Church of Christ on Kelly Spring Road Podcast

Series: N/A

Service: Sun PM

Type: Sermon

Speaker: Jim Anderson

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(Transcribed by Congregate. Always check document for possible errors and inaccuracies in automated transcriptions.)

Good evening.

It's almost like I gave Tim an outline of my sermon.

Could have just stopped after those songs.

I, uh.

Really appreciate him leading those and, and Gary reading there.

I, uh, I grew up in New Mexico and I spent 25 years of my life there.

And, uh, Saturday felt like a normal morning here in Alabama, normal in New Mexico because it was so cold and frozen and I had to scrape my truck.

I used to look forward to those cold winter days because that meant snow skiing for me.

I was an avid snow skier, used to race and everything, and so cold days meant snow days, meant the winter, and I would look on the horizon in New Mexico and I would be able to see those storms coming and I would get excited.

And I know that's the opposite reaction than what we're talking about tonight.

But see, first in Albuquerque, my parents lived at about 1000 ft above above the city, and you could see for 60 miles, literally 23 miles to the west, and the storms always came in from the west.

And I grew up thinking, why do people have so much hard time?

Taking care and looking ahead and saying that storm's coming in, let's take cover.

You see, I grew up in a way where I could see the storms coming.

I knew the traffic patterns.

They always came in from west to east, and it was very unusual to not do that, and you could see them coming for literally miles away.

And I get excited in the winter, you know.

I think oftentimes we don't see storms coming.

As a matter of fact, I think that we often in our lives do our best to plan and we make our best decisions with the knowledge that we have now.

And sometimes when we make those decisions, we still get storms that just hit us right in the right right in the right in the center of the head.

And we, we can't see him coming because we've made all the best decisions, we've made all the best plans, and sometimes things happen in life that we just can't see.

I want you to turn with me to Acts chapter 27.

We're gonna read a, a pretty lengthy reading here, and we're gonna take some allegory from this particular passage, and we're going to talk about how to get help in the storm.

And in particular, I, I think the allegory here that I want to call out is The storms in life that we cannot see ahead of time.

And I think every single one of us have these storms that we, no matter how well we plan or what we expect, they happen.

So turn with me.

Acts chapter 27.

Let's start in verse 14.

It's going to be a little bit of a lengthy reading.

Let's start in verse 13 actually.

Now, when the south wind blew gently, supposing that they had obtained their purpose, they weighed anchor and sailed along Crete close to the shore, but soon a tempestuous wind, I'm reading from the ESV standard, uh the um English standard version, excuse me.

Um, called the nor'easter, struck down from the land.

It's interesting that the ESV uses that term there.

I actually did a little bit of research.

There's actually quite a bit of um tempestuous storms that come through the Mediterranean.

Uh, as a matter of fact, there's, there's now a nickname called Medicans.

And uh so hurricanes, Mediterranean, you know, Medicas that come through.

The last one stuck in stuck, struck in 2020, actually was a category 2 hurricane in the middle of that small ocean.

So these were, these can happen and they're, they're very uh uh tempestuous, they're very strong, called the Northeaster, verse 14.

And when the ship was caught and could not face the wind, we gave way to it and we're driven along, running under the lee of a small island called Clada.

Or caught.

We managed with difficulty to secure the ship's boat.

After hoisting it up, they used supports to undergird the ship.

Then fearing that they would run aground on the surduce, they lowered the gear and thus were driven along.

Since we were violently storm tossed, they began the next day to jettison the cargo.

And on the 3rd day, they threw out the ship's tackle overboard with their own hands.

Now when neither sun nor stars appeared for many days and no small tempest lay on us all hope.

Of our being saved was at last abandoned.

I'm gonna pause here for just a second.

Here is a violent storm that they obviously didn't see.

Now, If you go on here, what they're saying here is, as the storm worsens, they recognized how bad it was getting and they tried to take as much action as they could to save themselves.

It's very interesting.

Some of the terminology here is nautical terminology.

And we don't really understand exactly, exactly what they did, but there's some suggestions out there.

What they did actually was at one point they undergirded the boat.

What they did was they took some ropes and they actually strapped the boat together to hold it tighter together.

You see, when a boat comes apart, if it's wooden, it actually the waves can beat on that boat so hard that it starts to come apart.

What they did was they actually took ropes and they strung it together and they undergirded itself.

At one point, the waves and the wind drove so much that they let the boat go.

In other words, they let it just dry.

Sometimes when you're steering a boat in the middle of a storm, you're going to drive it into the waves and actually make things worse.

You can't keep up with that kind of tempestuous waves.

They're going to drive the boat.

And at one point, they just let it go and let it drive itself.

They're doing things there.

that are trying to save.

Themselves At one point it says that they took the tackle as the ESV version.

A lot of commentaries that I read actually on this said that it might have been anything that was just not useful, but I think that this word here is the tackle.

It's the things that actually that actually use the ropes, the things that would tie the boat together, the sails, and at 1.1 of the technical terms is the main sail was taken down so that it wouldn't rip apart.

In other words, they were throwing things overboard to make the ship lighter so that it would float more, so that it would actually gird itself up.

So they they tightened it, they threw everything over so that it would float better.

They're trying to save themselves.

And yet by verse 443, I want you to realize the level of despair.

It says there no small tempest lay on us is what ESP says.

All hope of our being saved was at last abandoned.

I uh I think there are things in this life when you recognize that they're happening to you, drive you to a point of despair.

That I think it's well captured here.

Can you imagine being in this storm?

They've done everything they can to this ship.

They have done everything that they believe is in their control, and then they recognize that the only thing left.

It's just to let go of control.

The level of despair and lack of hope sets in.

It says abandoned in ESV.

Hope fades There's an old fable That says that the devil went out to the marketplace.

And the devil took all of his tools, and he was going to sell all of his tools.

And on the table was hatred and and anger and malice and lying.

And all of these things that the devil uses to tempt us, and they were all shiny and brand new and over behind the table.

Here was this.

Tool that was well used.

And all of these were marked very cheaply, but this old useful screwdriver down here, this old beaten up, most weathered tool in the background.

Labeled despair.

Depression Discouragement I think it's interesting that Alan spoke this morning about those things, the criticisms, discouragement, depression, that well used tool of the devil, which is the most expensive, most used tool, is actually the thing that gets us.

When we view the, when, when we in this situation where we have done everything we believe in our control, and yet, this thing is still battering us to the point where we are just so discouraged that we can't lift ourselves up.

Have you been in that situation?

Maybe you are in that situation.

4 years ago, I lost my mom.

Right before COVID hits.

30 days before COVID hit, my mom passed on from a simple heart surgery.

That was a storm that my sister and I This time of year are still weathering.

It reminds us, she loved this time of year.

My sister, when it comes around, she hears that.

She hears what's going on and she becomes discouraged, like she has no control.

And those storms that you're seeing and you might be going through right now might be hitting you to the point where you don't feel like you have control, but I want to dissuade you of that tonight because no matter what storm situation is hitting you, no matter what is going on, no matter what loss of control you're feeling, There are things here in this verse that we're about to read that I believe point to us.

To things that we need to recognize to help us in these storms.

Don't fall prey.

To that old battered screwdriver here that the devil uses called discouragement.

Don't fall prey to it.

Let's read the rest of these scriptures here.

Let's start in verse 20.

21, excuse me.

Since they had been without food for a long time, Paul stood up among them and said, man, you should have listened to me and not have set sail and incurred this injury and loss.

Yet now I urge you to take heart, for there will be no loss of life among you, but only of the ship.

For this very night, there stood before me an angel of God, to whom I belong and whom I worship.

And he said, do not be afraid, Paul.

You must stand before Caesar and behold, God has granted you all those who sail with you.

So take heart, men, for I have faith in God that it will be exactly as I have been told.

But we must run aground on some islands.

When the 14th night had come as we were driven across the Adriatic Sea about midnight, the sailors suspected that they were nearing land.

So they took a sounding and found 20 fathoms a little farther on, and they took a sounding again and they found 15 fathoms, and fearing that we might run on the rocks, they let down 4 anchors from the stern and prayed for day to come.

And as the sailors were seeking to escape from the ship and had lowered the ship's boat into the sea under pretense of laying out anchors from the bow, Paul said to the centurion and the soldiers, unless these men stay in the ship, you cannot be saved.

Then the soldiers cut away the ropes of the ship's boat and let it go.

Couple of things in this paragraph.

When we start to look at how these things came about, Paul stood up and gave them hope, where they said, it said in verse 20 it said, at last abandoned, Paul stood up and said, you should have listened to me.

But here's another opportunity.

Take heart It says in ESV, for there will be no loss of life among you.

He said, Don't be afraid, Paul.

God came to him.

There was a little bit of a warning though that he gave the sailors though.

He said, We must run aground.

But even then, after verse 23, they go off and they start to make soundings and they're getting shallower and shallower.

That's what that means when it says less and less fathoms.

They're taking soundings, they're taking measurements.

And even then the sailors were still afraid that they were going to run aground, even though they had been warned that they would run aground by Paul.

And they were going to escape.

And Paul, however, he knew this from God, said, We will not be saved unless those men stay here.

And then the sailors did some or the Centurion had something done here that I think is very interesting.

See that boat that they're talking about, the ship's boat is a small, essentially safety boat that used to get pulled behind large boats in this time period.

And you know what its purpose was?

To save them.

They cut the lifeline, the ship's boat away so that the soldiers or sailors, excuse me, would not.

Lose heart and try to escape, but stay in the ship together.

We're gonna make some Noise about that here in just a second.

But look down with me.

Verse 33.

And as day was about to dawn, Paul urged them all to take some food, saying, today is the 14th day that you've continued in suspense and without food and have taken nothing.

Therefore, I urge you to take some food, for it will give you strength for not a hair is to perish from the head of any of you.

And when he had said these things, he took bread and giving thanks to God in the presence of all, he broke it and began to eat, and they all were encouraged and ate some food themselves.

We were all in all, 276 persons in the ship, and when they had eaten enough, they lightened the ship, throwing out the wheat into the sea.

It's very interesting, the actions that are taken here.

He gets to the point where there's been 14 days without this, without the strength, without this, this food, taking nothing.

When is the last time you have tried to eat nothing for 14 days?

I think all of us would Be a Not very strong at the end of 14 days.

And remember, they've done nothing but work hard to try to save themselves like undergirding the ship.

And I think it's very interesting that when he takes bread, he gives thanks to God, and then they all are encouraged by this.

They are believing what he is saying, and he, they, at this point in time, take meat, is what the, the, the word actually says their meat, and they had enough strength to actually take their load of wheat and throw it overboard.

If you skip down here, let's go down to verse 44.

Let's not, let's go ahead and read this.

Verse 39.

When it was day, they did not recognize the land.

All that means is that they didn't recognize where they were, but they did see the land.

But they noticed a bay without with a beach on which they planned, if possible, to run the ship ashore.

So they cast off the anchors.

Remember the 4 of them that they had in the stern, and Left them in the sea and at the same time loosening the ropes that tied the rudders, then hoisting the foresail to the wind they made for the beach, but striking a reef, they ran the vessel aground.

The boat struck and remained immovable, and the stern was broken up by the surf.

In other words, the waves hit the back of the boat so much that it broke up the boat.

And the soldier's plan was to kill the prisoners lest any should swim away, but the centurion wishing to save Paul kept them from carrying out their plan, and he ordered those who could swim to jump overboard and make for the land, and the rest on planks or on pieces of the ship.

And so it was that all were brought safely to the land.

This is a pretty vivid story.

And it's not something that is just an allegory, even though we are using things in it.

This is something that really happened to Paul.

I find it very interesting here when it finally came into land, when they finally came into view, they didn't recognize where they were, but they did everything in their power to get there.

To the point where they said, cut the anchors.

They cut them and it drove ashore.

It drove to the ground, it broke apart, it got stuck on the rocks, and they still swam on anything that they could hold.

And the centurion cared enough to say, no, don't even kill the prisoners.

Get everyone alive to the shore.

But see, here's the thing.

God's promise came true.

In front of all the 2 persons in the ship, God's promise of saying, no one shall die at that point in time came true.

There's a whole lot of lessons in here in this allegory, but I'm gonna keep it real simple this evening.

I want to talk about 3 basic points, and I think we sang through them, Tim, every single 3, all the 3 of them.

The first one that I would like to point out that no matter what storm in life is here, just like in this story here that Paul has told and lived through, God is with us.

Jesus is with us You are not alone.

You are not. Alone.

Do you remember that tool of discouragement that we talked about a second ago?

That's the lie that Satan would sell us.

Here in the middle of this storm, see, men who had not listened to Paul, men who ignored what he had to say.

And went off and set sail anyway where he was a prisoner.

The discouragement is You are alone.

The sailors obviously believe that.

Because they wanted to kill the prisoners at the end, they also wanted to just take off on the boat sail.

Remember when they started to hear that those fathoms, they wanted to take off and leave.

They wanted to abandon everything.

In Matthew 18 and also chapter 28 in verse 20, the, the, the, the end, it says, and lo, I am with you always until the end, and he was giving the commands to the apostles there.

The great commission is what we call that and lo, I am with you always.

Go and teach.

I want to focus on low, I am with you always.

Matthew 18, Matthew chapter 28.

Those are both repetitive in the sense that Jesus has said, I am going to be with you.

And more than that, turn with me to Hebrews real quick.

Keep your finger there in Acts chapter 27, we will come back.

Hebrews chapter 123, let's go to chapter 4 verse 15.

I think this is something that we're all familiar with, for we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.

Let us then with confidence.

Draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

I want to repeat the first point.

No matter what storm you're going through, no matter how dark the sky, no matter what Medicane you're going through, Jesus is with us.

We are not alone.

God sent His Son.

Who lived a life and was tempted in the same way we are.

So that he would understand.

And with that we can draw near that when we need help in our times of need in this, we can draw near to him and understand what he is saying.

We can look at his doctrine, his life, and take encouragement.

And that's exactly what Paul did.

He went to God in prayer about what was going on in Acts chapter 27.

Go with me a couple chapters before this in Hebrews, Hebrews chapter 2, and look at this reinforcement here, verse 16.

It says, for surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham.

Therefore, he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God to make a propitiation for the sins of the people.

For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

When life gets stormy, and everything around you is falling apart, and you have probably even given into temptation, you are not alone.

We have this perfecter of the salvation, the propitiation who lived and was tempted in every way and understands.

And yet we fall.

For all have fallen short is what we read in Romans.

I had a friend of mine.

Alex was catching today.

I had a friend of mine that came to me.

About 10 years ago, he was a very good friend of mine in high school.

And he disappeared from my life for about 5 years.

And I Had dinner with him down in Austin.

And uh We caught up for about 4 or 5 hours, you know how things happen when you get in the company of others.

It turns out that he had become an alcoholic in those 23 years.

And he actually um He was so drunk one night that he ran his car.

Through a concrete barrier.

And he was in the hospital for 9 months, and I didn't know it.

And I asked him, I asked, why Bill, did you not call me?

And he said I was ashamed.

I felt like I was alone.

But I needed help And I didn't realize it We feel ashamed and we listen to the devil when we think we're alone.

We need to recognize that God is with us.

Christ understands what we're going through and we can come back.

And we can ask him and God for help.

Go with me to Colossians, the 4th chapter, where I drive home this point here with this verse.

This verse is not talking about being alone, but I want you to read it from Paul's viewpoint for just a second about who all he describes in Colossians chapter 4.

Tychikus will tell you all about my activities.

He is a beloved brother and faithful minister and fellow servant in the Lord.

Keep reading with me.

I have sent him to you for this very purpose, verse 8 chapter 4 of Colossians, that you may know how we are, and he may encourage you, encourage your hearts, and with him, Onesimus, our faithful and beloved brother who is one of you.

They will tell you of everything that has taken place here.

Aristarchus, my fellow prisoner, greets you, and Mark, the cousin of Barnabas, concerning whom you've received instruction.

If he comes to you, welcome him.

And Jesus, who is called justice.

These are the only men of the circumcision among my fellow workers for the kingdom of God, and they have been a comfort for me.

This congregation here.

Of men that he mentions that are encouragement and a comfort to him.

Do you think that he was alone?

Even from afar, he saw these people and he was telling the Classians, I had you too.

I'm sending these people to you, but they were all a comfort to me and they're going to be a comfort to you, and I want you to look out and look around and look left and look right and realize you have men and women.

You are not alone.

There are hard workers in the kingdom.

There are elders here that are guiding you spiritually.

You are not alone.

Sometimes more closely.

Then you realize, don't be ashamed.

Recognize what's going on, recognize the storm, and ask for help.

God is with us, Jesus is with us.

That's the first point.

We are not alone.

That's the first point.

The second point, That I want you to see, turn with me to Romans chapter 15.

And we'll see the allegory here.

That we see in the story Romans chapter 15 and verse 8, he's in the middle of describing in this practical side of Romans, the hope of the Jews and the Gentiles summing up here in Romans 15.

He says, for I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcise to show God's truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs.

Now, skip with me down to verse 33.

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing.

So that the power of His Holy Spirit, you may abound in hope.

The second point is very simple.

God, God Fills his promises.

You're not alone, and you have promises that will not fail.

You have promises of eternal salvation.

You have promises of eternal comforts, and you have promises of that hope.

That you can believe in because of a basic reason.

And the basic reason is Jesus Christ lived and died for you.

That's what it says in Romans chapter 15 verse 8, and then down in verse 13, he says, because Jesus came, he fulfills his promises.

He fulfilled the prophets that spoke of him.

He fulfilled those things, and you who are not alone in the storm, just like Paul wasn't.

You have a promise that God will save you, just like he saved those sailors.

And when Paul stood up and said, you should have listened to me, yes.

But here's an opportunity.

God has said, And spoken to me that you will be saved, not a hair on your head is what it says there.

Your soul will be saved.

We must cling to his promises.

22 Corinthians chapter 244 and verse 22, let me just read this for Nomady.

How many promises God has made, they are yes in Christ.

And so through him the Amen is spoken by us to the glory of God.

The context here is a little different, but if you take that verse, he essentially says the yes is in Christ.

The promises are there.

The amen, so let it be, is in the promises.

Do we understand that when we're facing the storm, we can look out and see God's promises are gonna come and happen no matter what happens to us.

The amen, which literally means so let it be.

It is about his promises.

I think it's very interesting.

When the fathoms of the ship in Acts chapter 227 got shorter and shorter, in other words, they were getting closer and closer to land.

They still couldn't see the land, they still couldn't see if you're ever out in the ocean, by the way, you can't see anything except for more and more ocean.

They threw the 212 anchors out the back.

Now, even in modern times we throw anchors out the front.

Sometimes in ancient times they threw it out the back.

Sometimes they threw it in the front, even in ancient times.

But in this particular case they threw it out the back.

And I think it's very interesting there because what that means is they think that they're aiming towards land.

And that's exactly what happened.

The question is, and maybe young men, you have another lesson in this allegory that you want to create.

In verse 22, it says that they threw out all four anchors.

I don't know what your anchors are.

I don't know what your stability is, but I know that one of them is promises.

The fact that God will fulfill his promises is an anchor for us.

We know that we will get to land.

We know that we will be saved because God will fulfill his promises.

He reassures us that time and time again.

Someone has counted that there's 33,23 promises in the Bible.

I don't know.

Uh, I have too many, I don't have that many fingers.

I can't get there.

But I do know that there's so many.

And the one promise that he has promised most of all is that his son will come again and save us.

I appreciate Brother Gary reading 227 Timothy.

If you would turn with me there for the 23rd point.

Not only are we not alone, Not only do we have the promises of God, To be reassured with.

That we know will happen, that we know we will be saved.

But I think that there's a lesson here in 2 Timothy chapter 1 that's also present in Acts chapter 27 in that allegory.

And I think it's there in that verse 12.

Now the context here as Gary eloquently put here.

He was talking about reminding them of what's going on in the in the gifts.

He was reminding Timothy there about the gifts.

Don't be ashamed of the testimony.

Don't be ashamed of the promises.

And then in verse there in 12, it says, for which I suffer as I do, there's that storm.

But I'm not ashamed, for I know whom I believed in, and I'm convinced that he is able to guard that.

Until that day, which that, excuse me, it's funny when you memorize a verse and it says it differently in the version you're rendering.

I apologize.

Let me go through it and I'll read it directly, which is why I suffer as I do, but I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that day that which has been entrusted to me.

We need courage when our faith is tested to recognize and stand up and say, I believe in God.

I will not take that discouragement.

I will not be taken down.

I know and have confidence that he is able to bring it.

He is able to guard.

He is able to bring back that day.

He is able to come.

In Job chapter 13 and verse 2, in the middle of his speech in the middle of that book, Job says, though he slay me, though he kills me, yet I will hope in him.

Our faith needs to be that strong.

Though I see this storm and it's battering, I need to let it finish, and I need to recognize that God will keep his promises, and I need to take courage.

There's that first song.

Be strong and courageous, we sang just a few minutes ago.

Though he kills me, I will remain faithful.

I will believe, I believe in him that his promises are true, and that I am not alone, and that confidence is one day.

One day we will be saved.

We don't need to jump ship like the sailors were going to.

We don't need to, to, to doubt.

We need to take the actions that are under our control, and I want, I want to say that for just a second.

This is not one of the main points that I wanted to, that I was going to bring out tonight, but I wanted to make sure that I said this in the hour.

You know, there are things here that that they acted within their control.

They did the most to correct what they could in their control.

And yet that storm still came.

We need to not, we need to just not give up.

We still need to do what's in our control.

Don't forget that part.

We need to still lighten our ship.

We need to still undergird the ship.

We need to still take the fathoms, right?

We need to not jump overboard.

We need to recognize that God calls us to act in certain ways.

Yes, that's what God's grace is about, like we just talked about.

We just read about God's grace.

Unmerited favor is there.

It's not our actions that will make that come true, but yet we need to be faithful.

That's what it's talking about.

That's what the actions taken that they had were about.

Would you be saved?

It is to say I have faith and to act in that faith.

Until he comes again.

That's what 1 John chapter 2 talks about.

That's what 2 Corinthians was really encouraging us about.

Don't jump ship.

Don't abandon each other.

Just because things are happening.

Just because you might have gotten some criticism, like we talked about today, just because something is happening that you have no control over, don't jump overboard.

Clean To God Believe in him and take courage.

Worthy Is Jesus' name.

Turn with me to Philippians chapter 2, and then the lesson will be yours.

In spite of difficult circumstances, just like in verse 44, we will be saved.

We can overcome with our faith intact.

And in Philippians chapter 2, I think there's some very encouraging words here that we see in Acts chapter 27, and I think we know these by heart.

Therefore, my beloved, in verse 12 and chapter 2, therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now not only in my presence, but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

Do all things without grumbling or disputing that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life, so that in the day of Christ, I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labor in vain.

Even I, to be poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrificial offering of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all.

Likewise, you should also be glad and rejoice with me.

What he's saying is, be blameless.

Literally, it says, be blameless and be innocent, operate as you have been called.

We must show the world our God is the strongest influence, that we will not listen to the world of discouragement, that no matter what storm comes, we will shine as the light.

So that others can see us and take strength from us.

Because we're not putting our strength there.

We're pointing to the strength that is in Jesus.

When Paul stood up and said, Take heart, brethren.

Take heart, sailors.

The Lord is going to save you.

That is pointing the worth and the worthiness to God and His strength.

So the 3 points to recap.

God is with us, Jesus is with us.

You're not alone.

That's the first point.

No matter what storm comes your way, no matter what.

God will keep his promises, and he reassures us in that.

That's the second point, and we must believe and take courage.

And I'd ask you, what light are you shining today with that courage.

Of those 3 points, There are things that we go through in this life.

That happen sometimes we do our best.

We take actions.

It still happens.

Sometimes the memory of those things come up and hit us like a hammer later on.

Those of you that are young Younger You'll be listening to some music or worshiping God and hearing something from the pulpit that you haven't heard in a while, and it will remind you of a time where you're going through those things, and all of a sudden something will hit you.

And you recognize because you have done something, because you have kept strength, that will reinforce that you took those actions and you maintain, all of a sudden you're out of the storm.

Sometimes you don't recognize it until it's over.

Take heart, you're not alone.

God has promises, he reassures us with.

He will fulfill them.

Take faith And walked faithfully.

There's many allegories here, many other lessons to be mined in Acts chapter 27 and compared, but those are the three main points I wanted to share with you tonight.

If you're here tonight and you're going through a storm and somehow that storm has knocked you down, You're a Christian, but yet you somehow stumbled and fallen.

We stand ready to pray with you.

God stands ready to strengthen you and forgive you based upon your faithful conviction.

And your confession To him, we stand ready to pray with you.

If you're here tonight and you've never named the name.

You have no hope.

I wouldn't want to get on a ship at this point.

It's amazing to me.

Paul was shipwrecked 3 times before this one, I believe, if you look at all the timelines.

And yet I guess he was forced on the ship because he was a prisoner, but I don't know that I would have had the strength to get on there.

But you're, you're here tonight and you've never named the name of Jesus.

You have no hope You have those promises.

You don't have those promises.

You cannot be saved.

There is only shipwreck and death for you.

But you have an opportunity tonight.

To recognize that you're not alone, that God has sent his Son, and he died for you.

You need to repent of your sinful life.

Believe that he is the savior of mankind.

Confess that Jesus is Lord.

He's Lord of you and your life.

He's Lord of, of all.

Be baptized, washing away your sins, and rise to walk a newness of life.

And tonight, if that is what you need to do.

We stand ready to help you do that.

If any of this applies to you, don't stand in that storm by yourself alone anymore.

Please, please come to the front of the building.

Make your wants and needs known as we stand and as we sing encouragement.

Series: N/A

Service: Sun AM

Type: Sermon

Speaker: Allen Dvorak

The following transcription is computer-generated and may not accurately reflect the contents of the audio. Please verify the content before quoting.

(Transcribed by Congregate. Always check document for possible errors and inaccuracies in automated transcriptions.)

Some of you are aware that I have a tendency occasionally to get a little emotional.

When I preach and uh.

If I do this morning, I'm blaming it on Alex.

But I'm gonna talk to you about fault finding this morning, so I may not cry too much.

One of the most important traits or abilities that we can develop as we mature in life is the ability to accept correction.

Not a pleasant thing.

And some people will have a good excuse for every flaw or mistake that they make, and others just become angry at any hint of rebuke or correction.

But correction is a form of instruction and that's, I think the way we need to look at it, that it is a thing that is helpful to us.

Proverbs has a great deal to say about correction and our attitude toward correction.

In Proverbs 6:23, for the commandment is a lamp in the teaching of light and the reproofs of discipline are the way of life.

I don't really think the proverb is saying that it's what happens to you all the time.

It's a way of life, but that it produces life, that that's the way that we can enjoy life.

In chapter 15, whoever ignores instruction despises himself, but he who listens to reprove gains intelligence.

So as we're young, we need to learn to accept correction in a gracious way and make use of it so that it can provide us with guidance and help us make good choices as we live our lives.

However, on the other side of the ledger, it is possible, of course, for those who offer correction to become hypercritical of others.

There are some people who are disposed to find fault with nearly everyone and everything, especially uh other people.

We call them fault finders or nitpickers, and we'll talk a little bit more about that in just a few moments.

They were born in the objective uh case and in the kickative mood.

And they kind of characterized, it seems, the people of Israel as they came out of Egypt.

You may recall that they grumbled about everything.

They grumbled about a lack of water, the shortage of food, and the quality of the food, and the presence of enemies.

And Paul says in 1 Corinthians 43:10 that we ought not to grumble like they grumbled, like they complained.

One writer, I think said it well.

He said fault finders are people who are, who obsessively find fault in others and criticize them.

They often complain and harshly judge others based on trivial issues.

Fault finders are constantly telling others what they are doing wrong or what they should be doing.

Well, we want to acknowledge the need for correction, for rebuke from time to time.

That's a way of learning as we've already suggested.

But I want to talk to you this morning about the danger of fault finding and we've defined fault finding in this particular context as being those who are uh finding fault in trivial things.

