14th Sunday after Pentecost!
Introduction:
A. Have
you ever heard someone say when referring to
someone's
religion, "It doesn't matter what you
believe as
long as you are sincere?"
B. I
have heard this statement made many times.
C. If
it doesn't matter what we believe, what are we
worried about? Everyone will go to Heaven anyway!
D. The
truth is it does matter what we believe!
I'm
afraid there
are people today who are Sincerely Lost!
Trans.
Let's look today at a man who was very
sincere and who came to Jesus,
learning some lessons from what was
said!
Prayer
Matt.
19: 16-22
I. What did this young man have going for him?
A.
He was a ruler!
We learn this from Luke's gospel –
Luke 18:18 (Possibly of the Sanhedran - B.K.C.)
B.
He was religious!
He was a "good" Jew! He
had kept
the commandments that Christ listed
to his knowledge!
* We might say he was sincere! *
C. He
was rich! All three gospel accounts of
"The rich
young ruler" present him as rich!
D. To
most people, he looked like he had it all!
Yet he
felt like something was missing!
II. What did he lack?
A. He
failed in his love for people!
1. He'd
just told Christ that he loved his neighbor
as himself
yet his action here proved the
contrary!
2. "You
have to love people more than things!"
a. My mother told me this one time when it was
much needed, and I've never
forgotten it!
b. Our world would be a much better place to
live if
people believed and practiced this!
1) People wouldn't be cheating others and
hurting
them to get ahead!
2) People would be generous and make
prevision
for the less fortunate!
3) People wouldn't lie about a product to
sell it!
4) People would practice Love not revenge
when their property
was damaged!
5) People wouldn't purposely damage
another's property!
6) There wouldn't be people hungry or
starving!
7) There wouldn’t be homeless!
B. He
lacked one other thing! He failed to
accept and
follow Christ!
1. John
3:16-18 He that doesn't believe in
Christ
is condemned!
2. This
is the one that I'm afraid gets a lot of
people today,
even like this man, religious
people!
a.
This is about believing that God did in
Christ what we can’t do for
ourselves! God made a way for us to be
forgiven and given a chance to live for God after we have messed it up. It isn’t about what we have done! It is about
following Jesus. People that don’t get this may be very Religious; they are
religiously working for the church,
but they are sincere but Lost!
b.
Our works should be an outflow of our faith!
We work because of our love for God
and for people! We work because we have found a better way! Working without the
faith and for any other reason may make us think we are okay, like the rich
young ruler, but in reality we are sincere but lost. Our works become a false
security!
False security:
1) We may be sincere and may feel sure we
are alright because we
never miss a
Sunday!
2) We may be sincere and may feel we are
alright because we are
a member of a
church!
3) We may be sincere and feel sure we
are
alright because to the best of our
knowledge
we live a clean, moral life!
We are not
like “those” people!
Whoever “those”
people are!
c.
These things are good, and we may be sincere in
doing them! We may be sincerely trying
to be good
people, but that in itself isn't
enough! (Eph. 2:8-9)
8 For by grace you
have been saved through faith, and this is not
your own doing; it is the gift of
God— 9 not the result of
works, so
that no one may boast.[1]
d.
Works can be a means of grace. They can be
an avenue through which God makes
Godself known to us and we come to faith.
Sadly, this wasn’t the case with the rich young ruler!
1)
So if you are working and don’t have
faith the answer is not to just
stop working!
2)
Once when John Wesley was suffering
from self-doubt and struggling with
his faith and wondering if he should stop preaching, his mentor, Peter Bohler,
told him:
“Preach
faith till you have it: and
then, because
you have it, you will
preach faith.”
3)
So our works can be part of the journey
but not the end of the journey.
III. The bottom line is this, if we haven't accepted
that God
has done for us what we
can't do for ourselves and because
of that are serving God with all our lives, we are lost!
A. We
can have our names on every church roll in
Forsyth and be lost! Joining the Church and serving
through the church are good and needful. It is
through our
service that God’s work gets done, but Church
membership in itself does not save us!
B. We
can be at church every time the doors are open and
be lost!
C. We
can take an active part in the church and be lost!
Conclusion: John 14:6 " “I am the way,
and the truth, and the life. No one comes
to the Father except through me. [2]"
A. This
man had done all these things, yet he lacked the
most important one!
C.
How about us?
Have we accepted what God has done for
us that we can't do for
ourselves? We have to get off of this
self-sufficiency kick when it comes to this; we can't do anything to make us
right with God! We can only accept what God has done for us, believing in
what God has done for us with all our hearts and serving God as a result of
it! Are we really following God, or are
we, like we are so use to doing in many other areas of our lives, trying to take
care of it ourselves? As we encounter
Christ at the table this morning, do we need to receive what God has done for
us that we can't do for ourselves?
Prayer of Confession
Service of Communion
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