What Are They Seeing?

Transcript

Alright. Thank you very much and hello again, radio friends. How in the world are you? You doing Alright? Well, sure, I wait for you to answer because I know many of you do. Bless your heart. We know what we’re doing, don’t we? Yeah. We’re together around the Word of God in these precious moments that we invest in things eternal. We just don’t spend them. We invest them.

We’re gotten into the second chapter of 2 Peter and if you take it, just on the face of it and especially in a broadcast like this it can sound like one long scolding, and I don’t want that to be because you get yelled at enough in life. And so what I thought I would do, it’d be to take some of these negative passages where Peter very properly points out the faults and the sins of the people who were then and who still today cluster around religious groups. You always got a few fakers wherever you got the real thing. And so he was pointing out these folk who, although they were in touch with the group of believers, they weren’t really submitted to the Lord Jesus Christ and instead they were living on the basis of the old unsaved fleshly life. So that’s that whole second chapter and we’ll see that as we go on.

But I want to do is to give you a contrast between that and the positive truth that we find in the rest of the Word of God that applies to the believer. So, in addition to the don’ts, we’ll have the do’s. That sound Alright? I want something that will encourage you as well as servicing as a warning to all of us in the matter of watching out for error. If you always have your eyes on watching out for what’s wrong, you don’t get around to doing what’s right. It’s like learning to ride a bicycle. If you keep watching for the potholes that you want to avoid, you run right into them. What you do is your keep your eye on where you want to go and then you get along better.

Well, with that explanation look at chapter 2 of 2 Peter. First of all, he talks about people who are false prophets among the people. Now, a small thought here. Wherever you have the real thing, you’ll find counterfeit. Don’t give up simply because you run into somebody that isn’t the real article. Did you ever get a counterfeit, 5 or a 10 dollar bill? Were you unfortunate enough to have that happen to you? I’ve seen that happened a few times in my life. People are still busy trying to make money dishonestly and so there are counterfeiters that show up from time to time.

And let us say you got a counterfeit 10 dollar bill. It looked Alright but when you went to put it in the bank or to cash it, someone said “This is a phony. This is a counterfeit and we won’t accept it.” And so you figured you were out of 10 bucks. Now, did you then at that point say, “I am done with money. I am never going to touch it again. I don’t trust it. I’ve been fooled. This is a counterfeit. It’s a fake and I’m going to give up having anything to do with money.” Did you do that? Why, no, of course not. You just kept a sharp eye out to make sure that you didn’t get fooled again, but you didn’t throw out all of your contact with paper money simply because somebody had setup a printing press and it fooled you once.

You meet people in church society that say, well — or out of it that say “Well, I met somebody once who fooled me or who lied to me or who was a hypocrite or who harmed me. And he or she claimed to be a Christian and I just don’t believe it and I’ve given up on that church.” Well, bless you. Just because one congressman is indicted and sent to jail, you don’t throw out congress. And just because one investment banker is indicted and sent to jail, you don’t throw out everybody that works in Wall Street. Ah? No, you look for the real thing, that’s what you do. They’re just false prophets among the people. There would be false teachers among you. They will privately bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them.

Now, what is the positive side of this? Yes, be aware of the possibility of the counterfeit and be sharp enough to see it when it comes. But what’s the positive side of it? “Denying the Lord that bought them.” See, this is the New Age. You don’t need God. You don’t need the redemption. You don’t need shed blood, the atonement. You can get along fine without and the New Age people say, “You don’t need a God who is the absolute eternal, unchangeable God because God is you. God is in you. You’re part of God.” And they tell that kind of stuff to people who take it in. That’s the new heresy and it denies, first of all, the need for God and second, the need for redemption. They say look, “You don’t need to talk about sin. That’s just — you’re just — you got a bad self attitude, self image. And so start liking yourself because you don’t need all these stuff about being born again. You don’t have to repent of anything. You’re okay.”

