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Three Fatal Dreams: But God

The document summarizes three fatal dreams that people can have that prevent them from truly following Jesus: 1) Relying on intellectualism/correct doctrine alone without obeying God's word. 2) Trusting in emotions/feelings toward Jesus alone without living a holy life. 3) Believing outward religious activity is enough without doing God's will inwardly through obedience. The key point is that saving faith requires thinking, feeling, and acting rightly through obedience to God's word by his Spirit's power, not just one or two of those elements alone.

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57 views5 pages

Three Fatal Dreams: But God

The document summarizes three fatal dreams that people can have that prevent them from truly following Jesus: 1) Relying on intellectualism/correct doctrine alone without obeying God's word. 2) Trusting in emotions/feelings toward Jesus alone without living a holy life. 3) Believing outward religious activity is enough without doing God's will inwardly through obedience. The key point is that saving faith requires thinking, feeling, and acting rightly through obedience to God's word by his Spirit's power, not just one or two of those elements alone.

Uploaded by

pishoi gerges
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Is any lostness worse than remaining lost while believing you’re

found?

Of all those who finally travel the broad way to destruction, are any so
wretched as those who sang Christian songs, prayed Christian
prayers, and sat under countless Christian sermons along the way?
The man sipping sand in the desert, because he thinks he holds a cup
of water, is the most tragic and pitiable of sights. To plunge
thoughtlessly into the next life is one horror; to play the saint, and
still be deceived, is another.

There was a time I wouldn’t have believed such people existed — least
of all, that I was one of them. Certainly, all who audibly called upon
Jesus as Lord would be saved — why else would anyone show up
every Sunday? But there it stood before me, glowing as if engraved in
fire, Jesus’s own words giving us a transcript of some on judgment
day:

Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of
heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On
that day many will say to me, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your
name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in
your name?” And then will I declare to them, “I never knew you; depart
from me, you workers of lawlessness.” (Matthew 7:21–23)
I read it again. And again. No verse had ever made me lose sleep
before.

I realized that I must be one of the “many.”

Three Fatal Dreams


I was like so many sermon-hearers, Bible-readers, and synagogue-
attenders of Jesus’s day: lost in a dream, traveling toward hell in
church clothes. “As when a hungry man dreams, and behold, he is
eating, and awakes with his hunger not satisfied, or as when a thirsty
man dreams, and behold, he is drinking, and awakes faint, with his
thirst not quenched” (Isaiah 29:8), I merely dreamt of eternal safety .
But God, as I pray for many who read this, woke me up through his
word. At the end of the greatest sermon ever preached, Jesus exposed
three fatal dreams that I dreamt as one of the religious lost: dreams
that mere intellectualism, mere emotionalism, and mere activism are
solid grounds for the hope of my salvation.
Correct Doctrine Is Insufficient
First, Jesus shows the insufficiency of intellectualism — of the one
who would say, “I know and, thus, I am saved.” Jesus says, “Not
everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of
heaven.” These men and women were addressing him with the
appropriate term, “Lord” (Greek kyrios), the characteristic title for
God in the Old Testament — and so he was.

“Knowing the right mantras, solas, verses, or


doctrines is not sufficient for eternal life.”
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Calling him Lord proved their orthodoxy, they may have thought.
They knew something every child of God knew to say. They did not
approach him as a mere prophet or religious teacher; they addressed
him as exalted majesty. They knew the Scriptures, the books to read,
and which podcasts to follow. But calling on him as Lord did not open
the kingdom of heaven to them. As the scene shows in full sobriety:
knowing the right mantras, solas, verses, or doctrines is not sufficient
for eternal life.

Emotions Are Inadequate


Second, Jesus shows the inadequacy of mere emotionalism — of the
one who would say, “I feel and, thus, I am saved.” Addressing him as
“Lord, Lord” shows that this wasn’t spoken dryly. They spoke
enthusiastically, expectantly, confidently. They spoke emphatically to
convey a sense of familiarity with who they perceived to be their Lord.
No doubt, this was the product of lives filled with great sensations
toward Jesus. Certainly, they had a relationship with him, they
thought — he was not “Unknown judge” or “Distant deity” but “Lord,
Lord.” If asked whether they felt affection toward Jesus, all would
have answered, “Of course.” Yet, they heard in reply, “I never knew
you; depart from me,” proving that positive emotions toward Christ
are not in themselves an adequate response to his word.

