come God's way. You either come on your terms or his terms, and that is precisely where the sermon climaxes in chapter 7 verses 13 and 14. And there our Lord says, enter in at the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction and many there be who go in that way, because narrow is the gate and hard is the way which leadeth unto life and few there be that find it. Jesus says there are only those two ways.

There is the broad gate leads to the broad way ends up in destruction. It is the way of easy religion. It is the way of human righteousness. It is the way of the scribes and the Pharisees and those who think they're good enough on their own. On the other hand is the narrow gate and the narrow way that leads to life, and that is the way of those who come with a broken heart, with contrite spirit, those who come and know they can't make it, they can't keep God's law, they can't meet his standard, they can't live up to his righteousness, they can't be as perfect as God is, and they cast themselves on the mercy of Jesus Christ who imputes to them his own righteousness.

Only those two ways, and that is the climax of the sermon. Now having stated that great invitation to enter at the narrow gate, and we've covered it in detail, the Lord then shows how difficult that really is. It is not easy. Don't believe anyone who says it's easy to become a Christian. It costs God everything, including his own son, and it'll cost you the same thing, including yourself. It's not easy. And those who would offer us an easy believism, a cheap grace, do us no favor at all.

They delude us. It is difficult to come to God on God's terms. First of all, it is difficult because you must recognize your own total inability, and that means the death of pride, and that's difficult, because we are constantly told that we're the most important thing to ourselves. Now the Lord points out the difficulty of entering in the narrow gate right in verses 13 and 14. First of all, it says in verse 14, few there be that find it, and the word find is important. It's difficult to enter the narrow gate because you have to find it, which implies a searching and a looking and an examining and an effort. It's as the Old Testament says, if you seek me with all your heart, you will find me.

God just stumbles along and falls into the kingdom of God inadvertently. It's a searching, and the idea is that it isn't easily made visible. Secondly, it's difficult not only because you have to find it, and that means a hard and diligent search. It's difficult because it means it's the opposite way that everybody else is going. Many go in the broad gate, few go in the narrow way. It's what James said when he said, friendship with the world is enmity against God.

It's what John said when he said, if you love the world, the love of the Father is not in you. In other words, you have to come apart from the system to enter the narrow gate. It's difficult because the crowd is going the other way. It's difficult also because it is a narrow gate, and that means you come through naked, stripped of all yourself, your sin, your self-righteousness. You come through absolutely alone. You don't come through with a group. You don't come through with a family.

You come through alone. And it is a constricted way, and you know it's going to be a narrow life, and you must count the cost. And Jesus said further, it's not only difficult because it's hard to find.

It's away from the crowd. It's a narrow gate, but because you must agonize to enter it, he said in the Gospel of Luke. In other words, there must be penitence and confession and repentance and soul-searching and brokenness. There is another reason why it's difficult to enter the narrow way, another reason why it's difficult to admit that you don't make it.

You can't live up to God's standard. You're not as perfect as you have to be, and that is because of false prophets, verse 15. And in 15 to 20, the Lord says false prophets add to the difficulty because they stand in the way and they chase people onto the broad road.

They're the ones trying to divert everybody for Satan's purposes and Satan's ends, telling people they can go through the wide gate with all their sin and selfishness and they can flop from side to side and wander all over a great big wide road and there's little price to pay. And so the Lord offers a choice and a verdict, a decision, but he says the right decision is to enter the narrow gate and it won't be easy. And he says, few there be that find it. Mark that, people, few. Not many, but few.

And there's one other reason why the few is only a few. Not only the deception of the false prophets, but listen to this, self-deception. Self-deception keeps people from entering the narrow gate. J.C. Ryle, Bishop Ryle wrote, the Lord Jesus winds up the Sermon on the Mount by a passage of heart-piercing application. He turns from false prophets to false professors, from unsound teachers to unsound hearers.

And Tasker, the commentator adds, it is not only false teachers who make the narrow way difficult to find, it is a man may also be grievously self-deceived that adds to the difficulty. In other words, not just the false prophets, but we can deceive our own selves into believing we're Christians when the fact is we're not. Now that precisely is the issue the Lord takes up in verses 21 to 27, self-deception. And what a fitting climax it is to the sermon, having stated all the principles, having warned about the false prophets, the Lord says, now let me warn you one other thing.

Make sure you're not kidding yourself. Are you really a true member of the kingdom of heaven? And the Lord warns us about two categories of self-deception. Number one is a mere verbal profession, and number two is a mere intellectual knowledge. In verses 21 to 23, it is a verbal profession. Verse 21, not everyone that saith, verse 22, many will say to me. Now these are the people who make the verbal profession.

They say they're Christians. And then in the second paragraph, it is the ones who have only an intellectual knowledge. They hear. Verse 26, everyone that hears these sayings.

Now listen. Then in verses 21 to 23, you have the people who say and don't do. And in verses 24 to 27, the people who hear and don't do.

