Admonition Podcast

Good morning.

It's good to have each of you with us, especially our visitors, those who've been
traveling and they're back with us.

We're grateful for your presence.

Take your Bible, if you will, and open it to the book of Matthew, and Matthew chapter 22
is where we're going to begin our lesson.

The lesson this morning is entitled The Value of Christianity.

If you were to start a

Business or perhaps be interested in a business.

You maybe you would uh visit some investor meetings.

Maybe you would meet with people if you were going to start a real estate business and you
were going to own and manage real estate properties.

You might go to an investor meeting.

And someone might there at that investor meeting present you with this property is
available, this property is available, here's the value that they return.

You would consider the value because some of the returns are immediate, some of the
returns are way off in the future.

You'd have to evaluate is it worth the cost?

Is it worth the price that you would have to pay to receive the value that would be in the
future?

I want to spend some time discussing the value of Christianity.

The value of what it was that Jesus Christ came here to establish and presented to
mankind.

For Jesus said in Matthew chapter 16 that he came to build his church, and that he would
give to the apostles the keys of the kingdom of God.

And he did exactly what he claimed he would do.

He did what he came for, and as a result, he presented and built that which has value.

So we're going to examine some of that value, if you will consider the value of
Christianity to the home.

In Matthew chapter twenty two, we read, beginning in verse thirty four, but when the
Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together.

Then one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, testing him and saying, Teacher, what is
the greatest commandment in the law?

And Jesus said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your
soul, with all your mind.

Jesus will quote from Deuteronomy chapter six, where Moses is going to instruct the nation
of Israel concerning what fathers and what parents should do in their home.

That they were to teach their children the laws, the statutes, the judgments in Israel,
that they were to remind them of them when they woke up, when they lied down, when they

were walking by the way, when they were sitting in the house.

They were to bind them before their eyes and have them as a reminder continually, so that
they might never depart from God.

Those were the practical descriptions of what Jesus quoted from.

Moses, when Moses said you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your
soul, with all your mind.

But he continues.

Verse 38 This is the first and great commandment.

And the second is like it you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

As Jesus answers the question from this lawyer, now the lawyer in that day and time would
be someone who was schooled in the law.

Someone who was schooled in the

interpretation of the law.

And this individual is asking the question, I need a set of priorities.

I need to know which is the greatest commandment in the law.

Jesus takes the lawyer back to a passage where God tells Moses to tell Israel how to raise
their children.

As we consider the value of Christianity to the home, we should begin to understand that
Jesus, through what he delivers in the Word of God, and how we might know God, and how we

might have a relationship with God, and how we might walk with God, and how we might be
right with God, has presented to us the opportunity to.

to raise a home and a family that is in fellowship with God.

If you turn to First Timothy chapter three.

Paul, as he writes to the young preacher Timothy, will give a series of qualifications.

Qualifications for elders, qualifications for deacons, qualifications for the wives of
elders and deacons, qualifications for other scenarios.

But notice as you examine the qualifications for an elder and for deacons and for their
wives, how many of them revolve around how they have acted.

in relationship to God in their homes.

Consider chapter three, verse one, this is a faithful saying If a man desires the position
of a bishop, he desires a good work.

A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, temperate, sober minded, of good
behavior, hospitable, able to teach, not given to wine, not violent, not greedy for money,

but gentle, not quarrelsome, not covetous.

One who rules his own house well, having his children in submission with all reverence.

For if a man does not know how to rule his own house, how will he take care of the church
of God?

Not a novice, lest being puffed up with pride he fall into the same condemnation as the
devil.

Moreover, he must have a good testimony among those who are outside, lest he fall into
reproach in the snare of the devil.

Likewise, deacons must be reverent.

Not double tongue, not given to much wine, not greedy for money, holding the mystery of
the faith with a pure conscience, but let these also first be tested.

Then let them serve as deacons, being found blameless, likewise their wives must be
reverent, not slanderers, temperate, faithful in all things.

