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This morning I wish to speak to you from the Word of God once again, in Luke's gospel, chapter four, we will look at verses 30-eight through 40-four, under the heading "The Overwhelming Displays of Jesus' Majesty." I remain forever lost in the wonder of the person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ and what he has done for me, and whenever I read about, whenever I contemplate his power over all creation, his love for sinners, I'm just left speechless, just an overwhelming sense of awe. Whenever I pensively reflect upon these things, I'm humbled to the core. And frankly, I shudder to think where I would be were it not for his grace. You ever think about that? Where would you be today if it was not for God's grace?

The words of the 19th-century hymnist Samuel Francis come to mind.

Oh, the deep, deep love of Jesus

Vast, unmeasured, boundless, free, rolling as a mighty ocean in its fullness over me.

Underneath me, all around me, is the current of His love,

Leading onward, leading homeward, to His glorious rest above.

And as we come to this text this morning, we once again behold more of the overwhelming displays of Jesus' majesty and his love for sinners. So let me read the text to you, and then we will look at it closely. Luke chapter four, beginning in verse 30-eight.

"Then He got up and left the synagogue, and entered Simon's home. Now Simon's mother-in-law was suffering from high fever, and they asked Him to help her.

"And standing over her, He rebuked the fever, and it left her; and she immediately got up and waited on them.

"While the sun was setting, all those who had any who were sick with various diseases brought them to Him; and laying His hands on each one of them, He was healing them.

"Demons also were coming out of many, shouting, "'ou are the Son of God!'nBut rebuking them, He would not allow them to speak, because they knew Him to be the Christ.

When day came, Jesus left and went to a secluded place; and the crowds were searching for Him, and came to Him and tried to keep Him from going away from them.

"But he said to them, 'I must preach the kingdom of God to the other cities also, for I was sent for this purpose.'

So He kept on preaching in the synagogues of Judea."

I want to look at this text under three headings. We're going to see Jesus' power over disease, over demons, and also thirdly, his priority of preaching; and in the context of examining what the Spirit of God is revealing to us in this passage of Scripture through his servant Luke, I wish also to expose some of the dangers, some of the chicanery, that we see in the charismatic movement, especially when you contrast what is going on there with what happened in Jesus' ministry and in the ministry of the apostles. I want us to look at the warning that Jesus gave, especially in Matthew seven, to those who claim to prophesy in his name, who claim to cast out demons in his name, who claim to perform many miracles in his name, and to see that terrifying warning that comes upon all those who are deceived by false teachers.

Now, you will recall that the previous verses that we've examined, we've seen Jesus, the Greek tells us muzzle the demon, that was in this man. Unimaginable to be able to do that, but that's what he did, he muzzled that demon and cast the demon out of this man; a man that was dwelling in the synagogue. And of course, the demon was screaming at Jesus while he was preaching and so forth. And then, in verse 36 of Luke four, we read the reaction,

"An amazement came upon them all, and they begin talking with one another, saying, 'What is this message? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and they come out.'

"And the report about Him was spreading into every locality in the surrounding district."

Now, what we see as the gospel narratives unfold, is that the Jews wanted Jesus to somehow prove his deity by performing miracles, wanted to prove to them that he was indeed the Messiah; and in the in the gospel accounts, we see many, many examples of this. However, despite the overwhelming evidence that these people saw, most of them did not believe in him. The spiritual resistance of their depraved heart was too strong. In fact, we read Jesus' words in Luke 16:31 He said, "If they did not listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not be persuaded, even if someone rises from the dead.'" Jesus said in Matthew 13 verse 13 and following that they neither see nor they do they hear, because their hearts have become dull. I remember dull in the original language means to make fat. It's the idea that their heart is just so sluggish that it is unresponsive. And so here in Luke four we see Jesus performing many miracles, and yet the people will not believe. Most of them will not believe. And it's interesting in Matthew 11, verses 20 through 24, we're not going to look at the text, just a little bit of it; but we read there how he denounced the cities of Chorazin and Bethsaida and Capernaum. Many times, this is called the Evangelical Triangle. It was on the northern shores of the the Sea of Galilee, and that's where Jesus did most of his ministry. A lot of you have been there, even with me; and Capernaum was actually kind of his second home, and so they saw all of these places, and despite all of the miracles that he performed, Jesus tells them that if comparable works had occurred in the pagan cities of Tyre and Sidon, they would have believed. In fact, in verse 23 of Matthew 11, he says,

