Could I Be A Christian? - [2 Corinthians 13:5]

Father, what a blessing and a privilege it is to gather together to look at your

Word, to look at the things that you have revealed to us about yourself. Father, I pray that our time this morning would be of benefit to us as we consider how we spend our time, how we live our lives.

Lord, would you just use this time to strengthen each of us, that we might look more deeply into our walk with you.

Father, we pray that this would be a time of encouragement and of exhortation in Christ's name.

Amen. Well, first I couldn't resist this.

Some things come up in the news and you just look at them and you go, this is just too good not to tell somebody and since nobody's home you guys have to suffer through it.

This is from Reuters and, you know, when they're not using pictures that have been doctored they're pretty reliable.

This is in Sri Lanka. I don't know if you guys saw this. Protestors calling for an end to recent violence in Sri Lanka found themselves brawling with hardline

Buddhist monks Thursday after a rally dubbed a peace protest turned unexpectedly violent.

You can't make stuff like this up. Organizers said there were about 1 ,000 people in a park in the capital,

Colombo. How many knew Colombo was the capital of Sri Lanka? I've never played it, no.

They were listening to a range of speakers when hardline saffron -robed monks opposed to concessions to these rebels mounted the stage and erected banners.

Some more moderate Buddhist monks protesting for peace, which I don't really know how that works exactly, were already on the stage when punches were thrown.

Soon monks' robes and fists were flying. Although no one was badly hurt, witnesses said.

One said, they were saying we should go to war. We like to listen to other opinions so we let them do that but when they started fighting we couldn't control some of our people.

They tried to make it a big fight but we settled it in a few minutes. Peace. We're going to establish peace by brawling.

Okay. Now let me ask you a question. Some of you or many of you probably have the sheet that I printed out.

I may run a few short so please share. But before we go to that lyric sheet, who was the greatest theologian ever who was not

God in the flesh? John? Paul? Did somebody say

John Paul? That would be wrong. Pogo.

We've met the enemy and he is us. Although Pogo was a pseudonym. But anybody else?

Greatest theologian ever? Greatest man?

Okay. Okay. Anybody outside of the Bible we think of as a great theologian? Edwards?

No. Yet. Spurgeon?

Okay. Augustine? Martin Luther? My point there is just it, you know, throughout the ages,

I mean, obviously after the canon of scripture was closed, we didn't have men illumined by the

Holy Spirit so that they wrote the Bible anymore. But we did, the Lord has definitely blessed the church with gifted men throughout the ages.

Now, shifting gears a little bit, who was the greatest hymn writer to ever live?

And by the way, you can't, please don't give me, you know, the Holy Spirit or person of the

Trinity. I'm talking about a human being only. Greatest hymn writer ever? David?

Wesley? Watts? Okay. Fanny Crosby?

Asaph? Wrote a lot of good ones. All right. What's the greatest hymn ever written?

And this will be graded. Greatest hymn ever written? A Mighty Fortress.

Hard to beat that one, at least in my book. I like that one a lot. What's that? Amazing Grace. Wonderful.

Can you hum a few bars? All right. My point is, if we think about it, we think, okay,

God has throughout the ages, he's given gifted men as teachers. He's given, as we can see, if we talk about Isaac Watts, we talk about Wesley, we talk about people throughout the ages.

We've had great music. And it seems like we've come to a point now where we think that basically

Christian music has to be, what, you know, seven words repeated 11 times.

Really dumb stuff. And sometimes, as I mentioned a few weeks ago on a Sunday evening, the songs can even be like, and I have to confess, as I said,

I have a few of those songs, you know, on CDs and stuff like that. And if I listen to them in the right frame of mind,

I go, oh, that's okay. I would never want to sing in a church, but that's okay. But when I just, really, if I just put the lyrics down on a piece of paper and I read them, it is a girlfriend song.

You know, God is a girlfriend. And I hate that. And a few weeks ago, I tried to steer us away from that.

And I said then that our songs, the songs that we sing in church, the songs that we sing together as a congregation, the songs that we praise

God with should be theologically precise, unworldly, limited in their focus on man, immeasurable in their depth, and they should promote or preserve the faith.

