Church of Christ on Kelly Spring Road Podcast

Series: N/A

Service: Sun PM

Type: Sermon

Speaker: Allen Dvorak

Series: N/A

Service: Sun AM

Type: Sermon

Speaker: Tim Smith

Series: N/A

Service: Sun PM

Type: Sermon

Speaker: Allen Dvorak

Series: N/A

Service: Sun AM

Type: Sermon

Speaker: Allen Dvorak

Series: N/A

Service: Sun PM

Type: Sermon

Speaker: Allen Dvorak

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

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

As you can see on the screen, I'll be reading from 1 Peter chapter 5, beginning in verse 33 tonight.

And I looked at several versions and um I may take some flak for this, but I couldn't talk myself out of reading from the New Living translation, so.

I like the phrasing that it uses.

And, um, I guess I should set the context just briefly.

Um, Peter in verse 5 has, uh, encouraged them, the, the recipients to exhibit humility towards themselves, and he continues this thought of humility here in verse 6.

It reads, so humble yourselves under the mighty power of God, and at the right time He will lift you up in honor.

Give all your worries and cares to God, for He cares about you.

Stay alert.

Watch out for your great enemy, the devil.

He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.

Stand firm against Him and be strong in your faith.

Remember that your family of believers all over the world is going through the same kind of suffering you are.

In His kindness, God called you to share in His eternal glory by means of Christ Jesus.

So after you have suffered a little while, He will restore, support, and strengthen you, and He will place you on a firm foundation.

All power to Him forever. Amen.

I want to begin this evening with the story of Snow White.

If you're looking in your Bibles, it's not in the New Testament.

But most of us are familiar with that childhood tale.

A wicked queen who has a special mirror.

And she goes to the mirror and she asks, who's the fairest in the land and the mirror keeps telling her it's her.

But she has a stepdaughter, Snow White.

And as Snow White grows and becomes more beautiful.

She eventually eclipses the wicked stepmother, the queen.

And the queen can't stand that, and so she tries to have Snow White killed.

But the person who is supposed to do that doesn't take care of business.

She's secreted off in the forest and she's with the dwarfs there who are miners.

The queen finds out where she is, and she conjures herself up as an old hag.

And believe me, that's a hack.

And she has prepared an apple.

The picture doesn't do it justice.

It was so delicious looking.

So Appealing to the senses that Snow White agrees to eat this apple and she takes a bite, but it's a poisoned apple.

You see, things are not always the way they seem.

And this apple that may have been so appealing to the eyes and looked so good was actually poisoned.

I would tell you the rest of the story, but the sermon's pretty long already and I didn't want to extend it too much further.

But that introduces the point that I wanted to make about Satan.

Satan, the devil is often pictured in our culture as an individual with a red body or sometimes you kind of get the impression he's got red leotards on.

And he has horns, small horns, and a pitchfork and, and a forked tail.

And that kind of a caricature doesn't really encourage people to take him seriously.

But the truth of the matter is the Bible presents Satan as a real being who inhabits a spiritual world, and he has a definite mission.

And a definite destiny.

The Bible tells us that he doesn't always seem what he is.

In 2 Corinthians chapter 11 in verse 12, the apostle Paul says, and what I am doing, I will continue to do in order to undermine the claim of those who would like to claim that in their boasted mission, they work on the same terms as we do.

Paul was dealing at Corinth with some individuals who were basically presenting themselves as super apostles, and they were questioning the authority and the motives of the apostle Paul.

He defends himself in the latter chapters 10 through 13 of the book.

He says, for such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen disguising themselves as apostles of Christ.

And no wonder, for, even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.

So it is no surprise if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness.

Their end will correspond to their deeds.

And so Paul says, Satan disguises himself.

He's not going to appear as that quintessential enemy that he's pictured as in so many uh portraits of our culture.

This evening, I want to talk about 1 Peter 5 and Travis, I appreciate that you went back to verse 123.

I'm going to look, start in verse 5 and I put the wrong numeral there uh in the scripture reading, but we're going to focus on verse 8, which discusses in particular, Satan.

We're going to focus on that verse, but I want to look at the development of Peter's thoughts in the text.

Our text, 1 Peter 5:5 to 11, I'm going to divide it into verses, sections, and we'll look at each of the sections and then we'll talk a little bit about the danger that Satan presents to us.

We don't need to be afraid to say Satan is a real individual.

The Bible doesn't present him as a boogeyman, doesn't present him as some sort of mythical creature.

But rather, he is an enemy.

He is our adversary.

And that's how Peter describes him in this text.

As Travis noted.

In verse 5, the subject of submission and humility is already introduced, and Peter will develop it even further, beginning in verse 6.

He says, likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders.

Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.

Um, I'm gonna disappoint Travis.

I'm going to use the ESV this evening.

Instead of the living translation, always a paragon of translational accuracy.

But in all fairness to Travis, I often cite the NLT because sometimes it provides a reading that is, I think, on the spot and easier sometimes for us to understand.

But tonight, you'll have to bear with the ESV instead of the NLT.

Peter begins verse 5 with an interesting word.

In fact, it's a word that he's used before in this same book.

In chapters 313 and 3, he noted the need for submission in other relationships.

In chapter 2 and verse 13, we need to be subject to the governing authorities.

Servants needed to be subject to their masters, chapter 2 and verse 18, and then in the beginning of chapter 3, in verse 1, he uses this very same word likewise as he addresses wives and indicates that they need to be subject to their husbands.

So in chapter 5, he has introduced, or I should say addressed in the beginning of the chapter, elders, the shepherds of local congregations, and he gives instructions to them.

But then in verse 5, he says, you who are younger, be subject to the elders.

I'm not sure if he's talking about elders in the sense of individuals qualified as 23 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 would suggest.

I think that's very likely in light of the context, but the word that's translated.

Elder in the New Testament is a word that simply means an older person, and it could be referring simply to older people and not necessarily those who are qualified as elders or shepherds of a local congregation should be.

But Peter, I think actually with the word likewise is continuing this theme of submission in various uh relationships, uh various uh circumstances.

And he says, clothe yourselves, all of you with humility toward one another.

The word clothe there just means to put on, to tie on.

And he says, for here's the reason, for God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble, and he'll continue that thought in verse 6, when he again says, therefore, humble yourselves, therefore, why?

Because God opposes the proud.

He gives grace to the humble.

He says, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God.

That's an interesting phrase.

I think maybe Peter is making connection to a couple of different other phrases in these verses.

For instance, He says, humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that at the proper time, he may exalt you.

We may be humble in this life, but God has the power to exalt us, as Peter writes, at the proper time.

And I also wonder if he's not tying that to the phrase that begins verse 7, casting all your anxieties.

I think the New King James Version says care or cares on him because he cares for you.

God is capable of meeting our needs, of taking care of our cares, uh, as some versions almost translate.

Moving to verse 8.

Moving to verse 8.

Moving to verse 8.

This is the verse that I really want to focus on.

Be sober-minded, the writer Peter says.

The word that's translated sober-minded here is a word that literally means to be free from intoxicants, sober, although most word studies will suggest that the word in the New Testament is used in a metaphorical sense, not in the sense of being free from Alcohol or some other physical toxin in our bodies, although I think that would certainly be included, but that's not the emphasis according to these word studies, but rather it is that we are not allowing ourselves to be overwhelmed by any kind of passion or substance that would make it difficult for us to be watchful.

Because that's the next thing he says, be sober-minded, be free from anything that would intoxicate you so that you can be alert.

That's the concept.

Be watchful.

And the reason is our adversary, the devil, prowls around, prowls around like a roaring lion.

That's kind of interesting.

One commentator made this observation.

He said the metaphor that is comparing Satan to a lion is apt.

It's suitable for a prowling lion attacks suddenly, viciously, and often when it's unsuspecting victim is engaged in routine activities.

You've probably seen the documentaries of wildlife in Africa on the savannah, and, and there's the watering hole, and here comes uh an animal, and this animal is there to get a drink of water, but there's a lion who's waiting, or maybe he He's moving through the grass.

He's camouflaged by his skin, his hair color rather.

And as the animal leans down to take a drink, vulnerable, and the animal, the lion comes and attacks.

And the commentator says that's appropriate, uh.

Roaring lion who attacks suddenly, viciously when its victim is engaged in routine activities.

What would that say for us?

It would be that sometimes we're so consumed by all of the things that are going on around us, the minutiae, the mundane things of life, and we forget to watch out for the predator who is Seeking us, who's stalking us.

He notes the lion's purpose.

And I think it's interesting that back in verse 7, he said about God, submit yourself under the mighty hand of God, casting your care or anxieties upon him because he cares for you.

But now in verse 8, there's this huge contrast because Satan, the devil, he just wants to devour, he wants to destroy.

Now he uses all kinds of attractions that look good, that seem to be pleasurable.

That are desirable.

But like that poisoned apple.

It's really detrimental to us.

It destroys us.

That's his purpose.

That's his mission is to destroy us.

In Matthew 23th chapter, Jesus as he pictured there in verses 31 and following, pictured the final scene of judgment.

There are the sheep and the goats, and they're gathered before him, he separated them, and he gives each of them their sentence or tells them what their destiny is.

And for the goats, the wicked, he basically says that they're going to be consigned to the lake that burns with fire.

Prepared for the devil and his angels.

The devil's destiny is already set.

What his mission is, is to take as many of us.

As he can with him.

So that we end up in torment as well.

God cares for you.

The devil just wants to devour you.

And so, Peter goes on to say in verse 9, resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world.

When Peter says resist him, he is implying that we are not helpless before the onslaught of the devil.

Now, he is an angel, a fallen angel, if I understand correctly.

Which means that he is more powerful than we are in some sense, we're made less than the angels, the Hebrews writer would say.

But Peter suggests that we can resist him despite his power.

Jesus resisted the tempter with the word of God.

The apostle Paul will write in Ephesians 6 as we sang just uh not too long ago about the armor of God that we need to put on that we may be able to withstand the wiles, the schemes of the devil.

And he talks in other places, the apostle Paul does about the fact that Satan doesn't necessarily approach us in a direct fashion, but that he is subtle.

He's a schemer, and we'll say more about him as we go on.

Resist him, firm in your faith.

That's an interesting word.

It means solid.

It's the idea of something that's not weak or, or easily pushed around, but the idea of something that is solid.

And he says, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are experienced by the brotherhood throughout the world.

One of the themes in the book of First Peter is suffering.

You see it in various places.

The suffering of Jesus is spoken of in chapter 2, verses 18 to 23, and we're encouraged to follow in his steps to respond to evil the way that he did as he was uh being tried and then crucified.

In chapter 3, verses 13 through 17.

Again, the idea, uh, if you suffer for righteousness' sake, here's what you should do.

In chapter 43, verses 12 to 19.

Don't be surprised at the suffering that you're, the fiery trial that you're going to endure.

And so you see suffering throughout this epistle as uh at least a minor theme, if not a primary theme.

And Peter says, your suffering as he writes to these Christians in the five provinces of Asia Minor.

He says, your suffering is not unique.

These suffering, these kinds of suffering are being experienced by brethren throughout the world.

And it seems to me in the context here.

That the devil is connected in this text to at least some of that suffering.

That probably wouldn't surprise us, would it?

When we remember the story of Job and we understand that in the first two chapters of Job.

Job is tormented.

He loses all of his possessions.

He loses his family, his children, all of, uh, only his wife is left.

And then in chapter 2, even Job himself is afflicted with some sort of terrible illness, sickness that will plague him during the conversation with his 3 friends and then later Elihu.

And Satan is the one who afflicted Job, as the text says in those first two chapters.

James in chapter 4 and verse 7 offers the same counsel that Peter offers here in chapter 5 with respect to how we should respond to Satan.

James 4:7, James wrote, submit yourselves, therefore to God.

That's what Peter said, Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God.

Therefore, uh, therefore to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you.

Not interesting that as much power as Satan might have ultimately, if he is resisted firm in our faith, And he'll flee He is not all powerful.

He is not deity.

I find it interesting that Peter and James give the same counsel, submit to God and resist the devil.

But you may recall that on the night that Jesus was betrayed, He spoke to Peter and said, you're going to deny me.

And Peter argued with the Lord.

The Lord said, Watch and pray, but Peter slept.

While the Lord prayed, Peter, James, and John, as they were separated from the other apostles by Jesus.

Jesus gave the council, submit to God and resist the devil.

Peter resisted the Lord and submitted to the devil.

And he went out And wept bitterly, we're told.

So then in verses 73 and 11.

In these final verses of the chapter, Peter says, and after you have suffered, final verses of this perricope, and after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to His eternal glory in Christ will Himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.

To Him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen.

The expression after you have suffered a little while seems maybe intentionally vague.

It doesn't specify a time, but the point is that God, who has called us to His eternal glory, and there's the motivation for enduring suffering, for staying steadfast, firm in our faith, resisting the devil, we've been called to a very high price.

And then he says, God of all grace will restore, confirm, strengthen and establish.

Those words have slightly different meanings, but I kind of feel as though Peter is just heaping up words that would suggest that God's going to provide everything that you need.

In order to last, in order to survive the onslaught of Satan.

The word Satan is actually a Greek transliteration.

Of the Hebrew word that means adversary or opposer, one who withstands another.

And so, the Greek language just took that Hebrew word and put Greek letters to it.

We know them as Satan.

The Greek word is Saanas.

In the Septuagint, the Hebrew word was usually translated by the Greek word diabolos.

Which means accuser or slanderer.

And in the New Testament, both words are used, satanas and diabolos to describe the devil.

Diabolos is more often translated devil.

As long as we're talking about various descriptions of Satan, there are a number of things that are set out in the scripture that describes Satan in a way that also says something about what his mission is, what his Intentions are.

Remember in 1 Peter 5:23, Peter said he's seeking someone to devour.

He's called the tempter in Matthew 212.

On the occasion of Jesus' temptation in the wilderness, the tempter came and said to him, If you're the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.

But Jesus answered, It is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

Then the devil, now we know who the tempter is, took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple.

Pay attention to the fact.

But Peter says, resist him, firm in your faith, and Jesus resisted Satan by quoting scripture, and that's where faith comes from, according to Paul in Romans 231:22.

Satan is also described as the evil one.

When Jesus tells this parable of the sower and the four soils upon which the seed would fall, in the description of the meaning of that, he says, when anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart.

This is what was sown along the path.

My impression is that Satan cannot take away from you what you do not willingly surrender.

In other words, it's not that Satan comes and he basically steals from you what could provide for your salvation.

But when the word of God lies on the surface of the heart.

When it doesn't, when it isn't received with meekness as Peter says in 22 Peter 24, then Satan will come and he'll find a way for it to be removed from our heart.

Satan is called a murderer, a liar, and the father of lies.

In John the 43th chapter, Jesus was uh controverting with the Jewish leaders there and they were claiming their allegiance or their, I should say connection to Abraham.

But Jesus said, no, no, you don't act like Abraham acted.

You act like your father.

And then he identified their father.

He says, you are of your father, the devil and your will is to do your father's desires.

He was a murderer from the beginning.

He didn't murder Adam and Eve, did he?

No, actually, spiritually he did.

He convinced Eve that she could do what God had said she couldn't, and so she went ahead and sinned, and the consequences were that they were uh chased out of the garden and they would die, they would return to dust from which they had been taken.

He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there's no truth in him.

When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

You like being lied to.

Someone tells you something and you find out later that They were basically manipulating you.

Might be some businessman.

He told you something, and later on you find out that's not true, but he told you that lie simply so that he could profit from you.

Do you feel respected?

Or do you feel manipulated?

Satan is a liar.

He is the father of lies.

And he's a murderer He wants to kill spiritually as many of us as he can.

To have us consigned to that same lake that burns with fire that is his destiny.

And God because he cares for us.

wants us to inherit his eternal glory.

He's the accuser of the brethren.

Interesting statement in Zechariah 24 and verse 226.

