Truth or Consequences - Glenn Conjurske

Truth or Consequences

by Glenn Conjurske

A Sermon Preached on July 20, 1992. Recorded, Transcribed, and Revised.

Turn in your Bibles to the sixth chapter of the book of Matthew. I’m going to preach this morning on “Truth or Consequences.” To begin, I’m going to read Matthew, chapter 6, verses 19 and 20. “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

God, strengthen my heart and mind this morning. Enable me to preach your word acceptably, and with profit to those that hear. Amen.

When I was converted quite a few years ago, I began to read the Bible, and particularly the New Testament. I had never been to Bible School. Nobody had taught me yet that I wasn’t supposed to take the Bible at face value, and believe it, and act on it, and live by it. I didn’t know all that yet. So I began reading the Bible, and I just ate it up—-drank it in—-believed it—-fashioned my course according to it. And since I began reading the book of Matthew first, since it was at the beginning of the New Testament, I suppose I read this sixth chapter of Matthew just a few days after I was converted, and this principle of “lay not up for yourselves treasures upon the earth,” along with “take no thought for the morrow,” got a hold of my heart, and I began to live by those things. I began to preach them. About a year later I went away to Bible School. I went with two men from my home town that had already been to Bible School, and were going back, and I going for the first time. We all rode together in the car, and we spent half the way there arguing over this sixth chapter of the book of Matthew. I was contending for “lay not up for yourselves treasures upon the earth.” I was standing on what I held to be TRUTH. They were arguing on the other side, on the basis of CONSEQUENCES. If you don’t have a bank account or an insurance policy, what’s going to happen to you when you get sick, or when some calamity strikes? You won’t have anything to take care of yourself with. Truth was set aside in favor of consequences. If you should happen to have a wife and family, and die, they will be left unprovided for, if you don’t lay up treasures on earth. I couldn’t answer their arguments, at least not to their satisfaction. I was young, and green, and I will not pretend that I was all right, and they all wrong, but the basis on which I was endeavoring to stand was truth, while they were arguing only on the basis of consequences. “If we do such and such things then this will be the consequence, and such dire consequences must be avoided at all cost.”

You know that I preach Romans 13:8, “Owe no man anything.” Can’t go into debt. Ought not to go into debt. The Bible says so. But whenever I speak of this to Christians, I am met with, “Well, if we can’t go into debt, then we can’t buy a house.” You see, setting aside truth because of consequences. Whenever I hear that argument I always say, “God never commanded you to buy a house, but he did command you to owe no man anything.” I wouldn’t mind owning a house, either. The reason I don’t have one is because I’d have to go into debt to get it. But I as much own the house I live in as anybody does, who has gone into debt to buy one. The only difference is, my monthly payments are smaller. I have as free use of my house as they have of theirs. Now, there is a difference, and that is that my payments will never end, while they’re looking forward to the day when theirs will end. But they’re standing on the side of consequences, rather than on the side of truth.

Now I believe that it is also legitimate to look at consequences, and to allow consequences to determine your course. In fact, in the verses that I read to you, that’s exactly what the Lord preaches. He preaches consequences. Listen. We’ll read the verses again. “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” In other words, if you take this course, this will be the consequence, and if you take that course, that will be the consequence. If you lay up treasure on earth, the consequence will be that your heart will be in those treasures on the earth. So you see the Lord looks at consequences too, but he looks at a different kind of consequences. The Lord is looking at the spiritual consequences, while most folks are always looking at the earthly, temporal, worldly, consequences—-and set aside truth to establish consequences for this life only.

Now I believe that our pathway is to be determined by truth, not consequences, unless we’re talking about spiritual consequences. But even then you have no right to set aside the command, precept, principle, or example of Scripture, in order to secure spiritual consequences. In other words, you have no right to do evil that good might come, even if it’s spiritual good. And you have no right to do evil that physical, temporal, earthly, or worldly good might come. You’re to be governed by truth—-by what the Bible says.

Now there’s one thing that you must bring in here to enable you to determine your course on the basis of truth rather than consequences. Somebody tell me in one word what it is. What must you have to be able to determine your course on the basis of truth rather than consequences?

All right, I’ve got two answers—-a single eye, and faith. Faith is the one I’m looking for. You must have faith. When I left home to go to Bible School many years ago, and argued half way there about this passage of Scripture, the one thing that became evident to me in those who were arguing on the side of consequences is this: they viewed nothing from the standpoint of faith. But in order to live by the truth, regardless of the consequences, you must have faith. You must have the ability to trust God to take care of the consequences.

