To watch carefully, because that is the time when you will start seeing yourself making excuses. And when you start making excuses, remember this message that the Lord Jesus is speaking to you in this parable. The moment you catch yourself making excuses, you know that you are on the way out spiritually. You will soon be down and out spiritually. Oh, the danger of making excuses. Try to be on the alert. Catch yourself when you start doing this. When you start saying that you are too busy, that you have no time — no time to pray, no time to go to church — or that you have so many other legitimate reasons for not doing this.
Now, the thing that we need to take heed of is to remember that those who fail have to make many excuses. And by reversing this, you know that when you start making excuses, you are on the way to spiritual failure and disaster. Now, many times when you speak to a Christian who fails, it is remarkable how many legitimate reasons he seems to be able to produce. It is this: other Christians are not understanding, they are not patient enough, they have stumbled me, they don't understand my character, and so it goes on and on. As I said, those who don't fail don't have to produce any excuses at all.
But notice also, as we look at the history of Israel, and as we remember the parable that we expounded last week, this polite excuse-making can gradually shift to a much less polite excuse-making, and from there on to outright hostility and rebellion. This is the thing you need to bear in mind. At first, excuses are so very harmless, appear to be so politely made. But when you compare the parable we studied last week, you saw that what happened later on was that they first sent the messenger away empty. Maybe they gave him some excuses: "We don't have fruit to give to you, I'm sorry, come back next year." The next time the servant comes, we see in the Scripture, he gets a beating. And the next time he comes along, he gets more than a beating. The next one gets killed for that. Once you start making excuses, you are on a downward slide that becomes very hard to stop. Gradually, the courtesy also disappears. Gradually, the hostility becomes open. Gradually, your criticism of the church, of Christians generally, gets harder and harder. Gradually, you quite dissociate yourself even from the life of the church as a whole.
Now, this is what we see in the history of Israel. And the remarkable thing is, of course, that the excuses become ever stronger, more dogmatic, more insistent. Now, when we study the history of Israel, it's precisely that kind of history. We can see the whole history of spiritual decline and the way the whole thing goes.
For example, at first, you will see that some of the servants of God in the Old Testament are simply humiliated or slapped or beaten and so forth. Take, for example, Micaiah, son of Imla, in 2 Chronicles chapter 18. He is simply insulted, slapped, humiliated, and thrown into jail. And that is to get off pretty lightly as a prophet of God. But a few chapters later — that was in chapter 18 — by the time we get to 2 Chronicles 24, verses 18 to 22, we see another prophet of God, Zechariah, son of Jehoiada, who was a high priest in Israel. Zechariah, his son, was a prophet. And Zechariah denounced Israel, denounced the people of Israel, saying these words: "God has forsaken you, because you have forsaken God." But what he got? He was stoned to death. Exactly as the Lord Jesus said, that they stoned God's prophets to death. He was stoned to death.
Now stoning is normally a punishment for blasphemy, for the breaking of the law, for some very serious crimes. What was Zechariah's crime? Zechariah's crime was that he had made a statement of treason. To the Jews, it was a treasonable statement to say that God had forsaken Israel. A very serious statement, because it was to say that they were no longer God's people. It was to say that God had rejected them totally. God had departed from them. That is a statement of treason. And yet, there is one unanimous message that all the prophets delivered. Namely, they said to Israel, "God has forsaken you."
Now I know exactly how you would feel if I said to you, "God has forsaken you." I mean, you can say that to somebody else. It's no skin off your nose. But to say that to you — "God has forsaken me?" That would be a shock. Now you can know why the reaction of the Jews towards the prophets was so hostile, so angry. And when Stephen, as you know in Acts chapter 7, said the same thing to the Jews, he was stoned to death also. He was stoned to death. In fact, they were so furious that the Bible says that they stuck their fingers in their ears. They don't want to hear this anymore. "God will never forsake His people. God will never do that. He cannot do that." You see, if I said, "God has forsaken His church today," oh, you would have me out here. "This guy is a heretic. This fellow is a disaster. God will never forsake His church. How dare you say a thing like this?" Now that is exactly the reaction in the Old Testament.
And here is the way that they could counter the prophets. First of all, they could charge them not only with treason, but with heresy. Why heresy? Well, let me read to you Deuteronomy 31, verse 6. Deuteronomy 31, verse 6. Now if you want to quote Scripture, that's one way to quote Scripture. Verse 6: "Be strong and of good courage. Do not fear or be in dread of them, that is, of the enemy. For it is the Lord your God who goes with you; He will not fail you or forsake you. He will not fail you or forsake you." Those words would ring down the corridors of history for Israel. Ringing in their ears: "He will not forsake you. He will not forsake you." And here comes a prophet and says something contradictory to the Word of God, and says that God has forsaken His people, when God said He will not forsake His people.
