Exodus 3-4- Encountering God

In the book of Exodus chapter 3, I know we were just in Joshua a moment ago, but in that particular moment that we just read, Joshua and the people of Israel were by Jericho. They saw the commander of the army of the Lord, whoever he was, he had a sword in his hand, and they were terrified by seeing that angel, the messenger of God. And he was told to remove the sandals from his feet because the place where he was standing is holy.

Now, that's the lesser known version of remove the sandals from your feet because the place where you're standing is holy. The more well-known passage is found in Exodus 3. What we find there is an account of this guy named Moses.

Have you heard of him before? Moses, a great mediator between God and the people of Israel when they were slaves in Egypt. He was the one that had the staff in his hand that could perform miracles and signs and part the Red Sea and lead the people.

And so Moses, before he was known by all those great deeds, was just simply a shepherd. It's a little bit of irony here in Scripture that all the great people of the Old Testament and even the New Testament really were shepherds. They were taking care of these large groups of really dumb animals.

And God chooses them to lead the people of God. I wonder if there's a connection, right? So, of course, King David was a great shepherd.

We had the shepherds that were told about the birth of Jesus. And then here we have Moses as a shepherd keeping the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law. So to kind of introduce the text where we are thus far, we have the generation of Pharaoh that knew Jacob and knew his sons.

They have passed on. And now we have about one to two and a half million of the Israelites living in Egypt, and they are enslaved. And they are being persecuted.

And the great actions done against them, against the people of God, has not gone unnoticed. Moses' life can be broken up into three different parts, which is pretty convenient for us who are liking to put them in categories. You have the first 40 years, after which he sees that his Hebrew brethren are being mistreated by an Egyptian taskmaster.

He kills that taskmaster and tries to hide the body. And then, of course, Pharaoh hears about what took place and Moses runs from Egypt out into the wilderness of Midian. And then he becomes married to a woman, Zipporah, and the father, or his father-in-law Jethro, was a priest of God.

And he had flocks that Moses would look after for another 40 years. After that 40 years of period is done, he then is called in Exodus 3 and 4 to go back and be the Moses that we recognize, looking just like Charlton Heston, no doubt. So in Exodus 3, we are at the end of this time period.

He's no longer in Egypt. He's now a shepherd taking care of his father-in-law's flock. And something significant is going to happen.

The thing of significance that we're going to focus in on today, next week and the week after that, Lord willing, is that Moses has an encounter with God. Now, often in Scripture, God communicates through prophets. He will use someone who's able to speak the Word of God, and they begin their message generally with the idea of listen to what the Word of God says and then just lays it out.

People can either listen to it or ignore it. Most of the time, they usually ignored it, right? Historically, in the Hebrew Bible.

Sometimes, you would have God speak through a messenger. He would send an angel, we would say in the English, to go and relay a message from God the Creator himself. Sometimes, he would speak to people through visions or dreams.

He would allow them to see things while they were dreaming, and this vision or this dream would be interpreted to kind of discern what the will of God was in that particular moment. But three times in Scripture, God himself shows up. And so we're going to discuss one of those moments this morning and talk about the burning bush, encountering God.

What I'd like to do is, if you can bear with me, go through the entirety of our text this morning, reading it word for word, and then we'll go back and make comments about what we learn about God from that passage and what we learn about Moses from this passage. In doing so, there's going to be a Dave slide following what we learn about God and what we learn about Moses. Now, if you weren't here for my Bible class, the infamous Dave slide is, here's some information that you should know.

Then Dave always says, so what? Very politely, what do I do with that information? That's the Dave slide, the application, in other words.

That's the slide just for Mr. Dave over there. You're welcome. Hey, whatever I can do.

All right, Exodus chapter 3, let's turn there together. Now, if you've been here before, you know I struggle every week with making the font legible. So if you can't read this, and I don't think you will be able to, go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Exodus chapter 3, beginning in verse 1.

It's not that big. Maybe you can read it, maybe you can't. Okay.

Exodus chapter 3, verses 1 through 6. Now, Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush.

He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. And Moses said, I mean, of all things, I will turn aside to see this great sight while the bush is not burned. Now, we all know that if you put a dry, tender bush on a bonfire, how long does that last?

Not very long. I mean, it's not quite as fast as gasoline, kerosene, or diesel, but it's not that far behind it, right? A dried up bush in the middle of the desert on fire.

Well, Moses is thinking, well, I'll be over quick. And it's not over quick. It's still burning.

So Moses says to himself, I'm going to go figure out what's going on over there, right? This is a very heavy paraphrase of the mind of Moses. Verse 4, When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, which I suppose was the intended purpose, God called to him out of the bush.

Now, keep in mind here we have the angel of the Lord appearing in the midst of the burning bush, but then you have God calling him from the midst of the burning bush. I wonder if that's significant. Calling to him out of the bush, Moses.

Moses. He said, Here I am. Now, again, if you want to imagine yourself in his sandals for a moment, here you are just taking care of some sheep in a deserted place near a mountain range, and you see a bush on fire.

Well, that's kind of weird, and it's not over. And so you say, Well, let me just go over there and see what's going on. So you walk over to the midst of this fire in this bush that's not burning up the actual tender that is there.

And so you've got a voice saying, Allan, Allan. Like, yeah, I'm right here. What's going on?

It's a weird situation, right? This is God trying to speak to Moses. He said, Do not come near, take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.

Let me just pause right there. Now, this particular mountain range, before God's presence is known to be there, was not a holy place to the Lord, as far as we know scripturally. There was no tabernacle yet.

There was no temple there. There was no place of an altar to sacrifice, like Bethel would be there before this, but this is not that location. The only thing that could have made this ground holy ground was the Holy God being present at that moment.

This is very unusual in scripture, because when an angel appears, everyone tries to worship the angel. The first thing they say is, don't worship me, because there is one God above me. Try to worship an apostle of God in the book of Acts.

They say, don't worship me. I'm a man just like you. This place where he is walking, he's told to remove his sandals.

Likely, historically, because of their culture, he was a shepherd. And if you're walking around following sheep all day, guess what you might step on?

Can you imagine, right? And so God is here at this mountain range. He's speaking to Moses from the midst of a burning bush, and he's saying, don't bring unclean things onto this ground.

Why? Because that which is the most clean is present, the Holy One of Israel. Verse six.

And he said to him, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Moses hid his face because he was afraid to look at God. Moving on to verses seven through 10.

The Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and I've heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, and I've come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hiavites, and the Jebusites. We all know them, don't we?

Verse nine, and now behold, the cry of the people of Israel have come to me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppressed them. Verse 10, come, I will send you to Pharaoh, that you may bring out my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt. God is there, remove your sandals, the ground where you're standing is holy because of the Holy One's presence at this location.

He says, I've got the perfect job for you, Moses. You tried to save your Hebrew brethren from an Egyptian taskmaster, and you murdered him. All right, and now you've been taking care of a large group of really dumb animals here in the middle of nowhere for the last 40 years.

You're the perfect guy for this job. You're gonna go back to Egypt and save the people. I have come down, he says, to deliver them.

Looking on to verses 11 through 15, but Moses said to God, who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt? He said, I will be with you, and this shall be the sign for you that I have sent you when you have brought the people out of Egypt. You shall serve God on this mountain.

