In this enlightening episode of The Sound of Faith, Sharon Otz delivers a powerful message based on the theme Awake, Arise, and Shine. Sharon discusses how godlessness and spiritual inactivity have left many Christians in states of apathy and how it’s critical to ignite the flame of faith once more. Referencing scripture, Sharon encourages listeners to embrace God’s light, which symbolizes truth and understanding, and challenges listeners to break free from the darkness that has held them back.
Greetings friends and new listeners and welcome to The Sound of Faith. I’m Sharon Otz thanking you for joining us today because we know faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. Today’s message, Awake, Arise and Shine, is a stirring word to ignite our hearts with new passion to fight against the tide of godlessness and persecution that has left some Christians in a state of carnal apathy and spiritual inactivity. Let us be sober and put on the armor of light. Let us awake, arise and shine. He said it’s going to break forth on you. God’s light. Now let’s keep it in its metaphorical sense. God’s truth. God’s truth. How much joy do you feel when you have been pondering something in the scriptures or a situation you’ve been pondering? And then one day it’s like somebody hit the light bulb in your mind and there it is. How many know what I’m talking about? You’ve been pondering something. What does this mean? Or how am I supposed to take this? Or what is the Lord trying to tell me? Or I don’t understand this passage of scripture. I don’t get it. And you just kind of have it always turning up there in the wheels of your mind. And one day it just opens up to you and you got it and you just feel like you want it. Tell everybody. Only they wouldn’t get as excited as you are because they don’t know what you’ve been thinking all along. But the light of the truth just comes shining on you. Amen. Oh, that’s what God wants to do for us. And if you don’t know the Lord, if you’re not… serving him if you’re not in relationship with him he wants to do for you he wants the light of the truth to penetrate your heart and all of the burdens and the sorrows and the troubles and the questions that you have not been able to figure out for yourself he wants to just shine on you and open up to you the truth Amen? John said in John 1, 5, And the light shines in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not. Now, the word comprehend there is katalambano in our English, and it means to perceive and to understand. But it also means to overcome and to hold down. And that’s the definition being used here. Let me read it again to you. And the light shines in darkness and the darkness comprehended it not. And the light shines in darkness and the darkness did not overcome the light. The truth of God is shining and the darkness and the lies of Satan cannot overcome the truth. Amen. Oh, he’s got a very good campaign going on to try to deny the truth. Amen? But he cannot overcome it. He cannot hold the truth down. In fact, Romans 1.18 tells us that the wrath of God is against all men who are ungodly and unrighteous who hold down the truth. There are some people that try to stifle the truth and hold it down, but they are on the losing side. All they’re going to do is bring all kinds of chaos and trouble in their own lives. And if they never ever accept the truth, it’s going to get worse as they get older. They’re going to have more trouble and chaos. But it is not going to change the truth of God’s word. God’s word as we know it. When God gave his word to men by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Amen. That word has survived over 4,000 years. Kingdoms have come and kingdoms have fallen. Great men have risen and great men have fallen. Many things have come and gone, but the truth of God’s word will stand forever. Jesus said, if you follow my word, you’ll find mercy. You will find mercy and grace. But if my word falls on you, it will grind you to a powder. Amen? That’s the dichotomy of God’s word. For those who receive it, they get the blessings, the mercy, the forgiveness, the healing. For those who resist it, you cannot resist God’s word and come out on top. God will deal with you for a very long time. He’ll deal with you over and over again because he loves you. He wants you to come to the knowledge of the truth. Scripture says that God would have all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. But he will not force or make anyone. One thing God did was he gave us free will. And free will is not free will if you don’t get to choose. Amen. He said, I set before you the way of life and the way of death, the way of light and the way of darkness. Now you choose. You choose whom you will serve. You get to choose. Amen. But you don’t get to choose the consequences. You get to choose whom you will serve. Now, you know, sometimes I think, why don’t you just, you know, why don’t you just make us serve you? Because after all, it’s the better way. Heaven is the better destination. But God will never violate your free will, even if it was better for you if he did. But he won’t. Amen? You have to choose. And so the darkness is not going to overcome the light. And of course, we always mean darkness. The light is the truth and the darkness is the error and the lies of Satan. You know, darkness is actually the