Beware

WESTSIDE BAPTIST CHURCH

PASTOR: TERRY VAUGHAN

SERMON TITLE: BEWARE

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through Him might be saved. He that believeth on Him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”

I had a burdened heart last night and I felt led to take one of my earlier sermons that was on tape with to work this morning and listen to it. I never do that. I usually like to listen to other preachers and not myself. I tell you what, the Lord blessed my heart and I was saying Amen and I was the one preaching. (laughter) More so than that it helped me.

TEXT VERSE: COLOSSIANS 2:8 “BEWARE LEST ANY MAN SPOIL YOU THROUGH PHILOSOPHY AND VAIN DECEIT, AFTER THE TRADITION OF MEN, AFTER THE RUDIMENTS OF THE WORLD, AND NOT AFTER CHRIST.”

Everything we do needs to revolve around Christ. Turn to LUKE 12 . We just wanted to read that verse to kind of get us started. A lot of times we seem to get off from the important things in this life. Sometimes we let distractions pull us away from the very meaning of life which is the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul said this in Philippians: “For me to live is Christ and to die is gain.” So the very lives we live is Christ. To die is gain. Thank God when we die it’s not going to be demotion but a premotion. I’m looking forward to it. Now in Colossians 2:8 the first word was BEWARE. There’s often times in the Bible when the Lord wants us to beware of certain things. Now I can’t point out all these things to you but number one if I’m going to beware of anything I have to beware of myself. I have a hard time keeping up with I do, let alone what other people do. I have to keep myself in line with the Lord Jesus Christ. I’m the one that’s going to have to answer to him one day after awhile. Whether it’s good or bad, I’m going to have to give account for myself for what I do or what I don’t do. I fall down and beg God many times to forgive me for not following the Spirit of God. Than there’s times I kneel down and thank Him for things that He allows us to do. There’s a lot of times we let things deviate us from God’s word or way. So the Lord said Beware. Now look at LUKE 12:1 “IN THE MEAN TIME, WHEN THERE WERE GATHERED TOGETHER AN INNUMERABLE MULTITUDE OF PEOPLE, INSOMUCH THAT THEY TRODE UPON ANOTHER, HE BEGAN TO SAY UNTO HIS DISCIPLES FIRST OF ALL, BEWARE YE OF THE LEAVEN OF THE PHARISEES, WHICH IS HYPOCRISY.

I want to talk to you first of all about Hypocrisy. I don’t want you to look tonight at who you think tonight might be a hypocrite. I want you to examine yourself. When we come to the house of God we have to get what we need as a child of God first then we can worry about other people. We have to keep our own house in order. Hypocrisy is a Greek word that means actor. In other words their pretenders. When we get in that Hypocrite mode we end up pretending to be somebody or something that we’re not. We end up wanting to impress other people and try to prove to other people that we are who they think we are. In actuality we’re coving up who we really are and making them believe we’re somebody else. In the natural sense a hypocrite is always trying to please others. Their trying to let other people look at them and see them as some big person. In a Christians life a hypocrite is someone who tries to be spiritual when in actuality they aren’t spiritual. God said to watch out for these kind of people and don’t let hypocrisy become a part of your life. A lot of Christians think they are above that but none of us are. You see these lost people all the time saying I’m not going down to that church because it’s full of a bunch of hypocrites. They may be right. We need to make sure we don’t give anybody that impression. You watch t.v. and you’ve seen these actors and sometimes people begin to think that that’s who those people really are. I seen a documentary on Gilligans Island one time and they said right after they put the show on the air people began to call in and say there were some people stranded on a deserted Island. They started believing what they saw. That’s what hypocrites do. They want people to believe their somebody they aren’t.