Have you ever miscommunicated your thoughts when trying to convey them to another? Most of us have, and then the following confusion can be very irritating, if not dangerous.
Sometimes, miscommunication can be very frustrating.
‘A man called his neighbor to help him move a couch that had become stuck in the doorway. They pushed and pulled until they were exhausted, but the couch wouldn’t budge. "Forget it," the man finally said. "We’ll never get this in."
The neighbor looked at him quizzically and said, "In?"
Then again, there are times when miscommunication leads to absolute bewilderment.
‘A husband who was not used to doing the laundry, was going to wash some of his dirty clothes but did not know which setting to set the washer on. He yelled upstairs to his wife and said, “What setting do I was my sweatshirt on?” She asked him what it said on the shirt, and he yelled back, “Ohio State”.
And then again, there times when we just do not understand at all. The problem is that we use two words interchangeably, but they mean two different things. They are ‘communicate’ and ‘information’. See, the word communicate means to ‘give out’, while the word information means to ‘get through’. Most of us are very good at ‘giving out’, but not all of us are good at ‘getting through’.
··· When Gerber first started selling baby food in Africa, they used the same packaging as here in the USA--with the cute baby on the label. Later they found out that in Africa companies routinely put pictures on the label of what is inside
since most people cannot read.
··· When Pepsi started marketing its products in China a few years back, they translated their slogan, "Pepsi Brings You Back to Life" pretty literally. The slogan in Chinese really meant, "Pepsi Brings Your Ancestors Back from the Grave."
··· And, then they found out why the Chevy Nova never sold well in Spanish speaking countries. "No Va" means "It Does Not Go" in Spanish....
But, sometimes, miscommunications can be downright dangerous. This notice was found in a newspaper:
··· ‘In our book, “Skydiving Made Easy”, please make the following correction: On page 12, cross out ‘ENTER ZIP CODE’ and write in ‘PULL RIP CORD’. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.’
Sometimes, we just fail to express ourselves properly, and the results are disastrous. Many times, Christians do not properly convey their message, either.
In HEBREWS 1:1-2, we read
‘In the past, God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days, He has spoken to us by His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, and through whom He made the universe.’
1. GOD HAS BEEN TRYING TO GET OUR ATTENTION FOR A LONG TIME
I think this is the perfect example of what I said a moment ago. See, all this time, God was ‘giving out’, but the hardness of our hearts kept Him from ‘getting through’.
From the very beginning, God wanted us to focus on Him; to love Him and be obedient to Him, but what did we do? We kept focusing on what we wanted; what we desired; and what we thought – all to the total exclusion of God Almighty.
We have hated the very same people we were supposed to love. We concentrated more on killing those same people we were supposed to be trying to bring to Christ. We have coveted from the same people we were supposed to reach out and give to.
God started out by having personal fellowship with Adam and Eve. He would come down to the garden during the coolness of the day and walk with them. Think about that for a moment. How awesome would that be? That, by the way, is something that every person here today should be desperately seeking – a very personal and intimate relationship with God, through His Son, Jesus. But what did Adam and Eve do?
They ignored what God had told them, and instead, they concentrated on what they wanted. God spent the next several thousand years trying to get everyone’s attention back on Him, but the curse had already been instilled in us. We became selfish and bitter against God. We ignored the prophets that God sent to warn us, and just went to war against one another. We chose to kill rather than listen.
What did God do next? He did not just shake His head in disgust and walk off. He then decided to take drastic steps. He sent His Son, whom He loved very much, down here to be our blood sacrifice. Could we ever love someone enough to let our children be a blood sacrifice for them? I don’t know about you, but I know that I am so weak that I would be trying to hide my son rather than have him be sacrificed for others that hated him.
Why did God do this? EPHESIANS 2:4 tells us that because God loves us so much, and because He is so rich in mercy, He made us live again through Jesus – even when we were spiritually dead in our sins. That is why God sent His Son for us – because of His great love for us. He sent His Son in response to our failure to communicate with God.
It is only through Jesus that we find the primary message of the entire New Testament. It says it best in HEBREWS 1:3 –
‘The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His being, sustaining all things by His powerful word.’
In other words, everything we ever need to know about God, we will find fully in Jesus Christ. If you would like to know what God thinks, how He feels or what He looks like, just look towards Jesus. Everything Jesus is represents the perfect image of God the Father.
Verse 4 continues by telling us that Jesus went to Heaven and sat at the right hand of God, and that He became superior to the angels. Contrary to what some false teachers say, Jesus is fully God. He is one of the Holy Triune. He was at the beginning and He will be at the end. And, if your desire is to be closer to God, you must first recognize that you need to have a personal and loving relationship with the Son.
1 JOHN 5:21 tells us that he who has the Son has life, but he who has not the Son does not have life. Let me repeat this very important truth to you:
The only way you can get to Heaven is through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Too many people sitting in churches across America today are going through all the motions; pretending to be Christians when they don’t have any understanding at all what a real Christian is. Why are they like that? Because they are focused on how important they are rather than how important Jesus is to them.
The Pharisees were religious leaders of Jesus’ day. They were all caught up in following the rules of religion. They went to the synagogues regularly; tithed their share – even while ignoring the needs of their families; and they loved to wear all the proper garments of their positions. They would enjoy the status and notoriety they would get when they walked in the marketplace, and they really liked getting the best seats at restaurants and theaters.
See, they made sure they ‘looked’ like Godly men, but they never bothered to make sure they ‘were’ Godly men. That is like many people sitting in church who think they are good Christians. They look at how they impress others, not how they impress God. 1 SAMUEL 16:7 says that men look at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart.
