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When a person first comes to God, it is for selfish reasons. Yes, even you and I first turned to God because of what He could and would do for us. It sounds weird put that way, but when I first made the commitment to live for God, it was because I believed the preacher when he taught that there was a hell and that if I did not obey the gospel, I was going! A healthy fear of hell drove me to my first altar of repentance.

There is nothing wrong with coming to God because you do not want to go to a lake of fire and brimstone. I call that "healthy fear." Many people today have lost the "healthy fear" of God. The scriptures say that the "Fear of God is the beginning of wisdom." Many of you did not really come to know this truth until later in life. Let me remind you of what you had coming to you before you came to God:

You were destined to reap the wages of sin which the scriptures says are death. Your “freedom” to do what you chose would have eventually led to the death of your marriage, the death of your relationships with friends, the death to happiness, and the death of your dreams. You thought that you were free, but really you were bound and enslaved to the inevitable results of sin. The reason that God was able to get some of your attention was because you looked into the future and realized that unless God changed some things, you were not going to like what was going to happen. It was a selfish agenda that brought you to God in the first place. You realized that only God could help you and so you came to Him asking "God could you help me!?"

Thank God that He responded! Thank God that He already had a way for you to get free of your sin! When you became a servant of God after being freed from sin, you changed the course of your life. Now you are on a path to reap the wages of God in the future, which is not death but life! When you are freed of sin AND become a servant of God, you see a resurrection of life in your marriage, relationships, and dreams! God gives you a new lease on life: a brand new start! You are a free person in Christ Jesus, able to choose your destiny, and able to receive the abundant blessings of God! You have gone from death to life, from dark to light, from despair to hope all by the blood of Jesus Christ! Without the Blood of Jesus, you had no hope of ever avoiding the death that sin would eventually bring, but the moment that you received His Spirit and were baptized in His name, you stood a free man, not bound to anything in your past! “Thank you, Jesus, for your Blood and Spirit!

But I want to remind you that this change in your life was made possible by the most unselfish act of history. Sometimes we need to go back and be reminded about what Jesus Christ really did for us at Calvary! I want you to remember that Jesus Christ had never sinned; He did not need a blood sacrifice to be free. To be crucified was one of the most horrible deaths that a man could suffer, but it was not for His own cause that He suffered so horribly and died . . . It wasn't for His own personal agenda . . . IT WAS FOR SOMEONE ELSE!!!!! He suffered and died because of someone else! And that someone else was you and I! He did not have to do it. He had the ability to stop the suffering and the pain and could have called down 10,000 angels to come and free Him. He could have healed Himself and walked away, but it was not a selfish agenda that drove Him to Calvary and it was not the nails that held Him to the Cross, but it was so that the world would have a chance at salvation. It was BECAUSE OF SOMEONE ELSE that He died!!!!

In Romans 6 Paul talked about what brought about the change in our lives as sinners:

Rom 6:17-18 But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you. 18 Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness.

There were two elements that allowed you to find your way to God and both were unselfish. First, your salvation was made possible because Jesus Christ was willing to die "because of someone else." Second, though, you were able to respond to the gospel and the doctrine of God and Repent of your sins, be baptized in Jesus' name and receive the Holy Ghost because of someone showing you what the scriptures commanded you to do! Paul said that you were set free because you obeyed "that form of doctrine delivered you." If it had not been for someone willing to study until they could present the message plainly to you, then you would have never known what to do about your sin. When you had the form of doctrine delivered unto you, it was powerful because someone had sacrificed time, prayer, fasting, and effort BECAUSE OF SOMEONE ELSE!!!! The reason why you are here today and the only reason why, is because Jesus Christ and one of His saints was willing to sacrifice not for their own agenda but because of someone else!