Years ago we met a couple and began to fellowship with them, and one thing that came up early in our relationship with them was the question of sending children to school. They had just had their first baby. She was born just a few days after we first met them. They had just had their first baby, and the new father was naturally thinking about bringing up his child, and he said to me, “What do you do to get good books for children?” He said, “I know that most of what is available is just junk, but how do you find something good for them to read? You have to send them to school…” And when he said that, I said, “Well, no, you don’t have to send them to school.” We then went into that subject, and in a subsequent visit with them, he told me, “As soon as you said that, I knew that it was right”—-about not having to send your kids to school. He said, “ As soon as you said it, I knew it was right, but my wife cried all the way home.” She said, “Our baby won’t have any friends if she can’t go to school.” He was looking at the truth. She was looking only at consequences—-and by the way, not at spiritual consequences either, but earthly, temporal, worldly consequences. And this is the way of unbelief, always. Faith looks at consequences, too, but it looks at the spiritual consequences.

You know, this question of sending children to school, I didn’t determine that on the basis of any consequences. Some twenty-four or twenty-five years ago I came clearly to understand what the world is, and clearly to understand that the public school system is part of the world. And as soon as I understood that, I said in my heart, If I ever have children, they will never go to school. I wasn’t looking at any consequences whatsoever. I was looking solely at the truth of God, and determined my course by that. But a lot of people treat this whole school question with regard to consequences. Some who are spiritually-minded look at spiritual consequences (and this is just fine), and they say, If my children go to school, my children are going to be corrupted by the world: therefore I will not send my children to school. Other folks, those with a carnal mind, look at the question from the standpoint of worldly, earthly, temporal, consequences, and say, If my children go to school, they will be well educated (a fallacy, by the way), they’ll learn how to relate to people, they will have advantages that they can’t have at home, and therefore (the conclusion is) I will send my children to school. I know of one who for whatever reason had her children out of school, out of the public schools at any rate, but she started to look at some consequences, and said, “My daughter likes gymnastics, and she can only get gymnastics in the public school, so we will send her to the public school.” That’s the carnal mind, looking at consequences that aren’t even worth looking at, and setting aside the truth of God in order to secure those worldly consequences. It’s an interesting thing too—-I’ve observed it often—-that people will give up things for themselves, and hold on to those same things for their children. Women will dress plain themselves, and deck their daughters out in lace and frills and ruffles. People very often look at the dire consequences that are going to come as a result of obedience to the truth, and therefore spare their children from things in which they themselves would gladly follow the truth. I think that’s the case with this school issue, and a lot of other issues. Parents will indulge their children in things, refusing to deny them according to the truth of God, in order to secure some temporal consequences.

But I want to look at a man who was of another spirit. You will find the account of him in the twenty-second chapter of Genesis. His name was Abraham, and I think the account we have of Abraham will well illustrate everything that I’m trying to preach this morning. Genesis, chapter twenty-two, beginning at the beginning. “And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham. And he said, Behold, here I am. And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah, and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of. And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him. Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off. And Abraham said unto his young men, Abide ye here with the ass, and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you. And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it upon Isaac his son, and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife, and they went both of them together. And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father. And he said, Here am I, my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering? And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together. And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood. And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. And the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham. And he said, Here am I. And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him, for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me. And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold, behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son.”

Now the first thing we have here, on the one side, is truth. “Thy word is truth,” and that is the thing that Abraham steered his course by. God came to Abraham with a plain command. Abraham didn’t reason and dispute, but unquestioningly obeyed the word which God had spoken. God said, Take your son, and offer him up for a burnt offering. Abraham obeyed. Now you talk about consequences! There were going to be some dire consequences when Abraham offered up his son. People are afraid to pull their children out of the public schools, or out of the worldly and world-oriented Christian schools, because they’re not going to get as good an education, or not going to be able to relate to people, or they’re going to grow up dwarfed, or they’re not going to have the advantages that other poeple have, and all kinds of things like this. You know what the consequence was going to be when Abraham obeyed the word of God? The consequence was going to be that his son was dead—-not just denied, and deprived, and dwarfed, and “stunted for life,” and that sort of thing—-but dead. And Abraham just obeyed. He looked at truth, not consequences.

