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Many Things
Are Lost
Within these verses of
Scripture is a lesson that is well for us to
study. The lesson covers the fact that Joseph
and Mary lost Christ and went on without
realizing He was not with them. We can draw a
parallel from that: we are living in a lost
world, in a world where many things have been
lost. I am sure when I mention that thought,
every mind begins to think of the many
principles that were good and which made our
nation great, but have been "lost" in the last
twenty-five years. It makes us sad and we weep
over the fact that they have been lost. The
terrible confusion manifested by national
leaders shows that our nation is in a lost
condition.
Some time ago, I was in a
lawyer's office. In all three rooms, the walls
were completely lined with law books. As he
pulled out a certain book to check on a
particular ordinance, it occurred to me that all
the laws contained in those volumes revert back
to those God gave the children of Israel. They
would not keep them, so others were added, some
were taken away, still others were changed. Men
are paid high salaries to continually make new
laws, only to have them broken.
We have
lost something, and that is respect for those
who have authority over us: government and law
on all levels. Many times it has begun right in
that which calls itself the church, the highest
pinnacle, and goes on down to the lowest level
of living.
All laws start with those
given to Moses. Then in the New Testament,
Jesus, Himself, let us know that ALL the law was
fulfilled in just one word: L-0-V-E. That's
right: LOVE. He made it very plain in
Matthew 22:40, when He said, On these two
commandments hang all the law and the
prophets. You know what they are: Jesus
said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God
with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and
with all thy mind. This is the first and great
commandment. And the second is like unto it,
Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
Matthew 22:37-39.
Our nation has not only
drifted from God's law, but has lost the very
thing the law hangs upon: the right respect for
God and the right respect for our fellowman.
From the very beginning, God wanted man to live
in a way that he could show right respect with
God, which is to love God with all his heart,
soul, mind and strength, and that he love his
neighbor as himself.
The purpose of this
message to you is not to discuss the sad picture
of our nation as a whole, but to reach the souls
of men and women. However, our nation is NOT
progressing toward God--it has lost its
way and is "headed for the ditch", just exactly
like so many other nations that forgot God. Not
only has our nation lost something, but many
individuals have lost wealth, health, happiness
and hope. Oh, the numberless people who are
existing without hope around our
world!
While my primary interest is to
see men and women find a real experience of
salvation through Jesus Christ, my secondary
interest is that I might, with the help of the
Holy Spirit, so feed the church that men and
women will not lose the experience that God
gives them.
You
Can Lose Christ
Many who once
enjoyed a rich experience and a rich fellowship
with Christ have lost Him. There is a false
doctrine that advocates if you ever had Christ
in your heart, you could never lose Him.
However, that is wrong: God gave us a free will
to make choices about whom we serve. Just as we
are not "forced" to be saved, we are not
"forced" to remain saved. The Bible speaks out
in warning for us to live in a careful attitude
before God, because we can lose this
great experience that God has brought to us
through real salvation.
The most tragic
loss anyone can experience is to lose real,
vital contact with Christ. This can be done in
various ways--it is not hard to lose Christ from
our hearts and lives. There are people who raise
up against the false teaching of eternal
security, yet the spirit of that thing works on
many, many people. The fruit of their lives lets
us know that they have lost Christ, but the
spirit of eternal security makes them feel
secure.
We can fight off incorrect
(false) doctrines with the truth; but only as we
keep the Holy Spirit working in power and force
in our lives can we raise up a standard against
the false spirit that wants to take hold of us
and seduce us, deceiving us and leading us in a
way contrary to the Word of God. If you have
lost Christ, I pray that this will be made plain
to you and that you will humble yourself and go
back to a place where you can find the real
contact that you once had with Him.
It is
possible to lose the real, vital contact with
Christ--that burning experience of salvation, by
just becoming too busy and engrossed with
temporal things. Remember our scripture text:
Joseph and Mary took Jesus to the feast of the
passover when He was twelve years old, and of
all the places in the world to lose Him, they
lost Him there. They went an entire's day
journey toward their home without
Him.
