It’s Thanksgiving Weekend and a couple of days ago we gathered with our family and friends and we thanked God for all that He has provided for us, the family that was sitting around the table, and certainly the food that was provided for us. We thanked Him for all He has done for us in our jobs and all these things. But have you ever sat back and simply thanked God that Jesus is enough, that He is our healer, that He is all that we need, that when life is falling apart, things are crumbling down around us and we don’t know what to do, are you thankful today that Jesus is there and that He will bring us through?
That is something that we as Christians need to be reminded of often. We need to be reminded that God loved us so much that He sent His Son Jesus to come to this earth, to be born in a manger. As we talk about what Jesus has done, we celebrate that. We celebrate the fact that 33 years later He allowed Himself to be crucified on that cross for you and me, that He was buried three days later and rose again to give us life, to give us salvation and freedom. We celebrate that because Jesus is all that we need.
The problem, however, is that we live in a culture, we live in a society, we live in a city where a lot of people don’t believe that. A lot of people don’t believe that Jesus is all that they need. People that are going through the same kind of crises that you and I are going through, the same kind of trials, the same kind of tribulation that we all face, and yet they don’t know, they don’t believe, they don’t cling to the fact that Jesus is everything that they need to get them through.
Oftentimes not even knowing Jesus at all. No clue about who He is, no clue about the Gospel, no clue about the death, burial and resurrection, no clue about God’s love for us.
And you know we, as a church, we, as a people, we have been sent here, and our job, our responsibility is to preach the Gospel to those people, to let them know who Jesus is. When Jesus died on the cross and rose again, a few days after that some of the last words that He spoke on this earth, we find it in Matthew 28, Mark 16, Acts 1, you know what He said? He said, “Go into all the world and preach the Gospel.” He said, “Go to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the outermost parts of the earth. Make disciples of all the nations.” He gave us our mission statement, our marching orders, if you will. Go preach the Gospel so that others might know who Jesus is, that others might know that Jesus is our healer, and that others would know that Jesus is all that we need. In the most difficult moments of life, when life is falling apart, Jesus is enough. That is what our duty is. That is what our job is.
Here at Thomas Road, our mission statement to change our world by developing Christ-followers who love God and who love people comes directly from Matthew 28, directly from Mark 16, directly from Acts 1. Jesus is saying, “Go and preach the Gospel. Don’t be ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ,” and that is something that we here at Thomas Road will always be doing.
But you know one of the challenges we have as a society, as people of the church, as people of faith is this: there are really only three ways we can do that. There’s really only three ways that we can preach the Gospel, that we can change our world, that we can evangelize the world. The three ways are first of all through our testimony, through what others see in us. The second way is through caring, and that is what others get from us. And the last way is through sharing. That is what others hear from us. So it is through our testimony—what they see; it’s through caring—what they get; it’s through sharing—what they hear. Those are the three ways we can evangelize the world.
And I would submit to you today that here at Thomas Road the people of the church and people of the churches, generally, around our country and around our world today, that we are pretty good at the last two. We are pretty good about caring for those in our community. We talked about it this morning. You saw on our video announcements today the opportunities we have to care for our community. You walk down Main Street and you see opportunity after opportunity of caring for those in need, whether it’s providing a toy to a child in need at Christmastime or digging a well in Guatemala, which we do each year; whether it’s going to Africa to minister or planting churches all across the country—at Thomas Road we planted over 1,100 churches last year. Whether it’s through ministering to those in need in our community, those who are hurting, providing food to those who are poor; regardless, we are pretty good at caring for our community.
We’re pretty good at sharing, too. Everything that we do here at Thomas Road centers around the Gospel. When we preach, we preach the Gospel. When we have events like the Virginia Christmas Spectacular, it’s about preaching the Gospel. When we have events like Kids Karnival, it’s about preaching the Gospel. When we do programs like Celebrate America, it’s about preaching the Gospel. When we have groups, it’s about preaching the Gospel. Everything we do, it’s about preaching the Gospel. We are not ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ because we know it is the power of God to salvation to everyone who believes.
