God's People Deceived — George Verwer

A group of people were present who could not understand English. Translation took place, therefore, step-by-step into six languages by means of interpreters. This interpretation has now been extracted, but it has resulted in there being a few places where unexpected changes of tone occur in the speaker's voice.

Victory Through Obedience to God's Word

Nothing has been added to or taken from the original message. To the book of Joshua, the first chapter. I'm sure all of us desire to live in victory. We want to see success. We want to see God work, just as Joshua wanted to see success in the plan or the proposal that God had given him.

And God gave to Joshua some very clear-cut instructions, and I believe these are for us as well this evening. Let's begin at verse 7. God had promised this land, and here we read in verse 7, Only be thou strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law which Moses my servant commanded me.

And turn not from it to the right hand or to the left, that thou mayest prosper with it, soever thou goest. And then verse 8. This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein, for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.

Now, this is a tremendous promise, and I'm convinced if we take this to heart, we would need even one more day of conference. Too many of us are conference Christians. We've had meeting itis for years, and we're never able to do anything until we get conference-ized and challenged and spurred and rebuked and everything else, and then finally we launch off at least for a few weeks.

Many a young person recommits his life every year from the time he's six or seven until he's tired of raising his hand, never to know real victory down in the deserts and the front lines of everyday living.

Developing a Daily Quiet Time

And basically it's because they never learn to feed themselves. They never learn to get their daily needs for themselves from the word of God. We all have heard many times about the quiet time. Every Christian should have a quiet time.

Every Christian should have his devotional time, whatever word you want to use. How many of us could stand up and say, for the last six months I've known reality and blessings in quiet time every morning of every day?

Dawson Trotman, before he died, interviewed many missionaries and discovered even a great high percentage of missionaries were not having a systematic quiet time with God. This is basically what God was saying to Joshua.

He was telling Joshua to have his quiet time and he was telling Joshua to make sure that he set aside every day for meditating and feeding upon the word of God. He says, but thou shalt meditate therein day and night.

Not just in the morning, but in the morning and at night. In the book of Deuteronomy, we have some tremendous verses along this line. Chapter 11, verse 18. Therefore shall ye lay up these my words in your heart and in your soul and bind them for a sign upon your hands.

They may be as frontlets between your eyes. Ye shall teach them, your children, speaking of them when thou sittest in thine house, when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down and when thou risest up, and thou shalt write them upon the doorposts of thine house and upon thy gates.

Very clear, isn't it? The absolute importance of the word of God in our lives. Yet wherever I go, I find Christians trying to live a Christian life without time with God. We get up early in the morning, but because we lack discipline, because it's so easy to get going in a conversation with some person, it's so easy to spend extra time taking care of our physical body, before we know it, the day's work has begun and we haven't been with God.

And then, of course, we wonder why we're not experiencing the reality and the victory that God wants to give. I want to tell you, out in India, we have a very, very difficult schedule. But I know that I can afford, no matter how much I have to do, I cannot afford to miss that time in the morning with God.

One mistake I made for many years was trying to get time with God before getting my body awake and alert. This is why starting on Monday morning here, we'll help you get alert with our physical exercise program the moment you get up.

Because, you know, it really isn't very pleasing to God when we sort of drift into His presence in the morning half asleep, and some of us have even developed the ability to sleep while we're praying.

Maybe some pray while they're sleeping, I don't know. That's not so bad. The verse that comes to my mind is, Whatsoever you do, do it heartily as unto the Lord. Nothing wrong with sleep. You sleep, sleep heartily.

And I can tell you, you laugh, but in my years of Christian service, I've discovered one of the greatest things you can develop is the ability to sleep with everything you've got. And you want to stay healthy, you learn to sleep well.

But then when you come to pray, pray with that same intensity. When you come to dig into the Word of God, come with that same intensity. And this will revolutionize your spiritual life. No greater power in breaking down that dichotomy that we've talked about much than the meditation on the Word of God.

I can say that ninety percent of the Christians I've met in my life do not have a quiet time of anything near as systematic. Even when I was at Bible college, there was only a small percentage of students that knew anything about a real quiet time with God.

