Sermon Central
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#4: Turn From Your Evil Ways Series
Contributed by Archie Luper on Nov 28, 2017 (message contributor)
Summary: STORY: Wife goes with husband to doctor. Not good, husband has but one week to live. Extend time by cooking, rubbing feet, back, take golfing, fishing, etc. Be as affectionate as when you were first married. This might extend his life. “Honey, what did do
STORY: Huge tree. Don’t know what kind it is, but it is really big and massive. A very strong looking tree. During a strong storm one of the main limbs was torn off of it. So I went to investigate and guess what I saw? That tree was an imposter. Now on the outside that tree looked big and strong, but inside it was hollowed out with corruption and decay. It only looked to be strong. I want to suggest to you this morning, that some of us are using coming to church as a cover for a decaying, spiritual life. You sing the songs on Sunday but your heart doesn’t jump when you sing. You put money in a plate, but there’s no joy when you give it. You may sign up to do something every now and then at the church, but your heart isn’t full of love. And you need to know, it’s one of the very basic things a new Christian learns, if you can do works for God with your heart detached, those works are dead. And you need to repent. You need to repent from going through the motions of church and religion when you don’t love God.
Revival’s got to come to the church before it comes to the land. And if you’ve been going through the motions when the fire in your heart is out, God says, “I want you to repent from your dead works.”
B. Turn Away from your “Proud Rebellion”
Both those word are important. Sin is rebellion and we do it because we’re proud. Straying hearts always lead to tolerated disobedience. Now we tolerate sin because we’re able to re-classify it.
Sin as humanness; we’re all just humans
Sin as disease; you know it’s just the condition I have, I can’t help myself.
Sin as ignorance; if we would just teach people more they’ll do better.
Sin as victimization; I’m just a victim of my circumstances, I didn’t have a choice.
Sin as inability; I’m just genetically disposed to this kind of behavior, there’s nothing I can do about it.
As long as we can re-classify sin we can tolerate it. I want you to understand, God sees sin too, not as disease, not as humanness, not as inability, but as rebellion. And so he says in Isaiah 53: “We all like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way.” Now that’s sin. Sin is turning to a way that you prefer more than God’s way. And that’s all sin, ultimately, whether it’s gossip, whether it’s lust, whether it’s greed, or envy or anger, all sin is ultimately rebellion against God. Because you have rejected his way.
Now if someone is visiting today and thinking, “My goodness, they must believe in hell, fire and damnation at that church!” Well, I don’t preach like this every Sunday but let me tell you something else. I have not preached anything today nearly as hard as the Lord Jesus. Look at what Jesus said about sin:
Matthew 5:29-30, “If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It’s better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.”