We are good at caring and we are good at sharing. My fear is that all the good things we do through caring and sharing, sometimes those things are negated because we are not pretty good, sometimes, at the first one, the testimony, at what others see when they look at us. Do they see someone real? Do they see someone who is truly walking with God, living for God, honoring God in all that we do? Is that what they see? Because I’ll be honest with you: We can care all day long, we can share all day long, but if what people see when they look at us is someone who is not honoring God with their life, all of it is a waste of time because they are not seeing real change by a real God who really loves us.
So today that is what I want to talk about. I want you to turn with me to Psalm 119. We started this a couple of weeks ago, and if you remember Psalm 119 from a couple of weeks ago, we talked about how God’s Word makes all the difference. Today I want to talk about how our actions make all the difference. God’s Word makes the difference, but what we do with God’s Word makes a difference, too. I want to read from Psalm 119:29-37, a powerful statement, a powerful passage about what we as Christians must do in living out the Word of God.
It says,
Remove from me the way of lying, and grant me Your law graciously. I have chosen the way of truth; Your judgments I have laid before me. I cling to Your testimonies; O Lord, do not put me to shame! I will run the course of Your commandments, for You shall enlarge my heart. Teach me, O Lord, the way of Your statutes, and I shall keep it to the end. Give me understanding, and I shall keep Your law; indeed, I shall observe it with my whole heart. Make me walk in the path of Your commandments, for I delight in it. Incline my heart to Your testimonies, and not to covetousness. Turn away my eyes from looking at worthless things, and revive me in Your way.
I want to read this in the New Living Translation, because this is an important passage that I want us to get. I want us to really get the idea of what the psalmist has given to us. Here it says in verse 29, “Keep me from lying to myself.” In other words, keep me honest inside my own heart. Keep me honest. “Give me the privilege of knowing your instructions. I have chosen to be faithful; I have determined to live by your regulations. I cling to your laws. Lord, don’t let me be put to shame!” If you will help me, I will run to follow your commands. Teach me, O Lord, to follow every one of your principles. “Give me understanding and I will obey your law. I will put it into practice with all of my heart. Make me walk along the path of your commands, for that is where my happiness is found. Give me an eagerness for your laws rather than a love for money! Turn my eyes from worthless things, and give me life through your word.”
This passage is all about how we can make sure our actions are putting the Word of God into practice, keeping us in check, keeping us honest. This past week my family and I were out in California with Shari’s family for Thanksgiving, and on Friday we flew back. It was a pretty good plan. To get up early and fly across country on Black Friday is awesome because it keeps your family out of the malls on Black Friday. But when you fly commercial, you get to the airport and we know the drill now. We show up and we see that long line going through security. We’ve gotten to the point now we kind of understand as a nation after September 2001 how things have changed dramatically in security in the airports, so when we get there we know the drill.
We arrive at the security gate, the TSA checkpoint, and we take off our shoes and jackets, we take off our belts, we take our wallets, phones and keys out of our pocket and put them in to the bin. If we’ve got a computer, we take the laptop out and put it in the bin. We put our bags up there, make sure all our liquids are three ounces or less and put them in a little quart-size Ziploc bag. We’ve got it down, don’t we? It’s almost like a ritual now. Even my kids know what they have to do. And we do it as fast as we possibly can. We start taking our shoes and belt off before we get to the line. Years ago we would have been arrested for that, but now it’s normal. Now it’s what we do.
So everybody is going through the drill and we know the drill so well that when we get up there and the person in front of us doesn’t know the drill and they are having to be told, we get frustrated, “Come on, don’t you know this?” We know the drill; we know what we’re supposed to do. That is what this passage is talking about in our lives, making sure that we are keeping in check everything in our lives to ensure that we are being who God wants us to be, that our testimonies are in check, that we know the drill, if you will, about what it means to have a good testimony.
