Christianity – Do or Done??
Believe it or not there are but two religions in the world: the first is the “do religion”, the second is the “done religion”. Take this back to the word at the heart of all religious experience – the word belief or faith – and it all comes down to this: our belief is either in what we are DOING, or in what has been DONE for us by another.
Scripture Reading: Judges 7:1-7
Then Jerubbaal (that is, Gideon) and all the people who were with him, rose early andcamped beside the spring of Harod; and the camp of Midian was on the north side of them by the hill of Moreh in the valley. The Lord said to Gideon, “The people who are with you are too many for Me to give Midian into their hands, for Israel would become boastful, saying, ‘My own power has delivered me.’ “Now therefore come, proclaim in the hearing of the people, saying, ‘Whoever is afraid and trembling, let him return and depart from Mount Gilead.’ ” So 22,000 people returned, but 10,000 remained. Then the Lord said to Gideon, “The people are still too many; bring them down to the water and I will test them for you there. Therefore it shall be that he of whom I say to you, ‘This one shall go with you,’ he shall go with you; but everyone of whom I say to you, ‘This one shall not go with you,’ he shall not go.” So he brought the people down to the water. And the Lord said to Gideon, “You shall separate everyone who laps the water with his tongue as a dog laps, as well as everyone who kneels to drink.” Now the number of those who lapped, putting their hand to their mouth, was 300 men; but all the rest of the people kneeled to drink water. The Lord said to Gideon, “I will deliver you with the 300 men who lapped and will give the Midianites into your hands; so let all the other people go, each man to his home.” So the 300 men took the people’s provisions and their trumpets into their hands. And Gideon sent all the other men of Israel, each to his tent, but retained the 300 men; and the camp of Midian was below him in the valley.
Every person on the planet is religious and has a religion. By that I mean that every person is living out of a mindset, a value system, or a certain philosophy. The person who protests the loudest that he has no religion is merely stating his religion. In other words his philosophical view, his mindset, his structured thought is that there is no religion – and that mindset is governing how he responds to life.
These structures of religion may be highly organized within the soul, they may be very complex and complicated, or they may be incredibly simple and without conscious / formal structure at all. But conscious or not, we are all living out a belief system.
And there is the key word – ‘belief’. Notice that I did not say the key word is ‘profession’. We can profess and confess anything we want, but at the end of the day the thing we actually live out is whatever we truly believe at the deepest level of the heart.
If we could gather every religious structure on the planet this morning – structures well defined and those that are not defined at all – if we could organize them and give each a name and then categorize them: How many categories do you think we would need?
This may appear to be a bit simplistic, but please don’t miss the point. Every religion on the planet can be fitted into one of only two categories. Those two categories require a total of six letters to communicate: DODONE. What are they? Do & Done.
Believe it or not there are but two religions in the world: the first is the “do religion”, the second is the “done religion”. Take this back to the word at the heart of all religious experience – the word belief or faith – and it all comes down to this: our belief is either in what we are DOING, or in what has been DONE for us by another.
Let me go a step further and say this: If we take all the religions of the world and separate them into these two categories there will only be one religion in the “done” category while all the rest will be in the “do” category. If I say that Christianity is the only religion in the “done”category, many of you will protest; “Not the Christianity I grew up with.” And I would agree with you and say the same thing; “Not the Christianity I grew up with either.” Christianity as mere religion is as much a “do” religion as any other works based religion out there. I am always careful to distinguish between Christianity the religion and true Biblical Christianity.
Biblical Christianity is not about external rules and forms of behaviour. Biblical Christianity is about a heart relationship with the Father God through the indwelling Holy Spirit based upon and in the eternally completed work of the Lord Jesus Christ – which work is totally redemptive in nature and totally restorative in scope. All of this is the provision of grace (free gift) and is experienced on the basis of faith and faith alone. And that faith is in what has been “done” rather than in what we are “doing”.
This needs a lot more working out but time will not allow for it. So let me go to the core of what I am trying to get to. Biblical Christianity is the one true religion of the heart. It is – what I like to call – the religion of the inside of the cup. The religions of the outside of the cup focus upon behaviour and external works. Biblical Christianity focuses upon the heart and is always probing the issue of what is inside of the cup.
