Smart, determined and confident people beware!
This sermon is to call upon all the smart, determined and confident people to follow Jesus with me!
A. Because one fall can completely destroy you!
1. Believe me, it is true all the time! Not just preachers, it is true in all fields of work!
2. One sickness can ruin all your dreams!
Don’t be too sure about yourself!
Please name your own hero in the past fall into this category!
3. I am sure, you are not sure for the rest of your life, you will not get this one fall!
B. No man can be smarter, more determined and more confident than Apostle Paul!
1. When the Jews plotted to kill him, this was what did! Acts 23:6-9
Then Paul, knowing that some of them were Sadducees and the others Pharisees,
called out in the Sanhedrin, "My brothers, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee.
I stand on trial because of my hope in the resurrection of the dead."
When he said this, a dispute broke out between the Pharisees and the Sadducees,
and the assembly was divided.
(The Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, and that there are neither angels nor spirits,
but the Pharisees acknowledge them all.) There was a great uproar,
and some of the teachers of the law who were Pharisees stood up and argued vigorously,
"We find nothing wrong with this man," they said.
"What if a spirit or an angel has spoken to him?"
2. Nothing can separate us from the love of God. Romans 8:35-39
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
For I am convinced that neither death … nor any powers, …
nor anything else in all creation,
will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
3. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, l
et him be condemned! Gal.1:8
4. To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life. And who is equal to such a task? 2Cor.2:16
C. What made him great to the end? Romans 7:15-25
1. There will be a time in which you will say these
a. Ro.7:15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.
b. Ro.7:19 For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.
c. Ro 7:20 Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwells in me. (KJV)
d. Ro 7:21 I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me.
One fall is may be enough to completely destroy you!
2. He made it because of these-->
a, Ro.7:22-23 For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: But I see another law in my
members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin
which is in my members.
b. Ro.7:24-25 O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?
I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.
3. Gal 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.
The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
D. Yes, we all need God to say this before we die! 2Tim.4:7-8
I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.
Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness,
which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day--
and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.
May the Lord bless you and keep you always! written on September 13, 2012.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8kcmPtlVh8