By Christ God sees His perfection not our imperfection

The Kingdom Salvation (2)

August 14, 2016

Now what about blaspheming? How many of us in the American language have said, "Oh my G-o-d." Or "G-o-d darn it." Or my, my, my, whatever. That is using the name of God that we must honor, praise, and worship, it's using it as a curse word, sometimes. Some people use it as curse words, sometimes you just use it as, "Oh, I'm surprised." You know. Gee whiz, right? And so we use it in a common form which is not praiseful, which is not honoring that person, which is not worthy of that person. Think about it, every time you stub your toe, if you said, "Oh, Sun Myung Moon!" Let me ask you a question, would Father be delighted to see that? Or would he punch you in the face? "Don' t you use my name like that!" Right? You'd have more than a stubbed toe! [laughter]

If we've used the name of God in vain we are called blasphemers, because blaspheming the name of God is a serious crime. It's a serious crime. People died because of that crime. And Jesus said, if you even look upon another person and lust after them, you have committed adultery with them in your heart. Who has not looked at another person with lust? Raise your hand, give me a break. You've done it, you adulterers! This is the problem. People do not understand the level of their sin. So in fact, they try to relativize it. "Well, everybody does it. Everybody has those thoughts." It doesn't matter. You still are an adulterer. Does it make sense? It doesn't make you feel good? So what, you're still an adulterer.

And so for those who believe that we can enter into heaven or God's presence through our "legal perfection", God gives us a very handy tool to break that arrogance down. Very handy tool, and that is His law. The law doesn't save us, but the law shows us our filthiness. And the problem with that is that many people say, "Oh, ok fine, I have sinned. Fine in terms of that sin, ok, fine, I'm guilty." And then what they try to do is that they try and follow th habit of continuing to "stay on themselves." So they say, "Ok, I am guilty, I am bad, alright, I am this or that, yes, ok, I'm a sinner, I am this or that. Yes, and actually I did this and I did that. Oh, and you know, when I think about it, I really did this, and I really am a sinner, I guess I'm worse than I thought. And I actually did this to my sister, and I did that to my friend one time, and oh, yeah, I guess I am actually worse than I thought." This is what they keep doing.

But let me ask you the question, when you stay on the fact that you're a sinner, which is already of course, quite obvious to everybody; when you do that, whom are you focusing on? Are you focusing on God or are you focusing on yourself? So, in fact, even self-hatred can be a form of self-worship. It's a way of giving yourself negative attention or a way of making you feel, "that's the reason why I should be a victim." So these can be different forms of self-worship.

The point of the mirror is not for us to keep staring into the mirror. The point of the mirror is to say, "Oh, shoot, I've got this crusty stuff on here, oh, my lord, coming out of my lip, or whatever." You've got to clean it up, and you go to the water to clean. Those who think they can enter into perfection by the law, it's like somebody who sees the mirror, sees their dirtiness, takes the mirror off , and tries to clean themselves with the mirror. You can't clean yourself with the mirror. The mirror will not clean you, it will only show you who you are.

What will clean you is the everlasting water of life. That's what will clean you. What will clean you and make you perfect, make you perfectly righteous, not by works, but by His works. It's when you have trust, and you believe, and you have a relationship with Christ. Because Christ did not sin like you. He was not a sinner like us. He did not have deceitful, lying, hate-mongering thoughts. He did not have those. He had a perfect presence, and so when we have Him, it is like going before the judge in the courtroom, and the judge makes a list of your crimes and the verdict comes now, the trial period is over, the verdict comes now, guilty or innocent? This person has committed this and this crime, what's the verdict, guilty or innocent? And when he looks at you, if you have a relationship with Christ, he sees who? He sees Christ. So he says, "Hey, what are you doing in this courtroom? Son, what are you doing in this courtroom, get out of here!" Does that make sense? That's what happens when we are covered by the blood. Covered by Christ. God sees His perfection, not our imperfection.

There are so many psychologists and liberal pagans who try to say, "Oh, well you've just got to love yourself, and you've just got to accept yourself. Guilt and shame, this is all just language to make us feel worse about ourselves." No, guilt or shame are truly, truly, hugely important evolutionary mechanisms, even if you don't believe in God. But if you have a perspective of the Creator, guilt and shame remind us, turn us away from ourselves and towards Him.

