Church of Christ on Kelly Spring Road Podcast

Series: N/A

Service: Sun AM

Type: Sermon

Speaker: Allen Dvorak

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

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

OK. I'll be reading from Psalms 1:19.

We'll be reading the 2nd stanza today.

Uh, it starts with the Hebrew, uh, letter Beth, which means house.

The verses we're gonna read.

Concern how we can build a pure life by making our heart the home of God's word.

Verse 9.

How can a young man keep his way pure by guarding it according to your word?

With my whole heart I seek you.

Let me not wander from your commands.

I have stored up your word in my heart that I may not sin against you.

Blessed are You, O Lord, teach me your statutes.

With my lips.

I declare all the rules of your mouth in the way of your testimonies.

I delight as much as in all riches.

I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways.

I will delight in your statutes.

I will not forget your word.

The background for the announced the slides this morning, worship slides, is that cornfield and with all of the rain we've gotten, that corn just sprouted yesterday and so the sun came out and it just took off.

Uh, I'm glad you're here.

Uh, most of us probably were washed in by the rain, but it's good to be together, uh.

As Gary suggested, we can worship God anytime, but it's a special privilege to be together with other Christians and to be encouraged by our presence and our worship together.

I want to tell you a little something about my wife and I. Debbie and I first met at Florida College.

We attended there in the fall of 1978.

That's in the olden days, previous century.

And um we met on the first, in the first week of school.

And uh so we had some classes together.

And by the spring of 153, she had fallen prey to my charms.

And so we were engaged in the early spring of 1979, but at the end of the school year, we went our separate ways.

She went back to San Antonio where her parents lived at that time, and during the summer, she worked uh in a medical clinic, and I was in a preacher training program not far from here in Coleman, Alabama.

Now, 1979.

is not just olden days, it's before cellphones.

In fact, Al Gore hadn't even invented the internet yet.

And so it was difficult for us to uh have any connection other than pretty much by letters.

Now, you could call back then, but it wasn't like cell phone calling where it's free.

You just call whoever you want on whatever side of the world you want.

If you called, you got charged for that.

And Debbie didn't, uh, parents, she didn't wanna, uh, load her parents with expenses, and I was living with a family there in Coleman.

So what we did is we wrote letters.

We kept the postal service busy that summer.

We couldn't visit one another, we didn't have the money to travel, and so I don't remember exactly how many letters we wrote, but there were many of them.

And I remember coming home from the office, coming to the house where I lived, and hoping that there was a letter waiting for me, a letter from Debbie.

I valued every letter, read them, reread them.

They were virtually at that time, my only connection with Debbie.

God does not verbally answer our prayers.

He doesn't perform miracles before our eyes as Jesus did before the disciples and as was noted uh by Tyler, before the Israelites, God performed miracles.

But we can treasure the Word of God.

God's Word is our Creator speaking to us.

He's communicated with us through His Word.

The 119th Psalm was certainly written by one who treasured the word of God.

We have been engaged.

In an examination of some of the Psalms, uh, periodically, and in the beginning of this series, I asked if you were interested in me addressing a particular Psalm.

If you would let me know what that psalm was, I would integrate it into the series and I got a request for Psalm 119.

Since Psalm 119 has 176 verses, I hope you packed a lunch.

I'm just kidding, and I'm not gonna tell you who requested this Psalm because we're not going to cover every verse in the Psalm.

We're going to look at some specific verses to pull out some of the major themes in this Psalm.

It's a good choice because the 119th Psalm is a beautiful Psalm, one of the most beautiful of all of the Psalms.

So this morning, what I want to do is two things.

I want to begin by just looking at the Psalm and noting that it has some rather unique characteristics as uh Steve alluded to prior to the scripture reading.

But I want us to be encouraged to have a proper attitude toward God's word, just like the psalmist did and encouraged his readers as well.

Psalm 119 is unique.

In the sense that it is a complete alphabetic acrostic.

What that means is that the 176 verses.

are divided into 163 sections, strophes they're called.

Each strophe has 8 verses.

And each of those strophies is dedicated to one of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, Alephett, uh, Gimmel, Dale, etc.

And within each strophe, each line of those, each of those eight verses, each line begins with the letter that the entire strophe is dedicated to.

That's a masterful job of composing poetry, which is what the Book of Psalms, uh, primarily is.

It's a book of poetry.

Now, it may have been done this way simply for uh a mnemonic as a mnemonic device, doesn't help as much in English, uh, memorizing 176 verses would be probably a challenge for most of us.

But It is a beautiful song as it talks about the word of God.

You know, it's interesting, in light of the beauty of the Psalm and its length, we don't know who the author is.

It resembles the style maybe of David, but we do know some things about the author, even if we don't know his precise identity.

For instance, we know that he has suffered some.

He talks about enemies and about those who would wish him harm, verses 23 and 69, 86 and 87, and, and a number of others.

As you read through the Psalm, If you are paying attention to this particular idea, you'll notice how many times he talks about the fact that he is under attack by those who are enemies of God.

But I'll tell you what we do know about the author, and that is, we know his attitude toward God's word, and that's what we're going to focus on, uh, a lot in this study this morning.

Nearly every verse in this Psalm contains a word that refers to the word of God.

There are only a couple of exceptions.

Uh, verse 122, I think is one of them, 84 maybe another.

But every other verse.

There's a different term that is used to identify God's word.

Um, there are about 143 of them.

They're listed on the screen there.

And they suggest certain or different aspects of God's word, but they're basically synonyms to talk about the inspired revelation of God.

It is also the case that the author of this Psalm addresses God in practically every verse.

If you look at the beginning of the Psalm, the 1st 3 verses, the author is talking about the blessedness of people who keep God's word, but then very quickly, he begins to talk to God.

And when you read the Psalm, it's almost as though you are hearing a conversation between two people.

Actually, the psalmist is speaking to God, and we are listening in to his words.

The song extols the value and the beauty of the Word of God.

Open my eyes, he writes in verse 18, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law.

Verse 18 may be a good thematic verse for the entire song, as the writer is going to talk about the value of God's word.

He recognizes that value and he talks about it as being better than thousands of coins of gold and silver, for instance.

Think about that, if you would.

Obviously, we don't use coins necessarily of gold and silver for our daily transactions, our monetary affairs.

But think about just giving up a, a big portion of your salary, your yearly income in exchange for the Word of God.

Do we value God's word to the extent that we would be willing to say, yes, I would give this large portion of my income.

So that I could have access to God's word.

The writer also describes God's word as being sweeter than honey.

We sing a song that alludes to that.

How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth.

But the author is going to talk about the value of God's word from some other standpoints.

For instance, from the standpoint of the character of God's word, and he will say a lot about the character of God's word.

I'm just going to pick out a few thoughts and share them with you.

I'm going to be quoting for the most part from the ESB, but there'll be a few passages here where I'm going to use the New King James Version translation.

Um, and I'm not going to necessarily read all of the passages that will appear on the screen just for the purpose, uh, of time, but he describes the character of God's word as being righteous and very faithful.

In fact, this is the New King James Version.

Your testimonies, he writes, which you have commanded are righteous and very faithful.

He says that God's word is pure.

Therefore, your servant, he says, loves it.

And he describes it as true, not surprising to us, but he says your righteousness is righteous forever and your law is true.

Righteousness is sometimes a term that's used to describe God's word.

The sum of your word is truth and every one of your righteous rules endures forever.

Verse 160.

It is very important because it says that not just some part of God's word is truth, but that all of God's word is truth.

And from that fact, we deduce that one part of God's word is not going to contradict another part of God's word, that they'll harmonize the various parts of God's word as they are equally related to the same subjects.

But he also talks about the value of God's word from the standpoint of its function, and he suggests several functions.

For instance, uh, as we sometimes sing, how can a young man keep his way pure by guarding it according to your word.

And so the word of God is the means by which we keep our lives pure.

It is the source of spiritual life.

Verse 50, this is my comfort in my affliction that your promise gives me life, promise standing for the Word of God.

I will never forget your precepts for by them you have given me life.

It makes us wiser than our enemies, the author says, for it is ever with me, and it gives us light and understanding.

It directs our steps.

Several passages here, I'm just going to read verses 104 and 105 at the top of that section.

Through your precepts, I get understanding.

Therefore, I hate every false way.

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

Some of these phrases I'm sure sound familiar because they are in the songs that we sing.

Those songs are based not just upon this song, but a number of the other songs as well.

But Psalm 119 is a favorite source for song lyrics, and you'll see it again and again in the passages as you read through the, the psalm.

And the psalmist expresses his love for God's word.

In verses 33 and 48, we'll just read these two verses.

He says, for I find my delight in your commandments, which I love.

I will lift up my hands toward your commandments, which I love, and I will meditate on your statutes.

And he says in other places as well that he has a love for God's word.

How do you feel about God's word?

Is there something that you love?

Or is it kind of a burden?

We know we have to study it.

We know we should understand it.

But that's more of a chore than a delight.

I don't get that impression from the psalmist here.

He says, I love your word.

I delight in meditating upon your word.

And he seeks to understand the word of God.

He requests, for instance, the help of the Lord in numerous passages, uh, in verses 26 and 27, the second passage there, when I told of my ways, you answered me.

Teach me your statutes, make me understand the way of your precepts, and I will meditate on your wondrous works.

Verses 124 and 125, deal with your servant according to your steadfast love.

That's a phrase that often is translated mercy, the word has said uh in the Old Testament.

According to your steadfast love and teach me your statutes, I am your servant.

Give me understanding that I may know your testimonies.

And related to that request is his acknowledgment, his profession of spending time with God's word.

Psalm 11997.

0 how I love your law.

It is my meditation all the day.

The people that we love are the ones we want to spend time with.

The things that we enjoy are the things that we use our time for.

Oh, how I love your law, he says.

It is my meditation all the day.

He spends time with it.

And he is committed, the author is, to obeying the law of the Lord.

He recognizes the blessedness of obedience.

That's the 1st 8 verses.

The first strophe, first section there is talking about the blessedness of people who keep God's word, who follow his commandments, and he mentions his past and even his intended future obedience of God's law.

I remember your name in the night, O Lord, and keep your law.

When I think on my ways, I turn my feet to your testimonies.

I hasten and do not delay to keep your commandments.

Think about that verse, those verses there, 15213 and 60.

When I think on my ways, Here's somebody who's considering his life, his basic conduct.

And he says, when I think on those things, I turn my, there's a deliberate effort.

Decision To follow God's testimonies, I hasten and do not delay to keep your commandments.

There's no reluctance here, there's no reticence here, no regret.

He says, I hasten and I don't delay to do what I understand you want me to do with my life.

I hold back my feet from every evil way in order to keep your word.

Did you notice the contrast between 59 and 101?

59 says, I turn my feet to your testimonies, 101 says, I hold back my feet from evil, every evil way, and both of those things are important in our lives.

This Psalm, Psalm 119, emphasizes the relationship between the believer in God and the Word of God.

And so when we move to the New Testament, we see the very same concepts being emphasized, the need for study of God's word, the need to understand God's Word, and you see that in several different ways in the New Testament.

For instance, there are direct statements about the need to study the Word of God in the New Testament.

I'm reminded of 2 Timothy 2 and verse 15.

Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.

The function of God suggests the importance of studying it.

In that same epistle of Paul to Timothy, 233 Timothy in chapter 3, in verses 15 to 17, Timothy is told and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training and righteousness.

So that's what the scriptures are profitable for.

And then in a summary way, he says that the man of God may be complete, that's the consequence of the scriptures being used for those purposes, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

And so the importance of study and understanding is seen in the function assigned to God's word.

And the New Testament places importance on obedience to God's word.

In the Sermon on the Mount, In Matthew 214:215, Jesus says, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father in heaven.

What's gonna be the deciding factor, according to Jesus in Matthew 216:214?

Well, it's not a claim.

That He is our Lord, the one who can command.

But rather, who does the will of the Father.

And you see the same thing in Hebrews 23 and 21521, being made perfect, speaking of Jesus, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey Him.

And so the New Testament emphasizes the importance of obedience and that suggests that we need to be studying and trying to understand to the best of our ability what God's word says.

Preachers often encourage.

Members of the church to study more diligently, to work harder to understand what God's word says.

Until we have the attitude of this psalmist, the author of Psalm 1313, until we appreciate the value and the character and the function of the Word of God, we're not gonna work as we should in order to understand it.

We've got to appreciate how precious this communication is.

Sometimes when you have something.

And it comes easy.

And it's plentiful.

You don't have to work for it.

You've had it for a while.

Sometimes we tend to take things for granted.

But when something becomes scarce, Or when we don't have something.

And we want it.

Then we realize the value of what it is.

And so it is with God's word.

I'm afraid that because God's word is so accessible to us.

Most of us have multiple Bibles in our homes, we have Bible study tools, we have all kinds of opportunity and privileges in terms of studying God's word, and it can be very easy for us to just kinda not be all that excited about it or not consider the value of what we've been given.

I want to suggest two other key ideas in this song that go along with this idea of appreciating the value of God's word and studying it to understand it.

And the first one is that The author uses the expression whole heart several times, uh, actually, about 2131 times, he uses the expression whole heart and he uses all my heart in another verse, but I want to read some of these, verse 2119, at the very beginning, Blessed are those who keep his testimonies, who seek Him with their whole heart.

Verse 2112, with my whole heart, I seek you.

Let me not wander from your commandments.

Give me understanding, verse 34, that I may keep your law and observe it with my whole heart.

The sixty-ninth verse, the insolence smear me with lies, but with my whole heart, I keep your precepts.

With my whole heart, I cried, verse 45, 145, Answer me, O Lord, I will keep your statutes.

I entreat your favor with all my heart.

Be gracious to me according to your promise.

The New King James Version doesn't say all my heart, it says, whole heart.

The idea here, of course, is total commitment, serious effort.

I don't have to explain to anybody here this morning what it means to be half-hearted about something.

You're given a task and you just kind of, well, you know, good is good enough and we don't really put a whole lot of effort into it.

We're not concerned about whether we do it right or wrong.

That's half-hearted efforts.

But what the Word of God deserves from us is our whole heart, and that's what the author of the Psalm says.

But the other word that I wanna draw your attention to is the word meditate.

Meditate is a word that's used in a lot of other contexts, but it's interesting how many times it is used in this particular psalm.

For instance, the 15th verse, I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways.

What we fix our eyes on will determine how we behave.

And the author says, I'm thinking about, I'm meditating, I'm considering.

Your precepts, and I'm fixing my eyes on them.

Down in verse 48, I will lift up my hands toward your commandments, which I love, and I will meditate on your statutes.

In the ninety-seventh verse, he says, oh, how I love your law.

It is my meditation all the day.

Well, this is the psalmist saying, all I do is read God's word.

That's, that's all I ever do.

Well, none of us would survive if that's all we did, right?

You've got to eat, you've got to provide for yourself, you've got to work.

There's lots of other responsibilities, but the psalmist is saying, it's my meditation all the day.

Do you find yourself When you're doing things that don't require a lot of focus or concentration, you find yourself thinking about Bible texts.

I love mowing grass for that very reason.

It's a mindless job, right?

I just follow the mower.

I'm actually pushing it, but it doesn't take any great brainpower to mow the grass.

It allows your head, your mind to think about other things, and it's a great opportunity to think about God's word and about specific things that perhaps you uh have read or studied recently.

Let me tell you something about meditation, it takes time.

If you're gonna focus your thoughts on the word of God, that requires time.

Christians everywhere need to spend lots of time with their Bibles.

How much time do you spend with your Bible in an average week?

I know some weeks are different from other weeks.

Our responsibilities sometimes change, events happen that we don't control and they interrupt our normal schedules, but on the average, How much time do you spend with your Bible, with God's word?

Paul wrote to Timothy in 1 Timothy 1193:15, Practice these things, the things that uh he was teaching, immerse yourself in them so that all may see your progress.

Immerse yourself in them.

And there are 100 different ways that you can do that in your daily life.

Immerse yourself in God's word.

I'll tell you what, close association breeds familiarity.

And so the psalmist talked about making God's word a part of Himself.

He says, in the 11th verse, I have stored up your heart, uh, your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.

I think the New King James Version says, I have hidden your word in my heart.

We just finished the Proverbs class, a study of Proverbs in the adult Auditorium class, and one of the challenges that I made in teaching that class was pick out six proverbs, memorize those proverbs.

So that when temptation comes, particularly if you memorize proverbs that are things or dealing with things that are weaknesses for you, then you have the scripture hidden here in your heart that you might not sin against God.

The author is determined not to forget the word of God.

I will meditate on your precepts, he says, and fix my eyes on your ways.

I will delight in your statutes.

I will not forget your word.

Though the chords of the wicked ensnare me, I do not forget your law, for I've become like a wine skin in the smoke, and I've not forgotten your statutes.

I think sometimes People are a little critical of us as a group, as a religious group.

With the emphasis that we place on Bible study.

All you guys do is study the Bible.

Is that what your religion is about?

Let me tell you something, the heart is stirred by what the head understands.

If you want to move people, teach them what God's law says.

Teach them about God.

Teach them what God requires.

Of them and of us.

Bible study is not a means, is not an end in and of itself.

It's a means to an end.

The heart is stirred by what the head understands.

And I will tell you, it's very hard to talk about God for very long without referring to his word.

Jesus, on the last night that he was with his apostles, uh John records extensive discussion that Jesus had with those apostles in John 14:15 and 16.

In John 14, 3 times, Jesus connects love for him with obedience to his word.

If you love me, keep my commandments.

He who keeps my commandments is he who loves me.

Verses 1521, 23, Jesus is making a point.

The disciples from time to time would express their love for Christ.

Peter even said, I'll die for you.

Jesus says, listen, if you love me, keep my word.

And that, of course, is true for us as well.

Knowledge comes before obedience.

You can't obey what you don't understand.

I wonder if this morning there's anyone here who longs to understand and is ready to obey God's commandments.

In the 131st verse of Psalm 119, the writer said, I open my mouth and pant because I long for your commandments.

And then he says in verse 112, I incline my heart to perform your statutes forever to the end.

Is your heart inclined this morning to follow the statutes of the Lord?

I hope that all of us who have obeyed the gospel, who become spiritual sons and daughters of, of God, that, that's our inclination that we are inclined to follow the commandments of God.

But perhaps this morning you're here and you've not obeyed the commandments that would are involved in you becoming a part of God's spiritual family.

And if that's your need this morning and your desire, To follow God's commands.

Then we want to stand and sing in just a moment to encourage you, and we invite you, don't wait, come to the front, we'll assist you.

You can leave this place today forgiven of your sins at peace with God and on the journey toward your heavenly home.

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.)

Morning will be 2 Timothy 4:15.

I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom, preach the word, be ready in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke and exhort with complete patience and teaching, for the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching but have itching ears that for have itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to truth and wander off into the myths.

As for you, always be sober-minded and your suffering, do the work of evangelists to fulfill your ministry.

In February of 23.

Russia invaded Ukraine.

It was the thinking of the Russians that they would basically march into Ukraine and in just a few days, some have even estimated as little as 3 days.

They would be able to liberate Ukraine from its Nazi government.

Many of you probably have followed some of this conflict now in its 4th year as developments took place and the part that the United States and European allies have played in the support of Ukraine.

The Russian president Vladimir Putin.

had embraced prior to the invasion several assumptions.

The Ukrainian people, he believed, would welcome the Russians as liberators.

They would be glad to have the Russians come in and change the government.

He believed, secondly, that the Ukrainian government was weak.

And that a weak and outdated military, Ukraine's military would not fight against Russia.

And then finally, he believed that NATO.

Would not mount any kind of.

Response to the Russian invasion.

And he was wrong.

He was wrong about all three of those assumptions.

As it turned out, the initial invasion force while it came close to the capital city of Kiev of Ukraine.

The fact of the matter is that invasion force became bogged down and suffered huge equipment.

Losses, losses of soldiers as well.

And that war, the Russian-Ukrainian war, has turned into a quagmire.

With both sides trying to hold their ground.

At The current boundaries.

Putin became the victim of an echo chamber that he had himself created.

The reason he believed those assumptions about the Ukrainian people and military and government.

was because that's what his advisors, those who were involved in intelligence agencies, spies, that's what they were telling him.

I'm gonna share with you a couple of quotations from the web about that.

You may remember some of these things.

These were comments that were made uh pretty openly and frequently at the beginning of the war.

This is an AI overview.

Um, And it says intelligence assessments and foreign policy experts widely agreed that Vladimir Putin operated within a self-created echo chamber.

Decades of consolidating power and marginalizing dissent left him surrounded by sycophants who were unwilling to deliver bad news or challenge his worldview.

Another source, the cipherbrief.

com, says this.

Putin's failures are actually years in the making.

After assuming power in the early 2000s, he surrounded himself with sycophants and loyal servants who were unwilling to give him bad news and always ready to repeat the lies and distortions the Russian leader wanted to promote.

Anyone who dared disagree with him was either thrown in jail, forced into exile, or assassinated by the Russian strongman.

Some of you may recall that after the invasion kind of ground to a halt and, and Russia was uh obviously not going to just sweep in and take over the city, the country of Ukraine, that there were a number of advisors and high government officials who suddenly began to fall out of windows, high-end apartment buildings.

And so he eliminated some of the people who had given him the wrong or bad information.

But what I want you to see is that he had deliberately surrounded himself with people who were what we would call yes men.

They would tell Putin what he wanted to hear and so they told him what he wanted to think about the Russian military and its ability to take the country of Ukraine.

That was a horrible mistake, and a lot of people have paid with their lives because of that mistake.

This morning, I want to talk to you about 3 expressions that you probably hear from time to time, echo chamber is one of them and that's what we'll look at uh here in just a bit, but another one is cognitive dissonance.

And the 3rd, which Eric even used in his talk, is confirmation bias.

And we're gonna define those three terms because each of those things can affect us as we are trying to determine God's truth and trying to live according to what we understand God's word to say.

So let's begin by talking about cognitive dissonance.

I don't think I'd ever heard of that word when I was growing up, but you hear it all the time now.

It's not really a very old expression.

It was only coined about 70 years ago by a psychologist by the name of Leon Festinger.

And he developed a theory called cognitive dissonance, and I'm gonna ask your patience, uh, so that I can clearly describe this theory, this idea, this concept.

I'm going to use some quotations from a book written by uh Tavras and Aaronside entitled Mistakes Were Made But Not By Me. And so they define cognitive dissonance this way.

The engine that drives self-justification, the energy that produces the need to justify our actions and decisions, especially the wrong ones, is the unpleasant feeling that Festinger called cognitive dissonance.

Cognitive dissonance, they say, is a state of tension that occurs when a person holds two cognitions, cognitions is just another word for ideas or attitudes, beliefs or opinions that are psychologically inconsistent with each other.

And they give an example such as smoking is a dumb thing to do because it could kill me and I smoke two packs a day.

Those things don't seem very logically to work together.

Dissonance produces mental discomfort that ranges from minor pangs to deep anguish.

People don't rest easy until they find a way to reduce it, that is this cognitive dissonance.

Continuing in the same source, dissonance theory exploded the self-flattering idea that we humans being homo sapiens, wise man is the term, what that term means.

That we humans process information logically.

On the contrary, if new information is consonant, that is, it agrees with our beliefs, we think it's well-founded and useful.

Just what I always said.

But if the new information is dissonant that it is, doesn't agree with, isn't harmonious, then we consider it biased or foolish.

What a dumb argument.

So powerful is the need for consonant harmony in our Thinking that when people are forced to look at disconfirming evidence, they will find a way to criticize, distort, or dismiss it so that they can maintain or even strengthen their existing belief.

This mental contortion is called the confirmation bias.

And so on that particular quote, you got a 2 for 1.

We define further what cognitive dissonance is and it's related to confirmation bias.

Confirmation bias is one of the ways that people resolve this dissonance that sometimes happens when we find two things we're thinking that don't really logically belong together or work together.

And so I'm going to suggest to you that confirmation bias is the tendency to accept only the information that confirms one's beliefs already held.

An echo chamber, as we've already illustrated with the Russian president.

is a situation in which an individual is being fed the very thing that he or she believes from others.

It could even be the internet.

It could be friends.

In the case of the Russian president, it was his.

Advisors and spies, etc.

in an echo chamber.

If you're in an actual echo chamber, whatever you say bounces back to you.

You get the same information from in the echo that the chamber creates.

And so the people who surround an individual and tell him or her Only what he wants to hear or believe, they function then as an echo chamber.

They echo his convictions.

I want you to turn, if you want in your Bibles to First Kings 22.

There are a couple of really good examples of echo chambers in the scriptures.

One of them is in 33 Kings 22.

Another one is found in Jeremiah 42.

I'm not gonna talk about Jeremiah 42, but if you want to go back and refresh your memory of some of the things that happened with Jeremiah and the people who were left after the governor Gedaliah was assassinated, uh, during the Babylonian exile, you'll see an echo chamber there.

But I want to spend time primarily by looking at 1 Kings 22.

A little bit of background, probably would be helpful for all of us.

In this passage, the king of the northern kingdom of Israel, the northern tribes, and the king of the southern kingdom, Judah, Jehoshaphat by name, they have come together.

Jehoshaphat uh was related to the family of Ahab.

We won't go into all of that.

And King Ahab asks Jehoshaphat.

To accompany him in battle, to join him in battle, to take back a city up in the northeast of the northern kingdom's territory, the city of Ramoth Gilead.

The Syrians had taken control of that, and Ahab wants it back.

And so he invites Jehoshaphat to go with him to battle.

And you agreed about that in 1 Kings chapter 22, verses 1 through 4, it's on the screen.

Jehoshaphat though, wants to inquire of the Lord about whether this is going to be a successful endeavor or not.

Ahab accommodates Jehoshaphat by calling together 23 prophets.

Now, if you remember anything from your studies of the Old Testament history, you probably remember that Ahab and his queen Jezebel, who was a Sedonian princess, that they encouraged Baal worship in the northern kingdom.

So I can almost guarantee you that all 400 of those prophets were prophets of Baal.

They were not prophets of the Lord.

