Touching Lives With Dr. James Merritt

Today’s key passage of Scripture contains a very famous verse. It says, “But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15). Can you imagine what could happen in this country if every family made that decision? Do you think the crime rate would go down? Do you think our jails would be emptier? Do you think our marriages might be stronger? Do you think schools would be safer? Joshua shares with his people that he is going to lead his family to do three things with all his might and power. I would encourage every family and every household head to give this same direction, make this same decision, and have this same determination for your family.

Being thankful is so important to God that He actually commands us to be thankful. A man in the New Testament by the name of Paul went through a tremendous amount of suffering and heartache that would cause anybody to be bitter and ungrateful and maybe even mad at God. He wrote these words, “Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” (I Thessalonians 5:18) You may not feel very thankful right now because of where you are in your life. Even though you may not feel thankful you can be thankful. This great man tells us how to be thankful and why to be thankful.

I want to ask you a question. When people are around you, do they know who you have been with? I want people to know that when they are around me there is one person I have been with, that I walk with, that I live with, that I stay with every day and His name is Jesus. That raises the big question, “How can people know that I have been with Jesus? What will be true of me and true of you if we have been with Jesus? What are the marks of a person who has been with Jesus?” You are going to see in this message that what was true of these men in Acts chapter 4 can be, should be, and will be true of us if we have been with Jesus.

Today’s key verse amazes me coming from a man who had a lot to brag about. When he was alive, he was the greatest preacher in the world, the greatest missionary in the church, the greatest teacher of the faith, the greatest theologian, and the greatest religious author. He wrote more books than anyone else in the New Testament. He had a lot to brag about. Yet, Paul said, “There is only one thing I’ll brag about. There is only one thing I will ever show pride in. There is only one thing that will make my heart swell, and it is the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Paul is saying that, as believers, our lives should be lived in the shadow of the cross of Jesus Christ. In this message, we’re going to see exactly what it means to live in the shadow of the cross. Let’s dive in together.

So often in our society today, the concept of “truth” is up for debate. What is right? What is wrong? What or who determines right from wrong? These are questions that people are constantly trying to answer. But the truth is, if you try to make right and wrong a matter of human choice, human reason, or human decision, you are out on a limb that will break every time. One of two things is true. Either what is right is right in our eyes or what is right is right in God’s eyes. With this in mind, I want to give you three reasons why only with God can you have morality. Only with God can you know what is right and what is wrong, and only with God can you tell the difference.

One of the greatest problems we have in the church is that we have too many people who have made decisions, but too few people who have become disciples. What we have in the church more often than not are not disciples; we have cultural Christians. These are people who proudly bear the label of Christian, but they don’t truly live the life of a disciple. The only cure for cultural Christianity is discipleship. In Luke chapter nine, Jesus tells us what it takes to become a disciple in just one sentence. I am going to reverse engineer what Jesus said and show you four marks of a cultural Christian. As I do, I want you to decide whether or not you are a true disciple or a cultural Christian. 

I truly believe that the best life, the greatest life and the only life to live is the cross-shaped life. That is a life where we worship, we are discipled, we serve and then we are sent. Now, please understand that this is not an idea I made up. It actually comes from a vision that a prophet named Isaiah had 2800 years ago. Isaiah had a front-row seat to see who God really is and it changed his life forever. From that moment on, he became a “sent” person. The reasons he was sent are the same reasons that we should want to be sent as well. Let’s look at those reasons right now. 

If you are a follower of Christ, you have been called to be a minister for Christ, to serve others with the gifts and talents you’ve been given. What’s more, you will maximize your fulfillment in life, your enjoyment of life, and your impact in life when you find the sweet spot of serving other people. A disciple called Peter wrote a book called I Peter in which there are several reasons why we should not look at serving as something we have to do, but something we should want to do. Let’s look at those reasons right now. 

If I were to ask ten people in this room to write down their definition of worship you would get ten different answers. Amazingly, though the Bible talks very much about worship and describes what worship looks like, worship is really only defined in one place that I can find in the Bible, and that is in Romans 12. In this passage, Paul tells us that worship is giving all that I am to all that God is. That means you can come to church. You can lift your hands. You can sing at the top of your lungs. You can listen to every word that is preached and take copious notes. You can even drop a dime or a dollar in the offering, but you have not worshipped until you have given all that you are to all that God is. 

Whether your last graduation was from college, high school, or pre-school, there is another graduation day that awaits all of us and for some of us it will be the greatest graduation day of all. It will mean no more death, no more disease, no more sin, no more sorrow, and no more suffering. For others, it will be a day of dread and disappointment, discouragement and defeat that no mind can even conceive. I am talking about that time when we are all physically raised from the dead. Today’s key text, 1 Corinthians 15, is what you could call Paul’s doctoral thesis on the subject of the resurrection. Specifically, he talks about the resurrection of the Christians. So as we study this text, let’s consider what the resurrection is and why it is so important.

