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 Be
The Light Of The World
Rev.
Michael Packard
Click
Here to listen to the mp3 of message |
"You
are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden.
Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they
put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In
the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your
good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.
- Matt 5:14-16(NIV)
Last week I
challenged you to make a paradigm shift, to change your perspective
on your relationship with God and the people around you. I challenged
you to be the love of God to everyone you encounter. This week I'm
going to raise the stakes a bit and talk to you about how you should
live your life in Christ, and about how your life in Christ makes you
accountable to Him for the people whose lives you affect by your
witness and your testimony. Today I'm going to challenge you to live
the good news of the kingdom of God, and of your salvation in Jesus
Christ, to let your salvation be evident and obvious to all of those
around you, to always hold on to the hope that is within you, and to
always be able to give the reasons for the hope you have. Today I'm
going to challenge you to:
Be the
light of the world.
Heavenly
Father, thank You for Your word, and for the message You are about to
give us. Father help us to receive it and let it enter our hearts.
Help us, Lord to meditate on Your words and cause Your words to spark
action in our lives. Equip us to reach out to the lost and hurting in
our world. Lord open our hearts to feel Your love and our minds to
understand Your instructions for us, and take away from us anything
that would distract or hinder us from receiving all that you have for
us today. Do the perfect work in our lives today. We give this time
to you, in Jesus' name, for Your honor and glory. Amen.
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We
Live In A Dark World |
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Everywhere
you look today, movies, television, radio, billboards, newspapers,
bumper stickers, t-shirts, whatever, they all proclaim the messages
of the lost. Drinking is socially acceptable. Pre-marital sex is a
requirement every "serious" relationship. Extra-marital sex
is ok too, as long as you don't get caught. Drugs should be
legalized. It's ok to hate people who are different than us. People
with money or power are above the law and can go unpunished for their
crimes. Homosexuality is a natural "alternative lifestyle,"
and should be promoted.
In the
schools, our children are taught that: (in the words of Frank Peretti)
"life
is an accident, that you are the result of a meaningless
conglomeration of molecules that came together purely by chance
billions and billions of years ago and became gooey creatures
swimming in a primordial soup that eventually developed legs and
crawled up on land and then billions of years later became monkeys,
and then the monkeys started shaving and developed into you. From goo
to you! (by way of the zoo). As such you have no real reason to be
here, your existence is pointless, the universe won't mind a bit when
you die, and when you do you'll just become so much compost." -
Frank Peretti
Proverbs
16:25 says:
There is
a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.
- Proverbs 16:25(NIV)
And in
Romans 3:10-18, the Apostle Paul declares:
As it is
written: "There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no
one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they
have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not
even one." "Their throats are open graves; their tongues
practice deceit." "The poison of vipers is on their
lips." "Their mouths are full of cursing and
bitterness." "Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and
misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know."
"There is no fear of God before their eyes." - Romans 3:10-18(NIV)
In Isaiah
5:20-23, the Prophet says,
Woe to
those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light
and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for
bitter. Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in
their own sight. Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine and
champions at mixing drinks, who acquit the guilty for a bribe, but
deny justice to the innocent.- Isaiah 5:20-23
And later,
in Isaiah 53:6 he says,
We all,
like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. - Isaiah 53:6(NIV)
Last week I
warned you about turning people away from God by our actions toward
them and reactions to them. Many people are lost because they are
turned off by so-called "organized religion" because of the
actions so-called "Christians" who were more interested in
justifying themselves than helping people find the Way, the Truth,
and the Life. Those people are turned away because God was
misrepresented to them by people claiming to be His. The people who
become the most defiant against God, don't really know God, or about
His salvation.
