Our Responsibility

I pointed out last week that as God's people we have been charged with a responsibility
of declaring what the Bible calls the whole will or the whole counsel of God.
Paul puts it this way in Acts chapter 20 verse 27, "I have not hesitated to proclaim to you
the whole will or the whole counsel of God."
And the whole will of God we saw last week is the sum total of God's program of salvation
through faith in Jesus Christ.
And that program of salvation we saw can most readily be summed up in these four words if
we can have that slide up, creation, fall, redemption, and restoration.
Creation means that God created the universe and that we are responsible to live before
his face.
The fall means that we have offended God, we have been exiled from him, we are under
Satan's control, all the trouble that we experience in the world is of our own making.
God stepped in in redemption through the person of Jesus so that by faith in Jesus our sins
could be atoned for, we could be declared righteous before God, and we could become
eligible for the blessings of his grace, and then restoration is God's promise that one
day he is going to make all things new.
That's the whole counsel, the whole saving program of God.
And that message of the whole counsel of God has two aspects to it.
It has a positive aspect, it has a negative aspect.
The positive aspect is that when we come into repentance in faith, believe the word of God,
knew Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, God becomes our Father, we become his children,
we become eligible for his blessings.
The negative side of the gospel, one that we don't like to talk about very much, is
that if we refuse to believe the good news of the gospel, God's judgment falls on us
and we will be separated from God eternally, in short, we go to hell.
That is not a very pleasant prospect.
And the job of the church in declaring the whole counsel of God is to warn people around
us of those realities of the need for faith in Jesus and the consequences of not walking
with Jesus.
That's why later on in this particular passage, verse 31, the apostle Paul says, "Remember
that for three years I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears."
And that is also why he says in the passage before us, "I declare to you today that I
am innocent of the blood of all men, for I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the
whole will or the whole counsel of God."
Paul is innocent of their blood because as we have seen, if we warn people and they don't
hear or heed, they will be lost, but it's their own doing.
On the other hand, if we don't warn them, they will still be lost, but Ezekiel says
the blood is on our heads, and that's why Paul has not hesitated to declare the whole
counsel of God, and that's why he says, "I am innocent of the blood of all of you."
That's where we want to pick it up this morning because while it may be true for the apostle
Paul that he can say, "I did not hesitate, I did not shrink from declaring to you the
whole counsel of God," chances are you and I living at the time of history where we are
living probably cannot say that quite as boldly.
I dare say that most of us pull back, can think of many situations where we should have
spoken up, should have said something, didn't because we were afraid of how it was going
to be received, and in the time that we have this morning, I want to give you what I believe
are three primary reasons, the list is not exclusive, but three primary reasons why God's
people often hesitate to speak the truth to our communities and to our neighbors.
One of the young men from here talked to me after the service last week, he'd been doing
some studying on this in preparation for teaching youth, and he discovered statistically 98%
of believing Christians typically do not share their faith with unbelievers, did you know
that?
That's a pretty high percentage.
Why are we so hesitant?
I'll give you three reasons this morning in the time that we have.
Number one, the message of the cross, which is really the summary of the whole counsel
of God, is inherently offensive, the message of the cross, the message of the gospel is
inherently offensive to the natural man, listen to these scriptures on Corinthians 1 verse
18, the message of the cross Paul says is foolishness to those who are perishing, but
to us are being saved, it is the power of God.
Second Corinthians chapter 2, 15 and 16, we are, he says, speaking of the church to God,
the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing.
To the one we are the smell of death, and to the other we are the fragrance of life.
We are the aroma of Christ.
We are the smell of death and we are the fragrance of life.
And what he means by that is that as we live the gospel and we proclaim the gospel, there
is this twofold reaction among people, those who are elect, those whom God has destined,
if you will, for eternal glory, they hear the message of the cross, it resonates with
them, it brings them to their knees, they come to faith and they embrace the gospel.
That same message to those who refuse to believe and refuse to bend the knee, that gospel is
offensive and it drives them away.
And the reason for that is the very context of the message of the cross itself.
Forget for a moment whether it's proclaimed properly or not.
Forget for a moment whether, you know, we're gentle or abusive or overbearing.
