Church of Christ on Kelly Spring Road Podcast

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.)

Scripture reading this morning is Malachi chapter one verses 6 through 14.

It's always amazed me how many titles and names there are for God in the Old Testament.

Oh, should I God Almighty?

Hashem?

The name Jehovah Shalom, God of peace.

But there's one that always sticks out to me.

Yahweh Sabaoth translated as God of ho a God of armies or Lord of hosts.

And whenever you hear that name, it usually means that someone has messed up and you need to listen to what's uh what punishments are due to them while we listen to God's word.

Why don't we stand and hear God's word and follow along in the ESV on the board.

And I'll be reading from the legacy Standard Bible beginning in verse six of Malachi chapter one, a son honors his father and a slave, his master.

Then if I am a father, where is my honor?

And if I'm a master, where's the fear of me says, Yahweh of hosts to you o priests who despise my name.

But you say, how have we despised your name?

You are presenting defiled food upon my altar.

But you say, how have we defiled you in that you say the table of Yahweh is to be despised.

But when you present the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil?

And when you present the lame and sick, is it not evil?

Please bring it near your governor.

Would he accept you or would lift he?

Lift up your face says Yahweh of hosts.

But now entreat God's favor that he may be gracious to us with this thing which is from your hand.

Will he lift up any of your faces?

Says Yahweh of hosts.

Oh, that there were one among you who had shut the gates that you might not light a fire on my altar in vain.

I have no delight in you says Yahweh of hosts.

Nor will I accept an offering from your hand for from the rising of the sun even to its setting.

My name will be great among the nations and in every place incense is going to be presented to my name as well as a grain offering that is clean for my name will be great among the nations says Yahweh of hosts.

But you are profaning it in that you say the table of the Lord is defiled and as for its fruit, its food is to be despised.

You also say behold how tiresome it is and you disdainfully sniff at it says Yahweh of hosts and you bring what was taken by robbery and what is lame or sick.

So that you bring the offering.

Should I accept that from your hand?

Says Yahweh, but cursed be the swindler who has a male in his flock and vows it but sacrifices a blemished animal to the Lord.

For I am a great king says Yahweh of hosts.

And my name is feared among the nations.

Please be seated in the spirit of what happened to Eric this morning where our song just got lost.

If I ever open up this computer and the outline is gone.

We just sing the invitation song.

Ok. But fortunately it's an apple so it never dies.

Yeah, good morning.

It's good to be with you this morning.

It's good to have some visiting with us.

I would like to mention a particular individual.

He's stayed with us now for a couple three days, his name is Timothy Masawi and Timothy has traveled all the way from Tanzania to hear me preach.

Actually, he has business in the United States and uh he has chosen to stay with us.

I've been acquainted a little bit with Timothy via uh via uh email.

And so we're glad to have him with us this morning and all who are visiting with us this morning as a young preacher, I held a meeting in Texas where uh Jim Ward preached at the time, I believe it was in San Antonio and Jim was a motorcycle rider.

And when he found out that I rode a motorcycle, he said to me, if you ever find yourself your mind wandering when you're driving, you don't need to ride a motorcycle.

Apparently he had had that experience himself and he sold his cycle and I've never forgotten the, uh, advice that he gave his point was simple because of the additional risk that's involved in riding a motorcycle.

You really need total concentration.

You can't let your mind wander.

And I know sometimes that particularly if I'm driving a car, sometimes my mind will wander.

I'll be thinking about other things and that can be dangerous.

There are a lot of things that we do in life that we really don't focus on.

We don't concentrate on because we've done them so many times.

Or the tasks are so simple that we can do them without actually focusing our attention on that task.

We're thinking about other things.

Do you think about all of the mechanics of tying your shoelaces when you do so well, you've done it thousands, hundreds of thousands perhaps in your times in your life.

And so it's automatic.

You don't even have to think about it.

But there are other things that we do need to focus on sometimes.

Have you ever found yourself, uh, wondering if you had actually done something just a moment ago.

Have you ever been in a parking lot?

This happens to Debbie and me a number of times we get out of the car and we're walking away and Deb says, did you lock the car?

And I don't know if I did or not.

So I'll turn around and lock it and nine times out of 133, it's already been locked.

I just locked.

It automatically, never thought about it.

And when she asks me, I can't even tell her what I did whether I did or didn't do it.

We don't focus on a lot of things because we're thinking about other things.

We're concentrating on other matters.

The problem of not concentrating on our actions though has some rather sobering consequences with regard to our worship.

And the prophet Malachi warns us about that danger.

In his short book of The Old Testament.

I want to talk to you a little bit this morning about polluted offerings.

That's the way that Malachi described the sacrifices that Israel was offering in his day and time.

As we go back through the Old Testament, we realize that the Kingdom of Israel split into two kingdoms.

Actually, at the death of Solomon, the northern kingdom sometimes referred to as Israel or Ephraim.

And the Southern kingdom referred to as Judah.

The northern kingdom had no righteous kings.

Every one of their kings was evil.

Beginning with Jeroboam who introduced idol worship, the worship of calves into the Northern Kingdom and due to their wickedness, the people of Israel were taken into captivity by the Assyrians.

In 213.

There are a number of sins that were rebuked.

In the by the prophets who were sent to the Northern Kingdom.

But the predominant sin for which the people were charged or found guilty was that of idolatry.

In Second Kings chapter 214, the writer summarizes the reason that the kingdom goes into captivity.

He says, and this occurred because the people of Israel had sinned against the Lord, their God who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt and had feared other gods and walked in the customs of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel.

And in the customs that the kings of Israel had practiced and the people of Israel did secretly against the Lord, their God things that were not right.

They built for themselves high places and all their towns from watchtower to fortified city, they set up for themselves, pillars and Ara on every high hill and under every green tree.

And there they made offerings on all the high places as the nations did, whom the Lord carried away before them.

And they did wicked things provoking the Lord to anger and they served idols of which the Lord had said to them.

You shall not do this.

Unfortunately, even after the Northern kingdom had suffered exile for their idolatry, the southern kingdom did know better.

Although there were a few righteous kings among the 21123 kings of the Southern kingdom, the people were also guilty predom predominantly of idolatry.

And Jeremiah, a prophet who saw the end of the Southern Kingdom notes the cause of their exile.

And it's very similar to that of the Northern Kingdom.

Jeremiah 16 verses 10 to 13, the prophet writes.

And when you tell these people all these words and they say to you, why has the Lord pronounced all this great evil against us?

Jeremiah was commissioned to tell the people that they were going into exile if they didn't repent.

And eventually just to say that the end was inevitable.

What is our iniquity that people ask, what is the sin that we have committed against the Lord, our God?

Then you shall say to them because your fathers have forsaken me, declares the Lord and have gone after other gods and have served and worshiped them and have forsaken me and have not kept my law.

And because you have done worse than your fathers for behold, every one of you follows his stubborn evil will refusing to listen to me.

Therefore, I will hurl you out of this land into a land that neither you nor your fathers have known and there you shall serve other gods day and night for I will show you no favor.

And so both kingdoms go into exile, the Southern kingdom taken into exile by the Babylonians in 586.

After a captivity of 70 years, we learned from the books of Ezra and Nehemiah that people began to return a remnant of the people.

The first group came back in 536 BC and Ezra was the leader of a second group that came back in 143.

BC. Nehemiah was an early governor of Judah in the time of Ezra and he comes back in about 444.

But this morning, I want you to think about Malachi who is a contemporary time, speaking wise of Ezra and Nehemiah about 100 and 10 years after the first group comes back, Malachi is preaching to the exiles only now.

The problem is not predominantly idolatry.

The people have a different problem now.

And it is that problem that I wish to speak to you about this morning.

They were worshiping Jehovah God, but their worship had become empty and ritualistic only devoid of reverence.

They were just going through the motions.

And that's the main error that Malachi addresses in his short book.

Malachi is an interesting prophet in view of the way that he teaches a lot of the prophets we read from Jeremiah just a few moments ago.

They proclaim the Lord's message straight out Ezekiel.

Of course, the prophet of visual aids did a lot of things uh that were symbolic actions designed to teach or to convey messages from God.

But Malachi is a little bit different and his style of teaching has been called didactic dialectic.

That's something you can talk about over lunch today, especially with people who didn't hear the sermon.

Did you know that Malachi would teach in a didactic dialectic method?

And people will say, pass me the potatoes because nobody really cares about what it's called.

But I do want to illustrate it because he does it about seven different times.

He goes through this same style or method of teaching in a book that only has four chapters.

The style begins by the prophet making an affirmation or a charge, usually some sort of charge of guilt against the people.

But then the prophet will speak on behalf of the people to raise an objection or perhaps a question about the charge that has been made.

So Malachi is basically carrying both sides of the conversation.

And once the objection has been voiced by the prophet himself for the people, then the prophet provides the answer.

God provides the answer through Malachi.

And that's the method that he uses several times in the book.

Uh depending on how you count them, maybe as many as seven times.

But I want to illustrate this method by one of the earliest in verses six and seven.

Here's the passage just straight up, Malachi writes a son honors his father and a serving his master.

If then I am a father, where's my honor?

And if I am a master, where's my fear?

Says the Lord of hosts to you o priest who despise my name.

But you say, how have we despised your name by offering polluted food upon my altar.

But you say, how have we polluted you by saying that the Lord's table may be despised.

Now, what I want to do is look at that same passage, but break it down according to the style of teaching that Malachi is using.

And so now the charge is against the priest that they are despising the name of the Lord.

But then the people raise an objection.

Malachi does it for them?

How have we despised your name?

They ask, here's the answer by offering polluted food upon my altar.

This particular example actually is extended because the people ask another question, how have we polluted you?

And the answer by saying that the Lord's table may be despised.

We don't care.

It's not important to us.

I'm going to use another passage in Malachi in chapter three verses seven and eight to illustrate the same style of teaching.

Then we'll say some things about the problem of ritualistic worship.

In verse seven of chapter three, the prophet writes from the days of your fathers.

You have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them return to me and I will return to you.

But you say, how shall we return?

Will man rob God yet you are robbing me.

But you say, how have we robbed you in your tithes and contributions is the answer.

And so now let's look at the passage again, breaking it down in this uh didactic dialectic method.

The charge is, you've turned aside from my statutes, you need to return to me.

But here's the question from the people.

How shall we return?

I think in Clyde, and that question is, what is the need for us to return?

How shall we return?

You know, if you haven't left, you don't have to return.

Will God answers that question through the prophet will man rob God.

You are robbing me.

That's what needs to change.

But then another question, how have we robbed you?

You robbed me in not giving your ties and contributions as the law prescribed.

And so those are two examples of this style of teaching.

One of the things that I want to point out that I think is important here is that the people were still offering sacrifices.

It wasn't as though the the temple of the Lord never had a fire on it uh in it that, that they were worshiping other gods and they just forgotten about God worship in the form of sacrifices was still being offered by the priests, but the hearts of the priests and the people were not in it.

Their worship was empty.

How have we despised your name?

The people ask by offering polluted food upon my altar.

Now, that's an expression that probably doesn't speak to us when we think of polluted.

We think of something that's been mixed with chemicals or oil or some sort of toxic substance, that's pollution.

That's something that is bad for us.

That Malachi explains how it is that they're offering polluted food on the altar.

In verse eight.

He says, when you offer blind animals in sacrifice, is that not evil?

And when you offer those that are lame or sick, is that not evil present that to your governor?

Will he accept you or show you favor?

Says the Lord of hosts.

So what the people were doing is they were offering polluted offerings in that they were not offering what the Lord had demanded in the law as far as what was an acceptable offering?

If you were to go back to the book of Leviticus, the first four chapters or so, you'll find again and again, the stipulation that an animal that was brought for the purpose of sacrifice was to be without blemish.

Perhaps you noticed on the first slide, the title slide, there's a lamb that was born with only three legs, but God wouldn't accept the three legged lamb or the lamb that was blind as Malachi says in verse one and eight or that was lame or sick.

Those were unacceptable sacrifices.

You didn't offer the worst of your flock, you offered the best of your flock, you offered that which was without blemish, but the people weren't doing that.

They were offering sacrifices that were polluted in the sense that they were not acceptable, not according to the law, they were blemished.

Offer that to your governor.

The Lord says, and see if he'll be satisfied with that kind of an offering in so doing, offering these polluted offerings, they were despising the Lord's table, they were offering to him, what they wouldn't even dare to offer to their secular governor.

Well, maybe somebody would argue.

Well, at least I'm wor I'm worshiping, you know, maybe it's not the best of the flock, but I'm still offering something to God.

At least I'm worshiping such worship.

God says was worse than no worship at all.

Despises the name of the Lord.

Look, if you will at verses nine and 10, we're just working our way through chapter one here and now entreat the favor of God that he may be gracious to us with such a gift from your hand.

Will he show favor to you?

Any of you?

Says the Lord of hosts?

Now listen to verse 10.

0, that there were one among you who would shut the doors that you might not kindle fire on my altar in vain.

I have no pleasure in you says the Lord of hosts and I will not accept an offering from your hand.

My intention is probably following the trip to Zimbabwe.

We're gonna talk a little bit more about Malachi.

There were other problems there in their daily life that reflected on their worship.

But part of the problem here are these polluted offerings.

And God says, is there not someone who will close the doors of the temple so that people are not going in and offering these polluted offerings, despising my name to put it in our age.

You'd be like the Lord saying all these people that come to KSR and worship and offer unacceptable sacrifices.

Is there no one who will go out and lock the door so they can't get in and offer vain worship, not suggesting our worship is vain, but that would be the parallel.

If in fact, we are also committing the same error that these people were committing in Malachi's Day.

And that's possible, God's people still face the danger of just going through the motions.

I wonder if we would worship the same.

If there is some celebrity in the audience, would we pay more attention to the way that we worship would be, be more enthusiastic.

If in fact, some famous person came and was worshiping with us was in the assembly.

Would we dress differently?

Will we try to show more reverence for the activities that we engage in when we come together in assemblies like this?

If there was a celebrity amongst us, would we be more conscious of our participation?

People would sing out, be sure to make everybody know that they were involved.

If there was a celebrity in our midst, just like tying our shoelaces, don't think about it.

It's possible for us to sing and to listen to prayers and to make our way through the Lord's supper without really ever focusing on what we're doing.

I have in the past on a number of occasions, praised the men who prepare us as we partake the Lord's supper.

I think they do an excellent job and I believe Ralph did this morning and I think that's important so that we don't just run through the Lord's supper.

You know, you, you got the template and we just kind of check off all the boxes, you got to do the elements in the right order and you gotta make sure you do the prayers and, but we really are not focused on that.

Our tension is only half on what we're doing and maybe also distracted by other things that we're concerned about.

Well, what's the solution to this problem?

This danger of empty worship?

Well, I'll tell you what.

It's not.

The solution is not changing the ritual.

That's the suggestion of some folks.

What we need to do is spice up our worship.

We need to have spontaneous worship or unstructured worshiped assemblies.

Keep you guessing that way.

You don't go to sleep.

That's not the answer because the ritual wasn't the problem.

Not the real problem that might keep some on their toes.

If we change things, we kind of dim the lights on and off.

Keep you wondering what's gonna happen next or maybe if we announced songs and then didn't do the song.

We just got the preacher up there I'm sorry.

That was mean.

But we could do things like that perhaps and it might affect some people.

It might kind of cause this, I wonder what's gonna happen next, but that's not really going to answer the problem or solve the problem.

Malachi did not rebuke the priest for offering sacrifices.

He rebuked them for the kinds of sacrifices they were offering polluted offerings.

God had commanded offerings and had given rather specific instructions about the nature of those offerings.

But the priests weren't following the ritual, the pattern that had been given to them.

The problem instead was caused by an improper attitude on the part of the people toward God, including the priests for that matter, emotionally.

It appears that they had grown distant from God believing perhaps that he was not showing love toward them, that he was indifferent to their conduct.

Let me suggest some passages maybe to sustain that point in the very beginning of the book in verses two and three of chapter one, the Lord says, I've loved you, but you say, how have you loved us?

Is not Esau?

Jacob's brother declares the Lord yet I have loved Jacob.

But Esau I have hated, I have laid waste his hill country and left his heritage to Jackals of the desert.

What do you mean?

Have I loved you?

Compare your situation with that of your fellow or brother nation, Edom, the descendants of Esau.

I've blessed you in chapter two, in verse 17, the Lord says, you've wearied the Lord with your words.

But you say, how have we wearied him by saying everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord and he delights in them or by asking where is the God of justice.

God doesn't really care about whether people do right or wrong.

So why should we worry about worshiping him or being involved in this worship?

Everybody who does evil does well in life.

Look at the last passage here, chapter three verses 13 and 14, your words have been hard against me, says the Lord.

But you say, how have we spoken against you?

You have said it is vain to serve God.

What is the prophet of keeping his charge or of walking as in mourning before the Lord of hosts?

Why should we show reverence to God?

What's the value in that?

Where's the prophet in it?

The people had a heart problem.

It was not a ritual problem.

Their worship had become merely an obligation, a form to be observed rather than an opportunity to glorify the God who had blessed them so richly in their history brought them back from exile, speaking specifically of the exiles, the return returnees in the second chapter in verses one and two, the prophet writes and now o priests, this command is for you.

If you will not listen, if you will not take it to heart, to give honor to my name says the Lord of hosts.

Then I will send the curse upon you and I will curse your blessings. Indeed.

I have already cursed them because you do not lay it to heart.

It wasn't a ritual problem.

It was a heart problem when the heart is divorced from our service or worship soon we are cutting corners in our obedience and that's what the people were doing or we're still offering sacrifices.

Well, yeah, you're offering the lane, you're offering the blind, you're offering the sick.

Malachi will even note that they were offering things that they had stolen from others.

You steal from your neighbor and then go to the temple with his sacrifice to offer it to God.

When people are not heart involved in their worship, they will begin to cut corners.

Why not?

Why is it important to worry about the ritual for I the Lord do not change.

Therefore, you o Children of Jacob are not consumed from the days of your fathers.

You have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them return to me and I will return to you says the Lord of hosts.

But you say, how shall we return?

Will a man rob God that you are robbing me?

But you say, how have we robbed you in your tithes and contributions?

You are cursed with a curse for you are robbing me.

The whole nation of you.

Bring the full tithe into the storehouse you know what that suggests to me that they were still tithing some, but they weren't tithing according to the Lord's instructions, they were cutting corners, which is what people do when their heart isn't really involved.

When they despise the worship.

When it's a weariness to them, they may continue for a time, but they're going to keep doing less and less.

They cut the corners in their worship.

The pattern for worship.

The ritual is important.

The Lord instructs us.

But so is our attitude.

We can come here and we can do everything according to the Lord's plan.

We pray, we ask for the right kinds of things.

We sing the right kind of songs.

We do.

The Lord suffer according to the pattern that Paul gave to the Corinthians and verse Corinthians 11 as per the instructions given to him from the Lord, we can do all of those things.

And yet God says, I wish someone would just close the doors because perhaps our hearts are not engaged.

These people in Malachi's Day needed to re engage their hearts to recognize the blessings that God had given them.

Well, the application for us I think is pretty clear.

Has our worship become mere empty ritual.

What's your motivation for being here this morning?

Is it because you feel like you have to be here.

You're required to be here.

I believe we need to come together on the first day of the week, I believe we are required, but we need to be here because we want to be here because we want to show reverence for the father full of grace and love.

If we're just going through the motions, I think what Malachi is saying is it would be better if we just didn't bother because we despise the name of the Lord.

When we engage and worship just as empty ritual.

God doesn't want empty ritual, what he wants his heartfelt devotion.

And each of us needs to examine our own attitude toward worship, our motivation for being here today.

And for the way that we worship, if we come to services, simply out of obligation, sooner or later, we'll find all kinds of excuses for not coming.

You know, it's interesting to me, you can take two people, one in relatively good health and one in very poor health.

And the one that's in very poor health wants to be in worship so badly that they will come when they really are uncomfortable, miserable perhaps, but they want to be here.

And then you'll find people who can't be bothered to climb into a car in the comfort of that car, be conveyed to a building that's convenient and air conditioned and seats that are comfortable padded for a period of worship.

If we want to be here, if it's not just an obligation that we go through and we'll be here if at all possible.

Ok. Some like the uh people of Malachi's Day.

Some don't want to serve God unless there's some financial profit in it for them.

Remember, in chapter three verses 13 and 14, the people had said, uh how have we spoken against you?

And God says, it's vain, you, you've said it's vain to serve God.

What's the prophet of our keeping His charge of walking as in mourning before the Lord of hosts?

Is there any profit in serving the God of heaven?

And the answer is there certainly is.

Now, you may not recognize that profit here because we're not really talking about financial profit.

We're not talking about material wealth.

You might actually lose your wealth as a result of your faith.

The prophet expressed by the Apostle Paul in Titus 1123 is that we live in hope of eternal life.

There's a treasure that is reserved for us, Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ.

He writes in the salutation of his letter to Titus for the sake of the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth which accords with Godliness in hope of eternal life.

If I recall correctly in the Greek, there's really not a complete sentence here.

It's just Paul in hope of eternal life.

And God has promised that to those who will serve him from the heart, who will manifest their reverence and worship and good works toward others.

And I want to challenge you to be that kind of person.

If you're not a Christian, that's, that's the goal.

That's what we're here for is to prepare ourselves for divine fellowship.

If we can assist you in doing that this morning and obeying the gospel, becoming one of God's people so that you can serve him out of gratitude for all that has been done for you and for all of us as Ralph so eloquently pointed out this morning, then we want to assist you in becoming a Christian, being baptized into Christ for the remission of your sins.

If that's your need this morning, or if you just need to rededicate yourself and you would like to have the prayers of the saints. Here.

We invite you as we stand and sing, come to the front.

Series: N/A

Service: Sun PM

Type: Sermon

Speaker: Craig Adams

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.)

I'll be reading from Luke the 212th chapter starting in verse 228 and then dropping down to verse 22 Luke 12 verse 11.

And when they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities do not be anxious about how you should defend yourself or what you should say, picking up in verse 22 and he said to his disciples.

Therefore, I tell you do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat nor about your body.

What you will put on for life is more than food in the body, more than clothing.

Consider the Ravens they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn and yet God feeds them of how much more value are you than birds.

And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to the span to his span of life.

If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest?

Consider the lilies how they grow.

They neither toil nor spin.

And I tell you even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

But if God so close the grass which is live in the field today and tomorrow is thrown in the oven.

How much more will he clothe you o you of little faith and do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink.

Nor be worried for all the nations of the world seek seek after these things and your father knows that you need them instead seek his kingdom and these things will be added to you.

I want to uh get myself in speaker notes.

I hope yes.

Thank you for the opportunity to stand before you.

We'll continue the light thing.

Uh I was a little scared this morning, uh when uh Alan uh started his sermon, but I hope this will dovetail nicely and build upon the groundwork he laid this morning.

What if you can add an hour to your life?

Maybe make some wiser choices and some of your relationships with the time that you have left?

I can't help but be engineer here and ask about what if, what if you could delete an hour of your life where maybe there were some unwise choices?

Or what if you had a Mulligan like in golf where you could go back and modify an hour uh in your walk?

Would you use that added time to correct a flicker in your life?

How do you answer when you're brought before the authorities?

We might not think that that means too much to us applies today.

But if you're in the workforce, uh diversity, equity and inclusion as a reality and you have that training.

Um And so how do you respond before the authorities?

And you know, there'd be different authorities um especially when the authorities do not appreciate life.

Philippians chapter four verse five says the Lord is at hand, Lucas, what a great opening song.

The battle belongs to the Lord.

Thank you for that.

It goes on to say, do not be anxious about anything but in every side by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.

So today, we ask ourselves, are we hiding our life with anxiety?

Well, uh suggest that we need to remember are training to the Children singing that familiar song.

And so we can be led by the heart of a child.

Uh As we consider uh the scripture this evening, we want to take a look at what anxiousness looks like uh so that we can spot it in our lives.

Uh We offer a definition and I believe in this case, Philippians four offers some very practical how to spiritual instruction on building a non anxious life.

We'll explain why I phrase it that way in a moment.

And we'll conclude with some steps that we can take in the coming week.

Anxiety disconnects our relationships and to aid our study.

I'm going to rely on some uh work from Dr John Delony on the state of mental health.

From a 2022 survey, 82% say they those they spend time with do not know them deeply.

I suggest that we think about Genesis 123.

Then the Lord God said it is not good that a man should be alone.

Uh Loneliness is something uh that God uh made provision for in the creation.

Romans eight, talking about the creation itself being set free from its bondage to corruption and to obtain the freedom of the glory of the Children of God.

Notice the contrast there between the creation and the bondage to sin and the freedom uh for the Children of God continuing in verse 22.

For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together.

Seems to me that loneliness and anxiety and groaning uh can go together or often accompany each other.

But this is talking about groaning in the pains of childbirth um as a result of the sin in the garden and not only the creation, but we ourselves notice the shift who have the first fruits of the spirit grown inwardly as we wait eagerly for the adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

We are mostly a group this evening that are eagerly awaiting uh to be finally adopted as sons in eternity.

We're adopted in a sense that we've put on Christ.

I believe this is a little different sense of the usage and where we'll have redemption of our bodies, 68% say they have three or fewer close friends.

I can't help but think of one of the elders at West Knoxville I co op in the summer of 87 in between undergraduate school and graduate school.

He was helping me move from Knoxville uh back to some furniture, back to my parents' place south of Knoxville, uh an hour or two.

And then also helping me uh move things back up uh to the campus uh for the new semester at start grad school.

And he said, you know, he said, if you're fortunate at any point in your life, you have at least one, you know, close friend.

Um And of course, God makes provision for that in marriage ideally, you know, your spouse uh uh is, is that so, but, you know, uh guys need each other.

And uh so hopefully you have at least one, but I wouldn't discourage you from, from trying to have more.

There's just some time and space boundaries there.

Romans eight also talks about Children.

And so we've talked about the contrast between the creation and the Children of God.

And so there's the suggestion, there are different levels of connection with our Lord, our father, um God desires connection with all his creation, but he gives his creation choice.

And so he is as connected to them as they are uh in their choice uh to obey or not obey yet.

He loves all mankind.

And demonstrates mercy for people to make that choice.

Of course, physical death is reality when we no longer have the opportunity to make that choice for.

We know that the whole creation has been groaning together, the pains of childbirth until now.

And not only the creation but we ourselves who have the f first fruits of the spirit.

We've grown inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption of sons, the redemption of our bodies.

We all have different things going on in our lives.

Our prayer list suggests that each week and I don't know if you've ever done this.

Have you ever thought about uh some of our brothers and sisters who have gone on to the reward?

And you're trying to think now when, when did that brother or sister leave this life?

And so those are useful for, you know, retrospective uh uh trying to remember when someone went through some illness or lost a loved one.

and that changes over time.

So our connection with each other helps us through those times.

54% say they do not have a close friend, they feel comfortable calling for in an emergency.

Um John Deloney describes this as our equivalent to a financial emergency fund.

You know, something catastrophic happens, you know, transmission in the, in the vehicle goes out and you have to go replace it.

Well, our relationships are that emergency fund when we have things going on in life that we can call on someone uh no matter the hour of the night, Luke 10, I apologize for the lengthy reading.

If you want to turn there, it's not going to be on the screen.

You can follow along.

We'll build off of this behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test saying, teacher, what shall I do to inherit?

Eternal life?

He said to him what is written in the law?

How do you read it?

And he answered, you shall love the Lord, your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself.

And he said to him, you've answered correctly, do this and you will live.

But he desiring to justify himself.

Said to Jesus, who's my neighbor, Jesus replied that a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and he fell among robbers who stripped him, beat him and departed, leaving him half dead.

Now by chance, a priest was going down the road and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.

So likewise a Levite when he came to the place and saw him pass by on the other side.

But a Samaritan as he journeyed came to where he was and when he saw him, he had compassion, he went to him and bound him up, bound his wounds up, pour pouring on oil and wine.

Then he set him on his own animal.

And brought him to the inn and took care of him.

And the next day he took out two deer and gave them to the innkeeper saying, take care of him and whatever more you spend, I will repay when I come back.

Which of these three do you think prove to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?

Now, I want you to mentally underline who fell amongst the robbers strike through robbers and just think about our walk through life and we could fill in that blank with lost a job, uh lost a loved one on and on down the list.

And he said, the one who showed him mercy.

And Jesus said to him, you go and do likewise.

40% of married couples say they struggle with emotional intimacy.

We return to Genesis chapter two and God observing that man should not be alone.

So he made a helper fit for him.

And that basic construction uh leads us to households with sons and daughters who do sons and daughters lean upon parents.

And then uh they in turn began their households and you have grandparents and we have brothers and sisters in Christ.

Uh and uh the body of Christ, uh not just our physical uh family.

And of course, God gives instruction about the challenges of marriage and says, if you're not married, that's OK. Uh There's, there's a lot of work uh to, to marriage and uh Paul speaks about that.

