Do we recognize Christ?

Too many people today talk about everything and everyone that is unimportant.

The nfl, the college game, who won what in hollywood, what the President said, what the has been actor, singer, or former leader said. 

Who cares, really? How are any of these people or things important in our lives?

All these things, all these people will soon be forgotten, how shallow our lives are when we have to live through the eyes of the media and what they tell us and put in front of us to watch day after day, and to top it off that is all we have to talk about. 

Really?

Time has come for people to get off babies milk and move on. 

Stop caring more about what was worn on the red carpet or said somewhere by so and so ,than the souls of those around you!

God’s word says this: “Therefore, I say this and testify in the Lord: You should no longer live as the Gentiles live, in the futility of their thoughts. They are darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them and because of the hardness of their hearts. They became callous and gave themselves over to promiscuity for the practice of every kind of impurity with a desire for more and more. But that is not how you came to know Christ, assuming you heard about him and were taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus, to take off your former way of life, the old self that is corrupted by deceitful desires, to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, the one created according to God’s likeness in righteousness and purity of the truth. Therefore, putting away lying, speak the truth, each one to his neighbor, because we are members of one another. Be angry and do not sin. Don’t let the sun go down on your anger, and don’t give the devil an opportunity. Let the thief no longer steal. Instead, he is to do honest work with his own hands, so that he has something to share with anyone in need. No foul language should come from your mouth, but only what is good for building up someone in need, so that it gives grace to those who hear. And don’t grieve God’s Holy Spirit. You were sealed by him for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, anger and wrath, shouting and slander be removed from you, along with all malice. And be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving one another, just as God also forgave you in Christ.”

Ephesians 4:17-32 CSB

“Therefore, be imitators of God, as dearly loved children, and walk in love, as Christ also loved us and gave himself for us, a sacrificial and fragrant offering to God. But sexual immorality and any impurity or greed should not even be heard of among you, as is proper for saints. Obscene and foolish talking or crude joking are not suitable, but rather giving thanks. For know and recognize this: Every sexually immoral or impure or greedy person, who is an idolater, does not have an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with empty arguments, for God’s wrath is coming on the disobedient because of these things. Therefore, do not become their partners. For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light — for the fruit of the light consists of all goodness, righteousness, and truth — testing what is pleasing to the Lord. Don’t participate in the fruitless works of darkness, but instead expose them.” Ephesians 5:1-11 CSB

We cannot partner with darkness and claim to walk in the light of Christ, Jesus could walk into our homes, our houses of worship and our work places and we would miss Him, just as when He walked the earth over 2000 years ago we are so caught up in ourselves and the way we think it should be. We are no different than what John tells us about the Jewish nation and  how they rejected Jesus.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. All things were created through him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. That light shines in the darkness, and yet the darkness did not overcome it....He was in the world, and the world was created through him, and yet the world did not recognize him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.” John 1:1-5, 10-11 CSB

If we who say we believe in Christ, don’t recognize Christ, His authority, His holiness, His grace, and live by what we say we believe, then how can we put expectations on the world to live that way either!

Ask God to break our hearts with what breaks His, to reveal to us areas we need too surrender to Him and for Him to work in us and around us , may we be broken of our ways and follow Him.

Engage the Culture

We live in a culture that is reluctant to get involved. We leave well enough alone. We steer clear of messy, complicated interaction with others. We mind our own business, and keep to ourselves--even those of us who go by the name of Christian. We're like the fellow on the bus who refused to tell another passenger what time it was. After being asked several times, he turned his back, and the young man went on and asked someone else. At the next stop, someone who had seen the exchange scolded the man, and this was his rationale: "If I had told that young man what time it was, we would have struck up a conversation, and I probably would have liked him.


 Before long, he would have gotten himself invited to supper, and my beautiful daughter would have met him. The two of them would probably fall in love, and want to get married - but I don't want my daughter marrying a man who can't afford a watch!" We intuitively know that involvement could prove expensive - so we shut ourselves off in the name of caution.


 The only problem is, we are commanded to love the brethren. In fact, the mark of a Christian is the love we have for one another. It is almost impossible for someone who has experienced the love and grace of God to live in isolation - but some of us do a pretty good job. Instead of hiding, get out of your comfort zone and reach out to those in your circle of influence with the love of Christ. It is dangerous, yes. But the only place outside of heaven where we can be safe from all the dangers of love is hell.




