Another Jesus — Carter Conlon

This message is one of the Times Square Church pulpit series. It was recorded in the sanctuary of Times Square Church in Manhattan, New York City. Other tapes are available by writing World Challenge, P .O. Box 260, Lindale, Texas, 75771 or calling 903 -963 -8626.

None of these messages are copyrighted and you are welcome to make copies for free distribution to friends.

Jesus of the Bible Versus Another Jesus

This is entitled Another Jesus. Another Jesus. And we're going to spend time in the Gospel of Matthew and we're going to take a look at the Jesus that Jesus brought the people. We're going to take a look at the words that he said and so it's really going to have to be his word that speaks to your heart tonight.

I'm going to ask for that kind of an unction, that kind of an anointing. I know that tonight there is a type of people that have braved the storm to come out in this service. By and large, there are many, many people here tonight that are willing to count the cost of what it is to walk with him.

And you're going to have to ask tonight for the Holy Spirit to make the truths that you're about to hear real to your heart. Real. To break down all defenses, to break down preconceived notions and to say, Oh God, if there's any chance that I have created my own Jesus.

If there's any chance that I have charted my own course. If there's any chance that I have gathered around a group of people or some doctrine that I've heard somewhere that is a golden calf by the name of Jesus.

God, deliver me tonight in your power and in your strength. Deliver me so that the Jesus I follow is the Jesus of the Bible. Lord Jesus, the voice I hear is your voice. Didn't he say that? My sheep hear my voice and another one they will not follow.

And so tonight it's going to be a red letter night. We're going to be looking in the Gospel of Matthew and looking at the claims that Christ made upon the lives of all who would be called by his name.

That's my life and it's your life. There are no exceptions. All who would follow him. There were legitimate claims that he laid upon their lives. So I'm going to half preach it and the other half will be almost like a Bible study.

I have a lot of scripture. You'll have to be very quick to turn to the scriptures because I'll be turning fast and reading them to you. Let's pray together. Lord Jesus, you are the way, you're the truth and you're the light.

There's no one else besides you. There's only one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. There's no one else. There's no other name that is named under heaven whereby men might be saved. And Jesus, we want to know you.

We want to walk with you as your people. Lord, it's you that we want to live for. It's you that we want to follow. And it's you that we want to hear. My covenant God, I ask, Father, in Jesus' name, that you would touch every heart, that you touch every life.

Touch my life tonight. God, empower me with the Holy Spirit. Lord, deliver, just take me out of this message altogether. And let it only be you. Jesus, speak through me tonight. Speak through your word tonight to every heart and every life.

And Lord, I ask that all falseness would be exposed. Any crooked path would be made straight. Any high place would be brought down. And Lord, we would be found worshipping you. We'd be found at the right place with the right Jesus.

Oh God, there are so many in this generation who are worshipping a person they think is Jesus, but it's another Jesus. Oh Lord, I'm asking tonight that you deliver anyone who happens to be in this sanctuary tonight, or anyone who hears this message in the coming days, from following a false Christ, from following a false Messiah, even though his name might be called Jesus.

Lord, help us now to find the right Messiah. Help us, Lord, to walk the way you would have us to walk. Oh Jesus, we want to live for you and you alone. You are the Son of God. Reveal yourself through your word tonight to every life and to every heart.

Father, I ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Now in 2 Corinthians chapter 11, the Apostle Paul, in verse 1, says these words, 1 to 4. He says, What to God you could bear with me a little in my folly, and indeed bear with me?

For I am jealous over you with a godly jealousy. For I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. But I fear, Paul says, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.

Now we're going to be hearing some words tonight from Jesus that are actually quite simple. There are people who try to make them complicated, they try to spiritualize everything, but if you will take it just the way it's written, it's actually quite simple and easy to understand, and even easier to follow in the strength of the Holy Ghost.

Paul says, through subtlety I fear that your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. For if he that comes preaches another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if you receive another spirit, which you have not received, or another gospel, which you have not accepted, you might well bear with him.

