Is your life cheapening the finished work of the cross?
In this sobering and challenging message, Stewart Green opens Zephaniah 1:7-18 and confronts the danger of complacency, lukewarm faith, and part-time Christianity.
God is purifying His bride. He wants us match-fit — not just surviving the dark and testing days ahead, but thriving. This is a personal call to get right with the Lord in every area of life, stop using grace as a licence to sin, and live fully for Jesus.
Key themes in this sermon:
– Complacency leads to disaster (“settled on their lees”)
– Living in freedom from sin, not freedom to sin (Romans 6)
– Areas that cheapen the cross: lack of commitment, gossip, addiction, lack of evangelism, laziness, failing to contend for truth, sexual immorality, materialism, body image, undermining the value of life, offence, and pride
– The window of opportunity is open — but it will close
– Hope for those who repent: purification and blessing (Zephaniah 2 & 3)
Jesus gave everything on the cross. The least we can do is decide to live fully for Him. This is no time for half-heartedness or waiting until tomorrow.
Scriptures referenced: Zephaniah 1:7-18, Zephaniah 2:1-3, Zephaniah 3:9-20, Romans 6, Ephesians 5:8, Colossians 2:9-10, Hebrews 10:25, Matthew 28:19-20, and others.
If the Lord is speaking to you about something that is cheapening the work of the cross in your life, don’t ignore it. There is no shame in coming in repentance. Jesus is ready, willing, and waiting to help you.
Introduction
If you turn with me in your Bible to the book of Zephaniah — one of the prophets. If you’re struggling to find it, you’ll find it just after Habakkuk. If you’re struggling to find that, consult your contents page.
We’re going to be starting in Zephaniah chapter 1 this morning.
I want to ask you the title of today’s message right from the start. It’s a very direct title, and I get that, so please don’t sit there with eyes wide open and go, “Goodness me, that just hit me.” I want to ask you this morning, right from the start: Is your life cheapening the work of the cross?
I’ll say that again. Is your life cheapening the work of the cross?
What do we mean by that? We mean, is your life, and the actions of your life, and what we do day to day exalting Jesus, or is it minimising the work of the cross? That’s what we’re looking at.
This is a sobering and challenging message. It’s a very direct message — the whole book of Zephaniah is a very direct book, as we’re going to discover. But I believe this is a message that we all need to hear, and once we’ve heard it, we need to act on it.
I’ve wrestled with this message for a few weeks. I got the title whilst I was out walking on the beach one evening. I really just stopped dead in my tracks and was like, “Oh, why are You asking me that, Lord? Is there something I need to look at?” The more I considered it, I thought, “Actually, is my life cheapening the work of the cross? Yes. In some ways, yes, it is.” I had to come to that realisation and come before the Lord and say, “There’s some things here I’m going to need to put right.”
God is gracious, compassionate, loving, and patient with us, but that doesn’t mean we don’t do anything about the issues in our lives. I wrestled with this message. I tried to shake it off and ask God, “Can You give me a nice message instead — a nice, easy, ear-tickling message that’s quite easy to deliver, and everyone goes home bubbly?” But sometimes God needs to give us a specific message for a specific purpose for a specific season. I believe we are heading into a specific season that is going to require this sort of message.
It’s not an easy message to deliver. When we look at some of the scriptures in the Bible, particularly Zephaniah, do you think that was a particularly easy message for him to deliver?
Last week, Arthur spoke more on the corporate aspects of how we need to change as a local church, and as the wider body of Christ, and why unity is key to seeing blessing — or more importantly, when we don’t have unity, it curses the blessing, and God can’t bless where there isn’t unity.
Today we’re looking less at the corporate and more at the personal — being pure before the Lord, because that’s key to seeing the blessing, not just in the church, but in our own lives.
I want to tell you right from the outset that Jesus is in the business of restoration. He is restoring us, bringing us back to our original purpose, which was to be pure and spotless as objects of worship unto Him. That’s what we were created to be. He is in the midst right now of purifying His bride, which is the church — which is us — and making it into what it needs to be.
That process of cleaning up, of change, of doing things differently, requires hard work, and it can be a little bit messy at times, because we’re comfortable in what we know. But sometimes we have to step out of that comfort and into a slightly uncomfortable, unfamiliar place in order to get to where God needs us to be. If we stay right where we are and just sit here forevermore, then we’re comfortable, we know what we’re doing, it’s routine — the same old every day — but we’re not where God needs us to be.
I don’t know about you, but I’m sitting in my life right now and going, “I don’t know where I need to be, but I know I want to be wherever God needs me to be.” I know that I am yet to see the fullness of God in my life, but I know that wherever God is moving, I want to be there, because I don’t want to miss out on what God is doing.