That’s what I want to talk about, briefly, in talking about this passage, because when we talk about our testimony, keeping it in check, making sure we’ve got the drill figured out, it’s basically in three ways. First, our thought life. What goes through our minds? What do we think about? What do we focus on or dwell on in our minds? We’ve got to be sure that if we’re going to have a good testimony, we have to protect our minds from what the world wants to corrupt our minds with.
And make no mistake; the world is trying to corrupt our minds. You can see it when you turn on kids’ cartoons and you can see things that years ago were only on after 10 o’clock on network TV. The world is trying to corrupt our minds, so we’ve got to understand that when we talk about keeping our thought life in check. Look at verse 29, “Keep me from lying to myself [keep me honest], give me the privilege of knowing your law. I have chosen to be faithful. I have determined to live by your laws.”
Those two words, “chosen” and “determined,” you know what that means? It means that it is a conscious decision that we must make every single day to follow after God, because the world is trying to do everything that it can to keep you away from God. The world is trying to lead you down a path that will take you away from God’s perfect plan, God’s will for your life.
This passage is very important. It tells us—because a lot of times what us Christians see, whether they got saved in a church like this one or maybe in a Billy Graham Crusade or watching something on television or being ministered to at the workplace by somebody who is a Christian, when they come to Christ, a lot of times when they come to Christ they think that God is going to do all the work in their lives, that everything is going to be figured out, that everything is going to change and their life is going to be great, going to be perfect because of what has just happened when they came to know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, and they continue to live as they lived before.
They continue doing today what they did yesterday. Nothing changes in the way they act. And you know what happens? Pretty soon they get disenchanted with the church. They come up with the idea that this is just all fake. They don’t see any change. They don’t feel any different. And we see that often. This passage is important to understand I have chosen to be faithful. “I have determined to live by our laws,” and it’s something that we realize that yes, when God saves us He changes us. He transforms us. We’re a new creation. But every single day, because we know that Satan is out there trying to steal and to kill and to destroy, we have to make a conscious effort to follow after Him and be diligent about it.
Look what it says in Colossians 3. Verse 1 says, “If then you were raised with Christ,” in other words, if you are a Christian, a follower of Christ, “seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things of this earth.” In other words, your thought life, what you are thinking about, you’ve got to focus on the things of God. How are you doing in that today? Because there are a lot of people that fill their mind with corruption, with things that are bad. We understand that. That’s kind of a no-brainer that if you fill your minds with pornography or things that are completely of this world, we know what that is going to do to the mind.
But what about filling your mind with things like negativity? What about filling your mind with things like that God is not enough, that Jesus is not all that we need, that I’ve got to figure out how to do this on my own? We fill our minds with that. The Bible says that if you are a child of Christ, if you have been risen with Christ—which we have if we are a child of God—then “Set your minds not on the things of this world, but set your mind on the things above where Christ is.” In other words, where He is alive and well and sitting on the throne, that the power of God that He has, that Jesus as the Prince of Peace, the King of kings and Lord of lords is still there. Set our minds on that.
The second thing, not only our thought life, but our inward sins. The things that we do inside, the things that we desire, the things that we want, the things that we think about, the things that we desperately desire in our lives. Look what it says in verse 31, “I cling to your decrees, Lord. Don’t let me be put to shame! If you will help me, I will run to follow your commands. Teach me, O Lord, to follow every one of your principles. Give me understanding and I will obey your law. I will put it into practice with all of my heart.”
That’s an important statement. I want to say something today and I want you to hear me say this. I want you to hear it, to understand it; I want to make sure it’s clear because otherwise I will get emails from you complaining about this. I want you to hear what I’m about to say, okay?
According to this passage, here is the idea: If we are going to make sure that our thought lives and then resulting in our inward sin, what is going on in our heart—not only in our mind but now in our heart—if we are going to make sure that we are following after Christ and doing the things of God, following after God, if you think that you can do it on your own, you’re wrong. If you think that you can actually follow Christ, you are wrong. If you think you can do the things that the Bible tells you to do, you are wrong apart from the power of the holy God in your life.
