Poison, Bible Lovers Jesus Haters: My Testimony of a Mission Gone Wrong
Well praise Jesus today everyone. I had a message on my heart when I woke up early this morning. And that message was one word, which is “poison”, and then it was, “Bible lovers, Jesus’ haters”. We will be poisoned even by the Christian Bible if we put ourselves before a pastor or before a man who hates Jesus Christ but loves the Bible. The Pharisees were these sorts of people. They turned people against Jesus Christ in their time because they loved their scriptures, yet they absolutely hated Jesus Christ.
It is a bunch of hypocrisy today because most Christians would never say they hate Jesus Christ but if they were in the times of Jesus they would side with the Pharisees. They would take part in the hypocrisy with the Pharisees because they love the scriptures. I want to give you an example of what this means and how it was played out in my own life in a time in the past. See I never wanted to be against Jesus but with my actions I was and I also played the hypocrite.
One time in high school I had this youth pastor who came to my church. He was hired to be the youth pastor and he was a godly man. He cared to lead people in the Lord. He was very biblical, and he started teaching us high school students about the Bible. We would go to Bible study. We would go to his house, and he would teach us the Bible verses on how to evangelize people, how to do street evangelism, how to witness to people if we go on mission trips, how to defend our faith. There were these verses that we would memorize, and we would learn how to be devoted. Much of this devotion was to the Bible but of course we thought it was to God. During this time in my life I was in a lot of sin, lustful sin. I really didn't follow Jesus the way I should because especially in high school when you're surrounded by girls and trying to be cool, Jesus is really one of the last things that is on your mind. But because a lot of my other friends were going to this Bible study and of course I wanted to be godly. I went to this Bible study, and I learned from my youth pastor how to read the Bible. I thought that I was becoming more spiritual. I thought because I was going to these meetings that I was getting closer to God and pleasing to God.
Well, one day the youth pastor announced that he was going to plan a mission trip. He planned out this mission trip to this certain Indian reservation in a different state. We were supposed to go there and prepare for this trip and speak to the native people there and the children. It was like an orphanage for some native people. And so we prepared for this mission trip and it was probably a day's journey to get there or farther by car. So not terribly far but for a high school student like me it was one of my first bigger mission trips that I went on. To tell you the truth, this whole mission trip I was in sin. I was lustful of other girls that were on the trip. My heart was in all the wrong places. I was trying to impress my guy friends. I was trying to impress girls on the trip. I was doing things that were very ungodly. But when my mentors would come around, we would just do Bible study. We would say a prayer and we looked like the good Christian kids. When we got to this mission trip, one of our tasks was to do some landscaping. And we were to rent what's called a ditch witch to put in a certain irrigation line that went from the orphanage to this other location so that we could bring water to this certain location.
There had been groups before us that had already put a certain amount of plumbing in the ground, but it wasn't completely finished. So we rented this ditch witch which was a kind of machine that you would walk behind and it had this turning kind of saw that would cut into the dirt. And it would cut into the dirt about 18 to 24 inches deep and you would push it. Now the ground where we went on this Indian reservation was extremely hard. You could not easily anyways dig it by hand. So that's why we rented this ditch witch. But we were supposed to check to see with either the building department or the people that were living there if there was any other underground cables or if there was any underground pipes. But we didn't check and as kind of a leader in part of this trip I advised everyone that it would be okay and that if I was running this machine that I would just be extra careful. So we were supposed to run this by probably like around 100 to 200 feet from one location to the next location. And as we started pushing this machine it was fine until we got about halfway in between one structure and the other structure, and we hit a water line. That water line that we hit got twisted up in our machine. It yanked other pipes with it that were deep underground, and it damaged a bunch of like one inch and two-inch water lines. And it ended up being such bad damage that it shut off the water, the main water to this whole orphanage.
Well, that wasn't enough for us to stop. It's not like I consulted the Lord. We didn't pray and say Lord guide us on what to do. All I thought and all the leadership of our mission trip thought well let's keep on going and we'll just be careful. So we kept on using this Ditch Witch and in our stupidity we ended up hitting like three or four more water lines. We totally destroyed the water system that they had. The water was totally shut off to the main orphanage. The kids couldn't take showers. It was an absolute disaster. Long story short, this was a mission trip sent from hell. We basically destroyed all of the progress that the people did before us, the missionaries did before us to get these people water and all of these underground lines we broke. They had already landscaped. We broke their landscaping. It was an absolute nightmare. I remember on the trip just sort of mocking other Christians because of how they sounded. It was very shameful what we did on that trip.
And when we returned from that trip back home to our church, we were to report what we did on that mission trip. And we were able, I mean, I remember in church even our youth pastor being ashamed to report because it was an absolute failure. If we were to tell the truth in church, we would look like such evil people because what we did was evil. Our hearts were evil. My heart was evil. But we tried to make it sound the best we could in church. We went on this mission trip. We helped these orphans. We played with them. We had pictures of ourselves with the kids at the orphanage and we were able to show the church. So in church on Sunday morning, we were able to make it look pretty half decent. But I knew in my heart that I was in sin. I knew that we were in sin as a group and God did not bless the mission trip. It was truly a mission trip from hell.