We are in troubling times. You don’t have to hide under a rock to know that. We’re coming into some extremely dark and testing times, and I believe that’s judgement. Look at the news headlines yesterday and going into today — what’s going on in France, spilling into Italy. Make no mistake, that stuff is coming here. I don’t say that excitably. I don’t say it just because it’s happening by default. No, because it’s a spiritual thing.
What’s happened in Western civilisation is that we’ve rejected God. That’s created a vacuum because the church has fallen silent and evacuated itself from the public square. It’s created an emptiness, and the devil has leapt into that. What you see happening on the streets of France, and to a lesser extent Italy and other countries around Western civilisation — or “uncivilisation” as I call it now — when you look at that, you can’t say that is civilised. It’s not. It’s very far from God’s pattern for life. This is what happens when we reject God and take Him out of it: the devil leaps in and takes over.
The focus in this message is on what we need to do personally and corporately as a church to move forward and be ready for this coming season. God wants us match-fit.
Not long ago the new football season started. For those of you who know the football clubs I support, it’s been a bit rocky. One of my clubs is now in very uncharted territory — they’re off the bottom of the league. We quite liked being on the bottom; there was nowhere further to go. Now we’re off the bottom, and we’ve got a massive three points in mid-October. Those of you who are aware can work out which team it is.
The point is, when a football team starts a new season, you can tell instantly if that team is ready. Are they straight out of the blocks, scoring left, right and centre, full of energy and determination, fans going wild? Or is it a kind of “oh, we just picked up where we left off”? People look at it and go, “I don’t think their squad’s match-fit. What happened over the summer? Did they all just sit down the local kebab shop?” They’re not match-fit. They’re not ready for the game. They’re lacklustre, and the result is that they’re useless and often it ends in defeat.
The issue is not of ability, but of preparedness. It’s the same with us. The issue is not of ability, but of a lack of preparedness. If we take this message seriously and take the steps required to get match-fit for Jesus, then we are not only going to be ready to cope with the next season, but we are going to thrive when others simply fall apart.
Who wants to thrive? Okay, at least four of you… five, six, seven. A few more slowly waking up. That’s good. It’s better than none of you. We’re going to have to take some steps in order to get there.
Zephaniah 1:7–18
Let’s read the first bit of Zephaniah. I’m going to start midway through chapter 1 and explain the context.
“Be silent before the Lord God, for the day of the Lord is near. The Lord has prepared a sacrifice and consecrated his guests. And on the day of the Lord’s sacrifice, I will punish the officials and the king’s sons, and all who array themselves in foreign attire. On that day I will punish everyone who leaps over the threshold, and those who fill their master’s house with violence and fraud.
On that day, declares the Lord, a cry will be heard from the Fish Gate, a wail from the Second Quarter, a loud crash from the hills. Wail, O inhabitants of the Mortar, for all the traders are no more; all who weigh out silver are cut off.
At that time I will search Jerusalem with lamps, and I will punish the men who are complacent, those who say in their hearts, ‘The Lord will not do good, nor will he do ill.’ Their goods shall be plundered, and their houses laid waste. Though they build houses, they shall not inhabit them; though they plant vineyards, they shall not drink wine from them.
The great day of the Lord is near, near and hastening fast; the sound of the day of the Lord is bitter; the mighty man cries aloud there. A day of wrath is that day, a day of distress and anguish, a day of ruin and devastation, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness, a day of trumpet blast and battle cry against the fortified cities and against the lofty battlements.
I will bring distress on mankind, so that they shall walk like the blind, because they have sinned against the Lord; their blood shall be poured out like dust, and their flesh like dung. Neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them on the day of the wrath of the Lord. In the fire of his jealousy, all the earth shall be consumed; for a full and sudden end he will make of all the inhabitants of the earth.”
I did warn you it was a direct word. I don’t think it gets much more direct than that.
The title “Is your life cheapening the work of the cross?” convicted me. Then when I read this scripture and God said this is the scripture for that message, it crushed me. First the conviction was there that there are things in my life that are not right, and then the crushing because I’m thinking, “Oh my goodness, there’s terrible judgement coming. I need to do something about this.”
What really stopped me in my tracks was verse 12 — the issue of complacency, which we’ll come back to in a minute.
Background and Context
A little bit of background and context. Little is known of Zephaniah. Some of the other prophets we know a fair bit about, but Zephaniah — we know his lineage, we know he’s of the royal household, the great-grandson of King Hezekiah. The lack of detail about who he is suggests that the focus for us is on the message rather than the messenger. We should focus on the words that are written rather than who wrote the words.
