You blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel! Matthew 23:24. This Scripture was addressed to the Pharisees.
The tendency of religion is to strain out the gnats and swallow the camel; in other words, to magnify non-essentials.
You could swallow a thousand gnats and I doubt whether your health would be affected very much. They don’t contain many calories. Unlike mosquitoes they are not known to be carriers of any kind of disease. I don’t think they would harm you at all.
Yet, people strain them out and they swallow the camel. That is exactly what happens when people are frustrated in a walk with God. It happens in the whole realm of religion, when people magnify non-essentials and become very careful about them, yet they bypass the major things that could really cause them trouble.
We spend our days frustrated and upset over little things. We never get around to doing anything about the big things because we’ve dissipated all our energy and our time on non-essentials. People seem to want it that way.
At election time they spend more time arguing over some minor statement that a candidate made in a speech, than they do in being concerned over the fact that all the candidates are completely ignoring the major issues facing our country.
It’s a tendency of religion to magnify gnats until all you can see are gnats. They do that so you won’t see the camels. Religion does that to you. Christian religion does that for you.
Let there not be any question in your mind about whether I am down on denominations and churches. Don’t let that question ever enter your mind. I am! Absolutely! Why?
Because these are the things that are keeping people out of the kingdom of God. That is the reason the Pharisees missed it completely.
The Lord told them, “Listen, the harlots and the publicans will go into the kingdom of God ahead of you.” Does that mean a harlot is morally superior to a Pharisee? No, it just means that the Pharisee is so busy dealing with gnats that he never has the time or the inclination or the heart to deal with the major issues, whereas a harlot and a publican are deep enough in sin that they can see the issue; they can see what they need from God and they can look to God for the answer. There’s a great deal of difference.
There has to be one thing ever before you. Whether you are a sinner, a beginner in Christ (a babe), a child, or one who has come to sonship; whether you are a member of the apostolic order, an apostle, prophet, evangelist, elder, deacon—whatever you are—there has to be one attitude in your mind always: “Show me what is not important; show me what is important; and of those important things, show me what is most important.”
Life does not consist of a religion in which certain things are condemned, and when you have stopped doing them you are a good Christian. That doesn’t make you a good Christian. No way.
a young man from a Pentecostal denomination. was asked him, “Do you know what you believe?” “Yes,” he answered, “we’re not supposed to go to dances; we’re not supposed to go to shows; we’re not supposed to smoke; we’re not supposed to swear.” He had it all worked out—there were four things they weren’t supposed to do. That was his religion.
There are people who may do any of those things (and I’m not excusing them or saying that they are right), but they still may have an attitude that sees and struggles for the more important things.
This is a life flow from God, and once that life flow starts, the things of death fall off. Just destroying them is not an end in itself.
The old tree of carnality grows tall and its roots grow deep. It produces many different kinds of leaves and fruit. Religion comes along and says, “This leaf we don’t approve of, and this fruit we don’t approve of, so we’ll pull it off.”
Then they look at the bare tree and say, “Now we have a good tree.” But the sun will shine and the rains will come, and it will grow some more leaves and some more fruit. You haven’t done anything when you’ve eliminated a few negative traits; they can come back again.
The gospel begins with one message from John the Baptist: “Now the ax is laid to the root of the tree” (Matthew 3:10). We must determine what makes it grow. Then we have to pick up that ax and remove the root, through the Power of the Spirit flowing through us.
We don’t worry so much about removing any of the fruit; we just chop off the root and then wait. Soon the fruit drops and the leaves fall off.
That illustrates the difference between religion and this walk in the spirit.
We never devote our attention just to eliminating the fruit and the leaves of the old life; we’re concerned about getting at the root that feeds it and makes it grow.
Some of you come into the church and you may have stumbled a few times, but no one condemns you. In fact, you may have received the impression, wrongly, that no one cared at all whether you did any of those things or not. We do care! I watch you and I see what you do. But I’m not going to change the situation by making you feel condemned when you stumble.
