Dakota Community Church
February 15, 2009 pm
The Wall
I didn’t become a Christian until I was finished school and in University but many of my Christian friends over the years have expressed regrets about being cowardly where faith is concerned in their school years.
How do you think you will feel about the type of Christianity you display to your friends and school mates in the future? Will you be able to say you took a solid stand, or will you feel ashamed?
What does God really want from us in these difficult years?
Surely He must be understanding of the pressures that come with this time of life.
Luke 2:41-52
Every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the Feast of the Passover. When he was twelve years old, they went up to the Feast, according to the custom. After the Feast was over, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it. Thinking he was in their company, they traveled on for a day. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for him. After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him, they were astonished. His mother said to him, "Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you."
"Why were you searching for me?" he asked. "Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?" But they did not understand what he was saying to them.
Then he went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. But his mother treasured all these things in her heart. And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.
We often think of the late teens and early twenties as a searching time of life.
Don’t laugh at a youth for his affectations; he is only trying on one face after another to find his own. -- Logan Pearsall Smith
Three things I believe God is calling you to do in this time of life:
1. Find yourself … quickly!
I have a special gift for each person under 20 here this evening. (Hand out wrapped mirrors)
Many of you have been coming to KOZ for years but you never make the big decision.
You listen to Pastor Chris, you hear the Word of God, but you withhold your heart.
Why is that, especially those of you who really know the truth?
Look into that mirror – find yourself tonight!
James 1:22-24
Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.
Maybe you don’t like what you see.
That’s not a bad thing.
I know that I am supposed to build you up here, to tell you that you are alright, to try to help you come out of your shell, shake off the insecurities and feel good about who you are and how God made you. I’m not going to do that.
Don’t misunderstand me… I don’t want to hurt your self esteem tonight… I want to obliterate it!
You don’t need your self esteem built up tonight; you need to discover the horrible truth about who you really are!
Romans 7:18-24
I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?
This is the man who wrote two thirds of the New Testament!
The quicker you find yourself, really find yourself, the quicker you can admit that you are no good, there is nothing good about you, you are lost and hopeless and you haven’t got a prayer on your own.
None of us do!
Nothing good lives in me…
What a wretched man I am!
That’s why we have to follow up finding ourselves by asking:
Who will rescue me from this body of death?
Who will rescue me from this body of death?
2. Lose yourself … in Christ.
Mark 8:34-38
Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels."
I am calling you; Jesus is calling you tonight to lose your life in Him…and in so doing to save it!
2 Peter 1:2-4
Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.
His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.
Have you been holding back because you wrongly assume that someone will tease you and your life will be ruined?
Have you said no to the gospel because you think it will ruin all the fun life has to offer?
Are you avoiding Jesus because the girls won’t go for you if you are religious?
Why don’t you walk into almost any church in the city and look at any one of the goofy looking pastors and then ask yourself, “How did he get her?”
When you lose yourself in Christ you will no longer care what the mockers think. In that mirror you may be a shy quiet embarrassed little mouse of a man, but in Christ, in Christ all of that is meaningless. In Christ you can stand, in Christ you can face your critics; in Christ you are free to be the man He makes you!
Read Daniel 3
I don’t care if you have bowed 1000 times when the music played before now, In Christ you can face the flames and live!
Read 1 Samuel 17
I don’t care if you have always until now cowered on the hill when the champions of evil start strutting and shouting, in Christ you can face the giants and live!
1 Timothy 4:1-16
The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron. They forbid people to marry and order them to abstain from certain foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know the truth. For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.
If you point these things out to the brothers, you will be a good minister of Christ Jesus, brought up in the truths of the faith and of the good teaching that you have followed. Have nothing to do with godless myths and old wives’ tales; rather, train yourself to be godly. For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.
This is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance (and for this we labor and strive), that we have put our hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, and especially of those who believe.
Command and teach these things. Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity. Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching and to teaching. Do not neglect your gift, which was given you through a prophetic message when the body of elders laid their hands on you.
Be diligent in these matters; give yourself wholly to them, so that everyone may see your progress. Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers.
Now I know that not all of us are to preach like Timothy but that brings me to my final point, all of us who have found our horrible selves and then lost ourselves in Christ, all of us do have a place in the Body of Christ.
3. Fall in … to the wall.
1 Peter 2:4-10
As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him— you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For in Scripture it says:
"See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame." Now to you who believe, this stone is precious. But to those who do not believe,
"The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone," and, "A stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall." They stumble because they disobey the message—which is also what they were destined for.
But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
I tell you young men and women we need you to take your place in the wall.
Is your voice silent when the praises rise on Sunday?
Is your seat empty when saints gather?
Have you made the mistake of thinking the Church is not for you?
Come!
PowerPoint available (Free of charge) on request dcormie@mts.net
