Welcome to the River Mountain Church Preaching Library. It is our prayer, and indeed our hope, that this message might inspire your life. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the preaching of God's Word. How many people know that Christianity is very, very simple? It's about one thing. And that one thing happens to be Christ. And the Apostle Paul put it all on Christ. Everything comes down to Christ, who is the mediator between us and the Father. So I'm going to be talking about the need for us to pay attention to one thing. And Kathy read from Hebrews, chapter 12. And I'm going to back you up one chapter, because that verse about that great cloud of witnesses that is watching us has everything to do with Hebrews 11. Has anybody ever read Hebrews 11? It's all about what we would call the Hall of Faith. Did you know that there's a Hall of Faith similar to our Hall of Fame? And these are people that we should look up to. These are the people that lived, not the Christian life, but lived the walk of God in a way that they received this reward of being mentioned here in the Hall of Faith. Now, here is the one I want to focus in on. This is Hebrews 11, and this is the one thing, and this is 5 through 6. By faith, Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death. He is only one of two people who didn't die. Do you know the other one? Elijah. So only two people never died a natural death. One was Elijah and the other one was Enoch. And the reason why it says that it was found because God had taken him, now before he took him, He commended him, having saying that he pleased God, and then it goes on to say, without faith it's impossible to please God. In other words, Enoch must have lived such a life of simply trusting God, believing God. God could not be seen, but he walked with God. Here is the testimony that is mentioned in Genesis about Enoch. It simply says this, Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him. That's the testimony. He walked with God, and one day God said, since you're walking with me, and that's all you seem to be interested in, is walking with me, why don't you just walk on over here? He didn't have to die. He just walked from this place into the next. That, to me, is amazing. Enoch was doing something right. What was he doing? He was doing what God originally intended, that one thing. Remember what Adam did in the garden? He walked with God in the cold of the day. When Jesus calls his disciples, he basically says, come and what? Walk with me. We are called to walk with God. This is it. Now why do I say Jesus is the thing? Because it's really through Jesus that we can walk with God. Now, I want to share with you a dream I had just the other night. I must be getting old because I'm no longer getting visions. I'm just getting dreams. And I'm having to make a transition. And so I had this strange dream in which I was like an MC. I was like a game show host. And I was telling the audience, which is you, that there is this wonderful, all-expense-paid cruise that I want to give you And you're all getting excited because we're going to some tropical island on this giant cruise ship. And I say, now, can I have the envelope, please? Because I don't know how many of you are going. So instead of somebody giving me an envelope, they give me this. It's a bunch of junk mail. And I'm going through this and saying, the winner is, well, that's junk. That's junk. That's junk. That's junk. And eventually I get to the point where I look at you and I'm panicking because I promised you a big cruise. Somebody's going to go, maybe many of you are going to go, I really don't know, it's all in the envelope, but I can't find the envelope. And I'm panicking. And all of a sudden, and this is my dream I'm having, somebody walks in with a bunch of donuts. It's just a big thing of donuts. As if to say, well, if you can't find the ticket for the cruise, maybe they'd like all these donuts. And about that point, as I'm still going through the junk mail, and you guys are going, at least we can eat all the donuts, I wake up. And I go, what was that? And I knew it had something to do with the church, because that's kind of what the church does. And if you remember, I had another dream sometime back. Maybe this was actually when I was young enough to actually have visions. No, this was a vision, because I was younger then. And the Lord said, the church is a lot like a cruise ship. It's a big, big thing, and everybody's excited to get on it. It has many decks and floors. There's entertainment. There's all kinds of programs, things you can do, whatever. But how far are you from the water on a cruise ship? You're like five stories above the water. Eight. Eight stories, thank you. But you're having a lot of fun on the water, but technically, you're not in the water. You're on it, but you're not in it. Right? You want to be there. And the Lord says, I want you to pattern this church, not after a cruise ship, but after a jet ski. Now, what is a jet ski all about? How close are you to the water? You're very close to the water. As a matter of fact, you are technically in the water because the water is continually hitting you in the face. But the other