The Second principle of authentic Christian discipleship is When God says something he means it. Believe Him and always take God seriously.
This Blog Will Discuss:
- Review: We Must agree with God in order to walk with God.
- Review: Discipleship is about growing into agreement with God's opinion. We shouldn't expect God to change to suit us.
- Review: God’s definition of Sin: Anything that misses the mark of God’s Standards.
- Today: Do not be deceived: Sin Has Real Consequences
- A wake-up call to modern-day Christendom
The Review:
Two people cannot walk together unless they come into agreement (Amos 3:3) If we do not choose to look at things the way God defines them, we cannot agree with or walk with God successfully and we will continue to lose our way.Remember Something is sin, when God and Jesus Christ says it is sin. Something is Righteous only when God calls it righteous.
Discipleship is about growing into agreement with God's opinion, not expecting God to adjust Himself or His standards to suit our own personal preferences. He is God, we are not.
On February 22, 2011 of this study blog; we discussed God's true definitions of the concept of sin. The original Greek New Testament language, the word for sin is “hamartia.” It is a Greek archery term meaning to miss the mark; meaning to miss the center or bull's-eye. Plainly speaking, anything that misses the mark of God's highest and best desires for our lives is sin.
Since God defines sin as missing the mark, then this of course means that God does indeed have specific standards of right and wrong, good and evil, light and darkness, because it would be impossible to miss the standard if a standard did not exist.
God pronounces woeful judgment on any society or people who try to redefine, adjust or undermine His standards concerning right and wrong:
Isaiah 5:20-24 Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; Who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, And prudent in their own sight! Woe to men mighty at drinking wine, Woe to men valiant for mixing intoxicating drink, Who justify the wicked for a bribe, And take away justice from the righteous man! Therefore, as the fire devours the stubble, And the flame consumes the chaff, So their root will be as rottenness, And their blossom will ascend like dust; Because they have rejected the law of the LORD of hosts, And despised the word of the Holy One of Israel (Isaiah 5:20-24 NKJV).If you will kindly remember, we spent a great deal of time describing what God bull's-eye mark of excellence is, and what it looks like to miss that mark. If you need to, please feel free to review lesson one of this series, "What Is Sin?" Please feel free to review it as often as you would find it beneficial. Please remember that according to God's word, there is a fourfold standard of righteousness, and anything that comes short of that standard is by definition sin. Please remember what sin is according to God:
1. Sin is anything that misses the bull's-eye mark of Godly Love (Matthew 22:34-40; Matthew 7:12; 1 Corinthians 13:4-8; Galatians 5:22-25).
2. Sin is anything that misses the bull's-eye mark of faith; anything not done in a motive of trusting or believing God is sin (Genesis 15:6; Hebrews 11:1,6; Habakkuk 2:4; Romans 1:17; Romans 14:23b).
3. Sin is anything that misses the bull's-eye mark of obeying God. The fact is that if you are truly loving God and believing God, the natural progressive outgrowth of this is that you will obey God. Anything that does not obey God is sin (Matthew 7:21; John 3:36; John 14:21; John 15:14; Ezekiel 36:26-27; Matthew 12:46-49).
4. Sin is anything that misses the bull's-eye of intentionally honoring God. (1 Corinthians 10:31; Colossians 3:17-23).
So please remember: Everything that we desire, everything that we pursue, everything that we say and all that we do must be done in love, in faith, in obedience to God and with the full purpose of honoring and glorifying God. By God's definition of the term, anything that falls short of these standards is sin.
Sin Has Real Consequences
Just like we know that there are four broad categories of righteousness; (Loving God and our neighbor, believing God, obeying God, and doing everything we do on purpose to glorify God), we can measure what we do against those standards and we know whether we are hitting the mark of God's standards or missing it; so, there are also four broad biblical consequences of sin. There are different shades and nuances of course, but in general, the four biblical consequences of sin are that it breaks relationships between us and God, and between us and our fellow human beings; Sin leads to captivity in bondage; Sin leads to death; and Sin leads to hell.
1. Sin breaks Fellowship with God and our fellow human beings. It makes those relationships infinitely more difficult (Exodus 33:3 Psalm 66:18; Isaiah 59:2; Psalm 95:7-11; Proverbs 15:8-9, 29; Matthew 5:21-26). Sin hardens our heart so we cannot hear God anymore. That's why God has to give us a totally new heart when we are born again. (Matthew 13:4, 19; Ezekiel 36:25-26; Deuteronomy 30:6)
2. Sin leads to captivity, slavery and bondage. Sin leads us captive into deception (Hebrews 3:13; Isaiah 44:20; Matthew 8:31-34; Romans 6:16; 7:11; 7:14; 7:25; Ephesians 4:22).