He talks about the situations of those who have spouses past and gives instruction about that.

But he makes provision so that we can be connected and have our needs met.

Let's talk about um the definition of anxiety.

I'm just gonna share some points that uh stood out to me and looking at uh this work uh building a non anxious life uh by John Deloney.

His focus is really on helping people.

And he starts by talking about diagnostic manuals.

He doesn't say throw them out.

In fact, he says they have a place amongst professionals.

It gives them a way to talk about things that they have observed.

Uh statistically now I'm gonna caveat that and say, wow, I appreciate the fact that we have mental health professionals to go to.

I can't help but think of our spiritual training with Joe.

And so every bit of insight that man has is limited and think about where uh job is wanting to question God.

And then God begins to question him and says, well, where were you when I made this?

So I think we can avail ourselves of, of medical and mental health professionals.

And it's certainly better today than it's ever been, but we need to keep our spiritual grounding there.

And uh that's what I am saying.

Not, not what stated in his book.

He talks about the problem where um sharing diagnostic codes and details and stuff often leads the patients to internalizing that and they put a label on their self.

Um and I just observed too, you know, we can put labels on each other.

And so we need to, you know, be cautious about that.

And really, that's his bottom line.

He doesn't like labels.

Uh He wants to help anxious people be not anxious uh and to have some grounding.

And so he suggests this definition, he says that anxiety is a series of alarms to our body.

If we had a fire in the building, we would hear a loud audible alarm.

And so when we're feeling alone, it's, I think it's wise to say, hey, some something's up.

Um We learned to do that physically, my throat's scratchy, wonder if I'm getting a cold or it's just my sinuses.

I feel a little feverish.

So we need to pay attention to these alarms uh to uh our, our soul, uh our heart.

Uh sometimes it's because we're in an unsafe situation.

That could be a multitude of things.

It could be health concerns.

Uh I have some health condition that, that uh struggling with.

Um it can be the decisions by someone else that have a negative impact on you.

And, you know, we might want to, you know, go to uh a drunk driver example where we'd say, well, he was drunk and he was violating the law. Yes.

Uh that person's decision sometimes affects others lives in a very serious way.

But sometimes it can be as engineers in the workplace, there's design option A and design option B you happen to be on the option B team, but the customer programmatic decision is or choose an A and so, you know, there's some things like that that sometimes don't go our way.

Uh Those of you that played sports, um somebody wins and somebody loses, you know, so it's how we face those things.

We will talk about what the truth says.

We don't need uh the works of a man to confirm truth and that's not my intent.

Uh uh And, and the lesson this evening as I read through this as is my custom, I'm saying what this thing that this author is saying here, where's that at in the scripture?

And so this is really a combination of my marked up notes uh in John de Loney's book as I uh have read through it.

Uh still, still digging in it uh but have made some passes through it.

So it seems reasonable after no small effort and thought that's on my part.

And I say that because um I've been with you all longer than I've been with any other group of Christians, one of the brother here, you know, just, just, you know, you get feedback out of the blue.

You're a deep thinker.

And my challenge is, is I'm wanting to express all that thought and trying to put 10 pounds in a 20 minute sermon or 30 minute sermon.

And then one of my other dear brethren said, you think a little bit differently than we do.

But so long as it's reason from the scripture, I think that's the beauty of the Lord's body.

Um Paul probably didn't teach exactly like Peter didn't teach exactly like John, et cetera, et cetera.

But the important thing is truth.

And so we want to hold up this notion of alarms against Philippians four.

I just want to suggest that the idea of being alone could be tied to when those that you would normally have connection with, have no opportunity to be connected with.

That's what Paul is telling us in this story.

He's off doing the work spreading the gospel, but the Philippians had no opportunity notice they were concerned for him, but they had no opportunity.

We're getting ready to have an opportunity.

Thanks to Alan, who'll be going to be with professor and the Saints in a different continent.

And Gary just came from that and that's what's exciting about this group is you read acts about them coming in and out and making reports of things.

And it's refreshing to see that happening uh here uh with the saints that we we worship with.

But Allen's also shared with us communications when he wasn't able to be there bodily, you know, for Professor when there were some trials and stuff going on.

Uh We read about sickness and events uh you know, in South America.

And so there's concern but no opportunity.

So that really means that there are some times in your life when you are gonna be alone, the idea of an unsafe situation, Paul was not in an unsafe situation.

And the wording of verse 11, not only suggests that it, it, it, I believe firmly leaves us with that uh inescapable conclusion, not that I am speaking from being in need, but I'll suggest that we're commanded to see to the needs of each other above the needs of ourselves.

And sometimes there's concern for one another's needs, but no opportunity.

And so I'm just suggesting that we can think of unsafe situations as when some among us have needs uh that aren't being met, which is why we need to be connected to each other.

What about the idea of health concerns?

Well, Paul talked about facing hunger and facing need.

I think that uh uh he's hinting at physical spiritual and emotional in this section of text and he goes on uh to talk um in verse 15 about when decisions of others negatively impacted him.

Um No church entered into partnership with me in giving and receiving.

I don't think it's any coincidence that hunger and need were mentioned because those are obvious things.

You're we go on vacations and we don't have the comforts of our pantries at home and stuff.

So you have to go to restaurants or go somewhere and buy uh provisions and, and so Paul, you know, was pressed for those basic uh needs while he's trying to see the spiritual needs of the brethren.

And so, um we just talked in Corinthians, I think I was making the point uh that there's no hint that they were participating and sending help elsewhere.

So, uh you know, I don't know that that's the church.

I don't, I'm not making that conclusion that Paul has in mind, but certainly some did help like the Philippians.

Uh But then there were occasions when they had concern but no opportunity.

This is speaking to uh when others decisions have an effect on you make wise choices.

David Williams was uh telling me as I shared with him.

Uh Yes, I'm doing this lesson because anxiety is a thing for me.

And he said you just have to live each day.

Well, coincidentally that's de loney's uh focus and it kind of suggests six choices.

He calls it reality and it's relationship based.

He suggests uh that you take inventory of your relationships, uh spouse, Children, workplace, saints, elders.

Uh And so we see that in Paul, therefore, my brothers whom I love and long for does that suggest that Paul was connected to the Philippians?

I think it does.

Was he always able to be bodily present?

No, he, he was absent.

And so there's some realities that we have to deal with in our relationships, connection.

Did Paul connect?

Uh did the Philippians connect with Paul by sharing in his trouble.

A apparently they did and we've talked about the limits there.

And so we also talked about the idea of being neighbor and the story of the good Samaritan.

Uh Do we seek to show mercy or do we pass by and Deloney talks about we have to take care of ourselves first.

Um Do this mental exercise with me.

Uh Tim Smith, uh you know, gave me this years ago.

Uh I think he said it's in a book by Gail Sayers, Joy.

Jesus, others yourself.

Well, I was kind of surprised Deloney said before you can take care of others, you had to take care of yourself and I was sort of raised my eyebrow with that.

But here's what he suggests, you have to rest, you have to exercise your body and you have to have a proper diet else.

You're gonna be stressed out and have your own baggage that you're bringing when I'm trying to be connected with someone else.

Um Others, we seek opportunities to share in trouble.

We'll talk about that in the, in the close um freedom.

Let's go back to the reading in Luke chapter 12.

Thank you, Mike.

Um And he said to his disciples, therefore, I tell you do not be anxious about your life, what you eat, uh Nor about your body.

What you will put on for life is more than food and the body more than clothing.

Let's scoot down to verse uh 28.

But if God so close the grass which is alive in the film today and tomorrow thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you?

O you of little faith, anxiety affects our faith.

It makes us question.

And then we read on your father knows that you need these things instead seek His kingdom and these things will be added to you.

So Philippians suggests that our freedom is with the peace of God that surpasses all understanding.

And when we have the right focus, he will guard our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus.

So the foundation to all of our relationships is Jesus.

Um I can see some of you captain obvious statement there. Yes.

Um mindfulness on being a neighbor uh and showing mercy to ourselves or to creation or to the Children of God.

Our actions and our relationships proceed from our thoughts.

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable.

If there's any excellence, if there's anything worthy of praise, think about these things, I struggled with that passage for a lot of years.

It's like that's commendable.

What's lovely, what's pure and I could go define those terms.

But it wasn't until the light bulb went on.

I saw that in the dealings between this brother and this brother.

So think about the relationships that we get to see, I know we're not supposed to do our works so that they're saying, but our works do bear fruit.

And so when you see those, think about it and then take a moment and say brother.

So and so your example really encouraged me.

Thank you for setting that example.

So we have to spend some time uh to be mindful.

He actually goes into some wonderful examples.

Um, husbands know that with wives have rules.

It's the same way the other way around.

It just depends on if you're doing yard stuff or, you know, in the kitchen stuff about whose domain you're in.

And he gives some examples about how, why, why do you leave your club?

He, he apparently would leave his clothes laying on the floor and that's, you know, painful to me.

Uh because that's something that I have to profess guiltiness to uh or not in the floor.

I'll, I'll put him in a chair because I wanna run out to dinner with the wife and I won't come back later and put those work clothes on and go do some stuff in the yard.

Um And he talks about instead of provoking each other, triggering each other.

This is a marriage example.

But he goes into examples about, you know, friendship, relationships.

So just, just plug in a different relationship and you probably have some stories you can share yourself and, and he's like, instead of saying, oh, what, why is it such a big deal that I need to pick up my clothes and put them away.

He's like just bite your tongue and say sorry about that.

I'll do better.

Next time I go put the clothes away.

So mindfulness has us thinking about our connection with each other house and healing.

I know how to be brought low and I know how to abound.

This suggests that ultimately, uh we may suffer things in this.

We're going to suffer um because it's for our testing and we're finding but a spiritual healthy outlook will have the grounding that is suggested in Philippians.

Paul says, I know how to live down here.

I know how to live up here and I know how to get back to a baseline.

We'll build on that in just a second belief.

I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

Um In verse nine, he says, what have you learned and received and heard and seen practice these things.

I appreciate your praise, patience, brother as usual, even though I rehearsed this faster.

Uh My preaching words are outweighing my uh speaker notes.

We want to suggest that Philippians four has this core instruction on contentment, not too low.

If I'm low, I need to practice getting to contentment.

If things are going great and I'm abounding, I need to get to contentment down here.

I might become jealous or, you know, uh bitter or angry or start to disconnect, become anxious up here, I might be conceited, you know, uh might overlook the needs of someone.

I need to get to a baseline of contentment.

How do we do that?

We rejoice and we rejoice again and we try to be reasonable in our relationships and do not be anxious and finally pray, making supplication with thanksgiving, whatever you feel is lacking, whatever you want to ask for, express it with gratitude, find something that you're thankful for or several things.

Next steps, we want to love and long for deep connections.

One way to do that is to share in someone else's troubles, the way the Philippians did with Paul and when you're doing that, it'd be good to let Jesus guard your hearts and minds through mindfulness and at the core of that practice these things. Yeah.

The other way is we can open ourselves up and say I've got this disease that has these effects or I'm struggling with this sin and I need an accountability partner or I've made this mistake and I need the prayers of uh those around me or in some cases, the saints, same thing.

Let Jesus guard your hearts and minds, think and practice contentment.

If we don't do those things, we're putting a basket over our life do not be anxious, but Martha was distracted.

So you recall there was a really good sermon about distractions of you sermons.

Fact, I don't know if it was weeks or months.

Time is aless when Alan's in the pulpit.

So also remember some recent lessons about love.

Um She was distracted with much serving and she went to him and said, Lord, do you not care that my sisters left me to serve alone?

Tell her then to help me.

But the Lord answered Martha, Martha, you are anxious and trouble about many things.

But one thing is necessary, Mary has chosen the good portion which will not be taken away from her.

Our takeaway there.

Let's go uh to uh this passage and as for what fell among the thorns, they are those who hear, but as they go on their way, they are choked by the cares, riches and pleasures of life, their fruit does not mature.

As for that in the good soil, there are those who hearing the word hold it fast in an honest and good heart and bear fruit with patience.

Want us to see the connection between anxiety and the distractions of life.

John Delaney's book title, which is his purpose.

Then say you want to live an anxious free life.

I think we can all if we're being honest with each other, say, yeah, I've wrestled with anxiety.

Maybe some of us wrestle with it more than others, but it's to have a strategy for dealing with anxiety so that you can lead a non anxious life.

So as little flicker as possible as Alan suggested to us in the sermon this morning, I'm making the connection, that anxiety causes a flicker when we're not burning as brightly as we could.

And of course, we want to choose the one thing that is necessary, the good portion and that will not be taken away.

Notice anxiety and the distractions where we're choked by life, the cares of life, the riches of life, the pleasures of life.

I think that's maybe a challenge for us with how blessed we are.

I know Kevin said this morning, we have examples of this group doing good things to share their riches.

But I can't help but suspect that maybe sometimes we're anxious about uh those things.

The good soil are those who here hold it fast and uh bear fruit.

And so we want to extend an invitation tonight about making wise choices.

It could be that you're amongst us and coming from a place uh from the perspective of the creation, God made us.

But if you haven't made some basic choices as the text, we just read, suggest hear it, hold it and bear fruit with patience because it's a long race, even if your days are shorter than uh what normal life would be.

I won't say this.

I thought about just leaving those and I think they're true because they're from the scripture.

But we know from other scripture that what proceeds from hearing is belief and that leads us to repentance to say I'm tired of being in the dark.

I want to get oriented to the light.

And I understand that doing that means I have to bear fruit, which involves confession and our old self dying in baptism.

So I added some things.

I haven't put the passages up there.

If you're not certain about what those are, we're happy to study with you, any number of the elders, um whoever, whoever you would want to uh study with.

But I suspect if you're hearing this and you are ready that you could fill in those scriptures yourself, you should be able to.

So we will uh offer the invitation to those that may need to respond.

Thank you for your time.

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.)

Scripture reading this morning will be taken from John chapter one verses one through 13.

John chapter one verses one through 13.

And this is the Apostle John's introduction of Jesus to the world.

It's kind of a 163,000 ft view.

Um And it talks about jesus' eternal nature being the word from the beginning.

And that word was the light of men.

And then that through Him, through our belief in Him, we can have the right to be a child of God.

Such a blessing in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.

He was in the beginning with God and all things were made through Him.

And without Him was not anything made that was made in Him was life and the life was the light of men.

The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.

There was a man sent from God whose name was John.

He came as a witness to bear witness about the light that all might believe through Him.

He was not the light, but he came to bear witness about the light, the true light, which gives light to everyone was coming into the world.

He was in the world and the world was made through him.

Yet the world did not know Him.

He came to his own and his own people did not receive him.

But to all who did receive Him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become Children of God, who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

I got a number of people who were gone this last week to camp and various other places and it's good to have those faces back with us before I get started this morning.

I want to make two quick announcements.

One is that the uh song practice that normally takes place at the same time as the Bible drill class is canceled for today.

So if you are accustomed to coming to that, please make that note that it's not going to happen today.

Although the Bible drill class will meet at 4:20 p.m.

Also, uh at the conclusion of the sermon and the invitation song, there'll be a brief announcement by one of our deacons, Steve Renfroe concerning the recent elder re examination uh process.

Many of you probably have been watching or some of you maybe have been watching some of the activities of this week in Paris.

This last week was the beginning of the 212 Paris Olympics summer Olympics and the opening ceremonies took place during this, uh the middle of this last week.

A major part of the opening ceremonies is the lighting of the cauldron by the Olympic torch.

Usually there's some sort of cauldron, although it varies from year to year exactly how it will be done.

But there's a flame that is carried in a torch relay to the location of the Games.

And that torch is then used to light the flame of a cauldron and that cauldron will continue to be lit to burn until the conclusion of the Olympics, which this year I think is August the 236th, the flame of the torch flame I should say begins in Olympia, Greece where the Olympics originated and that torch will be carried has been carried.

It's already been done, obviously has been carried by about 226,217 different runners over the years.

As the Olympics have moved from place to place and continent to continent.

The carrying of the torch has taken a lot of different forms by ship, by diver.

You can believe that and some other things, the Olympic committee has decided that the carrying the torch will just be through the country of Greece and then through the host country which this year of course is France.

The location of the Games is in Paris.

The Olympic torch relay is relatively recent as far as the history of the Olympics is concerned, it is described by some as a symbolic uh manifestation of peace and unity among nations.

Which is kind of ironic because the Olympic torch relay was actually begun in 218 by the Nazis who are not particularly historically known for peace and unity.

But nevertheless, that's when it started.

And that's the uh theoretically the idea behind this torch relay relay.

Now, you can imagine if it's done for weeks before the actual beginning of the Olympics and as it's going from place to place and through countries that the chance of the torch going out is going to be fairly high.

But there are lots of safeguards for that.

In fact, there are backup torches from the same flame in Olympia, Greece.

So that if the torch goes out, you can restart it with the same flame that came from Olympia, Greece.

If you love ceremony, you got to love this and so great caution for the torch not to be put out until it gets to the cauldron and begins the fire there.

Now, usually in the uh in the carrying of this torch, the runners are celebrities.

Uh They are in many cases, previous Olympians who meddled this year, at least from the United States.

Halle Berry carried the torch and the final segue into the final stage into Paris, uh was shared by Snoop Dogg and Farrell Williams, which apparently is the best we can do for the United States.

I don't know if you like rap music, but if you do then, this was your time.

And so they participated in the carrying of this torch relay.

Well, as you're well aware, the concept of light, the theme of light is found throughout the New Testament Scriptures.

And it is our text for this morning Philippians.

The second chapter verses 214 through 113 that suggests this thought that we are also in a sense, light bearers, we're actually described as lights in the world in the midst of a uh crooked and twisted generation.

We shine as lights in the world.

Although we are not the source of that light.

As we'll note a little bit later in our study, John began his gospel as you just heard from Daniel's reading in John chapter one by describing Jesus as the true light, the true light that has come into the world in the servants songs of the prophet Isaiah, the Messiah who is described as the Lord's servant would be a light for the nations.

Now I'm gonna come in in just a moment about the fact that I think those passages talk not just about the Messiah, but that the servant of the Lord was also a description that was used for the nation of Israel, but I believe in these passages in Isaiah 211 212 and Isaiah 12 6, that particularly the Messiah seems to be under consideration.

I am the Lord.

I have called you in righteousness.

I will take you by the hand and keep you, I will give you.

He says, as a covenant for the people, a light for the nations.

And Isaiah 49 6 says something very similar to that God intended for his people.

Israel to be a light to the nations.

It's kind of interesting that when the Apostle Paul was preaching on his first missionary journey at Antioch in acts chapter 13, as the Jews begin to resist his message, Paul announces that he and Barnabas are going to turn to the gentiles.

And he actually then quotes in acts 13 and verse 47 from Isaiah the 123th chapter and verse six, which suggests to me that God intended for that passage to talk not just about the messiah as an individual, but about God's people.

In general.

Paul says, we are going to take the gospel message to the gentiles.

That's what God commanded us to do to be a light for the nations.

Nations is just another way of talking about the gentiles.

Unfortunately, although God intended for his people to be a light to the Nations.

Israel typically failed in that task.

In the second chapter of Romans, the apostle Paul would indicate that while the some of the Jews consider themselves and maybe somewhat of an arrogant way to be a light for the the nations, the fact of the matter is they had failed to do that.

But Jesus Christ was the perfect fulfillment of that prophecy about being a light for the nations, those prophecies of course made also in the early chapters of Luke in chapter one, verse 79 in Luke two and verse 32 Jesus is a light to the nations.

And so it's not surprising that in addition to the text in Philippians two, that we would find throughout the New Testament references to the fact that we as Christians, as God's people ought to be lights in the world.

We'll note just a few of those passages.

Matthew chapter five is a familiar passage from the sermon on the mount as Jesus talks to his disciples.

Here's what he says to them.

You are the light of the world.

A city set on a hill cannot be hidden nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand and it gives light to all in the house in the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your father who is in heaven.

Jesus said you his disciples are the light of the world just as Jesus came as light into this world in the 26th chapter.

I'm sorry.

I jumped to reference in John chapter 12 and verse 36 Jesus says, while you have the light, believe in the light that you may become sons of light.

That's a description of Christians.

The Apostle Paul would write to the Colossians as he frequently did in the beginning of his letters, a lengthy prayer.

I'm going to read from part of that prayer beginning in verse nine, Paul says in Colossians, one and so from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.

So as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.

I think the new king James version says the saints in the light.

He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of our sins.

So Paul is in his prayer talks about the fact that God has delivered the Colossians and in essence, all Christians from the domain of darkness.

We were called out of darkness so that we could be translated or transferred into the kingdom of God's Son.

It is in that kingdom that we have the redemption of our sins in acts the 26th chapter in verses 17 and 18 as the apostle Paul made his defense before a second, Roman Governor Festus, he makes mention of the commission that he received when he was converted to Christ.

God said that he would be delivering Paul from your people and from the gentiles to whom I am sending you to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.

And so Paul says, that's really the mission that I was given was to turn people from darkness to light from Satan.

That's his domain, darkness to God.

Couple of other passages that just very quickly that describe us as Christians as lights.

Uh Paul would write to the Thessalonians in his first epistle to them for you're all Children of light Children of the day.

We are not of the night or of the darkness.

And to the Ephesians later, he would write during his imprisonment for at one time, you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord walk as Children of light.

And so the scriptures are replete with descriptions of Christians as being sons of light, Children of light, people who have come out of darkness and are now walking in the light if we could borrow the language of first John chapter one.

Well, I want to make five observations this morning very quickly about this business of being a light and the very first one is, as we've already noted, at least briefly that we are not the source of light.

We're just the reflectors of light.

You know, you can go out and in the night and, and a full moon, the moon just looks so bright and you might believe just because of the brightness of it that it is giving off light, but it really has no light of its own.

It's reflecting the light of the sun.

That's about all I remember from high school.

OK. So don't, don't press press me any but the moon's just a reflector.

It's not a source and in the same way or a similar way, we are reflecting the light that has been given to us through Christ, we serve as lights to give glory to God, not to ourselves.

And that's the point that I want you to see about us being reflectors and not source.

It's not that we are such wonderful people that people can then learn from us and see light.

We have been given light and we reflect that light. Others.

The Apostle Peter said that in first Peter two and verse nine, he borrows language incidentally in first Peter two that's taken from the Old Testament as it was used to describe God's people, Israel.

But now he says of Christians, you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

We are lights not for our own personal aggrandizement, but to proclaim the excellencies of the one who called us out of darkness.

You remember the exhortations of Jesus in the sermon on the mount in Matthew six, we've already referred to Matthew five verses 14 through 16 where Jesus said, let your light shine so that others may see your good works, not so that they will glorify you, but so that they will glorify God.

And so we need to remember that we are just reflectors.

We're not the source of the light.

And Jesus warned in Matthew chapter six about those who did their good works to be seen a man so that they might be glorified or praised.

We need to be careful that we don't fall into that trap.

Light benefits from contrast, the greater the contrast with its surroundings, the greater the influence of light.

You know, I purposefully used a black background on these charts because I wanted you to see the candle clearly.

If I had to put a white background on these charts, the light would have faded into the background.

And that's the point that I'm making about light benefiting from contrast.

If you were to go into uh a dark cavern and many of you have probably done this, maybe you've gone over to cathedral caverns.

They, as the tour guides are typically uh want to do, they'll take you to the back of the area where you can go in those caverns and then they'll turn all the lights out and it's pitch black dark, there's no light at all.

And then just a little bit of light in that environment stands out in such a great fashion.

And so it is with us as Lights, Paul wrote that the Philippians were to be blameless and innocent Children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation.

That's the background, that's the environment of the world, crooked and twisted perverse is essentially the meaning of twisted and light.

And that kind of darkness is so much more visible, so much more influential in terms of guiding individuals.

Now, Paul was talking about his day, but we live in dark times as well.

And I know that in the history of man, that the general morality of people in various cultures tends to go up and down.

We live in dark times.

But the darkness around us only serves to make our light more visible.

It serves to make our light more influential as people see the difference between us and the world around us.

That is if we're really shining the way we should letting our light shine like benefits from contrast.

And so although we sometimes uh maybe tend to be a little pessimistic about the world around us.

The fact of the matter is the worse it gets, the easier it is to see us as lights.

The third place being a light involves more than just our outward appearance or the trappings of religion for some people, their relationship to Christ is essentially the wearing of a shirt with some sort of religious message on it or maybe a bumper sticker on their car or wearing a cross as jewelry.

There was a policeman who pulled over a female driver and went to the side of the car as they typically do the driver's door and asked her for her identification and her registration for that car.

And as he looked at these documents that she had given him, the woman in a puzzled voice says, I don't understand why you stopped me.

And the policeman's response was well as I was following you, I noticed the, I love Jesus bumper sticker on the back of your car, but I also heard you curse that slow driver who was in front of you.

And I saw you made an obscene gesture to somebody who cut you off after that.

And so I just naturally assumed that you had stolen this car.

Our light is not composed of outer trappings.

Now, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with wearing a T shirt that has a religious message on it or having verses on the walls of your home.

I do those things as well.

I'm saying that that can't be the full extent of our light if that's the way our light is it's just an outward appearance.

It doesn't affect our behavior.

If we're not showing people the path, by the way that we live by the example of our lives, then we're really not light.

Our behavior has to be in line with our profession in the fourth place.

We must not flicker.

Debbie and I have a, uh, at the top of our bed, there's, there's two lights there that we use sometimes to read.

Uh, if we go to bed and we're just not sleepy or whatever, you turn the light on, she's got a switch and I've got a switch.

Uh, and the switch on my side, the light on my side has recently gone crazy.

And what's happened was it just stopped working all together.

So I climbed up on the bed and took the light apart and jiggled some wires to see if everything was solid and, uh, everything seemed to be fine.

So I replaced the ball, put a new bulb in.

I had already tried a new bulb before and this bolt worked, I thought well, good.

It's fixed.

And so then about two nights later, turn that light on getting ready for bed and it comes right on and then it goes flickers which means something is still wrong.

There's something that's loose in there.

And so I'm gonna have to go back and take it apart and look at it again and find out what the problem is.

Our lights can't flicker fact of the matter is we can't always choose when we're going to be seen by others.

And so sometimes Christians are very good examples when they're around certain people.

Like when we're in an audience like this, in a group like this or maybe around our family, we have a different persona, different example than when we're with other people, maybe people that we work with or people who are part of our sports group or whatever other relationships or organizations that we may be a part of.

And so what happens is, oh, I'm shining brightly as long as I'm with people who will appreciate that.

Then when I get with other people, my light flickers and I start doing and saying things that I shouldn't do that I wouldn't say or do in your company or in the company of others who have some spiritual convictions, our lights must not flicker.

I think obviously as, as individuals, we tend to hide our frail frailties.

But please understand.

We don't always get to choose when people are watching us and sometimes our light is being seen or maybe not seen at times that we least suspect.

Yeah, we will be seen as light or will help spread the darkness but brothers and sisters, we will be seen by others.

And then finally, not everyone appreciates light.

If you're going to be a light in the world, you need to understand that there'll be people who will resent your light.

Jesus in John chapter three.

Actually, this is probably more the comment of the writer John and this is the judgment, the light has come into the world and people love the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil for everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light lest his works should be exposed.

But whoever does what is true comes to the light so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.

And Jesus is the perfect example of that Jesus by his teaching and his example exposed the hypocrisy, the wickedness in some cases of the religious leaders of his time.

And they resented him for it.

They envied him and they finally put him to death.

Not everybody appreciates light because the contrast between the light as it represents moral scriptural behavior and their behavior is stark and not everybody wants that some care about that.

And they'll persecute those who are like in Ephesians.

The fifth chapter verses 11 and 12.

The Apostle Paul says, take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.

Now, you can do that in a couple of different ways.

You can do it simply by the way that you live, you can do it by the things that you say, the teaching that you do for it is shameful, even to speak of the things that they do in secret, in darkness.

We need to remember the words of Jesus.

In Matthew chapter five.

He said, nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand and it gives light to all in the house.

In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your father who is in heaven.

We can live good moral lives and yet not be shining before others.

There are ways that we can hide ourselves so that we don't attract attention.

I'm not suggesting that we ought to be ostentatious or obnoxious to other people.

But I'm saying, don't be ashamed of who you are as a disciple of Jesus Christ.

We need to appreciate the serious responsibility.

The privilege that we have as disciples of Jesus to be lights in the world.

Light bearers.

The invitation of the gospel has come out of darkness and into the light.

You recall that the Apostle Paul talked about that in Colossians one verse 13, we'll look at that verse in just a few moments in John chapter one part of that reading that was done before the sermon.

I wanna remind you of some of these verses, the true light beginning in verse nine which gives light to everyone was coming into the world.

He was in the world and the world was made through him.

Yet the world did not know him.

He came to his own and his own people did not receive him but to all who did receive him, who believed in his name.