The two monkeys on the screen.

are not intended to represent anybody in the congregation.

Let me be clear about that.

What they're doing is they're picking knits.

A knit is a word for lice.

And monkeys will pick lice off of each other, and you'll see them sometimes if you've gone to the zoo or see them in their natural habitat, you'll see them searching each other's hair for the just the smallest little piece or lice.

And so, They're called nits, those lies.

And when we talk about someone who's constantly focusing on little faults or flaws and others, we call them nitpickers, or I'll call them this morning fault finders.

And so this morning what I'd like to do.

So I wanna talk a little bit about the problem of fault finding and uh say a little bit about why maybe that seems to be a problem for some folks, but I also want to suggest to us that we need to temper our criticism sometimes and not be fault finders.

Has anybody ever said to you, you know that Church of Christ, those people, they're just too judgmental.

They're all critics of everybody else, uh, in the religious world.

Well, the fact of the matter is everybody's a critic.

The word critic, our English word critic, actually comes, is derived from a Greek adjective rios, which means able to discuss.

That word is derived or is in the same word family as a verb crino, which means to judge.

Vine defines that verb as primarily denoting to separate, to select, to choose.

So if you choose between two alternatives, you just judged in that particular sense of the word.

Word, hence to determine and so to judge to pronounce judgment.

Sometimes when we talk about judge, we think of condemn and that is a meaning, a possible meaning of the word, but the word can simply mean to distinguish between things.

And in that sense, we are all critics.

If we were to talk about the English word critic, there are several definitions or several senses in which we use the word.

Of course, Webster gives at least 3 that I'm gonna suggest to you this morning.

One is that a critic is one who expresses a reasoned opinion on any matter involving a judgment of its value, truth, or just righteousness or an appreciation of its beauty.

Or technique.

And the second definition is similar.

A critic is one skilled in judging the merits of literary or artistic works.

So someone might be a film critic, and so he's going to look at uh a film and he's going to decide, is it good in this sense or bad in that sense or any of those kinds of things.

But the word critic can be used in a negative way also, one given to harsh or captious judgment, a caviler or carver.

I love definitions where at least half of the words I have to then look up to find out what that word meant so I can find out what the initial word meant.

We don't use the word caps or cavaler or carper very much.

How many of you young people know what a carer is?

No, it's a guy who fishes for car.

No, that's not what it is.

But a captious judgment is a judgment that is focused on pickiness, small trivial details.

A cavalry is one who is engaged in that kind of judgment or fault finding and to carp about something is to complain about something or to nitpick about something.

So they're similar synonyms, those two last words.

Well, the fact of the matter is we have to judge.

We have to be critics in the sense of distinguishing between things.

The Bible requires that of Christians.

If we're going to distinguish between true prophets and false prophets or true teachers and false teachers, we're going to be judging them as Jesus said, beware of false prophets.

They're gonna come to you in sheep's clothing.

But he says, you will recognize them by their fruits.

So you have to look at the teaching, their fruits, and distinguish between those who are true teachers who teach the truth, and those who are false teachers.

We're required to pass judgment on the goodness or evil of many things.

In kind of a general statement, Paul says to the Thessalonians, test everything.

Hold fast what is good.

To the Romans, he would write in Romans 12:222, that we should abhor evil, hold fast to what is good.

You're gonna have to decide, aren't you?

What's good and what's evil in order to follow those kinds of instructions.

That's judging, that's being a critic, but in a good sense, in a required way, we have to make distinctions between good and evil, between what's true and what's false.

We are required to do that.

Even to, uh, in the matter of discipline, there is the requirement of measuring individuals against God's standard.

The apostle Paul wrote to the Thessalonians about a problem they were having there where some people were just being lazy.

Apparently, they'd misunderstood Paul's teaching and they were of the opinion that perhaps the Lord was coming back very soon.

If the Lord's gonna come back on Tuesday, why go to work on Monday?

And some Thessalonians apparently had decided that that's what they would do, and Paul corrects that error, and he says, we command you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from any brother who's walking in idleness and not in accord with the tradition that you received from us.

New King James version and says, walking disorderly, which would include not just those who are walking in idleness, but anyone who's not walking according to or in uh Uh, agreement with the standard of Christ's teaching.

In Galatians 215:227, similar uh point to be made.

Paul says, if anyone's caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness.

How are you gonna know if he's caught unless you are distinguishing between good conduct and bad conduct.

What is good, righteous conduct and what's sinful conduct?

And so just to fulfill our responsibilities as Christians, we're going to have to judge.

We're gonna have to be critics.

And sometimes we're gonna have to correct others.

We're gonna have to rebuke others.

Paul would write to Timothy.

And 27 Timothy 23:21, that Timothy is to preach the word, be ready in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke and exhort with complete patience and teaching.

Someone might say, well, that was for Timothy's uh benefit.

Well, that's true, although there's a lot of things that are written in the pastoral uh epistles, 203 and 220 Timothy and Titus, that are applicable to us as well, whether we're preachers or not.

To rebuke Bag says is to censure, to speak seriously, to warn.

And all of us are going to have to do that at some time when we see that there's a brother or sister uh who needs uh a warning.

It requires the assessment of another's conduct.

And I began by saying this morning that criticism or correction has great value.

It's instruction But I think Norman Vincent Peale said it well when he said the trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined with praise than saved by criticism.

Well praise is much easier to endure than criticism is.

But criticism may be the very thing that is the best for us at a particular time.

Criticism One source said may not be agreeable, but it's necessary.

It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body.

It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.

So here I am.

There's some sort of sin in my life.

And when somebody corrects me, criticizes that criticizes me in that sense.

That's the same function that pain does when it warns me that I'm engaging in an activity or I have some sort of physical problem.

To cite Alex It took quite a bit for Alex apparently to get the message, I guess, but that pain was telling him there's something that needs to be done.

And criticism is like that and it helps us.

To do those things, to make those changes that are necessary for our spiritual health.

But I'll tell you, it's often difficult to be objective about ourselves.

We may be able to benefit from others calling attention to certain matters.

Even if we don't like the criticism, the proverb writer in chapter 21 verse 1 says, faithful are the wounds of a friend, profuse are the kisses of an enemy.

The friend is the one who will correct you, who will rebuke you when you need it, and that's a helpful thing.

Your enemy will kiss you, your enemy will uh flatter you.

He'll do things that aren't all that helpful to you, but faithful are the wounds of a friend.

Wounds, correction is not pleasant.

But if it's for your benefit, for my benefit.

Then it's exactly what we need.

How we react to criticism or the rebukes of others probably says as much about us as it does the person who's offering the correction, maybe more about us.

The Proverbs writer also talks about that, do not reprove a scoffer or he will hate you, reprove a wise man, and he will love you.

How do you respond to correction?

How do you respond, respond to criticism when someone points out something that's legitimate, a legitimate flaw or fault or sin in our lives.

The scoffer hates that.

But the wise man loves the fact that you cared enough.

To criticize or to rebuke.

And he makes the change.

In the 13th chapter of the same book, verse 18, poverty and disgrace come to him who ignores instruction, but whoever heeds, reproof is honored.

My dad can tell you uh he's here this morning and he can tell you that as a, as a young person, I didn't much like criticism.

I didn't take correction very well.

And it would make me angry.

My mom used to call me a bullhead.

I don't know if that, does that phrase mean anything to anybody?

A bullhead?

I'm not sure how she meant it.

I think what she meant was there's, uh, sometimes you'll have a, a, a bull and, and he's decided he's gonna go a certain direction and he's not gonna be changed.

He's got that big strong neck and you can't push him one side or the other.

Mom said that was kind of the way you were, and I would get angry at correction.

But this morning we're also talking about excessive criticism.

Because as much as I might need to criticize or correct or rebuke.

Another person legitimately for sin, it is also quite possible that there is the tendency for me to search for some flaw in others.

So I become Focused on trivial things, things of no consequence.

It's not just that a fault is noticed, it is sought out and it's highlighted as though there was some reward for finding it.

Have you ever known someone?

Who every time you engage them in conversation, Doesn't make any difference what the subject is or who it might be that's mentioned in the conversation.

There's always a negative comment.

You could just, you could just bring up a list of people and this person will tell you what's wrong with that person, what's wrong with that person, what's wrong with that person.

Because the focus is always on the negative, and it could be trivial stuff, but they'll always be something negative.

As often as not, that harsh judgment is based on personal standards or opinions.

The fault finder frequently engages in petty or unreasonable criticism of others.

And what that suggests to me is that before I offer my criticism to another, I need to try to decide whether it's really necessary or not, or whether I'm just expressing my own personal opinion about what you should do or how you should be.

Which is not really my right to con to try to make you be the way I want you to be.

And I will tell you that frequently that kind of harsh judgment involves people in hypocrisy.

That's the point, I think, at least in part of Matthew the 7th chapter, the scripture reading for this morning.

Judge not that you be not judged, for with the judgment you pronounce, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

And Jesus kind of engages in some somewhat of a humorous illustration.

Here's a man with a, a plank or a beam in his eye, and he's trying to pick out the splinter, the speck in the eye of another.

We see that, we think about that illustration, we think how ridiculous that is.

It would be hypocritical for me to be looking for the speck in your eye, when I have this huge problem in my own life.

I want to hasten to point out that Jesus says in verse 5, you hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye.

Jesus is not saying you can't criticize, you can't correct.

There's no circumstance under which you should uh try to offer a rebuke to somebody else or try to correct somebody else.

But what he is talking about is the fact that so often.

There's a bigger flaw in my own life that I'm not addressing when I'm coming and trying to take the speck out of your eye.

Let me give you a biblical illustration of the very thing that Jesus is talking about.

It's found in John the 12th chapter.

It's the occasion where Jesus is anointed.

The disciples are there together and a woman comes in and anoints Jesus.

And so let's read together uh the discussion.

I'm going to start in verse 3, even though verses 13 and 2 are up there.

Mary, therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made of pure nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair.

The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples, he who was about to betray him said, why was this ointment not sold for 300 denarii and given to the poor?

Wow, how nice of Judas.

He's concerned about the poor and he thought that, or at least said that this ointment, the value of it could have been better spent or used, utilized for the caring of the poor.

But John tells us he said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief and having charge of the money bag, he used, used to help himself to what was put into it.

So here's the beam, he's a thief.

And he's criticizing Mary for what he describes essentially as poor judgment on her part.

You wasted this ointment that could have been sold and used for benevolence when in fact he's a hypocrite because he doesn't care about the poor, he just wants to take money from the disciples treasury.

Why is it that people get involved in fault finding?

I hope at least at this point, I've described these things to the extent that we would say, no, I don't want to be like that.

So why is it that sometimes people do engage in fault finding?

I think sometimes it's to use a technical term, it's an inferiority complex.

By tearing other people down.

If I am a person of low esteem, it may make me feel better about myself.

It's the same motivation for gossip, and gossip frequently is fault finding or involves fault finding.

And so if I can tear you down, then in some way, especially if I think I don't have the same flaw, then I feel superior to you and there's some people that's the only way they can feel good about themselves, it seems, is if they're tearing somebody else down.

They're finding whatever kind of flaws they can.

The next cause I think is kind of similar and it has to do with diversion.

If I'm showing your faults, then I'm Not drawing attention to my own faults or perhaps directing, diverting attention from my own flaws or my own conduct.

Sometimes it's ending.

Somebody else is doing very well and so I want to bring them down a notch or two.

I'm envious of their success or their position.

It's interesting to me how often you see envy among the Pharisees as they interacted with Jesus.

I'm gonna give you 3 illustrations here.

In Matthew 22 and verse 15, the Pharisees went and plotted how to entangle Jesus in his words.

You know, they came to him and they would ask him questions.

They would try to test him, to try to trick him into saying something that would make him look bad.

So they were looking for a flaw in Jesus.

After the resurrection of Lazarus, many people believed in Jesus, and they began following Jesus, and that irritated Caiaphas, the high priest, and the others who were leaders of the Jews.

And they say, if we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.

And so they're going to pick and find fault and even plot to kill Jesus because of envy.

A common cause.

A fault finding In Matthew chapter 27, in the context of Jesus appearing before Pontius Pilate, the governor.

The text says, Matthew writes, for he that is Pilate knew that it was out of envy that they had delivered him up.

Were there other emotions or other things going on?

I think so, but some of it was just envy.

And so they charged Jesus with all kinds of things that were not true.

And then finally, I think sometimes it's just arrogance.

I find fault in others because I believe that I'm qualified to run every aspect of everyone else's life.

And sometimes that leads to fault findings.

So I'm gonna go over and talk to Douglas, and Douglas, you ought to do this and this and this and this.

And so I'll go over and tell Douglas all the things that he needs to change in his life and often fault finders, they, they're the people who are looking for things that are trivial, things that are petty, things that don't make any difference, things that are essentially my opinion.

I'm not talking about sin here, but I'm finding fault with these people. Arrogance.

I believe my way of doing it is always the best way.

You know, I think sometimes it takes a good bit of effort to separate our own opinions from what God's word says.

I've heard people come and talk to me and say, you know, I don't think so and so should do such and such or I don't think this should be done and, and I just ask, well, why not?

What is it about that that bothers you?

Why does it bother you?

Well, and they can't point to scripture because what they're doing is they've got a personal opinion and they're applying it to this other individual.

They're finding fault because that individual is not living the way they want to live or think everybody should live.

But no one has given me or you the right to convict others of sin on the basis of my opinions.

Sin is not the violation of my judgment or my opinions.

It is the violation of God's law.

There are some consequences to fault finding, unpleasant things.

The fruit of fault finding involves the increasing of the harshness of our own judgment.

Hopefully, you didn't miss that in Matthew the 7th chapter.

Where Jesus says, judge not that you be not judged, people often quote verse one.

Because they want to say, don't, don't be telling me that I'm doing something wrong.

That's not at all what Jesus is saying there.

But he does talk about harsh judgment, and he says whatever judgment that we use against others, that's how we're going to be judged.

So we need to be cautious about being Carpers Those who involve ourselves in captious judgments.

finding alienates our friends and brethren.

You like to spend time with people who are constantly picking, constantly finding little things that they don't like about you, things that are petty, things that are really of no material value.

And so what happens is fault finding makes us an undesirable companion.

And people will draw away from us.

We fail to see the good in others.

If my mentality is that I'm constantly looking at the negative in your life.

I can't see the good.

And there's so much good in the lives of Christians.

We cheat ourselves.

When the only thing we can see is some sort of weakness or failure, and we have failures too.

But I think the idea of emphasizing the positive about others.

Is to our benefit.

But fault finding means we can't see that because we're focused on something different, or something negative.

And frankly, for those who are going through life with this negativity, this negative attitude about everything and everybody, they basically robbed themselves of their own unhappiness.

Have you ever known someone who was a fault finder and they just seemed unhappy all the time?

Well, of course, everything in life, everything in the world is negative.

There's no good They focus only on those things.

They're negative.

Well, whatever, it's Original motivation.

The fact of the matter is, we can slowly develop the habit.

of seeking out faults in the lives of others.

It becomes a habit, and habits are formed over time and usually gradually.

We get into The routine of noting some sort of problem with somebody instead of Looking for something good.

The formation of habits can sometimes be pretty subtle.

Uh, the way that we think, the patterns that we follow as we think can sometimes be so subtle that we're not even consciously aware of what we're doing.

And what I'm trying to do this morning, hopefully with some success, is to make us think about the way that we approach people and things.

Whether we're fault finders or whether we're encouragers like Barnabas and others.

How is it that we can overcome the problem of fault finding?

Excessive criticism.

Well, I'm gonna be very brief here.

I'm just gonna offer 3 quick suggestions.

And the first is that we need to develop our proper love for others.

I would suggest to you that fault finding.

Manifests a lack of love for others, a proper love.

I like what John said in 1 John 4:20.

He said, if anyone says I love God and hates his brother, he's a liar.

For he does not love his brother, for he who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.

So think about that.

How is it that I feel about you?

How is it that I act toward you?

If I'm saying I love God and yet I fail to love you, John says, how can you love God whom you haven't seen?

You don't even love, you hate the one that you do see.

So we need to develop a proper love for others.

Of course 1 Corinthians 13 talks about the behavior of love, its character.

It's patient, kind, doesn't envy or boasts, not arrogant.

Remember we talked about a couple of reasons that sometimes people are fault finders.

It does not rejoice at wrongdoing.

Rejoices with the truth.

Listen to this last verse.

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

That says a great deal about how we ought to treat one another, the approach that we use as we interact with one another.

Do we look for the best?

Do we look for the good in others, or do we focus always on the negative?

I don't think that's love, and so we need to develop a proper love for others.

If you've got a bad habit, The way to break it often is to replace it with a good habit, and good habits are formed just like bad habits are gradually and over time.

We do the same thing over and over again.

If the bad habit is that I'm constantly looking for something negative in other people, then maybe the good habit is I start looking constantly.

For the good in others.

I've known a few people where that would be a difficult task.

You'd have to work at it.

Because there was just a whole lot of undesirable traits.

But you know what, I think you can just about find some good in everybody.

And so replace the bad habit of excessive or harsh criticism.

By replacing it with an acceptable habit.

Of looking for the good and encouraging the good in others.

And then finally practice the golden rule.

That seems so simplistic, so obvious.

And yet, how often do we perhaps forget as we're talking about others or we're treating others, we forget that we would not want to be treated that way ourselves.

And so, when I say something to you or about you.

Would I want to be treated that way myself?

That's the golden rule.

Whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the law and the prophets.

It's so comprehensive that Jesus says that's a summary.

Of how to obey the law and the prophets.

I don't want to give the impression that all criticism is bad, or that there's never an occasion where there needs to be rebuke.

And sometimes it needs to be a sharp rebuke.

Paul told Titus that there were some who needed to be rebuked sharply.

But I'm talking about excessive criticism.

I'm talking about criticism on the basis of my personal opinions or judgments.

I'm talking about pettiness.

And we want to try to avoid that.

Sometimes we can't ignore faults in others, but we don't need to concentrate on weaknesses to the extent that we miss the good in people and that we fail to encourage what's positive in other people's lives.

It's interesting thing about bees.

Bees are always going to those fragrant flowers.

And they produce honey.

The buzzard on the other hand, the vulture.

is looking for something dead.

And that's what he finds.

What is it that we're looking for?

When we See our brethren.

Are we seeing the sweetness?

The fragrance, the good.

Or are we focused?

On those things that are negative.

I didn't intend this morning to minimize the need to make corrections in our lives.

I certainly don't want to give that impression or even uh to minimize the need sometimes to correct brethren.

Sometimes we're gonna have to do that as we noted earlier on.

The mirror of God's word, uh, James says, can help us see ourselves as we are, but sometimes others can see us even more clearly than we can see ourselves.

So the correction of brethren, the correction of others is very valuable.

You know, God knows all our faults.

He knows all of our sins.

If God wanted to be a fault finder, he would have no problem with me.

Or perhaps you as well.

But what God decided to do was to save us from the consequences of our sins, of our faults.

And so in his love, he sent his son, not because he's ignoring problems, not because he's ignoring our faults or our sins.

But instead because he wants to save us from the consequences of those sins.

How about you?

Are you taking advantage of the love of God?

Who looks down upon us and says, I want to save this individual, and he's made all these preparations, the death of Jesus, the preaching the gospel.

The guidance and the protection of Christians.

So that you and I can be saved.

If you need to avail yourself of that grace of God, that love of God this morning, we want to encourage you to obey the gospel.

God in His love, wants to save you.

But you have to decide whether you will respond to his invitation.

And so we invite you to do that now as we stand together and sing to.

Series: N/A

Service: Sun PM

Type: Sermon

Speaker: Neal Grantham

The following transcription is computer-generated and may not accurately reflect the contents of the audio. Please verify the content before quoting.

(Transcribed by Congregate. Always check document for possible errors and inaccuracies in automated transcriptions.)

Psalm 177 verses 1 to 773.

Psalms 77 1 to 10.

I cried out to God with my voice, to God with my voice.

And he gave ear to me in the day of my trouble.

I sought the Lord.

My hand was stretched out in the night without ceasing my soul refused to be comforted.

I remembered God and was troubled.

I complained and my spirit was overwhelmed.

You hold my eyelids open.

I am so troubled that I cannot speak.

I have considered the days of old, the years of ancient times.

I call to remembrance my song in the night.

I meditate within my heart and my spirit makes diligent search.

Will the Lord cast off forever and will he be favorable no more?

Has his mercy ceased forever?

Has his promise failed forevermore?

Has God forgotten to be gracious?

Has he in his anger, shut up his tender mercies?

And I said this is my anguish.

But I will remember the years of the right hand of the most high.

I'm thankful for the opportunity to speak tonight.

Uh It's, it's been about a full year since I last preached.

And uh it took me some time to realize that I didn't want to preach full time.

But, uh, I, I do enjoy, uh, coming in and sharing the word with people.

And I, I kind of really like to focus more on evangelism.

I found that the, the full time work of a preacher, uh didn't fit for me.

And, uh, I messaged Allen a few days ago because he was asking me what the title of my sermon was.

And I told him the title of my sermon was for, we cannot stop speaking because when I usually the first time I preach at a new congregation, I really wanna share that message and he text me back a few minutes later and said my lesson last weekend was for we cannot but speak.

And so I don't know how he went ahead in time and uh chose uh to steal my lesson.

But I think he, it's possible I did talk to him about it later over the phone and I said, I, I guess what we can do is I can present the same lesson and we'll let the congregation decide which one's best.

Um That's not what I'm doing.

OK. So, uh for the sake of Alan's job and that's, that's totally the whole reason.

Um So I, I have a gospel meeting series that is focused on understanding more about how God feels toward us.

And that's, that's quite the task for somebody that's my age.

I'm just 36 years old.

And I think really, the Christian spends all of their life trying to determine how God feels about them and what God thinks about them.

And I know the answer is found in God's word.

But I can assure you when I was baptized at 15, I didn't rise up out of the water and just know exactly how God feels about me.

I knew about Jesus, I knew what he had done for me, but here I am 21 years later, still trying to determine exactly how he feels about me and the things that I do.

And so this is one of the lessons in that series.

And so I'm gonna have to, I'll, I'll have to tell you just a a brief moment about what lesson one is about because this isn't the first lesson.

That's the reason that I had John Reid from Psalm 77 is because it seems like a af is really struggling with the idea of can I actually be forgiven?

And I think that all starts in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve.

I don't know when they were hiding among the trees, exactly what was going on in their mind.

But I know that there are human beings just like me created in the same way that, that I've been created.

So I would think they have similar thoughts to me before they man.

I wish I knew what that was like I wish I knew what it was like to have that relationship with God in the garden, not tainted by sin, having never sinned, having a perfect relationship with God.

And afterwards I feel like they probably spent the rest.

I think Adam lived 900 years or so.

I, I mean, it's close enough, you know, um, that I think he probably spent the rest of his life trying to determine just what God thinks about and how he feels.

And I wonder what kind of questions they asked themselves as they were hiding amongst the trees in the garden.

They were obviously afraid.

Adam says that we were afraid so we hid ourselves and I almost get the picture of, of a child messing up and having a parent that is abusive.

And as soon as the kid messes up, they are just terrified that they are going to be disciplined beyond belief and they are hiding and running.

And maybe those are kind of some of the same feelings that Adam and Eve were feeling as they're hiding among the trees.

Now, you and I at least know because I guess however long we've walked with the Lord that God's not just waiting for us to mess up so he can come chase us down with a belt.

He does teach good and proper discipline, but it's not the kind of thing that was going on in Adam and Eve's mind.

That's my estimation.

I think that they were terrified of what was going to happen as if they could only mess up this one time and their relationship with God would be over forever.

Well, the reason that this lesson is so important to me is, and I've talked to my wife, my wife knows this more about me than anybody else.

Um because of some things in my life and I'm not gonna give you the details other than to just say I fell away from, from the Lord for a time.

And when I came back to the Lord, I came back to the Lord because I was scared.

Now I don't like that about myself.

It makes me feel bad because I think I, I know other people in my life that it's like man, I think they've just been following the Lord their whole life and other people that just like, yeah, I'm, I'm sure you messed up but you didn't mess up like I messed up.

And after that for many years of my life and the feelings are still there.

The the feelings that I remember feeling, I'm not sure if I can go to heaven and that did not go away after a few weeks or a few months.

So I told you I was baptized when I was 15 and then I fell away probably at the age of 393.

And then I got really bad when, by the time I was 19 years old, 19 years old.

Is when I came back to the Lord and for a very long time and still I still get some counseling for it.

When it comes back up.

I will wonder, can I possibly go to heaven?

Because the alternative is terrifying as it should be.

But I want you to be thinking about Adam and Eve hiding in the trees in the garden.

As as we go through this lesson, I brought that psalm up.

I don't know if as a p was feeling the exact same thing, but it seems like he is passionately questioning the idea.

Can I be redeemed?

I really need to know this and me, the personal feelings that I had, I need to know that more than anything else, more than you know, I got married a little later probably than your average person, early thirties.

And I was wondering for a long time.

Am I going to find a wife?

And that meant a lot to me?

I thought about it a lot.

It didn't matter at all in comparison to me constantly thinking, am I going to get to go to heaven and what happens if I don't go to heaven?

And so that scared me and it grieved me and, and so on.

And so maybe here are some of the questions maybe Adam and Eve were thinking and if not, there are questions that I've thought is one is it's, it's all over and I'll never be redeemed.

Ok. And here in a minute we'll talk about some Bible characters that I think have the same feelings.

Maybe it's all over right now.

Maybe we can't walk with God in the garden anymore.

Well, that sound, that sounds pretty terrible.

If it can be fixed at all.

How long is it going to take to fix this relationship?

And even then when the relationship is fixed, is it actually really gonna be the same?

And you get that feeling right?

I think about my Children are completely innocent now.

They do some things that frustrate me, but it's not sin.

And I wonder when they're, if Lord willing they get old enough where they reach a point where they really, they commit sin and then, or they do something to me that upsets me and, and maybe Kaya has her first thought of like, well, can I ever make this right with dad?

We have those same kind of feelings toward God.

Will it ever really be the same?

So we've already read about a AAA F is he has that question?

I think Adam and Eve have that question.

And then I think about Jonah, if you want to turn over um to the story of Jonah with me real quick.

So I'm not gonna spend so much time on Jonah's story, but Jonah, obviously, you know, he's, I, I don't think of when I think of Bible characters that did just the worst things ever.

I don't pick Jonah out.

Maybe I should.

But, but Jonah did a pretty terrible thing. Right.

God is saying here's some people that I want to save and Jonah, he doesn't want to do that.

Now, by the end of the story, I think we realized Jonah didn't like those people and he wanted God to punish those people for what they had done.

God still wants to redeem them and Jonah runs away and I, I really, honestly, I don't think it was till a preacher in the past few years of my life pointed it out like I think of Jonah and that fish and I think about he, I do in my mind, I've always thought, well, like there was a lot of room in there and, um, I mean, it was probably scary but it wasn't, it couldn't been that scary until I heard a sermon and a preacher telling, tell me, I mean, he wasn't there either, right?

The preacher that was preaching about it, but he's talking about, you don't know if water was rushing in and out of the belly of that fish, how dark and scary it was.

And, you know, I'll spare you some of the details, but it's a terrifying situation and, and I think Jonah is dealing with some of the same kind of questions that A ap has in psalm 77.

Uh Let's, we'll start in chapter two of Jonah uh and begin reading in verse two where he says, I called out of my distress to the Lord and he answered me, I cried for help from the depth of Shiel.

So when he says that it sounds like he's saying, I was about as close to death as you could be.

I imagine that for three days, you know, I can't know exactly what Jonah thought other than what he said.

But I, I think in a similar way, what was the last thing that happened to Jonah before he goes in the belly of this fish?

He had sinned against God.

Last thing he had done, he gets tossed in the water, stormy waters.

I'm gonna drown out here.

Oh, no, it's worse.

I'm gonna die inside this fish and it's really dark and I can't see a way out.

What if it's all over?

And what if I die in the belly of this fish?

And I don't ever get to see God because of what I've done.