Let deacons be the husbands of one wi uh the husbands of one wife, ruling their children
in their own houses well.

For those who have served well as deacons obtain for themselves a good standing and great
boldness in the faith which is in Christ Jesus.

As you go down the list of qualifications for these two roles within the body of Christ,
these two positions within the body of Christ.

You look at uh item after item after item where God says you go look at their home.

You go measure their actions in raising their children.

You go measure their actions in regard to their spouse.

You go measure whether or not they have taken the word of God and applied it in their home
first.

before you ever hand them any authority in the body of Christ.

Why?

Because the home makes up the nation.

Because the home makes up the community.

Because the home makes up the business.

Because the home makes up the church.

God said, I've delivered to you, humanity, the things you need in order to be faithful in
your home.

To make your home something that is in fellowship with me.

If you turn over to 1 Timothy chapter 5, in 1 Timothy chapter 5, as Paul writes concerning
widows, here you have a scenario not concerning widows being in a position of authority,

but rather widows being those who are in a scenario where they are in need of financial
assistance and support.

Ongoing long-term base support from the congregation.

And he will describe in that scenario a widow who has no family, a widow who has no one
who has a God-given responsibility to provide for them, and so their care is going to fall

upon the church.

But notice in 1 Timothy chapter 5 and in verse 3: honor widows who are really widows.

But if any widow has children or grandchildren, let them first learn to show piety at
home, to repay their parents for this good this is good and acceptable before God.

Now she who is really a widow and left alone, trusts in God and continues in supplications
and prayers night and day.

But she lives in pleasure in uh but she who lives in pleasure is dead while she lives.

And these com things command that they may be blameless.

But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his own household,
he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

Before we get into really the discussion of widows, Paul will say, first of all, let me
talk to you about the responsibility of families.

Because you will deny your very faith in God if you have members of your family who are
destitute and in need of the daily provisions, and you

Do nothing.

Christianity.

As that which is delivered by God.

Not talking about cultural Christianity.

I'm not talking about what the world believes Christianity to be.

I'm talking about God's definition of what it means to be Christ like, to belong to and
wear the name of Christ.

Christianity does not allow.

for someone who has someone of their own family who is destitute and in is of need to lay
that burden upon the church and say, you know what, y'all need to take care of that.

I'm out.

Unless, of course, they're also freely admitting that in regards to fellowship with God,
they're also out.

But then consider, he goes on to say, Verse nine, do not let a widow under sixty years of
old be taken into the number, and not unless she has been the wife of one man, well

reported for good works.

If she has brought up children, if she has lodged strangers, if she has washed the s
saints' feet, if she has relieved the afflicted, she has d diligently followed every good

work.

Paul tells Timothy to tell the church at Ephesus to tell those Christians, if you have a
widow who says that she is in need of daily support, you better be ready to deliver it to

her.

But you get to go evaluate just exactly what kind of person she's been in her life.

And her reputation and her history and her actions that she has been building up because
of her home, which was directed by God.

will be the standard as to whether or not she is able to be supported by the church.

Are you saying, Aaron, that there's a list of I gotta check this off, I gotta check this
off?

Kinda like an insurance policy.

Have you done this, have you done this?

Well, sorry, you missed that box, we're not gonna help you.

No.

What Paul is describing is the minimum viable product, if I could use the the business
term, the minimum viable product of a Christian.

What does a Christian look like?

What does a Christian do on a daily basis?

What does a Christian have in their home?

Well, we'd go back to the text.

A Christian is one who is well reported of good works.

They don't have a reputation as a swindler.

They don't have a reputation as a stuck up person who doesn't care for people.

They don't have a reputation as someone who could not possibly show any compassion for
someone who is desperate and in need.

They couldn't possibly be described as someone who is self-centered, self-interested, and
selfish.

For you look at their lives, and their lives are the exemplification of God's works in the
lives of people.

He says they're well reported of good works if they brought up children.