Verse 13, then Moses said to God, if I come to the people of Israel and say to them that God of your fathers has sent me to you, they ask me, what is his name? What shall I say to them? I mean, fairly a good point.

If you say that God spoke to me in the midst of a burning bush that was not consumed at the middle of Mount Orab while I was taking care of sheep, and they said the God of who? What's his name? Verse 14, God said to Moses, I am who I am.

Now, this can be rendered in two different ways in the English. I am who I am, or I will be who I will be. That does not really matter for the text when it comes to our purposes, because when we look at this, it's just simply four letters in the Hebrew alphabet.

When we look at this, we see the I am who I am, I will be who I will be, the tense of if he's presently that which he is, or he will be that which he is, or he was who he always was, God is infinite. And so the I am who I am is the most popular rendition of this Tetragrammaton, the four letters of the Hebrew alphabet that describe Yahweh. He said, say this to the people of Israel, I am has sent me to you.

God also said to Moses, say this to the people of Israel, the Lord, so Yahweh here in the original language, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob has sent me to you. This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations. We then go on to verse 16 through 20.

Go and gather the elders of Israel together and say to them, the Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and Jacob has appeared to me, saying, I have observed you and what has been done to you in Egypt, and I promise that I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt to the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Parasites, the Hyibites, and the Jebusites, a land flowing with milk and honey. Verse 18, And they will listen to your voice, and you and the elders of Israel shall go to the king of Egypt and say to him, The Lord, Yahweh, the God of the Hebrews, has met with us. And now, please, let us go three days' journey into the wilderness, that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God.

But I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go unless compelled by a mighty hand, verse 20, so I will stretch out my hand and strike Egypt with all the wonders that I will do in it. After that, He will let you go. So again, a precursor to what we recognize as the Exodus story, right?

The idea of them being led out of slavery, being led to the Promised Land, this is the introduction for basically the rest of the book, the book of Exodus. God is being very forthcoming, personally, with the man Moses to prepare him for what he is to do and what God will do through him. Rarely do we see God being so plain with mankind.

Rarely. Small glimpses, small information, you ask a question, you get a small answer. Here is God himself communing and conversing with the man Moses, the mediator between God and his people, the Israelites.

And he is laying it all out for what the mission is. Verses 21 through chapter 4, verse 5, 21. I will give this people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, and when you go, you shall not go empty.

But each woman shall ask of her neighbor, and any woman who lives in her house for silver and gold and jewelry and for clothing, you shall put them on your sons and your daughters, and you shall thus plunder the Egyptians. You're leaving there with something, because you have some things to do when you're out of Egypt to prepare for the Lord. Chapter 4, verse 1.

Then Moses answered, but behold, they will not believe me or listen to my voice, because they'll say the Lord didn't appear to you. The Lord said to him, What is in your hand? As if God did not know what was in his hand.

Right? What's in your hand? A staff.

He said, Throw it on the ground. So he threw it on the ground, and it became a serpent or a snake. Moses ran from it, as would I.

I'm not scared of much in this world, but that's it. That's the one. That's the one.

Anita, is that true? We were over at Anita's, and there was a little dog running around out backyard, and there was a small little snake, and it was a water moccasin. And I was going to go out there with a shovel, and I was going to remove the head from this water moccasin's body.

And then Miss Anita said, Do you want a gun? I go, Yeah, I want a gun. Let me go get one.

She gave me a little pistol, went outside and popped that guy right in the head, and he was no longer a water moccasin, right? So, Amen, Moses ran from it. He's a smart guy.

I'll give him that, okay? But the Lord said to Moses, Put out your hand, catch it by the tail. I wouldn't recommend it, but God said to do it.

So he put out his hand and caught it. It became a staff in his hand. Verse 5, that they may believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob has appeared to you.

Again, the Lord said to him, put your hand inside your cloak. He put his hand inside his cloak. When he took it out, it wasn't a snake this time, thankfully.

Behold, his hand was leprous like snow. Then God said, put your hand back inside your cloak. He put his hand back inside his cloak.

Have I left you behind? I sure have. I kept reading.

Put your hand back inside your cloak. He put his hand back inside his cloak. He took it out.

Behold, it was restored like the rest of his flesh. If they will not believe you, God said, or listen to the first sign, they may believe the latter sign. Verse 9.

If they will not believe even these two signs or listen to your voice, you shall take some water from the Nile, pour it on the dry ground, and the water that you shall take from the Nile will become blood on the dry ground. Our last reading, verses 10 through 17. But Moses said to the Lord, Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, which is kind of an interesting detail I love.

He goes, I've not been known for being an eloquent person before, and I'm definitely not now speaking to God Almighty himself. I'm not eloquent. But I am slow of speech and of tongue.

Verse 11, the Lord said to him, who has made man's mouth? Who makes him mute or deaf or seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?

Good point.

Verse 12, now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak. But he said, oh, my Lord, please send someone else.

Then, and only then, the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses, and he said, is there not Aaron, your brother, the Levite? I know that he can speak well. Behold, he's coming out to meet you.

When he sees you, he will be glad in his heart. You shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth, and I will be with your mouth and with his mouth, and will teach you both what you shall do. Verse 16, he shall speak for you to the people, he shall be your mouth, and you will be as God to him.

And take in your hand this staff, with which you shall do the signs. Moses, the man who 40 years prior murdered an Egyptian to try to save the Hebrew people by his own power, his own skill, his own might, was thwarted because of fear, a pharaoh. He now, for the last 40 years, has been tending the sheep, it seems, of Jethro, his father-in-law, a priest of God.

And God has been preparing him, it seems, every step of the way to be the exact right person for this particular job. What we find here is Moses being a type or a symbol of a person who needs to stand in between the sinful people and the holy God to speak on their behalf from the people to God and to speak on his behalf from God to the people. Now, this image, this symbol, this individual, this metaphor is best culminated in only one person.

Jesus, the Messiah. But what we learn about God from God descending and speaking to Moses from the midst of this burning bush tells us so much about who our God is today. If we look at our text with a bird's eye view and we highlight some significant things that stand out in this text, we learn so much about our Lord and our Creator.

We learn from verse 6 that He is the God of His Father. He's introducing Moses to who He is. He's the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob.

God says in verse 7, I have surely seen, I have witnessed what's taking place down there in Egypt. Verse 8, I have come down to deliver, He says. Verse 9, I have seen the afflictions that are being performed against my people.

And verse 10, I will send you, God says. Verse 12, and I will be with you. Verse 14, He identifies His name as I am who I am.

Verse 17, He says, I promise to the people of Israel, I will bring you up. Verse 19, I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go. And verse 20, against that particular cause, I, God says, will stretch out my hand.

And at the very last excuse, in chapter 4, verses 11 and 12, He says, Who is it that made the seeing, the blind, the hearing, and the deaf? I have made you, I am the Lord. So God is identifying what Moses needs to know about God at this particular scene.

God says about himself so many things in this particular text. Now, when we look at this, we don't live in Orab. Our people aren't in bondage and slavery in Egypt.

God doesn't speak to us through the midst of a burning bush. When we look at how God identifies himself to Moses, how does he identify himself to us? He says that he is the God of our world.

