Dedicated To The Men of God Who Preach the Word of God As It
Is To Men As They Are
"Preach The Word"
SEVEN DANGEROUS LOVE AFFAIRS
God's Word says that love is the highest attribute of mankind.. It is greater than faith, greater than hope. (I Cor. 13). There are many varied distinctions in the use of this great word. A lot of so-(ailed "love affairs" are no more than "Lust affairs." Then there are degrees of love. Oh, the affection and devotion of mother love, the strength and feeling of father love, the tenderness and beauty of our companions love. But the greatest love known to man is the Saviour's love, unmerited and undeserved.
Oh, how marvelous, Oh, how wonderful
Is my Saviour's love for me.
I however, misplaced affection can be very dangerous and I want to bring you today face to face with seven dangerous love affairs.
First, "Men shall be lovers of their own selves." (II Timothy* 3:12). A Quaker lady said to her husband, "Bill, sometimes me-thinks that the whole world is crazy but me and thee and sometimes methinks thee is crazy." We are taught in the Bible not to think of ourselves more highly than we ought to think. Proverbs 6:17 tells us that God. hates a proud look! Again in Proverbs 16:18 the Bible says, "Pride goeth before destruction and an haughty spirit before a fall." Covetousness, which God calls idolatry, greediness, selfishness are wicked sins, though very respectable in many churches. The attitude of the world and the worlding is, "What do I get out of it?" The attitude of a Christian is, ‘What can I give?"
Second, the love of money. It is not money but the love of money that is the root of all evil. I Timothy 6:10. The Apostle warns that those who covet after money "have erred. from the faith and pierced themselves through with many sorrows." He is saying making money is not the main business of a Christian, serving and loving the Lord is. A man who works all week and is too tired on Sunday to go to God's house is a foolish man. A man or woman who says they can't afford to tithe (when God's Word plainly says the tithe is the Lord's) is greedy and selfish and will live to regret their thievery of God. The only poverty that hinders folks from giving to the Lord's cause is spiritual poverty.
[he third dangerous love affair is "the love of the praise of men. Now I know I'm stepping on plenty of toes. This is one sin most people hate to have exposed, but Jesus said: "Take heed that ye do not your alms before men to be seen of them. Otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in Heaven.( Matt. 6:1). Jesus taught that when we prayed, we were not to pray standing in the synagogues and street corners to he seen of men this is the way hypocrites pray, and the praise of men for their flowery recitation is their reward. But our Lord has taught us to do the bulk of our praying in the closet, in the secret place. and Jesus assured us that our Father which seeth in secret shall reward us openly.
Isn't it a shame that some preachers won't preach if the crowd is too small when Jesus did most of his preaching to a congregation of twelve. Isn't it a shame that some singers like to go where there's a big crowd and a lot of slaps on the back, where the praise of men is sweet in their ears. Isn't it a shame that some will sing in the choir if they have a solo or some will serve on a committee if they are chairman. Oh. beloved, this grieves the Saviour. This is just the vanity of the flesh which needs to be put to death continually. Remember, no one is immune. Beware!
The fourth dangerous love affair I mention is the love of the world. God's Word is very plain on this I John 2:15-17we read:
"Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world; If any man love the world, the love of [lie Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lost of the flesh. and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life is not of the Father but is of the world; and the world passeth away and the lusts thereof, but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever."
If you love the Lord Jesus. you don't have a hard time distinguishing between the devil's domain and the Lord's territory. No sir. Prayer to the Father through the shed blood of the Son is of God. So is singing praise to the Lord, witnessing for the Lord, attending regular church services where the Word of God is preached and where you get the right kind of Christian fellowship. Everything that is pure, clean, and of a good report, that's perfectly all right for a Christian. But places where Jesus wouldn't be welcome. with the crowd that's indecent, immoral and vulgar- that's off-limits for one who loves the Saviour.