best thing about a cruise ship is who's on this thing? You! Jet ski. What did I say? I'm sorry. Yeah, jet ski. Who's on the jet? You're on the jet ski. So it's intimate. It's personal. You get to go and turn and move and whatever. The cruise ship is a big crew telling you where to go and what to do. And the Lord said, this is kind of what the church is. And where are we promising people to go? We're promising we're taking them to paradise. But because we're not sure who's going and we're not sure what it's about, why don't we have just a bunch of donuts while we're waiting? So the church's job is to make you fat and happy with a bunch of doughnuts. So my job is to make sure that there's always enough doughnuts here that at least when you come to church you go, at least I ate a bunch of doughnuts. Now what I mean by doughnuts isn't necessarily technical doughnuts. It means I got to make sure you're happy and entertained. It's got to be a great sermon. We've got to have great worship. We've got to have light shows and laser beams. You know, because you people have an attention span of a gnat. And so therefore, it behooves me to be as entertaining and interesting as I possibly can. This brings me to Jeremiah, because this is the state of the church. The Lord told me kind of in the beginning of my walk that my calling was going to be like Jeremiah. And I said, oh, thank you. I begin to read Jeremiah. Jeremiah was the only prophet that nobody listened to. He was the only prophet that he kept talking and people kept saying, you're wrong. And I said, oh, thank you, Lord. But Jeremiah says, O be appalled, O heavens, at this. Be shocked, be utterly desolate, declares the Lord. For my people have committed two evils. They have forsaken me, listen, the fountain of living water, and they have hewned out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that cannot hold water. Now you say, how does this apply to the church? Who is the living water? Jesus, they were passing up that, a stream of life, mountains, trees, beauty. You could go there any time you want. The stream was continually flowing. It was just a continual source of joy. They passed that up for that. They built some sort of broken cistern, and they said, the people will come here, we'll fill it with water, and they will get really happy. Now, it leaks, so we'll have to keep filling it with water. But they'll keep coming to the cistern. This is religion. Religion is the broken cistern that I put up before you. We fill it with water or donuts. We say, this is Christianity. How do I know this is the case? Because I remember first coming into the church. And I'm going to paint this. How many people know all the revival meetings we've had here in our church? How many revival meetings have we had? Zero. Do you know why? Because I don't believe in revivals. Oh, my goodness, I'm getting out of this church. You don't believe in no revivals. Because I've been in a lot of revival meetings. And here's what revival meetings do. Listen, pay attention. You're looking at something. I don't know why you're looking at something. I'm talking up here, Pauly. Hey, Pauly, I'm talking up here. Yo, I'm talking up here, Pauly. I need strobe lights. Thank you. So I remember being in this tremendous revival meeting. I mean, everybody, hair on fire going 100 miles an hour, falling down, and this and that, and oh, my goodness, and oh, it was really great. And then a couple of days go on, and I go, well, what now? We had a wonderful time. And somebody says, well, we've got another revival meeting coming in about three months, if you can just hang on till then. Well, I got it. Christianity is about having revival meetings in which we get all pumped up about our faith, and we slowly begin to wane until our next revival meeting. I said, this guy, that can't be Christianity. And it's certainly not what Jesus died for. Jesus died for this. He says, are you thirsty? Come to church. Come to the revival meeting. Come to this concert. We had a concert last night. I'm going to pick on the concert a little bit. I have to. Thank you. And the guy says, now I realize that this might be a high mountain for most of you, or some of you. And I thought to myself, if this is a mountaintop experience for people, then God help us all. Jesus didn't say, if anyone's thirsty, get to a concert, get to a revival, go to church. What did he say? Come to me. Now granted, in church, we tell people to come to Jesus. At revivals, we tell people to come to Jesus. We've hewned out a cistern, and we have filled it with water, and we tell people to come, and we tell them that the water is Jesus. But that's not what Jesus said. Here's what he said. He says, if you begin to have faith in me, and you begin to believe this gospel, and you begin to believe the scriptures, out of where will flow water? Out of Pensacola? Out of Lakeland? Out of Texas? Out of this revival meeting, or this church, or that concert, or this, that, or this? Or River Mountain, even? Where is the river flowing? Out of your heart, the innermost part of you is the river, is the fountain. And what I've discovered is nobody knows how to get there. You know how to get to church. You know how to