INTRO.- ILL.- Fact or fiction?
· "I just got a hot tip from an inside source that this will go through the roof."
· "The word on the street is that this deal is ready to take off."
· "There is no way you can lose money. Your return is guaranteed!"
· "Everyone is getting in on this."
· "You gotta get in on the ground floor now or you’ll be left out in the cold. Let me send a messenger over tomorrow to pick up your check."
· "This is so sure fire all you have to do is sit back and watch your profits come rolling in."
What do these words sound like to you? Fact or fiction? These are the words of the con artist who is about to clean house on you and your bank account.
ILL.- November 10, 2001 - Con artists posing as cops take couple for $40,000 - Clarion-Ledger Staff Writer, Jackson, Mississippi
An elderly Jackson couple was swindled out of $40,000 Friday by two men who flashed badges and posed as police detectives, an official said.
The 87-year-old man and his 75-year-old wife were approached at 4 p.m. in front of the Albertson’s supermarket on Ridgewood Road, said Robert Graham, a Jackson Police Department spokesman.
"The couple felt they were helping the police find a crooked bank employee," Graham said.
"They were told to go to three different branches of the same bank and withdraw thousands of dollars in cash."
The swindlers convinced the couple the money would be given back to them later in the day at a location on Woodrow Wilson.
After waiting several hours, the man and wife went to the police who would not release the couple’s names.
"It’s a scam that’s been used several times here in the city," Graham said. "The police are not going to walk up to the general public and ask them to participate in police work."
ILL.- Did you ever hear of televangelist Robert Tilton out of Texas? The Miami News Times reported this about Tilton. While skeptics dismissed him as a low-rent Southern cultural phenomenon, Tilton was hee-hawing all the way to the bank. At his peak he purchased 5000 hours of airtime per month and appeared in all 235 U.S. television markets.
His daily Success-N-Life show reached virtually every TV set in North America. Tilton’s mass-market ministry pulled in $80 million per year, and his Dallas church drew as many as 5000 worshipers to Sunday service. He trotted the globe, wore $2000 tailored Italian suits, and drove, depending on his mood, a Mercedes-Benz or a Jaguar. He occupied multimillion-dollar residences near San Diego and Dallas and a waterfront vacation home in Fort Lauderdale. Of course, the facts of his gaudy lifestyle and the astonishing size of his business enterprise remained largely hidden until after his eclipse began.
One issue Tilton did dwell on was worldly wealth. Day after day he pitched a narrow, well-oiled version of the "prosperity gospel." In exchange for $1000 "vows" from followers, Tilton promised to lobby God for miraculous improvements in their health and finances. "If Jesus Christ were alive today and walking around, he wouldn’t want his people driving Volkswagens and living in apartments," he explained.
Then came November 21, 1991. On that evening, ABC’s Prime Time Live aired the findings of a six-month investigation into the ministries of Tilton and two other TV preachers.
The segment on Tilton was by far the most damning. At its heart was the accusation that Tilton never saw the vast majority of prayer requests and personal correspondence sent to him by faithful viewers. On the air Tilton promised to pray over each individual miracle-plea. But ABC said it found thousands of those requests dumped in garbage bins in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Checks, money orders, and in some cases cash, food stamps, and even wedding rings sent by followers had been removed for deposit at a nearby bank.
Tilton and his lawyer claimed the Dumpster documents had been stolen by enemies of the church and then planted in the trash.
Cross-examination of Leigh Valentine (his second wife), September 4, 1996, court testimony:
She said, “Bob’s mail ministry is a lie and a total deception. He does not write those letters. He did not even proofread them during our marriage.
“He makes it sound like [he’s] writing to you right now, this is what God spoke to me for your life, Jesus will appear to you tonight; if you sleep with this little red cord under your pillow, you will prosper.
“He doesn’t even know what’s going out to those people, and he doesn’t care, as long as they send their money in.
“He is stealing from people. Most of those people are on welfare. They’re little Hispanics and blacks. And he even said, ’What I do is I look at a map and we go after the ghettos, we go after those on welfare, we go after those that don’t read, those that are lower socioeconomic backgrounds. That’s who we send our letters to....’”
