What Are You Banking On?

Scripture: Psalm 20, Jeremiah 17:4-10

Ø      I’m banking on the notion that I’ll have time to get my life right with God before I die.

Ø      I’m banking on the idea that if I’m good enough, God will let me into heaven.

Ø      I’m banking on the fact that God didn’t really mean what he said.

Ø      I’m banking on the fact that this rule doesn’t apply to me.

Ø      I’m banking on the fact that I’m as good as anyone else in the world.

Ø      I’m banking on the fact that because I’m not a hypocrite that I’m okay.

Ø      I’m banking on the fact that there’s another option besides Jesus.

Jeremiah 17:4 Through your own fault you will lose the inheritance I gave you. I will enslave you to your enemies in a land you do not know, for you have kindled my anger, and it will burn for ever." 5 ¶ This is what the LORD says: "Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength and whose heart turns away from the LORD. 6  He will be like a bush in the wastelands; he will not see prosperity when it comes. He will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no-one lives. 7 "But blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him. 8  He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit." 9  The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? 10  "I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve."

1.    Our own resourcefulness.  The attitude of self-sufficiency.  What’s the problem with this?

Ps 116:6  The LORD protects the simple-hearted; when I was in great need, he saved me.

Ø      The belief that we have achieved all by ourselves.  Did you ever stop to think about the necessary parts of your success?  How much of that was your doing?  What about the hand of blessing in your life that perhaps you fail to give due credit to?   

It's my pride that makes me independent of God.  It's appealing to feel I am the master of my fate; I run my own life, I call my own shots; I go it alone.  But that feeling is my basic dishonesty.  I can't go it alone.  I have to get help from other people, and I can't ultimately rely on myself.  I am dependent on God for my very next breath.  It is dishonest of me to pretend that I am anything but a man, small, weak and limited.  So, living independent of God is self- delusion.  It's not just a matter or pride being an unfortunate little trait and humility being an attractive little virtue, it's my inner psychological integrity that's at stake.  When I am conceited, I am lying to myself about what I am.  I am pretending to be God, and not man. My pride is the idolatrous worship of myself, and that is the national religion of hell.

Success exposes a man to the pressures of people and thus tempts him to hold on to his gains by means of fleshy methods and practices, and to let himself be ruled wholly by the dictatorial demands of incessant expansion.  Success can go to my head and will unless I remember that it is God who accomplishes the work, that he can continue to do so without my help, and that he will be able to make out with other means whenever he wants to cut me out.

FUNNY how we can't think of anything to say when we pray, but don't have any difficulty thinking of things to talk about to a friend.

FUNNY how we are so quick to take directions from a total stranger when we are lost, but are hesitant to take God's direction for our lives.

FUNNY how so many churchgoers sing, "Standing on the Promises" but all they do is sit on the premises.

FUNNY how people want God to answer their prayers but refuse to listen to His counsel.

FUNNY how we sing about heaven, but live only for today.

FUNNY how people think they are going to Heaven but don't think there is a Hell.

FUNNY how it is okay to blame God for evil and suffering in the world, but it not necessary to thank Him for what is good and pleasant.

FUNNY how when something goes wrong, we cry, "Lord, why me?" but when something goes right, we think, "Hey, it must be me!"

Ø      I don’t need anyone else in this world.

Probably one of the greatest hindrances to the idea of “fellowship” in the body of Christ is that we don’t need other people.  Sunday is not a time of fellowship primarily but one of celebration.  In the NT, the church was alive daily in terms of fellowship.  They met “daily” from house to house.

Spiritual growth is meant to be an experience  that takes place with each other.  The writer of Hebrews wrote relative to fellowship – Let us not forsake the assembling of ourselves together and then Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.

The strength of the Methodist movement, founded by John Wesley was the idea of people meeting regularly in groups.

These are 22 questions the members of John Wesley's Holy Club asked THEMSELVES EACH DAY in thier private devotions over 200 years ago.

1.  Am I consciously or unconsciously creating the impression that I am better than I really am?  In other words, am I a hypocrite?

