The World Says:
“Cheating on your taxes is okay- it doesn’t hurt anybody”
Scripture: Galatians 6:7 Date: 14 March 2010
Purpose: To share that cheating doesn’t help you in life as the world tells us. It hurts us in the end.
We are surrounded by lies each and every day. Each day of our lives we are faced with ethical decisions that we need to weigh. We ask ourselves “what is true and what is a lie”? As Christians we need to seek God’s will and guidance in all things.
The world is full of deceit, evil, and lies; this is what we must realize as we live in this world. God’s truth is not what the world tells us.
I have recently been studying a book called, “Truth- Seeing Black and White in a Gray World”. This book is a straight forward look into what the world tells us and what God tells us. It’s a wonderful study for any worldly topic to be weighed against God’s truth. I have found a few items with in this book that I have felt lead to share with you.
This morning we begin our sermon series is entitled: “The World Says”. The world says many things that will hinder our relationship with God and we must identify the lies and see the Truth.
We feel the pressures of the world each and every day. To make the honor roll, a student cheats on examinations. To lower a tax bill, an entrepreneur pads business expenses. To be the best in a sport, an athlete takes steroids. We say, “What I did hurts no one.” Each smiles in satisfaction at being clever enough to beat the system to work in their advantage.
At this time of the year we are all faced with taxes. No one really enjoys taxes but I think we would all agree that we enjoy the returns. Cheating on your taxes to get a bigger return or even cheating on your taxes to lower what you owe can be a temptation for some.
God tells us that there are no short cuts. No short cuts in life and no short cuts to heaven. Our supreme example is Christ himself. He didn’t take any short cuts in life. Sure He was tempted, who wouldn’t be in the same situation. He was in agony, complete and total pain, He was face with hatred from the masses, He was tortured and he was dying. Jesus had the power to end all of His suffering. He could of stopped it all with a simple blink of His eyes but He stood fast and firm. He knew God’s plan and He completed it without taking any short cuts, Jesus was not a cheater nor should we be in this life.
Galatians 6:7 (Contemporary English Version) You cannot fool God, so don’t fool yourself! You will harvest what you plant.
*RELEASE THE CHILDREN FOR CHILDREN’S CHURCH*
A couple of weeks ago we played Hide and Go Seek in the church with IGNITE. It was a great time and we were able to bring a wonderful godly message from it. We learned that we can run from everyone and from everything in this world but we can never hide from God. And you know what else,
I. Our Cheating cannot hide from God!
A. Cheating not just on your taxes but on anything can easily become a habitual habit. Acts of cheating can worm their way into our daily practice. Little instances of trickery pass unnoticed by anyone and establish themselves as habit.
Illustration: I have met people in my life that cheat on their taxes each
year. And guess what, they don’t see anything wrong with it at all. They have
done it for years, little lies and deceit in order to cushion their pockets during
tax time. They get away with it as they always have and it becomes a habit. It
becomes just the way they do their taxes each year.
1. Ask your selves, “When there’s little chance of being caught, do I cheat? If I could explain away or cover up an act of deception, would I go ahead with it?”
2. Cheating, even cheating never detected by anyone, cannot hide from a holy God who sees inside the heart.
3. When you stop and think about it, Isn’t it crazy that we even try to hide anything from God when we know there is no way in the world that we can hide anything from Him? We can run but we cannot hide from God.
4. The psalmist knew that hiding from God was a fruitless enterprise. Psalm 139:7 where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?
5. He also knew (and described in various graphic passages such as Psalm 51) that it was his sin that drove him to try to hide from God and which erected a wall of separation between him and God.
6. When we think about cheating, we also need to realize that,
II. Our Cheating is an offense against God!
A. John 1:6-7 6If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in
the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. 7But if we walk
in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one
another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
1. No Cheater obtains God’s peace because dishonesty denies the Spirit of truth. No cheater possesses the serenity of a clear conscience.
Psalm 38:4 My guilt has overwhelmed me like a burden too heavy to bear.
Illustration: Cheating will ultimately separate us from God. It doesn’t matter if your cheating on your taxes or even in a sporting event, cheating hurts our relationship with God.
We’ve heard it time and time again. He or she cheated on their spouse with another person, they were dishonest, they were doing something they shouldn’t. Their marriage becomes strained. Lack of trust has built a wall between them. Their relationship isn’t the same because of the guilt that has set into their hearts like concrete. And they can’t face one another because that guilt will not allow it and Satan has just one the battle.
- Likewise, when we go against our Lord. When we cheat on him, lie to him, do things we shouldn’t do; our relationship becomes strained and we allow that hurt to tear apart the relationship that God so desperately wants with us. Just the guilt alone may drive us away from Him because we cannot face God with the guilt we have in our hearts.
2. The wonderful news for our stained relationship is that God has not and will not turn his back on us. He is still there no matter what you did against Him, with open arms. He is calling to you.
Proverbs 28:13 He who conceals his sins does not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy.