Hebrews 13:

1Let brotherly love continue. 2Don’t neglect to show hospitality, for by doing this some have welcomed angels as guests without knowing it. 3Remember the prisoners, as though you were in prison with them, and the mistreated, as though you yourselves were suffering bodily. 4Marriage must be respected by all, and the marriage bed kept undefiled, because God will judge immoral people and adulterers.  5Your life should be free from the love of money. Be satisfied with what you have, for He Himself has said, I will never leave you or forsake you.  6Therefore, we may boldly say:

The Lord is my helper;

I will not be afraid.

What can man do to me?

Hell is real

C. S. Lewis’s In The Great Divorce, describes a busload of people from hell who come to the outskirts of heaven. There they are urged to leave behind the sins that have trapped them in hell. The descriptions Lewis makes of people in hell are so striking because we recognize the denial and self-delusion of substance addictions. When addicted to alcohol, we are miserable, but we blame others and pity ourselves; we do not take responsibility for our behavior or see the roots of our problem. 

Lewis writes:Hell … begins with a grumbling mood, and yourself still distinct from it: perhaps even criticizing it. … You can repent and come out of it again. But there may come a day when you can do that no longer. Then there will be no you left to criticize the mood or even enjoy it, but just the grumble itself going on forever like a machine.

Modern people struggle with the idea of God’s thinking up punishments to inflict on disobedient people. When sin is seen as slavery and hell as the freely chosen, eternal skid row of the universe, hell becomes much more comprehensible.

Jesus said those who reject Him have condemned themselves (John 3:18) , so God does not send us there, we choose to go there. 1st, sin separates us from the presence of God (Isa. 59:2), which is the source of all joy (Ps. 16:11), love, wisdom or good thing of any sort (James 1:17)…

2nd, to understand hell we must understand sin as slavery. Romans 1:21-25 tells us that we were built to live for God supremely, but instead we live for love, work, achievement or morality to give us meaning and worth. Thus every person, religious or not, is worshiping something—idols, pseudo-saviors—to get their worth. But these things enslave us with guilt or anger or fear or a lust for things. Guilt, anger and fear are like fire that destroys us. Sin is worshiping anything but Jesus—and the wages of sin is slavery.

Perhaps the greatest paradox of all is that the people on Lewis’s bus from hell are enslaved because they freely chose to be. They would rather have their freedom as they define it than salvation. Their relentless delusion is that if they glorified God, they would lose their human greatness (Gen. 3:4–5), but their choice has really ruined their human greatness. Hell is, as Lewis says, “the greatest monument to human freedom.”

Hell Is Less Exclusive Than So-Called Tolerance Nothing is more characteristic of the modern mindset than the statement: “I think Christ is fine, but I believe a devout Muslim or Buddhist or even a good atheist will certainly find God.” A slightly different version is: “I don’t think God would send a person who lives a good life to hell just for holding the wrong belief.” This approach is seen as more inclusive.

In preaching about hell, then, I need to counter this argument: The universal religion of humankind is: We develop a good record and give it to God, and then he owes us.

The gospel is: God develops a good record and gives it to us, then we owe him (Rom. 1:17). In short, to say a good person, not just Christians, can find God is to say good works are enough to find God.

You can believe that faith in Christ is not necessary or you can believe that we are saved by grace, but you cannot believe in both at once.

So the apparently inclusive approach is really quite exclusive. It says, “The good people can find God, and the bad people do not.” But what about us moral failures? We are excluded.

The gospel says, “The people who know they aren’t good can find God, and the people who think they are good do not.” Then what about non-Christians, all of whom must, by definition, believe their moral efforts help them reach God? They are excluded.

So both approaches are exclusive, but the gospel’s is the more inclusive exclusivity. It says joyfully, “It doesn’t matter who you are or what you’ve done. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been at the gates of hell. You can be welcomed and embraced fully and instantly through Christ.” And Christ alone, John 14:6

Dr. Timothy Keller senior pastor of New York’s Redeemer Presbyterian Church