2.  Am I honest in all my acts and words, or do I exaggerate?

3.  Do I confidentially pass on to another what was told to me in confidence?

4.  Can I be trusted?

5.  Am I a slave to dress, friends, work, or habits?

6.  Am I self-conscious, self-pitying, or self justifying?

7.  Did the Bible live in me today?

8.  Do I give it time to speak to me everyday?

9.  Am I enjoying prayer?

10.  When did I last speak to someone else about my faith?

11. Do I pray about the money I spend?

12.  Do I get to bed on time and get up on time?

13.  Do I disobey God in anything?

14.  Do I insist upon doing something about which my conscience is uneasy?

15.  Am I defeated in any part of my life?

16.  Am I jealous, impure, critical, irritable, touchy, or distrustful?

17.  How do I spend my spare time?

18.  Am I proud?

19.  Do I thank God that I am not as other people, especially as the Pharisees who despised the publican?

20.  Is there anyone whom I fear, dislike, disown, critize, hold a resentment toward or disregard?  If so, what I am doing about it?

21.  Do I grumble or complain constantly?

22.  Is Christ real to me?

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Ø      I am not responsible to help others.  They should be able to do it themselves as well.

The story goes that, one time football coach Vince Lombardi climbed into bed and his wife, Marie, said, "God, your feet are cold!"  The coach answered, "Dear, in the privacy of the house, you may call me Vince."

Self-sufficient people sit back prideful and have a tendency to judge others weak or lazy if they have not done the same or achieved similar success.  They absolve themselves of responsibility of helping others because they believe that they have succeeded alone.

2.  Our ability to reason. What’s the problem with this?

1Co 1:20  Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?

Ill.  – She thinks I tried to kill her cat. (Layton’s grandpa)

THE FORGOTTEN 10 OTHER COMMANDMENTS

Thou shall not worry, for worry is the most unproductive of all human activities.

Thou shall not be fearful, for most of the things we fear never come to pass.

Thou shall not cross bridges before you come to them, for no one yet has succeeded in accomplishing this.

Thou shall face each problem as it comes.  You can only handle one at a time anyway.

Thou shall not take problems to bed with you, for they make very poor bedfellows.

Thou shall not borrow other people's problems.  They can better care for them than you can.

Thou shall not try to relive yesterday for good or ill, it is forever gone.  Concentrate on what is happening in your life and be happy now!

Thou shall be a good listener, for only when you listen do you hear different ideas from your own.  It is hard to learn something new when you are talking, and some people do know

more than you do.

Thou shall not become "bogged down" by frustration, for 90% of it is rooted in self-pity and will only interfere with positive action.

Thou shall count thy blessings, never overlooking the small ones, for a lot of small blessings add up to a big one.

Unknown

It is in vain, 0 men, that you seek within yourselves the cure for your miseries.  All your insight only leads you to the knowledge that it is not in yourselves that you will discover the true and the good.  The philosophers promised them to you, and have not been able to keep their promises...  Your principal maladies are pride, which cuts you off from God, and sensuality, which binds you to the earth; and they have done nothing but foster at least one of these maladies.  If they have given you God for your object, it has only been to pander to your pride; they have made you think that you were like Him and resembled Him by your nature.  And those who have grasped the vanity of such a pretension have cast you down into the other abyss by making you believe that your nature was like that of the beasts of the field, and have led you to seek your good in lust, which is the lot of animals.

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

Ø      Intellectual blindness is perhaps the greatest blindness of all.  To be convinced that we know all when we know nothing.  The notion that truth lies in our ability to understand would mean that it would fall to the most intelligent among us to discover it and then relay it to those less able to discover it.  Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life.”  The knowledge of truth may not depend on our ability to understand.  It may depend more on your experiencing truth than your understanding of it. 

John 9:8 His neighbors and those who had formerly seen him begging asked, "Isn't this the same man who used to sit and beg?" [9] Some claimed that he was.  Others said, "No, he only looks like him."  But he himself insisted, "I am the man." 

10 "How then were your eyes opened?" they demanded.

11 He replied, "The man they call Jesus made some mud and put it on my eyes. He told me to go to Siloam and wash. So I went and washed, and then I could see."

12 "Where is this man?" they asked him.  "I don't know," he said.  13 They brought to the Pharisees the man who had been blind. [14] Now the day on which Jesus had made the mud and opened the man's eyes was a Sabbath. [15] Therefore the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight. "He put mud on my eyes," the man replied, "and I washed, and now I see."