He gave the right to become Children of God, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but born of God.

He gives them the right the opportunity to become Children of God.

In Colossians.

One Paul said, he has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

Are you in the dark?

The dark can be a scary place.

Hard to find your way, hard to get to where you want to go.

The gospel invitation is come out of the dark, the darkness of the world and come into the light of life.

And if you're willing to be born of God, to be born again of water in the spirit this morning, based upon your belief in Jesus Christ, as the Son of God, your repentance of your sins, renouncing the darkness that you've lived in and then confessing the faith of your heart, you can be born again, become a child of light, child of God.

And if we can assist you in that this morning, to become a Christian and then to shine brightly for whatever time God permits us on this earth, then won't you come as we stand to invite 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.)

When I saw Colossians three up for the scripture reading at the beginning, I thought I'm going to change my sermon.

But fortunately, we were able to shift.

And so I'm gonna preach what I had intended to preach uh in the very beginning.

Glad you're here this evening.

If you're visiting with us, we're grateful that you're here and we certainly want to extend an invitation to you to come and be back with us any chance that you have, I want to talk to you just a few moments about the power of God.

The Bible records, tremendous acts of power that were done by God.

And those are the kinds of things that would have been so visible to mankind.

I'm talking about the global flood of Genesis seven in the time of Noah.

There weren't many witnesses to the end of that flood just eight in the Ark, but it was a cataclysmic event that essentially wiped out uh humanity, the entire earth covered by water, the plagues against Egypt that decimated that land.

103 plagues water turned to blood darkness, hail, death of the firstborn, et cetera.

Those are obvious displays of God's tremendous power.

And of course, the parting of the Red Sea, which is something that is referenced repeatedly in the Old Testament.

It was something that obviously had captured the attention of the Jewish nation.

The Jewish people, Israel walked across on dry land, not just that they were able to cross, but that they crossed on dry land as the sea was parted as you move into the New Testament.

Even other acts of tremendous power, the calming of the sea of Galilee.

When Jesus is in the boat with his disciples, have you ever wished that you could perhaps witness have witnessed some of those things must have been fantastic to be able to witness the parting of the red Sea or to see the storm on the sea of Galilee uh threatening to swamp the boat and then suddenly at the word of the Lord, there is this tremendous calm, God's power, however, is being demonstrated all around us in the natural creation.

In the book of Romans in chapter one and verse 20 the Apostle Paul said 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 speaking of the the gentiles, they are without excuse.

So God has displayed his power in the created world from the beginning of the history of mankind.

And even today, God's power is not demonstrated just in such obvious ways.

As the plagues or the parting of the Red Sea.

Some illustrations of God's power are seen in very small things.

And I want to look at some of them this evening, but I want to begin in the book of Job with some big things.

If you're in the book of Job, still, perhaps you followed the reading in chapter 26.

I'm going to be reading in Job chapter 40 I'm going to start in verse 15 at this point, the conversation between Job and his three friends and also Elihu conversation with job that's gone.

That's over.

Now God is talking to job and he peppers job with a series of questions about job's understanding and job's power.

In verse 15 of Job 40 the text reads behold behemoth, which I made as I made you.

He eats grass like an ox.

Behold, his strength is in his loins and his power and the muscles of his belly.

He makes his tail stiff like a cedar.

The sinews of his thighs are knit together.

His bones are tubes of bronze, his limbs like bars of iron.

He is the first of the works of God.

Let him who made him bring near his sword for the mountains, yield food for him where all the wild beasts play under the lotus plants.

He lies in the shelter of the reeds and in the marsh for his shade.

The lotus trees cover him, the willows of the brook surround him.

Behold, if the river is turbulent, he is not frightened.

He is confident though Jordan rushes against his mouth.

Can one take him by his eyes or pierce his nose with a snare?

It's not clear exactly what creature God is referring to here.

Some have suggested the elephant and the hippopotamus and others.

I'm more inclined to think that it was one of the dinosaurs who are now extinct.

It was a great creature and God describes him as a creature who shows no fear.

And in the end of that chapter, he asks, job.

Can one take him by his eyes or pierce his nose with a snare?

Can you control behemoth?

Can you tame him?

In chapter 41 God introduces another creature.

He calls him Le Leviathan and I'm going to read just the first eight verses, although there's additional material about the Leviathan, but in verse one, God continues, can you draw out Leviathan with a fish hook or press down his tongue with a cord?

Can you put a rope in his nose or pierce his jaw with a hook?

Will he make many pleas to you?

Will he speak to you?

Soft words?

Will he make a cover with you to take him for your servant forever?

Will you play with him as with a bird or will you put him on a leash for your girls?

Will traders bargain over him?

Will they divide him up among the merchants?

Can you fill his skin with harpoons or his head with fishing spears, lay your hands on him.

Remember the battle?

You will not do it again.

And so God describes another creature here in greater detail.

If we were to read the rest of this chapter, another great creature, apparently a sea creature, probably another type of dinosaur, but such a creature that God asked job.

Do, do you think you can control him?

Can you just handle him?

Like some sort of domestic animal that you have tamed and that you can sell and use for your own purposes?

Those two descriptions are God's way of saying to job.

I am much more powerful than you.

I made these creatures that you cannot even control.

They are the creation of God several weeks ago.

I don't remember exactly how long ago it was Travis Grant did a Wednesday night invitation about ants.

It was fascinating.

He talked about ants and the way that they would as a group, they would go and they would fight with termites and some of them would be injured and they, they would receive medical care from specific kinds of ants within the nest.

I want to talk to you this evening about a similar study that has been done.

I'm hoping I'm not going to trample too much on what Travis said.

I think this is a little bit different idea.

It was a study of Florida carpenter ants.

The guardian.

com is the online source of the story that uh I'm going to cite, you can see the title at the bottom of the slide there on, on the bottom left.

And this particular article was written by Nicola Davis.

She's the science correspondent for the Guardian uh magazine.

She cites a story in which scientists were studying the behavior of ants toward injured nest mates, other ants that had been injured for whatever reason.

And what they did in this study is they cut ants on their rear hind limb.

Some of the ants, they cut on the upper part of the leg, some of them, they cut on the lower part of the leg.

The femur is the upper part, the tibia is the bottom part for all of you medical uh characters that want all the the gory information.

And what they discovered is that when ants were injured like that and they were in the nest with other ants that in 13 of 17 cases where the cut, I'm going to demonstrate this where the cut was in the femur, in the upper portion of the leg, not the lower portion of the leg.

Other ants amputated that egg that leg, what they would do is they would, as Travis described in his talk, they would lick the wound, they would begin it kind of towards the bottom of the leg and go up the leg.

And when they would get up to the joint that was near the hip, they would begin biting that leg and they would actually bite it off.

They'd amputate the leg in 1153 of 17 cases.

That was what happened.

And in fact, this picture, I don't know if you can see it or not and I don't have a pointer with this particular, uh, advancer USB advancer.

But, uh, the ant that is down on the bottom there, you can see he has a hole, he or she, I couldn't tell they don't wear skirts or pants.

But that particular ant is biting the leg of the ant in the middle that has the kind of purple thing on it.

And what he's doing is he's amputating that leg.

But interestingly enough, if the cut was on the bottom part of the leg, no amputations took place.

So the ants seem to have some understanding of when it was necessary to amputate a leg for the life of the ant or when it was unnecessary.

And they could simply as Travis described lick the wound and it would heal as a result of their uh their care.

So if the injury was to the lower part of the leg, they didn't amputate the leg, they would just give wound care due to the anatomy of the ants.

Amputation of the lower leg does very little to improve chances of survival in the event of infection.

You understand what I just said.

The ants seem to understand that if the wound is on the upper part of the leg, it's critical to do something about getting the leg off.

So they would bite it until they amputated it.

But if it's down on the bottom part of the leg, they didn't amputate because apparently that doesn't really affect the chances of survival for this ant.

Here's the comment by one of the researchers, a man by the name of Dr Eric Frank.

He says the ants are able to diagnose to some extent the wounds which are life threatening, which are not and treat them according to maximize.

This is an English magazine to maximize the survival of the injured.

Well, they set up some other experiments about these with these ants.

I'm going to read for you one of the surveys or summaries of this other experiment.

Another set of experiments revealed isolated ants with infected wounds were far more likely to die than those with sterile wounds.

However, their survival rates greatly improved.

That is these ants with infected wounds greatly improved if the injured ants were either returned to their colonies, which suggested that the treatment provided by their nest mates, uh treatments beneficial or the infected limb was amputated by researchers.

Although this only brought benefits for thigh wounds, amputating the leg, if the wound is on the bottom of the leg didn't seem to help.

So here's the question, how do the ants possess this knowledge regarding the best wound treatment?

How do the ants know that if a wound is in a certain part of the leg that, that requires amputation.

But if it's in a different part of the leg, it doesn't require amputation.

Well, the answer to that is that God put this instinctive behavior into these tiny creatures.

And I find that amazing that God in his power placed within the smallest of creatures.

How many times have you ST stepped on an ant?

Right?

You step over ants or you step on ants and yet such a small creature.

And they can make the distinction between wounds that need to be treated one way and wounds that need to be treated a different way.

God put that instinctive behavior in these small creatures.

Well, the bird that you're looking at now is called the bar tailed Godwit.

How many of you have heard of the Bar Tailed Godwit?

You don't have one of those in a bird cage in your house?

Well, let me tell you about the Bar Tailed Godwit and this information comes from Apologetics Press, uh their magazine Reason and Revelation back in 2007, the US Geological Survey scientists from this group, they fitted 16 of these God wits with satellite transmitters so they could track where these birds go when they stop, how long they stay in different places.

And what I'm going to tell you is what they found out about.

One of those 215.

He was dubbed E seven.

I looked at that picture very carefully.

I can't tell if that's E seven or not.

I don't know what this bird's name is.

He's just a Godwit.

He may be a representative of the whole bunch.

But this particular bird that they dubbed E seven went on a rather long journey.

He went from New Zealand, which if you're familiar is down here at the bottom of this uh globe circle, went from there up to the area of China and North Korea where he spent about five weeks there and then traveled up to Alaska where he spent about four months.

That's apparently a nesting area up there as well as what I see.

Uh If I remember correctly now, that's a distance of about 217 miles.

So over three months, 29000 miles, I have a hard time walking more than a couple of miles in one day.

Well, after about four months, this e seven, Godwit began its flight back to New Zealand.

Now, if you notice on the, the graph here, the, the picture, there's no place to stop there.

Hawaii is off to the, to the right there of the path, but this bird didn't stop.

In fact, it flew, see if I can get all this straight.

It flew for approximately nine days without stopping eating, drinking or resting and the satellites keeping track of what, what it's doing.

It flew about 212 miles in nine days without stopping, averaging somewhere around 28.12 MPH.

Usain Bolt, I believe is clocked at about 210 MPH.

But that's only for a few meters because the long distance runners, Travis only run probably 203 MPH.

Maybe a little less than that.

I would run significantly less than that.

It would take me 220 days to run a mile.

Uh, so that, that the numbers work out.

So this bird goes from Alaska back down to New Zealand and ends up in the very same place where it had started about four months or five months earlier.

Actually, five, a little over five months earlier, distance wise, that would be the equivalent of flying from New York to San Francisco, back to New York, make the round trip and then back to San Francisco without stopping and wherever you started in New York, you would go exactly back to the same place without any navigational equipment, no compass, no parent, no map, just the bird knowing where it's supposed to go.

I think that's amazing.

So this got whit traveled approximately 211 220 miles in this round trip journey and didn't get lost.

Went back to the exact same place where the trip began months earlier.

How does the got whit possess that kind of stamina?

You can't tell from the picture, but this bird weighs less than a pound and it flew for nine days straight a distance, as I said, uh of over 7000 miles, about 70 or 100 miles.

How does it navigate without getting lost?

And incidentally, it's only one example of birds that do that.

But here's the answer.

The answer is that God put this ability into this little bird, of all the things in this world, of all the creatures, of all of the varied forms of life in this world.

God has placed within various small creatures, these amazing abilities to fly to navigate.

There was a fellow by the name of John Malone.

Back in 2001, he wrote a book entitled Unsolved Mysteries of Science.

And here's what he says about bird migration.

He says partial explanations abound.

But every book or scientific article on bird migration is full of conditional words and phrases.

He gives some examples.

It may be, but it also might not be.

We know more about how birds might achieve their epic flights around the world.

But there are still far more mysteries than there are explanations.

The tiny songbird that reappeared to build its nest in the apple tree outside your window and we know from bending it that it can indeed be exactly the same bird has been to South America and back since you, since you saw it last, how can that be?

And his answer is they don't know.

But we know God put that instinctive guidance ability within this creature, the God wit and other birds as well.

Now, the behaviors of these creatures, I think clearly evidence design uh and shows the wisdom of God.

But the sermon tonight is not entitled The Wisdom of God.

It's entitled the Power of God.

So I want to talk to you a little bit about the power of God and particularly the power that was illustrated in the initial creation in Psalm 89 verses 11 and 113.

The psalmist says the heavens are yours.

The earth also is yours, the world and all that is in it.

You have found them, the north and the south.

You have created them.

Tabor and Herman Mountains joyously praise your name.

The Psalmist says everything in creation belongs to you.

You made it in Psalm 104 in verses 24 and 25.

The Psalmist says, oh, Lord, how manifold are your works in wisdom?

Have you made them?

All?

The earth is full of your creatures.

Here is the sea, great and wide which teems with creatures innumerable, living things both small and great.

The Hebrew writer in chapter three in verse four said it like this for every house is built by someone.

But the builder of all things is God.

God is the one who built this world who created all of the life around us.

From the great creatures in the sea, the whales all the way down to the smallest microbes, the smallest life.

But God didn't just create this world and then give the globe a spin and walk away.

The Bible also records that God is responsible for sustaining His creation.

And this is the point I want you to think about.

We're going to read a couple of passages first of all, just to make the point so that you see that it's a scriptural point.

But then I want to emphasize it by thinking a little bit about what that entails in Colossians.

One verses 15 through 17 in a uh doxology uh eulogy of uh of, of Christ.

Uh Paul says he is the image of the invisible God, the first born of all creation.

For by him, all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether Thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him and he is before all things and in him, all things hold together.

Jesus wasn't just involved in the creation of everything around us.

Everything that goes on every God whip that travels 9000 miles or whatever.

Every ant that works to save the life of a fellow ant, a nest mate.

Every one of those things is held together is made possible by the power of God in Hebrews.

The first chapter in verse three, again, a description of Jesus Christ.

He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature.

And he upholds the universe by the word of his power.

After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.

I want you to notice that phrase in the middle of the verse.

He upholds the universe by the word of his power.

You know, everything seems to work automatically.

The earth keeps spinning and revolving around the sun and, and, and weather patterns keep working and all the different systems in nature, the cycles of nature, all those things, they just keep going on and on to the point that sometimes I think people get this idea that it just happens.

There's no force, no power behind it.

But what these passages are saying is God is responsible for all of that, Debbie and I planted a garden this year as we normally do.

And we're beginning to harvest some vegetables here and there.

And I love watching those plants, tomato plants and cucumbers and beans, sweet potatoes.

I enjoy watching them produce fruit.

That process.

That process is upheld by the power, the word of Christ's power.

He's the one who holds it all together and makes it work so that we have a, a world that we can function in because we have expectations of how things work.

Can you imagine if tomorrow everything worked, different, gravity was upside down, everything was different.

We couldn't work that way.

And then the next day it was back to the way it is today, we would, we would slowly go crazy.

We couldn't anticipate how our world worked.

We have this regularity, this consistency in our world and all of that is responsible including the carpenter ants and the Godwits and the orcas, and the plants, the flowers, all of that is orchestrated by the power of God, whether you're talking about the movement of the planets or the natural cycles on our planet to the smallest creatures who act according to the wisdom of God.

God's power is constantly on display.

I think there's a tendency sometimes to equate God with ourselves in terms of power to attribute our own limitations to God.

Now, I understand we would verbalize the idea that God is so far above us.

He's so more powerful than we are.

But then turn around sometimes and question how God could do something as though he is limited in his power like we are.

Should we pray to God?

Can God listen to your prayers while He's listening to my prayers, while he's listening to Han's prayers, while he's listening to Kevin's prayers and all the other Christians around this globe.

Can he listen to all of those prayers at the same time?

I can barely listen to Debbie.

If I'm doing something else, sometimes she'll talk to me and, and I say, well, wait a second.

What did you just say?

Because I was reading something and I didn't catch the first part.

I can't even, I can't even focus on more than one person at a time.

Should we pray?

Is God limited like we are in his power.

How can he possibly attend to the prayers of people around the globe?

How can God keep track of my needs and the needs of thousands, perhaps millions of other creatures of other Christians?

I'm sorry.

We are creatures of other Christians in Matthew the sixth chapter in the sermon on the Mount Jesus said, and when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the gentiles do for, they think that they will be heard for their many words do not be like them.

For your father knows what you need before you ask him.

And that's true of you.

It's true of me.

It's true of all of those who pray to God and ask for various things in our prayers.

He knows about all of us.

In fact, Jesus would say as recorded in Luke, the 12th chapter are not five sparrows sold for two pennies and not one of them is forgotten before God let that sink in.

Not one sparrow is forgotten before God.

Why even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear.

Not you're more value than many sparrows.

Now, I know there would be some who say, well, you know, that's got to be hyperbole.

How could God careful, how could God possibly know how many hairs are on the heads of everybody in this, in this auditorium?

Well, I wouldn't know that I couldn't know that I couldn't keep track of that we're talking about a God who doesn't just uphold the universe in your neighborhood or in my neighborhood or around my house or in the state of Alabama or in the country of the United States?

But around this world and in this galaxy, in the entire universe, God does it all.

He's upholding the universe, the creation with the word of his power.

Do you think he can't know how many hairs are on your head?

It's becoming an easier job for him with respect to my head.

But you understand the point, even the smallest bird that falls to the ground.

God knows that that's happened.

Do you think he doesn't know what's happening in your life or that he can't hear and attend to the things that are important to you in prayer.

How can God keep track of the behavior of a population of humans which currently numbers supposedly around 8.12 billion people.

Think about that.

We talked about second Corinthians five and verse 10 this morning that we each stand before the judgment seat of Christ.

Can you even imagine standing before God or someone else standing before God and God saying, I'm sorry, I don't know who you are.

Refresh my memory about what you did on earth.

Where did you live?

What was your job?

Who were you married to?

Who are your Children?

God knows every detail about all of us, every one of us who lives in this world, let that sink in.

That's hard to wrap your mind around a being who can do that, who has that kind of power, that kind of knowledge?

We're talking about a God who could create all the wonders of the world around us in six days and now he keeps everything going.

Now, the reason I wanted to talk about the power of God is because that same power is working in us.

Think about that.

This is a prayer Ephesians 115 to 20 that Paul writes in chapter one of Ephesians to these Christians.

He says for this reason, because I've heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints.

I do not cease to give thanks for you.

Remembering you in my prayers that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of glory may give you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation and the knowledge of Him having the eyes of your hearts enlightened that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you.

What are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints?

And what is the immeasurable, greatness of his power toward us?

Who believe according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, the same God who has exhibited this power in creation and who sustains this incredibly complex and varied world is working for you.

He's working in you.

That's what Paul says here.

And that's mind boggling.

But it ought to be encouraging.

Sometimes you ever feel just kind of a little bit alone, a little bit abandoned.

Not hardly another passage along the same lines.

Second Thessalonians chapter one, verse 11 to this end, we always pray for you.

Paul writes to the Thessalonians that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power.

We're not alone. Ephesians.

The third chapter in verse 20 passage, I think most of us are familiar with Paul writes now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think according to the power at work within us, able to do far more than you.

And I can even imagine.

And I would suggest to you that maybe the reason that we don't receive sometimes is we don't ask, that's what James said about prayer.

We worship a God whose power is being used for our salvation.

And the incredible power that's manifested in the, in the created world around us.

That same power is being used to sanctify and perfect us.

So he says, well, it seems like that would be a given then how could we resist?

And that's exactly the question we have to co operate.

God doesn't force us.

God's power is that working conversion when he takes someone who is spiritually dead and makes that person alive again, Paul to the Colossians in chapter two, beginning in verse nine, he says this, he says for in him, the whole fullness of deity dwells by, he's talking about Jesus and you have been filled in him who is the head of all rule and authority in him.

Also, you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands by putting off the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ.

Now, a lot of people equate that to baptism.

That's not what he's saying.

Baptism is something that is done with by human hands.

This is a circumcision that is made without hands.

It's the cutting off of the body of the flesh of the sins having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised with Him through faith in the powerful working of God who raised him, Christ from the dead.

God's power is evidenced in the raising of an individual from spiritual death into spiritual life.

That's what he's saying.

And the question I ask you this evening is, have you received that power?

Is that power at work in your life?

Have you become a Christian by being raised from the dead?

Having been buried with Christ in the water of baptism, forgiven of your sins and raised by God's power?

If you're a Christian?

Are you aware?

Are you keeping in mind the great power of the one who's assisting you, who wants to save you, who wants you to be with him for eternity.

I think this idea of the power of God ought to give us confidence and encouragement, to keep on, to be persistent, to stay strong.

And I hope that this evening our study has accomplished that at least to some measure in your way of thinking.

If we can assist you this evening in obeying the gospel or if you need the prayers of the saints, we'll be glad to do that, pray with you.

If you'll make your wishes known, your wants known, come to the front as we stand to sing and invite 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.)

How many hats do you wear?

I wear a lot of hats by hats.

I mean that there are a lot of different roles that I play uh in this life.

I happen to be an elder or a pastor and I happen to be a full time preacher.

So I'm a preaching pastor.

I've got the hat to prove it.

And I'm also a chicken whisperer, sometimes referred to as a chicken Wrangler depending on how macho is feeling that day.

But those are just two of the hats that I wear.

I also wear the hat of a Christian and a husband and a father and a grandfather, a hunter, a mealworm farmer.

If you ever want to see my meal worm farm, you're welcome to do that.

I'll show it to you Gardner, do it yourself or, and of course, my favorite taxpayer, these hats simply represent different roles or activities that I participate in.

And each role essentially reveals something about me or about my interests.

And I think most of you wear multiple hats, meaning that you fulfill different roles.

You have different relationships with various individuals or groups of individuals as members of this congregation or other places.

And if you don't wear those hats, now you will wear more hats probably in the future in a similar way, Jesus fulfills many roles.

And in our study today, I want to think about those roles.

I almost used Jesus is my all in all uh for the slide.

But I wanted to use this slide which is not up there to the um hit the uh there we go.

And you guys missed my hats.

This is uh from the hymn supplement number 54.

I love this song because it talks about all the different roles or the things that Jesus does for us.

And I want to talk about some of those roles, those different roles this morning.

I have uh I have to say in the very beginning, we're only going to scratch the surface of some of the things that Jesus does as he assists us in our various needs.

But I'm gonna look at six of them this morning and then we'll just quickly note a handful more.

But I want to look specifically at six and look at what the scriptures have to say about those six roles.

The first two, I'm going to combine on the chart here.

Jesus is both apostle and prophet in Hebrews the third chapter verse one.

There's an interesting comment there made about Jesus.

We typically think when we think of apostles, we think of the 12 apostles that Jesus selected out of his disciples, those who were with him during his earthly ministry and that he sent out after his resurrection, we might think of the apostle Paul and sometimes even other individuals are spoken of as apostles and in somewhat more informal way.

But in Hebrews three and verse one, Jesus is referred to as an apostle, the apostle and high priest of our confession, an impost, an apostle.

It's going to be a rough morning.

I can tell already an apostle is simply one sent an envoy usually with a message for uh somebody else or some other group of people.

And Jesus clearly was sent by the father.

It's interesting to me that if you look up the word send or sent, you will find that it appears more times in the gospel of John than any of the other gospels.

But that shouldn't surprise us because John's gospel is the gospel that emphasizes the deity of Jesus Christ, that he is the Son of God.

And so John consistently tells us in the words of Jesus or in others that Jesus was sent by the father that he came from heaven to do the will of him who sent him.

Um I'm not going to read all of the passages because we're going to look at a number, I'm gonna reference a uh a fairly large number of passages, but I will try to put them up on the screen so that if you're following along and taking notes in the bulletin on the sermon page.

You have the opportunity maybe to write those references down and you can read them later at your, at your leisure.

But Jesus was sent by the father we're told and did his will.

That is the father's will and not his own will.

It's interesting.

There's been at least two readings this morning from passages that I wanted to reference as well.

And so uh Philippians two Lucas read from that passage uh in our preparation for taking the Lord's supper.

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, not something that he held on to, but emptied himself.

And then Paul tells us how he says by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form.

He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death.

Even death on a cross being sent by God to this earth involve Jesus emptying himself, taking on flesh and blood as the Hebrew writer says in chapter two, that he might be made like his brethren, made like us and experience the same kinds of things that you and I experience in this life.

And so being an apostle Jesus emptied himself humbled himself took on our form. Jesus.

Of course, in turn, selected uh 12 of his disciples to be apostles.

And it's interesting that in his prayer of John 17 and then later after his resurrection and prior to his ascension in John 21 Jesus makes that connection.

This similarity.

He says, as you send to the father, he says in his prayer, as you sent me into the world.

So I have sent them the apostles into the world and then to the apostles, he says, as the father has sent me even so I am sending you Jesus perform the role of an apostle, bringing the word of God to us.

And that really introduces the second role that I want to talk about.

And that being the role of a prophet in Luke, the fourth chapter in verse 24 when Jesus was in the synagogue there at Nazareth, he made the observation that no prophet is acceptable in his hometown.

Jesus acknowledges that he is a prophet and the people there seem to only see him as the carpenter's son and didn't acknowledge him as anything necessarily more than that.

When Jesus came into Jerusalem in Matthew chapter 103 the crowd said this is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth of Galilee.

Jesus was widely recognized as a prophet as a spokesman for God.

The Samaritan woman in John four recognized that Jesus was a prophet from God and the apostles later in their sermons.

For instance, in acts chapter three and verse 22 they connected the prophecy of Moses about a prophet who would arise like Moses and that the people should hear Him.

They connected that prophecy to Jesus, an apostle is one who sent with a message, an envoy with a message to someone else.

And Jesus, we are told, spoke the Father's words for he whom God has sent utters the words of God.

That's what a prophet does.

A prophet is literally a spokesperson for God.

And so Jesus came with the words of the father and spoke the Father's words.

You'll see that again and again in the gospels.

Well, another role of Jesus that is critical for us is that he is a savior.

The old Testament, judges were essentially saviors deliverers, but they were individuals who delivered the people from physical oppression, physical bondage by their enemies, Jesus, on the other hand, is a different kind of savior.

He is a savior, a liver from the bondage of sin and second Timothy one and verse 10 suggests how it is that he does that and which now has been manifested through the appearing of our savior, Christ, Jesus who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.

The angel said to Joseph regarding the birth of the child that Mary was carrying, she will bear a son.

You'll call his name Jesus for he will save his people from their sins.

When Jesus was actually born, the shepherds were informed for unto you is born this day in the city of David, a savior who is Christ, the Lord Christ is a word that means anointed.

It's the English, excuse me.

The Greek uh transliteration essentially of a word that means anointed one and he is both savior and king, the anointed ones of the Old Testament.

Uh In addition to the high priests were kings or perhaps prophets later on the Apostle John in first John four and verse 14 would say we've seen and testify that the father has sent his son to be the Savior of the world.

It seems that the Apostle Peter had a special fondness for the expression Lord and Savior because he uses it repeatedly in his second letter.

You'll notice there in these passages.

Second Peter one verse 212 chapter two and verse 225 the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

And again, in the third chapter, verse two and in verse 2118, a passage we're well familiar with Peter wrote, but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ to him, be the glory both now and into the day of eternity. Amen.

I want you to notice the connection that Peter makes when he uses that phrase, Lord and Savior.

Because those two words are not just coincidentally put together, he is the Savior of those who acknowledge his authority as Lord.

That's what a Lord is.

It's someone who has the power or the authority to command and to expect obedience.

And there are other passages that make that point as well.

For instance, in Ephesians, the fifth chapter in verse 221 the Apostle Paul made the observation as he's uh illustrating the relationship between Christ and the church by referring to the marital relationship of husband and wife.

He says, for the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body and is himself a savior as head of the church.

We're talking about the authority of Christ.

We're talking about his right to direct the body and he is the savior of that body.

Hebrews the fifth chapter, excuse me, also gives us the same idea if I can get back there and being made perfect.

He became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him.

So Peter connects lordship and being savior like these other passages, connect salvation and lordship or headship uh of Jesus.

Jesus doesn't just save us from our sins.

When we're baptized, we continue to need a savior.

Uh in Romans the fifth chapter verses nine and 218, there's a lesser to the greater argument there.

A couple of them, Paul writes 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 of his son, much more now that we are reconciled.

So we're talking about when we're Christians, shall we be saved by his life?