So how can these prophets say something so contrary to that great servant of God, Moses, who said that God would not forsake Israel? In fact, if that was not enough, one could even go on. What about the great prophet Samuel? In 1 Samuel chapter 12, verse 22, this is what Samuel says to the people of Israel. 1 Samuel 12, verse 22. And Samuel says these reassuring words to Israel: "For the Lord will not cast away His people, for His great name's sake, because it has pleased the Lord to make you a people for Himself." The Lord will not cast away His people because of His own name's sake. It's not depending on you. It's depending on Him. His name's sake. He will not cast away His people. There you are. Heresy. No wonder they deservedly stone this fellow to death. He comes along and says words contrary to the promises of God through the great servant of God, Moses, through the great servant of God, Samuel. And who is this Zechariah, whatever his name was, coming along and saying God has forsaken His people?
Of course, it gets harder and harder to deal with when you have prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel all coming along and saying the same thing. But you see — charge of treason, charge of heresy. What is more, very interestingly, of course, these words in Deuteronomy 31 that we have just read, that God will not forsake His people, is quoted in the New Testament, and Christians love to quote this verse too. So comforting. So comforting indeed. Hebrews 13, verse 5, actually is a quotation of these words in Deuteronomy. And this is how it reads. Hebrews 13, verse 5: "Keep your life free from the love of money" — well, we should overlook this statement and rush on to more important things — "and be content with what you have. For He has said" — for He has said, that's the important part of the verse — "I will never fail you nor forsake you. I will never, no never, no never." People even remind you that you have a triple negative in the Greek. Never forsake you. There you are. And then you have some guy called Eric Chang, this great heretic, coming along and saying things like, "You are not always going to be safe. Don't be so self-confident." Because you have great teachers in the church — I mean, far superior to some guy called Eric Chang — who have reminded us, "See here, Hebrews 13, verse 5. He will never, no never" — remember the triple negative — "one more never, forsake you." Of course, so what it said before about the love of money — this probably has no connection to the second part. I mean, that's why we must concentrate only on the second part.
Now, if we want to deal with the Word of God in this fashion, if this is the way we treat God's Word, the possibilities for self-deception are limitless. So therefore, these servants of God were rightly stoned to death when they dared to say heretical statements like this, that God would ever forsake His people. Who do you think God is? Do you think God's mercy depends on you? Do you think God's mercy is for His own name's sake that He will not forsake you? I mean, even though Israel can sin and sin and sin, that doesn't matter because His name is the question. Oh, I am very familiar with this reasoning today. Haven't we heard it? As though God's mercy depends on you. No, no, it depends on Himself alone. So, having quoted the Scripture, we now have a theology to back up our statement. A theology of the sovereignty of grace. Oh, this sounds marvelous. I mean, against that, you cannot compete. You're left quite speechless. The sovereignty of grace, we are told, means that no matter what you do, He will never forsake you.
Of course, there are some other verses which are rather inconvenient, where it says — of course, rather exactly like the words of Zechariah — it says that if you forsake Him, He will forsake you. Oh, this is a bit uncomfortable. How do we deal with this? On one hand, it says, "I will never forsake you." Now He says, "He will forsake you." I mean, make up your mind. Does He forsake you or doesn't He forsake you? Well, if we had quoted Deuteronomy 31, verse 6 correctly, we would have seen that we should have read a little bit further down the chapter. Let us return again to Deuteronomy 31 and show you that if you misuse Scripture, you are only using it as an excuse. You can even use Scripture as an excuse. I beg of you to understand this. And if you use Scripture as an excuse, you are committing spiritual suicide. One can't afford this. Remember that even the devil can use Scripture. He used the Scripture when tempting the Lord Jesus in Matthew 4 at the temptation. Because even Satan knows that if you take Scripture out of its whole context, you can do all kinds of things with it.
So, Deuteronomy 31 and verse 6, we saw there these words, that the Lord would never forsake you. But then, look a little bit further down to verses 16 and 17. And what do we read there? Verses 16 and 17: "And the Lord said to Moses, 'Behold, you are about to sleep with your fathers'" — that is, Moses was about to die — "'Then this people will rise and play the harlot after the strange gods of the land where they go to be among them, and they will forsake me and break my covenant which I have made with them.' Now, read carefully verse 17: 'Then my anger will be kindled against them in that day, and I will forsake them and hide my face from them, and they will be devoured, and many evils and troubles will come upon them, so that they will say in that day, "Have not these evils come upon us because our God is not among us?"'" God has left them. God will forsake them.
