A wealthy landowner was seated on his front porch one afternoon, when two young men came walking by. He asked them if they would be willing to chop wood for him at the rate of $15.00 per hour. He explained that he was throwing a big party for everyone at his job, and they needed extra firewood.
Neither of the young men had ever chopped wood before, but since they were both in college and could use the money, they said they would. After the wealthy man got them started, his telephone rang. It was one of his co-workers. The co-worker informed him that the entertainment they had scheduled for the party had cancelled, leaving them with no entertainment at all.
After he finished the call, he looked out the window to see one of the men doing cartwheels, and even doing double flips in his back yard. He ran out the back door and asked if they would be willing to do that at the party that night for an additional $100.00.
The man said he didn’t know, and yelled to the other one, “Hey, Earl! Would you be willing to cut off another toe for $100.00?
Is there anything in your life that you would cut off, or give up, for some kind of reward? And if so, what would it be? And what would you require as the reward?
When you gave your life to Christ, were you aware that you were being asked to give some things up and cut them out of your life? You were. From the very moment you received Jesus, He expected you to start giving up those things that were sinful in your life.
Last week, I explained that, as long as we are okay with something in our lives, we automatically assume God is going to be okay with it. I also told you that it doesn’t work that way. God has already written all the rules, and He expects you to follow them. But I think the one thing He wants more than anything else, is to see us starting to get serious about having His Son in our lives.
A couple of weeks ago, I told you how some tribes in the jungle capture monkeys; by cutting a small hole in a coconut and stuffing berries in them. Then, they wait for the monkey to come along and put his hand in the hole to get the berries.
When they put their hand in, they grab as much as they can get in their fist. But the fist is then too big to get out of the hole. There the monkey sits, held captive by the coconut simply because it refuses to let go of what it wants. And it sits there until it is killed and taken home for monkey stew.
We are the same way in our Christian walk. There are sins in our lives that we just refuse to let go of. Oh, we have all kinds of excuses as to why we keep holding on to them, and we even convince ourselves that “it isn’t that bad” or that “God understands.”
In truth, it IS that bad, and God does understand. He understands that by holding on to the sin in your life, you are not taking Him seriously. And God will not be mocked.
I want you to think about something for a moment. Why did you receive Jesus? Why were you baptized? Why do you come to church? The answer to all these should be that you want to change so you can become like Christ.
But I feel that many people do these things because they want to “fit in” or they want to be Christians, and by doing these things they think they are Christians. But in reality, if we do not let go of the sin, we are not trying to be like Christ. And we aren’t taking Him seriously. Let me repeat what I said a moment ago: God will not be mocked.
MATTHEW 5:29 tells us,
‘If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.’
Jesus said it is so important that we stop sinning, that we should literally cut off body parts if they cause us to sin. Do you think He is serious about getting rid of the sin in your life? Yes He is! And don’t you think He expects you to be just as serious about getting rid of the sin in you life, too? Again, the answer is ‘Yes He is!’
But what do we do? Do we strive each day to do things God’s way, or do we waste our time away doing things the way we want to, all the while convincing ourselves that God will be okay with it, too, because – after all, He understands?
Let me say it from another perspective. There is a heaven. There is a hell. Heaven is a very, very good place to go. Hell is a very, very bad place to go. Where do you want to go?
If we want to go to Heaven, there is one very important question we must ask ourselves. Do we want to keep the sin in our lives so much that we are willing to risk going to hell for it?
We don’t like it to be put that way, do we? It sounds too harsh. Well, we’d better get used to it, because if we don’t start being serious enough about God to give up our sin, our futures are going to be much harsher than listening to me.
With that in mind, let’s talk about …
1. TAKING SIN VERY SERIOUSLY
Each of us has sin in our lives. And we are not perfect, so we will continue to have sin in our lives. But some people use that as an excuse to keep sin in their lives, while others focus on overcoming that sin. That is the difference between real Christians and Casual Christians. Both are serious about sin. One wants to keep it while one wants to get rid of it.
EPHESIANS 5:14-15 tells us what we are supposed to do.
‘Wake up, O sleeper – rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. Be very careful then, how you live – not as unwise, but as wise ….’
We need to start waking up from our slumber and start paying attention to the fact that sin is the most dangerous and most destructive thing in our lives. It is no longer sufficient to believe that we can ignore sin and think God will be fine with it because He won’t be.