He says for you cast me into the, deep into the heart of the seas and the current engulfed me.

All your breakers and billows passed over me.

So I said I have been expelled from your site.

There, it is right there.

Just like Adam and Eve, right?

You're the, you, there's something has happened where I'm now separated from God.

I've lost the kind of relationship that I had with him before.

Now, Jonah does have some hope here.

It's the only thing that's keeping him going because even though he sees how terrible this is and he's battling, am I actually gonna get saved from this situation?

He does still say nevertheless, I will look again towards your holy temple.

He knows if there is any salvation that it is only with God just holding on to.

The only thing he's got left in this dark spot.

Water encompassed me to the point of death.

The great deep engulfed me, weeds were wrapped around my head.

I mean that, that lit, that may have been literal.

You know, I don't know if he had seaweed and stuff wrapped around him in the belly of this fish.

And at times he was nearly suffocating in there.

I descended to the roots of the mountains and the earth with its bars was around me forever.

And that's where I'm gonna stop. Ok?

Because I know and you guys that have read Jonah, you know, there's still some hope in this story.

But the point of the lesson that is to first focus on that feeling of a lack of hope. Ok?

I want you to think about.

Not only now, Adam and Eve hiding in the trees.

Oh no, we did.

The one thing God told us not to do.

What's he gonna do to us is he gonna destroy us?

Are we just never going to see him again?

And how much suffering is this gonna cause?

So it's j I think about Paul and Peter, if we want to bring up some New Testament characters right now, I know we get a lot of hope from Paul's stories in the New Testament.

Paul is the one that said, you know, I'm, I'm the chief of Sinners.

So I think he's trying to bring some hope to the people that, you know, you feel like you've done the worst thing.

And Paul is saying, well, I did worse than that and Paul is imprisoned, Paul is spending, I mean, basically the rest of his life.

And this is one of these where I'm, I'm kind of speculating, but I would just think as a, as a human that did the things that Paul did that even though he had all the hope that he had in Christ, if not daily.

And it probably was daily that he thought about the wicked things that he did before he became a Christian.

You, I still battle with the idea of am I gonna be saved?

Peter is another one.

I'm, I'm, I'm saving the, my w in my opinion, my worst guy for last.

Ok. So I know Paul says he's the chief of sinners.

I get it.

That's not who I always pick out.

And I got Peter.

Peter is the kind of person that he, what I read in the story of Peter is it seems like he wanted to do good things for God, but he wanted to be able to do them on his own.

He wanted to be able to do it from his own courage and strength.

And oftentimes that that's what cost him.

You know, when Jesus comes out of the garden for a moment and speaks to him, hey, you guys are sleeping right now, you need to be praying.

You know, I know that they're tired, but also, it seemed like a lot of times Peter wanted to just be able to pull the strength out of his own heart and do things for Jesus and because he didn't prepare himself the way Jesus commanded him to prepare himself, then Peter ends up denying Christ, then denying him II, I always get mixed up.

I think he's denying him with curses and maybe foul language as well.

Like he's cursing the idea and he's using.

But whatever he did, he does it three times to God and then goes away weeping bitterly.

And I wonder for the next several days after jesus' crucifixion and waiting for, waiting for Christ to return if he's going to, you know, all the doubts that Peter may have in his head, Peter is I, well, I messed up.

It's, it's over.

We, we got, we got to the end of the story.

This is the event he's been preparing us for and that was it.

Peter had been walking with Christ his whole time and there was only one they struggle with their faith the whole time, right?

Like we all struggle with our faith.

But there was one point that Peter had to get right.

There was one thing that above everything else, Peter needed to get. Right.

And that was when Christ was going to be crucified, Peter needed to stand up.

He said he would, he said he wouldn't deny Christ and then he still did it.

And, you know, I wonder what kind of regret Peter is feeling over those next several days.

And how much I, I don't know if he's questioning, can I still be saved?

But I mean, I would, I didn't just run away.

I told everybody around me, I don't even know him.

He's my best friend.

I don't know that guy.

Sorry, I don't know.

And so each of these people Asaf is struggling with the idea of redemption.

I need to be redeemed from something I've sinned and I've separated myself from God.

Adam and Eve are struggling with that.

Jonah is struggling that while he's in the belly of the fish.

I think Paul was struggling with that on and all throughout his life.

I know God was there to remind him that he is a righteous man and that he saved and that he's walking with Christ.

But I think the battle would have still been there.

And of course, Peter.

Now here's the thing that is hopeful to me about all of their stories and then I'll tell you about this last guy.

Well, no, I'll save it.

I'm gonna, I'm gonna bring this last guy and then I'll tell you.

So I want you to turn to Second Kings chapter 227.

I don't think, you know, I think Paul would be in a battle here between him and Manasseh who's the worst person that ever existed and there might be worse people.

But when I go to Bible stories and I read, you know, sometimes you've got, like, this guy had this one problem.

He was a good righteous man, but he failed to get rid of the high places.

And you know, or, or this guy struggled with this one thing.

And then you've got Manasa who basically just has this laundry list of all of these terrible things that he did up to basically the worst things that you can do as a human being on the earth.

And while I was talking about that, I forgot to turn there.

So give me just a second.

It's gonna be second Kings chapter 233. Mhm.

Now I'm gonna start in verse one says Saint Kings 223 2100 says Manasseh was 227 years old when he became king.

He reigned 277 years in Jerusalem and his mother's name was Hephzibah.

He did evil in the sight of the Lord.

Now we've read that a lot, OK?

A lot of kings, you read that he did evil.

We just happen to get a lot of Manasseh's story.

He did according to the abominations of the nations whom the Lord dispossessed before the sons of Israel.

So basically did all those things.

He re he rebuilt the high places which Hezekiah, his father had destroyed.

So now he rebuilt them, but he had also witnessed Hezekiah destroy those things, right?

So he had good example, maybe not perfect examples.

We had good examples in his life.

So he's not just one of those people that was raised in a really bad situation.

And so he can just blame the environmental situation around.

Well, I wasn't raising a good home.

He also had good examples around him, but then still chose to do wicked things.

He erected altars for bail and made an Ashra as Ahab king of Israel had done.

That's one of those that you say, Ahab, like there's another one of the worst people from the Bible.

So he did all the things that Ahab had done, worshiped all the hosts of heaven and served and built altars in the house of the Lord of which the Lord had said in Jerusalem, I will put my name for, he built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of the Lord.

He made his son pass through the fire, which I don't want to go into much detail.

But that's one of the worst things that you can do, offering child sacrifices unless I've misinterpreted that passage.

But that's what I've always heard that it was he practiced witchcraft and used divination and dealt with mediums and spirits.

I almost kind of, I'll say I wish cause it's God's word but I almost wish that pass fast.

His son through the fire was at the end because I'm like, well there's the worst thing but you get, you get all of this and as you're reading this, I mean, there should be kind of this sickening feeling well up in your heart at this man.

And the more that you read about him, you go, OK?

I know Jesus can save anybody, but not this guy, the kind of a feeling that you might have.

I know Jesus can save anybody.

But that guy, we know what's gonna happen to that guy. OK?

And it will be well deserved.

Then he set carved images of Ashra that he had made in the house of which the Lord said to David and to his son Solomon in this house and in Jerusalem, which I've chosen from all the tribes of Israel.

I will put my name forever and I will not make the feet of Israel wonder anymore from the land which I gave their fathers.

If only they will observe to do according to all that I've commanded them and according to all the law and that my servant Moses commanded.

And I think here's kind of a God's word is making another point.

Again, it's like he knew not to do these things.

He knew from history.

He knew from the examples around him and he did all of the evil things that he could think of.

Verse 39 says, the Lord spoke through his servants, the prophets saying because Manasseh king of Judah has done these abominations, having done wickedly more than all the Emirates did who were before him and has also made Judah sin with his idol.

So now he's also kind of incurring the sin of he's brought the people and the nation into this sin.

And then skip ahead down to verse 223.

Moreover, Manasseh shed very much innocent blood until he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another besides his sin with which he made Judah's sin.

So it's really driving home the point he did all these things.

Oh and he also did all of these evil things.

And the only thing I can think in my mind is I'm reading, especially if I'm a first time reader is like, well, this guy's about to get it, ok.

If anybody's separated from God, it's Manasa.

And if anybody is not gonna be able to come back to the Lord, it's gonna be Manasa.

Now the rest of the acts of Manasseh and all that he did and his sin which he committed are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of June?

That's the way it ends that statement about him and all the sins he committed are recorded.

Now, I'm gonna have you turn over to second chronicles?

Chapter 21 I'm sure that most people here are familiar with ma a to some extent.

So you probably do know the conclusion of the story, not, not bringing a new revelation to you, but I still want to go and look at this because at this point, if I, if I tell any average person about the story of Manasa, right?

And say, what do you think happened to that guy?

He went to hell.

That's what, that's what I would think I would think.

And you know, sometimes the world talks about almost as if there's, you know, different levels of hell is if there's uh for the really bad people, they're going way down here.

And that's what I would probably think too is Manasa, he's, he's going way down there.

So in chapter 22000 of second chronicles, I'm gonna start back, I'm gonna read uh I'm gonna start back in verse one and, and read a little bit more uh of chronicle's record of the story.

It says Manasseh was 12 years old when he became king and he reigned 55 years in Jerusalem.

He did evil in the side of the Lord according to the abominations of the nations whom the Lord dispossessed before the sons of Israel, rebuilt the high places, the Baals, the Ashram worshiped all the hosts of heaven built altars in the house of the Lord altars for the hosts of heaven in the two courts of the house of the Lord.

You know, it's like, did we really need two accounts?

You know, of how bad this guy is?

But God did drive home the point of how bad this man is.

Here's some more verses in a different book of the Bible about how bad this guy was.

Mm I'm sorry, I lost my spot a second.

And then uh down in verse 10, the Lord spoke to Manasseh and his people.

Now, I don't know, there, there are some occasions where somebody is approached by a prophet like David was Nathan.

There are some occasions where God speaks directly.

Solomon was one of those people where God spoke directly to him as far as I know, heard the voice of God.

I hope I'm not making a mistake there, but either way God through the prophets or through his own voice or however he does, it spoke to Manasseh and his people.

So imagine he's done all these things.

The He doesn't really have much of an excuse yet because we've got Hezekiah, not a perfect man did some pretty good things.

The Bible also is recording.

He should know the history of God's people.

So he should be able to look at those examples and say I know what not to do.

And I also know what I should do for God.

So now God's speaking to him and you probably at that point you're thinking, well, he's about to get it.

Now, God's gonna speak to him and say, well, you know, it's too late, you know what's about to happen and he says they paid no attention.

So Manasseh at this point now has had God speak to him through whatever means and he's still, I'm going down this road of wickedness.

So we get to verse 11.

Therefore, the Lord brought the commanders of the army of the king of Assyria against him.

I think probably, you know, I'm very new here.

So I don't know what all lessons Alan's done, but Alan's lessons are usually from my understanding.

Pretty informative.

I wouldn't doubt if over the past few years, he's probably told you how terrible the Assyrians are.

Um I don't know if they're the worst people that ever existed, but they did some pretty brutal, nasty things to the, the people that they would conquer.

So God has allowed the Assyrians to come in and now here, you know, if you're a righteous person, you might be thinking finally, Manasseh is gonna get what he deserves and in some ways he does, it says the king of Assyria came against some captured Manasseh with hooks.

I don't want to know what that looks like.

Bound him with bronze chains and took him to Babylon.

So you could just end the story right there and say, well, probably died over there, died over there.

A wicked man like he deserved.

And that sounds like a just punishment for Manasa.

Well, for those of you who have already read, you know, that's not how the story goes.

And for me, I hate that man aa did these things.

I am thankful that this is recorded in the Bible.

I'm thankful that the full story of Manasa is recorded in the Bible because I need it because I'm a person who still sometimes struggles with.

I know what God's word says.

I know what he says about his people.

I still feel like I might not make it.

And so, um says, verse verse 12 when he was in distress.

Ok, I just talked to somebody the other day.

This was um they were riding in the back of the patrol car with me, ok?

And uh I was taking them to another jail where they were gonna spend some time and God opened the door for us to talk about Christ.

And this person was telling me how bad they felt that the reason that they came back to God is because they were in a very terrible situation.

Now, he didn't tell me all the details.

But you've heard those kind of stories before somebody gets in a car wreck, they nearly die.

They turn their life around.

Maybe he was participating in something else that nearly killed him or whatever it was, but he got to the end of his rope and maybe he thought he was gonna die or maybe he thought I've done the worst possible things and now I'm terrified of going to help.

And I talked to that guy about the NASA.

I, you know, I had several minutes to ride with him.

I asked him if he had ever heard about Manassa.

And I'm just gonna, you know, this is, I'm just guessing the guy in the patrol car that I was driving, he probably did some terrible things.

He might have done some things that are worse than things that I think that I've done, I'm not sure he did all the things M NASA did.

And I told him about Manasseh because of this part of the story is in verse 12 when he's in distress.

And I know that somebody might say, uh uh well, of course, now you're gonna call for help, but then you're gonna be charged with.

But that's, you're not really repenting because you're only doing it because you're afraid of the consequences if you don't or you want to get out of this punishment that you're now receiving, which is being dragged over to Assyria in hooks and thrown in a dungeon and you're gonna die here.

But it says, he entreated the Lord, his God humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers.

And I almost still picture people laughing at the idea.

And I think at a time in my life, I would have, it's not really gonna matter how much you cry out, man.

And it.

And it just simply says, when he prayed to Him, God right here says He God was moved by his entreaty and heard his supplication and brought him again to Jerusalem.

Then Manasa knew that the Lord was gone and I kinda wanna go back and, and use God's own word and just show God.

Well, wait a minute.

Hold on.

What about verse six?

He made his sons pass through the fire.

The I'm just not gonna say it.

You know what I'm saying?

He, he did the worst things you could do to the most innocent human beings that you can do that to.

What are you talking about?

You?

You heard his supplicate?

You were moved by Manasa.

And the truth is, is that God was, I don't know how I'm not having compassion for that guy.

I'm just, I'm not mean as a Christian.

I know what I'm supposed to do as a Christian.

But if I lived there, if I lived in Judah, and I knew what Manasa was doing to innocent Children, I'm gonna have a problem with anybody feeling compassion for it.

And I'm thankful at the same time that, that God is able to have compassion for Him.

And I don't need to understand all of it because when I go back, I know God didn't plan for man aa to do these wicked things.

But what God did plan is to have this story of redemption for man.

Aa. That's not so I can go back and go.

Oh, well, I didn't do nearly as bad as Manassa, but it's to go back and say it's not just how wicked can somebody be and God can still redeem them.

It is also can a person just be at the lowest most wicked point in their life.

And the only reason that they're calling out to God is they know that he's the only one that can get him out of this bad situation.

That doesn't seem very righteous.

But it is, it's still righteousness.

I, I have um a lesson that I did for a uh it's a, it was a Fall Gospel Gospel series, Fall Bible class series or something in South Fayetteville.

And I got asked, well, we're doing men of faith and I was like, I mean, you know, you got your normal list of men of faith.

And I asked, I asked my friend that preaches I was like, can IU use Solomon and Manasa?

And he, he's like, ok, if that's what you wanna do.

And the reason I did it is I need those stories too.

I don't need him to have done what he did.

But I need the story shown to me that says, hey, look, it's not just these people, let me give you an example.

It's not just the Christian that was raised by Christian parents that mostly stayed away from wickedness.

Sure they sin, but they were baptized and then they lived their life faithfully.

They struggled a little bit, but they were mostly good people.

I need to know that God can save people that are just the worst human beings that can exist on this planet.

I mean, NASA was, I'm not trying to tear him down if he stayed faithful.

Like the story says he'd be in paradise with God too.

So I don't think he's gonna be bothered about what I say right now.

And then I've got one last story for you.

I may have taken too much time on that one and I think I might be OK cause I think Allen preaches quite a long time.

So I think that gives me a few extra minutes and then you don't have to ever have me again if I spoke too long because the real point of the story is not actually about Manasa.

The end of that story of man Nasa's story is that he goes back and he builds up the city again, removed the foreign gods set up the altar of the Lord and made sacrifices and he reestablished the righteous things in Judah, Adam and Eve.

Um I mean, I, I hope Adam, you know, spending 13 years on earth or, or however long it was started doing some righteous things and working for the Lord and Jonah got out even reluctantly and started working for the Lord again.

And even Manasa, after all of that still gets to spend the rest of his life doing some good things for God.

Now that, you know, we can take that too far and go well, I'm gonna work my way up into heaven and that's not the point.

But you still, when you mess up and you repent, you want that opportunity to go back.

Can I fix it?

Like the question we asked at the beginning, how long is it gonna take to fix this?

Can I fix it?

I think you probably know the answer is really, no, no, I can't, I can't fix the sins that I've committed.

But that's gonna bring us to our last person.

And like I said, guys, if it takes too long, you know, to be my last, my last sermon up here, Matthew chapter 27 is where I want to go.

So the hope I mentioned this and then I for I, I was like, oh, wrong part of the sermon.

All of those people got a chance in a way to redeem themselves.

Now, I know ultimately God saved those people, right?

But you, when I say redeem themselves, I mean, after their repentance, they get to go do some good things for God and start feeling like I'm restoring myself.

I'm restoring my righteousness.

I'm getting back, right?

And then we're gonna come across a guy that doesn't have that opportunity.

Now I'm gonna make a real quick, quick disclaimer. OK?

I don't think you even go here.

You might.

So as a Christian, I get in some debates with people about the thief on the cross.

Ok. You know why?

Start talking about baptism?

And they're like, oh, well, was he baptized or he wasn't baptized?

That's not where I'm going.

Ok. Thief was under the old covenant and Jesus told him he was going to paradise.

You have been baptized to be saved.

All right.

I just want to get that out.

So you don't think, uh, oh, where's he going with this?

But I do want to talk about the thief and the way that he was saved because this is the one that for some reason, even though I really love the story of a NASA.

This one hits me emotionally more.

I don't know all the reasons.

Now in Matthew chapter 27 and I could be mistaken about this and Allen can correct this, uh, in the next Bible class or something if I'm wrong about it.

But there's a point in Matthew chapter 27 that sounds like both of the robbers are mocking at first.

Now, if I'm wrong about that, I'm wrong.

Ok. And that's, that's not really the point, but it sounds like robbers were mocking him.

It seems like both of them were and then the other robber or thief seeing what was going on and seeing Jesus reaction, he changed his heart.

That's what it seems like.

If not, it was just one and I apologize for the misinterpretation there.

But in Matthew chapter 27 it says when they verse 33 when they came to a place called Golgotha, which means place of a skull, they gave him wine to drink, mixed with gall.

And after tasting it, he was unwilling to drink.

And when they had crucified him, they divided up his garments among themselves, casting lots and sitting down, they began to keep watch over him there and above his head, they put up the charge against him which read, this is Jesus, the king of the Jews.

At that time, two robbers were crucified with him.

One on the right and one on the left.

And those passing by were hurling abuse at him, wagging their heads and saying you who are going to destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself.

If you're the Son of God come down from the cross, there's a lot of filthy things going on at the cross.

It's disgusting to look at.

If you visualize it in your mind, the way these people are acting to the perfect most innocent being that exists in the same way.

The chief priest also along with the scribes and elders are mocking him and saying he saved others.

He cannot save himself.

He's the king of Israel.

Let him come down now from the cross and we believe him, of course, they wouldn't have.

He trusts in God, let God rescue him.

Now if he delights in him for, he said, I'm the son of God.

The robbers who had been crucified with him were also insulting him with the same work that, that verse right there is why I, I tend to believe at one point both robbers were insulting him and then the other robber had a change of heart.

I don't know for sure in Luke chapter 23 and we're, we're almost at the end of this sermon.

So I said at the beginning of the sermon, you know, the point, this is the reason I had Ethan sing.

The songs that I, I wanted to sing were about redemption and forgiveness.

I didn't tell him any particular songs.

I just thought, hey, as long as they're about redemption and forgiveness that that'll fit the bill.

And this is why I, I love the story of the thief on the cross.

So probably most people here, they've been Christians for a long time know how brutal the cross was and how brutal discouraging was.

They know that some people didn't even make it to the cross because they died before.

And it's a very agonizing, apparently the worst death that the Romans could come up with.

And the thief, he's up there too.

He got beat, he's got nails in his hands, he's got nails on his feet.

Now, I don't think people were mocking him the way they were Christ, but I'm sure it hurt and the thing about the thief that's different than the other stories that I shared with you is even Manasseh, who I thought, hey, that guy's not being redeemed.

He even got to go back and do some good things at the end of his life, the thief has no option for that.

He can't do that.

You die on the cross and probably more than most things, you know, when you're up there, I'm not coming down.

There's been some times in my life where I thought I was going to die and I was wrong and I'm here years later, the thief knows he's going to die 100% and it's brutal.

And if I'm not mistaken and Matthew chapter 27 is, is read like I'm reading it there even up there for a time.

It sounds like he might have been mocking Jesus too with his buddy.

I'll say I apologize one more time if that's inaccurate.

But I don't know what kind of thief he was.

I don't know what kind of life he lived, but it sounds like the last things he did before he was going to die had nothing to do with God.

And it sounds like the thief is going exactly where you think he's going to go when his life is over.

And I feel like the thief probably is feeling the same kind of things that Asaf is singing about in Psalm chapter 77 is, will God forgive?

Can I be redeemed.

You just imagine if you've ever felt like, man, I'm lost or what if I am lost today.

And there is no doubt in your mind when your arms are spread out and there's holes in your hands and feet and your back is bleeding and you can barely breathe and it's over and I imagine how dark it feels to be up.

I can't, I can't really imagine, but I try to think about that.

Give me just a second to find my place.

Verse 39 Luke chapter 23 1 of the criminals who were hanging, there was hurling abuse at him saying, are you not the Christ save yourself and us?

So even up there, the thief has reason to look over at his buddy and go yeah, and join in with that, right?

He has there's another temptation for the thief and why not?

Because his life's over.

It's not like he can be saved.

He's dying as a thief.

But then it says the other answered rebuking him and said, do you not even fear God?

Maybe he's saying, hey, look, you don't seem even afraid to die right now.

We're up here hanging on the cross.

We're about to die.

You could be in more distress than to be I am a sinner.

I'm separated from God.

I'm about to die right now and I know I'm about to die and there's nothing that's gonna change it no matter what words come out of my mouth and I certainly don't have any actions that can save me.

I can't get myself off the cross.

He says, do not even fear God since you're under the same sentence of condemnation.

And we indeed are suffering justly for we're receiving what we deserve for our deeds.

But this man has done nothing.

He recognizes who Jesus is.

Jesus is the only person that's never done anything wrong.

And here it's gotta be right here, ok?

This is, and this will be it man.

Naa I imagined him crying out in distress like he thinks he's gonna die in a Syria.

He doesn't know that he doesn't know what's gonna happen for sure.

Maybe over time.

Yeah, they're gonna stop feeding me and I'm starving to death and I'm gonna die.

The thief is about to die right now.

It's in the next few hours.

It's inevitable and his faith not, don't worry, not about not without baptism for us, but for him, the only thing that he has left that could possibly save him is right here beside it.

And there's no reason for any normal human being to think this is gonna work.

You just, you know, it's over and he does the one thing that he needs to do.

He says, Jesus, remember me when you come in your kingdom?

I wonder how, what kind of pause it felt like in between him saying that and Jesus responding because I'm gonna tell you when I struggle with my thoughts about how God feels about me.

Sometimes I don't picture that he's saying good things to me.

Now, that's usually because I'm wrong.

But just imagine it's like, well, when I say this is he even gonna say anything back when I say this is he gonna turn his head.

When I say this is he just going to look at me and go, no, you're a wicked sinner.

And instead he says, truly, I say to you today, you should be with me in paradise today.

What the the thief?

I mean, I don't know how much longer it was just a few hours if it wasn't just mere minutes.

And he's been in paradise with Jesus ever since.

That's a long time ago, about 2000 years ago.

Um According to our human time, I bring that up because of course those other stories were hopeful to me.

But the thief, he had one opportunity when everything seemed impossible in this story, it is impossible for the thief to be saved.

He can't come down and do anything to change anything.

But he knows God can, he knows if there's any hope he can say something to Jesus and he just ask him, will you remember me when you come in your kingdom?

And the answer is yes.

Now for us today, in closing, I, I think that got the point for us today.

In closing after jesus' death, the new covenant came into effect and in that new covenant Christ command for us.

And I believe the thief would say the same thing to you, ok?

The thief that was saved the way he was saved.

Still gonna tell you what, obey Jesus.

Jesus tells us today if we want to be redeemed, if you're separated from God, that you need to confess.

Jesus is the Son of God.

You need to repent of your sins.

You need to be baptized into Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.

And Jesus feels the same way about you and me that he felt about as a Adam and Eve, Jonah Manasa, the thief, Peter and Paul and everybody else is.

He wants all the sin to go away and he wants to bring you up to heaven where there is no sin and there is no evil and there's no remembrance of those things.

And that's the opportunity again tonight is that if you're ready to obey the gospel, that you can repent of your sins, confess Jesus as the Son of God and be baptized in Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.

And please do that as we stand and say.

Series: N/A

Service: Sun AM

Type: Sermon

Speaker: Allen Dvorak

The following transcription is computer-generated and may not accurately reflect the contents of the audio. Please verify the content before quoting.

(Transcribed by Congregate. Always check document for possible errors and inaccuracies in automated transcriptions.)

Turn your baubles to John 22025 215 through 220.

John 22025 to 21.

I'll be reading from the new King James version.

Now Thomas called the twin.

One of the 203 was not with them when Jesus came and other disciples therefore said to him, we have seen the Lord.

So he said to them, unless I see his hands, the print of the of the nails and put my finger into the print of the nails and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.

And after eight days, his disciples were again inside and Thomas with them, Jesus came the doors being shut and stood in the midst and said peace to you.

Then he said to Thomas reach your finger here and look at my hands and reach your hand here and put it in my side.

Do not be unbelieving but believing.

And Thomas answered and said to him, my Lord and my God, Jesus said to him, Thomas because you have seen, seen me, you have believed, blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.

And truly Jesus did other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book.

But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.

And that believing you may have life in his name.

As Tim noted this morning in the announcements at the beginning, we are here to worship God and to be edified, built up by one another and it is good to be together.

I think sometimes we don't recognize the value of being with other Christians until we're in a place where we're not among other Christians.

And then suddenly we realize how precious the occasions like this really are.

If we were going to try to identify defining characteristics of a Christian, we would probably talk about faith that certainly has to be one of the defining characteristics of a Christian.

But what do we mean by faith?

There are several false ideas about the nature of religious faith that you probably are familiar with in the movie of the last century miracle on 220th street.

The comment was made, faith is believing when common sense tells you not to.

So faith is contrary to common sense, Mark Twain in his book, Tom Sawyer, put these words in the mouth of Huck Finn.

One of the characters in the book.

Faith is believing things, you know, ain't true.

Unfortunately, those are not just the ideas of a few folks, many religious people hold similar ideas about the nature or the meaning of faith, their faith is based on emotion based on feelings or maybe just wishful thinking.

I want such and such a thing.

So I believe in it.

They talk about faith being a leap into the dark where you don't know what's going to be on the other side.

You just take that leap, you leave reason and intellect behind in order to believe Richard Dawkins, a noted voice in the evolutionary community says faith is the belief in spite of even perhaps because of the lack of evidence.

So faith is when you believe, because you don't have any evidence.

Christopher Hitchens also in the same line of thinking, said faith is the surrender of the mind.

It's the surrender of reason.

So faith is contrary to reason, it's contrary or lacks evidence according to these kinds of statements.

And all of these statements describe a blind faith, but not the biblical meaning of faith.

Those who do not believe in God, those who do not believe in the Bible tend to characterize the faith of all those who do believe in God as being essentially a blind faith.

When individuals like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hicken Hitchens, when they define faith, they're not talking about just some.

That's how they perceive your faith and my faith and the faith of all those who would argue that there is a God and the Bible is his book.