Paul is warning the church in Corinth that there are going to come deceivers, there are going to come people, it's easy to spot those who are preaching about some other god somewhere, some ashen god, or a god of steel with some iron top belly and things like this, it's easy to pick it out that that's not the Messiah.

But what becomes difficult, and even more so in this generation, is those that have come and they are preaching in the name of Jesus. But the Jesus they preach is a god that they have formed out of their own imaginations.

He is a god that they prophesy about out of the dreams of their own hearts, and the visions of their own eyes. Jesus said himself, through one of the prophets, I have not sent these prophets, and yet they ran.

I have not spoken to them, and yet they have spoken in my name. And how much more in this generation? We see the golden calf having been raised up, and there are some that preach a Jesus that just simply wants to bless you, and make you happy, and prosper you all the time.

Repentance Instead of a Gospel of Emotional Comfort

I remember one time I was talking with a man who was a musician, who had traveled with a known evangelistic ministry for many years. He had been in services and crusades, had seen hundreds come to the altar through the preaching of Jesus.

And I remember this particular man, every time he'd go into a room, he'd have the whole place in a virtual uproar in no time at all. He caused contention and strife everywhere he went. So I went to his house because he was starting to attend the church that I was pastoring, and he was assisting there.

And I went to his house, and I told him, I said, Brother, what you're doing is wrong, it's sin. I said, everywhere you go you cause contention. I said, the scripture says only by pride comes contention.

And I shared with him, I said, you need to repent of this thing. And he sat back in his chair and stiffened up, and looked at me, and he said, Repent! He said, I've been serving God for years and never had to repent before.

Now you've got to tell me I've got to start repenting? And walking in repentance? I wonder what kind of a Jesus he came to, that didn't call for him to be examined by the Word of God and the power of the Holy Spirit in his heart, and to lay down issues of life and attitudes of heart that are unlike Christ's.

I wonder what kind of a Jesus this man came to. Now the Apostle Paul says there are many that are going to come preaching Jesus, and yet it's another Jesus. Pastor David preached on Sunday evening about the scripture in Matthew, where Jesus said many will come in that day and say, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and do many wonderful works and cast out devils?

And he will say to them, Depart from me, ye who work iniquity, I never knew you. I never knew you. You see, they were preaching in the name of Jesus. They were doing works in the name of Jesus. They were casting out devils in the name of Jesus.

They were prophesying in the name of Jesus, in the church, in Jesus' name. But Jesus looks at these people and says, I never knew you. You see, they had been recipients of another Jesus. They had embraced another gospel.

There are dangerous modern day trends that I want to talk about for a moment tonight. And number one, that I've seen in evangelism over the years, we have substituted the word hurting for the word sin.

In the church, and evangelists will call people, if you are hurting tonight, you can come to the altar, which is true. If you are hurting, you can come. But I have seen that word hurting substituted for the word sin on an incredible scale.

If some of these modern day prophets were able to rewrite the Bible, they would write it this way. And God's people were hurting, so they murmured against him in the wilderness. And Moses was a long time away, and the people were hurting, so they built a golden calf.

Today, there are many who preach of Jesus that appeals only to the realm of needs and emotions. There are some who preach of Jesus who is just simply a spiritual Santa Claus. He just meets every need, and he's out there, and his whole reason for being is just to make everybody happy.

Do you know how erroneous that is? Do you know that it's not the primary concern of God to make you and I happy? His primary concern is to make you and I holy. His primary concern is that we would turn to him for strength to walk through the trials and fires of this life, to live in self-denial if that's what he causes us to live in, and to preach and proclaim his name to the ends of the world.

That people who live in darkness might come to know Christ as their Lord and Savior. We're not called just to be happy. There is joy, but that joy comes from abandonment to Almighty God. It comes from a life that's separated from the things of this world.

It comes when we can, as the Apostle Paul said, This world has nothing in me, and I have nothing in this world. It comes when we can say with an honest heart, If I live, I live for Christ. If I die, it's gain.

I desire to go, but for a season it's more profitable that I stay here and minister in the capacity that God has given me to minister in. It's not God's primary desire to make us happy, and don't fall into that trap.