"'And you, Capernaum, will not be exalted to heaven, will you? You will descend to Hades; for if the miracles had occurred in Sodom, which occurred in you, it would have remained to this day.

"'Nevertheless, I say to you that it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for you."

Dear friends, please hear me: the greater the light, the greater the judgment upon you when you reject the light. Therefore, one of the most dangerous places in the world for you to be is inside Calvary Bible Church or a church like it, where you constantly, consistently hear the truths of saving grace and the gospel, and yet you refuse to believe. Your judgment will be even greater because of that. In fact, we read in Hebrews 10, and you don't have this verse to look at, but it says in verse 26 that,

"If we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins,

"but a certain terrifying expectation of judgment and the fury of a fire, which will consume the adversary."

Well, sadly, this is what happened in those days, as it has down through the centuries. So, after Jesus muzzled the demon and cast him out of the man in the synagogue, we come to verse 30-eight. It says, "Then he got up and left the synagogue and entered Simon's home." Now, this would be Simon Peter, who had been introduced to Jesus by his brother Andrew, and Peter would have been a member of that synagogue, all right? He would have seen all of this there in Capernaum. Peter ran a fishing business there in Capernaum along with his brother Andrew and their partners James and John, who had already been called to follow Jesus. And although the Lord had not officially called Peter yet to be his apostle, Peter had seen what had just happened, and certainly he, like everybody else, knew Jesus' reputation. So he invites Jesus over to his house for lunch after their church service, along with probably Andrew and James and John.

As a footnote, archeologists have identified two main candidates for Peter's house on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. I've been to both of them. Some of you have been there as well, and both of them have ancient churches that have been built over them. That's what happened, especially during the the Byzantine Empire. That was the Eastern Roman Empire that lasted about 1000 years. It began, I think, in 330 A.D. under Constantine. And what they would do is they would build churches over some of these famous places. One of the houses is in Bethsaida, and that was Peter's hometown. That was where he was originally from, and there they've uncovered a fifth to sixth century Byzantine Basilica or church, and there's a large Greek mosaic that references Peter as quote "the chief and commander of the heavenly apostles." And this by the way is in line with ninth century historical accounts describing a church that was built directly over Peter's home. So it very well could have been where where he once lived.

The other place is in Capernaum, and Italian excavators found a first-century home beneath an octagonal Byzantine church. By the way, you can go online, you can see pictures of all of this. I would encourage you not to do that right now, but sometime. And early pilgrims referred to this as Peter's house, and it contains Christian graffiti; you can read it in Greek and Aramaic as well as in Latin, suggesting that it was a place of early veneration and so forth. Well, a little side note there.

So they go to Peter's house, and it says in verse 38, "Now Simon's mother-in-law was suffering from a high fever; and they asked him to help her." So I'm sure Peter is not only wanting to get to know more of Jesus that he's heard about from his brother Andrew, from James and John, but also he's thinking in the back of his mind, my mother-in-law is really sick, maybe I can get Jesus to heal her.