It is very unhealthy for Christians to have such a casual approach to sin. We think that God is nothing but a God of love, and that He loves us so much He will forgive us of anything. That is only partly true. God will forgive us - if we are trying to live for Him. There is no such thing as receiving forgiveness for a sin that we refuse to repent from.
Someone said that when he was a kid, he used to pray to God for a bicycle. When he realized it didn’t work that way, he stole one and prayed for forgiveness. People who think God will forgive them in spite of what they do are falling for the lie of Satan. It might sound good, and it might keep you thinking you are safe, but believing that will lead you to your spiritual grave.
The apostle Paul said that if we died to sin by receiving Jesus as our Christ, how can we still live in it? The answer is, we can’t. But some people have come forward in church, claimed salvation through Jesus, and even got baptized, just to go home and not change a thing. They do not have a healthy respect for the damage that sin will cause them.
Now, let’s talk about how we can …
2. PROTECT OURSELVES FROM SIN
Scripture tells us that not one of us is without sin. I tell you this morning that we might not be sinless, but we can sin less. It all depends on whether your faith in God is a real faith, or a convenient faith.
I used to drink and I used to smoke. I also used to tell dirty jokes. Now what would you think of me if you came over to my house to see me sitting there drinking a beer and smoking a cigarette, all while I tried to tell you a dirty joke?
Now, what would you think of me if I sat there doing that while trying to convince you that I was a good Christian? You would see me for who I really am, wouldn’t you? You would see through my self-deception and my lies, only to see me as a person who was trying to fake God out.
If Jesus came over to your house, whom would He see in you? Would he see someone trying to live for Him, or would He see someone who claimed to be a Christian but living like Jesus didn’t matter?
We are closer to the end that we are aware. And we had better start getting serious about Jesus and serious about getting rid of the sin in our lives. You can give me all the excuses in the book, but none of them will hold water when it comes to explaining to God why you held on to, and refused to let go of, the sin in your life.
Now, I am going to say some things that are very hard for a pastor to say to his congregation, but being true to the Lord and His word, I must. I am going to give you some guidelines now that might rub some of you the wrong way. But if these words touch just one person for Jesus, it will be worth my saying them.
Jesus did not come here so He could go into the Temple and associate with the religious leaders of His day. He went to the barrios, the slums, and to the prostitutes. Why? He did that because He was taking the message of salvation to them. And, as Christians, we are to take the gospel to those who are unsaved, too.
Many people do not understand just what that means. That means exactly what it says. We need to take the gospel to the unsaved. That does not mean, however, that we create very close relationships with those who refuse Jesus, while not giving them the message of Jesus.
I had a man tell me that he hung around with sinners because Jesus did. I asked him if he saw any difference in what he was doing and what Jesus did. He said he didn’t. I told him that Jesus was trying to save the people he hung out with, but this man was only doing it to have fun. I told him that was the difference in his life between heaven and hell.
Here is what I am saying. Do not just hang out with unbelievers. If you cannot pull them up, don’t let them pull you down. If you have a relationship with a person who refuses to let God rule their life, start telling them about Jesus every chance you get. If they get mad and break up the relationship, you are much better off than to remain in one that is not equally yoked.
We are to have contact without having contamination. How much do you value your soul? That is what it all boils down to. If your best friend has taken the stance of not letting Jesus into their life, it is your duty to make a decision.
Do you want to continue being around them so you can influence them and talk to them about Jesus, or do you just want to be around them and have them in your life? I would hope that you want to continue being around them so you can talk to them about Jesus. Love them enough to force them to make decisions that they will not do on their own. If you do not have that much influence over them, they don’t really care about you.
I am not trying to tell you to dump everyone you know who is a non-believer. I am saying that the main purpose of your relationship with them should be getting them to know Jesus, and if it isn’t, you need to reassess your own walk with Christ.
2 CORINTHIANS 6:14 says,
‘Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?’
That means do not let the wickedness of an unbeliever influence you. Have you ever known a non-believer to have a Godly influence over someone? It doesn’t happen that way, folks. When is the last time you put a good apple in a basket of bad apples just to see the bad ones turn good?
Sometimes in this life, we have to make rough choices. What kind of choices have you made in the past? For every action, there is a reaction. What kind of reaction are you now living for your past actions? If you are going to stand up and call yourself a Christian, start living it rather than just talking about it.
A believer and an unbeliever have nothing in common spiritually. Let’s see what God thinks about unequal yokes.