Some people
don't know that their existence doesn't end in death. Their point of
view is that if this one brief shot at life is all that they get,
they might as well "eat,
drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die!" (Isaiah
22:13)
Some people
believe that if they are good enough they will automatically go to
heaven and they don't need to worry about it. Or maybe they believe
that "God is love! He wouldn't send anyone to Hell!" But
they don't know that we all are separated from God by our sins and
need His forgiveness, that the gates of Hell are locked from the
inside and that we send ourselves there and condemn ourselves by not
turning to God and receiving the salvation Jesus gave His life to
give us.
Most people
have never met God. They have never seen his face. They have never
heard His voice. They live in darkness and don't know it because they
have never seen the light. |
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We
Need To Be The Light Of The World |
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The only
image of God most people see is the one reflected in the lives and
actions of His people. Too often, that image is distorted. Our
mirrors are dirty, because we do not keep them clean. The things we
are taught we do not put into practice. We let the things of the
world crowd out the things of God. We let our attitudes slip because
we will not let His peace rest upon us and we will let His joy fill
us. In the words of Jesus:
Still
others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; but the worries
of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other
things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful.
- Mark 4:18-19 (NIV)
Look at the
moon. We see it at night because the light of the sun reflects off of
it, but it's not like a mirror. We do not see the sun, we see the
dust that covers the moon, we see the bumps, and rocks, and craters.
The moon has it's own problems, which are revealed by the light, and
because of the abundance of these problems, they are all we see. We
do not see the glory of the sun in the reflection we receive from the
moon. Likewise, when we let our own issues crowd out the things of
God in our lives, the only reflection the people around us see is our
issues and inadequacies lit up in stark contrast to the faith we
profess with our mouths.
Our mirrors
are warped, because we do not know the scriptures, or the power of
God. We read verses out of context and then shoehorn them into our
pet doctrines. We ignore verses that contradict what we want to
believe, calling them "allegory and not literal truth." We
make a god in our own image and then try and inflict him on others,
rather than reflect the image of true God who can save them.
Our mirrors
are out of alignment, because we aren't constantly seeking His face.
Since we're not always pointed completely in God's direction, we only
receive part of His image, and reflect only a glimpse of His light.
Let's go back to the moon. When the Earth isn't obstructing the light
of the sun, we see a full moon, a circle of brightness shining in the
dark. We only see the full moon for a couple days a cycle. The rest
of the time the moon is not in the right place (since it orbits the
earth) to give us a full reflection, we get a partial reflection.
What we see is still bright, but is not as full a picture of the moon
as during a full moon. During a lunar eclipse, you can't see the moon
at all, it's completely in the "wrong" place. Similarly,
during the times that we are not directed by God, when are not
diligently seeking to know Him and His will for us, we are not
reflecting His image fully. The good we may do and the help may we
give demonstrates the light He has shown us, but does not give the
whole picture. The longer we stray, the dimmer His light is, and when
we backslide, He stops shining in our lives.
The light
we are given shines out in all directions to encourage the lost and
help them find their way to Jesus. The light that led YOU out of
darkness was reflected off the face of someone willing to Be that reflection.
How
accurate is His image reflecting off of you today? How bright is your
light, today? Is your mirror dirty? Are there issues in your life
that are causing His light to be distorted? Are you focused on Jesus,
receiving His full light, so you can reflect His full light? |
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I'm
Going to Tell You Something That Will Change Your Whole Life If You
Let It: |
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You are
accountable to God for who your neighbor becomes in Christ because of
your testimony. You are accountable to God for how you share the
light you have been given. God has carried you through trials and
tests, which have together become a testimony of His faithfulness to
you, and He has commissioned you to share that testimony with others.
More than that, He has prepared you from the beginning, and has
uniquely qualified you through your tribulations to be His light to
people who are facing similar trials in the dark.