Verse 39, "And standing over her, He rebuked the fever." There's an obvious infection here, and it left her. And I love this next phrase, "...and she immediately got up and waited on them." I want to elaborate on that a little bit more in a moment. But first, I want you to see, folks, this is, Jesus number one: his power over disease. I mean, this is astounding. He rebukes demons and he heals diseases. He has authority over the spiritual as well as the physical realms, and isn't it interesting that the healing was instant? It was complete. It was undeniable. The infection was gone. Her strength was instantly regained, as if she had never been ill. I mean, there is no grogginess or weakness or weariness. No, "You know, honey, why don't you sit up on the side of the bread and drink some wine here, and let's get your strength back here, and hey, we'll take care of the meal." No, none of that. It says, "and she immediately got up and waited on them." It doesn't say this, but I imagine she just woke up and she's looking at them, and and they're saying, "Are you okay?" And she's saying, "Yes, I'm fine. What are you bozos looking at. I'm fine." And she begins to make the meal.

Verse 40 goes on to say, "While the sun was setting, all those who had any who were sick with various diseases brought them to Him; and laying His hands on each one, He was healing them." Folks, wouldn't you do the same thing if Jesus was here? Astounding. In Acts five verse 16, we read, "The people from the cities and the vicinities of Jerusalem were coming together, bringing people who were sick or afflicted with unclean spirits, and they were all being healed." Folks, this is a far cry from the fake healings of modern-day faith healers - men and women - ruled by their flesh. That whole ilk of phony, false Christian people. They are known for their biblical illiteracy, their sexual immorality, their financial impropriety, and for the ostentatious worldliness that you see in their lives. They work crowds into an emotional frenzy; gullible people, desperate people. It's so sad. I've witnessed it before. They slay people in the spirit, and people running around with ecstatic gibberish, making all kinds of noises, dancing around, laughing uncontrollably, crying, barking, snorting. You know, it's when you look at that, and I'm sure you've seen it online, and I've been around it some in person, I mean, it's laughably absurd, but beyond that, to me, it's frightening because it's just demonic, when you look and see what these people are doing. And no wonder people in the world see that and they call all Christians idiots because of that. As I say, it's a religious version of world wrestling. I mean, everybody knows it's fake, but it's entertaining, and people get caught up in it. Well, they claim all kinds of invisible ailments and supposedly heal those things as if they're able to do that.

By the way, I've got friends in, especially in Africa, in other third world countries, and it's so sad to see and to hear my friends talk about them -- the pastors, missionaries -  to see people lining up, hundreds if not 1000s of them lining up with their loved ones, who are in wheelchairs, who have tubes hanging out of them, people desperate for healing; the deaf, the blind, people walking on crutches, again attached to medical devices and so forth, and it's sad because those people never make it on stage because you can't fake that. It would be too obvious that they would not be healed, so you've got all these manipulative shenanigans and histrionics and mass hypnosis at times. It's demonic. It makes these charlatans seem credible. They take your money and laugh all the way to the bank, and naturally disenchanted people end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater, if you will, with Christianity. They want nothing to do with it because it didn't work. And of course, the reason it didn't work is because you didn't have enough faith. You must make a quote "positive confession."

Let me address that for a moment, and I want to deliberately chase some of these rabbits because they're appropriate. We will come back to the text, okay? But a survey of the healing ministries of Christ and the apostles repeatedly demonstrate the fact that they were completely healed without any expression of faith in Christ. In Luke 17, only one of the 10 lepers that were healed expressed faith in Christ. You can go to Matthew 8 and Mark 1, the demoniacs. None of them expressed faith in Christ. John 5, you've got the crippled man beside the pool of Bethesda that didn't even know who Jesus was until after he had been healed. The same was true of the blind man in John nine, and I could go on with this.  Obviously, Jarius's dead daughter and Lazarus made no positive confession, right, when they were raised from the dead. Jesus healed the multitudes, yet very few believed in Him.