He introduces himself that he is the God that made the heavens and the earth, Genesis 1 and verse 1. God is clear in Scripture that he sees what takes place in our lives. He is someone that didn't just spin the world on his axis and step away from his creation.

He is intimately engaged and involved with what he made here on earth. He knows what is going on. In verse 8 of our text, God said, I have come down to deliver my people from slavery.

God lets us know through the good news of Jesus the Messiah that he has given his son to come down from heaven to this earth to deliver us from sin and death. In verse 9 of our context here in the book of Exodus chapter 3, God told Moses to tell the people, I have seen what you are going through. That means that God knows about our struggles intimately.

The things that you suffer through, the struggles that you have, God is very much aware of them. In verse 10, Moses is sent to the people to give them the message that they will be delivered and redeemed and freed by the work of God. We are sent to share the message of the good news or the gospel of Jesus the Messiah, who has set us free from the law of sin and death.

God encouraged Moses in verse 12, I will be with you. We have the assurance from Jesus himself at the end of the Great Commission. I am with you even until the end of the age or the world.

God is with us every step of the way. His existence and His name being I Am Who I Am gives us the confidence to know that His existence and His very nature of being eternal gives us hope. Mankind can fail us.

God is always there. He has always been. He will always will be.

I am who I am. He told in verse 17 the Israelites, I promise to bring you up. Jesus promised us eternal life with Him.

God knew that the Pharaoh of Egypt would not let them go easily. And God knows that our enemy is against us and will not make it easy for us. God will stretch out His hand against Pharaoh and give them the victory of redemption from slavery.

God has already assured us the victory over death because of the resurrection of Jesus the Christ. He made us the way that we are with our gifts, with our talents, even with our deficiencies. He knows who we are, and He knows that we can complete the mission.

We've learned about God from Exodus 3 and 4, and we learned about how His eternal nature tells us who He is even still today. I have one more thing to share with you from this text. Moses wasn't super stoked to have this mission.

He wasn't ready with anticipation. He wasn't giddy. He wasn't excited.

In fact, we have a couple of reasons, or five of them, why he wasn't the right guy for the job, as if God picked the wrong person. He says, who am I? I'm nobody special.

I'm just a shepherd. Why are you picking me to go to the people from verse 11? He goes, well, even if I go, I tell the people that God came to me from the midst of a burning bush.

They say, what's your name? I'm not clear who you are. What's your name?

In chapter 4, verse 1, he gets right to the crux of it. Why would they believe what I had to say anyway? From verse 10, he says, I'm not eloquent.

I'm slow of speech. And then I love the one in verse 13. He runs out of really good reasons, and he just ends up with, you know what?

Hey, send anybody else to do this mission. I'm not the guy for the job. Now, if you know about the life of Moses, he definitely was the guy for this job.

To be the mediator between his people and their Creator. We are God's people today, and he is still our Creator, our Redeemer, and the God of our salvation. When we look at the excuses of Moses, maybe you think, well, if this happened to me, if I were in his sandals and God spoke to me directly, I wouldn't have these excuses.

Well, maybe. Good on you for being optimistic. If it were me, this is how I would reform the excuses that Moses had into my own life as to why I'm not the person God wants me to be in my life.

Here's our second day slide. Maybe you tell yourself, maybe I tell myself, why me? I'm not worthy.

Why put me in this position? I'm just someone who has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. I still feel that guilt about decisions that I've made in my life.

I'm not the right one. Why me? Maybe I tell myself, you know, if I just have time to learn more about God, I'll be more motivated then.

So let me just learn some more to know more about God, know more about the scriptures, and then I'll be better prepared to be the one to share the good news of Jesus the Messiah. And then we get to the big one. What if they don't believe me?

What if they think I'm wrong? What if they mock my belief in what I've seen in the scriptures? That's a big one.

It is for me anyway. It's embarrassing sometimes to try to talk to someone about God, and then they laugh at what you know to be true. Maybe you think to yourself, well, you know what, there are other people around me.

They're just way more qualified. He said, I'm not eloquent. That was most of the excuse.

Now, I know I'm not, but there are other people who can speak without stuttering, without missing a beat, without saying the wrong thing, who know more scripts than I had memorized. They're better. Others are more qualified to do the job of a preacher and a Christian.

He ends it with, send somebody else. And sometimes we may say to ourselves, well, that's just not my gift. You know, I can serve behind the scenes and clean up tables and buy things for the care building, maybe.

But it's just not my gift to be someone who talks to others about the saving gospel message. When we look at Exodus 3, Moses didn't just have an interesting experience. He encountered God, God himself.

And he was sent on that mission. And folks, we should have had an experience where we have encountered God, not in a literal way like this, but in a spiritual way, where we've come to be taught the Word of God enough to obey the good news of Jesus the Messiah, to have our sins washed away. And once we are Christians, we are given that same charge.

We are given that same mission. If we look at the Exodus account here in chapters 3 and 4, God reveals himself to Moses, but Moses also reveals himself to God. God says, here is who I am.

And Moses said, I think you got the wrong guy. When we become Christians, God is introducing himself to us. God says to us through our salvation, here is who I am.

I love you. I am full of grace. I am full of mercy.

I am full of forgiveness. And I have sacrificed myself, my son, for you to be with me. That's who I am, God says.

And our response sometimes to God is just like Moses. I'm just not, I'm not who you need. I'm not the right person.

Folks, you are the right person. I am the right person. This is the first time in Scripture when God reveals himself in a very literal way to someone, the encounter, who God is and his great holiness.

And it teaches us so much about who he is and who we ought to be on the inside. This morning, if you are someone who has a need to respond to the invitation of our Lord, if something in your life is not right, if you've not obeyed the gospel of Jesus Christ and you want to this morning, or you have obeyed, but you resonate with the attitude and the heart of Moses, and you want to change that within your heart this morning, you can come forward and talk to me for a moment, or you can see one of our elders at the door. If you have a need, respond now while we stand and sing.

Psalm 39- Introspection

Good morning.

There are many verses, like the one we just read.

We are individuals in this world, we are told by our culture. Oh, I'm sorry. If you're two to four, get out of here.

Throughout those doors, I just completely forgot about it. They don't want to hear me anyway. I'm sure you all do.

Now, the idea of forgetting who we are as individuals, and moving on to just thinking of ourselves as simply servants of God, like Jesus thought of himself, is a good Christian principle. However, there are other verses that seem to indicate to us that forgetting who we are as individuals, not going inward, sometimes can be a problem as well. There's the idea of balance in Christianity, not going to one extreme or the other, but somewhere in the happy medium, finding a balance, finding an equilibrium of not being self-absorbed about who we are, but also not forgetting to neglect ourselves when it comes to who we are as individual beings.

We've all got thoughts and experiences that shape who we are on the inside, things that either try us or test us or encourage us to keep growing in Christ. And so we're trying to find that happy balance between, again, not being self-absorbed and also not forgetting to neglect looking inward sometimes to be able to see who we are on the inside, what our soul is truly comprised of. To illustrate this, I want to go to one of my favorite passages of the New Testament.