It's no wonder that there's so much carnality and so little victory and power in our spiritual lives. To many of us, this is an old message. And we like, of course, to hear new things. But unless we get this old thing, all the new things we hear will always eventually be of no avail.

Of course, we always have an excuse, don't we, why we don't get our quiet time. And by the end of the summer, I'm sure you'll blame your team leader for not giving you enough time in the morning. Maybe he expected you to be ready to work by 9 .30.

And so you say, well, we didn't have enough time in the morning to get with God. Just, oh, and they're always running about just 9 .30 in the morning, looming off to do the work. Not enough time for God.

Now, with that philosophy, what hope is there for the man in the normal job ever to live the Christian life? There's none at all. Because he cannot come in at 10 o 'clock or an hour late and say to his boss, well, you know, I had a great blessing in my quiet time this morning.

It was a little late, but you understand, of course. And one of my great burdens is to testify to the layman, to the man in the world, and many of you will be in that position, that no matter where you work, no matter what you do, you can find time for God.

So it means learning how to use those early hours of the day. And that takes initiative. This is the word that has come to my mind almost every other day out in India. Initiative. Taking the initiative.

That means not worrying about the problem, the difficulty, or whatever might be missing, but on your own steam, accomplishing what needs to be done. Were you determined tonight, in the beginning of this conference, to have a quiet time, to give God priority in your day?

Not literature, not O .M., not a summer campaign, not driving a vehicle, or whatever else you might be doing, but God. Use whatever method you want. I must confess, I'll be very honest, that this past year, the one that has stirred me almost every other morning, is not Joshua, nor Matthew, nor Paul, but A .W. Tozer.

Every time I've opened one of his books in the past months, I've received breaking and blessing beyond capacity to hold. Most of us have this mentality, oh, we must get it from the word. And, of course, the word of God is a hundred times more important than any man's book or anything else.

But all through history, God has spoke to men through his prophets, through speakers, contemporary men, relating the word of God to the problems of their day. And when I read a chapter of Tozer, the verses that he uses, that he applies to the contemporary situation, revive my soul and cause me to want to press on for God, and then drive me deeper into the word.

I don't care what method you use, but get the method that will drive the word of God deep, deep, deep into your heart. Everybody I meet has some kind of problem, and we want to see our problems solved.

They'll have emotional problems, and they want to see them solved. More and more we see that the majority of sicknesses are caused by emotional and psychological problems. Again, all this year, I've just had this confirmed every week, that the major source of physical illness is emotional and spiritual and mental problems.

And this means that these problems are very deep in our psychological makeup. But you know what can go very deep right into where those problems are? That which can go down into the very depths of the word of God.

John chapter 15 says, Now you are clean through the word of God which I have spoken unto you. And I'm convinced that as we meditate day and night in the word of God, it will cleanse even some of the deepest problems of our life.

I find that people today are plagued with fear, and fears of various kinds. And sometimes these fears are not even seen on the surface. And you will find this work of door-to-door distribution a terrific battle if your heart is gripped with various kinds of fears of people and of situations that you will be going into.

There are more than 50 major diseases that can be brought upon your body through fear. And his sister, little Miss Worry. These two things have caused more illness than all the microbes that you can get under a microscope.

But again and again, when people have gotten serious about the word of God, I've seen them delivered from fear. I've had letters even this past week from people who were delivered from fear for simply getting down to business with the word of God.

2 Timothy 1 verse 7. God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. Recently a girl wrote to me. She heard me preach on that verse. She claimed it as her own. And was delivered from tremendous fears of her own life.

Recently I spoke to a young man in India. He was suffering from a number of sicknesses. He'd gone through all the tests. About a half a dozen tests. Doctors told him there's nothing wrong. Till he saw that his problem was fear.

That when he went out into the streets, he had a fear of being beaten. And the next time when he went into the streets, he claimed God's promise and he received terrific victory and blessing. And I think most of us are honest.

