God Is Just, Not Fair

0:00:00 – (Steve Gray): Hey, growing up, you always hear around kids—they get upset and say, that’s not fair. It’s not fair. Well, you know what? The kingdom of God is not fair, but it is just. I’ll tell you more about that on the More Faith, More Life podcast.

0:00:14 – (Steve Gray): You were made for more than the status quo. I’m Pastor Steve Gray, and this is the More Faith, More Life podcast. This podcast is for Christians with an ambitious heart who want to be more for their family, do more with their career, and see more of God’s promises in their life. I’ve spent many years as a worship artist, minister, nonprofit leader, bold truth speaker, and most importantly, father and spouse. When I was in my early 40s, I was craving more.

0:00:41 – (Steve Gray): More from God and more from life. I’d done everything I was supposed to do. My life was good, but it wasn’t good enough. So I spent the following years diving into the Word of God and, and searching for the biblical principles that would bring me closer to God and help my purpose and life flourish. That’s what I want to share with you. In every episode, you’ll get practical tools based on real life experiences that you can put into action to redefine your faith and ultimately your life.

0:01:13 – (Steve Gray): So if you’re ready to do more, subscribe to More Faith, More Life and hear an unfiltered biblical truth every week. It’s time to be and experience more.

0:01:26 – (Steve Gray): Hello, everyone, and welcome to another More Faith, More Life podcast, your voice of revival. So glad you’re with us. We’re going to talk about some very, very important things, but we’ll start off on a little more elementary level today because, you know, when I was a kid, and you too, everybody, even as long ago as that, I was in grade school and on, we always heard the same thing. We still hear it today.

0:01:49 – (Steve Gray): When something goes wrong or in the class, you know, somebody gets this and somebody gets that and classroom, whatever. And plus, I taught public school, so I heard it. That’s not fair. It’s not fair. And it seems like as soon as you get to throw in the fairness, that it changes the dynamic of it, because in our culture, like, if it’s not fair, then it’s not right. And so we have to make it fair for everybody, right?

0:02:16 – (Steve Gray): And we didn’t realize, I don’t think that that was already. That’s been in our culture. That is in our culture. And your kids will do it. My kids, your kids, everybody’s kids on the playground or wherever or just, you know, going for ice cream or whatever. If something doesn’t quite fit what the kid thinks, they’re going to pull the fairness. It’s not fair because we’re Americans and Americans are fair. Right?

0:02:42 – (Steve Gray): And so I grew up with that. Now the problem with it is it is now entered into politics, our political scene strong. And it’s also entered into the church. It was probably already there in the church in a Sunday school class where one kid got something and the other didn’t get it, and the kid yelled, it’s not fair. But it’s now entered into the gospel church, the gospel of the church. What the church teaches is a fairness gospel, right?

0:03:16 – (Steve Gray): And now it’s entered into our politics. Fairness. Because there’s like, it has to be fair. So one of the things that a lot of people don’t understand is they think that God is fair, that certainly God is fair, and that God treats us all with fairness all the same. All right? And so therefore, I don’t have to. I. I can look at you and you’re doing great things for God. And then I look at another person or me, and I go, like, well, I’m not doing that. I don’t want to do that. That’s just not who I am. Or whatever.

0:03:53 – (Steve Gray): I don’t need to serve. I don’t need to give of myself, whatever. And you don’t think anything of it because God’s fair. Then God’s going to treat that person who’s giving more than you are, who’s doing more than you are. Wait, you were. Wait, I got mixed up. You were the one doing it. I’m the one not doing it. Okay? I’m not doing as much. That’s okay. Because God’s fair. And so he’s going to treat us both.

0:04:17 – (Steve Gray): Your prayers will be answered. My prayers will be answered. Whatever blessing you have, I’ll get blessed too. Cause God is fair. So there is no such thing in the Bible as fairness. You need to know that. Now, like the Bible says, you know, without faith. Without faith, there’s faith, but there’s not fairness. There’s justice, but there’s not fairness. Without faith, it’s impossible to please God. So if you don’t have faith and another person does have faith, then you’re not going to be treated the same.

0:04:47 – (Steve Gray): You’re not going to be treated the same as a person who’s walking by faith, by you, walking by sight or feelings or whatever. That’s the way it is. And so we have this fairness gospel that is already in, but it’s now being preached. And the idea. So what happens is when you have, well, let’s go to the government too. Let’s just do it quick. I don’t want to talk about politics, but with the fairness political scene, it’s the same thing that God would approve.