So, why do we stop reading at verse 6? That is misusing Scripture. We should read on the whole chapter and see what the context says. "I will forsake them." Now, that is exactly what the Lord Jesus said. "The kingdom will be taken away from you and given to a nation that produces its fruit." Why? Because they had broken My covenant. I will be with them no more.
Oh, my beloved brothers and sisters, we come to the final disaster when we use Scripture as an excuse, and as an excuse for allowing the church or allowing Christians to sin, and inventing some doctrine of sovereign grace. Of course, God's grace is sovereign, but every promise of God is conditional. It is conditional upon — He will not forsake His people so long as His people keep His covenant. There is no promise in the Bible that is unconditional unless you can show me one. Hebrews 13:5 is most precious: "I will not leave you nor forsake you." But that is a promise to those who are within the covenant, who remain faithful to the covenant, who keep themselves free from the love of money. We cannot split the verse apart.
Now, you can, however, make further excuses for not obeying God. And when we start making this type of excuses, we start going into very dangerous ground. Here are some of the excuses that were used in the Old Testament to reject the message of the prophets. The excuse number one — apart from those that we have seen concerning heresy and treason and the like — but there are other excuses that could be made. One of these is that the true servants of God are a very small minority. They are constantly outnumbered in history. And you can always appeal to the majority. Remember one thing well. Remember this very well: the servants of God, the true servants of God, will always, always, at any time in the history of the church, be in the small minority.
You see that, for example, in 2 Chronicles 18, verse 5, in the case of Micaiah that I had mentioned earlier on. 400 prophets were consulted. 400 prophets were consulted by the king, and they all said the same thing, that he should go into battle and that he would win. 400 prophets. Only Micaiah, the only prophet, said to the king, "If you go into battle, you will surely die. You will surely be defeated. You will surely die. You will not come back here again after this battle. I shall see your face no more." 400 said, "God is with you. God's blessing is with you." They were all prophets of the Lord, so they claimed to be. 400 to 1. Which do you listen to? 400 can't be wrong. 400 people — I mean, we are used to the commercials. "So many people can't be wrong. 721,000 people have switched to Pepsi." I mean, 721,000 people cannot be wrong. Therefore, it proves that Pepsi is superior to Coke. Okay, okay. So if you think that's the case, then of course you switch to Pepsi. You are impressed by the numbers. And I am sure you have seen this — all the newspapers and everywhere — 721,000 people were quoting the Gallup poll or whatever poll it was. So we are impressed by numbers, and the advertisers know that. Otherwise, they wouldn't be quoting those numbers.
400 prophets of the Lord, and they claimed to be prophets of the Lord. 400 said to the king, "Go, God will be with you. You will come back triumphant by the grace and power of God. God is with His people, Israel. God will not forsake His people. You just go there in the name of the Lord and you will win." Oh, 400. And here comes one insignificant, scrawny prophet called Micaiah who comes along and says, "Oh no, no, God won't be with you. You will be defeated." Who do you listen to? You want to listen to what you want to hear? Who wants to listen to this guy? You see, that is going to be the constant situation in the history of the church. That is what you are going to experience. Look at the great army of clergy here. The majority of the clergy, the majority of the official church, is saying one thing, and here is one insignificant nonentity saying something else. So who do you listen to? Well, of course, to the majority, the respected clergy. I mean, of course you want to listen to them.
The same thing happened in the days of the Lord Jesus. That is exactly what happened with the Lord Jesus, wasn't it? Here was the Lord Jesus speaking a message which was exactly the opposite of the whole official system of the religion of Israel. There were the chief priests, the Bible scholars, the clergy of Israel, all ranged against Jesus. And what does Jesus have? Jesus has a small group of ragtag band of disciples, and that's all He had. He had no official recognition, He had no official status. He didn't even graduate from the rabbinical seminary. He had not even got a diploma from the seminary. At least if He was some kind of a rabbi with some diploma behind Him, at least He had a little bit more credibility. But with a bunch of fishermen as disciples tagging around after Him, a bunch of ignoramuses. And here was this man standing against the whole religious system of Israel — the temple, the priests, the clergy, everybody. No wonder the people looked which way to follow. "Who are we going to listen to? The clergy, the rabbis, or this guy here with a bunch of fishermen as disciples?" Who do you listen to? Always the men of God are in the minority. Always in the minority.