It’s often been said that the Bible itself, whilst it was not written to us (the book of Ephesians was written to the church at Ephesus, for example), was written for us. It’s not written directly to us. It doesn’t say, “Dear Stuart, I write to you today.” No, it was writing to Ephesus, but those words are applicable to our lives today because the Word of God is a living and breathing document.
Zephaniah was prophesying at a time of great spiritual and moral decline in Judah, the southern kingdom. He’s prophesying some fifty years after the reign of Hezekiah, who was one of the very few good kings. Judah had drifted away from God and into sin after Hezekiah’s reign. King Manasseh had come in and encouraged idol worship, sexual perversion, child sacrifice, spiritual mediums — basically all forms of evil had returned and were being celebrated and encouraged.
We’re at the end of Manasseh’s rule and into Amon, who was weak and totally useless and basically continued in the same way. The judgement on King Manasseh is very strong. If you read 2 Chronicles, God writes of Manasseh as if he is worse than the original Canaanites. God had destroyed the Canaanites because of their evil and wicked ways. He had brought His own people, Israel, into that land in order for the land to be blessed by the blessed people, so that they would be right before God. What had happened? They had themselves become corrupted. Now we’ve got a king of Judah who God is saying is worse than the evil people they replaced. That’s how bad it had got.
Zephaniah’s strong word — prophesying destruction and judgement to Judah, and indeed the whole world — is a result of the waywardness and rejection of God. As David Pawson says in Unlocking the Bible, spiritual confusion led to moral chaos. In other words, idolatry always leads to immorality.
Parallels with Our Nation
There are parallels here with our own nation. We’ve been drifting for decades, turning away from God. We’ve got leaders encouraging the rejection of truth, embracing false religions, evil being accepted, celebrated and encouraged. There’s moral chaos everywhere. You must see that. Anything goes except the truth itself.
Leaders are not leading. Teachers are not teaching. Judges are not administering justice. Scientists are peddling agendas over truth. Sportsmen are cheating. Families are crumbling. The economy is tanking. Artists are degrading. And folks, do you know the worst of it? Where on earth is the church in amongst all this?
I’ll tell you where the church is. Half of it is thinking everything’s fine, embracing all of it, pretending it’s all good, and then the rest of it is really kind of asleep and having a few party nights here and there, pretending that everything’s great because we just came together and had another worship night and there were thousands of people there.
Look, I said it at the conference and I’ll say it again here. If three thousand people can gather together for a worship night and yet the nation’s not shaken, there’s something wrong with the people that are gathered there. I’m sorry to sound so direct, and hear my heart here — I’m not saying that those worship nights are wrong and there’s a place for them. But if we are in a place of being right with God, then when we gather together and get uplifted and encouraged by worshipping God and the presence of the Holy Spirit, when we go out into the world we should infect people. We should have the aroma of Jesus that we’re carrying. Yet nothing seems to change in the nation. Why? Because we ourselves are not changed first and foremost.
As a result, our own nation is going to face judgement. Does that mean it’s all over? Am I contradicting previous messages about revival and so on? No, because I believe there is going to be judgement. I believe it’s going to be short and sharp, and when that comes it’s going to take us by surprise if we don’t clean up our act and get ready for it. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be one of these groups that’s mentioned in this scripture.
We have to be careful, because if we assess ourselves quite clearly, I think a lot of us have probably placed more trust and hope in the world than we have in God, if we take a really honest look at it.
The call is to turn to God whilst we have a chance. Stop cheapening the work of the cross through a lukewarm faith, through a half-hearted faith, through a part-time Christianity.
Zephaniah wasn’t saying this is definitely going to happen. He was saying this is going to happen if you don’t turn. There’s always an “if” with God, because He gives opportunity to turn.
We need to understand that God is jealous. He’s jealous for us because we are meant to worship Him. When we turn our lives to other things other than God, He gets jealous. He’s saying, “No, this is not right. I want you. I want all of you.” He has this pleading for us to return to Him.
When we understand that the work of the cross was full and final and complete — that Jesus is the once-for-all sacrifice — that should have an impact on us. When we see the whole Bible as a story, not of random stories of history, not as a collection of complex names that are hard to pronounce that we get caught up in, but as an entire story of redemption, as the entire story of God’s love for His creation, that He wants to be in total communion, in close relationship, in intimacy with His creation — when we see it in that context, it should have an impact on our hearts. It should cause us to come before the living God and say, “Oh God, how can I get closer to You?” rather than “How can I complete the next level on the next mobile game?”