We're not supposed to have guilt and shame in order to writhe in it all day long, and swim and languish in it all day long. We're not supposed to be making it into a slime juice where we are bathing and lathering ourselves up all day in it! We're supposed to say, "Schemitah! I'm dirty, I got to get on out of here!" That's the point. [applause] That's the point. Once the sinner is defeated in his rebellion against thinking, or admitting that he's a sinner, what the sinner will try to do is languish in the fact that he is a sinner, to try to give himself attention. It's a negative attention, but it's still attention. Children do it all the time.

But people will try to do this. They've been defeated in their rebellion against God. They now have to admit that they are sinners when it comes to God's laws, God's standards, when you are judged by God's justice, by that criteria, how do you fare, guilty or innocent? Sorry, guilty. Heaven or hell? Sorry, hell. Separation from God, you cannot be in His presence, simple. When they are defeated in their rebellion against admitting that and they finally admit it, many times what they will do is languish in it, because that's another way of worshipping themselves, do you see this?

So this is, of course, another sneaky way to pretend piety, but then break the first commandment, which is again, to fall into idol worship. "Ah, ok, fine, I must be bad, I must be this, I must be that." Ok, we know who you're focusing on, child. You're supposed to see the mirror not so you stand in front of the mirror all day without touching the eye accumulation, eye cheese, the nose cheese, whatever is there. Your messed up hair. You're not supposed to just sit there and say, "Oh, look, when I look at my hair, that other piece is a little messed up too, and oh, this piece is a little messed up too. Oh, come to think of it, this one's white and this one has a little, oh, I'm turning gray!" That's not the point. The point of the mirror is not to stand there for hours and hours and hours belaboring the point that you look dirty and disheveled. Does that make sense? The point of the mirror is to wash, to get you to wash.

This is why so many of the churches have had for a hundred years a "feel good prosperity Christianity" and "Oh, you believe in Jesus, and Jesus wants you to have a happy life, you're best life now." Joel Osteen, these people are not teaching God's will. They are just trying to make you feel good with positive psychology wrapped in Jesus or something, you know? You can find that anywhere else. The point of the mirror is to get us to the water. The point of the parachute is to help us make the safe landing. We put on Christ; we put on the parachute, not to have a comfy ride in the plane.

We put it on so that when we have to jump, we do not plummet to our death. That is the point of the parachute. We talked about how in modern evangelism in the last hundred years, and Family Fed has fallen into this too, it has been, "Oh, what can we get for people to stay here? Let's be seeker friendly, and let's be nice to people and say, 'oh, Jesus loves you so much, and you need Jesus, and you have a hole in your heart in the shape of Jesus.

All you have to do is just say this little prayer and you'll be forgiven of your sins and you'll be set free." They've done studies on this, and they've shown that ninety-five percent and in some cases ninety-eight percent of people who make commitments to Christ, say the prayer of confession, say the prayer of dedication, are no longer Christian within one year! So why is there a mortality rate of ninety eight percent? It's like if you had the parachutes and you had the people who were packing the parachutes, and these parachutes are special parachutes.

If you pack them and fold them correctly according to the instructions, it's going to open every time and it's going to save every person regardless of weight and size and height. But you have the fast packers who decide, "Hey, you know what? We can get more people into parachutes if we pack them real quick. We pack them quick, it will still be good, it will still be effective, we'll get more people to the door." What happens? If that company had a ninety percent failure rate; if nine out ten people who used that parachute, because of the fast packers, plummeted to their death, what do you think would happen? They'd have some big problems! Now the fast packers have to do something, they have to say, "Ok, maybe we should start reading the instruction manual, we're getting quite a high mortality rate. Maybe we should find out how the instructions say to fold this parachute, and maybe it will help." And if they do that, will the parachutes work or will they not work? They will work.

Of course, you will have some people within the "fast packer community" --- some people will say, "Well, you know, we did get one person, we did get ten percent. Let's try to be positive about it, and let's try to be 'glass is half full' people. Well, you know, ninety percent of the people died, but ten percent lived!" Well, you idiot, it could have all been avoided if you just followed the instructions. You killed ninety percent! Does that make sense?

