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.)

like to open your Bibles the reading would be Colossians 63 through 15.

I'll be reading from the New American Standard version.

Therefore, if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.

Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth.

For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ and God.

When Christ who is in our life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.

Therefore, consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry.

For it is because of these things that the wrath of God will come upon the sons of disobedience.

And in them you also once walked when you were living in them.

But now you also put them all aside anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth.

Do not lie to one another since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices.

And have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the one who created him.

A renewal in which there is no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and freeman, but Christ is all and in all.

So as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving each other.

Whoever has a complaint against anyone just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you.

Beyond all these things put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity.

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts to which indeed you were called in one body and be thankful.

Are you a prepper?

I think probably everybody is familiar with that term.

A prepper is an individual who makes preparations to deal with emergencies, and those emergencies could be national natural disasters, could be such things as an EMP attack, an electromagnetic pulse attack.

Uh, from other countries, civil disorder, even the disruption, temporary or long term of essential services like electricity and, and water.

And those preparations, those that preppers make, might involve the stockpiling of food and fuel, uh, might include learning first aid skills, uh, developing a wide range of survival skills, any of those things, all of those things are.

Uh, often pursued by preppers.

All of you have probably heard of to go bags.

Yeah, that's not the food that you couldn't eat when you're leaving the restaurant.

It's the go bag, it's the.

Uh, bag that contains all the essentials that a person would need for 72 hours of survival.

That's typically the time period that is used to talk about that.

The only thing I have exception with in this go bag picture, which you can purchase at blah blah blah, is that it doesn't include mac and cheese.

And my granddaughter Aurora will tell you that mac and cheese is absolutely essential for survival.

And so if you've got to go bag or a bug out bag as they're sometimes called, you need to make sure there's some mac and cheese in there.

Forget the paracord, make sure the mac and cheese is in there.

Well, when you talk about preppers, there's a pretty broad spectrum of individuals or levels of preparation, maybe I should say that would be described as preparedness or preppers.

There are some who are considered themselves to be preppers because they're ready for some specific emergency.

I've kept back some money in case I lose my job or.

Uh, Perhaps they've got a generator in order to take care of some power if you have a temporary power outage all the way to the other end of the spectrum where people are building underground concrete structures.

And have enough supplies for the next nuclear winter, which could last for years.

And so there's kind of a wide range of people who would perhaps be considered survivalists or preppers.

How many of you have seen the television show Doomsday Preppers?

Raise your hands.

Come on, bring them up.

Not many of you Not many of you Neither have I. Because I think that was kind of the, the far extreme from what I saw of it in the advertisements and that sort of thing.

But that's kind of the idea that people have about preppers.

They're these extremist fanatics who are constantly waiting for the apocalypse or some other sort of disaster that's going to give them the opportunity to use all that stuff that they've been stockpiling for years.

Well, We look at preppers sometimes that way is an extreme thing, but.

In about 15 years ago, only about 6% of the United States population considered themselves preppers.

What do you think the percentage is now?

It's about 1/3 of the adult population.

About a third of the US population would refer to themselves or consider themselves as preppers.

Now, like I said, that's a pretty broad range, and their preparation may be that they've stocked macaroni and cheese enough for 72 hours, and they consider themselves preppers, but this has become a much more widespread movement, this idea of prepper.

The level of preparedness that a prepper pursues, say that several times fast, is determined by several factors.

Uh, one of them is what kind of emergency are you anticipating.

If all you're trying to prepare for is if the power goes out for a couple of hours, then buy some candles and you stack them maybe in different rooms and you're ready to go.

On the other hand, if you're looking at the possibility of nuclear war, you better get the concrete shelter out lined with lead and all of that sort of thing.

And so what you're preparing for will determine to some extent the level of preparations that you make.

An electromagnetic pulse.

Would fry a lot of electronics and would essentially turn our society back into pioneer days conditions and that could last for months, maybe years, in which case we're all going to be envious of the Amish because they've got horses and buggies and all of our cars will sit in the driveway and rust because they don't work anymore, at least the newer ones won't.

An ice storm or a tornado can cause a lot of damage, but we usually don't think of that as long term damage.

And so again, the preparations that we would make would be determined by that.

In 2011, a tornado, actually several, came through this area and through the Birmingham area.

And there was extensive damage.

Debbie and I and at that time John and John, Mary was already deceased, but John, we lost power for about 9 days, which was a minor inconvenience all things considered in terms of the damage that was done in other places.

But another thing that determines how people prep is what kind of assets they have available for that.

How much money can you put into stockpiling?

Can you build your own concrete bunker, or is that outside of your budget?

How much time and space do you have in your home?

You may have a little place where you've got some canned foods that you can use if, if there's some sort of breakdown in social order, but you may not have a large area that you can stockpile food for several years for a family.

And so those are some of the things that we think about, and I want to talk to you this morning about the prepper's hole.

I want to talk about the mindset of the prepper, but I want to apply it to our families.

And so in doing that, I'm going to try to do two things.

I want to talk just briefly.

About some of the challenges that our families face, emergencies, if you will, in our present culture, and then what I'd like to do is describe what I think are some preparations that families need to make in order to successfully confront or deal with these modern challenges.

The family has been under attack for a long time.

This is not a new thing, and I'm going to be relatively brief, I hope, in talking about some of the challenges that we face in our culture, but it is indisputable that the biblical concept of family is under intense attack.

In our culture in several ways.

In recent years, I say recent, you know, the last decade or two decades.

Marriage has been redefined in our culture.

For literally centuries and centuries, marriage was a relationship between a man and a woman, a husband and wife.

And yet now in our country and in our culture, marriage is basically just an agreement between any two people who decide that they're going to live together as husband and wife, however, they assign those roles, and so we have same-sex marriages.

Another thing that's become very common is open marriage or trial marriages.

Marriage is being.

Uh, attack, it's being redefined and it has lost certainly the respect that it used to have in our country and our culture.

From Disney to the Great British Baking Show, everyone seems to be rushing to show how inclusive and understanding they are, how willing they are to accept sexual behaviors that the Bible says are absolutely wrong and sinful.

It's very common for sexual choices to be treated as though equal to racial identity, and what I mean by that is we would probably all agree that everyone should be treated equally regardless of their racial identity, but that shouldn't make a difference in how we treat people.

But some have decided that sexual choices, everyone's sexual choices should also be treated as moral equivalents.

And so, uh, this right of racial equality now speaks or is used to try to.

Defend the idea that regardless of what kind of moral perspective I have, what kind of moral behavior, sexual behavior I might engage in, that all of that is equally valid in terms of morality, and that's a non sequitur, does not follow.

Those are two different things, apples and oranges, and yet that argument, I think, has seen, uh, strength in our society, gender dysphoria.

I never thought I would be standing in a pulpit and talking about gender dysphoria.

I'm not sure I even knew what dysphoria was just a few years ago, but now we live in a society where people don't seem to understand whether they're male or female.

Gender dysphoria is defined by the National Health Services of the United Kingdom.

I know we don't live in the United Kingdom, but let's use their definition.

A sense of unease that a person might have might have because of a mismatch between their biological sex and their gender identity.

And so we have children who are yet preschool who are being Transgendered.

They're having surgeries in their early years before they're even teenagers in some cases or early teens, to turn them from one gender to another gender, at least their appearance.

Uh, if not their biology.

The family is under attack from the influence of public schools, and I hasten to point out that I'm painting with rather broad strokes.

I know there are good teachers.

Some of them are in our assembly this morning.

I know that we live in a rather conservative area compared to some places in this country.

And yet it seems to be a trend in the things that I'm noticing and reading of national import that more and more schools are not teaching math and reading.

They're teaching moral agendas and political agendas.

And teachers often are pushing those agendas rather than teaching the skills, the knowledge that help children to grow up and to be productive adults in society.

If you haven't seen that, maybe you haven't noticed that a lot of school children parents are starting to go to school board meetings, they are complaining about the curricula that is being used in the various schools, public schools.

Do not underestimate the value of that kind of influence because children spend this much time with their parents on a school day and that much time with their teachers, various teachers.

You cannot tell me that the parents are going to have more influence than the public school teachers unless parents are very diligent in the way that they organize their time.

Families is under attack in our public schools.

When I was in elementary school, probably 63-15 years ago.

Some of the stuff that you hear about now we never talked about.

I never heard any of that kind of stuff.

We learned how to write, we learned how to read, we learned how to add, subtract, multiply all of that, of course, has left me the math part of it anyway.

But we dealt with those kind of subjects.

Nowadays, kids that are practically preschool are being taught sex education.

What kind of foolishness is that?

It's an attack on the family.

It's an attack on morality, and we need to be aware of that.

I'm going to list social media as one of the Arenas of attack against the, the, uh, the family, the biblical family.

Disclaimer, I understand there's some wonderful things about social media.

I understand that the internet has some really valuable purposes.

I use it every day just like you do, and I have a smartphone that has access to the internet.

But let me tell you, a lot of the social media platforms are not good for our families.

And our children are growing up with those social media platforms.

And a lot of the influence that comes through those.

Platforms is not biblical sound doctrine.

All kinds of things that are detrimental to our families.

We, we can talk the rest of the morning about that, but you're aware of the dangers of some of these sites.

TikTok is one of them, for instance, but there are others.

Those are outside the family attacks, but even families face challenges from the inside.

That is, there's often interior strife or challenges, marital strife when husbands and wives are not getting.

Long, it affects the entire family if they have children, parents versus children.

Sometimes it's like a war, it seems in the home where there's a struggle as to who's going to rule the roost.

The family He's under attack.

The difference between the prepper.

And the family union unit is that the prepper is making preparations for anticipated emergencies or challenges.

The challenges to the family union unit are already here.

If you're not aware of these challenges, if you're not paying attention to these challenges, then you're behind the ball game.

I want to suggest several things that I think families need to pay attention to if they're going to be prepared for these kinds of challenges that I've listed and you can probably think of others as well.

One of them is training.

You know, preppers train.

Preppers try to develop skills that will be useful in perhaps a society where there's disorder or whether things have the normal ways of doing things have kind of broken down.

People want to learn how to fix things.

They want to learn how to do things, build things so that they can survive in an environment that's very different from the current environment.

Families need to train also.

Husbands need to be loving leaders.

They need to love their wives as Christ loved the church.

Let that sink in.

Virtually every Sunday, every first day of the week, we talk about the great love that God showed for us, that Christ showed for us when he went to the cross.

That that measure of love is hard for us to fathom.

It's hard for us to quantify in our own minds.

And yet Paul says in Ephesians 5 that that's the way that I should love my wife.

All of us husbands should love our wives as Christ loved the church.

It's a tall order Husbands need to be leaders.

Loving leaders, leading by love.

In Ephesians 5, the statement is made that the husband is the head of the wife.

It's not a command, it's an observation in the context of the wife being told to submit to her husband.

Husbands are not commanded to be heads, it's just stated that they are what they're commanded to do is love their wives.

In 1 Peter 3.

Peter said that husbands need to dwell with their wives with understanding.

In the marital arrangement in that relationship, God has placed the husband as the head and the wife as the one who submits to her head, that is to her husband.

She is in that sense, the weaker vessel.

She is to be submissive to him, Paul says in Ephesians 5, and all things, even as the church is to Christ, and husbands need to lead in an understanding way and not take advantage of that relationship and the role of the wife.

In Titus the 2nd chapter, Paul deals with the roles of various groups within a congregation, older men, younger men, older women.

And younger women and the older women are to teach the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.

They are to be those who keep the home.

Notice I didn't say they're those who keep themselves at home.

There's two different things there.

But her primary responsibility is to take care of the home.

We need to be trained In our roles, and we parents need to be training our children in those family responsibilities and roles.

For instance, parents need to be educators of their children.

Paul would write to the Ephesians in chapter 6 and verse 4 that children were to be brought up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

And part of that instruction is to teach children, both by word and by example, what role they will fill when they become adults and perhaps are married and then become parents.

And children are to be taught that they are to obey their parents in the Lord.

There's a time when children just need to be told this is what you need to do and they need to be made to do that because they don't understand at this age, the very young age, the reasons for these things, but as they get older, they need to be told that the reason they should obey their parents is because that's God's will.

