Hi Crow,
Finally got everything done for Sunday (well the Sunday School on Exodus could probably use another hour of work, but ...) so as promised I'm getting around to your final question.
Originally posted by crowMAW
But I have to ask you Andy, and this may seem a little harsh: having listened to your sermon "He Who is Not With Christ is Against Him"...it seems the intent is to instill fear of and inequity against those who have done you no wrong. You seem to be feeding distrust, which will undoubtedly lead to contempt or worse...hate. I think I understand your motives given the demographics of your congregation. But is this consistent with Paul?
The title of that sermon is actually taken from the words of Jesus which appear in both Luke 11:23 where I was preaching from and Matthew 12:30 -
"He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters." (that's the literal meaning in the Greek as well)
Christ throughout his ministry never opened the option that one could serve Him and some other master (Luke 16:13), that salvation was available through many paths (John 14:6), or that it was acceptable to be lukewarm about Him (Rev. 3:15-16). In fact He said explicitly that choosing to follow Him would divide families (Matt. 10:34-36) and inevitably lead to persecution and tribulation in this world. He even said explicitly that the more his followers loved him and denied the world, the more they would suffer persecution, and that they would be persecuted precisely because the men of the world hate Him, and to hate Him was to hate God. (John 15:18-23)
Now before you react to all of that, consider this. All of these things incense and anger people who are not following Christ, they once incensed me for instance, but keep in mind that when Jesus said these things for the first time, they made men extremely angry. In fact, we sometimes conveniently forget that Jesus made men
so angry by what he said, that they ended up killing Him by the worst method they could think of, so when he taught his disciples regarding the world
"it hated Me before it hated you" that was proven literally true.
Had Jesus merely wandered about telling people encouraging things that didn't ruffle their feathers, he wouldn't have been crucified. But as a general rule
all of the prophets who preceded Jesus and
all of the Apostles who followed Him made men very angry, and most of them ended up paying for their testimony with their lives. In fact, throughout the bible, a sure way of distinguishing
false prophets is that they told men
smooth things they told them "You're Just GREAT the way you are and you're definitely going to heaven" and tickled itching ears. That's what people instinctively
want to hear, men are by nature:
"rebellious people, Lying children, Children who will not hear the law of the LORD; Who say to the seers, "Do not see," And to the prophets, "Do not prophesy to us right things; Speak to us smooth things, prophesy deceits. Get out of the way, Turn aside from the path, Cause the Holy One of Israel To cease from before us." (Isaiah 30:9-11)
We don't want to hear the truth about ourselves, we certainly don't want to hear we are "liars" or "idolotrous" or "sinful" and yet the first sign of that heart change that I've been talking about involves confessing ourselves to be sinners and
unworthy of salvation:
"And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, 'God, be merciful to me a sinner!'" (Luke 18:13)
You see that's the message of the gospel, not that God came in the flesh to make perfect people feel better about themselves and then die for no good reason whatsoever, but that God so loved the world that he came in the flesh to seek and to save the lost by laying down His life as an atonement for their sin. As Christ put it: "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance." (Luke 5:31-32)
So if you consider yourself "well", of course you will feel no need of Him and regard His comments about being "lost" as offensive. But in preaching the gospel as Christ and the Apostles did, one strives to first bring men to an awareness of their true condition (conviction) and then show them that there is one sure remedy for it (faith). In the sermon you referenced, I certainly wasn't aiming at those outside the church, but rather was aiming at convicting those before me of their need of Christ using his own words. You see the objective of the gospel is not to hate men and keep them out of the kingdom, but to invite
all men everywhere in.- SEAGOON