The same was true in the healing ministries of the apostles. Peter healed the lame man in Acts three without requiring personal faith in Christ. In Acts nine, he raised Tabitha from the dead. Obviously, there was no faith in Christ, or positive confession here. Paul delivered an unbelieving slave girl from demon possession in Acts 16. He raised Uticus; remember, Uticus fell to his death in Acts 20. Please understand, folks, Scripture teaches that miracles served to authenticate the message and the messenger of God, but once the canon of Scripture in the New Testament was completed in around A.D. 95, there was no reason to perform miracles like that from men because he was no longer revealing truth that needed to be authenticated.

Biblical history reveals that there were essentially three major periods where God performed miracles through men, and beyond that, you don't see very many at all. The first period was with Moses and Joshua. The second period was with Elijah and Elisha, and then the third period was with Christ and his apostles. But once the canon of Scripture was closed, special revelation ceased, along with the, what we call, the revelatory and confirmatory gifts and offices, like you would read in First Corinthians 12. For example, there's no more apostles. A lot of people say there are. No, there aren't.

The New Testament tells us very clearly that there are three requirements for an apostle. You had to be an eyewitness of Christ and his resurrection, you had to be personally commissioned by the Lord Jesus Christ, and you had to be able to validate all of that by performing miracles. We don't have any of that today. In fact, in First Corinthians 15:8, Paul explicitly states that he was the last person who met that third qualification, so there's no genuine apostle since Paul.

Likewise, when we look at all of the the gifts in Romans 12 and First Corinthians 12, for example, you see that the revelatory gifts that were once in place, that once existed, and the confirmatory gifts-they're no longer needed. They no longer happen, despite the counterfeits that you will see. Those would include distinguishing between spirits, healing, miracles, prophecy, tongues, interpretation of tongues, utterance of knowledge, utterance of wisdom. So what you see today is just counterfeits of all of that. And to say that these gifts continue today just spawns enormous confusion in the body of Christ, and that's what Satan wants to see happen. It spawns doctrinal error. It gives people the illusion of spirituality; and a lot of you have come out of that. A lot of you will give testimony to these very things. It promotes the mindless ecstasy that you see in charismatic worship and the fraudulent ministries of faith healers. You say, Pastor, "Uou are really..." Yes, I am, because folks, this stuff is from the pit of hell. It is wicked stuff, and I have seen, and I've had to deal with this stuff for over 40 years. I've seen how it has destroyed families, destroyed churches, destroyed communities, and so I'm strong against this stuff. It undermines the authority and the sufficiency of Scripture. It undermines sola scriptura, and now all of a sudden, we've got everybody telling us what God has told them. All this special revelation, and what happens is it replaces true ministries of the Holy Spirit with counterfeits, and of course, all of this is rooted, especially in the prosperity gospel that you see. That somehow, it's God's will for us all to be healthy and wealthy, all right, and you've got to learn how to manipulate God to make that happen. It can be obtained by things like the positive confession of faith, name it and claim it, sowing seeds through financial and material gifts, which is all just nothing more than a demonic Ponzi scheme that just causes the people on the top to get wealthy. I mean, Satan is brilliant in distorting the true gospel and replacing it with counterfeits. It makes my blood boil. In Jude three, Jude was so upset about this type of stuff. He said, "Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity..." He feels the necessity now to do something different, "I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith," referring to the objective truth of the gospel revealed in Scripture, all that pertains to our common salvation, "....contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints." Once for all, "hapax" in the original language. It refers to something that is accomplished or completed one time with lasting results and never needs any repetition; and of course, this is a reference to the body of revelation that the Spirit of God has given to us.

In Second Timothy one, beginning in verse 13, Paul admonished Timothy to protect the faith. He says,

"Retain the standard of sound words which you have heard from me in the faith and love which you are in Christ Jesus.

"Guard, through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us, the treasure which has been entrusted to you."

And you will recall what Paul said to the Galatians in Galatians 1:9," If any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you receive, he is to be accursed." And beloved, that prosperity gospel, the social justice gospel, those types of things are another gospel, and those that preach them are cursed. Jude went on to describe these charlatans in Jude four, "For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ." The focus is on everything but that.