We've got to admit that there's some fear lurking in our hearts tonight about this whole work. The very thought of knocking on doors in France. There's some little unrest in some of your hearts, especially when you think of your French.

But the word of God says, I've not given you the spirit of fear. So when we read that, what do we do? Just pass over it? Oh, that's another nice verse. No. God said to Joshua, meditate on it. Take that verse and all day think upon it.

In the morning, noon, at night, think on that one verse. One verse in the subconscious is worth a hundred in the conscious. That's why we read so much in the Bible about meditating and very little about reading.

I dare to say that many here are probably Bible readers, but you're never going to know real reaching of the word until you become a meditator. So this is the thought I want to leave with you tonight, that we make quiet time the number one priority for this country.

Accountability, Obedience, and Dependence on God

If you're a weak person, then you want to get a partner. You know, when I'm all alone, it's very hard to get my 6 .30 exercise. And my wife is so loving, she always lets me sleep an extra half hour and then it's too late.

But almost all the time, wherever I go, I'm with at least one other fellow. We walk completely in the light. He knows what a wretch I am, I know what a wretch he is. From there we can start building together.

And so in the morning, we have the opportunity of beating each other to getting the other one up and helping him get the exercises. And through this system over the past two years, we've had a complete revolution in this thing of bodily exercises, which is so important for physical, mental, and every part of our health.

And so we can do the same thing with our quiet time. If we find that we just keep slipping on this, we can have someone check on us. And it's a great blessing. I just believe that victory this summer depends on whether we really determine to become serious about our meeting with God in the end.

Of course, the word of God without obedience is nothing. We must come hungry and ready for obedience. You know, one of our greatest problems is that we don't know how bad off we are. Many of us are not hungry for God the way we should be because we don't realize how far we are from God's plan for our life.

We also don't realize the importance of obedience or of discipline in our lives. And above all this, we live by feelings. Many mornings this summer, you're not going to feel like getting up, not going to feel like doing any exercises, that's for sure, not going to feel like reading the word of God, not going to feel like distributing books, not going to feel like being obedient to a team leader or anybody else.

The greatest enemy, without any doubt, of a victorious life is feelings. Tozer says this, he says, to want a thing or feel that we want it and then to turn from it because we see that it is contrary to the will of God is to win a greater battle on a field larger than Gettysburg or Bunkerville.

And there's a lot in that statement. And I can tell you that that decisive point of turning from feelings to obedience is the thing that will make a complete difference in your life. You know, this summer we have to be ready to be crucified.

And it's amazing what God will allow to come upon us to bring us to that point where we're truly dependent upon Him. The same morning I wrote that quote in my Bible, I wrote this other quotation. Tozer said, to do his supreme work of grace within you, he will take from your heart everything you love most.

Everything you trust in will go. Piles of ashes will lie where your most precious treasures used to be. I wonder how many of us are ready for those kind of ashes. You know, those ashes are going to come even more when we go back home.

In some cases, this campaign can only give the motivation for the action that must take when you get back home in that normal situation. You know, it's very hard for me to communicate. And every year it gets harder.

Six years ago when I went to preach in a place, people took one look at me and expected nothing. So whatever they got, they weren't disappointed. Now people come, they've heard some exaggerated story or they've seen some ridiculous picture or something else, and they expect great things, and no matter what, they go away disappointed.

And believe me, in many ways, I would rather be back in the desert of Rajasthan. But I want to say this, and I trust you'll understand it. We're interested in you. We're not interested in a machine. We're not interested in just seeing how many tracks we can give out.

We don't even count them anymore in most places. We're not interested in just being able to say we've had another summer campaign. We've had so many hundreds that come with us. Another airplane has crossed the Atlantic and has gone back.

So many souls have made decisions for Christ. This means nothing. If lives are not changed, if you don't go back different, more like Jesus Christ, ready to live in a lost world, then we will have failed.

We will have failed. I'd rather not have any more campaigns. You know, I just pray that you'll see what the Spirit of God wants to do this summer. What He wants to do in your life. That this will not be soldiering for a summer.