Not because I'm bigger and stronger.

Or because I said so.

For I told you that.

Now that may work when they're very young and they can't understand reasoning, but at some point, there needs to be this education that that's their role according to God's will, and that's the reason they obey their parents, because when they disobey their parents, they are in essence disobeying God.

I'm sorry, I'm supposed to stare at the young people at this point.

Make the emphasis on the point.

Well, another thing that I think families need to look at in terms of preparing for various challenges is to try to preserve, to maintain, to establish unity in the family unit.

Husband and wife need to work together as a team.

You know, the thing that really is saddening is that in so many homes, husbands and wives are working against each other.

They're in constant conflict.

Listen, the enemy is outside the gates.

Culture Ungodly people will tear your home to pieces if they have the opportunity.

And so we need to develop the attitude as husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, that we're working together as a team.

It's us against others who would try to harm or destroy our family.

The challenges from outside the home are real.

They are dangerous.

The principle that I'm talking about is what the writer of Ecclesiastes said in chapter 33 verse 12.

I love this verse.

And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him.

A 3-fold cord is not easily broken.

All that says is there's strength in numbers.

There's strength when we work together.

And families need to try to work together as a team with unity in the home.

Paul wrote in Galatians 6:270, Bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.

Bear one another's burdens.

Help one another.

Someone may be thinking, wait a second.

Galatians 27:2490 isn't about the family.

That that's not in Ephesians 2489.

That's not in 26 Peter 26.

That's not in Colossians 53.

That, that's not about every passage.

That talks about my responsibility as an individual, the way I should behave toward others as a Christian is a passage about the family.

Passages like Galatians 25:28 do not just discuss how I should deal with you as my brother or sister in Christ or maybe other passages dealing with how I deal with others in the world.

Those passages apply to my wife.

That is, they apply to me as I relate to my wife, and they apply to you too.

We talk about marriage passages.

Every passage that talks about how I ought to behave as a Christian is a passage that also deals with the whole.

And how I should behave.

Uh, in those relationships, the familial relationships.

We can make our homes places of encouragement.

Of support for one another or we can allow them to become war zones, and I've known families over the years where that's basically what their home was.

It was a war zone.

They were always fussing and fighting with one another.

If it wasn't husband and wife, it was parents and children or children and children with one another.

But our homes can be places where we are built up.

Where we're sustained and rejuvenated from the predations of the world.

I'm going to suggest 29 additional points.

All of which will contribute to this unity that I'm talking about.

I've listed them as separate things because I think they're that important, but all of them relate to how we maintain or even uh Initiate unity in our homes.

And the first one is forgiveness.

Transgressions are inevitable.

Sins against one another, even in marriage and in the home, are inevitable when people's lives are intertwined like they are in a home.

When you spend a lot of time together, when you have to work together on things, when you have to deal with common challenges, there are going to be sins that are going to be committed one against the other.

And if a family member cannot forgive, you're going to have chaos in the family.

You're gonna have tension and stress.

You're gonna have a war zone.

In Matthew 18th chapter.

Jesus has already talked about dealing with differences uh caused by sin back in verses 15 to 17.

In verse 21, Peter comes to Jesus and he asked a question, Lord, how often will my brother sin against me and I forgive him?

As many as 7 times.

I read someplace one time that the rabbis talk 3 times, 83 times you forgive your brother.

And Peter in the most gracious way, doubled it and added 17, you know, the nice biblical number.

Jesus responded, I do not say to you 7 times, but 77 times.

I believe the New King James Version says 70 times 7.

Just change the order of the words and you get a different number, a much larger number.

Let's see, 490.

Jesus is not saying, OK, keep a, keep a mark here.

Uh, when we get to 489, you need to be careful because only one more time, he's saying you don't forgive with limits.

It's an unforgive, it's an unlimited thing.

The way God forgives.

Those who repent of their sins The importance of that is seen in Matthew 6, where Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount following the model prayer that he gives there in chapter 6, for if you forgive others their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you.

But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

There will be people who will spend eternity in condemnation because of what happened in their homes.

Their unwillingness to forgive other members of their family.

The way they treated their family.

Because if we don't forgive, even in our holes, we cut ourselves off from that grace that we need so much as well.

Forgiveness, I admit, I think is one of the most difficult things for us to do.

Because it's so often involves the accepting of some injustice that's been done against us, some hurt against us.

And someone comes to us and says, I, I was wrong.

Please forgive me, and we release them of the guilt of their sin.

And that's tough to do when you've been hurt.

There's a lot more we can say about that, but forgiveness is absolutely necessary if families are going to be successful.

The second thing that I wanted to point out here is communication.

And I've said a number of times, communication is the lifeblood of virtually any relationship, human relationship, and for that matter, our relationship with God as well.

Communication is necessary for the avoiding of problems, and it becomes even more necessary when the problems arise for the resolution of those problems.

But what happens in our families?

Something happens and we're angry.

And what do we do?

Well, we either communicate in a way that's not in any way effective.

We yell and we holler and We make accusations and.

Or we don't communicate at all.

We give the person that We're upset with the silent treatment.

I'm not going to talk to you.

But in either case, there's no productive communication that would possibly resolve this problem and allow that relationship to be mended.

Anger, selfishness, a lack of love for others hinders productive communication.

I would say that's one of the most important skills.

That married people can learn, and that is how to listen to somebody else and how to respond.

In times when there's a disagreement between two people.

It's a skill that unfortunately is not possessed by a lot of folks.

The third thing that I wanted to point out that I think contributes to the unity of a home, and that is putting on the new self.

If you follow along in the reading that Brian did a little bit earlier from Colossians, the 3rd chapter, you noted, if you didn't remember already, you noted that in the beginning of that reading.

And for some reason, my Bible turned to uh Jeremiah.

That doesn't help me much.

If you remember at the beginning of that chapter, Paul talks about the fact that we've been raised with Christ and the implication of that is that we ought to set our mind on things that are above, seek those things that are above.

And it is in the context of those comments that the rest of the Piccope talks about how we put off some things and we put on other things.

We put off the old man, we put on the new self, the ESV says, and I'm going to point out some of the things that we're to put off in verses 5 and 8 and 9.

He indicates that we're to put off sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness, also wrath, malice, slander, obscene talk, lying.

You put away all those things.

But you have to put on other things, and Paul says, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts. Kindness. Humility.

Meekness and patience.

Bearing with one another.

Forgiving one another.

And above all those putting on love.

It is not A good thing.

That sometimes we are kind to everybody else.

And then we are bitter and sharp.

And discourteous and unthankful in our own homes.

With the people that we would argue to the public are the most important to us in terms of our relationships.

Why is it that we forget these character traits, these kinds of virtues when it comes to our homes, while we recognize they're absolutely necessary in other relationships outside the home?

Compassionate hearts.

Not taking for granted those of our family, kindness. Kindness.

That'll contribute to unity in the home.

Patience Bearing with one another.

How many times have you fell out of sorts?

You didn't feel good, maybe physically, you felt like you're getting sick or something happened at work or at school or your job in in some other job or some other relationship, and you're just out of sorts.

That's the time that others need to bear with you.

Sometimes Those are the things that Then cause all kinds of stress and arguments.

Turn our homes, as I said, into war zones.

Forgiveness, communication.

And putting on these qualities that Paul talks about as the new self, putting away the old man of the world.

I said a little bit earlier.

That the level of preparations that preppers can make is often restrained by the cost of those preparations.

You may not have the money to construct an underground concrete bunker out behind your house in the backyard.

Take some money.

Family preps do not involve financial cost.

Every one of these things you can do for free.

You don't have to pay to be humble.

You just decide what you're going to do.

You don't have to pay to communicate.

You decide that you're going to communicate in a way that illustrates compassion and kindness and patience, forbearing.

And we could go on and on, but I'm just saying that sometimes we're limited in what we can do in physical preparations is preppers.

But all of these things, the training.

That just takes time and effort.

Doesn't involve financial cost.

Isn't that wonderful?

They do require effort on the part of family members.

But you can do it for free, and you can get your family prepared for all kinds of challenges.

Is your family ready for the challenges?

That it will face or maybe that it's already facing.

Specific challenges to your family.

Are you doing your part as a member of a Family.

Physical family, are you doing your part to contribute to the success of your family?

My behavior.

In my family cannot be separated from my obligations and my responsibilities as a Christian, as a disciple of Jesus Christ.

Sometimes, as I've said before, people make that separation.

They, they think of themselves as Christians when they're dealing with people in the congregation or maybe even at work, they try to present a good example, and then they come home and it all falls apart.

It's as though what happens in the home doesn't count.

That may be where it counts the most.

As we present our examples to our children, to our mates.

Are you doing your part?

To contribute To the success of your family.

No, it occurred to me, I hadn't thought about this originally, but it occurred to me that the preppers motto, if they have a motto, I don't know, we don't have meetings, but if the preppers have mottos, the motto is be prepared, wouldn't that be the case?

And that's the exact same motto that the Boy Scouts have, be prepared.

Our whole lives on this earth are essentially a preparation period for the last great challenge.

It's when we're going to stand before God.

Before Christ and we're going to have to give an account for the things done in the body, whether good or evil.

And knowing the terror of the Lord, Paul writes, we persuade men.

That's going to be.

A challenge that you and I cannot face by ourselves on the basis of our own merit of our own efforts.

But the wonderful truth.

Is that the cost.

Of preparation so that you can be ready for that last great challenge has already been paid.

There's nothing that remains to be done that you need to do in order to make God's plan of salvation complete.

It's already revealed.

It's already set up.

Jesus already died on the cross.

The price for your forgiveness has already been paid.

And so you and I can be absolutely, totally, completely prepared.

For that last great challenge.

I don't know how many of you maybe consider yourselves as preppers, how many of you have tried to do some sort of preparation for whatever emergency might arise in this life.

But I would encourage you, if you're not prepared for the final judgment, you need to do that first.

That's one of the things that preppers are always faced with, and that is, I, I can only do so much.

What needs to be done first?

What's the most important preparation?

I'll tell you the most important preparation.

Is getting yourself ready for the final judgment.

And God has made it possible for you to do that through the gift of His Son.

If you've not obeyed the gospel, if you've not become a new creature in Christ, put on the new self, putting off the old man.

Then we want to encourage you to do that this morning, and it's done very simply by the expression of your faith.

Having repented of your sins, we'll baptize you into Christ, bury you with Him in death, so that you can rise to walk a new life.

If you need to do that this morning or if you need to make some changes in your life as a Christian and, and you need the prayers of the saints, and we want to encourage you if you'll come to the front, we'll assist you as we stand and sing to invite and encourage.

Series: N/A

Service: Sun PM

Type: Sermon

Speaker: Troy Nicholson

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.)

The scripture reading this evening will come from Luke chapter 12.

Luke chapter 12, and I'll be reading verses 13 through 21.

Luke 12:13-21.

Someone in the crowd said to him, being Jesus, Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.

But he said to him, Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?

And he said to them, Take care and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.

And he told them a parable saying, the land of a rich man produced plentifully, and he thought to himself, What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops.

And he said, I will do this.

I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods.

And I will say to my soul, soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years.

Relax, eat, drink, be merry.

But God said to him, Fool, this night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?

So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.

Well, around 6 months ago, my family and I began to move to North Alabama.

We visited around various churches over the next few months and then we visited here at KSR.

And we just felt like this is where we needed to be.

So from my family to our KSR family, I just want to say thank you for who you are and for the blessing you've been to me and my family, and I pray that we can be a blessing in return to you.

But let me also add.

That while we get to know our family.

And while you may get a text from me during the week or I may call you by name on Sunday morning, that doesn't mean I'm going to remember who you are Sunday night.

So please bear with me if I give you that deer in the headlights look when we meet or pass each other, it probably means I just don't remember exactly who you are.

So, and I'm kind of thankful that Paul messed up my name tonight, so I don't feel quite as bad if I mess up your name in return.

So, so just remember it, it's kind of difficult sometimes to remember names.

But as much as it's been kind of a journey for us getting settled in this area, a week from now, we're going to feel a little bit more a part of you because we're actually going to have a house in this area.

And while I'm thankful, That our move can finally be over.