What Jehoshaphat wanted, however, was to inquire of Jehovah God, not Baal.

However, the 400 prophets, the 400 men that Ahab called together, he asked them, Shall I go to battle against Ramoth Gilead, or shall I refrain?

And they said, go up, for the Lord will give it into the hand of the king.

Well, that's what Ahab wanted.

That's why he's invited Joshaphat to go with him.

And now he's got 25 people who are saying, yeah, yeah, go ahead and do that.

That's the thing to do.

And they constitute an echo chamber.

They're just telling Ahab and Jehoshaphat here, what Ahab wants to hear.

But Jehoshaphat is not happy with that.

He's not satisfied with that.

And so he asks again, is there not here another prophet of the Lord, of whom we may inquire?

I know you got your 213 baal prophets, but is there a prophet of Jehovah God?

That we can inquire of.

And Ahab says, well, there is yet one man by whom we may inquire of the Lord.

Ahab and Jezebel had been killing off prophets of the Lord, but there's still one man.

You might think it was Elijah, but it's actually a man by the name of Micae, son of Imlah.

And Ahab says, but I hate him, for he never prophesized good concerning me, but evil.

And I think even Jes Jehoshaphat's kind of set back a bit.

He says, let not the king say so.

Well, Ahab accommodates Jehoshaphat and he sends a messenger to Micaia, come and uh inquire of the Lord for us.

The messenger who summoned Micaia advises him, he gets to Micaiah and he says, listen, you, and I'm paraphrasing here, you need to say what the other 25 prophets have been saying.

You need to step into the echo chamber and just tell Ahab what he wants to hear.

Micaia has different uh convictions.

In verse 210, he says, as the Lord lives, what the Lord says to me, I will speak.

No, no, I'm not interested in what Ahab wants to hear.

I'll inquire of the Lord and speak what the Lord wants me to speak.

Well, there's an interesting conversation.

That takes place in verses 22 through 23 between Ahab and Micaiah.

Micaia comes to Ahab and Jehoshaphat and uh he prophesized, first of all, when he's asked, Micaiah, shall we go to Ramoth Gilead to battle or should we refrain?

And he answered him, go up in triumph.

The Lord will give it into the hand of the king.

But there's an interesting response response from Ahab because he says, how many times shall I make you swear that you speak to me nothing but the truth in the name of the Lord?

That's hilarious.

Because Ahab didn't like what Micaia would prophesy to him.

He didn't really want the truth, but there was something, I think, in the way Micah said, go up and triumph.

I think Ahab could smell the sarcasm that Micaia probably added to his prophecy.

And so when the king in verse 43 says, how many times have I got to tell you to tell the truth?

He said, I saw all Israel scattered on the mountains as sheep that had no shepherd, and the Lord said, these have no master.

Let each return to his home in peace.

Micah says, here's the truth, you're gonna be defeated, and you, Ahab, you're going to die in this battle.

Ahab complained about Micaa's evil prophecy.

Because Ahab only wanted to hear from those who would tell him what he wanted to hear, his echo chamber.

And Micaia is, if you'll pardon the anachronism, a fly in the ointment.

He's saying something different.

He's not accommodating Ahab's desire to hear only good things.

That's an echo chamber.

And the danger is that if we're not careful, we will likewise construct our own echo chambers.

Where we assemble around us those sources, those individuals, those friends who will only tell us what we want to hear.

And then every once in a while.

There'll be a preacher or a teacher or a friend.

Who will say what we need to hear, not necessarily what we want to hear.

And we got our noses all out of joint.

Because we don't really want the truth.

We want people to tell us what we already believe.

I've seen that happen a number of times.

In the past, and I guess you probably have as well.

In the book that I've already cited a couple of times, mistakes were made, but not by me.

In that book, there's an example given.

Of What I'm going to call confirmation bias, even cognitive dissonance.

I think both things are involved in this example.

In April of 24, there was a woman who was jogging in Central Park, New York City.

And she was beaten and raped.

And the police arrested 23. Teenagers.

And they took them and interrogated them for hours, and eventually, these teenagers confessed to the crime.

Even made up details about what had happened.

They were convicted in a court of law and they went to prison.

But 24 years later, There was another man who was already in prison for similar type crimes, who admitted that he, and he alone was responsible for the crime that these 5 teenagers had gone to jail for.

13 years later, Mind you, there was literally no physical evidence linking the teenagers to the crime.

There was some semen at the scene, but it didn't match the DNA of any of the teenagers.

They went to jail anyway and spent actually a little more than 13 years in prison.

Well, when this other felon confessed that he was the one who committed the crime, his DNA DNA was taken and it matched the DNA found at the scene of the crime.

It took some effort.

But eventually the 5 teenagers were exonerated.

The charges against them were vacated.

They were released from prison.

But the decision to do that was vigorously opposed by the prosecutor in the case.

Despite the physical evidence.

Supporting the decision to exonerate these teenagers.

She refused.

To admit that they were innocent of the crime, instead claiming that the prosecution team had always believed that there was a 6th person, the guy who eventually confesses to it, who was involved in this crime.

In other words, yeah, yeah, I know that.

This guy says he did it.

But we were right when we convicted these other 5.

Her steadfast claim.

That the original conviction was correct is an example of cognitive dissonance.

And confirmation bias.

And I'm gonna show you how this is another quotation from the same book and this quotation lasts two slides.

This is uncomfortably dissonant information that is this idea that these teenagers were actually innocent, wrongly convicted, sent to prison for 33 years for something they didn't do.

Oh, by the way, did I mention That the prosecution knew that the DNA at the scene was not a match to any of these 5 teenagers, and they sent them to jail anyway.

This is uncomfortably dissonant information for anyone who wants to believe that the system works.

Resolving it is hard enough for the average citizen.

I mean, does it bother you that people might, teenagers might spend 13 years in jail for something they didn't do?

The unfairness of it kind of gnaws at you, doesn't it?

But if you are a participant in the justice system, your motivation to justify its mistakes, let alone yours, will be immense.

Social psychologist Richard Offschi, an expert on the psychology of false confessions, observed that convicting the wrong person is quote, one of the worst professional errors you can make, like a physician amputating the wrong arm.

So someone comes into surgery and there's needing to be an amputation, and you as the surgeon, you cut off the wrong arm.

How would you feel about that afterwards?

Would it bother you that you had done that?

Would it kind of make you feel unprofessional even though you might claim to be a professional?

Continuing the quote.

Suppose that you are presented with evidence that you did the legal equivalent of amputating the wrong arm.

You helped send the wrong person to prison.

What do you do?

Your first impulse will be to deny your mistake for the obvious reason of protecting your job, reputation, and colleagues.

You have plenty of external incentives for denying that you made a mistake, but you have an even greater internal one.

You want to think of yourself as an honorable, competent person who would never help convict the wrong guy.

And how can you possibly think you've got the right guy in the face of the new evidence to the contrary?

Because you assure, because you assure yourself, the evidence is lousy and look, he's a bad guy.

Even if he didn't commit this particular crime, he undoubtedly committed another one.

The alternative that you sent an innocent man to prison for 15 years is so antithetical to your view of your competence that you will jump through multiple mental hoops to convince yourself that you couldn't possibly have made such a blunder.

So you got cognitive dissonance.

I'm a professional, and my job is to, to, to convict the guilty, to release the innocent.

And now we've got 5 teenagers who spent over 13 years in prison, and I was instrumental in that.

How do you put those things together?

It creates mental tension.

And so what you do is you ignore any evidence that might call your judgment, your behavior into question.

Because after all, you're a professional, you wouldn't have gotten it wrong.

That's exactly what this prosecutor did.

She even wrote a book about it.

That's cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias.

Now, listen to me carefully because this is where we're headed.

Cognitive dissonance can cause us to be unwilling to admit mistakes or confess sins.

That's bad enough this prosecutor wouldn't admit that she had made a mistake, that she had railroaded these 5 teenagers into prison.

But that's nothing compared to the consequences.

of individuals who will not admit sin but instead will try to justify their sins because they don't want to appear as individuals guilty of sin.

I'll talk about some Applications here.

If you're like me, sometimes you may get a little discouraged as you try to talk to people about the scriptures.

Because it seems so difficult to get people to unders to understand and accept even things that seem at least to us rather clear, rather obvious.

Cognitive dissonance can sometimes affect the way that people respond to the truth of God's word.

Here's an example.

If you learn the truth from God's word, And you believe that you've been living right, but now from God's word, you understand that you are actually lost.

There is the tendency sometimes to try to figure out how you can resolve those two things.

The Bible says I'm lost, but I've been believing all along that I'm, that I'm saved.

I'm a member of this denominational group or I'm just a spiritual person or whatever.

And so I've got to find some way to resolve that tension.

Now, one way to do that would be simply to respond to the gospel and be forgiven of my sins, and then that there's no more dissonance there, but that's not the way that people often go.

The resolution of that dissonance, dissonance can take several forms.

I've heard all of these.

Dismiss the book as the Bible with errors.

Well, I know what the Bible says, I know what the evidence is, but I don't care about that because I know I'm right.

And so people just dismiss passages in scripture.

Or sometimes they'll dismiss the teaching of the Bible by focusing on hypocrisy in the adherence that they know.

Adherents, people who are following that book.

Yeah, well, I know what the books, but look at these people over here, they're hypocrites.

And so what they do is they just basically sweep the Bible aside because of the weaknesses of those who are trying to follow it.

You probably remember a story in Luke's Gospel in the 10th chapter.

A lawyer comes to Jesus, he's testing Jesus, asking about eternal life, what's necessary?

And Jesus turns the question right back to him, and the lawyer answers with a good bit of wisdom, you need to love God with all that you are and love your neighbor as yourself, but the lawyer desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, and, and who is my neighbor?

Now, I don't know that this lawyer necessarily was not loving his neighbor, but I get the feeling that he knew what the truth was, and he didn't feel like he was necessarily following that truth.

So he's looking for the escape clause.

And Jesus tells him the parable of the Good Samaritan, there is no escape, even Samaritans.

can be your neighbor and can act as neighbors.

Cognitive dissonance, I think sometimes.

is the reason that people are reticent.

To change their lives, even when you try to show them what the truth of the gospel is.

Confirmation bias, the tendency to dismiss, dismiss any biblical argument that doesn't agree with what one already believes.

Sometimes what will happen is people find themselves in a particular situation in life, maybe it's uh a marriage, a 2nd or 3rd marriage or whatever, or they're living in some way that's contrary to the Bible and uh so what they'll do is they'll start to look for some preacher or teachers who will tell them what they want to hear.

No, no, no, God doesn't want you to be unhappy.

And so if you're unhappy in this marriage, you just go ahead and divorce and find someone you can be happy with or if you've already divorced, understand that God didn't want you to remain unhappy.

He wants you to be happy.

So now you've married someone that the Bible says you have no right to be married to, but God wants you to be happy, so don't worry about that.

And if you look long enough, you will find someone who will tell you what you want to hear.

And when that happens, what we do, what sometimes people do is they just kind of push all other kinds of information aside.

And they accept only that information or the person who's being consulted that supports them in what they want to hear.

If we had a text for this lesson, this would be it.

2 Timothy 4:3-4.

Paul writes to Timothy, for the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions.

They'll develop an echo chamber.

They'll find people who will tell them what they want to hear.

It may not be the truth.

But it's what suits them.

It scratches their ears, so to speak.

And they'll turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.

Does that ever happen with people?

Oh, absolutely.

And sometimes it even happens with Christians.

Individuals who ostensibly are interested in following God's word.

And then something arises.

That's not what they believe or want to believe, and so they leave one congregation in a myth to go to some other congregation if they can find one.

That will tell them what they want to hear, and usually you can find one.

There are plenty of congregations.

Churches that don't teach the truth.

Church hoppers.

As soon as something is said that they don't agree with, their first response is not to ask themselves, is the problem me?

I what, what's the truth say?

No, they go to someplace else where they will hear what they want to hear.

They heap up for themselves teachers because their ears are itching to hear only what they think.

Well, finally, just briefly.

I, I'm afraid that sometimes Bible classes are simply echo chambers.

And by that I mean that instead of studying the text, what people are doing is just repeating what they've always heard or what they already believe.

And so sometimes there'll be a text that's being discussed in the Bible class and there'll be an explanation made of that text that has nothing to do with that text.

It's obviously not what the text is saying, but that's what somebody thinks, and now they're just repeating it.

And if we're not careful, We'll construct our own echo chamber.

It'll be the, the class members.

It'll be the church, maybe, the congregation.

And the only thing that will be accepted.

is what we already believe.

That's great if we already believe the truth.

But what happens if we start to stray?

And all we want to hear is what we all

Series: N/A

Service: Sun AM

Type: Sermon

Speaker: Allen Dvorak

Series: N/A

Service: Sun PM

Type: Sermon

Speaker: John Jennings

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

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

When he saw that his counsel was not followed, He saddled his donkey and went off to his own city.

He said His house in order.

And hanged himself.

And he died And was buried In the tomb of his father.

Some of you may know who I'm talking about, uh, in this Bible story, uh, some of you may not, and I left the name out on purpose just to give you some sort of effects, but Uh, I know you're always able to look it up ahead of time, but if you can, try to withhold from that.

I believe this is probably a character that has one of the most greatest potentials in the Bible story.

And perhaps the most tragic.

And when I read this, I can't help but think of this question that keeps popping in my mind.

Is your room clean?

Is it set in order?

You're probably thinking, well, What in the world, you have a verse that guy commits suicide.

So why, why is that the question that comes out of this?

Well, let's answer that as we go through the story.

And this idea about is your room clean?

Why is this question important?

Uh, It's gonna give you at least a little reason before we dive into this, uh.

The state of a room.

can tell a lot about a person.

They can tell a lot about what's going inside of that person's mind.

And I mean, I guess if, if you want to participate, raise your hand if you would right now, knowing what your room looks like right now, would be OK with sharing what it looks like.

OK. Good, good.

That's good.

That's not a bad thing at all.

Uh, I think I feel a little hesitant and that's my fault, not my wife's fault.

Uh. And As we go through this, just keep that in mind.

It's not a bad thing.

It's not in terms of like sin or anything.

Just keep this in mind.

And it's also something to Keep in the back of your head as to what this may implicate.

Uh In your spiritual life as well.

So, Let's take an analysis of the states of a few characters in the room, in their room, what they look like.

Shall we?

All right.

In 2 Samuel.

If you want to follow along, I'm gonna probably be moving somewhat erratically, uh, quick.

So if you just want to listen, uh, you're more than welcome to.

I wanna start with the character Absalom.

This is after we read about or uh get insight about David's sin with Bathsheba.

He has his confrontation with Nathan.

And now after Solomon's birth, he conquers Raba, and now we're at a story point where Absalom is about to have a very good reason in terms of the worldly sense.

To kill a certain someone So, you have uh this approach where the story begins in 2 Samuel 13, you have the first born, Annon, who You could say he's madly in love with this.

Half sister Tamar.

And the sister Tamar is, uh, has a sibling named Absalom.

Now, as this is all going down, we have this part where Amnon has this.

Weird fantasy of being with Tamar.

And it's so much so that he just gets himself sick.

He just, he gets sick thinking about it over and over.

He knows, oh I just can't do anything about it.

And you have His uncle, I believe it's uncle David's brother.

And John A Depp, and you have him advise him to do something that encouraged him to do something that is completely Disgusting And so now you have this situation where Amnon feels Like he has a green light.

Someone accepts.

What he's going through and that what he needs to do is to just fulfill this desire.

So what he does He goes out with this plan to get his sister to make some cakes, bring some people in, just make some excuse.

Oh, I'm so sick, please make me some cakes.

Feed it, uh, feed it, feed it to me directly from your hand yourself.

And when she's making the cake, she, he tells everyone else to go out but her.

Uh And as she draws close to him.

He does something terrible.

I think we've heard this story many times, and He does something that a man should never do a man.

Overpowering someone who is weaker than he.

And forcing her to do something that she did not want.

He humiliates her.

He violates her.

Brethren, you're right, sir.

And so now you have the situation with Absalom.

Where it is very, very interesting.

After this is all said and done, In verse 20 And her brother Absalom said to her, Has Eon, your brother.

Has Annon your brother been with you?

Now Your peace, my sister, he is your brother.

Do not take this to heart.

Isn't that very strange?

So Tamar lived a desolate woman in her brother Absalom's house, and when King David heard of all these things, he was very angry, but Absalom spoke to Amnon, neither good.

And neither bad.

For Absalom hated Amnon because he has violated his sister Tamar.

I don't know if you've known people who have struggled.

With Someone Crossing them in some way.

And it's a horrible way.

And they, and they live with years and years of resentment.

And as we go through the story, we're going to discover just how bad this can get.

So continuing on 2 years, you have 2 years.

Where Absalom is planning, he's plotting, he's seething.

He is building this idea.

How to kill his brother.

So he comes up, uh, sheep shearing.

David loved sheep, OK. So he has this idea where he tries to invite the king to come to the sheep shearing festival.

Uh, and so he invites the king.

King says, oh, no, no, we, I, I'd be a burden to you.

Don't, don't worry about me.

Just, just go yourself.

And Abs is really adamant.

He says, No, you should really come.

You should, you should really come.

And so when he couldn't get his dad to go, he says, well, how about How about Amnon, he, I would really love if he came.

And it's interesting because David even questions why do you want him to come?

I would, I would think that David had some suspicion.

I mean, with the family feud that happened 233 years ago, that's something that you don't easily forget.

But I don't know what was said, but Absalom has found a way to convince his father David.

Then it's OK that Amnon should come.

And so when this is all happening, Amnon says to his men, I got him And when I say strike Amnon, you kill him.

You kill him.

You do what I say.

Do not fear.

Have I not commanded you, be courageous and valiant.

And so they have this strange Uh, little scene here where after he kills Amnon, his brothers flee off in on donkeys.

It's like, it's not the fastest animal.

You probably could run faster and Uh, you have this news that picks up and John Adab, the same person that advised Annon to do the very disgusting thing that he did, um, somehow knows the, the actual news of what happened.

So David first hears that all of his sons just died.

He, he just breaks down.

He, he's like, he hears that Absalom killed everyone, everyone.

He's crying.

John, uh, John Depp says, hey, it's just, don't worry, it's just Anon.

Uh, It's very curious how he knew that so quickly when he, the other messengers came with that news and where did he get his news from?

I don't know, conspiracy theory or not, but maybe he was a part of all this as well.

And so After he had the news of that everyone's not dead, there was some type of relief.

But Abin fled.

He, he didn't go straight to his father.

He ended up leaving to go with his grandfather where his mother used to live.

And so you have in verse 37, but Aslam fled and went to Talmai, the son of Amihud, king of Ger, uh, that's his mother's father.

And David mourned for his son day after day.

So Aslam fled and went to Geser and was, was there 3 years.

And the spirit of the king longed to go out to Absalom because he was comforted about Amnon since he was dead.

I don't know if this is actually something about him longing to reconcile.

Uh, it's not very clear.

It could be that he really want to have a really hard talking to.

It could be maybe there was.

Some sort of vengeful like thing, but knowing David's character is probably more of the former.

Uh, So you have Absalom in exile, uh.

He's there for 3 years and after killing Annon his older brother, And for doing the terrible thing to Tamar.

We ended up finding out an interesting detail that he has 3 sons.

Uh, which we find out later in chapter 18 that he ends up making this proclamation that he had no children or no sons, which they might have died at some point in between, uh, chapter 14 and 18 timeline, but he had a daughter and he named her Tamar.

And so even though he had that cold.

Calculated response to her after what happened to her.

I think this shows that he had a lot of love for his sister, a lot of love.

Uh And a lot of sorrow too.

Uh, I think we have a lot of examples.

Maybe some of you know that someone named someone after someone out of respect of what that person did for someone, for them personally.

Uh, Alan.

And so you have this Uh, the sad detail and what ends up happening is You have Abel eventually coming back through Joab's cleverness, uh, and getting Sequoia to convince him otherwise.

And so eventually, Aslam comes back.

And He's plotting He's plotting how to overtake the kingdom.

And before I continue, uh, it, it talks a lot about His good looks, you could say.

He's very charismatic.

He has a way with words, a way with the people that I think many of us would be convinced to want to listen to.

Uh, so it's interesting that it says he's incredibly handsome.

That's the same, same description that describes about his father.

He's basically the chip off the old block, you could say, uh, right, right from the branch.

And so he has this interesting detail, just talking about more of his physical traits that he has this beautiful massive long hair and when he cuts it annually, it weighs to almost about 5 pounds of hair.

That's a lot of hair.

That's like bigger than most dogs, uh, uh, small dogs that some people have.

Uh, that's an amazing thing.

And And it says he has good looks and so thinking about that, he has this presence, this aura, this.

Ability to command attention when he's in a certain area.

And so when we know that just human nature in itself, that when someone is, you know, good looking.

They're going to get more rapport.

They're going to have more attention.

People are going to be more attentive to that person.

Uh, Brad Pitt up here, people listen to him a lot more than me right now, so it's just, uh, you know, something that I've to come to grips with.

It's OK. Uh, my mom and wife love me, so that's a good thing.

And so he had this incredible looking person.

Great at speech.

And so now he's coming to the people and he's saying, If I were in charge, if I were in charge, you know what I would do?

Incredible politician, by the way.

I'm just kind of paraphrasing.

He was just say things like, I, I would bring, I would bring you justice.

You know, David doesn't have enough time for you.

He really doesn't.

In fact, he doesn't probably even care about what you're going through right now.

And As he is overtaking people's hearts, giving them promises that David himself probably was lacking, I think through this period of time we see David very quiet.

He doesn't say anything about Amnon when he committed the sin.

He's super quiet about Abla.

He's been avoiding him for so long.

You have years, years.

Did they not ever talk about anything?

It's just quiet.

And so then after he grabbed it, after he said it's taken the people's hearts.

He moves forward With this plan.

So Absalom springs with this conspiracy upon the kingdom.

And David is caught completely off guard.

Completely off guard.

He has no idea that the conspiracy was coming.

And if we read, uh, if you were to read between chapters 15 and 173, anytime you see the word Israel, It often refers to the people of Judah and Israel that are with Absalom.

Anytime you see the phrases the army or David's servants.

Referring to people who are with Damien.

Uh, And so you have this split And so what happens is Absalom takes about 200 of his messengers, and this is very interesting, uh, secret messengers.

And he sets up some preemptive strikes to guard, and let guards go into the city without their knowledge.

So this is very interesting.

He, without telling them what the plan is.

He gets them involved.

And says, all right, this is a coup.

We're starting right now.

And I couldn't imagine the pressure of like, uh, uh, what do we do?

I wish you would have told me something.

Uh, and so maybe there was a pressure to just follows, let's go along, we, we can't back down now.

So everything's just happening so fast, not even Absalom's people even knew was happening until it was called.

Uh, and so Absal proclaims, we are a rebellion of my father's kingdom.

This is basically a coup.

Uh, so you have 200 men that were with him, probably thinking, Uh, I wish we would have known.

So they stormed the city of Jerusalem.

David recognizes that people are with Absalom, not with him anymore, at least in his perception.

And David gathers his people, flees, grabs whatever he can, leaves the kingdom, go for the wilderness.

He leaves behind 10 concubines.

To leave and attend and manage and take care of the household should it survive this insurrection.

But it isn't.

Some people weep Some people rejoice.

You have a very polarized situation in the country of Israel, so to say.

Some people are really hating David.

Glad he's gone, glad he's out of here.

Some people are really weeping that the King David is having to flee.

What's going to happen to them?

Where's the, where's the state of the nation going?

I can imagine the panic.

And so now you have people just watching David Lee.

Look at him now.

Where are you now, Big king?

Throwing rocks at him, ridiculing him, spitting at him.

And while the rebellion was strong, Absalom Absalom sends for Ahithophel.

The Gilenites David's counselor from his city, the people increased and continually with Absalom.

So who is this guy?

Who is Absalom?

You would think that being, I mean, athoel, being Absalom, you would think.

I'm king now.

I'm, I'm basically in charge.

I can do whatever I want.

But he sends for this guy.

And basically asks him and says, Hey, Ahithophel, what do we do?

What do we do?

OK. So here, here's something I want you to notice by IFL.

He's basically, I don't know if you've watched the movie Rogue One on the Star Wars.

If you've ever seen it close to the ending and you have all the soldiers looking, aiming their guns at the end of a hallway, and all of a sudden you see a red light saber and Darth Vader approach, like appears out of nowhere in the dark, that's basically whopo is.

He is the big guy, the guy who can do lots of damage.

Keep that in mind.

He is basically Aslin's secret weapon.

A man who knows far more about David than anyone else, probably even more than his own wives.

And so in verse 211 or 23 verse 217, I mean.

Then Absalom says Ahithophel, Give your counsel.

What shall we do?

And a hit that Bell said.

Go into your father's concubines, whom he has left to keep the house, and all Israel will hear that you have made yourself a stench to your father.

In the hands of all who are with you will be strengthened.

So they pitched a tent for Absalom on the roof, and Absalom went into his father's concubines and the site.

Of all of Israel.

And stop there.

Why do you think he counseled that?

I'm not gonna answer right now, but we're gonna, we're gonna come back to that.

I just want you to think, why, why is it, it seems so pointed.

Maybe it's just to fulfill scripture.

Maybe it's just that that Nathan talked about this, warned that this was going to come.

Hold that in mind.

Now here's probably one of the most interesting verses that I keep thinking about a lot, uh, and it's the following verse, verse 217.

Now in those days, the council that Ahithophel gave was as if one consulted the word of God.

So was all the council of Ahithophel esteemed both by David and by Absalom. Wow.

You know, I, I, I get advice sometimes, but I never think and even compare it to your, it's like when you ask me advice, it's like talking through the words of God, it's like reading the Bible.

Uh, you can guarantee that whatever I say is going to go out just right, perfect, mm, just nice.

What confidence.

What a statement that made, and it was left in the Bible.

Uh, God allowed that to be there for a reason.

I think there's an attestament to one, just how wise this man is, uh, and 214, That both You, you call it political parties, you could say both one side and another side both agree.