And I think I say that every time I read a passage of the New Testament, but this one always stuck with me because as a brand new convert, 16, 17-year-old kid who said, I want to be a preacher when I grow up, which was apparently a year later, 1 Corinthians, Chapter 9, there's a lot of context around Chapter 9, but if you just jump towards the end here, verses 24 through 27, now I'm not opposed to getting a tattoo, personally. It's not my generation. I didn't get the gauges when I was big.

I didn't wear a spiky belt when I was a kid. I wasn't that kind of kid. But if I had ever considered getting a verse somewhere on my physical body, this would be the verse, just for what that's worth.

Chapter 9, verse 24. Do you not know that in a race, all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it.

Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly.

I do not box as one beating the air. And then verse 27, but I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others, I myself should be disqualified. If you ask the apostle Paul, what is the primary role for him in his life after his conversion, it was to preach the gospel, to not be ashamed of the gospel of truth.

There was the power unto salvation to all who believe, the Jew first, but also to the Greek. That was the mission of the apostle Paul, to preach the gospel. But it would not be wise of him to preach the gospel and neglect sometimes looking inward and seeing who he was and what he was doing.

And as today, many of us are thinking about the idea of graduation, the idea of maturing, of becoming men and women out there in the world, among other men and women. This morning, what I want to do is look at a Psalm together, Psalm 39, and see how even the great King David, when he was worshiping God, would sometimes reflect and look inward to see who he was, what he was thinking, what he was doing, and most importantly, all of that in light, that God is always watching over him. And the same thing is absolutely true of us today.

God is with us, he is in us, he is among us, and we as individuals sometimes need to go inward and see who we are in light that God is always present. Let's turn to Psalm 39 together. Now, this is not a very long Psalm, it's all 13 verses.

I could just read through the whole thing with you and be done and sit down and y'all can go have some finger foods. But if you bear with me just for a moment, I want to break down what we find in the content of this Psalm and see the movements that David wants us to walk through as we read this song together. So Psalm 39, pretty confident, I'll say before I make a fool of myself, that the actual verses are readable by you in the seats today.

I tried really hard. Psalm 39, let's just read verses 1 and 2. I said, I will guard my ways, that I may not sin with my tongue.

I will guard my mouth with a muzzle, so long as the wicked are in my presence. I was mute and silent. I held my peace to no avail, and my distress grew worse.

Now, I'm not sure about your own life experiences, but sometimes you just know when someone that is around you has a lot to say, and none of it is very worthwhile. A lot of people talk to kind of fill the silence or the void, and they seem to love the sound of their own voice. It's not me, despite what you may think.

And so you've got this situation that David is painting for us. He's around a bunch of other people, and he describes them as people being wicked. And he's trying to keep his mouth shut.

I don't know if you've been there before, but that's the most difficult thing to do. When someone that needs advice, and you have the advice, and you know what they need to hear, they're not going to listen to you anyway, but you try to keep your mouth shut and just be silent and be quiet and be patient. It's a very difficult situation David finds himself in in this moment.

And then we move on to verse 3. Verse 3, my heart became hot within me. Now, a few times that particular phraseology is used in scripture.

One moment is when the idea of Job, he has this thought, he has this feeling, and his heart just becomes hot within him because he's frustrated. You also see it in the book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah was given the word of God to preach to a people that would not listen to it, and he didn't want to talk about it anymore.

And after a time, he just felt this fire within himself and his bones, he describes. I couldn't keep silent about what the word of God had to say. And finally, this last illustration of my heart became hot within me is when Jesus was resurrected, and he was walking along two people that knew about the times of Jesus and what was going down that day in Jerusalem.

They were just so discouraged because they thought that this Jesus was the Messiah. Little did they know that Jesus was walking with them on the road to Emmaus. And so Jesus began to talk about all the scriptures that Jesus actually fulfilled in going to his death, being buried in a tomb, and then being resurrected.

So he was explaining the scriptures to these two guys at this house when they were on the way to Emmaus. When Jesus revealed that he actually was the Lord, he vanished. And the people said to each other, the two individuals, didn't our heart burn within us when he was explaining to us the scriptures?

Now this is not that. It's not quite as pious. My heart became hot within me as I mused, as I thought about what to say, what to do.

The fire burned and then I spoke with my tongue. I tried to keep my mouth shut and I tried really, really hard to keep that fire within me, but eventually it just came out. And sometimes we do that too.

If you can't relate to that, God bless you. All right? You're better than most of us.

That's David just simply recounting a moment in which he was surrounded by people that were wicked, not doing the Lord's will. He tried to keep his mouth shut, and yet finally he just gave in and just spoke what he wanted to say. Because of that, that caused David to go inward.

He saw his actions. He knew what he wanted to do, but he gave in to that temptation of speaking when he should have been silent. That caused him to look inward and say, what is this life anyway?

What is this thing all about? What are we doing here? Which is a great question.

If you've never had that, what are we doing here anyway moment, maybe you've never thought about the idea that life is just strange. You never asked to be here. I never asked to be here, and yet someday we're just going to preschool, and then we're going to primary school, and then we're learning things from people that tell us to sit down and be quiet, and then we grow up, and we get to high school somehow, and people say, what do you want to do with the rest of your life?

Like, what in the world are you talking about? What is this thing that we're all in? What is this?

So David tries to figure out what this whole thing is all about in verses 4 through 6. Oh, Lord, make me to know my end. And what is the measure of my days?

Let me know how fleeting I am. Behold, you've made my days a few hand breaths. How wide your hand is is the meaning there.

And my lifetime is as nothing before you. Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath. Surely a man goes about as a shadow.

And surely for nothing they are in turmoil. Man heaps up wealth and does not know who will gather. Now for me, when I was 16, 15 years old, they had asked me what I want to do with the rest of my life.

And my answer was, what in the world are you asking me? What are you talking about? Because it seemed just preposterous that my goal in this life that I'm in is just to go to a college and get four more years of education and then get a job somewhere making some money and then buy a house and find a wife and get a dog and have children.

All these things to me as a 15 year old, 16 year old, just didn't make any sense. I didn't know what life was, much less, that's what I'm thinking I'm told about what life's all about is getting all these things, it just seems silly. So my answer was, I guess I'll just join the military, I'll join the Navy, because the Navy was big in Virginia.

Then I'll go do that and figure it out and be told what I'm supposed to do and apparently shining shoes is very important, so that's life. David, it seems like in this text, is feeling a similar kind of way. Just taking a moment of his experience of just trying to keep his mouth shut before people that were just ignorant and wicked, and he couldn't even do that.

So he's saying, God, what is this life that we're in? What is this experience all about? Now if we look into verses 4-6, I think this is the real kicker of this particular psalm, because it kind of just takes a left turn.

You have an experience he went through, couldn't keep his mouth shut, and then he goes into this whole dirge about the idea of what life is, and it's so short, and does it really have any meaning or any purpose behind it? And a lot of other verses are similar to this. Over in Psalm 90, verses 10 and 11, the years of our life are 70, or even by reason of strength, 80, yet their span is but toil and trouble.

So he's kind of stuck in that rut still. They are soon gone, and we fly away. Who considers the power of your anger and your wrath according to the fear of you?