Zechariah saw several visions and in one of these visions, he sees Joshua, the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and there's Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him.

Satan wants to use the justice of God to punish you and me.

If he can accuse us of sin, he knows that God is a just God and he's not going to ignore sin, he will see us punished for that sin.

God, on the other hand, because He cares for us, has provided for us a way that we can escape the punishment of sin by having our sins forgiven.

Interesting statement over in Revelation chapter 227.

Chapter 12 is a setup chapter.

It basically helps us understand.

Why things are happening in the latter part of the book.

It gives us a peek behind the scenes to see the controversy, the competition between God and Satan.

And I heard a loud voice in heaven.

John writes saying now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of this Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down who accuses them day and night before our God.

They have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they love not their lives even unto death.

Revelation is a difficult book in places that uses a language that is figurative.

Sometimes things are spoken of as though they are literal, and yet they're simply symbolic.

But there are a couple of things from this text that I think are interesting.

One is he's called the accuser of our brothers.

That's how God, uh, excuse me, Satan manages.

To have us punished if he can accuse us before God of our sins.

But these people had conquered him by the blood of the Lamb.

Ephesians 1:7, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our sins, that redemption, that freedom from the bondage of sin by the payment of the ransom, the ransom that was the blood of Jesus Christ.

That's how we conquer Satan.

He has no hold on those who are not guilty of sin.

He can accuse all he wants, but the Lord Jesus can say that individual.

Belongs to me, as Paul would write in 1 Corinthians 6:19-2.

Satan is called the God of this age.

In 2 Corinthians 4:4, in their case, the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

There's a certain power that Satan has in this world.

He's called by Jesus 3 times here in the Gospel of John as the ruler, described as the ruler of this world.

John chapter 12 verse 31, the judgment of this world, now will the ruler of this world be cast out.

For the ruler of this world is coming.

He has no claim on me concerning judgment because the ruler of this world is judged.

Satan has already been judged.

He has a little time until the Lord returns when his destiny.

will be fixed.

He will be punished for eternity.

And so he's working.

He's plotting He's scheming.

To take you with him.

He's called the ruler of this world, the prince of the power of the air, as Paul describes him in Ephesians 2 and verse 2.

Satan is certainly a powerful individual.

You can see some of what he is about by just looking at the way that he is described, and there are other uh descriptions of him.

I've confined myself to just a few for the sake of time, but Satan is certainly a powerful individual and we shouldn't take him lightly.

I think that's the point that Peter is making here.

Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God that he may exalt you in due time.

Resist the devil.

Be sober-minded, be watchful.

So that you're not taken as prey.

But on the other hand We don't need to overestimate him either.

He can be resisted and he can be defeated as we noted in James 4:7, and as Paul notes in Ephesians 4:26 and 27, don't give any occasion, opportunity to the devil.

We can deny him that, as Paul says.

Something interesting.

Even the most dastardly deed that ever was done under Satan's direct direction, the crucifixion of Jesus the Christ redounded under God's glory.

Satan entered Judas, the text says.

Judas was being guided in his evil behavior by the evil one.

But when Jesus got on the cross and died there.

He shed his blood, and through that blood, we have the victory.

If Satan had understood that, he would have done everything possible to keep Jesus off the cross.

I'm convinced of that.

Because he wants you and I to suffer.

Eternal punishment.

And the cross is the way that God saves us from that punishment.

Through the death and resurrection of Jesus, we can have the ultimate victory over Satan.

We can break the power of Satan.

His power is sin and death.

We may not be able to see Satan himself, but it's not too difficult, I think, to see the evidence of his presence in this world.

All around us, we see.

The prevalence of wickedness, and it attests to his success.

As the one who's seeking whom he can devour.

And so this evening, I want to encourage you.

To be aware of the danger.

To take it seriously, to understand that you are being stalked just like I am.

And there are things that you can do in order to avoid being taken as prey.

Satan's not our friend, he's our enemy, and when we sin, we are cooperating with him.

Understand that when Satan.

Talked about Job.

He was really attacking God.

He challenges the motivation for Job serving God.

You, Job only serves you because you bribed him with all of these riches.

He was the richest man of the East.

That actually was a charge against God.

Satan is God's enemy and when you and I give in to sin, whether it's passion or anger or weakness in other ways, greed or whatever.

What we're doing is we're cooperating with Satan.

We turn our back on God.

The God who loved us and gave His Son for us when we were enemies.

So my question to you this evening.

Is will you turn your back on the devil?

Or on guard We can overcome Satan through the cross.

And the plan of salvation in the New Testament provides us with forgiveness of sins through that very act.

Of Jesus dying on the cross and our response to the instructions that he has given us in the Gospel.

If you believe that Jesus is the Christ, you trust him as the risen savior.

If you're willing to repent of your sins, turn from those things that you understand are only assisting Satan.

And you're willing to confess your faith in Jesus.

Then I would encourage you this evening to make the decision to be baptized, to be buried in water with Christ, forgiven of your sins through the blood that we come in contact with when we're buried into the death of Jesus Christ.

If we can assist you in doing that very thing this evening, and we want to encourage you as we stand and sing to invite you.

Series: N/A

Service: Sun AM

Type: Sermon

Speaker: Allen Dvorak

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

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

Ephesians 4:16.

I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.

There is one body and one spirit just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call.

One Lord, one faith, 11 baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.

While we are changing things up this morning, I just thought I'd come from the other side.

Appreciate everybody's presence here this morning.

But again, talking to you about marriage.

Married couples, sometimes to all outward appearances.

Seem to be happy and they're united.

But the truth is that there's actually rancor, fighting, bitterness, and discord in the home.

And what happens sometimes is that marriages have two personas.

There is the public persona where We wear the smile and make everybody think life is good, everything's good in our home.

And then there's the private persona, the truth of the matter.

Where the relationship is strained.

And there's disunity in the home.

Eventually, in most cases, the private persona comes to the surface.

And sometimes outside observers are surprised.

Thinking that everything was OK in that marriage.

Well, I brought that up because I think congregations sometimes are much the same way.

That sometimes it appears on the outside that there's unity and, and all is well, but under the surface.

Not too far under the surface sometimes there is bitterness and squabbling.

And division that seeds.

In the congregation I think we need to acknowledge that sometimes division is inevitable, even necessary.

The Lord in talking about his own mission in Luke the 12th chapter in verse 51, said, Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth?

No, I tell you, but rather division.

From now on, in one house, there will be 5 divided, 3 against 173 and 2 against 3.

They will be divided father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.

Jesus was not, I don't think, saying that division is a good thing, but I think he was saying it is inevitable.

That it is going to happen as a result of the preaching of the gospel and the different reactions that people have to that message.

In 1 Corinthians 11th chapter, later, the apostle Paul as he begins to correct uh some Uh, practice of the Corinthian Church, he says in 1 Corinthians 11:19, for there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized.

There needs to be a division sometimes so that those who are doing right are recognized.

And yet division in the local congregation of God's people always has a cost.

And frequently it is a devastating cost.

So I want to talk to you this morning about unity, but I'm going to approach it from the standpoint.

Of causes.

Of division, consequences of division.

But I want to end by talking about how we can promote unity in this local congregation or whatever congregation we might happen to be a member of.

Jesus said, every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation and every city or house divided against itself will not stand.

In Matthew the 12th chapter verse 25.

Division is destructive and it'll cause us not to stand in the sense of being able to do what the Lord wants us to do as a congregation and sometimes affect us even as individuals.

Many of us have been members of congregations that experienced division or problems that may have led to division, and it's an unpleasant thing always.

Maybe we've seen good friends separated, long-term relationships that have been destroyed, brethren treating other brethren as enemies.

It is astounding That some brethren think that they can come and worship God in a congregation.

While refusing even to acknowledge other brethren in that same assembly and we'll all go to heaven.

I guess when we get to heaven, all that will dissipate, right?

I think in general, KSR seems to enjoy unity sometimes in the prayers that are offered publicly.

There's Thanksgiving for the unity that we enjoy and I think that's appropriate.

I believe that there is unity here, but I think it is worth our time and our focus to talk about the danger of disunity because of the seriousness of it.

Let's talk a little bit about causes of division.

Why is it that congregations sometimes divide?

And I want to begin by talking about why they don't divide.

For instance, division is not necessitated by racial or economic or ethnic or gender diversity.

The fact that we come from different backgrounds and we come from different races has very little to do with whether we enjoy unity in a congregation or not.

We all heard and obeyed the same gospel.

Those who are members of the congregation all walk in the same light of the gospel and all have the same hope.

And God's intention in the gospel was to bring two groups of people who had been separated by virtue of the law of Moses back into one group in the church.

I'm talking about Jew and Gentile, and that's what Paul's talking about in Ephesians 183 verses 14 to 16.

That Jesus brought these two groups, Jew and Gentile together as one man in Christ, as one body in Christ.

In John the 17th chapter, as Jesus was talking with his apostles prior to the betrayal, in his prayer, he says to the Father, I do not ask for these only but also for those who will believe in me through your, their word, that they may all be one just as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.

God's intention is for us to have peace, for us to have unity as a group of his people, regardless of the diversity among us in terms of some of the things that I've already mentioned.

But sometimes there is division and there are multiple causes.

I don't know that I'll necessarily uh indicate all the causes that maybe you could think of, but clearly false teaching, false doctrine will cause division as some will embrace it and some will not.

Peter said in 2 Peter 2 that even among Christians, there would be false teachers just like there were false prophets among the people of Israel in the days of old.

Selfishness and or arrogance on the part of one or more members can lead to division.

When we talk about unity, it's important that we understand there's more than one dimension to unity.

We're unified hopefully on the things that we understand from the scriptures, but even if we embrace the same truths, there can be disunity by virtue of the fact that we are not behaving according to that truth.

Selfishness and sinful pride can pull people apart.

We've been studying in the adult auditorium class, the works of the flesh and the fruit of the spirit.

And it's interesting to me how many of the works of the flesh are related to divasion or have some connection.

Paul wrote about strife.

And jealousy And fits of anger and selfish ambition.

He talks about those things.

The church of Corinth provides us with a good example of individuals who were arrogant.

And they were divided.

Division in the congregation doesn't always result in two separate groups who are meeting in different locations.

So that now you have two congregations where there was one.

Sometimes the division in a congregation is every bit as real as the aisle that separates the various banks and pews.

People are still coming to the same building but they're not united.

In fact, brother so and so won't talk to sister so and so, sister so and so won't talk to sister so and so.

I guess they all should have different names, right?

But the point is that even though ostensibly on the surface, it looks like everybody's together, but the fact of the matter is we're divided.

We're divided by such things as selfishness.

And jealousy In fits of anger.

The Corinthians also had a problem with preacheritis.

And some congregations have that problem as well.

There are people who are members of the congregation who have more loyalty to a located, uh, local preacher than they do Christ.

The Corinthians were calling themselves after the individuals either who taught them or in some cases, apparently who had baptized them and Paul rebukes them for that in the 1st 3, almost really 4 chapters of 1 Corinthians.

He says in verse 33, for it's been reported to me by Chloe's people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers.

I think they were still meeting as a congregation, although they had divided themselves in the partaking of the Lord's supper, but I don't think some had pulled off and started another congregation, but Paul says there's quarreling among you.

What I mean is that each one of you says I follow Paul, or I follow Apollo, or I follow Cephas or I follow Christ.

And then Paul asked the question, is Christ divided?

Was Paul crucified for you or were you baptized in the name of Paul?

Paul says, if I may translate uh loosely, I'm glad I didn't baptize hardly any of you so that no one could make that claim that I am baptized in my name.

Sometimes division is the result of a failure to resolve sin among members.

What's interesting, Jesus said in Matthew 18:7 that offenses are inevitable.

We're gonna step on each other occasionally, even as we try to behave the way Christ would want us to behave, to be conformed to the image of God's Son.

We're still at times through weakness or thoughtlessness, we may sin against one another and a failure to resolve those sins can cause disunity.

A failure to go to a brother who has sinned against me.

In Matthew 18, a little later on in the chapter in verse 223, Paul's or Jesus says, if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault.

Between you and him alone.

And yet often brethren don't do that.

They just allow that to be like a thorn under the flesh that festers and festers until finally at some point, it kind of bursts like we see physically in our skin.

In Luke the 24th chapter and verse 22, Jesus said, pay attention to yourselves.

If your brother sins, rebuke him and if he repents, forgive him.

Which introduces another problem sometimes in this idea of a failure to resolve sin, and that is that sometimes when a brother does repent, we fail to forgive.

And so that sin just stays there and it's, it's like a barrier between me and the one who has sinned against me if I refuse to forgive.

Often grudges or bitterness arise instead of forgiveness and reconciliation.

It's very important that we deal with sin the way the scriptures instruct us to do so that we can enjoy.

Unity And I'm gonna list one more, and that is the failure to practice discipline.

Some cases it is the failure of members to follow the leadership of the elders in case of discipline.

The elders of a congregation have worked with an unrepentant brother or sister, and finally it comes to the point where discipline, that is congregational withdrawal becomes necessary, but there'll be this brother or that sister or this family that so I'm not sure we should do that.

And so there's Division or disunity in the congregation as a result.

If I may, I'd like to make just a few further observations.

And one of them is that the disunity or division that I'm talking about never exists without sin being present.

I think there are times when congregations divide.

They divide because they've outgrown their building or there's a group that wants to start a new congregation in an area where there is no congregation.

That's how this congregation came into existence.

Back in 216, and there's not necessarily any sin involved in that.

But the division I'm talking about is a division that really always has sin present.

Secondly, division usually doesn't happen overnight.

It can take time to develop.

As people sometimes develop parties or uh try to uh work or gain support uh among other members for whatever their pet peeve or uh hobby horse is.

But on the other hand, sometimes division can come up pretty quickly.

Something happens, two brethren have a falling out and brethren begin to pick sides.

So division can happen quickly.

Or it can take some time.

A local congregation can be unified in general.

But there may be pockets of disunity between individual Christians.

That's why I said I think KSR we have a unity in general, but that's not a comment about the relationship that you have with the other saints of this congregation.

It's quite possible that when we talk about the unity of a congregation, we're kind of generalizing, but the fact of the matter is every one of us is involved.

In this matter of whether we have unity or division.

Based on how we behave toward one another.

Unity is not an accidental condition.

That's caused by forces outside of our control.

The stars are aligned right.

So KSR has unity.

It's because members have made conscious deliberate efforts to promote.

Unity in the group.

My responsibility is to behave toward you in a way that will promote our working together, our worshiping together, our unity in Christ.

I want to talk a little bit about the consequences of division because I want to impress how serious it is when there is division in a congregation.

Long before sometimes it turns into a matter of where this group goes there and this group goes there and so now you have more than one congregation.

They've divided in that sense.

Long before that, there are consequences to fighting and squabbling.

And bitterness.

I'm going to divide them into uh immediate and long-term and eternal consequences.

But I want to begin with immediate consequences.

And I have seen this happen.

The work of a local church is impaired, sometimes even halted by work I'm referring primarily to evangelism in the community.

Because we're busy fighting among ourselves.

And so our focus, our attention, our energy, our efforts are all turned inward.

And not much teaching gets done in the community.

People who might otherwise be taught go untaught.

Visitors to our assemblies observe the tension, maybe feel or see it between members.

Sometimes open hostility between members.

I've seen that.

And when brethren are fussing and fighting in the lobby and visitors are exiting the, the, the, the.

Auditorium and they walked by two members of the church who are fussing with one another.

I wonder what the impression is that they get of Christ.

These are the people of Christ.

These are Christians.

Look at the way they're behaving.

And what happens sometimes is those people decide I don't want any part of that.

And so sometimes work that's already been done is undone.

Try and explain to an unbeliever that local churches splitting.

What does that do?

For their interest in studying the Bible with you.

Well, I want to talk to you about the scriptures.

I want to talk to you about salvation.