Lay that all aside, the message of the cross itself, God's saving plan in Christ, is offensive
and it's offensive for this reason.
It's offensive because in order to become a child of God, I have to acknowledge that
God exists, I have to acknowledge that he created everything good, I have to acknowledge
that the world is a mess because we have sinned against God, we have invited the devil in,
we are selfish, we are the cause of our own greatest conflict and turmoil.
We cannot save ourselves, we need to humble ourselves before God, we need to come to faith
in Jesus, we cannot do anything to make ourselves righteous before God.
Having come to Jesus, we need his strength to enable us to live for God so that we can
share in God's glory and if we refuse to do that, God's going to wipe us out, he's going
to send everybody to hell including all my family members who do not accept the good
news of the gospel.
Now you think that might make a few people upset?
The gospel is inherently offensive, I want us to understand that.
Has nothing to do with how we present it or how nicely we package it.
You cannot preach Christ crucified and risen without stirring the wrath of the natural
man.
And the reason for that, I believe, is threefold.
Number one, it offends human pride.
It offends human pride.
Pride says, I can do it myself.
Pride says, I'm kind of like God, you know, a little bit like cats, they think they're
queen of the house.
Pride says, I don't want to admit that I'm wrong.
Pride says, who does God think he is that he can tell me how I ought to live, I can
live the way that I want to?
That's the human heart.
And guess what?
The cross cuts across all of that pride because this is what God says to the pride of the
human heart in Isaiah chapter two, if we can, are these slides moving today?
The Lord Almighty has a day in store for all the proud and lofty, for all that is exalted
and they will be humbled.
The arrogance of man will be brought low and the pride of men humbled.
The Lord alone will be exalted in that day.
Pride gets hurt when God says you're bad and I need to change you and if you don't let
me change you, you're in trouble.
Second reason is that the gospel doesn't rationally make sense to the natural man.
Listen to what Paul says, 1 Corinthians 2, 14, the man without the spirit does not accept
the things that come from the spirit of God for they are foolishness to him and he cannot
understand them because they are spiritually discerned.
Second Corinthians 4, 4, same kind of thing, the God of this age, that is Satan, has blinded
the minds of unbelievers.
So they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of God of Christ who is the image
of God.
I mean the book of Romans says that every pagan looking at creation ought to be able
to discern just by looking at creation that God is and that he is powerful and that he
is worthy of being served.
But what happens to the human race as we unveil and uncover the complexities of nature, does
it drive us to where he's not at all?
It makes us come up with all kinds of theories that explain the universe apart from God.
How can people be so blind?
Well the God of this age has blinded them.
Don't be surprised when you try to share the gospel with somebody that it goes in one ear
and out the other.
Because apart from the work of God's Holy Spirit, the natural man is utterly blind.
It doesn't rationally make sense.
That's why so many people when they read the Bible they say it doesn't make any sense to
me.
I don't get it.
And they quit reading it because it doesn't speak to them.
It only speaks after you've come to faith in Jesus.
There's still a third reason why the message of the cross is offensive and that is that
it exposes our true condition.
What's the first thing Adam and Eve did in the garden after they ate the forbidden fruit?
They knew they were naked and what did they do?
They covered themselves with fig leaves.
Why?
Because they were ashamed.
They knew they had to hide.
That's the first thing you and I do by nature when we get caught in something.
We hide.
We hide from ourselves.
We hide from God.
We hide from others.
That is the natural human response.
Along comes the gospel.
Along comes the message of Christ.
Along comes the truth of God.
Guess what happens?
Our fig leaves get pulled away and like Adam and Eve we get found out and we discover that
we have been naked.
Hebrews 412, 13.
The word of God is living and active, sharper than any double-edged sword.
It penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow.
It judges the thoughts and the attitudes of the heart.
Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight.
Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.
See, that's why sometimes going to church is a miserable business.
You think you're in pretty good shape until God's word is presented and it speaks to the
depths of your heart and it exposes who we really are.
And that's a good thing if it leads you to repentance and if it leads you to faith.
It is healing.
It is cleansing and it's restoring.
It's incredibly good news for God's people.
But if you're not ready to bend the knee and you want to be what you are not before the
sight of God, it's miserable.
And so for that reason, it's not only the message of the cross that is inherently offensive
to people, it also makes people extremely angry.