If you believe in the eyes of such individuals, if you believe that God created the universe and all life that is in it.

You are perceived as some sort of delusion, delusionary wacko who believes in ancient uh mystic fables and myths that have no foundation.

In fact, atheists who accept macroevolution or essentially the general theory of evolution, they claim that they base their belief, their viewpoint on things that they can observe in the natural world.

And so their belief is scientific would be the claim that they would make.

But on the other hand, since the existence of God is not something that we can prove by our empirical senses, by touch or sight or sound or taste or smell, then creationism is viewed as unscientific and it is that dissonance that I want to talk about this morning and I apologize.

I'm going to dig into some things that are a little bit technical and I choose typically not to do that on a Sunday morning.

But you'll understand as we go along, why I'm choosing to do it today.

And I haven't overestimated the opinion or exaggerated the opinion of those who do not believe in God about your faith and my faith.

I mentioned Richard Dawkins already.

And he in a review a number of years ago of a book that was printed, a review that was printed in the New York Times.

He said it's absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane or wicked.

He says, but I'd rather not consider that.

So if you don't believe in the general theory of evolution according to this individual, and there are many others probably like Him, you are either ignorant, stupid or insane, maybe even wicked.

That's their view of those of us who believe that God created this world, that there is a God and that He created all that is in this world.

Is it true that atheistic evolution is scientific and creation is unscientific.

Is it true that we are in fact guilty of a blind faith?

A faith that's not based on evidence that has really nothing to support it other than our emotions and our wishful thinking.

Well, those are some of the questions that I'd like to address this morning.

Now I would freely admit and I think you would probably also that there are certainly religious people who do have what we would call a blind faith.

Their faith is based on emotions and feelings instead of truth.

They have kind of a feel good religion.

I get this warm feeling.

And so that's why I think I'm more spiritual, many believe in whatever allows them to do what they want to do.

That's essentially the motivation for their belief or their faith.

But that's not biblical faith.

When we talk about biblical faith, I know frequently we'll go to Hebrews the 220th chapter and verse one.

And while that may essentially be a definition.

It may more properly be the function of faith that's described here by the Hebrews author.

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen for by it.

The elders obtained a good testimony.

I want to suggest to you this morning that the Bible claims that true faith is in fact based on evidence, that evidence is often testimony, which is a form of indirect evidence, but it is evidence.

And it is the basis for faith, for instance, the Apostle Paul in Romans 23031 and verse 17 indicates that faith is not something that arises from within us.

But that in fact, faith comes from hearing and hearing of the word of God.

The word of God is what produces faith believe.

That is, it provides the foundation for that belief.

Jesus himself.

In John, the eighth chapter verse 32 said, you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.

You will know the truth.

It's possible for us to understand, to know, to recognize what the truth is about the origin of this world and life on it.

Eric read for us just a few moments ago, the comments of John in the toward the end of his gospel.

And he says, Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples which are not written in this book, but these signs are written so that you may believe John says these signs and typically they are numbered as seven in the gospel of John.

These signs are intended to be a foundation for our belief in Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God, that we might have a life in his name.

When the Apostle Paul on his second missionary journey went to the city of Berea.

He found people there who were more willing to accept his preaching, his teaching than in a previous city.

These Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica.

They received the word with all eagerness examining the scriptures daily to see if these things were.

So they didn't accept Paul's word just because, well, it sounds pretty good or that's something I would like to believe.

But rather they checked to see if there was some foundation for what he was saying.

They went back to the Old Testament Scriptures to confirm that what Paul was saying about the Christ about Jesus was in fact true.

And so the beans were people whose faith was based on evidence, the indirect testimony of the Old Testament.

But the Bible also claims, I believe that God has provided evidence for his existence.

Paul would preach and acts the 14th chapter and verses 16 and 17 in past generations.

He that is God allowed all the nations to walk in their own ways yet he did not leave himself without witness.

Well, what kind of witness Paul for?

He did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness.

I believe Paul is really talking about some of what we call the laws of nature.

We'll say more about that a little bit later on this morning and a good bit more as we pursue our subject.

But God left evidence of his existence in these laws because God is the lawmaker, a law has to have a maker, a lawmaker and God is that lawmaker, the psalmist would say in the 19th psalm and verse one, that the heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.

You can look into the heavens and see the power, the majesty of God.

And of course, a passage that's frequently cited in Romans chapter one where Paul is talking about gentiles who had rejected or failed to acknowledge God, they uh pushed him out of their thinking.

And he says, for what can be known about God is plain to them, these folks because God has shown it to them.

Well, how did he do that, Paul for his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made.

So they are without excuse.

Paul says there was evidence there of God's nature, his power so that if they choose to reject God, they are without excuse the witness.

Was there, the evidence was there for them to believe there was a foundation for faith in God.

I think the Bible really warns us also about blind faith.

I know there's a different context here.

But in first Thessalonians five and verse 203 the Apostle Paul, just in that kind of pithy chapter there, he says, but test everything, hold fast that which is good, test everything, don't just accept whatever but test things and hold to that which is genuine or good.

I think that's a kind of an abbreviated description of the scientific method.

Is it not that you test everything and you come to good conclusions about those things, our emotions, our feelings are not a good guy.

Jeremiah said that the heart can deceive us in Jeremiah 17 and verse nine in the field of psychology.

And actually, this principle can be found in other scientific fields or areas of study in the field of psychology.

There's a principle known as the law of rationality.

I'm not a big A I guy but I dove in and I let a a I define the law of rationality for me.

I I want to read what it, what it came up with.

The law of rationality generally refers to the concept that decisions and actions should be based on reason and logic.

That's a pretty fair definition, implying a systematic evaluation of available information to make the most optimal choice in a website called Philosophy terms.com.

The law of rationality is a key rule that tells us to base our beliefs and conclusions on solid reasons.

And so the law of rationality suggests that rational beliefs are based on evidence that supports them.

That's a quote from Wikipedia.

So, you know, you can trust it.

I like the quotation, the summary that Jeff Miller uh gave.

He's a preacher member of the church.

He said that the law of rationality says that we should only draw those conclusions that are warranted by the evidence.

So the law of rationality says, we look at the evidence and we draw conclusions, but only those conclusions that are legitimate for that evidence.

Sometimes people draw conclusions that the evidence doesn't support, that's not rational according to this principle in the study of psychology.

In fact, anyone who draws conclusions or who embraces ideas that are not warranted by the available evidence or facts is being irrational.

That's the conclusion of the law of rationality.

If you go beyond what the evidence actually warrants, now, you've become irrational instead of rational.

The fact that faith, our faith in God and Christ is based on indirect evidence or testimony doesn't mean that it's irrational.

It doesn't violate the law of rationality.

If the evidence supports our belief, that's a rational belief.

Now, atheistic evolutionists don't believe that they believe that we're irrational in our belief.

But I want to suggest to you that that's not really any different than the process that a number of the sciences use as they come to various conclusions.

How many of you like the crime shows where, uh they show you how people uh begin to look at the evidence and they try to figure out what happened and maybe who did it.

And even sometimes in those shows that the, the forensic scientists will even tell you why they did it.

But what they're doing, they didn't observe the crime, they didn't observe the event, but they're looking at evidence and they're drawing conclusions, hopefully that are warranted from the evidence.

They do that all the time in forensics and they do it in geology, they do it in paleontology, they do it in astronomy, they do it in archaeology, the historical sciences, often their conclusions, those who study those things in those fields, their conclusions are based on indirect evidence.

Listen to me carefully about the next statement.

The general theory of evolution relies on indirect evidence and the reason is the general theory is essentially macro evolution and nobody has ever observed that it's not something you can look at and say, well, see here, I, I I've got the evidence.

I'm, I'm watching it happen because of the nature of macro evolution.

It's deep time that we're talking about.

And so what the evolutionist does is he takes evidence from here and their facts and he draws conclusions from those pieces of evidence as to what they mean.

Is it true that belief in creation is unscientific.

That's the opinion of probably a large number of percentage of scientists.

Is it the case that the Bible and science are contradictory?

You don't have to spend much time on the internet or read in, uh, popular, uh, written books to hear that kind of view that.

Oh, well, the Bible is not a scientific book.

It's contrary to science, if you really want to know what's going on or what has gone on in the world, you need to listen to the scientists because the Bible is kind of a collection of myths and fables and that sort of thing.

If you begin to talk about creation, the beginning of life on this planet, somebody may pop up and say, well, what about all the scientific evidence that proves evolution and disproves the Bible?

That's the premise that many people begin with.

What about all the evidence, the scientific evidence that proves evolution and disproves the Bible, specifically creation or maybe it's not a question, maybe it's an affirmation.

Evolution is the scientific choice for an explanation of origins of the universe and life in this universe.

I'm gonna kind of move off to the side a little bit.

We'll come back to some of these things, these questions in just a few moments.

But I want to say to you that sometimes these discussions, these ideas are prejudiced by definition.

I'll give you an example.

Science is often des described or defined that is science.

What is science?

It's often described or defined in a way that suggests that a belief in creation is by definition unscientific.

For instance, the National Academy of Sciences is very influential in the way that science is taught in our schools and in universities, that sort of thing.

Here's the definition that they give for science or at least the description of what science does.

One goal of science is to understand nature.

The statements of science must invoke only natural things and processes.

The statements of science are those that emerge from the application of human intelligence to data obtained from observation and experience progress in science consists of the development of better explanations for the causes of natural phenomena.

Did you see a theme kind of running through this description of what science is and does?

Well, let me help you.

Science has nothing to do with the supernatural.

In fact, the supernatural is excluded from science, which is why so many people uh begin to have a meltdown when we talk about teaching creation in public schools in science class.

Well, that's not science because they define science as study that only deals with natural phenomena, natural processes, only the natural world.

There's nothing said about the supernatural.

But let me ask you a question since science is the idea of discovering information and understanding the implications, the conclusions that can be drawn from that information.

What if just spitballing here?

What if the data that's gathered would suggest supernatural activity No, we don't even consider that.

That's not science.

See, we've excluded that by definition.

If you believe in creation, you're abandoning science, you've moved into, uh fables and myths and that kind of thing.

Does true science support the biblical account of creation?

I believe that it does.

And I intend to show that in our studies, does the general theory of evolution really harmonize with true science.

And the fact of the matter is it doesn't, it is contrary to two s true science.

And I intend to try to show that as well.

Not all of that this morning, some of you are beginning to look a little worried.

I don't intend to deal with all of that this morning, but I want to affirm those things because that, that's the foundation of some studies that I want to present to you.

When we talk about science, we usually think of the laws of science, those regularities in our uh in our uh universe, the mcgraw Hill Dictionary of scientific and technical terms, which is only slightly more erudite than Wikipedia says scientific law is a regularity which applies to all members of a broad class of phenomena.

OK. That didn't help me a whole lot.

I see some of you going. What?

So let me uh let me just describe it this way.

The laws of science were discovered through extensive scientific investigation, gathering evidence about how things work in our universe, in our world.

Evidence that points to some conclusion.

Stephen Hawking said it this way in a presentation on the Discovery Channel in which he bashed uh eu uh creation.

He says the universe is a machine governed by principles or laws, laws that can be understood by the human mind.

I believe he writes that the discovery of these laws has been humankind's greatest achievement.

Unlike laws made by humans, the laws of nature cannot ever be broken.

That is important.

Scientific laws are not good on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

But Tuesday and Thursday sometimes, sometimes not, they're not broken.

This is the regularity of how things work in the world, in the universe.

That's why they're so powerful, the laws of nature are fixed.

He says, and so as an evolutionist, he makes an important point for us.

The laws of science are by definition rational, they fit the law rationality because they're drawn from information evidence and the conclusions are warranted conclusions to hold to any belief which is against the scientific laws is essentially irrational.

Let me say that again differently.

If the laws are rational, then if I hold some belief that's contrary to those laws, then I hold a belief that's irrational.

That that's just, I mean, that that's a logical conclusion.

If creation is against the laws of science as they've been discovered by mankind, then creation would be an irrational belief.

But if evolution, the general theory of evolution is against the laws of science violates those laws in the sense that uh it's contrary to the laws, then the general theory of evolution is irrational.

And that's what I intend to prove in our studies together.

Because the general theory of evolution contradicts several known, accepted scientific laws that makes it an irrational belief.

I've been using the word or the phrase general theory of evolution.

And maybe you're well familiar with very familiar with what that theory is.

But I want to spend just a moment or two talking about what that theory says.

I want to present to you the evolutionary model.

That is what uh evolutionists think is true according to their understanding of origins.

It's unfortunate that a lot of evolutionists use and, and others as well.

They use the word evolution, just evolution to talk about the general theory of evolution.

I read an article uh just this week, uh a rather scientific article and they talked about evolution is a fact and also a theory because what they're doing is they're combining two types of evolution in the term evolution microevolution, which and I'm a little behind on my chart.

Sorry about that microevolution, which involves small changes that are observable, the, the uh development of new species uh changes in individual big size and that sort of colors and that sort of thing and that's observable in the world.

No, we don't need to deny that because there's evidence of it, but that's not the general theory of evolution.

The general theory of evolution really is better described by macro evolution.

That word which refers to macro large changes and those changes are not observable have never been observ observed by mankind because of the nature of the changes they take long periods of time.

Methuselah lived 969 years and he wouldn't have seen macro evolution and that leaves the rest of us out in the cold because most of us aren't gonna make it nearly to 900 years, right?

So macro evolution is really what the general theory of evolution is all about.

The general theory of evolution suggests large change across taxonomic borders.

So that everything basically comes from the same single cell origin.

Now I'm gonna use the word evolution.

But when I use it, I mean, the general theory of evolution, I'm not talking about microevolution.

I'm talking about the theory that Darwin began with.

So, what's the evolution model?

Well, I'm gonna give you seven points.

We're not gonna discuss them.

I just want to present them to you this morning.

These are things that all need to be true.

In order for the general theory of evolution to be true, the universe spontaneously generated either that or it's eternal life spontaneously generated from non life at some point.

Microevolution is true.

Ma excuse me, microevolution is true and it accounts for the existence of different kinds of animal, different kinds kind in the sense of Genesis.

Chapter one, Neo Darwinism is the mechanism for the evolution of complex kinds.

From a simple primordial organization.

Macroevolution says it all came from one source, one simple primordial organi organism.

Neo Darwinism says here's the mechanism how that happened.

That's, that's the difference between those two planks, humans and apes have a common ancestor.

Uniform aarian is, is true.

The processes that we observe in our world today.

That's the way things have always worked in our world.

And so you can calculate things that way.

And the earth and life are very old on the on the scale of billions of years.

Well, as you probably would guess, there's a creation model also.

And it basically is kind of the opposite of many of these things.

The universe was created suddenly by a non-physical entity.

Life was created suddenly not over long period of time.

All present kinds have remained constant sense creation within kinds.

There have been microevolution changes, small changes, but macroevolution hasn't occurred, the kinds have been fixed from the beginning.

I said I wasn't going to explain all this and I made myself a liar.

Neo Darwinism is insufficient to account for the emergence of present day kinds from simple primordial organism.

That's uh the part of the creation model.

Humans and apes have separate ancestry.

We didn't descend from the apes or common ancestor.

Catastrophes is true as opposed to uniform itar is catastrophes.

Do I need to explain that?

That's the flood that stuff happening in ways that are not uniform or normal.

Regular, the earth and life are relatively young on the order of a few 1000 years, not billions of years.

Well, this morning, uh I think some of you were probably not even thinking that we're even near the conclusion.

But here we are this morning, all I wanted to do was introduce what I intend to use as kind of a theme for the year 2025.

I want to talk about an examination of the evidence for atheistic evolution.

This is the point at which I probably should spend about 15 or 20 minutes talking about why we should do that.

But I don't know that that's really necessary.

Does anybody here know someone who has lost their faith because they couldn't answer some of the things that were being said about evolution and creation.

Do you know anybody who has been challenged in uh a high school biology class or natural sciences class or in college?

They've been humiliated by some professor who ridiculed them because they believed in creation.

Do you know it or did it happen to you?

You know how many young people have lost their faith because we didn't spend enough time talking about whether the evidence for evolution is really evidence for evolution or whether it is in fact an irrational belief, we need to talk about this, the challenge to our faith and the faith of particularly young people as they build, the foundation of their faith is very serious.

And so what I'm going to do is over the year of 2025 Lord willing, I'm going to try to hit some points about evolution.

I want to talk about some of the evidences for evolution.

I want you to see that evolution is not supported by the scientific laws.

In fact, it is an unscientific theory.

I intend to show that evolution is both an irrational belief and a blind faith.

I'm going to show that the laws of science, such things as the law of causality, the law of biogenesis, the 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics, the law of probability genetics, they do not provide evidence for evolution.

They are in fact insurmountable barriers to that theory.

But folks, we've been gas lighted for a long time now by people who just affirm something that's not necessarily true.

But if you just keep saying it often enough after a while, someone pops up and says, well, I guess evolution is a fact.

It's been proven you can read that in biology textbooks and I'm going to show you that that's not true.

I want to go back to a passage that we began with early on in John chapter 20 in John chapter 20 verses 3031 John wrote that in his gospel, he was providing evidence in the recording of the signs that Jesus did the miracles that Jesus did miracles that pointed to some truth about Jesus or his ministry.

And John says these signs are essentially the foundation for your faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God.

Do you believe that this morning?

I know that most of us do.

We're Christians, we're here because we do believe maybe you're someone who's thinking about that and perhaps you are convinced that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.

But you've never done anything with that faith.

You need to obey the Gospel.

You need to respond in obedience to the truth of the gospel.

Jesus is not just the Son of God.

He's the only way to heaven and he offers to you and to me forgiveness of sins to the non-christian who obeys the Gospel and is baptized for the remission of sins, comes up out of the water free from the guilt of past sins.

And for those of us who are Christians, the blood of Jesus Christ continues as John writes and for sha one to cleanse us from our sins as we repent and confess those things to God.

If you need to respond to the Gospel this morning, we want to invite you to act on the faith that you have.

We stand and sing to encourage you this morning.

Series: N/A

Service: Sun PM

Type: Sermon

Speaker: Allen Dvorak

The following transcription is computer-generated and may not accurately reflect the contents of the audio. Please verify the content before quoting.

(Transcribed by Congregate. Always check document for possible errors and inaccuracies in automated transcriptions.)

Scripture reading this evening comes from acts chapter three, acts three verses one through 24.

I'll be reading from the new King James version you'll see will be on screen behind me.

Now, Peter and John went up together to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour and a certain man lame from his mother's womb was carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple, which is called beautiful to ask alms for those who entered the temple who seeing Peter and John about to go into the temple, asked for alms and fixing his eyes on him with John and Peter said and fixing his eyes on him with John and Peter said, look at us.

So he gave them his attention to expecting to receive something from them.

Then Peter said, silver and gold.

I do not have but what I do have I give you in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk and he took him by the right hand and lift him, lifted him up and immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength.

So he leaped up, stood and walked and entered the temple with them walking, leaping and praising God.

And all the people saw him walking and praising God.

Then they knew that it was he who sat begging alms at the at the beautiful gate of the temple.

And they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him.

In acts the seventh chapter.

The death of Stephen is recorded.

Stephen had been brought before the council and had been accused by false witnesses.

Stephen boldly preached to the council charging them as Peter had done on the day of Pentecost, Peter and the other apostles with the death of Jesus Christ.

In their rage at his sermon, they took him outside the city and they stoned him.

But you know, it wasn't like that in the beginning of the gospel we're told in the book of Acts in chapter two and verse 47 that the earliest disciples in Jerusalem were having favor with all the people.

A little bit later on in Acts the fifth chapter in verses 12 and 13, we're told that while some were reticent to join the disciples, they held them in high esteem, but it wouldn't be long.

However, before the Jewish leaders would begin to resist the preaching of the gospel and in particular, the preaching of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

So this evening, I'd like to talk a little bit about Acts third, the 3rd and 4th chapters, gonna look at those events in those two chapters.

Um we'll divide the text into three different sections.

In chapter three, you have the miracle that you just heard from the reading.

And then of course, Peter Servant sermon that results from the crowd that gathers together.

But then in chapter four, we're going to look specifically toward the end of the chapter at the prayer of the disciples.

Once Peter and John had been released by the council, there are some rather interesting things about that prayer, things that I think could be helpful to us as we try to serve the Lord.

So let's begin in the first part of that text in acts three, looking at the miracle and the sermon that followed it.

I want to begin with the circumstances of the lame man.

Luke in writing acts is very careful to tell us that this man was lame from his mother's womb, lame from birth.

Here's an individual who had never walked and we're told later on down uh in toward the end of this section.

Uh actually the end of uh chapter three that this man was over 40 years old and he was brought in daily laid at one of the gates, the entrances to the temple.

They're thinking to receive alms in the Old Testament and in the Inner Testament period, alms, the giving of alms and righteousness were very often connected.

And so the best place to go if you wanted to receive financial help from others was to go to the temple and to ask for alms of those who would come in to worship God there.

And so that's where this man is.

Uh It was interesting.

I uh I was looking for pictures that might at least reasonably represent the scene of this, this man being laid at the temple.

And one of them, he's holding his crutches uh, after the healing, of course, that would presume that he had crutch his way in.

Is that a word anyway that he gotten his way in by himself?

But the text says they carried him daily in the impression I get is that he couldn't walk at all.

He's lame and doesn't walk even a small amount.

But Peter and John arrived at the temple at a regular hour of prayer.

The ninth hour would have been about the middle of the afternoon, about three in the afternoon.

And this man does what he probably done with many others.

He's expecting alms asking for alms and Peter and John didn't give him alms, but instead Peter healed the man.

And the text is critical because it says immediately his feet and ankles were made strong.

That's in verse seven.

I don't know if you've ever been bedfast for a few days or maybe a few weeks.

If you were, if you've had that experience, you probably understand that when you begin to try to walk again, even after a fairly short period of being confined to bed, not being able to walk, that your legs are extremely weak.

When I was in junior high, I had to be in bed for a couple of weeks, uh, with some problems with my knees.

And after just two weeks to get up and to try to walk, I felt unsteady and my legs felt, felt, uh, uh, weak.

This is a man who's never walked.

And yet when Peter takes his hand and raises him up immediately, he's leaping and walking.

As verse eight of chapter three says, he stood and began to walk and entered the temple with them walking and leaping and praising God.

Not like some of the miracles that people talk about today where be healed.

And in three weeks, you know, you're gonna be all better.

This is a man who's never walked and now he's leaping and walking.

I've been walking nearly all my life.

I don't do much leaping now.

But here's a man who is obviously healed.

The healing was obviously a miracle.

At least two things make that evident.

We've already discussed the first one.

And that is that immediately.

He begins to act like someone who's been walking all his life, which is not the way the thing that you would expect from somebody who perhaps had not been healed.

But the other thing is important also and that is the reaction of the people who see him walking and leaping.

He has been there at the temple gate, who knows how long?

He's over 40 years old.

The people recognized him.

He was a common fixture there in the temple and they recognized him and they realize that something tremendous has happened.

The Bible says in verse 10 that they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him.

Verse 11, which is not on the screen says they were utterly astounded.

I don't know how Luke could say it any better than to say, they were shocked that what had, what had happened.

And so you've got people who know this man, they know he's lame and they recognize that he is now healed of his lameness.

Well, that will attract a crowd.

And that's exactly what happens.

Beginning in verse 223, we find that Peter and John take advantage of the fact that people have gathered together to witness or to find out what's going on how this has happened.

And Peter begins by simply noting if you're wondering if we did this by our power or in our name, that's not the case.

This man was healed by the name of Jesus.

Verses 12 and 16, make that very clear.

But Peter immediately then launches into a sermon in which he talks about how God had glorified Jesus.

I want you to notice that in the text there uh in the sermon, this is in chapter three and beginning in verse 12.

Peter first begins in verse 223 by saying men of Israel, why do you wonder at this or why do you stare at us as though by our own power or piety, we have made him walk the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, the God of our fathers glorified his servant Jesus Peter is going to affirm that this miracle is by the power of Jesus, by the name of Jesus.

But before he does that, he'll actually come to that conclusion down in verse 224.

But before he does that, he has some things to say about Jesus.

He introduces him as one who has been glorified by the God of their fathers.

There's the connection to them.

And he says, uh he glorified his servant Jesus whom you delivered over and denied in the presence of Pilate when he had decided to release him.

I want you to notice the contrasts that Peter makes in this sermon.

The next couple of phrases he says in verse uh 225, there you delivered over and denied in the presence of Pilate when Pilate had wanted to release Jesus.

And if you recall from the gospels pilot had decided I will chastise him and release him.

Oh no, oh no, they didn't want that.

They wanted Jesus punished, they wanted him killed.

But the Jews called for Jesus death.

And so he goes on to say, but you denied the holy and righteous one.

You denied him, but you asked for a murder to be granted to you, the holy and just one you denied but one who was a killer, that's who you asked for.

That's who you wanted granted to you.

The contrast here, the double contrast, it is amazing but it gets, it continues and you killed you Jews the author of life.

But God raised him from the dead, you killed him.

God raised him, which incidentally, well, not so incidentally is the prominent theme in the apostles preaching in the chapters, the early chapters of acts, the resurrection of Jesus is the miracle of the Bible.

It's the miracle of miracles.

And so it is the focal point of these early sermons by the apostles whom God raised from the dead to this.

We are witnesses in acts two.

Peter will actually uh appeal to scripture to prophecy to show that Jesus had fulfilled prophecy.

But here incidentally, Peter also talks about eyewitness testimony.

But here Peter and John are saying we're witnesses of the risen Jesus whom God raised from the dead to this.

We are witnesses and his name by faith in his name has made this man strong.

So I want you to see that He begins by saying it wasn't us that did this, not our power, not our piety.

This was by the name of Jesus.

But in between, in the midst of that statement, he lays down the facts of the gospel, God glorified Jesus.

You denied him handed him over, you killed him.

God raised him up.

And so he says then in verse 227 and now brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance as did also your rulers.

But what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets that His Christ would suffer.

He thus fulfilled one of the problems that the Jews had in understanding the role of Jesus as Messiah was.

They really weren't expecting a suffering, Messiah, they were expecting a triumphant kinging.

That's why in John the sixth chapter, they're ready to march him, take him by force to make him king in Jerusalem.

They didn't understand that Jesus was going to have to suffer as the sin sacrifice for mankind.

And so uh Peter talks about Jesus suffering as the fulfillment of scripture there in verse 227, repent therefore, and turn back that your sins may be thought it out that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord and that he may send the Christ appointed for you.

I prefer the new king James version translation here uh appointed for you Jesus whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets.

Long ago.

Peter will end this sermon in verse 228 by talking about the blessing that was going to come through Abraham.

But he's already alluding to it here in verse 203 when he encourages them to repent and turn back that your sins may be blotted out one of the things that seemed to be a matter of confusion for the Jews.

We talked about this in our auditorium class this morning.

In the study of John chapter seven, the Jews understood several things from prophecy about the Christ, about the prophet, but they didn't always put all those things together.

It's interesting that the Essenes even understood that the Christ might be deity, but the average Jew didn't seem to understand that.

And they separated the prophet of Deuteronomy 220 from the Messiah of second Samuel seven.

But Peter connects them here.

When he says, Moses said, this is verse 230.

Moses said, the Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from his brothers.

You shall listen to him and whatever He tells you and it shall be that every soul who does not listen to that prophet shall be destroyed from the people.

So Peter introduces Deuteronomy 231.

But then he continues and all the prophets who have spoken from Samuel and those who came after him also proclaim these days he's talking about Jesus.

He introduces Deuteronomy 18 so that they understand that Jesus is the prophet that they needed to listen to as Moses wrote so long ago, you are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant that God made with your father saying to Abraham.

And now he introduces that promise in Genesis 12, that all the families of the earth would be blessed through Abraham's seed.

Well, what is that blessing?

What's, what's the blessing?

Peter says, God uh excuse me in verse the end of verse 25 saying to Abraham and in your offspring, shall all the families of the earth be blessed.

God having raised up his servant, send him to you first to bless you by turning every one of you from your wickedness, the promises for all the families of the earth.