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This morning I talked about Moses and how that God had great plans to work through his ministry. We talked about how that Moses received the finest leadership training in Egypt that one could receive and how that one day, Moses felt like the time was right and began to take matters within his own hands by killing the Egyptian taskmaster. God allowed the plan to backfire and Moses found himself running to the wilderness far from the refinement of Egypt and marrying into a simple shepherd’s family. There Moses spent 40 years of watching smelly sheep. It was quite an humbling experience for someone raised to be a king. Why did God allow this to happen in Moses’ life? This morning we discussed one of the reasons: God was allowing Moses to go through a breaking process so that God’s strength would be made perfect through Moses! God was forming Moses into someone that could be trusted with a great anointing and power!

There was another reason that God allowed this event to happen. God knew that Moses would never be able to lead others out of Egypt until He was willing to leave Egypt! God was spending 40 years trying to get some of the false teaching and habits of Egypt out of Moses! When Moses left Egypt, he had a warped view of what was important and what priority. He still viewed life as an Egyptian.

One reason why God allows you to go through a breaking process and begins to deal with areas of your life is that God is trying to get some of the worldly ways of thinking out of your mind. He is trying to get the sinful ways of Egypt out of your life. When you come to God out of sin, He forgives you and washes them away but you still need the "renewing of your mind;" to learn to think as God does! God is trying to get some sinful habits out of your lives because He knows that those in sin will never listen to you as a messenger of deliverance until you have left Egypt!

We tend to categorize sin as big sins and little sins, but to God all sin is bad. Too many Christians choose to live in sin on the pew. They find it easy to justify their actions as “new Christians” when really the issue is not their newness but a lack of submission to God’s Word. They struggle from service to service and from repentance to repentance. Their spiritual goal in life is “staying saved” and right with God. I am preaching to people that should feel uncomfortable knowing that something in your life is not pleasing to God! But it is easy to justify our sin isn’t it?! If Jesus were to come back right now, and you are filled with the Holy Ghost but are choosing to willfully sin, you are not going to go despite the work of the blood of Jesus and His Spirit, because God cannot allow sin to enter into glory. If we know that something is contrary to God’s Word and we allow ourselves to continue to do it and do not get victory over it, then it is sin that would keep us from being ready to meet God despite whatever justification that we have. Sin is sin. It keeps us from the presence of God whether we have the Holy Ghost or not! In fact, if we sin with the Holy Ghost it will be worse off for us! Why? Because we have been freed from the bondage of sin only to have chosen with free accord to go back to it!

You are never going to be perfect, but that should not be an excuse for continuing in things that you know are not pleasing to God. John said that IF we sin we have an advocate! The key word is IF. Too many Christians are living by "when I sin, I'll get forgiveness" rather than "IF I sin I'll get forgiveness!" Think about it: “if the rapture were to take place in 20 seconds, is there anything in your life that you are doing that is not according to God’s Word that you would feel the need to get right!? Is there any thing that you are not sure about? Whatever those things are that come to your mind, they will keep you out of heaven on any day! Hell is a very real place, and our actions and consequences really do matter! There are no big sins and little sins and there are no big requirements and little requirements to God. Disobedience of even the smallest request is rebellion which God says is as the sin of witchcraft! What choice have you made in your life? Are you still hanging on to some small things -- but let’s call them what they are: sin!? Have you chosen to give everything to God in your life? Or have you chosen to continue to live in sin despite of God’s deliverance? Does it matter most what we think is important or what God says is important? Does it matter more what is convenient, or what is right? Does it matter more what we feel like doing, or what God thinks about our actions? If Judas Iscariot could live with Jesus Christ day in and day out and yet betray Him and lose out with God, why do we not guard our lives more closely!? Are we like Peter and feel that we would never fall!? Think about that for a moment!

The problem is that we do not realize how much is really riding upon our decisions! Let me tell you that you will never be able to win other people to God when you are playing around in sin! You will never be able to deliver someone from Egypt until you choose to leave Egypt yourself! There is more to this life than just you! But what about reaching somebody else!? If you play with sin and are hot and cold for God and the rapture happens to come at a time when you are on top of the struggle and you make it, what are you going to present to God!? Who will you have brought with you!? What I am trying to say is “as long as we stay at the spiritual level of trying to just stay saved throughout the week, we will never be able to win someone else! "Moses, to be the deliverer that God wants you to be, you must be willing to leave Egypt!" There's more than your deliverance at stake! If God was concerned about only saving Moses from Egypt then He would have just let Him stay in the wilderness with the sheep, but God directed Him to go back! God did not save you to just have you, but there is a multitude of people that you were designed to reach!