In JOHN 17:14-15, Jesus prayed for His disciples.
‘I have given them Your word, and the world now hates them, for they are no longer of this world any more than I am of this world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world, but that You protect them from it.’
JAMES 4:4 says,
‘You adulterous people! Don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend to the world becomes an enemy of God.’
1 CORINTHIANS 15:33 says,
“Don’t you know bad company corrupts good character?”
You cannot take a bath and then go play in the mud without becoming dirty again. Likewise, you cannot receive Jesus, get baptized for the remission of your sins, and then go back to the filth of the world without becoming sinful again. When you put on white gloves and go play in the mud, the mud never turns white, does it? When we play in the dirt, you can bet we will get dirty.
A man once went to the doctor and told him that his arm had been broken in two places. The doctor looked at him and told him to stay out of those places.
And we must stay out of situations that could hurt us, too. We cannot put ourselves in front of temptations without eventually succumbing to them.
Here is what I want you to do. Take a piece of paper. Write down the one thing in your life that you consider your biggest sin in the eyes of God. And don’t pretend you have to think about it, because we all know what our big-time sin is. Then, under that, draw a line down the center of your paper. On the left, write down all the reasons you continue to hold on to that sin. On the right, list all the reasons you should let go of that sin. And at the bottom, write down the consequence of keeping that sin.
You will probably list more reasons to keep the sin than getting rid of it. Most people do that because they have a list of justified reasons for keeping their sin. But after you list both sides, if you can read the consequences of your sin and ignore it, you desperately need to examine yourself to find out where your really stand with God. It might not be where you claim to be.
In Chandler, Arizona, where we come from, a local car dealer owns a huge ranch. His trademark is a big bull, and his slogan is, “This ain’t no bull!” On the fence to his ranch, he has a big sign that reads, “If you come on my property, you’d better make it to the other side in 5.9 seconds, because the bull can make it in 6.0 seconds.’
When we go places we should not go, or do things we should not do, we will eventually suffer. If you were to go to his ranch, you would consider the consequences of that bull before you went on his property, wouldn’t you?
You should also consider the eternal consequences to your sin before you choose to commit it. The actor, Robert Downey, Jr. has had a years-long battle with alcohol and drugs. He has been in and out of jail. But he is keeping himself sober these days. When a reporter asked him how he was doing, he replied that he couldn’t drink or do drugs anymore because he was allergic to alcohol and narcotics. He said every time he took them he broke out in handcuffs.
That man is finally weighing the consequences of his actions. I don’t know if he is a Christian or not, but he is modeling the perfect Christian behavior to sin.
EZEKIEL 16:58 it tells us that we will bear the consequences of our lewdness and detestable practices. We need to stay away from sin, and that means get away from the temptations.
The pastor asked the young man if he were entertaining sin in his life. The young man said, “No, but it sure is entertaining me!”
And if all this doesn’t persuade you to get rid of the sin in your life, read LUKE 8:17. It tells us that there is nothing hidden that will not end up being seen. That means that no matter what we are doing, God sees it and will bring it to light. We will eventually reap the rewards of our actions.
Let’s recap what we have so far. We are supposed to take sin very seriously. More seriously than we have ever taken it before. Why? Because it is that sin that will send us directly to hell.
And, we are supposed to protect ourselves from sin. But how can we do that? This world is so evil, and life is so hard. We can protect ourselves from the temptation and resultant sin in our lives only if we …
3. RELY ON THE POWER OF GOD’S WORD
We tend to take the word of God as just a bunch of distant, unfelt words in a book called the Bible. If you are like most Christians, you rarely read the Bible, and most never do it on a consistent basis.
But never, ever sell the power in the word of God short. Christianity Today Magazine ran a story about an English pastor who preached on the 10-Commandments. Over 3,000 people came to hear his sermon. He railed against stealing and drove home the point that it was a sin and sin is repaid with a trip to hell.
He read Scripture after Scripture about the sin of stealing, and the word was so powerful that the next night, many who had heard his sermon came and gave the church the items they could remember stealing in their life. These items included such things as CD players, radios, TV’s, and even crutches.
What got into those people? It is the power of God’s word. It is the same powerful word that created the universe, and it is the same powerful word that can turn your heart away from sin.
HEBREWS 4:12 reiterates that.
‘For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing the soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.’