Where do you go to church?

Well, I go to church over here at Kelly Spring Road.

Oh, well, I've heard that they're dividing.

I've heard that they're fussing and fighting.

Yeah, well.

What do you say then about that?

Support to preachers locally or in other places has to be discontinued.

I have seen that.

I've not suffered that myself.

My support was consistent when I was overseas, but I've known other preachers who lost their support because the congregation started fighting among themselves and so the contribution just went like this and so somebody referred, uh, you know, uh, communicates with the preacher, well, we can't support you any longer and so he's kind of left hanging.

In another country.

And so the work of the local church is impaired or halted.

Those who see the disunity, the division, And now I'm talking not so much about those who are involved in the division, but just those who are observing it, who are watching what's happening in the local congregation, they get discouraged.

Some members are even devoured, and by devoured, I'm making reference to what Paul says in Galatians 217:218 and following.

He said, for you a call to freedom, brothers, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love, serve one another, for the whole law is fulfilled in one word, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

But if you bide and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.

So I'm using the expression devoured a little bit differently than Paul did, but I have seen division actually cause weak Christians to give up.

They're new Christians in some cases, and they're watching Christians who have been members of the church for decades.

Behave in such immature ways.

That they just get discouraged.

And they give up And long-term relationships and friendships are damaged, even destroyed.

Those are some of the consequences, the immediate consequences of, of division in local congregation, and they are not pretty.

There are some long term consequences.

What happens sometimes when there's this kind of fussing and fighting is that those who often are guilty of some sort of sin, they, they begin to defend their position.

And their hearts are then hardened against repentance.

Secondly, the work of Christians in the area.

I sometimes hindered because of the reputation with the church in general has acquired.

It's interesting how much people know about you.

How much they know about me.

We sometimes don't realize that people are watching and people hear things and they know things about us as individuals and they know things about the church.

Now, maybe not the most innermost.

Uh, workings of a congregation.

But when brethren are fighting, word gets out, especially in small communities.

Where the church kind of stands out more than it does, say, for instance, in this metropolitan area where, you know, the population is very large and there are lots of churches, even several churches of Christ.

But in a small town where the Church of Christ is the only Church of Christ, And it's fighting and fussing and divides, then.

The church gains a reputation in the community.

And that makes it difficult for us to go out and teach people.

When they see the way Christians are behaving.

Jesus said that unity among those who claim allegiance to Him.

Is a testimony to the divine message.

That God sent His Son.

There are eternal consequences.

Elders, preachers, even other members may be condemned to eternal punishment because of their part in division.

They'll be members of God's people.

Who otherwise could have enjoyed eternal life in heaven, who will instead suffer the agonies of eternal punishment.

Well, I've already mentioned that Jesus prayed for unity among his disciples in John 103.

He prayed that we would be one, even as he and the Father.

are one Now, the unity of the Father, Son, and Spirit is perfect.

But neither the unity of individual Christians with deity.

Or the unity among us is perfect.

We differ among ourselves on some topics in scripture.

Some have a better understanding of the scriptures than others because they've had more time to study.

They've had more time to mature in their knowledge and their understanding.

Some do a better job of walking in the light than others.

We're not all the same.

We're at different places in this spiritual journey that we're, that we're on, and that's, that's normal.

In fact, it's good that there are people who are being added to the local body and, and they're new Christians, they're babes in Christ, and they need to grow and those who are more mature need to be assisting them and encouraging them.

But those differences do not necessarily have to result in division.

Many of those kinds of differences do not have any significant import for our work and worship together.

Promoting unity means that we're going to have to give some effort.

We're going to have to be conscious of the part that each one of us plays in the unity of the whole.

And when we talk about unity in a congregation, that's really what we're talking about, is it not?

The way that you treat me and the way that I treat you, the way that we work together, we worship together, how we relate to one another, all of that's involved in unity, even as much as perhaps the fact that we are unified in our practice of the gospel.

In Ephesians 210, part of the reading that was done uh prior to the sermon, there's a word in verse 23, it's the word translated eager in the ESV.

Vine says that it means to hasten to do a thing, to exert oneself, to endeavor, to give diligence, be eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.

What keeps congregations from dividing?

Well, there are probably a number of things we could talk about.

I'm just gonna suggest a handful.

A love for the souls of men causes us to promote the Lord's cause among unbelievers.

And so we don't want to hinder that in any way by the internal dissension or fighting and squabbling that sometimes goes on in congregations.

That'll help us avoid division.

A commitment to honest Bible study, I think is necessary.

If we're going to be united in our understanding of God's word, then the means by which we speak the same thing as Paul encouraged the Corinthians to do.

Nay, instructed, commanded them to do.

is by studying together, trying to come to a common understanding of the scriptures.

Paul said in 217 Corinthians 1:10, I appeal to you brothers by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment.

The means by which we grow more spiritually mature is again, this business of studying God's word, looking at it together, discussing it so that we can sharpen one another and share our knowledge of the scriptures.

Paul was critical of the Corinthians because they had failed to mature, failed to grow the way that they really needed to.

He says in 1 Corinthians 3, beginning in verse 1, but I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ.

I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you are not ready for it, and even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh.

For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way?

A commitment to honest Bible study, a devotion to learning and growing spiritually is one of the ways that we avoid division in the local congregation.

Brotherly love that overcomes pettiness.

When I love you to the point that I can overlook things maybe that I don't care as much for maybe mannerisms or, or things like that.

But brotherly love can overwhelm those kinds of small concerns.

John wrote in 1 John 33 and verse 1 that if we love God, we ought to love those who are born of God.

In other words, as sons of God, we have the same father.

And so we ought to love one another that will.

Avoid help us avoid division.

We have been studying, as I said in Galatians 5:19 through 23 about the works of the flesh and the fruit of the spirit, and there are a couple of things that are mentioned there, patience and gentleness.

They are mentioned also here in Ephesians 4 and verse 2, that we're to walk with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love.

And then finally withdraw from divisive people.

And I think that is largely a responsibility of the shepherds, the local.

Shepherds of the flock, the elders, that they don't allow people to divide the congregation.

By either poor behavior or false teaching.

It's not a question of meanness.

Not a question of like or not like.

It's a protection of the flock, and elders have been given that responsibility.

Withdraw from those who cause divisions quote contrary to the teaching.

Of the gospel.

Paul would write to the Romans in chapter 16 and verses 17 and 18.

I appeal to you brothers to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you've been taught.

Avoid them, for such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery, they deceive the hearts of the naive.

In Titus the 3rd chapter, Paul would write to him in verse 10, as for a person who stirs up division after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him, knowing that such a person is warped and sinful, he is self-condemned.

Vision is a serious thing.

We desire unity, but we need to be careful, of course, that we don't sacrifice truth on the altar of unity.

What good would it do us in the day of judgment for us to have been all united in false doctrine?

We would all be lost together.

Not sure there would be much comfort in that.

Some brethren I think are interested or more interested in union rather than unity.

Union is when you just, you're together, but not necessarily agreed.

There's not necessarily unity there, at least not the unity that the scriptures encourage.

James wrote in chapter 3 and verse 17, he says, the wisdom from above is first pure.

Then peaceful, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere.

First, pure, then peaceable.

Unity requires effort.

You can see that, can't you, in the things that we've talked about this morning.

Division is so easy.

We can say things without thinking, without worrying about the consequences, and pretty soon there's rifts between these brethren and rifts between those brethren and bitterness over here and anger against something that happened or was said over here.

Very easy.

For us to have division.

And we've said some things about the terrible fruits of division as well.

There will be brethren who will give up and be lost because of division.

And there'll be other brethren who will be lost because they were part of the stumbling block that caused those weak Christians to be lost.

Those in the world may be repelled by what they see among us.

It's interesting that Jesus said.

That people would recognize us as his disciples by the love that we have for one another.

But by the same token.

If we're fighting and squabbling among ourselves, we will turn people away.

From the gospel.

When division takes place, I guarantee you what happens is everybody kind of stops.

The work of a congregation, the evangelism that they may have been doing in the community, even the work that individuals are doing as they teach their colleagues and their neighbors and friends, all of that can almost grind to a standstill.

Because everybody's attention is now focused on what's going to happen in the congregation.

Some of God's people are going to be eternally lost because of their sinful behavior in such divisive things.

Ultimately, what binds us together as brethren.

Is our common love for God and our obedience to His word.

That, that's a big part, the primary part of unity in the local congregation is that we are determined to follow what the New Testament instructs us.

We want to live the way God wants us to live so that we can be acceptable to him, that we can encourage one another when we come together, that's what we want.

We want our assemblies to be such that when people leave here, they're energized, more determined.

To follow Christ in their daily lives, to stand with Christ involves a division, doesn't it?

Someone has to come out of the world, stand apart from the world.

But then once we do that, once we obey the gospel, and we're translated out of the domain of Satan, the world.

Into the kingdom of God's dear Son.

Then we need to pursue unity.

I think it's a beautiful thing when brethren work together, care about each other.

Worship together with the underlying foundation of love and concern, care for one another.

If you wanna be a part of that kind of a family, that's what God intends for his spiritual family, and we want to encourage you to obey the gospel this morning.

Become a Christian, become a part of God's spiritual family.

We can assist you in doing that, we invite you as we stand and sing.

Series: N/A

Service: Sun AM

Type: Sermon

Speaker: Allen Dvorak

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

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

With you this morning.

I appreciate the presence of those who are visiting with us.

We are so glad that you're here and we hope that you have been energized and built up by the worship that we have shared together.

And now as we open God's word, I would invite you to uh study along with me as we look at what the Bible has to say about the subject of influence.

When my family and I moved back from Brazil in 1998, we moved to this area and we stayed for a few months with family, but we also were looking for a place to buy, to live.

And one of our concerns was the school systems in the area.

At the time, we were told, we understood that people were fleeing the Huntsville City school systems because it was thought that the Madison school system, city of Madison school system, and the county schools were actually superior to those in Huntsville.

Whether that's true or not, hard to say, but that was, seemed to be the opinion of, of many.

And so we decided to live outside of Madison in the county for a couple of reasons, but a primary reason was that we had two sons who were on the cusp of moving into high school, and we wanted them to attend a high school that would help them as much as possible.

When people are looking for a place to live, if they're moving from some other community here or perhaps people who are leaving here to go someplace else, one of the strongest determining factors about where they're going to live, actually, where they buy a house or rent, is the quality of the local schools, particularly if they're already parents or they are anticipating becoming parents in the near future.

People are concerned about the quality of the schools that their children will go to because the schools will have such an impact on their children's lives, not just from an educational standpoint.

That of course is certainly true, but schools have so much other influence on young people and young people spend, if they attend the public schools, they're going to spend a lot of time.

With the school administrators and teachers and those who attend the school there.

And so because of the influence of schools upon the character, the moral character and the education of children, so parents are concerned about which schools their children will attend.

Webster gives an early definition of influence, which I've always thought was kind of amusing.

Webster says that influence, at least at one time, was defined as an ethereal fluid thought to flow from the stars and to affect the actions of men.

Later, a supposed emanation of occult power from stars. Wow.

But influence is actually much more down to earth, so to speak, than that.

And this morning, I want to talk to you about influence.

Looking at the story of Lot in Genesis the 19th chapter, we're gonna actually have two texts this morning, and we'll spend some time in each of those texts, Genesis 19 and 2 Peter 113, the passage that was read for your concern this morning by Tyler.

I want to take a look at the choice of Lot to live in the city of Sodom, and I want to identify in his case and in our case, the importance of influence, it's nature, uh, and how we can combat evil influence.

I encourage each of us to examine those things that are influencing us and our families.

Should we have a family.

How is it that Lot ends up in Sodom?

How is it that he begins to live in a city that is renowned for its wickedness?

I want to go back in the story of Lot and look at what Peter says about Lot, because if you read from Genesis 19, the impression you might get is that Lot wasn't a terribly good fellow.

But when you read 2 Peter, as Tyler did for us just a few moments ago, you begin to understand that he was a righteous man.

That's what the apostle says about him.

Verses 4 through 10 are an extremely long sentence.

It's a sentence that has a condition and then a conclusion, actually several conditions, and then a conclusion, and I've highlighted the conditional word if in these verses, verse 4, for if God did not spare angels, Then in verse 5, if he did not spare the ancient world, speaking of the world during the time of Noah, verse 6, if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gommar to ashes, and then verse 7, if he rescued righteous law, here's the conclusion of verse 9.

Then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the Day of Judgment.

If these things are true, then we know this is true.

And he cites these examples from the Old Testament of God both punishing those who are wicked, he includes angels, which may have occurred even prior to that time, and also the salvation that he provided to those who were righteous, and he mentions Lot, and he says in verse 43, if he rescued righteous Lot, And so what I want to do is I want to focus on the verses in specific that deal with Lot and his example.

Verse 6, if by turning the cities of Sodom and Goamar to ashes, he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly.

And if he rescued righteous Lot, greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked, for as that righteous man lived among them day after day, he was tormenting his righteous soul.

Over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard.

Maybe you've been counting and you noticed that Peter describes Lot not just once as righteous, but actually 3 times, he describes him as righteous Lot in verse 7, that righteous man in verse 8, and he's tormenting his righteous soul in the latter part of verse 8.

And so the picture that Peter portrays or paints concerning Lot is that he was a good man, a righteous man.

And so I repeat the question that I asked earlier.

How does he end up in Sodom?

It really doesn't seem like he belongs there.

Well, we know some things about Lot's story from the Book of Genesis.

We know that Abraham and his father Tira and Lot left of the Chaldeans and moved to what is called Hairan up in the area of Upper Mesopotamia.

Terra will die there and Abraham and Lot will continue on to uh the land of Canaan, where they will live for a number of years.

And so Lot, being the nephew to Abraham, Lot's father, Haan had already died back in Ur and so Lot goes with Abraham.

He is actually Abraham's uh nephew.

And he accompanies Abraham to Canaan, but eventually, because of the wealth of these two men and the need to separate to accommodate their flocks of animals, he separates from Abraham, and Abraham in kind of an interesting fashion gives Lot, the younger man, the choice of where he will go and wherever you go.

Abraham says, I'll, I'll go the opposite direction.

Lot looks over to the plains, uh, the plain of the Jordan River over to the east side, most likely, and it was well watered.

It was a good place.

And so he moves in that direction while Abraham stays within the context of Canaan as we normally think about it.

We find out that Lot pitches his tent in the plain of the Jordan River among the five cities, the cities of the plains they're called.

Sodom was one of those cities, and he pitches his tent, it is said, as far as Sodom, but he's still living in a tent.

He's living a nomadic lifestyle.

But by chapter 14, we find Lot inside the city of Sodom.

Is it likely that, like some people do, you move someplace and you realize later on, well, this isn't really a good place.

This neighborhood isn't good, or this town has got some real problems or something.

Did Lot not understand what was going on in Sodom, what kind of city it was?

Abraham did.

In Genesis 14, there's the story of Abraham's rescue of Lot from a coalition of kings who've come from Mesopotamia.

They come down, they've defeated these uh kings of the cities of the plain, and they've captured Lot and his family, and they've taken them as captives.

Abraham takes his own personal army and goes and rescues Lot.

And when he returns, the king of Sodom goes out to meet him.

And Abraham says, I don't want anything that belongs to you.

Abraham already understands what kind of city Sodom is.

He knows what's going on in that city.

Do you think Lot, who lived close to that city?

Or in the city at this point that he didn't know?

Certainly he did.

And we're told in the end of chapter 13, Lot chose for himself all the Jordan Valley, and Lot journeyed east.

Thus they separated he and Abraham from each other.

Abraham settled in the land of Canaan while Lot settled among the cities of the valley and moved his tent as far as Sodom.

Now the men of Sodom were wicked, great sinners against the Lord.

And yet despite that, we find Lot moving into the city and that's where we find him in Genesis 19.