When Christians refuse to allow God to speak to them and continue in sin and never develop a change in lifestyle, they are basically telling God, that they do not care for a lost and dying world and would rather live in their comfort zone rather than reach someone else. We must get beyond a mentality of “me, myself, and I!” Too many Christians do not realize that God may be dealing with a certain area in our life simply because of the harm that it does to our ability to win others! If I am baptized in Jesus’ name, filled with the Holy Ghost and yet never win someone else to God, then I have missed the very purpose for which I was cleansed.

Moses could have gotten comfortable in Egypt and just let the children of Israel continue as slaves. Moses could have stayed in the palace and enjoyed the pleasures of sin and just let the Hebrew people continue to be abused by the Egyptian taskmasters! What would have been the end result of Moses’ life if would have never bothered answering God’s call? When he stood before God on judgment day, would God have been pleased? Probably not. Why? Because Moses would have allowed his selfishness to prevent him from allowing God to change his life. Not only would Moses have missed out on the miracles and the promises of God but so would have millions of people that God wanted to deliver!

Can I preach to us for a while? If the preacher gets really hard on something and really hammers something then we will grudgingly change it so that we will not go to hell. But what about allowing God to change areas in your life so that you can win others! What about being convicted of something in your life “because of someone else!?” What about leaving Egypt so that someone else can see the way!? The word “Christian” simply means “Christ-like.” We are really never like Christ until we do what He did and that was to be willing to give up everything because of somebody else! You are free to do what you want with your choice! But what is the motivating force for your actions? Are we really Christ like enough to be willing to die to our desires because of someone else? Are we willing to give up a sinful lifestyle, not because of our own well being only, but so we can reach someone else!? We must get beyond just barely making it through the week saved because it is impossible to help someone else stay saved if we are barely making it ourselves. We must press through to a lifestyle of overcoming because of someone else!

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There is a hidden detriment to sin. It does more than just separate us from God and set us on a course for hell, but it also sacrifices other people that God had designed for us to lead to freedom!

You may remember the story of Achan that is found in Joshua chapter 7. He lived in the time of Joshua when the children of Israel were moving in to conquer the promised land! God promised them great victory and sure enough, when they obeyed the commandment of God to march around the first city, Jericho, the walls fell! God had ordered that the spoils of the first victory were to belong to Him. God has always required the firstfruits of our life and the tithing of everything including their victories belonged to God! Everyone was to rummage through the city after the walls fell and bring all gold, silver, and precious things to the priests so that it could be one day used for the temple of God.

Achan was the man that decided that the word of God was not serious in it's commands and that he could get away with just a "small" sin. He took a fancy garment some silver and a wedge of gold and hid it in his tent. No one from the church saw him do it but God saw! Not even his family knew his sin, "so" he probably thought, "it can't hurt anybody but me!"

But it did. God would not bless sin in the camp. In the next battle against the small Ai, 36 men were killed and their families were thrown into a state of mourning. The entire millions of Israel began to fear and were troubled. The leadership had to fall at the face of God in distress and ask "what went wrong?" God responded:

Did you catch that? The God of Glory was going to reject His precious people because of one man's sin! Achan's sin was about to cost the children of God the promised place and a relationship with God forever! God commanded that Joshua have every person to pass before him and said "I will tell you who has committed the act." When Achan came, God identified him and when Joshua asked, Achan confessed. Then He and His family lost their lives:

God help us to realize the seriousness of sin! There is more riding on our decision to live holy than just our destiny, but there are millions of people whose eternal destiny and whether or not they will ever enter into the promises of God hinges upon our simple obedience to His Word! Achan's own confession teaches us of how sin operates:

