Sermons on important subjects by Rev. Paul C. Jong

< Matthew 7:21-27 >
“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’ Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock:and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock. But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand:and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall.”

In the above scriptural passage, our Lord said, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.” The Lord said here that not just anyone who claims to believe in Him can enter Heaven where He is, but only those who do the will of the Father can enter Heaven. On the last day of judgment, when many who had believed in Jesus protest to Him and say, “Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?” our Lord cannot but say to them, “You practiced lawlessness, and so I never knew you. Depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!”

Our Lord said to all of us, “Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock:and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock. But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand:and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall” (Matthew 7:24-27). Like this, Jesus said here that those who hear the Word of our Lord, and believes in it and obeys it, are like the wise man whose house of faith is built on the rock, while those who do not do are bound to see their faith crumble down.

What our Lord is saying here is that the blessed are none other than those who hear His Word with their ears and believes in it with their hearts, thereby being saved from all their sins and doing the will of God the Father. On the other hand, if one hears the Word of the Lord and yet does not believe in it with his heart, then his life of faith is all in vain.

Those who hear our Lord’s Word and live their lives by faith are like the man who built his house on the rock. Have you been saved from all your sins by believing in this Word of God, the gospel Word of the water and the Spirit? Those who have been remitted from all their sins once for all by believing in the gospel of the water and the Spirit come to live their lives by doing the will of the Father with this faith rooted in the Word of God. Such people not only spread the gospel of the water and the Spirit to everyone throughout the world, but they also come to truly love their brothers and sisters of faith. In other words, because they believe in this gospel of the water and the Spirit, the Word of God, they want to show their true faith with their acts.

Our Lord said to all of us, “Be the ones who believe in the Word and practice it.” Although there are many Christians in this world who claim to believe in Jesus, few of them have actually been washed from all their sins white as snow, and become righteous, by truly believing in the gospel Word of the water and the Spirit. Nonetheless, there still are people who have received the remission of sin by hearing and believing in the gospel of the water and the Spirit, who have thus defended their faith and put their faith into actual practice. And more and more people who are realizing that the gospel of the water and the Spirit is the true gospel.

But if one believes in this gospel of the water and the Spirit with his heart, then he must preach it to others-those who otherwise do not actually spread this gospel will see their faith crumble down. Yet there are quite a few people who say only with their lips that they believe in the gospel of the water and the Spirit, when in fact they do not believe in it with their hearts and cannot therefore show their faith with their acts.

Such people preach that even false gospels are true. They cannot help but preach like this because they do not have the faith that truly believes in the gospel of water and the Spirit. But we cannot preach any other gospel but the gospel of the water and the Spirit, for this gospel alone is the true gospel.

Our Lord said, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.” In other words, those who really believe that the gospel of the water and the Spirit is the true gospel bear its witness to others. Therefore, those who do not spread the gospel of the water and the Spirit to others do not have any righteous deeds with them, nor do they do the will of God the Father, and hence they will be rejected by our Lord. In the end, their faith is one that ultimately flounders. Because such people’s sins remain in their hearts, they all remains as sinners even as they claim to believe in Jesus. No matter how enthusiastically they have led their lives of faith, they are all no more than sinners. Because they do not really believe in the gospel of the water and the Spirit, they cannot show the true deeds of their faith. Therefore they cannot avoid but be abandoned by our Lord on the last day.

What causes heartaches for the righteous who have been remitted from all their sins? Their hearts are hurt when they see some people, even as they claim to believe in the gospel of the water and the Spirit, do not actually believe that only this gospel is the truth, nor spread it as such. Why? Because this raises serious doubts as to whether or not they wholeheartedly believe in the gospel as they claim. All of us must know and believe in the true gospel of the water and the Spirit as it is. It bears to remind you once again what our Lord said here: those who do not believe in the power of the gospel of the water and the Spirit-that is, those who do not do the will of His Father-can never enter Heaven.

This is why our Lord will declare, “Depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness,” to all those who claim to believe in Jesus as the Savior and yet do not believe in the gospel of the water and the Spirit, nor preach it. Were they to really believe that the whole gospel of the water and the Spirit is the real gospel of truth, they would have preached exactly according to the truth. The reason why they neither believe nor preach like this is because they do not believe in the gospel of the water and the Spirit as the eternal love of God.

Because they do not really believe in Jesus according to the Lord’s Word of salvation and His law of salvation, they have no deed that shows that they have lived according to the will of the Father. They might say, “Have we not prophesied in the name of the Lord, cast out demons in His name, and done many wonders in His name?” But in the end, they have not believed in the gospel of the water and the Spirit, and they have performed only false miracles.

