August 14, 2002
Subject: An End Or Means To An End
John 1:41 "He first findeth his own brother Simon, and saith unto him, ‘We have found the Messiah, which is, being interpreted, the Christ.’”
I was really motivated when we received another Christian channel on our cable service. For the four years that I’ve been here, we were stuck with one channel, TBN. While there is some good programming every now and then, one should be on constant guard against much that is shown. The proliferation of the “name it/claim it” preachers and teachers seems to be at an all-time high. What a tragedy it is to have a lost and dying world out there and the proclamation of the church be, “come to Jesus and all of your financial problems will be over,” or “try Jesus and get that healing that you’ve always wanted.” Somehow the gospel message which identified Christ as “the end” of everything has gotten lost. Old testament prophecies spoke of a messiah who was to come and when He came, He was to be everything that the Jewish people had been waiting for. However, we know that He came unto His own and they received Him not. But look what happened in the verse above when Andrew found Christ. The first thing He did was to tell his brother, “we have found the Messiah.” In other words, the search is over. We are at the end of our looking. We have found what we were looking for. He then took his brother to Christ.
Sadly, most of today’s televangelistic expression doesn’t portray Christ as the end, but instead, as the means to an end. Their version is, “if you come to Christ then you can get A or B or C.” If A or B r C were traits of godly character, that would be one thing, but when it’s a big house, all your bills paid or a prominent position, then we’ve distorted the gospel message.
The issue for us today is, are we proclaiming Christ as the end of all searching or is He an intermediate point on our road to “riches”? Consider it. Jesus is enough!!!
Carlen