We all know that there is appropriate and inappropriate behaviour; or within the context of this message, there is Christian and non-Christian behaviour. And this may come as a bit of a shock, but Biblical Christianity asks the same question regarding both behaviours: “What is in the heart?’ True Christianity is not finally about Christian behaviour as a mere learned practice or code of conduct. It is about the regeneration and transformation of the heart which in turn is reflected in a sanctified lifestyle. The final issue in this is not – What is my behaviour? – but rather: What is my heart? Where is my heart? What is in my heart?
The rest of this message will centre around these questions: First - Does God know what is in the heart? Second – Do we know what is in our heart? Third – How do we discover what is in our heart?
Let’s go back to Judges, and to this text: So 22,000 people returned, but 10,000 remained. Then the Lord said to Gideon, “The people are still too many; bring them down to the water and I will test them for you there.
I had a very good friend who, right up to his death, was emphatic in his view that God never tested his people. I think most of that was rooted in a misunderstanding of what the word ‘test’ really means in a Biblical context. Regardless of his view, your view, or my view this much I do know; when you click on the word ‘test’ in the concordance eighty four references show up. And if we were to add to that other related words the number would greatly increase. The first thing we can safely conclude is that the word ‘test’ is definitely a Biblical word and is found from Genesis to Revelation.
We need to understand that the words ‘test’ and ‘tempt’ are not the same words, nor do they have the same meaning in scripture. The Bible makes it clear that God cannot be tempted with evil, nor does He tempt any man; God is not the tempter. The same Bible makes it crystal clear that this same God definitely tests the hearts of his people. Gen. 22:1 – Now it came about after these things, that God tested Abraham. Ex.15:25 – Then he cried out to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a tree; and he threw it into the waters, and the waters became sweet. There He made for them a statute and regulation, and there He tested them. Ps. 11:5– The Lord tests the righteous and the wicked. Obviously this could go on and on, and of course, there are several New Testament references also.
Depending upon context and the actual word used in the original languages of both the Old and New Testaments there are various shades of meaning regarding the words test, tested or testing etc.. At core it carries the idea of smelting, whereby a substance is refined to its purest possible state through a process of the constant reduction or separation of mixture.
Within this process of refinement we come to this – and this is part of the definition of the word found in the Hebrew text of the Old Testament: ‘to learn the information about the true nature or moral purity of an object.’ The purpose of a “God-test” is not condemnation, guilt or shame; its purpose is to demonstrate, prove, reveal and expose the truth or reality of things are they really are. We all know this morning that God will expose hidden or secret behaviour. But it is not the behaviour He is after; it is not the outside of the cup He is addressing. What He is after is the heart-issue that drives that behaviour.
At this point we can safely conclude that God arranges various tests for His people to pass through. In the process of passing through those tests something is happening, and what is happening is the revealing of the realities of the heart. And by the way it is not just negative heart issues that are being revealed – positive realities of heart transformation are also being revealed.
Because God already knows (and I mean knows with a perfect knowing) what is in our hearts, it is obvious that this exposure is not for His education or benefit. I am the one who needs to know what is in my heart. I need to know what lives and moves around inside the cup. Had God designed us as robots without souls none of this would matter. But we are not robots. We are human beings made in the image of God and we possess a soul. And the incredible dignity and responsibility that comes with this is that God has designed it that we get to be willing and active participants in this whole work of sanctification.
It looks like this: God sets me down in the middle of a test. In that place various heart issues become exposed and I am no longer ignorant of them. This is the critical point; the response of my will to that exposure. I can choose to agree with the revelation of the Holy Spirit and repent of that heart issue and be brought into healing. Or I can choose to ignore and deny the truth of the exposure and continue to have my behaviour influenced by that heart issue.
That brings me to the final point in this. What do these “God-tests” look like? I believe the issue we most often miss is that we are looking for the big event. We are looking for that one huge, massive, or major experience that is going to open our hearts up so dramatically that when we get beyond it we will be entirely sanctified lock, stock and barrel and never have to deal with our hearts again. And the truth is that while we are waiting upon that one massive defining event our hearts are being exposed everyday in a thousand tiny details too small to notice or pay any attention to.
That is the story of Gideon’s army. Earlier on in this message I shared that refinement is about the reduction of a substance to its purest possible form. What is true of metals is also true of armies. Gideon begins with 32,000 men who answered the call. And then comes two tests – each designed by God. And notice that God did not take them onto the battlefield to test them. The first was a simple offer of release: “Whoever is afraid and trembling, let him return (home) and depart from Mount Gilead.” Twenty two thousand immediately pack and leave.
