Well, this past weekend I saw a somewhat crazy computer breakdown and collapse. My personal laptop is now running Ubuntu as an operating system, because the Windows Recovery Partition on it was corrupt and the PC was out of warranty. So, no fixing it without a huge charge, and I was going to lose all my data anyway. So, I put Linux on it and restored documents from a backup. I would spot a big endorsement to using an external hard drive right now—my Seagate FreeAgent Go saved me a trip to the Funny Farm.
Here are the links from Sunday’s Sermon. We just had service in the morning to allow folks time to celebrate their fathers, celebrate being fathers, or go home and celebrate a nap. Here you go:
Come back to Luke 6:21-26
Raise these questions:
1. Are you striving to be filled with the things of this world?
What costs are you paying for those things?
What costs are your families paying for these things?
2. Are you doing the things you do to be praised by those around you?
3. Not only that, but what do we praise in the people around us?
Either by direct action?
Or by indirect action?
Whether as father, mother, or just a person following Christ, we need to consider these things:
1. Stop and consider the source of your values. Seriously.
Did you get them from your parents?
Did you get them from close friends?
Did you get them from school? Movies? Books?
Did you then compare those values to the values that are given in the Word of God?
2. Understand this: the world will have differing values from the Word of God until we reach the Millennial Kingdom of Christ. That is a fact: lost people are not merely confused, they are dead in their sins and dead has different priorities from alive.
3. We have hit this point for several sermons in a row, but it is critical to understanding how to live for Christ in the current age: we can seek the approval of Christ or the approval of mankind. One is obedience and the other is not.
4. Even as we go to spread the Gospel, the key issue is to spread the Word in a manner that is faithful and true to the Word, not in a manner geared toward pleasing the world but instead in a manner that shows faithfulness to Christ.
Alongside this point: nowhere in Scripture are we commanded to be well-liked by the world. We are told to be unified and loving to one another, and to show forth the fruit of the Spirit, which the world cannot make against the law, but this is different-> our lives are about pleasing Christ. Let the world see Jesus.
5. Do not be disheartened by the world's rejection
This is one of the reasons we are put together as the body of Christ: what the world sinfully rejects, the church as the body of Christ should strengthen and embrace. When the world runs you down, we as a body should be here to encourage and strengthen.
That is one of our main goals and purposes as the body of Christ: to be strengtheners of one another that we may all walk in obedience to Christ.
6. The world will eventually reject everything it now embraces: keep in mind that the "world" here is not the planet but the people. People that are going to go from one thing to the next until they realize their hunger is for their Creator. Some will never realize that, some will remain chained to the sinful nature inherited from Adam and Eve.
Yet we must share the good news, that for those who will come, there is forgiveness and grace.
For you, if you will ask God for it, there is forgiveness and grace. it starts at the Cross and comes to now: what will you do?
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