In my book, When Trouble Strikes Handling the Losses in Your Life, and a number of you
have been reading it and have found it profitable, I think, I tell the story of a rich southern
American landowner who piously goes to church every Sunday but whose reputation with the
people that work for him is extremely negative because he abuses them.
New preacher came to the congregation and saw this happening and felt it needed to be
addressed, and so he preached a powerful message about the responsibility of business owners
not taking unfair advantage of the poor but helping them and blessing them and giving
them fair wages.
Well, he preached a fine sermon that Sunday morning, and next morning, guess who appears
at his door but this particular landowner.
He was very pleasant, and he told the preacher how much he and his family appreciated his
ministry and how they had been blessed by his ministry.
And in fact, you know, he wanted to reward him, and he said, "Here's a check for the
expenses that you have in your life and the debts that you owe."
He also owned a local bank, so he knew exactly what this person needed, and the preacher's
heart swelled with gratitude because this was going to be a resolution to his financial
problems, but then just as the landowner was out the door, he glanced at him and he said,
"Oh, by the way, I trust that Sunday morning sermon is the last time that you're ever going
to talk about that topic."
Now put yourself in that preacher's shoes.
You need the money.
This guy not only runs the whole congregation, but he runs the whole blue in town.
You know that if you alienate him, you're going to be in trouble.
What's your loyalty?
Is your loyalty to the Lord?
Is your loyalty to the people who are being abusively treated by him?
Or are you going to kowtow to the prejudices of this particular rich man?
And to the preacher's credit, he tore up the check in front of this man's face, threw it
in the garbage can, and he said, "I will never, ever sell out the news of the gospel for you
or for anybody else."
Kost him dearly.
That Sunday had been the last time he ever preached in that church because the landowner
was sure to use his power to get rid of the preacher.
It's a true story.
And it illustrates what happens when the gospel comes along and flushes out what is in your
heart.
It makes people incredibly angry.
And Jesus warns his disciples about that in the gospels when he first sends them out.
Listen to what he says to them.
In Matthew chapter 10, the verses 16 and 17, he says to his disciples, "I'm sending you
out like sheep among wolves."
It's quite a picture, isn't it?
"I'm sending you out like sheep among wolves, therefore be shrewd as snakes and innocent
as doves."
Why shrewd?
Don't get yourself into needless trouble.
Why innocent as doves?
If you give any cause for offense, those you're holding to account will turn it around and
they will blame you so as not to have to take responsibility of stuff in their own lives.
When the truth gets exposed, people become angry.
And so he goes on to say then in verses 16 and 17, "Be on your guard against men.
They will hand you over to the local councils and they will flog you in their synagogues."
And if you look at the ministry of the apostle Paul in the book of Acts, you see how literally
true this is.
Because wherever Paul went proclaiming the gospel, whether to Jew or to Gentile, the
pushback was phenomenal.
We've already seen how in the previous chapter, in Acts chapter 19, he created a riot in the
city of Ephesus where everybody got on his case because they thought he was criticizing
the great God, Artemis, the goddess of the Ephesians.
Read on in the book of Acts, Acts chapter 21, when he finally gets to Jerusalem on this
journey home and he's barely in the city.
And the city gets turned upside down because everybody is mad at the apostle Paul.
And we know from the rest of the book of Acts that this is the beginning of the end of his
journey because they will not let up.
And a lot of people can't understand why in today's society the voices raised against
God's people, and God's people aren't perfect, but you know by and large God's people are
pretty decent, nice people.
I know a lot of them.
Some of you are really nice people.
Why the hatred towards God in God's people?
Okay, I want you to listen really carefully because it has to do with the nature of grace.
And I was thinking, if you remember nothing else that I have tried to teach you over the
32 odd years that I've been with you, would you please remember this?
It has to do with how you acquire the inheritance.
Let me explain it this way.
Get that picture up.
We've talked about the fact that God created everything.
We talked about the fact that we have fallen into sin.
We live in a broken world.
And the question that everybody faces is, how do I get back to paradise lost?
How can I regain the blessing of God?
People don't always put it in those terms, but that's what it comes down to.
How do I find happiness?
How do I have the good life?
Well, the world says you've got to find it in yourself.