But God sent his servant Jesus to you first to bless you.

And that blessing is the forgiveness of sins repent therefore, and turn that your sins can be blotted out.

As I said, he has already alluded to the response that God wants from them.

Well, as we move along in the text, the next section of the text in the beginning of chapter four is in the 1st 22 verses, Peter and John are arrested on that same day, they're put into custody.

It's late in the day toward evening.

And so they spend the night in custody.

We need to understand that the high priesthood and all of the activities of the temple essentially were controlled by the SADs.

There's some background there that we won't take the time to go into.

But it's important to understand that when we get to chapter four and it says, and as they were speaking to the people, the priest and the captain of the temple and the Sagos came upon them.

Those are the people who would have controlled the priesthood, particularly the high priesthood.

Those are the ones who would have controlled the activities of the temple.

And here are Peter and John in the temple and they're preaching the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And that annoyed these folks as you read in verse two.

They were greatly annoyed because they were teaching Peter and John were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead.

And so they're arrested and put in custody.

And uh now we're gonna have a question and answer session the next day where Peter and John will be brought before a number of the leaders of the Jews.

It seems the whole council that would be the Sanhedrin.

Uh in verse five, on the next day, their rulers and elders and scribes gathered together in Jerusalem with Anna, the high priest and Caas and John and Alexander and all who were of the high priestly family.

Listen to the question the very first question.

And really the only one that, that, that these individuals asked Peter and John by what power or by what name did you do this?

They ask about the source of the Apostle's power or authority.

And when they do note that they are tacitly admitting that a miracle has been done.

The first question is not, did you guys do a miracle that's already a given?

They want to know what the power was behind this miracle.

The things that you're doing here in the temple by what authority do you do these things?

That's reminiscent of the question that was asked of Jesus when he cleansed the temple both times early and late in his ministry.

By what authority are you doing these things?

But I want you to notice that the question is a tacit admission that a miracle has been done.

And frankly, later on in verse 16 of chapter four, um even the council members themselves saying, what shall we do with these men?

They're talking among themselves for that.

A notable sign, another name for a miracle has been performed through them is evident to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem and we cannot deny it.

And so they want to know by what authority are you doing this?

Well, Peter and John are going to answer Peter in verse eight is the individual who is named as speaking filled with the Holy Spirit.

He says, rulers of the people and elders, if we are being examined today concerning a good deed done to a crippled man, by what means this man has been healed.

Let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth whom you crucified?

I want you to pick up on that.

They didn't have to say that Peter didn't have to say whom you crucified.

He could just said this is by the power of Jesus but just like on the day of Pentecost, he is charging them with the denial and the death of the Messiah whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead by Him.

This man is standing before you.

Well, you know, it's interesting a little bit later on in this chapter before Peter and John are released, the observations can be made that Peter and John are standing there before the council and there's the man who has been healed standing with them.

And the text is not really clear to me at least.

Um in chapter four, in the beginning of the chapter, whether it was just Peter and John who were put in custody overnight or whether it was Peter and John and the guy who's been healed as well, I suspect and this is my personal opinion.

I suspect it was just Peter and John.

I'm suspicious that the men who had been healed made a point to be there the next morning when Peter and John appeared before the council and they're now being interrogated by these leaders of Israel.

I can't prove that, but I do find it interesting that the lame man, the formerly lame man doesn't just 303 and escape.

He doesn't take off.

He's there with Peter and John and he is evidence exhibit a that a miracle has been done and there's nothing that they can do to contradict that fact, this Jesus whom you crucified whom God raised from the dead by him.

This man is standing before you.

Well, this Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you.

The builders which has become the cornerstone and there is salvation in no one else for.

There's no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.

Peter does not back up at all.

The same Hedron was designed even the way that they sat when they talked to people was designed to intimidate people.

You've got these August rulers of Israel, you've got the high priest and his son-in-law gave, you've got the chief priests and scribes.

You've got all these members of the sand, which would have included some Pharisees and there they are, they're the learned, they're the intellectual intellectuals of Judaism and here's Peter and John in front of them.

They're not intimidated at all.

In fact, we're told in verse 13.

Now, when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived that they were uneducated common men, they were astonished.

They hadn't sat at the feet of rabbis.

They weren't making some sort of intellectual argument to try to wow, the, the council, you crucified the Christ God raised him up.

That must have rankled in the ears of Sago.

And furthermore, there's not salvation in any other name given among men.

The boldness of these men and the council takes note of it.

These are not the kind of guys fishermen, common men that you would expect to be able to stand before the Sanhedrin and say you're the guys guilty of murder.

And they recognize that they had been with Jesus.

Let that sink in.

They recognized that they had been with Jesus.

Something about the way they spoke their boldness, the authority by which they made their observations.

Their charges said these people were associated with Jesus, but seeing the man who was healed, standing beside them, they had nothing to say in opposition.

So what they do now is they take Peter and John, they put them aside and now the council will kind of talk among themselves saying what shall we do with these men?

For that?

A notable sign has been performed through them is evident to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

We cannot deny it.

But in order that it may spread no further among the people, let us warn them to speak no more to anyone in this name.

That's something, isn't it?

A miracle has been done?

It's there's no question that Peter and John are the ones involved in the performing of this miracle, even though they say it's God who has done this through Jesus.

But let's keep these guys quiet.

Let's forbid them to teach in this name.

They're missing the whole implication, the whole point of the miracle.

And so it is in the gospels more than once that people who are looking at a miracle in the face are unwilling to accept the implications of that miracle that this is God working.

And so they oppose God commanding people not to teach in the name of Jesus.

But if you want to hear some boldness in verse 19, Peter and John answered them, whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you, rather than to God, you must judge.

That's not even hardly a rhetorical question.

You guys judge whether we should listen to you or listen to God.

It reminds me of the question of Jesus when he's in the synagogue and he asked, is it lawful to do good or to do evil on the Sabbath day?

You know, who's gonna say to do evil?

Who's gonna say that we ought to, you ought to listen to us rather than God.

But that's essentially what they are saying when they forbid these men to preach in the name of Jesus.

And when they had further threatened them, they let them go finding no way to punish them because of the people for all were praising God for what had happened for the man on whom the sign of healing was performed was more than 40 years old.

Now, this is gonna change.

But at least right now, the council can't really do anything with Peter and John because everybody knows about this miracle.

It's been broadcast around the man was recognized.

It's such a notable sign as they themselves admit that they really can't do anything to Peter and John, but the time will come when the disciples would be scattered from Jerusalem.

The beginning of chapter eight, you can read about it because there's a shift in the attitude of the general public toward the Jewish public, toward the church.

And so they threatened these men and release them.

And then in verse 23 we want to look at the last section um of this text, chapters three and four and specifically at the prayer that is offered there and recorded by Luke when they were released, they went to their friends, the the word friends there is not literally in the text, they went to their own is the text.

Um I think in the new King James version, it uses the word companions, but it italicizes it to let you know that that's not, it's not in the text.

The Greek text itself.

They went to their own.

I think they just went to meet with other disciples, perhaps the church there as a, a larger group.

And they reported what the chief priests and elders had said to them.

It is important for you to note that fact that what they told the other disciples was what the chief priests and elders had said to them.

You know what I would have been blabbing about.

You should have seen that guy.

He was walking and leaping and everybody knew that a miracle.

It was fantastic.

But what they tell the other disciples is what the chief priests and the elders said to them and what the chief priests and elders had said is no more preaching in the name of Jesus.

That's important because when they begin praying, I can get behind here.

The first thing out of their mouths in verse 24 is sovereign.

Lord who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them.

The first thing they do is acknowledge that God is sovereign.

They answer the question, who should we listen to you?

The Jewish leaders or God?

And the answer is we need to listen to the sovereign, the one who is the creator of everything.

He's the sovereign God.

And so they begin by pushing back in this prayer against the chief priests and elders who are saying we're telling you no more preaching and they're saying sovereign Lord and they'll go on to say, help us to continue to speak boldly.

But I get ahead of myself because the next thing they do in verse 25 is they're going to cite Messianic passage there in Psalm two, the first couple of verses.

Why did the gentiles rage and the peoples plot in vain?

The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his anointed.

And so the next thing they do is they cite this passage.

And then in verse 27 they make the connection between that prophecy that there would be resistance to the messiah to the Lord's anointed.

They make the connection between that prophecy and what has already happened in the life of Jesus.

For truly in this city, there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus whom you anointed both Herod and Pontius Pilate along with the gentiles and the peoples of Israel.

In verse 27 they are talking about the people who are mentioned in Psalm two verses one and two. Herod.

There may not be Herod.

Antus, the one to whom Jesus was brought during the uh civil trial before his death.

That may be Herod the great, if you recall Herod, the great tried to kill the infant Jesus, the anointed one of God, he failed in that Pontius Pilate.

Well, wait a second, Pontius Pilate managed to put Jesus to death.

Sounds like Pontius actually won against Jesus, didn't he keep reading verse 28 along with the gentiles and the peoples of Israel to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.

When Pontius Pilate allows Jesus to be taken and crucified.

He is allowing exactly what God's plan required that Jesus die as a sin sacrifice on the cross.

Peter talked about that in the sermon on Pentecost when he said that Jesus had been delivered by the determined counsel and Foreknowledge of God.

It was part of God's plan for Jesus to die on the cross.

Read Psalm 22.

You can't miss it.

And so even though Pontius Pilate inherited the great, inherited the anus that matter, his son, even though they raged against Jesus, as the text says, they were impotent to change the plan of God, what God decides is going to happen is going to happen.

That's the point here.

And now, Lord look upon their threats, whose threats.

Well, the chief priests and the elders had threatened Peter and John no more teaching in the name of Jesus.

Now, Lord look on their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness.

Peter and John were noted by the council members for their boldness and they were released.

We'll note some other things here and just uh a little bit about boldness.

But I want you to note this Peter and John and the church or the disciples assembled here did not offer the prayer that I suspect I would have made and maybe you would have made as well if you had been threatened by these Jewish leaders, threatened with possible beatings or maybe even with your life, death.

Would you have prayed for boldness or would you have prayed for escape?

Would you have prayed?

Would I have prayed that God would, would stop this kind of persecution so that we can preach the gospel freely?

I I gotta confess, I think that's what I would have prayed.

It's not what they prayed for.

What they prayed for was the boldness to continue to speak the word.

I think understanding that there would be continued persecution, continued resistance to the preaching of the gospel.

Lord help us be bold preaching the word in acts four and verse 20.

For we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.

We are going to speak because of what we have seen and heard.

They saw a dead man raised Jesus of Nazareth, the one who had claimed that he would be raised, even as he claimed to be the Son of God and in human flesh, we've seen it and we can't help but say it.

I wonder if our faith He is so strong that we essentially have no alternative but to speak what we know what we have seen and heard through the eyes of scripture.

And then finally, they ask God to continue to heal.

Let's read it in the text in verse 30 while help us to continue to be bold.

And I are speaking the word while you are speaking to the Lord, stretch out your hand to heal and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.

Now I'll tell you what's interesting about this prayer, Peter and John have already been bold, but they seem to understand that they were going to need God's strength to continue to to boldly speak that way.

Remember Steven in chapter seven, he would speak boldly courageously, but he would also be killed for his boldness.

And so these disciples are asking God to continue to, to offer the signs that produce faith and those who saw them.

And then verse 31 and when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continue to speak the word of God with boldness.

That's what they prayed for and God answered with his help.

Well, I appreciate your kind attention this evening.

What do we need to take away from these two chapters?

Well, there's a lot of stuff here that we didn't even unpack and I'm not going to go over all this stuff even that we did discuss or focus on uh briefly.

But I think first of all, we need to remember that no matter what happens in this life that God is sovereign.

He is the ultimate authority.

And that comes out in this prayer.

I think that that's Luke's point in citing this prayer and citing what the Peter and John had told the other disciples.

They talked about what the chief priests and elders had said.

And then the next words are sovereign. Lord.

One has created heaven and earth, everything in them.

God is sovereign.

Does that mean that we won't suffer from time to time for our faith?

Or for speaking boldly, no, Stephen is gonna die.

Other Christians are going to die.

But understand in the end, everybody as Mike pointed out so, well, this morning, everybody answers to the judge, to Jesus Christ.

That's the authority that you and I have to deal with.

It's not the US government, the Supreme, it's not the government of Alabama or the state in which you live, if you're visiting or even local governments, God is sovereign and we must obey God rather than men.

That's a principle that seems so simple until you begin to apply it and there are consequences to its application.

But then the second point that I would make that, I think we can take away from all of this.

And that is that a grounded, strong faith makes for boldness.

You find yourself maybe sometimes a little timid to say anything.

The apostle said, we can't help but speak, say the things that we have seen and heard what we have in our Bibles is the record of a resurrection and that changes everything is our faith so strong.

Are we so solidly convicted by the things that we study in our Bible classes and our personal study and in, in venues like this are we so solidly convicted that there's no way we're going to be quiet about this, especially as Mike pointed out this morning, how much people need to hear what we know what we have seen and heard in the scriptures.

A grounded, strong solid faith makes for boldness.

We need to shore up our faith.

If we're timid in speaking the truth about Jesus Christ and about his gospel.

Well, the disciples said, and there is salvation and no one else for.

There's no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.

Some excellent thoughts by Mike this morning.

Talking about people.

It seems to be more of a common perception now that you can go to heaven in various roads.

That's a common doctrine.

It's been around for a long time, but more and more people are embracing it.

It's comforting.

You have to worry about the right path or a specific path.

You just believe whatever you want and you can choose your savior from whoever seems to please you or meets your expectations.

But the Apostle said salvation and no other name, Jesus said, I am the way no one comes to the Father except through me.

What's your relationship with God?

Do you need to accept the grace that God offers through the Gospel to those who will believe in his son, who will confess Him as the Christ, as the Son of God, the risen savior and who will repent of their sins and then be baptized immersed in water for the remission of their sins that they can have the hope of eternal life.

That's what we have seen in the gospel.

That's what we need to share with others if we ourselves already enjoy that hope.

But if you don't this evening, if you're outside of Christ, never having obeyed the gospel, then we want to encourage you to change that tonight.

And so we invite you to obey the gospel.

If you'll come to the front as we stand and sing in just a moment, we want to encourage you, we'll assist you and we encourage you.

Now, as we stand and sing.

Series: N/A

Service: Sun AM

Type: Sermon

Speaker: Mike Eison

The following transcription is computer-generated and may not accurately reflect the contents of the audio. Please verify the content before quoting.

(Transcribed by Congregate. Always check document for possible errors and inaccuracies in automated transcriptions.)

If you'd like to follow along in your Bibles this morning, the scripture reading comes from the book of Matthew chapter seven.

Matthew chapter seven, a few moments, I'll be reading from the ESV.

It's the last chapter sermon on the mount.

Uh Jesus has spent the latter half of chapter six discussing uh essentially the cure for anxiety.

How we being the chiefest of God's creation don't have to worry about basic essentials.

The beginning of chapter seven, Jesus addresses the idea of hypocritical judgment and in verse seven, he continues by saying, ask and it will be given to you seek and you will find knock and it will be opened to you for everyone who asks receives and the one who seeks finds and to the one who knocks, it will be opened or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone or if he asks for a fish, we'll give him a serpent.

If you then who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your Children.

How much more will your father who is in heaven?

Give good things to those who ask him.

So whatever you wish that others would do to, you do also to them.

For this is the law and the prophets enter by the narrow gate for the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction.

And those who enter by it are many for the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life and those who find it are few.

Good morning.

It's wonderful to see everyone here this morning.

Appreciate, uh Jared's words, uh, during the Lord's supper and I appreciate Daniel leading us some good songs this morning before I begin.

Let me just take a quick second and thank everyone for the prayers and the thoughts that you all have offered for me for the email and the text messages that you sent me for the meals that you provided to me and Angie.

Uh Thank you for the outpouring of love that you showed me before and during and after, uh my recent surgery.

If you were to ask your next door neighbor or perhaps the person sitting next to you on an airplane or just about anyone else that lives near you or that you are acquainted to you, ask him this question.

Will those who are saved?

Be few?

What do you think their answer would be?

It's an interesting question to me because of many of the funerals that I have gone to, I inevitably hear at these funerals phrases like he or she is now at peace and now with their savior or he or she has gone to a better place and they're resting people that haven't seen the inside of a church, maybe forever.

People that have no concern over what the will of God is, let alone trying to accomplish it seeming seemingly go to heaven because they were good people.

Every time a celebrity dies, that person is assumed to have gone to heaven.

People who can't spell the name of Jesus are somehow magically assumed to be in heaven because they have brought someone joy here on earth.

All this said, just who is it that will go to heaven?

And how do they get there?

And are there multiple paths that can get a person to heaven?

What I came across an article the other day from online uh article by Christian Da. I don't know much about Christian Da, but the article, the title of the article was intriguing to me and perhaps serves as the basis for my comments this morning.

As you can see, the article is entitled Majority of Generation Z. Believe that there are several ways to heaven study finds.

And it's interesting to me that this title that uh we see here on Christian Daily.

Their impetus for writing this article was based on what a research group, a Christian research group, the Barna group had discovered in one of their researches that they had done, they had done a report, they did a research report in 213.

Um and their findings showed that 218% of roughly two thirds of the respondents agreed to the perception that many religions can lead to eternal life, 2623% higher than that of their 261 survey, which recorded 61%.

So it's kind of interesting that just in a few, in a few short years, we see a number of generation Z that believe that there are multiple paths to salvation.

What's of special concern to me is what's written here, which says that the study also showed that 224% of, of uh of young adults responded or simply agree or believing that it is morally right and wrong changes.

What is morally right or wrong changes over time based on society?

That's scary to think that what we perceive what society believes is right or wrong is depends on what society believes.

It's hard for me to believe.

When you look at our society, you see what goes on around us, you see the killing of innocent babies.

You have a society that believes that this is morally right, brothers and sisters and friends.

What we're seeing with generation Z I think is the first godless generation in this country's history.

We live in a society where truth has become relative.

Our society tells us that there is no singular truth.

That truth is subjective how one feels replaces facts.

It's interesting that uh the novelist Flannery o'connor caught on to this many years ago and she said that the truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it emotionally.

And I think that's right.

While society tells us that there is no absolute truth, there actually is an absolute truth.

The only source of absolute truth is found exclusively in the Bible God himself being the origin and the altar of truth has given us the absolute truth regarding life, faith and salvation through his word.

There's a reason this current generation is the least religious generation in our country's history.

And it's because they don't know the truth.

They haven't been taught the truth.

That is God's word.

And I'll tell you something when society plants, the seeds of doubt, religion will disappear.

And as quickly as just one generation, it's not just the generation zero that believe that there are multiple paths to heaven mains, mainstream Christian denominations teach the same thing.

It's interesting that when you look and I'm sorry for always bringing up Catholicism, it's in my genes.

You have ostensibly the most powerful person in Christendom.

The Pope.

Look at his quote.

All religions are a path to God.

Can you imagine your elders teaching your Bible classes that Hinduism, Taoism Islam, all our paths to God.

But we see here with the Catholic church, as we see in many denominations around us is the art of compromise.

So it's not to offend anyone.

You have the leader of the largest denomination on earth.

Tell us that or tell them not us that all religions are a path to God, regardless of what a Christian denomination teaches.

The Bible is very clear that there are not multiple paths to heaven.

Jesus stated in John the 224th chapter, he said I am the resurrection and the life.

I, I am the resurrection and the life.

Whoever believes in me though we die yet shall he live?

And everyone who lives and believes in me, she'll never die.

Do you believe this?

Based on what we see here in John 2100 chapter seems to me that the path to heaven is pretty exclusive.

It's through Jesus Christ.

Now it's suppose that instead of asking generation Xers or the Pope or your neighbor or the person next to you on the plane, this question instead of asking men, let's ask Jesus, what the answer is to this question, Lord Jesus, will those who are saved be few?

How do you suppose he would answer this question?

Interestingly, Jesus was asked this question.

He was asked this question directly.

Recall in Luther 13th chapter that a person asked him our question this morning, Lord, will those who are saved be fused?

How did Jesus answer?

Well, the Bible reads, he Jesus went on his way through towns and villages, teaching and journeying towards Jerusalem.

And someone said to him, Lord will those who are saved be few.

I want you to notice something notice that someone that this one person asked Jesus the question and I want you to notice that Jesus answers the question, not just directly back to him, but Jesus answers the question to the entire audience.

Jesus gave his answer to the entire crowd saying strive to enter through the narrow door.

For many, I tell you will seek to enter and will not be able when once the master of the house has risen and shut the door and you begin to stand outside and knock at the door saying ward open to us, then he will answer you.

I do not know where you come from.

The answer that Jesus gets here.

It is not one that many people like to hear, but it is nonetheless the truth.

Many people will try to go to heaven, but I'm afraid that few will make it through the narrow door.

Jesus right here states that there is exactly one path to heaven and not multiple paths.

So our question this morning, I think has been answered definitively.

Few people will be saved.

That's not the opinion of Mike Eon.

It's not the opinion of the elders.

It is what Jesus himself said.

My next question is I hope almost as important, which is why will only a few be saved?

Why is it that only a few will be saved?

Well, start our answers from God's perspective.

First and foremost, it's not because God doesn't want to see people saved.

Let me repeat that.

It's not because God doesn't want to see people saved.

First Timothy two verses three and four makes this abundantly clear.

This is good and it is pleasing the side of God, our savior who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.

Second Peter three and nine reads, the Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count, slow slowness, but his patient to you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

John 316 and 17 passages at least three and 16 that we're familiar with for God so loved the world that He gave his only son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.

For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world.

But in order that the world might be saved through Him, we see clearly, we see unambiguously that God wants everybody to be saved.

Secondly, it's not because God will only save a few people.

There is a common misperception due to Calvinism that God will only save a few elect people.

When you look at the Westminster confession of faith that reads God as predestined and ordained some men and angels to everlasting life out of his free grace and love without any foresight of faith or works in man or perseverance in either of them and others are for ordained to everlasting death and the number of either is so certain and definite that it cannot be increased or diminished.

There's a whole sermon with just this quote right here from Westminster confession of faith.

When I read something like this, I have a lot to say about this.

But it simply begs one question for me.

What's the point of the Great Commission?

If predestination is true, Jesus himself commanded his apostles in Matthew the 18th chapter in verse 19 to go therefore, and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you and behold, I am with you always to the end of the age.

When you consider this Great commission, when you read Mark 61 verses 15 and 16, you see you can't help but be impressed with the fact that there are facts to be believed, there are commands to be obeyed.

There are promises to be embraced and there is a destiny to seek and there is a destiny to avoid.

The doctrine of Calvinistic predestination is an evil one.

It's nefarious, it's wicked.

The doctrine of Calvinistic predestination makes void.

Every command of God offers no hope to the obedience and nullifies every warning of eternal punishment to prove further that neither God nor His Son only intended to save a few people.

We can go to first John second chapter in verse two where this point is made abundantly clear.

He meaning Jesus is the propitiation of our sins and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world, not just the elect.

So does Hebrews two verse nine, but we see Him who for a little while was made lord than the angels, namely Jesus crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death.

So that by the grace of God, he might taste death for everyone.

So does Matthew 1128 when Jesus says, come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.

Let me ask you this question.

Can anybody, can anyone reasonably interpret this verse or the other verses as Jesus offering everyone something that they can't have?

Of course not.

It's obvious from these verses that God is not going to save only the elect as defined by Calvinism.

So why is it that few people will be saved as we just saw?

It's not because of God.

There's a number of reasons why.

And I know that undoubtedly your list will differ from mine, my list different from mine.

I've done it twice, but I'll share you with some suggested reasons and we'll start with this one.

And that is because many, many people are unwilling.

That sounds odd.

Doesn't it?

Many people are unwilling?

Well, as odd as that sounds, it's a biblical answer.

People are unwilling in a lot of ways people are unwilling to put forth the effort to develop a relationship with Jesus Note.

What said in Luke 13 and 24 notice the word strive the new living translation.

We're familiar with that paragon and translational accuracy.

The new living translation translates this as work hard and I think that's a reasonable interpretation.

You don't just stroll through the door and enter Jesus kingdom and receive salvation.

Faith takes effort.

As we just discussed, the door isn't narrow because Jesus wants to keep people from entering his kingdom.

It's narrow because the terms to enter are his terms and they're restrictive.

It doesn't matter what you think or what society thinks.

The terms of salvations are the terms of salvation are, it only matters what Jesus says.

The terms are and many people are unwilling to accept those terms.

I want you to know something else from.

Luke 13.

Many people won't be saved because the master does not know who they are or where they are from because they have no relationship with the master.

Notice that the people think that they do have a relationship with the master.

We ate and drank in your presents and you taught in our streets.

They are saying that they do know him and that he knows them.

I can't help but wonder if these words will sound familiar on the day of judgment, Jesus, we know you and you know what Jesus, we sat in your pews, Jesus, we heard your word Jesus, we went to church.

You may think that you have a relationship with Jesus.

But proximity to Jesus is not enough, it is not enough to say that you went to church that you listen to sermons, participate in the singing.

It's not enough to say that you spent some time with Jesus.

Jesus is not looking for a casual relationship.

People who are in jesus' kingdom are those that have strived to enter through the narrow door.

And once they're in his kingdom, they continue to labor and serving him.

People who are in Jesus Kingdom or those who have read and studied and believed and obeyed jesus' word and they have rejected the false doctrines taught by men and by religious institutions, there are only two choices in life.

You are either striving to enter through the narrow door and serve Jesus or you're simply working for yourself, which ultimately means that you're working for Satan.

There are many people who will hear the Gospel will not be saved because they are self righteous people.

There are a number of people that think that they're good.

They have deceived themselves into thinking that they are good.

There's all sorts of self-help books out there.

I just happen to stumble on this one that says all good people go to heaven who is good outside of God himself.

Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

No one is good, let alone good enough to go to heaven.

I know some of these people, they think that the gospel is for thieves, for murderers, for prostitutes, pervert, for perverts, for drug addicts, for alcoholics, but not them because they're nice decent people.

The irony is that is exactly who the gospel is for those kind of people and them, these people live good lives and they do good deeds.

They're even religious and I'm afraid that what happens is they're blinded.

They don't see their need of being saved because they see themselves as being good people.

The self righteous sound exactly to me like the pharisee in Luke the 18th chapter.

He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves, that they were righteous and treated others with contempt.

Two men went up to the temple to pray one a pharisee and the other tax collector, the pharisee standing by himself prayed.

Thus, God, I thank you that I'm not like other men, extortioners, unjust adulterers or even like this tax collector.

I fast twice a week.

I give tithes of all that I get.

But the tax collector standing far off would not even lift up his eyes to heaven.

But these rest saying God be merciful to me, a sinner.

I tell you this man went down to his house justified rather than the others for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.

Some people won't, won't be saved because they don't believe that they are good enough or worthy enough.

Do you know people like this?

I know people like this and it just kills me to hear this.

Many people are deeply convicted of their sins.

Unfortunately, it appears to me that there are many people that just want to get their wives cleaned up first and then they'll come to Jesus.

Seems to me that they want to prove to themselves and to others, perhaps even to God Himself that they can live good lives and then they will deserve salvation.

Unfortunately, this is a gross misunderstanding of the grace of God as we see in Romans, the fifth chapter starting in verse eight.

But God shows his love for us that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us since therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more.

Shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God?

For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death, son, much more now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life?

No one is good enough to earn or deserve salvation.

As we see in Romans 623 for the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ, Jesus, our Lord, brothers and sisters.

We need to remind people that they need to clean themselves up spiritually first with the gospel of Jesus Christ and then clean up their sexual lives.

Secondly, there are many people that will not be saved because they genuinely hate God and Jesus.

Do you know any people like this?

I work with people.

I used to work with people like this.

Why do you suppose that anyone would hate God or hate Jesus?

They hate God because they love and serve, serve something else and that something else is almost inevitably themselves and because they serve themselves, that's why they covet, That's why they boast.

That's why they are proud.

And that's why they blaspheme.

That's why they disobey parents and so forth related being lovers of self.