Brothers and sisters, I know that we are not to judge anyone, but it sounds very much like Robert Tilton has judged himself as a first class con artist. Is his preaching fact or fiction? Some of it is fact, but some of it is also fiction. When he preaches that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, he is preaching fact, but when he is preaching that God doesn’t want you driving Volkswagens and living in apartments, he is preaching fiction. Far worse, actually.
Brothers and sisters, every day the world or someone in it is out to con us. Let me give you some examples of how the world is out to con us.
1. THE WORLD SAYS “YOU ONLY GO ‘ROUND ONCE IN LIFE SO GRAB ALL THE GUSTO YOU CAN”
Fact or fiction? The world is right in one sense. We do only go around once in life. That part is true.
ILL.- Someone said, “Life is a one-way street and we are not coming back.” So where’s the con? It’s in the “grab all the gusto you can.”
ILL.- One preacher told his congregation, “There’s a theory around if people don’t smoke, drink, overeat, or engage in extramarital sex, they’ll live a lot longer. The trouble is, we won’t know for sure until somebody in this congregation tries it.”
HE MUST HAVE A BAD CONGREGATION, wouldn’t you think?
The world is trying to con us into thinking that we can do anything we want, grab all the gusto we want; good, bad or otherwise, because tomorrow we die and that’s all there is to it.
ILL.- Someone said, “Life is like a cafeteria, as one goes through he may pick and choose whatever he wants, but whatever he chooses must be paid for at the end of the line.”
The world is saying that it doesn’t make any difference what a person does in life or what a person believes. They will someday die and life will be over. There is no God, no heaven, and no hell. WE KNOW BETTER, but many people don’t and they have bought into this kind of thinking and it’s nothing but fiction.
James 4:13-15 “Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.’”
The Word of God says that some day life will be over. Life is short, too short for playing around. James says we should seek the Lord’s will in life. This is the truly smart thing to do. Seek the Lord, seek His will, seek to please Him while we live.
2. THE WORLD SAYS, “GREED IS GOOD”
Greed is good. Fact or fiction?
ILL.- A class of students was watching the professor of chemistry give a demonstration of the properties of various acids. “Now,” said the professor, “I am going to drop a silver dollar into this glass of acid. Will it dissolve?”
“No, sir” replied one of the students. “No,” said the professor, “Then perhaps you will explain to the class why it won’t dissolve.”
“Because,” came the answer, “IF THE MONEY WOULD DISSOLVE YOU WOULDN’T DROP IT IN.”
Most people don’t want their money to dissolve, they want it to increase. The world says, “Greed is good. Money is good. Do whatever you have to do to get it; cheat, steal, lie, swindle, drive hard bargains, etc.”
ILL.- CBS - A 55-year-old contractor won the $314.9 million Christmas Day, 2002 jackpot — the biggest undivided lottery prize in history — and said the first thing he will do is turn over 10 percent to his church.
"I just want to thank God for letting me pick the right numbers — or letting the machine pick the right numbers," said Powerball winner Andrew "Jack" Whittaker Jr., dressed in black with a big black cowboy hat.
Whittaker stepped forward Thursday with his wife, daughter and 15-year-old granddaughter and accepted an oversized facsimile check for $314.9 million and a cashable $10 million first installment on the multistate lottery prize. He said he plans to lavish money on his family, expand his contracting business, maybe buy a helicopter, and give to the Church of God.
Brothers and sisters, I wouldn’t say what Jack Whittaker did was a horrible sin and certainly not an unforgivable sin, but it does show how even people who claim Christ have been conned by the world into thinking that “if I just had more money” or “If I could just win the lottery” then I’d be happy or whatever.
I Tim. 6:17-18 “Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share.”
ILL.- “Dear Lord, I have been re-reading the record of the Rich Young Ruler and his obviously wrong choice. But it has set me thinking. No matter how much wealth he had, he could not-- ride in a car, have any surgery, turn on a light, buy penicillin, hear a pipe organ, watch TV, wash dishes in running water, type a letter, mow a lawn, fly in an airplane, sleep on an inner spring mattress, or talk on the phone. If he was rich, then what am I?”
3. THE WORLD SAYS, “WATCH OUT FOR NUMBER ONE”
ILL.- Mother said to Bobby, “Why, Bobby, you ate all the cake without thinking of your little sister.” Bobby replied, “I was thinking of her all the time. I was afraid she would come in before I finished it.”