And I noted how some of the songs in our hymnal, even our hymnal, are very theologically imprecise.

I said how many churches sing songs that if you were an unbeliever and you came in, nothing about those songs would offend you.

In fact, you'd go, oh, yeah, I know that song. Isn't that by the fill -in -the -blank? I love music.

And when I first got saved, you know, I said, what do I need? Because all

I had basically was, I think I still had my four -in -one, you know, King James Bible, Book of Mormon, Pearl of Great Price, Doctrine and Covenants, all that.

I said, I want to get a Bible. What should I get? And I think, you know, people are like, well, get this version, get that version.

And I wasn't really going to a church, and I don't even know, well, let's back up. I don't even really think

I was saved yet. But I went to the Christian bookstore, got myself a

Bible. And then I was wandering around, you know, because I just,

I'm a compulsive window shopper. And I went around and I was looking around and I saw they had a whole section of CDs, and I'd never heard of any of these people.

And I thought, this is crazy. How do these people make any money? That was my first thought. But the problem was, of course, if you don't know anything, what do you buy?

And how do you figure out what to buy? So they had some music playing on in the background.

And I thought, well, I like that. You know, what's the name of that guy? And so I looked at that and I bought it.

And I was wandering around some more, and I saw this CD by a man, his name is

Steve Camp. And it was called Consider the Cost. And it sounded vaguely familiar.

It sounded to me like these things, the names of these songs, some of them seemed like they came straight out of the

Bible. I thought, well, that sounds pretty good. And so I started listening to it, because they had a place where you could go and listen to things.

And I thought, this guy, if I was going to describe him, I thought, well, he's kind of like, kind of sounds musically a little bit like Billy Joel.

So I thought, well, that's okay. And I bought it. And I'm telling you what, you can learn so much.

I mean, as I grew in learning, I would hear things taught in the

Bible, and I'd go, I already knew that. How did I know that? And it's because I'd memorized it by listening to the

CD over and over and over again and learning the things that were biblical that were in it. So I looked the other day on the

Internet to see how much the CD is going for him. It's out of print now. And at Amazon .com,

I found a lot of copies available for less than $2. I thought, hey, that's pretty good, especially considering what

I paid for it. But I've gotten my use out of it. In fact, I listened to it about three times last night.

But I'm going to do something this morning that I would never do from the pulpit, not even on a Sunday night. I want to examine this song.

One of the songs from that is called, Could I Be Called a Christian. Why? Because it is a great example of how much theology can be packed into five and a half minutes.

It's not just a song. It is a song that is based on many biblical truths, as we will see.

And this song just doesn't give you information. This song demands a response.

Let's read 2 Corinthians 13 .5. Now, this is a verse that we're all very familiar with.

We hear it a lot. And this morning, as we go through this song, I'd really like, not as kind of a consummate checklist.

This isn't a comprehensive list where you can check everything off that he talks about in the song and go, okay, therefore,

I must be a Christian. But these things are good to examine. 2

Corinthians 13 .5, test yourselves to see if you are in the faith. Examine yourselves.

Or do you not recognize this about yourselves? That Jesus Christ is in you unless, indeed, you fail the test.

So what we want to do this morning is we're going to go through this song, see how it compares with biblical truth, and then what

I want you to do is examine your own lives. Is this how you live? Even as Christians, and another thing that really struck me this week is

I had the opportunity. I have a hobby where I communicate with people on the

Internet, and sometimes people are all around the world. And I was text messaging with somebody who's in Norway this week.

It was fairly early in the morning our time, so later for him.

And he said, oh, I'm sorry, I had to go away. I have an appointment right now. Okay. And he comes back a little bit later, and I said, you know,

I just guessed he was some kind of doctor from the way he said it. He said, I'm a psychiatrist. And I said, oh, that's interesting, and started going back and forth.

He says, what do you do for a living? And I said, well, you know. So I told him, and he says, you know, my wife goes to church.

Now this is in Norway. He goes, is your church charismatic? And I said, no, not really.