0:05:16 – (Steve Gray): If Jesus was here today, he’d make it fair. People believe that. And yet all the scriptures point another direction, that God is just and he rewards those who diligently seek him. If you don’t diligently seek him, you don’t get the same reward. And as somebody else, that’s Bible, but that’s not in people’s heads, okay? They’re hearing other things and they’re thinking other things. So in the fairness gospel, then we feel like everything’s fair. God treats everybody the same.

0:05:48 – (Steve Gray): And so now what’s happening in the churches then is because people believe that, and even the pastor may believe that the leadership might believe that. They don’t say they believe it. It’s just in there. It’s in them. Right, right. And so what’s happening is we now give everything more. And the more we give everything more, the less we get of God. We’re at a point where we’re getting less of God and more of everything else.

0:06:16 – (Steve Gray): And that everything. Doing more of everything else, which is not necessarily spiritual, but the doing more of everything else at church, I’m talking about at church or through the church, gives the impression that we are doing spiritual things and we’re doing something. And so churches are getting less of God, but they’re getting more of everything else. So you can check it for yourself. Go and see all the activities that these wonderful churches are doing. And they’re good. There’s nothing wrong with them, you know, Nothing wrong with it. It’s just more of this and that.

0:06:49 – (Steve Gray): And then look at the schedule, the weekly schedule of that. And they’ll have, you know, they’ll have the support groups and they’ll have the sports groups and, you know, okay, I get it. Home groups, of course. And they have all these activities and they might have something else, maybe something during the week, but anyway. But look at the schedule and find. Where is the prayer service? When do the people meet for prayer? They meet to eat, they meet to play, they meet to socialize, and. And they meet to tell each other’s pain.

0:07:21 – (Steve Gray): Right? We’re going to share our pain. They do that, and they could do that outside of church. But where is prayer and extra worship? Where’s the worship? The worship in a lot of churches is 15 or 20 minutes, few songs. Well, I grew up with that, you know, I grew up with that.

0:07:39 – (Steve Gray): I was.

0:07:40 – (Steve Gray): The Nazarene Church was kind of like that. I grew up that was younger, and I appreciate them so much. The Methodist church I was in was a lot more nominal, and it was planned. The organ would play the same thing when you get in. Well, they play whatever. But then a certain song comes on. That means the service has started. And then a guy comes out. Maybe he says a prayer, maybe not. And says, let’s all stand up and sing hymn. Whatever, whatever. And you sing the hymn.

0:08:05 – (Steve Gray): Amen. And you might sit down and then some little this. And then you’re going to stand up again and they’re going to sing another song. Amen. Maybe two to three. Two to three songs. And then we go into a liturgy, read scripture, have a prayer, do the sermon, and you’re out in an hour. We were out in an hour. It was 11 to 12, every Sunday, out by 12. And so. And that’s what we did. And so then how do you get. Now when. That’s it. How do you get people to cross over? That that’s not how this Bible works. That’s not how the kingdom of God works.

0:08:43 – (Steve Gray): So we back up and realized the people that set this into motion were trying to make disciples. These are people that gave everything they’ve got, even their lives, their time, their effort, and even the people. You know, not everybody walked around following Jesus, and then afterwards followed somebody else. Yeah, they had jobs, they had family, they were married, they had homes, and they had churches.

0:09:06 – (Steve Gray): But the church for these believers became the center of the gathering of the believers. The people of faith gathered, and it was the central part of their lives. And out of that was everything else, their fellowship. But in their services, they’re having signs and wonders and the presence of God. And sometimes the building would shake because the presence of God was so powerful. You know, they’re having God activities, they’re having God movement.

0:09:37 – (Steve Gray): God movement is in their services. But ours, we have different. We have nominal services, a few songs. We get out in an hour, and then we go do other things to replace that, to make us feel that we’re doing okay. All right, so this is the fairness gospel, is we can do that. And I’m telling you, we can do that. You know why? Because if you have church number one over here and they meet for prayer, they cry out to God. They go to church two times, three times a week. They’re always praying.

0:10:08 – (Steve Gray): Their services are whenever, you know, I mean, they go an hour, hour or two, whatever. And they have this intensity and this worship and the people have an attitude. The people have this church over here. The people have an attitude that nothing is too good for God. I’m going to serve him. I want to go for him. He’s everything to me. We sing songs like, you’re all I want. You’re all I need. Right? Jesus is all I need. And we sing those songs, but we don’t live it right?

