America has evolved into something that does not reflect its beginnings. In the beginning, our nation honored respect; today we don’t. In the beginning, our nation helped those who helped themselves. Today, we give handouts to those who refuse to help themselves. In the beginning, we worshiped God. Today, we worship our own desires.
Christianity has also evolved from its beginning. In the beginning, Jesus was the center of our worship. Today, we cannot wait to kick Him out of our nation. In the beginning, we were hungry for the word of God. Today, we want to hear that which will make us comfortable with ourselves.
That is called cheap grace, and that cheap grace is killing us spiritually. It is the desire to be comfortable that inhibits our hearing the Holy Spirit convict us of our sins in this day and age. Cheap grace is stealing us away from God.
It is cheap grace that tells us it is okay to be rude and disrespectful to our fellow man. After all, if we want to be comfortable in who we are and what we are doing, we have every right to be angry with those who don’t want us to do that. They disturb our comfort, and that takes our focus off us and puts it elsewhere. And then we get angry.
Now, the Bible does not say to never get angry. What it does say is found in –
PSALM 4:4
‘In your anger, do not sin.’
Jesus gave us a command to love one another, even our enemies. If you love somebody, you will not use your words to hurt them or to destroy them, will you? If you love somebody, you will be willing to cut them more slack than you cut someone you do not care about.
When we use harsh words either towards someone else, or in talking about them to other people, we are sinning in our anger. God says, “DON’T DO THAT!”
And it is for that reason; we need to be very careful what we say.
· We need to watch our thoughts because they become our words.
· We need to watch our words because they become our actions.
· We need to watch our actions because they become our habits.
· We need to watch our habits because they become our character.
· And we need to watch our character because it will become our eternity.
There is a verse that says it plainly. It is where Jesus is talking to those who do not believe, and He says in -
LUKE 6:45
‘The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.’
We think of ourselves as being good people, don’t we? But we must realize that our nature is inherently evil and wicked. It is only by the grace of God, and the covering of Jesus Christ that we are seen as good through the eyes of God. Yet, too many of us continue to harbor ill thoughts in our hearts.
Jesus is reminding us that our speech and actions will reveal what is in our hearts. And whether our thoughts that are in our hearts are good or bad, they roll off our tongues with ease. Do you remember what your mom used to tell you? “If you can’t say something nice about someone ……” Your mother had some Godly advice.
So, if our thoughts are on ourselves, they cannot be concerned with anything else but our own personal comfort. And that causes us to sin because it keeps us from focusing on other people. And we cannot love others if we don’t care enough about them to focus on their needs and desires, too.
So, if our sinful nature demands that we focus on ourselves at the expense of others, what can we do about it? Paul summed it up perfectly when he said in –
PHILIPPIANS 4:8 [NIV]
"Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable--if anything is excellent or praiseworthy--think about such things."
Have you ever heard the expression; ‘We are what we think?’ Or, what might be a better description of today’s society would be; ‘Garbage in – garbage out.’
What is in our hearts will always find a way to come out of our mouths.
There are two verses in the book of MATTHEW that should scare every human alive! Those two verses tell us what we can expect, considering the way in which we have talked to others during our lives. These two verses are the base of our sermon today. Please turn with me to -
MATTHEW 12:36-37
‘But I tell you that men will have to give account on the Day of Judgment for every careless word they have spoken. For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.’
In 1995, the oldest bank in England announced it was seeking bankruptcy. It lost nearly one billion dollars in a stock gamble. At the time it went under, it held over $100 million in assets for Queen Elizabeth.
It seems the 28-year old chief trader at their Singapore office started betting some very big money on Japan’s stock market. He made a lot of money for the company, but then an earthquake hit Japan the stock market took a nose dive, causing him to lose almost everything.
Thinking it was a temporary loss, the trader doubled up on his gambling, hoping to make even more money when the market rebounded. Instead of the bank cutting its losses, it just kept pouring money into the Singapore exchange and their employee would just use it to bet more on the market. They sent nearly $900 million dollars to this man, and he ended up losing it all.
