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Whatsoever
Things Are True
by Dan Coburn Pastor, Emmanuel Baptist Church pastordan@mtida.net What’s your favorite TV show? What was your favorite movie in the past five years? Would you like to sit and watch it with your five year old? Would you like to sit and watch it with your mom? How about your Pastor or Priest? I know, “fasten your seatbelts, we’re going on a guilt-trip”. We Christians have a bad habit of trying to separate our public life from our private life. I realize we have to, to a degree, but we try to do it all the time. The lost community is actually more honest about this than we are. The Bible tells us in Romans 8:7, that a lost person doesn’t submit himself to God, nor even can he do so. If that’s true (and it is), than they are off the hook speaking of their behavior. “What? You mean I have to live to a higher standard? Is there no consequence? Don’t you go to hell for lying?” Nope. “What”? Listen closely; You don’t go to hell for lying, raping, stealing, adultery, even murder. “What”? Ultimately, Every person in hell will be there for one reason, and one reason only. They Rejected the one provision God established whereby they might escape His wrath, in the person of Jesus Christ and His redemptive work on the Cross, for (in leu of) our sins, according to the scriptures. We will all be judged on the other stuff, but the second death, eternal separation from God, will be due to Rejecting Christ. Think about that for a second or two, then move on. What has this to do with TV? Well, it’s getting pretty bad. Even when we rationalize and say “I’m just going to watch baseball”, the commercials often come with a content warning. You can’t escape it. The Bible says in Phil. 4:8, “Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, meditate on these things.” I’m not suggesting you give up TV but rather that you pay close attention to what you let into your heart, where the “indwelling Christ” resides. Now let’s turn the Spiritual Switch. I heard a man tell the story of how he put himself through college by working on a garbage truck. He said it was really good work, but he had a real hard time with his partner, who couldn’t keep himself from going through all the garbage. One day his partner was crying out to him with a joy that would have caused you to think he’d found a thousand dollars. He hadn’t. His partner was digging through a garbage can behind a restaurant, and had found a whole loaf of bread. Still in the wrapper. He was beside himself. But the man telling the story said in order to get to the bread, his partner had gone beyond his elbows, in old-rotten-slimy lettuce. The question then, is this. When it comes to TV, or anything else in life, how much rotten lettuce are you willing to wade through, in order to find the loaf of bread? God Bless. |
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