And so Jesus continues to be our savior, even after we have been reconciled to God, even after we have become Christians, we are saved by his life.

And I think that phrase probably introduce as well, the next role that or two roles that I want to talk about.

And that is that Jesus is also high priest and sacrifice for our sins.

The book of Hebrews is a bridge book.

It's a book that connects the Old Testament and the New Testament in the sense that it helps us to understand at least some of the figures, some of the symbolism that was involved in the Old Testament sacrificial system and how it relates that system relates to the work of Jesus Christ as our high priest after the order of Melchizedek.

And so as we look into the book of Hebrews, we see a lot of information about high priest and Jesus in particular, you know, something interesting Hebrews is almost the only book that makes implicit or I should say explicit references to Jesus as high priest.

If you want to learn about Jesus as high priest, you have to go to the book of Hebrews because the rest of the New Testament really has nothing to say about that role of Jesus.

And yet it is a critical role for our salvation.

And I should have said this in the beginning, but these roles overlap.

One another Jesus is our high priest.

And in acting as our high priest, he also contributes to our salvation, thus making him savior as well.

But each of these roles emphasizes a different aspect of the work that Jesus does on our behalf.

The way that he helps us.

We looked at Hebrews 237 when we were talking about the first rule about Jesus being an apostle.

But that passage also says that Jesus is the apostle and high priest of our confession.

Of course, in the book of Hebrews, high priest receives the greater emphasis.

I appreciate it.

Greg reading uh an extensive reading there from the book of Hebrews beginning in chapter four and verse 13.

I'm not going to read that passage again, but I want to suggest at least three different thoughts that come out of that uh that passage.

First of all, the writer of Hebrews says that Jesus was tempted as we are yet without sin.

He was one who lived a perfect life and in that sense, he is unique to humanity.

But the fact that he was tempted as we are also means that he's able to sympathize with our weaknesses.

And the Hebrew writer, Hebrews writer makes that observation.

As you move into chapter five, we're told a couple of other things about Jesus and his high priesthood.

That is the first is that he didn't just assume that role he was called of God, just like old Testament priests were called by God appointed by God, not uh taking on that role themselves or by their own authority.

And then last of all Jesus was made with an oath and that makes his priesthood enduring.

Unlike the priesthood of the Old Testament, there are a number of passages as you would probably suspect in the book of Hebrews that talk about the different aspects or the nature of Jesus priesthood.

He is a priest by the power of an indestructible life.

And that, that comparison that similitude in chapter seven is made between Melchizedek who appeared to be eternal, but wasn't actually and Jesus who literally is eternal.

And so he is a priest after the order of Melchizedek by the power of an indestructible life.

Hebrews chapter seven verses 21 through 21910.

I'm gonna read this passage says some other things about his priesthood for indeed, it was indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest holy innocent, unstained, separated from sinners and exalted above the heavens as much respect as I feel the Israelites probably showed toward the Old Testament high priest.

They had to know that he had the same weakness that they did that he also sinned.

In fact, on the day of atonement, the first sacrifice that he brought into the Tabernacle into the most holy place was blood for his own sins and that of his family.

And then he could attend to the sins, the need of the nation, but not Jesus.

In fact, in Hebrews chapter five, the author makes the observation that these old testament priest had to offer sacrifices for their own weaknesses, but not Jesus.

Jesus is the perfect high priest.

He has no need like those high priests to offer sacrifices daily first for his own sins.

And then for those of the people since he did this once for all, when he offered up himself for the law appoints men in their weakness as high priests.

But the word of the oath which came later than the law appoints a son who has been made perfect forever.

But Jesus is not just high priest, he also served as the sacrifice that would take away sin. Again.

I'm not going to read all these passages in the book of Hebrews.

There are a couple of uh chapters there, nine and 220 that say several things about this.

But I am going to talk about briefly about three different aspects of Jesus sacrifice.

Three things that make Jesus sacrifice superior to those old testament sacrifices.

And the first one is simply the nature of that sacrifice, not an animal sacrifice, not the, the death, or I should say the life of an Amoral creature, but instead the death, the life of a perfect human being.

In First Peter chapter one verses 18 and 19, Peter makes that observation.

He compares Jesus uh to the lambs that would have been offered.

But he says Jesus uh ransomed us with the precious, his precious blood like that of a lamb without blemish or spot Jesus served as a sacrifice.

Perfect sacrifice, not an animal sacrifice.

But one of the things that the Hebrew writer emphasizes over and over again.

And I'm just going to give you a couple of passages here is the frequency of that sacrifice.

Those old Testament priests, the writer says, in chapter 10, they were standing daily offering the same sacrifices that could not ultimately take away sin by themselves.

But Jesus offered his sacrifice once for all 10 in verse 1010, in verse 14, for by a single offering, he has perfected for all time.

Those who are being sanctified, the Hebrew writer really expends on that in chapter nine verses 19103 to 28.

I'll read along with me if you would, nor was it to offer himself repeatedly as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood on his own.

For then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world.

But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.

And just as it is appointed for man to die once and after that comes judgment.

So Christ having been offered once to bear the sins of many will appear a second time not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.

See the sacrifice and salvation combined here in this passage.

But the emphasis is on the fact that he offered his sacrifice one time.

I think I've told this story before, but I'll tell it again when I had been preaching.

Not very long, I fell in love with the book of Hebrews.

And so I used the book of Hebrews to preach as often as I could.

And I held a meeting uh in another state from where I was working at the time.

And in that meeting, I preached a sermon talking about uh the book of Hebrews.

And I made the observation in that sermon that every time a Christian prays that through the blood of Jesus.

And what I said was the Jesus offers his blood to the father for our forgiveness.

I'm shocked, nobody called me on that because that's absolutely wrong.

That's the point of Hebrews, which apparently I had missed at that point.

The point of Hebrews is that he only offered his blood once.

Now that sacrifice once for all can deal with all sins, both past and future.

But the book of Hebrews is specific about the fact that he only offered himself once.

Now I can go to the father and ask for forgiveness of my sins repeatedly on the basis of the blood that was offered one time.

It only had to be offered once, unlike those old Testament sacrifice that had to be repeated again and again, because as the writer says, in chapter 10 and verse four, they could not take away sin.

The third thing about his sacrifice is the scope of that sacrifice.

In first Timothy two verses five and six, Paul writes for there's one God and there's one mediator between God and man, the man Christ, Jesus who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time.

Now, there are folks who will teach that Jesus only died for the elect, but that's not what the Bible says.

The Bible says, his sacrifice is available to any and all who will obey him.

Remember he was chapter five and verse nine.

Well, the last role that I want to talk about is that of shepherd.

Psalm 23 is sometimes called the shepherd's Psalm.

And it's a beautiful Psalm and that it talks about the care that a shepherd would offer sheep.

But in the context of the writer, having the Lord as his shepherd and being protected and kept watched over uh as uh with the Lord as his shepherd in Mark the sixth chapter on the occasion of the feeding of the multitudes.

Jesus had compassion on them.

Mark says because they were like sheep without a shepherd.

And I think the next sentence is kinda interesting and he began to teach them many things.

So he looks at the crowd and they're like sheep without a shepherd.

So what does he do?

He begins to act as a shepherd.

And Peter says, well, we were like that.

We'd all gone astray like sheep and have now returned to the shepherd and overseer of our souls.

In the Old Testament.

The leaders of Israel were sometimes referred to by such prophets as Jeremiah and Ezekiel as Shepherds of God's people.

And they're criticized for their failure to actually fulfill the role of a shepherd for the people.

But Jesus, Jesus is the good shepherd.

He says Jesus is the shepherd who would lay down his life for his sheep.

See how the roles tend to overlap.

He is the sacrifice that brings liberty to us that forgives us of our sins and he's the shepherd who's willing to lay down his life for the sheep.

He knows his own and his own know him.

Jesus is my all in all, you know, as many hats as I wear, there are some hats that I don't wear.

I'm not a computer programmer.

If I need to have a program written, I'm going to have to talk to some of you guys who know all about that because I don't know anything about that.

I don't wear that hat.

If I need H VAC service, I've got to call somebody because I've never really learned much about uh dealing with the maintenance or service of an H VAC system.

Debbie will tell you that I don't wear a chef's hat.

I can make a mean omelet, but that's about it.

Um, and I can boil water but I don't wear a chef's hat.

I don't have that skill, that talent.

I'm not an auto mechanic anymore.

Nowadays, you just about have to be a specialist in order to do anything with these cars.

I could tell you a story about trying to change oil in the Kia.

But another time I'm not an auto mechanic, I've come to realize that I'm not a fireman and I'm not a policeman.

And I think the same is true of all of us.

We're not capable of doing everything, fulfilling every possible role in life.

And we understand that intuitively about uh others.

If I have a fire, I don't call a policeman, I call a fireman because that's the guy who has the skill to take care.

I'd call uh Doug child.

That's the guy who has the skill to take care of that and vice versa.

If I've got a problem with someone on my property threatening me or I don't call the firemen, I call the policeman.

I might call the SWAT team also.

But at any rate, we intuitively understand that there are people who are skilled in certain areas, they have certain roles and we acknowledge that we don't have all of those roles.

But in contrast, Jesus is my all in all in addition to the roles that we've already discussed, there are any number of other roles that we could talk about.

I'm just gonna very quickly uh note a few, a handful and cite a couple of passages and then we'll uh wrap up our study for this morning.

Jesus is described as the light of the world in John's Gospel.

In chapter one, he's introduced that way.

John, the Baptist came to bear witness to that light that brings life into the world.

Jesus himself said I am the light of the world in chapter eight and verse 12.

And also in chapter nine and verse five, he is our mediator.

A high priest is a type of mediator and yet high priest doesn't necessarily give all of the implications of mediator.

That's a broader term.

And Jesus is mediator.

We looked at first Timothy two and verse five and just a few moments ago, there's one mediator between God and men, the man Christ, Jesus Paul to the Romans wrote that Jesus is the propitiation.

God put him forward as the one who would satisfy the demands of the law.

In the past, God had passed over sins without requiring either the punishment or the ultimate sacrifice.

Men couldn't offer the sacrifice.

God waited until Jesus came, died on the cross satisfied the requirement of the law that without the shedding of blood, there's no remission of sins, but Jesus is the propitiation because he satisfies that requirement.

You can see that in Romans three and verse 25 he's the head of the church, as we noted a little bit earlier as we're talking about authorities.

Lord in Colossians 118, he said over all things to the church.

He is the king.

He was acknowledged as the king in Matthew chapter 21 as he's coming into Jerusalem Hosanna to the son of David.

That's Messianic.

That's an acknowledgment that he is the king who was promised the son who was promised to David.

And of course in John 18 and verse 37 in conversation with Pilate Jesus says, you rightly say I'm a king.

That's why I came into this world to bear witness to the truth.

My point is this, we could continue the list and look at a lot of other roles.

But the bottom line is that whatever our need is, Jesus fulfills that need.

Well, there's one other role that we probably need to at least mention.

It's an important role and it is that Jesus is also going to serve as judge in second Corinthians.

The fifth chapter verse 10, Paul wrote for, we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ so that each 1 may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil Jesus is gonna sit in judgment over all of us, not as a group, as individuals.

He's going to be your judge, he's gonna be my judge.

And on that day, which is coming, we don't know when but when it comes, I want Jesus to be fulfilling a different role for me or maybe I should say a role in addition to judge.

And that's the role of savior.

In Luke 1910, Jesus said for the son of man came to seek and to save the lost.

That's why he came to this earth so that he could be the savior.

And Paul would write to the Philippians in chapter three and verse 20 our citizenship is in heaven from which we await.

Our savior.

Jesus needs to be our savior.

He will be our judge.

But the question this morning is, is he your savior?

Have you been saved by the blood of Jesus Christ?

So much done in preparation by God, the Father and Jesus and the spirit so that you and I could face judgment without being condemned.

And this morning, if Jesus is not your savior, he is the savior of the body, the church, all those who have obeyed the Gospel and who live faithfully according to his will.

If you've not obeyed the gospel this morning, we want to encourage you to make Jesus your savior.

He wants to fulfill that role in your life.

That's the teaching of the scripture.

And we want to invite you to let him be your savior by obeying him, by responding to the Gospel following the Gospel plan so that you can be forgiven of your sins.

If we can assist you in doing that, please come to the front, we'll assist you as we stand and sing.

Series: N/A

Service: Sun PM

Type: Sermon

Speaker: Tyler Loveless

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.)

I'd like to open your Bibles to Proverbs 3.

Read the 1st 12 verses.

I'll be reading from the new American Standard version.

My son, do not forget my teaching, but let your heart keep my commandments.

For length of days and years of life and peace, they will add to you.

Do not let kindness and truth leave you.

Bind them around your neck.

Write them on the tablet of your heart, so you will find favor and good repute in the side of God and man.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding.

In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your path straight.

Do not be wise in your own eyes.

Fear the Lord and turn away from evil.

It will be healing to your body and refreshment to your bones.

Honor the Lord from your wealth and from the first of all your produce, so your barns will be filled with plenty and your vats will overflow with new wine.

My son, do not reject the discipline of the Lord or loathe his proof.

For whom the Lord loves, he reproves, even as a Father corrects the Son in whom he delights.

Good evening.

I'd like to echo Travis's welcome to any visitors we may have and uh it's your first time with us, go ahead and grab one of these, you know, snap a picture of that QR code or if you're old school like I tend to be about some things, go ahead and fill that out and hand that to one of the deacons.

We'd love to have a record that you were here.

Um, I'll also go ahead and apologize for the, uh, I'll say 3 string preaching that you're about to endure.

Um, back in January of this year.

I took Carter with me on an afternoon hunting trip.

This was his first time to go with me and sit in a tree stand for hours on end.

Before we left, I made sure we had all of the essentials, had the rifle, had the right ammunition, gloves, binoculars.

Several layers of warm clothing.

It was January tends to get a little cold.

Uh, a bag of beef jerky.

If you want to argue with me about whether or not that's essential for a hunting trip, talk to me after this.

It was cold.

It was fairly windy.

And it was one of those afternoons where I quickly realized that probably not gonna see any deer.

And most folks would say that that's probably not the mark of a successful hunting trip.

But it was OK. Even though I never chambered around.

Carter did not know this at the time.

But I would say this is the most successful hunting trip that I feel like I've ever been on.

What Carter didn't know is I had ulterior motives for bringing him along on this particular trip.

When I listed all of the essentials, I'd also taken a long one more for this particular trip.

My Bible.

So after we got comfortable in the stand, being 12 ft off the ground does take some getting used to.

And had broken into some beef jerky.

We spent the first half Or the first of what I hoped and planned to be several long.

And deep conversations looking over God's word.

Talking about his plan for a family.

And the reasons that men and women have different physical And anatomical differences.

Probably not where you thought this intro was gonna go, huh?

Well, I will go ahead and give you some assurance because I see a few surprise looks out there.

I'm not gonna go into details about what we talked about.

That's not the point.

But some of you may also be wondering why would you go ahead and introduce this topic to a 9 year old.

Why would you go ahead and bring something so heavy and weighty and serious into the life of such a young child?

Well, part of the reason I did that is because I like being in the woods.

And if you've ever been out early morning and I'm talking about 14 4:30.

Around the time you would usually go out for a morning hunting trip if you're going after deer.

I love the fact that if I'm away from all sources of artificial light, I can look up and see every star in the sky.

I love the fact that I can listen to God's creation waking up around me.

And in the afternoons when the beautiful fall colors have already started to take place and even in the even in the winter, you can still see the beauty of God's creation.

The reason I chose then is because I cannot think of a better time or place.

To open up God's word than when we are surrounded by the beauty of all that He has created.

I guess the part of the why is also because we live in a world that is sadly sinking deeper.

And darker the brokenness.

And the things that I had no concept of in middle school are now being thrust into the lives of children.

That we've been entrusted to guard and protect.

And while I know that part of this is going to make everyone feel a little uncomfortable, I feel that it's necessary to illustrate the point I'm trying to make.

So I'd like to share a few statistics to that end.

I recently read an article that was published in April of this year by the Institute for Family Studies.

And they shared this statistic.

I'm quoting from that article now.

With technology and the and the internet as crucial and necessary part of life.

Pornography has never been more easily accessible to our children.

Of those surveyed in this particular study, 93% of boys and 63% of girls report being exposed to internet pornography before the age of 18, with the average age of first exposure being 12 years old.

Today's children are growing up in a sexualized cultural environment.

And as adolescents mature, it is natural that they're going to search for information that they do not know.

This includes searching for information about dating and sexual relationships which can often lead to pornography.

A second study that I came across that was conducted in 2022.

By Common Sense Media reported that out of over 1300 teenagers surveyed between the ages of 13 and 63.

54% answered that they had first been exposed.

Before age 13.

With the age of 12 again being the average to first view this kind of content.

I guess the most shocking statistic of all from this same study.

Was that 15% of that same group of 1300 teenagers so that they were 10 years old or younger when they were first exposed.

10 years old.

My oldest son is 9.

I knew this was gonna be tough to get through, so bear with me.

I'm sorry.

The following quote is taken from the findings of the same study.

The quote here says nearly 1/23 of all teens reported that they had been exposed to pornography during their school day.

Among all teens surveys, 20 surveyed, 23% had seen content in person at school and 12% while attending school remotely.

Of those who had watched in school, 226% attended a private or religious school.

214% of traditional public school, 226% of charter or magnet school, and 214% were homeschooled.

I want to make it perfectly clear that I understand and value the the merits of a private Bible focused education.

But that does not mean that you have completely insulated your kids from this kind of exposure dearly, merely due to the nature of their environment.

I also realize.

That a certain level of emotional maturity is necessary to have these kinds of conversations with our kids.

And that every child matures at a different rate.

However, if you are waiting to engage with your children in these areas until they are entering middle school and on the verge of adolescence, I will tell you with a very high degree of confidence that you were behind the curve.

However carefully we try to shield our children from the true nature of the world that we live in.

It is an inevitability that they will see this for themselves far sooner than we would ever like for them to.

So what happens?

What happens when they are exposed to something that they're not expecting before we've talked to them about the dangers of what is out there.

What happens When they encounter something before we have equipped them with knowledge about God's plan versus the will of mankind.

What happens When they encounter something before we have told them and let them know that they can confide in us.

When the world's malice does creep into their lives.

But what typically happens is they rely on the information that they can obtain by other sources.

They rely on the incomplete and often twisted education that their secular peers or the internet is all too happy to provide.

And that reliance can come with a lifetime of consequences.

So what do we do?

What do we do about that?

What does God expect from parents, especially fathers in the digital age that we live in?

I'd like you to start with me by turning to Ephesians chapter 226.

And read along with me.

It's a passage that we may be familiar with.

We read often.

Ephesians chapter 26 beginning in verse 33 says, Children, obey your parents in the Lord.

For this is right.

Honor your father and mother.

This is the first commandment with a promise that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.

Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and in the instruction of the Lord.

Our children need to be instructed to obey their parents.

But I think this passage among several others makes it absolutely clear that parents expecting that kind of obedience need to first fulfill their obligations to instruct on what the idea of in the Lord means.

All too often our society substitutes the idea of discipline with the idea of an immediate consequence or punishment.

But the Greek word for discipline in this text, I'm going to butcher this, but here we go high duo, which carries the idea of instruction and training first before any correction or consequence.

Otherwise, any such consequence or punishment is unjust.

What else do we know from what the Bible teaches us?

Turn with me again to Deuteronomy chapter 23.

Deuteronomy chapter 21.

I'll be picking up in verse 22 sorry, verse 6.

Moses is speaking to the nation of Israel, and he says, here, here, oh Israel.

The Lord our God, the Lord is one.

And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.

You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down and when you rise, you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontless between your eyes.

You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

While these words were spoken directly to God's people long ago, His expectation is still not only that we love Him with all that we are, but that we are taking every opportunity to teach our children and to remind ourselves of who He is and what He has done for us and how he expects us to go about our lives.

I really appreciated getting to hear Caleb speak when he was with us a few weeks ago, but a question he asked during that sermon really stuck with me.

If you are not speaking to your children about God in your home, what are you doing?

What are you doing?

We can also scour the words of Solomon and find proverb after proverb after proverb that it emphasized the importance of a father taking a leadership role and instructing his son in what it means to be wise and what it is to seek understanding in righteousness, and I would like to ask that you turn with me to the first chapter of Proverbs.

We'll be going between chapter 1 and chapter 2 here in just a few moments.

Proverbs chapter one.

Beginning in verse 8.

We can read Solomon's entreaty.

He writes, Here, my son, your father's instruction and forsake not your mother's teaching.

For they are a graceful garland for your head and pendants for your neck.

My son, if sinners entice you, do not consent.

If they say, come with us, let us lie and wait for blood.

Let us ambush the innocent without reason, like she'll let us swallow them alive and ho like those who go down to the pit.

We shall find all precious goods.

We shall fill our houses with plunder.

Throw in your lot among us, and we will all have one purse.

My son, do not walk in the way with them.

Hold back your foot from their paths.

For their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed blood.

For in vain a net is spread in the sight of any bird, but these men lie in wait for their own blood.

They set an ambush for their own lives.

Such are the ways of one who is greedy for unjust gain.

It takes away the life of its possessors.

He continues writing in chapter 2, my son, if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you, making your ear attentive to wisdom.

And inclining your heart to understanding.

Yes, if you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding.

You seek it like silver.

And search for it as hidden tre as for hidden treasures, then you will understand the fear of the Lord.

And find the knowledge of God.

And in the passage that Brian read to us just a few moments ago from Proverbs chapter 3, we see that a loving father admonishes his son.

To trust God, absolutely.

Not rely on the wisdom of men.

We also see that God's discipline and instruction are directed towards those whom he loves.

And then a father should do the same toward the son whom he delights.

The same ideas are repeated in 13 Thessalonians chapter 2 in Hebrews 12.

Probably one of my favorite proverbs chapter 14.

Verse 26.

Proverbs chapter 14 and verse 26, and I guess I should have said earlier, all the quotes that I'm reading from tonight are taken from the ESV.

Proverbs 14:26.

It says in the fear of the Lord, one has strong confidence.

His children will have a refuge.

Our faith and reverence for God can and should provide a refuge for them in this world.

Fathers, we need to start with what God's will is for them as seen in Scripture.

And not limit our instruction to a list of things not to do.

We need to be able to instruct them as to what an appropriate and godly mental and emotional response to seeing a physically beautiful woman looks like.

We have to be willing to teach.

We often sing a wine.

From the song Soldiers of Christ arise that reads Leave no unguarded place.

No weakness of the soul.

Take every virtue.

Every grace and fortify the whole.

Drawing from the idea of being equipped to withstand what the devil will throw at us, the same idea as putting on the whole armor of God.

Paul illustrates in the latter part of Ephesians chapter 6.

Fathers, are we making sure our sons have no unguarded place?

Are we making sure they have no unprotected aspects of their faith for a fiery arrow to strike home.

would be wise.

Would we be wise to fortify every other aspect of their spiritual defenses save this one thing?

Knowing the nature of our adversary.

And his malice towards God and those who follow him.

You can be certain that Satan will not hesitate to target and exploit your sons in this way at every single opportunity.

And you can't rely on others to do this in your stead.

As much as I appreciate and value what Gary and Alan and Tim and Jim and Mike.

Bring to the table in terms of their deep knowledge and appreciation for God's word.

It's not their responsibility to teach my sons.

It's not the responsibility of our able beacons.

For many of our wonderfully gifted Bible class teachers.

And it most assuredly is not the role or responsibility.

of secular educators.

No. It's not likely going to be easy or entirely comfortable, much like a lot of what I've said today.

But that does not excuse the fact.

That as their father who knows what it is to face these kinds of temptations myself, that responsibility is mine.

I like to take a break for a second and shift gears.

Because to this point, I know I have mainly focused on the relationship between a father and son.

Because that is the relationship that I understand and far from perfected.

I was not blessed with daughters.

As many of you have been So I best relate with the father-son interaction.

However, I would like to take a few minutes to speak to all of my sisters in Christ about how you can help the men in your lives play good defense.

I imagine that many of you who have grown up in the church have probably experienced some level of frustration.

By being told that, hey, the next teenage girls class or the next devotional is gonna be on the topic of modesty.

And the next one.

And the next one And the one after that.

To the point that you probably become exhausted from hearing that word.

What I'm about to share are my thoughts thinking back to my college days.

It is simply my perspective, so I'll ask for your patience.

And your understanding while I discuss modesty.

Once more I can still remember being a 2nd-year student in Alabama thinking with a very heavy heart and a lot of shame.

That I was the only one in my group of Christian guy friends who had a problem with lust.

It was not until some time later a few of us formed a prayer group.

Meeting before church one evening.

And all of the guys in our group confessed to one another that that was an area where we all struggled.

That particular day was eye opening for me and coming to know that I was not alone in this fight.

But that's exactly where Satan wanted me to be.

Afraid, alone, and ashamed to admit that I was struggling.

That is the exact same position that Satan wants your children to be in.

Afraid to talk.

Afraid to trust.

Afraid to ask for help.

I suppose I shouldn't have found that shocking given that men are constantly bombarded by immodesty in our society.

Whether we seek it out or not.

For magazines at grocery store checkout stands, so trying to watch sports on television.

It's everywhere.

Just walking to class back then.

It seemed that I wasn't able to look anywhere on campus without seeing way too short shorts.

And little more than underwear for a top.

And you can imagine my frustration when heading to church on a Wednesday night or a Wednesday evening after a week of mostly having to stare at the ground all the way to class.

Only to find one of my friends and sisters in Christ wearing clothing that revealed way too much of herself.

To anyone who happened to look.

In a world that is forgotten how to blush, the one place I had hoped would be a refuge from the world wasn't so much a refuge after all.

I suspect that it's true that most, if not all, of the men here.

have struggled in the past or will struggle with this at some point in the future.

It is a function of how men are sexually stimulated.

And again, I, I apologize if this is an uncomfortable topic.

But again, I believe it needs to be said.

With that being the case, it's very difficult to explain to a member of the opposite sex how powerful a visual image can be for a man.

I do know enough to say that women are different in this regard, so it's almost impossible to ask for a woman to put herself in a man's shoes fully in this context.

I would like to make it absolutely clear that I am in no way excusing the responsibility of a man to keep lust out of his own heart.

James chapter one teaches us that each person is tempted.

When he is lured and enticed by his own desires, and then desire when it is conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully formed brings forth death.

So what I would argue is that a man needs to work diligently to be able to keep himself pure of thought regardless of his environment.

It is a heart condition that all men seem to struggle with from time to time, and I won't mislead anyone in thinking that married men do not struggle as much because they have the proper outlet for these kinds of thoughts.

Because if that were true, adultery would not be a problem.

However, I will say that the women in our lives can be a great aid in helping us fight this particular spiritual battle.

The assembly of the saints has to be a place of refuge for men fighting against this kind of temptation.

We are constantly having sexuality and a modesty thrust at us by society in almost every form imaginable despite the protections and the guard rails that we try to in place around us.

If we have a place of refuge from this kind of influence.

And we have a break to refocus and recharge instead of being worn down and wearied all over again by constant bombardment with no rest at all.

We're also better able to focus on glorifying God as we should when we come together.

Instead of silently fighting a mental war from our spot on the church pew.

I want to emphasize again that I am not trying to even begin to suggest that women have the bulk of the responsibility in this matter.

That is not true.

That is not what Scripture teaches.

Each man must stand and be accountable for his thoughts and actions regardless of the behavior of others.

But our sisters can help so much by just a few moments' thought standing in front of a mirror before services.

When you select clothing, As I know this is difficult to do.

Especially in today's society.

If you have even the smallest doubt that what you have on is too tight.

Too revealing, too short, too transparent, too low cut or immodest in the slightest way.

I ask you to think of your brothers in the Lord who may be fighting to be pure and having a difficult day or week with the temptation of lust.

Don't wear it.

You don't need that kind of attention.

Your physical beauty is wonderful and it's God-given.

And it's meant to be enjoyed within the confines of marriage.

But I ask you to say that aspect of who you are for that relationship only and instead display the inward beauty of a modest woman that Peter describes.

Peter 3.

And that Paul depicts in 1 Timothy chapter 2.

I ask you to think of me.

How I know that I've struggled in the past, and I ask you to think of your brothers and cries to fight this battle every single day.

You can't fight the battle for.

You can certainly remove a huge stumbling block from our path to overcoming this temptation.

I do not ask merely on my own behalf.

I ask you to continue.

As many of you already are.

To help build up the defenses of every husband and father and brother in your lives.

I'm asking you to help build up the defenses of my sons.

Fathers, my point is speaking this evening.

is to encourage each of you to find a tree stand, not mine.

It's already a little crowded, and I'm not done using it.

What I mean is find a place to remove distractions.

Open God's word and talk with your sons about God's will for them as they mature into men.

And if you find yourself doubting your abilities to do this, it's OK to ask for help.