So, verse 12, teach us to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom. Allow us to realize that while we're stuck in this thing called life that we're all experiencing and going through, keep in the back of our minds the idea that our days, literally, are numbered before God, so to use our time with wisdom while we're here. Also in Psalm 90, verses 2-4, before the mountains were brought forth, or you ever formed the earth and the world from everlasting to everlasting, you are God.

That's the whole point of God saying, what are we before you? You've never had a beginning, you'll never have an end. We have a beginning, and apparently we go on forever with you somewhere.

But what are we in comparison to how great you are? Verse 3, you return man to dust and say, return, O children of man, for a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night. We long and we wait and we patiently hope for a moment that God doesn't really experience in the same way.

This idea of being frustrated with how long our life seems, but also how short it sometimes seems. We also find this in the Book of James, Chapter 4. Come now, you who say, today or tomorrow we'll go into such and such a town, spend a year there and trade and make a profit.

It's a good idea, making plans for the future. There is a problem though, James says, Verse 14, yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life?

You are but a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, if the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that. So we're in good company then, thinking about introspectively the idea of what our life even is.

In comparison to a great and awesome immortal God that we serve. We go back into our text of Psalm 39, picking up verses 7 through 11. We've had the moment where he tried to keep his mouth shut but couldn't.

Then he gets frustrated and disappointed with himself and tries to figure out what life's all about. And then we move on to this, verse 7. And now, O Lord, for what do I wait?

My hope is in You. I'm waiting for You, God, to help me. Verse 8, deliver me from all my transgressions.

Don't make me the scorn of the fool. I am mute. I do not open my mouth because it is You who have done it.

Remove Your stroke from me. I am spent by the hostility of Your hand. When You discipline a man with rebukes for sin, You consume like a moth what is dear to him.

Surely all mankind is mere breath. He says, listen, I know I should have kept my mouth shut in that moment. And when I open my mouth, I don't want it to be my voice speaking.

I want it to be Your words instructing with wise counsel. I know that I make mistakes. I know that I sin before Your holy presence.

I need You to be my hope. I need You to be my deliverer. I need You to give me mercy and grace when I fail.

And folks, haven't we all been there? We do something that is dumb, something that is sinful before our holy God. If we are not taken aback and say, Lord, You know I'm fallible.

You know I mess up. You know I need You to be my hope, to be my deliverer, and to forgive me with that grace and mercy You have offered because of Your dear Son Jesus. That's how David is feeling here in this passage.

He's not strong enough to make it through this life without God as his guide. Verses 12-13. Hear my prayer, O Lord.

Give ear to my cry. And don't miss this. Hold not your peace at my tears.

David's feeling something here in this text. He says, Lord, I know how I am nothing. I know how I am nothing before your great and awesome presence and power.

And yet, I'm going through this life. I need you to be my hope. I need you to deliver me.

I need your help in this life, because I can't do it by myself. And he is moved with that emotion, praying to God with tears for God to be there. Here's how he thinks of himself.

What an interesting way to think about King David, of all people, saying this about himself, because, verse 12, part B, I am a sojourner, a traveler with you, a guest like all my fathers. He says, Lord, I'm just traveling through this experience. I'm going through this life, but I don't belong here.

I'm just passing through, and you are my guide. Verse 13, look away from me, and condemnation, that I may smile again before I depart and am no more. This life is fleeting.

This life is short. We make mistakes along the way. We need to be like David and ask for God to be with us.

And this transient thing called life, that we are all in the middle of experiencing right now. So we are looking inward, and seeing how we resonate with the idea of life seeming to be long, making mistakes along the way, but also knowing that God is with us. Knowing that He is so much greater and more powerful than us.

And He has extended His grace and His mercy to us, who make mistakes along the way, and to walk with us in this time that we are just traveling through. If you are looking at a summary of what we have covered so far, verses 1 and 2, surrounded by the wicked, one is to remain silent. As best as you are able, some folks have a harder time with this than others.

Tempted, David spoke, and he was guilty. The brevity of life is a constant reminder to us that the mistakes we make along the way can be forgiven and should be. Forgiveness will not deserve is requested.

And finally, the sorrow turns to joy. He wants to smile again at the Lord's forgiveness. Another way to look at Psalm 39, a pattern that you may pick up as you read through it, is very introspective because it's written from David's perspective.

And he's also talking about all the things that he does and a lot of who God is. He talks about in verse 1, his ways. Verse 2, his mouth.

Verse 3, his heart. Verse 4, his end. Verse 5, his days.

Verse 7, my hope. Verses 10 and 11, my transgressions. And finally, in verse 12, my prayers.

He's being very introspective, thinking about himself. And while we are told to deny ourselves by the Lord Jesus, that balance must be had. Again, not being self-absorbed, thinking all about yourself and I all the time, but also not neglecting to look inward and see who you're all about at the same time.

Some application for us. This is the closest thing I can get to a Dave's slide for you from Psalm 39. Mind your speech when you're around those that are outside of Christ.

We can do a lot of good by being good examples and teaching along the way, sowing that seed and so forth. But also be mindful how you talk about the church, how you talk about your Christian brothers and sisters around you, because the world's watching and they're wanting to see if it's genuine or if it's all make-believe. Secondly, no one is sinless, and keep that truth in focus.

If you think that you've surpassed all these sinful things in the world, better be careful, because we're all human, we're all fallible. That's why Jesus came in the first place. Life is as nothing in comparison to eternity, so make sure you're putting your efforts, your treasures in the right location.

It's not about that white picket fence or that dog you might get in the future. It's about the idea of who God is and wanting to be with him forever. Forgiveness is offered as a free gift through our obedience to God's Word.

And then finally, when we're forgiven of our sins, when God forgives us of our sins, folks, our life should be full of joy. Now, you may not have forgiven yourself inwardly, but when God has forgiven you, there is no condemnation. No condemnation to those that are in Christ.

Romans 8, verse 1. This morning, we think about the future, we think about our lives, why we're all here, what we're doing in this occasion. We look at Psalm 39 and see David thinking about himself, asking himself the same questions, and the conclusion that he reached was, God is with me, God be praised, God deserves our worship, as he does this very morning.

Amen? If anyone has a need to respond to the invitation, maybe it's been a few moments before you thought about yourself in light of God's word that you've maybe forgotten, that God's with you every step of the way, that he's been watching this whole time, that maybe there's a need for asking for forgiveness for something in your life. If you have a need, you can respond by coming forward.

We can all pray for you in just a moment, or you can see one of our elders at the doors. If you have a need, please respond now as we stand and we sing.

Forgiveness

-Comments about going over my notes for this sermon with my 7 year old daughter-

Rolling through my notes, and this is what the graphic looks like. I had her read a couple of verses. She did really well for a seven-year-old.

I said, what do you think I'm talking about tomorrow? She goes, forgiveness. I go, yeah, what do you know about forgiveness?

And her answer was, well, you know, when Luke hits me, or he throws things at me, and he gets in trouble, he always is told by you guys to say, I'm sorry, then I'm supposed to say, I forgive you. And I was like, yeah, that's right. That's exactly what forgiveness is.

And what does that teach us? Because, well, God forgives us, so we should forgive other people. And I go, you got it.