16 Some of the Pharisees said, "This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath."  But others asked, "How can a sinner do such miraculous signs?" So they were divided.  17 Finally they turned again to the blind man, "What have you to say about him? It was your eyes he opened."  The man replied, "He is a prophet."

18 The Jews still did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they sent for the man's parents. [19] "Is this your son?" they asked. "Is this the one you say was born blind? How is it that now he can see?"

20 "We know he is our son," the parents answered, "and we know he was born blind. [21] But how he can see now, or who opened his eyes, we don't know. Ask him. He is of age; he will speak for himself." [22] His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews, for already the Jews had decided that anyone who acknowledged that Jesus was the Christ would be put out of the synagogue. [23] That was why his parents said, "He is of age; ask him."   24 A second time they summoned the man who had been blind. "Give glory to God, " they said. "We know this man is a sinner."

25 He replied, "Whether he is a sinner or not, I don't know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!"

26 Then they asked him, "What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?"

27 He answered, "I have told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples, too?"

28 Then they hurled insults at him and said, "You are this fellow's disciple! We are disciples of Moses! [29] We know that God spoke to Moses, but as for this fellow, we don't even know where he comes from."

9:30 The man answered, "Now that is remarkable! You don't know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. [31] We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly man who does his will. [32] Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. [33] If this man were not from God, he could do nothing."

34 To this they replied, "You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!" And they threw him out.

35 Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and when he found him, he said, "Do you believe in the Son of Man?"

36 "Who is he, sir?" the man asked. "Tell me so that I may believe in him."

37 Jesus said, "You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you."

38 Then the man said, "Lord, I believe," and he worshiped him.

Knowledge is gained through learning and understanding.  As we understand we acquire knowledge.  Do you know though, I have learned much more about the Bible and living since I have graduated from college than I ever learned while I was in college.  There is nothing in the world that highlights what is really important like living.  When we run up against our limits, then no one has to explain the value of education or anything else.  You may get muddled in debate with people who want to discredit the church and the gospel but the one thing that no one can argue you out of is your personal experience with God.  If you know what God ahs done for you, then no one can ever take that away.  And let me tell you something, there are more people than you can imagine worldwide who share the same testimony and experience.  God is real and He is alive today.  Christianity is the faith of the everyday man – available the same to all – to be equally known regardless of capacity for knowledge.  The Bible says:  “You shall KNOW the truth and the TRUTH shall set you free.”  It is God’s truth that frees his people not our knowledge of it.  To know it means to experience it.

Ø      Christ challenges us to be child-like in our relationship to Him.  Ultimately this is a relationship based on trust.  Did you know that finding Christ is a matter of the heart.  Ultimately it is not an appeal to the head but to the heart.  You can study and learn all there is to learn about God.  You might succeed – but not likely in finding all the unanswered questions that currently keep you from him and yet not be one step closer to God.  The step that you take toward him will never be one of sight but one of faith.  There is nothing else that can bring the sinner to God but trust in His ultimate nature and character.

Ø      Understanding is the self established pre-requisite for belief.  How many times have we heard people who stand back from God and say, “I don’t understand.”, citing this as the reason for their unbelief.  Do you know what the opposite of faith is – many would say “doubt” – rather the opposite is unbelief for belief is a choice.  Like so many other things in life – we choose what we believe in.

3.  Our self-established righteousness.  What’s the problem with this?

Rom. 3:20  Therefore no-one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin.

Ø      It is ultimate blasphemy when we wave the flag of self-righteousness in front of the one who has paid the ultimate price for our redemption.  When we live to draw God’s attention to our righteousness, he looks through the eyes of His justice and always we fall far short.  When we suggest by our words or our demeanor in this world that we achieve some special status with God because we have mastered this discipline or successfully resisted this or that temptation then we blaspheme God himself who stood in our place in the person of his Son.  The One who already has paid the price for our sin.  We proclaim His righteousness, not our own – in the face of our dismal failures or our deliberate disobedience we proclaim His righteousness.  “I know no other righteousness, I have no other plea – it is enough that Jesus died and that He died for me.”