I got to say, I just don't enjoy moving.

I mean, with moving, you've got all the decisions to make, you know, what are we going to keep, what are we going to get rid of?

You've got all the, the packing, you've got the loading and the unloading and the unpacking and the settling, which some people say it can take 3 years, just the settling part and getting everything unloaded.

But in spite of how much I dislike moving, I've got to say that everybody ought to have to move every 5 to 10 years.

If no other reason because there are so many lessons that we can learn from moving.

And I want to consider a few of those with you this evening.

You may think of more on your own and if you do, let me know because I'm always open to learning more myself.

And I also got to say after Gary's sermon last Sunday, I kind of felt I needed to up my game a little bit on my visuals.

So How's that, Gary?

But anyway, there are a lot of lessons that I think we can indeed learn from moving.

And I want us to consider a few of those this evening.

One of those is the fact that we are abundantly blessed materially.

Sometimes we don't stop and think about how many material things we really have until you have to move those things.

And then you're kind of forced to take inventory and evaluate what you have.

Sometimes we may sing, count your many blessings, but how often do we really do it?

When you move, you have to.

And it really makes us realize.

How blessed we are from God.

We had and still have a lot of stuff.

Some we just threw away, some we gave away, some we relocated.

And we still have a lot to put on the truck this coming Wednesday.

We all have a lot of stuff.

And we need to remember that all these blessings indeed do come from God.

1 Timothy 63:8, Paul said in having food and clothing with these we shall be content.

But moving would be so much easier.

Food and clothing were all that we had.

But God's blessed us so far beyond that.

So far beyond just the necessities of this life.

And even though God says this is all we need, he says this is.

How much I'm really going to give you even beyond that.

And James reminds us.

In James chapter 1 and verse 17.

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above.

And comes down from the Father of lights.

So as we assess our stuff as we go through the moving process, everything we have to look at and handle is a gift from God.

And we need to stop and realize that.

We are all indeed so blessed.

But I've got to be honest, moving also reminds me.

That maybe I'm not as satisfied or content as I see.

There are a few things I just got to say I don't necessarily like about this song, but that's a different discussion in itself.

Although there's some great things about this song, I mean, it doesn't get much better than the 3rd verse.

Don't think me poor or discouraged or lonely.

I'm not discouraged.

I'm heaven bound.

I'm just a pilgrim in search of a city.

I mean, it doesn't get much more encouraging than that.

But my problem with this line in the song.

As I'm just not always sure.

But I really mean it.

When I sing it.

And when I'm moving, it really makes me reflect on this and ask.

How satisfied am I?

And maybe we should begin by asking, well, what's a cottage anyway?

I say I'm satisfied with just a cottage below.

and if you try to Google cottage, you'll find different definitions, but, but one of the definitions is a small single-storied house.

There was a time 8 years ago.

That there were 7 of us.

And about a 1680 square foot, 70s ranch style house.

I think I could make a case that that may be considered a cottage.

We've got 2 out of the house now, so surely with only 73 of us when we're moving, that would at least be enough, right?

I mean, stop and think though about the age that our current kids were 8 years ago and that makes a little bit of difference, I guess.

But when I first talked to our realtor here.

Can I put in a plug for Emily Banner, a sister over at Jones Road.

She's been great to work with through our whole process.

But first time I talked to her, and of course she's gathering some basic information and she asked me, well, what are you looking for?

What better opportunity than that just to break out in song and say, I'm satisfied with just a cottage below.

But I didn't.

And it's not just because I didn't want to scare with my singing.

I just wasn't sure how true.

That really was.

Do you remember the verse we noticed just a moment ago in First Timothy?

And having food and clothing with these, we shall be content.

When I have to evaluate what I own and what I'm moving.

Can I say this?

That I'm content with food and clothing.

I mean, you really want to make the moving process easier, reflect this kind of satisfaction in what you move.

We wouldn't need the biggest truck that U-Haul has.

How content Emma.

In Genesis chapter 28.

Jacob made a vow, saying, If God will be with me and will keep me in this way that I go.

And will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear.

Is it really enough to me for God just to give me bread?

And clothing?

Would I be satisfied if that's all I had to move?

And I think it's important for us to realize it's not just how much we have, it's our attitude toward it even in the song, we're not saying we have to live in a cottage, but we're saying that I'm, I'm satisfied with that.

Can we say that we're content with just whatever Paul, whatever God decides to give us?

And in the life of Paul, Paul alludes to the fact that it may be more than that at times, and it may be less than that at times.

Consider what he said in Philippians chapter 4.

Is it not that I speak in regard to need?

For I have learned in whatever state I am to be content.

Tim, no wisecracks about the state Paul hadn't lived in.

I know how to be abased and I know how to abound everywhere and in all things I've learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need.

Now I never claimed to have gone through the extremes that Paul probably did in his life, but this move has put us through what I'd consider some extremes.

Our first rental when we moved to this area due to the misfortune of one family was a fortune to us.

We stayed in almost a 2500 square foot house, 213 bedrooms, 219 baths, truly a luxury home, and I know that because there's even a chandelier in the bathroom.

And a big garage to go with it.

You know what our next rental was like?

We went from 221 square feet to 21 square feet.

A 26 bed, 53 bath trailer.

No chandelier in the bathroom.

Not even a garage.

Now I'll say where we currently staying in the house we're about to move into falls somewhere in between that.

But were we content at whatever place God saw that we would land?

Kind of a test for our contentment.

In whatever state we're in.

Whatever we go through in life, we need to learn that level of contentment.

It may be times that we're blessed beyond that, and my guess is most of you here live in what we've considered more than just a cottage.

But what if due to circumstances you found yourself just in the cottage?

What if we had to permanently live in that 25 square foot trailer?

Could we say we would be content?

If God is with us, is that enough?

Am I satisfied with whatever God provides?

I've got to say this last move has really made me stop and think about that.

Another lesson that we can learn from moving.

Is it most material things.

Just aren't really that important.

Moving will make you reevaluate the importance of the things in your life like nothing else will.

As I said, we decided some things were just trash, not any good for anybody.

We threw them away.

We had other things we decided no good for us anymore, but maybe to Goodwill somebody else will find some use for them.

And then we have those other things that we've had boxed up and put away for months now.

We put some stuff in my dad's garage that's still there before we ever came to Alabama.

There's a warehouse down here that's full of stuff it's been there for months.

And you know what, not one of us has died from not having those things over the last several months.

All that stuff that we at least at one point thought was so important, we moved it and we function just fine without it.

Now some of it is seasonal and that's why we put it away and there'll come a season when we pull it out.

But it's not that important.

Consider the example of Solomon.

In Ecclesiastes chapter 26.

And if you can't read that up there, I apologize.

I started not to put it up at all, so that's kind of my compromise.

You just get it small.

He said, I made great works.

I built houses and planted vineyards for myself.

I made myself gardens and parks and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees.

I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees.

I bought male and female slaves and had slaves who were born in my house.

Also had great possessions of herds and flocks, more than any who had been before me in Jerusalem.

Also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces.

I got singers, both men and women, and many concubines, the delight of the sons of man.

So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem.

Also, my wisdom remained with me, and whatever my eyes desired, I did not keep from them.

I kept my heart from no pleasure.

For my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil.

Just look at that list for a moment.

No, it wasn't too long ago we finished a study on Ecclesiastes, so maybe it just refreshes your mind if you're in the class.

Is there anything on that list that maybe you'd like to have?

Can you imagine having your own parks?

How about servants?

Singers I mean, you, you, you don't have to Alexa play.

You just turn in singers sing.

I mean, think what that would be like.

Having orchards and gardens, and my guess is the servants would take care of them.

We look at all that Solomon has and we think, wow.

Wouldn't that be great?

OK. But what was Solomon's attitude toward all this stuff?

If you look at the next verse, you see his conclusion in verse 21.

Then I looked on all the works that my hands had done and all the labor in which I had told.

And indeed all was vanity and grasping for the wind.

There was no profit under the sun.

Solomon looked at all this stuff he owned, all that he accumulated, and he said, Yeah.

Not so important.

Doesn't make such a difference.

No satisfaction in life.

Are these the kind of things we look at for meaning in life?

I mean, when we move, we act like that cause we haul them all over the country with us.

But as we move them around, do we really understand the true value of them?

Jesus said in our reading a while ago in Luke chapter 12 in verse 15.

Take heed and beware of covetousness.

For one's life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses.

If my life is all about the stuff that I'm moving around.

And I don't have much of a life.

Cause all that stuff really isn't all that important.

Where is my focus?

What is important in my life.

And what is important in life isn't what we have as much as how we use what we have.

Paul made this point in 1 Timothy chapter 6.

And notice he doesn't command that nobody be rich, but what he says is command those who are rich in this present age.

In other words, those who have a lot of stuff.

Not to be haughty nor to trust in uncertain riches.

But in the living God who gives us richly all things to enjoy.

Let them do good that they may be rich in good works, ready to give, willing to share, storing up for themselves a good foundation for the time to come.

That they may lay hold on eternal life.

You know, if I think too much of my possessions.

I may hold on too tightly to my possessions.

And I may miss the joy of sharing those blessings with others.

And that's really when they're not worth anything.

When I try to hoard them all to myself.

If I'm just Moving stuff.

Then it's not that important.

It's how I use the stuff.

That makes the difference.

Because when it really boils down, most of these material things in and of themselves just aren't that important.

But moving also reminds us.

We can't take it all with us.

Sometimes people downsize.

And by that maybe they decide they've gotten to a point in life, they, they want a simpler life, less maintenance, and so they go from their big, bigger house down to the smaller house and that just in itself, I mean, you can't take it all with you.

You got to go through and decide what's important if you're going to downsize.

And some people may not necessarily intend to downsize, but if they're making like a move cross country.

And they thought about the truck, it looked bigger when it was empty and then they start filling it and they just run out of space.

I mean, especially on a cross country move where there's no going back.

Have you seen where people, they just have to finally decide what what's important to take and what's not, because we've got to leave some stuff behind.

Look at the curve.

After some people moved.

And there's what I would call some pretty nice stuff sometimes it's left behind.

Just because you can't take it all with you.

Sometimes we learn that the hard way.

When we make a move But Jesus tried to teach us that all along.

If you go back to the Sermon on the Mount there in Matthew chapter 6.

Jesus there said, do not lay up yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal.

That brand new shiny car.

Some days it's going to end up in the junk heap.

That phone with all the latest features on it.

And end up broken.

Quit working at some point.

That beautiful house on a hill.

Someday it's probably going to crumble and fall, or nowadays just be torn down to build something else there.

You see all these material things that we think so much of just don't last forever.

We can't take them all with us.

And again, going back to the reading, what God said to the rich fool.

The guy who was already rich and then became even richer.

And who evaluated all these things and thought he had many goods laid up for many years.

Well, that's when God called him the fool.

He said, fool, this not your soul will be required of you.

Then whose will those things be which you have provided?

He wasn't going to take them with him.

They go to somebody else now.

And if you go back to the Old Testament and think about Job for just a moment.

In Job chapter 1 and verse 63, consider the description of Job's material possessions.

He says also his possessions were 7000 sheep, 3000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, 500 female donkeys, and a very large household, so that this man was the greatest of all the people of the East.

I mean, even if somebody gave you all that, where would you put it?

But if you know the story of Joe.

You know how things continue.

Verses 13 through 19 begin.

Now there was a day.

And in that day he lost all those possessions about as quickly as his servants could tell him that they were gone.

And so how did Job respond?

If you go to verse 21.

And he said, naked I came from my mother's womb.

And naked shall I return.

See, Job realized all these material things wouldn't last forever.

So when they were taken away from him.

Yeah, in a sense it was a great loss to him.

But he already understood they wouldn't last forever.

He came into the world without him and he's going out of the world without him.

He just lost him a little earlier than that.

Do we all have that realization?

As we move our stuff around, that there's going to come a point that we can't move it any further.

They were going to leave it all behind.

Life is kind of like the game life.

Most of you here played live at some point, or at least somewhat familiar with it.

I guess it's kind of a dated game maybe for the current generation, but some of us older folks probably remember playing.

You know, you get out the the board and you get out your little car.