3. Sin leads to death (1 Chronicles 10:13; Proverbs 11:19; Ezekiel 18:4; Romans 5:12; James 1:13-15; Romans 6:23).
4. Sin leads to Hell and eternal torment (Matthew 25:41; ; Matthew 13:42; Matthew 24:41; Matthew 25:30; Luke 16:19-31; Revelation 14:9-11; Revelation 20:11-15; Revelation 21:8
Missing God's highest standards is called sin, and just as God is serious about not tampering with His definitions of key principles and concepts, He is equally serious about making sure that people do not misrepresent the real consequences of missing God's true standards.
Sin is real, and consequences of missing the mark of God's standards is equally real, and extremely severe. That is why it's so extremely critical to overcome and destroy sin out of our lives, before it destroys us. If we do not keep the serious consequences of our sin in mind, we won't be in much of a hurry to get rid of it, and the consequences will be unfathomably detrimental.
A wake-up call to modern-day Christendom
For decades in America we had preachers who did nothing but preach hellfire and brimstone in every sermon in almost every conversation. In so doing, they often neglected the love, the grace, the compassion, and kindness of God which leads people to repentance (Romans 2:4). The problem is that in modern times, we now have gone to the opposite and equally dangerous extreme. In an effort to avoid becoming a hellfire and damnation preacher, we have avoided confronting issues of sin and punishment altogether. We have left many people with the extremely mistaken impression that since Jesus came, died, and rose again, that somehow Almighty God, doesn't really care how we live any longer.There are many in modern Christendom who `take the approach that since God is love (1 John 4:8), and since He has demonstrated that love through sending His Son ( John 3:16-17), and since out of love Jesus Christ died for us while we were yet sinners (Romans 5:8), they wrongfully assume that God's opinion about sin has changed.
Yes, God loves us. Yes, Jesus Christ came to die in order to save us. Yes Jesus died and God raised Him from the dead. Yes, forgiveness of sins and salvation is available to those who believe and accept the Lordship of Jesus the Messiah over their lives. The only thing that fundamentally changed was how God deals with sin after Jesus died, but His opinion about sin did not change. Let us not make any mistake about this.
God still hates sin as much as He ever did. I will say it again. God still hates sin as much as He ever did. Do not be deceived. Do not mistake God's gracious kindness as though it were weakness. Although we often hear it preached that grace is not a license to sin, I'm sorry to say that in my own experiences with many diverse congregations as well as with individual believers, many of them function as though the grace of God were in fact a license to sin, while professing otherwise. This is dangerous, (Jude 1:4). How do I know this?
My individual experiences would be too many to recount, but the two biggest ways you can tell when congregations and individuals are turning the grace of God into a license to sin, his how they respond when you bring an issue of sin to their attention. I'm talking about situations with congregations an individual believers where you know that there is real sin in the camp. You bring it to their attention, you show it to them in the Scriptures, and the reaction we get will be that they immediately pull out the grace card, and not the repentance card. When addressing individuals, the response you get will usually be, "Well, since I am free in Jesus Christ, I can still do ___; ___; and ___; because I'm under grace. I will still get to heaven. I hear very little concern from people about whether or not they are pleasing God!
When dealing with whole congregations, the attitude is similar. "Well, we are under grace, and we do not want to go back under the law. Besides, we do not want to risk offending the seeker or the young believer." Really?
What I rarely hear is a real call for repentance anymore. It seems that American Christendom is more worried about not offending the individual, and that very few people are being trained to be concerned about not offending God, and in His own house to boot!
I'm going to say this once, and the people who claim to be in God's service had better hear me well. As ministers I don't believe we need to go out of our way to unnecessarily offend anyone. However, if we are going to be faithful ministers of God and Jesus Christ, it is about time that we become a whole lot more concerned about what offends The Holy, Almighty and living God of Heaven, then we do about trying to avoid offending the seeker, the sinner, or the unruly believer! This is His household, it's NOT our ministry. If something offends the LORD, it had better start offending us. If something delights the LORD, we better start developing an appetite for it, and delighting in it ourselves. Otherwise we will find ourselves being judged as unfaithful servants and unrighteous stewards of His words. That is not where any minister of the gospel should wish to find himself.
The bottom line: is American Christendom needs to return to a holy reverential respectful fear of the Lord, without neglecting love and mercy. We need to understand both and not merely pay lip service to either one.
Without a healthy fear of the Lord, we can't truly begin to know anything at all (Proverbs 1:7).
We all want to teach about the love mercy and grace of God, but in modern times we have forgotten some very important precepts:
The devil is at work in the world. Part of what the enemy is doing is blinding the minds of unbelievers, trying to convince them that they don't really NEED the Savior (2 Corinthians 4:4). To achieve this objective, part of the worldly belief being spread throughout the world is that people are 'basically good.'
To those of us who know and love truth, and can clearly observe human nature in action, we know that this is a lie. Nonetheless, it's what is taught in the marketplace of ideas on almost every stage. According to many of the worldly sages out there, all we have to do is learn to tap into 'our own innate goodness,' and we'll gradually evolve into a better human being, so to speak. I would call that a pile of fertilizer, but that lie can't even rise to the level of fertilizer. At least with a good pile of fertilizer you can grow roses or vegetables. Nothing grows from such a lie except death and destruction (Genesis 6:5; Jeremiah 17:9; Isaiah 64:6; Proverbs 12:15; Proverbs 14:12; Proverbs 16:25; Matthew 15:18-20; Mark 7:20-23; Romans 3:10-20).
