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DRIFTING 10.23.05 Two weeks ago in Hebrews 1 we considered that: … if we don’t ACCEPT that Jesus is better than anything else in our lives, we will always be UNCERTAIN about our FAITH. ~~~~~~~ 1 So we must listen very carefully to the truth we have heard, or we may DRIFT (carelessly pass; let slip –Strong’s) away from it. 2 The message God delivered through angels has always proved true, and the people were punished for every violation of the law and every act of disobedience. 3 What makes us think that we can escape if we are indifferent to this GREAT
SALVATION that was announced by the Lord Jesus himself? It was passed on to us by those who heard him speak, 4 and God verified the message by signs and wonders and various miracles and by giving gifts of the Holy Spirit whenever he chose to do so. ~~~~~~~ Mysteries in life: Another mystery in life is how people find it hard to understand that simply doing NOTHING is DANGEROUS in the SPIRITUAL realm. Doing nothing is seen in: 33Sleep a little. Doze a little. Fold your hands and twiddle your thumbs. 34Suddenly poverty hits you and everything is gone! Various theologians use the same metaphor for the word DRIFTING in verse 1. It’s the metaphor of a bucket with a small leak in it. ~~~~~~~ This week my parents and I have been to Portland a couple times. Friday on the way back we took the Columbia Historic Highway. The same thing is true of us spiritually. The life-giving juices of the Holy Spirit begin to leak out of our spiritual bucket if we lose our focus on Jesus. In Saint Louis in 1984, an unemployed cleaning woman noticed a few bees buzzing around the attic of her home. Since there were only a few, she made no effort to deal with them. Over the summer the bees continued to fly in and out the attic vent while the woman remained unconcerned, unaware of the growing city of bees. The whole attic became a hive, and the ceiling of the second-floor bedroom finally caved in under the weight of hundreds of pounds of honey and thousands of angry bees. The woman escaped serious injury, but she was unable to repair the damage of her accumulated neglect. SC – Matthew Cook ~~~~~~~ “WARNING comes before DESTRUCTION.” In Scripture we see how before God sends down a judgement against people, He’ll first send a warning.
God sends us warning signs, when we start drifting from Him even today. 1 Loss of FOCUS 1 Now King Solomon loved many foreign women. Besides Pharaoh's daughter, he married women from Moab, Ammon, Edom, Sidon, and from among the Hittites. 2 The LORD had clearly instructed his people not to intermarry with those nations, because the women they married would lead them to worship their gods. Yet Solomon insisted on loving them anyway. 3 He had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines. And sure enough, they led his heart away from the LORD. 4 In Solomon's old age, they turned his heart to worship their gods instead of trusting only in the LORD his God, as his father, David, had done. 1Kings 11:1-4 NLT King Solomon had a problem. He loved women, probably among other things, more than he loved God. 15 Stop loving this evil world and all that it offers you, for when you love the world, you show that you do not have the love of the Father in you. 16 For the world offers only the lust for physical pleasure, the lust for everything we see, and pride in our possessions. These are not from the Father. They are from this evil world. 1John 2:15-16 NLT
(vs.16 MSG) ~~~~~~~ 2 Loss of PRIORITIES When asked about how to receive eternal life, Jesus replied:
- We live in a self-serving, self-centered world, and Jesus’ followers, the Church, the Body of Jesus, must be different. 3 Loss of PASSION New Christians almost always exhibit deep passion for God. Are we CONTENT to give God a moment of our time in the way we’d give a DOG a BONE? 4 Loss of DISCIPLINE You can be sure that using people or religion or things just for what you can get out of them - the usual variations on idolatry - will get you nowhere, and certainly nowhere near the kingdom of Christ, the kingdom of God. Ephesians 5:5 MSG Obviously, if we find ourselves sinning, there’s something wrong! Don't be drunk with wine (or anything else that life has that dulls spiritual senses), because that will ruin your life. Instead, let the Holy Spirit fill and control you. Ephesians 5:18 NLT - You can’t have the Spirit fill you if you choose to live apart from God’s Spirit.
When he came to the village of Nazareth, his boyhood home, [Jesus] went as usual to the synagogue on the Sabbath and stood up to read the Scriptures. Luke 4:16 NLT Meeting regularly with other believers in various ways no longer matters.
“We never NEGLECT that “The INDIFFERENT are in as great a need of a SAVIOR as the drunkard, drug addict, murderer [or] genocidal tyrant.” ~~~~~~~
For every one who actually decides to turn his back on Christ, there are hundreds who drift through life without Him. It’s so easy, so pleasant, to drift. To lie back, relax, and let yourself go wherever the waters of life might carry you. Any dead fish can go with the stream! Are you drifting? We can tell by our answers to questions like these: ~~~~~~~ We need to understand the contempt we show God when we neglect and ignore the great salvation (verse 4) He provided through Jesus. “Oh well, it doesn’t really matter. I sent Jesus to die, but it really doesn’t matter that you ignored His sacrifice and were too busy to do anything about my warnings!”
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