Although some people think our pastor is a charismatic fellow. Where is he? Anyway, I said, no.

But we started interacting a little bit more, and he said, you know, in Norway you're kind of seen as the lunatic fringe if you describe yourself as a

Christian, because people don't do that. They don't go to church. They don't want to be attached to a church.

And I thought, do we, in some ways, live like those people in Norway?

Even though we say that we're Christians, do we live sometimes like we're not? And this song,

I think, is a good call to self -examination. You have the lyrics, or some of you have the lyrics.

And if you don't, I have extra copies right here. And if I didn't, I couldn't do this. Anybody need a copy?

Anyway, the song starts out, Could I be called a Christian if everybody knew the secret thoughts and feelings of everything

I do? And this is a tough area to quantify. What do you think he's talking about there? If you could sum it up in one word, what is he talking about?

Hypocrisy, hypocrite, exactly. And this is a difficult one. It's been said here before, the more you know, probably the bigger hypocrite you are, because the more you know, the more you think,

Okay, this is how I need to live my life. How short do I fall? Because if you live exactly to what you know,

I would expect you to disappear in a blaze of glory, because you're doing right, brother. Sister.

Jesus, in Matthew 15, verses 7 and 9, said this, talking to the religious powers of his day.

He said, You hypocrites, rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you. This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far away from me.

But in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.

Okay, could I be called a Christian if everybody knew the secret thoughts and feelings of everything I do? The things that I want to do, the things that fill my mind, the things that I do when nobody's looking.

You know, there's another aspect of that. We'll probably harp on that a little bit later.

Because there's something wrong with that line. It's almost like, could

I be called a Christian if everybody knew? Well, somebody does know. God knows every single thing that we think, everything that we feel, and sees everything that we do.

We're never alone. But sometimes we think we are. Sometimes we think we're in isolation.

But you know, this outward appearance, in other words, here's the idea. People might see me and think,

Hey, that guy's a pretty good Christian because look at what he does. But what they don't know is what

I think, what I feel, how difficult it might be for me to restrain the things that I want to say.

And you know what? This outward appearance is the point of every single false religion.

Impress someone, maybe just the other people in your religion, with the way you live your life, what you do.

Isn't that the point? Isn't that what they're after? But beloved, our motives matter.

What we do is one thing. But why we do it is another one entirely, and it is vital.

Doing the right thing is great. Doing the right thing for the wrong reason is, it's wrong, sinful.

Proverbs 16, 2 says, All the ways of a man are clean in his own sight, but the

Lord weighs the motives. We think we're doing things that are good, but God knows why we're doing them.

1 Corinthians 4, 5 says, Therefore, do not go on passing judgment before the time, but wait until the

Lord comes, who will both bring to light the things hidden in the darkness and disclose the motives of men's hearts.

And then each man's praise will come to him from God. And the question then becomes, will there be praise coming forth from God, or will

God be silent as a result of knowing what your motives are? Doing the right thing is great.

Doing the right thing for the right reasons, that's what the Lord wants.

Could I be called a Christian if everybody knew the secret thoughts and feelings of everything I do? How often do we strain and struggle with our emotions?

Next he says, Could they, could these same everybody's, see the likeness of Christ in me each day?

Could they hear him speaking in every word I say? Now this is, this is really, this is getting to it.

Here's the inward motivation, and now we're seeing it flesh itself out. How do we actually live? When people look at us, do they see

Jesus Christ? Our outward life does matter.

Could they hear him speaking in every word I say? Matthew 5, 16, you know, transferred into a song that maybe isn't so heavy, so weighty.

This little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine. But Matthew 5, 16 says, Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works and glorify your

Father who is in heaven. There's no such thing as an undercover

Christian. Your cover should not be blown as a Christian. You know, Oh, they found out

I was a Christian today. That's not the way it should be. But do your neighbors and your co -workers know that you're a

Christian? And then, what does that mean to them? What does that mean to them? When they think,

Well, I know so -and -so and he's a Christian. What do they think of Christianity? What do they think it means to be a

Christian? Do they think, Would they look at you and the way you behave at work, the way you behave in your neighborhood, and conclude that anybody can be a

Christian? That it's really not that big of a deal? Could you be a

Norwegian Christian? I had actually a neighbor in Santa Clarita who said he was a

Christian. And I tried, this was years and years ago, I tried to kind of convince him because he wanted to hang out and stuff, kind of a lonely guy.