absence of light. How many know that? If you want to get rid of darkness, you have to introduce light. You can’t go into a dark room and say, I’m going to get the darkness out of here. Give me a shovel. I’m going to shovel it out. No. All you have to do is open up the window. All you have to do is turn the light switch and let the light come in. And here’s the thing about that. You cannot have darkness without light. And you cannot have evil without good. And you cannot have lies without the truth. Amen. Because a lie, as I said before, is a twisting of the truth. And we can only discern what is false by what is true. How many are following me? We can only discern what is evil by what is good. You know, you can have God without Satan, but you can’t have Satan without God. Amen? Because Satan is the author of lies and darkness. Jesus said in John 8, 44, that Satan is a liar and the father of lies, and there’s no truth in him. But in order for him to… have lies, he’s got to have the truth by which to contrast it. Amen? So how many understand that statement? That means that darkness, evil, lies, and Satan, and all of those things are hostile witnesses against the truth. What is a hostile witness? A hostile witness is someone who proves your point, but they don’t want to prove it. Because they don’t want to agree with you. And they get up on the stand. And they’re forced to tell the truth. The whole truth. And nothing but the truth. And the truth is going to prove the case that they’re against. But yet if they tell the truth. They are actually a witness. Amen? And that’s what it is. Satan and darkness and the lies and the evil of this world and all of the things that they say to deny God and deny his truth and deny his word, in actuality, in spite of the fact that they deny God and they deny truth, they’re actually proving it. I want you to think about that for a moment. As I said when we started, anyone in this world would tell you that evil exists. You will not get an argument if you go ask people if evil exists. Just turn your news on later on this evening. There are more evil reports than good reports. Are there not? But this is the very evidence that God exists and good exists. Because you can only measure evil against good. You can only measure hate against love. And lies against the truth. People will tell you that evil exists. But those same people will tell you that there is no God. And the reason they will give you is, if there was a God, there wouldn’t be all this evil stuff in the world. If there was a God, there wouldn’t be all these bad things happening in the world. And so that is what they claim is why there is no God, when the fact is the very opposite. Amen? Because there would be no good if God didn’t exist. And you can’t have evil without good. And I could take more time to develop this as the measuring thing, but I think I’ve told you about that in messages before, so I’m going to move on. Because otherwise I have to ask the question, well, then when does good become evil? Do you see what I’m saying? If there is no God and you don’t have that to measure by, where do you draw the line and say, well, this is good and this is evil? And that’s why we’ve come to the day that the prophet said in Isaiah 520, he said, woe unto them that call good evil and evil good, that put light for darkness and darkness for light. Amen? This is what we’re up against. Gross darkness has covered the land and covered the people. And part of the reason for this is because people have undervalued sin. And what I mean by that, sin is not as sinful as it used to be. Today, you’ll be told that God doesn’t care if you’re living in sin. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care that if you’re living in sin and then he won’t judge you for your sin. And see, how does that happen? You don’t judge yourself for your sin. How many know people don’t judge themselves for their sin anymore? And don’t you dare tell them. The Bible says what they’re doing is sin. The first words out of their mouth is, don’t judge me. And they think that’s the answer. And that’s it. You don’t have a comeback. Because they don’t judge themselves for their own sin, they have now reached a point where they believe God won’t judge them for their sin anymore. And here’s the problem. They have made God like themselves. Amen? Let me tell you what is in Psalm 50. First of all, God is indicting the people because they have fallen into sin. And he not only says, you sinned, you’re doing this, but he uses the word partake a couple times. You’re partaking of the sins of the thief. You’re partaking of the sins of the adulterer. You’re partaking of their sins, lying and slandering and so on. Amen? So what does it mean if you partake of something? It could mean that you are not necessarily yourself committing the sin, but you are condoning it in others. I don’t see nothing wrong with. I know these are stolen goods, but I didn’t steal them. So I’m going to buy them cheap. I’m saving me some money. God is blessing me. This thing costs 50 bucks. If you go buy it, it’s 50 bucks, but I’m only going to pay 20 for it. I know the guy stole it from somebody, but I didn’t steal it. He stole it. And God is blessing me. Is this the kind of reasoning we have today? Do we have that kind of reasoning? And they feel perfectly justified. Now, you might buy