We are talking about hell today, because we are in a series that we are calling, “From Here To Eternity.” We are going through what the Word of God says about when we die, where we are after we die, and at the end of time when no one else will ever die physically. Though everybody dies, not everybody goes to spend eternity in the same place. There is a real heaven and a real hell, and we need to know what each of these final destinations entails so that we might have a sense of urgency to share the message of Jesus with those who have not secured their eternity in heaven.

Have you ever heard somebody say something like this, “I don’t know what the future holds, but I know who holds the future.” That sounds good, but it is not completely true, because if what we read in Revelation 21 is true, we do know what the future holds. Around 95 A.D. on an island called “Patmos,” the one who holds the future revealed what the future holds. The resurrected Jesus pulls back the curtains of eternity and reveals to a disciple named John our brand new, never to be destroyed, beautiful beyond words home called “heaven.”

As we continue in our series called “From Here To Eternity,” we are going to talk about the time we will all stand before God to give an account for our life. This is when we will have our day in court. As we learn about this text, keep in mind that when it comes time for you to have your day in court, make sure you know the judge. Let’s dive into Scripture and learn more about this judge and all that we are going to experience in His courtroom one day.

There are three days that we believe are the most important days on the calendar of any believer. There is what I call our “birthday.” By that I mean you come to the realization that you are a sinner and you need a Savior. So you repent of your sins, place your faith in Jesus, and surrender to Him as the Lord of your life. You are “born-again.” The second day is what I call “moving day.” That is the day we die, the day that we transition from this earth to be with the Lord. And then the third day is what I call “resurrection day.” That is when our bodies are raised from the dead and we receive a brand-new body, an eternal body. With all of that in mind, we must consider this question, “What happens in the meantime between moving day and resurrection day?” That’s exactly what we’re going to look at today.

Unless Jesus comes back before you die, one day one of your breaths will be your last. Your chest will rise and fall one last time. You will take in oxygen and breath out carbon dioxide one last time. You need to be ready for that moment, because today may be the day that moment comes. In Hebrews chapter 9, there are several verses that give us an encyclopedia of truth about our last breath. That’s what we’re going to dive into today.

What we are about to read is about an event that is coming that nobody likes to talk about, and a lot of people want to deny and that is the judgment of God. What you will see is that the passage isn’t really about the judge, or the sentence, or evidence that the judge uses to determine which sentence is appropriate. Do you remember the last time you were walking through a parking lot and a car alarm goes off? It is annoying and it is irritating, but if you are like me do you know what you do about it? Nothing, you keep walking. Do you know why? We have heard so many car alarms go off that now car alarms have lost their purpose. We don’t pay attention anymore. Think about what we are about to read as an alarm. You had best not ignore it, because we are all in this story. It reveals what is coming to us when life is over. There are facts we should face and be ready for what faces us.

In the third chapter of the Gospel of Mark, we see very clearly one of the things that gave Jesus heartburn, that made Jesus angry, and caused him to give his arch-enemies, the Pharisees that “look.” I particularly want those of us who are religious, church- going, heard about God, and dotting religious “i’s” and crossing religious “t’s” to listen very carefully to this story, because you are going to see a group of religious people that thought they were close to God and yet didn’t even know God. And then based on this story, I want to give you three practices to avoid that not only make Jesus angry but hurt his heart.

If you ever go into a job interview, headhunters and personnel experts will tell you there is one question you will always be asked and you had better be prepared to answer correctly and it is this one, “How do you measure success?” On one occasion, the disciples came to Jesus, and they asked him this question, “At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, ‘Who, then, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?’” (Matthew 18:1). The disciples thought the ultimate success would be to be chosen as the greatest in the kingdom. In fact, two of the disciples even asked if they could sit on either side of Jesus in the kingdom. The disciples were waiting with bated breath, but Jesus as he was very capable of doing, did something totally unexpected. He bypassed their question, and he did this. “He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them” (Matthew 18:2). He said to these twelve disciples, these battle-tested harden veterans who had been with him for three years and thought they had it all to

In the last public sermon that Jesus ever preached, He was calling out hypocritical holiness and counterfeit Christianity. Frankly, this is not a seeker-friendly topic. This is not a feel-good topic. This is not your best life now topic, but it is a topic that everyone and anyone who claims to be a follower of Jesus and every church needs to hear about, think about, and talk about. In this sermon we’re going to look at, Jesus says there are three things that we need to do as we call out counterfeits, including the times we may be counterfeit ourselves.

Today, we are going to look at probably the most angry that Jesus ever got. In fact, he not only expressed his anger verbally; he expressed it physically. Probably the most shocking picture of Jesus in the New Testament is when he cleaned house literally. He cleansed the temple. In fact, he did it twice. We are going to be looking at two passages of scripture – the second chapter of John and the twenty-first chapter of Matthew. In John, he cleansed the temple at the beginning of his ministry and in Matthew he did it at the end of his ministry. This story answers the two questions, “What made him angry?” and “Who was his anger directed toward?”