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If we had to preach to thousands year after year, and never rescued but one soul, that one soul would be full reward for all our labor, for a soul is of countless price.”
Charles Spurgeon
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Just a whisper of an ungodly suggestion, and the first woman in history was ready to challenge her God’s loving direction and fight for her rights. The relationship between God and man changed forever and paradise became a very strange land.
Is the church today listening to similar, gospel altering, suggestions? Is the church itself becoming a strange land?
We recommend the following music with this message:
1) This Little Light of Mine with Billy Graham
2) In Christ Alone
3) No Other Name
4) Humble Me
5) When I Think About the Lord
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A Strange Land – Presentation Transcript
In Exodus 2:22, Moses, after escaping from Egypt (in fear for his life) finds a wife named Zipporah in the foreign land of Midian.
She gives birth to a son and Moses names him “Gershon” (which means “a stranger.”)
Moses looks over the foreign country he’s living in and says, “I am a stranger in a strange land.”
Most of us don’t actually live in a foreign country, but maybe (as Christians) we sometimes get the feeling Moses had: of being a “stranger in a strange land.” I know I do.
Of course, as born-again Christians, we see the unsaved world around us, as strange and foreign. That’s always been true.
But I’m talking about closer to home.
I think when Moses called Midian a strange land, he wasn’t talking about the climate or countryside.
He was talking about the ways, traditions and practices of the people.
I want to take a hard look at the ways, traditions and practices of my own people, the body of Christ and ask myself:
Do I feel uncomfortable in today’s Christian climate?
Do your Christian surroundings make you feel like a stranger in a strange land?
Maybe we’re both feeling that way.
I want to know two things:
How we got here—and
How we can get back.
Genesis might tell us how we got here:
Two things which the Devil said to Eve, really stand out to me:
1. First, He said, “Did God really say…”
2. Then, He said, “God knows when you eat it, your eyes will be opened”
Let’s start with number 1:
“Did God really say?”
This is no innocent, harmless question.
Get that out of your mind forever!
It might be the most evil question of all time!
“Did God really say?”
The Devil has been whispering this into Christians’ ears down through history.
It’s not something we actually hear.
It comes to us in the form of doubt.
With Eve, the Devil started, by getting her to doubt the advice of her old teacher, God, and choose the advice of a new teacher, the Devil.
All the Devil had to whisper was
“Did God really say?” to get her to take the wrong road.
And that road led to separating that first family from God.
Did God really say?…
(pick up a mask)
Even before the crisis of the Covid 19 Pandemic, another crisis began developing, within the body of Christ—within the church.
It’s similar to a crisis the apostle Paul saw, at the church of Corinth in his day:
Paul heard about people taking sides over which preacher was better.
He saw it as: dangerous worldly behavior.
Can’t you just imagine Satan whispering doubt and mistrust into those believer’s ears?
“Don’t you think Paul’s a better preacher?”
“Doesn’t Apollos make things more clear?”
Paul also wrote about it in I Cor. 1:11-12 and included another preacher people sided with.
Some of the believers just said, “I follow only Christ.”
Now: what’s wrong with that?
If there was ever a perfect person to follow, wasn’t Jesus their best choice?
In fact- what’s wrong with any of those other people Paul mentioned?
Weren’t they all strong Christian leaders? Paul-Apollos-Peter-Jesus
Yes, they were!
I Follow Only
Maybe Paul’s way of preaching was a little different than Peter’s.
Maybe Apollos told better stories.
Maybe Jesus was especially good with kids!
Paul understood about different cultures.
He even adapted himself to his different surroundings.
In I Cor 9:20-22 he wrote:
God knows we’re not all the same.
So, what was the problem at Corinth:
Why was Paul so concerned?
Every one of those leaders was preaching the same Gospel message. It wasn’t the leaders!
People had gone too far, and things got mean!
And the church became seriously divided.
In the world, it’s called, “partisan politics.”
And Paul saw it as a danger to the church.
The problem was not with those leaders.
The problem started when people sided one against each other.
Perhaps the Devil just infected the first person with the lie:
“Isn’t your preacher better than the others?” And it spread like a pandemic.
And it turned into fighting, quarrelling and divisions in the church.
Paul
This unchristian attitude can start with a whisper in our ear, but soon we find ourselves at odds with people who used to be our friends.
Even when the Holy Spirit lets us know that our attitudes are carnal…
And even though He would help us make things right…
We can be deceived by Satan’ lies.
And once we start down the wrong path, pride makes it very hard to turn around!
Just a Whisper
You know when my wife and I are headed someplace in our car, we often have “friendly differences” on how to get there.
I have to confess, she is right most of the time, on which road to take.
But… once I’ve taken my road, I won’t turn back—until I start getting low on gas and…
I’m forced to admit I’m on the wrong road and she was right all along!
And all the while my wife’s been telling me: Turn around!
Nobody likes to admit they’re wrong.
It’s pride that keeps us heading in the wrong direction when we need to turn around!
The Devil knows this about us and if he can whisper something in our ear that sounds good, off we go merrily down the road!
Especially if there’s other people who can join us. In another Kerusso Couch Sermon you may have heard, Therese called it “group think”
And that’s what happened in Corinth.