stolen goods that you honestly don’t know are stolen goods. And you honestly don’t know. But when you know, amen, you yourself would not live together not being married. And you yourself know that’s sinful. But you will let unmarried relatives stay in your house. Oh. Uh-oh. Now I’m in big trouble. Well, we’re going to move on. I’m not even parking there. Okay, so let me tell you, this is in the Bible, folks. This is Psalm 50. Now, here he goes on. I’m going to tell you what verse 21 says. God said, these things you have done, and I kept silence. You know, I want to say, God, whatever you do, please don’t keep silence. When I am messing up, please tell me. Amen. Don’t keep silence and let me go on thinking that I’m all right or I know I’m not right but I’m getting away with it. I’m getting by. Some people think that because they’re getting away with something that it’s okay with God. A thunderbolt didn’t come down out of heaven. Scripture says there are some men that will never ever receive judgment in this life for their sin. But when they stand before God. When they stand before God, they will receive their full judgment. I would rather the Holy Spirit use somebody to preach me under the pew until I feel like I want a hole to open up and I drop in. But I would rather be in that miserable, uncomfortable state where the truth of God is penetrating my heart and my eyes are being opened up to the truth. Amen. So that I can acknowledge my sin and repent. But God said, you thought, let me finish this verse. You thought because I kept silence, I was altogether such as you. In other words, you thought that because I was silent and didn’t jump on your case and didn’t get on you about your sins, you thought God is like you are. You brought God down to your level. You created God in the image of man and the word of God says we are created in the image of God. We got to come up to God’s level. We got to come up to God’s standard. We’ve got to come up to God’s word. But when people say such foolish things as, I don’t think God would send you to hell for that. Or I don’t think that God will care about that. Amen. They make God like themselves because they wouldn’t do it. They wouldn’t send you to hell. They wouldn’t say you’re sinning. They bring God down. God said this. You make me like you. You try to bring me down to your level. Amen. See, they wouldn’t punish themselves for their sins. So they say, God won’t punish me either. In fact, there’s a lot of scriptures. I won’t even give them to you. Many scriptures where they say that God doesn’t see or if he sees, he doesn’t care. And so their conscience is no longer troubled. Why? Because they make sin trifling. They make sin such a little thing. They pass over it lightly. They minimize sin because they have a lack of understanding of who God is. A holy God. A righteous God. A God of truth. A God who said, what I said in my word, it will come to pass. Though the heavens and earth as we know them pass away, he said, not one jot or tittle will pass of my word. It will all be fulfilled. They don’t have an understanding of God. Not only of his greatness as we sang today and his majesty. He’s the creator. He created all things. Amen. Including you and me in his image. Amen. They don’t understand his holiness. They don’t understand his righteousness. And their lack of understanding of who God is causes them to minimize sin. when the fact is they don’t know anything about God. It’s one thing when you try to debate people who actually know some scriptures and know some Bible. That way you can get the scriptures out, rightly divided, and you can show them where they’ve gone off the grid. But what just frustrates and aggravates me is these people that, well, God wouldn’t do this and God wouldn’t do that. And they don’t know two scriptures. They could even quote two verses of scripture, but they know what God would and would not do. Because that’s how they feel about it. See, that’s how they feel what God would do if they were God. Amen? But it’s God who has created us and gives us breath and life. Amen? And they don’t know, and I’m going to say this because it’s in the Bible, in Hebrews, it says our God is a consuming fire. The Bible says it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living God. And guess what, folks? That’s not Old Testament. It’s New Testament. Both those verses are in the book of Hebrews. Amen? And so we’ve got to understand. I said all that to now get back to us Christians. And we’ve got to realize this is what we’re standing against. So you need to get your nose in the scripture so you can stand up against it. Not just let it wash over you. Wash over you. And so you feel like you can’t do nothing. So you put your nose down and try to lay low and go about your business. He said, no, it’s time to stand up. It’s time to awake. It’s time to declare the word of the Lord. You might even get excited. Amen. Always have a backup. All right, let’s go back to Ephesians 5 and we were talking about verse 14. So let’s go to verse 15. See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise. I like the word circumspectly. I know it’s archaic and all the new versions probably change it. It’s a curious word. And the Greek word, I’m not going to give you a lot of Greek words because I know a lot of you don’t care, but you do need to hear this one. Akribos. Akribos. Let