get to a concert. You know how to get to a revival meeting. But you don't know how to get there. And so Jeremiah says, be appalled. Be shocked. that these people have hewn down a cistern that can't hold the water, but they keep telling people to come. This is my mind. It's ADD to the max. I can't concentrate on anything except one thing. And I never understood, why is it that I get bored with everything? When I was a young man, I didn't know what I wanted to do for life. And I thought radio might entertain me, and it did for about a year. And then I realized this is as empty, and as self-focused, and as narcissistic, and as pleasing of myself, it made me sick. And then I found this book called Delivered from Distraction, written by two, one professor from Harvard, the other one's from Yale, they both have ADD, they both wrote about this book. They said, the ADD mind is like a hundred TV sets on at the same time, in which there's so much going on you can't pay attention to any one of them. But you just jump from thing to thing to thing to thing to thing to thing to thing to thing to thing, and your life basically ends up kind of like scattered. But he says there's one thing that can happen in the ADD mind, and that is if it finds something that totally, completely captivates it, something that just makes it go wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, it will stay hyper-focused. And I found that thing. You know what it's called? Jesus! I said it's called... And so I fell in love with Jesus, the living water. And then I went into the church, and the church is filled with broken cisterns. I remember trying to do radio, and I said, maybe I can do radio for the Lord. But I said, there's only one problem with radio. It's narcissistic. So I became bored with it because guess what? I'm not that interesting. My career is not that interesting. It bores me to think of me pursuing my dreams because I'm boring and my dreams are boring. But I found one thing that was very interesting. It was the big picture. And that was the other gift of an ADD mind. They don't know details, but when they see the big picture, the one thing, they go, I'm all in on one thing. And it's not that. I remember the first time I went into evangelical churches. I said, what is this? By the way, we're an evangelical church. How about that? But listen, this church will utterly fail if it's about me putting out a cistern or some donuts and you coming and feasting upon it and going home and saying, I'm coming back next Sunday for those donuts and that water. Because if you don't know how to get into that stream, that inner place where the river is flowing, this is a waste of time. Does anybody know the story of narcissism? It's the Greek mythology of Narcissus. I'm not sure how he pronounces his name. But he falls in love with his reflection. He looks at himself, and he goes, I look pretty good. And then he goes, I wonder if I can look any better. So he went on a quest, look at myself, make myself better, look at myself again, am I better? I'm better. He made himself into perfection. That's narcissism. That's how you'll become the best version of you that you can be. But who wants to be you? And I don't mean that you, Paulie. I'll pick on me. You, Tom. You'll become the best version of you. But who wants to be me? Not me. So let me take a selfie and post it. Oh, pastor, you're beginning to sound like a grumpy old man, you know? No, I've been grumpy all my life, so. This is how you transform, not by making you into a better version of you. It says, we behold, as in a mirror, the glory of the Lord. And what? We are being transformed into what? A better version of you? We were being transformed into the same image. Glory to glory. I only get this not by looking at me. And I used to do this all the time. Preachers do this all the time. Oh, this is my sermon. Oh, OK. I see that. OK. I'm going to tighten this up. I could tighten this up. I could have told a story there. I could have told a joke there. Oh, they love that. I could do that again. All right. till you get it down, till you're radio worthy, and then TV worthy. Come look at me. I perfected me and my messages. Now you're all beginning to hate me. Thank you very much. If it wasn't for Christ, if it wasn't for the fact that I could go and behold his image, I would have nothing. I've beheld me. It's not worth repairing. Again, the church is consumed with worldliness. And what do I mean by that? Now, here's where you're really going to hate. You thought you hated me before, you're really going to hate me now. About 20 years ago, I'm not sure why I did this, but I said, I want to meet with as many pastors as I possibly can meet with. So I've been pastoring about 35 years, so 20 years ago. And I sat down with them. And I didn't have a whole list of questions, but there were certain things that I wanted to talk to them about. But we always got to talking about certain key subjects, because we're pastors. So when we talked about outreach, they got very excited. We talked about church programs, very excited. We talked about missions, very excited. We talked about giving in their church, very excited. Talked about building projects. Very