The Philippian jailer conversion.
“It takes a huge effort to avoid being saved.” The following are 3 ways non-Christians
work so they can hold their place and not do what the Philippian jailer did to
be baptized into Jesus Christ.
- You will need to throw away your watch. Don’t think about time and how your life is ticking away from getting closer to God. Nobody knows how many ticks one gets. Luke 12:13-21. Most people think our last day comes too fast. If we want to be lost keep looking at your time and wait. The more one waits the closer we come to what? The end! Be urgent to obey God immediately. Abraham rose early in the morning and saddled his donkey Genesis 22:3. When we know the right thing to do, when do we do it? Immediately. The longer you delay you may talk yourself out of it. When you become a Christian you recognize Jesus Christ as the Lord of Lords and King of Kings. He is sovereign in your life. No one receives an order from the King, looks at it and says, I’m not going to do that. If I want to be lost I can’t be taking all this effort thinking like this.
- If you’re going to work at being lost you need to become a church Inspector. What is the number one excuse that insulates people from the call of the gospel? The church is full of hypocrites. Non Christian’s love this and feel so good to say it – the church is full of hypocrites. It gives them a get out of hell free card. I don’t need to become a Christian or go to church because it’s full of hypocrites. News Flash – Hypocrites are everywhere in life. Doctors, Bankers, Lawyers, everyday normal people, there are hypocrites in every walk of life – but when we go to church… Ah ha, that’s totally and completely different. Suddenly when there are hypocrites claiming to be part of the body of Christ, that means we can’t have any part of it. Look at Luke 12:56. Jesus regularly roasted hypocrites. If your lost and want to stay lost, you have to ignore the inconsistencies of hypocrisy that keeps you from doing business, or going places, or enjoying a sporting event. You will have to act like one bad apple ruins the whole barrel. You will have to put your pretend face on every day. And if there is one bad Christian then you can't be part of it because one bad Christian is faking it, they are all faking it. Christians, they are all hypocrites. You can do all this church inspection if you are determined to be lost!
- You will have to do some pretending to be lost. You will have to pretend that the sole purpose of life is to have a good time. Nothing under the sun is really new. Remember Ananias and Saphira in Acts chapter 2? They pretended and lost their lives before the elders! Solomon believed life was all about fun until he summed up life having everything at his disposal - Ecclesiastes 2:1-11. He tried to make life good and fun, but it didn’t work. If anyone in history could have made life about having fun to the fullest, King Solomon was the man. It didn’t satisfy, in fact it made him a fool (v.15). Pleasure does have a role (V.24), but it is not the anchor of life. Solomon figured this out. If your not a Christian trying to fill your life with all kinds of fun, you will find some difficult times with that. Why? When you go to a funeral, suddenly it becomes apparent that fun is not the end of all things. But if we determine not to become a Christian, we really need to think about that. If your going to have long thoughts about the purpose of life and its meaning, you better put that out of your mind if you aren’t going to become a Christian. Continue working hard to be lost, go out and have fun.
What about this
Christian thing? Getting baptized, living right, doing what the Lord wants
me to do, oh you know, its too much. Can’t do all of that. Have you ever thought
about how much you are doing so you can hold the Lord out of your life pushing
Him at arms length?
Matthew 11:28-30, “Come
to Me all of you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take
My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you
will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and My burden is light.”
Enjoy this Podcast lesson on how to work at being lost.