And you work your way through the game and maybe you get married, maybe you have some kids, get a job, have a few good things and some bad things happen to you and you finally come to retirement.

But then there comes a point, the game's over.

You take the car and you take the people.

You take the board and you put it all back in the box.

And you put it aside and walk away.

That's in essence what's going to happen to all of us at some point.

That we're gonna be the ones that are put in the box.

Our lives are going to come to an end.

And all those things we accumulated while we worked around the board or through life.

are just going to go on to somebody else.

Or just be left in a box.

As Paul said in 1 Timothy chapter 6.

In verse 7, We brought nothing into this world.

And it's certain we can carry nothing out.

That U-Haul has a trailer hitch if you want to carry a little bit more stuff with you.

But hearses don't have trailer hitches.

We can't take it with us.

When we end up in the box.

It's all going to be left behind.

All the stuff is.

Which is why Jesus told us to make sure we're laying up the right kind of treasures.

Because the treasures of this life are going to all be left behind.

And moving helps remind us that we just can't take it all with us.

There's one more lesson.

I think we should learn from moving.

And that is sometimes we need help.

What do you think if you showed up at our house this coming Thursday?

And the 5 of us are out there unloading the truck and, and so you come up there and say, hey, can I give you a hand?

Nope, we got it under control.

My kids are like, no, no, don't tell people that.

But we just keep taking the boxes and the furniture and stuff in and then we come to the piano.

And so you watch us pull and tug at the piano like, are you sure?

Really?

I, I'll be glad to help and we just say we're fine.

Thanks, but no thanks.

You probably think we were crazy.

Because it's obvious we need help.

We realize that when it comes time to move.

I've sent out notices for Tennessee.

I've sent out a notice here because basically that's my plea.

We need help.

But why is it we can't always see the spiritual application of that lesson?

Why is it sometimes spiritually, when we have burdens and difficulties in life, we just, nope, I'm fine.

I can handle it all myself.

We have those piano size burdens in our life and people try to help and I'm fine.

We need help.

As Paul wrote the Galatian brethren in Galatians chapter 6 and verse 1, he says, brethren, if a man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness.

Considering yourself lest you also be tempted.

Now Paul here is addressing the strong and saying you need to help.

But we need to see the implication there when we're the weak.

That we're willing to accept the help.

Now I just need to swallow my pride when it comes time to unload the truck and realize I need help moving and unloading everything.

And spiritually, there are times I just need to swallow my pride and realize, hey, at least in this situation, I'm the weaker brother and I need help.

And so when others who love me and care about me are trying to help, I need to let them.

Paul goes on to say, bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.

It's not just that I'm telling others that I'm fine when I'm not, when I don't let people help me spiritually.

But I'm also not allowing them to fulfill the law of Christ.

Christ tells them, help those who are in need.

And when I'm the one that's in need, I need to admit it and let them help me.

And there are gonna be times as we go through life, whether it's moving.

Maybe you're the one that's moving and you need help from other people.

The next time it may be somebody else that's moving, so you're there to help them.

I mean, we know how that works in the physical things, but spiritually it's the same.

Today you may have some spiritual needs, so I'm there to help.

Tomorrow you may be the one in need, so I'm there to help.

That's just the way God designed it.

And if we can see that physical application when it comes to something like moving.

And surely we can see the spiritual application.

When it comes to our souls.

Moving helps remind us.

That sometimes we need help.

And there may be other lessons that we can learn from moving, but these are just a few I want to share with you tonight.

And I hope they'll give you some things to think about.

As you all come and help me unload the truck Thursday.

No, you don't have to do that.

So we need to learn.

From the lessons that we go through in life and see the spiritual applications.

And I pray that tonight's helped you do that to some degree.

Maybe tonight you're the one who needs help.

And so I ask you, Will you admit that you need help?

There are brothers and sisters here who would be glad to help you in whatever your need may be.

It may be that you've come to the realization that you need to put Christ first in your life.

And you can do that this evening.

You can have your sins washed away and begin a new life for him.

Or maybe as a child of God, you realize that, you know, I'm not as strong as I once was.

I'm the weak one.

And I need help You're surrounded with brothers and sisters in Christ who love you and will help you take that piano-sized spiritual load.

And get it where it needs to be.

And help you get to where you need to be in your relationship with God.

And if there's any way tonight that you need to respond to the invitation, we encourage you to come as we stand and as we 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.)

Scripture reading before the lesson this morning will be taken from Mark chapter 4.

Verses 35 to 41.

Mark chapter 4, verses 35 to 13.

And just a little background, uh, before our reading, Jesus has just spent the day teaching by the sea and in fact he's been teaching in a boat, sitting in a boat all day.

Not sure how rough the waters were, but I'm sure moving about was tiring on top of the fact of teaching all day.

And then after he taught the multitudes, he also taught privately the disciples the meaning of all the parables.

So we've come to the end of the day and I'm sure he is utterly exhausted.

So this is where we pick up.

On the same day when evening had come, he said to them, Let us cross over to the other side.

But when they had left the multitude, they took him along in the boat as he was.

Another little boats were also with him.

And a great windstorm arose and the waves beat into the boat so that it was already filling.

But he was in the stern asleep on a pillow.

And they awoke him and said to him, Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?

Then he arose and he rebuked the wind, and he said to the sea, Peace be still.

And the wind ceased and there was a great calm.

But he said to them, Why are you so fearful, and how is it that you have no faith?

And they feared exceedingly and said to one another, Who can this be that even the wind and the sea obey him?

Good morning.

It's good to have such a good number here this morning.

We've kind of had smaller numbers recently because of weather and other concerns, but it's good to have everybody here this morning.

I do want you to know that I am going to go ahead and preach this morning even though Greg Bacon is sitting in my seat.

And the guy who sits in that seat normally does the preaching.

But And Greg would do a good job, I think, but I'm gonna go ahead since I am prepared and uh preach this morning anyway.

As the scripture reading suggested, and as the songs suggested, I appreciate David uh choosing songs that uh led into our thoughts this morning.

We're going to be talking about the story in Mark 4, a story in which Jesus and his disciples are on the Sea of Galilee.

Just a few notes about the Sea of Galilee.

It's just a very large lake, so to speak, but it's prone to violent storms because of the surrounding geography.

The Sea of Galilee is actually in a basin.

It's about almost 700 ft below sea level.

And around the shore of the Sea of Galilee, there are mountains that rise swiftly, and Mount.

Herman, of course, is over 9000 ft tall and lies to the north.

And when the winds, the, the, the winds from these mountains and from Mount Herman, when they come down and they reach the water of the Sea of Galilee.

mixture of cold and warm air creates these tempests that can sometimes be very violent.

Bob Uley in his commentary makes the observation that in this story in Mark 4, the storm here must have been pretty fierce because the people who are in the boat, several of them are professional fishermen.

They were individuals who made their living being on the Sea of Galilee, and they are terrified of this storm, which says something.

About the ferocity of this windstorm as Mark records as it occurred.

In Mark the 4th chapter, the gospel writer tells us about this storm.

And uh I would point out at the very beginning that in the storm, in the story, I should say of Mark 4, Jesus is in the stern of the ship, but I couldn't find a graphic that had Jesus in the back of the ship.

So you'll have to pardon, uh, I pointed this out to Debbie and Debbie said, well, maybe he moved to the front.

I said, how did you get past all those burly fishermen?

So Jesus is in the front of the boat in this picture, but in the story, he's in the back of the ship and they are crossing evidently from the west and maybe northwest side of the Sea of Galile over to the opposite side toward the Decapolis.

And as they're traveling and it's evening incidentally.

Which brings up another uh anomaly or anachronism, an error in the song that we sang.

It talks about in the calm, the sun is reflected off of the water, but this was at evening time and so very likely it was already dark, which would have increased, I think, even more the disciples' fears because in the darkness you can't see as well what's going on.

And so the boat is pitching and Mark records that the water was coming into the boat.

Of course, the disciples wake Jesus up.

He's sleeping on a cushion at the back of the boat in the stern.

And they wake him up and.

He then calms the sea.

Jesus did a lot of miracles.

Already in his ministry, Jesus has performed such things as casting out demons and healing many sick people.

He had turned water into wine by this time already.

So the disciples had had an opportunity to see the power of Jesus illustrated in these miracles.

But when he calms the sea, It's like it's a brand new thing for them.

They are amazed at what he did.

Who is this that has power even over the wind and the sea?

The disciples were amazed.

They were filled with great fear.

It seems that despite what they had already seen, they didn't understand yet the full power that Jesus as the Son of God possessed.

Some of the miracles that Jesus did served as signs.

Uh, for instance, in John 9, he heals a man who had been blind from birth.

And it's interesting that in the same basic context of that miracle in John 8:12 and John 43:5, Jesus says, proclaims, I'm the light of the world, and I think the miracle was designed to suggest through its The physical power of Jesus to bring light to this man who had been blind from birth, that he has the power to bring light to the world in terms of spiritual light.

And so signs, miracles were signs sometimes that helped individuals to understand the identity and the purpose of Jesus.

And of course, the miracle of the text illustrates the power of Jesus over nature.

And some of you are thinking, it looks like the sun's being reflected off the water.

See former comments about the evening.

But I wonder, and, and I think that's certainly true that this story illustrates Jesus' power over nature.

But I wonder if there isn't maybe even a greater lesson to be seen from his ability to bring peace to the sea, just as the miracle of healing the blind man suggested the power to bring light, his mission to bring spiritual light to the world.

Does the bringing of peace to the sea maybe illustrate something else about the purpose of Jesus?

I certainly wouldn't want to suggest this morning that the disciples were cowards or nervous Nellies because they were afraid in this uh sea, in this storm.

There were probably at least 13 people in this boat, the 12 apostles and Jesus.

We don't really know the size of their boat, but it's interesting that in 1986, over on the east side of the Sea of Galilee, there was discovered during a period of low water of the Sea of Galilee, the hull of a fishing boat that was about 27 ft long, about 7.5 ft wide, 4.5 ft deep.

And it was just the hull of the boat that had apparently been used for quite some time and dated by carbon dating to about the same time period as Jesus, maybe a little bit before or a little after.

And they had taken whoever had sunk this boat, they'd taken valuable things off it and left just the hull, but it gives us an idea of what that boat might have looked like.

Jesus may have been in a very similar looking boat, 27 ft long.

That boat could carry around 15 people, but at 193 people, it's loaded.

And Mark records that the waves were breaking into the boat so that the boat was filling.

I don't know if you've ever been on a, on a boat where you could see just nothing but ocean and it got rough.

It can be scary because you realize that you are kind of at the mercy of nature, and these apostles, they're terrified.

And they were convinced that they were going to perish.

They asked, uh, Jesus, waking him up.

Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?

Matthew also records the same story and Matthew suggests that they said, save us, Lord, we are perishing.

So in addition to what Luke or Mark records, they asked Jesus, uh, save us, we're perishing.

But that's not the same question as in Mark's account.

In Mark's account, they asked, Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?

Not just help us, we're, we're gonna die here, we're perishing, but you don't even care?

Of course Jesus then calms the storm.

As his power would allow him.

Their question about his care may have been prompted by the fact that he was sleeping in the stern of the boat.

Now that's, that's a fact about this whole story that seems kind of Odd because this is a storm that has terrified these fishermen, but Jesus is asleep.

In the back of the boat.

I appreciated Daniel's introduction to the scripture reading because I think he's right.

This was the end of a very long day.

You have to go all the way back to the beginning of chapter 4 in Mark, verse 1, where Jesus then is standing in a boat and he's teaching the people and he's probably been teaching all day.

And so, at the same time that this storm is, is rough, he's exhausted perhaps by the day's events.

But it's also possible that Jesus could sleep because he was confident.

That it was going to be all right.

And I think in Jesus' words to the disciples.

When they wake him up, I think there's a slight rebuke there.

Why are you so fearful?

Have you still no faith?

And I think that question implies that they had seen enough things.

They've seen enough miracles.

They had been privy to the power of Jesus in the past, enough so that they should have had confidence.

He could still the see that he would not be destroyed.

By this wind storm.

Well, just as there was this storm on the Sea of Galilee.

Our lives are sometimes, as the song says, tempest tossed.