People, two people who now hate each other, both agree that this one person's advice.

It is amazing.

It is incredible.

You can't even find that kind of agreement nowadays in our own government.

Uh, so just kind of have that in the back of your mind.

That's, it's an amazing thing that both could agree upon that no matter how much they hate each other.

So where did he get this wisdom?

I, I don't know.

Uh. I can imagine that being with David for so long, being the man of God, and he is a man after God's own heart, that the influence, maybe the God being with even Ahithophel at the time and giving them victory after victory after victory in war.

So much so.

So why was it hit that fell?

To be feared How much did David fear though?

Here's what's interesting.

So, after, uh, David leaves, he's running for his life, and you have people coming to him.

You have Ittai, the Gai, you have Hushai, uh, He says something interesting.

You would think that the moment he finds out that Ahithophel is with Absalom.

The one thing he says is, oh Lord.

Please thwart the council of Ahithophel.

Isn't that weird?

You would think now today's world, you would think, please strike him dead, please protect me, uh, find some way to annihilate him, uh, maybe make him sick or something, some physical illness, no, no, no, it's his counsel.

His words Is inside That's what David feared.

That's what was so scary.

And so you have people coming to him.

I talked about Ittai and Hushai.

Uh, I find it so interesting that Hushai, he's running over to David with his torn robe, dust all over his head, and he's like, all right, I'm done with my morning.

Uh, and he says, hey, I wanna go with you, David.

And David's like, No, no, no, no, no, you'd be a burden to me.

I need you to stay back in Israel.

And just swear your allegiance to abs.

Whatever you hear, you tell these two priests.

Zadok and Avi, you tell it to them and they won't tell it to me.

That's where you can help me.

Which is interesting.

Again, it's finding a way to thwart the council.

He's just there to listen, he's there to try to thwart the council of Hihophel.

It's, there's not, hey hushai when everyone's asleep, you know, toss something in the water, maybe they'll die of dysentery or something or uh.

Maybe slip a knife in between their ribs when they're sleeping.

It's none of that.

It's Counsel, this, this counsel the most dangerous thing.

Why was a hit to fail so powerful and to be feared?

Uh, 223 things.

His political savviness and his military knowledge.

So, two things about his, uh, military knowledge.

Uh Before I go there, uh, actually, yeah, let's go ahead and turn there.

Let's go 123 Samuel 212.

And so we're going to look at, uh, not all of them, but just this one verse.

So you have David, David's Mighty Men, you have a list of stories, amazing stories about things that have happened uh in David's mighty men's life and Which I would love to read, but let's focus on verse 219.

So about halfway through you have, uh, so you have Elephed, the son of Abishai and Micah of Micah, and then you have Eliam.

The son of Ahithophel of Gilo. Interesting.

So one of David's mighty men, Eliam, He's been working with David.

He, he's, he's one of the top dogs.

And if you read these stories, they're, they're no joke.

And so, he is a warrior.

It is assumed to be some type of warrior, at least a warrior background.

He's, he's not the kind of person that, uh, maybe just was, uh, hey, I know you, buddy.

Hey, you want a job position, uh, I can just get you in.

You don't need to have a resume or anything.

No, this guy had a very clear background on his capabilities.

Uh, the fact that God even left the testament of his counsel was like that of his own in some sense.

It is incredible.

And so, now you have someone who's not just like some armchair quarterback that gives, you know, advice willy-nilly.

Uh, he even says, I'm personally kill David.

I'll do it myself.

Uh, wow.

For a man, or I, I would assume around the age Sixty-ish Moving to be able to be that confident to move and to kill David, David was on the level of the mighty men, uh, very strong warrior, very clever, very athletic.

And he says, I will kill him personally.

Basically, I'm gonna send him home with a black eye and no lunch money, like a big bully at school.

He's not blowing smoke.

So a man that knows David, great persuasive counsel, and great military knowledge, it is no wonder why Absalom sought out for him.

All right, back to that counsel that hit that Phil gave.

All right, I'm gonna answer that question, uh, pretty soon.

So he takes 212 concubines, wives that David left behind, and Basically says to Absalom, I want you.

To sexually assault them.

I want you to hurt them in front of everybody.

Everyone Why?

Why would he do that?

One, It was to show the powerlessness of David.

You have no power here.

Uh, if you want to degrade a man's value, if you want to get underneath a man's skin, You talk about his wife.

Uh, I, I don't know if you've seen Rocky Balboa, but in Rocky 3, you have, uh, the antagonist talk about uh Rocky's wife, and there was that moment of Rocky just diving forward wanting to hit him really hard.

And I think that's innate within within us as men.

We protect those who we love.

Uh, protect those who are close to us.

I don't know about David's relationship with them.

But in that time, that was a way to say, I own you now.

I own the things you own.

There's nothing you can do about it. Nothing.

And it's a kind of psychological warfare that even, well, maybe back then, but today is extremely disturbing.

It's horrifying to even hear.

And you have this man who's so bent.

On killing David.

And he's seeking to humiliate him and it's as if there was something.

Personal Something personal.

So why did Ahithophel, David's counselor, betray David?

We read a song a moment ago, um, Phil did a great job of that and I just want to read a piece of the verse again.

I suspect that when David wrote this song, He was speaking about this man.

So in verse 1255 verse 12, Psalm 55:12, for it is not an enemy who taunts me.

Then I could bear it It is not an adversary who deals insolently with me, then I could hide from him.

But it is you.

A man My equal My companion My familiar friend.

Who we used to take sweet counsel together.

Within God's house we walked in the throng.

One of David's closest friends.

The betrayal I couldn't imagine.

The person who knows all of your weaknesses, all of your faults.

And he's ready.

To tell them all to your enemy, to use it against you.

That's what David was sweating over at night.

That's what he was praying to God for salvation for, to be protected against.

Now, I want to turn to 2 Samuel 193, uh, Actually.

Let's go to 2 Samuel 11.

I think it's wrote down the wrong chapter.

2 Samuel 11.

We'll finish this question about why Ahithophel may have done this.

So This chapter, I think we've heard a lot and we'll read through some of it is the context of David and Bathsheba, and we know what happens, uh, in short, bring some context.

Uh, it is.

Spring of the new year and typically there apparently is a custom in which kings go out to war, but for some reason David stays, which whenever I mention something that specific, it seems like it's out of character for David.

There's something wrong with David.

Why is he there?

Why is he back all by himself when all the other men are doing their thing?

And it's, it's interesting.

I suspect that because during this time is that victory after victory after victory.

I think maybe David got numb.

This is my suspicion.

Uh, I don't have explicit proof, but I think after all the victories, and I think he was just bored or either tired, and so he just stays back.

Maybe there was some temptation that he knew.

I mean, being king, you would think you would know your country's culture, and so apparently there was a common thing that I don't know why, maybe well.

Maybe it's just the way the structures were, they didn't have air conditioning, they didn't have ah closed doors that were probably available to them as we do now today for privacy's sake, but he walked intentionally walked on his roof.

And he, he looked out and of course, he sees Bathsheba.

She's mentioned is beautiful.

And what does he do?

Inquires about her, and says go get her, go get her.

Now, this is what's interesting after he says that.

So, he says, go get her.

And then, Uh, and when he inquired about the woman in verse 3, and one said, oh wait a minute, is this not Bathsheba, the daughter of Helium The wife of Uriah the Hittite.

Did you hear that?

Where do we hear that name from?

Helium. David's body men.

Who was Ian's dad?

A hit of her So maybe this betrayal.

Thatopel has been seemingly accused of.

And is doing.

David betrayed him.

Years ago.

Remember, this is before it, and not on Tamar.

So I couldn't imagine Your best friend You work together.

Maybe it's your boss even like that, that hierarchy, power hierarchy.

And you work together, you've known each other your whole life or maybe most of your life and you're really close and you do this job, and for some reason, he stays back and violates one of your family members.

How would that make you feel?

Brothers and sisters, that is awful.

Um When we read about Hitopel's life, it starts to make sense as to why he is so bent on killing David.

A man that he trusted, a man that he counseled, a man that he worked and fought with, and one day that he decides to stay back.

Violates his granddaughter.

Kills His grandson-in-law kills other people to hide that lie.

His great grandson dies as a result.

This man Who brought me nothing but pain and betrayal.

He deserves to die.

At least that's what I think that I was thinking.

He deserves to die.

So we plotted He seethed.

And he contemplated how he would carry this out.

So it is no wonder that when Aslan came to him, he said, I am yours, the king who gave me funerals, who used me at my advice, killed others for a sin, and followed my grandfather in a horrible way.

He needs to go down.

You know what's interesting, it's not, it's not like David would think when he heard the name, wait, wait, is this not Eliam, the, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah Hittite?

He, it's, it's not like, who's Eliam?

Uh well, uh, we will just put that aside.

No, no, no, no.

For someone as close as David was to Ithophel and having Eliam as one of the listed mighty men, there is no way that David did not know who he was dealing with, who, who he was messing with, no way.

So, this makes us all the more worse.

So David knew Bathsheba was related to William and Ahithophel.

No revelation required.

It was not like he was blindsided by knowledge of it.

And I think David knows, he was in it for More than anybody else So, the council, I have a hit that though.

Council of the film, we're at the part where Things take a turn.

So after, after, uh, David tells Hushai, go thwart it, praise to God, and God had it set in his mind to basically thwart the council of Ahithophel.

Uh, to make this short, we don't need to get into detail what they were trying to do, but basically, this is what was happening.

You have Absalom, uh, asking two people in her advice.

Hey, heyithophel, what do we do?

I can go right now, go right now.

Give me this many thousands of men.

I can kill him tonight.

I know where he is and I can do it so quickly.

It will be just him that dies and everyone else will be OK and they will all rally back to you.

Just give me that chance.

Wow, that's It's pretty intense.

Uh, that sounds great.

And then.

Wait, wait, wait, uh, Hushai, which I don't know why he decides that Hushai when Iithoel's advice is that good.

So he asked Hushai, Hushai was like hm.

You know, I think those advice is good, but not this time.

In fact, your father is crafty.

He's like a fox.

You go out there.

You'll outsmart you.

And then what's going to happen?

Men are gonna start dying, people are gonna start being scared.

Oh, you'll, you'll lose the support that you had.

Let's just take a moment.

Let's just take a moment.

In fact, breathe a little bit.

We're gonna wait, wait them out, right?

You have the support, you have numerous people, why rush it?

Take your time, gather everyone, and then when the time is right.

striking And that advice To whatever was going through Absalom's mind.

Seemed to be the most convincing.

We don't get details as to exactly why he was persuaded by that, but God was definitely Involved Uh, if we read.

In that section, it even mentions him, mentions him.

Uh, let's see.

So in chapter 17, This is the part where I forgot to write down in my notes.

Oh yes.

So in verse 17, verse 14, uh, we have And Absalom and all his men of Israel said the council of Hushai Archite is better than the council of Ahithophel, for the Lord had ordained to defeat the good counsel of Ahithophel so that the Lord might bring harm upon Absalom.

Which is interesting cause it didn't, uh, maybe it's just for a reason, but it doesn't say bring harm upon Aslam and Ahithophel.

I think there might have been some understanding with Ahithophel's part.

Could be, that's just my, my suspicion of it.

And so after that happens, Hushai, your box is great, let's stick with that.

And what this is.

This is the sad part, but when Ahithophel saw that his advice, his counsel, was not taken.

This is the verse that we first begin with.

Verse 23 of chapter 17, when Ahithophel saw that his counsel was not followed, he saddled his donkey.

Went off home to his own city.

He set his house in order.

And aimed himself.

He died and was buried in the tomb of his father.

Oh man.

If you couldn't think of anyone who had so much potential.

To be a great servant of God, it would have probably been this man and But here you have a man bent on revenge for so many years.

And I want to talk about revenge for a moment.

Revenge, as CS Lewis puts it, is the sweetest of poisons.

It is highly addictive.

In psychology, uh, It, it is involved in the rewarding playing system, so it's kind of like someone starting drugs for the first time.

And so what happens is you start to fantasize.

What I do to this person?

I, I would really like to do something.

And every time you start thinking it, your neurons fire off in a certain way, they start to connect and get stronger and stronger, and dopamine starts hitting your brain.

Like with all drugs, you need more and there needs to be more.

So as you contemplate, and as you see, and as you continue this thought pattern, it becomes more addictive and it needs to become more grand in order for it to be satisfying.

And one of the things that it, it seems to help with is hiding the pain that you're actually feeling.

It's a way to distract your mind of what you're going through.

It has a very similar effect.

I don't know if you've ever seen someone who's taking drugs and they go through relapse.

It's terrible.

And so this is what happens.

You have this heightened moment.

He's right there and I hit the fellow's palm.

I can kill him tonight.

It's, it, you, if you want to talk about climax, it's right there on the tip.

And then it doesn't happen.

All of the pain of his granddaughter, his family, all that he lost, all of that momentum that was driving this moment now collapses.

The best way I can try to help describe this because I don't know if anyone has.

Been that close to fulfilling revenge.

Is that I don't know if you ever had.

Thoughts like say someone did something small to you.

It could be something small, someone, something kind of horrible.

Uh, someone slighted you, OK?

And then you kinda push it off for a while.

It bothers you, but you don't want to admit it.

And what happens?

That thought keeps popping back up.

Why does it keep popping back up?

And you're like, Nah, I just push it aside, look at your phone, doom scroll, look at some videos, laugh, listen to music, cook, work, something.

Keep pushing it aside.

Keep pushing it aside.

And it grows and it grows to the point where a lizard has now become a dragon.

Where once you could have easily taken the lizard and just flicked it out, you now have a fire breathing dragon that's in your home, and what are you going to do about that?

That's a whole lot harder to overcome than just a simple lizard.

It's the best way I can try to explain that, uh, for those, at least in general terms, if you've never really gotten that close to fulfilling revenge, and I hope you never get that close.

Seeking personal revenge does not work.

It constantly escalates and eventually backfires.

And it's strange that once those who have have fulfilled their revenge, feel a whole lot worse when they were thinking about it.

It's so strange.

It's like no matter what you do, you succeed, it's going to crash.

You fail at the climax of the moment, it's going to crash.

It's a lose-lose folks.

Careful about seeking vengeance on your own.

In Romans 12:19, leave room for the vengeance of God.

In Hebrews 12, it talks about the root of bitterness.

Make sure you don't have any of that.

It will be your downfall.

Don't have the attitude that reflects most cultures, especially today.

I think there's a lot of Payback.

Hey, this person did this, get them back.

Get them back.

Show them exactly what you can do.

It feels good.

I, I, I think about it sometimes and I can see why it can be so addictive.

Who, who would allow someone to hurt You know, so and so, especially a loved one, and let them get away with it.

You can understand the hitFL.

He may have been viewed as a villain in the Bible, but after looking through it, You start to understand the pain he must have went through for years.

And with David being king, what can you do?

Why do you suppose God gives, so here's an interesting thought, uh, why do you think God gives governing authority to practice justice?

I, I thought about this for a while.

Um, it's not just, I don't think.

To provide, uh, you know.

God's authority or to be a medium for God's authority, I think there's a sense of mercy and grace in which God gives authority to a certain groups of people so that you don't need to fulfill a sense of revenge, that justice can be delivered but not through your hands.

I don't think we're ever meant to deal with our own justice.

It's too much for us.

To be placing ourselves in the judgment seat of God.

Revenge is more.

To seek your own self-satisfaction and the pain of others.

An interesting part is that often when people are hurt, they want others to feel the exact same thing they're feeling.

And I think that's why NFL gave that advice to ask them.

Um, if you pay attention, if you know people who are hurt and they're doing something to you, Maybe there is something similar that has happened to them that maybe either you or someone else has done and they just want someone to understand.

Do you understand what my pain feels like when I do this to you?

They may not be thinking of revenge, but it's very similar.

All right, forgiveness.

And then we're gonna answer the question, is your room clean?

So real quickly, uh, Forgiveness is different from reconciliation.

I want, I want us to kind of be clear about that.

Reconciliation is when you have two people involved.

This person's here, this person's here.

Make it up.

OK, good.

Forgiveness is just you.

Just you, it's meant for you.

For the one who sinned against you, it, it mainly for you.

So It's, it's one thing having negative emotions, uh, but don't turn it off.

It's a way For you to reflect, a way for you to process what is happening.

It is so easy in today's culture to want to find some medium to avoid.

The pain that calls at you.

Yeah, that reminds you and we, we turn on the car radio, we turn on, uh, some type of game.

We, that's why I think a lot of us can be game addicts so easily.

Uh, the, the, the things that call us that we, things that we should be doing but we're not doing that we should be attending to. Yeah.

We distract ourselves.

It's so easy to do so.

Uh, doom scrolling is probably the most common thing that we all probably share at some point.

Uh, if you don't, uh, I'm, I'm very impressed.

Um, it's a very hard thing, I think sometimes for me to avoid.

And One thing that we need to do is to name the experience.

Uh, I think a lot of times there's this idea that We just forgive.

But we don't know what we're forgetting exactly.

It's like, OK, yeah, he did this to me.

OK, I forgive him.

How are you healing?

Do you, do you know?

What you're actually getting, did you actually process it?

Do you understand what you're saying when you say those words?

And I think another thing when we rush to forgive, it also affects the other person as well, especially if you do it in front of them.

It's kind of like when you have children, uh, I've seen this sometimes.

Where, say a child does something to someone, OK, they hit him and then there's that part where, hey, just say you're sorry, OK, you're sorry.

But we're, what typically a parent says, what are you sorry for?

I'm sorry that I hit so and so in the face, and I did it because I was mad.

Why were you mad?

You're going through the process.

You're understanding what was happening.

If that never takes place, how can you heal?

How can the offender repent?

How can he change?

How can he understand what his wrong was?

Maybe it could have been pure accident.

I don't know.

So many, so many scenarios and To even address the level of pain that Ahithophel went through.

That, that's, that's hard.

I'm not here to say that.

You just need to, you know, just forgive the person that did something like that to you, and just, you know, deal with it and go and forgive because you're supposed to.

That would be harmless of me.

The one thing I can say is this I'm sorry.

I don't know.

I'm sure a lot of us have went through some type of trauma in our life.

that we would rather not talk about.

And that's OK, uh, But I will say that if you can to somebody.

If it's a thought that keeps coming back to you and haunts you.

Over and over and over.

Your room will never be clean.

So the question, is your room clean?

Why do I even bring this up?

I, you know, I, I've been thinking about it a lot and The reason why I even made the beginning with this idea of a question because I started seeing my little girl, uh, Lynette, uh, you know, every, we clean our house every now and then, but she somehow finds things that I Don't see.

Like, how did you, where did you find that cockroach?

And you're about to eat it.

She's about to eat it.

I'm like, that's so gross.

And no matter what I do, she finds something.

She finds like a piece of plastic or some dust bunny, Toji's hair.

And it's, it's just, it's just baffling to me, and I'm, I'm amazed at myself that I'm blind to some of it.

Like it, do I not to see it?

Do I not care?

I, I, I try to pick up after her.

Usually, I'm, uh, she's like my metal detector for garbage and I'm just picking up whatever's in front of her and OK, she's heading towards that and uh It's this constant battle.

It made me think about this.

Uh That even That when our rooms are messy.

It's not sometimes us that suffer the most.

It can be other people.

Who can suffer in our own garbage.

Uh, yes, it can hurt you.

And so I, I did some digging.

And I'm going to address some I guess you could say psychological perspectives as to why a clean room is beneficial, and then we'll target real quickly the spiritual side and then the lesson will be yours.

So one of the things that's interesting to maintain in a spotless home, or spotless, it's OK, it's a little dirty.

I think that's healthy, in my opinion.

It's not about superior discipline.

But it's about a different relationship.

With the environment in your mind and who you are, OK?

So, clutter increases cognitive load.

It's a term, basically it says mental effort.

You have a lot of stuff around, it, it stresses you out even if you're not aware of it.

They did a study and they found that students who had really bad rooms showed more signs of ADHD.

I thought that was interesting.

They, their attention span was off the charts.

It was bad.

Uh, cleaner rooms, much better control.

Uh, controlling the level of stimuli, uh, locus of control.

The idea that you have a tangible sense of control, something that you know that you have power to change, it's actually very important to have, and cleaning your room is actually highly effective in initiating this perspective.

Uh, the way you look at yourself.

So whenever you want to make a change, they say, Don't Place your identity on what you should be doing.

But more so defining on who you actually are.

So like if you're a Christian, you wouldn't say, Man, I just need to forgive more, or, no, I didn't need more patient.

OK, that's great.

If you look at it as.

This is just an example, it's not a perfect example, but.

Uh, I'm someone Who can understand.

That other people struggle.

And I can be more patient that way.

Uh, that, that can, that frame of mindset helps you change, uh.

And so this whole routine process, uh, when you are able to do this over and over, it becomes more automate automated.

Uh, so there's this idea that you need motivation, you need to have willpower.

It's actually not true.

The more repetitions you do with this, the more natural it becomes and becomes more of who you are.

And so, like, for example, riding a bike.

Super hard at first.

It takes a lot of muscle.

You, you get some scraped knees and stuff.

But then after a while, just, you don't even think about it, you're just gliding through the road, maybe you hit a tree every now and then, but hopefully.

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 Joshua chapter 24, Joshua chapter 24, starting in verse 14 through verse 28.

I'll be reading from the New King James Version.

Now, therefore, fear the Lord, serve Him in sincerity and in truth.

Put away the gods which your father served on the other side of the river and in Egypt.

Serve the Lord.

And if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your father served were on the other side of the river or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell.

But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

So the people answered and said, far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods.

For the Lord our God is he who brought us up and our fathers up from the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.

Who did those great signs in our site and preserved us in all the way that we went among all the people to whom we passed.

And the Lord drove, drove out from before us all the people, including the Amorites who dwell in the land.

We also will serve the Lord, for He is our God.

But Joshua said to the people, you cannot serve the Lord, for he is a holy God.

He is a jealous God.

He will not forgive your transgressions nor your sins.

If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, then he will turn and do you harm and consume you after he has done you good.

And the people said to Joshua, no, but we will serve the Lord.

So Joshua said to the people, you are witnesses against yourselves.

That you have chosen the Lord for yourselves to serve Him.

And they said, we are witnesses.

Now, therefore, he said, Put away the foreign gods which are among you and incline your heart to the Lord God of Israel.

And the people said to Joshua, The Lord our God will serve, and his voice we obey.

So Joshua made a covenant with the people that day and made for them a statute and an ordinance in Chechem.

Then Joshua wrote these words in the book of the law of God, and he took a large stone and set it there under the oak that was by the sanctuary of the Lord.

And Joshua said to the people, behold, this stone shall be a witness to us, for it has heard all the words of the Lord, which he spoke to us.

It shall therefore be a witness to you, lest you deny your God.

So Joshua let the people depart, each to his own inheritance.

I want to echo the greeting that Tim extended at the very beginning of our assembly.

It is a wonderful privilege for all of us to be together, to encourage one another, and if you're visiting with us from other places, we're especially glad for your presence and we wish you safe travels when you eventually return home, even as we wish safe travels for those of our own number who are in other places traveling.

People make decisions in different ways.

And it is sometimes quite interesting to observe the decision-making process as it takes place as much as you can in uh others, maybe even sometimes in ourselves.

When I say decision making, I'm really not talking about the daily mundane type decisions that we make, you know, what am I going to eat for lunch?

Will it be a hotdog or a hamburger, that sort of thing.

But rather, I want to talk about decisions, consider decisions that we make that are life-changing decisions, and we make a number of those in the course of our lifetime.

Uh, for instance, uh, where we may choose to go to school for secondary education, it might be that we're going to try to go to Harvard or it may be that we decide to go to the Bob and Bob Dor Company and College.

The tuition will be cheaper, but the The fact that it's on your resume may not help you as much as Harvard, and that could make a big difference in your life, which school you go to, what career are you going to pursue?

What is it that you want to do with your life in terms of your employment?

How about who you're going to marry?

It can make a huge difference in your life.

Uh, I have been informed repeatedly that I have been very blessed by the choice that I made, uh, some 46 years ago.

Uh, what about the new job that you're looking at?

Should you take that job or should you stay with the job that you have now?

If you're happy with the job you have now, the risk is you may not like the job that you're considering and so you have to make a rather important decision there.

Where are you going to live?

Are you going to live in town?

Are you going to live in a small town?

You like the big city, you want to live in the north?

Why?

I don't know, but if you, or, or you're going to live in the south.

But those are all kinds of decisions that we make.

Debbie and I are engaged in the decision-making process right now.

Since the passing of Ajax, we are seeking a new Dovak head of security.

We are not exactly on the same page as to what kind of head of security we're going to get.

Uh, more on that as the decision process falls out.

And I think decision making, like so many things in life, kind of follows a spectrum or you could describe it by a spectrum.

There are certain people who just can't seem to make a decision.

Uh, maybe you know someone like that.

They vacillate between choices.

I, I, I think maybe this, but no, maybe that.

And, and so they seem to be unable to commit to a single course of action.

But then, then on the other polar side of that spectrum, you've got people who just make major decisions on the fly.

They don't seem to be able to to consider seriously the uh the possibility.

Possibilities, they just make a decision and live with the consequences.

Sometimes that can be rather difficult.

Those are extremes, of course, and most of us fall somewhere in between those two extremes.

If you were to go online and just do a search of decision making, you'd find that there's been a lot of writing about that process, but I'm going to simplify it and simply give you three steps that I think follow a reasonable course in terms of decision making.

The first one is, you, you have to recognize that you have To make a decision.

There needs to be some sort of decision made.

Then you need to identify what the options or choices that are available to you are and what are the consequences or the benefits or the drawbacks of those choices.

And then finally, You need to commit to one option or one choice.

And so, uh, That process, I think sometimes we don't necessarily consciously follow it, but intuitively, that's the process that most of us normally follow.

And sometimes the process is so easy that we don't even think about it in terms of steps.

Uh, for instance, when Debbie met me in college, the decision of who she would choose as a possible husband among all the men there at Florida College was so Easy.

The choice was so obvious that she didn't spend any time thinking much about it.