Complacency Leads to Disaster
Complacency is a big word in this scripture, and a lot of the rest of it is linked around that.
Are you living in freedom from or freedom to sin? Your answer to that question will determine your view of grace.
Ephesians 5:8 says that we are saved by grace by Jesus — not anything that we’ve done, but what Jesus has done for us. We should be moving constantly towards God, away from sin, yet so much of our lives is so often not the case. We can end up either deliberately or otherwise using grace as a sort of cheap licence to carry on doing the things that we would rather do.
Let’s turn to Romans 6, because it explains it so clearly.
“What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.”
Grace gives us the freedom from sin. It gives us freedom from the curse of sin. But it does not give us licence to continue in sin.
When we go back to Zephaniah verse 12 and see this word “complacency,” it’s kind of like people are following to a certain extent, but they believe the lie that God will just be kind of neutral. He’ll never do anything good or bad. He’ll never actually intervene in the situation. Things will just continue as they always have.
Has anyone been in a situation in life where you’re kind of in a regular routine and you just think, “This is good. I know what’s going on here. Everything’s just going to continue as normal”? And then crash, bam, kaboom — something happens. Someone dies, some situation comes in, some health situation comes up, something happens in the nation, you lose a job, whatever else. Something comes in and everything gets upturned.
Some of us seem to think that maybe judgement will never come, because these prophets have been saying judgement’s coming to this nation and yet I don’t actually quite see it yet. Well, actually, if you look, we’ve probably got forms of judgement already in this nation.
In other words, we’re kind of doing life and going about our things, but almost tacking Jesus onto the end. “Yeah, yeah, I’m a Christian.” But really, Jesus is not everything.
At that conference, when Bishop Kai said that whenever he’s asked who’s the most important person in his life, he always says his wife. People are aghast and go, “Hang on, shouldn’t it be Jesus?” He went, “No, no, no. Jesus is not the most important person in my life, because He is my entire life.”
And that’s who Jesus should be in our lives.
The people of Judah were complacent about their behaviour, but not only that — they were complacent about how they thought God felt about it. It says “those who say in their hearts.” They don’t openly scoff, but inwardly they’re thinking nothing will ever happen.
If you’re reading the King James Version, you’ll see a slightly different text: “settled on their lees.” What does that mean? In the process of making wine, there’s leftover yeast and grape pulp that always goes to the bottom of the barrel. If it’s left for too long, it turns the entire content of the barrel and makes it stale — a thick, syrupy, gloopy mess. Still technically wine in terms of the qualifications of it, but if you try and drink it, you probably won’t have too good an experience with your stomach.
This is a metaphor for moral laziness and apathy. When we become complacent in the Lord, we become useless for His kingdom, because we’re just kind of motioningly going along.
We’ve reconciled sometimes, because we surround ourselves with people that are not followers of Christ. We can reconcile ourselves to doing the things of the world and think that it seems right in our eyes because it’s right in the eyes of the world — because those people are the people we are surrounding ourselves with.
Do you see the importance now? When we live in a society that is so opposed to the truth and so opposed to Jesus, what we need to do is surround ourselves with the right character. What does the Bible say? Bad company corrupts good character. The more time we spend with fellow believers, they’re going to encourage us, they’re going to build us up. The more accountable we are one to another, the more we’re going to be right with the Lord. It’s not about catching each other out. It’s about saying, “Actually, I love you so much that I want you to be closest to Jesus. I want you to get closer to Jesus than me.”
And that’s not just the job of whoever’s here on the pulpit. There is a role there, but it’s the job of all of us as the body of Christ to look out for one another, to care for each other, to be praying for each other, to be upholding each other. There’s a person that’s missing from church a week — drop them a text: “Hey, missed you on Sunday. What’s happening?” Maybe they’re going through something, maybe they’re struggling. We need to be coming around each other, and that’s picking up from that message last week, because that’s where the unity then comes.
There’s a window of opportunity to get right with God in every area of our lives, but it will close. Just as the cooler weather comes in now and you close the windows in the house to protect the heat, that window of opportunity is going to be closing soon.
There’s no shame in coming in repentance to Jesus and saying, “Yeah, hands up, I’ve mucked up. I’ve not been right with You here. There’s some areas of my life I’m going to need to address.” There’s no shame in doing that, but there’s total devastation coming if you don’t do that.
Jesus wants us to be right with Him. I look at Matthew 7:23 and I think, “I don’t want to be one of those people that Jesus says, ‘Away from Me, I never knew you.’”
We must pursue holiness in every part of our lives and reserve nothing for ourselves. Examine ourselves afresh, as I think it’s 2 Corinthians says, and see if there’s any faulty way in us that we need to address.