0:10:35 – (Steve Gray): We sing I Surrender all, and then we surrender nothing. But that church is doing all that, okay? And they’re really hitting it. They’re really hitting the God thing. They’re hitting the Bible, they preach the Bible, all those things, okay? Then we have another church number two over here, and they have an hour service and they come in, get out quick, in and out, just like I described before. Now, that church know. Let’s say that church knows that the other church does all those other things, but it doesn’t bother them. They’re not convicted like, man, look at that.

0:11:06 – (Steve Gray): I need to be doing more. I need to be worshiping more. We need to be doing more God things, more God activity. We need to pray until God comes down. And our lives are actually transformed from activities and nominal Christianity transformed into a fire brand Christianity, right? With fire shut up in our bones, experiencing the presence of God, okay? But that doesn’t happen because the fairness Gospel says, well, that’s okay for them.

0:11:36 – (Steve Gray): That’s okay for them. And this is okay for us, you know, and some of the things, attitudes and like that, you know, some people, they’re giving. This is what the Holy Spirit is saying to us. This is what he’s saying to us, and this is the level we are, and we’re okay, and this is what God’s telling us to do, and this is the level of God. And then the others, these firebrands that represent, I think, the early church a whole lot better, but it doesn’t convict them because they say, well, this is what God’s. This is the level God’s got us. So this is what the Holy Spirit’s saying to us.

0:12:11 – (Steve Gray): Well, guess what? Somebody’s right and somebody’s wrong. There’s only one Holy Spirit and he’s got the same message for 2,000 years, okay? So this fairness makes us live lower because it doesn’t matter. I’m still going to be fine because God’s okay with me this way and God’s okay with them that way. And we all call ourselves the body of Christ and we call it unity because we never fellowship with each other.

0:12:38 – (Steve Gray): That means we never talk about anything besides who we you know, we just live our lives out. So anyway, scripture, the spirit clearly says, this is First Timothy 4. The scripture clearly says that in the last days or latter times, some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. So we have a lot of people thinking we’re in the last days or latter times and they’re looking for monsters.

0:13:06 – (Steve Gray): 666 Antichrist fly out of here. All those scary things, all these, you know, things that keep people going to church just cause they’re scared not to. But when Paul teaches the latter times, he always turns on our character. It’s our character. And he says, look, here’s what’s happening in the latter times. People are going to abandon the faith, the faith walk. Now that doesn’t mean you’re going to abandon your faith that you don’t believe there’s a God anymore.

0:13:33 – (Steve Gray): You’re not going to turn into an atheist, right? You’re going to turn into lukewarm. That’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to turn into nominal. You’re going to go down the wide. You’re going to invent your faith says it’s okay to go the wide way. Even though Jesus said it’s narrow, it’s narrow. You don’t have all these other things. You have narrow. So you have three things that I like to think of that narrow us down.

0:13:57 – (Steve Gray): 4. Commitment, absolute loyalty and continual serving. Loyalty, commitment or commitment, Loyalty and serving. And so these are the things we do now. We still go to work, we take care of kids, we have to pay our bills, they did too. But their attitude and their level of faith, their level of faith towards God, see, was different than our level of faith in many places. So we have that out of Christianity, have abandoned the faith that those things are important.

0:14:28 – (Steve Gray): We don’t have the faith to do them. We don’t have the faith to believe. We need to live committed, loyal and serving. And so it’s real easy to go find another group that has a lower level. They got everything else they’re doing but seeking God. They’re not chasing after God. Good people, a good church, got everything. Great kids programs, they got everything. And youth programs, they got everything. All that except chasing after God, seeking after God and having prayer meetings where they pray to the Lord that God will come down in his greatness and his power and his presence and help change our lives and change our nation and have a revival in our church, in our cities and in our nation and maybe around the world.

0:15:16 – (Steve Gray): So you see, you abandon the faith. And so it says clearly says in the latter times they’ll abandon the faith. Now, it doesn’t mean that they’re not going to church or that they don’t believe in God anymore because look what it says and follow deceiving spirits. Well, okay, what? Just try to imagine for a minute. What would a deceiving spirit say? What are they deceiving? Well, in their case, they deceived them that instead of being that commitment and living by faith, committed faith, loyalty, they gave him other stuff to do and says, okay, well, if you’re really going to be spiritual, let me tell you what it is. You can’t get married, all right?