He goes on in verse 12, "These are the men who are hidden reefs in your love feasts, when they feast with you without fear, caring for themselves; clouds without water, carried along by winds; autumn trees without fruit, doubly dead, uprooted; wild waves of the sea, casting up their own shame like foam; wandering stars for whom the black darkness has been reserved forever."

I must add as well, especially as it relates to this false notion of faith healers - I want to underscore this again - Jesus healed instantly and completely, and obviously. It's interesting, all of his critics that hated him, that wanted to kill him, never once did they deny his miracle ability. They blamed it on Satan that was empowering him, but they never denied what he did; it was obvious, and he would do it with a word or a touch. There was no progressive healing. There was, you know, time that you needed to maybe have some therapy to kind of get your strength back. He healed all the symptoms, and here's the thing that just grips me as I think about it, there were no long lines of disappointed people that never made it to the stage, because he went and he touched and he healed all of them. The blind could see, the lame could walk. New limbs were formed. Imagine all that would have to happen for a blind person to be able to see. All of the neurons, everything in the body that would have to suddenly be made perfect. Paralytics instantly leaped about. Leprosy disappeared. He healed organic diseases. No vague, ambiguous, invisible ailments like, yeah, you know the headache's gone. Oh, ringing in the ears is gone. Oh, my back feels so much better. Folks, he raised the dead. He cast out demons, so all could see the radical change. And he did all of this without well-trained, well-organized, and disguised colleagues gathering information in a crowd like these charlatans do, and then communicating that to the phony healer. No crowd manipulation. And by the way, no seed faith money.  Likewise, the apostles they healed with a word, with a touch, instantly, completely.

We move from his power over disease to his power over demons. Notice verse 41, "Demons also were coming out of many, shouting, 'You are the Son of God!'" You see, they were terrified. I mean, they're screaming in rage and indignation. They are terrified that he is going to immediately send them to hell. By the way, if Jesus were here today, you would see the same thing in demon-possessed people. "But rebuking them, He would not allow them to speak because they knew Him to be the Christ." You see, the reason for this is to allow demons to affirm his deity and his messiahship would have been very confusing to the people and make them wonder if somehow, he was an ally with Satan, right? In fact, that would have fueled the false allegations of the Pharisees later on that claimed just that-that he's doing this under the power of Satan-and so he wouldn't let them speak.

Now, last week I went into great detail on demon possession and demon influence, and I'm not going to repeat that, but here again we witness Jesus' authority - his power over the domain of darkness, over physical and spiritual maladies that people have, over nature, disease, false religions, on and on it goes. And once again, aren't you thankful that he has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son? I'm reminded of Ephesians two, beginning in verse one. When I think about myself, when I subject myself to the scrutiny of divine omniscience and the penetrating light of his Word, when I look at myself, I'm reminded of this in Ephesians two, beginning in verse one, "And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air," referring to Satan, "of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience." Folks, that was me. That was you. "Among them, we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest." Oh, how thankful I am for God's saving grace! I'm thankful that Jesus has the authority over demons, and that he can deliver a depraved sinner like me, whose mind had been blinded by the God of this world (Second Corinthians 4:4). What a marvel to behold this in the lives of people.

Back to verse 41, "Demons were coming out of many, shouting, 'You are the Son of God!'" By the way, can you imagine the looks of the faces on people? My goodness, that's Aunt Hilda. I mean, seriously, that's what it would have been like. I live next door to that guy. Demon possessed. One of the things that I'm asked from time to time when you look at these things is, "How do you deal with all of this stuff?" Well, we see it here in verse 42, in terms of the priority.

