I want to submit to you, I believe in personal one on one discipleship, but, my dear
friend, the Church got along for a thousand or more years without it, without what we
know as personal, one on one, discipleship with all the books and all the different things.
I want you to think about this. One on one discipleship became gigantic in the late 70s
and until today. What was the cry? Just as many people are going out the back doors,
coming in the front door and the reason why that is happening is because we are not
discipling people.
No. The reason why it is happening is because people aren’t getting converted, because
his sheep, they hear his voice and they follow him, whether you disciple them or not.
Now we ought to disciple, but that is not why they are leaving. They went out from us
because they were not of us.43 And they hardly got a chance to be of us because they
never heard a true gospel and no one ever dealt with their soul.
So we spend a fortune discipling goats, hoping they will become sheep. You can’t teach
a goat into a sheep. A goat becomes a sheep by the supernatural working of the Spirit of
almighty God.
Now Church discipline... I moved my family to this church because they practice Church
discipline, because I need to be under Church discipline, the watchful care of elders and
other members who take this seriously. I want my children, if they are converted one day,
they are all tiny right now, but if they are converted or they make a profession of faith
and then go awry, I want to know that my children will be brought before the Church, if
necessary for the salvation of their soul.
Some of you in here would get so mad if a pastor walked up to you and said, “Honestly, I
have been praying about your child and I fear that they are unconverted.”
You would get so mad you would rally up a group to have that pastor kicked out instead
of realizing, “Oh, praise God, we have got a man of God here.”
Eighth indictment: A silence on separation.
There is a void of serious teaching about holiness. My dear friend, general teaching on
holiness, everyone agrees. Let’s be holy. We need to be more holy. Let’s have a holiness
conference.
But when you get specific about what that means, that’s when everything turns into a
turmoil.
“Pursue peace with all men,” the writer of Hebrews tells us, “and the sanctification
without which no one will see the Lord.”44
Does anybody believe this?
You say, “Brother Paul, I have been blamed so often for teaching, you know, works
religion.”
Listen to me. Listen. Again, it goes back to regeneration and the providence of God. If
God truly converts a man he will continue working in that man, through teaching and
blessing and admonition and discipline. He will see to it that the work he has begun will
be finished. And that is why the writer says, “Without sanctification, without holiness no
one will see the Lord.”45
Why? Because if there is no growth in holiness, God is not working in your life. If he is
not working in your life it is because you are not a child.
Look at the difference between Jacob and Esau. “Jacob I loved...Esau I hated.”46 Yet God
fulfilled all his promises to both of them. Jacob was blessed. Esau was blessed. How
did God demonstrate his judgments and wrath against Esau and his love toward Jacob? I
will tell you how. He let Jacob run wild. He let Esau run wild, no work of discipline, no
work of godliness, nothing. But he beat Jacob to death almost every day of his life.
The loving discipline, the correction of God to bring us to holiness.
Now there is so much teaching on this, but let me just say this. “Therefore I urge you,
brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice.”47
Romans 12:1 and then go on to two.
Your bodies. Why does he say “body?” I think to avoid all this super spirituality.
“Well, I have given Jesus my heart and you can’t judge a book by its cover.”
Well, as a matter of fact, you can judge a book by its cover. Jesus never said you couldn’t
just a book by his cover. He said you could. “You will know them by their fruit.”48
And if you think that you have given him your hear, then he will have your body. And I
will tell you why. The heart, my friend, is not some blood pumping muscle or some
figment of a poet’s imagination. It refers to the very essence or core of your being. Don’t
tell me Jesus has the very essence and core of your being and it doesn’t affect your body.
It is just not going to happen.
And so what do we do? We go through Scripture, what, legalistically? No, drawing
inferences? No. Just standing on the commands of Scripture.
About what?
I do not agree with everything the Puritans said, but I love the Puritans and one of the
reason why I love them because I believe they honestly made an attempt to bring
everything in their life under the lordship of Jesus Christ.
Their minds, because they wrote 800 page books on what should I think about according
to the Scriptures. What should not enter into my mind according to the Scriptures? What
should I do with my eyes? What should go in these ears and what should not go in these
ears? How should the tongue be ruled? What should be the direction of my life?
And yes, I am going to scare you to death. How should I dress?
Now here I am going to be careful here. I don’t want to draw inferences and things. My
dear friend, my wife says it this way. If your clothing is a frame for your face from
which the glory of Christ springs forth, it is of God. But if your clothing is a frame for
your body, it is sensual and God hates it. Enough said?
Now I can’t go through everything of holiness and holiness isn’t just outward expression,
but we have become to be a people that uses the interior work of the Spirit as an excuse
to say nothing is ever going to happen on the outside. And that is not true.
Some of you young men, you cry out probably more than I do that the Spirit of God
would fill you and work in you, but it only takes one half hour of television to so grieve
him, he will be miles from you.
Ninety-nine percent pure, 1% sewer I am not drinking.
One time I was struggling and Leonard Ravenhill was talking to a dear friend of mine
who was saying, “Brother Leonard, a young man, brother Paul, he is really struggling.”