You see, there are a lot of Christians who think, “I’ve got my Bible here and I’m going to church. I’m showing up every time they’re having a meeting. I’m doing all the things I’m supposed to do and I’m doing all of these things the right way, so therefore I must be following God,” but they never change their heart. You know why? Because they are trying to do it in their own power. It is impossible to follow after God without seeking the power of God every single day in your life.
Look what Colossians 3 says; verse 5, “So put to death the sinful, earthly things lurking within you. Have nothing to do with sexual sin, impurity, lust, shameful desires. Don’t be greedy for the good things of this life, for that is idolatry. God’s terrible anger will come upon those who do such things.”
The first part of that verse, “So put to death,” that’s the idea of killing it off. Now we’re in the hunting season right now. How many of you are hunters out there? Raise your hand. We got a few hunters out there. We know there are people out hunting. You know why there aren’t a lot of people raising their hand? Because they’re out hunting! Church takes a second place to hunting during hunting season.
A lot of people are out there hunting. I am not a hunter, but I know people that are; I’ve got friends that are hunters and they love it. They are passionate about it. In fact, I was driving home Friday night and I saw a new kind of hunter that I didn’t know we had in this area. As I was driving on the road going to my house, I passed a car that had just actually hit a deer. Now you know when you hit a deer, if you’ve ever had the misfortunate of hitting a deer, you know what you do. You get out and look at your car and you’re upset because your car is messed up, and then you’ve got to call the insurance company. That’s not what these guys did. No, they hit the deer, they got out of the car, they gutted the deer in the middle of the road. They found a whole new way to hunt. They killed that deer, gutted it, took the meat home, and today that carcass is still on the side of the road. That’s a new kind of hunter.
Listen. Killing it off. That hunting season, that hunting idea, that’s what we have to do with the things of this world and the desires of the heart, because there is not a person in this room, not a person that has ever lived, not a person that will ever live until Christ returns that does not have a sinful nature. We all do. And our deep desire, our passion of our hearts because of that sinful nature that we have, we want to do the things of this world. We want to do those things, and so in order to not do those things, we’ve got to kill it off. How do we do that? We focus on the things of God. We’re diligent about the Word of God, studying the Word of God, talking to—getting on our knees before God, seeking His face, seeking the power of God in our lives. It is the only way we can do it.
How are you doing there? The things that you are looking at, the things that you are thinking about, the things that you are reading, the things that you’re watching, how are you doing in that regard, because testimony is so vitally important. What does your family think about you? When you come to this church or any church, you come and worship and sing the songs of God together, and your family is looking at you worshiping and then they know what you do at home. Are they seeing the same person at home they are seeing at church?
The inward sins, and lastly the outward sins. You see it starts in the mind, then it moves to the heart, then it becomes what we do to others and how we treat others and how we respond to others and the things that we do outwardly.
Psalm 119:35, “Make me walk along the path of your commands,” it’s a journey, “for that is where my happiness is found. Give me an eagerness.” And “eagerness,” in the King James they use the word “incline my heart,” and that word is the Hebrew word natah, which is literally to bend my heart, to turn it, completely change its entire nature and bend it. “Give me an eagerness for your decrees. Do not inflict me with love for money. Turn my eyes away from the worthless things and give me life through your word.”
In other words, the idea is this: outward sins, how we treat others, what we do, and the church, a lot of this has to do with gossip, the way that we treat other people, the way we treat other people in our community. We talk about reaching our community and preaching the Gospel in our community and sharing the love of Jesus in our community, but sometimes we talk it and talk it and talk it but we don’t really live it. We don’t live it out because what people see in us with regard to our testimony, how we treat others and what we do, they might see someone who genuinely cares for them, but they don’t genuinely react to that and treat them that way.