Verse 42 says, "When day came, Jesus left and went to a secluded place." Here we move from his power over demons and our disease and demons to his priority of preaching. You simply must stay focused on the gospel. You can't stay focused on, for example, who's demonically influenced or possessed or all the wicked stuff around you. I mean, it will drive you crazy. That's why you can only watch the news so much, right? I mean, it just your jaw can't drop anymore. But Jesus maintained that priority; and what's interesting is when day came, it says, "Jesus left and went to a secluded place." "Secluded," in the original language, means "a solitary or desolate," literally "an uninhabited place" where there's no people, and anybody that is ever involved in ministry knows that it can be emotionally and even physically exhausting to deal with people with sins and sorrows; and many times you end up craving silence and seclusion to be alone with the Lord; and I cannot imagine how exhausted Jesus must have been, all right. He deals with the guy in the synagogue, and he goes over to Peter's house and heals his mother-in-law, and then you have this horde of people coming, and and he touches, he heals all of them. We learn more about this in Mark one, what happened, verse 35, "In the early morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left his house, and went away to a secluded place, and was praying there." Then it says, "Simon and his companions searched for Him; they found Him and said to Him, 'Everyone is looking for you.' He said to them, 'Let us go somewhere else, to the towns nearby, so that I I may preach there also, for that is what I came for.'"

It's interesting, and you can understand this at some level, all the people are coming to Jesus to to be healed, you know, for their loved ones to be healed. But they're not coming for the forgiveness of sins. That's not the priority, and yet that is the priority for Jesus, and it must be for us as well. So Jesus gets up early, leaves the house, goes up to a secluded place to pray. Some have asked, and I've heard this many times, "How can I develop a secret devotion to God, a prayer life, because I struggle with that - private worship, I struggle with that." I could probably preach a series on this, but I'll give you just two things, very short. If you have difficulty developing a time where making it a priority to spend time alone with the Lord and to pray and so forth, two things: number one, get to know Jesus better. Number two, get serious about serving him. The more you know Jesus, the more you love him. The more you love someone, the more you want to spend time with them and to hear their voice. And the more you serve him, the more you will see that ministry is war. It is exhausting. You cannot survive it apart from a disciplined life of prayer and private worship, fellowshipping with the lover of your soul.

I know over the years the cumulative effect of what's typically called "secondary trauma," where you you absorb the pain and the trauma of others, it weighs on you. It becomes increasingly debilitating. You know, you deal with people with all their sins and their secrets and their sorrows and their slanders. I mean, it can be exhausting. And if you're not careful, it can impair your capacity to feel empathy. That's why a lot of care caregivers just grow numb. Or sometimes you go to the hospital, and the nurse is like, you know, they're like robots. You know, they just have no feeling. Sometimes doctors the same way. You never want to get that way. The way you don't get that way is you have to spend time alone with the Lord. I think about the key to survival that Jesus gave us in John 15:4, "'Abide in Me,'" he says. In other words, "Maintain sweet fellowship, maintain sweet communion with me." That's why He said in John 15:5, "'I am the vine; you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, he bears much fruit; for apart from Me, you can do nothing.'"

Well, obviously Jesus understood this, and he's broken hearted over the people. He sees them clamoring for healing, and he has compassion upon them, but he knows what the real problem is, is not physical, it's spiritual; and he knows the hell that awaits them. So, in verse 42, "When day came, Jesus left and went to a secluded place; and the crowds were searching for Him and came to Him and tried to keep Him from going away from them." So again, obviously they're awestruck with all of this. Who wouldn't be? And it's interesting. Jesus didn't rebuke them, but he did say to them, "'I must preach the kingdom of God to the other cities also, for I was sent for this purpose.' So He kept on preaching in the synagogues of Judea."

You see, what you don't read here is that in the midst of all of the healing, he's still preaching the kingdom of God. Yes, he was a miracle worker, and people saw the overwhelming displays of his majesty, but most importantly, dear friends, he was a preacher of the gospel, because only the truth of the gospel can deliver sinners from the power and the penalty, and one day the presence of sin. The gospel is the only truth that can rescue sinners from Satan's kingdom of darkness and transfer them into the kingdom of God's dear Son, and this is an important truth that we must not overlook here. It's interesting. Jesus also knew that many believed in his name, but they did not trust in him to save savingly. They did not trust him to save them from their sin. It's interesting. We read about this, for example, in John two, beginning in verse 23,

"Now, when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover, during the feast, many believed in His name, observing His signs which He was doing.