Some people come to church and the gospel is preached and they go home and say, Whoa, whoa, what a rotten service. I mean, I thought I'd be happy at the end of the service. Not always so. Sometimes God's word comes and will touch an area, touch an idol in your heart.

It will touch something in your heart that's not right in your life. If you lay it down, you'll be happy. You will be happy. You'll go out of here shouting and rejoicing. I used to serve a God of self, but that thing has been cut off in my life.

You'll go out and your life will be changed. But if God's word comes and there's something you're resisting, and you're resisting that call to full and wholehearted abandonment in Christ, then you're not going to be happy.

There are people who run around, and they're doing it now, all over the western world. In this generation, they're running around looking to be happy. They'll spend thousands of dollars to get on a plane and go to some new place so they can do some foolish thing, so they can be happy.

Because they've come to this Jesus, and the Jesus that they've come to, his primary concern is to make everybody happy. The God that I came to, the God that I know, the God that I serve, his primary concern is to get a hold of my heart, every area of my heart.

And that his nature might be made manifested in my life. And that he might be able to use my life on this side of eternity for his honor and glory, even if it means hard times. Even if it means I have to suffer.

Even if it means I feel like screaming day in and day out for months on end because of what God is doing in my life. So that the fruit of Christ might become perfected in me, and that others who live in darkness might come to the saving knowledge of Christ.

And there are evangelistic movements that only appeal to the realm of need and emotions, moving the crowd continuously in emotions. Brothers and sisters, I've been there, I've seen it, and I've seen the long-term fruit of it.

I've been in services where people are running up and down the aisles, and there's nothing wrong with that if it's in the Holy Ghost. I'm not against that. They're popping up and down like pogo sticks, and they're twirling around like tops, and they're doing all kinds of things and shouting and yelling and everything.

But it's all just rank emotion, that's all it is. When the service is over, they go home, they go back to their life, nothing has changed inside. The word that they've heard doesn't penetrate, it doesn't produce the nature of Christ in them.

And give it about ten years, and eventually they fall off from the church. Their children fall away from God because there's no substance, there's no reality in what they've been involved in. They've come to this spiritual Santa Claus that they've created out of their own minds, and they've called Him Jesus.

Peter’s Sermon and the Call to Repentance

I want to bring to your mind and attention the book of Acts chapter 2, when Peter got up and preached in the Holy Ghost. He just said, this same Jesus whom you have crucified, God has raised Him up. He made the people aware that it is their sin that crucified the Lord of glory.

And when they heard that message, and they were bricked in their heart, they said, men and brethren, what shall we do? What can we do? You cannot truthfully present Christ without also appealing to the areas of reason and will.

We must appeal to reason to present Christ to the people. The Apostle Paul said, I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.

We must appeal to reason when we present the gospel, that the ultimate end of following Christ is an absolute abandonment to the will of God. We must appeal to the area of will, because I fully believe that until self-will is broken, there can never be a full surrender to Christ.

Self-will has to be broken. No matter where we start from, brothers and sisters, we've got to come to our own Gethsemane. We've got to come to that place where we say, Father, if it be possible, take this cup away from me.

Nevertheless, not my will, but Thy will be done. That's the call of God upon a Christian's life. It was the call of God upon the life of Jesus, and Jesus said, if any man will be my disciple, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

Hallelujah. Hallelujah. If we don't present the whole Jesus, we end up with a half a Christian, if there is such a thing. But I feel that that half Christian, many of them are going to stand before the Lord and hear those sad words, depart from me, I never knew you.

You went to church and you did all kinds of works, but your heart wasn't my heart. My nature wasn't formed in you. You didn't turn to me with all of your heart. You never followed me wholeheartedly. You see, if Jesus put the conditions of following him up front, why is it that today we put them on the back burner?

A Conference Challenge: Surrender Beyond Superficial Faith

And I'm not saying we, I'm not talking about Times Square Church, but all over the Western world, people, preachers and evangelists are putting the conditions of Christ on the back burner. My brothers and sisters, I know what I'm talking about.

A few years back, I was invited to speak at a very, very large conference that was being held in a certain city, and churches, evangelical churches from all over that city were being gathered by this particular ministry to spend three days together in a time in the Word, in a time in worship, a time to be challenged.