Many people hate God and Jesus because they just simply love pleasure.

I think that's probably most of the world that's around us.

The thing that is keeping people from being saved and the thing that is even killing some Christians spiritually is that people love pleasure more than they love God.

Similarly, many people hate God and Jesus because of their love of money.

And I realize this is not on the list up there.

However, one thing I've learned in my 61 years on earth is this, if you love money, you'll serve money and when you serve money, you will hate God.

Recall what Matthew 624 says, no one can serve two masters for either He will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.

You cannot serve God and money.

Let me reiterate, loving yourself, loving the world, loving pleasure, loving money will inevitably cause people to hate God, which will undoubtedly keep them from being saved.

And finally, many people will not be saved simply because they procrastinate.

Perhaps the largest category of people who are not saved.

And those who will never be saved are those who procrastinate.

I don't believe that these people intend to go to hell.

At least the ones that I know.

I think perhaps many of them sincerely intend to be saved, but not today, they put it off and refused to surrender the lives of Christ.

Now thinking that they will do it at a later date.

When you think of people like this, it's easy to think of the story of Felix.

You recall Felix's procrastination as we read in acts 24 starting verse 24.

After some days, Felix came with his wife Priscilla who is Jewish and he sent for Paul and heard him speak about faith in Christ, Jesus as he reason about righteousness and self control in the coming judgment or this coming.

Yeah, the coming judgment.

Felix was alarmed and said, go away for the present when I get an opportunity, I will summon you.

And what we see here is that procrastination is a thief of time.

It is the grave of opportunity and unfortunately, it will be the road to hell for many people like Felix.

Well, as you may have surmised the sermon isn't just about your neighbors or generation Z for people in denomination.

The sermon is about some of you.

Will you be one of the few that will be saved?

I wanna go back to the previous chart note that when Paul reasoned with Felix about righteousness and self control and the coming judgment, Felix became alarmed.

The Greek word here is Phobos to fear or to be terrified or frightened.

Judgment Day for all mankind is an absolute certainty.

Felix was terrified.

He was frightened.

He became alarmed because he knew what Paul said was true.

If you have not obeyed the gospel, it is my sincere hope that you will consider the words that I have spoken this morning and believe them because I believe they are true.

They are not true because of me, they are true because I've quoted you the words of God.

Moreover, I hope like Felix, you are terrified or frightened or alarmed as you consider the upcoming Judgment Day.

Unlike Felix, I pray that you will do something about your sins.

It is my prayer this morning.

The prayer of everyone in the audience that you will come forward confess that you believe that Jesus is the son of God, that you repent of your sins and are baptized for the forgiveness of sins.

Friends, every single one of us here is going to meet Jesus, the Christ that is 100% guaranteed Jesus, the Christ will either be your savior or your judge.

There is precisely one path to heaven and that path is through Jesus Christ.

Do not delay your decision to make Jesus your savior, make him your savior.

Right now, we invite you to come to the front as we stand to sing and encourage you.

Series: N/A

Service: Sun PM

Type: Sermon

Speaker: Allen Dvorak

The following transcription is computer-generated and may not accurately reflect the contents of the audio. Please verify the content before quoting.

(Transcribed by Congregate. Always check document for possible errors and inaccuracies in automated transcriptions.)

Appreciate the opportunity to speak with you this evening.

I appreciate your presence here this evening.

And I want to begin this evening by talking about the Lord's supper.

I felt like Kevin did an excellent job this morning in helping us to uh remember the special nature of the supper even though we do it every week.

Uh And we'll continue to do that until the Lord comes.

As Kevin noted, it is a special thing that we are observing and I want to talk a little bit about that first Lord's supper.

The Passover when Jesus instituted this supper of the Lord Jesus and his disciples had observed the Passover together before John records at least three, maybe four passovers in his jock gospel in which Jesus is with his disciples.

And they kept this Passover.

But this Passover, this last one must have seemed special and different, at least in some ways to the disciples.

Back in Mark the 20233th chapter uh Clark read from Mark 14.

But if you go back to chapter 10 of Mark, excuse me.

And in verse 32 we're told that as they're going up to Jerusalem, this is where Jesus will enter triumphantly as the king.

Uh on this last visit to Jerusalem as they're going up there, Jesus began to tell them what was to happen to him.

Verse 33 saying, see we are going up to Jerusalem and the son of man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the scribes and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the gentiles.

They will mock him and spit on him and flog him and kill him.

And after three days, he will rise.

Now we're told on other occasions that the disciples didn't necessarily understand some of these predictions.

The people in general didn't seem to understand the nature of the Messiah and his role in Israel's history.

But there were other signs that suggested something momentous was going to happen in these days prior to the Passover observance, there was a woman who anointed Jesus and even in the face of criticism, Jesus said, leave her alone.

She has anointed my body for burial.

I wonder what the disciples thought about that in some of the teaching that Jesus had done in the temple.

During this last week, he told a parable that suggested the death of the son, the owner of the vineyard's son.

And so the disciples may on this last night have been apprehensive about some of the things that might we were going to happen.

I still don't think they understood even partially what all was involved but this was going to be a different. Passover.

Jesus tells them as you read along with Clark, perhaps Jesus tells them that the Passover room needs to be prepared and he tells them to, gives them specific instructions, saying the teacher wants to know if the the upper room is prepared.

So this is something that may have happened before and they're using the same upper room.

It all takes place.

It was anticipated that Jesus would take the Passover, observe the Passover with his disciples in this place.

And then there's the identity of the betrayer revealed during the course of this evening.

Some rather unusual things happen.

Jesus for instance, takes some of the unleavened bread and he says, this is my body which is given for you do this in remembrance of me.

What must of the disciples have thought about that statement?

Jesus said some similar things in John the sixth chapter and the Jews in general didn't understand the figurative nature of what he was saying.

I wonder if the disciples understood and then he would say this is speaking of the cup, this is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many.

What did the disciples think about that this evening?

We're going to do a question and answer sermon.

And it was suggested to me that perhaps Clark mckee had only scheduled two songs with the intent of making it possible for me to cover both questions. Clark.

If that was your thinking.

I appreciate it.

It's probably in vain, but nevertheless, that's what we're going to do tonight.

I prepared a couple of questions for those who are not familiar with what we do. Occasionally.

I devote a sermon sometimes to answering some questions that have been submitted to me.

The questions are not necessarily related to each other and that is the case.

Uh This evening, they're on different topics and I want you to understand that the answers I give are my answers.

They don't represent some official position of either the elders of this congregation, but they do constitute my understanding of the topics uh that the questions relate to.

And so this evening, a couple of questions, the first one has to do with the food of the vine that was used in the institution of the Lord's Supper as we read about in Mark 14.

And the second question which I just uh just erased has to do with the Christians attitude towards some of the global con uh conflicts that are going on the Russian Ukrainian war, the things that are gone going on in Israel and have been going on for the last year, nearly uh between Israel and Hamas and Hezbollah.

And now Iran has gotten involved as well.

And I, I really think that sometimes we Christians have mixed emotions about some of those things.

Our country is certainly divided on that topic.

And so we'll say some things about that.

Uh When we get to the second question, somewhere around 10 o'clock.

So the first question is one that we had anticipated talking about last time we did a sermon like this.

And quotation marks here indicate that this is the question as I received it.

Exactly quoted.

Do you think that the food of the vine during the first Lord's supper was fermented or not?

And I actually have received fairly recently, Another similar question, did Jesus drink wine, grape juice or do we even know to be able to say for sure at the first Lord's supper?

Well, I think the questions are regarding not just the triviality or some uh unimportant detail as we'll look at.

And so I'm going to pursue these questions by first noting, as you're probably well aware that the Lord's sufferer was instituted as Jesus observed the last Passover with his disciples as we read a little bit earlier.

And so he would have been using the same elements from the Passover feast.

It would have been roasted lamb.

If you're familiar with the institution of the Passover in Exodus, the 12th chapter, you know that they were to roast the lamb and then begin eating it at twilight, uh unleavened bread, bitter herbs would have been used in that uh meal.

And there are several passages that deal with the Lord's supper or the Passover since uh the Lord's supper was instituted in the context of the Passover observance I want you to note that in Luke chapter 22 and we're gonna look at Matthew 26 10003st, I think just to make an observation about a detail in Mark, uh excuse me in Matthew account verse 29 of chapter 26 Jesus said, I tell you, I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine.

He says, until that day when I drink it new with you in my father's kingdom.

Mark's account uses the same language again of the fruit of the vine.

He says, but then Luke's account uses the same language in verse 18.

For I tell you that from now on, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the Kingdom of God comes.

So all three of the synoptics use the same language to describe the cup.

It's the fruit of the vine.

I want you to note that in Luke's account if you notice um in verse 210, Jesus took a cup and when he had given thanks, he said, take this and divide it among yourselves for, I tell you that from now on, I will not drink the fruit of the vine until the Kingdom of God comes and he took bread.

And when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying this is my body which is given for you, do this in remembrance of me.

So Jesus had taken a cup of fruit of the vine.

That was being used in the institution of the Passover, not the institution, but the, the observance of the Passover, which in the Volve usually four different cups of wine.

As we note a little bit later on.

And then he took the bread that was being used for the commemoration of the paso and sad that said, this is my body.

Then in verse 214 likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying this cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.

And so Jesus talks about this cup that he uses, whether it's the cup that he uses actually to institute the Lord's Supper or whether it was one of the cups that was used in the context of the Passover.

It's referred to as the fruit of the vine by Jesus in First Corinthians the 210th chapter.

It just talks about the cub.

It doesn't describe it as the fruit of the vine.

So the question, was this cup?

Was it fermented grape juice or unfermented?

Was it what most people would call wine?

Well, one of the things we need to understand is that wine, the word that is typically translated wine in the New Testament Oeno is a word that can refer either to fermented grape juice or for that matter, it can refer to unfermented grape juice.

Well, how would you know?

Well, context will tell you uh in many cases, for instance, in Luke the fifth chapter in verse 212 Jesus said, and no one puts new wine into old wine skins.

If he does, the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled and the skins will be destroyed.

Old wine skins made of animal parts would not have the capability to expand which they would need to do as grape juice that has been poured into them.

New wine begins to ferment from the yeast that is in the grape juice and the gasses need a room, need place volume to expand.

You're gonna split those old wine skins if you put the new wine in there.

Now, Jesus is not giving a lesson on the keeping of wine.

He has another purpose in all of that.

But for our consideration, just simply note that the wine here is wine.

That's fermenting.

That's the point of the illustration that Jesus uses on that occasion.

So wine can refer to fermented grape juice.

In fact, in Ephesians 27, that seems pretty clear and do not be drunk with wine.

You don't get drunk on grape juice, but you can on alcoholic uh beverages for that's debauchery, but be filled with the spirit wine.

There very clearly is used to talk about fermented grape juice.

Now, when we go to the Old Testament, I understand we're now dealing with a different language.

But I want you to see also that the word wine in the Old Testament doesn't necessarily mean grape juice that's fermented in Isaiah chapter 22023 and verse eight, the prophet says, on behalf of the Lord as the new wine is found in the cluster.

So even the juice that is in the cluster of grapes is described as new wine.

Well, it's obviously not fermented.

So the word wine is defined as fermented or unfermented based on the context because it can refer to either uh condition of grape juice.

Well, let's take a little bit different tact.

What do we know about the Passover?

Well, if we go back to the original institution of the Passover on the very night that Israel will be leaving Egypt.

We find that uh instructions had been given for how they were to observe this Passover during the final plague brought against Egypt.

The death of the first born this day shall be for you.

A memorial day, Moses recorded and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord throughout your generations as a statute forever.

You shall keep it as a feast.

Seven days.

You shall eat unleavened bread.

There's the first indication on the first day, you shall remove leave out of your houses for if anyone eats what is leaven from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel.

Now, it's also stated in the context of Israel's departure from Egypt that there wasn't time for their dough to be leave and one might suggest or conclude that the reason that there was no leaven in the bread was just because of the need to leave Egypt rapidly.

But that doesn't really explain why subsequent observances of the Passover needed to be unleavened bread and not leaven bread.

Because in the next uh observance of the Passover which would take place at Mount Sinai, the people weren't in a hurry to leave, they weren't leaving Egypt anymore.

They were settled there at least for a little bit at Mount Sinai.

So why the prohibition against le during the Passover feast and then the subsequent seven days that sometimes is referred to as the feast of unleavened bread.

I conclude that unleavened bread has some spiritual or symbolic significance.

It wasn't just a coincidence that they didn't have leaven or that they didn't have dough that had been leavened.

There wasn't time for that.

I think there's a bigger issue here at stake.

Um Luke chapter 10003 and verse one says now the feast of unleavened bread drew near which is called the Passover.

So the Passover was actually the beginning of this feast that would then last several days.

And during that entire period of time, a week or so, then they were not to have Levin in their houses.

Levin was to be removed from the house before the Passover lamb was killed. Levin.

Of course, as we uh I think all probably recognize is a fermentation agent agent.

We use leaven uh yeast in dough to cause it to rise to gain volume.

And what's happening is there's a fermentation process that's going on in that dough that makes it larger in quantity or at least in volume I should say.

And uh then it's leavened in First Corinthians.

The fifth chapter, Jesus uh Paul makes a point about Jesus being our Passover lamb and the necessity to have already removed Levin from the house.

He's going back to Exodus 21000 and he's talking about the original institution of the Passover.

Your boasting is not good.

He writes to the Corinthians.

Do you not know that a little Levin Levins the whole lump cleanse out the old leave that you may be a new lump as you really are unleavened for Christ, our Passover lamb has been sacrificed.

Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

So his argument simply is according to the Old Testament.

By the time the Passover lamb is sacrificed, they were to have removed all the leaven from their houses.

Well, Jesus is our Passover lamb.

Paul is not suggesting that we should observe the Passover or that the Corinthians were doing that.

But he's making the observation that once the Passover lamb has been killed, Levin should already be removed in the case here, they needed to remove the leaven.

The Passover lamb had already been sacrificed.

Now, what does that have to do dough leavened or not.

With the question that we're talking about.

Well, yeast or leaven is what causes grape juice to turn into fermented wine.

Leaven is used in different ways to symbolize different things in the scriptures.

For instance, in Matthew 218 and verse 210 Jesus told a parable, here's the parable.

The kingdom of Heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour till it was all leaven.

I think Jesus is making reference to the influencing power of leaven.

You put a little leaven in dough and it works its way.

The fermentation works its way through the dough and it influences the entire lump of dough.

That's what Jesus said.

And so the expansion of the Kingdom of Heaven is compared to the effect of Leaven in.

Do we already looked at first Corinthians five verses six through eight where Paul says, don't you understand a little le le is the whole lump.

Of course, he's talking now about sin, how sin can influence its influence can spread through a congregation if in fact, it's not dealt with in the way that God intends.

Well, you know, it's interesting that the modern day Jewish cedar meal peso is the word for Passover.

And the meal is described as a cedar meal uh meal.

And if you look at the picture there, you notice there are four cups of wine and each cup was intended to symbolize some portion of God's promise to Israel.

And you can see the meat there, the lamb and then some bitter herbs and then off to the right.

And in the middle, upper part of the picture, you see the unleavened bread.

So that's what a meal, a cedar meal would look like.

But the question is, what do Jews today understand about the wine or the cup that would be used to celebrate the Passover?

Because after all, that's what we're talking about in Mark the 14th chapter, we're talking about Jesus and his disciples celebrating the Passover.

There's no reason to believe that they used anything other than what was available for the Passover in the institution of the Lord's Supper.

Well, um the fact of the matter is do a little research and Jews who celebrate the Passover today, either grape juice or alcoholic wine.

Kosher wine is used in the celebration of the cedars.

Some yeasts are allowed in Kosher wine.

I want to read you something I found kind of interesting uh as I did a little bit of research on this.

Um and you'll find a lot of different uh kinds of information about this, not everybody is consistent in their discussion of it.

But here, here's uh the comments of one article that deals with the question of Kosher wine for Passover.

Kosher wine is a great wine that is produced according to Judaism's religious and dietary laws.

In order for a wine to be kosher.

It must be created under a rabbi's immediate supervision.

With only Sabbath, observant Jewish males touching the grapes from the crushing phase through the bottling.

So I guess either Jewish males who aren't observing the Sabbath or women can pick the grapes.

But when you get to the crushing say stage, it's only those males Jewish males who are observing the Sabbath sounds a little bit like the Pharisees.

So it continues, uh while all wines require some sort of mold or yeast for fermentation.

Kosher for Passover wine must be made from a mold that has not been been grown on bread such as sugar or fruit and must exclude several common preservatives like potassium sorbet.

A wine that is Kosher for Passover cannot include comets which includes grain bread and dough.

The most Kosher wine that is uh marketed and sold commercially has a seal of approval called and I don't know how to pronounce that word.

This typically comes from a Kosher certification agency.

So if you're a Jew and you're wanting to celebrate the Passover, you can go and you can find wine that is uh certified to be Kosher, meaning that it has been prepared according to Judaism's dietary laws.

So basically what we're saying and I'll share another quotation with you is that Jews believe at least some that you can use fermented grape juice in the institution of the Lord's Supper.

Many beers, bourbons and gins are typically considered kosher however, because they are made from fermented grains, a different kind of mold, they are a no go during the week of Passover.

Wine is commonly served at Passover celebrations just as long as it is made by a Kosher winery.

In other words, that has to be fermented by a particular kind of mold.

Well, what does that have to do with our question?

Well, let me suggest to you that as I indicated before, I don't think the requirement of using unleavened bread in the institution of the feast and also its observance later on.

I don't think the fact that they had to remove all leave from their houses before they could celebrate the Passover before they could kill the Passover lamb and then celebrate the cedar meal.

I don't think that's coincidental.

I think there's symbolism there, especially since Levin often represents sinful influence.

And what we know about our Passover lamb is that he was without sin, no 11 in his life, he was tempted like we all are tempted, but without sin.

The Hebrew writer says in chapter four.

And so I think the idea of celebrating the Lord's supper with unleavened bread.

It's not just a coincidence.

Oh, that's what they had at the Passover.

And so Jesus just used whatever that I think the fact that it was unleavened, the Passover was significant because the Passover was a shadow of the Lord's supper.

The Lord's supper is the fulfillment of this observance this memorial supper.

And so here's my answer to the question.

The fact that Levin was to be removed from the house before the Passover lamb was killed.

And the Passover to be observed with unleavened bread causes me to think that the original Lord's supper was not observed with fermented grape juice.

Wine is great juice that has leaven that has been fermented.

The bread wasn't to be fermented.

What makes us think that it would be acceptable for the cup to be fermented?

I would suggest that wasn't God's intention in light of the association of leaven with sin and the sinless of Jesus Christ.

I don't think it's coincidental that Passover was celebrated with unleavened bread.

Although fruit of the vine could conceivably be used to mean fermented wine.

I personally find it interesting and suggestive that every gospel account uses the phrase fruit of the vine rather than wine.

Isn't that interesting?

Because the word wine is used quite frequently in the New Testament, but fruit is a different word.

Fruit of divine is a different idea.

And I wonder if we weren't being told something.

So that's my answer to the question.

And I want to move on to the second question and this question I didn't really receive specifically the language of it.

So I've kind of summarized the question that I received.

What should be the Christians reaction to current regional military conflicts.

We're all aware that there are numerous armed conflicts going on in the world, even some that we don't hardly hear about in the United States because of the fact that they are in another part of the world.

But there are two wars that are going on right now that are getting a lot of press.

Obviously, the Russian Ukrainian war and the conflict between Israel and Hamas and Hezbollah now and Iran it seems is also involved now.

And as I said earlier, our country is divided over what the role of the United States should be in these conflicts.

Some people say, no, we don't need to be sending money there or expending our assets for these conflicts where we don't have any kind of national interest.

Others are saying we have a national interest and we need to defend freedom for whoever Israel of course, has been a long standing ally of the United States and it's not just our country that's probably divided.

I suspect that as individuals, we probably have some mixed feelings about these conflicts.

For instance, on the one hand, I think we all would pray for peace.

That was Paul's instruction to Timothy and first Timothy two, it's on screen verses one through three.

First of all, he writes, then I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions and thanksgivings be made for all people for kings and all who are in high positions.

And here's the purpose for this.

Here's what's in mind that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life.

Godly and dignified in every way.

This is good and it is pleasing in the sight of God, our savior.

What I understand from the passage is that Paul is writing to Timothy and saying, pray for peace because in peace, we're going to have a quiet, peaceful lives, Godly and dignified in every way.

Conflict frequently makes it more difficult for the gospel to be preached, to be distributed in areas where conflict is going on.

That's certainly true in the con in the areas where conflicts are going on now.

And we know that war generally doesn't bring out the best in people.

I don't know how much you've read about some of these things.

But uh in both conflicts that I've mentioned, there have been horrific barbarous acts that had been, had taken place by combatants.

In fact, that's really what initiated the conflict between Israel and Hamas and some of the reports that people are denying that the evidence is there video evidence in some cases and certainly eyewitness testimony, those fighters who came out of Gaza treated many Jews in a terrible way and then they took a bunch of hostages back, some of whom they've killed.

I've seen reports of some of the things that have been done in the Russian Ukrainian War.

I hasten to point out that the information that we frequently receive about anything that's going on in another part of the world has often been manipulated or massaged by mainstream media.

In fact, I would recommend to you that if you listen to mainstream media for your information about the world, you may want to broaden your sources a little bit.

The same thing is true of those who can find their information from one source in particular.

It's very easy for us to be deceived or at least misled by those kinds of sources.

So, on the one hand, we really want peace and we're told to pray for peace.

But then on the other hand, it would seem that both Ukraine and Israel are defending themselves against armed aggression, armed aggression from enemies.

Israel didn't invade Gazan October 7th 2023 Hamas invaded Israel and Ukraine didn't initially invade Russia. Russia.

Actually, that war started in 2014.

You're probably aware of that when Crimea and certain portions oblast in the southern part of Ukraine were basically just annexed by Russia against the will of the Ukrainian government.

But in both cases, one nation or one people invaded the other.

And so that involves now the defense against armed aggression.

Paul's comments in Romans 13 suggest to me that a nation has a right to defend itself.

He talks about the government not bearing the sword in vain.

And I understand that in Romans 183, we're talking about individuals in particular and how we should obey government, the ruling authorities because they're instituted by God that is government in general.

And we understand the purpose of government as it is described in Romans 13.

But I would extrapolate from Romans 13 and say, I think nations have a right not only to uh to create and preserve order in, in countries and territories, which seems to be part of the problem part of the issue in Romans 13.

But I think they have a right to defend themselves against aggression by other nations.

Now, we may view Russia and Hamas and Hezbollah as being bad actors with Ukraine and Israel being in the right.

And that may very well be correct.

Again, I would caution us to, to, to remember that sometimes we're manipulated by not just how information is presented, but what information is presented.

Sometimes we don't hear about the whole situation.

So it's a little hard sometimes to draw or make judgments about situations like that.

I think we need to remember that.

And I would also suggest to you that there's usually not a single cause for armed conflict.

In fact, any conflict that takes place typically has a history of things that have gone on in the past.

And so when we try to think of a conflict as being, you know, this happened and this happened and that's why the co it may be much broader than that and usually is.

But with all of that in mind, let me make three observations quickly about these kinds of conflicts.

This isn't going to be any mind shattering new material.

But there are things that I think we need to remember and take into account.

And the first one is there's consequences to actions.

In fact, I think that's a fundamental truth that we need to accept, that parents need to teach their Children, Children need to accept.

There are consequences to actions.

Hamas has worked very hard to elicit support, sympathy from the international community.

Israel is viewed as the bad actor according to Hamas and has been accused by others in the world of genocide.

They're trying to wipe out the Pales, Palestinians and that they're guilty of wanton disregard for civilians.

Well, Hamas uses civilians as human shields and then points the finger at Israel when civilians are killed.

It's my understanding and again, please understand we all need to evaluate our sources of information, but it's my understanding that Israel has often gone the second mile to ensure that civilian casualties are kept to a minimum.

I don't know how many nations will drop leaflets, warning people that there's a strike coming so they can get out of the way.

It almost seems kind of contrary to the whole point of the thing, but it is an effort to try to avoid killing people who are not directly involved in the conflict.

But the problem is it can be difficult to distinguish between Hamas fighters and Palestinian civilians.

Hamas doesn't use uniforms and so fighters fade back into the civilian population and then when people are killed they're identified as civilians because they're not wearing uniforms.

But my point is there's consequences to actions.

You invade a country and you do some of the horrible things that Hamas fighters did to, uh, innocent and helpless Israelis.

I'm not even going to talk about them.

There are young Children here.

They don't need to hear those kinds of things.

But when you do do those kind of things, there are consequences and that's a, a biblical principle we're told over and over again in the scriptures that we're going to be held accountable for the things that we do in the body.

Is that not true?

Second Corinthians, the fifth chapter verse 10, I've used it often enough.

Everybody can quote it.

Probably we're gonna all stand before the judgment seat of Christ.

And we're gonna give account for the things that have been done in the body, whether good or evil, we're all gonna stand before God and give account of ourselves.

Romans 14 and verse 10 through 12 says actions have consequences and we shouldn't be surprised when there are consequences that occur because of actions that have been taken.

Now, there are other things involved, but it seems clear to me that the Israeli invasion of Gaza was prompted by the actions of Hamas on October 7th 2023.

I think that's something we need to think about what happened when terrorists flew airliners into the twin towers of the World Trade Center.

Well, a lot of people were killed, not just people in the towers, but also those who went to try to help those in the towers as the towers then collapsed and killed many of the first responders.

What did the United States do?

Well, we ended up finding a war.

Eventually we responded to the actions that had been taken.

And it's interesting that we didn't have somebody invading our country and then taking hostages.

It was an act of terrorism.

I wonder what the United States would do.

The government, our government would do if one of the cartels in Mexico just decided to come across the border.

And this may not be totally hypothetical, came across the border and they killed a bunch of people in some of the same ways that Hamas did Israelis and then took a bunch of Texans or Arizonians or New Mexican people and took them back into Mexico as hostages with the United States say, well, we, we're not going to do anything about that.

Brothers and sisters.

I'm afraid we'd be bombing Mexico City the next day.

And I think we need to remember when we are critical of those nations that defend themselves or try to eliminate dangers, which I think what is, what Israel is trying to do?

You need to remember that actions have consequences.

And the second observation I would make is that sometimes others suffer the consequences of our actions.

And that's true.

Not just of us obviously, but of people in general, what I do in this world affects other people, not just Debbie, not just my family, not just you because we're intertwined.

We're not islands to ourselves and sometimes innocent people suffer because of the sins of others.

Children sometimes suffer because of the sinful actions of their parents.

And someone says, well, that's unfair.

It's unjust, it is a reality.

The fact of the matter is suffering is not always an indication of guilt.

Sometimes people suffer for reasons that have nothing to do with personal guilt.

They just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And we understand this, the father or the mother that drinks or does drugs, Children are gonna suffer.

We sometimes suffer because of the actions of strangers, actions that may be sinful or may just simply be unwise but others suffer the consequences of our actions, the actions of bad actors also in this world.

So says, well, it's, it's unfair that civilians are being killed in these conflicts.

And I think that's exactly right.

It's not fair and it's not a matter of justice, although we're gonna talk about justice in just a moment.

But the fact of the matter is there's going to be people who are going to suffer in a conflict as broad as the ones that we've used as examples.

And then third, it's a good thing, Clark that you only need two songs.

We may make it, it's easy to take pleasure in the punishment of evil people, not just in a broad conflict like the ones I've described, but even in the execution of criminals who frankly aren't suffering justice, the, the consequence of justice, they're put to death for certain crimes.

It's easy to take pleasure in the justice that's meted out by these nations that we perceive to be in the right.

But we need to understand or remember the big picture.

You know, we sometimes talk about wars that are just, but war is rarely a good way to accomplish justice.

And the individual combatant soldiers who are participating in that war in the battles.

They often do not share the rationale of their government nor even responsibility for their government's actions.

They are essentially, I, I hate using this word but they're essentially pawns of a government who will send them to fight for something.