ILL.- One lady said, "My husband and I have managed to be happy together for 20 years. I guess this is because we’re both in love with the same man."
Watch out for number one, meaning watch out for yourself. Fact or fiction?
While it is true that we do need to take care of ourselves and do some things for ourselves, we must not exclude others. However, one of the biggest cons of the world is that of putting self first in all things.
ILL.- Actress Shirley MacLaine said one time, “The most pleasurable journey you take is through yourself...the only sustaining love involvement is with yourself...When you look back on your life and try to figure out where you’ve been and where you’re going, when you look at your work, your love affairs, your marriages, your children, your pain, your happiness--when you examine all that closely, what you really find out is that the only person you really go to bed with is yourself...The only thing you have is working to the consummation of your own identity. And that’s what I’ve been trying to do all my life.”
Sounds to me like Shirley MacLaine has been wrapped with her own life all her life! This may not be true, but it sounds like it.
I think it is true that most people of the world are self-absorbed and self-centered, but the Christian is not supposed to be this way.
Phil. 2:3-4 “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.”
ILL.- Dwight Morrow, the father of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, once held a dinner party to which Calvin Coolidge had been invited. After Coolidge left, Morrow told the remaining guests that Coolidge would make a good president. The others disagreed. They felt Coolidge was too quiet, that he lacked color and personality. No one would like him, they said.
Anne, then age six, spoke up: "I like him," she said. Then she displayed a finger with a small bandage around it. "He was the only one at the party who asked about my sore finger." "And that’s why he would make a good president," added Morrow.
Care and concern for others is what makes people stand out among all others.
ILL.- Someone said, “The smallest package in the world is a person wrapped up in himself.”
The great con of the world is that we must live for self. The great fact of Christianity is that we must live for others, like Christ. After all, where would we be if Christ had lived according to the philosophy of the world? HE PROBABLY WOULD NOT HAVE LEFT HEAVEN IN THE FIRST PLACE, let alone die on the cross for us!
In Philippians 1:21-26, Paul gives us two more thoughts that could be fact or fiction, depending on how you look at them.
In V. 21 Paul said, “For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain.” Fact or fiction?
4. TO LIVE IS CHRIST
To Paul, life was a matter of believing in Christ, living for Christ and living like Christ. Fact or fiction? Truth or not?
ILL.- The Beatle, John Lennon 1940-1980), said, “Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.”
“We’re more popular than Jesus Christ now. I don’t know which will go first; rock and roll or Christianity.”
ILL.- Author: Camille Paglia 1947-, American Author, Critic, Educator, said, “Jesus was a brilliant Jewish stand-up comedian, a phenomenal improviser. His parables are great one-liners.”
Brothers and sisters, people of the world who do not believe in the deity of Jesus Christ have some strange ideas about Jesus, which they sometimes try to sell to others.
ILL.- Listen, however, to what C.S. Lewis said. “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’
“That is the one thing we must not say. A man who is merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic-on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg-or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God; or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
Lewis is saying that people really have one of two choices: either Jesus is who He claimed to be or he is a liar. And if people accept Jesus as the Christ there must be a difference in their lives.
CHRIST MADE A DIFFERENCE IN PAUL’S LIFE. Christ changed Paul from self-centered man to a Christ-centered man and to a people-centered man. He lived like Christ, for Christ and for people! WHAT ABOUT YOU?
ILL.- Wilfred Grenfell was a medical student in London. He accepted preacher Dwight L. Moody’s invitation to believe in Christ and follow Him. Some fourteen years later the two visited again. Grenfell said, “I want to thank you for leading me to know Christ.”
Moody, “What have you been doing since that time?” Grenfell said, “Doing! I have been living and working that others may know Christ!” Moody said, “Do you regret it?” Grenfell responded, “No, not at all. The only regret is for the person who has once met Christ and then must hang his head when asked the question, ‘What have you been doing since?’”
GOOD QUESTION. If you believe that Jesus is the Christ and have accepted Him, what have you been doing since? How have you been living? How has He affected your life?
Paul said it best, “FOR TO ME TO LIVE IS CHRIST.” What do you say?
5. TO DIE IS GAIN
Paul also said, “To die is gain.” Fact or fiction?