That's the issue, and they're deceived. On the one hand, it's a verbal profession. On the other, it's an intellectual knowledge. And I call it empty words and empty hearts. And that's what we want to speak to in our study today.

These deal with the matter of self-deception. Mere verbal profession, mere intellectual knowledge is, as John Stott puts it, a camouflage for disobedience. Now you will notice that at the end of verse 21, you have a key word there. But he that doeth the will of my Father who is in heaven. It is not the ones who say, and it is not the ones who hear, it is the ones who what?

Who do. In other words, the Lord is saying, if you do not live a righteous life, I don't care what you say or what you hear, you're deceived. Now this is a very, very strong word. And I want you to listen as the Spirit of God speaks. Both of these closing paragraphs, verses 21 to 23 and 24 to 27, contrast a right and a wrong response to the invitation of Christ. And they show that our eternal destiny is determined by the choice we make. One, as I said, deals with what you say over against what you do, and the other, what you hear over against what you do.

Now keep this in mind. The Lord is not speaking to irreligious people. He is speaking to people who were literally obsessed with religious activity. They're not apostates. They're not heretics. They're not anti-God. They're not atheists or agnostics. They are utterly religious people, but they're damned because they're on the wrong road and they are self-deluded. Now maybe they're self-delusion as a result of sitting under a false prophet, or maybe they've actually sat under the truth but have deluded themselves.

They are not a lot unlike Israel of whom Paul said they had a form of godliness but denied the reality of it. And I really believe, people, that this is a message that needs to be spoken today because I am convinced that the church of Jesus Christ is literally jammed full of people who aren't Christians and don't know it. Certainly Jesus is saying many of those who think they're in aren't in and only a few are.

This is the ultimate delusion, people. You could be deluded about a lot of things, but to be deceived about whether you're a Christian, that's really getting at your eternal destiny. And so Jesus says you better check it very carefully. We have all kinds of people who are connected to the right religion and utterly devoid of the righteousness of God through Christ. We have multitudes of deceived people who are in the church, who are on the Jesus bandwagon, who think everything is well, and for them judgment is going to be one big surprise.

Frankly, there's no better way to undeceive them than by this particular sermon of our Lord. Now some of these people, I believe, that are deceived are false prophets. I think some false prophets aren't deceived.

They know they're phony. But I think some of them probably are self-deceived, so we'd see some of them in this group. But I think the many in verses 21 and following is not just false prophets, but all of those who are self-deluded and deceived about whether they're really redeemed. The Bible literally is filled with warnings to people who are deceived. Let me just give you one other illustration. Matthew 25.

And it's very similar, and I think you'll get the picture. And the reason there are so many warnings, listen, is because there are so many people deceived. Many will say to me, Lord, Lord, and I'll say I never knew you. Not a few, not an isolated bunch, but many. And because there are so many that are deceived, there are many warnings. Matthew 25, 1 says, Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins who took their lamps and went forth to meet the bridegroom. And of course, the virgins are symbolic of people who are attached to Christianity, and the bridegroom is emblematic of Christ. Five of them were wise and five were foolish, like the people who build on the rock and the sand. And they were foolish, took their lamps, and took no oil with them. In other words, they had a form of godliness, but they didn't have the power, they didn't have what they needed, they didn't have the heart of it, they didn't have salvation.

They just had churchianity. But the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps. And while the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept, and at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh, go out to meet him. Then all those virgins arose and trimmed their lamps, and the foolish ones said unto the wise, Give us of your oil, for our lamps are gone out. The wise answered, saying, Not so, lest there be not enough for us and you, but go rather to them that sell and buy for yourselves. And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came, and they that were ready went in with him to the marriage, and the door was shut. Afterward came also the other virgins, saying, Lord, Lord, open to us. But he answered and said, Verily I say unto you, I know you not. Now there is a similar text. Go back to Matthew chapter 7. That's saying the same thing. There's going to come a day when people are going to expect the door to be open and it's going to slam shut forever in their faces.

I don't know you. What a fearful thing. So many people think they're saved, think they're safe, and judgment for them is going to be a shock. What lulls people into that deception? What makes people really think they're saved?

Well, let me give you several suggestions. First of all, I think many times it's because they have a false doctrine of assurance. In other words, let's assume that when you were led to Christ, somebody said to you now, all you have to do to be a Christian is pray this little prayer and say this little formula based on certain statements. Well, you prayed it, you said it, you signed on the dotted line, and as long as you said it, and as long as you prayed it, and as long as you went through the thing, why you're saved, and I don't want anybody to ever question that, and so forth and so on, and that very often happens, and you have a false sense of assurance.

You want to know something? When you lead a person to Christ, you should never say, now, I know you're saved, and don't you ever doubt it, and don't you ever let anybody else cause you to doubt it. Boy, you're saved. I've heard people even say, if you ever asked Jesus into your life a second time, you are denying something that belongs to God. You're denying the permanence of his salvation. You're questioning God's integrity. You are, in a sense, casting against God that which he has said as if it weren't true. Don't ever do that. Just accept it.

