Disciplined Living Sermon Iv: Christ The Master Of My New Life Series

THE MASTER OF MY LIFE IN CHRIST

The choices we make in life define us and determine our future. At some point in our lives we who gather here to worship the Lord made the same choice Joshua made long ago, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” Amen.

You had a choice of two ways to go in life and you chose the Jesus Way. You had a choice of two masters to serve, and you chose Jesus. You had a choice of two eternal destinies and you chose to live in the House of the Lord forever.

You said “yes” to God’s plan and purpose for His creation and for everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord. You said “no” to the way of atheists, fools, agnostics and others who reject the Creator of us all and the Father of those who by repentance and faith accept God’s Son Jesus Christ as the Messiah.

You chose God’s way, not the misguided way of humanists who say life is not about God but all about the accidentally evolved individual human being who, they say, has no choice but to become the master of oneself - a godless philosophy that espoused by many elitists through the centuries – humanists like the British poet

William Ernest Henley whose Victorian poem “Invictus”, written in 1875, is expressive of the atheistic doctrine of self-mastery (and I quote):

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeoning of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul.

The ungodly view of life poeticized by this secular humanist establishes self as the captain of one’s soul instead of relinquishing control of self to any deity, let alone the God and Father of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. However, “This way of the ungodly shall perish but the Lord watches over the way of the righteous.”

It has been said, “There are two kinds of people in the world: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, ‘All right, then, have it your way’” (C. S. Lewis). I am so glad it can be said of you, my brother and sister in Christ: “God’s will is being done in your life!”

The choice you made at whatever point in your life was epitomized by baptism, as pointed out by Paul in his letter to the Romans – Romans 6:4-14 . . .

Your baptism symbolically portrayed, to all who witnessed it, that you died to sin as a way of life, and that you were raised by God’s power to a new life in Christ.

Because you said “no” to sin as the master of your life and you said “yes” to Christ as Lord and Savior . . . as the master of your fate . . . as the captain of your soul, you can be certain that you shall be raised to eternal life with Him!

Sin cannot, will not, will never have dominion over you, because you are now united with the One who gave His life as a “once and for all” sacrifice, to pay the price for that inherited godless nature that made you bent on controlling your own thoughts, decisions, and actions rather than submit to the will of God.

Yes, my beloved, you have been set free! Yet, there is a caution flag that has been waved at you as you go down the home stretch toward the finish line of life’s race: God’s grace set you free BUT did not give thee or me a license to keep on sinning as we might have opportunity, or be prone to do, at the beck and call of the Evil One who is still at large and raging in this old world of ours!

Since you have died to sin as a way of life, come alive spiritually! Jesus lives forevermore! If Christ does not live, then all He professed is a lie. You and I, true believers, declare unequivocally that He lives! Jesus proved it by His resurrection! He defeated death. His death was real . . . sufficient to defeat death once for all.

Give serious thought to what has happened to you in Christ – dead indeed unto sin . . . alive unto God! So live like it! Our lives reflect who we are in Christ.