Reformation and the State of the Church

Some kind of a special holiday that you'll be able to tell your grandchildren about many years from now in your $40 ,000 home. You know, about nine years ago, when I began giving the orientation tapes at Moody Bible Institute, some of the things I said, people really got upset.

I said some radical things about the condition of the Church. I said I believed that the Church was completely hopeless to evangelize the world in our present generation and its present state. I said I didn't believe that any of the evangelical churches or any of the so-called New Testament churches were living and following real New Testament patterns.

And that we needed reformation. I used the word revolution. And some of you have heard me make comparisons in which I believe proven that our situation today is worse than the situation that Martin Luther faced.

Very few people comprehend this. We American evangelicals especially refuse to believe that we are pushing nothing but a carbon or a false copy of New Testament Christianity. And I can get it. I seem to be able to communicate to very few people how bad our situation really is.

How completely hopeless is the direction of all of our schools. You can imagine when I said things like this at 18 years of age, it didn't exactly get an applause from many people. But now in the past two years, the works of Tozer have become widely known.

Though I lived two years in Chicago, somehow in God's plan, I never heard him or read his books, though I lived in the same city. I don't understand it. But Tozer in far clearer words with 20 times the intellect and experience, if you read his writings, has said the exact same thing.

He says in one of his books that we're making converts to an ethic, I don't know how to pronounce that word, type of Christianity that bears little resemblance to that of the New Testament. He says the average so-called Bible Christian in our times is but a wretched parody on true sainthood.

He goes on to say yet we put millions of dollars behind movements to perpetuate this degenerate form of religion and attack the man who dares to challenge the wisdom of others. They're very hard words, aren't they?

Very hard words. If it wasn't for the very hardness of the dichotomy that we live in, we would get very sick just reading them. Thousands of Christians trapped by this blindness can even wade through Tozer and come out untouched and unchanged.

You can too. You know what scares me, really scares me? The deception of the human heart. The blindness of the masses of people. You'd think that especially we in America would wake up by now, but we won't.

The masses have never woken up. All of history proves that the masses have never been right. And the message of the cross will never be popular in any of our campuses. And it makes me really search my heart to know in what areas am I being deceived?

In what areas have I been blinded by a degenerate religion? And it drives me to the word of God, hunger after God, that He might be my sufficiency. He might deliver me from this present world and from this deception.

And I pray that in these days nothing else will receive a fresh hunger for God. Quite a few of you have come up to me. And you were at Urbana, a special conference that I spoke in in December, for those of you who don't know about it.

And you remember the response that there was there to a rather unusual kind of invitation. Yeah, where are these young people? Not that they have to come on O .M. That's completely irrelevant. But I can tell you this.

Because they go out from that giant gathering, many of them with hearts really hungry, if there was anything there, there was hunger for God. They go back to their colleges. And the Pied Piper plays. And the world calls.

And the deception is so great that within a year, the vast majority might as well never have come. You say, how can you say that? Old history proves it. So many commitments we have made. So many tears we have shed.

So many times we've been to the altar. So many times we've promised God we'd change. So many times we've rededicated our lives. Yet we remain. And one of the reasons is we don't realize how bad it is.

We don't realize how deep we are. We don't realize how much it's going to take to pull us out of this deception and bring us into life. On the day of Luther, many people were interested. Many were hungry for God.

Not only Martin Luther. There were only a few. Mainly him, who were ready to pay the price. Who understood how bad the situation was. Who refused to compromise and go back under the deception. But who determined to stand.

And he stood. And I believe it's the same today. The deception is great. Billy Graham says 95 of all Christians are living in defeat. We seem to be able to hear that statistic and it rolls off as if that was nothing.

95 Christians living in defeat. That very thought should be enough to drive us right into tears and crying out to God. It's going to take more than a summer. In the past seven summers, you know what we've learned?

We've learned a summer you can't do much. But you know that's so typical of us, especially from the West. We want instant Christianity. And some people are sure that if they can get a month on OM, they're going to come out a different person.

And we've got OMers that have been around for a hundred months and have proven still that OM doesn't make persons. Only God can do that. And you and you alone will determine whether God works through OM.

