Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 691 -- taken from Closed Captioning Text

-- Brother Phil Enlow: I don't know...I have a burden and a thought on my heart this morning. It's not a complicated one and I don't even know where to begin exactly to express it. But, maybe this would all come under the heading of "Two Kinds of Christians"--two kinds of Christians. You know there's two kinds of Christians?

You know when the gospel first began to be preached--and I'm thinking now of the church age--you know, we spoke about this recently in the service on baptism--God arranged for the disciples to experience the outpouring of His Spirit. They had been promised that they would have the means to do--to fulfill the calling that God had given them, that it was a supernatural job that they'd been given to do and they couldn't handle it until the Spirit came upon them.

And the Lord arranged for them to be standing in the temple on a major Jewish feast and standing there amidst all these thousands of people and suddenly all of this great demonstration took place, and they began to praise God in other languages. And, of course it got the people's attention and the Gospel was preached.

But, you know the Gospel that was preached on that occasion and in the days to follow was absolutely a revolution. They didn't come preaching another religion. All that they had in the world at that time was just a lot of religion. We know that God had originally spoken to Moses and given the Law to help prepare the children of Israel--the Israelites for the coming of the Messiah. It was meant to teach them that they had a need...that they needed a Savior, and point to the ultimate Lamb of God that was going to be the sacrifice for their sins.

But over the centuries something had happened. And what had happened was that they had turned what God had done in their midst into a religion. And it was simply a way of life to them. They believed certain things. They did certain things. They performed certain religious rituals and activities and they were good Jews. They belonged to God--that was all there was to it in their minds. That's all there was to being a follower of God.

And, we know what kind of a spirit had really come in and taken over. It was the spirit that caused these very religious, God-fearing-supposedly people to crucify Jesus, to be so blind spiritually that they were unable to recognize Him.

But when the Gospel began to be preached, as I say, it was a revolution. It was something totally different from religion. It was a Gospel that transformed men's lives--that caused them to, not only to have their sins forgiven and to take on a new way of life, but to have a new life literally on the inside. Christ came in by the Spirit and lived in there, and there was a transformation that was begun in their hearts from the inside out.

It caused them to--they were going this way--it caused them to turn around and go 180 degrees opposite. Every value, everything about their lives were completely transformed. And it was the preaching of that Gospel, fired with men whose hearts were literally on fire from heaven--went out of there--proclaimed it and it was said of them, they turned the world upside down.

This was not a religion, folks. This was a dynamic, living, faith in God. They became followers of Jesus. It was later on they began to call these people Christians. And we began to have that kind of a label. But in the beginning it was not a religion.

And, you know, we have an example of what I was talking about in 1st Peter, chapter 1. Peter talks about the faith of the Jews, and of course, he was talking about himself. That's where he'd been. That's where God called him out of, what God called him out of. Praise God! Verse 18, "For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life..."--(NIV). King James says, "vain conversation."--"...The empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers...." (NIV).

You see how they got it? This was a religion handed down to them. They learned it just like you learn to be a member of the Kiwanis, or you learn to be an American, or you learn to be Chinese. They learned to be Jews and supposedly God-fearing people. But he says, it was an empty thing. It was vain. "...Life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect." Praise God!

And so, here you have on the one hand you had religion, then you had God's Spirit invading human society with a message of hope that took people out of that. It delivered them! That absolutely filled their hearts with something that was brand-new and set their feet on a rock, spiritually speaking. They turned their back on their religion. They turned their back on their way of life. People didn't even go home. They just spent their time together learning about this wonderful new life, this wonderful new hope that had come into their hearts and into their lives.

But you know what's happened over the centuries--and it should be pretty obvious--is that the same process of something becoming religion has happened all over again. And so today the world is full of those that people call Christians. It's full of people who consider themselves to be Christians.

Well how do they become Christians? What does it mean to be a Christian? In the eyes of most people it is simply a religious set of beliefs and doctrines. It is a profession, and people enter it so many different ways. Now, of course, here we see the problem we would have in our midst here is that people would simply grow up with it. To them, it's never become a living faith that's personal, that has transformed their hearts and their lives from the inside out. It is simply a way of life that they have learned.

( congregational amens ).