Maybe they don't even believe in and certainly not responsible for the initial cause of conflict.

I have been reading as I suspect many of you have also that in the Russian Ukrainian war, the Russians sometimes are losing 1000 soldiers in a day or a week.

And we can just read that so many reports come across the news, 1000 soldiers died today in some offensive and because they were perhaps poorly trained or poorly equipped, they were just mowed down, they were killed and it's easy to think about casualties of warfare.

A as just numbers and whoever can get the largest numbers on the other side comes out the winner.

Those are people, the casualties, those are people with souls, those are people whose lives are being cut off short.

There are people who are going to meet their maker as a result of this conflict and many of them I feel confident are unprepared to do so.

Now I understand if there wasn't a conflict there, I don't know how many of those people would respond to the Gospel or even would seek out uh truth or God or would be willing to obey Him if they heard the Gospel.

But I know this once they die, that's it.

There is no more opportunity.

There's no joy in that ought not to be any joy in that, even in situations where we perceive that one nation is justly punishing another nation for an infraction of some sort, the people who are dying, they don't have any more opportunities to obey the Gospel.

It's interesting to me that Ezekiel is writing as a prophet with the exiles in Babylon.

God has sent those people to Babylon as punishment for the nation's idolatry.

But in Ezekiel 18 God pleads with people to repent, to turn.

He says, have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, the death of the wicked God says, I don't take any pleasure in that and not rather that he should turn from his way and live.

I understand the reality of the world.

I understand what's going on.

I know that there are things that you and I as individuals can't change, we can't stop.

But our attitude toward what's happening in these places are also to reflect the fact that there's a bigger picture and it is that we're all going to stand before the judgment seat of Christ.

And many of these people, their lives are being cut off unnecessarily because of warfare.

People killed in a conflict are not just numbers.

There are people who are going to meet their maker in judgment.

Wars come and go.

Nations come and go.

But our circumstances after death are immutable.

Once we die, there's no changing our situation, no second chance.

So here's my answer.

Although some warring parties may seem to us to be on the side of justice.

War is rarely an effective way of accomplishing justice.

As long as they're evil men in power, they are gonna be wars and that's gonna bring suffering to innocent people.

That's, it's unavoidable.

It seems even as we recognize the need for nations to defend themselves.

And I think they do have that right.

We need to pray for peace, that men and women will have the opportunity to hear and respond to the gospel.

The question was what should be our attitude toward these kinds of conflicts?

No joy in the death of hundreds of thousands of people.

And we could look back at other wars and multiply those numbers into the millions.

No joy in the fact that people are going to be lost eternally, not because they were killed in warfare, but they didn't have another opportunity, didn't have additional opportunities to obey the gospel.

You ever known somebody who obeyed the gospel late in life?

What if they'd been cut off?

Their lives had been cut off earlier in the 10th plague that was visited on Egypt?

You remember that the first born of every household was going to die unless of course blood from the Passover lamb that had been sacrificed was applied to the lentil and the door posts on the side.

You remember, and that blood preserved the life of the firstborn from death.

God gave the Israelites instructions.

This is what you do in order not to die.

The first born not to die.

Jesus Paul said is our Passover lamb sacrifice so that we could be preserved from physical or excuse me, spiritual death, physical death was the Passover.

But we're being preserved from spiritual death by the application of the blood, the blood that Jesus shed on the cross, that cleansing blood that has to be applied and it's applied.

When we respond to the Gospel, God's invitation for grace.

In the act of baptism, we're baptized into the death of Jesus Christ.

And I believe it's at that point when we're baptized for the remission, the forgiveness of our sins, that, that blood is then figuratively applied to us and we are preserved from spiritual death, forgiven of our sins as we continue to walk after Jesus to listen to the voice of the shepherd.

If you need to do that this evening, if you need to respond to the invitation of the gospel, in any way, we encourage you to do that.

Now, while you have the opportunity as we stand and sing, to encourage you.

Series: N/A

Service: Sun AM

Type: Sermon

Speaker: Allen Dvorak

The following transcription is computer-generated and may not accurately reflect the contents of the audio. Please verify the content before quoting.

(Transcribed by Congregate. Always check document for possible errors and inaccuracies in automated transcriptions.)

It's good to be with you this morning.

We have some, uh, here this morning who have not been able to be here by reason of health and, and Lindsay are both able to be here this morning.

We're certainly glad about that.

Uh, and there are others I think that, uh, have been out some with sickness and are here today.

Uh, I am sounding congested this morning.

It is actually part of my training for the Don Trux voice.

And so I think I've just about accomplished it.

Uh, I was very careful about checking for fever this morning and I've also been trying to give you a holy elbow.

Uh, it's not anything, uh, that I'm trying to, you know, be nasty or anything.

I just don't wanna share anything if in fact, I have some germs that could be shared.

It's always good to be with you and to be able to talk about God's word 11 of the things I've noticed and, and I'm probably, uh partly guilty of this also is that we tend to think of things in our generation as being unique, but there's never been a generation as wicked as our generation or, you know, the country is at the lowest point of its history and on and on and on.

It goes and yet just a quick study of history would tell us that that's not a true notion that in fact, previous generations have accomplished truly magnificent feats.

We are not unique in that sense and they face the same problems.

They've held many of the same attitudes that we talk about as being characteristic of Western society.

Oh, we're going downhill morally.

Just a quick reading of Genesis six will tell you that we're not unique in that regard.

In any sense, the attitude of modern Western society toward divorce has changed.

We know in the last uh couple of 100 years.

Uh Nowadays people think that divorce should be readily available.

There shouldn't be any stigma attached to those who might be divorced.

Such an attitude is not a new attitude.

And that's the point I want to make to you that that was a common attitude in the time of Jesus among the Jews, they favored easy divorce without the stigma of violating law.

Just as members of the church are frequently faced with divorce and the people that we try to teach, we find that a lot of times we're teaching people or wanting to teach people and they're in a second or third marriage, even some young people.

So it was in the first century that Jesus probably faced somewhat the same situation in Palestine because divorce was pursued, uh for trivial causes, at least according to the rabbis.

And yet Jesus courageously taught God's truth on the subject and we need to do the same thing.

It's not very popular to teach what the Bible says about marriage and divorce.

And yet Jesus did that.

We're going to do that as well.

It's interesting to me and you may have noticed this as well that despite the incredible significance of marriage in our lives, there are not that many passages, my wife would correct me.

There are exactly that many passages.

There are few passages in the New Testament that directly talk about marriage and divorce and we're not going to talk about all of them this morning, but I'm listing them up on the screen.

We're going to focus on the first two, Matthew five and Matthew 19.

Mark 10 is essentially a record of the same conversation that Jesus had with the Jews as recorded in Matthew 19.

Although there are some differences in there that is that Mark records some things that Matthew did not and uh the reverse is true as well.

So we're gonna look at Mark Matthew five and Matthew 19 primarily as we talk about God's marriage law.

And I would point out first of all that in Matthew, the fifth chapter, Jesus engages in a series six, in fact of contrasts contrast between uh the what was said as he says in the ESV you have heard that it was said and what the spirit of the law was teaching the Pharisees, it seems, had a tendency to hide behind the letter of the law without really respecting the spirit of the law as an illustration.

Uh You shall not commit adultery.

Well, does that mean that as long as we don't commit the overt act of sexual immorality of adultery, we can go ahead and look on a woman and lust after her.

Jesus says, no, whoever looks on a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart.

So Jesus gets to the spirit of the law and not just the letter of the law as it seems, sometimes the Pharisees would emphasize.

And I think the purpose of Jesus comments in the sermon on the mount, at least one of the purposes was to reveal the emptiness of fara righteousness.

Jesus says an amazing thing in chapter five and verse 93 when he says, unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the Pharisees, what how could that possibly happen?

The Pharisees were the paragon of righteousness.

No, Jesus indicates in his comments on the sermon on the mount that the Pharisees were missing the point in many cases as was illustrated, I think rather well in Matthew six in talking about uh praying and giving to be seen of men.

So at the same time that Jesus was laying out the moral principles of the Kingdom he was also, I think correcting the focus of the Pharisees as they missed the spirit of the law in some cases.

So let's take a look at Matthew chapter five and verses 31 and 32.

Jesus said, furthermore, it has been said, whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.

But I say to you that whoever divorces his wife for any reason except sexual immorality causes her to commit adultery and whoever divorces a woman who is divorced, commits adultery.

Jesus actually quotes from the Old Testament in verse 31 or at least makes a reference to it.

Excuse me, it seems that the fair, what he's quoting is actually what the Pharisees would have understood from the passage that is referenced.

And that passage is Deuteronomy chapter 24.

The first four verses.

The fact of the matter is that in Deuteronomy 24 Moses didn't command to give a certificate of divorce.

You'll notice that in Deuteronomy 24 I'm citing the new King James version.

And the reason for that is I think the New King James version more faithfully transmits the concept.

The point of the passage read along with me beginning in Deuteronomy 24 and verse one, when a man takes a wife and marries her and it happens that she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some uncleanness in her and he writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand and sends her out of her, his house when she has departed from his house and goes and becomes another man's wife.

If the latter husband detests her and writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, or if the latter husband dies, who took her as his wife, then you see this whole passage is an, if, then statement, there are several conditions.

Moses says, if, if, if, if, if these are the circumstances, here's the conclusion, then verse four, her former husband who divorced her must not take her back to be his wife after she's been defiled for that is an abomination before the Lord.

And you shall not bring sin on the land which the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance.

So the thrust of Matthew or excuse me, Deuteronomy 24 is not.

Moses said, if you divorce your wife, give her a certificate of divorce, Moses just observes that if these things happen, if you send your wife out of your house and you give her a certificate of divorce and she goes and marries somebody else, the first husband may not take her back again.

That's the point.

Moses is not giving a command to give a certificate of divorce.

Nor is he necessarily speaking about the goodness or badness of that practice the Jews.

It seems focused on the right to divorce a wife for some uncleanness.

The ESV uses indecency.

Uh You were, I was reading from the New King James version literally in the text, the Hebrew text.

It's a thing of nakedness.

And the rabbis disputed about what that meant, what was the cause?

But at any rate, the Jews focused on the right of a man to divorce his wife.

And they disputed about among the rabbis about what that cause might include the man who gave his wife a certificate of divorce when he put her away may have been uh following the letter of the law, but in fact, he was failing to love his wife by divorcing her.

Jesus didn't comment in Matthew five.

It's still up on the screen in Matthew 531 and 993.

Jesus didn't comment on the right of a man to remarry in the event that he divorces his wife for sexual immorality.

In the second half of the verse.

In fact, attention is paid to the question of whether he causes her, the divorced woman, his wife to commit adultery, assuming of course, that she remarries, listen to the verse and whoever marries a woman who is divorced, commits adultery.

And so the emphasis is on the one that whosoever would marry this uh put away woman.

I would point out that the second half of Matthew 32 5 32 actually contemplates two different women who have been divorced.

The text literally is having been put away women, one of them, of course, would be the woman who's divorced for just any calls.

But the introduction of the exception clause in verse 31 excuse me.

32 the first part of 32 introduces a second, put away woman.

And that's the woman who's put away for sexual immorality.

But notice in the last part of verse 32 there's no distinction made between this woman who's put away for just any cause.

And this woman who's put away for sexual immorality.

Jesus just said, whoever marries her, who's put away, that would include this woman and this woman, any put away woman that is, she's been divorced for one of these causes, whoever marries her then commits adultery.

The other passage I wanted to look at is Matthew 19.

And part of the reason for these two passages is that Matthew 19 and Matthew five are the only passages that deal with marriage where we find that exception except it before or except for sexual immorality.

I want to take a bird's eye view of Matthew 193.

This is a conversation obviously that uh took place later in Jesus uh ministry.

And in the beginning of the passage, the Pharisees come and they ask Jesus the question, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any cause?

Now they're testing him.

Matthew says in verse three, they testing him.

They're not asking for his opinion about marital law.

They're not asking for information's sake, they are testing him.

And we'll see that after Jesus makes his first response in verse four and verse five, they're going to ask another question in verse seven, which is not on the screen.

At this point, the Pharisees are gonna sharpen their question and Jesus will again respond to their question.

And then finally, in verses 10 to 12, we have the response of the disciples uh to the conversation.

And I want to look at some of these verse verses in a little bit more detail.

Jesus has already in Matthew chapter five, early in his ministry.

As we looked at just a few moments ago, he's already taught against divorce for just any cause.

And yet the Pharisees come again and ask the question.

Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for just any cause?

It seems to me that what they're trying to do is to pit Jesus against, what was the commonly accepted view among the Jews for divorce?

As I said earlier, the rabbis, the Jewish rabbis of Jesus time and even before, had different opinions about what that meant in Deuteronomy 24.

For some matter of uncleanness, a rabbi named Hillel who was roughly contemporary with Jesus, had many followers had taught that Deuteronomy 24.

And verse one meant that a husband could divorce his wife for practically any unseemly thing that he found in her.

And it might not surprise you that this was the most favored view of Deuteronomy 24 among the Jews because it gave them all kinds of latitude for divorcing their wives.

Well, just anything that I don't like about her becomes a legitimate cause for divorce the Pharisees.

When uh in verse seven, they respond to Jesus first, uh answer to them, they could have cited Genesis two.

When Jesus said, what did Moses command you instead of citing Genesis two, which was God's initial marriage law.

They run over to Deuteronomy 24 that talks about a man putting away his wife and their view of that, of course, was that Moses was commanding to give a certificate of divorce, as we've seen from Matthew chapter five and verse 31 I think that the Pharisees were attempting to pit Jesus against the commonly held view of Deuteronomy 24 Jesus, what they knew what he believed about marriage and divorce.

He'd already taught that in the sermon on the man.

I'm sure that was probably commonly known, but they also know that most Jews would favor the, the freer interpretation of Matthew 24.

And so they want Jesus to be pitted against what most people thought about divorce.

I'll tell you what a lot of preachers would have done.

They would have soft pedaled whatever they were going to say, perhaps even changed it or just kinda got pretty vague about things so that they didn't antagonize anybody who might otherwise disagree with them.

Jesus didn't do that.

Jesus responds by citing the initial marriage law and then God's intention from that law when he says in verse six, what therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.

That's a bold frank statement about God's intention for marriage to people who marry it is intended by God that they would stay together for life.

And so Jesus responded by citing God's original intent for marriage from the Old Testament, citing Genesis two.

But then adding in verse six, his own comment about divorce.

I want you to notice in Matthew 93 6 and I apologize.

It's on the previous screen.

So look backwards in your mind.

And if you look at Matthew 19 6, you'll see that Jesus is not quoting any longer from Genesis two.

That's Jesus speaking in Matthew 19 6 and it's a command.

Jesus says when God joins two people together, let not man put them asunder, don't divorce.

That was God's overall original intent for marriage.

That's Jesus comment in response to the Pharisees first question, but the Pharisees are gonna sharpen their divorce question in verse seven.

Why then did Moses command to give a certificate of divorce and to put her away just like Matthew 531?

They're misunderstanding what's going on in Deuteronomy 24 Moses didn't command to give a certificate of divorce.

But Jesus response in verse eight is Moses because of the hardness of your hearts permitted you to divorce your wives but from the beginning, it was not.

So Moses permitted, he didn't command you to do this, but he did permit it because of the hardness of your hearts.

But it wasn't intended by God to be that way.

From the beginning.

I really think that the thrust of the fair psychical question is, aren't you contradicting Moses you, you, you know you're saying here, don't divorce Matthew 19 6.

And Moses said we should give a certificate of divorce.

And so Jesus responds to that statement by noting that Moses statement was not for the purpose of commanding divorce or contradicting God's original marriage law.

His statement in Deuteronomy 5323 that is Moses statement was for the purpose of regulating marriage or remarriage.

I should say Jesus of course, is going to state his law in the ninth verse.

And the restriction upon divorce that Jesus makes in verse nine is really the logical extinction of the original law on marriage from Genesis 224.

Divorce for just any cause results in adultery.

Now, something interesting about we're gonna come back to verse nine in just a few moments.

But something interesting about this passage is that the disciples will respond then in verses 10 through 12, Alex already read this.

But if you don't mind, I'm going to read it again.

His disciples said to him, if such is the case of the man with his wife, it's better not to marry. What?

So if we can't get out of these marriages easily.

Then the best thing is just not to marry.

That's a pretty low view, I think uh of marriage.

But Jesus then responds, all cannot accept this saying.

I think the saying that Jesus mentions here is not his teaching on marriage and divorce.

But what the disciples had said, the disciples say, oh, well, it's better not to marry.

And Jesus says, well, not everybody can, can follow that kind of view.

He goes on to say for there were but only to those to whom it has been given for.

There are eunuchs who were born thus from their mother's womb.

And there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men.

And there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom's sake.

He who is able to accept it, let him accept it.

Oh, you think it's better not to marry?

Well, not everybody can live that way.

And so Jesus says, let those who can uh accept it, those who cannot are going to need to, to marry.

The disciple's view is kind of a pessimistic one.

If you, if you ask me the goodness of marriage really depends upon easy divorce.

And their comment, I think also reveals that they understood Jesus to be limiting divorce and remarriage.

There have been some who have taught uh viewpoints about marriage and divorce and remarriage uh even among our brethren in which virtually anybody can remarry after a divorce there's no sin involved, but that's not what Jesus is saying.

And the disciples response makes that clear.

They say, oh listen, if that's the way it is, then it's better not to marry.

Some people have argued and still do that.

Matthew 19 9 is really just an explanation of the old law.

Uh that Jesus is uh in the sermon on the mount and here in Matthew 19 9, he's just trying to help the Jews understand what the old law taught.

But the old law had provisions for cases in which adultery was committed in the course of a marriage.

You can look at passages like the Levis 20 verse 10 and Deuteronomy 193 and verse 22 under the old law.

If there were witnesses, if there were people who were aware who could testify to adultery being committed, the penalty was not divorced.

Oh, I'll just divorce.

My, the penalty was stoning.

Someone says, well, they didn't really have a, they didn't have a choice about, they had a choice about that.

No, the law said stoning.

That's the penalty.

It's pretty clear here if a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall be surely be put to death.

That's the problem in John eight.

When the Pharisees and scribes been bring, the woman says she's been caught in adultery.

So there are witnesses to her sin.

Where's the adulterer?

Where's the man who was involved.

And that's why Jesus says, he who is without sin, let him throw the first stone, he convicts them of their own hypocrisy in asking this question, what should we do with this woman?

The law says we should stone her.

Duroy 2222 says essentially the same thing.

Now, you couldn't put somebody to death under the old law, except at the testimony of two or three witnesses.

You couldn't have a single witness who would say, well, I saw such and so you carry out the death penalty in that case.

So what happens if a husband is suspicious that his wife has committed adultery?

But there are no witnesses.

If he thinks that his wife has been unfaithful, she would be compelled to drink the water of bitterness.

I'll let you go to numbers the fifth chapter and read all the details there.

But essentially, it was God's way of saying this woman is guilty or not guilty.

Uh But you didn't put her away, you didn't kill her.

I should say on the basis of the husband's suspicion.

Now, here's something else that would suggest that Jesus is not simply explaining the old law because Jesus said that a woman who's put away for just any cause and marries another that she commits adultery.

And yet the passage that we looked at a little bit earlier in Deuteronomy 24 suggests that a woman can remarry.

Deuteronomy 29 says if a man puts away his wife gives her a certificate of divorce and she goes and marries another man.

There's no comment made there directly about uh whether that's a sin or not, it's not stated that she sins when she does that, the passage says she can't be taken back by the first husband if the second husband divorces her or dies.

And so under the old law, a divorced woman was permitted to remarry another man.

That's not what Jesus says in Matthew 29 299 or Matthew five in verse 219.

Now, one of the things that we haven't talked about a great deal, but we've mentioned is that Matthew five and Matthew 29 are the only two passages that deal directly with marriage and divorce that contain that exception clause except for sexual immorality.

And so I want to talk a little bit now about that exception clause.

I suspect that Matthew 92 is perhaps the most comprehensive statement of God's law on divorce and remarriage.

Now, there are some other passages uh Romans seven, for instance, and first Corinthians seven verses 63 through 26 or 219 through 26, that also adds some details.

But this really is the most comprehensive statement of God's marriage law.

Mark also records the same discussion between Jesus and the Pharisees, but he does not include the exception clause.

And he said to them, whoever divorces his wife and marries another, commits adultery against her.

And if she divorces her husband and marries another.

She commits adultery.

Mark's Gospel tells us that divorce by both the husband or the wife that is the one who's doing the putting away is contemplated.

Luke also recorded Jesus teaching on divorce and remarriage on another occasion.

Not the same as Mark 10 and Matthew 19, but he doesn't record or include the exception clause.

Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another, commits adultery and who, who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery.

I want you to notice something in Luke 16 and verse 18, Jesus did not say whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery or whoever marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery.

Jesus didn't make a statement that would imply that in any divorce, at least one of the parties can remarry without sin.

Jesus said this is the point I'm making.

Look at the beginning of the second half of the verse and he who marries Jesus says the one who puts away his wife and the one who marries the woman put away.

They both commit adultery.

There are many people who teach that when a divorce occurs that God doesn't recognize that divorce if it's for a cause other than fornication or sexual immorality.

And so when one or the other of the partners remarries, then the second partner, the other partner can mentally put away the first partner and then can remarry. Visa.

Matthew 19 9.

The problem with that view is right here in Luke 193, because what Jesus says would not be true.

One of the two would have the right to remarry if that viewpoint is correct.

Are you following me?

How many of you would like me to start over?

Like from the beginning of the sermon?

No hands.

Ok. Jesus says they both commit adultery.

But in the viewpoint, I've just described, one of them will always get to remarry because they just have to outweigh the other mate and let them remarry first and then they become the innocent party.

Well, there are other problems with that view, but Luke 1618 gives us a very clear view of the fact that that's not a true view of the marriage law.

Matthew 99 deals explicitly or implicitly with four different individuals.

In four possible scenarios, you knew this was gonna happen, the HS and the WS, the husbands and the wives.

And sometimes these are a little difficult to follow.

I'll try to make some sense about them.

The first part of Matthew 19 9 says, whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery.

And so I've indicated a husband who divorces his initial wife and then he marries wife, subscript two.

And that marriage is adulterous.

That's what Jesus says in verse 9, uh 99 B and whoever marries her, who is divorced commits adultery.

So now here's the woman who's been divorced, put away by her first husband and she then marries husband subscript two.

And that marriage Jesus says in Matthew 19 9 B, that's an adulterous marriage.

Ok. Well, there's several individuals spoken of already, but the exception clause introduces at least one other case.

And that is that if the divorce took place for sexual immorality, if the husband puts away his wife for fornication or sexual immorality, when he remarries, he does not commit adultery.

That's the significance of the exception clause.

It reverses the conclusion in the first part of the verse.

What was the conclusion?

And marries another commits adultery.

Well, that happens across the board except for in this case, what case if he puts his wife away for sexual immorality?

Well, doesn't that change something for the wife also?

And the answer is no, it doesn't actually because just like in Matthew 532 the second half of the verse says, and whoever marries her who is divorced, commits adultery, her who is divorced, which divorced woman, because the exception clause has introduced two possibilities.

She could be divorced for sexual immorality, she could be divorced for just any of cause which one are you talking about Jesus?

And the answer is both both because both of them are having been put away women.

That's the literal meaning of the text there.

Whoever marries one of these women who's been divorced by her husband for these causes, then commits adultery.

I want you to note also that the exception clause is not included in the second half of the verse and grammatically, it can't be really applied to the second half of the verse.

Well, I really appreciate your patience.

Sometimes these things are a little bit hard to follow, but let's see if we can't summarize some of the things, uh, that we have said this morning.

Marriage is intended to last until the death of one of the spouses.

Uh, and that's what brides and grooms usually vow.

Sometimes I wonder if they really mean it, they make solemn promises until death.

Do us pork.

You know, we're gonna stick together through thick and thin, rich and poor sickness and health or until one of us wants to watch that television program and the other one wants to watch that television program and we can't agree on it.

And if you think I'm being facetious, some divorces are just that trivial.

But usually the vows include the promise to stay together until death do us part.

I did a marriage one time for which I repented later.

I did a marriage ceremony and I talked to the young lady who was getting married before.

I didn't know her very well.

She wasn't a member of the church.

So I didn't know what she understood about marriage and divorce.

I want to make sure she hadn't been married before, et cetera, et cetera.

So I talked to her and, and, uh, I told her, I said Well, these, you know, usually they'll be typical vows.

I'll include some vows and everything.

And she said, I really don't like that.

Obey my husband thing.

Let me give you the, uh, cliff notes of what I said to her.

Tough because I'm not leaving it out.

You need to understand this what God says.

So when people get married, they need to understand they're not just promising to their spouse.

Oh, well, I didn't really like her anyway.

So when I promised I had my fingers crossed, you're making that promise before God in Ecclesiastes five says, don't be foolish and make promises or vows to God that you don't intend to keep marriage is intended to last until the death of one of the spouses.

The only divine approved cause for divorce is sexual immorality.

The one who's innocent of sexual immorality and such divorces may remarry without committing adultery.

That's the implication of the exception clause.

But the one who's guilty of sexual immorality may not remarry without committing adultery in that second marriage in a divorce for a cause, other than sexual immorality, both individuals to that divorce, commit adultery.

If and when they remarry in the absence of sexual immorality, divorce is sinful even without remarriage, someone says, well, I don't, my mate hasn't committed adultery or sexual immorality, but I don't intend to ever remarry.

It's as though that washes the divorce and makes it ok.

But that's ignoring what Jesus said in Matthew 19 6.

If I keep getting excited, there'll be no sermon this evening, I'm gonna have to calm down and my voice won't last.

But Matthew 19 6 says what God has joined together.

Let not man put asunder, he gives a command.

That's Jesus speaking.

He's not quoting the old law.

Although that was the intent, I think all along one more point though.

And that is that strong emotions or feelings do not change God's marriage law.

We're miserable.

God wouldn't want me to be unhappy.

God wants you to be obedient and God's primary goal for us in this life is holiness, not necessarily happiness.

Hopefully, there'll be that also, but there'll be some suffering.

There'll be some difficult times if you're gonna live like a Christian.

I'm not saying that marriage has to be this bad thing.

I don't think it does, but sometimes people act as though.

Well, you know, it's not, it's not working very well.

We're, we're not very happy.

So God must be willing to let us, you know, jettison this marriage.

No, no, God's marriage law doesn't change just because I don't like it or I don't feel like it's working very well in my situation.

Well, that same principle, this last fourth principle applies to our salvation as well.

God's plan isn't open to change.

Series: N/A

Service: Sun PM

Type: Sermon

Speaker: Allen Dvorak

The following transcription is computer-generated and may not accurately reflect the contents of the audio. Please verify the content before quoting.

(Transcribed by Congregate. Always check document for possible errors and inaccuracies in automated transcriptions.)

Is an opponent to you in some various ways, you can still seek the best interest of that person even though they are not seeking yours.

The word is the same in Ephesians five and Matthew five.

But people don't understand that love is manifested by action in our society.

Love is a feeling thing.

It's an emotional thing.

And so if we get goosebumps about someone of the opposite sex, we're in love with them or a husband may say at some point, I really just don't love her anymore.

And the solution to that is start, that's your responsibility as a husband is you need to love your wife.

Someone says, but I don't feel it's not about feelings.

It's about a choice.

It's about the decision to seek the good of your wife, whether she's submissive, whether she's pretty, that doesn't matter.

Your responsibility is to love her.

That's God placing that responsibility upon you as husbands and that love is manifested as we try to learn and then seek what is in the best interest of our spouse of our wives.

Jesus said here in John 173, that love can be recognized by obedience to his word that is loving Jesus is clearly manifest by obeying his words, keeping his commandments.

And he didn't say it once.

He said it four times in the space of just a few moments, God has manifested his love in action passage we're all familiar with for God so loved the world.

What that He gave, he acted, he sent his son to die for us.

Part of that redemptive plan that was spoken of in the prayer.