If she has lodged strangers, if she has washed the saints' feet,

She took seriously the responsibility of a wife.

She didn't say, you know what, I think we just need to hold off on all this children
stuff.

I've got a career to focus on.

I've got money to make.

I've got things to do.

I've got things of great importance that I need to be about and I need to be busy with.

And so I don't have time for children.

Now see, there's something to point out here.

And this isn't about whether or not this woman was unfortunately barren and unable to bear
children.

This is about the biblical perspective of the value of the wife in a home.

This is a woman who has brought up children, who sees the value of the next generation,
who has raised the next generation, who has perhaps helped those orphans who have no home.

You remember what James would write in James chapter one?

That true and un pure and undefiled religion before God is the and i is this to support,
to visit the widows and the orphans in need?

Here you might have described a woman who was never able to bear children.

That's not the qualification.

But she, being unable to bear children, said, you know what?

There's some children who do not have a mother.

And I can raise them up to follow God.

Not saying that every home that is barren and unable to bear children needs to adopt in a
legal way.

perspective children in order to qualify for this.

What I'm saying is this is a woman who looked at God's priorities for her life and God's
priorities for the home and God's function for what her role in this life is and said, I'm

going to fulfill it one way or another.

As you consider these three texts, what do you see?

You see that God has established Christianity to be of inherent, immense value to the
home.

So many who grow up in a society where their homes are in shambles.

Not just because of poverty.

Some of the people whose homes are in shambles live in the nicest houses in the entire
region.

But they don't have a home.

They don't have a home where they have fellowship with God.

They don't have a home where the actions and the lifestyle and the act

Activities that are established in that home are controlled, established, and ordered
after the steps of Jesus Christ.

They don't have a home as God would have it.

Oh, the value that they would find if the next generation was raised in a Christian.

But then consider the value of Christianity to society.

In Matthew chapter five, Jesus would confront the Jews.

He would confront the people of his day, of his own culture, of his own time.

He would confront his disciples and those who were present, who were listening to him,
those who had attention to spiritual matters.

And he would speak to them and say, You are the salt of the earth.

But if salt loses its flavour, how shall it be seasoned?

It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.

Jesus makes it clear that God had established Israel in his day and time through the
history that God had given to them from the days of Abraham all the way forward to the

days of Christ as the salt of the earth.

He says, God has made you to be that which is providing seasoning to the world so that
they might see and understand that God exists.

So much of society.

lives in a world where they're not sure God exists.

They're not sure that the God of Heaven is real.

And if you look back over their lives, you really probably won't be surprised.

For their lives have never been touched by the salt that God put in this earth.

That is the body of Christ.

They have no idea what it's like to be connected to the body of Christ.

When I was doing it yesterday it wasn't for the point of this illustration and it wasn't
for the point of this lesson and it's not a pat on my back.

Yesterday, as I was sitting at the house, I was thinking about all the people that I know.

That I call brother because of their relationship in Christ.

And the interactions that I have had through the years with them and the knowledge that I
have that if there were ever a time where there was a desperate need, where there was a

situation in my life, I would have someone to turn to.

And as I was thinking about that, I thought, you what, let me text a few of these people.

And so I just went through the somewhat long process of going through text messages.

I'm one of these people that doesn't delete anything.

Drives my wife crazy.

But if I sent you a text in nineteen um twenty twenty one after I started using the
service I'm using now, I still have the text.

I didn't make it back past twenty twenty four going down the list of people and I thought,
you know what, I need to send him a text.

Some of you got a text.

Those of you who didn't get a text it wasn't because I didn't think it just didn't it
didn't get to y that thread.

But I sent text to many people close to sixty.

Just saying thank you.

Happy July fourth.

Glad I can call your brother.

Thank you for what you do.

And it wasn't because of them.

It was because I was taking the time to think, you know what?

What has God blessed me with?

And the answer is the church and the people in it who by nature of their shared faith
would say, I'm so glad I can call you brothers.