Sometimes we also suffer or experience storms in life.

The disciples were afraid and they became anxious.

But Jesus brings peace into their lives by his words.

I hope there are periods of calm in our lives.

But they definitely definitely will be storms in our lives.

There are many passages that talk about the fact that there's gonna be difficulties in the lives of Christians in particular.

For instance, in Matthew the 10th chapter verses 34 to 39, Jesus indicated that he didn't come to bring peace.

He talks about the fact that there's going to be turmoil, there's going to be tension as a result of the fact that some obey the gospel, some do not, some reject it.

And that storm, the tension, those difficulties will be within our own families sometimes, he says.

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

And so in those storms, there will be difficult choices that will have to be made.

The apostle Paul in 2 Timothy 3 and verse 12 said, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

Now that maybe not necessarily uh physically in the sense of giving our lives or being beaten like the apostle Paul or as many other Christians have over the ages, but there will be persecution if you're going to live godly, you'll stand out.

You're going to be the square peg.

That won't fit into the round hole of the world.

And you're going to stand out and people don't like that.

Your good conduct is essentially an implicit rebuke of their worldliness.

That'll bring persecution, that's going to bring storms into our lives.

In 1 Peter 103 and verse 12, Peter also indicates that we're going to have to face storms.

Beloved, do not be surprised, he writes, at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you as though something strange were happening to you.

He's talking about persecution.

But I'm going to suggest to you that these storms in our lives can take several different forms, or may I suggest, maybe they come from several different sources, and I'm going to list 7, mostly because that's a good biblical number.

The first one we've already mentioned, and that is that sometimes it's persecution, persecution because of our faith.

Have you ever been ridiculed because you wouldn't?

Engage in the behavior of others, your colleagues at work or your fellow students or just the people that you know in some organization.

Have you ever been ridiculed because you spoke up and said, I don't agree with that.

I don't believe in that.

As the world moves farther and farther away from biblical morality, you'll see that more and more.

That's a storm that you're going to face if you're going to live godly in Christ Jesus.

Sometimes we face another storm.

It's the injustice that's done to us by people who seem to get away with it.

And it may not have anything to do with the fact that you're a Christian.

It's just that here's someone who can take advantage of you, and they choose to do that.

People in the world do it all the time.

You take your car to a repairman, and he tells you you need $1600 worth of mechanical repairs.

You don't have $1600 to spend right now.

So you take it to somebody else and he fixes it without spending a cent.

Because somebody had disconnected something underneath the.

Front of the car so that your air conditioning wouldn't work anymore and all it needed was to be reconnected.

Somebody was going to commit an injustice against you because they could, because there was money involved.

Your face storms like that.

I have, and I suspect most of us have.

Sometimes we face storms as a consequence of the actions of wicked people.

Maybe not even things that are done specifically against us, but things that are done and then we suffer as a result of those things because we live in an interconnected world.

We're not islands to ourselves.

And so when others do things that are wicked and there are consequences, sometimes we bear some of those consequences.

Families traveling to church.

Several children, mother and father.

And a drunk driver hits their vehicle.

They were doing nothing wrong.

But somebody else because of lack of self-control, killed several members of the family.

There's a storm Sometimes it's the consequences of our sinful behavior.

We talked recently in a study about the wages of sin, suggesting that one of the things that sin brings is spiritual debt.

It can cause us to be separated from God, both in this life and perhaps even for eternity, but there are physical consequences sometimes to our sins as well.

And so we make sinful choices and then we have to live with the fruit.

That those choices there.

Sometimes it's the consequences of choices that we make that are not necessarily sinful.

They're just a, a question of wisdom, but because they're unwise choices, sometimes we end up enduring a storm.

Difficulties in life changes our lives, maybe sometimes for a long, long time.

Economic setbacks.

The economy is kind of a cyclical thing and there's a time of boom of growth and good employment, and then sometimes we lose jobs because, not because of anything we've done, but because the economy has changed and our job is no longer there.

We have to go seek some other job, and that can cause a storm in the life of a family.

And suddenly your income isn't what it was, and you still have obligations, financial obligations.

Economic setbacks sometimes create big storms in people's lives.

And then of course sickness.

Debilitating illnesses.

Our own or those of those of others in our families, our loved ones, people that we care for and care about.

That can create a storm in our lives that lasts for a very long time.

7 different and maybe you can think of other sources of storms that occur in our lives, and I want to make some observations about these storms, and the very first one is that there is no new storm.

The Ecclesiastes writer in Ecclesiastes 1 verses 9 and 10 said.

If you say is, is, uh, is this a thing of which it said here it is new?

Nope, that's happened before.

Now, maybe it didn't happen with the exact same circumstances, but the storm in general is always, already happened.

It's happened in the lives of other people.

Sometimes we look at things that happen in our lives and we think, oh, nobody's ever experienced this.

No, that's not true.

Whatever storms you and I are facing in our lives or have faced, others have faced them as well.

And then secondly, not all storms have some moral dimension to them, as I've suggested, sometimes it's just circumstances, time and chance.

You lose your job, it's not your fault.

You're a good employee.

But suddenly the work is gone or other things happen.

It's not always a matter of morality.

Debilitating illness is not a matter of morality.

Sometimes we make unwise choices.

It's not a question of morality.

It's not right or wrong, but those choices bring consequences that create storms in our lives.

And I'll tell you, sometimes those storms can last a long time.

I think about some of the choices that I've made over the years.

And I can see pretty distinctly that some of those choices had big effects, great effects on the rest of my life.

Some of them good, some of them not so good.

I'm not talking about marrying Debbie.

I mean, it's a bad choice.

It was a good choice.

Storms have different intensities.

One of the things that Mark emphasizes in the story is that this was a terrible windstorm.

In fact, the word that he uses, the word that's translated windstorm in the ESV is a word that's described, used to describe a, a whirlwind or a hurricane.

We're not just talking about, well, it was kind of blowing and there were some waves.

We're talking about a real tempest here, and some of the storms in our lives are like that.

We're not sure what's going to happen.

Some storms not so intense.

But then finally, the danger of a storm is in the ability to cause harm.

If we knew, if we knew that every storm that we experienced wasn't going to cause any harm, we would probably relax a good bit in terms of physical storms.

But I'll tell you what, every time the wind starts blowing strong since 2011, I think about the tornadoes that came through in 413.

Because they did a lot of damage and people's lives were lost.

The danger of storms is that they can cause great harm to you, and when we have storms in our lives, storms of a different nature.

We sometimes are very concerned about what kinds of harm they can bring to us.

The apostles, they're in this boat and the boat is being tossed and water's coming over the side and the boat is filling and they're afraid.

They are anxious.

And fearful.

They're afraid that their lives are Going to be lost.

And so it is with so many people today when storms come into their lives.

Their lives are taking on water.

And they're in danger of being swamped and sunk, perishing.

We need to remember That others have faced storms in their lives.

No storm is new.

I'm thinking of Jacob.

Who fled from his twin brother Esau, who wanted to kill him. Yeah.

I'm thinking of Naboth.

Whose vineyard King Ahab wanted to possess and who was essentially put to death by the conspiracy of the people of Jezreel and Jezebel the queen.

I'm thinking about David, who was forced to flee from his life for his life from Saul and live in caves, running to try to avoid being killed.

And then later in his life, even when he's king, he has two sons who rebel against their father and try to take his throne.

A lot of the Old Testament prophets were persecuted.

Jeremiah was thrown into a pit and left to die there.

Daniel was thrown into a, a den of lions, and, and you could go on and on talking about some of the persecutions, the storms that the prophets, even just those in the Bible mentioned in the Bible, experienced.

And of course we read in 2 Corinthians about the multiple storms that Paul endured in his life.

We need to develop an attitude.

An attitude of it's gonna be all right.

Jesus asked the question of his disciples, why are you so afraid?

Have you still no faith?

Why is it that you don't trust in me, I think is the implication of the question.

They'd seen the miracles, the miracles that substantiated who Jesus was identified him as the Son of God.

And now they're facing a storm.

They're anxious and fearful.

Don't you care?

We're perishing Have you still no faith?

Jesus asked.

In the time of Habakkuk, and Habakkuk lived toward the end of the southern kingdom in the Old Testament.

Habakkuk complains to God in chapter one that there's such wickedness in Judah and it just doesn't seem like God is doing anything about it.

God tells Habakku, oh, I, I have a plan.

I'm going to bring the Babylonians.

They're going to punish Judah.

And Habakkuk now is concerned because The Babylonians, in his opinion, are even more wicked than the people of Judah.

And there's going to be a judgment, God says, against Judah.

So Habakkuk at the end of his book talks about how he's going to respond or how he responds to that judgment.

And I want you to listen carefully to what he writes.

He says though the fig tree should not blossom.

Nor fruit beyond the vines.

The produce of the olive fail, and the fields yield no food.

The flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls.

Do you understand the significance of what he's saying?

If our economy just goes to pot, everything is, is messed up.

No food, no animals.

If everything just is destroyed.

Can you think of a bigger storm?

People will starve.

Habakkuk says, Yet I will rejoice in the Lord.

I will take joy in the God of my salvation.

I don't think it's accidental that he calls him the God of my salvation.

And Habakkuk says, God the Lord is my strength.

He makes my feet like the deers.

He makes me tread on my high places.

Habakkuk says, no matter how big the storm is, no matter how terrible the tempest is, I'm going to rejoice in the Lord.

Habakkuk is going to remember his relationship with God.

He's going to trust in God.

God's going to be his strength.

That's how Habakkuk faced the coming storm.

That God had predicted.

I mentioned earlier that the apostle Paul faced multiple storms.

They're listed at least in part, uh, not just in Acts, but in 2 Corinthians chapter 11.

There are things in that chapter that are not even mentioned in Acts.

Paul was beaten multiple times with rods, shipwrecked 212 times.

That's before the shipwreck that he encountered on his journey to Rome later in the Book of Acts.

But here's what Paul wrote while he was in prison in Rome.

This is what he wrote to the Philippians in chapter 23.

He said, Not that I'm speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content.

I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound in any and every circumstance.

I've learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need.

I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.

Twice Paul mentions I have learned.

That's not necessarily a natural ability, but Paul says, I've learned to deal with whatever circumstances, whatever storm comes my way, because sometimes things were difficult for the apostle Paul.

He mentions hunger, he mentions need.

Among other things And I want to point out that both Habakkuk and Paul recognized that storms bring difficulties.

Trusting in the Lord doesn't mean that there's not ever going to be any difficulties in our lives.

There's going to be storms, just like the apostles were in a storm.

But what Habakkukan and Paul are both saying is you need to trust in God.

It's gonna be all right.

How is it that we calmly weather the storms of life?

Well, the same way that the disciples should have by trusting in the Son of God, by trusting in God.

I want to share with you just very quickly, 21 or 24 passages.

In Matthew the 219th chapter, Jesus actually in the Sermon on the Mount talks about this particular thing.

He says that we shouldn't be overly anxious, concerned about uh what we're going to wear, what we're going to eat.

Listen to what he says.

No man can, no one can serve two masters, for either you'll hate the one and love the other, or he'll be devoted to the one and despise the other.

You can't serve God and Mammon.

Therefore, so he's basing his comments now and what he said about who we serve.

Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you'll eat or what you will drink or about your body, what you'll put on is not life more than food and the body more than clothing.

Do, do we have to eat?

Yes. Do we need to have clothing?

Yes. Do we need shelter?

Yes. But life is more than that.

That's not the sum total of our existence here is getting our things and, and having these things provided.

Dropping down in this passage to verse 210 in Matthew 423, but seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

Jesus says, the most important thing is seeking the righteousness of God in His kingdom.

All of those other things pale in significance.

It's not that we don't have to be concerned about them or we don't have to give some effort to, uh, to achieve those things, to have those things supplied.

But no matter what storm comes in your life, it's gonna be all right if you are trusting in the Lord, because no storm can destroy the most important thing.

And that's your relationship with God.

That's your relationship with Jesus Christ.

God knows what we need.

But the priority is seeking his righteousness and the kingdom.

The other passage I wanted to share with you on the screen is Matthew 242.

Jesus said, Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Jesus acknowledged that people are going to suffer storms.