This bride of Christ — this church — should be in a spotless condition, but we’re not. We’re in a bit of a mess because we’ve been polluted by the world. We’ve been polluted by the things of the world, and worse than that, we sometimes hold on to too much of the world. We, like Judah and like the people of Israel, are held to a higher standard. Why? Because we have been bought with a price. And what is that price? The price was the life of Jesus.
Colossians 2:9–10 talks about us having the fullness in Jesus — everything that we need of life. There’s no need to look to the world for anything, because Jesus is the giver of everything that we need.
Zephaniah 2:1–3 — The “If”
So then we go on into Zephaniah 2. The first three verses give us a glimmer of hope. Remember I said there’s the word “if” — it’s a qualification. There is terrible destruction coming, there is terrible judgement coming for the state of things and for the state of people, but ultimately if. So what is that if?
“Gather together, yes, gather, O shameless nation, before the decree takes effect, before the day passes away like chaff, before there comes upon you the burning anger of the Lord, before there comes upon you the day of the anger of the Lord. Seek the Lord, all you humble of the land, who do his just commands; seek righteousness; seek humility; perhaps you may be hidden on the day of the anger of the Lord.”
Perhaps you may be hidden. There’s an “if.”
We’ll have a chance, if we will take that step right now to get right with God, to be right before a holy and righteous God, that He in turn will then make us holy and righteous as He cleans us up. When that judgement comes, we’ll be in a place not just to be destroyed, not just to kind of cope and get by, but to thrive in the midst of it.
That’s what’s going to happen with the church, because there are coming such terrible times in this nation that people’s going to be looking at all the systems that are already starting to crumble, but they’re going to totally collapse. When that happens, people are going to be looking to the church and saying, “How is it that you’ve still got a smile on your face? How is it that you still have divine provision? How is it that you’ve got a full larder and a fridge at home?” Because God will supernaturally provide for His people who He loves, who He cherishes, who choose right now to put Him first and to clean up their act.
Practical Areas That Cheapen the Cross
I want to just go through a few practical areas in our lives. These are very much overview, so excuse me if you feel that maybe there should be more detail. We could do a whole sermon on each one, but we’re not going to, otherwise we would keep you until after sundown, and we don’t want to do that.
1. Lack of Commitment
What does it say to the world if we prioritise other things in our lives over church on a Sunday and other church activities? We’re down the football, we’re down the golf, we’re going shopping or whatever else. Imagine going shopping in Asda at half ten, eleven o’clock on the Sunday morning when we should be here in the church. Somebody that knows you, that knows that you’re a Christian, might not say anything to you, but what are they thinking when they know that you should be in the church, when they know that that’s where you said you’d be, because you said, “I’m a Christian”? You’ve nailed your colours to the mast. All of a sudden, they’re holding you by those standards.
What witness is that when we choose to prioritise those other things rather than being in the church together?
Or let’s flip it the other way. What would it say to those people if we chose to say, “No, actually, I’m not going to be at the golf because I’m going to be at church”? What message would that send to them?
Hear me carefully here. Emergencies happen, things come up — absolutely, completely understand. First of all, what I would say when it comes to emergencies is we need to be on the front foot spiritually and understand that the devil will do everything he can to try and stop us from being here. Things will happen, yes. Life will come at us fast, yes. But if we are prayed up, if we are having that spiritual protection and armour of God, you’ll watch as those emergencies just don’t seem to happen quite so much. When we choose to prioritise God and actually take a step back, even when things come up, we’ll sit there and go, “Is this something that I really have to attend to right now, or can it be attended to at 1 p.m. when we finish?”
People will say, “Oh, you know, but I’m busy. I’ve had such a busy week, and I’ve had such a full-on week, I just needed to rest on Sunday morning.” Hey, newsflash — we’re always going to be busy, right? There’s some people busy dead in the graveyard. We’re all going to be busy. Every stage of your life, we’re always going to be busy.
God challenged me recently when I said to someone I didn’t have time for something, and He says, “Stuart, if you had another four hours in each day, can you honestly say you would give that to Me? Or would you just fill three and a half hours of it scrolling on social media, staring at the ceiling, doing absolutely nothing?” I don’t know. I like to think I would use some of it and all of it for God, but really would I? I don’t know.
We’re in a spiritual battle, and when we understand the spiritual realms as what’s happening primarily, then things are different. We will start to shift our thinking, and we need to wake up to the reality of what the devil’s doing to try and keep us away from things.
Hebrews 10:25 says, “Let us not forsake the gathering together.” Couldn’t be clearer.