0:15:57 – (Steve Gray): And you have to start eating certain foods or not certain foods. So they gave him outside things to do other. Yeah, it was activities, but it was still religious activities. So that means if it’s religious activities, then with believers, even though it was deceiving them into thinking they need to do those things, they were still hanging out with believers doing some other things, abandon their faith that what God’s after is inner things, not activities. Activities don’t count.

0:16:29 – (Steve Gray): Inner things, not what you eat, not marrying, not having all these other things that keep us busy. And, you know, we meet together and we’re kind, we feel good. You know, maybe we do pray for people that are hurting. You know, we listen to their problems. And I get your pain. You know, I understand your pain and I know what you’re going through. They’re not bad, and that’s why they’re deceiving. See, they’re not bad. It’s not out and out sin.

0:16:55 – (Steve Gray): It’s deceiving is because it’s taking us away from living a life of full commitment, loyalty, and serving the Lord Jesus. We serve him. And so we find now we can go to churches that go less. Churches are doing less, Less church, less church services and more everything else to kind of keep the people active and keep them interested. And the more everything else is just all volunteer. And churches volunteer. You know, you come if you want to.

0:17:30 – (Steve Gray): And so churches, then there’s no drawing the line like, okay, this is the kind of church that Paul would start or Timothy in this case would start. And this is the attitude they would have. This is the level they would live. This is the things that they would do different. They wouldn’t be doing all those other activities. But then you look at it and say, well, you know, it’s okay if they, if that church, God’s fair.

0:17:53 – (Steve Gray): I mean, as long as they’re going to church, does it matter which one they go to? Well, Absolutely. Because then it says deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. Well, where do you think those demon things are being taught? Well, they’re being taught in the pulpit. They’re being taught things taught by demons. And so things taught by demons is the fairness gospel that I already told you about.

0:18:20 – (Steve Gray): Fair. Don’t worry. God’s fair with all of us and things taught by demons. And you know, the fairness gospel and then the “all about me” gospel. So you come away and when you put it, you know, if you’re. If you don’t realize that what’s being taught is about you and Jesus is serving you. Jesus is taking, is wanting you to feel better about you and helping you to get through your week, teaching you to cope with your problems, which is okay, but rather be transformed so you don’t have those problems.

0:18:56 – (Steve Gray): That’s the Jesus way. Transformation, revival, power of God, presence of God, desiring, crying out that we must have a move of God in our church. And because the fairness gospel has hit politics, we must have a move of God in our nation. We’ve got to have a revival. Because what’s happening is we’re going to see the fairness politics and the fairness gospel hit. And all of a sudden people are taking from these people and giving it to those people. They all become Robin Hood, Robin rich and giving to the poor. And we have to be fair about this.

0:19:32 – (Steve Gray): And next thing you know, if you’re a fairly wealthy, not even wealthy, but well to do person, if this fairness politics keeps going, they’re going to come after your wealth. Yeah. In the Bolshevik Revolution, it was the poor peasants were calling for revolution. And as soon as they got it and Lennon came in, the leader, then what did they do? They went and took the money away from the wealthy and the well to do and even middle class and overtook everything and they distributed evenly.

0:20:03 – (Steve Gray): So the poor had the same and the rich that were rich had the same. And that’s where our nation wanted to go. And that’s not God. God rewards those that diligently seek them and doesn’t reward those that don’t. That’s not fair. But it is God. And so we have things, the all about me gospel. So you come away and you know your pain, your hurt, your encouragement. That’s all good. You come away feeling better about yourself.

0:20:30 – (Steve Gray): But what have we really learned about God? Where’s the Bible? Where are we teaching, as I say, the Gospel of Mark, the very first verse. And Mark was the first gospel to be written. The first verse of the first gospel says the gospel about Jesus Christ. The gospel, that’s about him. Jesus Christ. The gospel is about him. But we make it all about us. Our feelings, our finances, which is good. I want people’s. I talk about it. I want people’s finances. I want their marriages to get better, of course, but how do I get them there?

0:21:06 – (Steve Gray): I get them there. How do I get. How do you get somebody’s finances better? You have a financial seminar. No, you get them more involved with God. You get more of God. How do you get a better relationship at home with your wife or kids or husband or whatever? Get more of God. More. More commitment, more loyalty, more serving. And the more you get of God, the more he comes. If you draw near to him, the closer you get to him, the closer he comes to you. And the closer he comes to you, everything starts changing. Are you getting it? That’s God’s formula. We’re not getting it. We’re not getting it.