But he just drank so much. And he actually, this was tragic, but it shows the effect of inoculating yourself and believing that you're a

Christian when you're not. He was so self -deluded, and he had such an alcohol problem, he actually fell, broke his leg, and was stuck in his house there for a couple days, couldn't even get to the phone before we figured out that something was wrong with him.

And he said he was a Christian. And I couldn't talk him out of it.

Matthew 10, 32 and 33. Jesus says, Therefore, everyone who confesses me before men,

I will also confess him before my Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies me before men,

I will also deny him before my Father who is in heaven. Let me put it to you this way.

If I was to come over to your house, and I'm not really sure how I would do this, but if I was to come over to your house and give you $10 million with this stipulation that any time that somebody asks you where you got all the money so you could do all the things, support all the missionaries you are, how you could do that, that you had to say, well, the money came from Steve.

And if you failed to do that, I would yank the funding. You think you'd say, you wouldn't tell people where the money came from?

Where'd you get all the money? I'd really rather not say, and there's Steve. Give me the money back.

I think we'd be very eager to tell people where the money came from. And I'm not implying in any way that you can somehow lose your salvation by failing to tell people about Christ, but we have been given something of infinite value, far more than any money, because we can't lose it.

It can't be taken away. But why is it that we are quiet about it?

Why is it that we're not running all over the neighborhood, telling everybody? Why is it that we're prone to remaining silent, prone to being closet

Christians? These things shouldn't be. These things shouldn't be.

I mean, if you think about a Christian, our inward life, our thought life, we need to examine that.

Our outward life, the way we behave, before unbelievers, before believers, we need to be evangelists.

We need to serve. James 1 .26 tells us that, talking about,

I'm getting ahead of myself here, but it talks about controlling the tongue. It says, if anyone thinks himself to be religious, in other words, maybe you consider yourself to be a

Christian, and yet does not bridle, does not control, does not harness his tongue, he deceives his own heart, and this man's religion is worthless.

Do unbelievers hear the Lord Jesus Christ in what we say?

When we talk to them, do we temper our language? Are we patient in our homes, in our workplaces?

Are we loving with the things that we say? Do we refrain from gossip?

Are we kind, gentle, guarded in what we say? You know, I know this is hard for you guys to believe, and I know most of you have led really sheltered lives,

I don't really mean that, but the sheriff's department, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, is like one gigantic locker room, and when

I say that, I mean, it's just like, the language, it's like, we used to call it slam fest, meaning the whole objective of things was to cast insults as often as you could at everybody.

That's just what, you know, being a cop was all about, and he who had the quickest wit, you know, good for him, and I was, before Christ, I was a great participant in that, and in fact,

I think, maybe one of the hardest things for me to implement in all of my life is this idea of controlling the tongue.

I think it's hard for everybody, but when you live in that kind of environment, it is a real challenge, and so, all of a sudden, people were looking at me, because we would gather in rooms pretty much like this, no cross in it, but rooms pretty much like this, once a day, and we would have briefings, and they were just waiting for Steve to unleash, and you know, after I got saved, and I stopped, it was like something just got taken out of the room, and it wasn't a bad thing.

It wasn't a bad thing. We need constantly to be monitoring what we say.

Could I be called a Christian, the song goes on, if my faith I did not show, if I do not go to places where the

Lord would have me go. Now, I say this is a tough one, because how do we know where the

Lord would have us go? If you were here last Sunday night, and I pray you were, you heard Charlie preach, and one of the things he said was, you know what, if you're waiting for that still small voice, you know, of Christian folklore to come and speak to you, and tell you where you should go, you're probably going to be sitting at home, because that's just not it, and what if, you know, who says that the

Holy Spirit, by the way, has a still small voice? Maybe it's like a shout, but anyway, I digress.