A Danger In Communion With
Our Fellowman
In one sense,
it is hard to understand how Mary, the mother of
Jesus, chosen of God to be a model mother for
all mothers to look to, could go a whole day's
journey without her son, but the fact is, she
did. However, any alarm we feel at that should
be lessened when we stop to consider that Mary
was just an everyday woman like women of today.
If we stop and look at everyday life, such as
even we experience, we can understand how it was
possible for such a thing to
happen.
First of all, let us consider the
history of the text. To the Jewish nation,
keeping ceremonial feasts were high places in
their lives. Those feasts were to them something
like our campmeetings are to us, except we are
in the time of Holy Ghost dispensation where we
have the reality, while they had just the form.
Because of this huge gathering together, Mary
had many things to think about and talk about
with other women. Feast times were busy times
and she was meeting old friends and making new
friends, History lets us know that at this
particular time, the national picture was
shaking and emerging quickly. The upheaval was
on the minds of people; they had hope of a
soon-coming liberty that would release Judah
from the throne of Rome.
When we look at
that picture, we can see that it is not too much
different from the picture of our day. What do
you think about and talk about the
biggest majority of your time? The people of God
must be ever vigilant about the dangers arising
from communion with their fellow man. Just the
common communion that we have with others can
cause us to lose God. We need to be careful
about too-close companionship with neighbors,
co-workers, friends, etc. Certainly, we want to
be friendly, we want to do what we can to win
the world to Christ. However, the devil is ready
to set up a program where a too-close communion
can easily begin working. Mark it down: if you
are a Christian and your neighbor is not, ONE or
the OTHER is going to change. If you are not
strong enough in the Lord and the power of His
might to affect him (her) and bring that soul to
Jesus Christ, he (or she) is going to pull you
toward the world. When it comes to communion
with our fellowman, we need to let the Holy
Spirit be fervent in our lives; when we feel the
least pull within our souls against the path of
light, we need to break off that relationship
(friendship) and hold on to
Jesus.
Too Busy With Daily
Activities
I want to warn the young
people first of all. The program of school and
activities of one's school have, in many many
cases, been the cause of many losing Christ from
their lives. Certainly, we fully appreciate the
young people who sell out to God and get an
experience of salvation. However, every one of
you must remember that the devil works through
circumstance. The enemy of our soul, the devil,
has ONE goal: he wants to rob you of the
precious experience of salvation that God has
given you. This is not preaching against
schools--but this IS a red light of
warning! You can easily become so busy with the
activities of school that you do not readily
realize that somewhere along the way, you lost
Christ.
Young friends, anyone or anything
that demands you give up Christ--your experience
of salvation--is NOT worth having. I would even
go so far as to advise you in this manner: if
you are attending college--if you feel God is
leading you into a vocation--certainly you need
the education to support that vocation. However:
you need to settle it in your heart and mind: if
the going gets too tough and it begins to crowd
Jesus Christ out of your life, you pull back and
critically examine what is taking place. While
education is important in this world, your
eternal salvation is even MORE important. If
need be, go to the dean of your college and let
him know that you would rather have Jesus than
the education.
Many are being robbed by
the daily program of life (some people refer to
it as the "rat race"). Furthermore, the devil is
going to speed it up all he can, and he would
like to get every one of us in such a whirl that
we don't have time to serve God and live a
Christian life as God ordained us to live.
However, you have the privilege, as an
individual, of "putting on the brakes". If the
program of the world is spinning too fast, just
jump off. You do not have to go around with the
world--the devil just makes you feel that you
do.
A Danger In Courtship and
Marriage
There is danger of losing
Christ during courtship and marriage. Far too
many young people have lost out with Jesus
during these periods of their life. I recall a
young woman I talked with one time. It grieved
my heart as I thought upon the condition of her
soul. With all of her moral goodness and all of
her fine qualities, she did not have Jesus in
her heart. She once did; however, she became so
wrapped up in courtship that she got to the
place where the young man held the apex of her
life. When he turned her down, she took such a
fall that when she hit ground, she did not have
either the young man or Jesus.
