Close your eyes; picture yourself standing before a huge, beautiful golden thrown with Jesus sitting there at the right hand of God. He has a large book in His hand. He asks you “so my dear, what is your name”. You answer, Sandy Anton! He turns page after page looking for your name, your heart is pounding anxiously waiting for Him to find it, but its no where to be found in the Lamb’s Book of Life! You fall down, confused, afraid, shaking with the knowledge of your certain future of hell in eternity when finally you get the words out, “but why Lord, why not? Lord, Lord did I not prophesy in your name, and in your name cast out many demons and perform many miracles, was I not in church every Sunday”? Now your head bowed, knees on the ground, tears streaming down your face when you hear His awful yet familiar words “I never knew you, depart from Me you who practice lawlessness”.
What a day that would be! Nothing less than a shocking revelation that I was not what I thought I was and going where I thought I was going and the result was forever punishment and torment in hell. How are we to know if we are saved, if our name is in the Lamb’s book of life right now? How are we to know if our soul has been bought by the precious blood that Jesus Christ shed on the cross? Some would say because He promised, some would say because I am a good person even yet some would say yeah I believe in God! Only the saved receive the promise of eternal life so how do we really know if we are saved! In the book of Romans in chapter 10 starting with verse 9 we see that we must confess with our mouths and believe in our hearts that God raised Jesus from the dead and you will be saved, for it is with our hearts that we are justified and believe and with our mouths that you confess and are saved. I could stop here and send you all away and say “there now you are saved”. But I believe there is deep meaning in “believe in your hearts”. Lets look at Matt. 7:21, when Jesus talks about “THAT DAY” and you who practice lawlessness…just who are the YOU? I believe the “you” are the one who thought they were saved. Come on non-believers didn’t go around prophesying in Jesus name and cast out demons in His name. So how can one think they are saved and not really be saved? Remember Romans chapter 8, believe in your heart and Matt. Chapter 7, Jesus says only those who does the will of the father will be saved. So the will of the father must be for us to believe in our hearts, which for me brings me back to the same question, how do we know if we really believe in our hearts. Matt. 6:21 tells us “for where your treasure is there your heart will be also”. So Jesus and our belief in Him need to be our treasure.
What is a treasure? {box}, Long ago pirates were on search of a treasure. They would carry around a box similar to this one and inside was their treasure. It probably would be filled with lots of gold. This was their treasure, not only was it their treasure but it was worth them dying for. They would fight and kill anyone who would come along and try to steal it from them. They would keep close guard of it. Someone was always standing on watch. They didn’t put the treasure box on a shelf in plain view and let it collect dust. They didn’t just throw it in a corner until they had time to go and look at it. They kept it close to them so that no one could steal it away. Today when you get paid, you don’t carry around your paycheck in your pocket. You deposit the money into a bank, for safe keeping. You protect the things in your homes. We place value on them, they are dear to our hearts. This is how Jesus is to be for us dear and in our hearts.
He tells us the workers of lawlessness will be sent away and yet they thought they were saved. Where was their treasure, heart? Jesus tells us, it was in their lawlessness. Lawlessness is sin and being a worker of it would be like a job, or a lifestyle of that particular sin. What ever we are practicing is in our lifestyle so our heart will follow and this will be our treasure. But what exactly is sin. Jesus tells us in Matt. 15:19 “for out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness {lies}, and slanders. It is recounted in Mark 7:21 and Jesus explains that all these evil things proceed from within and defile the man. There is so much more about lawlessness, turn to Galatians 5:19. Paul tells us here that the acts of a sinful nature are obvious; sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery, idolatry, and witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, orgies and the like, I warn you as I did before that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of heaven! In 1 Cor. 6:9 he says do you not know that the wicked shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived, neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters or adulators, nor male prostitutes, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor the drunkards, nor slanderers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God!
Throughout Paul’s writing in the New Testament he warns of falling into these lifestyles, he tells us in Timothy to guard the treasure. The treasure is the gospel, which should be in our hearts. We all work so hard on our outward appearance but the final judgment is based on what is within us in our hearts. Jesus tells us to keep our thought on good things, Paul reinforces that when he tells us we should be filled with all good things. In Galatians 5:22 he tells us the fruits of the spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control; against such there is no law. Many of us, especially women have dieted. So do a comparison with me, lets take potato chips and carrots for our example. On the weight watchers plan you loose weight by eating a certain amount of points. Each food has a point assigned to it. Lets say the carrots are free, 0 points, eat as many as you like but the chips are 6 points for a cup. Now you can only have 6 points a day. So the fruits of the spirit can be compared to the carrots, as paul says you cant express the fruits enough and certainly never to much! so do we want to sit around eating chips all day or do we want to be eating things that are free of points.