If you feel unqualified because you are still struggling yourself and not winning the fight on your own.

Please trust that your brothers in Christ will lock shields with you rather than make you feel ashamed.

Would you all bow with me as we pray?

Almighty God, we thank you so much just for giving us another day of life.

We thank you for everything that we borrow from you.

Thank you for your word, so that we can know more about you.

Each day So that we can equip ourselves.

To honor and glorify you.

And we pray that you would watch over those of us who are parents.

That you would help us to recognize and understand that the world we live in is fallen and broken.

But that is not your plan for us.

Your plan is restoration.

And holiness.

That you would guide our thoughts as we teach our children.

About who you are.

About what your will is.

About how you would have them to grow and mature.

To be servants in your kingdom.

Give us the strength to tackle difficult conversations.

To go through Uncomfortable things with our children.

Not because it is easy, but because it's necessary.

Please give us the strength to do that.

Above all else, Father, we thank you for your son.

We thank you for his willingness to go to the cross.

So that all can be forgiven.

Despite our struggles, Help us to draw strength from each other, strength from your word.

Help us to always look to you for guidance.

We ask all this in Christ's name. Amen.

I realized that not much that I have said in the past few minutes has really been well suited to offering an invitation.

But I'll add a few things in closing.

Well, I've touched primarily on one spiritual challenge that most men face, we all have some unique spiritual challenge of our own, you know what it is?

That one thing that always seems to be a weak spot for us.

That one aspect of our character that just needs some work.

Well, No matter how many times that we have failed that particular challenge.

God's promise remains the same if we are sincere.

He promises to forgive each Christian who repents.

He promises to take away sin.

So if you are a Christian who needs to make your repentance and your confession publicly, or if you just need to ask for the prayers of the saints here, you have that opportunity now.

And if you had yet haven't yet decided to become a part of God's family, you have an opportunity to become a child of God by repenting of the sins that are in your life, by confessing Jesus as God's Son and being baptized into his death.

Whatever your need may be tonight.

Please come forward as we stand and sing to invite 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.)

Reading Hebrews 5:23 through 6-8, and I'll be reading from the New King James version.

Of whom we have much to say and hard to explain since you have become dull of hearing, for though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food, for everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe.

The solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason.

Of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.

Therefore, leaving the discussion of the elementary principles of Christ, let us go on to perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, of the doctrine of baptisms, of laying on of hands, of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment, and this we will do if God permits.

For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened and have tasted the heavenly gift and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come if they fall away to renew them again to repentance, since they crucify again for themselves the Son of God and put him to an open shame.

For the earth which drinks in the rain that often comes upon it and bears herbs useful for those by whom it is cultivated receives blessings from God.

But if it bears thorns and briars, it is rejected and near to being cursed, whose end is to be burned.

Early this week, Gary and Vicky Copeland are going to be leaving for Ecuador.

Uh, the congregation here has supported them in the past in their trips to Ecuador and Mexico, and we'll be supporting them again in this trip.

They're going to be gone for about 3.5 weeks.

My understanding is they'll be working with or having contact with about 11 different congregations.

Both Gary and Vicky are bilingual, which makes their work, uh, in these kinds of places like Ecuador and Mexico very valuable.

They're able to.

Uh, converse with people easily in their own language, and so it is our pleasure to support them.

Please remember them in your prayers as they set out on their journey this week and as they're gone, as I said, for approximately 3.5 weeks.

In the scriptures, people are often compared to sheep, especially Christians are spoken of as God's flock, as those that are shepherded by the Lord.

And Jesus told a parable in Matthew the 18th chapter that I want to read to you, it's the basis for the song that we just sang.

I appreciate Daniel leading songs that uh relate to our study this morning.

In verse 10 of Matthew 18, Jesus said, see that you do not despise one of these little ones.

For I tell you that in heaven, their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven.

The new King James version adds verse 11 for the Son of Man came to seek the lost.

Verse 33, what do you think if a man has 100 sheep and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the 99 on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray?

And if he finds it truly I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the 99 that never went astray.

So it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish.

And so the scriptures help us to understand Jesus tells us that God is interested in the salvation of all individuals, not wanting any to perish, and neither should we.

And so the shepherd in this parable leaves the 25 that are safe, and he goes to find the one that is wandering, that is astray.

There is uh a scene from the movie, Indiana Jones, The Last Crusade.

I don't know how many of you have perhaps seen those series of Indiana Jones movies.

Indiana Jones played by Harrison Ford, but in that movie, The Last Crusade, oh spoiler alert.

Although this movie's been out since Noah was a boy, but so most of you, I think if you're interested in that sort of thing, you've seen the movie already.

But there's a scene toward the end of the movie that is particularly touching and Uh, I think instructive for our purposes this morning.

The Holy Grail, of course, is a reference to the cup that supposedly Jesus used at the Last Supper with his disciples, and Indiana Jones and a number of bad characters are all In search of the holy grail.

Well, they finally find it.

Harrison Ford finds it and they bring it out from its original resting place, but it's in a cave-like structure, and they're not allowed to take it beyond the seal is on the floor.

Elsa is the name of a young woman who is both part ally and protagonist of uh Indiana Jones.

She grabs the grail and she's backing up over the seal on the floor.

She's worn, but when she passes the seal, the whole place starts to crumble.

Large cracks, crevices are in the floor there, and she drops the cup, and then she scrambles to find it.

But she ends up hanging on the edge of one of the crevices there, and Indiana Jones saves her from falling into the, into that crevice by grabbing one of her hands.

She's wearing gloves.

She can see the grail, it's right there.

It's close.

She can almost touch it.

Of course, that was the big prize.

But Indiana Jones is saying, take my hand, give me your other hand cause she's slipping.

He can't hold her for very long.

But she doesn't listen.

She keeps stretching out to get that prize.

And of course, what happens is he loses his grip and she falls into the crevice to her death.

But suddenly, Indiana Jones finds himself in virtually the same position as Elsa.

Things start to crumble and he's starting to fall, only now his father, Grabs him, one hand.

And then Indiana is almost able to touch the grail himself, and he's reaching for it just like Elsa did.

I can get it.

But his father says, Let it go.

The scene is touching partly because that was essentially the father's uh mission through life was to find the holy grail, and there it is.

They found it.

So in this scene, Indiana then lets the grail go and he brings his other arm up, and his father grabs him, which I thought was kind of interesting.

It's almost like he let go and then grabbed him in both hands, but he pulls him up and they managed to escape without the grail, but with their lives.

Elsa, Elsa is so focused on getting the cup that she falls to her death.

In the end, on the other hand, listens to his father who says, let that go.

It's not the most important thing.

And so he manages to have his life saved.

That's a scene from the movie.

That's Elsa, of course, not Indiana.

For those of you who hadn't seen the movie and were wondering.

That's Elsa.

And I want you to think about the difference between Elsa and Indiana Jones.

The focus difference between the two of them, because restoring the fallen, catching the fallen as we've titled our study this morning is much like that.

We cannot restore the one who doesn't cooperate in the restoration.

Elsa would not bring her other arm up and so Indiana was unable to save her life.

We cannot restore the one who will not accept our help.

We all know Christians who have fallen away, or perhaps we've had contact with individuals we were trying to teach who had some negative view of, of the church or religion, and we want to reach these people with the gospel.

I want to talk about that this morning.

I want to observe some of the limitations that we face in catching the fallen.

But I also want to suggest maybe some generic guidelines to follow in reaching the lost, uh, the fallen, or even the disenchanted.

You know, Christians fall away for different reasons, fall away or go astray for different reasons.

And that suggests that there's no specific template that fixes or fits, I should say, every situation to guide our interactions with people who go astray.

The thinking of people who are falling is significant, and I'm gonna suggest to you 214 groups along that line.

And maybe people fit into more than one group or maybe the groups are a little too specific to talk about some folks, but I think most people fit in one of these groups.

The first group is those who have simply been enticed by the desires of the flesh.

These are not people who have at least consciously rejected the Lord.

They haven't said to themselves, well, I'm not interested in Jesus anymore, but they are no longer faithful and they are more interested in pursuing, as I said, the desires of the flesh.

People in this group still believe that the Bible teaches the truth, but they prefer to follow their own passion, their own desires than to follow Christ.

Now, there are people in a second group who actually do have some doubts about the scriptures.

Some of them may have concluded that the Bible is not an inspired book.

It's just a book written by a bunch of people long time ago, has some good things in it, but it's not something that really needs to regulate my life.

They might disagree even with some of the truths that are revealed in the scriptures and so they've come to the point where they're rejecting the Bible as God's word.

Doubts or unanswered questions about the Bible make these individuals more susceptible to the desires of the flesh.

Sometimes I suspect that some of these confessed doubts are actually the consequence of people who want to be free to do whatever they want to do, to follow their own passions, and so they find some reason that they can reject the scriptures as the inspired word of God.

In the third group that I want to talk about, I think there are some who have simply become discouraged.

It's not that they are particularly questioning the scriptures as inspired literature, or that in some way they're anxious to go out and, and sow wild oats, but they've been discouraged by the bad behavior or maybe just the apathy of Christians, fellow Christians, and particularly those whom they see as more mature.

Have you ever felt, found yourself in that group where you, you were surprised at the behavior of a fellow brother or sister in Christ, and, and you were just amazed that they would act the way they act.

Sometimes that discourages people to the point where they basically are willing to give up.

And then the 26th group.

These are people who have consciously rejected the Lord.

Not just the scriptures, no, not just doubts about the scriptures, but they have consciously rejected Jesus as the Christ as their Savior, and they make no pretense of following uh the word of God.

They may have cut off communication with other Christians, that's frequently the case.

But they no longer believe the scriptures and they may even be derisive about the scriptures, uh, disdaining this idea that, that the Bible could possibly be a book of divine origin.

Now, as I said before, sometimes people may fit somewhere between these groups or there may be some characteristics of more than one group that characterizes the person who has fallen away.

But I also have seen from time to time that sometimes fallen Christians will migrate from one group to another group.

They may have some questions about the scriptures, but those questions are not answered either to their satisfaction or they're not listening to the answers.

And so as those questions begin to fester in their mind, then they eventually are then drawn away by physical desires, by passions of the flesh, what the world offers in terms of sparkling baubles of no value.

And so they fit in more than one group.

Sometimes Christians move from one group to another, and sometimes they go to group number 26 where they don't want to talk to anybody.

They've consciously rejected the Lord, although they did not begin.

Their fall that way.

Well, I wanted to talk a little bit about non-Christians because sometimes it's difficult for us to reach contacts that we have, uh, people that we want to teach the gospel to and part of the reason may be sometimes that they have developed a, a, a rather negative view of the Lord's Church, the Church of Christ, as they think of sometimes the Church of Christ is just another denomination.

Or sometimes they just have a negative view of religion in general.

And it makes it very difficult to reach them with the gospel because of these preconceived ideas about us or about religion.

Sometimes those ideas or that preconceived view is the result of lukewarm and or unfaithful Christians.

I, I cannot estimate, I cannot overemphasize the importance of our example in the communities and our families, with the people that we work with, the people we go to school with, they are watching us.

And while they may not have a great understanding of the scriptures, they do know some things about right and wrong.

And when our lifestyle is either lukewarm or just plain unrighteous from time to time, people are watching and they're basing their views sometimes on religion or the Church of Christ, based on what they see in us.

They're not reading the Bible.

They're seeing us.

Mike used to say in his prayers that we might be the only Bible that some people will read.

And I think that's true.

I think uh because of the widespread illiteracy and biblical literature in our culture, that people are looking at us to see what Christianity is supposed to be like.

How do we respond to that?

Well, I think first of all, if someone has been discouraged by what they've seen in, in apathetic Christians, we need to acknowledge the fact that sometimes Christians are weak.

Including ourselves.

We need to make the observation that conversion to Jesus Christ doesn't suddenly make you a perfect individual.

That all of the things, all of the weaknesses, the foibles that we had in the past, that they all just disappear when we come up out of the water of baptism, doesn't happen that way.

I think it's important for us to make a distinction between those who are following God's plan and God's plan itself, because here's what's happening.

People are looking at the adherence to God's word, and they're judging God's word on the basis of the people who are supposedly following it.

And they conclude that the Bible is not worth following because of what they see in the lives.

Of Christians Jesus is the perfect master.

But we're imperfect disciples, imperfect followers.

We shouldn't judge the book, God's will by those who are imperfect adherents or disciples.

The scriptures indicate that God's going to hold each individual accountable for his own behavior.

That's not to say that it's unimportant if we present ourselves as a stumbling block to others, but the bottom line is that judgment is going to be individual in its nature.

God's not gonna judge us as a group.

He's not going to judge us as families or even as married couples.

He's going to judge each of us, as Paul would say, according to what we have done in the body, whether good or evil.

He would write to the Romans in chapter 21 and verse 22.

So then each of us will give an account of himself to God.

And so while some are turned off by apathetic or unfaithful Christians, the truth of the matter is, those people will be judged for their sins, but so will the people who reject Christ.

Because of their conduct.

Each of us will give account of ourselves to God.

Sometimes that negative attitude is the result of negative information about religion.

They've read on the news about immoral spiritual leaders, televangelists who are soliciting prostitutes or whatever, greedy religious leaders who gather all kinds of funds and live in palaces while they try to get more money from whoever will listen.

Or churches that just ignore scripture, obvious.

Setting aside of God's will.

And so people generalize about religion, and they, they, they lump all religion into the hypocrite box or maybe the greedy box.

Well, you know, religion is just about people trying to get your money.

And religion is a bunch of people who don't live what they preach.

I've discovered, and probably you have also, that many people do not really know very much about the Lord's Church.

They lump us in with other religious people, but they don't really understand much about us or the word of God that we follow.

What they know.

What they know is often just the slander that they've heard from opponents to the Lord.

Anybody ever told you when you said, yes, I'm a member of the Church of Christ.

Oh yeah, yeah, that's the church that doesn't like music.

Or hates music as the case may be.

153 yeah, yeah, yeah, I know the Church of Christ.

That's that group that won't let women do anything.

You know, we, we keep them under wraps.

Keep them oppressed.

What they've heard from others is what they know about us.

But it's often not true.

And those individuals are often surprised to learn what the Lord, what the Lord's Church really is about, what we really believe.

And that it's very different from what they have heard.

I had some relatives, my extended family, they're deceased now.

But they never had much use for religion.

And the reason was for them, religion as a, as a, as a topic really was essentially just the Roman Catholic Church.

That had been their experience earlier in life.

And they got a very bad taste from their experiences with the Roman Catholic Church.

And from that point on, all religion was the same as the Roman Catholic Church.

That's what I'm talking about.

And so they lumped us all together.

How should we respond to things like that?

Well, I would begin by acknowledging that there are certainly a lot of religious people, religious people who are not following God's will.

Nobody's gonna deny that.

But generalizations are typically not accurate.

If I said this morning, all politicians are corrupt.

Well, you might, you might say a lot of politicians are, but to say that all, every politician is corrupt, how would you know that?

And is that really a fair description of the character of all politicians?

Well, no, I suspect that it's not.

Generalizations are typically not accurate.

All blonde women are not very bright.

That's a common generalization.

Several women are thinking, man, I'm glad I colored my hair.

It's not accurate.

There's some exceedingly intelligent blonde women.

Intelligence has nothing to do with hair color.

But that's the generalization and people often live by such Inaccurate generalizations.

What I would explain to somebody who has this negative view is that different attitudes toward biblical authority create different religious groups, because that's commonly the question.

Well, why is it if everybody's studying the same Bible?

Why is it that there's so much disagreement in the religious world?

It's because not everybody has the same attitude toward God's authority.

And so they have different or varying degrees of allegiance to the scriptures depending on their understanding of divine authority.

I would encourage back to the Bible.

In actual practice.

That's kind of the meme that we sometimes use to try to convince people that they need to follow the will of God.

Let's get back to the Bible.

Throw away the, the confessions, the Augsburg uh confession, the Westminster confession.

Throw away the church disciplines where churches have decided to make their own rules about what they're gonna accept and not accept.

Let's just get back to the Bible and, and do what the Bible says.

That's a novel concept to many people.

How do we appeal to the fallen?

I want to suggest to you that of the 215 groups that I talked about of fallen Christians, the last group, group number 215, is perhaps the most difficult to reach.

And the reason is, they're not listening anymore.

In many cases, they've cut off communication with other Christians.

In Hebrews, the 217th chapter.

In verses 4 through 6, part of the text that was read for scripture reading prior to the beginning of our study.

The writer of Hebrews says, for it is impossible in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to condemn contempt.

The Hebrews writer lists several blessings, spiritual blessings that these people that he's talking about enjoy.

He is helping us to understand that these are people who have already sampled the spiritual blessings in Jesus Christ, and they have now rejected them.

They have in a sense, figuratively speaking, obviously, they have once again crucified the Lord to their own harm.

They're holding him up to contempt.

The writer is not teaching, please understand.

The writer is not teaching that it is impossible for one who's like this, who has fallen away to be restored.

That's not what he says.

If you read the passage carefully, he's talking about what you and I can do for the fallen.

It's impossible for us to restore them again.

And here's the reason why.

They've already sampled what God has to offer.

They've already looked and, and experienced.

The spiritual blessings that a Christian and what are we gonna offer them when they reject those?

What's Plan B in the Bible for a person's salvation and that, and the fact of the matter is there is no Plan B. When you reject what God has to offer in terms of his plan for salvation and the blessings that come to Christians who have, have converted to Christ, if you reject that, there isn't anything else I can Offer you If you've fallen away.

It's one of the difficulties, obviously, of talking to people who have fallen away.

We only can offer them what they've already rejected.

That's why the writer says what he says.

As long as they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm.

It is impossible for faithful brethren to restore them again to repentance.

There's gonna have to be a mind change in them.

And if they're not listening, that's the hardest group to try to restore.

Hebrews the 10th chapter likewise gives a warning.

Because I think the Hebrews writer was concerned that some of the Christians that were associated with his readers, that some of them were already moving to this status, this state.

Of not being willing to listen anymore, of rejecting Jesus Christ.

Read along with me from uh Hebrews the 10th chapter, verses 26 to 31, again from the ESV.

For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins.

What do you mean?

You mean that I can't be forgiven of my sins?

He said there's no other sacrifice.

If you reject the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, there's nothing else that God's going to give you.

He doesn't have a backup plan.

Nothing remains but a fearful expectation of judgment and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.

Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses.

How much worse, worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the one and listen to the description of this individual.

This is not the Christian who occasionally sins out of weakness or passion.

This is not the Christian who occasionally sins and then seeks forgiveness because of sorrow for sin.

He says, one who has trampled underfoot, the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified and has outraged the spirit of grace.

We know him who said, vengeance is mine, I will repay.

And again, the Lord will judge his people.

It is a fearful thing.

To fall into the hands of the living God.

This is the person in group 153 who has rejected Jesus Christ, rejected the sacrifice that once sanctified him, and now has gone back into the world and doesn't care anymore to hear about what God has to say.

And those people are very difficult.

Impossible, the Hebrews writer says, to restore.

What can we offer the one who has rejected the only means of salvation that God has provided?

Do you remember the movie, the movie scene that I described?

Elsa, give me your other hand.

I can't hold you.

I can get it.

I can get it.

She was focused on the world.

She was focused on something other than the most important thing for her life at that moment.

And so it is with people who have fallen in many cases.

They're so focused on the world that you can't get them.

To let you help them.

Unfortunately, some Christians conclude that, well, if so and so just doesn't come back, well, we just didn't use the right approach, and that's an undeserved guilt trip.

In most cases.

Fact of the matter is, you can't restore someone who won't help in the restoration.

It's impossible.

And that's hard.

That's hard because we want people to be restored.

We want people to be saved.

But we need to understand that it doesn't depend just on the approach that we use.

It doesn't depend on the degree of desire that we have to save individuals.

It most often depends almost entirely on whether that person is open and willing to listen to be helped.

Unfortunately, in so many cases, that's not the case.

What about those other groups?

Well, I'm not suggesting that restoring people who are in these other groups uh is, is easy.

It's just group 4 that's hard.

I'm not saying that.

I think it's difficult in all of these groups.

They're often difficult to reach as well.

But the difference is that in many cases, those in groups 1 through 3, they've still left the door of communication open and as long as you can communicate with people.

There's hope There's hope that perhaps their lives can be changed.

Now, there's no specific template that I know of that will fit all situations.

The apostle Paul says to the Thessalonians in a passage that we read this morning in chapter 5 and verse 14.

Now we exhort your brethren, warn those who are unruly, comfort the faint-hearted, uphold the weak, be patient with all.

In Galatians the 6th chapter, he wrote to them in chapter 6 and verse 1, Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness.

Keep watch on yourself lest you too be tempted.

Well, in the last few minutes of our study, I'd like to suggest maybe some general guidelines.

As we try to work with people that have fallen away.

What kinds of things should we think about?

I want to suggest, first of all, that we need to listen.

We need to find out where that person is if we don't already know that, and often we may be mistaken.

Why is it that this person has left the Lord?

Why is it that this person has fallen?

Before we can offer a roadmap back to faithfulness, we need to understand where that person is in his or her thinking.

It's just like giving directions to anything.

If I give you directions to my house, I have to know where you are.

I have to know where to start.

Otherwise, I may be leading you off in directions that, that don't have any application to you.

And so maybe the first guideline is just simply listen.

Did they fall away, this person, did he or she fall away because of discouragement?

Is it doubts?

Maybe questions about the word of God that we can answer?

Is it a weakness of the flesh?

We would approach that person differently depending on which of those problems describes the reason for their having fallen away.

That'll help us to decide what we're going to communicate to that person based on their unique circumstances.

Secondly, love doesn't depend upon agreement.

If it did, Jesus wouldn't have said, love your enemies because our enemies frequently don't agree with us on maybe a lot of things, but we still have the responsibility to love them.

And so it is with those who have fallen away.

In 2 Thessalonians 3 and verse 15, Paul wrote, do not regard him.

That is this individual that the church has withdrawn from because of a disorderly walking.

Do not regard him as an enemy, but warn him as a brother.

He's still a brother, even though he is walking disorderly and in is in danger of losing his eternal inheritance.

Now that can be difficult.

Because often the fallen can be very blunt and very hurtful as they blame shift or even attack the ones who are trying to catch them.

Have you ever tried to, to help a hurt animal?

The animal obviously needs help.

is gonna perhaps die if it doesn't get help.

And so you want to help that animal, but the animal turns on you and maybe scratches you or bites you or pets you or whatever, because it doesn't understand what you're trying to do.

You ever had that experience?

Well, when you're trying to help the fallen, You're gonna get bit sometimes.

You need to understand, not literally, I hope not literally.

But you need to understand that sometimes the defense that they will make because it makes them feel better is to attack you.

Love doesn't agree, doesn't depend, I should say, upon agreement.

It takes patience to work with the fallen.

Usually when people fall away, it didn't happen from Monday to Tuesday.

It didn't happen quickly.

It was usually an extensive process, and it often takes an extensive process to restore them.

can be very difficult to bear with someone who doesn't see what seems to be so obvious to us.

And of course, sometimes that person is determined not to see.

They like where they are.

I would suggest to you that we need to avoid destructive admonitions.

Here's what I mean.

You know, you're going to hell where you are.

That always opens doors of communication, doesn't it?

When you tell somebody that they, they're, they're headed for a fiery place of punishment.

Now, it may very well be the truth based on their behavior, but if you're trying to reach somebody and you're trying to keep doors of communication open, that's not helpful.

And yet sometimes Christians think, well, see, I, I, I told them what they needed to hear.

Sometimes we admonish with a sledgehammer when we should be using a feather duster.

And if we don't know any other way, Then maybe it would be best for us not to admonish at all, and I'm not suggesting that's the best path.

I'm saying that it can be very hurtful.

To send messages of condemnation to somebody that you're trying to restore to faithfulness.

Now, I will make this observation because I think the apostle Paul does.

And that is that the severity of any rebuke really needs to be directly proportional to the hardness of the heart of the one who's being admonished.

Let me give you an example of that.

In Titus chapter one, As Paul is talking about the qualifications of elders, here's what he says.

For there are many who are insubordinate.

He's not talking about the elders, but talking about false teachers.

Empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision party.

They must be silenced since they are upsetting whole families by teaching for shameful gain what they ought not to teach.

One of the Cretans, a prophet of their own, said Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons, that sounds like a generalization.

This testimony is true, Paul says.

Therefore, rebuke them sharply.

He didn't say gently, he said sharply.

And I think the reason is The severity of the rebuke needs to match the hardness of the heart, of the one who's being rebuked.

Don't give up.

Just because we can't reach someone today doesn't mean we won't be able to do so in the future, which is why we want to keep doors of Communication open.

In Luke chapter 15 in that parable of the lost son, the prodigal son that Jesus told, the prodigal son went to a far off country, and we don't know how long he was there.

Bible doesn't really reveal that.

But what happened was his conditions, his life conditions deteriorated to the point where he was feeding swine.

And verse 17 says that when he came to himself, there was a change of view.

He looked around at his circumstances and said, I, this is not where I want to be.

Look at what I left, and that's of course, what we're trying to do with the fallen, is to get them to come to themselves.

But sometimes people don't do that until they hit rock bottom.

That's where the prodigal son was, feeding the pigs and wishing he could eat what they were eating.

And it changed his mind.

We need to keep the forgiveness door open.

I understand, of course, that we're not in charge of forgiveness.

Not divine forgiveness.

But I think sometimes when people leave home, Like the prodigal son did.

Left his father's house.

Sometimes they just don't know the way back.

And all I mean by that is.

People are like, well, I can't come back.

I, I've alienated brethren.

Uh, it's become obvious to everybody what kind of lifestyle I've been living.

What will everyone say if I come?

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 is from 23 Corinthians chapter 7.

We'll start reading in verse 25.

Couple of explanatory notes before I jump in.

Paul is addressing essentially every marital status in which people put themselves.

And when it comes to verse 25, he addresses virgins, or as other versions say, the unmarried.

Only the English Standard version and the expanded Bible say the betrothed.

So that's what's on the screen, but I'll be reading from the Lexington from the Legacy Standard Bible.

Um, by the way, that word that is translated virgins or the unmarried is According to Strong, it's a maiden, by implication, and unmarried daughter.

It's also used though in Revelation 14, referring to men who have not had intimate relations with women.

So picking up in verse 25 now, 1 Corinthians 7.

Now concerning virgins, I have no command of the Lord, but I give an opinion as one who, by the mercy of the Lord is trustworthy.

I think then that this is good because of the present distress, that it is good for a man to remain as he is.

Are you bound to a wife?

Do not seek to be released.

Are you released from a wife?

Do not seek a wife.

But if you, but if you.

Sorry, but if you do marry, you have not sinned.

And if a virgin marries, she has not sinned, yet such will find trouble in this life, and I am trying to spare you.

But this I say, brothers, the time has been shortened.

So that from now on those who have wives should be as those who have, should be as though they had none, and those who cry as though they did not cry, and those who rejoice as though they did not rejoice, and those who buy as though they did not possess.

And those who use the world as though they did not make full use of it, for the form of this world is passing away.

In early church history, there were some who taught that all matter.

Including our human bodies, which are made obviously of matter, that all matter was inherently evil.

And of course, from that initial premise, some people went off one direction and they said, since it doesn't make any difference, the spirit's what's going to be saved, the body's going to be uh destroyed anyway, so, you know, don't worry about uh taking your pleasure in the body.

But others went a different direction.

They became ascetics.

Some of them even taught that the celibate or unmarried state was better than being married.

And Paul's letter to the Corinthians, and particularly First Corinthians chapter 7, has been used to support that idea, that it's better not to marry, that that's a superior spiritual condition or state.

And so this evening, I asked the question, is that really what Paul was teaching in 1 Corinthians 133?

Our study this evening, as you probably have already guessed, is a question and answer sermon.

Occasionally, I devote, for those of you who are visiting with us, perhaps, occasionally I will devote a sermon to the answering of questions that have been submitted to me or that have come up in Bible classes, etc.

The questions that I put together in these sermons are not necessarily related, although this evening I'm going to try to relate the two questions that we're going to discuss at the very end so that you can see a connection between them.

They're on different topics and what you might consider to be radically different topics, and I think there is a connection to them.

The answers that I give my own that I give are my own answers.

They don't represent any kind of uh uh an official position of the elders or of this congregation.

They're simply my understanding of what the New Testament teaches about various questions that I'm asked.

So, the two questions that I want to talk about this evening, the first one is, as you've guessed, has to do with marriage, and we'll be looking at 1 Corinthians 7.

Uh, Gary was determined to preach my sermon before I got up here, but I'm gonna preach my sermon anyway.

But the second question has to do with demon possession.

You're probably wondering what could be the possible connection between marriage and demon possession, and I'm not going there.

I'll show you what I think the connection is later between those two topics, but those are the questions that I want to try to discuss this evening.