Just one moment before that offer of release they looked just like all the other solders. They were positioned among the other solders. Very likely their external behaviour and conversations were closely aligned with that of the rest of the army. What then was the difference? And we all know what the difference was – a heart difference. Despite external appearance and physical association they were not solders at heart; warfare was not in their hearts. And all it took to reveal that was something as simple as an offer of release; the opportunity to go home; the opportunity to return to where they had been.
If we are tempted to applaud their honesty, I would suggest we reconsider. The Bible says two things about them and honesty is not one of them; it says they were afraid and trembling. And we need to understand that fear and trembling is a matter, a state, a condition of heart.
Heb.11:15 – And indeed if they had been thinking of that country from which they went out, they would have had opportunity to return. If your heart is somewhere back in your history, you will return to that history. Lot’s wife looked backwards to where her heart was, and everything stopped for her right there.
Good news – there is still ten thousand left. And then comes another test, and with the test another reduction. We all know the numbers here: this time nine thousand and seven hundred are sifted out. And look how it happened. There is no crisis here: just a drink from the old watering hole. The issue was not the drinking of water – it was the posture they took in doing so. That posture revealed the far greater issue of the posture of their hearts. And that heart issue was that they set their personal need for a drink above the responsibility of their position and calling as solders.
This is amazing to me that in an army of 32,000 solders there was only 300 who were soldersas a matter of heart. And equally amazing is the simplicity of the two tests God designed to reveal those heart differences.
I will close with a series of questions. What I urge you to understand is that I am not exempting myself from the questions I am asking.
Have you noticed how little it takes to offend people?
Have you noticed how little it takes to become offended?
Have you noticed how little it takes for people to stop worshipping?
Have you noticed how little it takes for people to leave relationships?
Have you noticed how little it takes for people to break with community?
Have you noticed how little it takes for people to pout?
Have you noticed how little it takes for people to complain?
Have you noticed how little it takes to make people angry?
Could it be that all those little things are really about one thing – the heart, the exposure of the inside of the cup?
It is not up to me to reveal your heart, nor is it up to you to reveal mine. I can guarantee you two things: The journey is designed to reveal it, and God is set to heal it. But we must acknowledge and release to Him what has been revealed.
Illustration: “Petro Canada gas receipt”
Scripture Reading: Judges 7:1-7
Then Jerubbaal (that is, Gideon) and all the people who were with him, rose early andcamped beside the spring of Harod; and the camp of Midian was on the north side of them by the hill of Moreh in the valley. The Lord said to Gideon, “The people who are with you are too many for Me to give Midian into their hands, for Israel would become boastful, saying, ‘My own power has delivered me.’ “Now therefore come, proclaim in the hearing of the people, saying, ‘Whoever is afraid and trembling, let him return and depart from Mount Gilead.’ ” So 22,000 people returned, but 10,000 remained. Then the Lord said to Gideon, “The people are still too many; bring them down to the water and I will test them for you there. Therefore it shall be that he of whom I say to you, ‘This one shall go with you,’ he shall go with you; but everyone of whom I say to you, ‘This one shall not go with you,’ he shall not go.” So he brought the people down to the water. And the Lord said to Gideon, “You shall separate everyone who laps the water with his tongue as a dog laps, as well as everyone who kneels to drink.” Now the number of those who lapped, putting their hand to their mouth, was 300 men; but all the rest of the people kneeled to drink water. The Lord said to Gideon, “I will deliver you with the 300 men who lapped and will give the Midianites into your hands; so let all the other people go, each man to his home.” So the 300 men took the people’s provisions and their trumpets into their hands. And Gideon sent all the other men of Israel, each to his tent, but retained the 300 men; and the camp of Midian was below him in the valley.
Every person on the planet is religious and has a religion. By that I mean that every person is living out of a mindset, a value system, or a certain philosophy. The person who protests the loudest that he has no religion is merely stating his religion. In other words his philosophical view, his mindset, his structured thought is that there is no religion – and that mindset is governing how he responds to life.
These structures of religion may be highly organized within the soul, they may be very complex and complicated, or they may be incredibly simple and without conscious / formal structure at all. But conscious or not, we are all living out a belief system.
And there is the key word – ‘belief’. Notice that I did not say the key word is ‘profession’. We can profess and confess anything we want, but at the end of the day the thing we actually live out is whatever we truly believe at the deepest level of the heart.
