Fruit Inspection: Make Believe Fruit
Pastor Rollan Fisher
Focus: You can tell how real your relationship is with Jesus by how you live on a daily basis, not once a week at church.
Playing Favorites
Fantasy Faith
Real Faith
Fantasy Football - The two most popular fantasy draft weeks are the week before and after Labor Day (Beginning August 27-Sept 2, 2023)
Playing Favorites
Playing favorites based on people’s station in life reveals our aggrandizement of the world’s values, the distortion of our faith and smallness of our love.
James 2:1-7 ESV
“My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, “You sit here in a good place,” while you say to the poor man, “You stand over there,” or, “Sit down at my feet,” have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor man. Are not the rich the ones who oppress you, and the ones who drag you into court? Are they not the ones who blaspheme the honorable name by which you were called?”
The Scripture makes it clear that because of the cross of Jesus Christ, there is no room for us to play favorites amongst men and women.
“The ground is level at the foot of the cross.”
-Billy Graham
The value that is placed on human life is restored through the heart and eyes of God, who made all of mankind in his image.
People who live without God in the world not only lose a compass for the dignity of human life, but all of morality itself.
“In a world without God, who’s to say whose values are right and whose are wrong? There can be no objective right and wrong, only our culturally and personally relative, subjective judgments. Think of what that means! It means it’s impossible to condemn war, oppression, or crime as evil. Nor can you praise generosity, self-sacrifice, and love as good. To kill someone or to love someone is morally equivalent. For in a universe without God, good and evil do not exist—there is only the bare, valueless fact of existence, and there is no one to say you are right and I am wrong.”
-William Lane Craig, On Guard: Defending Your Faith with Reason and Precision
Fantasy Faith
A faith that diminishes sin is not one that understands either the judgment of God or the cross of Christ.
James 2:8-13 ESV
“If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing well. But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it. For he who said, “Do not commit adultery,” also said, “Do not murder.” If you do not commit adultery but do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.”
“The nearer a man gets to God, the greater he sees his sin.”
-Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Jesus Christ came to save sinners by perfectly fulfilling the law of God and then dying sacrificially for those sins, in our place.
To come to a genuine faith in Jesus means to turn to God in repentance from all sin, not those that we simply can not tolerate.
As with fantasy football, the truth is we are not really playing football, no matter how into the game, trading and coaching that we get if we’re not on the field playing by the rules.
The time, effort and dedication that the athletes put into actually being on that field for crowns that will not last should inspire our true lives for rewards that will in Christ (I Corinthians 9).
“The cross shows the seriousness of our sin—but it also shows us the immeasurable love of God.”
-Billy Graham
How have you diminished the seriousness of sin in your life?
How have you diminished the mercy of God?
Real Faith
Real faith is that which produces actionable love for Jesus and others.
James 2:14-26 ESV
“What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder! Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works; and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”—and he was called a friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. And in the same way was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way? For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.”
When people do not have a Biblical faith in Jesus, it is reflected in the way that they live.
It can begin in the extreme:
“if God does not exist and there is no immortality, then all the evil acts of men go unpunished and all the sacrifices of good men go unrewarded. But who can live with such a view? Richard Wurmbrand, who has been tortured for his faith in communist prisons, says,
The cruelty of atheism is hard to believe when man has no faith in the reward of good or the punishment of evil. There is no reason to be human. There is no restraint from the depths of evil which is in man. The communist torturers often said, 'There is no God, no Hereafter, no punishment for evil. We can do what we wish.' I have heard one torturer even say, 'I thank God, in whom I don't believe, that I have lived to this hour when I can express all the evil in my heart.' He expressed it in unbelievable brutality and torture inflicted on prisoners.”
-William Lane Craig
The faith that we claim to have in Jesus should have a direct impact on the way that we spend our time, energy, resources and talents for Jesus.
Yet faith without works is the carbon monoxide in the closed room of our hearts - it is the silent killer of our daily lives.
What does real faith look like?
“I am not asking whether you know things about Him but do you know God, are you enjoying God, is God the centre of your life, the soul of your being, the source of your greatest joy? He is meant to be.”
-Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Second City Church - Pastor Rollan Fisher