We don't want to be doing that. What we do know, what God has told us, is that there are places we should go, and where would some of those places be?

Can you think of some places where we should go? Church would be a place we should go.

Any place else? Widows and orphans, I had that one down on my list, that's pure and undefiled religion,

James 127. Anything else? Mission field? Okay. And I expanded that a little bit, to anywhere, we have the opportunity to present the truth.

Isn't that what the mission field is? If we're to go into all the world, we know those things for sure.

Anybody have anything else they can think of? Any other place where we should go? I mean, basically, if I say go into all the world,

I think that covers it all. And that's with a purpose. Are we reluctant to go to the places where the

Lord would have us go? You know, again, getting to the idea, I'm sure, and I'm looking forward to having more conversations with the psychiatrist from Norway.

In fact, I directed him to our website, he wrote back and he goes, nice website. So, I thought, yeah it is.

And I have absolutely nothing to do with that, but it's a great website. But, what do we do?

How do we fulfill that? How do we make sure that we're going to the places the Lord would have us go?

We need to be faithful to do that. Pure and undefiled religion, visit orphans and widows.

You know, we have a rest home ministry. It's a great opportunity to do that. We have the outreach down in Worcester, another great opportunity.

And the song goes on, and my time goes on. If I do not love His truth, just one line.

If I do not love His truth, do you love the Bible? Listen to Psalm 119, several verses here.

Your word I have treasured in my heart that I may not sin against you. Treasured it. 119 verse 16,

I shall delight in your statutes, I shall not forget your word. Verse 42, so I will have an answer for him who reproaches me, for I trust in your word.

Verse 82, my eyes fail with longing for your word, while I say, when will you comfort me?

Verse 162, I rejoice at your word, as one who finds great spoil. Now, is that how you think about the

Bible? If that is how God who has saved us, has chosen to reveal himself, how can we do less than to love his truth?

Says, if I do not guard his trust. What does it mean to guard the trust?

2 Timothy 1 .14, guard. Now, he's talking to a pastor, but he says, guard through the

Holy Spirit who dwells in us, the treasure which has been entrusted to you. How do we do that?

How do we do that as Christians? How do we guard the treasure? That's exactly right.

That is definitely a big one. I mean, I would certainly hope, as a congregation, that there would be an uproar if we started getting up here and teaching something that was not biblical.

How else can we do that? Practically, what do we do? I'm sorry?

Guard them. And we do that by, this is an old analogy, I was just, I just saw an ad on this the other day though.

They had a $200 bills. You know, I found out that they're counterfeiting smaller and smaller bills.

It just boggles my mind. But, anyway, $200 bills next to each other. And I'm looking at them, and I'm going, my first thought was, it must be the fuzzy one, must be the counterfeit.

And then I started thinking, well, wait a minute. They're probably doing that to trick me so that I'll look at the fuzzy one, think it's the counterfeit, but it's really the clearer one.

And the fuzzy one has the best technology. And so I go, it's probably the fuzzy one. I read down, it goes, no, it's the crisp clear one.

You know, so you can fool yourself on that. But we study the Bible so well that when the false teaching comes along, we're not fooled.

We know the truth, and therefore, we can guard it. In our homes, as husbands and fathers, we need to keep out false teaching.

As Christians, we can read good books. We can listen to good things, good teaching.

I'll never forget, here, it wasn't too long ago, Pastor Mike got a letter from somebody who listened to him on the internet and just thanked him very much for his teaching.

And then compared him to a few teachers that I'm sure he'd rather not be, you know, this person thought they were being very complimentary, but I'm sure that Mike would rather not be compared to these people.

So we got a laugh out of that. Moving on in the song, if I cherish more than Jesus, could

I be called a Christian if I cherish more than Jesus, my greatest hidden lust?

Again, there's a single word for this. What would we call it? Idolatry. Idolatry.

Idolatry can be stuff, things. It can be a person or it could be sin that you put in your life and raise to a level where maybe you don't even think about it this way, but you have made it, whatever it is, or this person more important than Jesus.

How can you make a person more important than the Lord? He said, you base your welfare on the condition of this relationship.