So I'm telling you, if a seven-year-old can get that concept, surely this is a thing that we've all mastered by now. We ended our little Bible talk last night talking about how sometimes the things that Jesus teaches us are super simple to understand, but sometimes they're really hard to live out. And forgiveness is one of those things.

It's easy for us to mentally register with what the Lord taught us about the idea of forgiveness, and that's easy for us to say, but sometimes it's really hard for us to do and actually live out. I've got a couple of verses for us to consider talking about the idea of forgiveness in our lives as Christians. Ephesians chapter 4 and verse 32, Paul wrote these words.

We didn't quite get there this morning in Bible class, but we are almost there. Ephesians 4, 32. Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you.

It's almost like the apostle Paul learned from Jesus the idea of reciprocity, the idea that Christ forgives us, so we ought to forgive other people as well. We read this in the model prayer, Matthew chapter 6 and verse 12. Part of that prayer is forgive us our debts or trespasses as we also have forgiven our debtors or those that trespass against us.

And then the conclusion to that model prayer ends with the lesson where Jesus emphasizes the idea of forgiveness, Matthew 6, 15. But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your father forgive your trespasses. So to kind of hit home how serious and how important the idea of understanding and applying the idea of forgiveness towards one another, Jesus said that if we do not forgive others, our own forgiveness is called into jeopardy.

To talk more in detail about this idea of forgiveness, we go to Matthew chapter 18. Matthew chapter 18. In this context, we find Jesus in the middle of his ministry.

He's teaching the people, teaching his disciples, teaching the later called apostles about the idea of what do you do when it comes to relations with one another and the body of Christ. In Matthew chapter 18, beginning in verse 15, he talks about the idea of having harmony or unity between brothers and sisters in Christ. He says in Matthew 18, 15, if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone.

If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. I'd like to say that from my experience, that this is about as far as what we call church discipline goes. This is the idea of having a fault between you and somebody else.

Someone offends you, sins against you. If you just go to that individual, pull them aside and say, hey, the scariest words in the English language, can I talk to you for a minute? It comes out of your mouth.

Now, my elders know how to push my buttons by now. All my elders have to say is, hey, you got a minute to talk after worship this morning? I go, yes.

So I think of all the terrible things I've done in my entire life. What do they know about? What did I say?

What did I do? What did I didn't do? They go, I'm just kidding with you, we're fine.

I'm like, oh, okay, great, thanks, thanks so much. If you go and tell that person that's offended you or sinned against you what the issue is, usually that is enough, because you love them, they love you, maybe they were ignorant of how something was said or done, came across, and they want to apologize. They want to make things right.

They want to be in harmony once again. However, sometimes that's not quite how it turns out. If you want to escalate the situation, if he does not listen, meaning he's heard your complaint, he's heard the fault that was done, the sin that was done against someone else, he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses.

Now, this is an ancient Jewish principle. If you go back to the book of the law, you read about the idea of a court proceeding back in the day, you would have the idea of two or three witnesses to establish that what was done is accurate and true. So the same principle applies here.

If you going to someone in love and highlighting a fault or a sin that was done against you does not convict them, if their heart is hardened to that concept, then sometimes it can be helpful to escalate just a little bit and bring two or three witnesses to establish that what you've said is true, that it was harming you, it was sinful against you, and by that, that should convict them enough to say, you know what, you're right, I am sorry, please forgive me. But sometimes, Jesus says here in this context, that's not quite enough. Someone has hardened their heart so much that they refuse to listen to a brother in Christ, ask them for forgiveness.

You have the establishment of the word by two or three witnesses, and sometimes even that is not enough. Jesus says if he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. Now, keep in mind here the context.

We are in Matthew 18, not Acts chapter two. What's happening here is Jesus is talking about the protocol for the church before the church had been fully established in Acts chapter two. So he is looking forward to this union of Christ and believers in one body and how they have a rapport with one another.

Again, Paul would write in Ephesians 432, be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other as God and Christ forgave you. So Jesus says, tell it to the church. If he does not repent of that, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector, so someone outside of God's grace.

That's how far this has gone. If we go over to Matthew chapter 18, continuing in verse 18, truly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven. Whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

The idea of harmony among believers in the body of Christ being reflected in the heavenly places is seen here in this text. He continues, again, I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. The idea of harmony among brethren here on earth, being reflected in the dynamic between us and our Creator, is emphasized here in this text.

And then back in the proper context, we have this quote that we sometimes like to pull out and use in other applications. Jesus says, For where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am among them. So again, the proper context here is the idea of this harmony and unity and someone sinning against another brother in Christ.

Know that when we deal with this kind of issue, when we are gathered together in His name, and we are trying to find peace and forgiveness and grace and harmony and the body of Jesus, guess who is right there with us? The head of the body, Jesus the Christ. If you for some reason think that the idea of having fault with one of your brothers or sisters in Christ is not a big deal, know that Jesus talked specifically before the church was established about the idea of Him being there to help reconcile two individuals, two humans, to find grace, love, and mercy and peace among them.

Then Peter came up and said to him, because of course Peter did, Lord, how often will my brother sin against me and I must forgive him? Good question. What's the limit of how much mercy I could have towards someone who sins against me?

As many as seven times? Because seven is the perfect biblical number, right? You get to eight, no more forgiveness, right?

Sir Peter wants to get to here in this context. Jesus said to him, I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times. So the idea of this grace and this peace and this forgiveness being extended to one another is unlimited.

As long as we have soft and tender hearts towards one another, we will want to have that unity restored and that peace be given. To emphasize what we've read here in this context, the protocol of how to seek peace with one another in the body of Christ, we continue our reading in verse 23. He gives a parable.

Literally the word parable means to cast or throw alongside of. So we have a spiritual truth, a principle. He's going to illustrate by a story or a metaphor that's kind of thrown alongside it to show some parallels.

So here in Matthew chapter 18 in verse 23, Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. He began to settle. One was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents.

That's a lot of money. And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold with his wife and children and all that he had in payment to be made. The servant fell on his knees, begged him or implored him, have patience with me and I will pay you everything.

And out of pity for him, the master of the servant released him and did what? Forgave the debt, forgave the debt. Now that's the ultimate illustration of someone who owed so much to his lord and his master, he could not pay it, and so out of mercy and grace, the master forgave that great debt.

If we keep reading, though, in verse 28, when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, which, by the way, is next to nothing compared to ten thousand talons. Seizing him, he began to choke him, now this is a little bit funny, right? Come on, you got this servant about to be sold with all his family members to pay back a great debt.

He owes, or he finds a guy who owes him a hundred denarii, begins to choke the guy, he says, pay what you owe. His fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, have patience with me, I'll pay you. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

He refused, went, put him in prison until he should pay the debt. Well, a little ironic, isn't it? That's the whole point of the illustration.

Verse 31, when his fellow servant saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed. Yeah, he's choking the guy to death. I mean, yeah.

And they went and reported to their master all that had taken place. Then his master summoned him and said to him, You wicked servant, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had mercy on you?

In anger, his master delivered him to the jailers until he should pay all his debt. Then here is the application from Jesus. So also my heavenly father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother.

And then to make it even more complicated, from your heart.

The idea of us being forgiven from God brings us great joy and comfort. But sometimes that idea of forgiveness from our Heavenly Father, and then extending that mercy, extending that forgiveness to one another, is somehow much more complicated. And that's always been the case, hasn't it?