In,
Ephesians 2:8-10 Paul said,
For it
is by grace you have been saved, through faith-- and this not from
yourselves, it is the gift of God--not by works, so that no one can
boast. For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do
good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. - Ephesians
2:8-10 (NIV)
You have a
responsibility to share the Good News. People are on the road to
destruction and God loved them enough to send Jesus to pay for their
sins and reconcile them to Himself, and He loves them enough to send
you to show them His love, and to help them turn from their sins and
toward God. You are part of His redemptive plan for them. He has
given you His light so you can be a beacon for them in the darkness,
and if they are willing to come, you can lead them to His light. You
MUST take your responsibility seriously. The lives of your neighbors
depend on your willingness to be the light of God.
Here is a
heavy passage of scripture. It's Ezekiel 3:17-21
"Son
of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel; so hear
the word I speak and give them warning from me. When I say to a
wicked man, 'You will surely die,' and you do not warn him or speak
out to dissuade him from his evil ways in order to save his life,
that wicked man will die for his sin, and I will hold you accountable
for his blood. But if you do warn the wicked man and he does not turn
from his wickedness or from his evil ways, he will die for his sin;
but you will have saved yourself. "Again, when a righteous man
turns from his righteousness and does evil, and I put a stumbling
block before him, he will die. Since you did not warn him, he will
die for his sin. The righteous things he did will not be remembered,
and I will hold you accountable for his blood. But if you do warn the
righteous man not to sin and he does not sin, he will surely live
because he took warning, and you will have saved yourself." -
Ezekiel 3:17-21 (NIV)
In 1 Peter
4:17-18, Peter says
For it
is time for judgment to begin with the family of God; and if it
begins with us, what will the outcome be for those who do not obey
the gospel of God? And, "If it is hard for the righteous to be
saved, what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?" (NIV) |
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To be
The Light Of The World We need To Receive The Light Of The World |
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We need to
know Jesus, and we need to let Him light us up on the inside so that
we can shine on the outside. We need to be fully equipped and ready
to give an answer to anyone who asks us about the hope that is within
us. But they won't ask us about the hope we have within us if they do
not see it, if we do not demonstrate through our lives and our
actions that we have the hope. And we cannot demonstrate it on the
outside if we do not have it on the inside, and we cannot have it on
the inside if we don't know about it. We receive the message of the
hope, we believe the message and it becomes hope inside us, we
demonstrate that hope in our actions and our lifestyles, and then we
testify of the hope within us when someone asks.
This is how
the Apostle Paul put it in Romans 10:13-17
for,
"Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved."
How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And
how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how
can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they
preach unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful
are the feet of those who bring good news!" But not all the
Israelites accepted the good news. For Isaiah says, "Lord, who
has believed our message?" Consequently, faith comes from
hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of
Christ. - Romans 10:13-17 (NIV)
We need to
get the message in us, and let it transform our hearts and renew our
minds. We need to take a stand and listen to God's instructions for
our lives, meditate on the instructions, and follow them day by day.
As we change, people will notice, and see that we have a hope that
they do not have and they will ask us about it. The brighter our
light shines, the more people will notice.
We can't
say a word to them about Jesus until they see Jesus in our lives and
He calls them to ask. Our words are meaningless without the faith to
back them up. Without the inward commitment to our Lord, any outward
expressions are meaningless. Instead of telling them of our faith, we
need to show them our faith by what we do. (James 2:18) How do we
know what do do? We need to dive into the Bible with all our hearts
and grab onto His instructions for our lives.
In 2
Timothy 3:16-17 it says:
All
Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking,
correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may
be thoroughly equipped for every good work. - 2 Timothy 3:16-17 (NIV)
The Bible
is filled with instructions for how to live our lives. The 10
Commandments (Exodus 20:3-17), the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6-8),
the whole book of Proverbs, and all of the Epistles in the New
Testement (Romans-Jude) are good places to learn His way for you
from. Search the scriptures, find His will for your life and live
that way.