And I think you know that that is a worthless thing. But you've got two different kinds of Christians. One is a real Christian that has been transformed by the power of God on the inside and you have somebody else that's simply learned a set of religious practices and beliefs. Oh, I'll tell you what, we need to have the living faith. We need to have the faith they had on the Day of Pentecost.

( congregational amens ).

We don't have to have all the manifestation necessarily, but we've got to have that reality. And I believe with all my heart that God would challenge me, would challenge us that that is what we are about. It wouldn't matter if we filled these pews and built a bigger church and filled those pews, if we did not have people who have been transformed by that living power of Christ, we would have nothing.

( congregational amens ).

Our business in the world today is not to establish a religion and say, come join our church. Ours is better than yours. That's not what it's about. We need to have the living power of God and to have a message that will strike into people's hearts. If all we do is preach something that they conform their lives to...they learn how to come to church. They learn how to dress. They learn how act. They learn what to say and they just mimic Christianity and it's like they put on a suit of clothes.

( congregational amens ).

You know, that's all most people's faith is in the world. I know...I thank God, He's got His. In spite of the general condition, God has got His remnant and it's not my job to judge people in a very specific sense. But I'll tell you what, this is something that we need to understand is the nature of the church that we belong to...that God would establish in this place. Because if we ever--if we were ever to just crystallize our religion--crystallize our faith into a religion and hand it down to our children, we would absolutely die and the Spirit of God would leave.

( congregational amens ).

But I don't believe that's happening. I believe that God is--more than that, I believe God is calling us back to this living faith.

( congregational amens ).

And I'll tell you what it takes for someone to be a real Christian. It doesn't take learning the ropes. It takes a praying people who call upon God from their souls and say, oh God, work. Because if all we do is preach the ideas and the truths and God isn't at work, then nothing happens. All we wind up doing is imposing a religion upon people from the outside, who then conform their lives to what's expected of them.

What God wants to do is for us to have message from heaven and to preach it with His power and to pray and to trust God to get right down into people's hearts and to cause them to see their need. This is not just taking on a new way of life that somehow God will accept me if I take on His way of life. That's not it! You can take on all the Christianity you want to from the outside as a suit of clothes and you will go to Hell, if that's all you have.

( congregational amens ).

Oh, I pray that God will fill this church with people who have the real stuff on the inside--the real deal. God wants to give it. I believe He is giving it. I believe He's here and He's at work.

( congregational amens ).

I believe we have a wonderful nucleus of people who are beginning to understand in a greater way than perhaps we ever have what this is all about. This is gonna have to be a supernatural work. If we are not...if God is not here and at work, then we are--what we are doing is vain. You know what vain means? Suppose it was our job to cross the Atlantic Ocean and the only means at our disposal was running and jumping. Now, the natural man might look around and say, well first of all I've got a longer pier.

( laughter ).

And I can run faster and I can jump farther. And so, he runs and he jumps and he sails out 20 feet, or whatever into the ocean, and he looks back and says, see, I did better than you. You know, what most people do is tend to compare themselves with other human beings. And they've said my religion is better than yours. Look...I live a better life. I have a better suit of clothes.

You know, they have all kinds of ways to measure what they call Christian faith that has nothing to do with the real objective, which is to get across the Atlantic Ocean. Now, if I were to run out on a pier and jump, I'd be dead by the time I got to the end of the pier. I'd fall in and drown.

( laughter ).

But the point is, that no matter how far and how skilled you are at running and jumping, the fact is, you're going to come considerably short of the objective. We need a supernatural power to be at work in our hearts if we're gonna have the real thing that God wants us to have.

( congregational amens ).

And my prayer, as I say, that God will fill this church with people who have been changed from the inside out, because is you haven't, it won't make a bit of difference how you live in terms of simply adopting Christianity as a lifestyle.

( congregational amens ).

You look abroad in the land today. How many people go to churches and that's what they've been handed. I mean, they go there--they feel a need--well, I need to do something about God. I believe in heaven. I believe in a judgment. I'd better go and they listen to the message that's preached and it's basically, come join our church, believe our doctrines, adopt our way of life, go through our ritual of baptism, or whatever it is, and come learn the catechism. It could be a thousand and one different things, but if God does not transform the heart, all you have done is made a religious person out of that person.

( congregational amens ).