If Jesus had not known what it's like to be on this earth as a human, he wouldn't have given us such a perfect illustration, parable, metaphor, to illustrate, God has forgiven me of my great trespass and sin against him. If he can forgive me, surely I should be able to go and extend that forgiveness and mercy to my brothers and sisters in Christ, right? I won't call you Shirley again.

All right, moving on. I've got a couple of verses. There's like three people who might get that reference.

Airplane, all right, can't condone it, but it's funny. All right, Colossians chapter three, for your consideration. The apostle Paul, writing in verse 12, says this, Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another.

I got a small illustration for you. Yesterday, we were at the house, and we had this jump rope. I don't know where we got it, but it's in our house.

But the problem is, you might have guessed, we've got one jump rope, and I've got two kids. And so, I don't know how, they tie this thing into a knot all the time. It's a nylon rope, so I have to get in there and finagle it and unravel it.

So there was one day I was doing that, this week, and Luke thought it was his turn to use the jump rope. Matty thought the exact same thing. It's my turn to use the jump rope.

And so I have to go in there and troubleshoot, because he's getting mad, she's getting mad. The jump rope is not the issue, but there's a problem going on. There's no harmony, there's no unity in our household, because whenever will there be unity or harmony with two kids in the house?

And so I said, what's the problem? Problem is he thinks it's his turn, she thinks it's her turn. I go, Luke, how many turns did you have?

Two. Matty, how many turns did you have? One.

Luke, who do you think's turn it is? Well, I had two, and she had one, and then these words came out of his mouth. Dave, you listening?

These words came out of my son's mouth. Well, Ms. Bev says that I should be kind to my sister in Bible class. I go, is that right?

You learned something from Ms. Bev. All right, what do you think, Luke, you should do? I think I should be kind and give her a turn.

It's my turn, but I'll give it to her. When Paul writes the words, have compassionate hearts. Be full of kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another.

That's an important thing for all of us to apply to our situations in life. If one has a complaint against another, now I know that you wouldn't have a complaint about anybody else in the church here, I know that. But if you happen to have one or find one one day, forgive each other as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.

Above all these, put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. Paul wrote those words from the instruction he received from Jesus the Christ. One more thing for your consideration, Romans chapter 12 and verse 16.

Live in harmony with one another. Don't be haughty or prideful, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight.

Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. Here's the part I love the most for some reason. Sometimes it's all or nothing with scripture.

Live at peace with all people, right? But here in Romans 12, we have one exception to that rule. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.

You're not going to be able to please all the people all the time. But as much as you can do, as much depends on you and your heart, your words, your actions, try to be at peace with all people. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God because it is written, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord, which, by the way, is just one of those lines that Paul pulls out of the Old Testament to prove that the wrath of God is still an existing thing.

The idea of God being the one who deserves justice is right there in that text. To the contrary, here's a quote, If your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink, for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Considering these words, the encouragement from Jesus himself about the idea of forgiving one another, knowing that there will be sins or faults that we have against one another, and being informed by the model prayer and by his parable that we ought to extend that same forgiveness that we have received, we're encouraged to know that none of us are perfect. One of the criticisms that I have heard often about why people don't want to come to church is that we are a group of hypocrites. Absolutely we are.

If anyone is perfect in our number today, you don't need to be here. We're all human. We're all fallible.

We all make mistakes. We all stumble. That's why we're here.

To praise God for His great mercy and grace by forgiving us for being fallible people. That's why we're here. If we can gather together in His name and praise Him for forgiving us of our great sins, we then too should be able to look among our number of human fallible sinful people and forgive them as we have been forgiven.

Here is what I want you to walk away with this week. What to put into practice. Number one, enjoy the forgiveness that God's grace gives to us.

Enjoy the forgiveness that God's grace gives to us. God has forgiven us so much more than we could ever forgive someone else in this world. Last night when we were going through this lesson with my daughter, she said, it's kind of like grace, isn't it?

I go, what do you know about grace? She goes, well, I know that grace is getting something that you didn't earn. She's seven years old, folks.

I'm like, yeah, you nailed it. That's pretty much it. We didn't deserve God's love.

He gives it to us anyway. We didn't deserve His forgiveness. He gives it to us anyway.

We praise Him. We give Him laud and accolation and praise and honor because He has this great grace towards us. Number two, understand that we reflect that grace to others through forgiving them.

If God can forgive us, we ought to be able to forgive one another. And finally, keep this in the back of your mind. If we fail to forgive as God forgives us, our own forgiveness is in question.

Jesus had those words there specifically to encourage us, to nudge us in the right direction, that this is not an optional request. It is a command from our holy Lord that forgiveness should be extended because He forgave us. Folks, the simple lesson, easy to understand, hopefully, sometimes very difficult to apply in our own situations, but a necessary reminder of what our Christian character should be like, full of grace, full of mercy, full of forgiveness, even for one another.

If you are in need this morning for the prayers of the congregation, something in your life is preventing you from being at peace or at harmony with one another or with our Lord in heaven, now is the chance you get to look inward and see how you can make that correction. If you have a need this morning to be forgiven or to give forgiveness, you can talk to one of our elders at the doors, or you can come forward and talk to me for a moment and have your needs met. If you do have a need, respond now as we stand and we sing.

The Roman's Road to Salvation

Last week, we talked about the greatest word in scripture. And I was suggesting that the greatest word in scripture was the idea of love. If you were here last week, you might have heard me say at the very end that if we have a service here in which we are all collectively gathered together to worship the Lord's name, and you do not leave with the information that God loves you, and you ought to love God and love one another, then we have failed.

That was the push at the end of my sermon. Well, there's also something else that I would be remiss if you did not know if you were gathering together with the Lord's people and you walked out confused or unsure about the idea of how to get into the love of God and have salvation for your soul. And so this morning, what I'd like to do is talk about an easy way for us to walk through just one simple book of the Bible, the Book of Romans, and talk about what it means for us to have salvation.

One of the greatest messages that we have in the Gospel is the idea of Luke chapter 19 and verse 10. Jesus says these words, For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. So the idea of us knowing how to be saved by the Lord is one of those important lessons that we should all be very clear about.

Now, if you were here about a year ago, this slide show may seem somewhat familiar because I preached this message almost exactly one year ago. And so if you've been here for a year, this is going to be old hat to you. Whatever in the world that phrase means.

Got an old hat you like? You're familiar with it, I guess? I don't know.

Whatever the case, we do have, thankfully, a lot of individuals that have joined us in the last year that did not hear that message. And I want to be very clear. This message is for all of us to either to understand and apply to our own current situations when it comes to salvation for our souls.

Or if you find this lesson and you are already in a saved Christian state, this is an easy way for you to take some simple notes and to show someone else the good news of Jesus Christ. We have had this graphic up behind me on this wall of Matthew chapter 28 and verse 19, the so-called Great Commission from our Lord Jesus, to go into all the nations and teach the Gospel, to go and make disciples. And so if you are someone who has struggled with trying to condense the volume of Scripture to be able to share with someone what they have to do to achieve salvation, then I would suggest that you follow along with us and just notate these verses.