As God said
through the Prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 58:8
Then
your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will
quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the
glory of the LORD will be your rear guard. - Isaiah 58:8 (NIV) |
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Here's
A Start On That Path: |
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Paul wrote
these instructions to Timothy: in 1 Timothy 1:15-16
Here is
a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came
into the world to save sinners-- of whom I am the worst. But for that
very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners,
Christ Jesus might display his unlimited patience as an example for
those who would believe on him and receive eternal life. - 1 Timothy
1:15-16 (NIV)
and later
in 1 Timothy 4:7-8:
Have
nothing to do with godless myths and old wives' tales; rather, train
yourself to be godly. For physical training is of some value, but
godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the
present life and the life to come. - 1 Timothy 4:7-8 (NIV)
and in his
second letter to Timothy, in 2:22-26, he added:
Flee the
evil desires of youth, and pursue righteousness, faith, love and
peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.
Don't have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because
you know they produce quarrels. And the Lord's servant must not
quarrel; instead, he must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not
resentful. Those who oppose him he must gently instruct, in the hope
that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of
the truth, and that they will come to their senses and escape from
the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will. -
Timothy, in 2:22-26 (NIV)
To the
Galatians, Paul wrote
Brothers,
if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore
him gently. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted. Carry
each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of
Christ. If anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he
deceives himself. Each one should test his own actions. Then he can
take pride in himself, without comparing himself to somebody else,
for each one should carry his own load. Anyone who receives
instruction in the word must share all good things with his
instructor. Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps
what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that
nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit,
from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Let us not become weary in
doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do
not give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all
people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers. -
Galatians 6:1-10 (NIV)
In James
3:13-18, the Lord's brother James adds,
Who is
wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good life,
by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you
harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast
about it or deny the truth. Such "wisdom" does not come
down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, of the devil. For where
you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every
evil practice. But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all
pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and
good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace raise
a harvest of righteousness. - James 3:13-18 (NIV)
And Peter
says in 1 Peter 4:7-11,
The end
of all things is near. Therefore be clear minded and self-controlled
so that you can pray. Above all, love each other deeply, because love
covers over a multitude of sins. Offer hospitality to one another
without grumbling. Each one should use whatever gift he has received
to serve others, faithfully administering God's grace in its various
forms. If anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very
words of God. If anyone serves, he should do it with the strength God
provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus
Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen. -
1 Peter 4:7-11 (NIV) |
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If We
Believe the Message Of The Gospel, the Message Of The Gospel WIll
Change Our Lives. |
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If we
believe the message of the Gospel, the message of the Gospel will
change our lives. We'll do what He tells us in Scripture. We will
seek Him and find Him and share Him with others. Do you want what God
wants? God does not want anyone to perish, but everyone to come to
repentence. (2 Peter 3:9)
Do you
believe the message? Are you willing to let Jesus be your Lord and
Savior? Are you willing to stand out in a crowd and be different?
That's what Christianity is about. It's about setting a higher
standard in love and in life. To do what is right and not what is
convenient and not what will satisfy your fleshy desires. To turn
away from immorality and destructive behavior, and to show people
that there is a better way. To love people enough to accept them just
as they are, and then do whatever it takes to help them escape from
where they are. |
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Are
You Willing To Be The Light Of The World? |
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Let's pray:
Father,
thank you, for the powerful and convicting message you've given to us
today. We ask you, Sovereign Lord, to search our hearts and reveal to
us what we need to change in order to be Your light to the people you
send us. Make those changes in us, Lord. Give us a hunger for Your
word, and Your active presence in our lives. Renew our minds, and
transform our hearts, and make us Your people. Lord, help us to let
our lights shine before men, so that they may see our good deeds and
praise our Father in heaven. Lord, cause our lives and our
testimonies to draw those who need you to seek you out so that they
will be saved. You are our hope and our salvation. Let Your light
shine in us. In Jesus' name, for Your honor and glory.
And
everybody said...Praise the Lord!
God be in
your hearts this week. |
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Rev.Michael
Packard
Copyright
1999 Practically Righteous Ministries - All Rights Reserved |
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