And more than that, you have inoculated them against the real deal. You know, I've just--part of getting ready to go overseas is getting shot considerably.

( laughter ).

Thank God, I've sailed right through. I believe Jim has, too. I've had a considerable number of shots, and I've got another one Tuesday. But the purpose of a shot is to inoculate you against some kind of a disease. And it's to arouse the natural defenses of the body against that particular disease, many times by giving you a weakened form of it so that your body will mount its own defenses.

But what happens when people receive this weakened, dead, useless, vain form of what they call Christianity, all they are is inoculated against the real thing. I'll tell you what, I just pray that God will give us a vision of what His Church is about and it will become the supernatural thing that it's supposed to be. It's not that we have to have great feelings and great signs and wonders, necessarily, but folks, we've got to be changed down in here.

( congregational amens ).

We've got to be changed down in here. You know, one of the--one of the odd things about all of this, is that it is possible for someone who is just religious to live a better life in many ways, to have a better personal morality in many ways, than someone who really has the real thing and just needs God to work in their hearts, to work in their lives. You can really be born again and have a lot of needs,

( congregational amens ).

and live very much short of what God wants. And you may have somebody who's very religious and they've learned how to do it, and if you were just looking at it through natural eyes, that's all you'd see. Oh you'd say, this one's a real Christian. I don't know about this one. But you know what God sees?

-- Congregation: The heart.

-- Brother Phil Enlow: He sees the heart, doesn't He? He knows when someone has bowed the knee to Jesus Christ, and Christ has come in. But you know, the person that's just religious, he doesn't see any of that. He has taken on Christianity as an external thing and so that's how he looks at everybody else. Well, I'm as good as they are. That's how people evaluate their faith. I'm as good as the next one. Look what I...look how I live.

It's just like the Pharisee who went in and prayed. He said, God look at all the stuff I'm doing for you. Aren't you impressed? I mean--I'm paraphrasing that. But that's what he was doing. He was so proud of his own efforts to be a righteous person that he thought that God should really recognize him and be pleased with his efforts.

And he looked with disdain--he looked down his nose at this poor publican, wasn't it? It was a tax collector, one of the despised classes among the society of that day. And there was that old tax collector, oh boy, I'm sure better than him. What was he basing his comparison on? Just natural things--self-righteousness.

But oh, that man had a prayer. He lifted his heart to God. He said, "...God be merciful to me a sinner." (KJV). And God heard that prayer, and he went from that place justified in his heart. You know what the difference is? The difference is self on the throne wanting to be righteous.

And I fear that there's so many people who take on Christian garb, and all that it boils down to is that they want to find a way to remain--for self to remain on the throne of their heart and their life and still be Christians, and there is no such thing--there is no such thing. When God works with hearts, He brings souls down to the place where they look up and they know--the depths of their soul, they're not comparing themselves with Joe or Mary or Susie. They're looking at the righteousness of God and saying, oh God, I'm undone, I'm lost, help me.

( congregational amens ).

Oh God, I have no hope unless I come the way of the cross! Lord, I cannot possibly please You, no matter what I do. My only hope is to come and to put my hope and my trust in Jesus and for You to fulfill Your promise to come into my heart and change me and make me a new creature. That's what Christianity is about.

Do you see what I mean about two kinds of Christians? Really there's only one. You know, it's to the point where I almost hate to call myself a Christian. It's such a mess in the world today. 'Cause you take other religions--they're looking at people, and they call themselves Christians. And how many of them have any clue what we're talking about here this morning. Oh, I praise God that there are some, but by-and-large the world is filled with people who have just put on Christianity as a way of life. I'd rather call myself a follower of Jesus.

( congregational amens ).

You know that was--Christianity or Christian was not a label that they called themselves. Peter didn't say, come I want you to become a Christian. It was years later before they ever adopted the term Christian, and it was somebody else who labeled them that way. Hey these people are followers of Christ and we call 'em Christians. That was a label the world put on it. But oh, they were followers of Jesus who just had had their eyes opened to another kingdom.

You know, I talked about how the religious man...all he sees is a comparison in the natural, outward things. He has no clue that in order to live for God, for faith to be real, it has to be something God first does down here, and then in the process of time you're gonna see that effect of what God has done here begin to show itself in outward things. And so he just says, well I'm as good as the next one and that's what it means to be a Christian. You act a certain way and you say certain things. He doesn't have any idea.

