We'll praise Jesus today, brothers and sisters in the Lord. I wanted to speak about this subject of in faith alone, positional righteousness, the grace gospel, because these are things that have affected the Christian Church for many, many years. Ever since the fathers of the faith during the time of the early Catholic Church, promoting their version of Christianity, some of these false doctrines got into the church. Martin Luther taught some of these false doctrines, John Calvin taught some of these false doctrines, and many churches follow after the teachings of John Calvin and Martin Luther, instead of following after the teachings of Jesus Christ and listening to his words. But I want to just speak about this again, because it is such a big topic in the Christian Church. It's such a big deception, rather, and it's led many people off of the straight and narrow path, because they get confused about the filthy rags. They think that their works for Jesus don't count or matter, because God sees them as filthy, and the church tells you the only thing that matters, you know, is that Jesus died on the cross for our sins, and so God sees you as positionally righteous through his Son, Jesus Christ. They say you don't have to do anything for God to love you more. He'll never love you any less than he does right now in your sin. It's a work that is just filthy if you try to repent and reconcile with God, and so it introduces a great amount of confusion into the Christian faith, because as a Christian you start thinking, especially as a baby Christian, well, Jesus paid it all on the cross, so I believe that. I trust that Jesus died and resurrected, but I want to live for him, but I know if I start living for him, Christians will say I'm trying to work out my salvation by just works, and that is sinful, and God sees that as filthy rags, so I don't really want to be filthy, and if God sees me as filthy, then I just shouldn't do those works anyway. So this promotes a sort of Christianity that is very dualistic, because one side of their mouth they preach you have to have you have to have works, you know, you have to go to church, read your Bible, pay tithe, but then on the other side of their mouth they say all of our works are as filthy rags, and so you get really confused as a Christian trying to go two directions at once.
So I want to break
a bit of this down. The confusion of the filthy rags, a certain brother in the
Lord about a year ago sent me a really good message that he had made for a
church to rebuke them. He sent me that that PowerPoint, and I have posted it on
my WarningThePeople channel. So if you
go to warningthepeople.com and you want more information on this, you can go to
warningthepeople.com and open up one of the tabs there that takes you to I
believe it's just called Filthy Rags, and so if you look at that, it gives, it
really breaks down and gives a good description of what the filthy rags in
context looks like in Isaiah, and how the prophet Isaiah was describing all of
their deeds as filthy because they weren't honoring God.
We know though as
Christians that Jesus died on the cross, he resurrected, and we know that we
have to believe in him in order to be saved. We know that it isn't by our own
works. So I think the couple things we
need to break down here is, what is a work of righteousness compared to what is
a filthy rag or a dead work, a work that's not really true, because the Bible
speaks about both of these. On one side you hear about works that are leading
to death, works that are filthy, and so we need to make a clear-cut distinction
between what a false work is and what a true work is. So let's break that down
first.
So a false work we
can know is something that doesn't bring God glory. It's in vain. So an easy
example of this for a Christian who is in the truth already would be to look at
some of the false faiths that are on this earth. One would be the Muslim faith that is based
on works. Their faith, they have five pillars of their faith which are
religious works that they have to carry out, and none of these works bring
about the righteousness God requires. They don't believe in Jesus Christ. They don't believe in him as the one true God,
but they think that you have to make a journey to Mecca. They think that that
work makes you holy. They think you have to give alms to the poor. You have to
pray facing the east, and there's all these things you have to do, memorizing
the Quran, upholding the prophets, fasting from sunup to sundown during the
months of Ramadan, and there's all of these religious things that you have to
do. Those are all works that God sees as filthy rags, and not just to pick on
the Muslim faith, because a lot of Christians have a faith that is totally in vain
as well, and all of their works are also as filthy rags. For example, the
Catholic Church thinks it's very holy to go to Mass, have the Eucharist, pray
to Mary, and pray to all these other idols that they call saints, and all of
their so-called righteousness, and all of their prayer, and all of their
alms-giving is all as filthy to God, because their works are totally dead. They're not done in the spirit of truth with
the Holy Spirit. There are many other faiths that are very vain. They go
door-to-door, trying to witness to people about their watchtower, or about
their Joseph Smith prophet. They go far
and wide into all of the earth, trying to preach about their works. Yet, God
sees all of their deeds as filthy. So guys, these are all of the works that are
as filthy rags to God. All the things that men try to achieve, and men try to
do a lot to appease their conscience. We try to give a lot of money to the
poor. We try to fast. We try to read the
Bible. We try to do good things to people, to erase bad deeds. And all of these
sort of deeds that we can do, at the end of the day, God sees as filthy rags
when we don't belong to Jesus, and our works were not works that were being
fulfilled of the Holy Spirit, but works, rather, to try to appease a guilty conscience.