So, let's say you're not married. You start seeing somebody and you think maybe this person is a

Christian and all of a sudden, they start steering you away from everything. They don't want to read the Bible.

They want to do things that you shouldn't do. They don't want to go to church and you, now, if you're thinking rightly, you think, well, okay, do

I love the Lord or do I love this person who seems to be leading me away from the Lord? A lot of people just go,

I'm going to follow that person and then I'll take care of the other things later. Many unhappy marriages based on that.

Now, you might think it's pretty strong to call it idolatry. I don't think so. I think that's the biblical concept.

Do we have a sin that we cherish so much that we can't give up? These are issues that we need to think about, that we need to reflect upon.

Because if there are issues like that, you may not be a Christian. Again, this is examine yourself.

See if you're in the faith. John 3, verses 19 and 20. This is the judgment that the light has come into the world and men love the darkness rather than the light for their deeds were evil.

For everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.

Do you love the Lord more than anything else? Great example, of course, is the rich young ruler.

Luke 18, verses 18 and 24. A ruler questioned him, saying, good teacher, what shall

I do to inherit life, eternal life? And Jesus said to him, why do you call me good?

No one is good except God alone. Now, again, and you've probably, maybe you've heard this before, but it seems like Jesus missed it here.

Here was a guy who said, hey, what do I have to do to be saved? And Jesus just didn't go into a gospel presentation.

Why? Because he was God in the flesh and he knew this man's heart. We read on in verse 20.

You know the commandments, do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not bear false witness, honor your mother and your father.

And he, the rich young ruler, said all these things I have kept from my youth. He was a good little

Mormon boy. Verse 22, when Jesus heard this, he said to him, one thing you still lack, sell all that you possess and distribute it to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven, and come follow me.

But when he had heard these things, he became very sad, for he was extremely rich.

And Jesus looked at him and said, how hard it is for those who are wealthy to enter the kingdom of God.

Jesus hit him right where he knew it was going to hurt this guy. He said, you think you're righteous.

I know the one area of your life where you will not give things up to follow me, and I'm going to hit you right there.

It wasn't, let's go around and let's find a way to get this guy into the kingdom. It was like, no, let's reveal his real sin issue.

Let's reveal the real state of his heart. And the Lord went right to the heart of the matter.

In our own lives, we need to look at this. Is there anything that is keeping us from loving the

Lord like we should? Jesus amplifies it in Luke 14, verse 26.

If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.

Try telling that to somebody who is a nominal Christian. Go to Norway and tell them that they have to hate their own life in order to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.

Try telling your neighbor that. You know what it means to be a Christian? It means you have to be willing to give up everything.

Everything must come second after the Lord Jesus Christ. That's not a popular message.

That's not going to be in many of today's songs. Might be on that new

CD out in the lobby, but I don't know. Shameless plug. Thank you. Camp goes on.

To obey all he's commanded, to do all that he said, to be his true disciple.

What did Jesus say? John 14, 15. If you love me, you will keep my commandments. That is not

Christianity today. There's going to be a profile tonight on television.

One of the leading evangelicals in the world. And I can't help but notice it's on the secular news channel.

And they're asking the question, can this man save the world? I'm like, no, he can't.

I don't care how good his intentions are. He can't save the world. But each and every

Christian is responsible to obey the commandments, not to save the world, not to make the world a better place, but to obey

Christ, to love him, to follow him. To be a true disciple is to be a learner.

To be a learner is to be a studier. To be a studier, if you take things in, if you go to school all the time, and you're learning and learning and learning, and the day comes to take that exam, and you completely bomb it, does the professor say, well, you know,

I know that you've been reading all this stuff, and I'm just going to bump up your grade to an A anyway. You have to live it out.

You have to practice it. To place no confidence, camp goes on, to place no confidence in the flesh, to glory in Christ Jesus.

Paul writes in Philippians 3, verses 2 to 4, beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of the false circumcision.

For we are the true circumcision, who worship in the spirit of God, and glory in Christ Jesus, and put no confidence in the flesh.