The only thing you’ll be chastened for is refusing to walk with God, refusing to draw the light from God, refusing to accept what He has for you. If you keep accepting what God has for you, the stumbling will be eliminated. Many of you were a mess and you progressively became less a mess as you went on. That’s the idea. You were being delivered from the things that oppressed you, from the things that were in your old nature. One day you woke up to the fact that you could look back and exclaim, “Man, look how the Lord lifted me up out of that pit!”
You can’t explain all the things that bother people and the things they do to try to change the situation. One of the favorite tricks is to use hypnosis to change people. Recently I read of a poll that was conducted on a group of one hundred people who were hypnotized to help them stop smoking cigarettes. They were all deeply addicted to it. As a result of the hypnosis, most of them stopped smoking cigarettes, but it’s rather interesting to note what they began doing instead. Some took to drinking heavily, though they had never been drunk before. Some who had had good homes before, as they puffed their way along happily, discovered after they had been hypnotized that they were chasing all over, committing adultery, doing every weird thing. The compulsion that was leading them to smoking now drove them to other activities.
If you start rearranging people’s lives on a basis of conformity to a certain behavior pattern and that is your idea of making them religious and serving God, you’re missing it. They will go along, completely frustrated. I know of one case where that happened. A young man loved God very much, but he had lived deeply in sin as part of the underworld in the entertainment business. He never did get that dealt with deep in his heart, and consequently he could go just so long with the frustration of holding it down, trying to be religious, until finally he blew the whole thing. I’m concerned about you not missing God, but finding the way into true righteousness and holiness, that you come and open up to God and worship Him.
That’s why the Bless-In is such a tremendous service. You come here and worship God. The approach is different than the one usually used with young people, where the leaders say, “Let’s get them down and make them repent. Let’s make them solemnly swear and take a pledge that they will not be found in the camp of the enemy, out in the places of the world, that they won’t do all these terrible things.” After they have taken all of those pledges and made all of those vows, they still haven’t changed the condition of their heart that drives them to do those things. This begins with changing the heart. Then little by little you discover that God is dealing with the change that has to be made in your life.
Religion will strain at gnats and swallow a camel. They neglect doing the thing that is most important. It’s hard for people who haven’t lived half a century to understand the seriousness of what I’m saying. They are too young to know what I’m talking about. They haven’t been a part of young people’s organizations and rallies in the churches. They haven’t seen the struggle. They haven’t seen the young people come in by the hundreds and leave by the hundreds. In old order they can’t hang onto them; they can’t see them change. Their emphasis is wrong. They give them a fly swatter and say, “Go after the gnats.” And while they are whacking away at the gnats, the devil is carrying them along, ready for that time when they will get hit hard enough so they will go under.
What should we do, then? Open your spirit, and learn to be worshipers. It’s the flow from God that is going to change you; it will change your heart. It’s that communion with the Lord that is going to change everything for you. You won’t be trying only to perfect little things in the behavior and conduct patterns of your life, though that will take place too.
The Lord has been speaking to me about improving my speech. I express myself vehemently and quite freely, and sometimes the words that I use are not blasphemy or profanity, but they are superdescriptive! I know I have to watch that. As we go on with the Lord, He constantly deals with things in our life. He’s going to deal with you every day about something or other. He does with me. And if He doesn’t seem to be dealing with you, it’s just because you’re not listening. Then that is another thing God will have to deal with you about!
Bringing it down to one simple fact: if we are going to walk with the Lord, He must give us the wisdom to see what is important and what is not important, to see what are mere effects and what are causes.
We have to get a hold of God in a flow of life and let that bless us and let it change us. Then the effects will change. The traits and tendencies in your life that are produced by the old nature will disappear with the old nature. And with the coming of a new nature the new tendencies will appear. Pray, “Lord, show me what is important; show me what is not important. And after I learn what is important, then teach me the greatest of all wisdom; how to sacrifice the lesser things for the greater things, that I not be entangled and engulfed with things that are of lesser importance—even though they are good things—but I devote myself wholly and completely to the most important.”
