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Upland Indonesian SDA Church

Eric Walsh: Road Map to Heaven

Eric Walsh

God’s Word as our Guiding Light

Staying on the Path to a Healthy Lifestyle

The Road Less Traveled

How to Avoid Pit Falls

Beware of Hitchhikers

Focusing on the Finish Line

Sex Lies and the Fight for Purity

Our message tonight is entitled Avoiding Pitfalls.

Father God, we thank you Lord for this opportunity to enter your word and to lord just bathe in your wisdom and knowledge.

Father god tonight let me not be seen lord.

Father god speak from the throne room of grace.

Lord let each person here be given the food that they need spiritually.

Father God let all of us leave this place with a newness of heart and mind because we have been closer to Jesus through his word.

Original text comes from Thessalonians, 1 of my favorite books of the Bible.

The Thessalonians were very interesting people.

This church was 1 of the churches that lasted the longest after it was established.

It was often called the Orthodox Church of Thessalonica because of how long the church lasted.

It was the first 2 books written by Paul.

It was an interesting place where a road that ran north and south connected it to southern Greece.

And because it was on a bay, it was a portal where a lot of trade was done.

Act 17 tells us that when Paul went there to preach, actually he preached in the synagogues.

Very few of the Jews did, but many of the Greeks did.

This established a very interesting church at Thessalonica, because many of them did not have the advantage of knowing Old Testament truths.

And so they were very new to monotheistic religion, and of course, new to the knowledge of Jesus Christ.

As a matter of fact, it was so rough there.

The persecution was so serious that the way that we waited it is read in Acts chapter 17, actually they got thugs eventually to to go after those who were preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ and drive them out of the city But the Bible says that many of the devout Greeks not a few and even many of the women joined the church So Paul writes when he writes to this church.

He's writing to a church that he understood would have a long lasting effect in Christianity.

1 of the things he realizes that many of them had come out of a pagan lifestyle.

He understood that there would be many pitfalls, many traps that the devil would set to try and derail their Christianity.

And as we kind of discuss this road map to heaven, Tonight it is important, I think, that we talk about the things that can happen on your Christian journey that can cause you to fall off the way.

The enemy is working diligently, tirelessly, to try and get us to make mistakes, to make us give up on God, or turn our backs on God.

He works tirelessly to lead us away from God.

But I'm pleased to know that we serve the kind of God that does not give up on us even if we were to give up on him the scripture says in verse chapter 5 starting at verse 4 he says but ye brethren are not in darkness that that day should overtake you as a thief.

You're all the children of light and the children of the day we are not of the night nor of darkness.

He says therefore let us not sleep as do others but let us watch and be sober.

Paul likes this analogy of night and day for the Christian.

Jesus uses this even when Jesus even says the night cometh he must he says he must do the work of his father while in his day the night comes when no man can work.

I submit to you that we live in a time of great darkness.

I don't know if you, you know, even when you read the headlines or you listen to what's going on in the news, you realize that we live in a time of great darkness, where people are blatantly coming out against God, blatantly coming out against decency, blatantly coming out against the family, against God's word.

Even ironically, people inside of Christianity are coming out against the Bible.

I find it amazing and I always wonder when what even some of our own pastors they go to get doctoral degrees and terminal degrees and and in these high-level degrees and come back doubting the truths that they had before they went to get educated.

It's an amazing thing and I would submit to you that Harvard and Yale and Princeton, the top 3 schools in the country, It's interesting because they were all once Christian schools Yet now they are the seat of the place from which evolution is preached and and homosexuality as normal And and and on and on we live in a time of great darkness and and Paul is saying you've got a choice you have a choice as to whether or not you will be a children of the day or you will be a child of the night whether or not you will accept what God has shared with you what he has offered you in terms of of greater truth or or whether or not you will believe the lies that man is preaching.

It's interesting, because now the church is under fire.

There's a Time magazine, I believe it was the last Time magazine, where they had this article on teenagers.

And they went through and they interviewed a statistically significant number of teenagers, like 13 or 14, hundreds of teenagers about 10 years ago and then they redid the study now.

And it showed on every point the teenagers were less involved in church, less likely to pray, and on and on, every statistic.

What was interesting, however, is that the teenagers, the teenagers in this poll, and these weren't Adventist teenagers, these were, I think, just typical American teenagers, almost all said 1 thing.

They did not really respect church that, as they described it, was a popcorn church culture.

In other words, the teenagers said, we weren't really looking for MTV at church.

So all the more and more, the churches seem to want to lower the standard and make church more entertaining and put pool tables in the youth rooms and video games and have modern Christian music play that sounds like secular music and they think that somehow this will draw in the teenagers and keep them.

And what this study that was shown in Secular Time Magazine said is that what teenagers over and over said they really wanted was to be rooted and grounded in God's Word.

They decided, I mean just from the poll and I can say that even working at my church, that the teenagers are not so concerned with church being like the world.

The teenagers don't have to come to church if they want the world.

If they want the world, all they have to do is go to public school.

All they've got to do is walk around in their neighborhood.

They don't have to, you know, if they want Jay-Z, they don't have to come to church to get Jay-Z or Mace.

That's playing on every radio, in every car, in the parking lot of the high school.

But somehow they understand something's missing.

The scripture says that we must be children of the day, children of light.

Because we should reflect the light that Christ is shining on us.

1 of the things you must do is you must first make up in your mind which side you will be on, whether you will be of the light or of the darkness.

The problem is many Christians try to be a little bit of both.

She says that the worst thing you could be is a half-hearted Christian.

To be a half-hearted Christian, and I'm paraphrasing, but she says basically that what it does is you do the church no good and you're not a good you're not a good church person you're not a good worldling but you do for the devil a work that no 1 else can do There's nothing more effective in Satan's arsenal than Christians who are part-time worldlings.

Because when that Christian falls, when that Christian goes down, when the bad press comes on that Christian, There are many who often, in a domino effect, go down.

It makes, you know, because our lives are a form of sermon.

So when we live a contrary life and our relatives see it, when our neighbors see it, and We claim to be Christian, but we can't be kind.

People say, well, I don't want anything to do with that, God.

I want nothing to do with being a Christian.

If being a Christian means I'm going to act like that, you've got to make up your mind.

The scripture goes on, and Paul here says, but let us who are of the verse 7 but they that sleep sleep in the night and they that be drunken are drunken in the night but let us who are of the day be sober putting on the breastplate of faith and love I want to go back to verse 6 and talk about being sober he says let us watch and be sober it's not enough to just watch you see a lot of Christians watch we we're waiting for the second coming we're hoping for the second coming it's not enough to watch You've got to watch and be sober.

Being sober means that your mind is clear.

I want to break this down, because you see, as Christians, what the devil is trying to do is to intoxicate you.

He isn't simply trying to intoxicate you with alcohol or cocaine or amphetamines.

He's trying to intoxicate you with the world.

Now drugs are 1 of the most potent way to do that, but you can become intoxicated with the world in a lot of ways by trying to be like the world, by trying to absorb the world, by trying to become famous in the world.

The pitfall that you must avoid here is taking your focus off of God.

You see salvation is an intellectual process.

The Bible in Isaiah 1 and verse 18 says, come let us reason together.

Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow.

If you're going to know God, you must be able to reason.

So the devil works tirelessly to get us drunk.

He works tirelessly to take away our ability to reason.

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Series

Eric Walsh: Road Map to Heaven

How to Avoid Pit Falls

Transcript

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