You have to capitalize on the advantages that you're born with.
If you're good looking, if you're smart, if you have money, if you have good parents,
if you live at the right time of history and things go right for you, then you make your
way into success.
That's the philosophy of the world.
And sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't work, but it all depends on you.
Now the gospel says what you bring to the table does not bring you back into the inheritance
because the inheritance is not determined by how hard you work, how smart you are, or
what your gifts are, it is determined by relationship with God.
And if God and you are in relationship and he considers you his son, just as he gave
the first creation to Adam and Eve as a free gift, he will give the eternal kingdom to
you his child as a free gift because of Jesus.
And so the message of the gospel is that we're not saved by what we bring to the table, we're
saved by faith in Jesus.
We acknowledge that Jesus is the only one who is worthy of the inheritance because he
lived perfectly.
That's why death couldn't hold him down.
That's why he arose from the dead.
When we're joined by faith to Jesus, what God has given to Jesus at the right hand of
the God the Father, he gives to you and to me the net result of that.
Now listen to this.
The net result of that is that it doesn't matter what you bring to the table naturally.
The rich have no advantage over the poor, the smart have no advantage over the dumb,
the broker, the people who are all put together have no advantage over the people who, everybody
needs Jesus.
Everybody needs Jesus.
Which is wonderful news, let me say it again, it's wonderful news if you've got nothing
to bring to the table and you know how poor, naked, and blind you are.
That's why we become Christians.
It's terrible news if you bring a lot to the table and you're proud of what you bring to
the table.
Do you understand that?
Listen again to how Paul puts it.
We'll move that slide on to Philippians chapter 3, the verses 4 through 9.
If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, that is in human
nature what he brings to the table, Paul says, "I top it.
I have more."
He says, "I'm circumcised on the eighth day of the people of Israel, of the tribe
of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, in regard to the law of Pharisee, as for zeal persecuting
the church, as for legalistic righteousness, faultless."
Those are his credentials.
That's you and me saying I have a PhD in this, I have this much money in the bank, this is
what everybody thinks of me in terms of my natural gifting.
I'm top dog in my environment, but then he goes on.
He really ruins it.
"Whatever was to my profit, I now consider loss for the sake of Christ," and then he
goes on to spell that out.
What is more, "I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of known
Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things.
I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness
of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness
that comes from God and is by faith."
When he says, "I consider them all rubbish," and I've talked about this before, the real
world word is garbage manure.
And so what Paul is saying here is this, "I have spent my whole life trying to be a good
person, and when I compare myself to other people, I'm a better person than most.
I keep the law, I live righteously, God must really like me."
But then he says, "I met Jesus," and then I discovered that Jesus was infinitely better
than I am, infinitely more righteous.
And so he says, "I made the great exchange, I gave him my fig leaves and allowed him to
put his righteousness on me, and now I stand by faith in the righteousness of Jesus."
And that righteousness is perfect, and that righteousness has earned every blessing of
God's grace.
Are you with me?
That is offensive when you work it out in the real world.
And the best way to illustrate that is by a story that you all know very well, the story
of the prodigal son and the elder brother.
You know the story, the younger brother said, "I want my inheritance now," takes it, squashes,
just squanders it in loose living, eventually hits bottom, comes back home, gets restored
to his father, the father kills the fatted calf, and then the older brother, he's out
in the field working away, and he hears the noise of a party and he asks, "What in the
world's going on over there?"
And somebody tells him that his younger brother, who was lost, has now been found to just come
back home and the father's throwing a party.
And we all remember the older brother's reaction, don't we?
"All these years," he says to his father, "I've been slaving for you and never disobeyed
your orders, yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends.
But when this son of yours, who has squandered your property with prostitutes, comes home,
you kill the fattened calf for him."
I've often said to church people, "If you're really honest with yourself in that story,
with whom does your loyalty lie?"
And when people are really honest, they will tell you it lies with the elder brother.
Because see, the elder brother is church people.
The elder brother represents the Jews.
The elder brother represents the apostle Paul before his conversion, trying so hard on his
own to do it right, only to be told it's not good enough.
Do you get the flavor of the older brother when he says, "All these years I've slaved
for you, and all these years you haven't even given me a goat so that I could party with
my friends."