Where the Lord has decided that Sodom and Gomorrah, the cities of the plains, 183 other cities are going to be destroyed.

The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by God because of their wickedness.

But in that destruction and the events surrounding it, there's the destruction of Lot's family as well.

Some of you may be thinking, I thought Lot was saved from the city of Sodom.

Let's look at it a little bit more.

Lot was certainly saved from the destruction of the city, but his family was destroyed by the wickedness of the people of Sodom.

Do you remember the command of the Lord in Genesis 1917, when you're fleeing from the city, don't look back.

And yet it's clear from verse 26 that Lot's wife behind him as they're fleeing from the destruction.

looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.

She died as a result of the fact that she had to see what was going to happen to Sodom.

I think there was a connection there that she just could not leave behind.

And so Lot left her behind as a corpse.

Lot's daughters.

Also suffered.

There's an interesting difference between the ESV and the New King James Version in verse 14 of Genesis 19, if you're looking at your Bible, the ESV says So Lot went out and said to his sons-in-law, who were to marry his daughters, they're called sons-in-law because marriage at that point, in, in that Culture was a contractual thing.

And so his daughters probably had already been promised to men that they would marry them at some point in the future and Lot is told to go talk to these men.

The city's going to be destroyed.

But of course they think it's, uh, they laugh at him.

Uh, he seemed to be jesting, uh, is what the text says.

In the New King James, it says, so Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law, who had married his daughters.

Well, that changes the story a little bit because that would make it appear that there were 2 unmarried daughters in Lot's house, but that he had at least 2 married daughters, and so he had 2 sons-in-laws at least.

I tend to think that the ESB is probably the correct translation, but the point is, That whether these sons-in-laws had already married daughters of Lot or whether they were simply promised to do that, had promised to do that.

They're lost.

They think Lot is joking.

Yeah, city of Sodom is going to be destroyed.

And so Lot's perspective, perhaps sons-in-laws died in Sodom.

Lot's daughters who do flee with him, there are at least 2 daughters who flee with him, they become pregnant by incestuous relations with their father.

You remember perhaps that Lot and his wife and his two daughters, they all leave the city.

Lot's wife looks back, she dies, and they go to the city of Zohar, but Lot's afraid to stay there for reasons that are not, uh, explicitly given to us.

And so he ends up living in a cave with his two daughters.

And his daughters reason that there's no possibility at this point in this kind of circumstance for them to be married, to have a son, to give children to their father as grandchildren, and so they concoct this plan where both of them end up pregnant from their father.

Look at the family of Lot.

Oh, they were saved from the destruction of Sodom, but I really think that Lot's family took part of Sodom with them.

What would have Encourage these daughters to do what they did with respect to their father, not to mention that Lot uh is made drunken, apparently, uh, not against his will.

An individual by the name of SI made this comment.

He said, We live with other men, not exclusively with or to ourselves.

We have no intercourse or interaction with others that does not tell on them as they are all the while influencing us.

And I believe the story of Lot illustrates that point as it shows us the power of influence.

Lot and his family were under the attack of evil influence while living in the city of Sodom.

The text in 2 Peter 893.

Particularly verses 7 and 8.

Tell us 4 things about influence, and, and it's right there in the text.

In verse 23, we're told that righteous Lot was greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked.

A little bit later on in verse 26, it says he was tormenting his righteous soul.

The power of influence, the words distress, greatly distressed, tormented are powerful phrases and words.

This is what was happening to Lot while he is living in the city of Sodom, and he sees the wickedness around him.

And that's the second thing that I would point out about influence and that is its presence.

It's very difficult for us to escape entirely the influence of others and especially those of, of the world.

For as that righteous man lived among them.

Peter emphasizes that this is not something that he sees at a distance.

Oh, the people of Sodom are, are wicked.

Abraham knew that and he didn't live in the city.

The Lord is living right in the middle of it and by choice.

We're told about the persistence of influence.

For as that righteous man lived among them, day after day, you know, it's enough for the apostles to simply say that Lot lived among the people of Sodom.

But he emphasizes this day after day, I think, intending to show the persistence of the influence of these people upon an individual who's described as righteous.

But this text also tells us about the path of influence.

How was it that he was tormenting his righteous soul?

Well, it's in the things that he saw and that he heard, the way that our senses bring in information often influences us.

Influence, of course, is a two-way street.

Meaning that at the same time that we are being influenced by others, we are also attempting to influence others.

And Lot did as well.

When the two strangers who were actually angels come and they are given hospitality in Lot's house, here come the men of the city, all the people of the city, they're gathered outside Lot's house.

And Lot tries to reason with these individuals once they've made their immoral request of Lot, bring these men out that we may know them, obviously, uh in a sexual way.

And Lot tries to reason with them.

Don't do this thing.

And their response to him is enlightening.

Because they talk about him coming in as a sojourner, that's someone who doesn't stay.

So it may have been that Lot didn't intend to stay there originally for any length of time.

And he says, and he keeps acting as a judge.

Lot encounters these two men, angels in the form of men, in the gate of the city.

That's where business was transacted.

That's where civil justice, would transpire.

And Lot is there, and I think probably trying to exert some good influence and the people of the city recognize that.

He keeps acting as a judge.

So Lot wasn't just quiet, and he wasn't participating, apparently in the wickedness of the city.

But unfortunately, like I said, influence is a two-way street.

Whatever he may have tried to do for the people of Sodom, to influence them.

He's been influenced himself.

When it appears that there's not going to be anyone saved except Lot and his immediate family, those in his household, the angels say up, take your wife and your two daughters who are here, lest you be swept away in the punishment of the city.

But he lingered.

Why did Lot linger?

Why was he slow to do what the angels had told him to do, slow to flee from a city that God has said is going to be destroyed.

Text doesn't say.

I think we can surmise.

That there was something about leaving Sodom that wasn't exactly what Lot wanted to do, so he lingered.

So the men seized him, his wife and his two daughters by the hand, the Lord being merciful to him, and they brought him out.

You get the impression that he's being pushed, he's being, uh, hurried along.

Because there's still some connection to Sodom.

Romans 216:211 says, do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

As Paul would say in 24 Corinthians 218, you can't stop associating with all the evil in the world, you'd have to go out of the world.

But Paul also says we need to overcome evil with good.

And I think that Lot, in some senses, was overcome by evil.

In the New Testament, the power of influence is illustrated by Levin.

In 23 Corinthians, I'm sorry, Matthew 22 and verse 27, a chapter that talks about the kingdom of heaven.

Jesus likens the kingdom of heaven to leaven that a woman took and she mixes it with or hides in three measures of flour till all of it is leaven.

That's what leaven does.

Leaven changes what it comes in contact with.

And Levin is sometimes pictured as a good thing, like here, the kingdom of heaven changes people in the world.

But Levin is also compared to sin.

In 211 Corinthians 5, Paul says, your boasting is not good.

Do you not know that a little Len leavens the whole lump?

I think he may be citing a proverb there, one that he had previously cited in Galatians the 5th chapter in verse 9.

Don't you know?

So that a little leaven leavens the whole lump.

And so Paul says, I'm writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he's guilty of and he lists some sins there, why not even to eat with such a one, because you'll get leavened.

That's what he's saying.

The power of influence.

And it's working.

It's always working.

And we need to beware of its power.

Power of influence can be measured.

By its magnitude.

Or extend or by its duration.

I'm not gonna spend a lot of time at this point.

I think you understand the significance of these stories.

I won't relate all of them, but we're told about Solomon, who in 2 Kings 11, 1 Kings 73, excuse me, he marries many foreign women, something that God had uh prohibited, commanded the people not to do, and Solomon's heart is turned, corrupted by these foreign women who are worshiping other gods.

In fact, he even builds.

Temples or altars for these foreign gods for his wives.

They influenced him.

Compare Solomon.

The king in 1 Kings 11.

With Solomon the King in 1 Kings 3.

When God says, ask what you want, and Solomon says, I want wisdom to guide this great people that he had just become a king of.

And now we see Solomon.

Who because of his practice of marrying many women, he is influenced by them until God sends adversaries against the very man.

And God said, I'll bless you because you asked for.

Uh, wisdom and not long life or riches, or the lives of your enemies.

Another example of that is Daniel in King Goris.

In chapter 6, we have uh this king of the Persian Empire who's glorifying God as a result of the influence of Daniel, a faithful young man for whom there is no criticism in the scriptures. Samson.

The strong man of the Old Testament.

One who could kill Philistines by the hundreds.

It's taken down by the influence.

Of an ungodly woman, Delilah.

Judges 16 tells the story.

And in that story, we're told that she pestered him.

She stayed after him.

That's the persistence of bad influence sometimes.

And eventually, he tells her the secret of his strength, and she uses that to destroy him.

But We see the duration of influence in a good way also in the Hebrew letter in chapter 11 verse 4.

The writer says, by faith, Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts, and through his faith, though he died, he still speaks.

The example of Abel continues on influencing people to understand that it's important that we follow the instructions of God.

I want to repeat the fact that Lot was a righteous man.

But he made a very poor choice.

He moved to and then stayed in the city of Sodom.

Have you ever wondered why he would do that in the first place?

Uh, the scriptures don't really explain that.

He may have been getting older and the nomadic life of, of animal husbandry may not have fit him anymore, or he may have just been easier to live in the city, more secure in some ways.

But at what point should Lot have considered leaving this place because of the influence it was having on him and his family?

Well, I can think of reasons that people will not remove themselves from bad influences today.

Leave Sodom?

Are you kidding?

What will happen to my business?

We don't know what Lot's doing anymore.

He used to be a herdsman just like Abraham.

Maybe he's moved on in some way.

But leaving Sodom, maybe that would be a hardship for Lot.

We don't know.

What about his family?

His family obviously didn't want to leave, whether you think he already had sons-in-law or just prospective sons-in-law.

They, they think this idea of leaving Sodom is crazy.

You're just joking, right?

Well. And he and his immediate family have to be hustled out of Sodom because he's lingering, he's not following the instructions of the angels, and God's merciful to him.

And helping him along.

What kind of excuses?

Do people offer For not leaving behind bad influences in their lives.

Jesus taught the principle of removing any hindrance to our eternal salvation in rather vivid terms.

In Matthew 18th chapter verses 89, Jesus said, if your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.

It is better for you to enter life crippled or lame than with two hands or 2 ft to be thrown into the eternal fire.

And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away.

It is better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire.

I do not believe that Jesus is suggesting that we ought to literally disfigure ourselves or cut off hands and, and feet or gouge out eyes in order to avoid sin because he tells us in other places like March 7th, that sin comes from within.

It's not something that comes or finds its origin in our hand, foot, or eye.

But what Jesus is saying is you may have to make sacrifices in order to avoid eternal punishment, and they may be difficult sacrifices.

Can you imagine cutting off your own foot?

Cutting off your own hand, not by accident, by purpose, or gouging out your eye.

Jesus' point is whatever sacrifice is necessary.

For you to enjoy life, that's the important thing.

Remove hindrances to that goal.

The Hebrews writer says something very similar.

He says, therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, I think he's talking about the faithful who are mentioned in chapter 11.

Let us also lay aside every weight and sin, which clings so closely and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him, looking to the ultimate goal.

Endured the cross, despising the shame and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

I want you to notice there's a phrase in verse one that's very, very important.

The writer says, let us lay aside every weight and sin.

He's not calling the sin the weight.

He's talking about two different.

Kinds of things, sin obviously lay it aside that'll hinder hinder you, but there are some things that are not sinful that could hinder us if we give them the wrong priorities, the wrong emphasis in our lives, and the writer says put away anything that would stop you from running this race or from finishing it successfully.

Fathers Should be the leaders of their families.

And part of that leadership is being aware of what is influencing.

The family.

Remember the path of influence?

Things that he saw and heard.

What is it that your family watches on television?

What kind of movies do we go to in the theater?

What do we read for entertainment?

What are we listening to in terms of our music?

And what kind of conversations do we have with friends?

What kind of friends do we have?

Families are not only influenced by what comes into the home, but what they also encounter outside of the home.

And we need to be careful not to underestimate the power of slow or slight influence.

You know, sometimes something may happen to us or we see something that is so Traumatic It, it impresses on our senses to the point where decades later, we can recall it with vivid detail.

And it influences us.

But there's other kinds of things that are slight.

And they influence us also in a slower but more constant fashion.

Sometimes those influences I think we're not even aware of, unless we specifically try to focus on what's going on in our lives influencing us.

I said earlier, leaven is a substance that changes other things into its same nature.

You put leaven in fresh dough, what happens, the whole dough, uh, Becomes all the dough becomes leavened.

We need to be careful what influence we're exerting on our family members.

Would you want your mate, your spouse to be the same kind of person you are?

Think about that.

Because we influence our spouses.

What kind of influence are we giving to our Spouse Would you want your children to grow up to be just like you, your parents?

What kind of influence are we exerting upon our children?

What kind of persons are we?

Because we will influence others and especially in our own family.

I believe that's part of the reason that you'll see sometimes generational sins.

You'll see sometimes things like abuse, physical abuse that goes from one generation and it's practiced by the next generation.

The reason is influence, example.

And we need to be careful about what kind of people we are and how we're influencing those in our family around us.

Fathers, mothers, do you want your sons and daughters to grow up like the people they watch on television?

Is that the kind of influence that would be good for them?

What kind of friends do they have?

Because their friends will influence them greatly.

In fact, there are times in the life of a young person where their friends may have more influence than their parents do.

At least unfortunately, that is the case sometimes. School.

Children spend much more time at school a lot of times than they do even at home.

What kind of friends do they have?

What kind of influences are they?

Being exposed to.

Well, let me finish up this morning by just simply suggesting that I think Lot made a very poor choice.

The righteous man.

But the decision to live in Sodom, I'm concluding, had detrimental effects on his family.

He should have left long before he did.

And we need to be careful about exposing ourselves and our families to influences.

That will destroy us or destroy our families.

A righteous man who made a poor choice and he lost his family to sin.

We need to recognize, as Peter suggests, the power, the presence, the, the reality of influence and its persistence and the path of influence.

Well, the things that we see and hear.

And as Jesus said, there may be some difficult choices to be made.

If we're going to control the quality of those things that influence us, we may have to give up some things we like.

I've had to do that.

And to kind of look at my life and say, you know what, that's not really a good influence for me.

I did, in some cases it was things I enjoy.

But you need to put them aside because we're looking for a more important thing, and that's eternal life.

Any sacrifice is worth obtaining eternal life.

That's the reality in this world.

Not the physical circumstances in which we live, not the house that we live in, the car we drive, or the vacations we can take, or, or all of the toys that we, we accumulate both as children and, and, and adults.

It's what's the condition of your soul, what's your spiritual life like?

That's the important thing.

And that's affected in great measure.

By the influence of others.

Discipleship and salvation is only for those who have the courage to take up their cross.

That's what Jesus said.

If you're not willing to take up your cross, carry your cross and follow me, you cannot be my disciple.

I don't know what was holding Lot back from getting out of Sodom.

But if you're not a Christian, what's holding you back?

Where's the tie to the world?

What is it in the world that is keeping you connected to the things that are evil?

I would encourage you this morning and we will encourage you in song in just a moment to throw off those ties.

And to commit yourself to the Lord in obedience to the gospel.

Become a Christian.

Because there's a greater goal, there's something much higher that we're working toward.

than any of the things that might Appeal to us in this world.

Those of us who are Christians need to be careful.

It's a wonderful thing when someone obeys the gospel like Brooklyn did.

But the truth of the matter is, if we're not steadfast, if we don't endure to the end, if we allow ourselves to be influenced by the world and slowly pulled back into the world, we will lose that inheritance.

eternal life.

If you're a Christian already, but you have been slowly moving back into the world, now's the time to recommit yourself.

Make the decision that you're going to leave Sodom.

And return to the Lord.

If we can assist you this morning, we want to do so as we stand and sing to encourage you.