The church is Jesus’s gift to us. It’s made possible through the work of the cross. If other things are getting in the way of you being at church, then can I gently suggest to you that maybe it’s a time to just consider realigning priorities? Because what could be more important than coming together as the body of Christ to spend time worshipping Jesus and building each other up?
I wonder, maybe you’ve just concluded it’s okay to just dip in and out of church like it’s another social club. Hey, church is not a social club. Church is the centre of our lives.
2. Gossip
It’s very easy, isn’t it, when you’re in the workplace, to participate in gossip. But what happens when that attitude then comes into the church? It’s toxic. It spreads lies. It tears people down. It brings division in the church. And as Arthur was saying last week, when we’ve got division in the church, God can’t bring a blessing. That’s why gossip is really one of the devil’s main tactics, because he knows that it drives division and stops God doing what He wants to be able to do in the church.
Let me say this plainly and clearly: if you know that you are involved in gossip in any aspect of your life, and indeed in the church, it is time to cut it out.
It’s fine to have differences. It’s fine to not like a song or a different style or not like a person. We’re all different people; we might not all get on together. But when you start to implant your own opinions and your own ideas onto what God is doing, you become the blockage. You actually become an agent of the devil at that point.
It’s time to stop complaining and start participating.
Ephesians 4:29 says that we should not let corrupting talk come out of our mouths. And Proverbs 6:16–19 clearly says that God hates a gossip.
3. Addiction
Continuing on in addiction and doing nothing about it. God wants all of us, and He wants us to be dependent on Him alone. The problem with addiction is it robs us of that. It makes us dependent on something else other than the Lord, and it takes us away from God. It places another between us and God, and so that substance, that drug, that drink, that pornography, that whatever it is, becomes an idol in our lives that ends up consuming us. It ends up eating us from the inside out.
Galatians 5:1 says it was for freedom that Christ has set us free, no longer to be subjects to the yoke of slavery. Christ has already done everything on the cross for you so that you could be free from that addiction. All you need to do is submit to God and say, “Jesus, would You help me? Would You come into my life and into my heart, and would You help me to take this away?” And He will — not through our work, but through the power of His Holy Spirit.
4. Lack of Evangelism
Ask yourself: when was the last time you led someone to Jesus? When was the last time you prayed a sinner’s prayer with someone? When was the last time even that you told someone directly about Jesus? I’m not saying, “Oh, well, in the staff room they kind of knew I’m a Christian.” No, they need to know what it is that you believe. Are you one of these compromised liberals, or are you actually following what it says here in the Scripture?
The Great Commission that we find in Matthew 28 is a command. It’s an instruction, not an optional extra. Actually, let’s put it a slightly different way. Somebody told you at some stage in your life about Jesus, and each and every one of us is sitting here today because somebody told you about Jesus. Somebody invited you to church, and you came here as a result.
So how about we actually start making it our number one business to tell others also about Jesus? Because if you look to your left and your right and you see any empty chairs, who’s going to fill that chair? That’s something to pray for this week.
5. Laziness and Lack of Productivity
The amount of lazy people I meet, including myself at times, is unbelievable. We’re made to work. We’re to be workers. Even some people say, “Oh, it’s subject to the fall, and it’s a curse.” No, actually, even before the fall, when God created Adam, He set him to work in the garden. We are meant to be workers.
Paul says something really very clear that often is looked over. 2 Thessalonians 3:10 says that if an able person refuses to work, let them not eat. If an able-bodied person who is able to work refuses to work and therefore does not have an income to be able to buy food, let them not eat.
What does that say about how we now view state benefit handouts to able-bodied people? I’m not talking about people that cannot work. My own father hasn’t been able to work for a number of years. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about people that could, if they were presented a job, could work but choose not to. We have plenty of them in this country because there is a spirit of laziness that has taken over. And it’s the devil’s way of wasting us away.
Colossians 3:23 says that we should be doing everything working for the Lord, not for ourselves. And Proverbs 10:4 and 13:4 say that laziness is bad for us — it leads to poverty.
6. Not Contending for the Truth
There are plenty of people in the church today that are just kind of going along with it. I’ve got many good Christian friends that I’ve grown up with, but they’re so apathetic about the pathetic nature of our nation right now. I almost want to grab them by their shoulders and give them a good shake.
It’s almost like they’ve kind of accepted this kind of continual decline. “Oh well, that’s just the drift of where it’s going to go.” Do you know something? Here’s one person that refuses to accept the general decline. I refuse to accept the status quo. I refuse to accept that this nation is going to hell in a handcart. I refuse to accept that Jesus is going to be sidetracked in this nation anymore. I refuse to accept that this nation is over and finished and a thing of the past and just confined to the history textbooks in the classroom.