Our Lord will ask such people who practiced lawlessness instead of believing in the gospel of the water and the Spirit, “What have you done for Me? Did you perform miracles and signs? Apart from these, did you really believe in the gospel of the water and the Spirit that I had given you, and did you live your lives by this faith? Did you truly believe that I bore the sins of the world by being baptized by John, that I shed My blood on the Cross for you, and that none other than this was the very salvation that blotted out all the sins of the world? And did you spread this to others? You did none of these, and yet just how many times did you practice lawlessness by invoking My name? I know very well that you blasphemously performed false miracles in My name. So depart from Me!”

Throughout the world, there are many who perform miracles and signs in the name of Jesus. In churches led by such people, the main purpose of their worship services is only to perform miracles. Why do they seek after signs so much during this hour when the gospel Word of the water and the Spirit must be preached to them in detail, and when all that the congregation has to do is just respond to it with faith? What we must realize here is that it is the demon-possessed who perform many false miracles. Those possessed by evil spirits, in other words, deceive their followers by pretending to perform miracles and signs, thus robbing them of their sense and extracting even more material offerings from them. These are precisely the work of Satan’s servants. All such miracles are no more than an illusionary show. This is why Jesus said that when such people say to Him, “Have we not cast out demons in Your name,” He will declare to them that He never knew them. On this last day, the Lord will cast out all those who have sin, without any exception.

Demons cannot be seen by the eyes of the born-again. But those who are not born again can hear demons and see their images. This is because there are sins in their hearts. In the hearts of such sinful people, evil spirits can come in and work in them freely. As such, the demon-possessed can easily commune with demons. It is in those who still have their sins intact that demons work and bear their evil fruits.

What people must really do, instead of seeking after false miracles, is to believe that Jesus took upon all their sins by being baptized by John, and that He bore the condemnation of their sins with His own bloodshed. Far from participating in the works of demons, we must believe in the gospel of the water and the Spirit and devote all our strength to its spreading. Because Jesus took upon the sins of the world by being baptized by John the Baptist and bore all the condemnation of sin on the Cross, we have been saved from all our sins and become sinless by faith. Since our Lord has washed away all our sins with the gospel of the water and the Spirit, those who believe in this are all cleansed, and therefore the evil spirits can never dwell in their hearts. For the believers of the gospel of the water and the Spirit, there is no work of Satan at all.

This is why our Lord said, “He who does the will of My Father in heaven shall enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” What we must consider here is what exactly the Father’s will is. The will of the Father is for us to be saved by believing in the gospel of the water and the Spirit: Jesus Christ, our Savior, has blotted out all our sins by being baptized by John the Baptist and crucified to death on the Cross. Such faith is the very faith that believes according to the Father’s will. Our God the Father has washed away all our sins, in other words, by sending us His Son, making Him accept the sins of the world by having Him be baptized, and making Him shed His blood on the Cross.

When we believe in this truth, we can be washed from all our sins and enter the eternal Kingdom of God to live happily forever. We the righteous will live there altogether happily and forever. The Lord has saved us from our sins with the gospel of the water and the Spirit. For us to believe in Jesus as the Savior through the gospel of the water and the Spirit is none other than to believe according to the will of God the Father and to do His will.

Yet there are many who, from their failure to believe so, cannot escape from their sins even as they believe in Jesus as the Savior, and are thus rejected and destroyed for their sins in the end. They are forsaken, in other words, because they do not believe in the gospel of the water and the Spirit as the real truth until the very end. Because they do not believe in this gospel of the water and the Spirit and are thus unable to do the will of the Father by faith, when the last day comes, their faith, which they had come up with their own thoughts, will all crumble down and collapse. It is because people do not believe in God’s gospel Word of the water and the Spirit that they are rejected by Him on the last day. The same is true for you as well-if you reject the gospel of the water and the Spirit now, then you yourselves will be rejected by God later on.

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Our Lord Jesus said that the angels would come forth at the end of the age, separate the wicked from among the just, and cast them into the furnace of fire (Matthew 13:49-50). Brothers and sisters, who are the wicked among the righteous? Our Lord has told us clearly and explicitly that it is with the gospel of the water and the Spirit that He has saved us from our sins. Yet in spite of this, there are still those who do not believe in this gospel, who not only make compromises with the world, but even take its side. The wicked are none other than such people.

Brothers and sisters, there are no two true gospels. Nor is Jesus two, but there is only one Jesus. There is no other way for us to enter Heaven but only by believing in the gospel of the water and the Spirit, the gospel with which Jesus has remitted away all our sins. This gospel of the water and the Spirit has blotted out all your sins.

You must realize that if you believe in this truth, the way will be opened for you to live according to the will of God the Father. The gospel of the water and the Spirit will indeed let you recognize what the will of God the Father really is.

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