Series: N/A

Service: Sun AM

Type: Sermon

Speaker: Allen Dvorak

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

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

The reading this morning will come from James chapter 1, beginning in verse 19.

James 1, beginning in verse 19.

Know this, my beloved brothers, but one must be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger, for the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God.

Therefore, laying aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness and gentleness, receive the implanted word which is able to save your souls.

But become doers of the word and not merely hearers who delude themselves, for if one is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror.

For once he has looked at himself and has gone away, he immediately forgot what kind of person he was.

But one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of freedom, and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer but a doer of work, this man will be blessed in what he does.

If any one thinks himself to be religious while not bridling his tongue but deceiving his own heart, this man's religion is worthless, pure and undefiled religion before our God and Father is this to visit orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

Some of you are probably wondering why I'm doing my impression of the peg-legged pirate.

Yesterday at the Holder shindig, I decided, my mind decided that I could play volleyball and so I did.

And my body said, we'll see about that.

And reminded me that I recently had a birthday in, that is described by two large digits.

So, uh, I'm going to be limping around a little bit and I can see by the worried look on some of your faces that you're concerned that this morning the sermon may be reduced in length by my weakness.

Fear not, my brothers and sisters, we shall persevere.

We want to begin this morning by talking about an Old Testament character by the name of Ezra.

Ezra was a scribe, and he was also the leader of the second group of exiles who would come back from exile in Babylon to Judea and uh would eventually uh.

Be the people that are, are, are described as God's people there.

Scriptures tell us some important details about Ezra.

In Ezra chapter 7, we're told in verse 6 that he was a scribe skilled in the law of Moses.

That's kind of an effect statement because then verse 10 tells us how it was that he became a skilled scribe.

Verse 73, as you can see on the screen, says, for Ezra had set his heart to study the law of the Lord and to do it and to teach his statutes and rules in Israel.

Ezra was not just a student of the law, scribes were often students of the law as they would copy, uh, the, the, uh, scriptures, and he wasn't just a teacher of the law.

He was a doer of the law.

In fact, I would encourage you to look at the order in verse 10.

As Ezra is described as one who had set his heart.

To study the law.

To practice the law.

And then to teach the law.

And I believe this description of Ezra emphasizes a very important fact about the scriptures and that is that study of the law, Christ's law now is not an end in and of itself, it needs to be followed by the practice of the law.

And so this morning, I want to talk about whether you and I are professors of the law or whether we could be more accurately described as journeymen.

The need for practice of the law was emphasized again and again in the old law.

Several passages we could look at, I'm just going to suggest three.

Deuteronomy 4:1, as Moses encourages the people near the end of his life, he says to them, and now, oh Israel, listen to the statutes and the rules that I'm teaching you and do them.

They were encouraged to listen to what God had to say.

In the 224th chapter of Deuteronomy and in verse 222 again, Moses wrote, now this is the commandment, the statutes and the rules that the Lord your God commanded me to teach you, that you may do them.

Teaching is for the purpose of encouraging others to obey the truth of God.

Interesting fact about the kings of Israel.

In the 210th chapter of Deuteronomy, Moses informs the people that they shouldn't select kings from other nations but from among their brethren.

And there's a specific requirement that was made of the kings.

I wonder how often this requirement was even met.

But Moses wrote, and when he, the king, sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book, a copy of this law approved by the Levitical priests, and it shall be with him, and he shall read it, uh, read in it all the days of his life that he may learn to fear the Lord his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes and doing them.

So as soon as an individual became king, he was to take a book and write the law in this book and then keep it with him and reading it all the days of his life.

History would suggest that not many kings did that, if hardly any.

But it suggests the importance.

Of listening to the law and doing the things that one would learn from it.

This morning I have two pretty simple objectives, but I think things we need to consider.

The first one is gonna warn about the danger of being just students and not putting into practice the things that we actually learn in our study of God's word.

But then secondly, I want to encourage us to study and listen with the intent always to apply our knowledge in the transformation of our lives.

There is a meme that probably all of us have heard at one time or another, those who can't do, teach.

And frankly, uh, I find that kind of a pessimistic meme, to be honest with you.

Uh, it's actually a statement then shortened from a quote from a George Bernard Shaw, uh, play, if you're interested, it was 225.

And he wrote, he who can does.

He who cannot teaches.

Like many generalizations, it's not an accurate description of the class of teachers.

However, there are some who do not have the ability to do, but instead they teach.

Perhaps one of the reasons I don't like this meme is because I'm a teacher and it just hits a little too close to home, I think.

A professor is a teacher who has achieved a high level of knowledge or understanding in a particular subject.

And unfortunately, that means sometimes apply, not you, Douglas, but sometimes it applies to professors.

They know all about a subject.

But it's all knowledge and theory for them.

There's no real-life practice of their.

Particular area of study or expertise.

A person who has a PhD in business administration.

May have worked his way through or his or her way through the various levels of education to get to that advanced degree but has actually never run a business, never owned a business, and so talking about business administration is just kind of uh an exercise in theory for that individual, but not something that he or she really has any experience in.

Congress has been charged many times with this particular problem, that is they're quick to write laws about how businesses should be regulated, run, and, and they write things about the tax code which applies to small businesses, but many of them have never worked in a small business.

Some of them have never owned a small business.

And so for them, it's something that is kind of Esoteric, uh, in its application.

That's professors.

But by contrast, the journeyman.

is one who has completed an official apprenticeship in which he or she has been instructed, usually passed some sort of licensing test, and has been mentored, supervised by an individual who is already an accomplished worker in that same field.

That's the kind of definition you would give journeyman.

You're talking about a plumber or an electrician.

As an apprentice, a learner.

This person has learned the principles of his trade.

But he has accomplished that and then moves to journeyman status where he is now working independently and making use of the knowledge that he or she has gained in that particular trade.

This is important.

The journeyman not only knows the principles of his trade, but he knows how to apply them in real life situations.

Well, what does this have to do with us?

Well, the question that I would ask you is with reference to God's word, what are we?

Are we professors?

Are we the kind of professor who knows a lot about something but really doesn't have any experience in it, doesn't practice what he knows, he just says it to others, or are we like the journeyman who has learned and then puts into practice the things that he or she has learned about uh that trade.

We can become professors.

We study the Bible on Sundays and Wednesdays and we have sermons, some of them lengthy, um, and in those opportunities on those, those venues, we learn and we're able to talk, uh, intelligently at length about the Bible.

But maybe we're not using it to transform us as God would intend.

What we need to be is journeymen.

We need to be individuals who have dedicated ourselves, not just to learning about the Bible, but becoming proficient in the application of the biblical truths that we understand from God's word.

And preachers need to contribute to that.

I believe, and I've tried to teach the young men that I've worked with in training programs, I believe that a good sermon should have at least two elements.

It ought to contain information.

It ought to be informative.

But not just that, it also ought to answer the question, so what?

If this is true information, what should I do with it?

What's the application of this?

That I think makes for a good sermon.

I certainly by the comments that I've made so far, don't want to depreciate or minimize the need for Bible study.

We need to learn.

There is definitely the need to learn what the Bible says, and you see that all through the scriptures.

Jesus concluded the parable of the sower by saying, he who has ears to hear, let him hear, an invitation to listen to what was being taught.

All of the letters to the churches in Revelation in chapters 23 and 236 have this sentence in them.

He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

We need to be listening as Deuteronomy 103:210 says, listening to the word of God.

The Ezra model, uh, that verse 21 in Ezra 222:10 begins with study and then moves to practice and then finally to teaching, and the fact of the matter is you can't practice God's word or the truth as it applies to your life or my life.

We can't practice it until we understand it, until we've learned it, and we can't teach it until we've learned it.

But the danger is that we sometimes stop simply at learning.

There are, of course, levels of learning.

When you teach the youngest children, for instance, uh, the children, many of them that I have in the Bible drill class, what we begin with are facts.

We just want them to understand the Bible stories.

We want them to understand the relationships of people in the Bible and, and, and understand some of the events that take place, the activities that are recorded in the scriptures.

Even at that age, there's some application of truth, but you begin with the facts, and that's part of the purpose of the Bible drill classes to help children put some of those things together to learn those facts so that they can then move on to.

The next level of learning, which is to understand uh more complex material that is concepts.

What, what do I learn from these facts?

What kind of precepts or concepts can I draw from this story.

And then, of course, putting that concept into some sort of application in my life.

How am I going to take that concept and use it to transform myself?

However, Knowing how to apply, to apply a concept or truth does not mean that I'm actually applying it.

It's not the same thing as doing it.

I'm going to illustrate that very idea with the story of Nemon the leper.

You're probably familiar with that story in 2 Kings 5, and we're told a number of facts.

I'm not going to put all of them up on the screen, but I just want you to see that we begin with the story and we understand that Ne'eman was a military commander in the Syrian army, but his problem was that he was also a leper.

And so the king of Syria sends Naheman to Israel to be healed of his leprosy because he's heard that there's a prophet there that can do that.

And Neheman comes to the prophet Elisha, who doesn't even leave his house.

He just sends a messenger out to Nehemon who is parked out front in his chariots, uh, with his chariots, uh, in front of the house and sends him a messenger and says, dip 7 times in the Jordan River.

Namon is incensed.

He really had expected something much more pompous, much more majestic, a simple dipping in the Jordan River, not even a great river, uh, made him angry, but his servants implored him to follow the prophet's instructions.

And so Namon does.

And when he dips in the Jordan River, as he was instructed 7 times, he is cleansed of his leprosy.

Now, that story continues as Neheman responds to his cleansing, but I'm gonna stop at this point and say that as we look at that story, there's a concept there that becomes very clear, and that is that God's blessing.

The cure of leprosy was not bestowed until Namon obeyed God's instructions through the prophet.

That's just an observation.

It seems to be a concept that you can find in other places in the scriptures.

It's illustrated in the story of Nahemon.

And here's an important thing that we need to be able to do.

We need to take concepts like that that are generic in a sense.

God's blessing is bestowed after obedience or with obedience, and then take that concept and apply it to things that are true in our lives, how.

That works for us for instance we could note that the spiritual blessing of forgiveness of sins again is not bestowed until an individual obeys the commandments, the instructions of the Lord, such things as belief, repentance, confession, and baptism.

And so the application strategy that we would take from this is that if I haven't followed those steps, if I want that spiritual blessing, then I need to do that, and that's the application strategy.

But listen, a lot of people know that.

But they haven't done it yet.

They haven't actually obeyed.

They haven't practiced it yet.

And that's the problem that sometimes our learning stops short of actually transforming us because we're not applying the things sometimes that we understand from the scriptures.

I hope and pray that that doesn't describe us, but I know it does some individuals and the scriptures warn us about the danger of just being hearers of not actually practicing what we learn.

We can get stuck, if you will, at the learning stage and not move on to the doing stage.

Jesus concludes nearly his mountain sermon in Matthew 7 by talking about two builders.

And he describes them this way, he says, everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.

But then in verse 13 he says, and everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.

The two different, the difference between these two men both have heard.

But only one of them goes beyond hearing or learning, understanding, and moves on to practice, and he's described as a wise individual who is blessed.

The other one described as a foolish individual who uh comes to ruin.

This problem that I'm talking about, this business of just knowing but not doing was a common problem in Jesus' day.

He criticized the scribes and the Pharisees in Matthew 23 in the first part of that chapter.

He says to the uh individuals listening, the scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat.

In other words, they were teachers of the law.

So do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. Why?

For they preach, but do not practice.

So these were professors.

Not journeymen Uh, to follow the illustration that we looked at earlier.

And James likewise encourages us in the passage that was read for your consideration earlier.

To, first of all, he says in verse 21, receive with meekness the implanted word.

Receive with meekness means I don't struggle against.

I'm not resisting.

I'm open to the word.

But James says don't stop there, because he goes on to say that the word which is able to save your souls but be doers of the word and not hearers only deceiving yourselves so James talks about the fact that maybe people will easily and without resistance receive the Word of God.

And then do absolutely nothing about it.

They're just heroes They're not doers And James goes on to give an illustration you're quite familiar with, I suspect, a man who looks in the mirror and he sees something wrong, but then he goes away and he forgets what he saw and he makes no changes whatsoever.

Verse 23 says Uh, I'm sorry, I'm looking at uh.

Verse 24, for he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like, but the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets, but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.

In verse 22, but be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.

We'll come back to that verse at the very conclusion of our study, but I want you to remember that phrase deceiving yourselves.

I think one of the best illustrations of the problem that we're talking about, the need to not just understand but to put into practice what we learned from God's word is illustrated in one of the most well-known parables.

It's the parable of the Good Samaritan.

You may recall that on that occasion, as you look at Luke chapter 10 verse 25, that a lawyer came to Jesus, put him to the test, asking the question, Teacher, what should I do to inherit eternal life?

And Jesus basically turns the question back to him and says, what is written in the law?

How do you read it?

What do you understand?

With regard to gaining eternal life.

And the lawyer gives a good answer.

He says, uh, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself and Jesus says, that's right, you've answered correctly.

Do this.

You know the answer to the question.

You know the truth.

Now, practice the truth.

But of course, that's not the end of the story, is it?

In fact, we haven't gotten into the parable yet because the lawyer wants to justify himself.

And so he asks Jesus another question, and who is my neighbor?

And one gets the impression, at least this is my impression, that the lawyer is, at least to some extent, unwilling to simply make an application.

And so he asked this question and Jesus responds with the parable that we call the parable of the Good Samaritan.

I'm not going to read through all of the parable, but I would point out that there are 3 people who passed an injured man on the roadside there.

He's been beaten and left for dead.

And the first two who pass are both Levites.

One of them, in fact, is, is a priest.

These are individuals who would have been professors and certainly the priest, who would have been experts in what the law said about how you should treat your neighbor and the old law said a lot about helping those who were oppressed, helping those who are needy, helping those who needed your help.

And so these are two individuals.

Who know what the law says.

But they didn't make application of the law to their own conduct and so they passed by on the other side.

I think it's interesting that Jesus chooses the Samaritan, the despised Samaritan, to be the one who actually practices the second greatest commandment, and that is to love your neighbor as yourself.

How that must have rankled as this lawyer heard Jesus make that point.

And when Jesus asks him at the end in verse 36, which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the one who fell among the robbers?

He said, uh, it was the Samaritan.

No, he didn't say that, did he?

He said, the one who showed him mercy.

He couldn't bring himself apparently even to say Samaritan.

But he gets the answer right.

It's the one who showed mercy, the one who actually practiced what the Levites only knew but didn't practice.

Jesus' final encouragement.

You go And do likewise.

You know the law.

Now put it into practice.

So that it changes your life.

At the risk Of beating a dead prophet.

I'm gonna go back to Ezekiel, Ezekiel, that's another dead prophet.

Ezra 7 verse 10, where we read earlier that Ezra had set his heart to study the law of the Lord and to do it and to teach his statutes and rules in Israel.

That's what we need to do.

We need to set our heart to study the law of the Lord, to study the scriptures.

And to do them.

So that we can then teach others.

Have you ever had an interest in something that was so strong?

That it just kind of consumed your thoughts, consumed your attention.

Maybe you're a history buff, and there's some portion of American history or world history, and you just find it fascinating.

And so, you read about it and you find another book and you read about the, that same history or historical event in this next book and, and you're seeking videos, you, you're just trying to fill your mind with all this information about this because it's interesting to you.

Do you feel that way about the, the Bible?

That the word of God.

Is it so interesting to you that you will listen to the statutes and the rules that are contained in the law of Christ?

Do you keep God's law, the scriptures with you?

And I don't mean necessarily, oh, I've got them on my phone and I keep my phone with me all the time, so I've got them with me.

I'm talking about whether we are paying attention to them, whether we're spending time with them, are we reading them all the days of our lives?

So that the truth becomes a part of us.

And then it just becomes natural to practice it.

We need to listen.