How could one young employee in Singapore lose nearly a billion dollars and ruin the oldest and most influential bank in England? It all boiled down to a lack of supervision. A lack of accountability. Against his company’s own instructions, nobody gave this man any supervision. He was the only one who handled money and he kept his own books. That mixture is like a schoolboy getting to grade all of his own tests.
Accountability protects us from ourselves. And today, I want to talk about accountability. Specifically, accountability for Christians.
1. WE ARE ACCOUNTABLE TO OUR GOD
A school was having a problem with one of its students. Seem there was a ten-year-old boy would interrupt his teachers, fight with classmates, and just create all kinds of havoc in general. They would try to discipline him, but it would never do any good. Finally, they referred him to a psychiatrist to see what type of problem he had. It was not long before they found out.
Everyone had reacted to this boy by disciplining him and getting mad at him, but nobody, including the parents ever spelled out the limits or guidelines he was supposed to be meet. They had never taught the boy where the line between acceptable and unacceptable was drawn. Yet they held him to the standards as if they had.
The psychiatrist took the time to teach the boy where the lines were drawn, and how to act reasonable. He taught the boy that reasonable actions reap rewards and unreasonable actions suffer punishment. Once the boy understood, he behaved like any other normal child. For the first time in his young life, he began to have and to enjoy relationships with other children and to know what it felt like to be smiled at by adults rather than yelled at by them.
The psychiatrist relayed this information to the school and told them that the an individual’s greatest need is to realize they are personally accountable for what they do.
The report I read did not specify this, but I think we all know the psychiatrist must have gotten his information from the Bible, don’t we? Why? Because that sounds exactly like the limits and accountability factors that God has placed upon the lives of Christians. We obey Him; we get rewarded with His mighty blessings. We disobey Him and we get punished.
Many people ignore God, apparently thinking either He doesn’t exist, or He has no power. They are sadly mistaken. We will be held accountable to God for He is the judge and He is all-powerful.
ROMANS 14:11 informs us,
‘It is written: “As surely as I live,” says the Lord, “every knee will bow before me; every tongue will confess to God.”
As we go through our daily lives, we can sometimes pull one over on those around us. We know they cannot be everywhere, so we can do and say some things and get away with it, right? Wrong! Our God sees every thing we do, even before we do it; He knows every thought we have, before we have it; and our God hears every word we speak before we speak it. God knows everything about us, and to just think; we will be held to His accountability, not anyone else’s.
Yes, we might be able to pull the wool over the eyes of our loved ones, but we shall never be able to keep anything from God.
PSALM 139:7-10 reads,
‘Where can I go from Your Spirit? Where can I flee from Your presence? If I go up to the Heavens, You are there; if I make my beds in the depth, You are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there Your hand will guide me – Your right hand will hold me fast.’
And in addition to being fully accountable to God, we are …
2. WE ARE ACCOUNTABLE TO EACH OTHER
Some denominations accept some parts of the Bible while throwing the other parts away. Some of the things that the Lord teaches makes us uncomfortable, so we tend to ignore those parts. For instance, the notion that we are accountable to another - - why, that is just too much for some people!
We might not like accountability in God’s kingdom or within the church, but we are actually quite used to being accountable. When we were kids, we were held accountable by our parents and by our teachers. If you have ever been in the military, you really know what accountability is, don’t you? We are held accountable on our jobs and in the different organizations we belong to. If you are married, each of you are accountable to each other, and the list goes on and on.
All that is okay with us. We are used to it. It is only in the areas of our spiritual character and spiritual development do we always seem to fight being accountable. We tend to think, “Why – it’s just not anybody else’s business,” when in fact, it really is somebody else’s business.
The Bible teaches us that Christians are to be accountable to one another. Early Christians in Africa had a very unique way of holding each other accountable for their prayer life. Each Christian had a small little place all to their self that was cut out of the tall grass on the African desert. They would go to their spot to pray and meditate. The paths leading to these places had no grass because of their daily traffic.
When those men of God noticed another man was not keeping up with his prayer life, they would simply tell him, “Grass grows on your path, Brother.” And in so doing, they would keep that brother accountable.
LUKE 17:3 says,
‘So watch yourselves. ‘If your brother sins, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him.’