You said it. You signed the dotted line, and that's a lot of baloney. Don't let somebody's false assurance, somebody's false certification take the place of the convicting work of the Spirit of God. And I think a lot of times in our evangelism, as long as somebody says the prayer and prays the little thing and signs on the line and has the card stuck in their Bible, we give them this little psychological game that they don't ever have to worry about whether they're saved or not when the Spirit of God never did that in the beginning because they never were really right. I can't ever say to someone, well now, boy, I know you're saved and don't you ever doubt it and don't you ever ask again, it's all settled and it's done because you said the little formula. If I do that, I give them a psychological assurance of something I don't even know is true.

When Jesus said the seed of the Word is cast on four soils, only one out of four turned out to be true. Don't go around certifying people's salvation. You give them a false assurance. Let God give them assurance through His Spirit, witnessing with their spirits that they are the children of God and crying Abba, Father. Let God give them assurance when they add to their faith virtue.

And as they add to their faith virtue and patience and godliness and love, then shall their election be sure. Then shall they know they've been forgiven of their sins. Then shall they not be blind to the reality of salvation.

That's God's work, not some certification by some human being. But I think a lot of people have been told they're saved so they believe it. Another thing that I think lulls people into this deception is a failure of self-examination. They never really examine themselves. They get into such a grace concept that everything is grace and everything is forgiveness that they never really bother to face their sin.

They hear somebody say, well, you don't have to confess your sin. Your sin is already forgiven. It's all taken care of. Everything is set aside. Don't even worry about that. Just go on.

Live your life. It almost borders on what is called antinomianism or an attitude against the law of God. And people can get to the place where they don't even bother to examine their lives. Why do you think the Lord brings us to His table, 1 Corinthians 11, over and over and over again, in order that a man may examine himself? 2 Corinthians 13, 5 says you better examine yourself whether you be in the faith. If you don't, you're in danger of self-deception. You need to look at your sin. You need to look at your motives.

Why do you do what you do? And believe me, if you're really genuinely saved, God will confirm that by His Spirit witnessing with your spirit. But if that confirmation isn't there, you shouldn't be under the illusion that just because it isn't there, you're okay by some certification by somebody or some little prayer you pray. Thirdly, another thing that I think causes people to be under the delusion that they're saved is a fixation on religious activity.

In other words, they go to church, they hear sermons, they sing songs, they read the Bible, they go to a Bible study, they take a class. And because they're all wrapped up in religious activity, they think they're saved. But that's a very, very great illusion.

Very great illusion. There are many in the church that are not, tears among the wheat. And then a fourth area that I think lulls people into deception is what I call the fair exchange approach. And this is where whenever you see something wrong in your life, instead of really dealing with it and examining whether you're really a true Christian, instead of dealing with what's wrong in your life, you find something right with your life and you make a fair exchange. Oh, it can't be that bad. I mean, look at what I did over here.

See? And you're always trading off the negatives and the positives, and instead of really evaluating your life honestly with integrity and saying, am I a believer, and if I am, can I be doing this? You say, well, I know I do that, but I, oh, look what I did over here, and you make a fair exchange and you whitewash the deal. You can be lulled into deception by some false assurance, by a failure to examine yourself, by a fixation on religious activity, or by a fair exchange approach, but in all those cases you're deceived. It's amazing to me how many people are deceived, and they can recite the creed, and they can tell you the day they were saved, and they can show you the card where they wrote the line, and they can say we believe in Jesus, and so forth and so on, but the bottom line is this. With all of your false assurance, with all your failure to self-examine, with all this fixation on religious activity, and with the fair exchange principle in operation, the bottom line that you better examine is this. Do you live in total obedience to the Word of God?

And when you disobey it, is there a sense of conviction and remorse that draws you to confess it to God? And if that isn't there, there's a fair question about whether you're even a Christian. This is Grace to You with John MacArthur.

Thanks for being with us. So what do you think so far about John's study called Salvation Survey? Has it affirmed your faith or convicted you?

Maybe a little bit of both. Perhaps you know someone who claims to be a Christian, but his life doesn't seem to back that up. Whether for you or for a friend, this study is helpful to review again. To pick up a copy, get in touch today. The two-CD album costs $12, and shipping is free. To order, call 800-55-GRACE or visit our website, GTY.org. You can also download both messages from Salvation Survey free of charge in audio or transcript format at GTY.org. And thanks for remembering that it's friends like you who help us connect people around the world with biblical truth through radio, television, and thousands of online resources, including 3,500 full-length sermons available for free download. To help bring daily spiritual nourishment to people in your community and beyond, express your support when writing to Grace to You, Box 4000, Panorama City, California, 91412. You can also donate online at GTY.org or when you call 800-55-GRACE. That's our toll-free phone number. One more time, 800-55-GRACE. Thanks also for your prayers for John and for the staff. It's really the most important way you can support our ministry. Now for John MacArthur and the staff, I'm Phil Johnson, inviting you back tomorrow to take our Salvation Survey, that's the title of John's study, don't miss the next 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace to You.