Do you think Steve Camp took this song straight out of the Bible? Although I myself might have confidence, even in the flesh, if anyone else has a mind to put confidence in the flesh,

I far more. And then he goes on to describe all the things that he's accomplished in the flesh before he got saved.

And his point is, all of our works, all the things that we think we can do on our own strength are rubbish.

We glory in Christ Jesus. If you can't look back and say, that's what

I was, but by the grace of God, I am what I am today. If you can't do that, then maybe you're not a

Christian. Jesus Christ changes people. We glory in Christ Jesus because of what he has done.

When we think, there's no good thing in me, but what Jesus Christ has done, and that is the

Christian life. That's the Christian thinking. That's what we need to do if we're examining ourselves to determine whether or not we're in the faith.

Camp goes on, it is he who justifies. Jesus Christ justifies us.

It's by his work alone that we stand before God, declared righteous.

Romans 5 .18, so then as through one transgression, there resulted condemnation to all men by the fall of Adam.

So even so, through one act of righteousness, there resulted justification of life to all men.

We are justified through Christ's righteousness.

That's a great truth to think about. That one song, that one verse, we could spend weeks on that.

What does it mean to be justified? How great a truth is that? This song and songs like this, not only calls to examine ourselves, but they remind us of great truths of the

Christian faith that we need to constantly be thinking about, reminding ourselves. He goes on, to find your life, you must lose it again.

Not a popular notion, but a biblical one. Jesus said in Matthew 10 .39,

he who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for my sake will find it.

We are not promised a rose garden in this life. We are not promised a life of ease.

We are not promised health, wealth, prosperity. In fact, we're told if we were to do a complete study on it, we're promised suffering.

We're promised trials. We're promised a lot of difficulty, persecution.

But, we have a greater promise, and that promise is eternal life.

That's what Jesus gives us. We lose our lives now. We sell ourselves out now.

We follow him. We serve him. We obey him now. We turn ourselves completely over to him, trusting alone in Christ Jesus for salvation, and we gain eternal life.

Romans 8 .13 says, For if you are living according to the flesh, you must die.

And again, Paul's not talking about mortal life. He says,

But by the spirit, or by the spirit you are being put to death, the deeds of the body you will live.

Maybe I should read that again. But if by the spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body you will live.

You can't do it on your own. You can't sanctify yourself. It is by the spirit that you are putting to death the deeds of the body you will live.

And again, Camp goes back and says, Let every man examine his own life. Could I be called a

Christian? We need to be in constant examination mode, looking at our thoughts, our motives, our actions, how we portray

Christ to the world. That's what we need to do.

That's in 2 Corinthians 13 .5. He goes on. And he says, Could I be called a Christian and believe not his holy word?

We've heard about love not his word, but how about believe not his word? Many claim

Christ, but they don't believe his word. Libraries are filled with books that are written by liberals who don't believe the

God of the Bible. They don't believe in the Revelation. I was just reading an article in the

Christian Research Journal. The more sanctified answer to Christianity today.

And they were talking about somebody who is a

Christian and yet is a major professor and everything of evolution and how he rationalizes those two things.

And I don't really understand that. But there are a lot of people. In fact,

I was in an interview with somebody else this week. And he said, You know what? Christians really have a problem.

And the problem is they can't take the Bible literally. He said,

Didn't Jesus speak in a lot of, what was the word he used? He said,

Didn't he speak metaphorically? No, I didn't even say that. How do you put it?

Symbolically. Didn't he use a lot of that? And I said, Well, you're talking about parables. Yes, he did a lot of that.

But this guy was specifically referring to Genesis. And he said, You can't take it literally. And I said, Well, that's interesting.

When does the Bible become literal? You know, what page is that? Is that when Samson is born?

Is that when the Israelites come out of Egypt? Is that after they cross the

Red Sea? When exactly is it that we should start taking it literally? And there is no answer for that, of course.

Because they just decide what they don't want to believe and what they do believe. But we have to believe

God's word. Why? Because the God of the universe has deigned to give us his self -revelation.

He's given us everything that we need. In 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17, a passage we know well, says,

All scripture is inspired by God. It's breathed out by God. And it is profitable. It is valuable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness.

