ONLY TWO SERMONS!

ONLY TWO SERMONS!

James 1:22-25

22 But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.

23 For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass:

24 For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.

25 But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.

James 4:11

11 Speak not evil one of another, brethren. He that speaketh evil of his brother, and judgeth his brother, speaketh evil of the law, and judgeth the law: but if thou judge the law, thou art not a doer of the law, but a judge.

Twenty years ago there was ample warning of our society’s slide into darkness. One marriage in three ended in divorce. Today one in TWO marriages ends in divorce. Sexual permissiveness was generally ignored and today pornography is a multi-billion (with a B) dollar enterprise. Our children know more about sex today than many of us knew on our wedding night – or a few weeks thereafter! The answer is not more education and enlightenment. The answer is to DO WHAT IS RIGHT.

This coming May I will mark forty-two years in pastoral ministry. Let’s see…a minimum of three sermons per week times fifty-two times forty is 6,552 sermons. That’s a lot of preaching but I really only have two sermons – and here they are – forty-two years of ministry in a nutshell.

GET SAVED!

James 1:21

21 Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.

James was pretty keen on this topic! Stop sinning and receive simply the Word of God which is able to save your souls. If you do not you will remain eternally doomed and damned! The grip of sin will tighten on you until you are strangled by it. GET SAVED! For heaven’s sake, get saved! Repent, turn from your sin and your sins and run into the waiting arms of a loving Savior! I cannot overemphasize the urgency of it. GET SAVED!

DO RIGHT!

My second sermon is to those who have claimed to have obeyed the first one. Like an ineffective vaccine, their professed salvation did not even raise a scab! Their sinfulness continues unabated, their morals are more at home in the barnyard and their language belongs in the gutter. Greed grips their finances, lust drives their relationships and pleasure and amusement determines their life choices!

James is clear that the Bible is sufficient as a life guide but if a man looks into it like a mirror and does not respond to its challenges he walks away as dirty and disheveled as before! The mirror has done him no good because of his willful disobedience.

Some have become “editors” of the Word according to chapter four and verse eleven. They have become a judge of the law instead of the other way around. DO RIGHT! For crying out loud, do right!

Isa 1:16-18

16 Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil;

17 Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.

18 Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.

Dear Lord, I want to understand and to do what your Word says. Thank you for forgiveness which you purchased at so great a cost. AMEN