They're going to be persecuted for righteousness' sake, he says, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you and others, revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of the kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

How can you rejoice when you're being persecuted and reviled for your faith?

What's lying ahead?

What's more important than anything that happens in this life?

My relationship with God and the reward that he's promised.

In Philippians, the 210th chapter, again looking at the apostle Paul.

He says, do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God.

And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

That's written by the same guy who had storms often in his life.

He talks about them in 227 Corinthians 11.

But he says, don't be anxious about anything.

Take your concerns to God.

And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

That's how you weather the storms.

Is through the relationship that you have with Christ.

One passage along this line yet.

Matthew 10th chapter verse 28, and this is the point that I'm really trying to make.

Jesus says, do not fear, he's speaking to the apostles, those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.

Rather fear Him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

Jesus says there's something more important than even the, the question of whether someone will take your life here.

It's what your eternal destiny is going to be.

That's more important.

And it doesn't make any difference what the storm is here on Earth.

If you're trusting in Jesus, if your relationship with Jesus is what it ought to be.

Then you're good.

It's gonna be all right.

Paul did rehearse for the Corinthians some of the storms he had faced.

He says in chapter 11.

5 times, well, I, I'm gonna back up because I don't want to miss any.

Verse 23, are they servants of Christ?

He's talking about these, uh, false apostles that had come into the Corinthian church.

He says, I'm a better one.

I'm talking like a madman with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings and often near death.

103 times I received at the hands of the Jews the 40 lashes, less 1.

Do you read anything about that in the Book of Acts?

3 times I was beaten with rods.

Let me recall one time that the Book of Acts talks about Philippi.

Once I was stoned at Lystra.

Three times I was shipwrecked.

A night and a day I was adrift at sea on frequent journeys in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, dangers from my own people, dangers from Gentiles, danger.

In the city, dangers in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers in toil and hardship through many a sleepless night and hunger and thirst, often without food and cold and exposure.

What is Paul saying?

He's saying there were a lot of storms in my life.

A lot of storms.

In chapter 12, Paul will go on to talk about.

Some revelations that he had been given by the Lord in the beginning of that chapter and so that he didn't become arrogant by the privileges that he had been given, he is given a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, God permits to, to humble him, to harass me, he says, to keep me from becoming conceited, for say, 3 times I've pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me, but he said to me, God didn't take away the difficulty.

There'll be storms in your lives.

And they're not all going to just dissipate immediately and easily with no difficulties, no stress.

And he said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.

Therefore, Paul writes, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

For the sake of Christ.

Then I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities.

For when I am weak, then I am strong.

When he's weak and he has to rely on the Lord, the Lord's grace being sufficient for him, he says, that's when I'm really strong.

That's how you weather the storms in life.

You trust in the one who can give the ultimate peace, the ultimate calm in our lives.

The apostle Peter gave much the same answer in 1 Peter 4 and verse 19.

Therefore, let those who suffer, who have storms in their life according to God's will, entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good.

That passage does not say the storms will stop or that you'll never have storms.

It says, entrust yourself to the Lord.

That's how we have that peace that comes from within.

I keep saying one final passage.

This is the last passage.

Until the invitation Luke chapter 10 verses 41 and 42.

Interesting story there, just very quick observation.

Mary and Martha are entertaining Jesus, giving him hospitality.

Martha's busy getting things ready, and there's Mary and she's sitting, sitting in front of Jesus.

She's listening to Jesus, and Martha's upset about that.

She complains to the Lord, but Jesus' response is, Martha, Martha, you're anxious.

And troubled about many things.

Now that may seem like not much of a tempest.

She's upset because her sister isn't helping her, but Jesus says you're anxious and troubled, and that's what happens to us so many times in storms.

You become anxious and troubled about what might happen.

But one thing is necessary.

Mary has chosen the good portion which will not be taken away from her.

That expression, but one thing is necessary.

I don't believe that Jesus was saying that Martha's efforts in preparing food.

were irrelevant or unimportant But what he was saying is there's one thing that's absolutely more important, and Mary has chosen that, and that's to listen to Jesus, to be with Jesus.

It's gonna be all right.

For all those who serve the Lord.

And that's important because there'll be storms in the lives of all of us.

But it's not necessarily an inescapable conclusion that we're with the Lord.

They'll be unbelievers who are going to have storms in their lives and they're going to be anxious.

Water's coming into their life, and they think they're going to be swamped and there's no peace for them.

Because they don't have any promise of something greater.

They don't have a relationship with the Lord.

Jesus said in John 10:27, My sheep hear my voice.

And I know them.

And they followed me.

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them.

And they follow me.

The people who are listening to Jesus and following him, they're going to have peace.

It doesn't mean that there won't be outside circumstances, storms in their lives, but because they can trust in the Lord, they know they're not going to perish eternally.

And there's something more important than just this life.

It's what's going to happen to us in eternity.

Are you prepared There'll be storms.

You may be going through a storm right now.

It may be something physical.

It may be emotional.

There are different storms, kinds of storms.

A true peace, Paul says, is when we leave it with the Lord.

That peace can come to us.

In Christ Jesus.

If you're not in Christ this morning, if you've never been baptized into Christ for the remission of your sins, if you've never become one of God's spiritual children, with that promise of eternal life, that's the most important thing.

Not how well we live here, not whether we have good health, not whether we have a great job, not whether we have lots of money.

Not even whether we managed to live to old age.

None of those things are more important.

Then what's going to happen to us after this life, and that's determined by whether or not we have a relationship with Jesus Christ.

And if you don't have one, this morning, we're asking you to do what Jesus, I think implied in his, his question, have you still no faith?

You need to trust in Jesus as the Son of God.

As the risen savior, the one who can bring salvation into your life, and you need to respond, you need to hear his voice and follow him.

If we can assist you in doing that this morning, we invite you as we stand.

Series: N/A

Service: Sun PM

Type: Sermon

Speaker: Gary Copeland

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.)

Sure glad to see everyone today.

One of the challenges of public speaking.

On this occasion, especially is trying to make a lesson timely.

So I was going to preach all about ice.

Well, there's only like 3 verses.

They're all in Job and not very interesting.

So uh let's try this one instead.

Is there a problem?

What do you mean?

Is there a problem?

You mean a problem in my home?

Yeah, that's what I mean, a problem in your congregation.

Sure, that's what I'm talking about.

Is there a problem?

And the answer is Naturally.

Luke 17:1 says it's impossible that no offenses should come.

That's just like what we read in Matthew 18, right?

The Jared read for us.

In every relationship, in every culture, in every congregation.

There will be, there are problems.

There have been offenses since Eve gave the fruit to Adam.

And since Cain became jealous of Abel.

So if you don't have problems now, thank God for that.

But know that they will come.

And we need to know how to respond.

So the first thing is just a word of caution.

Watch out.

Because that verse continues Luke 17:1, Woe to him through whom they do come.

And this is parallel to what was read from Matthew 153.

It'd be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, thrown into the sea.

Then that he should offend one of these little ones.

And so we're talking about.

Somebody has that red stick figure.

He's gonna get a lot of play time.

So the red stick figure, see that that way y'all stay awake.

He's like, oh, he's, he's got some little graphics.

Oh wow.

So he's the one that caused the offense.

He's created the problem.

And woe to him Now there is hope for him.

But it's a major problem.

But the emphasis of this lesson is not going to be so much on him as it is going to be on.

The other person in the equation because other verses speak to the other person.

Look what Hebrews 12:15 says.

Looking carefully lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled.

And so this little person is the one who was offended.

Right, he's the one that the red stick figure offended this person.

So why is the scripture calling out this yellow figure?

But he didn't even do anything wrong.

The reason that he gets some focus.

Is because that bitterness from having been offended, from having been hurt.

That bitterness becomes a problem in itself.

Bitterness comes from unresolved issues.

Right, our sense of fairness has been violated.

Probably something unfair did happen.

We have been hurt.

We've been sinned against.

But we've never settled it in our mind.

So this remains an unresolved issue.

Now when Hurt is bottled up, isn't that cool?

I made him like slide right in it.

When the when the herd is bottled up.

Creates stress.

Nobody needs that.

Creates anxiety.

You see how I changed colors.

See this, this is the, this is the big, right, special effects, so.

We're not supposed to be anxious over anything.

But if we let bitterness get inside us and stay there.

And we nurture it by not doing anything about it, by not addressing it.

It grows.

And so stress turns into anxiety.

And now we got a problem.

Right now, we've got sin in our lives.

Now we've got this negativity.

Now we've got depression.

Now we've got a lack of love toward the other guy because I promise, when you're feeling that way toward the person that hurt you, right, when you're the yellow one, and the red person did something against you, you don't feel loving toward that person.

Your sense of fairness has been violated.

And you are not in a position where you're going to be treating that person with the love that you should.

So the yellow guy is in danger.

That's just from bottling it up.

His soul becomes in danger, and he's not the one who did anything wrong to begin with.

But what if he doesn't bottle it up?

What if he gives his hurt a voice?

Well, then he starts complaining.

Well, we know that's no good.

That's not what we're supposed to be doing.

Criticize, and we're not supposed to be criticizing other people.

But boy, isn't it easier.

Or maybe I should, before I get into the actually some of the solutions.

Isn't it easy to start criticizing the person?

Right, that person hurt me.

I can take it a little bit.

And some people are better at bottling things up than others.

I say better, that's not necessarily a good thing, right?

But when we give it that voice.

Then we say, do you know what he did?

You should have seen what, oh boy, here it comes.

Here comes the criticism.

Turns into slander sometimes.

And see what has happened there is exactly what it said in Hebrews 12, that many are becoming defiled.

Because now I'm running my mouth and I'm running the person down.

Yes, the person created a problem.

The person sinned.

But now I got sent in my life.

Even though he sinned against, I got sent in my, and now I'm spreading that evil influence to other people.

So bitterness can grow over time and as long as issues are unresolved, the relationship between the two people, the red and the yellow, is broken.

And both people's souls are in danger.

So the solution is to settle it.

We're going to look at how to handle 3 types of problems and I really don't intend for this to be kind of a cookbook, but I do want you to understand that there are 3 different types of problems that require a different type of response in each case.

So number 1, we're going to talk about false teaching.

I'm not going to spend much time on this.

There's one passage from Titus 3 verses 9 to 11.

The instruction of the preacher is avoid foolish disputes, genealogies, contentions, strivings about the law, for they are unprofitable and useless.

Look what verse 23 says, reject a divisive man after the first and 2nd admonition.

Knowing that such a person is warped and sinning, being self-condemned.

What's the solution?

Well, the solution is more action and correction.

Right, Titus 3 says, after a 1st and 2nd admonition, an admonition is a warning.

And he gets one.

And I want you to notice that then he's got an opportunity to teach that false teaching again.

That doesn't seem quite right, does it?

There are a lot of people that having heard that first false teaching, boy, they're ready to reject that person.

I mean, they're ready to cut him off.

And that's not what the scripture says.

We give them a first warning.

We give them a second warning before we reject them.

If somebody's got a good heart, there's a real good chance that that first warning will be all that's needed.

So why do we even take the risk of letting that person have an opportunity to teach again?

Well, the point is to try to reconcile.

The point is trying to fix that person so that he's no longer teaching falsely.

Now, I want you to notice this context.

We're talking about things that are important.

We're not just talking about some small thing that we disagree over.

We're talking about things that cause division among us.

We're talking about a, a serious issue.

So we don't just, you know, we're, we don't just start warning people over every little thing.

But I also want you to notice that what this is not about.

Oh, I guess first we got to do the count, right?

How many times do I go?

It's 2 admonitions, 2 times that we go, and I want you to see what it's not.

We don't just go ask the person about it.

I've seen this happen, right?

Where we, we go and say, so brother Brian, um.

I, I understood you to be saying la la la la la.

Is that, is that what you said?

He said, yeah.

And I say, I say to myself, oh, that's wrong.

That's sinful.

And what I say to him is, oh, I see.

And then I go off to somebody else and I say, we're done with him.

We can't have anything more to do with him.

I said, what just happened here?

The scripture says the 1st and 2nd admonition.

That means when I go to Brian or whomever, sorry to pick on you, he's just handy there.