When
something is good for you, you can have it and
serve God at the same time. Paul teaches us,
And we know that all things work together for
good to them that love God, to them who are the
called according to his purpose. Romans
8:28. Those all things include school,
courtship, marriage, the job and all else.
However, we must live according to God's
purpose, because whenever we begin to live
according to our own purpose, we are going to be
misled and defeated. Simply put: we are going to
lose Jesus Christ. Get the message: we must have
one purpose above every other purpose, and that
is to please God!
There must be one
supreme purpose in our lives, and when we make
Christ that purpose, we will want to be educated
to the Glory of God. We will want to be married
to the Glory of God. With that ONE purpose, we
have a wonderful promise to stand on: everything
IS going to work for good.
As I walked
away from the meeting we had with that precious
young lady, I am sure she has spent years in
remorse with a broken heart. Only God in heaven
knows for certain, but it could be that it was a
blessing for her when that courtship didn't work
out. There is something worse than not having
any man, and that is having a bad one. Something
worse than having no companion is having the
wrong one, because your lives are tied
together.
I have dealt with broken homes
where women with children have looked me
squarely in the face and told me, "I don't love
my husband, and I never did. I didn't love him
when I married him--I married him for other
reasons." Now that is a pitiful state to be in.
God is love, and we know that when hearts are
yielded to Him, He is able to put love there.
But if those hearts are not yielded to Him, what
a sad situation it is to have to live with
someone the rest of your life who has told you
right to your face that he or she does not love
you.
Someone made the statement that they
had gotten a "no-fault" divorce. There is no
such thing. Some couples fight like cats and
dogs, read each other's pedigree, run each other
down, and then sign a paper stating they are
getting a divorce and no one is to blame.
Ridiculous! If there were no blame and no fault,
there would be no divorce.
It is in
courtship and marriage that people need to be
very careful. Even the Bible let us know that
under the law, they did not call on a
newly-married man to go to war or to do anything
else for a year (Deuteronomy 24:5). The only man
who had a real excuse for not attending the
feast when the gospel feast was given was the
man who got married. He married a wife and could
not come. Even God gave him time to show his
affection for his wife. We might just as well
face it: there is a reason when men and women
are joined together in true matrimony and love.
They have one thing in mind: giving themselves
to each other. Their thoughts are about each
other. However, let me warn you--you must be
careful, because when the honeymoon is over, you
might have lost Christ.
Even though the
preacher joined you together and it was a holy
matrimony and the Holy Ghost touched your
marriage, you still have to be careful. The
devil will work right through your very marriage
to rob you of a real personal experience with
Jesus Christ. How many young people loved the
Lord when they were single, but after they
married, they dropped out of the work of God.
This is one of the ways that the devil is
working to cause many, far too many, to lose
Christ.
Religious
Duties Without A
Purpose
We need to watch the
deceptive dangers of religious duties without
real purpose. Notice verses 42 and 43 in our
text: And when he was twelve years old, they
went up to Jerusalem after the custom of the
feast. And when they had fulfilled the days, as
they returned, the child Jesus tarried behind in
Jerusalem; and Joseph and his mother knew not of
it. The feast of the passover, an eight-day
feast, was the highpoint of all the religious
services that Judah enjoyed. It was right in the
midst of that religious service that Mary and
Joseph lost track of Jesus.
Those of you
who are in a backslidden condition probably did
not backslide at the beer joint, in a house of
prostitution, or in a crooked deal. You lost
Christ while sitting right in the pew during a
church service. The reason Mary and Joseph lost
Jesus is the same reason people lose Him today:
there was more thought being given to the feast
than to the purpose of the feast. There is more
thought of us "being seen in church by others"
or going because "it's a habit", or "we're
supposed to" than why we should be: to
focus on Jesus. Jesus sternly laid the truth on
literal Israel and called many of them
hypocrites, because they had kept the letter of
the law, but lost the real purpose of the
law.
