Having
A Form of Godliness
10/28/07
(The following was used with a PowerPoint presentation,
the asterisks indicate slide changes.)
*The games we play.
There’s pretend and then there’s real.
There’s artificial and then there’s authentic.
There’s a form
of godliness through out this land and then there is genuine godliness through out
this land.
We need to
know the difference!
*Having A Form
of Godliness
*2
Tim. 3:1 But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. …5 having a form
of godliness but denying its power.
There is the genuine and then there is the
counterfeit.
*Our country has reached an epidemic of “religious
imitation!”
There is a fierce spiritual war going on for the
preservation of Genuine Truth!
Truth is not popular.
We can go on TV and talk about God. We can talk about feeding the poor, doing
good deeds, sell books about self improvement, set goals, have marriage
seminars, etc. Just don’t talk about
Jesus and don’t push your moral convictions on anyone else!
We can pray at some public gatherings, just don’t pray
in Jesus name.
What would cause more uproar? Mentioning Jesus or mentioning Allah?
*Lt.
Gordon James Klingenschmitt
*On
September 13, 2006, Lt. Gordon James Klingenschmitt, a Navy chaplain, was
convicted of a misdemeanor for disobeying his commanding officer for wearing
his uniform while delivering a prayer "in Jesus' name" at an assembly
in front of the White House.
*In
2006 a high school valedictorian (Erica Corder) was forced to publicly
apologize for declaring her Christian faith and inviting students to respond to
the Gospel in a speech at her graduation ceremony at Lewis-Palmer High School
near Colorado Springs.
*"In
God We Trust," the official national motto since 1956 and a familiar sight
on U.S. coins and currency, is hard to find on the new presidential dollar
coins.
The
official reason for the design change? According to the Mint, to allow space
for larger portraits of the presidents on the face and the Statue of Liberty on
the reverse.
Jude,
the brother of our Lord wrote something that is very relevant for this time…
*Jude 1:3 Dear
friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we
share, I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was
once for all entrusted to the saints. 4For certain men whose
condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you.
They are godless men, who change the grace of our God into a
*license for immorality and deny
Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.
*America
fearfully resembles the city of Samaria in the Old Testament.
When
the Assyrians conquered Israel (721 B.C.) and exiled 27,290 Israelites, a
“remnant of Israel” remained in the land. Assyrian captives from distant places
also settled there. This led to the intermarriage and widespread worship of
foreign gods.
*2 Ki. 17:29
Nevertheless, each national group
made its own gods in the several towns where they settled, and set them
up in the shrines the people of Samaria had made at the high places. 30The
men from Babylon made Succoth Benoth (bee-noth), the men from Cuthah (q-thah)
made Nergal (ner-gal), and the men from Hamath made Ashima (a-shy-ma); 31the
Avvites made Nibhaz and Tartak, and the
*Sepharvites
(seph-r-vites) burned their children in the fire as sacrifices to Adrammelech
(a-dram-a-lech) and Anammelech (a-name-a-lech), the gods of Sepharvaim. 32They
worshiped the LORD, but they also appointed all sorts
of their own people to officiate for them as priests in the shrines at the high
places. 33 They worshiped the LORD, but they also served their own
gods in accordance with the customs of the nations
*from
which they had been brought.
34To this day they persist in their former
practices. They neither worship the
LORD nor adhere to the decrees and ordinances, the laws and commands
that the LORD gave the descendants of Jacob, whom he named Israel.
America
wants to make room for everybody and in so doing throw away every godly
principle we’ve ever had!
*(American
flag) America should open its arms. I
believe that’s what God would want us to do.
But that does not mean that people should come in to this country
without do process nor does it mean that we should turn away from or apologize
for worshipping the Living God who founded this country!
Israel
was to accept the alien, but not the alien’s god!
Jesus
said, whosoever will, let him come unto me.
He doesn’t make people worship Him, nor should we. But neither does anyone have the right to
stop us from worshiping our Lord and Savior Jesus!
