Heart Matters Series

Many years ago, I visited someone in the hospital whom I had never met before. He was a member of the church I pastored but had not gathered for a service in years. After introducing myself I looked for a way to have a spiritual conversation with him. From all the cussing he was doing, I was worried he was far from Christ so I decided to walk through the gospel message.

As soon as I got to the necessity of repenting and receiving Christ, I recall him saying something like: “Don’t worry, preacher. I’m good to go. I did that baptism thing and all that other stuff.” Well, now I was really worried, so I took another run at him. Sadly, he held up his hand and told me to stop.

I’ll never forget this encounter because it seemed like he was holding on to a religious ritual and not the finished work of Christ on the cross. In his mind, he was “good to go.” I’m still not sure what he meant by, “and all that other stuff.”

While I can’t say for certain, it certainly didn’t appear he was saved. He was a baptized church member but gave no evidence he was a genuine believer. It’s likely there are people like this in every church.

They act religious but are not regenerated.

They talk about Heaven but don’t demonstrate a walk of holiness.

They claim to have faith but give no evidence of fruit.

They may know the date of their baptism but have not been born again.

They want Christ without the cross.

They speak about a decision but not discipleship.

They like cheap grace, not costly grace.

They may be near the kingdom but are actually far from it.

A.W. Tozer once remarked, “It is my opinion that tens of thousands, if not millions have been brought into some kind of religious experience…and they have never been saved.”

In Matthew 13:24-25, Jesus warned that counterfeit Christians, with phony faith, would embed themselves with true believers: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away.” Satan loves to sow gross weeds among the good seeds.

Quoting Isaiah, Jesus gave this indictment in Matthew 15:8: “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.” Titus 1:16 says, “They profess to know God, but they deny him by their works. They are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work.”

As the early church exploded with growth, Satan unleashed his hatred by stirring up persecution from without and creating problems from within. Warren Wiersbe put it this way: “The enemy comes as a lion to devour or as a serpent to deceive.”

Persecution broke out in Acts 4. In Acts 5, Satan filled the hearts of Ananias and Sapphira with hypocrisy, leading them to lie to the Holy Spirit. In Acts 6, the Devil stirred up dissension among church members, which threatened to tear the church apart. In Acts 7, Stephen was martyred and in Acts 8:1 we read: “And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria.” In our passage for today we’ll see how the evil one influenced a religious racketeer named Simon to exhibit phony faith.

We’re continuing in our verse-by-verse exposition of the Book of Acts. Please turn in your Bibles to Acts 8:9-25. If you’re using our mobile app, I want to show you a new feature. Once you open the app, click on the “Welcome” icon. You can access the online connection card from the next screen. To get to the passage for today, click on the “Read Bible” link on the bottom and it will take you to Acts 8. Simply scroll down to verse 9.

If you don’t have the free Edgewood app, simply go to Google Play or the Apple App Store and search for “edgewoodQC.”

Here’s the main idea of our passage: Doing Christian things doesn’t make you a Christian.

Because this passage is long, we’ll break it up into sections. To organize the flow, I’m adapting an outline from another pastor to help us see four characteristics of false faith in this passage:

• An egotistical view of self (8:9-11)

• An external view of salvation (8:12-17)

• An economic view of the Spirit (8:18-20)

• An evasive view of sin (8:21-24)

Characteristics of False Faith

1. An egotistical view of self. After the gospel penetrated Judea and Samaria, we pick up the story in Acts 8:9-11: “But there was a man named Simon, who had previously practiced magic in the city and amazed the people of Samaria, saying that he himself was somebody great. They all paid attention to him, from the least to the greatest, saying, ‘This man is the power of God that is called Great.’ And they paid attention to him because for a long time he had amazed them with his magic.”