Archive for the ‘ed young fellowship church’ tag
Missing the Mark by Pastor Ed Young
How about the man with the one talent. You see, Christ was defining the sin of omission. Here’s a man who had this gift, what the Lord had given him. Did the guy take it and invest it in Vegas or maybe in ~ What did he do? No, he sat on the talent. And Jesus said he went away into the darkness. A lot of us live by this motto: “Get all you can; can all you get; sit on the can and fill the rest.” So many years. We saw ~ if we saw what God could do through our lives, we would fall right on our faces before the throne and say, “I cannot believe this.” So, one day, folks, we will be judged on our sin of omission. So there is the first question: Are we taking advantage of these opportunities. Missing the mark.
Another term that describes sin is stepping on the line. You know Franco Harris, don’t you? A running back, a great athlete. The announcers would always criticize Franco Harris because, here he is running down that field, here’s the sideline and here’s a 300-pound lineman with bad breath, breathing down his throat, getting ready to take his head off, and he would step out of bounds. The guy would go~ That’s the picture, here. Here’s the line that God has drawn. This is ungodly, this is godly. And we all have done this. Step on the line.
There’s another word to describe sin that means slip over the line. “That just slipped out. You know, I kind of slipped into that situation over there,” and that’s the picture of someone who has no turf cleats on. He has hard-soled shoes trying to play in Texas Stadium at -10 degrees, playing outside, ice. There’s no way you can stay in bounds. You’ll fall flat on your face in that sin.
Life from that Great Intention by Pastor Ed Young
Now turn back to Matthew 6. And see the term “debts”? See the term “debts,” there? “Forgive us our debts”? There’s five New Testament words that define the term sin. Five new Testament words. The first term is called “missing the mark.” That’s the picture of someone shooting a bow and arrow. God’s mark is perfect, but we as human beings, we’re finite, we’re limited, we’re sinners. We shoot the arrow—and if I shot an arrow right now,I could maybe shoot, you know, 20 or 30 yards. But if we got some big, strong man in here, some Arnold Schwarzenegger type, he might shoot it 200 yards, but it’s still way, way, way, way short. Missing the mark.
Jesus Christ introduced a new term when He said “missing the mark.” It’s called the sin of omission. Jesus said, “Not only are you sinners, but you are sinners when you don’t take advantage of opportunities that I have given you.” Dr. Charles Lang diagrammed a man’s life from that great intention. Incredible gifts, a future that was so bright, everyone said, “Oh, wow.” He says three stages are described in this man’s life were described in these terms: “He will be something. I mean, he will be something. Look at his life.” The second stage, Dr. Lang says, was described like this: “He could do something if he would.” And finally, the third stage of this man’s life is described like this: “He could have done something. He could have done something.”
Jesus Christ talks about the fig tree. Remember that? Jesus said, “Here is a fig tree.” And did the fig produce poison fruit? The fig tree produced no fruit. Zero fruit. And what happened to the fig tree? It was cut down and thrown into the fire.
Workaholism is due to Guilt by Pastor Ed Young
There’s no way to do it. You want to lose your life You want to get beaten up by guilt and frustration, you try to suppress sin. Wealthy people. I can go up and count the suppression of sin, just from the look on their face. There’s another beach ball and it’ll pop back up. So, suppression is something else Justice says we do.
We also use distractions. We’re always busy. “Boy, I wake up at 5:45, going around, get to the office by 7:30 and I do this and I go here. I’m involved with this softball league and I play golf, be with my wife.” We have all these schedules. And a lot of times, workaholism is due to guilt, is due to sin that we never confess. Why? Because we always assume, we don’t want to listen, we don’t want to be convicted of that single small break. So we get so busy with all these activities- Distraction.
Also, we use isolation, Justice says. That’s why a lot of people are afraid to go to church, or afraid to bump into someone. They isolate themselves. They want to live like a spiritual baby. They don’t want to be convicted.
And, finally, one that is very common is escapism. Take four or five drinks, or a puff, or a jump. A man I talked to a couple of months ago said, “I’m moving to the islands. I’m moving to Hawaii.” He thought geographically he could get away from God, escape from now on. But he found out something, the same way Jonah did, if you escape from God, you run right into God. So, you see, we’ll meet our sins again. If you try to escape and say, “God, wait,” you watch your sins go away, one day, you’ll be blindsided by the sin. So Justice talks about seven ways we lie to ourselves. So the word “our,” that’s our sins.