excited. We talked about preaching. Oh! The sermon series I'm into now. Very excited. Then I brought up something. How's your intimacy with God? Intimacy with God. Now, this may sound judgmental. It may sound like I'm a jerk. It may sound like I'm being critical. I'm not. This is not done to puff me up. In actuality, in all of these conversations, I had one overriding feeling that wasn't superiority. It was sadness. Because as I heard them talk, I realized that they didn't have much intimacy with God. that they knew how to do church, they knew how to grow a church, they knew how to do the programs, they knew even how to preach sermons. But intimacy with God somehow got overlooked. And they said, man, I feel a little convicted about my prayer life. And I thought to myself, you know, ministry is designed just to be a prayer life. Ministry is overflow in my time. Now listen, now this is where, again, if I wanted you to feel positive about me, I wouldn't be telling these stories, because it makes me sound like a pompous jerk by saying this. So if you think I'm a pompous jerk, good, because that's better than thinking that I'm this humble pastor. So good. Think of me as a pompous jerk. That's good. The Apostle Paul went through the religious system, and he says, listen, I count everything as loss, To one thing, the surpassing worth, the only value I have is in knowing Christ. All ministry, everything else is, I count it as rubbish. It's all rubbish. And in case you're wondering the context, Paul goes on to talk about his religious practices. Circumcised on the eighth day, I did this. I was a Hebrew of the Hebrews. I was a Pharisee of the Pharisee. I had zeal. He says all of it lost for one thing. Not ministry. Not that I'm an apostle now. Not that I'm a missionary now. Christ, the living water. It comes down to this is all he wanted to know. I count everything is lost to the surpassing worth of what? Knowing Christ. Every day is an opportunity to know Christ. I tell you what, get that building project going. And I'm picking on myself, and they're picking on us now. People that think that. And I probably have said that myself. That's because we all have the same human condition. Because what I'm picking on is really not people. I'm picking on what the Bible calls the human way. How many people know that you can fall into the human way? And my goal, Lord willing, is that We go from a Corinthian church to like an Ephesus church. The Corinthian church was all about outward programs, manifestations, showiness. And so Paul says this to them. He says, listen. I could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh. In other words, you thought like the world, you acted like the world. It's baptized narcissism, but it's still narcissism. You're infants in Christ. So I fed you with milk and not solid food, for you were not ready for it. Even now you're not ready for it, for you are still of the flesh. Here's what he goes on to say. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, Are you not behaving in the flesh? What he's talking about here is competition. How many people know that there's a little competition going on in ministry? And you guys don't need to know about that. I remember the first Christian concert I went to. It was backstage. And I was backstage because we were trying to get people's testimony so we can share them to spread the faith. And there was one group backstage, and they said, those people out there, They have come to see us. We're opening act, but those people are our people. And I thought to myself, you know, the only reason I brought anybody here is in hopes that they would come to Christ. And the fact that you're using ministry as some sort of narcissistic gas to inflate your own ego is pathetic. But it's not really pathetic. It's what Paul calls the human way. Because humans, above all things, need to be seen. Humans, above all things, need to have a hero that they're following. So one says, I'm following Paul. The other one says, I'm following Apollos. He says, are you not acting like humans? Who's Paul? Who's Apollos? Who are any of these people? We're nothing. Do you understand that? We're nothing. And what they were responding to is Apollo, apparently, was a professional speaker. And they didn't have professional entertainers back then. The closest thing they had to an entertainer was orators, or people that had wonderful speeches usually filled with wisdom and philosophy. And so Apollo, apparently, was one of these guys that everybody wanted to hear. And because that's how they made their living, they charged money. And so that's why if you read Paul talking about, I didn't charge any money, the reason why he's talking about that, most theologians believe, is because Apollo charged money to hear the gospel. I said he charged money to hear the gospel. And Paul says, no, you're not going to take that away from me. And here's what the Corinthians thought. Who wants to hear Paul if he's free? You get what you pay for. He must not be that impressive of a speaker, because if he was a really good speaker, people would be paying to hear him. So Paul has to justify why he's as good as Apollo. And he also goes on to say, this is