ILL.- I think we’ve all heard the old story about the preacher who asked all who wanted to go to heaven to raise their hands. Everyone in the audience did so, except one elderly man sitting near the front of the auditorium.
The preacher pointed his finger at him and said, “Sir, do you mean to tell us that you don’t want to go to heaven?” “Sure I want to go, but the way you put the question, I figured you were getting up a busload for tonight!”
I think most want to go to heaven, but they don’t want to die to get there.
ILL.- Comedian, actor Woody Allen is quoted as saying, “It’s not that I’m afraid to die, I just don’t want to be there when it happens."
Fact or fiction? To die is gain? Is death really a gain, a plus, something better?
ILL.- Listen to the last words of some famous people:
- Actress Joan Crawford, May 10, 1977, spoke these words to her housekeeper who had begun to pray out loud for her, “Damn it . . . Don’t you dare ask God to help me.”
- Comedian Lou Costello, March 3, 1959, just before he died, “That was the best ice-cream soda I ever tasted.”
- Sir Winston Churchill, Jan. 24, 1965, just before slipping into a coma and passing away 9 days later, said, “I’m bored with it all.”
- Aristotle-A Great Philosopher. In the face of death he proclaimed, "I was born in sin. I have lived unhappily. I die in doubt. Cause of causes pity me."
- Thomas Paine-Author and Philosopher. In answer to Dr. Manley’s question, "Do you then believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ?" Paine’s reply and last utterance was, "I have no wish to believe on that subject."
Brothers and sisters, in some ways we don’t know what to make of these words. One thing seems sure: they don’t appear to express faith in Christ and faith in heaven.
Contrast these words to those who believe in Christ.
- Charles Dickens-Author. "I commit my soul to the mercy of God through our Lord Jesus Christ, and I exhort my dear children to humbly try to guide themselves by the teaching of the New Testament."
- C.H. Spurgeon-Preacher. Nearing the end of life, he said, "Tranquil and happy, though very weak. My theology is very simple. I can express it in few words and they are enough to die by." After a pause, he slowly said, "Jesus died for me."
- Dwight L. Moody. "Earth recedes, Heaven opens before me!" His son, Will, concluded his father was dreaming. "No, this is no dream, Will. It is beautiful. It is like a trance. If this is death, it is sweet. There is no valley here. God is calling me, and I must go."
Death comes to all. Recently we have heard of the deaths of some famous people: Actor Charles Bronson, age 81, Johnny Cash, age 71, and John Ritter, age 54.
Did they believe in the Lord Jesus and in heaven? Only the Lord knows. Some expressed faith, like Johnny Cash and we want to believe that he’s with the Lord because of his faith.
Paul said, “To die is gain.” We must believe this! It is our great and final hope in Christ! A new life, a better life, a never-ending life!
Rev. 14:13 “Then I heard a voice from heaven say, ‘Write: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.’ ‘Yes,’ says the Spirit, ‘they will rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them.”
Rev. 21:3-4 “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.’”
ILL.- A preacher, in speaking to an atheist, said, “Death ends all. Death ends all your chances for doing evil; death ends all your joy, all your projects, all your friendships, all your ambitions. Death ends all for you and you will go out into outer darkness.
“As for me, death ends all my wanderings, all my tears, all my perplexities, all my disappointments, all my aches and pains. Death ends it all and I will go to be with my Lord in glory.”
BELIEVE IT! It’s true.
ILL.- Someone said, “Fear not death; for the sooner we die, the longer shall we be immortal.”
CONCLUSION-------------------------------------
Fact or fiction? Every day we are faced with truths and lies, facts and fiction, and we must decide what is true.
ILL.- Once the Devil was walking along with one of his cohorts. They saw a man ahead of them pick up something shiny. "What did he find?" asked the cohort. "A piece of the truth," the Devil replied. "Doesn’t it bother you that he found a piece of the truth?" asked the cohort. "No," said the Devil, "I will see to it that he makes a religion out of it."
ILL.- Someone said it this way: “Beware of half-truths. You may get hold of the wrong half.”
ILL.- Someone else wisely said, “Truth is what God says about a thing.” All truth is contained in Scripture.
II Tim. 3:14-17 “But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