What's his problem?
He doesn't understand that relationship with the father is based on relationship.
It's not based on his hard work.
And Paul says, "When you think relationship with God is based on what you bring to the
table, if it's based on what you can give to God, you put yourself under a curse.
Which means that God is not only not going to bless you, he's going to push you away.
And that is maddening to good people.
The gospel is offensive to good people."
And so if you preach Christ crucified, and you declare that the blessings of God are
not handed out on the basis of good behavior, but on the basis of faith in the Lord Jesus,
then you stir up resentment, rejection, and eventually murder.
Why did Cain kill Abel?
Because God accepted Abel's sacrifice, but not his sacrifice.
And there is something about the gospel, if you're unrepentant, it makes you feel like
you don't matter, you're not good enough, somebody else is better than you.
And if ever you want to see how that works out in the real world, just look at your own
heart.
When you're trying hard to do everything right, and you're not being appreciated, and somebody
else comes along and they do it all wrong, and God throws a party for the sinner instead
of you.
How does that make you feel?
Do you get the point?
Grace is wonderful, wonderful, if you can embrace the message of the cross.
It's terrible if you think God should bless you because you've been good.
I don't want to belabor the point, but help me a little bit here.
Is this like getting through?
Yes.
Okay.
The gospel hinges on this.
Society will hate Christians because we claim to have a relationship with God through faith
in Jesus, that all their good living isn't producing, and when God blesses you and he
doesn't bless them in the same way, that breeds murder, particularly if they're religious
people who think they're doing it right for God.
So why do we shrink back?
We shrink back because the gospel message inherently is offensive.
We shrink back because when we preach it and we live it, pardon the pun, people become
livid, they become angry, and I want to give you a third reason, and that's this.
We shrink back because we don't really believe the gospel ourselves.
We shrink back because we don't really believe the gospel ourselves.
In my book, I've got a chapter, it's chapter 12, it's a chapter entitled "Faith that Works,"
and I quote a series of statistics that describe the schizophrenic nature of North American
religious life.
And here are some stats, and they've changed a little bit over the years, they go downward
rather than up.
90% of North American adults profess to believe in God, 85% would call themselves Christian,
85% profess to believe in heaven, and 63% believe the Bible is the authoritative word
of God.
Not bad, right?
But then look at these statistics.
Only 15% of people who profess to be Christians would declare that God is their highest priority,
only 16% profess to read the Bible with any measure of regularity, only 29% claim to attend
the church regularly, Canadian figures are lower.
I gave you a percentage figure last week of 13% of people being present at worship any
given Sunday, including non-Christians.
Somebody raised that question with me, what about the higher figures, because usually
the figure that is quoted is in the 20s, the answer is this, the 13% is on any given Sunday.
The larger percentage is in the course of a month, about a quarter of the people would
say they attend church with some measure of regularity.
When it comes to youth, these are the figures, 60% of youth that go to church call themselves
commuted Christians, 66% declare the Bible to be the word of God, 43% are active in the
local church.
Listen to these now, 73% of youth indicate they've been involved in some kind of occult
activity, doesn't even include reading horoscopes, 50% of such youth will have had sex by the
time they're 18, and only 9% profess to believe in moral absolutes, that is to say they believe
some things are just simply always wrong and some things are right.
And what you have is a great divide between what we profess to believe and what we really
practice, because at the end of the day it is what we practice that describes what we
truly believe.
And so it's very hard, it's very hard to preach the radical claims of Jesus if in your own
heart you don't believe that those claims are really true, it's a good way to check
this out in your own life, do you really believe for example, those of you that have adult
children that have wandered away from the faith, they were raised in the church, you
loved them with all your heart, they do life for all practical intents and purposes, they're
good people, but they're not churchgoers and they certainly aren't serving Jesus in
any active way, do you believe that unless they repent, come to faith in Christ and follow
him, are bound for hell, pretty tough.