I just must read this other quote that I put in my Bible recently. He writes,. The American genius for getting things done quickly and easily with little concern for quality or permanence has bred a virus that has infected the whole evangelical church in America.

And through our literature, our evangelists and our missionaries has spread all over the world. An automatic once-for-all quality is present here that is completely out of mode with the faith of the New Testament.

A summer on OM won't do it. A year on OM won't do it. But God can do it. Take his word. Meditate therein. Day and night. Allowing it to break down every area of your life that's not pleasing to him. Allowing him to make a pile of ashes out of the things you cling to, love, most of all.

Let us pray. Our Heavenly Father, we're not willing by nature to face truth. We know by nature we're rebels against truth. The pride of our heart deceives us. The deceitfulness of our heart overwhelms us.

Lord, we look out over thy church. We are part of that church. We cannot leave it, but we plead with thee. Revive thy church. Change individuals that we might know a New Testament reality in our next generation.

Unbelief in Entering the Promised Land

We ask in Jesus' name. Amen. Book of Numbers and chapter 13. For we do so, let's ask the Lord to speak to us through his word as we read it. Father, we do praise you for the power of your word which is as powerful as when it was written.

We praise you, Father, that we see it at work in our own lives day by day and in the lives of others. Lord, we ask that it might be operative in our lives tonight. Father, we ask that, as we've prayed so often before, we might not become used to your word.

We might not become hardened to it. Lord, that it might speak in a living and do a powerful way to our hearts day by day. Open our hearts, Father, lead and guide us to what we should meditate on tonight.

For we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. Numbers chapter 13 and reading from verse 26. George will be speaking after me so I don't know how much of what I have to say there'll be time to say but we'll just go as the Lord leads.

Numbers chapter 13 and verse 26. And they went and came to Moses and to Aaron and to all the congregation of the children of Israel unto the wilderness of Paran to Kadesh and brought back word unto them and unto all the congregation and showed them the fruit of the land.

And they told him and said, We came unto the land which thou sentest us and surely it flourished with milk and honey and this is the fruit of it. Nevertheless the people be strong that dwell in the land and the cities are walled and very great and moreover we saw the children of Anak there.

The Amalekites dwell in the land of the south and the Hittites and the Jebusites and the Amorites dwell in the mountains and the Canaanites dwell by the sea and by the coast of Jordan. And Caleb stilled the people before Moses and said, Let us go up at once and possess it for we are well able to overcome it.

But the man that went up with him said, We be not able to go up against the people for they are stronger than we. And they brought up an evil report of the land which they had searched unto the children of Israel saying, The land through which we have gone to search it is a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof and all the people that we saw in it are men of a great stature.

And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak which came as the giants and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers and so we were in their sight. I would like to apply the different passages of Scripture we will be reading strictly to our situation.

Those of us who will be going out on teams during the next few days there is a very similar situation to the situation that existed in the passages we read and in some of the other passages in that we are entering into new territory we are entering into a new sphere of work, of witness and I think we can learn some lessons from the experience of the children of Israel here and in other books.

We saw that in this passage the children of Israel brought back an evil report of the land. They brought back a report which made God seem very small in their own eyes and which exalted the circumstances which exalted the difficulties and so we read in Hebrews that they didn't enter into the land because of their unbelief.

And if you'd asked those children of Israel excuse me if you'd asked those children of Israel why they hadn't entered the land they would probably have given you a number of different reasons. Some would have said it was because of the children of Anak some would have said it was because of the Amalekites some would have said it was because of the Hittites or the Jebusites or the Amorites.

Each one would have had his particular reason why they couldn't enter into the land. And yet we read God's verdict He says it wasn't anything to do with that at all it was because of your unbelief. You saw something that's bigger than me.

Although you profess to worship the living God you thought that there was something greater than I am. And this is idolatry. Although we may think that those Israelites were strange and rather foolish people to react in that way after all the wonders they've seen God do yet I believe that we in our own generation are very similar sometimes unconsciously to them.