So again, these are all the sorts of works that are on the side of filthy rags,
true filthy rags.
But what is on the
other side? The other side is the righteousness God requires. And obviously,
Jesus does not look down and call true works filthy rags, whether you want to
call that positional righteous, or whether you want to call that practical
righteousness. But if you look at Matthew chapter 16 verse 27, you see Jesus
rewarding people according to their works, and those are good works or bad works.
So if you have works of iniquity, works of sin, or false works of religion,
you're going to be rewarded with damnation. But if you have works of
righteousness, because you were living in step with the Holy Spirit, then your
reward will be everlasting life and peace with the Son of God in eternity. And
we know that Jesus said these things in Matthew 16 verse 27. We know that if we
stand with the Lord, He will stand with us, and if we deny Him and reject Him,
He will also reject us before His holy angels. I want to give one example,
because when I was young in my faith, even though I didn't know it, I really
promoted John Calvin. I promoted John MacArthur and his doctrines, and also a
lot of the thoughts of Martin Luther. And when I first started working at a
Baptist church when I was about 18 years old, it was sometime early on, I was
like 18 or 19 years old, and I remember at that time my Baptist church was
going to do this new sermon series for a month, and they had made banners. So
the secretaries had put these banners up in the worship area, and the banners
said, “draw close to God by making right choices”. And as a 19 year old, I saw
these banners that were so pretty and that were being promoted by my church,
and I saw them, and I went up to my youth pastor, and I said, isn't this an
exact example of the false gospel? Because we can't draw close to God with good
works. The only way you can draw close to God is with true imputed
righteousness. That's believing in the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross.
And I truly was under the deception of this imputed positional righteousness
that Jesus has done everything on the cross, that you can't do anything for
him, because anything you do is filthy rags. And I went into the youth pastor
saying this, and the youth pastor looked at me and he said, “well, that saying
that we made those banners for in our church actually came from James, the book
of James, where James says”, he says, I'm going to probably not get the quote
exactly right, but, oh sinners draw close to God and he will draw close to you.
Resist the devil and the devil will flee. And after the youth pastor spoke this
to me, I knew he was speaking the truth, because this is also a verse in the
bible. And in James, it does say draw close to God and he will draw close to
you. Resist the devil and the devil will flee. So in what way do we resist the
devil? We resist the devil by doing good works and not doing bad works. We draw
close to God by making good choices and not by making bad choices. But if you
were to think to yourself, I'm going to draw close to God by lusting, looking
at pornography, by smoking pot, by getting drunk, you know, by hating my
neighbor, by having just a hateful spirit. And if you thought to yourself, I'm
going to draw close to God by that, because God is so loving and he's imputed
righteousness to me, I'm positionally righteousness, so it doesn't matter how
evil I am, then you are the definition of a deceived hypocrite.
And sadly, many
Christians were like how I was. They're sitting in church. They think that they're positionally
righteous. They believe these lies of John MacArthur, John Calvin, Martin
Luther. And they think that they're so smart because they've read these
doctrines of men of old and they've believed in these doctrines of men that
have seminaries and teach bible college. They're very literate. But at the same
time, they're completely idiotic because the very basic principles of the faith
that even a child could understand, they don't understand and they and they reject
and they deny. We need to get back to the very basic understanding that if we
do right, God accepts us. And if we do
evil, God condemns us. It's been this way from the beginning. Remember all the
way back to Adam and Eve and their sons. Cain killed Abel. And before Cain
killed Abel, God came to Cain and he said to Cain, Sin lies at your door. And
he told Cain if you do what is right, will you not be justified? And if you do
wrong, you will be condemned. If you'll be if you do wrong, I believe he said
sin lies at your door. Sin's knocking at your door. But it was very basic. If you overcome the temptation to hate
someone, the temptation to murder, the temptation to lust, then you will
overcome in the name of the living God. But if you don't, sin lies at your door
and its desire is to devour you and to take you to hell. As we know, Cain chose
to murder his brother Abel. And God put a marking on Cain. Cain became a
vagabond. I believe he was roaming the earth.