Verse 43 tells us And
when they had fulfilled the days... They had
fulfilled the required time, but not the
purpose. They made sure they stayed eight days;
they made sure they attended the temple worship;
they made sure that they ate of the unleavened
bread--but they had lost the true purpose of the
feast. The purpose of the feast was to remind
them of the great deliverance that God had given
them out of Egyptian bondage. They stayed in
Jerusalem until they had fulfilled the days, and
then they headed home.
People today go to
the house of worship, stay a couple of hours,
and say that worship is over. There is more
involved than just showing up at the pew. What
should be the real purpose of you going
to church? It ought to be in appreciation for
the deliverance that God has given you from the
life of sin and because He has made you a new
creature, affording you grace and strength.
Sadly, many many go into the building, fulfill
the required time and go back out without having
ever lifted their hearts unto God in praise for
His Mercy and Grace.
We need to be very
careful about this thing of "going to church"
merely for the sake of ritual (habit). It is
very easy to slip into such a custom, yet it is
without fulfillment of any real purpose. If
every person who entered the church doors stayed
until they fulfilled the purpose for being there
in the first place, there would be many more
lost souls getting saved, and very very few
backsliders, indeed! Be very careful of this
deceptive danger, merely going through the
motion without accomplishing the purpose. It is
very easy to slide into tradition instead of
keeping on track of purpose. It is very easy to
start missing services, the forsaking of the
assembling of ourselves together, for minor
reasons. If our focus is on anything but the
worship of God, the enemy of our soul will use
that very thing to twist our purpose of going to
church and we will not gain what we could from
our time spent
there!
Just
Suppose
Far too many are living
just as it is pictured in our text, under
religious supposition. When you live under
"religious supposition", you go along with the
crowd, really afraid to be one of God's peculiar
people (what the world calls an
"oddball"). Verse 44 states that Mary and
Joseph, supposing Jesus to be in the crowd,
traveled a whole day without Him. I dare say
there are thousands filling the pews in church
buildings who are living in religious
supposition; they have not taken the time to
check--they just suppose.
Friend,
religious supposition is dangerous! If you are
just supposing Jesus Christ is in your
heart, let me ask you this: Suppose He isn't?
You cannot afford to operate under "suppose"; if
God saw fit to fill out the last page of your
life's record and required your soul tonight,
are you willing to merely suppose that you are
saved? That all is well with you and God? There
has to be more than just supposition. Many who
have sustained a loss in their souls are kept
from making speedy application to God for help
and salvation through foolish supposition. They
suppose that He is there and they
suppose that their religious state is not
as bad as it really is.
One of the marks
of the spirit of the age is that we take too
much for granted. That is doing more damage to
this great nation than any one thought the devil
has sowed in the minds of mankind. Just as our
parents took for granted that this grand old USA
would always be, we do, too and so do our
children. "Oh, good times are here to stay!" No
one is willing to consider the thought that the
good old USA may not always exist.
It
would do anyone good to travel outside the
United States and be treated as people are
treated in many foreign countries. It would
cause them to be thankful for what we have, to
pray and live and hold what we have far dearer
than we do. There are many foreign countries
where people are not treated as they are in the
good old USA--they are pushed around and
not thought of as highly as animals,
even.
Many of this day and age are taking
it for granted that certain freedoms will always
be here. Yet, how very foolish of us to do so:
even today, one cannot go about on the streets
at the same hours as they once did, or in
certains sections of the city. Yet, we persist
in foolishly "supposing" that the "good old USA"
will always remain just as she is. Yet just "as
she is" is a far cry from who she used to be.
The only way that the "good old USA" can
continue to exist is for the people to walk
according to the principles and patterns that
our forefathers walked by to develop the United
States of America. When we quit walking that
way, we will lose it. And the same thing is true
of the body of Christ, the church. Do not take
for granted that you will always have the same
religious freedoms that you currently
have.