But oh when somebody comes into the Kingdom of God, their eyes are opened. They have a different vision. Have you ever seen the Kingdom of God? Have you ever seen the people of God as He sees them? His holy Church, a Body of people in whom He lives, and dwells, and moves, and we know Him, and we love one another and we're joined together because we have a common Spirit. That's what it means to be the Church of Jesus Christ. Oh, may He establish that here in a new way in our hearts. May He open our vision and cause us to see what this is about, and cry out to Him and say, Lord make it so here!

( congregational amens ).

Lord, fill us with Your--fire us with Your Spirit that we might know what we're called to--we might see this happen in lives. We can preach and try to make people come and behave like we want 'em to behave. That's not gonna change a thing. Oh, we need to give out the Word and say, God, reach down into people's hearts and bring conviction of sin! May they come because they can't do anything else. They know they're lost and undone, and they need a Savior, and they're willing to fall down and give up their lives to follow Jesus.

( congregational praise ).

That's what it's about. And they go on and they're no longer their own, they're bought with a price. They belong to Him. But, oh, there's a joy, there's a sense of eternity that opens up to their vision. You know, you can't see the Kingdom of God without being born again.

( congregational amens ).

Oh, I'll tell you, going through that doorway just opens up another world. And it's not some big experience you have to have. It's not that. But, I'll tell you, there is a real work of the Spirit of God that needs to happen in a person's life.

( congregational amens ).

And that's the burden of how easy it is here, that's what relevant here, is that people not just grow up here and not know what this is about, not know what I'm talking about. They simply learned to be Christians. Oh and I pray that people won't come in from the outside and just learn to be Bible Tabernacle-eans.

( laughter ).

Whatever that is. That won't help 'em--that won't help 'em. Oh, they need Jesus on the inside. They need to be changed. The same power that worked on the Day of Pentecost needs to work in their hearts and make them new creatures.

( congregational amens ).

How many will come on that day? He says, many will say on that day, Lord, Lord, have we not preached in Your name, prophesied in Your name, done many wonderful works, even cast out devils. They'd done all kinds of things--they thought--done wonderful works. Oh, we've built great buildings. We've built all of these wonderful things and done these things in Your name--great institutions. We've sent missionaries to the ends of the world. We had this and we had that.

And He'll say to many people like that, "...Depart from me, ye that work iniquity." I never knew you. There's only one thing that's gonna matter in that day--it's knowing Him.

( congregational amens ).

And there's only one way we're gonna know Him. We're gonna have to be willing to give up the throne, and fall on that Rock and be broken. And say, Lord, come and just take over my life. I am undone. I have no hope. I have no confidence. You know, we need to come to a place where, like Paul, we have no confidence in the flesh. We just have no 'self' confidence. It's not that we're just a bunch--not worms laying around, squirming on the ground. We replace 'self' confidence with faith...

( congregational amens ).

...with something so much better. Oh what a horrible thing to trust in ourselves. What a weak, meaningless, vain, empty place to place our trust. But, oh, to put our hope and trust in One Who died for us and Who lives for us, Who prays for us, Who is One with us in the Spirit, Who's promised to finish what He's started. That's what it's about.

That's my burden this morning. I don't know...I've rambled around and I've had a hard time trying express it in a way, but, oh, that God would make real the difference between the two kinds of Christians, that God would bring people to become the real kind of Christian, that He would fill these pews with people that have the kind of living vital faith they had in the New Testament. I thank God for everyone that's He's worked in and He's working, folks. He's working. But there's so much more He wants to do.

( congregational amens ).

May God just fire not just our imaginations. It's not just that we want to tickle people's excitement in the natural and in the carnal and say, oh brother, we got a good program going here, let's get excited. We want to be excited because God is here.

( congregational amens ).

We want to cry out and then when He comes, just worship Him, and love Him, and praise Him, and believe in Him, and trust Him to change lives. He has the power, we don't. I don't have the power to change anybody.

( congregational amens ).

But I can yield myself to God and say, oh God, go forth. God, make Yourself real. Show people the difference. Help them to come and be real Christians, born of the Spirit of God, and not just take on Christianity as a way of life.

