Don’t Believe the Look

Text: Matthew 9:35-38 (NIV)

Jesus looked out and saw people from every walk of life.  He didn’t believe the look; He understood their need.

Main Idea: If people don’t have Jesus, no matter how they look, they need Jesus!

And I want to make three points, which I will present by asking three questions?

I.  Why are we here this morning?

We are here to bring glory to His name.

• Ephesians 3:21 – to Him be glory in the church…

We are here to promote faith in Jesus Christ to one another. Through our service, our songs, the sermon.  Through our sharing we are promoting faith in Christ.

We promote faith in Jesus among ourselves for our own encouragement but also for mutual inspiration to promote Him to the world we live in outside of our church family.

• 1 Peter 2:9 We are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession that we may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called us out of darkness into His marvelous light.

II.  Why did Jesus come to earth?

Matthew 1:21 (NIV) ²¹ She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

He didn’t come to change the world.  In Jesus’ own words: The Son of man did not come to be served but to serve and to give His life a ransom for many.

Jesus is not a game we’re playing. C.S. Lewis famously said about Christianity: “Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.”  There is no middle ground.

Jesus’s mission was deadly serious.  Which brings us to question 3.

III.  Why did we need to be saved from our sins?

Jeremiah 5:25  Sin has withheld good.  It cripples, corrupts and chokes life as God intended us to experience it. 

 Don’t believe the look.  People may look like they’re doing good; they may talk like they are doing good; they may even And they may even believe they are doing good.

When you’ve grown accustomed to a certain existence, you need exposure to a new existence to see what the previous one lacked.

Sin separates us from the life of God, from the fullness that is in Him.

And if you’re a believer and you are not experiencing that fullness.  The answer is not in something different out there.  The answer is found by going deeper in Him.  He is the life.

But there’s another reason, an even more important reason than the quality of our life experience here on earth.

According to the Scriptures, A Day is Coming… Acts 17:31 Acts 17:31 (NIV) ³¹ For He has set a day when He will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead.”

This is not a separation of good people from bad people in human terms. It is a separation of who have accepted Christ’s payment for our sins from those who have not.

The unredeemed will be forever separated from the life of Christ whom they rejected or ignored during their lifetime.

God doesn’t wish any to perish.  Jesus said He would draw all men unto Himself.  But God will not force Himself on those who reject His offer of love, of forgiveness, of redemption.  They will be banished away from the presence of the Lord for all time.  Which means, it is a place without the fruit of the Spirit.  A place without love, joy, peace, goodness.  A place of eternal misery and torment.  And gnashing of teeth, which means biting down in pain, anguish or anger.

Everything in this World is Temporary

Matthew 24:35: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away.”

What we do for Christ; in His name not only goes with us, it goes ahead of us.  Hebrews 6:10 “God is not unjust; he will not forget your work and the love you have shown Him as you have helped His people and continue to help them.”

There are lots of good causes.  But only what is done for Jesus or because of our faith in Jesus will last.  Earthly achievements.  Earthly status symbols.  All of that will pass away.

We have been called to be part of an eternal enterprise.

How does getting to know the Lord better affect this area?

Evangelism isn’t a separate subject than getting to know the Lord better; it is an outgrowth of it.  As we spend time getting to know the Lord, He will introduce different subjects and focal points of ministry to us.  Just as He did with His disciples.

• As I thought about today’s message, a couple of phrases from Jesus came to mind: Pray for those who persecute you. Pray for those who mistreat you.  That is influencing someone for Christ, and therefore a form of evangelism. What about setting aside an evangelism day for praying for people who persecute you or mistreat you. While Stephen was being stoned, he prayed for Saul and Christianity’s biggest persecutor became its greatest proponent.