And he sent a tract. I still got that tract. I will never, never part with that. It said, “Others
can, you cannot.”
I don’t necessarily agree with everything.
Young man, listen to me. I don’t go to malls. I don’t, not because I am more holy than
you. It is because I know what I am.
There is the story of one of the finest, greatest violinists in Europe playing his final
concern, an old man. And when he finished a young man walked up to him, violinist and
said, “Sir, I’d give my life to play like you.”
And the old man said, “Son, I have given my life to play like me.”
“I want the power of God on my life.” Then something has got to go.
“I want to know him.” Then some separation has to occur.
Let me tell you something, young man, everyone else is running around, all their little
retreats and all their conferences and getting together with group hugs and singing
Kumbyah and everything else. Maybe you need to get alone in the wilderness with God
and fast for seven days on your knees studying the book of Psalms, just being alone with
God, belonging to him.
To be a man of God there has got to be a sense where sometimes even your wife who is
of your own flesh, one with her, she looks you in the eye and she knows she can’t go
where you are going.
There is silence on separation. I think, “Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for
what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness?”49 Nothing. “Or what fellowship
has light with darkness?”50 Nothing. Darkness is the opposite of God’s revelation.
At what harmony Christ was [?]. Nothing. Or what has the believer in common with the
unbeliever? Nothing.
He says, “Come out from their midst.”51 Come out from the midst of what? Come out
from the midst of lawlessness, darkness, satanic devices and the life and worldliness of
the unbeliever. Come out from it.
I have a ninth indictment and this is very important to me as an older man with a young
family. I didn’t get married until I was 30. My had something of a little brain tumor for
the first eight years. We couldn’t have children and then, oh, praise God, a child was born
and then another and then another and then, who knows?
Psychology and sociology have replaced the Scriptures with regard to the family.
My dear friend, pastors, leaders, think about this. Our churches or our Sunday morning
services—better said—are so cosmetic. Just because there seems to be beautiful worship
and the sermon went well and people seem to be moved, that is not evidence. I will tell
you what evidence is. The home, the marriages, the families.
Judges 17:6. “In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in
his own eyes.”52
If I talk to people because I go for all kinds, I find a godly man who has raised godly
children and I go and I latch on to him. But in most cases do you know what I find out?
The people I talk to in church all of it is wive’s tales and sociology and this and that and
every other thing, what is right in their own eyes and can’t give me one biblical verse.
But every once in a while I find a man and a woman who set themselves to set their
family according to Scripture and the difference is overwhelming.
When I am on an airplane I love to do this. Men will sit down beside me and they will go,
“What do you do?”
I go, “Oh, I’m a husband.”
They go, “Oh, what else do you do?”
“Oh, I’m a father.”
“What else do you do?”
“Well, if I have any time left over I preach a little.”
What does it matter if a man win the whole world and lose his family? And let me just
put it to you this way. Based upon what are you raising your children and loving your
wife? Based upon what? If you can’t start going into Scriptures right now and pulling
them apart and showing me how your family is founded upon it, I can assure you, you are
a captive of psychology, sociology, the whims and the lies of this age.
You see, you don’t have the right to do... You have no authority, sir, apart from the
Word of God.
Look at Genesis 18:19. “For I have chosen him, so that he may command his children
and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing righteousness and
justice, so that the LORD may bring upon Abraham what He has spoken about him.”53
What a beautiful thing?
And listen, Romans chapter 12 verses one and two. Well, verse two tells us that the will
of God is perfect. So if you ever come up with this idea as a man of God, “I am
sacrificing my family for the sake of the ministry,” I will tell you, you are a bald faced
liar. You are sacrificing your family for the sake of the little kingdom you are trying to
build because the will of God is perfect. That means I do not have to violate the will of
God with regard to my family in order to fulfill the will of God with regard to the
ministry.
God doesn’t need you. He does desire that you be obedient, that you be obedient.
I just want to give you two examples. Now before... It is like when someone asked me
one time, “Brother Paul, are you against evangelism?”
I said, “Yes and no. I am not against biblical evangelism, but I am against the way you
are doing it.”
“Are you against Sunday school and youth groups?”
“Yes and no.”
I want to explain something to you. Now, for some of you I am not going to be enough
and for some of you I am going to be too much. I just want to use these two things to
point out what is wrong with us.
Sunday school. No matter what denomination you are a part of, if you are a part of some
denomination that is kind of organized I can assure you that your denomination spends
multi millions of dollars on Sunday school material, multi millions of dollars of
conferences, on teaching teachers how to teach Sunday school, on doing everything in the
book to promote Sunday school. I know that for a fact.
Let me ask you. How much money does your denomination spend and how many
conference and man hours are put in to teach fathers to teach their children? So now you
have found it, haven’t you? God doesn’t have a plan B. He has a plan A. You
circumvent plan A, plan B won’t work.
Now I am not saying that children can’t come together in groups and be catechized or be
taught or anything, but if that ever even begins to hint to supplant the ministry of the
Father in the home, blow it to pieces.
Do you see what I am saying? Look at just that one tiny instance. Everything for Sunday
school, everything for Sunday school. But there is hardly a conference in this entire