That is a scenario of a group of people that loved the Bible. We loved Bible study. We loved the idea of evangelism. We loved the idea of knowing how to defend the Bible, knowing how to speak to people on the streets. We loved the idea of going on a mission trip. But we truly hated Jesus Christ. Now did we think that we hated Jesus Christ? No. We thought that we were doing a mission trip for God. We thought that we were reading the Bible for the Lord. We thought that we were doing it for Jesus Christ. All of these things we thought we were doing for God, but it was all in vain. In reality, we were serving ourselves. We were serving our own pleasure. We were lying to the congregation, to the church, and we were living hypocrites. We were godless. And God absolutely despised that trip that we went on. He despised us because we were sinners. Even though we were Christians and the whole church would say we were all saved by grace and that we were good people going on this mission trip, it was truly from hell.
This scenario, guys, is not an isolated incident to me when I was 16 or 17 in high school. This happens all the time. Christians are in deep, deep sin. And if we don't repent of sin, if we don't purify our own hearts, then we will also be Christians that are Bible lovers and Jesus’ haters. We are enemies of God if we are sinning. You can't just say God looks over my sin. He's forgiven me if you haven't truly repented. The first order to getting right with Jesus Christ is to confess that you are a sinner and to actually repent, say “Lord, I can't do anything on my own. I'm a sinner. I have lust in my heart, hate in my heart. I have abused your words. I've taken your name in vain. I've put other gods before you. I've lived as a wretched man, and I desperately want to repent. I know that I can do nothing on my own. I know it means nothing. How many Bible verses I've memorized. I know it means nothing how many mission trips I've went on and how many sermons I've went on because I have this sin in my life and I'm an enemy of you, oh Lord, because you hate sin and you will be against me, Lord, until I repent.” You need to truly repent, as it says in the Bible, with mourning and with ashes with sackcloth and ashes. Until we display that we truly are sad for our sins and that we really have a heart that wants to repent, the Lord will be against us. He will not bless the work of our hands.
The Bible itself will be as poison to us. I was poisoned by the Bible for many years because I believed I was righteous because I knew the Bible. I believed that I could evangelize others because I knew the Bible. I believed that because I was in church and going on mission trips that I was a better person and I felt in my heart when I went home that I had done God good because I was speaking the things of the Bible, but I was poisoned by the Bible. My heart was poisoned with sin. If we want to be in right standing with the Lord, we have to repent of Bible hypocrisy. We have to repent of Christian hypocrisy, church hypocrisy. We have to look into our own hearts and say, “is there sin in my life? Am I doing things that are godless?” We have to truly repent of the evil that is in us. And then once we truly repent, the Lord can wash us clean. We can be baptized in water and then we can be baptized in the Holy Spirit. We can speak with our new tongues, not just in some tongue that is audible to men, but a tongue that truly comes from the Holy Spirit that allows us to understand prophecies, to understand visions and have visions and dreams from the Lord, to understand the scriptures, to have wisdom that comes from God, to be able to enlighten others because the Holy Spirit is now lighting up our entire life, a tongue that is not of the old flesh, but of the regeneration that Jesus has made us when we come into the new covenant.
So I share this testimony about myself when I was in church and on this mission trip because I don't want my fellow brothers and sisters to fall into the same hypocrisy and Bible poisoning and Bible teaching that ended in lies that I also fell into for many, many years. I could have died in my sins except the Lord got my attention and pulled me out of church. He pulled me out of hypocrisy so that I could live for Him with all of my heart. And I share this message so that you also may hear the truth of the gospel and genuinely come into a relationship with Jesus Christ.
So if you are someone out there that knows that you are in sin, because all of us have been in sin, all of us were sinners, if you know that you want to repent, if you know that you want to get right with God, if you say, “I know in my heart, I know something is wrong, but I want to get reconciled with Jesus Christ and get my life in order with Him.” I want to pray for you and anyone who is ready to give their life to the Lord Jesus. “So Jesus, I pray for those who want to be part of your true church that don't want to be Bible hypocrites or poisoned by the Bible because they ate up all the scriptures, but they didn't come to your truth of repentance. I pray for those that are in hypocrisy as I was in hypocrisy, as I was in sin. We come before you humbly Lord, and ask that you cleanse us of all unrighteousness, that you purge us and that we truly can be part of your new covenant. We thank you that you died on the cross for our sins, that we could truly be a new creation and that we could walk in the newness of life with you if we repent and put our faith completely in you. I pray Lord Jesus that you would become a father to those who have been fatherless. I pray that you would become a father to those that have not seen what it means to have a father, even a father in heaven. I pray that those who are listening to this message today, that God has given their life to you, would put their life in your hands and that you would baptize them with the gift of your Holy Spirit. I pray that they would be obedient to be baptized and that they would be filled with the gifts of your Holy Spirit, that they would go out in power, being able to rebuke demons, to send the voices of accusation that come into them out of them, that they would be able to stand holy and pure before you Lord and that you would wash their garments, that they would be made white as snow and be ready for the wedding supper of the Lamb. So I pray for anyone that is watching this that wants to be made clean, that they would be cleansed by the blood of the Lamb, that they would be washed in your blood Lord and that they would turn a 180 from sin, that they would put their faith in you Lord Jesus, and say, Lord Jesus cleanse me and make my heart pure and holy. I pray this in your name Lord Jesus and for anyone listening that they would be convicted, that they would put their trust 100% in you. In your name I pray Lord Jesus, Amen.”