not a performance. Are you listening to me, or have you all gone home? Good. The Apostle Paul says, we're nothing. We're absolutely nothing. All we are is a bunch of people that are throwing out seed. And it's up to the human heart to determine whether this seed can take root or whether this seed will be rejected. Paul says, I want to give you meat, but you can't handle meat. You still need milk. I'm going to give you a little bit of meat. But getting back to this, and I'm going to close with this because I've kind of gone on too far. Because we've been talking about gold and silver. And I want to bring it to a close, this whole gold and silver thing. Because you're like, Pastor, I don't even understand the whole gold, silver. Let's hope this helps. He says, no one can lay a foundation other than the one that was laid. What is the foundation? You notice a theme, Jesus. It's Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. It's Jesus today. What I found in the church is the reason why the church is always reinventing itself, you know why? Because they're bored with Jesus. I don't know how you get bored with Jesus, but you do. You know why they get bored with Jesus? Because they have no connection with Jesus. So how do I excite my hyperactive type A personality? Well, I would turn the church into McDonald's. And we will have franchises. All of this. And yes, we will serve cheeseburgers. We will serve Jesus. We will help people come to the Lord. All right, I've said enough. Here we go. Jesus. If anyone builds on the foundation There it is, gold, silver, precious stones. You can build stuff on Jesus. Gold, silver, things from heaven, precious stones. Or you can build things on wood and hay and straw. But here's what you need to know, and Paul puts this right back on not people in ministry, but now people. What are you becoming and what are you accomplishing? That's the question. What are you becoming? A better version of you? What are you accomplishing? A lot of things that keep you entertained, so you don't get bored. Here it is. Listen. On the Day of Judgment, you will stand before God. And here's what he's going to do. And I don't want this to be a surprise to you. I don't want you going to the Day of Judgment going, man, I just thought I was just going to hug him, and that was going to be it. That's what I thought. I'm going to hug him. I'm going to come in. Hey, there's Uncle Fred and Uncle Beb. That's what I thought. Let me tell you what the Bible says. Every person, Paulie, this is you, you'll be there, right? Yes, you will. I don't know why I'm picking on Paulie. Paulie won't return anymore. He'll teach him not to read the handout, though. Listen, each one's work will become manifest. That is to say, what you did on this earth, all of your Good deeds, bad deeds. And the question would be, did you do it to feel good about yourself? Did you do it to entertain yourself? Did you do it to, when you went to bed at night, you say, man, I'm a pretty good person. Look at all the good things I did today. I feel OK. I can live with myself now. Listen. Each one will become manifest on the day. And it will disclose it, because it will reveal it by fire. The fire will test what sort of work each man has done. And by the way, this is where Catholics get the idea of purgatory, that fire of perdation, that fire of purification. I'm going to blow your mind. You ready for this? I believe in purgatory. All right, see you later. Bye. Good night. I do. I just don't believe it goes on and on and on for some stupid amount so much that it totally totally does away with the justification of one perfect act on the cross. This purification, the Bible's talking, happens instantaneously. You come through the fire, all the wood hay of your life is burned away, and the only thing that remains is gold and silver. That is the stuff that you did by faith. Remember, it's faith that pleases God. Without faith, it's impossible. What did God tell you to do that you walked out there and you did it? Gold! I don't think I can do that, but God, I'm trusting you are God out there. Gold! I'm trying to tell you how to get gold. Listen, if you got enough gold, here's what happens. It's tested, and God says, here's the reward. If anyone has built their life on another foundation, it says if the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. What happens to the rest of us? Or the rest of the things? Here it is. If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, but he himself or she herself will be saved. You're going to get to heaven. You're just going to not have anything. You're going to heaven. It's by grace. But you've got to know that everything you do in your life is going to be tested by that fire. Did you do it for Christ? Did you do it in faith? Did you do it in the power of the Holy Spirit? Or did you do it because you perfected yourself in such a way that you became so beautiful that everybody liked you? And they told you so. on Facebook and Instagram and wherever else you were. Baptized narcissism. So on that, that's great. Thanks for listening to this message from River Mountain Church. If you'd like some more information, visit our website, rivermountainchurch.org.