Second thing. So first of all, you have an excuse. When you don't want to hear the message, you will always be in a very strong position not to listen to it. Why? Because, as we have noticed well, the truth will be in the minority. The second thing: lack of evidence. Oh, that's a very strong excuse or reason to give. Lack of evidence. You see, remember the point that we just made, that spiritual decline is in proportion to material prosperity. Do you know when Israel most declined and was spiritually at its lowest point? When it was most prosperous. Now, when the prophets of God came along and said to Israel, "God has forsaken you," the evidence was against it. At least the visible evidence was against it. Why? I mean, God has forsaken us? Look at our economic situation. Look — Israel is so prosperous today. Just look at the message of the prophets, and you will see that the message of the prophets were constantly thundering against the luxurious living of the Israelites. Some could live or sleep in beds of ivory. Oh, they lived in palatial conditions. They were drinking wine out of golden goblets. They were having — in fact, some of the prophets called even the women "cows of Bashan." Why? Because the cows of Bashan were particularly well-nourished and fat. So the prophets were, you see, rather rude, weren't they? Rather rude. How can servants of God be so rude?
So, this was the condition. Israel was so prosperous. And surely, prosperity is a sign of God's blessing. I mean, do you call prosperity a curse from God? Well, most people don't call that a curse from God. I mean, that's blessing. And here the prophet comes along and says to a prosperous nation, evidently, at least in their eyes, under the blessing of God, and says, "God has forsaken you." Nonsense. I mean, if God had forsaken us, we would all be poor, right? We would all be in terrible distress economically and in every way. But Israel at these times, before their collapse, was always in a very good position economically, and even politically was not so bad. That is why they dared to revolt against the Assyrian powers. They felt confident enough to try it, to attack a nation or to rebel against a nation far more powerful than themselves. Such was their confidence in their economic and military strength.
Anyone at all familiar with the history of Israel will realize that the prophets were in a most difficult position. Namely, that there was a lack of evidence that their message was true. At least, lack of any visible evidence. If you say today to the churches today, "God has forsaken you, because you have forsaken God" — it's nonsense. I mean, we never had it so good. Just look at our budget. Just look at the treasurer's budget here. Our budget last year was $200,000, and of this we gave $80,000 to the missionary work out there. Look at our television stations — they're mushrooming all over the place, and more and more people are tuning in to Christian entertainment. This is so successful. And you say, "God has forsaken us?" Nonsense.
And thirdly, not only the economic and political evidence is lacking, even more, the religious evidence is lacking. "It's not true. We have not forsaken God. God has not forsaken us, as witnessed by our prosperity, and we have not forsaken God, because you just go into the temple and have a look." When you go into the temple and have a look, you'll see crowds of people in the temple. That's exactly the point. There was so much religious activity. If only you're familiar with the history of Israel, you'll know that. Religious activity had taken the place of spiritual depth. And whenever a church is spiritually dead or dying, you'll have so much activity in that church. That is a principle and a rule. There will be lots of them. There will be this department and that department and the other department and so many departments. And you will have this minister in charge of Christian education, that minister in charge of youth functions, and that minister in charge of external affairs like visitation and so forth. And you have a whole army of pastors with the presiding pastor on top, who is of course chairman of the board, director, and general director of all departments. All thriving and efficiently organized. And there you're going to bring in the people with the MBAs to administer the large finances. You've got the efficiency; you've got everything laid out perfectly. The only thing you don't have too much of is spiritual life and depth and power.
Now, I am not against efficiency, of course, and I'm not against organization. Who needs to be against any of these things? What I'm just saying here is the principle: do not mistake activity and spiritual busyness as being the same thing as spiritual life.
The same thing is again true in the Lord's day. Every one of these points is true in the Lord's day, and it will be true into the future because these are permanent principles. The same was with the Lord Jesus. The Lord Jesus was saying to the Israelites, "The kingdom of God will be taken away from you. You did not know the time of your visitation, and God has left you. God has forsaken you." But Israel was very prosperous at that time. Even though they were under Roman occupation, they were doing quite nicely. They were doing economically very nicely, in fact. Politically, they weren't doing so bad either. I mean, the Romans were quite good peacekeepers. They didn't have to maintain their own army because the Romans were the peacekeepers. That takes a big slice off the budget because you don't have to have a defense budget. And then you can go on and build your economy. Israel was doing very nicely then. And that is why their hearts waxed more and more dissatisfied and rebellious against the Romans. They began to feel more and more confident to take on the Roman army. That was how prosperous and how confident they were in themselves.