I was invited to be one of the keynote speakers, although I knew nothing about the ministry that was there or what I was involved in. And I went down there to be a keynote speaker, and the thing that God put on my heart to speak about is the message, to some degree, that you're hearing tonight.

Is that the Jesus we come to had better be the Jesus of the Bible. I talked about the cross. I talked about the call of Christ on the life of every believer. I talked about the heart of God for this generation.

And those who come to Christ and are called by His name, sooner or later, have got to stop rejoicing in just superficial things and have got to embrace the very heart of God and say, Lord, what is it that you would have me to do?

What is your will for my life? And I began to share on these things, and I gave an altar call for people who wanted to surrender to Jesus Christ. It was a very religious atmosphere. There were supposedly born again people from virtually every denomination in that city.

And I gave an altar call for those who... My altar call was very definite. I said, there are people here, you're elders and deacons, you've been in the church for years, some of you even sing in choirs, but you're not saved.

You don't have the heart of God. You never had the heart of God. You never came to fully surrender your life to God. You came to Him for what you can get. But the true Christian comes to Christ for what he can give to the kingdom of God and how he can serve his Lord and his Master.

And I gave an altar call for salvation, and by the hundreds, it was in a stadium type place, and by the hundreds people came out, weeping and crying and broken before the Lord. Men with cards on, identifying themselves as leaders in the church, came out, and by their coming out they were saying, I'm a leader in the church, but God, I'm not saved.

I'm not saved. I've come to another Jesus. Lord, I come to you tonight. I come to give my whole life. I come to give my heart. The people rejoiced. I was able to lead those people in a prayer for salvation, and they began to rejoice, and the joy of Christ was released in their lives.

But right after the service, some of the leaders of that organization and some of the pastors got together and had a meeting as to how they might get rid of me out of the conference. And one of the men said these words to another pastor that was there, He's wrecking our good feeling.

He's wrecking our good feeling. I want you to think this over. This is not an isolated incident. The gospel that's being preached in most of the western world now is just a gospel that's tailored to make the sinner feel good in his sin.

To make the lukewarm man feel good in his lukewarmness. It's to make the man who's not committed to the purposes of Christ feel good and saved when he's not committed. But thanks be to God that there are still voices.

Thanks be to God that there are voices like Pastor Wilkerson that are not compromising in this generation and still laying out the claim and call of God upon those who would follow Jesus Christ. Better that I offend you tonight.

Better that you leave your matter in the hornets than you go out happy and dancing and lost in your sin and stand before God and hear Him say, I never knew you. Jeremiah 6 .16, the prophet Jeremiah says, Ask for the old path where is the good way and walk therein and you shall find rest for your souls.

Ask for the old path. That's got to be the cry of your heart if you're a Christian tonight. Oh God, show me out of your word. Show me what your call is. If there are conditions to following you, Jesus you said it yourself, no man starts to build a house without first counting the cost.

If I've not counted the cost, if I've not even understood the cost, then Lord God show it to me tonight. Better that I should see it and make a clear cut decision than to live in illusion all my life and end up before the throne of God having missed the heart of God altogether.

In Jeremiah, the Lord said to Jeremiah, in Jeremiah chapter 15, He says, let them return unto you but return not thou unto them. There is a call of God in this generation calling the holy remnant bride.

Out of all of this mixture that's found in western society, I'm talking now about the church, the supposed church, before we even start talking to the unsaved. Brothers and sisters, there's a lot of talk about revival, but there is no revival right now in this generation.

Other than very little sporadic things around different places in North America. We are in desperate need of revival. We are in desperate need of a people who will seek God with all of their heart once again and call the people back to God instead of trying to bring and tailor a Christ that fits the appetites of a carnal and lukewarm society that we live in.

Conditions of Following Christ: Dying to Reputation

Now, go to the gospel of Matthew please, chapter 10. Hallelujah. If you love the word of God, you will love this. If you love Jesus, you won't find this hard. These are His words. I want to talk about some of the conditions now, about eight or nine of them.

