Spoiled for choice
Helping the Lost overcome Obstacles to faith • Sermon • Submitted
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Spoiled For Choice
Spoiled For Choice
If I had to pick my Achilles heel I would have to say it is candy. My whole life, I have been addicted to candy. Sour candies to be exact. For some reason I have a hard time walking past a candy isles without buying something. When I was a kid candy was the way to get on my good side. On occasion my parents would let me pick out my own candy. Most of the time it wasn’t a big deal until they would take me to a bulk store. Bulk stores are the best, and the worst. As a kid, and let’s be honest even as an adult, the bulk candy section would send me into sensory overload. There were so many options to choice from. Different colours, flavours, shapes, textures, and smells. I could spend an hour in the bulk candy section just dreaming, but when it came time to make a choice it would be really hard. Too many choices, it was like I was spoiled for choice. Would I get a lot of one kind, and if so which one. My mom would suggest getting a little of a bunch of different kinds. But that just means you don’t get enough of anything to be satisfied and enough of everything to be teased. No I had to make a choice. But with so many options what do I choose.
Have you ever been spoiled for choice? Given so many options finding the right choice for you is almost impossible. It would be almost better for you if there were no choice just one option. That would be easy or even two choices, but three, four, five, even six. Want to get your car washed, choices. Want to buy some margarin you face choices. what kind of car is the best? So many choices for things that are essentially the same now
Life is full of choices and unfortunately that is also true when it comes to choosing a “god”. According to a quick google search some have estimated that there are somewhere around 4200 different religions in the world today. And you thought we were spoiled for choice during the election.
Over the past few weeks we have been talking about different obstacles that are keeping people from surrendering their life to God. Fear of change, it sounds to out there for some, but what about the sheer number of choices that are out there.
Satan is a master of the stumbling block and he knows that one obstacle that will keep a lot of people lost and heading his way, is by not destroying religion, no rather by polluting it with so many fake and false god’s and religions that people will look at the 4200 options and say, “How can you know which is the real one?” or they say, “Christianity is just like all those religions out there”.
This is a huge obstacle for some to overcome. Let’s call it the obstacle of choice. The truth is Satan has made sure the world is spoiled for choice. And this isn’t like candy in a bulk store, we are talking about our eternal souls here. Yet even today someone somewhere is trying to find the truth as they wade through the polluted options, like, Buddhism, Hinduism, Muslim, Scientology, Flat earthers, and then there are those who confuse different christian denominations as different religions. There are Universalists who think all paths lead to God and that no one goes to hell, despite that almost all religions false of not would say that is an impossibility.
Our religion is given the moniker “Christian” This is a term cast on the early believers first in Antioch. Over time we took that scathing insult and we adopted it as an accurate description of us. Those who follow Jesus who is the way.
It’s true in the NT believers never called themselves Christians they refereed to each other as disciples or followers of the way. Where did that phrase come from well most likely they were refereeing to when,
Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.
Jesus is the way, the only way so His followers were following “The way” so they could go to heaven to be with Him.
So let my ask a few if questions...
If Jesus is truly the Son of God,
And If Like the Bible says there is Only One God,
And If Jesus said He was the only way,
what does that mean for the other 4199 religions out there?
It means they are nothing more than stumbling blocks. Obstacles placed by the enemy to keep as many people from the way, truth and life as possible.
Which leads us to today’s question.
How do we know we are right?
How do we know we are right?
Because that is the obstacle keeping others from faith isn’t it. How do we know we are right?
There were witnesses
There were witnesses
Me: Did you know there is this new groovy movement out there of people who have convinced themselves and now are trying to convince others the world is not round rather flat. Sorry did I say new movement, I guess that would actually be a really old movement people are trying to bring back to life. Can I tell you I will never, and I do not say never often, but I will never, be convinced the earth is flat. You know why? Because I have seen the evidence first hand that the world is round. I have witnessed the sun moving through the sky, and how the spinning of this planet causes day and night. I have witnesses the constellations and noted how you can see different constellations from different parts of the planet at the same time because we can’t see through the planet it blocks some stars but on the other side of the country the planet is blocking different stars like we are on a sphere. If the world was flat we would all see the same stars at the same time. I have seen pictures from space, and connected to satellites orbiting the planet. I am a witness that the world is in fact round like an orange not a flat like a pancake.
We: The point is when we are witnesses to the truth we will not believe a lie. Is that true? How many of you have eaten a carrot? It tasted like cotton candy didn’t it? Sure it did, right down to the texture and how that carrot dissolves in your mouth. Carrots taste like Cotton Candy. Who believes me? Why not? Because you are witnesses to the truth. When we have witnessed the truth we will never except a lie. But wait none of us were there when Jesus was around. So how does that help us prove that Jesus is who He said He was? Simple we read the eye witness accounts!
God: read’s like this…
When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”
“Well,” they replied, “some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah, and others say Jeremiah or one of the other prophets.”
Then he asked them, “But who do you say I am?”
Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
Jesus replied, “You are blessed, Simon son of John, because my Father in heaven has revealed this to you. You did not learn this from any human being.
Now I say to you that you are Peter (which means ‘rock’), and upon this rock I will build my church, and all the powers of hell will not conquer it.
And I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven. Whatever you forbid on earth will be forbidden in heaven, and whatever you permit on earth will be permitted in heaven.”
Then he sternly warned the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.
Peter was an eye witness. What did He witness. He saw God in the flesh. He saw Jesus healing the sick, walking on water, feeding thousands with practically nothing. He saw demons through themselves at His feet begging for mercy and acknowledging who Jesus really was. That is why when asked who He thought Jesus was, Peter was confident He knew because He was a witness. He also witnessed Jesus arrest and ran away after denying Christ three times also witnessed Christ mercy as Jesus reinstated Him after the resurrection. Oh yeah he also was a witness to the resurrected Jesus and watched as He ascended into Heaven.
Peter testified in front of officials looking to kill him Jesus was and is the Son of God. He preached the truth and 3000 were saved on the day of Pentecost, because the people accepted him as a reliable witness.
Oh and tradition says He was crucified like our Lord, but most likely upside down at His request because he did not feel worthy to die in the same manner as Jesus.
You: Can I tell you something no one dies a death like that defending a lie, but one would if they refused to deny the truth they witnessed.
We: We can know we serve the one and only God because there were many witnesses who kept goo account. Peter was only one, but there were many who witnessed and were willing to suffer, and even die because they refused to deny the truth they witnessed.
Next Step: Proclaim the truth. Share what you have witnessed and read the first hand accounts of those who were there.