Some of these things we are constantly being warned about, such as:
• Air Pollution
• Noise Pollution
• Water Pollution
• Smoking
• Fast foods
Most of these dangers come with some warning. But something that can bring DEATH and MISERY to our lives are bees, and we very seldom hear any warnings about them.
For example, there are some folks that are allergic to a bee sting. Once they are stung:
• Some will end up in the hospital
• Some will end up in the graveyard
About the only warnings we hear about bees, concern the Africanized honey bees, popularly known as the "killer bees,"
• These killer bees have been migrating from South America since the 50's.
• The domestic bee has lived in harmony with human beings for hundreds of years.
• The “killer bees” are not comfortable being around people or animals. Any colony of bees will defend its hive, but these “killer bees” do so with gusto.
This morning I want to talk to you about some “BE’S” we find in the Word of God. These are “BE’S” we can embrace, we do not need to fear them. As we begin looking at GOD’S “BE’S” in our text, we see that we are to ...
I. BE VICTORIOUS
Look at 1 Cor. 15:57, we read, “...thanks BE to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.....” In this verse of scripture, Paul is THANKING the Lord for giving us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ…
That makes us ask a question: “If the Lord gives us victory, why are so many Christians living a defeated life?”
The Lord wants to teach us how to BE VICTORIOUS. Does this mean that -
• Every time we have a problem the problem will be eliminated?
• Every time we have sickness we are going to get well?
• Every time we have a debt we are going to have plenty of money to pay it?
• Every time we have an argument we are going to win it? (You husbands KNOW this isn’t true)
No, that is not what this verse of scripture is teaching us. Having the victory through Jesus Christ means that we are able to live above our difficulties and problems.
It does not mean our problems will disappear, but that our worries and discouragement will.
Illus: Dr. Odell Belger was conducting a funeral in January of 2004. Before the funeral, he was talking with a man that is a wonderful Christian, who at one time was a store manager for one of the K-mart stores in Columbia, S.C.. Dr. Belger asked him how he was doing. He said, “I am doing better now, I do not know if you know this, but I just had a heart attack!” Dr. Belger told him he did not know that, and was sorry to hear about it, and he asked him if the doctor now had him on a special diet and exercise program. He said, “Yes, but its not food and a lack of exercise that caused the problem.”
He began to explain that the problem occurred when K-mart had to declare bankruptcy and at the same time the stock market went down.
• He went on to tell how he was getting ready to retire and he and his wife had plans to travel around the world.
• He had inherited a lot of stock from his parents years ago when K-mart was doing so well.
• He had been having a thousand dollars a month taken from his check to buy stock in K-mart.
• He then said, “Pastor, I had over two million dollars worth of stock. I was fixed for life, but today all that stock is almost worthless, and today I work at the funeral home to survive.”
He said this was such a tremendous blow to him that his heart could not take it.
Listen, this dear Christian man faced a trial that some back in the depression could not take, and they literally jumped out of tall buildings, ending their lives.
But the Lord wanted to teach him that he can BE VICTORIOUS!
HOW CAN THE LORD MAKE HIM VICTORIOUS? By giving him all his money back? No!
• The Lord can help him realize that life is more than stocks and bonds
• The Lord can help him realize that he can be penniless and still be the happiest man on this earth
The problems won’t disappear, but God wants to teach us we can live above our problems through Christ.
Illus: Paul prayed three times for God to remove the “Thorn in his flesh”, but God finally told him, He would not remove it but would teach Paul that His grace is sufficient!
In other words, God is saying He is going to teach you how to live above the problems.
Illus: Sometimes a pilot will be flying and see a storm before him. The storm is so severe there is no way he could ever get through that storm. But he then begins to climb to a higher altitude and he flies above the storm.
Psalm 34:19, “Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the LORD delivereth him out of them all.”
We see that we are to BE VICTORIOUS and we are to-
II. BE STEDFAST
As Christians, we want the Lord to be able to use us. But God has never been able to use anyone who was not stedfast.
Illus: When Jimmy Carter was president, this country had one of the worst economies it has ever had. As the experts began to examine the problem, they concluded the problem was that President Carter was not stedfast.