And again, the same thing religiously was the case. You remember we talked about the cleansing of the temple. The temple was crowded in the days of the Lord Jesus. Crowds of people in the temple. There was no lack of worshippers. And that is why they were doing a thriving business in the temple. The money lenders on one hand, the money changers and people selling animals. Oh, you go into the temple, you could hear cows and bullocks and sheep and pigeons — whatever you got there. Lots of activity. So you say that we have forsaken God? What? Nonsense. Just look at our temple.
This is why, for example, the prophets had to attack the very activity in the temple. Rather, as I have been doing, the prophet Isaiah was saying to the Israelites that God said to them, "Who asked of you this trampling of My courts, these crowds of animals in the temple? Who wants all of this? Do you think I want all of this? What I want is a spirit of devotion. What I want is justice and truth. I don't want all this religious activity." You see all that already in the first chapter of Isaiah, and the message goes on and on, all the way through Isaiah. We confuse activity.
And so, if you are very active in the church, you can use that as an excuse for not progressing spiritually. Or in fact, to deny that you are spiritually slipping at all. And let me remind you that this will be the same situation in the last days, wherever you go. As the time of the coming of the Lord draws near, the world will not get poorer. The rich get richer. And the churches, because of the very principles that are taught in it, are always among the most prosperous. Christians are always among the most prosperous people. I'm sure you have noticed that. And Christian countries are always among the most prosperous nations. And that very prosperity is taken to be a sign of God's blessing. We have such pity and condescension upon those poor nations. We are so blessed by God. Oh, indeed. But remember what we said, that such a blessing can turn out to be a curse, as our spirit waxes fat within us, and we start making all kinds of excuses for not responding to the kind of life to which God has called us.
And then finally, and lastly, we can finally develop to such a stage of resistance to the message of God, that even these excuses can be put aside. And you can use even stronger excuses. You can start attacking the servants of the Lord. You can start saying, for example, that he's demon-possessed, which is in fact what they said of John the Baptist in Matthew 11, verse 18: "He has a demon. This guy, the Baptist, this fellow, is out of his mind." But what attacks were put upon the Lord Jesus by way of defamation — He's just about had every name under the sun called upon Him. Let me give you five things that were said about the Lord Jesus, so that you can ponder about it.
He also was said to be demon-possessed and to work by the power of the devil, for example, in John chapter 10, verse 20. "Why do we want to listen to this fellow? He is demon-possessed." The second thing that is said about the Lord Jesus is that He is mad. "Why do you listen to Him? He's a nutcase." Also in John 10:20 and other passages. Or then we can say more about Him. We can say that the servant of God is a glutton and a drunkard and associates with bad people, such as in Matthew 11, verse 19. Drunkard and glutton. He likes His bottle of wine. Not only so, but He gets drunk and He fills Himself with good food and associates with bad people. You don't want to listen to somebody like this. And then fourthly, He is a lawbreaker. He does not keep the Sabbath. Matthew 12, verses 1 to 14. A breaker of God's law. "And He professes to preach to us that God has forsaken us. I mean, if anybody has been forsaken, God has forsaken Him, not us." And the fifth thing that is said of the Lord Jesus is that He was a blasphemer. He has spoken out against God. In John chapter 10, verse 33 and 36, for example, and on three separate occasions He was accused of blasphemy.
On top of that, one could add other criticisms of the Lord Jesus. For example, His critical spirit. I mean, think of His denunciation of the Pharisees in Matthew 23. I mean, that denunciation makes even our ears ring, never mind the Pharisees who were getting the brunt of it. I mean, surely a person with such a critical spirit cannot be a true servant of the Lord. And after all, the Pharisees were among the most respected people and had some of the greatest scholars of the time. And you denounce people in a sevenfold curse? Oh, I mean, that's not the right spirit. Too critical, isn't it? So we find all these very good reasons for rejecting the message by rejecting the person who delivers the message. For example, if you don't like the message I preach, then of course you can simply say, "Well, this fellow is arrogant and he is proud and he is critical, or he is even worse than that. He himself does not keep the law. He is a drunkard. He likes food too much," and things of this kind. And once you have said all this, of course, you don't have to listen to my message anymore. We have disposed of the message.
So let us close. And let us remember well this point: any excuses — or reasons, as you might call them — for not doing what the Lord wants you to do, for not responding to His will, to His call — that will cost you your salvation. Let us be quiet before God in prayer.