I choose to believe that God is not done with this nation. I choose to believe that God is not done with every single person out there today. I choose to believe that God is not done with me. He’s not done with you. He’s not done with any of us yet.
Surely, yes, it’s tiring. Yes, it can be. Yes, it’s hard going. Yes, contending for the truth is not always the easy option. It doesn’t win you the most amount of likes online. It doesn’t win you the biggest contact list. But Jesus calls us to the narrow path, not the wide and the easy path.
Let’s put it a slightly different way and put it even more clearly for you. If dying for the truth was worth it for Jesus, then it has to be worth it for us to proclaim the truth as well. God didn’t give up on you, so why do we give up on Him by ceasing to contend for the truth? Because it’s easier to not do so. It’s easier to not cause an argument. It’s easier to just sit down.
But 2 Corinthians 10:5–6 says that we demolish every argument and everything that sets itself up against God, taking captive every thought that comes into our mind.
7. Sexual Immorality
Any form of sexual action outside of holy matrimony that does not involve your spouse is a sin. The Bible is so clear on that — not just in one scripture taken out of context. It’s all the way through. It’s very, very clear.
“But Stuart, there’s so many episodes in the Bible of kings that had multiple wives and all of this and so on.” Yeah, now show me the scripture that actually supports that as the ideal. Show me the scripture that actually exalts that as good. There isn’t any.
People are cohabiting and not getting married because of a lack of commitment. It’s time to have that commitment. Watching pornography and thinking nothing of it whilst really it’s eating you from inside and leaving you empty. Engaging in casual sexual relations, tinkering around the edges.
Jesus died so that we could be made pure. But yet so many of our actions and our thoughts defile us. You can read more on the whole area of sexual morality in 1 Corinthians 6. We don’t have time to dive into that in detail today. But sexual sin is a sin against the body, and our body should be a temple to the Lord. Jesus came to purify us.
8. Materialism
When we place the focus on the material, we’re saying that Christ is not enough. We’re putting our hope in something other than Jesus. 1 Timothy 6 doesn’t say money is the root of all evil; it says the love of money is the root of all evil. We have to be very careful about the language that’s used.
Sometimes we can claim that we don’t have enough when we’ve got loads, or the opposite — we claim that we’ve got enough so therefore we don’t need God, because “Hey, look at this, we’re doing well, we’re doing good, we’ve got the bank balance.” We end up relying on the material and not on God.
I have seen in my life people who in this very situation were very, very successful in their jobs, and then all of a sudden something happened at the company, they end up being made redundant, they struggle to get another job, and all of a sudden everything that they had — five holidays a year and so on, new car every couple of years — all of a sudden it’s like, “Oh, what’s happened? It’s three years since they got a new car,” and everything starts to crumble. Why? Because they placed their hope in those things, and those people fall away from the church when the material disappears, because their hope is not in Jesus; their hope is in the material.
9. Body Image
Are you treating your body as a temple, or are you abusing it? Have you made an idol of your body and exalted it above God? There’s a balance to be found here. It’s good to look after ourselves — the Bible’s clear on that — but making an idol of ourselves and chasing outward perfection, whatever that looks like, is bad. Because everything we do should give glory to God. And if it exalts us, if it puffs us up in any way, then it’s wrong, and we need to examine whether that is cheapening the work of the cross.
10. Life — Abortion, Suicide and Euthanasia
God is the sole giver of life. He is the Creator of life. He created us in His image, and therefore we have a unique value. Abortion destroys life. Suicide destroys life. It destroys God’s gift deliberately. Participating in and supporting these things is enabling the work of the devil to continue.
Proverbs 6:17 says that God hates hands that shed innocent blood. Every time we support one of these things or involve ourselves in one of these things, we are cheapening the work of the cross.
But let me be very careful here and very clear. If you have had thoughts of suicide, if you have had an abortion, or if you know someone that has had that, then know today that there is healing, there is forgiveness, there is restoration. That’s not the end, because Jesus comes to restore us. He comes to make all things new.
11. Spirit of Offence
“Oh, that offends me.” We’re holding on to things that we shouldn’t. The offence itself ends up having a hold on us and it holds us back, because we hold something against that other person. Proverbs 18:19 — have a look at this scripture later when you’re home. An offended brother is harder to win over than a fortified city. That’s very interesting to ponder on more.
12. Pride
The Bible says pride goes before a fall. When we put ourselves above God, when we put our confidence in ourselves rather than Jesus, we don’t change because we think we’re fine. We excuse poor behaviour. We don’t think there’s any bad consequences. Because we think we’re fine, what we’re doing is we’re puffing ourselves up, we’re being prideful, and we’re relying on ourselves rather than God.