And so that's sometimes how our decisions go.

I want to talk to you about one of the most important decisions that you're going to make in life, and that is who will you serve?

What path are you going to take in this life?

And I'm not talking about the decision that you make on Monday and it's over with.

I'm talking about a life direction or directing decision.

I want to begin our study this morning by looking at 3 examples of where individuals call upon Israel to make decisions, to choose a path.

And you probably already are familiar with those examples, but I'm going to review just very briefly those 3 examples.

The first one is Moses.

Moses on more than one occasion encouraged Israel to make a choice, but I'm particularly interested in Deuteronomy 30.

Deuteronomy was the book that Moses wrote at the conclusion of his life.

Israel is at the end of the wilderness wandering.

In fact, they're encamped in the plains of Moab.

They're just on the east side of the Jordan River.

And they're about to go into the land, and so Moses writes what may be considered his farewell address, as he's approaching the end of his life as well.

And in chapter 63 of Deuteronomy, Moses rehearses the history of Abraham's family for the people that are gathered there before him.

And he talks about the curses and the blessings that would come upon Israel, depending on whether they obeyed the covenant that had been made with them at Horeb, Sinai, or whether they didn't.

But then in chapter 30, he calls upon them to make a choice.

And God's word makes very clear what the two options were.

Moses identified those two options in a couple of different ways.

He says in verse 15, I've set before you today, life and good, death and evil.

And he says, then in verse 19, I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I've set before you life and death, blessing and curse.

Depending on how the people choose to behave, what path they choose, they'll inherit either life and good blessings, or it'll be death and evil, destruction.

Now, I believe Moses was calling upon those who were responsible adults, those who could make such a choice by reason of their understanding of God's word to make this choice.

The second example is again with the people of Israel and in the days of Joshua.

In Joshua 24, much like Moses, Joshua is nearing the end of his life, and he gathers the people and he encourages them.

In fact, he commands them.

To serve the Lord.

He rehearses, uh, God's blessings toward the family of Abraham, even as Moses had done back in 29.

Joshua does the same thing in the beginning of the chapter 24 of Joshua.

We're looking specifically now at the end of the chapter where Joshua calls upon the people to make a choice.

He says, now, therefore, fear the Lord and serve Him in sincerity and in faithfulness.

Verse 14, put away the gods that your father served beyond the river and in Egypt and serve the Lord.

Now, the interesting thing about Joshua's choices, his delineation of the, the two choices, is that he doesn't say it's between God and false God.

As I put on the chart, he says, choose which false gods you're going to worship.

And he says in verse 15, I'm sorry, I'll get verse 15 up there.

And if it's evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods beyond the river, that is the gods of Mesopotamia, or whether you'll serve the gods of Canaan, the gods of the Amorites.

But really, the choice is whether you're going to serve the Lord or whether you're going to serve false gods.

And the secret is that if you don't choose the Lord, it really doesn't make any difference which false gods you choose to serve.

The end will be the same.

And verse 73, the latter part of that verse.

Makes it clear what the choice really is, where Joshua says, but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

Many of us have that, maybe on our, in our homes and cross stitch or some sort of uh picture or something.

Joshua made it plain that really the choice was between the Lord and false gods.

And the people respond to his call for this decision.

They say the Lord drove out before us all the peoples, the Amorites who lived in the land, talking about those on Uh, the east side of the Jordan and now in the land of Canaan, this is just after, uh, the conquest of the land.

Therefore, we also will serve the Lord, for He is our God.

That was their decision.

Kind of interesting.

Joshua informed the people about the consequences of their choice.

He said, you can't serve the Lord.

Now, he's not saying they were unable to, but he's referring to the fact that they were prone not to, and in fact, that's exactly what you read in the book of Judges.

It is, uh, uh, a litany of failures of Israel to follow the God that they had said we will serve.

Joshua says, if you say you're going to serve him, and then you don't serve him, he'll turn and instead of blessing you, he will curse you and do you harm.

And he says, you need then to put away the foreign gods that were among them, and incline their hearts to the Lord.

That's an interesting statement.

What foreign gods are you talking about, Joshua?

These are God's people, right?

Israel, chosen nation of God.

And Joshua says, you need to make a decision who you're going to serve, or we're going to serve them, then put away the foreign gods, which suggests that they hadn't really made a clear decision, many of them up to this point.

And Joshua says, make a decision, choose your path.

And I think Joshua, like Moses, was calling upon those who were responsible before God to make that choice.

He's not talking about children.

He's talking about those who can know the truth and make a decision.

The third example I would suggest to you is Elijah, and it is one of my favorite stories of the Old Testament.

In 1 Kings chapter 18, many of us are familiar with the contest between the prophet Elijah and the prophets of Baal and Ashera.

God had gotten the attention of King Ahab and Queen Jezebel, who had introduced and fostered the worship of Baal in the northern kingdom.

And he got their attention by means of a drought that then caused famine.

Eventually, after over 3 years, Elijah will appear to King Ahab and instruct him to gather all of Israel at Mount Carmel, including the 23 prophets of Baal and the 214 prophets of Asherah.

This is in verses 227 and 21 of First Kings 25.

Once the people are gathered there, then Elijah challenges the people.

He does so by a question.

He begins with a question.

He came near to all the people, he said, how long will you go limping between two opinions?

If the Lord is God, follow him.

But if Baal, then follow him.

That's the clear two choices.

When will you stop limping between two opinions?

I like the New King James Version.

How long will you falter between two opinions?

falter. They didn't stand fast for either.

They were trying to go back and forth, it appears.

And Elijah says, make a decision, choose your path.

This is what the people do.

How do they respond?

But the people answered him not a word.

Still not able to make a choice.

And so we're familiar with what happened.

The prophets of Baal got their sacrifice together and they danced and cut themselves and called upon Baal to answer from heaven with fire to demonstrate that he was the God that should be worshiped.

No response.

Elijah even mocks them, but then he prepared.

is the sacrifice that the Lord would consume with fire from heaven.

And when that happens, note the different reaction of the people.

And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, The Lord, He is God, the Lord, He is God.

They had two options.

And it was a pretty easy choice at this point.

Baal hadn't done anything, hadn't evidence that he had any power, but the Lord had consumed the sacrifice, the altar, the water around the altar, and the dirt that the altar was sitting on.

And so the people said, the Lord, He is God.

I want us To look at our options.

Because the scriptures call upon us likewise.

To make a choice, to choose our path.

You know, not all major decisions in life boil down to just two choices or options.

Sometimes we, we have multiple options, and sometimes whatever we choose to do may be really kind of a combination of more than one distinct option.

We see some good in this and some good in that, and so we combine things.

But I want you to understand that the scriptures make it clear that we're faced with a decision that really only has two options.

Just two options and there are several scriptures that make that bilateral decision very clear.

For instance, in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 26, the passage on the screen, Jesus says there's two ways.

Not 25463, he says, enter by the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many, but the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.

Where's the 22546rd way?

There is no 23rd way.

Just two ways.

You and I must choose one way or the other.

Likewise, in the same Sermon on the Mount and in the same chapter of Matthew, Jesus concludes his Sermon on the Mount by talking about two builders.

How many builders?

Just 21.

The wise builder, on the one hand, is the one who hears and obeys the words of the Lord, and the foolish builder is the one who hears but does not obey.

Two groups, you and I are challenged to belong to one group or the other.

It's our choice.

But there are only two choices there.

In Matthew the 12th chapter, Jesus, in what some would probably consider to be a rather exclusive type of language, he says, whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me shatters.

You're either with the Lord or you're against the Lord.

There's no medium ground there.

There's no Switzerland, no neutral territory here.

You're either with the Lord or you're against the Lord.

Where are you today?

Are you with him?

Are you scattering because you're against him?

James, likewise, talks about that dichotomy.

He says, you adulterous people, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?

Anybody who is a Christian, who is still trying to be a friend of the world is a spiritual adulterer, not faithful to the spouse, is the idea here.

Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

There isn't any in between ground, no middle ground in this spiritual conflict.

Now, it's interesting that in the passages that we've looked at, that define the choices as being simply 2, they also talk about the consequences or the outcomes of those choices.

Matthew 7:13-14.

There's a, there's a broad way, uh, a broad gate and an easy way.

Many people are following.

Where does it lead to?

Destruction. There's a narrow gate, there's a hard way.

Where does it lead to?

Well, that's the one that leads to lie.

And so right away, you can analyze what the choices are, what the outcomes are in the very same passage.

Same thing with the two builders.

The wise builder, the one who hears and obeys, he builds his house.

What, what's the outcome?

Stability, it lasts as the future.

What about the foolish builder?

Well, the rains come.

There's force against his house and it falls.

Ruin is the end of that path.

Are we gathered with Jesus or against him?

Are we a friend of God or a friend of the world?

What's the outcome of these two paths?

Well, let's talk a little bit more about that.

Let's talk about it in, in, in this decision-making process, we need to make a decision.

That's step one.

Recognize that you and I are making a decision.

We have to, and we need to identify what our options are, and there are only 2, we've seen that.

What are the consequences?

How do we evaluate those two?

Well, I will tell you that if you decide to travel to Broadway, there's plenty of pleasure there.

That is the truth.

It's fleeting pleasure.

And even some things that seem to be pleasurable bring misery, but they, that path allows you to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh.

First John 33:15 talks about the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, the pride of life.

Those are the things that the world enjoys, the passions of the flesh.

That way is not restrictive.

That's why it's described as the easy way or in some versions, the broad way.

It'll allow you to pursue whatever pleases you if you choose that way.

In 1 Peter 4:3, Peter's writing to Christians and saying, talking about in the past, when they followed the passions of the flesh.

And that's what people do on this road, if, if they make this choice.

They just go wherever their passions lead them.

And I'll tell you something else about that, that particular choice.

It'll allow you to blend with the people around you.

You don't have to stand out.

You don't have to be different.

You don't have to be transformed.

You can be conformed.

You don't have to be ashamed that you're different or feel ostracized or uncomfortable.

You'll be just like everybody else because most of the world is traveling that road.

The many are traveling that road.

And so there's no need also to be critical of the behavior of others.

It's unrestricted.

No discomfort doing, due to being different from the world.

But now don't miss this.

That choice eventually ends in eternal punishment.

And I have to tell you, I think that's something that's very difficult for us to wrap our minds around, not the concept of punishment, but punishment that never ends.

Because essentially everything in this world is temporary.

Even pain At some point it ends.

It may end in death, but it ends.

And there are many other things that are uncomfortable for us in this life, but they're all temporary, but this.

This is eternal.

This never ends.

That's a hard concept.

As I said, to kind of wrap our minds around, but understand, that's the end of that path, that choice.

Well, what about the other choice?

What about the hard way, the difficult way, as some versions would translate, living according to the will of God, following the scriptures, well, it will require sacrifice.

You'll, it'll involve you giving of yourself.

Luke 14 and 27, as Jesus is talking about the cost of discipleship.

He says, if, if anyone's not willing to take up his cross, bear his cross, and come after me, he cannot be my disciple.

Bearing a cross just speaks of dying to oneself.

It requires submission to the will of God.

Peter writes in 1 Peter 5:6, Humble yourselves before the Lord.

Humble yourselves now, submit to him, and he will exalt you in due time.

In Matthew 7th chapter, Jesus said, not everyone who says, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but those who do the will of my Father in heaven.

There are going to be many who are going to say, Lord, Lord, didn't we do this and do that?

And Jesus is going to say, I never knew you.

You're workers of lawlessness.

You were without obedience to God's law.

This way, this choice, the hard way, the difficult way, it's going to require submission.

But it provides forgiveness.

How many people do you know in the world?

who are wracked with guilt because of things they've done in their lives.

And there's no forgiveness for them.

They just live with the shame.

They live with the guilt.

But the beauty of this road, this choice is that we can be forgiven of our sins.

And when God forgives, he forgets in the sense that he doesn't any longer hold those things against us.

We're no longer accountable for those sins.

And this road provides a spiritual family.

You know, the young man that came to Jesus, what good thing shall I do to inherit eternal life?

And when Jesus tells him what he lacks in his life, he goes away sorrowful.

He was a rich man and Jesus said, you need to divest yourself of your assets.

And he couldn't do that, didn't want to do that.

And the disciples, Peter, I believe it was, it said, uh, we've, we've given up everything.

What, what will we receive?

And Jesus says, you're gonna receive houses.

And brothers And sisters.

A spiritual family.

It's amazing to me occasionally.

I shouldn't say amazing.

It reminds me.

of how much of a blessing, how much of a privilege it is to have a spiritual family, a local congregation of people that you can call on if you need help, a support system.

There are lots and lots of people in the world, even some who are quote, uh, affiliated with some religious group who do not have that.

And so when the vicissitudes of life strike them, they're without support.

They're in despair.

But you And I can call on our brethren.

Sometimes people say, well, you know, my brother did, did you call upon them?

Did you seek their support?

Because it's there.

If you seek it.

This path provides hope.

If you live your life on the Broadway and you do whatever you want, you come to the end of life.

And what's left?

Only this desire to cling as strongly as possible to this human life because what's beyond that?

Nothing but punishment.

We have hope for life after death, if we make the choice to serve God according to His will.

We have the promise of eternal life.

Life more abundantly, I believe is what Ethan said in his prayer.

In Matthew 2546, The sheep, the righteous, they go to eternal life.

The goats, the wicked.

Theirs is eternal punishment.

So, you're looking at two choices.

And to evaluate those two choices, you need to take the long view.

Because one choice looks pretty good right away.

You know, you can do whatever you want and it's pleasurable, it's unrestricted, you blend with everybody, have a good time for your entire life, but understand there's more.

Eventually it brings punishment.

Terrible punishment.

The other way has some difficulties.

It's a difficult way.

It's a hard way.

But it also brings blessings even here in this life, and ultimately, it brings the blessing of communion life with God for eternity.

And that again is something hard to wrap our minds around.

You know, what's amazing to me about those three examples that we talked about Moses, uh, and Joshua and Elijah.

In every case, these prophets were talking to people who were already Israelites.

It wasn't, it wasn't that they had to choose whether they were going to be Israelites.

They were already part of God's people.

But unfortunately, many times the people of Israel, Moses' generation, the generations after Joshua didn't follow through with the decisions that they had previously made.

And so these 3 prophets are calling the people back to the decision.

You need to stay with the decision that was made by the people in the past.

We need to follow through with our decision.

But unfortunately, sometimes Christians like the Israelites go limping, limping between two opinions.

That they're trying to inhabit some sort of gray area between the light and the dark.

But they're mistaken because there is no such place.

You're either in one path or you're in the other, but you can't have 1 ft in both sides.

Can't be done.

So he says, well, what about a lukewarm Christian?

That's someone who's trying, the lukewarm Christian is on the dark side.

They've chosen a path.

It's one of the two.

There is no middle course.

Now, the life-changing decision to serve God no matter what will determine the outcome of many other more specific decisions.

If that becomes the backdrop of your life, that I've chosen to serve God, I'm taking the path that though it's hard, leads to life, then a lot of decisions really are already made.

Am I going to go worship on the first day of the week with other Christians?

Absolutely. I don't even have to think about that.

I don't even have to make that decision.

There's no process there.

I've already made that decision when I made the decision to serve the Lord with all my life.

Am I going to participate in the passions of the flesh?

Sexual immorality or, or gambling or, or whatever, uh, drunkenness?

Absolutely not.

I made that decision.

I made that decision when I decided to give my life to the Lord, to serve the Lord.

Am I going to fill my life with good works to glorify God?

Absolutely. That decision's already been made.

And so I don't have to keep revisiting specific decisions, but I have to be constant in that overall decision that I'm going to choose the path that leads to life.

Well, I'm just not sure if I want to make that decision.

I'm still thinking about it.

I'm still considering it.

If you're responsible before God, and by that I simply mean that you are old enough, you have the capacity to understand between right and wrong, you can understand God's will, you could respond to it, and you're deciding that you're not going to make a decision, guess what?

You've already made a decision.

Your decision.

There's no middle ground.

You can't stay in the middle ground.

Your decision has been to continue serving Satan because that's where you are if you're responsible for God and you're a sinner.

You, you can't just say, well, I, I don't want to make a decision.

You're making a decision.

In fact, every one of us here today responsible for God.

is making a decision.

We may have made it in the past and we just continue with the same decision.

But we all are faced with this decision and you cannot avoid it.

There's no middle ground.

There's no place where you can kind of say, well, I'm not sure, maybe, maybe this way, maybe that way, no, you're on one road or the other.

If you're responsible before God.

And no decision to serve God is an implicit decision to serve the devil.

So choose this day.

Whom you will serve.

I'm borrowing the language of Moses.

Choose this day.

Whom you're going to serve.

You know what the options are, you know what the consequences are.

We've analyzed what they both look like.

I think the choice is obvious.

If you're not a Christian, today, you can make the choice, the right choice, the one that blesses you as opposed to the one that brings curses.

If we can assist you this morning in obeying the gospel as it's described on the chart there.

Then we want to do so.

We want to help you.

Make that choice and we encourage you to do so today, while you have the opportunity, and we encourage you as we stand and sing.

Series: N/A

Service: Sun PM

Type: Sermon

Speaker: Allen Dvorak

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

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

Scripture reading is from Matthew 12:63.

Matthew 12:18.

And it reads, At that time, Jesus went through the grain fields on the Sabbath, and his disciples became became hungry and began to pick the heads of grain and eat.

But when the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, Look, your disciples do what is not lawful to do on a Sabbath.

But he said to them, Have you not read what David did when he became hungry, he and his companions?

How he entered the house of God, and they ate the consecrated bread, which was not lawful for him to eat, nor for those with him.

But for the priests alone.

Or have you not read in the law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple break the Sabbath and are innocent?

But I say to you that something greater than the temple is here.

But if you had known what this means, I desire compassion and not sacrifice.

You would not have condemned the innocent.

For the Son of Man is the Lord of the Sabbath.

I want to thank everybody for being here, particularly those who may be visiting with us this evening.

And I want to begin this evening as we think about Matthew 12th chapter.

Suggesting that sometimes as we try to obey God's commands, we fulfill our responsibilities toward God.

Sometimes we have to choose between two different responsibilities that we may not be able to fulfill at the same time.

For instance, we are commanded to remember the Lord's death in the Lord's supper on the first day of the week as we did this morning.

But we also have the responsibility, those of us who are parents to take care of sick children, so it's the first day of the week, it's Sunday morning, your child is sick, what do you do?

Well, most of us would probably opt to stay home, take care of our child, and I believe that's a legitimate choice, legitimate behavior.

But it's difficult in that situation for us to fulfill the responsibility to take the Lord's supper on the first day of the week as is our responsibility and at the same time take care of our sick child.

We're commanded to assemble on the first day of the week, but we're also commanded to help others in need.

So imagine if you will, that we are driving towards services and we either witness an accident or we come upon someone who has just been involved in an accident and they are in need of emergency assistance.

So what do you do?

If you stop and help, you may not get the services or at least you'll be late.

Do you stop and help or do you just continue on the services?

It's my personal opinion that if you stopped and helped and you missed the partaking of the Lord's supper, I don't believe that God would condemn you for that.

You can't do both of those things, and both of those things are legitimate things for Christians to do to help others in need, especially in.

Emergency and also to take the Lord's supper and all I'm saying is that sometimes things seem to work against each other certain responsibilities and we'll say more about that later this evening we're going to be doing a question and answer sermon.

And if you're visiting with us, you may not know what that means, but from time to time questions are submitted to me and then I choose some of those to answer from the pulpit.

When I do multiple questions, the questions are maybe from different topics or uh come from different areas of the scriptures and so they're often not related to one another, but this evening, you don't have to worry about that because I only have one question.

That question is how should we understand Matthew 193:183 through 173.

That sounds like it should be an easy question, but this question has a lot of moving parts, and so we're gonna have to spend some time.

Um, unpacking the question as it actually came to me, that's just a summary question to get it up on the screen.

So I want to begin by showing you the questions that I received.

Is the eating of the bread of the and notice the quotation marks means this is exactly the wording that I received, it's not my wording is the eating of the bread of the presence by David and his men in verses 163 and 153 and in 143 Samuel 133 is the original story an approved example?

Does Ahimelech insisting that the young men.

To have kept themselves from women.

First Samuel 123:113 to receive the bread helped to understand the underlying principles.

What lessons does it teach us about authority?

How, if at all, should Christians apply these lessons today?

In what ways did the priests profane the Sabbath and how did they remain guiltless?

But wait Christ declared himself Lord of the Sabbath, verse 103, accepting this truth and the Son of Man's power to set the terms, does perfect obedience through making exceptions conflict with or weaken Hebrews 2112:217's teaching about our sympathizing high priest.

Related to that, is it correct to state that Jesus made any exception to the law?

I'm still quoting.

How should Christians today rightly divide the principle of mercy over sacrifice expressed by Jesus in verse 218 and by God through the prophet Hosea chapter 214, verse 2115?

What are practical guidelines for knowing when we have gone too far?

In either direction, the idea of mercy versus obedience or sacrifice, for example, how can we discern when an impulse of that's just the sacrifice that I or someone else must make might go beyond what God has bound.

Well, that's some pretty extensive questions.

I'm not sure I'm going to answer all of them.

But wait.

Where does mercy end and excusing disobedience begin?

Does mercy over sacrifice give an answer and even comfort the questions about extreme cases?

For example, With very little water on hand and minutes to live, one wants to be baptized.

Should a Christian nearby refuse to give false hope because immersion is impossible, or may we trust that God's mercy will cover people doing the utmost to obey but falling short.

So quite a few questions there, uh, I feel like my influence in this congregation has been extensive because I am constantly uh.

What's the right word, not criticized, reminded that I tend to give multiple questions under one number.

I think Jim even mentioned that this morning in class.

But this This is at the professional level.

And I feel like my work here at this congregation is done because nobody could see or would say that this isn't that same principle at a much higher level.

So, uh, I, I'll tell you what I'm going to do this evening.

Rather than trying to give you a specific answer to each of these questions, although I will try to hit as many as possible.

I'm going to talk about Matthew 214.

We won't have time for any other questions or passages, but I'm gonna talk about Matthew 2115, and then we'll come back to these questions and we'll just run through them quickly and I'll make comments in terms of answers to as many of them as I can, uh, as time permits.

Well, let's begin by looking again at the passage, Matthew 213:211, and I've had a little bit of fun at the expense of the questioner, but this is a difficult text.

It's a text that is interpreted in several different ways, as we'll talk about a little bit later.

I'm gonna talk about 212.

And as I said, there are a lot of moving parts.

There are a lot of scriptures that are involved in trying to understand what's going on here in Matthew 12:1 through 8.

So I'm gonna be as brief as I can in talking about relevant passages, but we need to go back and reread Matthew 12:1 through 8.

Appreciate Jake's reading of that.

I'm reading from the ESV.

At that time, Jesus went through the grain fields on the Sabbath.

His disciples were hungry and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat.

But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.

He said to them, Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, those who were with him, how he entered the house of God and ate the bread of the presence, which it was not lawful for him to eat, nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests.

Or have you not read in the law how on the Sabbath, the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless?

I tell you something greater than the temple is here, and if you had known what this means, I desire mercy and not sacrifice, you would not have condemned the guiltless, for the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.

This same story or event is recorded in all three of the synoptic Gospels.

Mark records the story in Mark chapter 233, verses 23 to 28, and Luke in chapter 6, verses 1 through 5, and we'll pull a little bit of information from these other accounts, although they are more abbreviated than Matthew's account.

It's interesting to me and I think significant that in all three of the synoptic accounts, the same story follows this text that we're looking at tonight, 12 1 through 8.

It's the story of the healing of the man with the withered hand.

And all three of the gospels put that story right after Matthew 12:233 through 8.

I believe that the second story helps us to understand the first story, and we'll say more about that even later.

Now in the text here of Matthew 12 there is a reference to David eating the bread of the presence or sometimes it's called the show bread that was the bread that was stacked on uh a table there in the tabernacle later in the temple in David's time it was uh in the tabernacle.

The temple hadn't been built yet and there were two stacks of unleavened bread that was.

Put in there that were put in there on this table and they were swapped out every week on the Sabbath incidentally and the priests would normally eat that bread.

But the reference that Jesus is making is to 1 Samuel chapter 21, verses 1 through 6.

Please pardon me for the lengthy reading, but if you're not remembering maybe some of the details, let's read together first Samuel 21:1 through 6, just a little bit of background might be helpful, uh, as we look at this story.

David has already been anointed as the next king, but Saul has been attempting to kill David.

And so David is now on the run from Saul, and he shows up at Nob, which is where the tabernacle was located at this time in Israel's history.

Verse one, then David came to Nob to Ahimelech, the priest, and Ahimelech came to meet David trembling and said to him, Why are you alone and no one with you?

David had been appointed by Saul in the past as the leader of troops, and yet here he comes to the tabernacle to Nob, and he's by himself, and that bothers Ahimelech.

He's concerned about what's going on here.

David said to Himelech, the priest, the king has charged me with a matter and said to me, Let no one know anything of the matter about which I send you and with which I have charged you.

David continues, I've made an appointment with the young men for such and such a place.

Now then, what do you have on hand?

Give me 123 loaves of bread or whatever is here.

And the priest answered, David, I have no common bread on hand, but there is holy bread that would be the bread of the presence or the show bread if the young men have kept themselves from women, and David answered the priest, Truly women have been kept from us as always when I go on an expedition.

The vessels of the young men are holy even when it is an ordinary journey.

How much more today will their vessels be holy?

So the priest gave him the holy bread, for there was no bread there, but the bread of the presence, which is removed from before the Lord to be replaced by hot bread on the day it is taken away.

And so that's the story, that's the setting of Jesus' comments in Matthew 12 when he talks about David eating this bread, uh, from the tabernacle.

In Matthew 12 and 7, another relevant passage, Jesus says, and if you speaking to the Pharisees who were critical of his disciples, he says, and if you had known what this means, I desire mercy and not sacrifice, you would not have condemned the guiltless.