Today I want to look at our sinful nature and leave you to ask yourself, “Am I living in this lifestyle”? The immoral lifestyles are clear, adultery which is having sex when you are married with someone other than your spouse. Fornication is simply sex outside of marriage, homosexuality is sex with someone of your same gender. A lot of churches are accepting this behavior and saying that it is okay, but according to the word of God, it is not! God blew up a whole city because of the sexual perversion, the city of Sodom that’s where the true word for homosexual came from sodomy. Gay means to be happy and queer means to be strange. These words water down the truth of the act. Just like drunkards in the bible became alcoholics in our society and baby killers became abortionists and now they want to call abortion, reproductive rights. Look people sin is sin no matter what pretty word we put on it. Orgies would consist of sex with several partners at the same time. Sensuality is one that many of us may not know about. As women we can dress a certain way that entices men, and cause them to lust! We are sinning too when we do this. The days are here when the in thing is to be clothed with very little, allowing or tummies to show and wearing low cut pants, this is not Godly attire and as women we need to be very careful in how we dress, so we don’t cause men to lust! Lust is a sin regardless, even if I as a wife cause my own husband to lust, guess what it’s a sin. These sexual lifestyles are prominent today, accepted by society and in some churches! There are some of you who may be here today and living with your lover and having sex, but you aren’t married, and your lifestyle will take you to hell! Sex is a beautiful gift God created for us, but He reserved it for the marriage bed. There are a lot for reasons for this and we can look at the rampant spread of diseases and death from them and the 42 million babies that we have killed as a nation as a result of sex outside of marriage. We need to realize that God’s kingdom isn’t a democracy but a monarchy, lets get real, the Ten Commandments are Not multiple choice! There is no voting on what we should follow and what as a society we should change.
Factions was another sin listed that many of us will fall into if we aren’t careful. These are our little cliques and our little groups. From that come gossiping, and slandering. To think that a lifestyle of just talking bad about people will send us to hell. As a society we have formed our cliques or factions by our Political Correctness. We have the “White Americans” the Greek Americans”, the “African Americans” the Jewish Americans” the “Muslim Americans” then we have the Gay Americans and the republicans and the democrats and soon I would suppose we will have the genetically engineered Americans. From all of this nonsense as we tried to make sure everyone was treated the same we simply made it worse by splitting everyone into groups. Unity was not the result. Factions tend to be a group of people who are self seeking and self serving, with selfish ambition. Paul tells us we do not belong to ourselves for we have been bought at a high price. We need to focus on others and serving them. We have our big homes and expensive cars, that’s great but are we sharing them with others? Are we grouping together as a culture, a color, a religious denomination, a certain income level, or do we spread ourselves with all men loving everyone and doing for all.
What about drinking? I could not find any scripture that said not to drink only several that said not to be drunk on much wine! Don’t live a lifestyle of drunkenness, usually from this comes the sexual immoralities that I spoke of before.
The fits of rage, hatred, discord and jealousy all run together and really most of us don’t have a lot of that but the point is when this lifestyle of unforgiveness lives in our heart it blocks us from being with Jesus. God cannot be where there is sin. He can only be in perfection, this is why He sent His precious son to die in our place, so we could be with the father in heaven someday.
I’m not here today to bring condemnation to any of you. I’m not trying to suggest that I am perfect and without sin in my life. But what I can say is yes I am a sinner saved by grace a “work in progress” who loves Jesus more than anything. I do not live in these lifestyles, I once did and was saved from that. My personal testimony is available on tape for anyone who is interested. Paul is not saying that if you fall and sin you are going to hell, that is what we have grace for, but what he does say is a lifestyle of this sin will put you in hell. As Christians we are suppose to be different, we are to uphold the standard that God put for us. Never lower His standard for anyone.
The treasure of Jesus should be in our hearts. David who wrote most of Psalms asked God to search his heart, to find the bad and expose it. I want more of God, all I can have, I want Jesus to be the treasure of my heart {dump out the gold pieces and add the cross}. I am constantly asking God to bring my self to death, allow me to die to self and resurrect my heart in the shed blood of the cross.
Are you here today living a lifestyle of sin? Did you think walking in here today that you were saved and somehow through this talk you see that you are not! Join with me and ask Jesus into your heart ask Him to become Lord of your life. Allow Him to change you, ask Him to give you the desire to be more like him.