And that whole fight was most likely, over nothing more than the different preaching styles of Godly Christian leaders.
Satan whispered a mistrust of Godly leaders into Christian ears at Corinth and it weakened and divided their church, just as the Devil whispered mistrust into Eve’s ear.
Now, back in Genesis Satan told Eve a second thing :
2. “God knows when you eat it, your eyes will be opened”
So, the Devil has planted doubt in Eve’s ear concerning God’s advice.
Next thing, he tells her God is holding back good things from her and she should take her liberty and eat whatever she wants.
Her personal right to eat the fruit of her choice had become more important to her than Godly counsel.
Satan has now preached to Eve, two false gospels:
1. The gospel of mistrusting authorities
2. The gospel of guarding your personal rights
Paul prophecies an attack upon the last day church, just like it happened to Eve:
1. The gospel of mistrusting
authorities.
2. The gospel of guarding
your personal rights.
This prophecy is coming to pass today, and we must see it for what it is and turn around.
The defiant, rebellious spirit of the unsaved world around us has infected the body of Christ, just as Paul warned it would happen.
It is more dangerous than at Corinth because
Christians in these last times have begun siding with unsaved leaders, preaching false gospels, that have led us away from God.
We need to see it in ourselves and turn around!
We can be traveling down the road of our Christian calling and still take a wrong turn.
Let’s rely on God’s Word and the Holy Spirit.
Then we can know when we’ve been whispered to by the Devil and turn around.
This is the “crisis of our faith” we are facing in today’s church.
There is an old Christian Hymn, “Faith of Our Fathers” which says,
“Faith of our fathers, holy faith! We will be true to thee till death.”
And what is the “Faith of our fathers?”
Are we staying true to the faith of our fathers?
Or has our faith become misguided?
Are we on a dangerous detour?
Are we, without realizing it, being led down the wrong road?
Then we need to turn around!
Paul reminds all believers to keep on track:
That’s it! That’s the sum-total of our job and calling as Christians:
Remember, listening to the wrong teacher isn’t anything new.
Eve listened to the wrong teacher way back in the garden of Eden.
Two things happened to her:
1. She was seduced into listening to an ungodly leader.
2. He whispered in her ear that she was missing out on some good things and needed to exercise her individual rights.
We place a great emphasis today on our “individual rights.”
We don’t want be restricted by the powers that be.
Eve decided to exercise her rights, but for her, it didn’t end well.
Our “individual rights” are guaranteed by our constitution, at least here in America.
But they are not a “gospel” to be believed in.
And The Gospel of Christ never guarantees our rights and often asks us to give them up.
Twice in scripture, Peter fights for individual rights:
First In Mat. 16 after Jesus explains that he must go to the Cross, Peter rebukes Him, saying that his master had a right to live and should not be crucified:
Then, in Mat 26 he attacks a guard with his sword: he physically assaults and injures someone to protect his master’s rightful place as Messiah.
Guess who that unnamed servant was? It was Peter! (It says so in John 18:10)
And who could blame Peter for fighting for those rights?
Wouldn’t we do the same thing?
But each time Jesus corrects Peter’s behavior.
First, when Peter rebukes Him, Jesus says…
Secondly, when Peter pulls out his sword to protect his leader, Jesus say this:
Jesus knew, that listening to Peter’s so-called gospel of “individual rights” would overturn God’s mission for Christ to go to the Cross and die for our sins.
And our mission must be as Paul directed: to simply preach about Christ dying to save mankind.
Like Peter, the false “gospel” of our rights and concerns, is, at best, selfish, and at worst: the same lie the Devil whispered into Eve’s ear.
I hope you now see the condition of our church and how we got here.
How can we, now, get back on track as faithful followers of the one true Gospel?
Lets ask ourselves:
“What do we love talking about, sharing, and studying?”
If it’s different than what we used to love talking about, sharing, and studying, then we need to turn around!
God pleads with the people of his day through the prophet Jeremiah
From the very first sentence I feel in my heart that is a Word from the Lord for us today!
Finally, in Revelation chapter 2 Jesus pleads with the church at Ephesus, asking them to
turn around
Back in 1960 the US Navy adopted the initials K-I-S-S, as the best and most efficient way to run all their machinery and systems. It stood for “Keep It Simple, Stupid.”
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, let’s not be seduced from the simple gospel by the distractions and temptations the Devil would have us follow.
Remember that old children’s song, “This little light of mine?”
It’s a simple song about a simple gospel.
Let’s keep it simple.
Listen to what John overheard when he visited Heaven in a vision:
Finally, King David is a perfect example of a man who was on the side of the angels.
This man had the very heart of angels, a heart of worship and of service.
I suspect the angels might have even joined in with him (in Heaven) as he prayed this prayer.
Can we say with David. “O LORD, this is your kingdom.”
And now we will see that David even went far beyond the side of the angels.
He realized that he was unworthy to even be allowed to offer praise to the Most High.
Yet, he must… he must praise the Lord.
He had gone beyond the “side of the angels”
He was now on the side of the REDEEMED.
Today, can we detach ourselves from our various groups and sides and fill our hearts with praise and adoration for the One who died for us and has risen to His throne in Heaven?
Can we stand on the side of the angels (and with David) to offer him a level of praise truly worthy of Who He is?