Verse 13 and 14 in Zephaniah 1 — God will act. He won’t just sit there and do nothing. He will act eventually. And everything that people place their false hope in is going to be destroyed, because God wants all of us, all of the time, forever.
Closing Challenge
These cover just a few areas — a little bit of a whistle-stop tour of some different things that we need to do to step out of the things of the world and into the kingdom of God. They’re like roadblocks. You can’t get round them however much you try. And only when that block is removed can you move forward. Anyone who came up this road last Sunday compared to this Sunday will know about roadblocks.
Maybe there are other areas in your life that God is speaking to you about, or another area in your life to address. In every single one of these areas the issue is not the issue itself primarily. The issue is us putting ourselves before God and holding on to things that we should not.
Colossians 2:6–8 says that we should not be deceived or swayed by humans who lead us away from Jesus. There’s a warning in Revelation to the seven churches — Laodicea, the lukewarm church, neither hot nor cold. Jesus says, “I would prefer that you were cold or hot, but because you’re lukewarm I will spit you out of My mouth.” It’s very strong language, very clear.
Hebrews 11:25 shows us that only a holy life can give us that completeness in Jesus.
There’s lots of areas that we need to come into alignment with the truth on. What is clear is that we cannot continue as we are if we are to be part of this remnant church that God is purifying and building up in this hour.
It’s time to repent, which means to turn away from all of that stuff that we know is not right and to live fully and only for Jesus. Because really, every time we sin, every time we hold on to any one of these areas, we’re literally just throwing mud in the face of Jesus. At best we’re kind of saying, “Thanks for the cross, but no thanks, I’m okay by myself.” We’re saying, “Actually, maybe we didn’t need to be saved after all.”
Well, I needed to be saved because I know I’ve messed up. What about you?
Jesus’s sacrifice was final and complete. He gave everything for you. He gave it all. The least you can do is decide to live for Him.
When Jesus hung there on that cross with His arms wide open, it was like He was saying, “Come to Me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. I’ll clean you up. I’ll help you. Let’s walk together.”
God is about to go through this nation, just as it says in the scripture there about going through Jerusalem with a lamp, rooting out all the complacency. He’s about to go through this nation with a lamp, and all who have hidden will be found. All who have become complacent will be found out, and all who are not right will be found. And all who have pretended all is well when really in their lives it’s far from well — they’re going to be exposed.
It is time to examine our hearts and do some business with the Lord. It’s time to get right with God.
So I ask you: where do you need to stop cheapening the work of the cross in your life? What do you need to turn away from? Where do you need to reject the lies of the devil and embrace the truth of Jesus?
Jesus is ready, willing, and waiting to help you through by the power of the Holy Spirit. He’s just waiting for you to take the first step and say yes to Him today.
This is no time for complacency or waiting for tomorrow to fix things. It’s not about being religious or doing things for the sake of ticking a box. It’s about coming before God, turning away from things, and asking Him to clean us up. His heart is for us to be fully reconciled to Him. It’s what this whole Bible is about.
When we come to Zephaniah 3, those who choose to get right with God today, those who choose to clear out the muck and the guff in their lives, will on that day of judgement be able to stand before God. And when judgement comes, they will escape it. Chapter 3 verses 9 to 13 is really talking about the purifying process, and verses 14 to 20 is the blessing — what happens after that purification is done.
We started with that question, and we ask it again. After all that you’ve heard here, after all of the scriptures and everything that’s been said here: Is your life cheapening the work of the cross?
And if the answer in any way, shape or form is yes, then are you prepared to take the steps that are necessary in order to stop your life cheapening the cross?
Psalm 145:8–9, 17–19
We started this morning’s service in Psalm 145. I said we would go back there and we will go back there just now at the end.
“The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. The Lord is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made.
The Lord is righteous in all his ways and kind in all his works. The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth. He fulfills the desire of those who fear him; he also hears their cry and saves them.”
Closing Prayer
Let’s pray this morning.
Jesus, I thank You that Your work on the cross was final and complete. I thank You that You gave Your all on that cross for us. I thank You that You died so that we could have new life, that we could be free from the clutches of sin, from the clutches of the curses of this world.
Lord, I pray that You would help us to examine our hearts, and if there be any way found in us that is not of You, let us deal with that. Let us come before Your throne of grace boldly, in order that we would be made right and made whole with You.
Jesus, we thank You that in You there is healing, in You there is reconciliation, in You there is restoration. We thank You for Your grace. We thank You for Your love. We thank You for Your mercy. Amen.