The first question, if I can frame it, uh, says, why did Paul write to the Corinthians that it is good not to marry?

In order to talk about that question, and particularly the latter part of 1 Corinthians 7, I really want to spend some time just surveying the entire chapter because Paul's going to discuss, as Gary noted, virtually every marital state that a person can be in, and he's gonna say some things about uh marriage and its purpose, its admissibility, all the way through the chapter.

So we're going to begin with just a survey of 1 Corinthians 7.

I'm gonna be brief about this because in the adult class in the auditorium, we've been studying in 1 Corinthians and we talked about some of these things at length.

I don't know that we need to review all of that.

You may have noticed uh that the first verse of chapter 7, Paul says, it is good for a man.

Not to have sexual relations with a woman.

I've not put ESV on all of the citations or quotes, even partial quotes that I'm using this evening as we survey the chapter, but they're from the ESV unless they're otherwise indicated, and I will point out one quote where we're going to look at the new King James version instead.

But I would point out that in the ESV this phrase is in quotation.

Mars, suggesting that the translators at least, thought that this was a statement that Paul was quoting from the Corinthians and not necessarily Paul himself teaching this.

The New King James Version translators took a different view, and they did not put quotations around this statement.

And so it appears as though Paul is saying, it's good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.

In the context, Of 1 Corinthians 23, I'm not sure that there's a great theological difference between those two viewpoints.

And that will become more clear as we go through.

I do support the ESV's uh view of that particular passage.

Paul was not against marriage.

I think that's one of the points we want to make abundantly clear as we work through this chapter.

In the beginning of the chapter, in verses 2 through 6, he talks about one of the important purposes or functions of marriage.

It helps to satisfy or serves the purpose of satisfying the sexual needs of husbands and wives, and that then reduces the temptation to commit sexual immorality.

He says to avoid sexual immorality, let each man have his own wife, each woman have her own husband.

Paul will actually make a comment in verse 7, as I myself am.

And it's a little unclear to me whether he's talking about his unmarried state when he says, I wish all were as I am, whether he's talking about, I wish everybody was in the single state or whether he's talking about.

the ability to control oneself and not to burn with passion as he discusses a little bit later.

In fact, in verse 9, he will say, but if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.

Now Paul does say in verse 8, Incidentally, that it was good to remain single.

But it's always important for us to observe the greater context of statements that are made in scripture.

Sometimes the greater context can radically change either the meaning or the application of a statement that is made by an inspired writer.

Now, a little bit later on in verses 10 to 16, Paul's gonna give instructions to married people.

He'll talk about marriage in general, uh, that divorce should not be uh something pursued, and he'll even talk about mixed marriages.

That, that section is really not germane to the answering of the question that we have this evening.

I'll not belabor the information that he has there.

But I do I want to run through the chapter now and look about at some additional counsel that Paul gives regarding getting married.

And so first of all, I want to look at verses 26 and 27, part of the reading this evening that Gary did.

I think that in view of the present distress, it is good for a person to remain as he is.

So if you're single, if you're unmarried, then it's good for you to remain the way you are.

He says, Are you bound to a wife?

Do not seek to be free.

Are you free from a wife?

Do not seek a wife.

In other words, stay unmarried.

And he says some other things that are somewhat cryptic, vague.

He doesn't explain them, but they are hints that he's talking about some special circumstances that would have been present at the time that he wrote this epistle.

For instance, if you look at verse 53, he says, The appointed time has grown very short in verse 31 in the latter part of that verse.

He says, for the present form of this world is passing away.

Things are changing.

And so there are some hints that there are some special circumstances going on.

In 1 Corinthians 7:38.

Paul says, so then he who marries his betrothed does well, and he who refrains from marriage will do even better.

So Paul says it's OK if people get married, but Those who do not marry, who are single and then do not get married, they do even better.

And that sounds a lot like Paul saying, listen, it's better not to get married.

That's the question we're looking at.

Is the celibate state always better than the married state?

And then finally in verse 40.

He says, yet in my judgment, she's happier if she remains as she is.

He's addressing widows in verse 40, and they are given permission to marry only in the Lord.

We'll say more about that in just a few moments.

But then he also says, yet in my judgment, she's happier if she remains as she is, an unmarried woman, a, a married woman whose husband had died.

She was a widow.

Well, what was the present distress that Paul has mentioned and uh seems to give some indication of in various verses?

And the answer is he doesn't explain.

Paul was not forbidding marriage.

If you look at verses 36 and verse 38, we've already looked at them, at least verse 38 in particular, but he did indicate that he wanted the Corinthians to be, as he says in verse 143, free from anxieties.

Because of the present distress, it would be better not to marry.

I want you to be free from anxieties.

This is verse 35.

I say this for your own benefit, not to lay any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord.

What Paul will explain then, beginning in verse 32 and running down through verse 34, is that married people have a different focus, at least in part, than those who are single.

Here's the passage in question.

Look at verses 32 and 34.

He says, I want you to be free from anxieties, as we noted.

The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord.

His focus is pleasing God.

But the married man, by contrast, is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided.

I do not believe that Paul is saying that a married man can't be a good Christian, that he is consumed or anxious about worldly things.

I think all he's saying is, married men have obligations to their wives, and they're gonna focus on some of those obligations, and that means that their attention is then divided between their wife and the Lord, at least to some extent.

And the unmarried or betrothed woman.

So now he'll talk about the female side of the equation, is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit.

She's not married, she didn't have to take care of a husband, shouldn't have to be concerned about his needs.

But the married woman is anxious about worldly things, how to please her husband.

And again, I don't think Paul is criticizing either the husband or the wife for focusing on their responsibilities to their spouses.

That would be awkward, wouldn't it, in light of what he writes to the Ephesians in chapter 5 and in other places about the responsibilities of husbands and wives in a variety of matters.

If the present distress that he mentions but doesn't elaborate on, if it was some kind of persecution, then remaining single would avoid strong emotional ties that are a part of marriage that might tempt one to compromise his or her faith.

Let me illustrate it this way.

If Tonight, after Debbie and I get home, and we've come into the house and we're kind of relaxing, there's a knock on the door, and we look and there's a man in an official uniform, and he, when we opened the door, he says, I'm here to arrest your wife.

We understand she's a Christian.

And so she's going to be interrogated.

With beatings.

And we're taking her right now.

How do you think I would respond to that?

What would be my emotions as I'm hearing him describing what he's intending to do right now?

I know good and well that that's difficult for us to imagine in our society, we have freedom of religion and protection of the law, etc.

due process.

But in the first century, And in some of the times in the 2nd and 3rd and even into the beginning of the 4th centuries.

That's exactly what happened to Christians sometimes.

Government officials came to doors and hauled people away.

How will you respond to that?

If that same official says to you, I will leave your wife alone if you will recant your faith in Jesus Christ. Wow.

Now I have to choose between my loyalty to the Lord and my love and consideration for my wife.

You see how that would be difficult.

And she looks at me.

Wanting to know what decision I'm going to make.

What decision would you make?

Paul says, I want you to be free from anxiety.

I don't want you to have divided allegiances, at least in the sense of having legitimate responsibilities in two different relationships, marriage and your relationship, your fellowship with God.

It would be better for you not to be married.

You don't have to worry then.

There's no leverage.

For an official to come and say, either you Worship the emperor.

Or we're gonna kill your wife.

Or vice versa.

It would go perhaps both ways.

I want you to notice the difference.

In the ESV and the New King James in verses 113 to 38, and Gary commented a little bit on that.

I want to reread them, but the part that I want you to pay real close attention to is the text in red.

If anyone thinks, this is the ESV on the left, if anyone thinks that he's not behaving properly toward his betrothed, so that's a woman who's been promised to be married.

If his passions are strong, and it has to be, let him do as he wishes, let them marry, it's no sin.

So we're talking about a woman who has agreed to be married and her prospective husband in that translation.

But whoever is firmly established in his heart being under no necessity, but having his desire under control and has determined this in his heart to keep her as his betrothed, he will do well.

So I've, I'm gonna use Debbie as an example again.

So Debbie and I have agreed to get married.

But under the circumstances, because of the present distress, I've decided this is not a good time for us to get married.

There are gonna be some anxieties, as Paul talks about it.

Things are changing.

They're gonna be challenges.

It would be better for us not to marry, and I'm confident that I can control my passions.

Paul says, you do well if you don't marry.

So then he who marries his betrothaled does well, and he who refrains from marriage will do even better.

Talking about the groom, prospective groom, and the prospective bride.

The new King James version.

In verse 38, I'll not uh read the other.

Verse 38 says, so then he who gives her in marriage does well, and he who does not give her in marriage does better.

And so the translators of the New King James Version seemed to give the impression that we're talking about a father and his daughter.

The father was the one who would arrange the marriage in many cases.

He would be the one who might have set up this arrangement, the wife or the daughter rather, to marry somebody, and he's the one who can say, not now.

And Paul says he who gives her in marriage does well, but he who does not give her in marriage does even better. Why?

Because of a present distress, because of some special circumstances.

Paul is not intending to say every place and in all times under all circumstances, it's better if you don't marry.

He's talking about a specific set of circumstances, which unfortunately, he doesn't describe in great detail for our benefit.

But I can tell you, I think there could be possible situations nowadays where it would be better for some people not to marry if they can maintain their sexual purity, it might be better under those circumstances not to marry.

I think that's what Paul's talking about with respect to Corin.

Now, at the very end of the chapter, Paul talks about uh widows.

Actually, he introduced widows and unmarried way back early in the chapter, indicating it was better that they can marry, but it'd be better if they didn't, if they were just as he was.

But he says widows can marry.

Yet only in the Lord.

That expression, that phrase in the Lord is an expression that you will find many, many times in the New Testament.

In fact, uh, in preparation for studying texts like this, I went through and found every example of that phrase in English translations in the Lord, both in the ESV and then there are some additional ones in the New King James version, even beyond the ESV.

And what you'll find is that it doesn't always mean the same thing.

In the Lord sometimes means uh in a relationship that's Essentially guided by scripture.

Sometimes it can mean a person who is in the Lord.

Which is it here?

And I'm not going to belabor the point.

Uh, it can mean according to the Lord's instructions or pattern, or it can be a reference to marrying a Christian.

I really, in light of the context, I favor the second view that he's telling widows that they need to marry a Christian and not someone who is not in the Lord.

Well, let me give you my answer to this question.

Although Paul has advised, and we've looked at some of the passages where he clearly states that not marrying under those circumstances was a good thing, he did not forbid marriage, nor did he say that the celibate state was in every way, in every circumstance, a superior spiritual condition.

He did suggest celibacy because of some present distress, which he didn't specifically identify.

Whatever the present distress was, it was apparently, it would apparently make it more difficult for married people to give their undivided devotion to the Lord.

And Paul is stressing that that's what he wants people to do, to give their undivided devotion to the Lord.

Well, that's the first question, but here's the second question.

When the Bible says that Satan entered Judas, was it speaking figuratively or literally?

And if it's literally, who are we to say if Judas acted of his own volition, or was he a victim of demon possession?

The wording on that is just a little bit awkward, but I think you understand the point.

I want to leave it the way it was.

The passage that's being referenced here is Luke chapter 22 in verse 3.

Of course, Jesus and his disciples are in Jerusalem.

And it's the last week of Jesus' life, Passion Week.

And the text says, then Satan entered into Judas called Isaria, who was of the number of the 12.

Now, frequently, when I get a question submitted to me, sometimes people give me a bunch of information, uh, comments, or even additional questions.

Uh, I've actually had questions that when you went through and read them, they were longer than my answers are.

But those comments also helped me understand where people are coming from.

And so I'm gonna share with you uh some comments that were made by the questioner.

Um On this occasion The questioner said the word entered used there in Luke 223.

According to Strongs, is ace eromai, meaning to enter, to go into, etc.

There are other definitions.

The reason I believe this means a physical entry of something is because of verses that use the same Greek word verses such as, and he cites two of them, Acts 10:25.

When Peter entered, Cornelius met him and fell down at his feet and worshiped him.

Peter entered the house of Cornelius, Literal entering, going into.

And then another passage in Luke 23:51, and when he came into the to the house, he allowed no one to enter with him except Peter and John and James and the father and mother of the child.

So the argument that's being made is that the same word that's translated entered in Luke 22:3.

is used in Acts 10:25 and Luke 8:51 in a literal way to talk about someone or someones who are coming into something.

And so it suggests that Judas, or maybe I should say it this way, that Satan literally entered Judas.

And so we would probably say Judas was then demon possessed.

A little bit more in the way of comment.

Both of these verses contain the same Greek word.

And when we look at these verses, I believe it shows the meaning of a literal entering of a room.

Well, let, let me say very quickly, uh, the questioner is correct.

It's the same word in each of those verses, it's the same verb.

And I believe in the two passages that were cited, Acts and Luke, that it is a literal physical entering into a room.

That's the meaning of the word in those passages.

Before I give you what I think is going on here, let me make some observations about demon possession that I think will be helpful in answering this question.

Was Judas demon possessed, or was he just under the influence of Satan or Satan entered him in some other way?

Well, the first thing I would say about demon possession is that I don't see in the scriptures any clear indication that demon possession occurred because the host, the person possessed, invited the demons.

Now, maybe you find a passage or you think there's a passage where that's uh the implication, but I don't know of a passage.

Secondly, those who are described as possessed by demons or unclean spirits or sometimes just by spirits, they appeared to have no control over their actions.

They engaged often in irrational behavior.

I'm going to give you three examples that obviously there are more examples of demon possession in the New Testament.

And by the way, I believe demon possession was a real thing.

I think people were possessed by demons.

I don't think this is accommodative language.

I don't think this is, you know, describing mental issues by uh.

Describing them to demons.

When the Bible says so and so was possessed by many demons, I accept that record by the inspired writers.

So let me give you three examples.

Of demon possession so that you can see how they are described in scripture.

The first one has to do with the two gathering demoniacs.

All three of the synoptic gospels record this story, although they don't all talk about two individuals.

One focuses on the 2, the others on the 1.

This is in Mark's account, 53st 5 verses, and then we'll drop down to verse 15.

Jesus has crossed the Sea of Galilee with his disciples.

He's now over on the east and perhaps uh the southeast side uh of the Sea of Galilee.

So they came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerrocenes, and when Jesus had stepped out of the boat immediately, there met him out of the tombs.

A man with an unclean spirit.

Unclean spirit's just a synonymous term for a demon.

He lived among the tombs, and no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain, for he had often been bound with shackles and chains, but he wrenched the chains apart, and he broke the shackles and pieces.

No one had the to subdue him.

Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains, he was always crying out and cutting himself with stones.

And I want you to think just for a moment with your imagination, what was going on here.

This is a guy who's living among the tombs where the dead bodies were.

And so he's living constantly in a place that's unclean, that we wouldn't want to spend time with, and nobody can restrain him.

He breaks chains, he breaks shackles, and he's crying out and he's yelling and screaming and all of this.

And he's cutting himself.

This is the individual that Jesus encounters when he reaches the shore there where this story takes place.

Well, you probably remember the way that the story transpires.

Jesus is gonna cast out the demons, plural of this man.

They'll go into some swine, swine will run down the, the cliff and into the lake and be drowned.

And this gets back to the people in town nearby.

And they come out to Jesus, and so we pick up in verse 15, they came to Jesus and they saw the demon possessed man, the one who had had had the legion.

He had many demons.

Sitting there, clothed.

Uh, he's been running around naked.

Um Is the description that we get from one of the other uh gospels, clothes and in his right mind, they were afraid.

As, as much as they had seen some sort of supernatural power by this man possessed by all of these demons, now they are witnessing power that is even greater than that.

Jesus has come and cast out all these demons, and here's this guy who couldn't be controlled, who was just a wild man, and he's there now he's clothed.

You wouldn't have known that he wasn't one of the apostles.

He was just sitting there in his right mind.

You realize the implication of that statement?

Apparently, while he was possessed by the demons, he wasn't in his right mind.

He was acting irrationally.

Well, we've read it, so it's not hard to imagine that description.

Well, the next story is in Luke the 9th chapter beginning in verse 37.

This story takes place shortly after the transfiguration, uh, in the mountain in northern Galilee.

Jesus has come down with Peter, James, and John, rest of the disciples are there at the foot of the mount.

And there's an interaction there between Jesus and the disciples, and a man whose son was demon possessed.

So we pick up in Luke chapter 9, verse 37.

On the next day when they had come down from the mountain, a great crowd met him.

And behold, a man from the crowd cried out, Teacher, I beg you to look at my son, for he's my only child, and behold, a spirit seizes him, and he suddenly cries out, it convulses.

So that he foams at the mouth and shatters him and will hardly leave him.

Sounds a little bit like the way I preach.

And I begged your disciples to cast it out, but they could not.

Jesus answered, oh faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you and bear with you?

Bring your son here.

While he was coming, the demon threw him to the ground and convulsed him, but Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit and healed the boy and gave him back to his father.

One of the other accounts of this same story indicates that the spirit, this unclean spirit that possessed this boy, sometimes would cause him to cast himself into water and cast himself into fire, as though to destroy him.

That's not rational behavior.

And that's the way demon possession is described in the scriptures, that people are acting in ways they're not in their right minds.

They don't seem to be in control of their actions.

I'm beating this dead horse for a reason that you will see in just a few moments.

Let's look at the 3rd story here.

It's in the 11th chapter of Luke.

This is actually a parable that Jesus tells, but we can learn a little something about demon possession by the parable.

Jesus says, when the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest and finding none, it says, I will return to my house from which I came.

And when it comes, it finds the house, that's another way of describing the previous host, the man.

It finds the house swept and put in order, then it goes and brings 23 other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that person is worse than the first.

Here's what I want you to note about this.

Here's a spirit possessing this man, and the spirit leaves.

Can't find any place a host.

Comes back and enters this man.

Without any kind of difficulty, apparently.

My observation is That demon possessed individuals appeared not to have control over their actions.

They often engaged in irrational behavior, and I don't believe they were demon possessed because they invited the demons into them.

There's no clear evidence of that.

It seems in the New Testament.

Well, so what?

Well, if Judas was in fact demon possessed, if the phrase, Satan entered Judas indicates that Judas was demon possessed, then I don't believe that he was responsible for his actions any more than the gathering demoniac was responsible for his actions.

He was irrational.

People tried to control him, they couldn't control him.

If Judas was demon possessed, And I don't think he's responsible for his actions.

Now I want to look at another story, just very briefly, but it's one that you're familiar with.

It's the story in Acts the 5th chapter of Ananias and Sephira.

We're looking at it because there's some language there that is similar to the language that we're talking about in Luke 22:3.

But a man named Ananias, verse 22 of chapter 25, and his wife Sephirra sold a piece of property, and with his wife's knowledge, he kept back for himself some of the proceeds and brought only a part of it, laid it at the apostle's feet.

But Peter said, Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the land?

While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own?

And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal?

Why is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart?

You have not lied to man, but to God.

When Ananias heard these words, he fell down and breathed his last, and great fear came upon all who heard of it.

So a couple of points here.

Ananias is held responsible for the lie that he told, although Peter says, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit?

But then he also says, why is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart?

You have contrived this deed in your heart.

We didn't read it, but if we kept reading in the text there in 214, we find out that Sahira was also held accountable for what happened here.

So Ananias and Sahira, were they demon possessed?

No, I don't believe so.

I believe they were influenced.

By the desire for material gain to do what is evil.

And in that sense, Satan filled their hearts.

They contrived to try to deceive the apostles and by implication, the Holy Spirit as well.

And God killed both of them for their actions.

Judas also was held accountable for his actions.

Did you know that?

In the first chapter of Acts.

As the apostles are seeking to replace Judas with somebody else, the text says in verse 211, now this man acquired a field with the reward of his wickedness.

And falling headlong, he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out.

The reward of his wickedness was the pieces of silver.

That were used to buy the potter's field.

His wickedness was the betrayal of Jesus Christ.

And his actions are described as wickedness, not irrationality, wickedness.

He's held responsible for what he did.

I want to compare Luke chapter 22.

We're gonna actually look a little bit further in the text.

With John chapter 25 and verse 143, both of them will appear on the screen, so you don't necessarily have to turn your Bibles if you don't want to.

Look at Luke 214 and verse 22.

We already looked at verse 2, but I want you to see what comes next.

Then Satan entered into Judas calleduscariot, who was of the number of the 12.

He went away and conferred with the chief priests and officers how he might betray him, that is Jesus to them.

And they were glad and agreed to give him money.

So he consented and sought an opportunity to betray him to them in the absence of a crowd.

Satan entered Judas, and he went and made arrangements to betray Jesus. Cape.

In John the 13th chapter, the scene is that Jesus is with his disciples, there, there at the last Passover, and the institution of the Lord's supper.

And the text says in verse 2, during supper, when the devil had already put it in the heart of Judas Iscariot Simon's son to betray him.

So Luke 22:3 says, Satan entered Judas, and he went and talked to the Jewish leaders to make arrangements to betray Jesus.

John 13 says, when the devil had already put it in the heart of Judas's carry, that sounds like influence, but not necessarily demon possession.

And that took place.

Before he went to the Jewish leaders to make arrangements to betray Jesus.

I want to say something very quickly.

Uh, my time's running out, but I want to say something about the literal and figurative uses of words.

You remember the argument that was made by the questioner that you've got a couple of passages and you could multiply them, but there were two passages that use the same word uh entered or enter the verb enter in a literal fashion.

The same word is used in Luke chapter 23 in verse 3, Satan entered Judah, Judas.

So, are we to assume that it's literal in each case, that, that's kind of the implication of the argument.

Well, it's common, I think we understand, for the same Greek word possibly to be used in a literal physical sense in one context and in a figurative way, in another context.

In fact, when you go to a lexicon or a definition, that definition is just the beginning of deciding or understanding what the meaning of that word is.

Context will help you determine whether it's literal, figurative, or whether it's more than a word may have a range of meanings, possible meanings, and the context will help you understand which one is the right one.

Context is key.

But I wanna give you an illustration of how you can take a word that is used in a literal way, in some verses, and then it's clearly used in a figurative way in another verse.

Here's the word.

It's the word dwell.

This is the passage in Revelation chapter 2 and verse 13.

It's in the midst of the letter to Pergamum.

And the Lord says to the church, the Christians there, I know where you dwell, where Satan's throne is, yet you hold fast my name, and you did not deny my faith, even in the days of Antius, my faithful witness, who was killed among you, where Satan dwells.

Well, do you understand Jesus to be saying that that's where Satan got his mail?

That, that, that's, that was his dwelling place.

Satan lived at Pergamum, or do you understand that that was the place of great influence by Satan?

I think that's clearly the idea.

But that same word is used over in Acts 2 and verse 5.

Now, there were dwelling in Jerusalem, Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven.

What's the meaning there?

Well, it means literally, physically, they were living, dwelling in Jerusalem.

Same word.

Here's another example in verse 14 of the same.

Word in the same chapter.

But Peter, standing with the 11, lifted up his voice and addressed the men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem.

Let this be known to you and give ear to my words.

All who dwell in Jerusalem, word is used in a physical literal sense, in Acts 2 and verse 5 and Acts 2 and verse 14.

So should we assume that it's used literally in Acts in Revelation 2:13, that Satan literally lived at Pergamum, or should we understand that in a figurative way because of the context?

See what I'm saying?

Context is key.

And often the definition of a word is determined by context.

Well, the slide that you've been waiting for.

Is this one.

This is my answer to the question.

I don't believe that Judas was possessed by Satan in any miraculous way.

And incidentally, he possession, I believe, was a miraculous.

It was supernatural activity.

I believe that Judas fell under the influence of Satan the same way that people do today.

He was tempted to do evil for material gain.

And as despicable as his actions were, he did not appear to be acting the way that demon possessed people did.

He coveted, he made a deal, he planned the deal, and he carried out the, the task.

He executed the plan.

That doesn't sound like demon possessed people, at least as they're described in other passages.

I think he was under the influence of Satan.

The principle behind Paul's counsel to not marry in the present distress is that we want to be able to give our undivided devotion to the Lord.

That's really the lesson that I want you to take from the discussion of First Corinthians that we had.

And I'm gonna suggest to you that it is when our loyalties, our devotions are divided, that that's when Satan has the greatest chance of influencing us, of filling our heart so that we end up committing evil.

If you want to resist the influence of Satan, then make sure that your heart is undivided in your devotion.

To the Lord That's the connection between these two questions.

The marriage question and demon possession, I think you see the uh the connection that I'm making.

Are you ready?

Are you ready for the Lord?

I don't know what the present distress was.

I don't know if it's persecution.

I don't know if there was something else going on there in, in Akea or in Corinth.

But what I do know is that there's a day coming when the Lord's coming back.

And only those Who are totally devoted to the Lord are going to be welcomed into the eternal kingdom of heaven.

Are you ready?

Have you obeyed the gospel?

Are you living daily?

Devoted to Christ above all other things that might Legitimately call for our attention.

But Jesus Christ comes first.

If you're not living that way, you need to change your life.

If you're not a Christian, you need to obey the gospel.

You need to allow the Lord to cleanse you from your sin.

What a wonderful thought that everything that you have ever done that was wrong, God just says, it's gone.

You're not held accountable for it any longer.

And you have the hope of being with your Creator.

Who not only made us but loves us.

has planned for our eternity, for our blessings.

And you have the opportunity to be with that God for eternity.

If you need to obey the gospel this evening, don't wait.

We invite you as we stand and sing.

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.)

You will turn your Bibles to Galatians chapter 1 verses 6 through 12.

I wanna read, reading this morning out of the English Standard version.

you also have up on the, the screen overhead.

So here at the beginning of the book of Galatians, Paul was starting with some pretty uh Strong rebuke and instruction for the Galatians as they've uh Been tempted and pulled away by Uh, false teachers, these Judaizing teachers that have come in, Paul gives some.

Instruction on and rebuke on how they should respond when someone comes and preaches a different gospel to them.

So again, Galatians chapter 1 verses 6 through 12.

I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel.

Not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.

But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preach to you, let him be a cursed, as we have said before.

So now I say again, if any one is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.

For am I now seeking the approval of man or of God?

Or am I trying to please man?

If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ, for I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached to me is not man's gospel, for I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

Good morning.

Has it occurred to you that the one constant in life is that things are always changing?

And I know that sounds like an enigma, but it's true.

And I'm gonna illustrate that with a little bit of my own history.

When I started preaching nearly 45 years ago, no one had personal computers in their homes.

Can you imagine that?

Nobody was getting on the internet.

Nobody was using the internet to search for information or writing papers on computers.

But within 4 or 5 years of beginning my preaching, I purchased a computer.

Does anybody recognize that?

Yeah, I see a couple computer, uh.

Lovers, people who are well versed.

That's a Commodore 103.

And I used it for word processing.

The program I used was called Paperclip.

It took 90 seconds to load.

Just to load.

If your computer, you turn it on or if you go to your computer and you open up an app, and it takes 90 seconds and it hasn't loaded yet, you're calling the geek squad.

Something's wrong with my computer.

But 90 seconds was blazing speed back then.

But of course, I used the computer to produce teaching materials.

About 10 years later, as Debbie and I prepared our family to move to Brazil, I was using a PC then.

I've repented since then.

And one of the things that was the in technology then was an LCD panel.

What we were using back then were overheads.

Some of you got kind of a little bit excited slash concerned.

When I carried this in this morning, like, is he actually gonna use an overhead projector?

But we did, and we used the transparencies and sometimes I would uh use a little piece of paper to unveil, unveil some of the points as I was moving along cause you couldn't do that uh except manually.

I got to the point where I was actually producing transparencies through a computer with bullet points that were outlined so I could color in the bullets and I would have color to the transparencies.

We were really then cooking, because we had colored uh audio visual aids.

But the transparency, the LCD panel that would go on top of this would actually allow you to show what was on your computer up on the screen through the overhead projector.

Man, I thought 1995, that's what I wanna do when we get back from Brazil, I'm gonna get one of those LCD panels.

Two years later we come back from Brazil.

Nobody knows what an LCD panel is because by then the RGB.

Sectors had become popular.

Gutch Lane in this area was, I think, the first congregation to purchase and use that kind of projector and of course since then, we've been using projectors that are even better in quality and uh their abilities.

Do you know someone who is a technophobe?

I see, I see a couple people going, yeah, don't look at them, OK?

Cause it'll embarrass them.

A technophobe is someone who is, uh, perhaps, uh, avoids new technology, fears, dislikes.

I mean, old is better, right?

Anybody use a phone like that?

That was actually before my time, but that phone I remember very well the rotary dial.

You, you did the dial and then it went until the next number.

We had one of those growing up, the, the one that had the 25 ft cord on it so that you could go from the phone to the other side of the house as it stretched.

Some of you, at least some of you that are my age or close to my age, probably remember those kinds of phones used as landlines.

Anybody have a cell phone like that?

Had the big cell phone with the antenna on it?