0:21:42 – (Steve Gray): And so people come and if they run into a person that’s really committed and on fire, you know what I’m talking about. You know, that person, they’re really on fire. And it seems like they’re all about God all the time, you know, and they’re always in church and they’re always in their prayer and, you know, you know that person. And instead of admiring them and imitating their faith, what do we do? We criticize them. And they, you know what?

0:22:10 – (Steve Gray): They frighten us just a little bit. They frighten us because they’re so on fire. And we’re sort of like, I don’t know, I think maybe they need to pull back and be a little more balanced. We’re afraid of people that appear to go too far with God. Now, come on. If you’re like most people, admit it. You find somebody that appears to be going too much for God. Too many times. They have too many services at that church, they go too much for God.

0:22:41 – (Steve Gray): This person’s in church all the time. I used to say every time the doors are open. My dad was like that after he got saved. He was in church. Every time the doors are open, he’s in there. And we have those people at our church. And every time the doors are open, the people are there. And it frightens other people who are now into the fairness. Like, well, you know, I don’t. God’s fair. I can be me.

0:23:05 – (Steve Gray): I want to be me. I want to be what’s comfortable for me. And it doesn’t matter. Cause God’s fair. We’ll all come out the same. We’ll just Take all this and mix it up and you’ll get it and I’ll get it. We’ll all get it. And that’s not going to work for you. That’s not that. So this is the tendency, less of God in the church. I’m talking about churches, less of God and more of everything else. And if they can get your tithe, if they can get your offering.

0:23:33 – (Steve Gray): Most pastors don’t care whether you’re there, do you know that? They don’t care whether you’re actually there, if you send your offering in. And I’m not that way, you know, I know that the God’s will is the gathering of the saints that come and they worship him and magnify him and establish who God is in the earth. They come to establish by praise, prayer, worship, word of God, all the activities we do to establish who God is in the earth. The gospel, we want to make it all about Jesus Christ.

0:24:09 – (Steve Gray): It’s not about even, you know, he forgives our sins. Yeah, but it’s not about your sins, is it? He loves you, but it’s not about you. It’s about you loving him. God said, love the Lord, your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. So these are the latter-day times. I think the next podcast we do, I may pick this up here and go to another scripture too. I may recap this. This is so good. I don’t even like to say it, but chances are you’re not going to hear this, what I just said anywhere else, at least not on podcasts.

0:24:44 – (Steve Gray): You might, you might. I better not say that. But it’s not what mostly we’re hearing in churches, podcasts and stuff today. And it’s not called the fairness gospel. But the bottom line is you can be yourself and it’ll be okay. Cause God treats everybody equal and he is fair. So that’s not true. It’s not gospel. We got lots of scriptures to take that away from us and realize we that God calls us to walk the walk and he’s making disciples and they are disciplined ones. Disciplined.

0:25:15 – (Steve Gray): And a disciple does what? Picks up his cross. We pick up our cross and follow him. To be your disciple you got to

0:25:23 – (Steve Gray): pick up your cross.

0:25:24 – (Steve Gray): What’s the cross for? It’s to crucify things. It’s to get rid of all those other things so that we live the narrow way. Not the wide way, the narrow way. We’re really narrow. You know, it used to be an insult to say she’s really narrow-minded or he’s really narrow-minded. But it’s not because you know who the most narrow-minded person was? That’s Jesus. Jesus is very narrow-minded. It’s about him, it’s about the kingdom, it’s about his father, it’s about glorifying his father, serving, committed, loyal.

0:25:56 – (Steve Gray): And then we do everything else that we have to do, but we do that to support ourselves,  so we can be that loyal, committed, serving person. That’s it. He’s very narrow-minded. But you’re always going to find a church and another person that after a while they’re very wide. It’s like it’s a less of God and more of everything else or this much of God and equal everything else. So anyway, that’s the latter. That’s the sign.

0:26:24 – (Steve Gray): Seeing this is a sign. We’re in the last days. What I just told you is one of the signs of the last days. So I don’t have time to think about monsters or 666. This is what’s going on in our city and around our country. And this is where I want you to step out and see that. And see how the things that are being deceived and the things taught by demons are less, lower the standard. Less of God and more of everything else. All right?

0:26:55 – (Steve Gray): Go to https://stevegrayministries.com. We have new things going on. The website’s changing, we’re offering new things. You want to check that out and like and tell your friends, subscribe, do all those things and till next time, bye-bye.