3. We allow guilt to keep us back because of fear. We are afraid of not being forgiven but why do we accept this lie?
Illustration: Jesus tells us the story of The Prodigal Son, also known as the Lost Son, is one of the best known parables of Jesus. The story is found in Luke 15:11-32.
Jesus tells the story of a man who has two sons. The younger demands his share of his inheritance while his father is still living, and goes off to a distant country where he "wastes his substance with riotous living" and eventually has to take work as a swineherd (clearly a low point, since swine are unclean in Judaism). There he comes to his senses and decides to return home and throw himself on his father’s mercy, thinking that even if his father does disown him, being one of his servants is still far better than feeding pigs. But when he returns home, his father greets him with open arms and hardly gives him a chance to express his repentance. He kills a fatted calf to celebrate his return. The older brother resents the favored treatment of his faithless brother and complains of the lack of reward for his own faithfulness. But the father responds:
– Luke 15:31-32 " ’My son,’ the father said, ’you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’
4. This is how our Father in heaven is as well. He rejoices when those of us that have been living of the world and have been cheating our way through life, come to him and repent.
5. The prodigal son swallowed his fear of not being forgiven, of not being loved, and he went to his father. When I think of this parable I picture the son on bending knee at his father’s footstep, telling his dad how sorry he is while his father is reaching down to him lifting him back to his feet greeting him with a warm tight embrace.
6. There are times in our lives that we may have separated ourselves from our father and we need to go back to him. We simply need to knock on His door and say.”FATHER, FORGIVE ME OF MY WRONG DOINGS, FORGIVE ME OF MY CHEATING WAYS, FORGIVE ME OF BELIEVING SATAN’S LIES AND NOT HAVING FAITH IN YOU”
7. Have you realized that people always get hurt when we do wrong?
III. Our Cheating always takes victims!
A. The first victim is not the one that most would realize but the first victim is the cheater.
1. When we give in to the flesh and cheat, it’s like we are telling to God that we do not have faith. It’s like we are saying to Him, “I am not good enough, I’m not smart enough, I can’t do this on my own and I know that you will not help me through it. So, I need to cheat.”
2. When we cheat on anything in this life that God has blessed us with, it is much like driving a wedge between us and God.
3. We are told most of our lives that in order to get ahead you need to crush those around you. It doesn’t matter how many people you step on to get to the top. It’s all about you and no one else. You deserve to be happy at any cost.
4. Usually when we cheat, someone other than our selves gets hurt. Cheaters have no compassion or feelings about those they step on in order to get what they want.
5. This is not the Christian way.
VIDEO: “Worthless”
Colossians 3:12 Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.
6. We can clothe ourselves in as much Christian apparel as we can find but the bottom line is, if we don’t have the compassion of Christ, all that we have is worthless.
7. I believe compassion is something that seems to be lacking from many of our lives today. This is one area in which cheating on anything shows a complete lack thereof.
Conclusion:
A couple weeks ago I listened in on the retirement of Dr. James Dobson from his long going ministry of Focus on the Family. His wife, Shirley spoke and she told a story that really spoke volume.
Jim, as Shirley calls Dr. Dobson, Hates mayonnaise. He ate some spoiled mayo when he was a young child and to this day he cannot eat it. One day , early in their marriage, he asked Shirley to make him a tuna fish sandwich. She said she was completely baffeled, “How do I make a tuna sandwich without Mayo?” You see the mayonnaise holds the egg, onion, celery, or whatever else you put in it all together. She thought since tuna has such a strong odor, she would put just a spoon full of mayo in it and mix it up. “He would never know the difference”.
She placed the plate in front of him on the table and she sat down across from him to enjoy their lunch. Dr. Dobson asked her, “Did you put mayonnaise in this?” Shirley responded, “Now, Jim You know that I know you don’t like Mayonnaise!” And they ate their tuna sandwiches.
He took a few bites of his tuna sandwich and asked his wife again, “Are you sure you didn’t put any mayonnaise in this?” She said “Of course not, now just eat your sandwich Jim.”
She said as they sat there eating their lunch she felt horrible. She had lied to her husband, she had cheated in making that tuna sandwich and had done something that she knew was wrong. It was killing her! She said that she could hardly finish her meal.
She finally confessed and told her husband that she had lied and that she was sorry. She told him that she cheated in making it and had no idea how to make a tuna sandwich without placing mayonnaise in it.
James sat down with her on that afternoon and told her how important it is in life to never take short cuts and cheat in anything. He told her that even though this situation was a small deal, it was still a lie and she still cheated. If she would cheat on making a tuna sandwich for her husband and lie to him about such a small deal, what is to say that she would cheat and lie later on in their marriage when the big things come their way?
- The world tells us that it is okay to cheat on some things and lie on some things but these are things that will strain our relationship with God and place a wedge between us. God desires a close relationship with each of us. He sent us Son to die for us in order to have that relationship with Him. I pray that we have all received Jesus and that we are diligently seeking God in all areas of our lives.