Now, how are we going to know what is important and what is not important? One of the things you can be sure of is that the things that belong to this passing scene are among the lesser things. Some of you feel that unless you get married you’re not going to be happy. And you’d better get over that idea completely! We’re going to start teaching some different attitudes. You do not have to be compulsively sexual.
I have watched young people get married and struggle along with little income, neglecting education, neglecting great talents and abilities they have, as they settle down to wiping noses, washing diapers, raising children. There are plenty of children in the world already, and the children they are raising will not be that extraordinary and special. They thought they might be—at first. But it soon dawned on them that the river doesn’t rise much above its source, and their children will be human beings with about the same limitations as their parents had. Don’t say, “You’re debunking the whole family scene.” I’m not really. I’m saying that many great ministries have been lost so they could sweat it out and raise a family. Well, if that’s the most important thing in the world, then do it; be fruitful, multiply, and replenish the earth. However, if there is something more important right now, then do that.
In case you are saying, “I feel frustrated,” then your problem is the inability to discern the most important thing in your life. Only a small percentage seem to rise above that common herd that insists on subjecting itself to instincts and drives of the old human nature. Only a few will rise up and say, “If marriage is for me, let it be something that God brings about exactly in the perfect leading of the Lord.” Then we can all say Amen to it.
We’re living in a different age, and I probably have an entirely different attitude toward such things than do most ministers, who are still living in an age when people could not control their actions or the result of their actions; nor did they have control over their own bodies. If they side-stepped once (or maybe more than once), a girl might find herself pregnant, with little recourse except to have that child. But in the present time, both legally and in every way, you have control over your body and you can determine what is to happen to you. If you get out of the will of the Lord, you can repent of it and ask God to forgive you, and take steps to correct that situation.
I think everyone should be led by the Spirit of the Lord. There should not be one child born in the Body of Christ that is an accident. There should not be one marriage into which young people are drawn by any circumstance of that nature. We should be a people who are led by the Spirit of God. If God leads a couple to be married, they should pray and seek the face of the Lord, and if God leads, they should have children. If God leads them not to have children, they should not have children. We are living in an age when that can be controlled. It is more important for you to fulfill the will of God in your life than to be caught by the accident of circumstances until everyone and everything else is determining the course of your life, except you on your knees before God.
Can you buy that? Maybe you can’t. Maybe you think life is just supposed to happen to people. I know that in everything I deny myself in order to do the will of the Lord. And I like to see young people who put the will of God ahead of everything else, too. As far as boy friends and girl friends are concerned, I’m not so sure that we need to follow the pattern of former years and generations. Oh, you’re afraid you might be lonely? How about that! I can point to a lot of married people who are very lonely. So that isn’t too good a reason. You better have a marriage that is in the will of the Lord.
I suppose I’ve shocked you. I usually do. But I don’t say things just for their shock value. I say them because in my heart I believe there’s a perfect will of God for every one of us; and we can find that will of God. I believe there is something more than just going through the routines of living. There’s something more important than your concern as a parent, “Oh, I have to see that my child has a good breakfast.” So you slap him around, “Sit down. Eat your breakfast!” He eats his breakfast and you send him off to school. Throughout the day you’re fussing, “Oh, he forgot to take his vitamins. He forgot to brush his teeth with fluoride.” We spend so much time on some of these little things we forget to live. We forget there’s a life to be lived. Come on up to the higher plane.
You say, “Oh, but I have terrible circumstances.” You do? “Yes, you don’t know the problems. You don’t know the environment I’m in.” I know. You come around and whine to me and I’ll back you up in a corner and let you know what problems really are, the spiritual warfare I’m in constantly. I’ll let you know what it is to live with death for twenty years. There wouldn’t be any life in this walk if I hadn’t lived with death. Paul says it is necessary that death worketh in us, but life in you. II Corinthians 4:12. I know what difficult circumstances can mean. Let me tell you something: You can sing the blues, you can whine and complain—or you can throw back your shoulders and look up to God and say, “Give me strength. I’m going to live the life You want me to live today.” It can be so exciting! It can be tremendous as God leads you right in His perfect will.