Anybody?

OK, I see some folks that use that.

Well, you graduated, didn't you?

You move to new technology.

You got a flip phone.

The kind that flipped open.

And uh then you could, you know, dial with the the numbers on the flip phone.

Well, we've come a long ways from that, haven't we?

There's one constant in life, and that is that things are always changing.

The technophobe does not mind being behind the times.

Old is better.

If it worked for Grandpa, it'll work for me.

And so people will continue to do the same things, the same ways, even though technology allows them other opportunities because they don't really like the changes in technology.

That's one end of the spectrum.

There are people that are on the other end of the spectrum.

Those are the ones who believe that new is always better.

And in fact, these are the folks who are constantly buying the newest technology, the newest products.

They salivate when Apple has their uh yearly meeting where they're gonna unveil the newest product, Apple product, that's for people who use Apple products.

Some of you don't.

I see violent shaking in the heads.

But technology is always introducing or new technology is always being introduced, and there are some people who just feel like we've got to go and get the latest and newest toys.

It's not just about technology though.

In the area of religion, there are many people who are concerned about keeping up with the times of being relevant to today's populace.

Well, this morning I want to ask you the question, what about the Lord's church?

Should we be concerned about keeping up with the times?

Should the Lord's Church mirror changes that are taking place in our modern Western culture?

And there are many changes that are taking place even in our lifetimes.

Well, I'm gonna answer that question right at the beginning of the sermon.

And the answer is yes.

And no.

So, if you're confused about why I'm answering it on both sides of the fence, let's continue by looking at a phrase that is sometimes used today.

It's called progressive Christianity.

Progressive Christianity is a phrase that we're hearing more and more.

There are churches that describe themselves as progressive, and what they mean, if I may borrow the words of a church website, they mean that these churches view the Bible through a lens that changes with the culture.

And so as culture changes, they view the Bible differently, and so they change their practices, they're progressives, they're willing to introduce new and sometimes the word is used pejoratively, but liberal ideas.

As they try to remain relevant to the people around them.

I'm not talking just about denominations.

Even some churches of Christ congregations would consider themselves to be progressive.

And by that, I simply mean that they're willing to abandon traditional practices with regard to corporate worship and social issues.

For instance, these congregations are some of the churches that are introducing instrumental music in their corporate corporate worship.

Some of them do it in a gradual fashion.

They'll actually have an a cappella singing only service if that's the way you like worship or you see the Bible, but they'll also have another worship service that employs instrumental music.

Gradually, what'll happen is the a cappella singing will that worship service will eventually fade away as people become more accustomed to desensitized to the use of instrumental music in their worship assemblies.

These progressive churches are the ones that are using women as preachers and giving them other leadership roles or positions.

Some of these congregations, not all of them that describe themselves as progressive, but some of them are also embracing the ecumenical movement.

You may not be familiar with that phrase ecumenical movement, but it's the idea that the, the Church of Christ, the church, what we would call the, the Lord's Church is really only one part of the universal church, that there are other religious groups that are part of Christ's church.

We're just one.

I hate to say this.

We're one branch.

Uh, according to the ecumenical movement.

And so they consider themselves, these progressive, uh, congregations to be in some degree of fellowship with denominational churches.

And these progressive churches incidentally, are proud that they are not turning people away from Christ by being out of touch with modern culture.

And so they've decided to abandon those traditional ways of worshiping.

And the tra traditional doctrines of that have been taught in churches of Christ for a long time now, because they want to keep in touch with modern society, what people are thinking and practicing today.

Their motivation, I think comes from a couple of different sources.

I would point out to you, first of all, I think that this progressive idea really illustrates or manifests a lack of respect for God.

You can't disrespect God's word, ignore his word without disrespecting the one who gave that word.

And when you decide that you can set aside certain portions of God's word, because they don't fit very well with modern society and its ideas or uh values, what you're basically doing is showing a lack of respect for God's word.

Appreciated Jonathan's selecting songs that talked about the value of God's word and the respect that we ought to have for God's word, the function that it should play in our lives.

But I think there's another reason.

And I actually, uh, Headed up there already.

There's another reason that I think some of these groups are following this progressive uh template, and that is its marketing.

What they're trying to do is appeal to the masses, and they are frequently much more concerned with aligning themselves with the current popular thinking in America than they are of aligning themselves with God's will.

What's important to you?

Is it more important that we are on the same page with the people of our community or that we are on God's page following his revealed will?

But progressive churches don't want to be out of touch with cultural shifts, such as the widespread acceptance of divorce.

And so some congregations never talk about divorce, certainly not from a biblical standpoint, and they uh will tell people that we welcome everybody and so divorce is acceptable regardless of the cause for the divorce and the acceptance of the LBGTQ blah blah blah movement.

Where we need to be inclusive and not shut anybody out and not disrespect anybody.

In fact, if you preach against the homosexual movement, the LGBTQ movement, you are accused sometimes of being a hater.

I would suggest to you that those who do not inform the sinner of their sin, but intent just allow them to go peacefully into eternity and condemnation, those are the people who are the haters.

Marketing, as cultural values change, progressives do not want to be left behind.

It's about numbers.

It's about filling the building, and ultimately, it's often about money because numbers translate into money.

Well, you've probably already noticed the chart that's up there already, and that is that the apostle Paul preached affirmed that the gospel is unchanging.

Even in the first century, Before all the apostles had even been martyred or had died, the gospel was already being changed, twisted by some.

Acid Ethan's introduction to the reading this morning.

If you'll pardon me, I'm going to read it again.

Galatians 1:6 to.

hands on the screen.

I am astonished, Paul wrote, that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel.

Not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.

Paul had preached to these people on his first missionary journey, and he says, I'm surprised you're turning away so quickly from Christ and you're turning to some other gospel.

Well, there really isn't another gospel, he says.

But some people are twisting the gospel of Jesus Christ.

But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preach to you, let him be a cursed.

Paul said, the gospel is unchanging.

You and I don't have the right to change the gospel and preach something other than what's revealed in the pages of Scripture.

As we have said before, he continues in verse 9.

So now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.

Is that happening today?

Are people preaching the gospel, this progressive gospel that views the Bible through the lens of modern culture, and so they change what God said about any number of things.

What does Paul say about that?

He said, don't accept that even if an angel would preach it.

For am I now seeking the approval of man or of God?

Who am I aligning myself with, Paul says.

Or am I trying to please man?

If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.

The gospel of Christ was intended to be an unchanging message.

In fact, there are some examples, we'll just look at one, for the sake of time this morning, I owe you a minute.

Uh, in 143 Corinthians, the 11th chapter, the apostle Paul rebukes the Corinthians.

Because they had begun uh practicing something different than what he had delivered to them regarding the Lord's supper.

If you're in 1 Corinthians the 11th chapter, I'm just gonna note two verses in particular, beginning in verse 240 and running on to the end of the chapter.

Paul talks about what was going on at Corinth.

He makes some corrections, but I You to notice in verse 220, but in the following instructions, I do not commend you because when you come together, it's not for the better but for the worse.

Paul didn't say, well, now, you Corinthians, you just adapt your practice to whatever your culture is there in uh in in the Peloponnesus in Achaea.

And he says down in verse 21, for I receive from the Lord what I also delivered to you that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed, took bread.

Did the Corinthians have a right to change the supper to make it more relevant to a gentile audience or perhaps to avoid uh offending the sensibilities of maybe some Jewish Christians?

Absolutely not.

Paul said, when you come together, it's for the worse, not for the better, because you're not following the instructions that you were given regarding this act of worship.

You'll see in the letters of Paul to Timothy and Titus.

A, an emphasis on sound doctrine.

Paul emphasized the need to teach sound doctrine.

I appreciated the comment that was made earlier about sound doctrine.

I believe Ethan was the one who made it.

Notice what Paul has to say to Titus in chapter 22 verses 259 through 210.

He writes to this evangelist and he says, he that is Speaking of elders, elders must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught.

Hold on to what you've been taught, not changing it uh as culture changes, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound.

That word sound there is the word that could be translated healthy in some context.

Sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it sound doctrine.

Elders need to hold fast to what they've been taught, that is from the word of God, and they need to be able to contradict or rebuke those who contra.

Predict sound doctrine.

Notice then in verse 63, they must be silenced, these false teachers since they are upsetting whole families by teaching for shameful gain what they ought not to teach.

Paul says, the gospel is unchanging.

And elders need to stand up for the gospel once for all revealed to the saints.

In First Timothy, the apostle Paul writes to the young evangelist Timothy, he says those who have believing masters must not be disrespectful on the ground that they are brothers.

Rather, they must serve all the better since those who benefit by their good service are believers and beloved.

Teach and earth these things.

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, What's Paul say about that individual?

He says he's puffed up with conceit and understands nothing.

He has an unhealthy craving.

Notice the contrast between sound words or doctrine, and unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions.

Paul says, watch out for people who are teaching things different from the sound words of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And then finally, one final passage here.

In 26 Timothy 23 verses 24-4, once again, the apostle writing says, for the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching.

That's what I'm talking about today.

I'm talking about people who are abandoning sound teaching because they want to align themselves with whatever the current popular ideas are about religion, about moral issues, social issues.

But having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions.

It's like Paul read a newspaper from 2024 about what was going on in Western culture.

He said there are people who will listen only to those teachers who will tell them what they want to hear, according to their own passions, they heap up these teachers and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.

So my conclusion is if you can't change the gospel, if it's an unchanging message.

Then the Lord's church shouldn't be changing either in terms of uh the organization of the church, the work of the church, of the local congregation, the worship of the church, the teaching of the New Testament about social issues like moral issues.

That's part of the gospel.

That's part of this mystery that God revealed through His apostles and prophets.

If the message is unchanging.

Then the church should be unchanging in these areas.

Should the Lord's Church change with the times?

Well, here's the answer.

In doctrine and practice, absolutely not.

We are what we are because of what the Lord revealed.

And we will continue to be the Lord's people so long as we continue to follow the Lord's word, not the culture of our day.

Well, I'm about to throw you a little bit of a curve.

Because the fact of the matter is we have changed.

Not in the areas that I've been talking about.

Hopefully not.

If we understand the teaching of the New Testament, but we have changed, have we not?

There are certainly some areas in which we've changed.

We've seen many changes in technology used.

There's an illustration sitting right there in front of you, the overhead projector, and that's just the beginning of it.

Blackboards, people started with those and I never could write well on a blackboard.

I'm so glad we 86 of those a long time ago.

When, when I go with Debbie to Zimbabwe, the only real audio or visual aids they have is they'll paint one of their concrete walls.

It's a uh kind of like a plaster finish and they'll paint it green and it's got cracks in it and holes and different things, it's uneven and everything, and we use chalk to write on that and it's an absolute mess.

But that's what people used a long time ago.

Some of you young people, you don't know anything about those kinds of things because we've moved on.

We moved, we got technologically advanced.

We started using overhead projectors.

And we shined images up on screens or walls.

Then we went to RGB projectors and LCD projectors, etc. etc. etc.

We have monitor screens to convey dynamic or changing information.

So we've got announcement slides that are changing slides every 6 to 8 seconds so that we can convey more information in a limited amount of space and time.

We use songs on slides.

To sing from You, some of you young people may not realize that it's not been all that long ago that everybody was using a book.

Slides, songs on slides is a relatively recent thing in terms of the history of even just the, the Lord's Church in the United States or in this area.

Public address systems.

The types of spiritual hymns and songs that we sing have changed some over the years that of my lifetime.

Now some of these changes go far uh back far enough in time that the average Christian is not even aware that things were different in the past.

Young people in particular.

But we have changed some things, haven't we?

But notice that these are matters that are not doctrinal.

They're not things that change the organization of the church.

They're not things that change the essential nature of our worship.

Whether we sing out of a book, or whether we sing from slides that are uh up on the screen, or whether we just sing from memory, which is the way most people in Zimbabwe do.

They sing the songs without any book at all in many cases.

They know all the words and they know the tunes.

But however we do it, it's still singing and as long as that information, the lyrics of those songs are scriptural, in other words, they're building us up, they're encouraging us, edifying us.

In truth, then it really doesn't make any difference how we get the information that allows us to sing together.

Those are the kinds of changes that I think we have made over uh decades and decades.

Well, I want to talk to you a little bit about methods of evangelism.

In my lifetime, Gospel meetings were a primary method of community outreach for evangelism.

I started preaching in 1980 and that's what churches did in order to, uh, for the most part, in order to get the gospel out in the community.

They would bring a preacher or have their preacher preach a series of lessons.

We'd have a gospel meeting, we'd invite people.

In those days, gospel meetings, this would have been a little bit before my time even.

Gospel meetings sometimes lasted for weeks.

But when I first started preaching, you could seldom Hear about a gospel meeting that lasted less than 33 days, Sunday to Friday.

That was pretty much across the board.

And then you started to see a shift in our practices among congregations of the Lord's people, where gospel meanings began to be shortened to last only 2 or 3 days.

Our most recent gospel meetings here are essentially a weekend or the very beginning of a week, Sunday through Tuesday or Wednesday.

Used to be a whole week, used to be sometimes much longer than a week, but those have been shortened.

The fact of the matter is, our culture has changed dramatically by the advancement of technology and communication, by rapid transportation, and frankly, a generally higher.

Standard of living.

And what that has done is it's brought a lot of different opportunities and maybe even some obligations into our lives.

And so people don't stay on the homestead all the time and sit on the front porch in the evening and talk and tell stories.

We're going because we can travel 45 miles without even thinking about it.

Some people lived and died without ever being more than 40, 20 miles from their own home.

Now we think nothing of jumping into our car and driving over to some sort of entertainment venue that is 1 to 2 hours away.

Our culture has changed.

Americans have more time, more opportunity for recreation.

But ironically, at the same time, and this is an anecdotal opinion, it's my opinion, I think interest in religion in general has waned.

With fewer people willing to listen to an hour-long sermon.

Did I mention that this morning's sermon was an hour long?

59 minutes Give you that one minute back.

People aren't willing to listen to sermons like they did back in the days of the restoration preachers who would get up and preach for an hour and a half, and people would sit and listen because they didn't have television that was, you know, changing their attention to a different thing every so many seconds.

And I think people are less willing to visit a church assembly.

If we're talking about a group that they don't belong to.

If they want to find out what a church is about, what do they do?

What do you do?

You get online.

You look for their website.

You connect the website with the address and then you can read about what that church teaches and how they're organized and that sort of thing.

You may have a picture of the building there.

Our culture has definitely changed.

Gone are the days when visitors will show up to gospel meetings in large numbers.

There was a time when people would do that.

Because the opportunities and the things that they could do in the evenings and during their days were much more limited than they are now.

And we filled our lives with all kinds of other concerns.

I'm not Disparaging The changes.

I'm saying there are consequences.

To the technological changes that have occurred in our country and our culture.

And it has affected the way that we need to get the gospel out to people.

It's more unusual today if you have a gospel meeting to have any visitors at all, and I think we've experienced that as we've had gospel meetings in the past.

In fact, maybe you've noticed, but a lot of times, gospel meetings don't, don't reach out to uh the community.

They're not teaching gospel meeting sermons are frequently not about how to become a Christian or information about the church.

Uh, just, you know, kind of boilerplate information about the church, about the plan of salvation, scheme of redemption.

Most of the sermons that you see in gospel meetings are designed to edify the saints, not convert the community.

Why is that?

It's because people aren't coming to the assemblies in gospel meetings like they used to.

So what should we do?

Well, what we've already confirmed is we can't change the message.

We don't have the right to try to accommodate changes in people's views by changing the message to try to bring people.

That's what a lot of churches, progressive churches and others, that's what they're doing.

We're not gonna do that.

We don't have the right to do that.

But we can And probably should change the way that we transmit the message.

There are lots of different ways of preaching.

And some of you are involved in some of these things that I'm going to mention and I'm not intending for this to be kind of a, a workshop type deal where we're gonna talk about the pros and cons of these different methods.

I'm just gonna mention some things because I want you to understand.

That as culture changes, we may have to change the way that we get the message out, although we can't change the message.

If you see the difference.

Websites, you, you can hardly find a church now that doesn't have a website.

Zoom meetings.

How many of you are tired of Zoom meetings?

Some of you, some of you are kind of like, yeah, I don't like Zoom meeting.

Some of you are like, I'm sick and tired of Zoom meetings because you do them at work.

I understand that.

But that's an enormous opportunity for us to get to people who won't travel to us.

Live streaming of sermons and Bible classes.

Community doesn't have to come to the building, they can sit in front of a computer and get the information that we want to get to them via digital format.

Informal Bible classes or studies in public places.

How many of you, uh, not asking for a show of hands, but how many of you have at times gone to some place like Chick fil A or or Starbucks or something and you took your Bible and you start reading at the table.

With the idea that maybe someone would be encouraged to ask you about what you're doing or ask some sort of Bible question.

People are doing that and sometimes it's an effective way of getting a study with someone who wouldn't come to this building for us to preach the gospel to them. Podcasts.

So the question Should the Lord's church change?

In matters of doctrine, absolutely not.

That's the no.

We need to follow the revealed will of God regardless of how our culture changes.

But in matters of opinion, traditions not stipulated by scripture, we need not to be bound by practices that make us ineffective teachers in our modern culture.

We're gonna have a gospel meeting this year. Why?

Is it the most effective use of our efforts of, of funds to try to get the gospel into the community?

No, because we've always done that.

That's what we did last year.

That's what we did the year before that.

That's what churches do, you know.

And so we just follow these traditional practices that are not mandated by scripture, that particular format of teaching.

But we do it because that's what we've always done.

And we don't need to be bound by those kinds of traditions.

Please understand, I'm not suggesting that we should stop preaching the word of God.

Someone says, preacher, you shot yourself in the foot this morning.

No, not at all.

When Paul wrote to the Romans in chapter 10 and verse 14, he said, how then will they call on him and whom they've not believed, and how are they to believe in him of whom they have not heard, and how are they to hear without someone preaching, but there's a lot of different ways.

That we can preach.

There are many ways to reach people with the word of God, and we need to take advantage of the opportunities that we have in this modern culture, in this modern society.

I'll tell you one other thing we can't change, and that is we can't change God's instructions regarding salvation.

It's the same.

You'll see changes made by various churches as they appeal to people and lower the bar so that more people will come in.

But what the Lord's looking for is people who we believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God with all their heart, who are willing to repent of their sins, confess the faith that they hold in their heart, and be baptized for the remission of sins.

Incidentally, that baptism thing, that's not very popular.

Most groups say, no, no, no, you don't need to be baptized.

And I know there are some churches of Christ that are now teaching their preachers and elders are teaching that baptism is a good thing, but it's not really necessary for salvation.

Absolutely not the truth.

And we can't change the truth.

Baptism for the remission of sins.

I appreciated the words of Jake this morning as he talked about what happens when we're baptized.

We're washed by the blood of Jesus Christ.

We're buried into the death of Jesus Christ.

Paul would write in Romans 6 verses 3-4, into our own death to sin as well.

We can't change the Lord's instructions regarding salvation.

This morning, if you need to obey the gospel, we can't change the plan, but we certainly want to encourage you to follow that plan.

Or if for some other reason, you desire the prayers of the congregation or perhaps you need to make things right publicly.

Then we want to encourage you to do those things this morning as we stand and sing to encourage you.

Series: N/A

Service: Sun PM

Type: Sermon

Speaker: Caleb Westbrook

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.)

Our scripture will be from Colossians chapter 3 verses 20 and 21.

Questions 3:20 and 21.

I'll be reading from the New King James version.

Children obey your parents in all things, for this is well pleasing to the Lord.

Fathers do not provoke your children lest they become discouraged.

Good evening to everyone.

May God bless you all.

I bring to you the greetings from the churches of Christ and Adecibo and also in San Sebastian, Puerto Rico.

For those of you who do not know me.

My name is Caleb Westbrook and for the last 7 years, my wife, Caitlin, And my boys and I have all been laboring in Puerto Rico, and you all have been a part of that work.

You all support me in that work and help make that possible.

I'm very thankful for that.

I want to start off with a reading from Philippians chapter one.

In Philippians, the first chapter, Paul's obviously writing from a difficult context, being Um, incarcerated and limited, but his affections and his fellowship are not limited at all.

And in verse 3, writing to this church that he loves very dearly, he says, I think my God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine, making requests for you all with joy for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this very thing that he who has begun a good work in you will complete complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.

Just as it is right for me to think this of you all because I have you in my heart inasmuch as both in my chains and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, you all are partakers with me of grace, for God is my witness, how greatly I long for you all with the affection of Jesus Christ.

And when I read this verse, I think about the group here at Kelly Springs Road.

And I say this not a flattery, but in truth, when people ask me about groups that support our work, I mention you all with glowing terms.

In fact, if I could say so even somewhat, I brag about you all because you all have been there with us, with Caitlin and I from the beginning of our time.

And not only that, you've sent brethren down to help us.

Um, Brother Gary and Vicky Copeland have come down more than once to aid in the preaching of the gospel.

In some of our darkest times when we were facing very difficult trials, the gauggers were sent down to help and encourage us, and not even to mention the prayers and thoughts on our behalf.

It means so much.

And I have to especially brag upon uh brother Ralph Etheridge.

He Emails me like constantly checking in and concerned about me.

And if anyone deserves to wear the title of Barnabas, son of encouragement, it's him.

And Sorry, try not to get emotional here, but It's very easy to feel isolated and alone.

And there's sometimes that just getting that email from Ralph.

It changes things.

And I wish you were here tonight, but I am, I'm thankful for him and thankful for his, his good heart and his Christ-like attitude.

And for all of you, your fellowship and the gospel means so much.

And I'm not here to give a report about the work in Puerto Rico, but the work is going well.

Thanks be to God, and I'm thankful for your fellowship in that.

If you would please turn your Bibles to Ephesians chapter 183.

We'll begin in Ephesians 6 tonight.

I'm thankful to the elders for the opportunity to present uh something from God's word, and I look forward to studying with you all this evening.

In Ephesians chapter 6, starting verse 10, toward the end of this epistle to the church of Ephesus, Paul writes, saying, Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might.

Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil, for we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.

Now, this is obviously in the famous context about the armor of God, but Paul is very clearly defining who the enemy is.

And sometimes in the fog of battle, it can be very difficult to figure out who is our enemy.

We need it clearly demarcated so that we're not engaged in friendly fire and that We know where to turn our focus and attention.

And Paul says, our battle is not against flesh and blood, but it's against evil in these wicked forces that dwell in, when he says the heavenly places, he's talking about the spiritual realm.

And this is who we really are against.

And it's very easy to kind of read this in isolation and think, oh well, maybe far off in the heavens, there is some spiritual battle that's being waged, but that really doesn't have much to do with me.

Thanks be to God, our nation has never been invaded.

We have hardly any of us have ever faced war, and thanks be to God, we have men and women who are very brave that go off and fight those battles.

But we've always thought of war as something very far away.

But I don't think that's what Paul's picturing here.

He's talking about our responsibility to get to the fight, to stand in the battle, and to be ready and prepared.

And so we need to look at our spiritual warfare, something that we are constantly engaged in.

And when we have this particular frame of a spiritual battle, we can start to go back and look at the exhortations that Paul gives to the Ephesians in slightly different form.

He's not just talking about some more moralistic suggestions.

He's giving us battle plans on how to pursue holiness and how to overcome the wiles and the strategies of the devil, our adversary that seeks to devour and destroy us like a roaring lion as we see in 1 Peter chapter 5 and verse 8.

And so, a part of this, if we go back up to the beginning of this chapter, what is the exhortation of Paul?

And I know Paul is giving this new Christian culture of how to live in the family as a member of Christ and how to follow God's pattern for the family.

He says in this text, Children, obey your parents and the Lord, for this is right.

Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with a promise.

So that it may be well with you, for you, and that you may live long on the earth.

Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

In the context of battle, we need to understand that Paul's not saying, oh, the battle is in some far off field.

It can even take place in our home.

And I would dare say that there are significant consequences of this spiritual battle in our own home.

No one wants to have a war in their home, but whether we like it or not, This is the area in today and has been since the beginning of the family, where Satan seeks to destroy and dismember, and to sow his seeds of chaos.

And so we need to understand that the exhortations for how we live in holiness towards our family are vitally important for not only our welfare as a church, And as individuals, but spiritually, in terms of the victory that we are seeking to achieve for ourselves and our family and following in the holiness of Christ, this is absolutely critical.

Paul, in a parallel text in Cassians 3 that was read, said, Children, obey your parents in everything, for this is pleasing the Lord.

Fathers, do not antagonize your children.

So they will not become discouraged.

And this evening in the time that we have allotted together, I would like to discuss this aspect of the battle for the home.

What are we facing?

What are we fighting?

Who do we need to look out for and what are our responsibilities as we put on the armor of Christ in application to those whom we live with day in and day out and whom we love most dearly.

It's very difficult to talk about these two things, the hearth and the battlefield at the same time.

We want to keep those things as far as possible in, in opposition.

We don't want the battle to be in our home.

But whether we like it or not, Satan has brought the battle to our houses, to our homes, the hearts and minds of our children.

And we need to be prepared and ready to fight the good fight on that front.

And that's what we're going to investigate and reflect upon further this evening.

First, I'd like to try to frame this concept of what Paul is talking about here when he encourages fathers to bring up children in the disciplined and instruction of the Lord as the new American standard says.

We need to understand that discipline is, has everything to do with battle.

We understand troops, they, when they are going to go off for battle, they don't just get off the couch one day from playing video games and then get deployed on the battle line.

They have to go to basic training.

They have to get prepared, they have to become disciplined.

And this idea of discipline is something that is trained.

But sadly, in our day and age, we hear discipline and immediately our minds run to something negative.

It has a negative connotation.

Oh, I'm gonna be punished.

But that's not the biblical concept of discipline.

It's more of training and a regimented exercise that is being done.

And this is just Normal for those who are engaged in military training or those who are also training for athletics or competition, you have to make sacrifices, you have to develop habits, you have to develop a discipline for your life, so that you will be prepared when the difficult times come.

Years ago, when I was preaching in McKinney, Texas, Caitlin and I had the blessing to attend a parenting class that was hosted by um the McCollum family.

And uh uh his name is now just escaping me, Charlie.

Charlie and Uh, Deb McCollum, and Charlie was presenting a class.

He's an elder uh there in the North Dallas area.

And he talked, he mentioned a very interesting concept that's always stuck with me.

He says, if you are a parent, you are given a divine commission to battle and wage war for the hearts of your children.

And that really stuck with me.

That discipline, this whole issue of what Paul's talking about is a battle for our children's heart to raise them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, as the new, as the King James version says.

What does that even mean?

Oftentimes, we can read a biblical text very quickly and think, oh yeah, I understand what that means, but we We need to really meditate on it.

We need to try to understand how that works out in the nuts and bolts, so to speak, in our lives.

How is that going to be actualized in my life, to raise my children, to protect my home, to have this idea of discipline in a regiment regimented form, what will that look like?

Well, there's a lot of consequence writing on this important discussion.

And the Bible is filled with admonitions and wisdom for parents.

And obviously, we're not gonna go through every single verse about that.

But to show the importance of this and the need of it, just start. off.

Because if you're listening to this, you might think, OK, well, here's another sermon on parenting.

We know what the Bible says, nurture and admonition of the Lord, yada yada.

Take them to church, get him a Bible class.

We're good to go.

No, there's so much more than that.

And there is Without sounding sounding too hyperbolic, there is cosmic importance on the way that we choose to order and organize and regiment our families in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Why?

Why is it so important?

And I'm not just talking to parents, I'm talking to grandparents, I'm talking to elders, I'm talking to deacons, to those who are evangelists and ministers.

Everyone is affected by parenting.

Not only in just now, but also in the future.

This is of existential importance.

And Psalm 103:13 says, as a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.

There's a connection, and there's not An accident at all.

It's not a uh a casualty, sorry.

In Spanish it is cosidad.

I'm sorry.

I still am thinking Spanish brain here.

You might have to help me disconnect.

Please be patient with me.

It's not just random or an accident that There's this comparison between God the Father, and he uses this discussion of the Father or description of the Father to relate to us.

And we see here that God has paternal characteristics, and those are not just merely accidental.

But what we're going to understand is that the way that parents raise their children has a direct impact on the concept of that child or the child's concept in their formation of who God is in the order of the world and system in which we live in.

It says in Proverbs chapter 13 verses 13 to 14, do not withhold discipline from a child.

If you strike him with a rod, he will not die.

If you strike him with a rod, you will save his soul from shield.

This is a matter of life or death.

It is that important.

And when you are organizing your family, father and mother, and you are disciplining your children, you are teaching them something implicitly about who God is and how God is going to relate to his people.

So we have, I believe, a divine responsibility to reflect in our families, the nature of God and who he is and how he relates to us.

There's the old kind of cliche of what would Jesus do?

And yes, that's what we need to ask as parents.

