How To Do Good (part one)

Recently, there has been a subject just sort of resinating in my heart because when you watch tv preaching, this is what the main subject seems to be in almost every sermon I've heard. The general idea is: You shun the good and either ignor or avoid the bad, and that will make you pleasing to God. WRONG! I know...it may sound like I am about to teach something unscriptural, but we will not teach things that are not in the Bible in this ministry, we at least, deliver truth to folk in the most pure form that we know how to.

I remember back in those days when I was not saved, talking to a friend of mine about God once. We were under the influence of alcohol, and felt the need to discuss such things as God, and Heaven and such. I remember very clearly talking about the Ten Commandments and saying openly to my friend, "There is NO WAY that ANYONE can live an entire life without ANY SIN! I wasn't ruling out Christ, because I had been taught that He came from God and was not completely like we mere humans....so I didn't exclude the fact that Christ DID live a perfect and sinless life, but I had come to the true and real conclusion that no one could DO that successfully unless He be from God. It's amazing that a sinner, not serving God could see that so clearly and know in their heart that WE CAN'T DO IT, but church people can't see that. My stance at that time in my life was this: I knew I couldn't do it, I was upset about that thought that I was expected to do something that I KNEW I couldn't do, and I was therefore unwilling to even try. That actually was both smart and yet sad, for two reasons. It was smart because I didn't go to work, trying harder than ever to do what I knew that I had no power to do: which was live a sinless and perfect life, which is the ONLY THING that God will accept. It is sad because no one ever told me that Christ did it all for me so I wouldn't have to! THAT would have been some useful information back then!!! It would have kept me from countless sins, heartaches, pains, sorrow, all of which eventually led me to a divorce and then one fine day, to the Lord. It was like going around my elbow to get to my thumb, but I got there finally.

I was curious about God, but has the wrong perception of Him and how to reach Him. This the stance of the world, and unfortunately most of the church as well. Most people have never been told what Christ really came to do, therefore, they don't know how to receive what He did as payment for their sins, thus leading them to do one of two things: 1. Not even try because they know they can't do it or 2. They work themselves to death trying to earn what Jesus freely gave them.

There is a story in the Bible that speaks of this very subject, although I rarely hear anyone talk much about one of the characters, while always slamming the other one. It is the story of the Prodigal Son, (Luke 15). The story is about a young man that decides that he wants to find out what the world holds out there for him, so he goes to his father and tells him that he wants his inheritance. This young man is actually the youngest of two sons, so what he receives is only whatever is leftover from what the oldest son would have gotten when their father died. We mention this because the youngest son is a symbol of our lives before we receive Christ in our hearts. The Bible says that the younger son spends his inheritance with riotous living...and he winds up broke, wallering in the dung with the pigs, (which to Jews, pigs are seen as the most unclean of animals, so for a Jew to even so much as touch a pig, let alone live with one...well, it was shameful and of total disgust for them to say the least.) Back in those days, the pigs were basically the cockroach of animals. Jews would take their "toilets," dishwater, and trash and fill a ditch with their waste...and the pigs ate it. So...in conjunction with our lives lived before Christ, we live the same way. All we are able to produce on our own leads to wasteful living and poverty of spirit. This is a picture of the unsaved life. The story goes on to mention that while starving in the pig pen the young man decides that his fathers servants live better than he is living and he decides to return home, desiring to ask his dad if he can just come be his servant.

The story goes on to share how the boy came into view, the father RAN to meet his son (which no self respecting adult male Jew would have done--is run), but it shows that the father was looking for the son to come home and was willing to meet him where he was at. This is a typology to show us our Heavenly Father's love for us, as He meets us right where we are at and will run to us if we will only show a desire in our hearts to be with Him.

This is all we have for this segment, but in our next blog we will discuss the other brother and also finish the conclusion of "How to do good."