There are more, but I want to talk about those that God put upon my heart for tonight. The conditions of following Him. And I know this to be true. Matthew chapter 10, verse 22. We must be willing to die to our reputation to follow Christ.

You shall be hated of all men for my name's sake, but he that endureth to the end shall be saved. In verse 25, He says, It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master and the servant as his lord.

If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, that's the devil, how much more shall they call them of his household? And Jesus said it clearly. He said, Woe unto men when they speak well of you, for so did their fathers with the false prophets.

There are secular prophets in this generation, or those that call themselves by the name of Christ, and all of the world speaks well of them. But I tell you, brothers and sisters, if you're going to come to Christ and live for Christ and have the fire of God in your life, you've got to be willing to die to your reputation.

You've got to be willing to have men cast out your name as evil because it's not you that they hate, it's Christ that they hate in you. There's got to be a willingness and understanding that if you live for God, people who are in sin are not going to be happy when you come into their midst.

You go into the workplace and they're going to make fun of you, they're going to lie about you, they're going to joke about you. Some of you are smiling, you're experiencing it right now in your workplace.

Well, rejoice, the scripture says. Be exceedingly glad. Jump over a chair and give glory to God. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Rejoice that you are counted worthy to suffer shame for His name's sake.

If you're suffering just simply because you're living for God, I'm not talking about people who make a nuisance out of themselves, but if you're suffering because simply you love Him, you want to do what's right.

You're reaching out with love when others are hating. You're speaking good about people that others are speaking evil of. You're doing acts of kindness when others are trying to rip everybody off. You're walking in honesty when everybody else is dealing under the table.

Sure they're going to speak evil of you, they're going to cast you down and try to bring you down to the level where they live. Face it once and for all, those who live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.

The Apostle Paul said it, Jesus said it, that settles it in my heart. Hallelujah. I remember when I got saved and filled with the Holy Ghost, I was a police officer, and I lived on the wild side for a lot of years.

And when I got saved, God did a... Especially when I got baptized in the Holy Ghost. Before I got baptized in the Holy Ghost I was a little bit shaky as a Christian, but after I got filled with the Holy Ghost, God did such a radical transformation in my life.

You'd think everybody around you is going to be happy about it. One of the very first things that I found is that I couldn't find a partner to work with on the police force, because they knew that I wouldn't lie under oath.

That's an awful thing to have to say, isn't it? Now I found some partners who would work with me, but I would level with them. I said, no hotels, no girls, no manhandling people, no nothing. We do everything by the book and we do it right.

And some guys really appreciated that, and others wouldn't work with me anymore. And needless to say, they said some things that were not very nice. But in the midst of it all, I can't be specific about this, but one time a scandal hit the police force.

There was a person of ill repute that a lot of people had been associating with, and this person threatened to blow the whistle on virtually half of the police force. And I walked into my office one day, and it was in the papers, and everybody was running around.

A lot of guys were really sweating, right from the top and down. And I walked in the office, and one of the guys in the office says, well, we know at least one person that has nothing to worry about this morning.

Hallelujah! Hallelujah! I told him, I said, guys, you're willing to live righteously, you too can have a clean conscience in the sight of God and men. Hallelujah! You've got to die to your reputation.

Settle it. Settle it in the workplace. Others are going to get promoted, and you're not, because there's an old boy system. God can circumvent all of that, but you've got to entrust yourself to God, and die to the desire to be loved by carnal and wicked men, because you're not going to be if you live for Christ.

Open Testimony Before Others

Secondly, Jesus said, you have to have an open-faced testimony. Matthew chapter 10 and verse 33. Now listen to this carefully. He said, Whosoever will deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven.

Whoever denies me before men, him will I deny before my Father which is in heaven. I see people from time to time, and I've been in restaurants with people who can't even bow their heads and pray in a restaurant, let alone testify for Christ.

They make it look like they're wiping the sweat off their brow when they pray. Oh Lord, bless the food. Amen. Jesus said, If you're going to be ashamed of me, I'm going to be ashamed of you before my Father.

We've got to settle the issue in our hearts and say, God, you put this down as a condition of being your disciple. I didn't make these words up. I didn't say them. Jesus said, Whoever denies me before men, him will I deny before my Father which is in heaven.