When he says the guiltless, he Talking about his disciples, he quotes from the Old Testament, and you're probably aware perhaps that he's quoting from Hosea chapter 6 and verse 6.

The ESV says, for I desire steadfast love, but that's the same word that it frequently is translated mercy.

Or sometimes loving kindness, uh, in the New King James Version, uh, principally mercy.

And so Jesus quotes part of that verse, uh, as he speaks to the Pharisees.

Now I want to make some observations here that I think may clear away some, some questions or at least some concerns.

First of all, what David did was unlawful.

Jesus is very clear about that in Matthew 12 and 4, when he says that David ate what was not lawful for him to eat.

The bread that was in the tabernacle had been reserved or was reserved for the priests.

They were the only ones who were supposed to eat it as Leviticus 24:59 suggests.

Secondly, The disciples were traveling with Jesus.

They were, uh, going someplace on the Sabbath day.

I don't know.

The text doesn't say where, but they were going with Jesus through the fields, perhaps on the wayside, and they were taking heads of grain.

Off of the stalks and they were rubbing them in their hands we know that from one of the other uh techs here.

And then they were eating this, it would kind of form somewhat of a gum, and that was permitted by the law of Moses.

In fact, you look at Deuteronomy 73, perhaps you've read it already, verse 24 says if you go into your neighbor's vineyard, you may eat your fill of grapes as many as you wish.

But you shall not put any in your bag.

You couldn't go in and just start loading up grapes, but you are allowed to satisfy hunger in somebody else's vineyard.

I included verse 24 because I think the same point is being made in verse 25, only now about the fields about grain, and if you go into your neighbor's standing grain, you may pluck the ears with your hand.

That's what the disciples were doing, but you shall not put a sickle to your neighbor's standing grain.

Now, maybe a little bit of background information concerning the Jews and particularly the Pharisees would be helpful at this point.

The Pharisees were criticizing Jesus' disciples because the Pharisees, and incidentally this wasn't an across the board understanding of the Sabbath law, it was a more extreme view of that law, but the Pharisees, at least some of them, had classified the plucking of grain as harvesting.

And you shouldn't be working in harvesting on the Sabbath day.

And then when you were rubbing the chaff off of the grain there, that was winnowing.

That was also work as far as they were concerned and not something you ought to be doing on the Sabbath day and so the disciples were doing what the Pharisees had decided was unlawful.

Where did the Pharisees come up with this?

Exodus chapter 20 is where the Decalogue is originally recorded and beginning in verse 9, there's some information there about the Sabbath law.

6 days you shall labor and do all your work, verse 9, verse 10, but the 7th day.

is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.

On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male servant or your female servant or your livestock or the sojourner who is within your gates, for in 83 days.

The Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them and rested on the 7th day.

Therefore, the Lord blessed the 7th day and made it holy.

It's different from the other day.

You can do your work on the other 6 days, but on the 7th day, on the Sabbath day, you don't do any work.

Well, if you notice there's nothing in those verses about, uh, harvesting or winnowing.

And if you had a field and you went out with a sickle and you began harvesting your field on the Sabbath, you would indeed be violating the Sabbath law.

In the Old Testament and Pentateuch, you find out there was a fellow who went out and he was picking up sticks on the Sabbath day, and he was punished because he violated the law that I just read for you.

No, the Pharisees didn't get it from Exodus chapter 20.

That was their interpretation of what constituted work and they had devised a list of all kinds of things that you could not do on the Sabbath day because.

Those things constituted in their opinion, working on the Sabbath and one of those things was what the disciples were doing because they had called it the Pharisees had identified it as harvesting and winnowing.

So what David did was unlawful, but the Mosaic law permitted individuals to eat grain while passing through a field.

I wanna say a little bit more.

I got, uh, carried away and I wanna come back to David, uh, very quickly.

I think just as an aside, David sinned in some other ways as well.

First of all, when he comes to Ahimelech, he doesn't tell Ahimelech the truth.

The truth of the matter was Saul hadn't sent him.

He was running from Saul because Saul was wanting to kill him, so he lies to Ahimelech.

He lied about the reason for him being at Noob, and furthermore, the text seems to indicate in the New Testament's records that he entered into the house of God.

If we're talking about the holy place, David had no business going into the holy place that was reserved for priests.

So Jesus, Paul violated the law at least in 3 ways.

He lied, he entered where he shouldn't have gone, and he ate what wasn't his to eat, and apparently he gave to others who likewise were not permitted to eat that.

I don't believe this is an answer to one of the questions that I read for you a little bit earlier.

I don't believe that David's action is an approved example.

I don't think that's what Jesus is trying to say here, that Jesus, excuse me, David did something that was unlawful, but that's OK, and we'll say more about that when I talk about the three ways that this passage is interpreted by many.

I also believe that the condition that was cited by the priest Ahimelech, uh, and by that I mean that the young men had kept themselves from women, women, I don't think that changed anything.

I believe that was primarily to save his own conscience, uh, for doing what he should not have done, and that is giving the bread of the presents to David and his men to eat.

Even if these men were ceremonially clean, and that's kind of what Ahimelech is getting at, the fact of the matter is they're not priests, had no business eating the bread, and David had no business entering into the holy place.

So I think Ahimelech ignores the fact that David and his men are not priests, he focuses instead on the need for holiness, which is admirable, but it doesn't excuse what happened on this particular occasion.

Well, thirdly, in our observations, the priests, Jesus said, profane the Sabbath.

How did they do that?

They did that by doing what God commanded them to do on the Sabbath day.

In Numbers chapter 28 verses 9 and 10, There's a listing of some of the things that were to be offered on the Sabbath day, and that's what the priests did.

They offered sacrifices, they took care of the tabernacle that is the holy place, even on the Sabbath day.

Verse 43 of Numbers 28, this is the burnt offering of every Sabbath besides the regular burnt offering and its drink offering.

There's a passage in the New Testament in John 7, where Jesus makes this observation.

He says, Moses gave you circumcision, not that it is from Moses, but from the fathers, and you circumcise a man on the Sabbath.

The law said that a male infant was to be circumcised on the 8th day, you know, the 8th day occasionally will fall on the Sabbath.

And Jesus says, you circumcise a man on the Sabbath.

If on the Sabbath, a man receives circumcision, listen, so that the law of Moses may not be broken, are you angry with me because on the Sabbath, I made a man's whole body well?

And so Jesus says that the law to not work on the Sabbath.

Didn't mean that you couldn't circumcise an infant Israelite on the 8th day if it fell on the Sabbath day, so that you didn't break the law.

What law?

The law that circumcision takes place on the 8th day.

This is an example I think of where you've got two laws and they seem to conflict with one another because you can't rest on the Sabbath.

They do nothing and at the same time circumcise the infant child because it is the 8th day of his life.

Jesus indicated that his disciples were guiltless, at least in the matter of their taking grain and eating it.

We noted that from Matthew the 12th chapter verses, verse 7, the latter part of that verse.

Well, we're gonna get into some other questions that were raised, uh, early on, but I want to talk to you about 153 views of Matthew 12.

And I'm gonna tell you upfront, the 1st and the 2nd views, I think are incorrect.

I believe the third view is the correct understanding of this passage, but I want you to understand how others see this passage.

It's a difficult passage, as the, uh, multiplicity of questions would, would suggest.

The first view.

Is that mercy toward the disciples.

They're hungry, they're walking on the Sabbath, that mercy toward the disciples allowed the Sabbath law to be set aside.

Or as one writer put it, necessity knows no law.

So in situations where mercy needs to be extended, you just set aside God's divine law.

This view would suggest that what David did was wrong, it was unlawful, but it was permissible under the circumstances.

In other words, God didn't.

Uh, wasn't disapproving of David's behavior even though technically he violated the law regarding the eating of this bread that was reserved for priests.

And so this view sees Jesus mentioning the story of David and the bread of the presence as essentially being an appeal to historical precedents.

You shouldn't condemn my disciples because David wasn't condemned.

Mercy meant that he could set aside the law that had to do with the bread, and in the same way, mercy toward the disciples means you can set aside the Sabbath law.

Verse 7.

It is understood to suggest that mercy is more important than sacrifice in the sense that sacrifice or obedience to the law can be set aside if mercy dictates.

The disciples were guiltless according to this view, only in the sense that the Sabbath law was set aside and was it applicable to them because of the mercy that they required.

And so it's not a question of whether they violated the Sabbath or not.

People say this passage Jesus is teaching, that law was just set aside, they didn't have to worry about it.

Well, How does one decide?

What circumstances permit the setting aside of law?

I think one of the questions that was laid out early on is exactly this question, where do you decide?

That mercy ends and obedience starts.

If you can set aside the Sabbath law because you've got hungry disciples, what other laws can you set aside?

Why was Uza killed?

He touched the Ark of the Covenant.

You may recall in that story that the oxen who were.

Pulling this new cart and the Ark of the Covenant was on that cart.

They went across the threshing floor.

And the cart apparently jiggled or whatever and Uza with good intention, I think, reached out and touched the ark, grabbed hold of the ark so that he could secure the ark.

You don't want God's Ark of the Covenant falling off the cart.

And God struck him dead right there.

Well, why?

Why not mercy in this case, since his intention was good.

Why not set aside this law that nobody should be touching the Ark of the Covenant, even the priests who carried the Ark of the Covenant, they use poles that went through rings on the Ark of the Covenant.

We talked about this in a recent sermon, and they carried this.

They didn't touch the ark.

In fact, ideally, nobody did, not even the high priest on the day of atonement, he didn't touch it.

I find this comment by JW McGarvey and his commentary on Matthew, very interesting.

He says if Christians may violate law when it's observance would involve hardship or suffering, circumstances where mercy might be required, then there's an end of suffering for the name of Christ and an end even of self-denial.

All McGarvey is saying is that when you extend this principle to its logical conclusion, there's no reason that anybody should ever suffer.

Every time hardship or suffering might come upon us because of what the law demands, we just set the law aside.

I think that's a problem.

I don't think that's supported by the New Testament.

This seems to me to be a slippery slope.

It starts with mercy, you know, extreme circumstances, but who defines those circumstances?

How do we know when God agrees and says, well, you know, in this case, I'm setting my law aside, but now over here, you're condemned because you didn't follow the law, you decided you could just set it aside.

That's the first view And as I said, I don't favor that view.

I will tell you that is a very popular view.

Among religious people.

I've heard it.

I've talked to people about that same view.

And the idea is that obedience to the law just depends on circumstances and mercy.

The showing of mercy is one of those circumstances, set of circumstances where we can just set the law aside.

Well, here's a second view.

And uh Alfred Eddersheim, for instance, who has written some rather classic works on the life of Christ and New Testament, uh, Jewish culture, he takes this view and the view is that serving the Lord trumped the specific dictates of law.

I was reading Eddersheim, and Edderheim makes, makes this point that David, because he was serving the Lord, that David was able to go ahead and eat the bread of the show, the show bread, the bread of the presence, because serving the Lord means that's more important, that's the greater law, and we can set aside the lesser laws.

And they would argue, he would argue that the disciples were in the same situation.

They're with the, the master, they're serving the Lord, and so that responsibility and whatever it entails is more important than this business of whether or not you work on the Sabbath day.

And so you can set aside the Sabbath law because, as I said, you're serving the Lord.

And they argue that in part from Matthew 12 and 6.

The priests profane the Sabbath, serving in the temple.

And so the argument is based on this idea that the priests, because they were serving in the tabernacle or in later in the temple, that the, the Sabbath law wouldn't apply to them.

It was set aside because that's a lesser law than serving the Lord.

And if you read the New King James Version of Matthew 12 and 6, it's not something greater than the temple, but someone or one who is greater than the temple.

Jesus is, I think, referring to himself.

If the priests can violate the Sabbath law.

As they serve in the temple, then surely my disciples is the argument, can violate the Sabbath law because they're serving me and I'm greater than the temple in terms of God's presence among men.

Hopefully that's clear, um.

That description.

Let me see if I've got everything up here.

I want to talk about this particular point.

David was serving the Lord, so he didn't have to obey the law concerned regarding the show bread.

I think that's a pretty gratuitous view of what David was doing when he asked for the show bread.

He was running from Saul.

He was serving the Lord by lying to the priest about what he was doing and why he was there.

I think that case is weak to say that's the reason that David could eat the show bread because he was serving the Lord.

That may not have been one of David's brightest chapters in life.

Well, the third view.

Is that the disciples were guiltless because they didn't violate the Sabbath law.

What they violated, if anything, was the Pharisaic interpretations of the law.

That's the reason I read Exodus 20 because I wanted you to understand that the law didn't stipulate that you couldn't, uh, eat grain as you pass through a field because that's work, that's Pharisaical tradition and their interpretation of how the Sabbath law should be applied.

But they applied it without any regrets or any.

What's the word I'm looking for?

Anyway, they applied it to Jesus' disciples without any worries.

I think Jesus actually makes several different arguments here and, and I'm gonna kind of run through the text again.

You may wish, since this won't be on the slides, the text won't be on the slides, you may wish to open your Bibles to Matthew 43 as I reference different verses that way you can see what those verses actually say.

First of all.

In verses 3 and 4, I think what Jesus is doing here is not excusing David.

I think the problem was the Pharisees excused David.

David, uh, excuse me, Jesus says David did what was unlawful for him to do.

He shouldn't have been eating the show bread.

Have you not read what David did when he was hungry and those who were with him, how he entered the house of God and ate the bread of the presence, which it was not lawful for them to eat, nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests.

But the rabbinical teachers were not critical of David.

In fact, they venerated David.

David wasn't criticized because he violated God's law in this case.

The Pharisees gave him a pass, but now the disciples are not violating God's law, not God's law.

They're only violating the traditions of the Pharisees, but the Pharisees are condemning them.

Why is it that your disciples are doing what is unlawful to do?

I wonder if the reason Jesus brought up this particular case was twofold.

One, Because of the attitude of the Pharisees toward David's actions, but secondly, there's almost a parallelism here.

David is hungry, his men are hungry.

He comes to the tabernacle and so he's wanting to eat bread that he doesn't have any right to eat.

The disciples are in the same situation.

They're hungry and so they're pulling the grain and eating that grain.

Although the Pharisees accused Jesus' disciples of sin, violating the Sabbath, they gave David a pass.

They didn't criticize him for his actions.

Listen, if they were critical of David, if they had condemned David, then when Jesus said, have you heard, have you not read what David did, how he did what was unlawful?

If the Pharisees thought that David was guilty of sin, and Jesus says he did what was unlawful.

Then the response that Jesus probably would have faced was, yes, he did what was wrong.

You condemned him with your own voice, your own words, and you are in the same class as he is.

No Pharisee said that.

And the reason they didn't is they didn't condemn David.

What Jesus is using here is an argument called ad hominem to the man.

He is trying to point out the inconsistency of the Pharisees, their willingness to excuse David but condemn the disciples.

In verses 5 and 6.

Jesus, I think, is arguing that the Sabbath law against work was not absolute.

Remember, this is the passage, verse 5, or have you not read in the law, how on the Sabbath, the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless.

Well, wait a second.

If the Sabbath law forbid all work, then how could those priests do what they did on the Sabbath day?

In the New King James Version, at least the.

Edition that I have.

The heading for Matthew 12:18, the passage that we're looking at in detail, is controversy over Sabbath labor.

You, you know, the Pharisees are critical of Jesus' disciples because they're breaking the Sabbath by working on the Sabbath.

But then in verses 9 to 13, the next story, the story about the withered hand healing, they have a heading that says controversy over Sabbath healing.

But friends, both of those pericopes are about working on the Sabbath.

Read if you will, in verse 153 with me this section that I've mentioned a couple of times already.

Verse 9 says he, Jesus went on from there and entered their synagogue, and a man was there with a withered hand, and they asked him, Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath so that they might accuse him.

He said to them, which one of you has a sheep if it falls into a pit.

On the Sabbath will not take hold of it and lift it out of how much more value is a man than a sheep so and this is Jesus' conclusion, so it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.

It's lawful to do good.

On the Sabbath What Jesus is saying is that the Sabbath law didn't forbid all activity, because Jesus goes on and says to the man, stretch out your hand, and the man stretched it out and it was restored healthy like the other.

Jesus healed this man on the Sabbath day.

So the Sabbath law, as I've suggested on the chart, was not absolute in that sense.

Just like the priests who worked on the Sabbath according to the law, the Pharisees would lift out a sheep out of a pit on the Sabbath.

I think Jesus' question is rhetorical.

He's not asking, would you do that?

He's assuming they would do that.

It's a good thing.

To rescue this sheep.

It's lawful to do good on the Sabbath day.

In Deuteronomy 22:4, the law said, you shall not see your brother's donkey or his ox falling down by the way and ignore them.

You shall help him to lift them up again.

That's what the law said you should do.

Could you do that on the Sabbath day?

Yes, apparently you can, according to Jesus in Matthew 212.

In Luke's account in chapter 27 and verse 28, Jesus said to them, I ask you, is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to destroy it?

What's the answer to that question or those questions?

Well, to do good is lawful on the Sabbath, to save life is lawful on the Sabbath.

Not all activity was prohibited on the Sabbath.

Jesus, for instance, healed the withered hand.

I'm getting behind here.

I apologize for that.

The Sabbath, Jesus says in Mark 24 and verse 215, Mark's account, the Sabbath was made for man, not men for the Sabbath.

I think we're getting into what's going on with the Hosea 24:33 quotation.

The Pharisees had turned the Sabbath, which was intended to be for the benefit of men, they turned it into a burden.

For instance, in Matthew chapter 23.

And in verse 21, Jesus says of the Pharisees, they tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger.

Their interpretations of the law restricted and burdened the people.

Jesus says the Sabbath was not made, uh, man was not made for the Sabbath, but rather the Sabbath was made for man.

And I think that's the point that's going on in Hosea chapter 22 and verse 6.

For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.

I understand that that's inverted in terms of the grammatical order of things, but I believe that's a not but statement.

A not but statement denies one thing in order to emphasize another thing.

The first thing that's being denied is actually true, but the point of a not but statement is to emphasize the truth of the second half of the statement.

I desire mercy and not sacrifice.

Did God desire sacrifice?

Did he command sacrifice?

Oh, absolutely.

Hebrews uses the same kind of argument, uh, in chapter two of that book.

So God desires sacrifice.

But what the writer Hosea is saying is behind that sacrifice there also needs to be mercy shown toward others.

Here's the Pharisees who will insist on their interpretation of the Sabbath law even if it shows no mercy to the individuals who are hungry and could legitimately eat on the Sabbath day as the disciples were actually doing.

In Matthew 9:9-13, I'm moving along, we're getting close.

I know I've spoken a long time, but it's been so interesting that you've lost track of the time.

Um, but I'm getting close to the end here, so be patient with me.

In Matthew 9, the same passage is quoted by Jesus, I desire mercy and not sacrifice, and he quotes it.

To the Pharisees who are critical of Jesus because he's eating with tax collectors and sinners.

To the Pharisees, oh, that was horrible.

He was going to be unclean.

They were more concerned about the minutia of the law, much of which they had invented themselves, the interpretation of ceremonial cleanliness laws.

And less concerned about the spiritual condition of the people that Jesus was associating with and trying to teach, calling to righteousness.

You, you see the same thing in other passages.

I'll be very brief about this.

Micah 6:13 through 8, with what shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before God on high?

Shall I come before him with burnt offerings with calves a year old?

Will the Lord sacrifice?

Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams with thousands of rivers of oil sacrifice?

Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?

He has told you, oh man, what is good and what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God.

Sacrifice was commended.

But sacrifice without reverence for God, independent of justice and mercy and humility, is worthless.

What God's looking for is people whose sacrifices manifest their proper attitude toward God, their obedience to God.

It's exactly what Samuel told Saul, King Saul.

When Saul spared and the people spared the best of the Amalekites, Samuel said, Has the Lord has great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord.

Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice and to listen than the fat of rams.

And Matthew 23:23 essentially says the same thing.

The last thing that Jesus talks about in Matthew 12 and 7 and 8 is that he is Lord of the Sabbath.

Jesus, unlike the Pharisees, can speak to the meaning of the Sabbath because he's the one who commanded it in the first place, that the Sabbath was to be kept holy.

Well, is the eating of the bread in the presence of David and his men an approved example?

No. No, that's not why Jesus cited that example.

Uh, what about Ahimelech?

Does that help us understand the underlying principles?

Not really.

Uh, Ahimelech is, I think, saving his own conscience, didn't make any difference.

Um, I'm not going to worry about the question there under B. In what ways did the priests profane the Sabbath and how did they remain guiltless?

We've discussed that.

They did what God commanded them on the Sabbath day, and so they were guiltless because God had enabled them, permitted them to do these things.

Christ declared Himself Lord of the Sabbath.

Um, does perfect obedience through making exceptions conflict with or weaken Hebrews 4:15's teaching about our sympathizing high priest?

I'm not sure I understand entirely what that question is about.

I think the idea is that, uh, we, we, we, we don't do, uh, we don't obey God's law perfectly, but the exceptions make, make it so that now we have perfect obedience.

I think maybe that's what's being said here, um.

I don't know how that would weaken Hebrew, Hebrews 4:15's teaching about our sympathizing high priest.

Is it correct to state that Jesus made any exception to the law?

I think it is incorrect to say that.

I don't believe Jesus was making an exception in this passage, saying that, oh well, because of circumstances you can set the laws.

I don't believe he ever said that.

How should Christians today rightly divide the principles of mercy over sacrifice?

Well, We need to be careful that when we come together to worship, that we're not just checking a box like an Israelite who brings a lamb to the altar and he kills it and the priest takes the blood, and the Israelite cares not one whit about serving God, but he has checked the box and he's offered a sacrifice like God commanded.

Is that really obedience?

I think we can fall into that same kind of error.

If the things that we do to serve God, the sacrifice of the fruit of our lips, if it's nothing more than just rote behavior, and I think we are in danger of not rightly dividing the principle of mercy over sacrifice, and I, I don't think mercy is the only thing involved here.

I think the Pharisees had forgotten about the purpose of the law, and it just become a matter of checking boxes.

What are practical guidelines for knowing when we have gone too far in either direction.

When you set aside God's law, I believe you've gone too far in that direction.

Can you show mercy?

Yes, within the confines of God's law.

But I don't think that we have this spectrum where we can obey God's law up until the point where mercy takes over.

I think that's an incorrect view of the relationship between mercy and sacrifice.

Where does mercy end and excusing disobedience begin?

That's a great question.

How do you know where it begins and ends?

This business of setting aside God's law so that you can pursue mercy.

Does mercy over sacrifice give an answer and even comfort to questions about extreme cases, and there's an example there.

That question really needs to be answered in the context of talking about God's final judgment, and I'm not gonna do that tonight.

Uh, I've already spoken, uh, longer than I intended, but I believe that we need to be following God's law and let God decide in terms of final judgment where he will extend mercy and where he will demand a more severe judgment.

I believe God's judgment in the last day is going to be based on the standard of the gospel, God's word, and there are plenty of passages that talk about that, but I think taking into account, uh, in the judgment of various individuals is going to be the light that we have been given in terms of knowledge and and understanding opportunity.

Check with James 3:1-2, where teachers are going to receive the stricter judgment.

Why is it that they're going to receive the stricter judgment?

Well, because they're the ones who are handling the word of God and should know how to, how to obey that word.

Can we trust that God's mercy will cover people doing the utmost to obey, but falling short?

If God chooses, if God chooses to say to somebody, I know you didn't obey what I stipulated because you could not do it.

There wasn't enough water, no water at all, whatever, that's God's business.

You and I need to be very, very careful about assuming that we can then assure people, oh, don't worry about that.

God will understand.

We don't have that right.

And so I'm gonna suggest to you this evening that as we talk about uh obeying the gospel, we don't have the right to adjust God's plan.

It is his plan.

That plan is designed to provide mercy to us in terms of forgiveness of sins, the hope of eternal life.

You have been so patient tonight and you've listened so well.

um, if anybody's sleeping, nudge them, uh, it's almost time to get up and sing the invitation song we don't wanna embarrass anybody, but, uh, seriously, you've been so gracious and I appreciate that.

Uh, if you need to obey the gospel, if you need to avail yourself of God's mercy, and we want to encourage you to do that tonight.

The last part of the question was, well, what if you know they don't have opportunity?

You have opportunity tonight to do exactly what God requires of us for us to be forgiven of our sins and have the hope of eternal life.

If you need to do that, we stand 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 scripture reading this morning will be from Psalm 139 verses 1 through 12.

I'll be reading from the Christian Standard Bible, but behind me will be the English Standard Version.

Lord, you have searched me and know me.

You know, when I sit down and when I stand up, you understand my thoughts from far away.

You observe my travels and my rest.

You are aware of all my ways.

Before a word is on my tongue, you know all about it, Lord.

You have encircled me.

You have placed your hand on me.

This wondrous knowledge is beyond me.

It is lofty.

I am unable to reach it.

Where can I go to escape your spirit?

Where can I flee from your presence?

If I go up to heaven, you are there.

If I, if I make my bed and shiel, you are there.

If I live at the eastern horizon or settle at the western limits, even there your hand will lead me.

Your right hand will hold on to me.

If I say, surely the darkness will hide me and the light around me will be night, even the darkness is not dark to you.

The night shines like the day.

Darkness and light are alike to you.

Recently, the elders had been teaching, have been teaching a series of lessons on marriage.

And that series typically has started off with the first lesson being about communication.

I'm not sure there's any significance to the fact that it's first, except that communication is the lifeblood of virtually any human relationship.

I taught the first lesson of this series, uh, several times now, and this last time, I used a graphic that I thought was kind of humorous.

Uh, Debbie and I were in, uh, Gettysburg, uh, last Sunday, and we met a couple who actually have roots here in Athens, Wilson and Cassandra Leg I believe were their names.

They've been married, I think she said about 67 years.

By the time you've been married 123 years, you've kind of gotten to know about each other.

You're, uh, speaking to each other on a first name basis by then.

But I like this cartoon where the woman says, when you've been married a long time, you get to know what the other person thinks.

She's thinking that, and her husband is thinking, no, you don't.