I could have picked on somebody else in the near, near pew, but I go to them and I say, is this what you're saying?

And when they say yes, I say, brother, that's not right.

And if this is something important, something that's going to cause division, I ought to have a Bible verse, right?

I would say, no, no, no, you, you, you're teaching it wrong.

You're teaching it wrong, Lee.

This is the way the truth says.

Now you need to stop teaching it the way you did.

You need to come around to this viewpoint.

That's my first admonition.

If it happens again, I go on the same thing, right?

I say, here's the scripture, here's my warning, you're off base.

You need to correct yourself.

And then if he still doesn't respond well, then we reject the person.

But it's not just going to ask them at all.

Yeah, OK. And then we're done with them.

It is a go and admonish, a go and admonish, and then when worst case, then we reject the person.

I want you to not be like one of the elders down in Texas.

This is a whole other lifetime ago for me.

He was still stinging from a huge church split.

I mean, it was a doozy.

And what he said in one of the meetings that he had with the men, if anybody brings it up, we're going to withdraw from them.

I thought, what happened?

This is not even somebody who's causing division.

He's mentioning the topic.

He's not even teaching falsely.

Right after he was gonna be done with withdraw from him immediately.

But, no, no, we go, we admonish, we go again and admonish again.

OK, the second type of situation I want us to consider is the smallest matters.

Oh, that really got small, didn't it?

See, that was on purpose.

Because these are what 1 Corinthians 73:2 says, Are you unworthy to judge the smallest matters?

Do you not know that we shall judge angels?

How much more than things that pertain to this life?

So the second category is the smallest things, the things that pertain to this life.

Sometimes the smallest matters.

Cause the biggest problems. Right?

Bitterness can set in even on these little small things.

Especially because they're sneaky.

They're so small that we think, yeah, it's not worth bringing up.

And then another one happens.

We say, yeah, it's so small, it's not worth bringing up.

And it happens again.

We keep saying the same thing, but we never bring it up.

Well, maybe it is too small to bring up.

But there is another solution.

How about just some more wisdom to judge and to say, you know, this really is a small thing.

It's so small.

I've got enough judgment that I'm gonna just let this go.

John 7:24 says, do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment.

Um, 1 Corinthians 6:5 there.

Should have read first Is it so that there is not a wise man among you, not even one who will be able to judge between his brethren?

And so what that suggests is sometimes we have to have somebody else to help.

So we need more wisdom to discern these things.

We need to judge with righteous judgment, not just according to appearance, do our due diligence and really understand what's going on, but then we may need to bring somebody along to help us.

To help judge between the sit in the situation.

We definitely need more patience.

Patience to accept the wrong and just to suffer.

1 Corinthians 6:7.

Why do you not rather accept wrong?

Well, well, what kind of question is that?

Why do I not accept wrong?

Because it's wrong and it's against me and I don't like it.

My feelings are, so no, I'm not gonna just accept it.

Brethren, when we're talking about the smallest matters, we're talking about things that pertain to this life.

This kind of stuff happens all the time in the family, especially when you have 83 kids.

Oh, sorry, get too personal.

I'm just saying that we bump into each other.

Somebody's gonna break something unintentionally.

People are gonna just get crosswise with each other.

It's impossible that offenses will not come.

But these are the, if these are the littlest matters, let them go.

Just accept it.

And I don't mean just stick it away and say, OK, I'm gonna remember that one.

OK, I'm not gonna do anything right now, but I'm gonna remember that one.

What does 1 Corinthians 13 say?

Love does not keep an account of evil of wrongs suffered.

So 1 Corinthians 6:7, why do you not rather let yourselves be cheated?

Boy oh boy, that's tough.

But I want you to remember that the Lord is patient toward you.

Now, I pulled the ESV.

I don't normally do that.

I pulled it on purpose just so you'll see there's really a better word.

So I'm kind of pulling it to poke at it, not so much intentionally.

I use the ESV all over my YouTube channel, but um, so I don't dislike it, but there is a better word and the word that I learned from memorizing it from a different translation.

So when I found the word is patient towards you.

OK, patient.

Well, what does that word patient mean?

If you look it up on Blue Letter Bible.

org and you find out that you can pronounce macrohumeo.

Well then you can read that what it actually means.

The lexicographer says to be of a long spirit, not to lose heart, to be patient in bearing the offenses and injuries of others.

To be mild and slow in avenging, to be long suffering, slow to anger, slow to punish.

And so the New King James and other translations will say the Lord is long suffering toward us.

And boy, that just, see, that gives it a whole different spin in my head because I'm not just patiently just bearing with you and just wading through it.

No, I'm suffering with it.

The Lord is suffering with what we do against Him.

He's long suffering toward us.

And so I need to be long suffering.

I need to be patient.

I need to accept a wrong.

I need to allow myself to be cheated sometimes by my brethren.

And of course we need more love.

Do you really want me to read all the love passages?

We sang one of them, Love your neighbors yourself.

Already read about love from 1 Corinthians 13.

Love suffers long.

Oh, love suffers long, bears all, endures all.

Philippians 2:2.

Let each esteem others better than himself.

Philippians 93, be of the same mind in the Lord.

We need more love so that we can stay united, even when these little offenses happen.

Romans 12 live peaceably with all men.

He said, Gary, you got your Text scooted way over us allowing that little uh picture in picture thing for the Zoom audience.

So anyway, I don't know if they put it down in that corner, but it would fit there.

OK, the third type of.

The situation we need to discuss, of course, is sin, not, not false teaching and not just some little petty thing, but this is actually when sin happens.

The Key passages are Matthew 5, Matthew 18, and 1 Corinthians 5.

And the solution, starting there with Matthew 5:23 and 24, is to go.

If you bring your gift to the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you.

Oh, You're saying, wait a minute, who's the red stick figure?

I thought I was the yellow one, right?

It says if you were there, remember that your brother has something against you.

Leave your gift before the altar and go your way.

First be reconciled to your brother.

You gotta go.

If he's got something against me, I have to go.

And I might say, well, wait a minute, I didn't do anything.

Well, maybe not, but your brother thinks you did, and your brother's problem becomes.

Get my pronouns mixed up.

My brother's problem against me becomes my problem, even if I didn't do anything.

The fact that he thinks I did.

Becomes the problem we need to reconcile.

The relationship is broken.

His perception may or may not be right, but it's up to me to go.

And then in Matthew Matthew 18:133, the first part says, if your brother sins against you, OK, now I'm the yellow guy.

Go and tell him his fault between you and him alone.

Say oh boy, and 2 Timothy 4 there is all about rebuke.

Preach the word, be ready in season and out of season.

Convince, rebuke, exhort with all long suffering.

Oh, there's that word again and teaching.

So we've seen in Matthew 5.

And Matthew 18.

That both people involved need to go to each other.

The one who thinks, oh yeah, they, they think I did something wrong.

I better go.

Or if I'm on the flip side of that and I know that the other guy did something wrong, I need to go.

We need more action, brethren.

Less talking to each other about it and more going to the person that actually committed the offense, who has to go both people.

Continuing there in Matthew 18.

Verse 16 says if he will not hear.

See, now we're, we didn't get the right response that we hoped for.

If you will not hear, take with you one or two more.

So here comes the 3rd person.

That by the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.

Hopefully somebody else can become involved, help judge between the two people that are having the problem, and resolve the thing.

You gain your brother.

That's the point of the whole chapter.

Matthew 18 starts off talking about little children and not offending the little ones.

Jesus gives a couple of parables.

Then he talks about this.

Dealing with your sinning brother.

Verse 17 If that doesn't work, you tell it to the church.

What do you think the church is gonna do?

Well, it says if he refuses even to hear the church, so that means there was yet another time going.

Now it's not just the individual, not now it's not just the individual and a witness.

Now it's the whole church trying to go to this person.

Get him to change And so there's a go rebuke, a go rebuke, a go rebuke, right?

Oh yeah, a little graphic.

There's a little church, yeah.

So the question is how many times?

243 times Need more action sometimes.

And we definitely need more love.

Out of what is love trying to accomplish here?

The love in my heart.

Is trying to get me to gain my brother.

I have to go.

I'm not going to go unless I love my brother.

Right, if you do something against me and I don't love you, well, I'm just done with you.

Well, that's not what Jesus is all about.

I've got to have enough love to motivate me to go try to gain my brother, try to reconcile, try to get this relationship going again.

Matthew 18:21-22, I've got to have enough love to forgive, and this forgiveness is without limit, up to 70 x 7.

And yes, that's, that's a figurative number.

It's, I know it's a literal number.

I know we can count those things, but the point is to forgive without limit.

Matthew 18:17B.

If he refuses even to hear the church.

Let him be to you like a heathen and a tax collector.

1 Corinthians 5:243 says to cut off our association with the person.

That takes love.

Real easy just to say, uh, I'm not gonna, they're not gonna change their ways, but I'm just gonna keep on pretending everything's good, won't really bring it up.

We'll never be able to talk about that again.

There'll always be this tension.

But I'm gonna keep on trying to keep up appearances and imagine that things are good.

I'm gonna preach peace, peace, when there is no peace.

I've got to have enough love.

That if the person continues not to respond well.

Then I draw a line and I say now I can't have association with you.

It's the hard thing.

It's the loving thing because we're trying to get the person to see that they need to make a change.

They haven't listened to words, words, words 3 times, they're not listening to words.

Now let's see if they'll listen to action.

And if they do, praise God, because the whole point of this whole process, from the beginning, from the first time we went to them, all the way through the process, if they continue responding poorly.

The whole point is to try to gain our brother.

1 Corinthians 5.

Deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh.

Right, not to keep company with this person.

There are other examples.

There's one example in First Timothy one about the apostle Paul delivering to Satan.

Couple of men that he calls by name because.

Regarding the faith, they suffered shipwreck.

They no longer have.

Regard for faith and a good conscience.

So that's an example of Paul doing that very thing.

So let's be clear.

Oh, I had that up there, sorry.

So in the cases of false teaching and sin, we're assuming now in the case that the person does not repent.

What do we cut off?

I want you to be careful here how you answer.

Because they've already cut off.

Their fellowship with God.

Their communion with God.

We cut off our association with the person.

What do we, oh, sorry, 2 Thessalonians 3:14 speaks the same way as Matthew 18:17, same way as 1 Corinthians 24:11.

We do not keep company with the person.

What do we not cut off?

Love and communication.

2 Thessalonians 3:27 said not to keep company with, and the very next verse, verse 28, says, Yet do not count him as an enemy but admonish him as a brother.

The warnings continue.

Right, the relationship is broken.

But we don't cut off communication entirely.

Now, sometimes the other person does, well, we can't help that, right?

And so your first, you may be thinking about the other person and their likely response and blah, blah.

I want you to focus on you.

I need to focus on me through this whole process, regardless of the other person's response, talking about if I'm the yellow guy, right?

I need to focus on me.

There is great comfort.

And knowing that you've done all you can.

More specifically, in knowing that we have done all that the Lord asks us to do.

Look at 29 Corinthians 213.

Apparently the Corinthians did what they were requested to do, commanded to do by the Lord.

And Paul brags on him.

He says, what diligence it produced in you.

What clearing of yourselves.

What indignation, What fear, what vehement desire, what zeal, what vindication in all things, you proved yourselves to be clear in this matter.

That's worth doing, regardless of how the other person responds.

We've seen the passages that tell me to go.

I gotta go.

I got to go and rebuke.

I've got to speak hard things.

I've got to face difficult situations.

I've got to try to resolve broken, broken relationships.

I need to show myself clear in the matter.

I need to vindicate myself and say, Lord, I'm trying.

I don't have the words.

Uh, I doubt I'm gonna be able to change the person's mind, but I've got to do all that I can do to clear myself so that I don't go gray in the process.

Remember how the little stick.

OK, so, my soul is in danger.

I need to clear myself.

Do all that I can and look at another aspect of focusing on me.

Matthew chapter 224.

Jesus taught us to pray, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.

We've got to be doing forgiving.

We gotta have love enough to forgive.

But look, if we don't even try and we don't even get to the point where we can have an opportunity to forgive.

Look at verse 224.

If you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your father forgive your trespasses.