There is far too much taken for
granted today. There is too much dreaming and
not enough reality. People dream about living in
beautiful homes and having high-paying jobs. We
must quit our dreaming and get down to business.
Every one of the things that we dream of having
takes great preparation and the starting place
is Jesus Christ in your heart and life. He
promises in the Word of God that if you will
seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness,
all these other things shall be added unto
you.
Salvation Is An Individual
Matter
Thank God for the
privilege of meeting together to worship God and
for the blessing there is in it! Thank God for
the strength we derive from one another by the
lives and testimonies. God has ordained these to
be a blessing, but the enemy of our soul will
try to twist these privileges around and work in
a deceptive way on you! He just loves deceiving
folks into supposing all is well with their
soul, when in fact, they may be in a seriously
lukewarm condition, they may be lean in their
souls, they may have unforgiven sin in their
life. Yet because you have worshiped with some
spiritual people, you suppose that
everything is all right with your
soul.
Understand something very very
clearly: real salvation is an individual matter.
Philippians 2:12 tells us we must work out our
own salvation with fear and trembling.
That clarifies the individuality of it--that
clarifies that we must work it out for
ourselves--it doesn't just rub or jump off onto
us. You can sit with spiritual people all around
you, drink from their wells, eat of their food,
be warmed by their fires, and die and go to hell
right from their midst unless you have a living
experience of Christ in your own heart and
life!
In our text, the people walked many
miles to go to the feast and many miles to get
home again. Undoubtedly, they walked as we do
today; for the most part, we still find the men
walking with the men, the women walking as a
group, and the children frolicking along
together. As Mary and Joseph and those with whom
they were traveling moved along, they may have
walked a number of miles before stopping to eat.
Mary was comfortable that Jesus was traveling
with Joseph--Joseph may have felt the same
assurance, except thinking Jesus was with Mary.
They went along, enjoying the communion of
the crowd they were with, not realizing they had
lost Jesus.
Many feel safe and
protected, so long as they are meeting with, or
in regular contact with "the saints". Friends,
that simply is not true! The picture we get from
our scripture text teaches us that when we are
merely going along with the crowd, even a
"saved" crowd, even a "good" crowd, we can still
lose Christ. Every step that Mary and Joseph
took with the crowd was taking the both
of them farther and farther from
Jesus.
Turn Back and Seek
Him
Verse 45 reads, And
when they found him not, they turned back again
to Jerusalem, seeking him. I love that
verse! When they realized Jesus was no longer
with them, that in fact they were traveling away
from Him, they immediately turned back. They did
not attempt to go any further with the
crowd--they turned back to Jesus! Oh, if we
would only be so prompt to do so today! The Word
of God tells us that if we will seek Him, we
will find Him: Then shalt thou call, and the
Lord shall answer; thou shalt cry, and he shall
say, Here I am… Isaiah
58:9.
Supposition will carry you farther
and farther away on the busy highway of life,
and if the devil gets his way about it, you will
never receive light on your condition until it
is too late. Then, through your own willful
neglect, the light that should be saving
light will only light up the fact that you have
lived a life of error and the ghastly future
will be yours throughout ceaseless
eternity.
So many, who once had Christ,
do not get straightened out with Him, is because
of a too light and chaffy attitude. Oh,
it is a wonderful thought to think on the
mercies of God that are from everlasting to
everlasting, but if that thought is taken too
lightly, a person will never get straightened
out with God! They will live under the false
supposition that they don't need to refresh
themselves in Christ, they don't need a daily
walk close to Him--they can just "coast". There
is no coasting in the Christian walk, my
friends.
Not only did Mary and Joseph
seek Jesus at once, but they also sought Him
sorrowfully. They were sorry they had
lost Him. People today don't want to experience
"being sorry", thus they wander farther and
farther away from God. Oh yes, many today
profess on and on, living a life of supposition.
Congregations are dotted with this condition of
people living on in supposition, almost beyond
feeling.