So, how does accountability work for people like us, within the church? Let’s start with me. I am human, and as such, I am going to be making mistakes. And since I cannot see myself as well as you can see me, I needed someone who could be trustworthy enough to hold me accountable.
So I have asked the elders to hold me accountable for the things I might do or say. That holds me accountable for you sakes, and it holds me accountable for God’s sake.
As far as it pertains to you, get someone you really care about and ask them to do the same thing for you. Tell them to let you know when they see you falter. They will do it in love and it will help you more than you can imagine. And if you see somebody else falter, with as much love in your hearts as you can have, you need to tell them. Don’t tell them for any other purpose, however, than to let them know how they can better themselves in God’s realm. We all need to be held accountable, especially in God’s kingdom.
PROVERBS 9:8 tells us,
‘ … rebuke a wise man and he will love you.’
That should be very easy for all of us to do, right? After all, we are all wise men here, aren’t we? And if somebody should come to you in love and mention something that is meant to keep you focused, don’t take it offensively – hug them and tell them you love them for doing so! That will take the pressure off everyone and put the focus back in everyone.
Everyone needs an accountability partner, no matter who they are. And when somebody confides something in you, be accountable to them in a Godly way. Do not share that information with anyone else, or somebody might hold you accountable!
3. YOU ARE ACCOUNTABLE FOR BEING TRUTHFUL
Do you know what an excuse is? It is a lie that we make up to keep from being accountable for what really happened, or a story we make up to keep us from doing what we do not want to do.
A man went to his neighbor and asked if he could borrow the lawn mower. The neighbor said he couldn’t lend his mower out because all the flights out of the airport had been canceled that day.
The first man asked what in the world that had to do with his borrowing the lawnmower, and the neighbor said, “Nothing, but if I don’t want to let you borrow it, one excuse is as good as another.”
The man was right. If we are going to tell a lie, or embellish a truth, just to keep from doing something, isn’t one just as good as another?
We have all made excuses for something we did, or didn’t do – or didn’t want to do. Some might be legitimate, but most are not. A teen-aged boy in Washington D.C. was acquitted on the grounds of murder. The defense was that he was “morally handicapped”. The judge said it wasn’t his fault, that he shot and killed a fellow student because he didn’t have any morals. So, with that excuse, they let the boy go.
Now, I will tell you something. My heart bleeds for that teenager, but not enough to let him walk around free where he could do it again. Too many people say their actions are nothing more than a by-product of their past. They say they aren’t guilty of this or that because their mother made them eat spinach as a kid, or some such nonsense. That is nothing more than excuses to keep from being accountable for their actions.
Just as a teenager might try to write a note excusing him from class and signing his parent’s name to it, we try to come up with excuses to justify our sinful nature and to keep us from being accountable for what we do wrong.
If Jesus had never come into this world, we would have legitimate excuses for being “morally handicapped” and for our sins. But that is not the case at all. Jesus did come into the world, and when He came, He brought the truth of God with Him. And with that truth of God, He brought a choice for each one of us. And with that choice comes accountability. And with that accountability, Jesus took away all the excuses.
In JOHN 15:22, He said,
‘If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin. Now, however, they have no excuse for their sin.’
Jesus is our only excuse for sin. He is the note that allows us to be absent from sin, and as His disciples, we have been given something else: An accountability factor. And we are supposed to use that accountability factor to help other Christians stay accountable to the word of God.
Remember I said we all need an accountability partner? I will be yours. I want you to come up and pray with me. You don’t have to tell me what you did that has caused you burden because God already knows. It’s between you and Him, not you and me. But as your partner, I will go with you to the Throne of forgiveness and intercede for you. I will go as your partner before God Almighty and stand with you. I will pray that whatever is on your heart will be released, and again – you don’t have to confess anything to me but that you are a sinner. I am not able to cleanse your heart, but our wonderful Jesus can.
As we go into invitation, won’t you trust me enough to just come up here and pray with me? As Christians, we need to help each other rid ourselves of guilt and burdens, and this is the perfect way to do it – helping each other be more accountable to living a more Godly and happier life.
As we stand to sing, step out into the aisle and come to me.
INVITATION