Now as I said, the thing that enables a man to do that is faith. You may look at the logical results of the course that you take, and see some dire consequences. But faith says, God is able to do one of two things. If I obey God, he is able in the first place to step in and prevent those consequences from ever taking place. And if God doesn’t choose to do so, God is able in the second place to overrule those dire consequences, and work all of those things together for the ultimate good of those who love him. Now Abraham had both of those kinds of faith. You see them both in this passage. Verse 7: “Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father. And he said, Here am I, my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering? And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together.” Abraham evidently had faith that God could prevent those dire consequences which he knew must come, naturally, as a result of his obedience to the command of God. He believed that God was able to provide himself a lamb. And God did so, by the way, but there is something beyond that here. I cannot promise anybody that the natural consequences of their obedience to the truth will not follow. When somebody takes a course in obedience to the truth of God, I can’t promise that persecution won’t come upon him. I can’t promise that he won’t be cast out. I can’t promise that he won’t be killed. I can’t promise that he won’t go hungry. I can’t promise that he won’t be booted out of the house he lives in, and set out in the street. I can’t promise that he won’t be “destitute, afflicted, tormented.” I can’t promise that God will step in and prevent the natural consequences of your obedience to him. I’m talking about the earthly consequences. I can’t promise that. I can promise that if he doesn’t prevent them he will overrule them, and bring good out of them. I can promise that he will bring meat out of the eater, and sweetness out of the strong.

There are some things that God himself does promise: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you”—-what ye shall eat, and what ye shall drink, and wherewithal ye shall be clothed. God promises you that much. He promises that you will have the necessities of this life. Enough of them, at any rate, to keep you going. But there are a lot of things he doesn’t promise. He hasn’t promised that the natural consequences of the course of obedience that you take will not come upon you.

But Abraham had another kind of faith. Abraham had the faith to believe that even though the dire consequences of his act should actually take place, God would overrule it and reverse it and turn it around. And so we read in the eleventh chapter of the book of Hebrews, verse 17, “By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac, and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, of whom it was said, That in Isaac shall thy seed be called, accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure.” It was necessary for Abraham, assuming he had faith, it was necessary for him to believe that if he offered up his son, God would raise him up. It was necessary for him to believe that, because God had said, In thee and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, and In Isaac shall thy seed be called. It was a necessity, in order for God to keep his own word, to raise Isaac from the dead. Abraham could look at his act of obedience, and see the awful consequences which it would bring to his son—-not only dead, but burned up, and consumed to ashes. Offered up as a burnt offering. And by faith he went forward in that course of obedience to the command of God, believing that if all those consequences should ensue, that God would come down and raise his son from the dead.

You’ll find that back in Genesis 22. It says in verse 4, “Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place afar off. And Abraham said unto his young men, Abide ye here with the ass, and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you.” “I and the lad—-we’ll come again to you.” Abraham had faith. If you don’t have faith, you will always be looking at the consequences, and because of the dire consequences that you see coming upon you and yours, you will shrink back from obeying the truth. Faith knows that those consequences exist, but it knows also that there is a living God in heaven, and that he rewards them that obey the truth. It therefore calmly leaves those consequences in the hand of God, believing that God will keep his promises, and that in the final reckoning I’ll receive better consequences for obedience to the truth, than for disobedience, even though I may have some painful things to go through in the mean time. You’ll find that set forth also in the eleventh chapter of the book of Hebrews. He speaks in verse 33 of those who “subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. Women received their dead raised to life again.” These are the exploits of faith, and of course when such things are the expected results, and the consequences of your obedience to the truth are all to your temporal advantage, that kind of faith is easy. But then he goes on and says, “others were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection. And others had trials of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover, of bonds and of imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, they were slain with the sword; they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented; they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise, God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect.” It’s very interesting in this passage that we just read, in verse 34 we read of some who by faith escaped the edge of the sword, while in verse 37 we read of others who by faith were slain with the sword. You see, in one case God prevented the dire consequences, and in another case he just let them happen. All these dire consequences actually came upon these people for their obedience to the truth. They actually were slain with the sword. They actually did wander about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, and afflicted, and tormented. They spent their lives that way, and they did it by faith. Faith in what? In a God who is going to overrule all of those dire consequences, and bring greater good out of it at the last. They were tortured that they might receive a better resurrection. If you have faith, you won’t worry about the consequences. You’ll leave them in the hands of God, and obey the truth. This is precisely what the Lord is teaching when he says, “Take no thought for the morrow.” We are to obey the truth, and let the morrow worry about itself. Leave the consequences in God’s hands, and, as Bob Jones used to say, “Do right, though the stars fall.” But unbelief abandons the truth in order to secure earthly, temporal, physical, worldly consequences.

Now the applications of this doctrine that I’m preaching to you this morning are numerous. The principles here taught will apply in every area of life, in what you do, and what you say, how you spend your time and your money, and with whom you associate. It’s yours to understand and embrace the truth in everything that you do, and by faith leave the consequences to God.

Glenn Conjurske