To the teaching of God's word, whether you're listening to a sermon, you're sitting in a class, or whether you're reading the Bible and the privacy and, and seclusion of your home.

But you're reading and listening.

And asking the question, so what?

What does this mean for me?

What's the application of this sermon?

What's the application of this, the passage or the subject that we studied today in Bible class?

If I preach a sermon and you can't tell me what the so what was in that sermon, then I didn't do my job.

But we have to look for it.

We have to be willing to ask the question, how does this affect me?

What am I going to do in order?

To put into practice what I learned in this particular study of God's word.

So I asked you the question this morning.

Are you listening?

Do you recognize perhaps that in your life there are some changes that you need to make?

If you're not a Christian, you need to think about the precept or the concept that God's blessing comes with obedience.

And if you've not believed in Jesus, you've not repented of your sins and confessed your faith in Christ, if you've not been baptized for the remission of your sins.

Then understand that's the truth.

And you may have heard it many times already.

But what are you doing about it?

That's the so what.

It may be that you're already a Christian, you've already followed those steps, but there are some things in your life that, that maybe you've drifted back into former sins or maybe there's something that you've just not pushed out of your life, some sinful habit or practice or way of thinking.

But you know you need to.

So what are you're gonna do something about it?

Will we practice what we know?

I'll tell you what, People who will continually work to practice as they learn, their lives will be transformed.

They'll become different people.

They'll become the kind of people that others will see Christ in them.

This morning, James 1:22 says, but be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.

I think there are people who feel like if they just open a Bible pretty frequently or if they listen to sermons without complaining.

Then somehow God is happy with them, that that's really all that's required, and that's deception.

James says, you're deceiving yourself if you think that's all God wants.

What he wants is for us to practice what we understand.

If we can assist you in doing that this morning, we want to encourage you and we do so as we stand and sing and invite you.

Series: N/A

Service: Sun PM

Type: Sermon

Speaker: Allen Dvorak

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

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

W

hat kind of smells you're going to smell if you're walking through a barn that has a bunch of cows in it.

Now, pigs, that's a different matter.

But cows, I like that smell.

What's the most unpleasant smell that you can think of?

Well, I'll tell you what mine is.

It is the smell of death.

It is the smell of flesh.

That is rotting, it's putrefying, putrefying an animal that has died and it's not been buried or anything, and you come across that carcass after several days and the smell that, that, that's just really terribly unpleasant to me.

Third question, what's the most unpleasant thing that you've had to do in your life?

That's pretty hard sometimes for us to focus on just one because there may be any number of things that have been kind of unpleasant, and it may not have to do with uh eating something or smelling something.

It may be something you had to do in a relationship with somebody that you were close to.

That'd probably be where I would fall.

The most unpleasant thing that I ever had to do.

I will tell you, for Christians in general, perhaps among the most unpleasant things to have happened is the division of a local congregation.

You're worshiping with the same group of Christians, and maybe for years, maybe for decades, sometimes.

And then something happens.

Maybe false doctrine comes into the group and, and the congregation splits, or maybe a couple of Christians kind of get on the outs with each other and, and then they begin to kind of uh develop party support, and pretty soon the congregation is pulling itself apart on the basis of this. Personality.

Difference, turmoil in the same context in which we worship our God, damaged relationships with people who are sometimes, maybe oftentimes, closer to us than our own family members.

That's enough to make some people's stomachs just clench because of how unpleasant it is.

But I'll tell you that among unpleasant things that Christians experience, congregational discipline probably follows closely behind the division of a local church.

You think about things that just absolutely are unpleasant.

It's having to discipline a member of a local congregation.

Perhaps somebody you've been very close to in the congregation.

We're not as close to one another, everyone the same way, and maybe this is somebody that you've been very close to, and now the congregation has to discipline that individual.

That's very unpleasant.

I almost envy those groups who basically have a profession of unlimited fellowship.

Sometimes what they call them is community churches, you know, come, you, you, you don't necessarily have to believe exactly the same thing as maybe I believe or others believe.

Everybody's welcome and the consequence of that is that you're not faced with the need to discipline or withdraw from somebody who has a very different idea than, say, for instance, what the Bible teaches about some particular subject.

You can believe and do almost, almost anything that you want and still be accepted as the faithful member of that group.

You know, there's something that appeals to us about that because we can avoid this business of having to discipline members who are walking disorderly because it doesn't happen.

There is no such thing in some of these groups.

Those kind of groups go through the discomfort or the agony of church discipline very infrequently.

Our fellowship, on the other hand, one with another, is based on people walking according to the truth, walking in the light with God, walking as God walks.

And we have been given divinely given responsibilities that relate to this fellowship that we have with one another.

I mentioned this morning at the conclusion of the sermon.

That we were going to continue the study of fellowship and discipline that we had begun sometime in the past.

I want to spend just a moment or two, refreshing our minds about some of the truths that we have laid out in that study.

For instance, we have suggested that fellowship really has two key elements.

One of them is relationship and the other one is action or participation in spiritual activities.

It's important to note that both of those elements are a part of biblical fellowship.

There can be participation.

We can do things together without relationship, but that's not what the Bible calls fellowship, or there can be participation in social activities, but that's not what the Bible talks about as being fellowship.

Fellowship, the participation of fellowship is in spiritual activities and the context of those passages that talk about fellowship sustain that truth.

We establish when we obey the gospel, a spiritual relationship with God.

We become sons through faith in Jesus Christ.

I'm using sons in the generic way to describe people, although I understand men and women are both involved here.

In Galatians 63 and verses 26 and 27, near the end of that chapter, Paul writes, for in Christ Jesus, in Christ Jesus, you are all sons of God through faith.

For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.

And so, as the apostle Paul would say, we are translated out of darkness into the marvelous light of God.

In Colossians 1:13, Colossians 1:13, Paul says, he has delivered us from the domain of darkness, that's Satan's domain, and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son.

So, this relationship that we sustain happens when we leave darkness and come into the light and that takes place when we obey the gospel.

In 1 Peter 2, in verse 9, the apostle Peter uh says something very similar.

He says, but you speaking to these Christians of the five Roman provinces that he addresses in the beginning of the book, he says, but you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation.

A people for his own possession.

That, here's the purpose that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.

And Paul wrote to the Thessalonians that God calls people by means of the gospel.

So we're called out of darkness into light that we may proclaim the excellencies of God.

And so we have fellowship with God.

As we are walking in the light, as he is in the light.

John writes about that fellowship in 73 John, his first chapter.

He says in verse 7, but if we walk in the light as he that is God is in the light, we have fellowship with one another.

I don't believe John's talking about the fellowship.

Between people, I think he's talking about the fellowship between God and those who are walking in the light.

If we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, me and God, if we're both walking in the light, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.

Verse 7 is very important because it helps us understand the nature of walking in the light.

Walking in the light doesn't mean sinless conduct.

If it did, then the end of verse 7 wouldn't make any sense.

Because John says there are two consequences to walking in the line.

The first one is that we have fellowship with God.

And the second one is, as we're walking in the light, the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son cleanses us from all sin.

And so it becomes obvious that walking in the light does not mean sinless perfection.

Otherwise, who would need forgiveness by the blood of Jesus Christ?

But of course, John will go on to say what the conditions are for that forgiveness.

If you drop down in chapter 1 to verse 91 John 1 and verse 9, John continues, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

So, walking in the light, Means that we have fellowship with God, and our sins are forgiven by the blood of Jesus Christ, not unconditionally, because John then goes ahead in verse 9 to say what the condition is.

He mentions confession, of course, repentance we find in other passages as well.

So at the same time that we become sons of God because of our obedience to the gospel, we also become brothers with others who are also walking in the light with God and have fellowship with God.

I use the term brothers in a generic way to talk about this relationship that we have with one another, whether we're male or female.

We have a common spiritual relationship with all others who have likewise been added to the Lord's family.

There's a sense in which fellowship is used to talk about Participation in spiritual things at a very general level.

There's a sense in which we have fellowship with everyone else who is walking in the light, even those who are not in a local congregation with us.

But fellowship often is used to talk about this participation that we have in specific spiritual activities like worship.

When we sing together, when we take the Lord's supper together, when we study God's word together.

When we pray together, we are having fellowship, we're participating together in spiritual activities, and it's fellowship because we have this common relationship with God, and that produces fellowship between those who have that relationship. Continued.

Horizontal fellowship, if you'll plea if you please, the fellowship that we have with other Christians, it depends on each person walking in the light, continuing to walk in the light.

When people stop walking in the light, then they don't have fellowship with God.

And by implication, they don't have fellowship with us either, as long as we continue to walk in the line.

Fellowship among men is an effort to respect fellowship between men and their God.

And to implement its meaning, its usefulness among us.

Can I say that again?

The fellowship that we have with other people is an, is an attempt to acknowledge their fellowship with their God.

And to implement its meaning, it's usefulness among us.

We encourage one another.

We work together in teaching one another and in teaching others.

We worship together and we are strengthened by our common participation in these spiritual activities.

Well, what happens when an individual who's been walking in the light, walking according to God's commandments, according to his will, what happens when he stops doing that?

Well, he breaks his fellowship with God.

That relationship is, uh, disrupted.

Again, in 1 John 13, backing up to verse 6, John says, if we say, We have fellowship with Him, God, while we walk in darkness.

John says, we lie and do not practice the truth.

What's the implication of verse 6?

You can't walk in darkness and have fellowship with God.

And so if you're walking in truth, walking in the light.

And then you decide to stop living that way.

And you lose the relationship that you had with God that was based upon your common walk, walking in the light with our Creator.

When sin disrupts the fellowship between an individual Christian and his God, there's no longer any basis for fellowship between that Christian and other Christians who are still walking in the line. Why?

Because they're on different paths.

Fellowship between individuals implies that we're walking the same way.

We're walking with God.

And when someone stops walking with God, Their fellowship with us is essentially disrupted as well, even as it is disrupted with God.

So, as I said earlier, horizontal fellowship depends upon the same thing that vertical fellowship depends on, and that is walking in the light.

Now, it's quite possible that a Christian could stop walking in the light.

And yet still come to services, still participate in the worship that we do here.

But now listen to me carefully.

Fellowship doesn't continue to exist because fellowship is not just participation.

It is participation that is founded upon, has as its foundation, a common walk with God.

If I stop walking with God, I break my fellowship with Him and I break my fellowship with you as well, as long as you're walking in the light.

Now, I may come and participate with you just like we do every Sunday, but that's not what the Bible describes as fellowship.

The truth of the matter is sometimes as human beings, we are inaccurate in recognizing with whom we actually have fellowship.

I, I could give you some examples, uh, for instance, in the Book of Revelation, in those seven letters that were written to the seven churches of Asia, in chapter 2, there's a letter written to the church at Pergamus, verses 14 and 15, I'm gonna begin back in verse 13.

Revelation 2 verse 13, if you're following along in your Bibles.

The Lord says, I know where you dwell, as he speaks to this church, where Satan's throne is.

Yet you hold fast my name, and you did not deny my faith even in the days of Antipus, my faithful witness, who was killed among you where Satan dwells.

But But he says, I have a few things against you.

You have some there who hold the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balla to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel so that they might eat food sacrificed to idols and practice sexual immorality.

So, also, you have some who hold the teaching of the Nicolaitans.

In another later letter, the Lord says, that teaching which I hate.

So here's the church at Pergamus, and the Lord commends the church as a general group, but he says there are some people there in that congregation who are not walking in the light.

They are guilty of, uh, as he says, uh, teaching.

What Balaam taught Balla to do, to encourage Christians to get involved in immorality and idolatry, and others who held the teaching of the Nicolaitans, we're not totally sure what that teaching was.

So that's Pergamus.

But now look at chapter 3 of Revelation.

The first church that is addressed in chapter 53 is the church at Sardis, Sardis, and in verse 1, Jesus says unto the angel of the church in Sardis, write, the words of him who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars, I know your works.

You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead.

So two different situations here in Pergamum, here's a congregation that as a whole seems to be commended for their steadfastness, but even in that congregation, there are some people who frankly are not in fellowship with God.

They're involved in false teaching, and they don't have fellowship with the saints.

And so that's a possibility sometimes, that even some who are part of a local congregation are not in fellowship with others, even though they continue to participate with their brethren in Christ.

In worship in spiritual activities, and then the other situation is here's a church that if people looked at it they would say, yeah, that's, that's a church that's alive and God says you're dead.

These are people who are not walking in the light, but others think they're walking in the light and my point is this, that sometimes we are inaccurate.

In determining who it is that actually is walking in the light and who is not.

Why is that?

Well, we don't know the hearts of people.

And sometimes we don't even know, uh, precisely how they are behaving in other parts of their life, that is apart from when we see them, uh, the parts of their lives that we know.

A man may be walking in the light.

Excuse me, not walking in the light, but he also may be a hypocrite.

A hypocrite is a pretender.

And so he puts on a good show when he comes together with the saints.

Everybody thinks, oh yeah, brother so and so, yeah, he's, he's a very spiritual individual.

The truth of the matter is he's not spiritual.

He's walking in darkness Monday through Saturday.

He just shows up on Sunday with the mask.

Of holiness is not really pure, not really holy.

And so we may make poor judgments sometimes about the real status of people with, in terms of their relationship to God.

I want you to listen carefully to what I'm saying next.

The erring brother, the one who has left the light and is now walking in darkness, he is responsible for the severing of divine fellowship.

Neither you nor I can disinherit any saint.

We don't have that power.

We don't have the right, we don't have the authority, we don't have the power to add people to the Lord's group, and we don't have the right to throw them out or disinherit them.

If somebody ends up being a saint who loses his or her inheritance, it's not because of somebody else who made it that way, it's because of their decision to stop walking in the light.

So if there's a disruption of fellowship.

It's because somebody has decided to stop walking with God.

And by implication, we don't have fellowship with that person any longer as well.

The Greek word for discipline or training, sometimes it's translated is Paideia.

It is a word that Vine says refers to the training of a child, including instruction.

In other words, the word that's sometimes translated discipline is not necessarily always the idea of correction or even punishment.

It includes both things, instruction and correction.

And so when we talk about discipline, We need to understand that discipline is not simply a correction thing.

It's not just a punishment thing.

But rather, it involves instruction.

Instructive discipline is designed to maintain fellowship with God.

Corrective discipline.

is designed to preserve or to restore fellowship with God and men.

Here's a brother or sister who's beginning to do things that obviously are not according to the word of God.

And if that person is corrected, and that's the job of elders in particular, but not entirely their own, if that person is corrected, the effort is to maintain, to preserve fellowship.

Don't go off into the darkness.

Walk with God in the light.

This next statement, I think, is key to our discussion this evening.

Marking an individual.

As engaging in things that are not according to God's will.

And withdrawing from that individual, if that becomes necessary, serves as a statement of discord in our fellowship with the person who's being disciplined.

Did you, did you hear what I said?

Marking and withdrawal serve as a statement of discord in our fellowship of the person being disciplined.

What's happening when a congregation withdraws from an individual is we are essentially saying, you are not in fellowship with us anymore.

Whose fault is that?

Not ours.

That person left the light.

And when they did, they severed their fellowship with God and by implication, they severed their fellowship with us because our fellowship with that person depended upon.

The relationship that they have with God.

That doesn't exist anymore when someone begins walking in darkness.

In a sense, In corrective discipline, we do not withdraw fellowship.

You can't withdraw something that doesn't exist.

And at least fellowship, as the Bible talks about fellowship, doesn't exist in situations like that.

Now, we can say we're not gonna participate with you.

But the fact of the matter is the fellowship has already been broken at that point by the person's decision to walk in darkness.

And so when we engage in withdrawal, we are simply recognizing that the basis for fellowship no longer exists.

I don't know if you realize this or not, but the expression withdraw fellowship isn't found anywhere in the scriptures.

That's a common expression.

We're gonna withdraw fellowship from somebody.

The Bible doesn't talk about withdrawing fellowship.

