Get Woke - David Griffin

In Romans chapter 13 in verses 11 and 12.

Romans 13 · chapter mention

The Apostle Paul says and do this knowing the time that now

it is high time to awake out of sleep.

For now, our Salvation is nearer than when we first believed the

night is far. Spent the day is at hand.

Therefore, let us cast off. The works of darkness.

And let us put on the armor of light.

I would like to propose to you the question tonight.

Are you woke? I heard that term sometime back

and I was not aware of what it meant so I took the time to look

it up and I find out that merriamwebster.com says that

woke is a slang term. That is easing into the

mainstream from African American vernacular English and that in

some dialects awake is often rendered as awoke as in, I was

sleeping but now I'm woke. Wo ke Wolk is increasingly used

metaphorically. I'm told for social awareness, a

person who has awakened to social issues and has become

aware of Injustice or oppression or whatever particular social

issue of the day happens to be that person is said to be woke

and that just means they're awake.

It is very quickly taking on broader uses.

For example, awoke Corporation is a company that That is

socially aware and adopts Progressive policies, and

advertising campaigns reflective of that social awareness.

I also learned that the term woke.

Twitter has a very recently taken off as the shorthand for

describing social media activists concern with

Progressive issues. So I want to say tonight that

woke is something we need to be in the biblical sense of the

term. So I asked, are you woke?

In Romans 13, the passage that I just read a moment ago, the

Apostle says that it is high time to awake out of sleep, it

is not a time for lethargy and Slumber, but rather it's a time

if you will to become woke. Now, there's a tone of urgency

in Paul's words tonight and I hope to be able to communicate

that urgency to you as well. So number one tonight, we need

to become woke on the brevity of life.

James said, in chapter 4 and verse 14, for what is your life?

It is even a vapor that appears for a little time.

And then vanishes away when James, Likens your life and mine

to a vapor, he Compares it to one of the most fleeting and

ephemeral, phenomena of nature. You know, a morning fog appears

in the Twilight morning hours of the day and it is there only for

a brief time and if you're not paying close attention, son,

Only the fog has dissipated before you hardly notice that

it's gone and such as our life. Paul and James are saying

therefore that we must wake up and realize even if we're very

young that our life is very temporary.

Well completely temporary and quite brief as it turns out.

In other words we need to give our greatest energies and our

service to the Lord now today, because the days are fleeting

and The time passes quickly and we should not therefore squander

away our days and are times in our lives for the service of the

material, things of the world, and the service of the devil in

the world. Now I might add though that even

if you take a look at yourself and realize that you've been

guilty of doing this, and even if it may even be late in life

for you as long as you're still breathing, and as long as your

heart is beating as long as you're still, Walking above the

ground, it is still an opportunity for you to change

that. You now can serve God Faithfully

more Faithfully, perhaps than before, I'm afraid though that

the way we are sometimes we need to hear the words of the Apostle

Paul in Ephesians 4 or 5 and verse 14, awake, you who sleep

arise from the dead and Christ will give you light.

And so if we're not in the right way and if we're not, Not awake

on these issues on this matter of the brevity of life than it's

time that we woke up, it's time that we become woke.

Number two, we need to become woke on the pressing needs of

God's service. Now that may be the same point,

I just made, I don't know, but let me just add to it a little

bit. In Hebrews chapter 2 and verse

Hebrews 2 · chapter mention

28. Paul says, let us have Grace

whereby. We may serve God acceptably.

With reverence and godly fear. This passage speaks of an

acceptable service to God. And let me just say tonight that

God needs people to serve him. Now, let me clarify, but God

doesn't need anything from us, just read the book of Psalm, the

50th Psalms, the 50th Psalm, and you'll see what I mean.

God doesn't need anything from me, and he doesn't need anything

from you, but let me say that God has put his cause into the

hands of human beings in this world.

And the only way that his cause can be represented and upheld in

the world is by people to take hold of that cause and to go

forth with the work. God needs people to love him or

God's cause needs people to love God Jesus.

Quoted the Old Testament and you shall love the Lord.

Your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all

your mind and all your strength. We also need to love the word of

God. Now, you can go out on the

street and I see, Postponed. The whole lot of people who

would tell you that they have a love of the word of God, and

maybe you can find a lot of people in the church that say

they have a love of the word of God, but if you watch them and

listen to them, I'm and observe their patterns of behavior over

the course of several weeks days months or Years, you'll find

that maybe they don't quite honor it, like, they say.

So when we say love the word of God, we're talking about having

enough of the motivation and the willingness to devote our

energies and our resources. To cherishing the word of God

searching, the word of God devouring, the word of God

imbibing, the word of God and accepting it and letting it soak

into the pores of our thoughts. So that we may play them out in

our lives or the word out in our lives.

In other words, obey it. God needs people to do this.

Let me add God's cause needs people to make the life of the

church. Ask lifestyle, and not just an

appendage. To all of the American dream

that we sometimes devote more attention to, it seems than the

services of God, people need to devote themselves to the cause

of God in every respect. So that the work of the church,

the efforts of the church. The plans of the church to carry

out the cause of the Lord, the services of the church, if you

will become the Warped and wooof of Our Lives on a day-to-day

basis. And like I said, not just a

patch that's added on Or so don on Sunday.

And so my friends, we need to become walk on the service of

God but let me hasten and we need to become woke on the evils

of sin in Ephesians 5 and verse 11.

Paul says, and have no fellowship with the unfruitful

works of darkness but rather expose them Have no Fellowship.

This means no Affinity with no involvement in no participation

in any of the things that the Bible calls sin.

Now, let me just tell you in my observation.