The
majority of the prevailing powers in our government have no desire to protect
our values or the truth that we stand upon.
I
don’t know if you have seen this…
*Muslim CHRISTMAS STAMP
Read
from the power point
How ironic is this??!! They don't even believe in Christ and they're
getting their own Christmas stamp, but don't dream of posting the ten
commandments on federal property?
The
apostle Paul warned the church of this very thing…
*Acts
20:28 Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has
made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his
own blood. 29I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in
among you and will not spare the flock. 30Even from your own number
men will arise and
*distort the truth in order to
draw away disciples after them.
Having the desire to please men more than the desire
to please God is the basis for distortion.
*2
Tim. 4:2 Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct,
rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. 3For
the time will come when men will not
put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of
teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.
The apostle Paul understood the seriousness of making
sure he pleased God more than man.
*Gal. 1:10 Am I now trying to win the approval of men,
or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men,
I would not be a servant of Christ.
The temptation to please man is costly…
*Mk. 15:15 (NLT) So Pilate, anxious to please the
crowd, released Barabbas to them. He ordered Jesus flogged with a lead-tipped
whip, then turned him over to the Roman soldiers to crucify him.
*Acts
12:1 It was about this time that King Herod arrested some who belonged to the
church, intending to persecute them. 2He had James, the brother of
John, put to death with the sword. 3When he saw that this pleased
the Jews, he proceeded to seize Peter also.
Saul cared more about pleasing the people than
pleasing God and God took the Kingship away from him.
*(slide
Games we play) HARTFORD, Conn. – In June,
Sen. Barack Obama told a church convention that some right- wing evangelical
leaders have exploited and politicized religious beliefs in an effort to sow
division.
"Somehow, somewhere along the way, faith
stopped being used to bring us together and started being used to drive us
apart.
Obama is a member of the United Church of
Christ, a church of about 1.2 million members that is considered one the most
liberal of the mainline Protestant groups.
In 1972, the church was the first to ordain
an openly gay man. Two years ago, the church endorsed same-sex
marriage, the largest Christian denomination to do so.
What a perfect definition of holding to a form of
godliness and denying the power there of!
*The church needs to be like Micaiah!
Read 1 Ki. 22
*Eph.
3:10 His intent was that now, through
the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the
rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms…
Glenn Beck
interviewing Joel Osteen. A lot of Christian thinkers have a lot of
questions about Osteen, but Beck beautifully distilled most of them by asking
(my paraphrase): “if you’re a Christian leader, shouldn’t you talk about Jesus
more?”
Osteen made a
tip of the hat to Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection as tenets of faith, but
it took him less than 3 seconds on the subject before he shifted to talking
about “life beyond that”.
*(blank) The Purpose Driven church pastured by Rick
Warrens models the “Seeker friendly” church. I have not tried this myself, but
someone typed in basic words of the Christian faith in his search engine, words
like cross, sin, surrender, repent; it yielded nothing. What came up is a list
of topics baptism, counseling, free food, hockey, marriage, support, tithe,
surfing, weight loss and topics similar to these. These are all the activities
in his church.
Is that bad?
Not necessarily. But if that’s
all that you have, what is going to fight against the attack of darkness
penetrating this world?
You could argue the pros and cons all day long.
The bottom line with me, I have never read any place
in the Bible where Jesus or the disciples compromised the gospel to make it
more attractive to a lost world.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t use wisdom and change
methods for the purpose of evangelism.
But in so doing, we still stand firm while the world is pushing against
the church with all its might!
I want to thank you for being who you are!
This has been a fascinating summer!
God has poured out His Spirit on everything we have
done because He told us to do it.
Without a doubt, the articles we placed in the USA
Today were led by divine appointment and were miraculously provided for.
We have made an agreement with The Southern for
placing one full page ad once a month for four months.
We have done things as a church that we have never
done before.
We must continue to take our stand against
abortion. We will continue to go to
Hope Clinic in Granite City.
I encourage you not to grow weary!
We can’t stop!
Let’s end this service with a
celebration of praise!