There is a problem. When we put on the parachute, when we make a relationship with Jesus, when we make a commitment to Christ, it is not for the comfyness of the ride. The Bible promises us that the ride will not be comfortable. You're going to be attacked, you're going to be mocked, you're going to be made fun of, you're going to be hated because you have that parachute on. But if you have the parachute on with the idea of knowing that at 25,000 feet I have to jump, and I need to keep this thing on, despite the trials and tribulations, despite the mockery, despite the coffee being spilled on me, I need to keep it on. When you jump and you pull the cord, and the parachute comes out, you're going to be smiling. Does that make sense?

So when we have the end in mind which is when I die and I face God on judgment, when I stand in front of the judge at the courtroom, what kind of lies are you going to try to make then? What are you going to say? "Oh, but God is a forgiving God, He wouldn't do that." Bull, total bull. Ok, let's try to use that. In a court of law you go before a judge, you've committed all these crimes, the judge is sentencing you now and you say, "Well, judge, I know you're a real forgiving person." If he was a good judge, he could not let you off. He would have to say, "I'm sorry.

I am a good person, that's why I have to obey the law, and I'm sorry, you are sentenced." You see, good judges, good people who are actual judges have to keep justice. So one cannot say, "I believe you're a good judge, or I believe in you, or I believe that you'll forgive me. " Or you have some religious people who say, it's like in a courtroom, they've committed three murders of young teenage girls, and now the person is in the sentencing stage, and he says, "Before I came here, I kicked my foot really hard in the door, and broke my toe. So I suffered. I suffered for my crime.

So you should give me a more lenient sentence, you should let me off." A lot of religious people do this. "I did this or that condition. I did this or that thing. And so thus, God, I flagellated myself, I did whatever. I did these hard fastings. That's basically saying, "God, I stubbed my toe, please forgive all my crimes." It's preposterous. Any judge would say, "Are you kidding. Get this psych evaluation now!" You would never use that in a courtroom, you would never use it. You would never even say, "Judge, I know you, I believe in you as a judge of goodness and forgiveness." You'd never use that kind of line in court. It would never work. Why do people think that it would work against God? You'd condemn yourself if you do that. It's already condemning yourself.

Here we have an is an episode in the wilderness, and many of you know this story. It is when God sent fiery serpents to the Israelites. He sent them because they were getting so arrogant. They kept on saying, "We're not sinners, we're good people, we serve the poor, we do these kinds of things, we're good." God sent fiery serpents and He had the serpents bite the people of Israel, you know, who were raging in arrogance. And then He instructed Moses to lift up the serpent, cast it in bronze, and hang it on a stick, and those who see it will be healed.

Isn't that interesting? Have you heard of this story? What's interesting about this story is that, here it is in Numbers 21:6 and 9, "He who looks upon that serpent of brass is now healed, is forgiven of God's wrath." And this is interesting, In John 3:14, look what Jesus says. Jesus says, when he is talking about himself about to die, look what he says. "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up."

He actually used that old example to talk about his upcoming crucifixion. He compares the old example of the serpent who was lifted up in the wilderness and if people beheld it, they would be healed, to "now I must be lifted up and he who believes in me," "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Isn't that interesting? In other words, how did these people recognize that they had sinned against God? God had to send these fiery serpents right? He had to send this reminder, that, "Look, no, no, no." He had to send this mirror to them, right? "Wait, wait, wait, you're sinful." In a sense, the 10 Commandments are like that. They're ten fiery serpents like that. They come and convict us, they come and bite us.

They show us, "Wait, wait, no, no, you've broken them all." Do you see what I mean? The 10 Commandments are like those serpents that come and force us to recognize that, "Oh, wait a minute, I am a sinner before God. I have sinned against Him. I have separated from Him. I have committed adultery against Him, I have done those things." They force you to do that, and the forcing of us to recognize that by the fiery serpent, forces us to what? Does it force us to rely on ourselves?

If you got bit by a poisonous snake, are you going to sit there and say, "Oh, I just have to believe in myself, talking to myself saying "you'll be better, I believe in you. I believe in me. I'll be fine, just believe in me." Give me a break. You're going to be killed with that poison. You now must rely on a cure, you must rely on the doctor, you must say, "Oh, my goodness, black mamba bite, whoa, I've got to get to the hospital now, I need the antidote now." You see, you have to rely on it. Once you get bitten by that poison, it doesn't matter how much you believe in yourself, you've got to get the antidote. You have to rely on the antidote, not yourself. You've got to rely on the antidote. You've got to get to that antidote. The fiery serpents make them, force them to be aware of the antidote, which is God. Does that make sense?

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