Ø      Sin has more to do with who we are than it does with what we do.  Someone has said, “I am not a sinner because I sin – I sin because I am a sinner.”  God’s forgiveness for the things that we have done does not solve the problem.  When we receive God’s forgiveness for those things that we have done, that is past, present and future forgiveness.  In Christ he has already forgiven us for the sins we have yet to commit.  Our part in the future is merely to confess – to own them.  In order for  us to be truly freed from our sin addiction, we must die with Christ.  The blood provided our forgiveness, the cross provides for our death to the nature within us that leads us to live sinful lives.  A relationship with Christ is about much more than just forgiveness.  It is about deliverance.  I would suspect that there are people today who have all but given up on being delivered in this or that area.  It is at the point that we surrender our hope that we are truly defeated and the Devil has us exactly where he wants us.  I have watched numerous “real-life” stories on television of people who have survived life threatening situations and circumstances where others have given up and died.  Some of the most non-productive words that we can allow ourselves to say are:  “I just can’t take anymore.”  The truth is that God know how much we can stand and he will not allow more to come our way than what we can bear.  Also many people live with very low tolerance levels.  We develop endurance by pressing ourselves beyond what we think our limits are.  There is personal discipline which can help us to learn that we can endure and also adversity can teach us the same lesson.   They say that the average smoker successfully breaks the bonds of nicotine addiction on the 12th try.   We are enrolled in God’s witness protection program.  We are dead to sin even though we live.  Our old nature is gone.

Ø      What human being is fit to establish the standard for another human being.  Behavior all by itself can be deceptive.  Even an evil person can behave righteously for a time if it serves his/her purposes.  It’s not over until it’s over.  Our lives will be reliable when they are lived consistently over a period of time.  There are many spiritual casualties, people who once lived in a manner to bring glory to God and have given up.  We can never set our own standard when it comes to righteousness.  Jesus is our standard today by the Holy Spirit.  He said to his disciples, “[7] But I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. [8] When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment: [9] in regard to sin, because men do not believe in me; [10] in regard to righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; [11] and in regard to judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned. 

4.  Our References. What’s the problem with this?

Lk. 6:26  Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for that is how their fathers treated the false prophets.

Did you ever stop to ask yourself how much of your behavior is influenced by what people might think or say about you?  Would you say that this is a sign of weakness or strength?  Or either?

The desire to make a good impression is an incredible one for many people.  It is then the false self that we most often encounter when we meet other people.  We discover the true persona as time passes and we are in close proximity with the person.

One thing for the church to call what is obviously sin – sin.  That’s one of the targets that we can all stand back and throw rocks at but it is quite another to begin to address things that are more easily concealed or more acceptable.  Let’s face it we will tolerate certain things more quickly than we will tolerate other things.

Merciless with ourselves and merciful with others.  We should be knowledgeable when it comes to our gifts and our strengths and openly acknowledge our weaknesses.  Success can easily pass the person who neglects the gift within – more so than the person perhaps who ignores his/her weaknesses.  There comes a time when we have to step out and risk being laughed at because experience would become our teacher.

There is a difference between putting our best foot forward and misleading someone relative to who we actually are.  To become and behave our best is a wonderful goal.  To build character is the greater pursuit.  A person of character is as he/she seems.  As you get to know that person you will discover more that you like and further affirmation of their sincerity.

SENILITY PRAYER

God grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway, the good fortune to run into the ones I do, and the eyesight to tell the difference.

Ø      Generally people have difficulty telling the truth.  We are more affirming than perhaps we should be at times.  I heard the other day that people say that references from lawyers and preachers are the least desirable as inclusions in a resume. 

Ø      Often we really don’t want to hear the truth.  We want to be flattered.  We don’t receive the truth about ourselves well.

Ø      What people may say about you makes no difference to God.  What does God sasy about you?

What does it mean to trust in God?

It means that we trust him for things and that we trust him with things and that we trust him in things.  And when our expectations are not met or when we are disappointed that we can still trust him.  We can be thankful that all of our plans have not worked out.

We never become truly spiritual by sitting down and wishing to become so.  You must undertake something so great that you cannot accomplish it unaided. 

Phillips Brooks (1835-1893)