"Cheating On Your Taxes Is Okay- It Doesn’t Hurt Anybody” Series

The World Says:

“Cheating on your taxes is okay- it doesn’t hurt anybody”

Scripture: Galatians 6:7 Date: 14 March 2010

Purpose: To share that cheating doesn’t help you in life as the world tells us. It hurts us in the end.

We are surrounded by lies each and every day. Each day of our lives we are faced with ethical decisions that we need to weigh. We ask ourselves “what is true and what is a lie”? As Christians we need to seek God’s will and guidance in all things.

The world is full of deceit, evil, and lies; this is what we must realize as we live in this world. God’s truth is not what the world tells us.

I have recently been studying a book called, “Truth- Seeing Black and White in a Gray World”. This book is a straight forward look into what the world tells us and what God tells us. It’s a wonderful study for any worldly topic to be weighed against God’s truth. I have found a few items with in this book that I have felt lead to share with you.

This morning we begin our sermon series is entitled: “The World Says”. The world says many things that will hinder our relationship with God and we must identify the lies and see the Truth.

We feel the pressures of the world each and every day. To make the honor roll, a student cheats on examinations. To lower a tax bill, an entrepreneur pads business expenses. To be the best in a sport, an athlete takes steroids. We say, “What I did hurts no one.” Each smiles in satisfaction at being clever enough to beat the system to work in their advantage.

At this time of the year we are all faced with taxes. No one really enjoys taxes but I think we would all agree that we enjoy the returns. Cheating on your taxes to get a bigger return or even cheating on your taxes to lower what you owe can be a temptation for some.

God tells us that there are no short cuts. No short cuts in life and no short cuts to heaven. Our supreme example is Christ himself. He didn’t take any short cuts in life. Sure He was tempted, who wouldn’t be in the same situation. He was in agony, complete and total pain, He was face with hatred from the masses, He was tortured and he was dying. Jesus had the power to end all of His suffering. He could of stopped it all with a simple blink of His eyes but He stood fast and firm. He knew God’s plan and He completed it without taking any short cuts, Jesus was not a cheater nor should we be in this life.

Galatians 6:7 (Contemporary English Version) You cannot fool God, so don’t fool yourself! You will harvest what you plant.

*RELEASE THE CHILDREN FOR CHILDREN’S CHURCH*

A couple of weeks ago we played Hide and Go Seek in the church with IGNITE. It was a great time and we were able to bring a wonderful godly message from it. We learned that we can run from everyone and from everything in this world but we can never hide from God. And you know what else,

I. Our Cheating cannot hide from God!

A. Cheating not just on your taxes but on anything can easily become a habitual habit. Acts of cheating can worm their way into our daily practice. Little instances of trickery pass unnoticed by anyone and establish themselves as habit.

Illustration: I have met people in my life that cheat on their taxes each

year. And guess what, they don’t see anything wrong with it at all. They have

done it for years, little lies and deceit in order to cushion their pockets during

tax time. They get away with it as they always have and it becomes a habit. It

becomes just the way they do their taxes each year.

1. Ask your selves, “When there’s little chance of being caught, do I cheat? If I could explain away or cover up an act of deception, would I go ahead with it?”

2. Cheating, even cheating never detected by anyone, cannot hide from a holy God who sees inside the heart.

3. When you stop and think about it, Isn’t it crazy that we even try to hide anything from God when we know there is no way in the world that we can hide anything from Him? We can run but we cannot hide from God.

4. The psalmist knew that hiding from God was a fruitless enterprise. Psalm 139:7 where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?

5. He also knew (and described in various graphic passages such as Psalm 51) that it was his sin that drove him to try to hide from God and which erected a wall of separation between him and God.