And so there's some irony there in that he's actually denying what they are already doing.

Have you ever had somebody who knows you so well that they finish your sentences for you?

That can be a little annoying at times, I guess.

But Debbie and I have gotten to the point in our lives in terms of memory and, and the cognitive clarity that occasionally we'll start a sentence and can't think of that word, and so the other one will say, uh, compass, uh, gasket, uh, gate.

Sometimes it takes a little while to get the right word, but we supply words for each other.

And usually we do it pretty quickly because we know how each other thinks in the way that we express ourselves.

Is there somebody in your life who knows what you're going to say before you say it?

Something happens, or maybe you're watching a movie together or television, or there's some event, some family event, and this person knows you so well.

That he or she can anticipate how you're going to react to things and what you would probably say in response.

Now the person most likely able to do that uh is going to be a spouse and particularly after years of marriage or maybe an exceptionally close friend if you spend a lot of time together over the years, you begin to understand how each other thinks about stuff.

But unfortunately Even in those relationships that you would think are so intimate that are Two people are bonded together and they know how each other thinks.

And yet sometimes one spouse will hide things from the other spouse.

I see things all the time about people who carry on affairs even after they've been married to someone.

For decades.

And so it's possible for us to hide things even from those.

That we are in a one flesh relationship with, and that's how the Bible describes marriage as a one flesh relationship.

But no one can keep secrets from God.

King David affirmed in Psalm 139 that God knows us to a degree that no human being does.

Now, in this Psalm 139, which is the text for our study this morning, David writes about himself.

He speaks in the first person.

But what he says applies to us as well.

When David says, you know me so well.

That is also true of you, and it's true of me as far as our relationship to God is concerned.

When I began a series of lessons on psalms at the beginning of this year.

I asked if anyone had a favorite psalm or a psalm of preference that they would like to hear discussed from the pulpit, if you would send me that information, and some of you have done that.

Psalm 139 was requested as one of the psalms that we would study in this series, and it is a very thought provoking and wonderful psalm and yet at the same time sobering.

I'm going to begin this morning by just simply outlining the psalm, and I'm going to divide it into 4 parts.

Although I would suggest to you that the 1st 18 verses really are about the same general topic, and that is the knowledge of God about us and His presence.

Uh, with reference to us, but then I want to divide the 1st 18 verses into two sections, the 1st 133 verses which talk about God knowing us, and we'll say more about those as we look at each, uh, unit, each of the 4 units, but the 1st 6 verses simply David says, God knows me so well.

The 2nd 6 verses talk about the presence of God and as the, the language of uh that other version that Joel read.

As it said, I can't escape the presence of God, and that's, I think, the very point of the passage of that section.

Verses 13 to 18 continue this idea that God has known me.

In fact, he's known me from my beginning, even prior to my birth, even while I was being formed in the womb.

And then the Psalm ends in verses 19 to 24 in somewhat of a twist because it's a Psalm that is addressed entirely to God and in the last section, the author David actually engages in some imprecations of the enemies of God, of wicked men.

We'll talk a little bit more about uh the significance of imprecatory language, but David's saying in the last couple of verses of the Psalm, test my heart.

You know me so well, you know my thoughts from afar, so test my heart and see that I have no sympathy for wickedness.

So let's talk a little bit about these different sections, particularly the first section.

Uh, verses 13 through 6, God knows me so well and uh if you'll permit me, I'm going to reread the, uh, the sections, each of the sections, there's only 24 verses in this Psalm, so it won't take very long.

Verse one says, oh Lord, you have searched me and known me.

The word searched there is the same word that's used over in Job 28:3 to talk about how man digs into the earth to find precious metals.

It is a comprehensive knowing or searching out.

And so David says, O Lord, you have searched me and.

me, you know, when I sit down and when I rise up, you discern my thoughts from afar and so whether he's resting or whether he's laboring when he rises up, God knows of his every activity, and he says that in verse 3, the end of the verse, and are acquainted with all my ways.

There's nothing that we do.

That God doesn't know about.

There's no activity in our life that God is not aware of.

He is aware of every word that is spoken by ourselves.

In verse 3, he says, you search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways, even before a word is on my tongue, behold, Lord, you know it all together.

I understand the psalmist to be saying that before I actually speak something, God already knows what I'm going to say.

He knows my thoughts, as he says, from afar.

Uh, from afar maybe a reference.

To distance or it may be a reference to the fact that the thought hasn't even been particularly formulated yet and yet God knows where we are headed.

You hem me in behind and before and lay your hand upon me.

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me.

It is high.

I cannot attain it.

And so in the 1st 6 verses, the psalmist just says, God just knows me so well.

But then in the next 6 verses, he talks about the presence of God.

I don't believe that David was really seeking to escape God's presence.

When he says, oh, where shall I flee from your presence?

I don't believe David wanted to be, uh, separate or distant from God.

He's using these rhetorical questions to suggest that there's no place that he can go where God is not aware, he's not present.

Where shall I go from your spirit or where shall I flee from your presence?

If I ascend to heaven, you are there.

If I make my bed in Shiel, you are there.

If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea from east to west, even there your hand shall lead me and your right hand shall hold me.

If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me and the light about me be night.

Even the darkness is not dark to you.

The night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you.

We typically think of darkness as hiding things.

We can't see as well in the darkness.

We need light to guide us.

The psalmist says with God, light and dark don't mean anything.

God can see as well in the dark as in the light, if you'll pardon the anachronism.

God is not distant, so that he is unable to observe our lives.

There are several passages in the Old Testament.

I'm just gonna look at a couple in the old and one in the new, that talk about God being close to us.

In Job 103, 1 of Job's friends, Eliphaz, Charges Job with having the attitude of the wicked, and he describes it here in these verses 12 to 14, where Eliphaz says, Is not God high in the heavens?

See the highest stars, how lofty they are.

But you say he's talking about what Job says.

What does God know?

Can he judge through the deep darkness?

Thick clouds veil him so that he does not see, and he walks on the vault of heaven.

And vault of heaven.

And so Eliphaz says, Job, you reason, you think just like the wicked people do.

They think that the clouds block God's vision.

They think God is way off in some other place.

But of course, God is not distant.

Distance makes no difference.

In the New Testament in Acts chapter 17.

The apostle Paul is speaking there in the latter part of the chapter to the Areopagus, elite group of individuals there in Athens, and he says, as he preaches to them, and he, God, made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place that they should.

Seek God and perhaps feel their way toward Him and find Him.

Feel their way toward God as though to find him, but Paul says, yeah, he is actually not far from each one of us.

For in him we live and move and have our being, as even some of your own poets have said, for we are indeed his offspring.

He's not far away, he's not distant.

It's not that he doesn't know or cannot observe what is happening in our lives.

And then finally, in the book of Jeremiah in chapter 23, God says, am I a God at hand?

declares the Lord, and not a God far away?

That's a rhetorical question.

It's an, an assertion actually.

Can a man hide himself in secret places so that I cannot see him?

declares the Lord.

Do I not fill heaven and earth, declares the Lord.

Is there some secret place where man can hide and God can't find him or can't observe him?

Not at all.

God is not distant.

He is able to observe all.

If we refuse to acknowledge God's presence, is he then not able to observe us?

Debbie and I have got a, a cat now.

His name is Titus.

Uh, he is Titus the destroyer.

He's actually kind of a cute cat, but he is sometimes frenetic.

Look it up.

Uh, he just, he's like a madman and so he comes and he jumps on my desk and when he jumps off, he takes the papers and just scatters them.

And so there are things that we have tried to teach him, stay off the table, stay off the counter, you belong on the floor.

But he'll do that and, and then when you fuss at him, if I fuss at him in the office and he jumps down, he'll roll over on his side and look at me like, I'm just laying here, I'm not doing anything.

And so I'll point at him and say, this is the finger of discipline, and he goes, He starts blinking both of his eyes.

Uh, there's nothing wrong with his eyes.

He just seems to think that if I can't see you, either you can't see me or I'm not worried about where you are or what you might do.

I wonder if sometimes people don't think that way.

Do they just pretend that God can't observe them, that somehow their lives then become secret.

I've never had a car with a sunroof.

Don't want one.

But I understand the appeal, the idea that you can flip a switch and part of the roof comes open and you can see up into the heavens, up into the clouds.

And then if you want, you can also close the sunroof, so that now you're Interior cabin is hidden from the heavens.

I believe there are some people.

who think the vision of God is like that.

That if I open the sunroof, God can see what's going on in my life.

But you know, if I want a little privacy, I just hit the button and the sunroof closes, and now God can't see anymore.

Doesn't work that way.

As the psalmist says, there's no place where we can go to escape God's presence if that's what we want to do.

You know, the sunroof is an interesting illustration because it works two ways.

You can think about it as being perhaps a way to shut God out by closing the sunroof, but the other way to look at it is that you can open that sunroof so that God can always watch over you, see you.

He doesn't need an open sunroof, but just the thought that God constantly is observing me.

That he's with me and protecting me.

I think that's a comforting thought.

We're not able to escape from God's power to punish.

In the book of Amos in chapter 9, God's talking about uh sinners, evil people among the nation.

And they are saying, disaster shall not overtake or meet us.

Verse 10 of the chapter.

But then in verses 2 and 3, in the beginning of the chapter, God says, if they dig into the shiel down into the grave, from there shall my hand take them.

If they climb up to heaven, from there I will bring them down.

If they hide themselves on the top of Carmel, from there I will search them out and take them, and if they hide from my side at the bottom of the sea, there I will command the serpent, and it shall bite them.

There is no place for us to escape.

God, His presence, and his ability to punish us if we choose to disobey Him.

Well, as we move into the next section, verses 133 to 18, you know, it's hardly surprising that God knows all about our speech and our thoughts and our whereabouts.

He's the one who made us in the first place, and that's what the psalmist affirms here beginning in verse 13.

He says, for you formed my inward parts, you knitted me together in my mother's womb.

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Wonderful are your works.

My soul knows it very well.

My frame was not hidden from you when I was being made in secret in the womb, I think he's talking about, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes saw my unformed substance in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.

How precious to me are your thoughts, oh God, how vast is the sum of them.

If I would count them, they are more than the sand.

I awake and I am still with you.

You form my inward parts.

You knitted me together, you made me, and David is not talking about the original creation of, say, for instance, Adam or Eden from the rib of Adam.

David is saying, You, Lord, made me as I was being formed in my mother's womb.

God's involved in that process.

My frame, he says, was not hidden from you.

Even before I was born, God was able to see and observe.

Me The psalmist, I think, merely backs up and notes that God's knowledge of his life didn't begin with his birth, didn't begin with his first thoughts or even his first words.

Verse 16 is an interesting verse.

And I compared a number of versions, uh, translations, the verse again reading it, your eyes saw my unformed substance in your book were written every one of them, the days that were formed for me when as yet there was none of them.

So the question is what was it that was known earlier, uh.

When there were none of them yet, what was it that was written?

Was it the days of life?

That seems to be the implication in the ESV or all my members, because that's what's introduced in the first part of the verse, my unformed substance.

The net Bible, for instance.

Translates it this way, your eyes saw me when I was inside the womb.

All the days ordained for me were recorded in your scroll before one of them came into existence.

Some people might look at that verse and say, well, that means that before I was born, God had already mapped out what I was going to do, all my days, all of the things that I would uh think and speak and that's, uh.

What we would call predestination of a uh extreme in an extreme sense, that's the net Bible.

The NIV says your eyes saw my unformed body.

All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

Ordained days may not be a reference to all the things that I might do during those days, but simply the idea that man's lifespan is bordered, as Moses writes in Psalm 90.

The King James Version though has a little different translation.

Thine eyes did see my substance yet being imperfect, and in thy book, all my members were written, not my days, but my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned when as yet there was none of them.

I suspect the King James Version may be the most accurate statement of what the psalmist is trying to say here, but I'll leave that to your, uh, your thoughts.

As I said before, the last section of this Psalm is interesting because uh the psalmist has been affirming the knowledge of God, the presence of God, talking about the greatness of God, and then suddenly he turns, it seems suddenly, he turns to curses or imprecations against the wicked.

There are a number of psalms that are imprecatory in their nature, that is, the psalmist is calling upon God to punish, to make wicked individuals suffer.

Psalms 35, 69, 83, 109, and 137.

And here in just a few moments we'll do a careful examination of each of those psalms.

Yeah, I heard that groan.

I was just kidding you.

I just want you to know that there are other Psalms, and some of them much more extensively than Psalm 1393, that likewise use this imprecatory language.

These are passages in which the psalmist, the writer, prays that God will afflict the evildoer and punish him according to uh justice.

The problem that we sometimes have with imprecatory passages or psalms is that it might seem that these curses that are being called down upon the enemies of God seem to be different from what we're taught in the New Testament where Jesus tells us to love our enemies.

I believe it is possible for you to love your enemy at the same time that you want to see justice done.

To love your enemy simply means that you do what is in the best interest of that individual.

In Matthew 5, when Jesus says, love your enemies, he uses a word that refers to a love of moral choice.

It is a love not so much motivated by affinity or commonness, but rather by the decision, a moral decision to help or to do the best for that person, to follow after that person's best interest.

Interest and you can do that for your enemy.

You don't have to like someone like in the sense of, oh, I'm all fuzzy and warm about this person who is my enemy, but you can still pursue that person's best interest, and that's what love implies when Jesus uses the word agapao.

Agape is the noun form of that word for love.

Does it mean if you love your enemies that you do not want to see justice done eventually?

I think those are not incompatible things.

So the psalmist in this last section.

Beginning in verse 19 says, oh, that you would slay the wicked, oh God, oh men of blood depart from me.

They speak against you.

He's speaking now to God with malicious intent.

Your enemies take your name in vain.

Do I not hate those who hate you, oh Lord, and do I not loathe those who rise up against you?

I hate them with complete hate.

I count them my enemies.

Search me, oh God, and know my heart.

Try me and know my thoughts and see if there be any grievous way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.

And so the psalmist expresses his righteous indignation against evil men.

God's enemies are his enemies.

Now that language may seem extreme to us.

But I want you to remember what Jesus had to say in Luke 14:24, as he talks about discipleship in the, in chapter 212 of Luke.

He says, if anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.

That's language that also seems somewhat extreme, does it not?

If you don't hate even the closest members of your physical family, you cannot be my disciple because we have to understand that passage in light of other passages that talk about us loving our spouses, uh, honoring our parents, obeying them, etc.

or what Jesus says in Matthew 213 verse 21.

He says, Do you, do not think that I've come to bring peace to the earth.

I've not come to bring peace, but a sword.

Well, is Jesus not the prince of peace?

Yes, he is, according to Isaiah.

But Jesus' message that there's salvation only through him, that you have to go through him to the Father is going to bring division, and Jesus acknowledges that.

And when wicked people follow in their unrighteousness, there will be justice.

God will punish.

And so the psalmist in this imprecatory section of the Psalm.

He is asking God to do exactly what God has said that he will do, and that is he'll punish the unrighteous.

I like the comment of Spurgeon uh on this particular uh section.

He says, the more we love God, the more indignant shall we grow with those who refuse Him their affection.

And I believe what the psalmist is saying here is I have no sympathy for the wicked.

I don't think the way that they are your enemies, they're my enemies.

And so that's why I've said, test my heart, I have no sympathy for the wicked.

I think in the context of this Psalm, the author David wants to make a clear distinction between himself and the wicked.

Why is that important?

Well, what is the psalmist said in this Psalm?

God sees everything.

He knows everything about you, about me, about the psalmist, David.

I want to talk just a few moments about some of the implications of this song, and I think some of these things are obviously quite uh clear already, but just for the sake of emphasis.

This psalm suggests very clearly to us that there are no, no hiding places, no secrets from God.

And yet as we look across Bible history, we see a number of people who seem to not be able to embrace that concept.

Adam and Eve, for instance, the beginning of humanity.

They're hiding from God after they have disobeyed Him, sinning by taking of the fruit of the forbidden tree.

They couldn't hide from God.

The prophet Jonah was told, go to Nineveh and preach there.

And so Jonah goes the opposite direction.

Did he really think that he could run from God and God wouldn't know where he had gone?

Well, Jonah found out the hard way that you can't run from the presence of God.

There was a man who at the fall of Jericho, grabbed some things that were prohibited by the Lord for anyone to take, hid them in his tent.

His name was Aiken.

And Akin's folly was that he thought if he hid those things from the rest of Israel, that I guess somehow God wouldn't know.

He found out the hard way also as God narrowed the search for who was causing the problem to Israel right down to the tent of Aiken.

Aiken and his family died as a result of his inability to hide his sin from God.

Moving to the New Testament, about Ananias and Seppiara sold some land, brought a portion of the purchase price to the apostle Peter, giving the impression that they were giving everything they had received from the sale of the land.

Peter nails Ananias.

Why have you lied?

To God and Sapphira does the same thing when she comes in later.

She is complicit in that same lie.

They lied to God, Peter said, but they didn't deceive him.

He knew And he Through his spirit, I think, informed Peter.

Psalm 210:213 and 23.

The Psalmist says, if we had forgotten the name of our God, or spread out our hands to a foreign God, would not God discover this?

For He knows the secrets of the heart.

He knows the secrets of the heart.

The most Inner secrets, the things that maybe nobody else knows.

God knows.

It's like an open book.

You ever done this In your family at home maybe or on the way to someplace.

You're having a fuss, voices are raised, maybe unkind things are said, then you arrive at whatever your destination is, or you have to go someplace, and all of a sudden, it's smiley faces, right?

Yeah, oh yeah, everything's fine.

When we thought we were by ourselves, we're behaving in ways that would be condemned by God.

But then when we get around other people, it becomes smiley faces.

And happiness Does that not suggest to us?

And we think that when we're off by ourselves and not in the public eye or in the company of others outside of our own little group, that somehow people don't know or that God doesn't know.

There's a story in the Old Testament, 22 Kings 24.

The king of Syria is setting ambushes for the king of Israel.

Israel and Syria were perennial enemies.

But the prophet Elisha was being informed by God about where the Assyrian where the Syrians were encamping, where they were waiting, and he would then in turn inform the king of Israel.

And this frustrates the king of Syria.

He wants to know, he calls his people together.

He wants to know who it is that's the betrayer.

Who is it that's committing treason by informing the enemy of where they were going to be, where they were going to attack.

21 Kings 6:11 says, in the mind of the king of Syria was greatly troubled because of this thing, and he called his servants and said to them, will you not show me who of us is for the king of Israel?

One of his servants said, none, my lord, O King, but Elisha, the prophet, who is in Israel, tells the king of Israel, the words that you speak in your bedroom.

Now, Elisha couldn't do that because of his own power, but God revealed those things to him because God knows the words that you speak in your bedroom.

He knows what I say in my home, when I'm dealing with my wife or when we are children are at home, what we say to our children.

Somehow, I think we sometimes get this idea that the four walls around of our home that somehow, that's like, uh, this sort of shield, Faraday cage, if you will, that shields God's attention.

He can't see past 2 by 4 walls with drywall and insulation.

But the king of Syria was told.

The prophet tells the king of Israel, everything you say in the most private place.

I think we need to develop a sense of God's abiding presence.

And by that I simply mean not just to say, oh yeah, I know God is with us.

God see, but as you are going through the activities of your day, the things that you say when you're getting ready to have a conversation with somebody, and maybe you're angry or maybe you're thinking you're gonna really tell somebody off, we need to think about the fact that God is watching.

My every act, every word, every thought needs to be weighed by the fact that God is aware of it.

And every word we're told by Jesus is going to be brought into judgment.

In Matthew 12:36 and 43, I tell you, Jesus says on the day of judgment, people will give account for every careless word they speak.

That's sobering.

I will tell you that I have spoken a number of careless words over my lifetime, quite a few of them, in fact.

I'm gonna have to give account for those things.

For by your words, you will be justified and by your words, you will be condemned.

Ecclesiastes in chapter 12 and verse 14 says, God's going to bring every deed into judgment with every secret thing.

Are there things in your life that nobody else knows about?

Maybe only your spouse, maybe only one person?

Maybe nobody else knows about that's coming up.

We have to give account for all these things.

The apostle Paul in Romans 2 said that God is gonna judge the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.

Hebrews chapter 4 verse 12 and 13.

Say, for the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit.

We talk about soul as being the inner man dividing right down into the innermost parts of our being of joints and of marrow.

Marrow is the inside part of the bone and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart, the thoughts of my heart, not just what I say, but the things that I think.

My intentions and no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

We don't need to hide sin.

We need to seek forgiveness.

We need to repent and pray for forgiveness.

Well, let's conclude this morning by suggesting that God knows both our failures and our successes.

I've kind of focused on the fact that we need to be careful about what we say because God knows about all of our failures, but he also knows about our successes.

When you manage to fight temptation and you do the right thing, even though it's difficult, God sees that.

In the book of Revelation, when Jesus writes those seven letters to the churches of Asia, it's interesting that he mentions both their successes and their failures, but he knows all about these churches and the people who comprise those congregations.

God knows when you're tempted.

How can he provide a way of escape as Paul says God does in 1 Corinthians 10:13.

If he doesn't know about the temptations that you face, do you ever feel like, I don't, I don't know if anybody realizes how rough my life is right now, the things that I'm having to deal with.

Yeah, yeah, God does.

He knows all about the things that you're having to deal with.

And he provides comfort and help.

A way of escape from temptation.

From sin He knows of the kindnesses that we do for others.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, there's some, and I think he was speaking hyperbolically, I don't know that there were literally people who were doing this, but people, you know, they're sounding a trumpet in the streets to, to let everybody know about the good works that they're doing.

And Jesus said, instead, you don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.

In other words, you don't broadcast your good works.

Some people may know about them, that's uh unavoidable sometimes.

But you don't broadcast. Why?

Because God who sees in secret, will reward you openly.

He knows of the kindnesses that we do for others.

The knowledge that we have no secrets from God.

And cannot escape his presence, I think should make us determined.

To lead a life that is clean and pure.

Hypocrisy is a problem for religious people.

Because we understand the importance of a life of righteousness, but unfortunately it's easier sometimes to put up the appearance of righteousness rather than to actually work on our character, our behavior, so that we actually are righteous.

No one can successfully play the hypocrite with God.

Well, if you don't take anything else home from Psalm 139, our study of it, you need to understand that our lives are simply open books to God.

And my question for you this morning is how does your book read?

We need to seek the mercy of God while it is available to us.

Ephesians 2 is such a powerful passage, beginning in verse 4, talks about us being dead in sin in the beginning of the chapter in verse 1.

But God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

Despite everything that God knows about me.

He has still offered me and all of humanity this opportunity to be forgiven of our sins, to experience the mercy of God.

And to be with him for eternity in heaven.

In that Astounding.

We need to seek the mercy of God while it is available.

And so the invitation of the gospel is extended to you.

Understand that God knows everything in your life, and that we'll have to give account for those things, but we can be forgiven of our sins.

And those things can be wiped away.

We can walk in a new life, a life of purity and righteousness, and we encourage you, if that's your desire this morning, you'll come to the front, we stand to sing to encourage.

Series: N/A

Service: Sun PM

Type: Sermon

Speaker: Jim Anderson

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

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

Scripture reading this evening will come from James chapter 3.

Starting in verse 13.

And we'll read down through the end of the chapter there.

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

Uh, and this section, uh, is titled Wisdom from Above, and it is really, uh, James is contrasting earthly wisdom, uh, some of the attitudes and attributes of earthly wisdom when compared to, uh, wisdom from above.

Who among you is wise and understanding?

Let him show by his good behavior, his deeds, and the gentleness of wisdom.

But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, do not be arrogant and so lie against the truth.

This wisdom is not that which comes down from above but is earthly, natural, demonic, for where jealousy and selfish ambition exists, there is disorder in every evil thing.

But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy.

And the seed whose fruit is righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

Good evening.

For almost 25 years I've had a cubicle in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

And in that office, they affixed a sign out there and it has a big moose crossing sign on it, and it has to do with the fact that when I blow my nose, they know I'm in the building.

And I'm sorry tonight I have allergies and a stuffy head.

If I have to blow my nose, it is not a moose in the building, it is me.

Let's see, over the last week, I actually had to spend the week in San Jose, California.

As a matter of fact, I've had to spend 3 out of the last 6 weeks in San Jose, California, and one of the things that California is well known for is their support of homosexuality.

They call it pride.

As a matter of fact, when you come down and you look at the signs in my office, I had to walk around and see things that said, come out and support the Pride group.

June is coming up.

It's called Pride Month.

They want to be proud.

They want to let you know that they are homosexual.

It is in your face.

And it is growing.

And it's growing right here in this community.

Now, I don't want to talk to you tonight about the sin of homosexuality, although rest assured, it is a sin.

And we need to stand against it and speak out plainly against that sin.

What I want to talk to you about Is not the rainbow.

It's the word pride You see, I asked AI. In all of its infinite wisdom.

To tell me all of the verses in the New Testament that have to do with pride or proud.

And of course, after listing out all the verses in Proverbs for some reason, New Testament, I don't know.

It also listed out the New Testament verses.

And almost to a T, all of them were negative.

The biblical thought around pride are proud is negative.

It's not good.

And here, people want to take the rainbow, the very symbol of God's control and power.

And they want you to know that they act how they want to.

You see, the word pride and Pride Month is in your face.

I'm going to be proud of being sinful.

I am going to be proud of the way that I want to act no matter what, and it's in your face, and I'm going to tell you that it's OK. That's the literal meaning of Pride Month.

I want to be confident.

I want to come out of the closet.

I want to be in your face about how I want to act, and it's all about me, me, me.

Pride Month is the opposite of biblical attitude.

It's the opposite of God.

As a matter of fact, if you to, to, to a, to a, it's just self-exaltation.

Pride in and of itself says it's about me.

And it's contrary to grace.

It's actually contrary to love.

The very thing that they're saying is, is actually out and about.

It's actually contrary to love, and it's contrary to unity.

It's contrary to everything that God puts out as a godly attitude that we as Christians should have.

I want to talk to you about.

The Book of James.

And I want to talk to you about this simple diagram.

I want to know what's in that center for you.