He would head in one direction, and the investors in this nation would began to invest in the direction he was taking the country. But then, once they invested, he would change directions and go another way. This caused the stock market to reach some of it’s lowest levels.
• The time when this country did the best, was when we had a president that announced what course he was taking and remained stedfast.
• The time when the church has been most successful was when God had stedfast Christians that never wavered.
In what ways are we to be stedfast? We are to -
A. BE STEDFAST IN OUR WALK
Get on the path of God and don’t waver from it.
Illus: This is the problem God had with Israel. They would get all fired up for God and serve Him, and the next week they would be serving Baal.
This is the same problem God is having with His people today. Many walk in the path of righteouness one day and the path of sin the next. Aren’t you glad the Lord is not like us? He does not love us one day and the next day not care a thing about us. One of the things we all appreciate about the Lord is His stedfastness.
We read in Lamentations 3:22-23, “It is of the LORD'S mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.”
He is stedfast (dependable) and He wants us to be stedfast.
B. BE STEDFAST IN OUR WORSHIP
If our dictionary is revised in the next few years, beside the entry for the word "stedfastness," there could possibly be a note which reads: "a once prized characteristic of human character which is now extinct."
You might think that is a bit ludicrous; but there is more truth to that statement than many realize! If stedfastness is not yet extinct in our culture, it is definitely moving in that direction!
• The characteristic of stedfastness is certainly one element that is missing in our society today!
• Marriages break up because of a lack of faithfulness!
• Friendships end in bitterness because of a lack of faithfulness!
• Churches suffer because of a lack of stedfastness!
When some folks attend church, we are surprised to see them coming. They are noted for not being STEDFAST. One day they love the LORD, and the next day they love the THINGS OF THE WORLD.
C. BE STEDFAST IN THE WAR
2 Tim. 2:3-4, “Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier.”
As a church, we are a regiment in the Lord’s army.
• We WALK TOGETHER
• WE WORSHIP TOGETHER
• WE WAR TOGETHER
In this battle, Satan is doing everything he can do to attack God’s church. We have a responsibility in THREE ways, such as:
(1) WE SHOULD BE STEDFAST IN EXTENDING GOD’S CHURCH!
We are to go out and bring others in! In Luke 14:23, we read, "And the Lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled."
• Are you going out and compelling people to come to the house of God?
• Or do you come and sit down and think you’ve done God a favor?
The devil is trying to capture all of our friends and loved ones and take them to a devil’s hell. But we should be STEDFAST in battling Satan every day, trying to keep this from happening.
We should bring them to the house of God where they can hear that the Lord loves them and died for them.
(2) WE SHOULD BE STEDFAST IN DEFENDING GOD’S CHURCH!
The devil is always attacking the church.
• I am convinced that the devil doesn’t like the PREACHING AND TEACHING OF GOD AROUND HERE
• I am convinced that the devil doesn’t like it when God’s Word is preached and people flock down to the altar, crying before God
• I am convinced that the devil doesn’t like it when God’s people come to church and get all fired up and leave here wanting to win their loved ones and friends to Christ
He does not like these things and he will try to use someone WITHIN or WITHOUT the church to try to STOP everything GOD IS TRYING TO DO!
There are people who allow someone to tear down God’s church and God’s man, and they never open their mouths.
Illus: Let me ask you something. Would you allow a FRENCHMAN to come to America and ridicule everything this country holds dear? As an American, if they spoke against our nation, would you would have the backbone to stand up against them?
Thank God for those in the church that are stedfast in the Lord, who will speak up to a crowd and tell the enemy of God, “There is not a bit of truth in what you are saying and you need to get right with God!”
Listen, God can only use people who are stedfast. They stand for what is right today, and they will be standing for what is right tomorrow.
Illus: Shandon Baptist Church in Columbia, S.C., is one of the largest churches in the city of Columbia. One day a group of preachers were at a local restaurant saying some terrible things about the pastor, out of pure jealousy. After this went on a few minutes, a woman in the next booth stood up and came to their booth and said, “I could not help but hear what you were saying about Dick Lincoln, the pastor of Shandon Baptist Church. And I just want you to know that there is not a bit of truth to what you said, and I should know because I am his wife!”