And over this past year I've been looking back over it and thinking of the different things that we exalt in our own eyes to take on a bigger perspective than God takes in our eyes. And there are four things that particularly stand out as I think back.

The Circumstances That Make God Seem Small

The first one as we look forward into the future we need to beware of is the thing that stumbles these Israelites. They looked at the circumstances they looked at the evil conditions they looked at the obstacles in their way and they got so caught up with their conditions they got so caught up with the problems that faced them that they forgot about God.

And the whole report was concerned with the situation in the land the whole report was concerned with the enemies that faced them and they forgot the promises of God that he would give them that land for inheritance.

And it's very easy for us as we work on the teams in different lands or those of us who aren't going out to no end as we're working in our own home area to make excuses to make excuses for why we don't see God's blessing and to justify ourselves for the lack of fruit.

And you find this wherever you go people will come up to you and they'll give this reason, that reason, why God isn't blessing their work because of the hardness of the people's hearts because we lack this or because we lack that.

And yet we only find one reason for failure throughout the Bible it's lack of faith lack of faith in the promises of God. And we need to beware as we go out on teams of blaming other things for a lack of fruit for a lack of results in our work.

The Danger of Idolizing Great Men of God

Another thing that we often exalt in our own eyes and which we often use to excuse our own lack of results I want to go quickly through these is the great men of God that we see down through the history of the Church.

This might seem an insignificant thing it might not seem very important as we admire the men that God has used in the past or the men that God is using in the present but in actual fact it's very subtle and it's a very dangerous thing.

We look back into the Old Testament and we read the life of someone like David we see the way that God used him we look back and we see the life of someone like Elijah and we see the way that God used him we look back and we see the life of the Apostle Paul or we look back and we see the life of someone like Hudson Taylor and sometimes it can be discouraging to read their lives and we wonder just how can I ever achieve that standard how can I ever achieve that standard of dedication as it seems to us and we use this as an excuse sometimes for not seeing God being able to do more in our own lives.

If you think of David we admire him so much for the things that he achieved for God the way he flew Goliath the things that he did throughout his life and yet one of the things which characterizes David if you read the Psalms is the consciousness of his own sin and his own unworthiness and his own lack of dependence on God over and over again through the Psalms you find that he's bemoaning the fact that he's so sinful and he's so wretched and he can do nothing.

You read the life of Elijah and you find the same thing we think of him as a great man of God, a great man of prayer. And yet the book of James says that he was a man of like passions as we are and it uses that to emphasize the very thing which I'm trying to say tonight he was a man of like passions as we are and yet he prayed, he prayed fervently and God answered it didn't depend on him, it didn't depend on his ability on his training, on his dedication.

He was conscious of his need of God and he prayed fervently. We think of the Apostle Paul a great man of God. Sometimes we tend to idolize him and set him up as someone who is just someone apart, very special.

And he was special in many ways. And yet we should beware of just putting him on one side as being an unattainable kind of life to live as we read into his own intimate life. And we read when he pours out his heart about his own failures and his own weaknesses and the thing that he exulted in the most was the fact of his own weakness.

As for time he struggled against this fact that he was weak until he realized that this was the very thing that God wanted to show him so he could lift him up and use him. When I am weak, then I am strong.

These great saints, down through the pages of the Bible each one of them was a weak man. Each one of them was a frail man. Each one of them was dependent upon God. We think of the life of someone like Hudson Taylor in a more up-to-date year.

And you may have heard already the answer that he gave when someone said that he must find it very difficult not to be proud because God had used him in such a wonderful way. And he said on the contrary he said he thought that God must have been looking around for someone weak enough and frail enough to take up and use.

And this is the kind of person that God is looking for in our generation. Someone who is conscious of his own failing. Someone who is conscious of his own weakness so that God can take him up and use him without fear of him becoming proud without fear of him becoming swollen-headed without fear of him eventually falling through pride.

And I don't think that any of us should be discouraged as we go out into this coming year because we don't think that we have abilities and talents and some kind of what we call dedication. The main thing that we should have as we go out into this year is a sense of dependence upon the living God that He is going to do the work through us.