Activity Can Be Deceptive


Finally, Jesus shows the fantasy of mere activism — of the one who
would say, “I’ve done great things for God and thus I am saved.”
Jesus says, “On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not
prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do
many mighty works in your name?’” They took action in Jesus’s name.
They performed visible, effective works for others. They had a résumé
of miracles. They acknowledged him before the world. People heard
them prophesy, watched them cast out demons, and do many other
mighty works in his name — and they concluded that this counted for
more than it did. They were “used of God” — surely, they must be his.
And yet, they heard, along with those who outwardly hated God, “I
never knew you; depart from me.”

Surprising Oversight
What was missing? Jesus’s answer might surprise us: They were
not doers of the word. “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’
will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my
Father who is in heaven.” Instead of doers of God’s will, they
amounted to “workers of lawlessness.” They called him “Lord, Lord”
but failed to do what he told them (Luke 6:46).
They heard the word of God — in the gospel message and in the
written Scriptures — but they did not obey it. These were those who,
as Jesus teaches in the next breath, built their lives on sand because
they heard his words but did not do them:
Everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a
foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the
floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and
great was the fall of it. (Matthew 7:26–27)

“They thought and felt and acted, at times, like


saints, but deep down lived as devils.”
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They thought and felt and acted, at times, like saints, but their lives
were marked by self and sin. They listened to the Sermon on the
Mount, only to go away not to cut off limbs of lust, nor cease their
adulteries, nor end the hatred toward their brother, nor renounce the
love of money, nor forgive their neighbor, nor relinquish their
anxieties, nor resolve to be charitable in their judgments — all by
faith in and love for the Preacher. Nor would they be bothered to ask,
seek, and knock for the Spirit’s help (Matthew 7:7–11). Their
righteousness would not exceed that of the Pharisees (Matthew 5:20).
They vainly thought — as I thought for many years, and ache over
how many in our day still think it — that hearing was sufficient. That
feeling was enough. That public displays of religion would do the
trick. They wandered, as in a dream, trusting in the fact that they
heard, that they felt, or that they did, even though they continued to
practice sin.

James, who would have been unbelieving when he heard his brother
preach this sermon, later urges the church not to similarly live in this
dream of disobedience: “Put away all filthiness and rampant
wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is
able to save your souls. But be doers of the word, and not hearers
only, deceiving yourselves” (James 1:21–22). Later he calls such “faith”
useless, dead, and demonic (James 2:14–26).

Thy Will Be Done


We are justified by faith alone, as the Reformers taught, but not by a
faith that is alone. To truly receive the words of God is to
intentionally, through a joyous faith in our crucified and resurrected
Lord and active reliance upon his Spirit, obey them. Consider that if
exposure to God’s word in the spoken gospel and the written
Scriptures doesn’t soon change your behavior (even if slower than
you might hope), if the transformation of your inner person does not
extend to your outer life, you may well be wandering in the dream of
those who never knew him.

Remember, the word of God, by its very nature, reproves us, corrects
us, and trains us in righteousness, that we “may be complete,
equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16–17). It reaches into
our homes, our work, our world, doing business in every crevice of
our hearts, and having implications for all of our lives. The Bible is a
Book to be obeyed, for it is the Book through which our God speaks.
And these words of our God are not burdensome. They are words of
eternal life, and glad obedience to them is abiding in his love and the
fullness of our joy (John 15:9–11). Scripture contains no impersonal
instructions for everyday life, but living words to children from their
Father, strategic commands from the General to his soldiers,
necessary instruction from the Shepherd to his sheep, life-giving
vows from a Groom to his bride. If we love him, we will obey him
(John 14:15).
Thus, while requiring us to think (true doctrine matters), saving faith
is not merely about thinking; while requiring us to feel (we must love
the Lord with all of our hearts), it does not terminate in our passions;
while affording great displays of power and wonders, it calls for
private fruits of a holy life to corroborate public showings. It
produces men, women, and children who, in union with Jesus and
given new hearts, happily do the will of God with a new, childlike
aim: to please him (2 Corinthians 5:9).

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