A lot of you young people get hung up on the lesser things, and that’s why you’re not getting them. You’re putting them up there ahead of God, and God just isn’t inclined to give you something that you think of more highly than you do Him. If you would go back and seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, these other things would be added to you. If you didn’t chafe so much in wanting the secondary things, and instead you’d start seeking for the primary things, God would add the secondary things to you.
I like the way Abraham walked with God. Everything he did was to please God. Twice in the Old Testament he is called “the friend of God.” How would you like to have God say of you, “This is John, My friend,” or “This is Mary, My friend.” And think of all the beautiful promises God gave Abraham.
As I was reading an account of ancient Babylon in a current magazine, I was impressed with the archaeologist’s fantastic report on life in that day. It told of the code of laws that was first classified by Hammurabi, a famous Babylonian king in Abraham’s day. He was also known as Amraphel, one of the four Babylonian kings who were defeated by Abraham with only 318 of his trained body servants. Abraham would tackle anything, even the greatest monarch of the day. After Abraham had finally defeated these kings to rescue Lot, the king of Sodom wanted him to take some of the spoil. But Abraham refused. He said, “I won’t even take a shoelatchet, lest you should say, ‘I made Abraham rich!’ ” God had already made Abraham rich. He wasn’t that impressed with money. Walk with God—that’s all he wanted. He let Lot take the fertile land while he settled in the rocky country that was left. He was generous, never concerned about himself. He put God first and God took care of him.
Look at David. He said, “With my whole heart have I sought Thee, Lord. My heart is fixed on Thee.” Because he had things straight in his mind, as to what was important, God made him exceedingly wealthy. If we had the gold that he amassed to build the temple (which Solomon, his son, built) we would really be on a gold standard. In our present currency it would be valued at between two and five billion dollars. Yet his heart was fixed on something far greater. He had the true riches.
That’s what all of us need right now. Get your eye on the thing that is important and all these other things will be added unto you. But they won’t be added to you until you have a lesser opinion of them than you do of the will of God. Put the most important things first. Don’t strain out gnats and swallow a camel.
Every day that I live I try to do the thing that is most important for the kingdom of God that day. I try to seek for the specific word, for the message that I believe is the word that will help this walk with God more than anything else. Because I live with that attitude in mind, you hear more than a sermon; you receive principles.
If I were to die tonight I would have very few regrets. I know that each day of each year I’ve tried to do the thing that God set before me as most important. I didn’t say, “God, I’ll put that in the background because I have other things I want to do today.” My own business affairs and personal affairs have fallen completely into neglect because I’ve been too busy taking care of the thing of God first. But suppose I were to fail financially on the personal level—that’s of very little importance. How these churches walk on with God—that is of the utmost importance.
A great deal of the confusion comes from the conflicting loyalties, the conflicting goals and purposes, and a set of values that is all messed up because people don’t know what is important and what isn’t important; they don’t know what to seek first and what not to seek. And so they tend to go back and to become religious, going through the motions, and that is all. Many people go to church because it gives them a good feeling that they’ve done something real noble. Going to church doesn’t mean anything if you don’t go to worship God, and open your heart wholly to the Lord.
Apply this message on a personal level, too. What do you talk about at home? What do you argue about? What disturbs you? It is surprising to see how dedicated people can be to be disturbed about little things. They belong to the kingdom of gnats; that’s all they see. A gnat can be irritating, buzzing around your ear, but a bite by a camel is much more serious.
Learn to be kind. Don’t be sarcastic. Sometime turn on a recorder and record your conversation while you’re eating a meal, and afterwards play it back and listen to it. Then decide if you said anything at all that you would want to face in eternity. Let’s get out of the low level and begin to live on the higher plane, with the bigger objectives. Come on up high where God wants you to live. If you’re going to live this walk, you will have to stop the religious pursuit of gnats.