So if I'm that little guy that goes all gray cause somebody offended me and I never said anything about it.

I never did the Matthew 553 thing.

I never did.

I never went to the person.

I just let it harbor up in my brain.

I'll let it go down into my heart.

Develop bitterness.

I'll let that bitterness grow.

And then I had all kinds of bad attitudes and lack of love.

Sure not in a position to forgive the person, am I?

Neither will my father forgive me my trespasses.

So I need to focus on me.

Let's review what are the what are two purposes.

Well, the first is from 255 Corinthians 210.

Verse 22 says we deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh that his soul may be saved.

In the day of the Lord Jesus.

So we're we're talking about reconciling our relationship.

Similar point.

We're trying to get the other person to no longer be in spiritual danger.

They created the offense.

We're trying to get their spirit to be saved.

There's another thing in 1 Corinthians 5:7.

Tells us that we need to purge out the old leaven.

So there are 2 purposes of discipline.

Right, we're trying to save the other person's soul.

Try to get them out of jeopardy.

And in the meantime, if they will not repent, we're trying to keep the church pure.

Let me see what I've got in the way of uh.

Slides here.

This is what I usually hear.

Oh, that's not gonna work. Right?

Are you trying to tell the person, oh, did so and so offend you?

Yeah, they did.

And boy, I'm ready to tell you all about you, no, no, no, no.

You need to go to the person.

Oh, well, now that won't work, and blah blah blah and they start continuing they're running the person down because that person's got a hard attitude and they're not, they're gonna change.

It's like, OK, you need to take a breath.

My daddy too.

You need to take a breath.

And remember the two purposes.

Focus on you.

Focus on yourself.

You can't control the other person's response.

And I would dare say you can't predict it either.

Oh, you think you can. Right?

Based on their track record, you expect it.

But brethren, I will tell you that.

We know somebody personally.

It had a long standing issue, a sin unresolved, never rebuked.

Certain circumstances kind of extenuating there.

After many years, With much trepidation.

They went to the person who had offended them.

And guess what they got.

They got the most humble apology.

They got, they got a contrite spirit, and they were just so thankful.

I say thank God too because.

It may be better than you expect.

You can't control the other person, and that other person's got other factors working on them.

So you focus on you and you go, try to gain your brother.

So does the process work?

God's ways always work.

Let me try that again.

God's ways always work.

Thank you.

Seriously, Let us never doubt that, brethren.

Because we've got two purposes.

We're gonna, we're going to accomplish one of this that's within our control by maintaining the purity of the church.

But we may get lucky and we may see repentance and gain our brother.

I want to take just a few minutes here and talk to you about Saul and Samuel.

I don't really have slides to go with this.

1 Samuel 15.

Whole sermon could be just about this.

I'm supposed to stop before class starts, right?

I think Jim's Zoom class is going to start at 103 p.m.

, so.

Yeah 1 Samuel 15.

Without getting into the backstory.

The instruction by God to His King of the physical nation of Israel, King Saul.

was to go and render vengeance and punishment.

Corporal punishment, you're going to wipe out an entire nation.

There were reasons for that.

This is not a whim.

This is not capricious.

This was centuries long coming.

I have to double check my time frame.

Uh, this was a long time, many years coming.

And God said, go wipe them all out.

He said, kill every person and make sure that you, um, 2 Samuel, yeah, that's not gonna, no wonder it's in the wrong place on the page.

Oh yes, that's where my marker is.

Go and attack Amelech.

Utterly destroy all they have.

Do not spare them.

Kill both man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.

So Saul went and did.

Almost there.

Verse 7 Saul attacked the Amalekites.

Verse 8, he took Agag, king of the Amalekites, alive.

And destroyed all the people.

Verse 9 says, but Saul and the people spared Agag and the best of the sheep.

They were unwilling to utterly destroy them, uh, but everything despised worthless that they utterly destroyed. Right?

Well, that was easy.

They did what's what was convenient for him.

Well, anyway, Samuel comes to the scene.

And look what happens in verse 13, when Samuel the prophet approaches Saul the king.

Saul speaks first, he says, Blessed are you of the Lord, I have performed the commandment of the Lord.

You ever get that when you try to talk to somebody who sinned against you?

I haven't done anything wrong.

Oh boy.

No wonder we're having a problem here.

They don't even see their own sin.

Saul didn't even see his own sand.

I have performed, wow.

Let let's review.

The command was pretty clear.

Didn't have any exception clauses in it, right?

I've performed.

So Samuel says, well, what's the bleeding of the sheep in my ears then?

I'm hearing the sheep that you spared, you were supposed to kill all the animals.

Right, he had to show him evidence.

We need to sometimes show evidence when we rebuke.

We need to say, look, this is the problem right here.

Can you see it now?

But unfortunately, in Saul's case, that's when the excuses started.

Oh, well, the, the people, they have brought them.

The people spared the best of the sheep.

That's the first excuse, but it wasn't my fault.

And now watch this little twist.

Oh, and they did it to sacrifice to the Lord your God.

Oh, and now we're blaming the Lord for this whole thing.

Now we're saying that, oh, there was this this high noble reason for doing it.

Well, you know, I didn't want to cause a big problem.

I didn't want to stir something.

I didn't want to make this thing seem, I didn't.

And so we make all kinds of excuses for not going.

And the person who sinned in the first place makes all kinds of excuses for what they did.

Well, they pushed me to it.

You know, I never would have done that if there hadn't been something else happened before that.

And so it becomes this endless chain of dominoes, and it's never the person's fault.

It's a whole bunch of excuses.

Look what Saul says um down in verse 24.

After Samuel rebukes him.

I mean, he gives him a real, real direct and forceful rebuke.

Then Saul said to Samuel, I have sinned, for I have transgressed the commandment of the Lord and your words because I feared the people and obeyed their voice.

And you think, oh, finally, he's admitting it.

Or is he now?

Therefore, please pardon my sin and return with me that I may worship the Lord.

That sounds pretty innocent right on the surface of it.

But Samuel said to Saul, I will not return with you, for you have rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord has rejected you from being king over Israel.

Right, there's this little tussle and, and intentional.

As Samuel turned around to go away, Saul sees the edge of his robe and it tore.

Samuel said to him, The Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you today, and has given it to a neighbor of yours who is better than you.

Also, the strength of Israel will not lie nor relent, for he is not a man that he should relent.

OK, now are we getting somewhere now look what Saul says.

Then he said, I have sinned Yet honor me now, please, before the elders of my people and before Israel and return with me that I may worship the Lord your God.

Wow, see, we, we understand now what was going on in verse 24.

When he says, Pardon me and come with me to worship.

He's trying to keep up appearances.

He just wants to be still seen as the unsullied king, right?

No, he didn't have a problem.

He's going to show up, all the elders, all the, everything, the ceremony that was planned, he's going to be there.

He's going to be upfront.

No wonder Samuel wouldn't go back with him.

This was not a, this was not a David confession.

Right when Nathan the prophet told him, you are the man who has sinned.

And David said, I have sinned.

This is not bad.

This is an I have sinned yet honor me now.

Those two phrases don't go in the same sentence, brethren.

What we need more of on the part of the guy, the little red stick figure, what we need more of.

It's more humility.

I appreciate Ed's.

Song, I appreciate Jared's prayer.

We need more admission of guilt.

Uh, there's there's always some humorous thing, right?

Some of you are old enough to remember the Fonz.

He never could bring himself to say he was wrong.

He would say I was wrong, wrong, wrong.

I was He couldn't get it out.

He could not admit his guilt.

OK, for you modern folks, it's Megamind, right?

You were right, and, and I was.

Less right.

We can't admit our guilt sometimes.

What the world is going to end because we admit our guilt.

No, brethren, the world's gonna begin.

It's gonna open up, because you finally got some humility about you, and you finally confessed it.

And started trying to move forward.

We need more repentance.

What would repentance have looked like in the case of Saul?

And this is a softball question, right?

OK, let's review what was the command.

Kill all the people, kill all the animals.

What was his sin?

He didn't kill all the people.

He didn't kill all the animals.

OK, so what would repentance be?

Go kill the remaining people and go kill the remaining animals.

He's too busy trying to save face.

What he should have said when Samuel said.

You have sinned Because blah blah, then Samuel, then Saul should have said.

You're right, Samuel I feared the people I caved.

Shouldn't have done it.

I should have held firm.

I knew what the Lord said.

I should have done it right.

I need some time.

Anybody got a sword?

And then he would take the sword and he would have finished his business.

Didn't happen that way, did it?

He's too busy trying to save face.

You honor me now.

I got to go worship here and be there in front, be out where everybody can see me.

Who hacked a gag to pieces?

Wasn't solved And because of Saul's lack of repentance, Saul's and Samuel's relationship broke that day.

And it stayed broken.

What was it waiting for?

It was waiting for Saul to repent.

He never did it.

Right, how does the chapter end?

That Samuel went no more to see Saul until the day of his death.

Now it's an interesting twist on this story because look what happened after the day of his death.

Jump over to chapter 24.

Samuel is now dead.

He's in the realm of the dead.

And God allows Samuel to speak to Saul.

And the first thing he says to Saul is.

OK, this is almost a multiple choice.

I'll give you the wrong answer first.

So Samuel says, Saul, good to hear from you.

It's been a lot of years.

How's life?

You know, they say time heals all wounds.

Hope you're doing well.

OK, that's all the wrong answer.

What Samuel said to Saul after all those years.

Why are you bothering me?

You still haven't repented.

Do you remember your sins?

And oh, by the way, you're dying tomorrow.

And you think, wow, Even after the day of his death.

The relationship was still broken, and Saul was still receiving rebukes from Samuel because Saul never repented.

Well, does the process work?

It will work.

Isaiah 55.

Verse 10, for as the rain comes down and the snow from heaven, oh see, my sermon is timely.

And do not return there but water the earth and make it bring forth in bud that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater.

So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth.

It shall not return to me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.

Sometimes that thing.

is to rebuke, to call out, to convict someone of sin.

That by itself, brethren, is a worthwhile objective.

Regardless of the person's response to the Word of God, the Word of God accomplishes that.

It's like when the Holy Spirit was going to convict the world of sin, and of righteousness and of judgment.

It's important for us to call out unrepentant sin.

Whether the sinner actually turns or not.

Well, the invitation is.

Is there a problem?

You know, I've been both of those people.

I know your alarm is going off.

I'm done.

I'm done, girl.

Seriously, I've been both of those people.

So we gotta know how to respond to these situations.

And in that respect, this sermon will always be timely.

But when I think about.

The sermon per se has so far presented, it's really been about these two people and their relationship to each other.

But when it comes to me and my relationship with God.

I guarantee all of us have been and may now be the red stick figure.

And so all I can tell you.

That's what Peter preached.

To the crowd that was the reddest of red in Acts chapter 2, Peter had laid on them the accusation that they had crucified the very Son of God, the Lord and the Christ.

And when he laid that accusation on them.

They showed humility.

They said, men and brethren, what shall we do?

Because there's a way to get that stain off of you.

And it's what Peter told them, repent.

It's what we've been preaching from the example of Saul, repent.

And let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.

So as much as I wish I could just preach to you about happy things.

There's at least a happy side to this whole sermon that if we do what we're supposed to do in either case.

There is a way to settle it.

His problems have solutions, and even our worst sins against God have solutions because He has made a way through the sacrifice of Jesus like Jim Anderson talked to us about before the Lord's supper.

And so the invitation is to All stick figures.

Right, red, yellow, gray.

Whatever the situation, you may need to ask for prayers.

You may need to take some action.

And if we can help you in that, we'd encourage you to come to the front while we stand and sing.

Series: N/A

Service: Sun PM

Type: Sermon

Speaker: Allen Dvorak

Series: N/A

Service: Sun AM

Type: Sermon

Speaker: Brian Rodriguez

Series: N/A

Service: Sun PM

Type: Sermon

Speaker: Jon Hood

Series: N/A

Service: Sun AM

Type: Sermon

Speaker: Allen Dvorak

Series: N/A

Service: Sun PM

Type: Sermon

Speaker: Allen Dvorak

Series: N/A

Service: Sun AM

Type: Sermon

Speaker: Tim Smith