You can take that position and you can apply it to your life in

a practical way on a day-to-day beat the basis and many people

sometimes, even members of the church will call you radical and

extreme. But I believe that extreme and

radical is the thing that Paul had in mind.

For when we consider the great power and the force of the sins

of the world and the things that surround us everywhere and

threaten, the spiritual lives of ourselves and our children, we

need to be a little more radical than we are and quit trying to

Buddy up to the world's, somehow win them to the church through a

congenial stance with sin. It's time that we get Us about

living the Christian Life. Now permit me to criticize

parents, even though I'm not one, I've been an observer for a

long time of parents raising their children in the church.

And it's been my notice that parents who are proactive, and

make a plan and executed effort to instill, Holiness and a

respect for the word of God and a commitment to the body of

Christ. Those parents, who do that have

a far better track record of raising children, who will?

The same thing when they become adults than those, who simply

again, are reactive and only try to fight things off once they've

been invited into the home or into the lives of people and in

the lives of their children, because they've been lakhs and

careless in the treatment of matters of sin, relative to the

family. Let me add to this point.

Father's need to step up and be the spiritual leaders of the

family and stop leaving it for the mothers.

You know, people think it's easy.

Seems like that because the mother carries the baby in the

womb and the mother cares for the little toddler.

When it's very young. While the father's off working

at the job and the mother takes care of this and takes care of

that though, when it comes to the matters of spirituality than

she ought to take care of that too.

And the problem is that a lot of fathers.

I noticed this in the church a lot, there are lots of men who

think that it is their responsibility simply to make a

living, give, thanks at the dinner table and drive the

family to church on Sunday and Virtually no other input from

the father on matters of spirituality than that.

My friends. I'm afraid that there are men

who are going to lose their souls in the day of judgment for

the failure to follow up, and to step up and take the lead in the

family on matters of spirituality.

They are going to be accountable before God on the day of

judgment for the fact that their children are no longer in the

body of Christ, and maybe even other influences as a result of

that. You know, the Apostle Paul in

Ephesians chapter 4 speaks of the fact that there is a thing

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

called the corruption, that is in the world that grows corrupt.

We need to fight that off, we need to do whatever we can and

if we don't know what to do, was talk to people and ask questions

and find out what we can do. And what we can know about how

to fight off the ways of sin, but I must hurry, we need to

become woke, I believe on the very real and raw.

Rising threat of persecution. Yes, really in Luke chapter 21

Luke 21 · chapter mention

and verse 12. Jesus says.

But before all these things, they will lay their hands on you

and persecute you delivering you up to synagogues and prisons.

You will be brought before Kings and rulers for my namesake for

years. I think we've been reading these

passages like this, as something that that was the way it was

back. Then, that's something the may

be the way it was a few. Centuries ago but we don't need

to concern ourselves so much with that today and that's been

true and maybe it still is to a great extent.

But here in this passage Jesus says that persecution involves

prosecution. In other words, whenever

persecution comes on the rise, it will be through the arm of

the state that will attempt to thwart the church and to silence

people into submission. This is the way it was all

through the Old Testament. When those Us and very brave Old

Testament, prophets were again. And again brought before one of

the Kings of Israel and Judah and brought to task for some of

the things that they preached and declared.

Among the people all the way down to the end of the Bible, in

the Book of Revelation when for example, the church at Smyrna in

the Book of Revelation was threatened with the same power

persecution comes through the state.

Now, I'm not an alarmist and I'm not here to be Sensational and

I'm not trying to impress you with anything of that sort.

And I don't want to frighten people, but I'm afraid I'll be

honest with you. That we are living in the last

days of comfortable Christianity, in America.

And if you think I'm just being radical, just go out and take a

look on the internet at some of the things that people who we

may disagree with, on some things.

But we are Agree, on other things.

And some of those things people are being fined for their being

run out of business for their even being put into prison for

just take a look at the things that you hear and see on the

news. And if you think you haven't

heard much about it, I say go take a look again on the

internet. There is a growing hatred of

Christianity of the judeo, Christian ethics and morality

and moreover anyone who upholds it and believes it is hate.

All the more for doing so, and the person who is bold enough to

step up and take a stand for, it takes the Heat.

And let me tell you, it's hot in the kitchen, it's hot in the

kitchen. Whenever that type of opposition

comes people all over the Western World.

I don't know if some of you are aware of this or not for we only

hear it occasionally now and then on the news but it's all

over the place. All over the Western World and

even in the United States today, people are being sued and being

issued. Massive fines for simply acting

or failing to act in some cases because of their conviction on

certain matters of principle and louder and more powerful voices

are even now calling for legislation that essentially

outlaws some parts of the Bible even in the United States of

America. You say, well, that's not going

to happen anytime soon. Maybe not.

But I think we need to be aware of it, I think.

We need to educate ourselves and we need to be thinking about

what we're going to do when we are confronted with these kinds

of things. Well I need to hurry.

I'm right now out of time. I want to say one more thing.

We need to get woke on the coming judgment.

Jesus, and Paul, and the New Testament, writers proclaimed.

A judgment Jesus proclaimed. The Judgment the world today,

says, there will not be one because there's no God.

And the proof is in how they live and how they openly and

proudly disdain God and His law and criticize every person who

upholds it. But just because a thing is not

believe doesn't be mean, it will not become a reality simply

denying. The Judgment doesn't mean it

will not. Come.

I may defy. I'm a disdain the law of

gravity, but if I jump off of a 30-story building, it's not

going to take me very long to figure out that the reality was

different than what? I believed.

We need to be waking up. We need to wake up in our

spiritual lives and do what we can to awake others.

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