If we could gather every religious structure on the planet this morning – structures well defined and those that are not defined at all – if we could organize them and give each a name and then categorize them: How many categories do you think we would need?
This may appear to be a bit simplistic, but please don’t miss the point. Every religion on the planet can be fitted into one of only two categories. Those two categories require a total of six letters to communicate: DODONE. What are they? Do & Done.
Believe it or not there are but two religions in the world: the first is the “do religion”, the second is the “done religion”. Take this back to the word at the heart of all religious experience – the word belief or faith – and it all comes down to this: our belief is either in what we are DOING, or in what has been DONE for us by another.
Let me go a step further and say this: If we take all the religions of the world and separate them into these two categories there will only be one religion in the “done” category while all the rest will be in the “do” category. If I say that Christianity is the only religion in the “done”category, many of you will protest; “Not the Christianity I grew up with.” And I would agree with you and say the same thing; “Not the Christianity I grew up with either.” Christianity as mere religion is as much a “do” religion as any other works based religion out there. I am always careful to distinguish between Christianity the religion and true Biblical Christianity.
Biblical Christianity is not about external rules and forms of behaviour. Biblical Christianity is about a heart relationship with the Father God through the indwelling Holy Spirit based upon and in the eternally completed work of the Lord Jesus Christ – which work is totally redemptive in nature and totally restorative in scope. All of this is the provision of grace (free gift) and is experienced on the basis of faith and faith alone. And that faith is in what has been “done” rather than in what we are “doing”.
This needs a lot more working out but time will not allow for it. So let me go to the core of what I am trying to get to. Biblical Christianity is the one true religion of the heart. It is – what I like to call – the religion of the inside of the cup. The religions of the outside of the cup focus upon behaviour and external works. Biblical Christianity focuses upon the heart and is always probing the issue of what is inside of the cup.
We all know that there is appropriate and inappropriate behaviour; or within the context of this message, there is Christian and non-Christian behaviour. And this may come as a bit of a shock, but Biblical Christianity asks the same question regarding both behaviours: “What is in the heart?’ True Christianity is not finally about Christian behaviour as a mere learned practice or code of conduct. It is about the regeneration and transformation of the heart which in turn is reflected in a sanctified lifestyle. The final issue in this is not – What is my behaviour? – but rather: What is my heart? Where is my heart? What is in my heart?
The rest of this message will centre around these questions: First - Does God know what is in the heart? Second – Do we know what is in our heart? Third – How do we discover what is in our heart?
Let’s go back to Judges, and to this text: So 22,000 people returned, but 10,000 remained. Then the Lord said to Gideon, “The people are still too many; bring them down to the water and I will test them for you there.
I had a very good friend who, right up to his death, was emphatic in his view that God never tested his people. I think most of that was rooted in a misunderstanding of what the word ‘test’ really means in a Biblical context. Regardless of his view, your view, or my view this much I do know; when you click on the word ‘test’ in the concordance eighty four references show up. And if we were to add to that other related words the number would greatly increase. The first thing we can safely conclude is that the word ‘test’ is definitely a Biblical word and is found from Genesis to Revelation.
We need to understand that the words ‘test’ and ‘tempt’ are not the same words, nor do they have the same meaning in scripture. The Bible makes it clear that God cannot be tempted with evil, nor does He tempt any man; God is not the tempter. The same Bible makes it crystal clear that this same God definitely tests the hearts of his people. Gen. 22:1 – Now it came about after these things, that God tested Abraham. Ex.15:25 – Then he cried out to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a tree; and he threw it into the waters, and the waters became sweet. There He made for them a statute and regulation, and there He tested them. Ps. 11:5– The Lord tests the righteous and the wicked. Obviously this could go on and on, and of course, there are several New Testament references also.
Depending upon context and the actual word used in the original languages of both the Old and New Testaments there are various shades of meaning regarding the words test, tested or testing etc.. At core it carries the idea of smelting, whereby a substance is refined to its purest possible state through a process of the constant reduction or separation of mixture.
Within this process of refinement we come to this – and this is part of the definition of the word found in the Hebrew text of the Old Testament: ‘to learn the information about the true nature or moral purity of an object.’ The purpose of a “God-test” is not condemnation, guilt or shame; its purpose is to demonstrate, prove, reveal and expose the truth or reality of things are they really are. We all know this morning that God will expose hidden or secret behaviour. But it is not the behaviour He is after; it is not the outside of the cup He is addressing. What He is after is the heart-issue that drives that behaviour.