So the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work. It is not a compendium of myths and fables.

It is the literal living word of God. And we need to, as Charlie said a week ago, and as Peter wrote, we need to pay attention to it.

Again, Camp says, if I take him as Savior and then refuse him as my Lord, there's no such thing as hell insurance.

The Bible never talks about that. You can't just have salvation and then tack on later. Jesus Christ says,

Lord, I want to be saved from my sin, but I'll determine when

I start obeying Jesus Christ. It's not in the Bible. Luke 9, 23.

Jesus again. Jesus was very tough. I think he'd get thrown right out of a lot of evangelical.

I mean, I'm speaking with a little bit of hyperbole, but his teaching does not fit into the current evangelical scheme.

Luke 9, 23. He said, and he was saying to them all, if anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.

You can't put on a skit and then preach that. That isn't going to work.

We can't have Jesus as Savior and then refuse him as Lord. So if I'm thinking about my own life,

I can't think. I sure am glad that I'm not going to hell and that I'm going to heaven, but I don't want to obey

Christ. This is the call to remember. I need to obey him. He says, if I could not love the outcast.

And I'm not burdened for the lost. There is, did

Jesus love the outcasts? Do we need to emulate Jesus? Did Jesus go and hang out with the, the rich, the affluent, the really cool people of the day.

He was with the dregs of society. We need to have a burden for those who are outside.

We need to have a burden for every lost person, but we need to have a burden for those who are down and out.

Matthew 25 verses 44 to 46. Then they themselves will also answer Lord.

When did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did not take care of you.

Then he will answer them. Truly. I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.

These will go away into eternal punishment, put the righteous into eternal life.

There is something when the Holy spirit takes up residency in you, you develop, you have a

God given compassion for the lost. You have a God compact given compassion for those who are, um, as the world would say, less fortunate you than you, we would say less blessed than you.

We have an obligation under the great commission to go and preach and teach the word of Christ. Finally, he says, if I failed to deny myself and each day, take up my cross, that phrase there, deny yourself means to disassociate, to hate yourself, to want to, to look back.

Does that mean that I have to get up in the morning and say, boy, I hate that Steve guy. I hate that guy in the mirror.

Well, yeah, part of it. I hate what he used to be. I hate what he still thinks about doing.

I hate what he still does. Sometimes when he lives in his flesh, when he acts out, when he doesn't practice self -control, when he says things that he shouldn't say every day, take up my cross, not to carry it through the streets of Worcester or Clinton.

Like they, they call us every year wanting us to be involved in that. That's not what it means. It means to think about the fact every single day that I am a

Christian. I represent the Lord Jesus Christ and I need to do that. Well, I need to do that.

Well, all of this in five and a half minutes of music.

Think of all the truth contained in this song about God, about man, about the

Lord Jesus Christ, about the Bible, about sin, about salvation, about evangelism, about our need to serve.

These are the bedrock truths of Christianity. And we need to be reminded of them again and again and again.

We need to have our love for the Lord Jesus Christ, for his word, for his work, for his church rekindled over and over and over again.

Good music, music that causes us to focus on the word, to focus on the

Lord, to focus on the things that are important to the Lord. Jesus Christ is important.

It can just stir us to good things. It can take us out of our funky moods.

It can get us off of self pity and it can bring us back to where we need to be thinking rightly about the

Lord Jesus Christ and rightly about ourselves. We may not have

Martin Luther, Charles Wesley, David Asaph, all these great hymn writers, but we do have

Christians who are writing great music today. Great biblical lyrics, if we will, but listen to them, focus on those things and be reminded of the greatness of our

God. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the gifts that you give your church.

We thank you for the men that you have throughout the ages, gifted to teach, to write about your word.

Father, we thank you for the men and women who whom you have gifted over the years to write music.

Lord, I pray that you would turn our hearts toward that music, which would keep us focused on you.

That would cause us to analyze our own lives, to seek to live for your glory and not for our own.

Lord, would you do, would you just fill up our time with poignant reminders of our first love and our first desire to be pleasing in your side.