YOU CAN'T HAVE YOUR CAKE AND EAT IT TOO!

The lives of Cain, Judas, and the Pharisees teach us lessons that are vital. They turned their back on God and His Son and taught others to do the same! They chose to reject Jesus and be slaves to their sinful nature! Cain is most infamous for being the world’s first murderer. He was a rebellious man who rejected God and ignored His warnings. He’s an example of how deadly the common sins of anger and jealousy can be. Judas is most infamous for his betrayal of Jesus. He was one of the twelve disciples who lived with and followed Jesus for three years. He witnessed Jesus’ ministry, His teaching and His miracles, first hand! Judas’ life teaches us to guard against the small, gradual failings, weaknesses, sins, that grow in strength and power in our lives that open the door to more deadly influences.

Judas reminds us that appearances can be deceiving. It’s hard to imagine how he could’ve betrayed the Lord! It should make us wonder how Christians who’ve seemingly known and followed Jesus and His Word, possibly most of their life, have fallen from faith – but it happens! The Pharisees were most infamous for rejecting the Savior! They emphasized personal godliness in their lives, their version of it, but in general they were self-righteous and self-satisfied in their delusion that they were pleasing God, all the while living in opposition to God’s will, basing their salvation on keeping the Law which they failed at miserably. They were the leaders and teachers of Israel who appeared sincere and faithful to the people! However, Jesus who can see the heart, called them hypocrites--whitewashed tombs.

The lessons we learn from Cain, Judas, and the Pharisees have a direct impact on what our Lord teaches us today. Jesus warns, not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven! We need to consider our Savior’s Words with the utmost urgency and seriousness! Those our Lord speaks of thought they had a close personal relationship with Him, they thought they were serving Him, that they were the Lord’s own! It’s certainly possible they were sincere but in truth they were sincerely deceived! We also need to examine ourselves in the Light of God’s Word to make sure our faith, hope, and love are firmly in Jesus and not divided with this world. We too can be deceived if we’re not on guard! It boils down to understanding: We Can’t have our cake and eat it too! May the Spirit bless…

We understand that It’s not possible to follow our sinful nature and our Savior because they are in direct opposition to each other. So we ask ourselves the question, are we doing the will of our Father in heaven?  To answer that we need to know what God’s will is. Ultimately, it’s trusting in His Son Jesus as our Savior and living for and serving Him. To do that we must deny ourselves and take up our cross and follow Him. Not half-heartedly but all out making every possible effort to get rid of anything in our life that’s contrary to His will and not make excuses for them! The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.

We’re to strive to be dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry.  Not because we “Have to” but because we want to! Because we love our Lord Jesus because He first loved us! We’ve experienced God’s saving grace in Jesus! We’ve seen the perfect love our Lord has for us that led Him to Calvary! In true Christian faith and love for our Savior we want to live for Him and serve Him in thankfulness for His living and serving us! For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. That’s God’s desire for us and all mankind! But there will be many who will try to justify their way of life, their actions, and their words as the Pharisees tried to do! Many will say to Jesus on that day, 'LORD, LORD, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?' That Day is Judgment day and the answer is YES; they did these things in Jesus name but not as believers. Remember, Jesus’ Name means everything He has made known to us in His Word. The Word of God is living and powerful!

It doesn’t depend on the faith of a person to make it effective. Consider Judas, he was able to do wonders in Jesus Name, but he wasn’t the Lord’s. On that Day Jesus will declare to them, ‘I never knew you! Could there be a more heartrending and fatal judgment pronounced against anyone? They thought they were the Lord’s when in fact they were deceiving themselves. The danger arises for us when we think we’ve grown to the point where we know all we need to and then, rather than going all out to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, we get lazy and put our faith life on cruise control which is deadly! It leads us to take matters of faith such as our Christian and congregational life and duties, for granted. It leads us away from Jesus and can lead to our Savior’s Words depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!

We understand that our Christian faith and life are about a whole lot more than just coming to church! It’s also about daily taking up our cross and following Jesus, it’s about serving Him and growing in faith and understanding, practicing what we preach, loving our neighbor as our self, in short, it’s about living our faith not putting it on cruise control! We learn ¹Judas to guard and fight against anything that could slowly take over and grow in strength in our lives and lead us away from our Lord. ²Cain shows us the deadly effects that two common sins, anger and jealousy, have on our faith. The ³Pharisees show us the certain eternal death of trusting in ourselves for salvation, an easy trap to fall into! No one is immune to these faith destroying sins, we want to always be on guard against them! We can’t have our cake and eat it too!

By God’s grace we’ve been called to faith in Jesus alone for forgiveness, life, and salvation. He is our Alpha and Omega! We have been given the Holy Spirit who dwells in us to strengthen and enable us to be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving ourselves.  May He enable us to take to heart and apply the saving lessons of His Word, to continually fight against our sinful nature that we may all one day hear that glorious welcome, Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.

Amen!