For example, the dance is of the world. Why. I'd just as soon put my arms around a telephone pole as to dance with another man in my arms. You put man with man, woman with woman on the dance floor and there soon won't he any more dancing. The attraction is the lust of the flesh. The dance is an incubator of adultery. a cesspool of iniquity, a mother of harlots a sister of the red-light district, a road to ruin, disgrace and Hell.
Same goes with the Hollywood movies. Every honest person will admit that the movies glorify illicit sex, crime and other debauchery. The lives of the charactors are generally sordid and sinful. Lust, drinking, gambling, smoking, loose-living and all kinds of ungodliness provide the main themes for Hollywood movies. A theatre is just no place for a Christian to go. And while I'm on this subject, let me say that it's just as rotten to sit at home and watch the same thing on television and fill your mind with such trash as it is to go to a drive-in or downtown theatre.
A man stepped up angrily to a ticket window of a drive-in show and pushed a gun in the cashier's face. "My wife's in a parked car with another man and I want you to call her outside. Tell her if she doesn't I'm coming in to kill her and the man with her." The girl nervously sent the message over the Public Address system to the cars. Then she whispered softly, "I suggest that you slip away immediately through the back exit." One of the ushers said he saw about 35 cars hurriedly leave through the back exit.
Dangerous Love Affair No. 5 is "loving pleasure more than loving God." Clean recreation is fine, fun is fine, pleasure is fine and normal for us provided we do not place our love for it above our love for Cod. God pity the woman who goes to a movie and weeps crocodile tears and makes fun of weeping Christians in the church. God help this crowd who go to a ball game or wrestling match and jump and shout like Comanche Indians, then go to church and sit as bored as little wooden Indians. Some church members will drive a thousand miles on a pleasure trip and won't drive a few blocks to church. Some of you will put all kinds of money into boats, fishing gear, golf clubs, and cabins but gripe like the mischief when a radio preacher asks for an offering to help preach the gospel to the thousands. You're not fooling God, my friend. He knows where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
Then, many have lost their first love. Oh, how dangerous this is for a Christian. God tells these to repent or else. Because iniquity shall abound, the love of many (for the Lord) shall wax cold. Marriages go on the rocks because of this. Husband takes wife for granted. Wife shows little attention or affection for the one she vowed to cherish and obey. So here is the real cause why so many Christian's lives have been shipwrecked spiritually. We take our wonderful Saviour and His work for granted. We become careless in our prayer-life, careless in our Bible reading, careless in our church attendance, selfish in our giving, cowardly in our witnessing, compromising in our convictions and thoughtless in our associations with those who do not love and worship our Lord. Have you lost your first love for Jesus? Oh, how drab, how dull, how dead your profession seems to be. Then, repent! Turn to Him for forgiveness. As David prayed, "Lord, I will be sorry for my sin." "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."
The most dangerous love affair of all is love for Satan. Only degenerates love Satan for he is heartless and cruel but this world is fast degenerating into heathen darkness. Don't take my word for this. Turn in your Bible to I Timothy 4:1, 2.
"Now the Spirit speaketh expressly that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils; speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron."
Jesus taught that no man could serve two masters. Either God is your master or Satan. You cannot serve God and mammon. The American Sunbathing Association boasts that it has nearly a million members. These are called "nudists." If the present trend continues, in a few years that number will be multiplied many times. A woman who will defy the Bible (I Timothy 2:9) and defy the natural instinct to modesty and shamefacedness and go in public nearly naked will sooner or later go completely undressed and sell herself completely into the hands of Satan. Don't think for a moment that demon-possession existed only in Jesus' day. It exists today. Any qualified African missionary will testify to that fact.. And if American don't repent of their lust and loose-living, God will give us up like he did the Africans of many generations ago to reprobate mind:
Spiritually-minded people over this land see multiplying evidence of this Satan-inspired degeneracy all about us.
SERMON STARTER FROM DR. BOB BEVINGTON