Some of these people are all on the other side of the planet.

Some of these people are right here at home.

And I say that not to declare how many people Aaron knows.

It is kind of a test testament of the fact that unlike what my brothers, physical brothers
think, not everybody hates me.

They have a biased opinion.

They grew up with me.

I was annoying back then.

To some people I still am.

But rather that through the gifts that God has blessed me with in connection to the body
of Christ.

That I have a shared relationship with people all over the world, not because of who I am,
but because of who he is.

And if society understood the value of Christianity, and if their lives had been touched
by the value of the church.

They would begin to understand what Jesus says when He says, You are the salt of the
earth.

But the cautionary statement comes after the declaration, you are the salt of the earth.

The cautionary statement is what happens when the church goes sour?

What happens when the church no longer functions the way it's supposed to?

What happens to society?

Growing up, I had a disposition concerning vegetables.

That is that they're horrible by and large.

And all of my life growing up, we had green beans with regularity was one of the things
you could grow in eastern Kentucky.

We had a lot of green beans.

Mom made green beans.

I hated green beans until I was introduced to salt.

Because my mother was one of those people that grew up in a household where her
grandmother oversalted everything.

And she couldn't stand it.

And she determined when she was going to become an adult, she was just going to let people
add the salt they wanted instead of the abundance of salt someone else thought they

needed.

So she doesn't really salt food.

Some of you may know that vegetables are horrible without salt.

least in my opinion.

When I was introduced to salt, my perspective concerning vegetables changed.

Hey, you know what?

You put something worthwhile to eat by way of flavor on this, and actually it's okay.

Can't do anything for berries, but vegetables you can save.

He says, You are the salt of the earth, but if salt is loathed as its flavor, how shall it
be seasoned?

It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.

You are the light of the world.

A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden.

Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand and it gives light
to all who are in the house.

Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your
Father in heaven.

Many in society.

cannot describe the value of Christianity because they live in a world of darkness because
they have no association with the body of Christ and the good works that come as a result

of what Christ has done.

Or the only introdu introduction they've ever had to it has been salt that's lost its
flavor.

And a light that has been shuttered and closed off from the world.

Christianity has value to society when Christianity is done God's way and not man's.

Then consider the value of Christianity to the lost.

The value of Christianity to those who are separated from God in Acts chapter two.

In Acts chapter two and in verse thirty six.

Peter is there on the day of Pentecost and he is preaching to a nation that had murdered
the very son of God.

They had for centuries spoken of the promise of the Messiah.

They had spent generation after generation after generation rehearsing the stories and the
words of the prophets and the words of David and the words of the psalmists and the words

of Moses about the one who is going to come in the name of the Lord.

The Savior of

The king, the prophet, the priest, the one who was going to come and they told told their
children about it, and they told the next generation about it, and they rehearsed the

stories.

And they lived in anticipation of the day when he would finally arrive.

Generation after generation after generation of people looking for the Messiah to come,
like Simeon, who was there in the temple when Jesus was born and brought to the temple.

thirty three years later that same nation who had rehearsed those same stories, those same
accounts who they had spoken of for generation after generation after generation had to

hear the words Verse thirty six, therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that
God has made this Jesus whom you crucified.

Both Lord and Christ.

For a millennia and a half.

From the day when Moses said, as we read in Deuteronomy eighteen, that the Lord would
raise up to you a prophet like unto me.

To go back another four hundred years to the day when God would tell Abraham, In your seed
shall all nations of the earth be blessed.

One family had been rehearsing one story of one individual who was to come and this
generation killed him.

How much you describe the nation of Israel at that moment in time.

Well, you might describe them as lost.

Verse thirty seven Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart and said to Peter
and the rest of the apostles, men and brethren, What shall we do?

Sometimes we come to that question and we just imagine they're saying, I know that I'm a
sinner in need of salvation and I need to know what to do to be saved.

There is so much more than that.