It is a great blessing to be
awakened to the fact that you have lost Christ
from your life. When you have Godly sorrow fall
upon you, count it a blessing! Real Godly sorrow
will do exactly what Paul said it would do:
For godly sorrow worketh repentance to
salvation not to be repented of… II
Corinthians 7:10. "Not to be repented of" means
that you will not be sorry of feeling that Godly
sorrow--it refreshes your walk with God. Godly
sorrow will cause you to seek Christ, and no
price will be too great, no journey too far, no
effort too much when real Godly sorrow strikes
your heart.
It is very important that you
understand one thing: no matter how beloved you
are to them, no matter how beloved they are to
you, your kinfolk cannot bring you salvation.
Thank God for Mothers and Dads who have lived
the Christian life, but their salvation will not
save you. You must make personal contact--you
must work out your own salvation. It is
an individual experience for each and every
person.
There are those who start to get
straightened out with God, but then decide they
are unwilling to pay the price. They shop
around in religion just like someone does to
get a better bargain at a supermarket. Finding
salvation for your soul is not a bargain hunt.
Maintaining a close personal relationship with
God is not a bargain hunt. There are no cutting
corners, my friends--there is only one
acceptable method: we must go through
Christ to get to our Heavenly Father! Just as
Jesus told Thomas in John 14:6, I am the way,
the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the
Father, but by me.
Is being busy
about your Father's business the last place or
the first place your friends and loved ones know
to look for you? Do your friends and others in
your life know where to find you when it's time
to go to church? When there is someone in need,
do others know where to find you? We all need to
live our lives so that those who know us will
know where to find us. And we all need to stay
in close communion with Jesus so we don't have
to "go looking" for Him--we know right where to
find Him.
Searching
Questions
Search me, O
God, and know my heart: try me, and know my
thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in
me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
Psalm 139:23,24. We must quit supposing and make
certain. Putting on a search is the
excellent way for us to find out our condition,
our state of being with God. Put on a search by
asking yourself these questions: "Do I have
peace that passes understanding? Is there
joy unspeakable and full of glory in my
soul today? It must be yes or no: "Well, I'm
getting there", "Almost", or "Sometimes" will
not do because Jesus is not a "sometime-Jesus".
This is not a "sometime-salvation" that we have,
my friends. This is a "know-so" salvation:
either Jesus Christ abides in our heart and
shines through in our lives, or He doesn't.
There's no guesswork or "maybe" to it.
Jesus does not come and go--when He comes into
our heart, it is to stay. He doesn't move away
from us--we move away from Him. Just as with
Mary and Joseph when they "lost" Jesus--He
didn't wander away from them--they moved away
from Him. He was "about His Father's business".
Think about it!
Once we realize we have
lost Jesus, we must seek Him with all of our
heart. Fling away that robe of religious
supposition and take a long hard look at the
truth of your condition. If we seek Him, we
shall find Him. We can be renewed daily
in Him: For which cause we faint not; but
though our outward man perish, yet the inward
man is renewed day by day. II Corinthians
4:16. Renewed in Christ each and every day! But
it is only through the realization that we must
stay in communion with HIM and not everything
else that is going on around us.
Do you
have victory over sin, the flesh and the enemy
of your soul as he comes against you in your
daily life? We can, through the Spirit of Life
that is in Jesus Christ! Paul made it plain in
Romans 8:9, when he said, So then they that
are in the flesh cannot please God. But ye are
not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be
that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any
man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of
his. Romans 8:8,9. Now if any man have NOT
the Spirit of Christ, he is none of
His.
The Word of God teaches us that
Jesus will take our old stoney hard heart and
replace it with one full of love and compassion
toward our fellow man. He will take the wrong
spirit out and put the right spirit in. He will
remove your sin as far as the east is from the
west; Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit will move
into your heart and go everywhere with you. Turn
back to Him, seek Him while He may be
found--don't allow yourself to live by merely
supposing that all is as it should be with you
and
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