He had no home. He was scared people were going to murder him because he
was a murderer. If we start thinking like Cain that we don't have to overcome,
that God will just forgive us, or if we start thinking like John MacArthur or
Calvin or Martin Luther, if we get too smart for ourselves, then God is also
against us. So we in our Christian faith need to make sure that we are not
deceived by intellectual Christians, that we're not deceived by church
doctrines, and that we're not deceived by this filthy rags doctrine or this
positional righteousness doctrine. You are by no means positionally righteous
before Jesus, before God of all heaven and all earth, by just believing in him
with no works of righteousness. Read again the book of James and you will know
for a fact that the scripture says that faith without works is dead. If you say
that you have faith, but don't have works that prove your faith, then your
deeds, your works, your deeds are completely worthless.
So what are deeds?
What are works that are worthy before God? Let's talk about that. Works or
deeds, as the Bible calls them, that are worthy before God are those that the
Holy Spirit puts in you to do. So when you come to Jesus knowing that you are a
sinner and that you need to repent, that you need to go and be baptized, and
that you need to confess your sins, when you start acting on those convictions,
all of those works before God are justified as righteous. Even Rahab the
prostitute was considered righteous, in her works righteous, when she lied to
conceal the identity of the spies. When she pointed the government in the
opposite direction saying they went that way, when they went this way, she was
considered righteous. If you read about what all of those men of old did that
are in the faith chapter, they laid down their lives and they had works of
righteousness and they were justified by their faith and by their deeds for
choosing to go the right way by honoring the Spirit of God. So what are some of
those things that you can do? Well, true repentance, a water baptism, not for
religion, but for true faith in God, forgiveness, long-suffering, having love
in your heart, joy, all the things that the apostle Paul speaks of as the
fruits of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness,
faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. We know what attributes are good in the
eyes of God and we know which ones are evil. So if we practice good works, the
things God requires, the things that we have on our conscience from God to do
that are righteous, God will never condemn you saying that you are filthy. He
will never condemn you as being filthy for praying, for casting out evil
thoughts from your mind. When is the last time you think that Jesus ever said
that you were filthy for resisting thinking an evil thought? When is the last
time God ever looked at one of his servants and said, because you resisted
temptation, you are filthy. Just know that I have done it all on the cross and
you don't need to resist temptation. You don't need to resist evil people. Just
follow after your lusts. Obviously, that is the devil's voice that says that,
that says that you can stumble into all sorts of lusts of the flesh and that
you're just positionally righteous. Every time that you choose to cast an evil
thought out of your mind, that is a work of righteousness. Every time that you
overcome a temptation, that is a work of righteousness. Every time you resist
pride, every time that you are overcoming in the name of Jesus, those are works
of righteousness. And as his disciples, those are the works that we need to have
accompanying our faith. And if we don't, then our faith is totally in
vain. It is totally fake.
Go back and read
the book of James. A lot of Christians don't like the book of James. They avoid it because they uphold John
MacArthur or they uphold Calvin or Martin Luther. And a lot of these men are
upholding their false doctrines, but they're not upholding the truth of Jesus
Christ. We need to get back to the basics of true love by working out our
salvation with fear and trembling and having love of the truth and hatred of
evil. If we hate what God hates and if we love what he loves, we will be going
in the right direction. But it's impossible to go the right direction by going
left and right at the same time. If you're saying all the things God loves are
filthy rags, but we need to have those filthy rags, you're going to be so
confused as a Christian. You're not
going to know what to do. So I encourage you to go back and read James. Go back
and read the gospels. Read what Jesus
said about about faith and about works. And then make sure that you as a
Christian have works of righteousness, not the false works, not dead religious
works, but make sure that you have genuine works of faith like all the apostles
had, like all the men of old had, like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had. Faith
that proved or works that proved their faith.
Anyways, I want to
pray for those of you that do want to have works of righteousness with your
faith and those of you that want to work out your salvation with fear and
trembling. “So Lord Jesus, I pray for your church. I pray that we will not be
deceived by false prophets, by false doctrines, even those of old that even
came about 2,000 years ago. We pray that we can overcome in your name and truly
have the works of righteousness in us. We pray that we are your children, that
we're not just chasing after doctrines of the church, that we're not just
thinking that we're righteous because we've believed in the easy grace gospel
or believed in positional righteousness or imputed righteousness. But we pray
Lord that we really lay down our lives for you and that as you took up your
cross, we also take up our cross, deny ourselves daily, and follow you, which
we know is a work. We know it takes work to stay on the straight and narrow
path, but it doesn't take work and it doesn't take diligence or self-control to
deviate off the path. It only takes one lazy move to get off of the straight
and narrow path, but it takes diligence, persistence, focus. It takes all of
our self-control to stay on the straight and narrow path. So we want to work
for you, Lord Jesus, with diligence, with all of our heart, soul, mind, and
strength. We love you, Lord, and we pray for many more to lay down their life
for you and come into the true faith. In your name we pray, amen.”