At this point we can safely conclude that God arranges various tests for His people to pass through. In the process of passing through those tests something is happening, and what is happening is the revealing of the realities of the heart. And by the way it is not just negative heart issues that are being revealed – positive realities of heart transformation are also being revealed.
Because God already knows (and I mean knows with a perfect knowing) what is in our hearts, it is obvious that this exposure is not for His education or benefit. I am the one who needs to know what is in my heart. I need to know what lives and moves around inside the cup. Had God designed us as robots without souls none of this would matter. But we are not robots. We are human beings made in the image of God and we possess a soul. And the incredible dignity and responsibility that comes with this is that God has designed it that we get to be willing and active participants in this whole work of sanctification.
It looks like this: God sets me down in the middle of a test. In that place various heart issues become exposed and I am no longer ignorant of them. This is the critical point; the response of my will to that exposure. I can choose to agree with the revelation of the Holy Spirit and repent of that heart issue and be brought into healing. Or I can choose to ignore and deny the truth of the exposure and continue to have my behaviour influenced by that heart issue.
That brings me to the final point in this. What do these “God-tests” look like? I believe the issue we most often miss is that we are looking for the big event. We are looking for that one huge, massive, or major experience that is going to open our hearts up so dramatically that when we get beyond it we will be entirely sanctified lock, stock and barrel and never have to deal with our hearts again. And the truth is that while we are waiting upon that one massive defining event our hearts are being exposed everyday in a thousand tiny details too small to notice or pay any attention to.
That is the story of Gideon’s army. Earlier on in this message I shared that refinement is about the reduction of a substance to its purest possible form. What is true of metals is also true of armies. Gideon begins with 32,000 men who answered the call. And then comes two tests – each designed by God. And notice that God did not take them onto the battlefield to test them. The first was a simple offer of release: “Whoever is afraid and trembling, let him return (home) and depart from Mount Gilead.” Twenty two thousand immediately pack and leave.
Just one moment before that offer of release they looked just like all the other solders. They were positioned among the other solders. Very likely their external behaviour and conversations were closely aligned with that of the rest of the army. What then was the difference? And we all know what the difference was – a heart difference. Despite external appearance and physical association they were not solders at heart; warfare was not in their hearts. And all it took to reveal that was something as simple as an offer of release; the opportunity to go home; the opportunity to return to where they had been.
If we are tempted to applaud their honesty, I would suggest we reconsider. The Bible says two things about them and honesty is not one of them; it says they were afraid and trembling. And we need to understand that fear and trembling is a matter, a state, a condition of heart.
Heb.11:15 – And indeed if they had been thinking of that country from which they went out, they would have had opportunity to return. If your heart is somewhere back in your history, you will return to that history. Lot’s wife looked backwards to where her heart was, and everything stopped for her right there.
Good news – there is still ten thousand left. And then comes another test, and with the test another reduction. We all know the numbers here: this time nine thousand and seven hundred are sifted out. And look how it happened. There is no crisis here: just a drink from the old watering hole. The issue was not the drinking of water – it was the posture they took in doing so. That posture revealed the far greater issue of the posture of their hearts. And that heart issue was that they set their personal need for a drink above the responsibility of their position and calling as solders.
This is amazing to me that in an army of 32,000 solders there was only 300 who were soldersas a matter of heart. And equally amazing is the simplicity of the two tests God designed to reveal those heart differences.
I will close with a series of questions. What I urge you to understand is that I am not exempting myself from the questions I am asking.
Have you noticed how little it takes to offend people?
Have you noticed how little it takes to become offended?
Have you noticed how little it takes for people to stop worshipping?
Have you noticed how little it takes for people to leave relationships?
Have you noticed how little it takes for people to break with community?
Have you noticed how little it takes for people to pout?
Have you noticed how little it takes for people to complain?
Have you noticed how little it takes to make people angry?
Could it be that all those little things are really about one thing – the heart, the exposure of the inside of the cup?
It is not up to me to reveal your heart, nor is it up to you to reveal mine. I can guarantee you two things: The journey is designed to reveal it, and God is set to heal it. But we must acknowledge and release to Him what has been revealed.
Illustration: “Petro Canada gas receipt”