Yes, they were sinners.

Yes, they were in need of salvation.

And yes, Peter was going to give them exactly what Jesus said they had to do in order to
be saved.

But there was so much more than that.

Peter didn't say you haven't lived a life of equity and righteousness before God, and that
because of your ongoing life in sin, you need to repent of those things.

There's certainly passages that talk about that and situations where people were preached
to where that was the situation.

That wasn't what Peter said.

Peter said, You've killed the very Son of God.

They said, what do we do now?

We've spent sixteen hundred years saying he was coming.

And you're saying we killed it?

But notice that Peter didn't say you killed him and he's dead and there's nothing you can
do about it.

That's not what Peter confronted them with.

Peter confronted them with the same thing that Jesus confronted Saul of Tarsus with on the
road to Damascus.

It's really, really hard to fight against the will of God.

Who are you, Lord?

I'm Jesus of Nazareth, whom you persecute.

And what was Saul's question?

What will you have me to do?

Because Peter didn't proclaim to them, you took the very Son of God, you took the Savior,
you took the Messiah, the priest, the King, the prophet, you took the one who we all hope

for, and you've dashed our hope into nothing because you killed him, and now we have no
hope.

No, that's that wasn't Peter's message.

Peter said.

God has taken this very one who you crucified and has made him both Lord and Christ.

And the one who you killed.

is ready to save the one who killed him.

And they said, Men and brethren, what shall we do?

And Peter replied, Repent and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ
for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, for the

promise is to you and to your children and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord
our God shall call.

Peter said, You didn't intercept the promise of God?

Юдин the plan of God.

Now you have the opportunity to take part in what God has been building all along.

And with many other words he testified and exhorted them, saying, Be saved from this
perverse generation.

Then those who gladly received his word were baptized, and that day about three thousand
souls were added to them, and guess what?

Two thousand years later, God's message hasn't changed.

When people realize that they're lost, that they've sinned, that they violated the very
terms of God's allowance of salvation, that they have to respond and that they have to

deny their sin, deny themselves, deny their interest in this world.

and change to be conformed to the very nature and the very image of God so that they might
have an eternal home when this life is over.

When they realize that God's message is exactly the same.

When they've heard that Jesus Christ is the Savior, the Messiah, the Christ, the one who
God raised from the dead and did not allow him to remain in the tomb and has set him at

the right hand of the throne of God and he is reigning right now.

And they come to that realization and they say, what shall I do?

I now know that I am lost, and I now know that He is the Savior.

What would He have me to do?

Message hasn't changed.

Repent and be baptized for the remission of your sins.

First John chapter four.

John writes to these Christians.

And he says, Beloved, let us love one another.

For God for love is of God.

And everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.

He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.

In this, the love of God was manifested toward us.

That God sent his only begotten Son into the world that we might have life, that we might
live through Him.

And this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the
propitiation for our sins.

Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

John the Elder, the one who at that night of Jesus' betrayal had laid his head on the
shoulder of Jesus.

says, I need you to understand the love of God.

А нідістан the very nature of love itself.

The love is demonstrated in what God did for us.

when he sent his only begotten son that we might live.

Buddha didn't do that.

Muhammad didn't do that.

None of the world religions in all of human history.

can tell you of a God who did that.

Because they can't first tell you of a God who exists.

They can't tell you of a God who spoke.

They can't tell you of a God who brought forth humanity and created the world and created
the universe and everything that exists and allows it to continue to exist by the word of

his power.

It they can't tell you.

They're missing an integral integral piece to the story, God.

And their hope is an earthly one.

It's hope of a nation, hope of power, hope of might, hope of glory, hope of peace, hope of
being reborn into a some greater form and not some lesser form.

But not hope of salvation.

Not hope of redemption purchased for the very blood of the Son of God.

Romans chapter five.

Paul would write for when we were still without strength.

In due time Christ died for the ungodly.