First, Achan saw. Then He coveted. Then He took them, and then came the deceit and trying to cover up. Is this not the pattern of our sinful actions? We first see the sin, then we desire it, then we partake and then we try to hide our actions from God and our brothers and sisters. But whether any other person in this world knows our sins or not, God knows and our church will never grow into the promised place until sin had been removed from the camp! You are not just hurting yourself, but your family, your friends, and your brothers and sisters! God's not talking about accidental sin, but pre-meditated sins that we justify and try to hide! Would you do anything different in your lifestyle around the preacher or away? That is sin! If I were to announce like Joshua did that God wanted everyone to pass before me and that God was going to reveal all the secret sins of every individual here, would you be uncomfortable? If so, your sin is already hindering the work of God! You were reached because someone was willing to grow beyond just barely making it and trying to overcome routine sin and reached out to you in the power of God! You are here because someone was willing to obey the Word of God BECAUSE OF SOMEONE ELSE'S soul!

There is a greater cause than just one soul riding on our decisions, because somebody else’s soul rest upon my walk with God. “Moses, there is more riding on your obedience to God’s plan than just your dreams or miracles!” “There are large amounts of people who will die in Egypt unless you submit to the will of God!” "Achan, do not be fooled, your actions are hurting other people!"

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Not everybody "gets" the point of Christianity. And those who miss the point shrivel up and die. Everybody has somebody that they alone can win and reaching them is the point of living for God. Paul certainly got the point:

God wants to change even more than your sinful ways for the sake of reaching others. Paul was willing to study the law of the Jews so that he could better win them. He was willing to learn about the customs of the Gentiles so that he could better win them. He was willing to find common ground with every type of man that he would meet, so that he would have better odds of winning them! If anything in his life, could be taken as something that would make a brother fall, Paul said that he refrained from it!

He never compromised his message, but yet he was willing to change anything else so that he could reach more people with the message! As Paul said "that I might by all means save some." We are not going to reach everybody that we try to win, but we must allow God to change things in our life that increase the odds!

When a prejudice person says "well, I just wasn't raised that way to accept that, no matter what the Bible says," what they are really saying is, "I'll never be able to win certain races to God!" When a person says, "well that just ain't my style so I ain't supporting that" what they are really saying is "I'm limiting myself as to how many people that I can win." But Paul said "I'm going to change any opinion and allow God to work on whatever He wants to change so that I can increase my chances of reaching some!" It's all about "BECAUSE OF SOMEONE ELSE." God has more at stake than just your soul when He begins to deal with you about something!

You are free to live like you want, but we must be careful of anything that would cause a weaker brother to stumble and fall! If we really are to be like Christ, then we must live "because of someone else." Our lives should be centered around winning someone!

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Paul told Timothy that "first of all," we should pray for others! When we pray, before we ever get to what we need or want, we should make supplications, prayers, intercesssions, and giving of thanks for "all men." Our focus in prayer should be first on praising God, second upon others, and then upon our needs! The main reason that we pray should be "because of someone else!"

Everything that we do must be centered around reaching or helping someone else! When the church gets to the place where it exists only for what "I can get out of it," then it ceases to be church that God is pleased with! I should worship to help someone else out of a depression. I should pray to help create an environment for someone else to receive their blessing. If we only pray until we feel we have received what we need, then we have missed the entire point of prayer!

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The opposite of Paul is Demas. Demas forsook Paul in his ministry. What Paul meant was that Demas did not enjoy missions because it was too much sacrifice and too much work not for himself. Demas wanted a normal life where everything that he did was for his own benefit. Unfortunately, true Christianity and selfishness do not mix.

You were won because someone was willing to get beyond their selfishness and get a burden to see others won to God. Are you willing to show the same sacrifice and love that was shown to you? Are you willing to become "Christ-like?" If so you must live for God and everything in your life must be driven by this cause: "Because of someone else!"