"But Jesus, on His part, was not entrusting Himself to them, for He knew all men, and because He did not need anyone to testify concerning man, for He Himself knew what was in man."

You see, they trusted in him to be a miracle man to perform miracles, but they did not embrace him in repentant saving faith. In fact, many people today believe in Jesus' name. Many people call him Lord, but Jesus, on his part, is not entrusting himself to them because he knows what's in their heart.

I want to shift for a moment to Matthew seven, beloved. Remember, there are two kinds of faith. There's true faith and there's false faith. There's saving faith, and there's non-saving faith. And in Matthew seven, you will recall how Jesus asks us to choose between two gates. Remember, there's a narrow and a wide gate. Verse 13, Jesus commands, "'Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction...'" The narrow gate, even in the original language, gives you the idea of a restrictive gate, a compressed gate. In fact, it comes from a Greek root word that means "to groan." One does not enter this gate with ease. You have to squeeze through. It will not allow you to enter with the excess baggage of your self-righteousness. It's a gate that requires you to enter completely empty-handed, recognizing your spiritual bankruptcy, being consumed with guilt over your sin. There will be an intense pressure resulting from a conscious choice to renounce the old self and to put on Christ; so, this is a gate that requires a determined, purposeful decision to enter it, requiring strenuous effort, because it's not easy for us to acknowledge our wickedness and to say, "I am going to repent, I'm going to start going in this direction. Will you have mercy on me and help me to do that?"

 There's a wide gate and a narrow gate. Both of them point to heaven. The wide gate is the roomy gate, spacious, inclusive, attractive. Everybody can kind of go through it. No striving here. No need for conscious, strenuous effort. No need to experience guilt over your sin. No groaning or crying out for mercy. This is the easy way. Just repeat a little prayer. Walk an aisle. Whatever. Believe in Jesus, come as you are and stay that way, or hey, obey this rule, this ritual, do this, do that, you'll make the cut. That's the easy gate, the wide gate. He goes on to talk about the two ways. There's the narrow and the broad, both leading to two destinations: life or destruction. One leads to eternal life. One leads to eternal death and punishment. But those on the broad way think they're going to heaven. Isn't it sad? Just listen to the average funeral service. where everybody is in heaven. "Oh, I'm so glad he's in a better place now." On what basis would you say that? "Oh, he's a good man. Had lots of friends. Everybody loved him. He even went to such and such a church, sang in the choir, taught Sunday school."

There's two groups of people too, Jesus says, the few and the many. You see, the majority of those who claim to know and love Christ don’t and will never enter the kingdom. Matthew 22 verse 14. We read, "'Many are called, but few are chosen.'" In other words, the gospel of Christ goes out to millions and millions of people over millennia, and yet mercy will only be granted to the few who will enter through the narrow gate by God's grace. So, folks, whenever you see vast multitudes of people clamoring after some supposedly Christian guru, bear in mind that's a high probability that that is the wide gate gospel that appeals to the flesh. Very few, Jesus says, will even find the narrow gate. Why is that? Because you got so many false teachers giving you the other gate, and because that's not the gate that is appealing to your flesh. Genuine salvation requires the end of self, not the satisfaction of self. We do not come to the Savior primarily to somehow find fulfillment and happiness and purpose in life, even though those are byproducts of saving grace; we come to Christ because we're longing for the forgiveness of sin, and we're craving a righteousness that is not ours-the imputed righteousness of Christ.