Yesterday morning I took Nicholas out to breakfast and we came home about 10:00, 10:30 and I was going to go in and wake up my daughter, Jessica, who had been sleeping. We’d been traveling this week and got all the jet lag, so we let her sleep in and get rest, but I wanted to wake her up because I didn’t want to get her all messed up for school, because school starts tomorrow.
So I went to her room yesterday morning, probably about 11 o’clock. I am the only one who will go wake her up on a Saturday morning; everybody else is scared to, but I go and wake her up. I get to her door and I’m getting ready to wake her up for the day, and when I did I happened to see that she had taken the time the night before to put this on her door. This says, “Please do not disturb. Please be quiet and considerate. I am trying to catch up on z’s, my sleep. Thank you. Shh. P.S. I do have two pocket knives in my room Be afraid.”
I was afraid. When I saw that sign, I took a picture of it because as I was thinking about my sermon for today that sign is a perfect picture of what often we do in our Christian lives, what we do with the community, what we do with those who don’t know Christ, what we do in relationship to evangelize and reach the world for Jesus Christ. We love the community, we want to reach the community, we do it in all the nice platitudes and statements, we want to change our world, but we have knives. Don’t come near me. Be afraid.
And what we do in our community in relationship to evangelism is “We love you, we want to reach you, we want to change you. We want you to see the love of Christ, but you know what? You’re going to have to change. You’re going to have to do some things. You’re going to have to clean up. You’re not good enough to come in. We love you, but we don’t want to hang around you because of the things you do. We love you, but we’ve got to avoid you because of the way that you act. We love you and we want to share the love of Christ with you, but we’re going to lock our doors when we drive by.”
That’s how we treat the world. It’s interesting to note that when you read stories of the life of Christ, when you read through the Gospels and see what it is that Christ did, Christ actually not only talked about loving the world, but you know what He did? He talked about loving sinners and then He actually loved them. He actually did it. He actually reached out to them and wrapped His arms around them. He ministered to them. He ate with them. He talked with them. He walked with them. He treated them with the love of God.
How are we doing there? Because I’ll be honest with you, man, you can care with the best of them. You can share with the best of them. But if your testimony is not where it needs to be, you’re wasting your time. You might as well stop caring for them. You might as well stop sharing if that is what people see. Because you see when people look at us, they really see one of three things. They see either something different, something better, or something familiar—you’re just like me—or they see something worse—a hypocrite, someone who says the right things but they don’t live it.
So my question is this: When we talk about testimony, it’s so vitally important, we talk about evangelizing, changing the world for Jesus Christ, preaching unashamedly and unswervingly, are you preaching it with the way you live? Are you preaching it with the way you act? Are you preaching it with the way you treat others? When people look at you, do they see something different or do they see something that is exactly like the world?
I’m afraid a lot of times when the world looks at followers of Christ, people who go to church, people who do the right things, I’m afraid that what they see is not a whole lot different than they are. I’m afraid what they see is no different than what the world does. Or far worse, when they look at us, what they see is someone who says the right things and tries to make people think that we’ve got it all together, but privately, inwardly, secretly we are nothing but a hypocrite and we’re living way away from the Word of God.
They will see something different, which means someone who’s living for God and walking with God, living it out, loving others with the love of God; they’ll see something familiar, or they will see something worse. And I just want to leave you with this today: Which are you? Which one are you? I shared with you earlier out of Psalm 119, the first part of that passage says, “I will choose to follow you.” I have decided to follow you. I will do this. I have decided. This is a conscious decision. In other words, that has to be for all of us.
You’re going to make a conscious decision whether you’re going to follow Christ or whether you’re not, so what is it? How are you living today? Because if we’re going to have a mission statement that says we’re going to change the world with the Gospel, yeah, we’re going to care and yeah, we’re going to share, but we better be living it. People had better be able to look at us and see something different, and that difference that they see had better be Christlikeness, the love of Christ. And today that is my prayer and hope for each and every one of you, that when people look at you, what they see is someone who desperately wants to be like their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. That’s how we change the world.