In first John, the fourth chapter verses nine and 10.

The apostle John again says in this, the love of God was made manifest among us that God sent his son into the world.

How can you know that God loves you?

He sent his son for you.

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

John 316 0 all over again, love is manifested in action.

Well, what did the scribe mean?

Then when he made his comment about loving God and one's neighbor is more than whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.

Here's what he said.

He said.

And to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding, with all the strength and to love one's neighbors, oneself is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.

Please understand the scribe is not saying that whole burnt offerings or any kind of sacrifice that God had commanded in the Old Testament.

You don't have to worry about that.

Just love God.

That's not at all what the scribe was saying.

And I think you probably understand that.

I believe that what the scribe is trying to say is that ritual.

And that's what burn offerings and sacrifices were.

They were acts of obedience and they would be repeated in many cases that those rituals cannot be divorced from love.

Otherwise, it's just burning flesh, it's just dead animals.

It's just bloodshed for nothing.

Those sacrifices need to be the expression of one's love and respect for God.

One's faith in God that would cause him or her to obey the words of God.

God's not looking for sacrifice just as a ritual.

He's looking for sacrifice as an expression of love.

That is what the scribe was trying to say, I believe.

And I think that was an astute observation by this individual.

Well, I want to talk about another idea that I think is also common among religious people.

And I'm gonna try to describe this view, false view, even though I'm not going to address every detail of the view.

Doctrine is not important for fellowship, that our fellowship is just based on our belief in Jesus as the Son of God.

And then beyond that, whether we use instrumental music or not, is irrelevant, whether we believe certain things or don't believe those things.

That's really all that's doctrine and gospel and doctrine are two separate bodies of information, our fellowship according to this view, as it's expressed, sometimes our fellowship is really based on the gospel upon our common ground or belief in Jesus Christ as the Son of God.

And once we've established that once we agree on that, then we are free to, to disagree about church organization or the work of the church or the worship of the church in various ways.

The important thing again is our relationship to Jesus as it's expressed in believing in Him as the Son of God.

And so, differences in doctrinal views and practices are not impediments to broad fellowship.

And I have to tell you this is very appealing to a lot of people because what it says is that we can consider others many others to be in fellowship with us because we do believe that Jesus is the Christ.

They believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God.

Jehovah's witnesses don't, but many groups do well.

What about the different doctrines that they, I don't worry about that?

That's not the basis of fellowship.

And you can see how that really just opens the door to broad fellowship as I've described it, we need to say a little something about the meaning of doctrine.

And I suspect this is not new material for most folks, but the word doctrine as it appears in our English translations is really the result of two words.

There are two words in the Greek that are translated Doctrine.

Although sometimes even in the same translation translation like ESV, the, the these words may be translated teaching.

And the reason for that is that both of these words have their foundation in a cognate verb.

The verb did daco, which means simply to teach.

And so Didi and Dido Scalia, those are two words that both refer to teaching.

Vine actually gives a couple of different definitions.

He says sometimes these words are used in a active sense or a passive sense.

And uh if you're really interested, did he suggest that the primary, the prominent use of Didi or is that which is taught and did the art or the act of teaching or instruction?

But they're used almost interchangeably.

I'm not sure how definitive those distinctions are.

Both of those words refer to either the teaching, the active teaching or that which is taught and sometimes they're even translated teaching.

But as you noted from the title of our study this evening, we wanna talk about sound doctrine.

And so I want to say that the word that's translated sound most frequently is a word that simply means to be healthy, to be sound in good health.

If it's used as a participle, it's a verb, but it's used as a participle in some of the passages that we'll look at.

And when it's used in that agit way, it just refers to being healthy doctrine that is healthy or sound, we may not use that terminology anymore.

In our secular speech, we used to talk about someone whose health, health was sound, what we meant was they're healthy, their body is doing well.

But doctrine is also described as sound or healthy.

For instance, in first Timothy six verses three and four, here's what Paul writes.

If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words and that word sound is this word Uh ju I know that means healthier or to be in good health and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching, that's the word to do Scalia that accords with Godliness.

He is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing.

He has an unhealthy craving.

I think Paul is, is making a pun here to be honest with you because the word sound means healthy.

He says if somebody has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil, and suspicions, he's puffed up and understands nothing.

So Paul talks about sound or healthy words.

He talks about teaching that accords with Godliness when we use the expression sound doctrine.

What does that imply?

Well, it implies that there's doctrine that is not sound, that is not healthy.

And I'm gonna suggest four passages that would give, bring out that particular point that there's sound doctrine, but that there's also doctrine that is not healthy, that is not sound.

And the first passage here in first Timothy one verses nine and 10, the last phrase there of course, is what we want to look at.

But verse nine begins understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane for those who strike their fathers and mothers for murders, the sexually immoral men who practice homosexuality.

Excuse me, I misread that the sexually immoral men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine.

So Paul has listed a number of things that he considers to be contrary to sound doctrine.

So any of these terms would describe behavior that is not according to sound doctrine would be unhealthy teaching if we were to uh follow it to practice it in second Timothy four and verse three for the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves, teachers to suit their own passions.

And that may very well be part of the motivation for this whole idea that doctrine is not important because we can agree on some very broad basic about the identity of Jesus Christ.

He's the messiah, the Christ, he's the Son of God.

But you know all that doctrine that you find in the New Testament that kind of gets in the way sometimes of what people want to do the way they want to live.

And so they just kind of minimize the importance of that.

Let's focus on Jesus and who Jesus is.

But I would remind you that Jesus says, you can't really separate me from my message.

If you love me, you will keep my commandments.

Another passage here in Titus chapter one and verse nine, you probably recall that Titus one, at least in the beginning of the chapter is talking about qualifications for elders and one of the qualifications for elders is that he needs to be a competent teacher.

He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine.

Elders need to be able to teach sound doctrine.

That means they've got to understand what sound, what's healthy, what's according to the apostles teaching, the inspired revelation of the New Testament.

And also here's the other thing also to rebuke those who contradict it.

So Paul says, there will be people who will teach other doctrines, doctrines that are contradictory to sound doctrine.

And elders need to be able to rebuke that to silence those kinds of teachers by making their error clear to others in the second chapter of the same epistle chapter two and verse one.

But as for you, Paul says to Titus teach what accords with sound doctrine.

So Paul says to this evangelist Titus, the doctrine you need to teach is healthy, sound doctrine.

And the implication is that there's other doctrine but it's not sound, it's not healthy.

What does it really matter?

I mean, should we get all worked up about details?

You know, whether we play a piano or whether we just sing or whether we uh do things uh in the work of the church that the early church didn't do.

I mean, we live in a different century, we live in a different culture, all of that.

That's the argument that sometimes people make.

Does it really matter all this doctrine stuff?

As long as we believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God?

Well, I'm gonna show you four more passages and then our study will conclude and these passages make it very clear that it makes a difference what we teach.

I think that's probably not a revelation to you, but it's good to be able to look at the scriptures and say that's what the Bible says about Doctrine.

Ephesians four and verse 14 in a passage in which Paul is talking about the efforts, the things that God has provided for us to mature in Christ as a church.

He says, so that we may no longer be Children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes.

Over the years, I've seen people who've been carried away my winds of doctrine, they heard something that they kind of liked and rather than check to see if it's what the New Testament taught, they embraced it and pretty soon they're defending it and sometimes they're trying to teach others in the local congregation.

They're causing divisions.

Paul says we don't need to be Children pulled this way and that way.

Ok, I've got a confession to make.

I sometimes say things to my grandchildren that are not true.

For instance, just recently, Debbie and I had all four of the kids with us.

Um We were kind of concerned that John and Katie weren't going to ever come back, but we only had him for about a week.

But during that week, we were eating at the table one night and I said, hey, are you all enjoying this meat?

This is kangaroo meat.

Well, the older kids are like, yeah, right.

Go Malachi.

He gobbled that up literally.

And in terms of accepting what I said, kangaroo meat, you know why I remember that because they were at the house today and he was looking at meat and asking if it was kangaroo meat.

But that's Children.

Sometimes you can say something and if you're serious enough and if you really kind of work it a little bit, Children will, they'll, they'll agree, they'll accept it.

I mean, after all, you're older, uh you're an authority figure.

They don't know.

Malachi probably realizes now that Papa can't be trusted, but Paul says don't be Children any longer.

Toss to and fro believing just whatever wind of doctrine blows by you.

And let me tell you something.

There's a lot of stuff that blows through the internet.

A lot of false teaching that goes on.

We need to be cautious about the doctrine that we accept young people.

It would be good before you just grab on to something and embrace it, to run your ideas or the things that you're reading past an older, more mature member of the Lord's church doesn't have to be me or an elder.

It could be other brethren here who are well versed in the scriptures don't embrace just whatever comes your way.

In first Timothy chapter one verse three.

Paul says, as I urge you Timothy when I was come, going to Macedonia remain in Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine.

Paul says it's important which doctrine Timothy would teach, don't teach any different doctrine.

What different doctrine do you think he's talking about any doctrine?

That's not sound any doctrine that's not, has not come from the apostles.

Paul would end his epistle in Romans 16 toward the end of that epistle, he says, I appeal to you brothers to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught, avoid them.

Paul says it's important that you don't teach any other doctrine and watch out for those who are teaching other doctrines.

And he says, avoid them, they're to be disciplined.

And then finally, in first Timothy six verses three and four, we looked at this passage, uh, a little bit earlier, if anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with Godliness, he's puffed up with conceit and understands nothing.

He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions.

If anyone teaches a different doctrine, is it important?

What doctrine we teach, what we practice?

Oh, absolutely.

And the next time someone says, well, I'm just so tired of all this doctrine stuff.

I'm just tired of all this talk about whether we should worship this way or worship that way.

Understand somebody saying that doctrine isn't important.

And the New Testament says, yes, it is, don't be teaching any different doctrine.

Well, how do we know which doctrine is sound?

Read your New Testament, read your Bible and you'll understand what's sound, what's healthy and you'll even know what's not.

Well, let me conclude uh this evening by saying the first thing that we talked about from John 14 is that love and obedience are intimately connected.

We can't love God without obeying him right?

From John 14 verses 1521 23 and 24.

But we also have suggested that God expects us to teach and to practice sound doctrine, which is essentially the teaching of the apostles, the message of the cross, the gospel.

We didn't spend time talking about the erroneous view that gospel and doctrine are two very separate things we could have.

We could have gone to Romans the first chapter and talked about how Paul wants to go and preach the gospel to the Roman Christians.

The argument is made that gospel is preached to people who are not Christians.

Doctrine is for Christians.

But Paul messed up that argument, didn't he?

In Romans chapter one?

And those two ideas that we've talked about tonight, they work together well, to suggest that our obedience is to be to sound doctrine in Romans six chapter in verses 17 and 18.

Paul says, but thanks be to God that you who once were slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching.

What is that?

Well, that's doctrine.

That's sound doctrine.

You became obedient to sound doctrine to which you were committed and having been set free from sin had become slaves of righteousness.

Have you become set from free from sin or are you still enslaved to sin to the evils of the world?

The Bible, of course, offers us in the Gospel, in the death of Jesus Christ, the opportunity to be free from sin and to have hope to have spiritual life and the hope of eternal life with God.

Our father and Jesus, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Are you ready to obey the standard of teaching that you find in the New Testament that tells us how to become Christians, how to have this spiritual life.

If you need to obey the gospel.

This evening, we stand ready and willing.

And in fact, we stand to encourage you as we sing.

If you'll come to the front, we'll assist you in doing that very thing.

Series: N/A

Service: Sun AM

Type: Sermon

Speaker: Allen Dvorak

The following transcription is computer-generated and may not accurately reflect the contents of the audio. Please verify the content before quoting.

(Transcribed by Congregate. Always check document for possible errors and inaccuracies in automated transcriptions.)

Be reading from Philippians three verses one through 163.

It's an incredible gift that God has given us his word that we might know Him and his ways.

And I think it's easy to take it for granted because we have so many copies of it that it's pretty mind blowing that the one who spoke this world into existence wants us to know Him and his ways.

So we'll read a part of that.

Now, finally, my brothers rejoice in the Lord to write the same things to you is no trouble to me and is safe for you.

Look out for the dogs, look out for the evildoers, look out for those who mutilate the flesh for.

We are the circumcision who worship by the spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh.

Though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh.

Also, if anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more circumcised on the eighth day of the people of Israel of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews as to the law, a pharisee as to zeal a persecutor of the church as to righteousness under the law, blameless.

But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.

Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ, Jesus, my Lord.

For his sake, I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish in order that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God, that depends on faith that I may know Him and the power of his resurrection and may share his sufferings becoming like him in his death.

That by any means possible, I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Well, good morning, I want you to think about your life just a little bit for a moment, about maybe a time in your life.

It may have been a single day or maybe an event that just seemed to be a turning point in your life, a being the day of your marriage.

Uh Certainly our baptisms would qualify, I think for that kind of an event, the direction of our life was suddenly changed by this change in circumstances or situation.

It may have been such a watershed moment that just seem like our entire life was turned around upside down.

And the direction that we would take in life was completely changed back in the Old Testament.

Isaiah 216 tells us that the prophet Isaiah was sent to King Hezekiah.

Hezekiah was sick.

The text says he was near to death in sickness and the prophet is sent to him to tell him that he's not going to recover that he's going to die.

You need to get his affairs in order and you may recall that Hezekiah prayed to God.

The Babylonians were already outside the I'm sorry, the Assyrians were already outside the city besieging the city of Jerusalem.

And before Isaiah could even leave the court courtyard of the palace, the Lord answered that prayer and sent Isaiah back to Hezekiah to tell him that God would grant him 215 more years.

That would have been a watershed event.

If you're not sure if you're going to live, you're close to death.

And suddenly you find out that God has said you're going to have 214 more years.

And in the 15th year, imagine the thoughts of Hezekiah as he realizes that this time, his time is running out.

We're going to consider just such a moment a turning point in the life of Saul of Tarsus this morning.

And I want to emphasize the magnitude of the change that Saul would experience as a result of a moment in his life.

And I think that change, the great change that came to Saul of Tarsus, the persecutor.

I think it illustrates the power of the gospel, the way the gospel can work in our lives as well to change us.

Even on a daily basis.

I want to begin this morning by talking about Saul, the persecutor.

I believe that Saul was already in Jerusalem before acts the seventh chapter.

He tells us later in the book of Acts that he was a student of Gio.

Gio was a rabbi, a rather well known rabbi in the city of Jerusalem.

And so Saul of Tarsus had been there before.

But we're introduced to him in the biblical text in chapter seven, where he is present at the death, the martyrdom of Stephen as people are stoning him.

Saul of Tarsus is the young man who is holding their clothes observing.

And we're told in verse one of chapter eight that Saul approved of what had happened there, not just approved of it, but the text goes on to say in verse three of chapter eight, that Saul was a persecutor of the church ravaging the church.

Think about that word ravaging the church entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison.

The Apostle Paul was converted to Christ in acts chapter nine, we're told of that conversion.

But the chapter begins with this young man Saul having letters from the chief priest from the high priest to go to Damascus to a foreign city as he describes it later to find Christians in the synagogues there and to bind them.

And so he heads out for Damascus at noon, we're told breathing out threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord Saul of Tarsus is a fanatical persecutor of the church.

He believes that these Christians are a danger to Judaism.

He believes that the church needs to be stamped out and he is making every effort to accomplish that in his own life.

Later on, after Paul had become a Christian and was commissioned as an apostle.

He would appear before different groups and he would give his testimony about his conversion.

He would talk about what happened to him.

One such time was in act the 22nd chapter when the Apostle Paul is being taken up into the fortress Antonia by Roman soldiers.

His life preserved from the mob that was trying to beat him to death down in the temple courtyard.

And he asked permission to speak to the people there as they're carrying him up the steps into the fortress.

And he says in verse uh 19 and I said, Lord, they themselves know that in one synagogue after another, I am prisoned and beat those who believed in you.

Early Christians weren't just scorned, they were bound, they were beaten.

And Paul says I participated in that I imprisoned and beat those who believed in you and even mentions the martyrdom of Stephen as Stephen was stoned to death.

Later on in the book of Acts in chapter 26 the Apostle Paul would relate to uh Festus the governor and Herod Agrippa with him, some of the things that we've already talked about and he says in verse 10, and I did so in Jerusalem, I know not only locked up many of the Saints in prison after receiving authority from the chief priest, but when they were put to death, I cast my vote against them.

Many commentators think it's unlikely that Paul would have been a member of the Sanhedrin.

He would have probably been too young at this point.

And so it's not clear, entirely clear, the sense in which Paul gave his vote against them.

It may not have been a formal vote as a member of the Sanhedrin who said, yeah, death to these people.

It may have been simply that Paul was testifying against these people and in that way, cast his vote against them.

But Paul was involved.

So of Tarsus, I should say was involved in the death of many Christians and I punished them often and all the synagogues and tried to make them blaspheme and enraging fury against them.

I persecuted them even to foreign cities.

How many Christians saul were there?

Christians who gave up, recanted their faith in Jesus Christ because Saul of Tarsus was going to beat them if they didn't recant their faith, deny the Lord, how many Christians were put to death?

And Paul said I cast my vote against them.

We don't know, we don't know.

But I sometimes wonder if that didn't weigh heavily on Paul later as an apostle of Jesus Christ, as he's trying to save the souls of men, to recall those who may have given up their faith because of his efforts be a hard burden to bear the apostle.

Paul also would write in some of his epistles about his life as a persecutor describing the kind of person he was in Galatians.

One verses 13 and 153.

He writes to the Galatians for you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it.

And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people.

So extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers.

Saul was an up and coming persecutor.

He had an elevated status in Judaism because of his fanatical belief that the church needed to be stamped out.

And at this point, the church has lost some of its initial favor among the unbelieving Jews in the passage that Kevin read for us just a few moments ago from Philippians three.

He talks about his confidence in the flesh.

His standing among the Jews.

He talks about his lineage, but he also says as to the law of pharisee as to zeal a persecutor of the church.

And then he writes to Timothy and first Timothy won.

I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus, my Lord because he judged me faithful appointing me to his service.

Though formally, I was a blasphemer, a persecutor and insolent opponent.

Let that description sink in Jesus said thing excuse me.

Saul said things about Jesus that he would later say were blasphemous.

He was an insolent opponent.

He was proud of what he was doing when he was beating Christians binding them in prison, approving of their deaths.

This was Saul of Tarsus, but there was a turning point in Saul's life and it had to do with that occasion where Paul is on his way to Damascus.

And the text tells us that he was traveling at midday at noon and as they were approaching the city of Damascus, he and others with him, there are bright light shone down around him and a voice spoke to him.

Saul Saul, why are you persecuting me?

And the voice identified itself.

I am Jesus whom you are persecuted?

Paul described the same experience on a couple of other occasions.

It's described there obviously by Luke and Acts nine as the historical event would take place in its chronological order there of the Book of Acts.

But Paul would write about this in acts chapter 22 verses six through 10, I fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to me, Saul Saul, why are you persecuting me?

Who are you?

Lord, I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting?

What shall I do?

Lord?

He asks in response to that identification again in chapter 26 we noted a few moments ago that Paul would make his defense, speaking of his own history to Festus, the govern governor and Herod Agrippa.

And he says at midday O King, a time when most people didn't travel in the Middle East because of the heat of the day.

But he is so determined to take care of this business of persecuting the church, finding Christians and he travels in the middle of the day.

But everything changes. Saul.

Saul, why are you persecuting me?

It is hard for you to kick against the goats from some of the things that Paul would say to the Corinthians would write to them in first Corinthians, it seems obvious not only did he hear the voice of the Lord, but he saw the risen Lord in First Corinthians.

The 15th chapter, Paul talks about the gospel that he preached at Corinth and how uh there were witnesses to the resurrected Jesus.

And he says in verse eight, last of all as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me, Jesus appeared to Saul for I am the least of the apostles unworthy to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of God.

He says in chapter nine and verse one, as he defends his apostleship and the right to be supported of the gospel.

He says, have I not seen Jesus?

Our Lord.

Paul would continue into Damascus there.

In chapter nine, he's now blinded.

And for three days in Damascus, Saul will neither eat nor drink.

He's praying Ananias, one of the Christians there in Damascus would be sent to Saul.

Can you imagine Ananias thoughts when God said I'm sending you to Saul of Tarsus, that must have been scary.

But Ananias goes and he informs Saul of what he needs to do in order to become a Christian.

Have you ever wondered why?

Three days?

Have you ever wondered why it was that the Lord didn't send Ananias immediately to Saul?

Why did he wait three days?

Saul is in limbo if you'll pardon the term?

I think the the turning point in Paul's life happened right then actually on the road.

But as he contemplated for three days, the significance, the implications of what he had seen and heard Paul's whole life turned upside down.

He says in Philippians three verses seven and eight, but whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.

Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth, of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord for his sake, I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish.

In order that I may gain Christ.

I want you to note that in two verses, Paul says three times, I count all that.

That was my confidence in the flesh.

I count all that as loss.

And then he says, and I count those things as rubbish the word rubbish is actually translated.

If I recall correctly in the King James version as dung, it can have that meaning, but it's the idea of the off scouring of things.

It's like when you had a feast, the leftovers that you would scrape off the table to the dogs.

I counted as rubbish, all of that.

How did Paul make that kind of a decision?

He uses the language almost of profit and loss, doesn't he?

I counted his loss.

He says three times.

I believe that during the three days that Paul was praying, Paul's doing a financial analysis of his life and everything that had seemed to be gained, everything that had seemed to be good and going for Paul, all of that.

Now he realizes he was rubbish and he says, I counted it all as a loss.

Put that in the negative column that I might.

No Christ Jesus, my Lord, the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus.

My Lord, Paul realizes during that period of time that his life is exactly 100 and 80 degrees out of faith.

He's going the wrong direction.

The one that he has been persecuting is the one that he ought to be following.

What, whatever Paul or Saul, what might have thought about Jesus that he was perhaps in a posture that he was some uh passing fancy in the minds of these Christians, whatever he thought about.

Saul, he realizes that is totally wrong because the one that was put to death on the cross has been raised and now he knows it.

I don't know that anybody maybe would have had much success trying to talk to Saul of Tarsus.

Prior to this time, you would more likely find yourself bound and beaten and in prison.

Then you would convert or change the thinking of Saul of Tarsus.

But the resurrection, as Gary said, the resurrection is evidence of who Jesus really is.

He's the son of God.

Paul himself would write that in Romans, the first chapter in verse four.

Later on, it talks about the power of God that he can, that he can exercise in this physical way as he raises Jesus bodily, but also that he can raise us spiritually as Paul again would write about in Romans the sixth chapter.

And in Ephesians, the second chapter, the beginning of that chapter, the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Paul, seeing the risen Lord changed everything.

I want to talk to you a little bit about Paul, the Apostle Saul of Tarsus.

Didn't just think about being a disciple of Jesus as a better thing.

I'm weighing this business of by standing in Judaism and being a disciple of Jesus and being a disciple comes out ahead just by a hair.

Paul says, I counted everything as rubbish as loss.

It's not even there's no comparison.

And the life of Paul the Apostle was one of difficulty and suffering in Second Corinthians 11th chapter as he compares himself by necessity to the Corinthians.

So some of the false apostles who had come to them and were apparently challenging the apostleship and the authority of Paul.

He says, are they servants of Christ?

I am a better one.

I'm talking like a madman or a fool.

Sometimes it says with far greater labors, far more imprisonments with countless beatings and often near death five times, he writes, I received at the hands of the Jews, the 40 lashes less 13 times, I was beaten with rods.

Once I was stoned three times.

I was shipwrecked a night and a day, I was adrift at sea on frequent journeys in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers in toil and hardship through many a sleepless night in hunger and thirst, often without food in cold and exposure.

And apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches who's weak and I'm not weak, who is made to fall and I'm not indignant.

So Paul Saul of Tarsus, he is this bright light in Judaism.

He's a persecutor of the church.

He's excelling above people of his own age.

He's making progress and all of a sudden he realizes that his whole life is on the wrong track.

And so he begins following Jesus counts all that loss sets it aside.

And now those who were approving of him and congratulating him for his efforts, they are now trying to kill him and beat him, stop him.

And yet Paul never goes back.

He continues even to the end of his life.

And he says, why in Galatians two and verse 20 when he says, I've been crucified with Christ.

It's no longer I who live.

But Christ who lives in me and the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith.

And the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

What a change want to change.

And it was precipitated by that information that the one that he was kicking against the one, he was persecuting Jesus of Nazareth was, in fact, the Son of God.

And that information changed everything.

The gospel is the power of God and the salvation.

Paul writes that in Romans one and in verse 16, and that's the gospel that Paul preached to the Corinthians, as he says in first Corinthians 15, I alluded to this passage earlier, verse one says, now I would remind you brothers of the gospel, I preach to you which you received in which you stand and by which you are being saved.

If you hold fast to the word I preach to you, unless you believed in vain.

What gospel Paul, what did you preach to the Corinthians?

He says in verse three, for I delivered to you as of first importance, what I also received in Galatians, in particular, Paul emphasizes that the gospel that he preached, he didn't get from man.

He didn't consult with the other apostles and they filled him in on all the details, but that rather it was revealed to him by Jesus Christ.

And so he says that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures.

That's what I preach to you Corinthians.

That was the gospel that changed Paul's life.

The gospel is the means by which God calls us out of the world.

He writes Paul does to second to the Thessalonians and second Thessalonians two and verse 14, that gospel can bring us out of the world and calls us to be translated into the kingdom of God's dear son as Paul would write to the Colossians in chapter one.

And it's the same gospel that continues to work in us to change us after we become Christians.

My question to you this morning is, have you seen that change in your life?

Has there been that complete absolute change in the way that you live in your loyalty?

There's a story told in the Synoptic gospels of a young man, a rich young man who we're also told was a ruler.

He comes to Jesus, he runs to Jesus kneels before him and he asks him the question, what must I do to inherit eternal life?

Mark's Gospel is the gospel that tells us that when the young man responds to Jesus answer, keep the commandments, you know, the commandments.

All these I've kept from my youth, he says, and Mark's Gospel Gospel says, Jesus loved him.

I've always found that kind of strange in the sense that I think we would assume that Jesus loves everybody.

I think that's a true statement.

But there was something about that young man that I think particularly impressed the Lord.

He was already a moral individual.

And so Jesus then continues, here's what you need to do.

You need to sell all that you possess, give it to the poor and come and follow me.

The text tells us that this young man had great possessions.

He was, I don't know how you would compare him who you would compare him to in this day people that we would know.

But the idea of being extremely rich, it means coming to follow Jesus selling all that he has.

It means his life changing entirely.

He's used to being able to buy what he needs to provide for himself, to live a life of comfort or luxury.

And Jesus is telling him, you have to give all that up, you have to make your life completely.

You're going to be a disciple, you're gonna follow after me and others will support you.

That's how the disciples were supported Jesus and the apostles.

And he was sad.

He went away, sad because he had these great possessions.

He couldn't make the change.

I wonder, will we make the change?

Will we allow God's Word to work in us to make us new people?

Paul writes that if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature or creation.

Some versions say we become a new man, the old man has been crucified with Christ.

And when we rise to walk from the waters of baptism, our life is changed.

We have to make that decision that we're willing to make that change and become a disciple of Jesus Christ.

Have you done that?

And if you have, have you followed through with that change?

The implications of your spiritual resurrection, everything is different after you obey the Gospel.

Oh I know we live in the same houses and we have uh maybe the same job and we know the same people and all of that.

But everything is now seen in a different light as we realize that the life that we had before, that's all loss so that we can have the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus.

If you've not obeyed the gospel today is a good day for your change.

For this cataclysmic change, I guess would be a good word, complete different life.

And if you are a Christian, you have obeyed the Gospel in the past.

Will we allow the gospel?

God's word to continue to work in our lives, to change us into new people.

If you need to respond to the gospel this morning, we certainly want to encourage you and we're gonna sing a song in just a moment to do that.

This is your opportunity and we encourage you as we stand and sing.