See, that’s the teaching you have today and it isn’t new at all. It’s as old as the Garden of Eden. And what’s the other side of it? Well, denying the Lord is one side. The other side is confess Him as Lord. Put the Lord Jesus Christ on the throne of your life. Mathew 10:32, “Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I also confess before my Father which is in Heaven. But whoso shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven.” Mark 8:38 is a similar passage, “Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my word in this adulterous and sinful generation; of Him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy Angels.” He said, if you can’t be proud of me here in a sinful world, I’m going to have difficulty with you in the Holy World, in the shining world.

So, the answer to this particular problem is to put the Lord Jesus Christ where He belongs on the throne of your heart as the second person of the God head, as your loving Lord and your wonderful Savior, and your high priest and your coming King. See, confess Him as Lord. “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus is Lord, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” But the call on the name of the Lord means to trust Him, to do what His name means. People used to be named for their work. Today even, we have Mr. Carpenter, Mr. Baker, Mr. Banker, Mr. Shoemaker, and so on. We’ve got all that. We take it for granted but that used to be the names for the work people did.

Now, the angel said to Joseph, “Thou shalt call his name Jesus. He shall bring forth a son, and thou shall call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins.” His name means Savior. So if you call on the name of the Lord, that means ask him to do and trust him to do what his name means, to save you from your sins and make you a child of God. That’s the essence, that’s the sense of what you find in John 1:12, “As many has received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.” To believe on his name means to trust him to do what his name means. He is a Savior, and you trust him then to lift you, and to forgive you, and to cleanse you and to give you that new eternal life which makes you then a child of God.

The opposite of this heresy that Peter is talking about here is to put the Lord Jesus Christ on the throne of your life where he belongs and confess him as Lord, don’t deny him, confess him. Well, see you that. Now then, verse 2, it says, “Many shall follow their pernicious ways by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of.” There are two thoughts there. One is, you do have influence for good or ill whether or not you wish it. The idea of ministry is the idea of sharing from your life the very essence of what you are and if you minister as good ministers of the Gospel Paul talks about. If you minister God to people that means you’re sharing with them the very reality and the essence and the presence of your loving Lord.

Well, it’s possible to have an influence for good or ill. Whatever you are, you are impacting somebody else’s life. That’s what I want us to remember here. It says, “Many shall follow their pernicious ways.” You do have an impact upon other people whether or not you wish it, and the impact is produced not by what you say when you are making some official utterance. The impact is produced by which you are routinely, when nobody is particularly watching you. That is the impact area of your life. You want to give that some thought?

Who is following you and if they’re following you what are they getting into? Who is watching you and if they’re watching you, what are they learning? Who is evaluating you and if they’re evaluating you, what do they come up with concerning the realities of your life? Who is observing your lifestyle in terms of faith in Jesus and as they do it, what opinion do they come away with concerning Jesus your Lord? You and your life are the only Bible that people read many of them and they form their opinion of the Lord Jesus Christ by the life they see us lead. “Follow” is the keyword there. Who is following you and what are they getting out of it?

If you keep on just the way you are, what is going to be the impact upon the people who know you, and who observe you, and work with you and live with you? Mothers and dads think about that in terms of your children. If we keep on just the way we are. Now, life turns out to be pretty ordinary most of the time. Get up, get dressed, get breakfast or pack the lunches for the kids, get off to school and work, do the house work of your home worker — homemaker, I should say. You do the three million things that nobody ever thanks mother for. Or you go out to business or you go to school or whatever it may be, and you come on home again by and by in the evening and you have dinner, and you either watch TV or you do homework or whatever it is and you take two aspirins and go to bed.

Most days are pretty ordinary but in the process of living that ordinary life, people are learning, learning, observing, observing, evaluating, evaluating what you are. Now, ask yourself then mother and dad, if we keep on just the way we are — oh, we have an occasional spat. Oh, we don’t agree on this and that. Oh, we have our difficulties and so on. Well, let us suppose that is so. If you keep right on just the way you are, what impact are you making on your children? They are following something. And what they follow is not what you tell them in their lectures. They follow what you really are in your life in those moments when you’re not being official, you’re just being you. That is what people follow. Make sure that it’s full of Lord Jesus Christ. Well, we’ll come back to this the next time we get together.

Father God, help us to live the life today that has an impact for Jesus. I ask in His name. Amen.

Till I meet you once again by way of radio, walk with the King today and be blessing!