Would you pray with me today?
Father, we thank you for your love. We thank you for all that you’ve done for us. You’ve provided for us in amazing ways. We thank you that you are enough. We thank you for salvation. We thank you for the fact that in the darkest days of life you are all that we need. You are our healer, our provider, that you minister to us in those moments. We thank you for all of that. God, we thank you for the Word of God. We thank you for the Bible that you’ve given to us to lead and to guide us. We thank you for the cross. We thank you for the empty tomb.
But Lord, we also thank you today for the opportunity that we have to become more like you. And God our prayer is that that would be the desire of our heart. I pray that each of us today, in this moment, the desire of our heart is to be genuine, to be authentic in our love for and our walk with Christ.
Today’s message is just one that testimony matters. How you live matters. What you do with the Word of God in your life matters. A simple message. So this is a simple invitation; a simple invitation for each one of you, and that is just simply this: Are you living your life to be more like Christ, or are you not? Something different or are you living something familiar? Something different or something worse?
Here is the great thing about God. He loves us so much that He gives us the opportunity that no matter where we are in our life, He allows us to change. There is always hope. He gives us that opportunity that when we’ve gotten far away from him, 1 John 1:9 tells us that He welcomes us back if we will just simply confess. He will forgive us, He will cleanse us, He will wrap His arms around us, He will take us back. So today’s invitation is if you are a Christian but you are not living for God, your testimony is in shambles, what your family sees of you and what your coworkers see of you, what your friends see of you is something totally different than what maybe I as your pastor see in you, or far more important, what God sees in you, because God looks on the inward, not on the outward, I’m going to ask you to say, “God, I’m sorry. I want to change now. I want to be on the outside what I am on the inside, and I want it to be all about you, to honor you with everything.”
Maybe you are not a Christian; you don’t know Christ as your personal Savior. We’ve talked numerous times today about that God loved us so much He sent His Son to die on the cross for us. He was buried and three days later rose again. That Jesus is the way, the truth and the life; no man can come to the Father except through Him. There is good news for you today. We talk about giving and the holiday season. I want to give you something today that is the best thing you’ll ever hear: Romans 5:8 tells us that God loves you so much He demonstrated that love in that while you were still a sinner, while you were still far from God, He sent His only Son Jesus to die for you.
The Bible tells us in Romans 10 that all we’ve got to do is believe in our heart, confess with our lips that Jesus is Lord, that He was raised from the dead, and the Bible says you will be saved. We can accept and receive that incredible gift with simply a decision of the heart, because that’s how much God loves you. He’s not going to make you work for it, He’s not going to make you buy it, He’s not going to make you wait for it. No, it’s there, right now, today.
So if you don’t know Christ, I invite you to make this the day that you meet Jesus Christ. Make this the day that everything changes. Second Corinthians 5:17 says if we are in Christ we are made a new creation. All the old is passed away and everything becomes new. That is what God desires for you, that everything becomes new.
So as we sing, I invite you, if God is speaking to your heart to change something, to come back to Him, to change your testimony, or maybe to come to Him for the first time, I’m going to ask you to respond right now.
(Singing “I Surrender All”)
We can care for those around us who are lost and away from God. We can care for them and share with them about what God did when He sent His Son Jesus to die on the cross, but if what they see in us is something that runs completely counter to the Word of God, then all of our efforts might be in vain. You might have a loved one that is away from God; you might have a loved one that you know is not a Christian and you want to see them come to Christ, you want to see their lives changed, but your life hasn’t changed. Why would you expect that they would want to change and come to Christ when all they’ve seen in you is somebody who has never changed?
If your testimony is not where it needs to be, if inside and outside you are not living for God and living for the Word of God, allowing Him to lead you each and every day, listen to what He’s telling you. Step out and change things now. There is no better time than right now to get things right with God.
