In Romans chapter 13 in verses 11 and 12.
The Apostle Paul says and do this knowing the time that now
it is high time to awake out of sleep.
For now, our Salvation is nearer than when we first believed the
night is far. Spent the day is at hand.
Therefore, let us cast off. The works of darkness.
And let us put on the armor of light.
I would like to propose to you the question tonight.
Are you woke? I heard that term sometime back
and I was not aware of what it meant so I took the time to look
it up and I find out that merriamwebster.com says that
woke is a slang term. That is easing into the
mainstream from African American vernacular English and that in
some dialects awake is often rendered as awoke as in, I was
sleeping but now I'm woke. Wo ke Wolk is increasingly used
metaphorically. I'm told for social awareness, a
person who has awakened to social issues and has become
aware of Injustice or oppression or whatever particular social
issue of the day happens to be that person is said to be woke
and that just means they're awake.
It is very quickly taking on broader uses.
For example, awoke Corporation is a company that That is
socially aware and adopts Progressive policies, and
advertising campaigns reflective of that social awareness.
I also learned that the term woke.
Twitter has a very recently taken off as the shorthand for
describing social media activists concern with
Progressive issues. So I want to say tonight that
woke is something we need to be in the biblical sense of the
term. So I asked, are you woke?
In Romans 13, the passage that I just read a moment ago, the
Apostle says that it is high time to awake out of sleep, it
is not a time for lethargy and Slumber, but rather it's a time
if you will to become woke. Now, there's a tone of urgency
in Paul's words tonight and I hope to be able to communicate
that urgency to you as well. So number one tonight, we need
to become woke on the brevity of life.
James said, in chapter 4 and verse 14, for what is your life?
It is even a vapor that appears for a little time.
And then vanishes away when James, Likens your life and mine
to a vapor, he Compares it to one of the most fleeting and
ephemeral, phenomena of nature. You know, a morning fog appears
in the Twilight morning hours of the day and it is there only for
a brief time and if you're not paying close attention, son,
Only the fog has dissipated before you hardly notice that
it's gone and such as our life. Paul and James are saying
therefore that we must wake up and realize even if we're very
young that our life is very temporary.
Well completely temporary and quite brief as it turns out.
In other words we need to give our greatest energies and our
service to the Lord now today, because the days are fleeting
and The time passes quickly and we should not therefore squander
away our days and are times in our lives for the service of the
material, things of the world, and the service of the devil in
the world. Now I might add though that even
if you take a look at yourself and realize that you've been
guilty of doing this, and even if it may even be late in life
for you as long as you're still breathing, and as long as your
heart is beating as long as you're still, Walking above the
ground, it is still an opportunity for you to change
that. You now can serve God Faithfully
more Faithfully, perhaps than before, I'm afraid though that
the way we are sometimes we need to hear the words of the Apostle
Paul in Ephesians 4 or 5 and verse 14, awake, you who sleep
arise from the dead and Christ will give you light.
And so if we're not in the right way and if we're not, Not awake
on these issues on this matter of the brevity of life than it's
time that we woke up, it's time that we become woke.
Number two, we need to become woke on the pressing needs of
God's service. Now that may be the same point,
I just made, I don't know, but let me just add to it a little
bit. In Hebrews chapter 2 and verse
28. Paul says, let us have Grace
whereby. We may serve God acceptably.
With reverence and godly fear. This passage speaks of an
acceptable service to God. And let me just say tonight that
God needs people to serve him. Now, let me clarify, but God
doesn't need anything from us, just read the book of Psalm, the
50th Psalms, the 50th Psalm, and you'll see what I mean.
God doesn't need anything from me, and he doesn't need anything
from you, but let me say that God has put his cause into the
hands of human beings in this world.
And the only way that his cause can be represented and upheld in
the world is by people to take hold of that cause and to go
forth with the work. God needs people to love him or
God's cause needs people to love God Jesus.
Quoted the Old Testament and you shall love the Lord.
Your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all
your mind and all your strength. We also need to love the word of
God. Now, you can go out on the
street and I see, Postponed. The whole lot of people who
would tell you that they have a love of the word of God, and
maybe you can find a lot of people in the church that say
they have a love of the word of God, but if you watch them and
listen to them, I'm and observe their patterns of behavior over
the course of several weeks days months or Years, you'll find
that maybe they don't quite honor it, like, they say.
So when we say love the word of God, we're talking about having
enough of the motivation and the willingness to devote our
energies and our resources. To cherishing the word of God
searching, the word of God devouring, the word of God
imbibing, the word of God and accepting it and letting it soak
into the pores of our thoughts. So that we may play them out in
our lives or the word out in our lives.
In other words, obey it. God needs people to do this.
Let me add God's cause needs people to make the life of the
church. Ask lifestyle, and not just an
appendage. To all of the American dream
that we sometimes devote more attention to, it seems than the
services of God, people need to devote themselves to the cause
of God in every respect. So that the work of the church,
the efforts of the church. The plans of the church to carry
out the cause of the Lord, the services of the church, if you
will become the Warped and wooof of Our Lives on a day-to-day
basis. And like I said, not just a
patch that's added on Or so don on Sunday.
And so my friends, we need to become walk on the service of
God but let me hasten and we need to become woke on the evils
of sin in Ephesians 5 and verse 11.
Paul says, and have no fellowship with the unfruitful
works of darkness but rather expose them Have no Fellowship.
This means no Affinity with no involvement in no participation
in any of the things that the Bible calls sin.
Now, let me just tell you in my observation.
