Sermon Central
-
Life Out Of Focus Series
Contributed by Ralph Andrus on Dec 7, 2011 (message contributor)
Summary: 1. Mad Focus 2. Bad Focus 3. Sad Focus 4. Glad Focus
- Out of focus – Not clear, distorted
- Can’t make out what it is
> VIDEO – 011 Life Out of focus 9/11 Tribute
The Sept. 11 terrorists hijacked four passenger jets.
-Two into World Trade Center
- A third plane was crashed into the
- Fourth in a field near Shanksville, Pa.,
+ 1. Mad Focus
> At the five-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, President George W. Bush declared Sept. 8-10 as National Days of Prayer and Remembrance for those who died in the terrorist attacks and for those who put their lives on the line to respond.
> Washington National Cathedral
President Obama will be on hand for the Cathedral’s “Call to Compassion,” as will a bishop, a rabbi, a Tibetan lama, a Buddhist nun, representatives of the Hindu and Jain faiths, an imam and an Islamic musician. However, the guest list does not include a representative of the evangelical community.
> FOX News - NYC "Mayor Michael Bloomberg Is Banning Clergy From The September 11th, 10th Anniversary Ceremony. and there will be no prayer
Religious Left love to imagine that America is multi-culturally, evenly divided among Christians, Muslims, Buddhist and Hindus, with some allowance for Jews.
Most surveys show about 75 to 80 percent of Americans identifying as Christian, about 2 percent as Jewish, under 1 percent as Muslim, and fewer as Hindu and Buddhist.
- Lower Manhattan Community Church, one of Saddleback’s “daughter churches located two blocks from ground zero will hold a National Day of Prayer,
“God meant for all of these tragic events to change us,"
+ 2. Bad Focus
> Pharisee
it’s possible to do everything right – go to church, pray, read your Bible, be involved in ministry – and still lack a "fire of personal revival" in your relationship with God.
Largest and most influential religious-political party during NT times
Pharisee in its Hebrew form means separatists, or the separated ones.
Their system of religion was a form and nothing more.
They were noted for their self-righteousness and their pride (Matt. 9:11; Luke 7:39; 18:11, 12)
> Adultery – Latin: to pollute, corrupt, contaminate
God wrote the Ten Commandments with his finger (Ex 31:18; Deut 9:10); perhaps Jesus writes the first line of the tenth commandment in the Septuagint of Exodus 20: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife.”
> Leviticus 20:10 (AV)
10 And the man that committeth adultery with another man’s wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour’s wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.
Deuteronomy 22:22 (AV)
22 If a man be found lying with a woman married to an husband, then they shall both of them die, both the man that lay with the woman, and the woman: so shalt thou put away evil from Israel.
Death By Stoning — The offender was led to a place without the gates, 3’-4’ high, his hands being bound. One of the witnesses knocked him off by a blow to the groin. If that did not killed him the other witness lifted up a stone, being the weight of two men, which chiefly the other witness cast upon him. If that killed him not, all Israel threw stones upon him. The party thus executed was afterwards, in greater disgrace, hanged on a tree till towards the sunset, at which time both he and the tree were buried.
– (Goodwin)
+ Writing in the Dust
- Writing the Commandments?
- Writing names after the Commandments?
- Finger of God wrote on the stone tablets
- Finger of God wrote on the wall – Da. 6
- Finger of God wrote in the dust
> Jeremiah 17:13 (NIV)
13 LORD, you are the hope of Israel; all who forsake you will be put to shame. Those who turn away from you will be written in the dust because they have forsaken the LORD, the spring of living water.
+ 3. Sad Focus
> Women
> Adulterer
- Branded, Desolate, Forsaken
- Jesus alone stood with her
> Pharisee
Their sins of unbelief & deceit, self-righteousness’, pride are as wicked as adultery.
> John 2:15–17 (AV)
15 Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.
17 And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.
- Lust of the flesh – It’s desires & cravings (Misuses of sex, food, drugs, temperament & character
- Lust of the eye, & it’s imagination & mind