The Bible talks about withdrawing ourselves.

In more than one place in the ESV, the New King James Version, I, I would suggest you can find other versions as well.

Do your search.

Withdrawing fellowship doesn't actually appear in the scriptures, and the reason is it's not really the, the way things work.

It's not accurate.

The concept that it conveys, as we've seen in our study this evening, is inaccurate.

We don't withdraw fellowship.

We're merely recognizing that somebody else's fellowship with God has been disrupted and by implication with us as well.

That's the purpose of withdrawal, at least a purpose.

Care and understanding needs to be exercised so that we're not inaccurate in our determination of who we are in fellowship with and who we are not.

The Corinthians, for instance, were accepting a sexually immoral man as though he was still walking in the light with God.

In 1 Corinthians 5, the latter part of that chapter was the part of the reading for this evening.

In that passage, The Corinthians are told to withdraw themselves, purge that person from among you. Why?

Because he's already walking in darkness, by virtue of the fact that he has his father's wife, probably his stepmother.

In 3rd John.

Again, there was an inaccuracy in the determination of who's in fellowship.

You probably are familiar with the name Diotrophes and John writes about him.

He says in verse 9 of 3rd John, I have written something to the church, but Diotrophes, who likes to put himself first, does not acknowledge our authority.

I think John's talking about the authority of the apostles.

So if I come, I will bring up what he's doing, talking wicked nonsense against us and not content with that, he refuses to welcome the brothers and also stops those who want to and puts them out of the church.

That's the only place where you can find someone putting someone out of the church, the atrophies.

Diotrophy was unwilling to accept those who were in fact walking according to truth, I think is the implication of John's comments there.

Again, please remember that walking in the light does not mean sinless conduct, but the effort to live according to God's will and a willingness to repent of and confess wrongdoing.

Well, if we're not withdrawing fellowship, what exactly is happening in congregational withdrawal?

Let's look at uh a couple of passages here.

Uh, the first one is in Matthew, the 18th chapter.

Jesus is the speaker.

The Jews were critical of Jesus because he ate with tax collectors.

In Matthew 18:15, Jesus says, if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone.

This passage seems to be based primarily in a sin of one brother against another, not necessarily a public type thing.

If he listens to you, Jesus continues, you've gained your brother.

But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses.

If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church.

And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.

And so this passage deals, it seems, with the sin of one brother against another, but without repentance on the part of the sinning brother, it eventuates into congregational withdrawal.

If you go through the steps and he continues to be unwilling to repent, eventually what happens, you withdraw yourself from it.

The Jews would have understand exactly what Jesus meant when he said treat him as a tax collector.

And a Gentile, didn't want to have anything to do with those people.

The 13nd passage is 2 Thessalonians 3.

In 22 Thessalonians 3, Paul is dealing with a difficulty that actually had been addressed in the 1st epistle in chapter 4 of 1 Thessalonians.

And it seems to have continued to be a problem.

It was the problem of people who were not taking care of their own business.

They were not working, they were being lazy, depending on others.

And so, Paul says in 2 Thessalonians 3 and verse 53, now we commend you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from any brother who's walking in idleness and not in accord with the tradition that you received from us.

I think the New King James translation.

Walking disorderly is a better translation.

The ESV has taken the translation of the idea of walking disorderly.

And they've translated it according to the context of the passage, but it would be better for them simply to note that this was someone walking disorderly, not walking according to the commandments of God.

The word literally means to be out of rank, out of, out of step with uh the, the marching orders.

And then in verse 14, he says, if anyone does not obey what we say in this letter, take note of that.

Person and have nothing to do with him that he may be ashamed, which tells us also about another purpose of congregation withdrawal and that is to shame that person.

They need to understand that the relationship between the sinner and the rest of the congregation has changed.

Fellowship doesn't exist anymore because of the sinners walk in darkness.

The 3rd passage that I want to look at is 1 Corinthians 25, as you might guess.

And I'm gonna read verses 26 to 27 again.

These are the verses that were read uh earlier.

In verse 21, Paul writes to the Corinthians, I wrote, wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people, not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world or the greedy and swindlers or idolaters.

Since then, you would need to go out of the world.

Paul's not talking about your relationship with those who are obviously walking in darkness.

No, he's talking about anybody named a brother, and so he says to you in verse, uh, it says in verse 25.

But now I'm writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler, not even to eat with such a one.

For what have I to do with judging outsiders?

Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge, judge as in discern who's walking in the light and who's not.

God judges those.

purge the evil person from among you.

21 times in this passage, Paul talks about what's going on in congregational withdrawal.

He says in verse 203, not to associate with, in verse 220, not to associate with.

In the end of verse 29, not even to eat with such a one, not talking about the Lord's supper, but talking about social meals.

And then finally in verse 242, purge the evil person from among you.

Not withdrawing fellowship, that's gone.

But the association that you have with them or formerly had.

That should cease.

Of course, when we withdraw ourselves, we necessarily cease to pursue joint participation with the disciplined person.

Now, it's not real common.

But it is certainly possible and sometimes does take place that a disciplined person who's erring may continue to attend the assemblies.

They sing the same songs we sing.

They take the Lord's Supper, they give, they listen, amen, the prayers.

We don't lock the erring brother out of the building.

We don't become enemies.

In fact, Paul says in 2 Thessalonians 3:15, don't count him as an enemy, admonish him as a brother.

He's not an enemy.

He's an erring brother.

Warn him as a brother, he says in verse 15.

But the erring brother needs to understand that our relationship has changed.

There's no fellowship any longer because of the walk of this individual, the life that they have chosen to live.

One of the ways to make this point is to cease our social interaction with that brother, not to keep company with him is the translation of some versions, the New King James Version I believe, in passages like 1 Corinthians 5 and 93 Thessalonians 3.

Now you want to talk about something that's difficult.

Something that's unpleasant.

If you've been close to somebody for years and years, you've prayed together, you've sung together, you've worked together.

You've done all these things, you worship together, and then over time, that person drifts back into the world, they start walking in darkness, and you have to pull yourself away from that person.

That's tough But that's what the Lord commands us to do.

Withdrawal has more than one purpose, as we've already noted, at least by implication.

It's for the purpose, obviously of saving the erring brother.

Paul talks about that 1 Corinthians 5 and 5.

It's also for the purpose of preserving the the the, the purity of the local church.

Paul says to the Corinthians in verses 6 and 7 there, 1 Corinthians 5, he says, your boasting is not good.

The Corinthians seemed to be happy.

They were boasting about the fact that they accepted this guy.

They were broad-minded enough to not worry about the fact that he was involved in gross sexual immorality.

Your boasting is not good, Paul writes.

Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?

Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump as you really are unleavened.

For Christ our Passover lamb has been sacrificed.

There's, there's an illustration here that we won't take time to go into this evening.

But basically, Paul's saying, don't you understand the influence that Levin has over dough?

It just takes a little bit and pretty soon the whole lump is leaven.

You are an unleavened lump.

That's what you ought to be.

And so you need to withdraw from this brother lest he influenced the congregation.

In 1 Timothy 5 and 20.

Paul wrote to Timothy, as for those who persist in sin, rebuke them in the presence of all so that the rest may stand in fear.

I believe in the context of the passage, he is, if he's not focused on elders, he's certainly including elders.

No one is to be exempt from discipline if they are continuing to walk in sin.

Well, let me conclude this evening.

I appreciate your kind attention.

Fellowship between brethren is disrupted by the brother who ceases to walk in the light because that's how fellowship is established.

It's how we establish our fellowship with God.

We walk in the light with Him.

And it's how we have fellowship with one another is we walk in the light together and we participate in spiritual activities as we've described even this evening.

The fellowship between brethren is disrupted by the brother who ceases to walk in the light, even if they participate with us in worship in this building.

Because fellowship is not just doing things together.

It's participation, sharing in things based on the common relationship that we have with God.

Congregational withdrawal involves withdrawing ourselves in an effort to make plain to the Aring brother that he doesn't have fellowship with us anymore.

We want that person to understand that he's in danger.

And the way to do that is to pull ourselves back so that he understands his relationship with God has changed as well.

Walking in the light is a matter of life in which an individual strives to do what is right to the best of his ability.

John says, if we say we have no sin, this is the first John one, we lie, we don't tell the truth.

But walking in the light means that when we discover that we have sinned, we repent.

We make the decision to stop doing what is wrong and we confess our sins to God who is faithful and just to forgive us, as verse 9 says. Family.

Family is wonderful.

Yesterday was the annual Dvorak reunion.

Believe me, we're trying to recover.

But it was a great time.

I think we had somewhere around 42 people come together and all of us just descended upon John and Katie Dvorak's house.

Uh, they're rebuilding now.

Uh, but it was wonderful to come together and to enjoy family, the commonness that we have.

And this is the spiritual family that we have.

We come from different physical families.

We come from different areas of the country.

We weren't always together.

We come together as we move into the area, as we begin to work together.

But family, spiritual family.

It is so important.

We have this common bond.

In Christ, that we are all headed.

Hopefully to the same destination.

That's our hope, eternal life.

And so when someone decides.

To leave that path.

And begin walking in darkness.

As family.

We want to draw that person back.

And sometimes the best way to do that is to say, understand what's happening to you.

As we withdraw ourselves, withdrawal is not the first act of discipline, corrective discipline even.

It is after there's been rebuke.

And study And correction.

Patience, But at some point, When an individuals unwilling to respond to that kind of discipline.

Then it becomes necessary for us to pull ourselves away.

And it is a very difficult thing.

It's a very unpleasant thing.

Because we're family.

And it's tough to pull away from family.

Where are you?

With respect to the light.

And darkness Have you obeyed the gospel?

Have you been transferred out of the realm of darkness into the kingdom of God's dear Son?

Have you come into the light, been called by the gospel and responding to that gospel, you've become a spiritual son of God, and part of this spiritual family.

Whose members are around the globe.

Do you need to come out of the darkness?

Why not obey the gospel tonight.

Why not become a part of this spiritual family?

I will tell you.

That this is not a family of perfect individuals.

It's people who are attempting to walk in the line.

And we sin sometimes, and sometimes we don't do what we should do.

We are weak, we're growing, we're trying to mature in Christ.

We have this common bond.

And that common bond partly is that we are trying to head in the same direction.

To life, eternal life.

Have you wondered if you're a Christian back into the darkness?

By continuing to sin without repentance.

You know, in your life, perhaps, that there are things that need to be changed, but there's a part of you that doesn't want to give it up.

You need to be very, very careful.

You're in a dangerous position.

Come back into the light, repent of your sin.

God forgives.

If we can assist you this evening in obeying the gospel by expressing your faith in Jesus as the Son of God.

And having confessed him and repented of your sins, you can be baptized, immersed in water, buried with Christ, into your death to sin, buried into his death, so that his blood can wash away your sins.

If that's what you need tonight, then don't wait.

Become a part of the family.

If you're part of the family and you drifted away from God, you've begun to walk the way the world walks.

You need to come back into the light.

God will forgive, and we encourage you, whatever your need is, if you'll come to the front, we'll assist you as we stand and sing.

Series: N/A

Service: Sun AM

Type: Sermon

Speaker: Allen Dvorak

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

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

I'll be reading from 2 Peter chapter 2.

And I'll be reading from the New King James Version.

2 Peter chapter 2.

By way of context, we know from verse 10 that Peter is speaking of those who walk according to the flesh.

So picking up in verse 63.

These are wells without water, clouds carried by a tempest for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever.

For when they speak great swelling words of emptiness, they allure through the lusts of the flesh, through lewdness, the ones who have actually escaped from those who live in error.

While they promise them liberty, they themselves are slaves of corruption, for by whom a person is overcome, by him also he is brought into bondage.

For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the latter end is worse for them than the beginning.

For it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness than, having known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered to them.

But it has happened to them according to the true proverb, a dog returns to his own vomit, and a sow having washed to her wallowing in the mire.

We have almost a full house this morning.

We have a little bit of uh open space here and there, but we have a number of visitors.

We're grateful for your presence, grateful for the presence of everyone, as has already been suggested.

We appreciate your presence here this morning.

Hopefully, as we study God's word together, you'll be encouraged by the things that we look at in uh God's divine revelation.

Onesimus You probably recognize that name.

He was a slave in the first century.

He was a slave who was owned by an individual by the name of Philemon.

Philemon was a Christian, a member of the church at Colossi.

Onesimus ran away from his master, Philemon.

And headed for an excellent place to get lost, and that was in the great city of Rome.

But in that city, he came in contact with the apostle Paul, who had been taken there as a prisoner, as we understand from the latter chapters of Acts.

And Paul was able to convert Onesimus.

I think they may have been acquainted already since Paul was acquainted obviously with Philemon.

And Paul sends Onesimus, the slave, back to his owner.

And he writes a letter, a brief letter that's in our New Testament, the Book of Philemon, to Philemon, encouraging Philemon to take Onesimus back, not just as a slave but as a brother, and I think it's maybe even intimated in that letter that Paul would like to have seen Philemon to release Onesimus from his slavery.

Slavery in the first century Roman world was very common.

It's not the kind of slavery that most of us think of when we think about human slavery or chattel slavery.

It was not racially based.

slaves came from all kinds of nations, Greeks and various others, and it encompassed all professions.

In fact, many of the Greek slaves, we are told, were better educated than their Roman masters.

Slaves were sometimes, uh, doctors, lawyers, teachers.

And slavery was everywhere in the empire.

It wasn't just in Rome, it wasn't just in Italy, it spanned all of the areas that were controlled by the Romans.

But in that slavery, there was the hope of freedom.

In fact, it was not unusual for slaves to be freed.

Either by buying their own freedom, it was not uncommon for a master to give his slaves something that if the slave would save it, he could eventually buy his own freedom, or it was not uncommon for masters to free their slaves after so many years of slavery service or even in their wills when they died to manumit these slaves to free them, give them liberty.

New Testament writers.

Didn't condemn slavery.

Slavery was even practiced under the old law but regulated.

And so in the New Testament, the New Testament writers didn't condemn slavery, but they gave instructions to both slaves and to those who were masters.

In Ephesians, the 6th chapter and verses 5 through 9, Paul addresses both masters and servants or slaves.

The word is dli, which means a slave, not just a servant.

Servant doesn't really convey accurately the idea.

In 1 Corinthians 7:21 to 24, Paul says, if you're in bondage, if you're a slave, you can serve God in that way.

So slaves didn't have to be freed in order for them to be saved.

They could be Christians who would serve uh their masters, their human masters.

When we think of slavery, particularly in the context of our own, uh, country's history, we think of a different kind of slavery.

That slavery was race-based, nearly always, and the slaves in our country were agrarian in their nature most of the time.

They worked fields, they did the kinds of jobs, uh, that now are mechanics. done.

It was geographically limited.

It wasn't everywhere, even in the United States, and frankly, there was little hope, little or no hope for freedom, even after years or even uh most of the lifetime of service.

And so our country fought a civil war over the practice of slavery.

President Abraham Lincoln, you probably recall, issued a, an Emancipation Proclamation, as it's been called in 1863 in the midst of the Civil War.

But chattel slavery did not become constitutionally illegal until the end of 1865 after the war had already ended.

And with the ratification of the 193th Amendment, that's what actually ended slavery.

But the end of slavery didn't signal the end of racial prejudice.

A very large percentage of people were still racially prejudiced.

But that led to the civil rights movement a century after the 13th Amendment had been ratified.

Human slavery may be outlawed in the United States, but a very large percentage of the population is still in slavery as I speak.

A different kind of slavery.

But every bit is real.

And much more devastating than the slavery that occurred in our country or in the Roman world of the first century.

And so it's my purpose this morning to talk a little bit about that slavery.

When we describe slavery, we tend to think about slavery in terms of historical slavery.

That is being under the power of another or being the property of somebody else, and that's literally what slaves were.

When you look at human slavery in history, the property of somebody else to do with as they wished in most cases.