And elsewhere he says, Those that are ashamed of me, I'll be ashamed of before my Father who is in heaven. We really must consider this. We're not called this whole closet Christian thing. I don't even know where it came from, but I don't find it in the book of Acts.

I don't find the book of Acts where it says, Now you're saved and filled with the Holy Ghost. No, it just exists and trusted. Somewhere down the line, somebody in secret is going to ask you for a reason for the hope that's in your life.

That's not what the Scripture says. You're going to be filled with the Holy Ghost, and you're going to be witnesses all over the world. In Judea, Jerusalem, and Samaria, to the other most parts of the earth.

We have to have an open-faced testimony. I am a Christian. I've shared with my sons, I've shared with others over the years, I've said, Guys, when you walk into the school locker room, put your Bible on the locker.

Don't hide it in the top shelf. The longer you hide it, the harder it becomes to bring it out and to profess before all that you are a Christian. I'm not talking about being obnoxious in Christ. I'm not talking about pushing people that don't want to hear.

I'm not talking about casting pearls before swine. I'm talking about just declaring openly, I am saved. Before you got saved, people you used to walk into work, that were here, and you used to boast about, I was drunk all night, Saturday night.

I was in such and such a bar. Boy, you should have seen the party we had. And you bragged about sin. You boasted about sinful living. You joked about it. And you'd unashamedly open your mouth and tell the filthiest joke that's ever been produced in all of humankind.

You wouldn't even blush. But now the King of Kings lives inside of your life. The Lord of Lords is within you. And how is it? How is it that people were so unashamed of sin, now come back into the workplace and people start telling a dirty joke and they get all sweaty and nervous and all shaky inside and won't even at least just get out of the room if nothing else, but be a testimony for Jesus Christ.

Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Now thirdly, in Matthew chapter 22, Matthew chapter 22, verse 37, he says that we must enter into a consuming personal relationship with Him. A consuming.

Do you remember the scripture when it talked about Jesus going down into Jerusalem, into the temple? Here He has a chance for all the praise of men. The very first thing He does, they want to take Him and make Him a king.

The very first thing He does is goes into the temple, makes a scourge of cords, drives out the buyers and sellers and totally offends the religious order of His day. Finally, once and for all, seals His own fate.

We must enter into a consuming personal relationship. The disciples remembered after that day that it was written of Him, the zeal of Thine house has eaten me up. A consuming personal relationship with Christ.

In Matthew 22, verse 37, Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God. Do you want to know why so many people struggle in their walk with God?

Do you want to know why it's so hard sometimes for so many? Because it's a lack of love in that relationship. When there's love in that relationship. There are people tonight that legitimately can't come out to the house of God.

I understand that and I'm not condemning anybody. But there are people tonight who simply because it's raining didn't come out to the house of God. Now, you think back to the day when you first met that first girl or that first guy and you fell in love and you try phoning somebody up.

You try phoning them up and saying, well, it's raining out. I'm not coming over to your house. Tonight, the odds are that if that's the person you did marry, that you wouldn't be married to them. You wouldn't have married them.

I'd like to challenge anybody to call their boss tomorrow morning and say, it's raining. You expect me to come to work? Now, just a question. Are we called to give less to Christ than we give to boyfriend, girlfriend or other human relationships or we give our secular employer?

Are we called to give less to Him if we love Him with all of our heart and our soul and our mind? Now, that doesn't mean you don't love Him if you miss a church service. But there's a pattern if you don't love Him.

There's a pattern of non-attendance in God's house. There's a pattern of not gathering yourself with other believers if there's a lack of love in your heart for God. And that's why I feel good preaching this tonight because I feel and sense and know because I've seen the worship tonight.

There's a depth of love in the hearts of many that are in this house tonight. You come here because you love Him. You come here because you want to raise your hands with other believers. You come here because that's not just something that's written in a book, but it's a truth and a reality that's coming into your life.

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind. It's a quest for a true believer in Jesus Christ. It's, Lord, take out of my heart those things that are keeping me from You.