Jesus is not about the rules or the looks. He is all about the heart. There is nothing more that He wants from you, but by the same token, there is nothing less that He will settle from you.
God has been busy trying to give information out to us, but we have refused to let that information get through because of our hardened and selfish hearts.
2. WE ARE THE VERY OBJECT OF ALL OF GOD’S LOVE
What would you think the biggest hurdle in our walk with Christ is? I will tell you what it is: It is the lie from Satan that we are not worthy of God’s love. I have heard people tell me that they will not go to Heaven because of how bad they have been in their lives. They say that they have just given up and acknowledge that their lot will be in hell.
That is what Satan wants! He wants you to give up so you will just quit trying to walk with Jesus. What BUNK! He is the author of all lies, and the instiller of all confusion, so why do we spend so much time listening to him?
Let me clarify how God thinks. Let us say that you know a person who is very free in letting you know that he hates you. Pretty soon, being human, you are going to start hating him, aren’t you? That is how a lot of people think God feels, but He doesn’t.
God knows many people either hate Him, or at best, just ignore Him and never acknowledge Him in their lives. Go back to EPHESIANS 2:4 and read the first eight words again. “BUT BECAUSE OF HIS GREAT LOVE FOR US…’ We may not love or acknowledge God, but He loves us so much He will never give up on us.
JOHN 3:16 says that
‘God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son so that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.’
JOHN 3:17 says,
‘For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn it, but to save the world through Him.’
And, finally, JOHN 3:18 says,
‘Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.’
God has been giving out information to us, but we have not let that information get through to our hearts. Why would God keep trying to communicate His love for us over thousands of years, if He really did not love us as the Bible says He does?
The very sad part is that too many people do not understand the concept of His love, because we do not let Him get through to us. It is like the woman who went into the post office and asked the window clerk for 100 stamps. The clerk asked the lady which denominations she would like and she blurted out, “Just give me 50 Baptist and 50 Methodists.” She had no clue because she had never bothered to try and understand.
We can busy ourselves with the art of looking like a good Christian, or we can drop the prideful pretense and actually start worshiping the Lord with our hearts. It will only be at that point that we can really know we are saved and going to Heaven.
3. WE ARE PRIDEFUL, AND PEOPLE OF PRIDE DO NOT ACCEPT GIFTS
God gave us minds that rely heavily on logic, so let’s use some logic for a minute.
If we were not important to God, would He have tried for thousands of years to communicate to us that we are important to Him? The answer is NO. If we were not important to God, would He have sent His Son specifically to die upon the cross so that we would have His shed blood to cover our sins? Again, the answer is NO.
Now, I want you to pay attention to this because this is the kicker. You know that you are very important to God, or you would not be here in church this morning. So, if we know this, why do we fight so hard to keep the pride and to expel the Son?
In GENESIS 1:26-27, we see that God created us in His own image and that He put us in charge of everything on this planet. He would not have done this had He not loved us and felt that we were important to Him.
In verse 28, we see where God blessed the human race. Again, if we were not important to Him, we would have received none of His blessings.
You have heard some people being referred to as ‘control freaks’. Those people have such a need to be in control they will end up causing a good situation to go bad, just so they will have the control. They feel that if they are not in control, they will just totally fall apart.
The tragedy of this is that by keeping all that control, you actually escort Jesus to the door of your heart and throw Him out! In MATTHEW, it says we cannot have two masters, that we will love one and hate the other. If we hang on to our ability to control ourselves, we are letting ourselves become the masters of our lives, and we will end up loving us to the hate we will end up feeling for Jesus.
This week, I was listening to a talk show on radio. It was a Christian show and this lady called in and was berating the host, saying that there was no way she was ever going to be stupid enough to believe in Jesus, as He was nothing but a man. She said that she knows where she is and she knows how to get to where she is going.
This woman is a very prideful woman. She is holding on to her own control and she actually hates Jesus by denying His deity. The saddest secret in the world is the number of people who sit in the church pews and go through the motions, but have such a hardened heart because they can’t give up their own self-control – even if it means they are going to hell when they die. And if you are one of those people right now, you know it. You feel the tug of God trying to get through to you, but you are quick to deny Him the chance.
A pastor once went to a barber to get a haircut. All through the haircut, the pastor wanted to witness to the barber, but the barber kept talking non-stop and gave the pastor no chance to interrupt.
Later, when the pastor was paying for the haircut, he asked the barber if he was a good man. The barber said he was. The pastor then asked if the barber believed in God, and the barber affirmed that he did. The pastor then asked if the barber thought he would go to heaven, and the barber said that he would because he was such a good man.
The pastor then told the barber that he could use a haircut, too. The barber agreed, but said that he had just been so busy he didn’t have a chance.
The pastor said, “Don’t worry, you have a few minutes now, so sit down and I will cut your hair for you.” The barber quickly told the pastor that he couldn’t do that because he wasn’t trained to do it.
The pastor assured the barber that he would truly do his very best to do it right, and the barber laughed at him and said, “You best is simply not good enough to do it right.” The pastor responded by saying, “That is right. And trying to be the best person you can is simply not good enough to get into Heaven.”
As we go into our time of invitation, I ask you to think for a minute. Where are you RIGHT NOW in relation to Jesus? Are you the one who has total control over your heart? When is the last time you honestly spent any time really praying to get closer to Jesus?
Do you feel a bit antsy and uncomfortable as I talk about your relationship with Jesus? If you do, that is just God trying to get through to you. You now have the information and are fully accountable for it. What is your decision going to be? Are you going to submit your heart to Christ, or are you going to keep the control and go to hell? There are no other choices and there is no gray area.
I pray you make the right choice.
INVITATION