You can take that position and you can apply it to your life in
a practical way on a day-to-day beat the basis and many people
sometimes, even members of the church will call you radical and
extreme. But I believe that extreme and
radical is the thing that Paul had in mind.
For when we consider the great power and the force of the sins
of the world and the things that surround us everywhere and
threaten, the spiritual lives of ourselves and our children, we
need to be a little more radical than we are and quit trying to
Buddy up to the world's, somehow win them to the church through a
congenial stance with sin. It's time that we get Us about
living the Christian Life. Now permit me to criticize
parents, even though I'm not one, I've been an observer for a
long time of parents raising their children in the church.
And it's been my notice that parents who are proactive, and
make a plan and executed effort to instill, Holiness and a
respect for the word of God and a commitment to the body of
Christ. Those parents, who do that have
a far better track record of raising children, who will?
The same thing when they become adults than those, who simply
again, are reactive and only try to fight things off once they've
been invited into the home or into the lives of people and in
the lives of their children, because they've been lakhs and
careless in the treatment of matters of sin, relative to the
family. Let me add to this point.
Father's need to step up and be the spiritual leaders of the
family and stop leaving it for the mothers.
You know, people think it's easy.
Seems like that because the mother carries the baby in the
womb and the mother cares for the little toddler.
When it's very young. While the father's off working
at the job and the mother takes care of this and takes care of
that though, when it comes to the matters of spirituality than
she ought to take care of that too.
And the problem is that a lot of fathers.
I noticed this in the church a lot, there are lots of men who
think that it is their responsibility simply to make a
living, give, thanks at the dinner table and drive the
family to church on Sunday and Virtually no other input from
the father on matters of spirituality than that.
My friends. I'm afraid that there are men
who are going to lose their souls in the day of judgment for
the failure to follow up, and to step up and take the lead in the
family on matters of spirituality.
They are going to be accountable before God on the day of
judgment for the fact that their children are no longer in the
body of Christ, and maybe even other influences as a result of
that. You know, the Apostle Paul in
Ephesians chapter 4 speaks of the fact that there is a thing
called the corruption, that is in the world that grows corrupt.
We need to fight that off, we need to do whatever we can and
if we don't know what to do, was talk to people and ask questions
and find out what we can do. And what we can know about how
to fight off the ways of sin, but I must hurry, we need to
become woke, I believe on the very real and raw.
Rising threat of persecution. Yes, really in Luke chapter 21
and verse 12. Jesus says.
But before all these things, they will lay their hands on you
and persecute you delivering you up to synagogues and prisons.
You will be brought before Kings and rulers for my namesake for
years. I think we've been reading these
passages like this, as something that that was the way it was
back. Then, that's something the may
be the way it was a few. Centuries ago but we don't need
to concern ourselves so much with that today and that's been
true and maybe it still is to a great extent.
But here in this passage Jesus says that persecution involves
prosecution. In other words, whenever
persecution comes on the rise, it will be through the arm of
the state that will attempt to thwart the church and to silence
people into submission. This is the way it was all
through the Old Testament. When those Us and very brave Old
Testament, prophets were again. And again brought before one of
the Kings of Israel and Judah and brought to task for some of
the things that they preached and declared.
Among the people all the way down to the end of the Bible, in
the Book of Revelation when for example, the church at Smyrna in
the Book of Revelation was threatened with the same power
persecution comes through the state.
Now, I'm not an alarmist and I'm not here to be Sensational and
I'm not trying to impress you with anything of that sort.
And I don't want to frighten people, but I'm afraid I'll be
honest with you. That we are living in the last
days of comfortable Christianity, in America.
And if you think I'm just being radical, just go out and take a
look on the internet at some of the things that people who we
may disagree with, on some things.
But we are Agree, on other things.
And some of those things people are being fined for their being
run out of business for their even being put into prison for
just take a look at the things that you hear and see on the
news. And if you think you haven't
heard much about it, I say go take a look again on the
internet. There is a growing hatred of
Christianity of the judeo, Christian ethics and morality
and moreover anyone who upholds it and believes it is hate.
All the more for doing so, and the person who is bold enough to
step up and take a stand for, it takes the Heat.
And let me tell you, it's hot in the kitchen, it's hot in the
kitchen. Whenever that type of opposition
comes people all over the Western World.
I don't know if some of you are aware of this or not for we only
hear it occasionally now and then on the news but it's all
over the place. All over the Western World and
even in the United States today, people are being sued and being
issued. Massive fines for simply acting
or failing to act in some cases because of their conviction on
certain matters of principle and louder and more powerful voices
are even now calling for legislation that essentially
outlaws some parts of the Bible even in the United States of
America. You say, well, that's not going
to happen anytime soon. Maybe not.
But I think we need to be aware of it, I think.
We need to educate ourselves and we need to be thinking about
what we're going to do when we are confronted with these kinds
of things. Well I need to hurry.
I'm right now out of time. I want to say one more thing.
We need to get woke on the coming judgment.
Jesus, and Paul, and the New Testament, writers proclaimed.
A judgment Jesus proclaimed. The Judgment the world today,
says, there will not be one because there's no God.
And the proof is in how they live and how they openly and
proudly disdain God and His law and criticize every person who
upholds it. But just because a thing is not
believe doesn't be mean, it will not become a reality simply
denying. The Judgment doesn't mean it
will not. Come.
I may defy. I'm a disdain the law of
gravity, but if I jump off of a 30-story building, it's not
going to take me very long to figure out that the reality was
different than what? I believed.
We need to be waking up. We need to wake up in our
spiritual lives and do what we can to awake others.
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