The few and the many are likened in Matthew seven, to two kinds of trees, the good and the bad. The fruit of the good tree, those who fear God, who love God, and who tremble at Him. They're in awe of his attributes. They find happiness and joy in the Lord, but the tree that produces the bad fruit knows nothing of any of that because they're spiritually dead; they’re man-centered, and those two trees produce two kinds of people who profess Christ: the sincere and the self-deceived.

And if you go on to study it, and I'm just hitting obviously the highlights, Jesus talks of two kinds of spiritual builders. There's the wise and there's the foolish. They build upon two kinds of foundations, rock and sand, and they erect two kinds of houses of faith: one that will stand the storms of final judgment versus one that will collapse in a heap of eternal disappointment. And in light of this, Jesus offers the most chilling prediction ever made concerning the masses of people who would fall prey to self-deception. Those people that believe that somehow they belong to Him, when in fact they don't. Here's what He said, Matthew seven verse 21, "'Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord!' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to me on that day, "Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name cast out demons and in Your name perform many miracles” and then I will declare to them, "I never knew you. Depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.'"

Folks, think of all the apostate forms of Christianity that offer a wide gate gospel, especially in the Pentecostal and charismatic movements to teach the prosperity gospel; all of the fake healings and prophecies and miracles and exorcism-people that claim to know and worship the Lord, but they have no idea who he really is-they rely on experience to validate their truth claims rather than the authority of the Word of God. It's estimated that approximately 120 million out of 500 million charismatics are Roman Catholic, and Roman Catholicism is an apostate, false religion. 25 million of them are Oneness Pentecostals, and they deny the Trinity. You can't know Christ and deny the Trinity. 90% of them believe the prosperity gospel: that Jesus died mainly to make you rich and healthy. And then there's all the cultural Christianity that we see around here. People are Christian in name only. They have no love for Christ, no love for his word. They believe in the name of Jesus, but they have no compassion for the lost, no mourning over their own sin and so forth. Proverbs 30 verse 12 warns, "There is a kind who is pure in his own eyes, yet is not washed from his filthiness." And that's what we see, and that's the great burden of my heart, even in our community and in the world at large.

You see, what validates genuine saving faith is a brokenness over sin so profound that it causes you to cry out for undeserved forgiveness, and in so doing, you're doing the will of the Father. That's what Jesus said. You know, the only ones that will enter the kingdom are the ones that do the will of the Father. What's the will of the Father? Well, that you be saved and sanctified, suffer for Christ, and so on and so forth. And of course, that begins with the attitude of your heart, and then that is manifested in your life. Hebrews five and verse nine makes this abundantly clear. "He became to all those who obey Him the source of eternal life."

Well, dear friends, in closing this morning, Satan's most effective weapon to deceive and create false religious systems and cultures is to distort the character of God and convince men and women that somehow they have been reconciled to God, and that they know Christ because they've done something rather than they trust in what Christ alone has done for them. And in our contemporary evangelical community, people are routinely invited to come to Christ, but it's a Christ that bears little, if any, resemblance to the Lord of glory revealed in Scripture. "Just make this decision. Just accept Jesus into your heart, and you're good to go." Folks, that's the wide gate gospel preached by false teachers. Oh, dear friends, examine your heart. Do you really love Christ? Is it your passion to do the will of the Father? And for all of us who are debtors to His grace, let's all celebrate the overwhelming displays of the majesty of Jesus-not just what we read about historically in the Scriptures, but the overwhelming displays of his majesty in our life. Let's celebrate these things and share them with others, that they too might see Christ in us and behold his glory. Amen.

Father, thank you for the great truths of your word that penetrate to the very core of who we are. I pray that your word will do its work of grace in each heart that has been given ears to hear. We thank you for your love for us. We thank you for the overwhelming displays of your majesty that we have seen down through history, that we have experienced in our life, especially in the miracle of regeneration, and oh Lord, how we long to see more of those displays, especially when we enter into your presence, blameless with great joy. We thank you, we give you praise in Jesus' name. Amen.