A little girl did something wrong and was sent to her room. A little while later, her mother went in and the little girl asked why people do wrong things in the first place. The mother said it was because the devil tells us to, and we listen to him. Then the mother told her that we needed to listen to God more often. To which, the little girl said that God didn’t speak loud enough.
Why is it so important that you develop a daily habit of reading the Bible? The more you are in the word of God; the less you will be tempted by the sin of the world. The more your thoughts are on God, the less they will be on other things.
David wrote that he was hiding God’s word in his heart so that he wouldn’t sin against God. Remember that when there’s dust on the Bible, there’s dirt in the owner’s life. And when a Bible is falling apart, the owner isn’t.
God’s word is a roadmap for our spiritual journey. It is a love letter written to each one of us from the Heavenly Father. Pastor Joe Wright is from Kansas City. He spoke before the Kansas state legislature and gave the opening prayer. In part, here is what he said –
“We know Your Word says, "Woe to those who call evil good," but that’s exactly what we have done. We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and inverted Your values. We have ridiculed the absolute truth of Your Word and called it pluralism. We have worshipped other gods and called it multi-culturalism. We have endorsed perversion and called it an alternative lifestyle.
“We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery. We have neglected the needy and called it self-preservation. We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare. We have killed our unborn and called it a choice. We have shot abortionists and called it justifiable. We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building their self-esteem. We have abused power and called it political savvy. We have coveted our neighbor’s possessions and called it ambition. We have polluted the airwaves with filth and called it freedom of expression. We have taken Your word and turned it around to benefit our selfish desires."
God must get sick when He sees our long list of sins. We lust after our own sex and get hateful when someone says it is wrong. We have taken marriage and thrown it away like it was somebody else’s trash.
We call all of our friends and spread gossip like wildfire, when we could be telling them about the love and forgiveness found in Jesus Christ.
Peter reminded us that we were redeemed from the empty way of life, not by things of the world, but by the blood of Jesus. When the spear tore that hole in the side of Jesus, the blood that was spilled was for our sake. That blood keeps us from having to be crucified – if we will but accept it.
But to accept the blood, means to really accept Jesus. And to accept Jesus means to repent … or another way to say it is, ‘to turn from your wicked and ungodly ways and turn back toward God, to follow His Son and to get rid of the sin in your life.’
Sadly, there are many who have convinced themselves that they need to keep a particular sin in their lives. They can’t get along without it. How sad that these people are missing the very basic meaning of Christianity. I know a man who said he just couldn’t live without gambling. He found that he could, because he finally had to make a decision. That decision was to give up gambling, or give up his wife, daughter, and job. This man chose wisely. Many more don’t.
Sin promises the best, but pays with the worst; it promises honor, and pays with disgrace; it promises pleasure, and pays with pain; it promises profit, and pays with loss; it promises life, and pays with death.
Sin will also take you where you never wanted to go, it will keep you there longer than you ever expected to remain, and it will cost you much more than you were ever willing to pay.
Sometimes we learn quickly. There was a middle school in Oregon that began to have a problem. Seems the girls would all go into the girls’ bathroom and put on lipstick. Then, they would kiss the mirror and leave the greasy prints.
The principal called several of the girls in there, where the janitor was waiting for them. She explained that these were very hard to clean off the mirrors. And to show how hard it was, she asked the janitor to clean one of the mirrors.
He took an old dirty brush and dipped it in the toilet and then began scrubbing the mirror. The problem with lipstick on the mirrors came to a quick halt.
Just like that principal gave her students a picture of how disgusting it was to clean the mirrors, God has given His children a picture of how filthy our sin is.
It is a picture of a cross, with a man hanging on it, bleeding and dying. He has been nailed to that cross with nails and he has been pierced by a sword that went from his side up through his lungs and into his heart.
That is how sin looks to God. That is why he turned away while His own Son hung on the cross. He could not stand to see His Son dying there in sin. And He cannot stand to see you, dying in your sin, either, because the sin you keep in your life looks just like Jesus hanging on the cross.
The one thing I am most thankful for in my life is that God loved me enough to wait for me until I realized I needed to take His forgiveness seriously.
You might say that you are a sinner and have no hope, but God says give it to Him. You say you have let others down and now, you just don’t count. God says you count to Him.
You say that nobody knows the terrible things you have done, God knows, and says He will take you. You say you are worthless, and God says not to Him.
God loves you, and he stands waiting for you. All He wants is for you to just give it to Him. Will you do that this morning, as we head into our ….
INVITATION