me spell it for you. A-K-R-I-B-O-S. Now the literal meaning is perfectly or diligently. So when you put it in a verb form of action, it means to exercise extreme caution and care. It means to be exact. To be exact. And in reference to hearing, in this verse, it means to hear and to heed and walk according to the word of God. Most all other places where you find it in the New Testament, instead of being translated circumspectly, they translate it perfectly. The same Greek word, akribos. And Luke is especially fond of this word because he uses it quite a bit in the book of Acts and wherever he attaches this word acrobose to what he’s talking about in his writings, it’s always in reference to the word of God being perfect, receiving the word of God, acting on the word of God perfectly. I tell you the liberty that many preachers and teachers take today when they expound the scriptures is so dangerously out of balance. And they really should be afraid to do that because this word tells us we have to walk circumspectly. Our English word, circumspectly, I know right here it doesn’t sound like acrobose. So don’t get too confused here. Let me just tell you this. Do you know that the Bible, when it was translated, the New Testament out of Greek, it went into Latin. How many of you know I taught on that not long ago? We didn’t get an English version for quite a long time. It went to Latin. So what they’ve done is instead of borrowing the Greek word, they took the Latin word and brought it right into English. What does that mean, Sharon? It means circum, C-I-R-C-U-M in Latin means around. And it means specto in Latin means to look. How many got the picture? Okay, so you’re looking. You’re looking and you’re looking. You’re walking and you’re looking. How many got that much of it? So while you’re walking, you are looking. And this is the way a Christian is supposed to conduct his life and navigate his way. Through this world, this perverse and wicked and ungodly world. Amen? He’s supposed to navigate his way walking and looking. Some of you may have saw that I posted I took a very bad fall the other day on Thursday. And I’m always careful that I don’t see a rock or a pothole or whatever. But I was walking across this parking lot from my home. And they have pine trees there. And… The wind was really blowing hard that day, and apparently a pine cone just blew right about as I took my step, and down I went. Thank God I’m sore, but I’m okay. Amen? but that shows me that you can never be too careful and you can never be too vigilant I mean it could have been worse I was going forward and I knew I was going forward I was trying to stop but I ended up falling sideward but I fell on this side I call it my good side because the surgery I had on my back It affected my right side. So I always have to sort of like, you know, watch out for this side. And I fell on this side. You know what? I don’t even have any bruises and I fell on asphalt. And I hit my elbow pretty hard. My elbow didn’t even get bruised. It didn’t even bother me. I mean, if you’re going to fall, that’s the way to fall. I mean, if you’re going down, you want to go down like that. Nice and easy. So I’m going to give most credit to the angels. Amen. Said they will bear you up in their own hands unless you would dash your foot against a stone. I’m going to give them 98% of the credit and the other 2% I’m going to give to this extra padding right here. I told Benny, I’m not worried about that padding right there. That padding helped me. There’s some other padding that I, but you know, we won’t talk about that. It was like bouncing. Hit it and bounced off. And the lady said, Amen. What an exciting exhortation of the Lord. Awake, arise, and shine. Jesus warned in Matthew 24 his discourse on the signs of the end time. Because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. Now the Greek term iniquity means without law or lawlessness. It describes a departure from and disregard for God’s laws, the Bible. When there is no restrainer, it allows evil to abound. And instead of the saints standing up against the tide of wickedness, their love and their passion for God and his word waxes cold. This implies a progression into apathy and inactivity. But Paul declared with his pen of passion five things we are to do in this chaotic climate. awake from your sleep and christ will give you light arise arise means to stand up not just on your feet in the physical sense but to stand up for or against something the church must stand against the hostilities of the world we are at war against the kingdom of darkness shine you are the lights of the world jesus said let your light shine before men Walk circumspectly like a tightrope walker with extreme focus and balance and redeeming the times. You can’t change the past, but you can buy back each moment wasted in sin and failures to finish your course strong with joy. Awake, Arise, and Shine can be ordered on CD for a radio love gift of $10 or more. Request SK198. Mail to Sound of Faith, P.O. Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland, 21203. You can also order online at soundoffaith.org. soundoffaith.org where mp3s are also available but to order by mail send a minimum love gift of ten dollars to p.o box 1744 baltimore maryland 21203 and request sk198 till next time this is sharon not saying maranatha