Illus: Years ago a woman attended a Bible-preaching church and she complained about everything.
One Sunday she came into the church nursery doing her typical fault finding.
But this Sunday she made a mistake. The Nursery director, a woman that loves the Lord, stopped her in her tracks. She told her she could not come into the nursery and talk about people. I am going to the pastor and have you removed from this nursery. She did just that, and in a few months when she realized everyone knew her for what she was, the fault finder left the church. And the church was a better church after she left.
Thank God for people who LOVE THE LORD’S CHURCH ENOUGH to DEFEND IT.
(3) WE SHOULD BE STEDFAST IN ATTENDING GOD’S CHURCH
DO YOU KNOW WHAT THE CHURCH IS? The church is a group of sinners who finally realized that they are nothing without the Lord, and who have decided to do something about it! One of the best ways to see if you are stedfast concerning the church, is to examine your church attendance.
Illus: I challenge you to do something. At the first of the month make a calendar, listing all the church services. Place an “X” each day you attend. At the end of the month look at the calendar and see how many “X’s” you have on that calendar.
Nothing reveals our stedfastness like our church attendance. For example, if a church has three services a week:
• If you only attend on Sunday morning, you miss 2/3 of the church services. How can you live a victorious life missing 2/3 of the church services?
• If you attend only Sunday Morning and Sunday evening, you miss 1/3 of the church services.
People’s church attendance shows if GOD IS FIRST IN THEIR LIVES OR IF THERE ARE OTHER THINGS THEY LOVE MORE THAN THEY LOVE THE LORD. How stedfast are you in attending God’s church?
We see that we are to BE VICTORIOUS, we are to BE STEDFAST, and ...
III. BE BUSY
1 Cor. 15:58b, “...always abounding in the work of the Lord,”
Illus: A woman went with her husband to the doctor’s office. When the checkup was over, the doctor asked the man to wait outside so he could talk to the wife. He had a very somber look on his face and asked her to sit down. He said, “Your husband is suffering from a very severe stress disorder. If you don’t do what I ask, he is not going to make it.”
“Here’s what I want you to do.
• Get up early each morning and fix him a healthy breakfast.
• Make him a nutritious lunch and prepare a really special dinner every night.
• Be pleasant at all times.
• Don’t burden him with chores or discuss your problems with him.
• You will need to do almost all the work around the house.
• And, you can not nag him about anything.
If you can do this for a year, your husband will completely regain his health.”
As they were driving home, the husband turned to his wife and asked, “What did the doctor say?” To which she replied, “He said you’re going to die!”
The woman was not willing to listen to the doctor, and a lot of folks are not willing to listen to the Lord. One of the things the Bible teaches is that we should BE BUSY serving Him.
The church in Thessalonica had some problems. They were all sitting around waiting for the imminent return of Christ, and had stopped working and had become idle.
• Because they had all this time on their hands they were “busy bodies”.
• The worst Christians in a church are those who have too much spare time on their hands. The reason they have so much spare time on their hands is because they will not do anything.
Illus: Warren Wiersbe puts it this way: “They had time on their hands and gossip on their lips, but they defended themselves by saying, ‘The Lord is coming soon!’”
This wasn’t the first time that Paul had to address these people. Look at 2 Thess. 3:10, he said, “For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat.”
Paul’s instruction for dealing with those who will not work, could be summed up as, “No loaf to the loafer and no soup for the slacker.”
Illus: When the United States was making plans to wage war against Saddam Hussein in Iraq, we asked other countries like France, Germany and Russia to help us overthrow the “Butcher from Bagdad,” but they would not. After a tremendous victory, when it came time to issue contracts for the rebuilding of Iraq, guess who wanted to be awarded lucrative contracts. Thank God our President said, “You did not shed any blood and you are not entitled to contracts in the rebuilding of Iraq!”
There are people in our churches that will not lift their hands to do anything for the Lord. But guess who wants the most say-so in everything…YOU’VE GOT IT!
God wants “Busy Bodies” but the kind he wants are those who are looking for something they can do that will exalt the Lord Jesus.
Conclusion:
I. BE VICTORIOUS
II. BE STEDFAST
III. BE BUSY