I don't know what kind of Christianity you have. What kind of Christian are you this morning? That's the question everyone needs to be asking themselves, saying, Lord, help me. I want the real thing. I want to know You, because to know You is eternal life.

( congregational amens ).

To just be a Christian in the other sense, is just to be--just to live an empty way of life, to go, to die at the end of the way with a false hope, and to stand there and have Him say, I never knew you. See, He didn't say, I knew you and then I didn't know you. He said I never knew you.

( congregational amens ).

These aren't people who had it and they lost it, these are people who never had it to start with. They went in the wrong door. They went in the wrong gate. They went in the gate everybody else was following. The crowds were going that way. There is a broad way. There's a broad way, a lot of company there.

It looks very respectable. Oh, it lives up to all the billing of what men have made out of the Christian faith. They've turned it into a religion. But, oh, you go in that way, and where does it lead? Destruction. "...Many there be which go in thereat," Jesus said. But oh, there's another gate and it's still open.

( congregational amens ).

There's another way. It's a humbling way. It's a way where you lay down your life to get into it. It's the way of the cross. Take up your cross and you serve Him, but He's there and He's real in your heart. And He begins to go to work on all those things that are so wrong with us. And He's with us every step of the way. Oh, what a blessed way that is.

( congregational amens ).

We can have fellowship one with another, with those few who are willing to walk in that way. May God help us to be that kind of a church in a greater and greater way as the days go forward and fire our own vision of what He desires to make out of our lives and out of this church. Because I believe that He wants to make it a House where the lost and the lonely can come.

If God can lift up a light and a beacon in this hour...there are people that He wants to reach, that He can bring to that light and the light won't be us. We're nothing--we're nothing. We're absolutely nothing. If we think we're something, we're fooling ourselves. God doesn't need us. We need Him.

( congregational amens ).

But, oh what a privilege He's given us to be workers together with Him. Just to say, oh, God, come, fill us, anoint us, touch lives, change people's hearts, work in lives. Oh, God, do the work of Your Kingdom. Jesus said, 'I' will build My Church. We don't have to build one for Him. We can be workers together as He builds it, though. Let Him put it together. Let Him bring whom He will and make us of one Spirit and one heart and one mind.

Oh, I just praise God this morning and pray that God will just burn these simple truths into our hearts and cause everyone to examine their hearts and say, where am I? Am I just a religious Christian? Have I just put on Christianity like a suit of clothes?

You know, one of the fruits of that is a lot of hypocrisy. You get a lot of folks who are that kind of a Christian and it turns 'em into chameleons, too. They sort of know how to blend in their surroundings. They know when they're here, how to be a Christian. But they're just as comfortable being out in the world, with worldly people, doing worldly things. And when they're there, you wouldn't know they were anything but what it appears.

But, oh, God wants to make us Christians 24 hours a day, no matter where we're at, where we have a fixed life within us. We don't do something because someone puts it in our head from the outside. We don't have to be like those where the Scripture says that they're--we won't say to the people in that day, "...Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest."

He's gonna put something down in here, where we have a conviction and we're gonna stand no matter--if everybody's bending that way, we're gonna stand straight and say, Lord, I'm a Christian. I'm a follower of Jesus. I don't care what the world does, or what way it goes, I'm gonna be a follower of Jesus.

You know what it meant for them in that day? It meant persecution. It meant death in many cases. They had to be willing to--their conviction had to be so real down at the depths of their soul. You know, somebody putting on a set of clothes isn't gonna be like this. They're not gonna be like this. That kind of Christian is gonna evaporate if the situation changes in our society and I suspect that it's going to before it's over.

But, oh, people that have the real thing, Christ is gonna be with us when we're staring a bullet, staring the muzzle of a gun, He's gonna give grace and strength and we're gonna be able to say, yes, I'm a Christian. You look at that girl who laid down her life in Columbine. I thank God! What a testimony! For a teenage girl to be able to look at that gunman and say, yes I'm a Christian.

What would you do? You have that kind of a faith? God wants to give it to everyone of us to where we're Christians, period. And we're followers of Jesus, come hell or high water. So I just pray that God will take this Word and use it according to whatever anybody's need is, to cause us to really consider what this is all about, because God wants to give us the real thing, and I believe He is. Thank God!

( congregational praise ).

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