What about the guy or the girl that you work with, good people, in fact I often say the
pagans are better people than God's people, give you the shirt off your back, they're
the first to jump in and help you when you need help, do you believe that if they don't
come to faith in Jesus, they're going to be lost, see is the gospel kind of getting under
your own skin right about now, see what I'm saying, the gospel is offensive and so we
play all these head games that somehow or another God doesn't really mean what he says,
the gospel doesn't really mean what it says and somehow or another when history ends and
Jesus comes, it'll all come out in the washing, everybody will go to heaven, it's not so,
so how do we get there, I mean I'll tell you a story, quite a number of years ago, had
a young man die in a tragic drunken accident and no evidence of faith in his life had darkened
the door of a church for ages and certainly lived a lifestyle totally in contradiction
to biblical values and I was asked to do the service and one of the first things the parents
were asking of me was to assure them and you can understand this, they asked me to assure
them that their son had indeed gone to heaven, now put yourself in my shoes, I'm a diplomatic
pastor and funerals aren't times to give people trouble but neither can you deny the gospel
and so my response was it's not for me to say let's leave it in the hands of God, I
think that's fair, only God knows the heart, only God can make the ultimate judgment, well
as you imagine that hit a very sore spot in that particular couple, they were profoundly
offended and it wasn't very long thereafter that they left the church to go to another
church because you see even as God's people do we really believe the gospel, I believe
there are three reasons we have trouble believing the gospels, let me be real quick about this,
number one we don't really know the scriptures and the reason we don't know the scriptures
is because we don't read them from one end to the other and we concentrate on the passages
that we like and the passages that we don't like we ignore, I remember a bible study years
ago we were doing a bible study of all things in the book of Ezekiel, well if you want to
feel good don't read the book of Ezekiel and don't study it in your bible study group and
I remember the reaction of one of the women in that group particularly saying I just don't
like it and we all feel that way, we don't like the word being living active and quick
and cutting us to the bone and so we just sort of pick and choose a little bit, we don't
believe the gospel because we don't really fundamentally know the character of God, we
make God over in our image and our likeness and we can't possibly imagine that we would
send somebody that we love to hell because we see so many good qualities in them and
we can't possibly imagine that anybody could do that to anybody isn't that true, well
I got news for you, our God is a consuming fire and when he's gone out of his way to
provide the way of escape and people do not receive the way of escape he gets royally
annoyed, I don't know how else to put it, that's the reality of the gospel and we have
trouble believing the gospel ourselves because we don't really understand the nature of faith,
we confuse what our forebears used to call historical faith or intellectual faith with
saving faith, remember even the demons believe and they shudder, doesn't mean they're going
to be saved just because you know there was a Jesus, just because you believe there's
a God, just because you believe the Bible is the word of God, just because you go to
church every Sunday doesn't make you a Christian, you're a Christian when you appropriate it
in your own heart and you humble yourself before God, confess your sins and you put
your trust and your faith in Jesus, now as you know my ministry among you is officially
starting to wind down and I don't want anybody to ever be able to say that I am guilty of
the blood of any of you, so would you indulge me, I'm going to read you some scriptures
that give you the picture of how God sees the gospel, how we not only need to come to
faith in Christ but we need to live it out, repenting when we fail, turning to Jesus again
and again knowing that because of you we can be sure to stand before God and be accepted
by him, just a couple of Bible passages, I really want you to write these on your hearts,
some of these are very familiar, John 14-6, Jesus, I am the way, the truth and the life,
no one comes to the father except through me, Acts 4-12, a verse we've often quoted,
Peter speaking, salvation is found in no one else, there is no other name under heaven
given to men by which we must be saved, let me stop there and say that unless people have
come to faith in Jesus they have no biblical basis for saying they are the children of
God or that they are going to inherit a new heaven and a new earth, do you believe that?