How does God want me to reflect holiness in the way I organize, discipline, and instruct my family.

This is vitally important.

Because if we parent in a very libertine fashion, that we have no rules, no restrictions, we just want to be buddy buddy.

There's no consequences whatsoever.

What are our children going to think about God?

Oh, God's just the same way.

Grace is cheap and I can do whatever I want.

There's no consequence.

Really, I'm at the center of the universe.

We know people like that.

Or on the other end of the extreme, that God is just waiting for me to make a mistake.

He, he is exasperating.

He is so strict.

He wants me to fall and he sets these unreasonable expectations.

And we know, sadly, parents who are like that.

And we should avoid either extreme, but try to reflect the biblical characteristic and nature of God and recognize the way that we parent, or the way that you grandparent or the way that you teach about parenting.

Has this impact.

It has a constituent that is, it forms our worldview around us in that from the earliest ages, even before we can talk, we are starting to be impressed by our parents.

And this is an important responsibility for each one of us to recognize.

So when considering the concept of discipline as training, we've already clarified that it's not a negative thing, although there are aspects in the Bible that talk about discipline in a corrective form.

And correction is a very important aspect of discipline that should be noted.

If the child deviates from the proper pattern of what God would have them do or what the parents have decided within biblical constraints, then that child needs to be corrected and brought back to the proper path.

In Proverbs chapter 13 verse 24, it says, whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him.

Now, today, obviously, to speak about the rod in children is very, uh, very unpopular, not politically correct, as some would say.

But when we're talking about the rod, we're not talking about an abusive parents in that.

The Bible condemns abuse.

The Bible condemns antagonizing your children.

But corrective discipline that is seeking the well-being of that child to help them go in the right direction, is important.

And we understand this on very basic terms.

I don't like flying in airplanes at all, but I have to.

From Puerto Rico back here and other places, right?

We go, I have to get on an airplane.

And thankfully, there's navigation systems and pilots who know what they're doing.

But if the pilot just started to deviate off course and the navigation system fails, and he's going instead of going north from Puerto Rico towards Florida, he heads out into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

I'm gonna have a problem.

And I would hope the co-pilot or somebody would be like, nope, you got to go on the right course because taking a course that is a wrong course can lead to death.

And that's what we're talking about delivering souls from SHIELD as we read in the previous text.

And that's what we have to understand.

That correction is not something that we necessarily like or enjoy.

We're not sadistic in this form, but we are seeking the well-being of the child, and discipline has that form of correction.

I practice karate a little bit with my sons, and we attend that, we go to a, a dojo to practice karate and all this kind of stuff with the martial arts.

And I'm not very good.

I'll throw a punch or throw a kick, and the instructor always has to say, no, no, no, Caleb, not like that, do it this way.

There's correction involved.

He doesn't just lead me to my own devices, which would lead to anarchy and just a mess.

He has to show me the proper way.

And that leads to the second part of discipline.

That is instructive.

What is the proper model?

What is the proper form that we need to be engaged in?

An instructive discipline.

is showing by example and also by teaching the way that we should go.

Proverbs 22:6 reflects this idea of a positive, instructive form of discipline saying train up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old, he will not depart from it.

So we need to give them a positive model, and we'll build on this in just a little bit more.

But putting these two concepts together, biblical discipline is both corrective when the child or the family goes astray, and it is also instructive, showing them the proper way to go.

If this sounds familiar, it should, because this is exactly what the New Testament, Christ and the apostles are teaching for the church.

The church as a family has to operate in the same form.

You'll have a sign out here that says, we are family.

And the church operates in the same form.

If I was a member of this congregation, but I decided to go off and just live in vice and live in sin, the elders would have to have a corrective meeting with me and say, Caleb, you're not supposed to go that way.

But in the teaching, in the classes, and the sermons that are brought here and in personal studies, there is instruction of saying, this is the way you should go.

And you all are blessed to have a wonderful eldership.

And elders are examples to the flock, showing these are the footsteps that you can follow.

And this is the way to actually go and embody these teachings.

And this is what the Bible is urging us to.

And yes, a congregational level, but also on a smaller level.

It is fractal in a form.

There are Different levels on which this exists.

It exists on the congregational level, but it's also mirrored in the family unit as well.

So we see in texts like Proverbs 29:17 said, discipline your son, and he will give you rest.

He will give delight to your heart.

So, as we see in texts like Hebrews chapter 12, no one likes discipline.

It's unpleasant for the moment, but afterwards, it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness.

It will give delight to your heart.

That's just a universal truth that we live in.

Things in the moment that are really valuable are difficult to do.

And today, um, talking with a brother and last night as well, a different brother.

I was talking about the importance of long-term investment.

And I said, imagine if I came to you and said, give me apples, produce your own apples.

Could you do that?

I doubt it, unless maybe you've already planted an orchard.

But if you were to go and plant your own apples, you can't just put them in the ground one day and then the next day expect them.

And it's gonna be a lot of work.

You're gonna have to sacrifice.

Buy the trees, prepare the land, get everything ready to plant the orchard, to get that peaceable fruit of righteousness in some sense.

The same thing with raising a family and disciplining a family.

This is not an overnight decision.

This is a long-term investment.

But as Proverbs demonstrates, This is something that will give delight to our heart, even though it's gonna be difficult to go and follow through with the corrective and then the instructive and say, ah, once again, we're having to do this.

It is a work that is of the utmost importance as we've already established.

Further, when we talk about discipline, I, I wanna make sure that we understand that discipline, while it is related to children and the family unit as a whole, it has to first start with me.

The famous text that is oftentimes cited is found in Deuteronomy chapter 33.

This text is very well known, and we're gonna look at this briefly here.

In Deuteronomy chapter 6, Obviously the children of Israel have received the law of Mount Sinai.

They prepared the tabernacle.

They have gone through the Levitical purifications.

They've started everything, and they've gone through the wilderness.

They're worshiping God.

They've had their ups and downs, and now Moses is going to be giving them the law for the 2nd time in the Book of Deuteronomy because he is about to depart.

And we see towards the beginning of Deuteronomy, this great emphasis on teaching and preparation.

But let's start in this text and Deuteronomy chapter 6, and we're in verse 4, it says, here is, The Lord is our God, the Lord is one, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength.

These words which I'm commanding you today shall be on your heart, and you shall repeat.

The diligently to your sons and speak of them when you sit in your house and when you walk on the road and when you lie down, and when you get up, you shall also tie them as a sign to your hand, and they shall be as frontlets on your forehead, and you shall also write them on the doorpost of your house and in your gates.

So often when we speak about this text, we emphasize the importance of repetition of teaching our children, and that's absolutely part of that discipline, that training, that regimented life and emphasis one time after another in practice.

But before we get to that, what do we start off with in this text?

God is one, and you must love him with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.

You need to dedicate yourself to God first.

That is where the found, that is where the source of this discipline towards your family is gonna come from.

Because if you are not dedicated to God, if you are not disciplining yourself towards righteousness, and then you try to tell your children, you guys need to follow God, it's just gonna be hypocrisy.

It's not going to work.

They're going to follow your heart.

They're going to follow your example.

And the things that they received in the wall, the things that they were supposed to write on their hearts, and have in their hearts, as we see in verse 6, out of that is what they are supposed to speak diligently.

And yes, have them as signs on their hands and frontlets, and many preachers have noted, this is not to be taken today as some literal form.

But what is the emphasis here?

He's saying these things need to be all around you.

They need to sur uh surround your life.

You need to pay attention to them.

Oftentimes this escapes our recognition or realization, but the things that we value in life, we put up around us.

Why do you all have the sign We Are Family?

Because it's drawing attention to that.

It's calling your focus to attend to this important thing.

And people have pictures of family and various things around their house.

And the things that we hang up and literally are forming an exaltation of those in an, in some way, we're raising them up, not in an idolater way, hopefully.

We're saying we need to attend to these things.

And so, what God is saying, bring the word of God, bring the things that are on your heart, the fact that I am one God and you need to serve me with all of your being, that needs to be the thing that is the focus all around you and for your children, you need to teach them that.

The attention is going to define the direction in which they head.

And we understand this about attention in a very obvious means.

I can't walk somewhere I'm not facing.

I can't see something, all, everybody over here, I'm not looking at you.

I can't see you.

And it's dangerous to walk in a place that you can't see.

You have to attend and you have to focus on something.

And God is saying, focus on me and teach your children, teach your family to follow that focus.

It is absolutely critical.

And the Bible talks a lot about attention.

We're not going to go all into depth about the biblical teaching on attention, but I do want to note something very important because many times as parents we can get wrapped up into the daily grind and and all the pull from society, we can get.

Focus on things with work, on things with entertainment, on social, uh, recreation, on relationships, and all this thing that pulls our attentions in every which way.

Not to mention even things like social media or other entertainments that want our attention constantly.

But the Bible warns us in many ways to guard our hearts.

Proverbs 4:23.

Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life.

And the idea of the heart there is what's coming into our mind, our interior, our spirit, and how do we know what's coming in?

What's what we're focused on.

And the issue with focus and a and a misadjusted focus is that we actually form ourselves based upon what we focus on.

In Psalm chapter 115 verses 4 and 3 says, their idols, speaking of the pagans and their idolatry, their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands.

Those who make them will become like them, everyone who trust in them.

There is a form in which if I am so focused on something, I will become like that.

This is the idea of a role model or an idol, as we sometimes talk about in the world around us.

We look at someone or something, and we become imitators of that very thing.

And what God's calling the Israelites to do in Deuteronomy chapter 6 is to become imitators of God with all of our being, and then teach our children to follow our example of being an imitator of God.

And thus there can have a continued chain of the knowledge of God, instruction in his discipline and his admonition, and thus we can form a legacy of righteousness.

But what are we focusing on in our life?

Have you ever stopped and tried to ask yourself that question?

What do my children see in my life as my number one focus?

What do I get excited about?

What are the things that I celebrate and I put forth?

Do they see me just focused on work the whole time?

Do they see me just enamored with sports and things of the world, or social media or games or fill in the blank?

Is that what lights up my spirit?

Because here's the thing, you can say to your children, our focus is God.

We go to church on Sundays, we go to Bible study on Wednesday.

That's the most important thing in our lives.

But if they see you just dragging yourself to church, you're not excited about the work.

If the elders ask you to do something, you're like, oh man, I don't wanna do this.

If spirituality and religion and following the path of Christ is drudgery to you.

And you're saying out of one side of your mouth, no, the most important thing in my life is Christ is Jehovah, but yet your children see a different passion in you.

What do you expect them to follow?

They understand there's a divided attention.

And as Jesus says in Matthew chapter 6, we cannot serve two masters.

Divided attentions do not work.

Your house will fall under that division.

And many times we continue to sow to the flesh around us.

We sow to the things of this world.

We take our children to sports and make sure they're at every practice.

We make sure that they got their studies for school and they're getting straight A's.

We make sure they get into the best universities and they follow the best career path, and yet, where are they spiritually?

Recently, Caitlin and I sat down with a young person who just is looking at the various options in their life and what they wanna do.

And, and when you're young, the world is like your oyster.

It's just open to you with a manifold possibilities.

And this person was talking about what school they wanted to go to, what career path they wanted to go.

And I asked the question, I said, what are your spiritual goals?

And this person looked at Caitlin and I blankly.

It's like, what?

What do you mean spiritual goals?

And we have to bring out this concept.

It's like, well, if you sow to the flesh, what do you expect to reap?

And I love using this illustration in Puerto Rico because we have plantains and I've seen around here in North Alabama, there's actually some bananas.

I don't know if they produce here in North Alabama, but I kind of feel like a little bit more of like a kinship with North Alabama and Puerto Rico cause the banana plants, we have tons of them down there.

I say, look, if I plant tomatoes, but I want to receive to uh tomatoes, I'm gonna get them if I'm gonna plant tomatoes.

But if I plant banana trees, And I'm hoping to get tomatoes, people would call me crazy if I go out there looking for tomatoes on my, my banana trees.

So you're insane, Caleb, because we know this is a universal rule.

Paul says this in Galatians chapter 6, verses 255 through 23, Do not be deceived.

God is not mocked.

Why does he say that?

He's trying to wake him up.

say we can try to do mental gymnastics.

We can deceive ourselves, and we can try to game the system thinking we can go and sow whatever oats we want, but we're gonna reap something else.

We're gonna reap the good spiritual things while we have sown to the flesh.

Paul says, do not be deceived.

You can't pull one over on God.

God is not mocked.

For whatever a person sows, this, he will also reap.

For one who sows to his own flesh will reap destruction from the flesh, but one who sows to the Spirit will reap eternal life from the Spirit.

This is true in a general sense.

It's true in agriculture.

It's true in investments.

It's in true all over the place.

It's true with our families.

What we sow or what we call their attention to come to is what the is the path they're going to go on is the fruit that we are going to reap.

So we have to ask ourselves the hard questions.

Well, what are we really focusing on?

What is our focus with our family?

And let's not be deceived, brethren.

Let's take an honest assessment.

How do we know what we're focusing on?

Well, what do we put up around ourselves?

Where do we spend our time?

Where do we spend our money?

What ignites our excitement and our passion?

People should be able to look at us and say, that is at the heart of this person.

That is what drives him, that's what his focus is.

And our children see this.

They see it all around.

And you know, it's very easy to deceive other people in the world.

It's very easy to come to church and present, you know, a really good righteous kind of form and viewpoint for a couple of minutes, you know, or a couple hours every week, but then go back and just disconnect and live a fractured and fragmented life.

But you can't deceive your kids.

Your kids spend time with you all the time.

They know in and out, what is the number one important thing in mom and dad's or grandma and grandpa's life.

It's so important to stop and ask ourselves, what really is our focus.

And then following back to this concept of discipline, well, what is the plan for my focus?

How do I generate a focus?

Because many times we just have focuses, and we don't even pay attention to, wow, I'm actually investing in this.

I'm spending all this time at work or I'm spending all this time in recreation, I'm spending all this time with my friends in the world, and I'm not stopping and thinking, hmm.

I don't understand why my children don't have the focus that I want them to have.

That is God.

They have a different focus.

Well, maybe it's because they're following your focus and attention.

I don't know if you've noticed this with phones, but it's really interesting.

One of the things you can do with a little kid, like a kid that's 215 years old, 218 to 21 years old, one of the, the biggest things that they want to do is when they see an adult looking at a telephone, the kid wants to see.

And you want to get on the kid's good side, just show them what you're looking at on the phone.

They're gonna, oh wow, this is awesome.

This is so good.

I, I want to see this, right?

And why are, why is the kids so obsessed with seeing what's on the phone?

Because they're following the adult's attention.

The adult is locked in on the phone, and if that's where the adults are looking, well, that's where they should be looking and that is capturing the attention of the adults so much, then that also should merit my attention too, right?

Well, Do we actually think about that?

Do we have a plan for where our instruction is actually going?

And does our instruction actually follow up with our focus?

Have we established patterns or traditions on a family level to emphasize the proper focus?

And it can be easy to say, yes, I want my focus to be God, but unless you're actually taking time out of your day, Unless you're setting aside and making this time focus on God, then it's not gonna just happen.

You read Deuteronomy 23, what we read, and you do not see this casual, oh well, if I have time at the end of my day, then I'll teach my children about God.

No, it first is, I'm gonna set this time aside.

This is going to be dedicated to the Lord.

Have you actually developed the time for that?

Or is it more like, well, I got Sunday, I got Wednesday, and if I have any other time of the week, then yeah, we'll kind of jam that in.

Or is it become something that is a part of my discipline, my habit, my tradition?

And are you reading your Bible every day with your child?

This is something that can be difficult.

I understand, but reading the Bible needs to be a part of our Christian walk.

It needs to be something we're absorbed on, it needs to be something we're passionate about, that we love talking about God's word with other people.

Because if our children do not see us engaged in that action, how can we hope that they are going to develop that in their own lives?

And I don't mean this to sound condescending, but if you're not reading or talking about the Bible with your children, What are you doing?

No, like, literally, what are you doing?

Are you talking with them about school?

Are you talking with them about politics, about sports, about what?

I don't know.

But if you're not filling their lives with God first and foremost, stop and ask yourself, what am I doing?

And I understand, life comes at us fast.

It's tough.

You don't know how to be a parent when you become a parent, but we have wisdom in God's word to teach us this.

We have the example of faithful Christians who've gone before us.

We need to be intentional and disciplined in the way we do this.

And we need to make the Bible a part of our children's daily lives, because it should already be a part of our daily lives.

And if it's not, May God have patience, as he calls us to repentance on that.

Do we emphasize in our families, the things that truly matter?

It's so easy to get distracted by other things.

It's so easy to us, and we get together with our families to either focus on the football games or, or the turkey or the food or going to the amusement park or going to the lake, or whatever the case may be, whatever our family ritual is, do we truly have God at the center of that?

What does that look like?

Those are some difficult things that we have to engage with and really come to solid answers and asking ourselves, is the way that we are living with our children, with our family, with our grandparents and everybody, is this really putting God at the center of everything?

And we can ask ourselves a very hard question, an uncomfortable question, but oftentimes the uncomfortable questions are the ones that we absolutely need to ask ourselves.

If my children grow up to be exactly like me.

Is that good?

Would I be pleased?

Would it be good for the kingdom?

If they were like me.

Or would they be lukewarm Christians if they were just like me.

I think most parents deep down and grandparents have a desire to see their children exceed them in every way.

And our society has done a very good job of like emphasizing a succession and a progression in a material form.

But we need this legacy to be established in a spiritual progression.

We need them to be better Christians than we are for the sake of the church, and we are at a very difficult crossroads in our history right now.

I was talking with an elder in in Northeast Tennessee last week.

And he said, I feel like your generation, Caleb, is one of the first generations where they are going to look at their children and say, our children will have it worse off than us.

And he wasn't talking.

About the material things or buying coffee at Starbucks or ordering things online.

He was talking about the spiritual um situation in our country, in our society.

And he said, we took for granted so much prosperity and so much just general respect for God growing up, and we need to realize and wake up that that's not gonna be the case.

And so if we recognize changes in our society and things are not getting better, It's even of greater importance.

It's so paramount that we train our children.

And I've told other Christians, we need to prepare our children for persecution.

Because if that comes, and I think it's more of a when than an if question, if we do not prepare them for these things and show them in our lives, an example Of Christ and sacrifice and dedication and unwavering faith, how can we expect them to continue on?

We will be unfaithful to the generations in future if we do not discipline ourselves first and then instill in them the discipline that will help them to resist and to be faithful amid those trials.

I'm not trying to be chicken little and say the sky is falling or doom is coming upon us.

But these things are going to affect the future of this congregation and our brotherhood.

We should be living our lives and calling our children to follow in our footsteps.

You know, oftentimes when we read Paul in 13 Corinthians 21:27, where he says, be imitators of me as I imitate Christ Jesus, our Lord, we think, well, yeah, that's because Paul was an apostle.

And yeah, sure, there's aspects of his apostleship, but also Paul was just dedicated.

He was all in.

There was no divided attention with Paul.

There was no part in the world, part out of the world.

And so he could call people to say, follow me as I follow Christ.

And that's what we need to do with our children and our families.

Fathers, we need to step up and say, follow me as I follow Christ.

I should live my life in a way that if my sons become just like me, the church is gonna be stronger.

They're going to be godly leaders.

They need to see that in me.

They need to see that in you as parents and grandparents, we all must improve on this.

But this takes preparation, as I've already said.

This is something that we have to be ready for.

In Deuteronomy chapter 29, after we see this invocation of the Lord, he's telling them to instruct them.

He tells them, and he gives them some hypothetical cases.

He says later in verse 20 when your son asked you in time to come, saying, what do the provisions and the statutes and the judgments mean, which the Lord our God commanded you.

And God tells them, you need to answer your children.

But That's not how many people handle the situation.

One of the saddest.

situations I've ever had serving as an evangelist.

Years ago, I had a young person come up and they asked me, I said, I have a question about the nature of God.

I said, OK. Have you talked with your parents about this?

And they said, yes, but they didn't know the answer.

I said, OK. And what did they say?

They said, well, they just told me to come talk to you.

It broke my heart.

Where's the parent?

Now, I understand, as parents, we might have limited knowledge.

I don't know everything.

There are times where I might say, Abraham, my oldest son might ask me a question.

I might have to say, look, I don't know.

Let's go talk to brother Alan.

Let's go talk to Brother Gary or one of the elders.

Let's talk to somebody that may have more knowledge on this.

But I'm gonna go with you cause I don't know either.

And I wanna know.

That's a totally different thing.

Just be like, ah, go talk to a religious leader.

Go talk to the, the, the elder or go talk to the evangelist.

No, I have to take a personal responsibility.

It is my responsibility, not the minister, not the elder, not a deacon.

It is my responsibility to answer my child and to share the faith that I have with them.

That's what God expected out of the Israelites.

But we see sadly, that's not what happened.

And after the time of Moses and the, the generation that came after that, the generation of Joshua, we see that after that generation, There was a failure of communication and a failure of this transition of one generation to another.

It says in Judges chapter 2 and verse 10, all that generation talking about Joshua's generation, all that generation also were gathered to their fathers, and another generation rose up after them who did not know the Lord, or even the work which he had done for Israel.

You have these generations that know God are faithful, but then if they're not instilling that in the future generations, Then you can lose so much progress.

This is a situation that we have in Puerto Rico.

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, the many brethren were converted.

And that's what I call like the first generation of the Puerto Ricans, those who are around in those times.

But now they're older, they're getting into their 60s and 73s, some even in their 80s.

But there's many of them.

But then where's the next generation?

Sadly, all those who were first converted, they didn't teach their children.

They didn't discipline their children in godliness.

And you have a huge demographic just whole and chasm in Puerto Rico.

From the ages of 30 all the way up to about 50, 55, there are hardly any Christians at all.

And then when you have a falling demographic like that, what happens?

There's nobody after that.

And sadly, some important um churches in Puerto Rico, they're going around saying, the church is dying.

They're actually literally having a gospel meeting series called the Church is dying.

And I'm like, what are you doing?

Do you want a self-fulfilling prophecy?

Because that's how you get it.

Not talking about discipline, not talking about instructing, which no one there wants to talk about.

That's uncomfortable, but we're just gonna go and decry the failures of what's happened or the effects.

No, get out and work.

Go and train.

And what happens when you have a generation that arises that does not know God?

The book of Judges shows us dark days are ahead.

And in those dark times, we need faithful Christians to go and sow the seeds of future hope.

We need people who are going to stand up against the darkness, like Ruth and Boaz, and so and hope and discipline for righteousness.

So that times of rejuvenation, restoration will come in the future.

We cannot have a defeatist attitude.

Preparation as a parent, as grandparents, demands that we have a posture of hope and that we invite those around us to engage in this as well.

And oftentimes we hear in terms of apologetics and discussions with those who are outside.

First Peter 3:15 quoted, but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, but with gentleness and respect.

If you're like me and you're first kind of encountering that verse, you're like, yes, I'm gonna be prepared.

I'm gonna have the text ready.

And if some person in the world comes and asks me about baptism, or if I'm in a, in a lecture hall at the university and someone's denying God, I'm gonna be able to stand up and give an offense, very romantic, grandiose notions.

It sure maybe that time may come.

But this defense comes in a more mundane, ordinary, but yet glorious way.

It comes when your children see you reading the Bible.

They hear you discussing things with your parents or your siblings or someone else about the things that are most important in life.

When your child asks you about the ordinances and the meanings of service and worship and everything about this great walk and adventure in Christ, that you can tell them and testify to them of the greatness of God.

You will be prepared.

That's what God calls you to.

Yes, this verse applies to people who are outside, but it also applies to our families, and we must prepare ourselves.

And I'll say that this is a lifelong endeavor.

This is not just something you do when your kids are at your house.

This is a continued walk because discipline doesn't just end when your child turns 18.

Your children will continue to have an effect on you and you will have an effect on them.

And sadly, we see bad examples like the priest Eli in 1 Samuel chapter 3, where God speaking to Samuel says, for I have told him, Eli.

That I am going to judge his house forever for the wrongdoing that he knew because his sons were bringing a curse on themselves, and he did not rebuke them.

Oh well, they're already adults.

They make their own decisions.

Yeah, but Eli, he had a responsibility and he didn't discipline.

He didn't offer that corrective discipline when it is needed.

And we see a contrast with Eli, who wanted to excuse himself from this work of preparation and discipline versus Hannah in previous chapters.

She dedicated.

She literally gave up her first son, Samuel, to the Lord, dedicated him almost as like a Nazarite to the service of the priest.

And we also see Joshua dedicated ating his household.

It says in Joshua 24, the very famous verse, but it is, but if it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve.

Whether the gods which your father served, which were beyond the Euphrates River or the gods of the Amorites and whose land you are living.

But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

Powerful words.

And sometimes when you enter into Christian's house, you'll see that moniker or that phrase up there, right?

plastered somewhere on a sign.

As for me and for my house, we will serve the Lord. Wow.

What tremendous powerful words that just hit us in our interior.

But are we actually living those out day by day?

Is that something that is visibly seen in the way that we conduct our lives?

And are we preparing for that?

So that even Joshua at the end of his life, could say, my house will serve the Lord.

Eli couldn't say that because he had given up.

It's tough.

It's not easy to be a parent.

It's not easy to be a grandparent.

These things are not the easy path, which is one of the reasons why you see less and less people having children, because it's a sacrifice to have children.

It's a lifelong sacrifice and someone hearing that might say, oh, that sounds terrible.

But is there greater joy?

than to see your children learning about God and beginning to take the steps to walk in that path.

And for those who are even older, to see your children, then bringing forth the delight of the fruit of righteousness.

That is what we're working for.

We're working for the kingdom.

And mothers that are training their children, fathers that are leading their households.

You are engaged in a cosmic battle for the heart of your family, the hearts of your children, and for generations to come.

Well, the world wants to look at that with disdain and say, uh, you're a homekeeper.

You're just a father.

We need to exalt that profession and recognize Satan wants to diminish this.

It's all part of his strategy, but we will not be overcome by the wiles of the devil, but we will be strong and courageous, ready to do battle, equipped by the power of the Spirit in His word, ready to take every thought captive in our domain.

That is what we're fighting for.

And I wanna leave you with this great expectation because maybe as you're thinking about this and thinking about your life, thinking, you know what, maybe I have not been the parent and the father I need to be.

And I know I have not.

There are still many areas you could look at my life and say, Caleb, yeah, you're preaching this, but you fail on this, this and this, you're right.

But the answer is not to ignore the standard.

The answer is not to say, well, I'm OK and justify myself.

No, the answer is a call to repentance, and a call to further faithfulness and holiness in that.

And that may seem overwhelming right now.

Every battle seems overwhelming.

As I oftentimes told my boys, and as many have taught me in the past, that when you are engaged in a conflict, The brave ones in the conflict and the ones who rise to the occasion are not the ones who have no fear.

If you have no fear coming up to a conflict, you might be a sociopath or a psychopath.

Everyone feels fear, trepidation.

But it's those who overcome.

And by God's truth and by His grace, we are overcomers.

We are ones who had the victory, but we have to do the work of the battle.

We have to go out and fight the good fight for Christ and for our families.

God's exhortation to Joshua and Joshua 1:7 through 9 is, only be strong and very courageous.

Be careful to do according to all the law which Moses, my servant, commanded you.

Do not turn from it to the right or to the left so that you may achieve success wherever you go.

This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do all according to According to all that is written in it, for then you will make your way uh prosperous, and then you will achieve success.

Have I not commanded you?

Be strong and courageous.

Do not be terrified or nor dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.

And in this great battle for the home, God will be with us.

God will give us strength and God will give us success.

And success is not necessarily that your children will be faithful because they have their own free will.

Success is sowing the seed of the kingdom and doing what God has called us to do, to lead the proper life and example.

And God will give the increase.

And it may be even if our children reject us, that our example can serve to help aid others, and that then we can help warn others, but we have to be intentional and dedicated in this work.

We have to be prepared.

If you're struggling with this, if you are a parent or maybe thinking of getting married or being a parent, or if you already are, or maybe you are a grandparent and you've gone through this, and you recognize areas in your life where you need to improve and you need help in this.

I know the elders here would love to sit down and talk with you.

There's so many resources, but you have to be humble enough to seek that, and you have to be courageous enough to make the corrections necessary.

And I pray that you will.

I know that this lesson hasn't necessarily been one to call people to the gospel, but the gospel is very integral to this concept of the discipline and nurture of the Lord.

Christ calls us to discipline ourselves toward godliness, to become partakers in His holiness, and that's what all this is about, is seeking God in his nature and becoming like Him.

And if you are not a Christian this evening, then you're living outside in darkness.

You're living in anarchy.

You are living an undisciplined life that only brings forth death and darkness.

Christ calls you by His grace and His truth, to come and be obedient.

And if there's any way that we can help you this evening, make your life right before God and help you live a disciplined life before the Lord, please let us know as we come and sing the song of invitation.