But I want to look back at the passage, one verse that was read just a few moments ago by uh Brother Copeland.

In 2 Peter 2 and verse 19, Peter identifies the basic premise behind slavery.

He says they promise and in the context, he's talking about false teachers and they, these false teachers promise others freedom, but they themselves are slaves, slaves of corruption, he writes, and then he expresses the principle that we need to remember and that is for whatever overcomes a person to that he is enslaved.

I want you to notice something very important about this verse, and that is that Peter did not write, whoever.

Overcomes a person.

He said whatever, indicating that it could be a person, but it could be things or other uh.

Masters besides human masters.

For whatever overcomes a person, to that, he becomes a slave.

Paul likewise gave the same basic principle in Romans 6 verse 16 when he said, do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness.

Those who continue in sin, Paul says they are slaves.

They have a master.

The end of that slavery is death.

It's not life.

In Galatians, the 5th chapter.

The apostle Paul encourages these Christians for freedom.

Christ has set us free.

He says, stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

In the context of Galatians, I believe the yoke of slavery is a reference to the law of Moses.

It became a yoke of slavery because once an individual sinned there wasn't really any escape from the guilt of that sin.

By the things that pertain to the law of Moses themselves.

itself, I should say.

People could offer animal sacrifices, but as the book of Hebrews clearly, uh, points out, that couldn't take away sin.

And so here's an individual who sins, and he can offer an animal sacrifice, but it's not sufficient for the forgiveness of sins.

And so he's with the guilt of his sin, and then he sinned again, and then he sinned again.

He becomes a slave.

He's in bondage to these sins, and the law of Moses is expressed by Paul as a yoke of slavery.

We'll come back to that point a little bit later.

But I want to talk about some forms of slavery that are very common in our world today.

We think of ourselves as free people.

In fact, Americans are very proud of their freedom.

But the fact of the matter is, many Americans, most Americans are slaves.

They don't even realize it.

They're slave to substances.

They're involved in physical addictions in which they have been overcome by some substance.

Alcohol, for instance, is addictive.

Harvard's health.

website says alcohol abuse is the 2nd most common form of substance abuse in the United States after tobacco addiction.

I'm not gonna spend time this morning.

I think it would be unnecessary for us to do this.

I'm not gonna spend time giving you statistics about how many people drink and, and, and what the effects of alcohol are.

I think we know enough about that to understand that overindulgence in alcohol brings drunkenness and it's addictive.

Those who become drunken often can't remember what they've done or where they have been.

In a drunken condition, they sustain injuries or they hurt others and are not even sometimes aware of that.

The scriptures talk about the danger of alcohol use.

We've just finished a study not long ago in Proverbs in the adult class in the auditorium.

And a couple of passages that we looked at were Proverbs chapter 20 and verse 13.

Wine is a mocker, the writer says, strong drink, a brawler, and whoever is led astray by it is not wise.

Wine is a mocker.

People drink it to feel good, but it mocks them in its consequences.

A little bit later on in chapter 23.

Beginning in verse 29, there's a section here that talks about the effects of alcohol use on individuals who has woe, the writer says, who has sorrow, who has strife, who has complaining, who has wounds without cause?

Well, they're not without cause, but the drunkard doesn't know where he was wounded or when he was wounded, who has redness of eyes, those who tarry long after wine, those who go to try mixed wine.

Do not look at wine when it is red, when it sparkles in the cup and goes down smoothly.

In the end, it bites like a serpent and stings like an adder.

Your eyes will see strange things and your heart utter perverse things.

You will be like one who lies down in the midst of the sea, like one who lies at the top of a mast where the boat is doing this and you're weaving back and forth with it, the loss of balance.

They struck me, you will say, but I was not hurt.

They beat me, but I did not feel it.

When shall I awake?

I must have another drink.

And so alcohol becomes the master of those who have begun to use it, and it now is a compelling desire, physical addiction in their bodies.

You don't have to have lived very long before you have probably seen the effects of alcohol in the lives of individuals who are addicted to it, it destroys families, it destroys individuals.

It causes ruin, and many people have been overcome by alcohol.

That's a big problem on college campuses now, the binge parties, where individuals who are now away from their homes, maybe sometimes for the first time away from their parents, and so they indulge, and sometimes people even die because of excessive alcohol consumption.

It's an addiction.

And it's a master Despite the health problems that are caused by alcohol use, it'll destroy your body.

The troubles that it causes at home, between work, colleagues, or at school or even with the law, people continue to return to their indulgence because they have become slaves.

Or we could talk about tobacco.

Maybe we should say an addiction to nicotine, that's the addictive element in the, the cigarette and tobacco use.

Tobacco addiction has been described as one of the strongest addictions and hardest to give up, even more so than some of the synthetic drugs that are now being used by individuals.

The body's desire for nicotine controls their lives.

Smoking tobacco or vaping, which is the common thing now among many people.

Damages the lungs and heart.

Vaping, as I understand it, is the turning of certain chemicals, aerosol, into an aerosol that then is ingested.

It's not any safer, particularly than cigarette smoking.

It's just a different form of consuming nicotine and other toxic substances.

And it destroys the lungs and the heart.

Many smokers eventually develop breathing problems because the little sacks inside the lungs that are responsible for oxygen exchange when we breathe in and breathe out.

They're paralyzed, and so people struggle more and more to pull in oxygen to feed their bodies.

It's misery, and I have seen it firsthand.

Had a grandmother.

Who, when we would go and visit our grandparents, she would get up early in the morning before anybody else in the house.

And you could hear her coughing and hacking and trying to breathe because nicotine also paralyzes the cilia that clear mucus.

And so she would hack and cough to try to get up the mucus that was in her lungs.

And she smoked even when she had to have oxygen.

In order to breathe.

That's slavery.

She had a master, and the master was nicotine.

And she was the slave.

Someone says, well, I'm, I'm not addicted to tobacco. Why?

I quit twice last week.

People deny sometimes that they're slaves, but very much so.

It is clear that they are slaves.

They can't set it aside.

They've got to come back to it, can't even engage in normal activities without stopping to go smoke a cigarette or vape or whatever they use in terms of tobacco.

We could talk about legal and illegal drugs.

We can become addicted to drugs which then control our lives.

They become our masters.

Some of them are legal, they're painkillers, that sort of thing.

But at some point, people suddenly, not suddenly, over time, they can't set it aside.

They've got to have more of them.

That slavery.

And they are the slaves.

Addicts, drug addicts will steal.

Do all kinds of terrible things to others, murder other people in order to support that habit.

They are slaves, and that's their master.

They're not in control of their lives really anymore.

Those are substance addictions and we can talk a great deal about them, but you are probably aware, you may even seen the ill effects of someone who is enslaved to these substances.

It's not pretty, and sometimes it just destroys lives completely. Pornography.

Someone says, well, pornography, how could that be an addiction?

More and more evidence is indicating that pornography is in fact addictive.

Doctor Anthony Jack in a book entitled Your Brain on Porn is cited as saying, addiction to internet pornography is a very real phenomenon with a very real impact on well-being.

It is a phenomenon, he writes, Which has grown exponentially in the last decade.

Now, that's a little bit dated.

He's, he's writing several, uh, uh, a number of years ago, not even in our decade, even though it has remained largely invisible and undetected by society.

So many people argue that pornography, viewing pornography is harmless.

Well, it's actually not.

Tragically, its risks continue to be ignored or actively denied by all but a few enlightened medical professionals.

It is a phenomenon that is not just here to stay, but also likely to increase.

It is almost certainly the cause of the widespread sexual dysfunction found in recent studies of late adolescents.

Young people are suffering as a result of their use of pornography.

Well, how can pornography use be addictive?

Well, what happens is during sexual arousal, the human brain produces some very powerful chemicals.

They're natural chemicals, your body produces them.

Uh, and I've listed some of them there, but what happens is those chemicals become associated with the viewing of pornography, and so people want more and they want more, and so they return repeatedly to the use of pornography.

Sometimes the cycle is so strong that individuals will risk marriages, even knowing that it may destroy their marriage.

It'll destroy their home.

It'll cause them to lose a high paying, a good job.

They don't care because they've got to pursue this addiction.

Even sometimes risking prison time.

For viewing or collecting illegal pornography, child pornography, those sorts of things.

That's a person who's overcome by something.

That's slavery Physical passions.

The apostle Paul wrote to Titus in chapter 3 and verse 3, for we ourselves were once foolish, talking about their past life, these Christians, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another.

Now, I, I think Paul has in mind as he finishes the verse, some of the passions that he mentions in the midst of the verse, but we could talk about all kinds of passions or things that we can be enslaved to pleasures that we can be enslaved.

to, you know, I find it interesting, gambling has become much more popular in our society, legalized gambling, but it's ironic that the very ads that will encourage you to gamble also will often have a warning saying, be careful, this can be addictive.

That's like handing someone a gun and saying, go ahead, spin the chamber, but know that it's possible it may kill you.

Why would you do that?

Does that make good sense?

The answer is no. Gambling.

You can be a workaholic that may be the master of your life and it pushes out everything else.

Could be covetousness.

Your things control you, as uh John Coda so well described the rich young ruler.

Earlier in our service.

So whatever overcomes us becomes our master, and we become slaves.

Do you think that you are free?

Are you really?

Or are we slaves as well?

Each of these masters involves a slavery that causes misery in this life and brings ruin in the next life.

What's the problem with all of this?

Well, the problem is that in Matthew 6:24, Jesus said, you can't serve two masters.

He says for either you'll hate the one and love the other or you'll be devoted to the one and despise the other and in the context, he says you can't serve God and money.

Money, covetousness can be a master.

And Jesus says, you can't serve two masters.

So listen to me carefully.

If you are a subject, a slave to any of the masters that we've talked about, you can't serve God, and the reason for that is what Jesus said in Matthew 2237.

What's the greatest commandment in the law?

he's asked.

He responds, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.

Parallel accounts with all your strength.

God demands everything from us.

He's not willing to be 2nd place.

And you can't serve two masters in the same heart.

One will push the other out.

The question we have to answer is, Are we really free from the slavery that is in the world today?

God's intention is that we be free.

God doesn't want us to be enslaved to these things that ruin our lives.

We already mentioned Romans 6:103 a little bit earlier.

Paul says, do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone's obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death.

You can be the slave of sin, but here's the result, it's spiritual death.

And if not forgiven eternal death.

Jared gave an excellent Wednesday night invitation recently when he talked about the wages of sin.

Sin pays a wage, but it's not the wage that we want to receive.

But God doesn't want us to be enslaved and so he sent his son, as we often talk about, to free us from the bondage of sin, from slavery of sin.

In Ephesians 1:7, Paul says, in him that is in Christ, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of His grace.

The word redemption is a rich word.

It's a word that talks about paying a ransom to free somebody from slavery.

That's what Jesus did.

He came to a world, people who were engulfed in slavery, slavery, who were servants of sin, slaves of sin.

But in that death, he paid the price for our forgiveness, and that's what Paul says here in Ephesians 1:27.

He freed us.

In a way that the law of Moses by itself could not do.

In Titus 21 verse 21, Paul says, who gave himself for us, to redeem us from all lawlessness.

And to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.

Once again, he came to redeem us from this slavery in sin that was true of all mankind.

In Revelation 26 and verse 219, once the lamb takes the, the scroll out of the hand of the one who sits on the throne, the question, having been asked, who's worthy to do that?

Well, it's the lamb. Why?

In the praise that follows in chapter 21, we learned that he's worthy to take the scroll because you were slain and by your blood, you ransomed people.

Another way of saying they were redeemed.

Jesus paid the redemption price.

The ransom that was necessary to free us from the bondage of slavery.

I said we would come back to Galatians 123 and 212 and I'd like to do that now because I believe Paul referred to the law of Moses as a yoke of slavery because the law of Moses identified sin, but ultimately, it couldn't with its animal sacrifices actually provide forgiveness, not just through animal sacrifices.

I want to point out, I think people under the old law could be saved.

But they weren't saved by animal sacrifices.

That was just a manifestation of their obedient faith.

It was the blood of Christ that goes back from the cross and comes forward that would be responsible for the forgiveness of people who were obedient to God under that first law.

Hebrews 26:12 says that.

But the law of Moses in and of itself was just a yoke of slavery.

And what that does is it highlights the advantage that we have.

Because we have a sacrifice that really does take away sins.

And so when we obey the gospel.

We are ransomed by the blood of Jesus Christ.

We're forgiven of our sins.

We are free from the guilt of sin.

Hebrews 10:1 emphasizes this point about the law of Moses, for since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year make perfect those who draw near.

But you and I, we can be free.

We do not have to be enslaved to sin.

One of the things that the apostle Peter wrote in 2 Peter 1:5 through 8, is that we need to give effort to add to our lives self-control.

The word that's translated self-control, there is an interesting one.

It has two parts.

It's a compound word, and one of those parts literally means strength, kratos.

Self-control is the strength.

To do what's right.

To control your life by the will of God.

In 63 Corinthians, the 6th chapter and verse 12, The apostle Paul writing to the Corinthians says, all things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful.

All things are lawful for me, but I will not be dominated by anything.

There's a significant difference in the translations of the ESB and the New King James Version in this verse, as is the case with 1 Corinthians 7:1 as well.

I believe that when Paul says all things are lawful for me, I believe, as the ESV indicates by the quotations around that phrase, that Paul was quoting the Corinthians.

The Corinthians were taking something that Paul had said, and they were twisting it so that they could engage in immorality and say, well, it's insignificant.

Paul says, no, no, no.

I won't be dominated by anything, not any kind of sin.

I appreciated the comment earlier about 1 Corinthians 6 and verse 19, the comment that Quinn made.

The fact of the matter is our bodies as Christians are a temple of the Holy Spirit within us whom we have from God.

You are not your own. Why?

Because you were bought.

You were bought with a price.

That's redemption.

Redemption is when a slave has someone who will pay the ransom price so that he can be liberated from his slavery, and that's what happened to us.

If we've obeyed the gospel, we have been free, we were bought with a price and the consequences, Paul says, so glorify God in your body because you belong to him, you're not even your own anymore.

Slavery comes in various forms.

And most people in our communities.

Our slaves.

They're slaves to various masters.

Even though they would consider themselves to be a free people, the fact of the matter is, spiritually speaking, they have been overcome by these masters.

So many people don't even recognize that they are slaves.

Christ not only frees individuals from the guilt of sin, but he promises Christians.

That they will not be tempted beyond what they're able to bear.

There are things in this world that are difficult, that can be difficult to resist, but God promises to us who are Christians that God will always provide a way of escape.

1 Corinthians, the 10th chapter in verse 12, Paul wrote, therefore, let anyone who thinks that he stands speaking to Christians take heed lest they fall.

No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man.

God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation, he will also provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it.

Paul was writing to Christians, that's a promise, a spiritual blessing that is in Christ.

If you are a Christian this morning and you're struggling with an addiction, you're struggling to free yourself from some master in this world, please understand that God provides the way of escape.

Although we haven't this morning identified specific ways to avoid the sins mentioned.

The way of escape is there for Christians if we can recognize it and if we are willing to take that way of escape.

In Romans 6:23, the passage I referred to a little bit earlier, for the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

What God wants for you is life.

But understand if you submit yourself to sin, it pays a wage.

And what is owed eventually is death, eternal punishment away from the presence of the Lord.

Are you free?

Are you free in Christ?

Are you free from the guilt of sin because the blood of Jesus Christ has washed it away?

Or are you still in slavery?

If you're a Christian, Who's wandered away from the way of truth and you've gone back into slavery.

You can be free once again.

Salvation is available to you.

Forgiveness is available to us as we repent.

And confess our sins asking for forgiveness.

If you need to obey the gospel this morning or if you need to be restored, if you need to leave slavery behind.

And now is the time to act.

And we want to encourage you to do what's necessary.

We stand insane to do so.