Part of the problem is that for decades modern-day Christendom has allowed pop psychology and worldly culture to define truth for the churches, instead of Scripture. Beloved, we are not basically good. On the contrary, the truth is that we are basically and fundamentally wicked, and we NEED and must have the Redeemer. Do not be deceived. Do not let your loved ones be deceived.
No matter what our background, whether we come from a traditional church, a nondenominational congregation, a Messianic /Torah Observant /Whole Covenant or other parachurch gathering etc. God's standards do not change, and they will not change. Basically, I'm just trying to make sure that I address every possible contingent, myself included. We are called to love Almighty God YHWH, with our whole heart soul mind and strength (Deuteronomy 6:5; Matthew 22:37-40).
We are further commanded to love our neighbor as ourselves, and in every respect to treat and behave toward them, just as we ourselves would like to be treated (Matthew 7:12).
If I cooperate with Almighty God, and let Him transform me to the point where I effectually walk in fulfilling these six verses of Scripture, then I would be fulfilling the entire Torah, The Prophets, the Gospels and the teachings of the apostles.
If on the other hand, I neglect or fail to obey these six verses, then in such a case, I would be guilty of violating the entire Torah, the whole of the prophets, all the Gospels, and all the apostolic teachings. in such a case I would be guilty of sin, and worthy of death, worthy of God's wrath, and worthy of eternal torment. That is the truth of the whole situation. I NEED the Savior.
The forgotten principle: Here is the secret that is almost entirely forgotten by modern-day Christendom. It is not until I understand what is sin in God's eyes that I discern my crucial need for the Savior. Human pride cannot believe it needs redemption until we understand sin.
Until I see what God's standards are and learn to compare my inner man and outward behavior to His Standards, I won't understand or even believe that I truly need saving.
Until I learned to respect what God standards are; until I learn that missing those standards is sin;
Until and unless I learn that it is my own sinfulness that separates me from the Most High and Holy God;
Until I learn that it is my sin that enslaves me into the bad habits and bondage I can't seem to break; until I learn and believe that all death is the result of sin;
and until I understand that the true result of sin will be in eternity spent separated from God's love and eternal agony;
Until I understand that God is so righteous that no sin can dwell in His presence, and so His innocent blameless Son took the punishment I deserved, so that I could repent and be restored into right standing with God;
Until I appreciate the real nature and weightiness of sin, I cannot understand or receive the grace of God, because I wouldn't really believe how desperately I need it.
Yes, I need God to save me from all the works of the devil (1 John 3:8).
Yes, I need God to save me from all the filthiness and defilement of the world (James 1:27).
Yes, I need God to save me that I will not fall into temptation (Matthew 26:41).
Conclusion/Closing Prayer:
I desperately need God's continuing salvation and rescue from each one and all of these things. As much as I need rescue from all of these things, I need Almighty God and Jesus Christ, to save me from myself, and I need Him to do it on a constant basis. I also need God to save me from the righteous wrath and righteous punishment my sins deserve, and that is the simple fact of the matter.That is why I cry out:
Almighty God and Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy upon me and save me in every aspect of my life and being. I need the Savior. I have failed to love You with my whole being. I have failed to always believe You in all things. I have failed to perfectly obey You in all things. I have failed to purposely and intentionally glorify You with all the things that I have thought, desired, said and done. I have sinned. I have missed the mark of Your highest standards. In missing the standards, I have violated Your entire Scripture.
As such, I am worthy of Your judgment. I am worthy of death and hell.
Thank you for promising to save everyone who calls on Your Name (Romans 10:13; John 6:37).
Thank You for giving me the grace to recognize and confess my sins, because you promise that when I confess, You will forgive me, and cleanse me of all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9).
Thank You God for sending Messiah. Thank you Jesus for taking the punishment I deserved on my behalf.
Thank you God, for raising him from the dead. Thank you Jesus that you are seated at the right hand of THE MAJESTY, praying for me, and all who seek to walk as Your people.
I ask you now to wash and cover me in the precious sacrificial blood of Jesus Christ the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
Mercifully wash my sins away in that sacrifice. Circumcise my heart (Deuteronomy 30:6), and make mea true member of Your household.
Mercifully give me the grace to find sin and iniquity as repugnant as You do. Please transform my heart with Your love, and give me grace to delight in the things that bring joy and delight to Your heart. Help me to seek and to do what pleases You. Help me to recognize, to repent, and to return to you quickly when I fall short of Your true standards, because they are the only standards that really count. please grant this according to Your unfailing love, through your son and Messiah Jesus of Nazareth , the Christ; Amen
Brother Michel Lankford
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