For Your Consideration

For Your Consideration Deuteronomy 4:39-40

Introduction: The old “Twilight Zone” TV series started each week’s episode with the catch phrase “submitted for your consideration...” This morning I would like to submit four areas to you for your consideration; Your Fallibility, God’s Goodness and Severity, Your Ways, and Your Influence on others.

I. Consider your Fallibility

A. One of the very first things for us to consider is our frailty and fallibility. This is pointed out to us in numerous passages of Scripture.

B. Galatians 6:1 “Brethren, if a man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness, considering yourself lest you also be tempted.”

C. 1 Corinthians 10:12 “...let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.”

D. How often we overlook our own failures and sins while criticizing the faults in others! In fact, our judgment may reflect our own flaws, which usually are more serious than those we see in someone else. A woman named Ruth Knowlton told how she came to see this truth. The building across the alley was only a few feet away, and she could easily look into her neighbor’s apartment. Ruth had never met the woman who lived there, but she could see her as she sewed and read each afternoon. After several months, she noticed that the figure by the window had become indistinct. She couldn’t understand why the woman didn’t wash her windows. One sunny day Ruth decided to do some housecleaning, including washing her own windows. Later that day, she sat down to rest by the window. To her amazement, she could clearly and distinctly see her neighbor sitting by her window. Ruth said to herself, "Well, finally she washed her windows!" By now you’ve guessed what really happened: Ruth’s own windows were the ones that needed washing. - copied

E. Did you hear about the inscription on the tombstone of a hypochondriac? It read, "NOW will you believe that I’m sick?" When it comes to recognizing most are the exact opposite of the hypochondriac. They do not want to admit their imperfection. The Bible teaches that all humans are "sick"—because of the effects of sin. Only the grace of God can make us well.

F. In order to be saved we must acknowledge our need of a savior. This awareness ought to produce godly sorrow that results in repentance.

G. But too often after we have been redeemed we forget where we came from and that we are still only sinners but that we have been saved by grace.

H. Romans 7:18 “For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find.”

I. Sgt. Shultz, the German prison guard on the old {Hogan’s Heroes} television show, used to bellow, "I zee nuthing, Nuthing!" He didn’t see because he did not want to see. Many of us do not see what God is doing around and through our lives, not because we can’t see but because we choose not to see the hand of God. - Matt Neace Jr., The Southeast Outlook, 26 Sept, 1997, p. A-12

J. 1 John 1:8-10 “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.”

II. Consider the consider the goodness and severity of God

A. Romans 11:22 “Therefore consider the goodness and severity of God: on those who fell, severity; but toward you, goodness, if you continue in His goodness. Otherwise you also will be cut off.”

B. To understand the goodness of God we must see His severity.

C. God’s holiness demands that sin be punished. God’s justice demands the full weight of the penalty to be applied – death.

D. Romans 6:23 “The wages of sin is death...”

E. The Bible declares that God hates sin We have lost the reality of God’s wrath. We have disregarded His hatred for sin.

F. We have come a long way since Jonathan Edwards’ delivered his sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God". Edwards portrayed sinful man as being held over the blazing abyss of hell in the hands of a God whose fury over their sinfulness might plunge them at any moment into that burning inferno. He read that sermon with little personal emotion but the conviction of those listening was so great that women fainted and men in agony dug their fingernails deep into the pews before them.