Does it trouble you that most of the people around you do not believe that and that we
live in a culture that says all roads lead to heaven, let me continue, Hebrews 3-14,
this is about the importance of continuing to bear fruit, we share in Christ if only
we hold our first confidence firm to the end, if we deliberately keep on sitting after we
have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left but only a fearful
expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God, not
the kind of verses that you want to study for your devotions are they, not the kind
of verses that you want preachers to preach about either but they are in the Bible and
they are part of the whole council of God, Galatians 5-19-21, the acts of the sinful
nature are obvious, sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery, idolatry and witchcraft,
hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambitions, dissensions, factions, envy and
drunkenness, orgies and the like, I warn you as I did before that those who live like this
will not inherit the kingdom of God, those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom
of God, 1 Corinthians 6-9-10, same drum beat, do you not know that the wicked will not inherit
the kingdom of God, do not be deceived, neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters or adulterers
nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor
slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God and the emphasis there is on
living that lifestyle unrepentantly, I want you to understand all of us are going to fail,
none of us is immune to the greatest of sin but when we confess that sin, come to Jesus,
repent of it, he forgives us and ultimately is going to present us before God without
wrinkle, blemish or spot or anything, we are not saved because we are such good people,
we are saved because we belong to Jesus and because we belong to Jesus, by his Holy Spirit
he works change in our hearts so that we bear fruit for Jesus' sake, that's the reality
of the gospel, that's how it works, can you see how this is a troubling message for the
world and that when we stand firm and say Jesus is the only way and only through faith
in Jesus and walking it out with him can you be saved, people are going to have to make
a choice and some will make the choice to say boy I'm glad you told me this because
it enabled me to get my life right before God and stand secure for all eternity and
others will turn against you and they will hate you and they will say who do you think
you are, you self-righteous holier than thou individual, I'm just as good as you are and
so it's no wonder, it's no wonder only 98% of God's people ever share their faith let
alone proclaim the whole council of God because when you proclaim the whole council of God
the message is offensive, some people will turn against you and it makes you examine
your own life and say do I really believe what I believe so let me end this morning
where I ended last week and that is with this challenge and with this question who is there
in your life that you know rub shoulders with who is not walking with Jesus, maybe it's
one of your kids you raised them in the faith you brought them to Sunday school you brought
them to church but they've grown up and they've outgrown faith and you know they're living
as if there is no God, maybe it's the guy to work that you rub shoulders with nice guy
but the only time you ever hear the name of Jesus mentioned by him is when he takes his
name in vain or your neighbor down the road who is there in your sphere of influence who's
not walking with God. Have they ever been warned? Have they ever been told the good
news of the gospel that through faith in Jesus they can be saved? Have they ever been warned
that if they do not put their faith in Jesus they will be lost eternally and don't count
on God's mercy in that day because in that day mercy will have finished. What's your
responsibility? What's your responsibility? Would you seriously pray about making very
very sure that they have been warned at least once? I'm not saying keep beating them over
that. I'm not saying make life miserable for them that doesn't do much of any good. Would
you take them aside? Find out do you know Jesus? Have you put your faith in Jesus? What
does it look like walking with Jesus and trusting him? And would you warn them not to depend
on the mercies of God if they knowingly and deliberately reject Jesus? They're going to
be lost eternally if they don't put their faith in him. You might lose a friend or two.
You might gain a brother or sister or two in the kingdom of God because you see the
word of God is living and active and it's sharper than a two-edged sword. It'll penetrate
to the division of soul and spirit bone and marrow. When you speak God's truth into somebody's
life if they are elect that truth they cannot run away from it will bother them until they
get to their knees and come to faith in Jesus. That's what the gospel will do. If they're
not elect and they choose to turn away from God their hearts will harden and both you
and they will know that they've taken a position against God and then when Jesus comes in judgment
nobody can fault him for judging them because by their deeds they will have demonstrated
their lack of faith. And when Jesus comes he's going to separate sheep from goats. There's
nobody in the middle. You're either in or you're out. What an awesome privilege and
responsibility you and I have to make sure that we proclaim the whole counsel of God.
Don't you agree? Let's stand. Lord we confess that sometimes we don't like you very much.
We don't like it that you're God. We don't like it that you're the boss. We don't like
it that you have the authority to decide who lives or who dies. And we don't like it that
we have to bow the knee before you. And so the word of the cross is offensive to every
human heart but the power of God and the salvation. And Lord when we have come to know you and
we have come to faith in you, what an incredibly good news the gospel is, to know that we can
come just as we are and you give us everything in your kingdom because of Jesus. Lord help
us to be so full of that message, help us to believe it to such a degree that we know
how to proclaim the whole counsel of God until there isn't an individual left in the world
who hasn't heard the good news because we know that when the gospel has been proclaimed
to all nations then Jesus will come. So Lord we believe but help our unbelief we pray in
Jesus name. Amen.
you