For scarcely for a righteous man will one die, perhaps for a good man someone would even
dare to die, but God demonstrates his own love toward us in that while we were still

sinners, Christ died for us.

Much more than.

Having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.

For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his son, much
more having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.

And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom
we have now received the reconciliation.

Paul looks back at his life.

Paul looks back at his circumstance.

And for him, this is more than just theoretical.

More than just doctrinal.

Paul who held the coats of those who stoned the servant of Jesus Christ.

Paul, who was on the road to Damascus, ready to take those Christians that he found in
every house that he entered and bring them in bondage or to death.

Куд Вен Христ Дід.

He didn't die for good men.

He died for the ungodly.

And he didn't wait for them to become godly to die.

He died for them when they were yet enemies of God.

Christianity has value to the lost, to God's enemies, because it provides the alternative
to God's righteous judgment.

For all those who are willing to hear the Word of God and believe that Jesus Christ is the
Son of God, who are willing to repent of their sins and confess the name of Christ and be

immersed in water for the remission of those sins, rising to walk in newness of life,
being uh immersed, as it were, in the blood of Christ, as Paul describes, that through the

life of Christ they might have reconciliation and hope.

Of eternity with God.

But before we close, consider that the value of Christianity also exists

to the penitent.

To the one who said, In times gone by, I'll be faithful to Christ.

I'll be faithful to his name.

I'll walk that walk.

I'll establish Christ in my home.

I will establish Christ in my life.

I will give over control of my life to the Messiah who has redeemed me from sin and from
death.

And from judgment and from hell, I'll give the my life over to him.

I'll give my family, my decision making, my principles, all of the things that I thought
were of greatest importance that I had always known, my philosophies, my undergirding

value in life.

I'll give it all over to Christ and I will conform to his name.

And then they turned back.

James chapter five.

James makes it clear

That when God established in Christ his church, his kingdom, and the doctrine and the
pattern and the message of the gospel that we are to preach, that God did not just

consider the lost.

He also considered the wayward, the Christian who has departed from the faith and is
penitent and willing to come home.

James writes in James chapter five, confess your trespasses to one another and pray for
one another that you may be healed.

The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.

Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain,
and it did not rain on the land for three years and six months, and he prayed again, and

the heaven gave rain, and the earth produced its fruit.

Brethren, if any one among you wanders from the truth, and someone turns him back.

Let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save a soul from
death and cover a multitude of sins.

value of Christianity.

Unlike many of the things in this world where you miss it, you mess it up.

No bringing it back.

that when you have departed from the faith of Christ, when you agreed to that covenant and
then you broke that covenant and now you say, I want to come home.

That much like that prodigal son who realized I was raised in a home where God was.

I was raised in a home with a father who taught me what I should have been.

And now here I am in a pig sty, and I just want to eat what the pigs are eating just so I
have something.

You know what?

I can't ask my father to take me back.

Not worthy of it.

I'll just ask to be a servant in my Father.

And he goes back.

And he goes home.

And his father runs to meet him.

value of Christianity to the penitent.

You don't come home as someone of no value given maybe one more opportunity to not mess it
up.

You are invited to come back with rejoicing in heaven.

Over one who repents, then over 99 who are saved.

If you have need of the invitation of Christ to take part in the value of Christianity,
you're invited to do that this morning.

If you say, Aaron, sounds interesting.

You know what?

Might be willing to invest in that.

I might need to learn a little bit more.

So let's study.

Let's open the Word of God so we can know the value of Christianity.

Unlike those deals and those investor meetings where maybe the deal's not quite everything
it's cracked up to be in the investor summary.

When it comes to Christianity, we've only touched the hem of the garment of the value of
the name of Christ.

If you're outside the body of Christ this morning, why not change that?

If you're a member of the body of Christ this morning and you need to come home to Christ
to once again wear that name proudly, why not repent today?

If it's time to open the book and study, let's start today.

If you have need of the invitation, why not come now as we stand and as we say?