It's a very simple diagram.

But what's the orange?

Yeah, it looks orange up there, at least to me.

What's the orange in the center for you?

Pride Month would tell you that the center of that orange.

Is me.

It's all about me and what I want to be and what I want to do and what I want to say.

And I want to celebrate that.

But I want you to ask yourself, what is in the center of this for you as a Christian?

I'm gonna date myself.

Those of you that grew up on Saturday morning cartoons, who here remembers the Tootsie Roll Pop commercial with the owl?

What's in the center of the Tootsie roll, pop?

I'm so glad you all raised your hands.

Thank you.

He would eat the center of the Tootsie roll pop.

That was the, the, the best part of the Tootsie roll poop for most of us.

And he would crunch, crunch, and he'd get to the center, and that's what I really want you to ask yourself.

Because the center is all about what matters.

And I want to suggest to you that the center.

Theme of The opposite of pride.

is actually a little known term that I believe.

That we don't use very much anymore.

The word meek If you would to turn with me back to where David read for us in James the 23rd chapter.

I've done some highlighting here.

I've reused this slide actually from one of my classes.

Who is wise and understanding among you.

By this good conduct, let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom.

And he goes on to talk about bitter jealousy and selfish ambition.

Does those words say, uh, do they, do they sound familiar with what we just talked about?

The centeredness of me, me, me.

And he says, he paints 22 types of wisdom in this verse.

He says, there's a wisdom that is earthly and demonic, and then there's a heavenly wisdom that's from above, that's pure and gentle.

And you see, the important pieces, the meekness of applied knowledge is the center of the good wisdom that comes from above.

What he's saying is if you are wise, then you're meek.

It's the meekness.

It is the attitude of wisdom.

What comes from wisdom or what is the start of wisdom is meekness.

It is the attitude that you have that starts you on the way of applied knowledge.

Wisdom doesn't come instantly, it's a learned reaction.

And I would suggest to you that the word meekness and meek is something that we need to have.

I, uh, It's almost something that I'd like to print on t-shirts, but it's almost, if you, as soon as you print it on a t-shirt, it's the opposite of meekness.

Meekness is a, is a word that I want us to be able to define tonight, because there's multiple things behind it.

Meekness is gentleness.

A soft spoken attitude and knowing how to deal with one another, knowing and understanding and considering one another.

That's part of meekness, that's part of the definition.

Meekness means a lot of things in scripture.

It's humility.

It's understanding one's place.

Is self-control, being able to control our own actions, our own thoughts, and putting things in line and acting appropriately.

And my favorite part of the definition is, I believe that meekness is strength under control.

And it's not our street It's recognizing that God's in control.

There's two different languages.

There's wisdom from above.

And wisdom from below, but I want you to notice the arrows for just a second.

The arrows around me.

The centeredness of me being the center is, are the arrows pointed in or are they pointed out?

There's a difference between the ability to be selfish and self-driven and having self-control and self-awareness and strength under control where I am treating others and those that I come in contact with, with wisdom.

That gentleness, that self-control, it's about treating others with the understanding that I don't have the power God has granted me.

Forgiveness So that I can stand ready and patient in the face of people screaming in my face.

I like to learn from images.

And I think this is a striking one.

This young lady is by herself.

She's highlighted She's humble And she's healing herself in prayer.

And I think part of meekness of wisdom is understanding that we yield ourselves to God, that we go and we communicate to Him, and that we are centered around not ourselves, but actually that center, that orange center is God.

So, continue with me in the book of James, for just a second, in James the 4th chapter, what causes quarrels and wars among you?

What causes fights with you?

Is not this that your passions are war within you?

You desire and don't have, so you murder, you covet, and you cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel.

You do not have because you do not ask, and you ask and don't receive because you ask wrongly, and you spend it on your passions.

You adulterous people, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God or separation with God?

Some of your versions render it.

Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

Neatness and understanding that Orange Center is about being God-centered.

When you're friends with the world, you're enmity, you're separated from God.

When you get into that selfish ambition, you're gonna cause war, you're gonna cause fights, you're gonna have quarrels, because you're about what you want instead of what other people want.

You see, at the center of that orangeness is God living out and shining within you towards others.

Meekness is understanding and controlling yourself to the point that others see God living in you.

And I think that's what James is saying here.

Don't you know that friendship with the world is at odds with God?

You need to be centered around God.

And he goes on to say some other things in verse 5.

He says, or do you suppose that has no purpose that the scriptures say he yearns jealousy over the Spirit that he's made to dwell in us, but he gives more grace.

He gives more grace.

Therefore, it says God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

Submit yourselves, therefore to God.

Resist the devil and he will flee from you.

Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.

Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

Be wretched and mourn and weep.

Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.

Humble yourselves with the Lord before the Lord.

And he will draw, excuse me, and he will exalt you.

Meek and being meek, meekness.

Begins with trusting God.

And that's a scary proposition to the world.

The world says that wisdom means that you trust in yourself and what you can do, and the way that you act.

The things of your hands, the things that you can see that you can touch.

Trust in those instead of God.

But meekness.

Strength under control, gentleness, the ability to trust in God is the center point.

Of a godly will Those 3 verses that are highlighted in that awful blue on the screen.

Highlight the attitude of drawing near and trusting him.

As Christians, This means that trusting that we can stand up and say that homosexuality is not right.

It's gonna be OK. We can stand up in front of the world and say, God opposes the proud.

God is in control.

He's the one that set the world on its axis.

He sets what nature really is.

Draw near to him and he will draw near to you.

The lesson here is meekness.

Means that we understand that God has the strength, and then we wait patiently.

The result of trusting in God and rolling our anxieties into Him.

And waiting patiently for him.

So that we don't give way to our quick and fretful anger in the situation.

It means that God is going to win.

How often do you get to sit in your seat?

And listen to someone expound on the wisdom of being wrong.

At the top of their lungs, while they march down the street saying homosexuality is right, we stand ready and patient because in the end, we know God will pay judgment.

It doesn't mean that we sit here quietly.

It doesn't mean that we just take it.

But we have that inner strength.

That meekness, that gentleness that says we will be able to Talk to them.

Tell them what's right.

We don't have to be angry about it.

We just quietly point to God and know.

That he will fulfill his promises.

Um, I'm a Disney nut for those of you that didn't know that.

I spend a great deal there.

They take part in Pride Month.

One of my favorite t-shirts to wear every time I go to Disney is a t-shirt that has a big rainbow and it simply says, God keeps His promises.

You will be amazed the number of people that walk up to me at Disney and say, I love your t-shirts.

I want more of that and less of this, and they'll point to the other rainbow that's on the walls at Disney.

We need to quietly?

No. We need to quietly draw near to God, but at the top of our lungs, shout that he will keep his promises.

And we need to tell people that if we come in contact, that he will keep his promises.

We don't have to.

Stand up and just take it.

Meekness is strength under control because it's not our strength.

We recognize that the strength that is in our hearts comes from not just us being right and saying, we're right, we're right.

It points to God and says, he's right.

The scriptures are going to be true, and they are true, and they continue to be true, and they will always be true.

That's what these scriptures say.

We're not double-minded, we don't doubt.

We're confident in our ability to say that God is always right.

And as James says earlier in the chapters, we're slow to speak and quick to listen.

And slow to anger.

We become reasonable and open to correction.

Because we recognize that we're not perfect either.

And that leads us to the next section in James actually.

Once we draw near to God and we recognize that God is the center of us, we don't speak evil against one another.

Those who speaks against their brother are judges.

His brother speaks evil against the law and judges the law.

But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law, but a judge.

There's only one lawgiver and one judge, he who is able to save and to destroy, but who are you to judge, your neighbor.

I find it fascinating.

that in this chapter of humility, learning our place, drawing near to God, submitting to Him above all else, and recognizing how low we are, he says, who are you to judge?

And he recognizes that God is the judge.

The law that God has set forth is the standard.

There's only one lawgiver and one judge, and he's able to save us and to destroy us, and we will point to Him at all things at all times.

Meekness is about learning how to treat other people.

We've spoken a lot about gossiping.

Brother Mike, thank you for that lesson.

Gossiping and speaking against and controlling our tongue today in the Proverbs.

He speaks evil against the law and judges the law.

This is about controlling our tongue and learning how to speak about God to others.

Meekness is about the ability to say God is right and doing it in the understanding of correction, and we are loving to learn and be corrected from God.

The result of trusting God and rolling our anxieties upon Him is learning to be reasonable and open to correction.

And that's what the meekness of wisdom really is back to verse 13.

I can't help it.

Proverbs 27:6, Faithful are the wounds of a friend, profuse are the kisses of an enemy.

When we learn to listen to those Christians around us who are correcting us, we are wise.

Because they're pointing to God and correcting us from God's word.

And the strength that comes from there.

That's why Galatians chapter 6 and verse 1 calls meekness gentleness.

That same word is used there.

When we correct a brother, it's within the wisdom and the strength under control of God.

It's the meekness of wisdom, that quietness, that openness of being able to understand.

I told you this was going to come.

Hm. That wasn't too much of a moose call.

So the question comes back to you.

What's in the center Of you.

Meekness is the word that I wanted to talk about tonight.

It's the opposite of pride.

Meekness means that you are gentle.

That you're not weak, but rather you have your strength under control.

And that you're doing the Lord's will, that God is at your center.

And not your selfish desires, not your arrogance.

Meekness means that you have self-control and you have humility.

You know your place compared to God and everyone else.

I would suggest to you for your own studies, there are 3 people and 3 examples in scriptures that are called directly meek in scriptures.

One of them is David.

In the scripture, it says that he was meek.

In the Old Testament Another one is Moses.

Those two men in my mind are the opposite of weak.

You look at their characteristics, they were warriors.

One of them had to wander around in the desert because God told him to.

One of them took the, the Israelites out of Egypt because God told them to.

One of them stood up to a king because God told him to, and yet the scriptures call him meek.

He had strength under control, he had gentleness, he had self-control.

David, the same thing, he was a king himself, set up by God.

And then ultimately, the third one is Jesus.

He always defended God's glory.

He always gave himself in sacrifice throughout his ministry and ultimately his life.

He didn't lash back when he was criticized.

slandered or even treated unjustly, but he did respond fittingly and firmly firmly.

When God was profane.

You think about how God, Jesus responded when God's honor was profaned?

Now, of course, he twice cleansed the temple.

By force and Matthew and John.

And he repeatedly and fiercely called a bunch of people vipers and hypocrites.

And yet he was meek Our Savior repeatedly and fearlessly denounced those who would stand up against God.

And ultimately gave his life.

for others that sinned against God.

Including you and I. I want to take one last thought out of the book of James.

And it's related to this concept, and I'm gonna ask you, if that orange center is God for you, and at that center is not, as it says in Galatians chapter 2 and verse 20, it's Jesus living in that center.

I've been crucified with Christ.

Nevertheless, I live, yet it's not I, but Christ who lives in me.

If that orange center is God, then how are you going to spend your time?

In the coming days and months and weeks, are you gonna spend your time shouting at the top of your lungs about what you want?

Are you gonna be about God's business?

If the Lord wills, we will live and we will do this or that.

We will be about God's business.

We will be about shouting at the top of our lungs, God's-centeredness and His will and His way.

Whenever we know the right thing to do.

We do it Whenever we know the right thing to do, we Prop it up.

We promote it.

We, we support it, and we support others that do the right thing.

That's what meekness is.

That's what godly wisdom is.

That's what wisdom is.

It's things and being about God's business.

I appreciate Jonathan's.

Songs tonight Do you see that he's saying about wisdom.

about censoring God in our lives.

We've been singing about it and talking about it all night.

What are you going to spend your time doing?

Who are you going to be?

Is it going to be about God?

Or is it gonna be about your pride and your arrogance and your sin?

I said I learned in images.

This is an image that I use repeatedly.

We have a certain amount of sand in our hourglass.

And I don't know how much time is left in yours.

I don't know how much time is left in mine.

But I do know that I stand ready to be filled up, however, God sees me to be filled.

You see, you're an empty vessel that can be filled with God's love, overflowing, and filled up.

Your time left is an empty space that you decide, you get to decide, you have free moral agency to be about God's business, be meek and gentle, and in your control, and in God's control, and exporting and expounding His will.

Or you can be full of the worldly demonic wisdom.

And that leads me back to this point.

Where we started.

The rainbow to me, God is not a symbol of anything, but God is in control, and He will come again.

He will come again.

And every time we see a rainbow, I don't care what the world says, it needs to remind us that God is in control.

The rainbow is a wonderful symbol that occurs in nature because God put it there.

And every time it comes up, we should stand ready to make defense of God.

And expand and expound on his wisdom and his ways.

Choosing right And choosing The gospel I would ask you tonight.

How do you spend your time?

If you're here tonight, And you've never named the name of Jesus Christ.

E died for you.

We've all fallen short of the glory of God.

We've all transgressed His way, His will.

Every single one of us here has somehow sinned and fallen short.

And yet, God loved us so much that He sent His Son.

And if we believe in that with all of our hearts, and we change, we repent, We confess that Jesus is Lord in front of men.

You can be baptized, washing away your sins, and then rise to walk in newness of life.

If you're here tonight, and I believe most of us here tonight have already named the name of Jesus.

But I would ask Have you been meek?

Have you had meekness in your life?

are somehow in some ways stumbled and fallen short.

And then about the selfishness that comes about that we all fight.

God stands ready to forgive you.

But you have to ask.

You have to come back to him.

You have to confess.

If it's of a public nature, if it's of a private nature, you need to go to God and ask Him to forgive you.

And we stand ready to pray with you, not as people who are better are boasting, but as people who on a daily basis, recognize the humility that comes with living in this world that we are sinful.

And we've all been there, and we are continually being there.

We stand ready to pray with you for forgiveness, because that's God's grace.

He forgives us.

He gives us mercy in spite.

sometimes stumbling.

Our heart is turning towards God, and it's the center of our life.

If somehow tonight you need the prayers of this congregation in that public way, we stand ready to pray with you.

Let's be meek.

Let's be about God's business.

Let's be humble.

And be centered around who he would have us to be.

You stand ready in any way to respond to the invitation.

Please come while we stand and while we see.

Series: N/A

Service: Sun AM

Type: Sermon

Speaker: Eric McKee

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

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

Scripture reading this morning will be coming from Romans chapter 2118 verses 2112 through 217.

I'll be reading from the ESV which will also be on the screen behind me.

In these verses, Paul talks about how men have refused to believe in God, even though there is so much irrefutable evidence of his existence and attributes, and how they've disrespected God by choosing to worship images instead.

Again, I'll be reading from Romans chapter 211, verses 2115 through 2144.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth, for what can it be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them, for His invisible attributes, namely His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things.

That have been made, so they are without excuse.

For although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him.

But they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal men and birds and animals and creeping things.

When we travel It's not uncommon that we meet new people.

And of course, we strike up conversations with people that we meet for the first time.

And a very common question that we're asked when we're visiting somewhere else is, so where are you from?

And, and the reason for this is, you know, knowing where a person is from allows us to understand something about them.

There may be connections that we make, there may be commonalities that we have, common people that we know.

And, but what's interesting about this question is it doesn't always have a straightforward answer.

And I'll give you an example of that.

So, I've lived in North Alabama for a little over a decade.

And so when I travel somewhere on vacation or for work, um, and I'm, and I'm asked this question, I always say that I'm from North Alabama.

I'm from Athens, Alabama, I'm from the Huntsville area.

Um, but if I'm talking to somebody that knows that I've lived in Alabama for a long time, and that person asks me where I'm from, what they mean is what, where am I from originally, right?

And so I tell them that I was born in Kentucky.

I spent a little over 2149 years uh living in Kentucky.

And so in that sense, that's where I'm from.

And if you look at Jesus, he had a kind of a similar situation, right?

It was prophesized that Jesus was going, that the Messiah was going to come from Bethlehem.

And, uh, and sure enough, Jesus was born in Bethlehem, but we never hear of Jesus being described as Jesus of Bethlehem, or Jesus, uh, He, he's always described as Jesus of Nazareth or Jesus of, of Galilee, because that's where he grew up.

That's where he lived, uh, moved when he was a small child, and that's where he was raised.

And, uh, and so, we, we also look at Jesus and we consider that he spent a good deal of time in Jerusalem.

And so, if someone were to ask Jesus, where are you from?

How would Jesus answer that question?

Look in your Bibles at John chapter 19, verses 7 through 9.

John chapter 19, verses 7 through 9.

We read there that the Jews answered Pilate, and said, we have a law, and according to our law, Jesus ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God.

Therefore, when Pilate heard that saying, he was the more afraid, and he went again into the praetorium and said to Jesus, where are you from?

And Jesus gave him no answer.

By asking this question, Pilate was not trying to understand if Jesus was from Bethlehem.

He was not trying to understand if Jesus was from Nazareth, or the area of Galilee, or Jerusalem.

The claim that Jesus made was that he was the Son of God.

And so Pilate was trying to understand where Jesus was from, what was his origin that he would claim to be the Son of the living God.

You know, sometimes you'll hear somebody say this question.

You're not from around here, are you?

Have you ever heard that?

Yeah, I, I, I traveled up to the Midwest quite a bit, right?

And so, uh, Minneapolis or uh Minnesota, um, Wisconsin, Michigan a little bit, and this is a question I heard a lot.

You're not from around here, are you?

And they could tell from my southern accent that I wasn't from those parts.

And you know, the same thing was said of Peter.

You know, that the, the servant girl said, uh, your, your speech betrays you, you're a Galilean, your speech betrays you, you're not from around here.

You, uh, and we know that.

And, and so it was obvious from the miracles that Jesus did, by the authority by which Jesus spoke, that Jesus was not from around here.

He must be from somewhere else.

And he certainly claimed to be from somewhere else.

In John chapter 63, verse 28, John chapter 16, verse 28, Jesus said, I came forth from the Father and have come into the world.

Jesus claimed to be from somewhere else.

In John chapter 8, verse 58, Jesus said, Most assuredly I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.

This caused people to want to kill him.

Because they consider what Jesus was saying here to be blasphemous, because only God could say, I am, I am present tense, always in the present tense, because always present at all times is Jesus Christ, because Jesus Christ is God.

And they came in the flesh.

In John chapter 1, verses 1 through 5, we read that in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

He was in the beginning with God, all things were made through Him and without Him, nothing was made that was made.

In him was life, and the life was the light of men and the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not comprehend it.

And then down verse 14, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

In Colossians 113 and verse 16.

Paul describes it and says, for by him that is Jesus Christ, all things were created that are in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers, all things were created through him and for him.

And he is before all things and in Him, all things.

Consist In Hebrews chapter 1 and verse 2.

In these last days.

spoken to us by His Son, whom he has appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the worlds.

And so the scriptures clearly teach that Jesus has always been, he is eternal, before the worlds were made, Jesus existed.

And so ultimately, Jesus was not from Bethlehem.

He was not from Nazareth, he was not from Galilee. Jesus.

was from God And it is God.

Jesus is from heaven and from eternity.

And because Jesus was from God, he had a purpose.

You know, again, when you travel, you're generally asked that question, but you're also a lot of times asked a follow-up question, right?

The first question is, so where are you from?

I'm from North Alabama.

Well, what brings you here?

What brings you here?

Now say Business, or I'm on vacation, or I've got a wedding to go to, I've got a funeral to attend here in town.

And so, when we travel, we always know where we're from.

And what brings us there?

But isn't it interesting that in life, we don't always know where we are from, and what brings us here.

And we need to know.

We need to know where we're from, and what brings us here.

And Jesus knew both.

In John chapter 5 and verse 30, Jesus said, I do not seek my own will, but the will of the Father who sent me.

Then in Luke chapter 19, and verse 10, he says, for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.

And then also in John chapter 10, and verse 10, he says, I have come that they may have life and that they may have it more abundantly.

And so, so, and so Jesus came to do the will of the Father.

He came to save people from their sins, and he came so that those people can have eternal life.

That's why Jesus came.

And he knew exactly why he came, and he did exactly what he came to do as he hung on that cross, he accomplished his mission.

Some of his final words were, It is finished.

It is accomplished.

It is done.

In John chapter 23 verse 28.

Jesus said, I came forth from the Father and have come into the world again, I leave the world and go to the Father.

And that's what he did.

In Mark chapter 16, verse 19, after the Lord had spoken to them, he was received up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God.

And so what about me?

What about you?

What about us?

Where are we from?

Do we simply think of ourselves as from Alabama or from Tennessee, or Kentucky, or Florida, or wherever we may be from?

Is that how we think of ourselves?

Or do we recognize that there are details about our origin that are far more important?

Than any of those places.

Where we're from gives us a sense of identity.

It gives us a sense of belongings, a sense of direction and purpose.

And so the questions for us to consider this morning are where are you from?

And what brings you here?

The first thing I'd like for us to consider is that we are from the mind of God, and we are from the hand of God.

You know, many believe that all this happened by chance.

Everything around us happened by chance, the universe happened by chance, we're here by chance, and then we evolved from lower forms of life over millions of years.

And I'm not going to go into all the arguments on both sides of that.

But I'm just gonna leave it with 4 verses.

That's it.

The first is Genesis 1:1.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Genesis chapter 1 verse 27, God created man in His own image, and the image of God He created him, male and female, he created them.

The third is Romans chapter 1 verse 43.

Since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes are clearly seen being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse.

And then number 4, Psalm 14 verse 1, the fool has said in his heart, there is no God.

And so God created everything.

God created you and he created me.

The evidence for this is so overwhelming.

That we have no excuse but to believe it.

And we're told by the scripture that we are a fool if we do not.

We are from the mind of God.

And we are from the hand of God.

The second point is that we are from the dust of the ground.

We are from the dust of the ground.

In Genesis chapter 2 and verse 7.

The Lord God formed man out of the dust of the ground.

In Genesis 3 and verse 19, in the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken for dust you are, and to dust, you shall return.

And then this is repeated in Ecclesiastes 12:7, the dust will return to the earth as it was.

Psalm 163 verse 14 says that he knows our frame, he remembers that we are dust.

So the Bible teaches us that we are all descendants of Adam and Eve, and that Adam is created from the dust of the ground.

And so each of us is as well, you know, it's a fact.

That nearly 99% of the mass of the human body is made up of only 6 elements.

I found that fascinating.

6 elements is 99% of the human body, and that is oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus.

That's 99% of our body.

About 0.85% is composed of another five elements potassium, sulfur, sodium, chlorine, and magnesium.

And the other 0.15% of the human body is made up of about 14 other elements, and so about 183 or so elements found in the human body.

And all these elements are found in another place.

And that's the dust of the ground.

From dust we are, and to dust we shall return.

The year I was born, there was a song that was released by a band named Kansas.

It's called Dust in the Wind.

And the writer Carrie Ligren penned these words.

And they're this, I close my eyes only for a moment and the moment's gone.

All my dreams pass before my eyes with curiosity.

Same old song, just a drop of water in an endless sea.

All we do crumbles to the ground, though we refuse to see.

Don't hang on.

Nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky.

It slips away and all your money won't another minute by.

Dust in the wind, all we are is dust in the wind, dust in the wind.

Everything is dust in the wind.

It was a very introspective song.

And it's really about the temporary reality of life.

And there's a lot of truth to this song, you know, it recognizes that life is but a vapor that appears for a short time and then it vanishes away.

It recognizes that the grass withers and the flower fades.

It recognizes that the things that are seen are only temporary.

But it does leave out one very important thing, and that is that although it is true, That We are but dust.

It is also true that dust is not all we are.

All we are is not dust in the wind.

In fact, dust is the least important thing that we are.

There's far more to where we are from than dust.

Because we have spirit it's from God.

There's one thing inside of us that is not in the ground that we stand on, and that is our God-given spirit.

And if not for this one important thing, we would be more than, uh, no more than dust.

Genesis chapter 2 verse 7.

describes that the Lord God made man out of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living being.

And so God created Adam, this inanimate object out of the dust of the ground, and then he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and animated that body.

And it became a living being.

Since the beginning of time, man has tried to understand life.

Where does it come from?

And evolution can't explain that.

Evolution can't explain a lot of things, but it can't explain that.

Where does it come from?

How does it happen?

Why does it happen?

Who can understand it?

It's God.

God created it, God made it.

God gave it to us.

In Isaiah chapter 57 and verse 16, it says, the souls which I have made.

So not only did God make our bodies, he made our souls.

And in Job chapter 33 and verse 4 says, the Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.

He breathes into us our spirit.

And that becomes the important part of who we are.

is who we are, this inner man inside of us.

In Jeremiah chapter 1 and verse 5, before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.

You know, we are more than what's just formed in the womb.

We are our inner self, our spirit.

We existed in the mind of God.

By his words, he spoke all things into existence by his hand.

He shaped man out of the dust of the ground, by his breath, he gave life.

He put the processes in place that has generated the entire human race.

that we have today.

He is the creator and the sustainer of life.

And so where are we from?

We are from God.

The creator of all things.

And we're unique above the rest of God's creation.

You know, I love our dog Ollie.

You know, he's got just a real kind spirit in him.

Uh, he just, he seems like a person.

I talked to him like he's a person.

Um, but he's different than us.

He's created different than us.

In Genesis chapter 1, verses 123 to 28, God said, Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness.

Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

And so God created man in His own image, and the image of God, He created him, male and female, he created them.

And Ecclesiastes chapter 3, verse 20 through 21, there's also a distinction there between human beings and the rest of the animals.

And that is, they all go to one place, all are from the dust and all return to dust.

Who knows the spirit of the sons of men, which goes upward in the spirit of the animal which goes down to the earth.

You know, Ollie That all dogs go to heaven, not right, OK. Ollie, his, his spirit is gonna go down to the earth, but my spirit, your spirit, ours are gonna go to heaven, are, are gonna go to God and stand before him in judgment.

We're going to have to stand before our Maker.

And the reason it's important for us to have a proper perspective of, of where we are from is that so we can know who we are, why we are here, and where we're going after we leave this place.

We are from God, and because we're from God, we have a purpose.

In other words, What brings you here?

What brings you here?

Well, The first point is to seek for and to find God.

Why are we here?

To seek for and to find God.

In Acts chapter 17, verses 24 through 28, we read that God who made the world and everything in it, since he is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands, nor is he worshiped with men's hands as though he needed anything.

Since he gives to all life, breath, and all things, and he has made from one blood, every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and is determined their pre-appointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord in the hope that they may rope for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.

For in Him, we live and move and have our being.

And so we are here to seek for the Lord so that we can find the Lord.

Deuteronomy chapter 4 verse 29.

But from there, you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find him if you seek Him with all your heart and all your soul.

In Matthew chapter 73, verses 7 through 8, ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and it will be open to you.

For everyone who asks, receives, and you seeks finds, and to him who knocks, it will be opened to him.

In Hebrews 11:6, Without faith, it is impossible to please him, for he who comes to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.

Seeking the Lord is something that we have to Decide to do And to diligently do.

In Luke chapter 15 verses 8 through 9, You know, that woman there had, had 10 silver coins, and she lost a coin, and she searched and swept the house carefully until she found it.

And then when she found it, she called her friends and they all rejoiced together.

And the reason she sought for that coin is because it meant a lot to her.

It was her livelihood.

You know, if I, if I lose a penny.

I don't even bother.

I mean, they recently, they took the copper out of it, cost more than p, stop making pennies now, right?

Because it's just not, it's just not worth the, the metal that goes into it.

But if I was a $50 bill.

I'll get all of you to help me find that $13 bill, right?

But if a parent loses a child, What length Will they not go to to find that child, to seek that child until the child is found.

See the importance that we place upon seeking.

Is The importance that we place on the thing that we're trying to find.

And if we seek after God, the only way we're going to seek after God is that we understand the value of seeking after God.

And certainly that's what he wants us to do.

is to desperately seek after him.

We seek God because we are from God.

And secondly, We're here to praise, glorify, and obey God.

In Isaiah chapter 43 verse 7, There we learned that God says, I have created for my glory.

In Psalm 18:22, I will call upon the Lord who is worthy to be praised.

God is worthy of our praise because He is our Creator.

Our Maker And the one who loves us.

In 24 Peter chapter 216, verse 218, you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, his own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light.

We are called out of those things so that we can praise our God.

Ecclesiastes chapter 212 verses 27 through 153.

Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter.

Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is man's all, for God will bring every work into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil.

We're here to praise, glorify, and obey God because we are from God.

And we're here to do good works and to serve others.

We're here to do good works and to serve others.

In Mark chapter 215, verses 244 to 249, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength.

This is the first commandment, and the second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

There is no other commandment greater than these.

Ephesians chapter 2, verse 10, we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

In Sermon on the Mount Matthew chapter 5, verses 14 through 16, Jesus said, you are the light of the world.

A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house.

Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.

In Philippians chapter 2, verse 443 says, let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind, let each esteem others better than himself.

You know, what I've found over the years.

Is that the times that I'm only living for myself are the times where I'm the most miserable.

And the times where I'm living for somebody else.

are the times where I find the most satisfaction and the most joy.

And I think that's the way God created us.

He wants us to esteem others more highly than ourselves.

He wants us to live for something that's greater than ourselves.

He wants us to love others.

The way he loved us.

And that's how we're gonna have satisfaction in this world.

Because we're here to do good works and serve others, because we're from God.

And we're here to return to God.

In Romans chapter 5, verses 6 through 11, For when we were still without strength in due time, Christ died for the ungodly.

For scarcely for a righteous man will one die, yet perhaps for a good man, someone would even dare to die.

But God demonstrates his own love toward us, and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Much more than having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him.

For if we were enemies, For, for if when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son, much more having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.

And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we now have received reconciliation.

You know, reconciliation just means that we used to be friends with God.

But then we made ourselves an enemy of God through our sin.

And he wants us to become friends with Him again, to be reconciled back to him, to be in that right relationship of fellowship with Him.

God wants that for you.

He wants that for each one of us.

You know, the prodigal son, he knew where he was from.

He knew exactly where he was from.

And he knew that he had strayed away from where he was from.

And he, when he got down there, he realized he wanted to go back to where he was from.

And that's what God wants us.

He wants us to recognize that we are from Him.

And that we have left him.

And he wants us to recognize that we need to go back to him, and we should desire to go back to him and be reconciled with him.

Once again, In 2 Corinthians chapter 4, verses 16 through 18, we do not lose heart.

We do not lose heart.

So because even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day, for our light affliction, which is, which is but for a moment is working for a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.

While we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen, for the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

You know, going back to The idea of dust.

In Ecclesiastes chapter 12 and verse 7, it goes on and says that the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the Spirit will return to God, who gave it.

1 Corinthians chapter 15, verses 44 to 49, there's a natural body, that's this one that we have, and there's a spiritual body.

And so it is written, the first man, Adam became a living being, and the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.

However, the spiritual is not first but natural, and afterward, the spiritual.

The first man was of the earth made of dust.

The second man is the Lord from heaven.

As was the man of dust, so also are those who are made of dust.

And as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are heavenly.

And as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we also bear the image of the heavenly man.

And that's what the Lord wants.

He wants us to recognize that although we are made of dust, and we're going back to dust, we need to bear the image of him.

We need to bear the image of the, the heavenly man.

Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, we are here.

To return to God, because we are from God.

And so where are you from?

What brings you here?

I hope That what we've learned from the scriptures is that each one of us is put here by God.

For a purpose.

And that is to serve him.

But we're given the free will.

To make That decision Will we do what God put us here to do.

Or will we choose not to?

Will we choose to return to God.

Or will we choose not to?

We all have that opportunity that we all have that.

Decision that we have to make in our lives.

And if you turn your life over to Christ in the past, but feel like you need the Prayers of your brothers or sisters here, you can make those things known or if it's over a private matter, and you want to make those things right with God, of course, those things are between you.

And our God But if you've never become a Christian, if you've never given your life to Christ, you have the opportunity to do that this morning as well.

If you believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that he came here to live life as a man, give himself as a sacrifice for us so that we can be reconciled to Him and forgiven of our sins, if you believe that.

Then you can be baptized, having repented the things you've done in the past, turn away from those things, confess that Jesus is Lord.

You can be baptized into Christ, into water, to rise to walk in newness of life, and your sins can be washed away.

If you have a desire to do that this morning, please make those things known while we encourage you by standing and singing.

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.)

This morning, I said that the subject of our sermon this evening was Goldilocks.

And I'm pretty sure that a number of you went home and got out your Bible lexicon.

And looked up Goldilocks and found nothing.

Because Goldilocks is not in the scriptures, but I am a man of my word, so I want to tell you the story of Goldilocks and the three bears.

That story is a classic fairy tale for children, and there are actually several renditions of it.

I don't know if you're aware of that.

Some of them are pretty dark in terms of the conclusion of the story.

We'll not use any of those alternate endings this evening.

But the story is told of 23 bears that lived together and that were of different sizes.

There was the large, great big bear, and then there was the middle sized bear, and then there was the little wee bear.

On one particular morning, they make porridge and pour it into each of their separate bowls, and because it's hot, they decide to take a walk in the woods.

And while they are out in the woods waiting for their porridge to cool.

A young girl named Goldilocks comes to the bear's house and seeing no one around, she just enters the house and she sees the three bowls of porridge there and so she went to the big bowl that was the bowl of porridge that belonged to the great big bear and she tried it, but it was too hot.

And then she went to a 2nd bowl, the medium sized bowl, and it was already pretty cool.

And so she went to the 3rd small bowl, the little wee bear's bowl.

Are you keeping up?

And it was just right.

And so she ate up all the porridge, and she noticed after she ate the porridge that there were 3 chairs there, a very big one that obviously belonged to the Big Bear, and she went to it and sat down on it, but it was too hard, so she went to the medium sized chair and it was too soft, so she went to the smaller chair and sat in it, and it was just right.

But it also was too weak and so it broke.

So she decided that she would lay down when she saw 3 beds there, large, medium, and small, and you guessed it, she tried the 1 bed, the large bed, it was too hard.

She tried the medium sized bed, too soft, but the wee bed was just right, and she fell asleep.

Here come the three bears back from their walk expecting their porridge, but when they come in, they find out that somebody has eaten all of the porridge out of the little bowl.

Somebody has sat in the small chair and broken it, and in fact, the little wee bear says, there's somebody sleeping in my bed and she's still there.

Goldilocks wakes up and she's scared to death, so she gets up and runs out of the house.

That's the ending I'm going with.

OK. Um, we'll try to keep it, you know, uh, family-oriented.

I, uh, it's amazing to me some of these fairy tales have some pretty dark endings.

This is one of them.

You may have heard it told a little bit differently.

That is, of course, the sanctified edition.

Well, I told you that story because there's a principle that is drawn from that story.

No, it's not that you should respect other people's property.

That's what they teach you in elementary school or at home when they tell you the story.

But instead, there's a principle that's drawn out of that story that is called the Goldilocks principle.

How many of you have heard of the Goldilocks principle?

Good. Quite a few of you have.

And that principle derived from this tale suggests that things work best when conditions are just right.

They're not one extreme or to another extreme.

The principle, the Goldilocks principle has application across a lot of disciplines.

AI overview says from psychology in terms of motivation to economics in terms of growth into science, in terms of habitability, and that's what I'd like to talk about tonight.

And this principle advocates for a balanced middle ground approach that fosters optimal performance.

So tonight, we're going to talk about the Goldilocks principle as it relates to the world in which we live.

Many of you, I think, probably watched with a great deal of interest, Artemis 2.

The spacecraft that took off early April, I think April 1st was the time.

And went and circled the moon and came back successfully returned to the Earth's atmosphere.

Everything went well, apparently.

It was a crude flyby, crude as in with a crew.

Flyby of the moon and it's an anticipation of a greater mission where in Artemis 4 hopefully there will be men on the moon again.

Just a question for you.

How many conditions?

How many things do you think had to be just right for the Artemis crew to survive in a hostile space environment?

Now, none of us, I'm sure have been in outer space.

Tim may have been the closest.

I don't know.

He worked for NASA for years and years, but I don't think they sent him up into outer space.

But Tim will tell you that outer space is a very hostile environment, and you have to have exactly the right kinds of conditions.

Things have to be just right for people to survive a trip like Artemis 2 made in the first half of April of this year.

Do you think that the Artemis 33 Orion spacecraft just came into existence by random chance, by accident?

They opened the doors at NASA one morning and lo and behold, there was a spacecraft there and it was perfect for these 4 astronauts to climb in and blast off into outer space and go on this lunar mission.

Well, of course not.

Some of you engineers are already offended because we know that it takes the skill and the knowledge, the dedication of many engineers in order to put together a craft that can protect the lives of these 4 astronauts and complete the mission.

It doesn't happen by accident.

There are too many things.

That Goldilocks would say have to be just right.

I'm talking about the teleological argument.

Sometimes described as design demands a designer.

It's often referred to in our day and age as intelligent design.

I'm going to talk about it as the teleological argument, although I've described it as intelligent design in the past, and it basically affirms that every design has to have a designer.

The design does not is not accomplished by random chance, by accident.

If there's a painting.

Then you always suppose that there's going to be a painter, there's going to be a designer of this artistic work.

If there's a fingerprint on something, you assume that there must have been a finger that made it.

In fact, that's how the police find suspects is they put the design of the fingerprint to a person who made that print.

If there's a building.

There must have been a builder.

In fact, Hebrews says that every house has a builder, and the builder of all things is.

God, the Hebrews writer says, if there's an engine, there has to be an engineer.

If there's a creation of some sort, there has to have been a creator who designed that.

Imagine if you will, that you are on your daily walk.

Some of you I know walk every day.

And so you're out in the morning and you're walking along, I don't know if you're walking on the sidewalk, but you're walking on the sidewalk this morning and you, you look to the side of the sidewalk and there is a watch.

It's a Rolex watch, no less.

And you look at it and you think, how fortunate.

How fortunate it is that there's a road that runs right by here, a busy street, and this watch is the product of many automobiles who came by and little pieces of metal flew off and they came together and they made this Rolex watch.

And the person walking with you says, I'm not walking with you anymore.

Because we know that's crazy.

You look at an intricate machine like a Rolex watch, and you know that there has to be a designer.

That is the teleological argument.

Everywhere you look in the Huntsville, Madison, Athens area, I guess Tony is the same way, houses are springing up.

Debbie and I have to take different routes to go different places so we can keep track of what's going on in our community, how people are building things that they never talked to us about.

So we go by a subdivision and there's a house that's barely started.

Maybe it's just got the plumbing uh in the, uh, in the setup stage.

And then the next time you go by there, there's this house that's practically finished.

All it needs now is brick.

And of course, we would assume that what happened was the last time we had some good wind, a lot of these construction materials were swirling around and they just happened to settle down in this subdivision and look at that, a house with all the major systems that we have in our modern homes, electricity and HVAC and plumbing, all of those things just How many of you believe that's the way it works?

Well, good.

This is a sharp crowd.

Fact of the matter is that's craziness.

That is chicken feed, if you'll pardon the farming illustration.

That's chicken feed compared to people saying that the world in which we live came about as an accident with all of the design and complex design that has to occur in order for us even to survive in this world.

And that's what I want to talk about this evening.

Psychologist Paul Bloom of Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania said this.

He says there is by now a large body of research suggesting that humans are natural born creationists.

Before you become skeptical, listen to the rest of his quote.

He says, when we see non-random structure and design, we assume that it was created by an intelligent being.

I think he's right.

I think that's exactly what we assume.

Because it makes perfect sense with the evidence that we have available.

And so the universe and our world in particular evidence is a highly complex.

System design.

Much more complex than a Rolex watch.

And so the teleological argument says, if the universe evidences design, then there must have been a designer, we would call God the Creator.

I appreciate so much the songs that Josh led.

They are wonderful songs for setting the stage for our thoughts tonight, that God is the Creator.

He's the power.

He's the lawmaker.

We talk about laws of nature.

You can't have a law without a lawgiver, and God is the one who makes the laws, made the laws that govern this world that we live in.

Jeff Miller wrote the Goldilocks principle in secular cosmology, the study of the cosmos universe, is a recognition by scientists that the earth appears to be just right for life to exist on it.

There's another expression that is similar to the Goldilocks principle.

It's a little more specific.

It's called the anthropic principle.

And in secular cosmology, it is the recognition by scientists that the universe appears to be just right for life and specifically humans.

Anthroposs is the Greek word for man.

The anthropic principle says that this world looks like it was designed for us, for mankind, and of course, as students of the Bible, we recognize that that's what the Bible says in the very beginning.

One Writer in discussing the anthropic principle and the Goldilocks universe, he says, why does the universe have properties that are just right?

Freeman Dyson is a theoretical physicist.

And he wrote, as we look into the universe and identify the many accidents of physics and astronomy that have worked together to our benefit, it almost seems as if the universe must in some sense have known that we were coming.

Don't you love that?

The Bible says, God created the world for us.

It's just right.

Because that's how God made it.

The universe does appear to be designed for mankind.

A skeptic and a science writer by the name of Michael Shermer said this.

The design inference comes naturally.

By divine design inference, he means that we look at the world and we infer from design that there must be a designer.

The reason people think, he says, he writes that a designer created the world is because it looks designed.

And I'm going to suggest to you that's exactly right.

It was designed and you can see it very, very easily.

I wonder how often.

We think about the things that are necessary.

Conditions of our world for us to exist on this planet.

You know, children take for granted that their parents are going to provide food, their parents are going to provide clothes, that their parents are going to provide toys.

I don't know if that's a necessity of life, but for most kids it is.

Anyway, children just assume that all those things are just going to be there.

They're going to come, that they're going to have a home and a bed.

And they don't really think about the fact that, you know, that could all change.

House could burn down.

There could be other calamities that would take place.

I want to ask the question, how often do we go from day to day?

Without even thinking of how our lives would change with even minuscule variations within the parameters of Earth's activity and makeup.

And so I'm going to suggest just a handful of things that if even there was a small change.

You and I wouldn't exist any longer.

We wouldn't be able to live in this world.

And the whole point of these items, these conditions, is to suggest.

That as Goldilocks would say, this world is just right for us.

You're probably aware.

That the Earth's axis, we're actually on a 23.5, almost 219 degree tilt.

Some of you are aware of that because when you get out of bed, it seems like you're going one side.

219 degrees.

Most of us, maybe at least many of us, probably recognize that if that tilt even changed just a little bit.

It would be catastrophic in terms of our weather, our seasons, the duration of seasons.

If the rotation axis became parallel to the orbital plane, in other words, if it changed from 219 drastically as it does for Uranus, we would have winter in the northern hemisphere for 240 months followed by summer.

The sun would set on the entire northern hemisphere and not rise again for 226 months.

That's the answer that was given by an individual on the NASA Image Education Center to the question, what would happen if the rotation axis of the Earth changed?

It rotates, but it's tilted.

In his answer, his name was Sten Odenwald.

That's a cool name, Sten Oldenwald.

He answered, it would be catastrophic because that's exactly the right tilt for our lives to be possible on this earth.

Otherwise, our lives would change.

In fact, it would be catastrophic, catastrophic, catastrophic. Catastrophic. Bad.

It would be bad, really bad.

There you go.

Thank you, Gary.

Gary was just dying in the front pew here.

So first of all, that's one of the conditions of the Earth that is just right for our survival.

Now you're aware that the Earth is spinning at the same time that it's revolving around.

The son The Earth's rotational speed, I've not measured this, but I'm told that it is a little over 22 MPH.

We don't think about that.

We don't feel it in terms of our senses.

But what if, what if the Earth was spinning faster?

Now that's the average speed at the equator.

It changes as you move north or south from the equator.

But in answer to the question, what if the Earth was spinning just a little bit faster?

Hurricanes would spin faster.

We don't want that, and there'd be more energy in them.

A faster rotation speed by only 143%.

would translate to water bulging around the equator so that all equatorial land would be flooded while the sea level at the poles would actually decrease or lower.

Humans and animal life would probably be forced to live closer to the poles.

Anybody in favor of moving to the North Pole?

Wouldn't that be fun, which would result in catastrophic extinctions.

So again, the point is our Earth is spinning at a speed that is optimum for the.

Composition of our Earth and for us to live on this Earth and be able to inhabit all of the globe and not simply the poles.

The Earth is approximately 214 million miles, 210 miles.

It's getting warm.

It's summer, 212 million miles.

Now that's on an average.

You may be aware the rotation or the revolution of the Earth around the sun is elliptical, so sometimes it varies a little bit.

But if the average distance from the sun was reduced by only 0.1%.

We would have disastrous atmospheric changes, including sea level rise, I'm quoting now, increases in extreme weather, species extinctions, and agricultural disruptions.

Just a little change in the distance between the earth and the sun.

Now in our solar system there are a series of planets, and we are in what is known as the Goldilocks zone or the habitable zone.

Farther out we freeze to death.

Closer to the sun, we bake to death.

You see the point?

It's just right the way our Earth is positioned in this solar system.

In fact, the Earth's perfect distance, as I suggested, is called the Goldilocks zone, where it's not too close, not too far from the sun for water to be liquid on the surface, and our Earth temperature is not too hot or too cold, regardless of what you think about summertime.

This is from science. NASA.gov.

I don't know if Tim wrote this or not, but here's what it said.

The definition of habitable zone is the distance from a star at which liquid water can exist on orbiting planets' surfaces.

Habitable zones are also known as Goldilocks zones, where conditions must be.

Just right, not too hot, not too cold for life.

What if the Earth had less water on it?

About 75% of the entire area of the Earth is covered by water.

You probably have heard that figure.

If there was less water on the Earth, we would suffer from drastic temperature changes that are seen, for instance, even now in deserts, extremely hot during the day, extremely cold during the night.

Most of the Earth doesn't have that problem, the desert problem, due in large part to the fact that the Earth has so much water on it.

Water has a high specific heat capacity, and that means that water can hold a lot of heat, more than most other natural substances on Earth.

What if we had less water?

Well, it would change the atmosphere.

It would change our environment.

That would make it difficult for us to survive.

Well, we could go on and on.

The Earth has an ozone layer that blocks harmful rays, otherwise we'd be X-rayed to death.

It has a big moon that stabilizes an axial wobble that the Earth would have otherwise, varied surfaces that support many life forms around the globe, has a magnetic field that deflects solar tempests.

Let me summarize with the words of physicist Paul Davies.

He said, it is hard to resist the impression that the present structure of the universe, apparently so sensitive to minor alterations in numbers, has been rather carefully thought out.

I appreciated David's prayer when he said God's wisdom is far above us.

It helps us understand that we are not even in the same class.

We are little compared to the God who created this world and who sustains it, because as we talk about these physical laws that keep our globe habitable, it is God, it is God the Son, according to Colossians 1, who keeps everything together, who keeps things working the right way.

The seemingly miraculous concurrence of these numerical values must remain the most compelling evidence for cosmic design.

Those are the words of Paul Davies, and he says, design is obvious.

What's interesting, engineers look for design in nature.

And the field of biomimicry is a growing field where engineers are looking at design in nature to mimic that if they can.

Some engineers are beginning to recognize that nature is much more efficient, much wiser, much more complex than what we can produce ourselves.

But they're copying the designs that are evident in nature.

You probably have read things about that and you know that when you look at some of the airplanes and other machines that we use in our daily lives.

Cosmologists talk about the perfection of the created order as well, knowing, and this is the expression they use, knowing that the fine tuning.

That is evident in the universe seems to have resulted in it being custom tailored for humans.

That's the anthropic principle that this world was designed specifically for our existence.

Can you fine tune something that hasn't been tuned to begin with?

Can you borrow this phrase, custom tailor something that hasn't already been tailored?

Those kind of expressions.

Essentially grant the fact that there's a designer.

There's someone who tuned the world, who created it.

With conditions that are Necessary for our existence.

The design in the universe demands the existence of a universal designer, and the universe was designed specifically with us in mind.

I'd like to encourage you to open your Bibles to the 19th Psalm, Psalm 19.

God wrote two books.

One of them is special revelation.

It is your Bible that we study.

But the other book is natural revelation.

And God intends for us to read both books.

He intends for us to understand the message of both books.

In Romans, the first chapter, verses 18 to 103, the apostle Paul said that God gave evidence of Himself in the things that he created, that we can see the wisdom and the divine nature of God in the things that are created.

But Psalm 19 talks about these two books.

Beginning in verse one, David wrote, the heavens declare the glory of God.

And the sky above proclaims his handiwork.

Day to day pours out speech and night to night reveals knowledge.

There is no speech, nor are there words.

Whose voice is not heard.

Their voice goes out through all the earth and their words to the end of the world.

In them, he has set a tent for the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber and like a strong man runs its course with joy.

It's rising is from the end of the heavens and its circuit to the end of them, and there is nothing hidden from its heat.

That's God's natural revelation.

Everything around us declares God's handiwork, declares His wisdom, His power.

But the psalmist continues in verse 7, the law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul.

The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.

The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart, the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes.

The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever.

The rules rules of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

Much to be desired, more to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb.

Moreover, by them is your servant warned, and in keeping them there is great reward.

And so we've got God's special revelation, His word that teaches us in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and that he placed us, mankind on this earth, an earth that was created specifically for our habitation, designed perfectly so that we could live here, change a few things, and we're history.

We couldn't survive.

The Bible explains the purpose of the book of nature as we read in Psalm 1914.

Both books, if you'll use pardon the expression, agree that they both claim the universe was created and they point to the designer, the author who is God, and it's available.

This book of nature is available to everybody.

As the Psalmist says in verse 19, in chapter 19, uh, Psalm 19, no, there's no place where that message cannot be heard.

Psalm, excuse me, Isaiah 40:26 says, lift up your eyes on high and see who has created these things, who brings out their host by number.

He calls them all by name, by the greatness of his might, and the strength of His power, not one is missing.

We live in an immense universe, and God is in control of all of that.

He created it for our benefit.

Some of you have heard of the name Richard Dawkins.

The evolutionist.

He wrote in New Scientist magazine, he said, the more statistically improbable a thing is, the less we can believe that it just happened by blind chance.

What do you think are the odds?

That a world as complex as our world could come into existence by blind chance, he continued, superficially, I got to say that superficially, the obvious alternative to chance is an intelligent designer.

Now, please understand, Richard Dawkins wasn't saying I've become a believer.

And so I decided that there's an intelligent designer, but he recognizes that that's the obvious alternative to chance, and that's really all the evolution this has.

He has to believe that everything around us all evolved by random chance so that eventually we could live in a world that was, as Goldilocks says, just right for us.

You need quite a bit of faith to believe that.

We worship a God who is the Creator and the sustainer of this universe.

He sees and knows all about us.

And the Bible talks about the great love that he has for each one of us, for you, for me.

And so he not just created this world, but he also Placed into progress a plan whereby you and I could be reunited with him despite our sins.

Through the forgiveness of those sins.

That's the God who wants to have you spend eternity with Him.

If you're not prepared for that.

Please understand that you have the opportunity to become a child of God, a spiritual child of God, even this evening.

By expressing your faith in Jesus Christ, there's no other name given among men by which men can be saved.

And confessing the name of Christ and being baptized into Christ for the remission of your sins.

You can be prepared.

For when this world will end.

Peter says in 2 Peter 3, there's coming a day.

And everything that we see, everything around us is going to be destroyed.

It's going to burn with fire.

And in that time, We need to be prepared.

To answer to the Lord, to give an account of ourselves, as Paul says in Romans 14:10-12.

Give an account of ourselves before the judgment seat of Jesus Christ.

Are you ready for that?

It's amazing to me that the same God who could engineer a world like we live in, and many of you in your prayers, you manage, you lead us in prayer, you speak about the wisdom of God, the beauty of creation.

It's amazing to me that the same God who could do all that is intimately interested in my future.

And your future.

And if you're not ready for eternity, then we want to encourage you this evening.

To get ready by obeying the gospel, becoming a Christian.

If you've obeyed the gospel of the past and you've kind of lost sight of your path, you've strayed away and you need the prayers, the encouragement of the Christians here, we certainly want to help you with that.

If you'll come to the front as we sing, we'll assist you.