And if you just walk someone or yourself through these lines of thought, it will be somewhat helpful to kind of show someone the so-called Roman's road to salvation. So how does someone be saved through the blood of Jesus Christ? Let's begin our conversation at the beginning in Romans chapter 3 beginning in verse 21.

There is something that we have to acknowledge and identify when it comes to our spiritual state before we can talk about how we are saved from our sin. Romans chapter 3 in verse 21, the Apostle Paul writes these words, But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it. We'll pause right there and break that down just a little bit for us.

God is a righteous God. God is the definition of righteousness. That which is right is how you define righteousness.

So God is always right all the time. We would not know what right is apart from God's divine character. And it says right here that the law and the prophets, meaning the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, reveal to us that God is righteous.

The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. How do we as people who understand that God is righteous and holy understand or ascertain holiness and righteousness for ourselves? Paul says it's through faith in Jesus Christ.

For there is no distinction. Why? Because all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

There's one simple fact that we must establish first and foremost that we are all people who have committed sin against a righteous and holy God. There have been very, very few occasions in my ministry in which I've had a conversation with someone and started with this foundation, this framework of do you believe that God is righteous and holy? And they say yes.

I go, do you think that you've lived up to the standard of how God wants you to live? And they say no. I go, what does that mean for you and your salvation?

It means that I am lost. I have sinned before a holy and righteous God, and I am in need of forgiveness of that sin. That's the foundation.

If you don't think that you need salvation, there's no need for us to have a conversation about how to achieve salvation. I've had a couple of people be prideful enough to say, I've never committed a sin. And I go, well, can you tell me how you've done that?

Because I know me, and I know the way that I've chosen to live in my life, and I know that I fail and I fail and I fail, and God knows that about me. That's why He gave me a way through His grace and mercy to be saved from my mistakes and from my sinfulness. So starting with that foundation, you have to first ascertain, are you someone who has sinned and therefore in need of forgiveness from God?

Once that foundation has been laid, you can move on to Romans 6 and verse 22. If you believe that you have sinned against a righteous and holy God, where does that leave you? Where does that leave me in light of God's Word?

Romans 6, 22 and 23. But now you have been set free from sin and have become slaves or servants of God. The fruit you get leads to sanctification and is end eternal life.

Where were we before we had forgiveness? Because the wages of sin is death. And here is the dichotomy.

Here is the flip side. But the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. So if you can understand and you believe that you have sinned against a righteous and holy God, where does that sin lead you?

It leads you to spiritual and physical death in this life. Jesus came to seek and save the lost. If you don't believe that you're lost, then you're not able to benefit from the idea of what Romans has to say about salvation.

The wages of sin is death. If you've committed sin, you are walking down the path to death. But we have some good news for you.

And the good news is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The fact that He has already died for you on the cross. Though He never committed sin, He was willing to give up His life in your stead to pay the debt that you owe a righteous and holy God.

The free gift of God is what? Eternal life. But where, folks, is that eternal life?

Paul just says it is in Christ Jesus our Lord. The question is, how do we get into that eternal life, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord? We then go to Romans 6, beginning in verse 1.

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? So here is the line of thinking that Paul is trying to have a dialogue with.

Is grace a good thing or a bad thing? It's a good thing. So you would like more grace, would you?

Right? I know I would. The line of thinking is, well, if grace is good and I want more grace, should I keep committing sin that I can get more grace, which is good?

Paul says, by no means. You're missing something here, folks.

How can we, who died to sin, still live in it? Paul is saying, you forget your spiritual state. When you are in Christ, you are dead to the old man of sin that you were.

You are a new creation. He says, do you not know? And whenever Paul says, don't you know?

It's something very foundational, right? Don't you know that all of us who have been baptized or immersed into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried, therefore, with him by baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

Now, this for me is new information. Here is the new information. We were in a spiritual state of sin against a pure and holy righteous God.

I know that that sin leads me towards spiritual death and condemnation. I don't want that to be my eternal future. And Paul says that salvation is in Christ Jesus.

Salvation is in Christ Jesus. Paul says here in Romans 6, 1-4 that we get into Christ Jesus by dying to our old man of sin and death. That takes place during the idea of water baptism, water immersion.

He says that when you go down into the water, it's just like Jesus going down into the tomb after the crucifixion. And then when you rise out of that water, it's just like Jesus walking out of the tomb. You are going down into a spiritual, symbolic, spiritual death to your old man of sin, and you're being raised to walk in the newness of life.

That is when you are born again. That is your spiritual birthday, if you will. That is when things get washed away by the blood of Jesus and the idea of going down into the water and then being resurrected.

If we keep reading in Romans 6, going down to verse 12 now, Paul says this, Therefore, do not let sin reign in your immortal physical body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members or body parts to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life. And your members or body parts to God as instruments for righteousness, because sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

How do we go from the law of sin and death? If you sin, therefore you die by becoming born again. And two, Jesus Christ, having your sins washed away, where you are brought from spiritual death to spiritual life.

You are no longer under that law of sin and death, but now under the grace of God and of Jesus the Christ. Y'all follow me? Is it complicated?

Hopefully not. If it's complicated, it's my fault, not the Gospel's fault. We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

The wages of sin is death. I don't want that to be my future, therefore I put that old man to death, Romans 6, 1-4. Through water baptism, I am born again.

I have newness of life, and now I strive to serve a grace and a loving God who did all this for me. That's the Gospel. That's the good news.

We are all in the same sinful boat, but we're also in the same boat where we can look at the grace and mercy of God and be born again to walk in newness of life. What is our spiritual state after we are born again? All you have to do is go to Romans chapter 8.

If you continue to read through Romans chapter 7, Paul's got a problem within his own heart, his own mind, and we all have the same struggle that Paul had. His struggle was, well, sometimes I do the things that I don't want to do, and I don't do the things I know I should do. Who can deliver me from this flippant idea of serving myself and serving sin and serving God?

Who can save me from this? In Romans chapter 8 and verse 1, Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are, where? In Christ Jesus.

We've all committed sin and fallen short. The wages of sin is death, but the good news is we can be in Christ. And when you are in Christ, you have eternal life.

And when you are in Christ, there is now no condemnation for even you and even me. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free, where? In Christ Jesus, from the law of sin and death.

We can be set free. We can be born again. We can walk in newness of life.

We can have eternal life in Christ. Simply obeying the Gospel and taking advantage of the sacrifice that Jesus was for our sin can make sure that we know that we are saved, we are on our way towards heaven to be with God forever more, and to experience that love of God in a real way. What do we do then?

In Romans chapter 12, in verse 1, I appeal to you therefore, brothers, people who have obeyed the Gospel, people who are born again Christians, who have salvation, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. In the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament law, they were to make animal sacrifices continually, to simply cover their sins up, for at the most one year, Paul says, now that you've had the blood of the Lamb of God, Jesus the Christ shed for you, and now that you have been washed by the perfect, holy blood of Jesus, you are now the sacrifice. You are the one to live in this world, as part of his body, to work in his stead, and to be a shining light, reflecting the love of God in your life.

Paul says, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable, and complete or perfect. We begin the conversation by admitting that we are someone who ascend against a righteous and holy God. We are convicted by that and by the knowledge that the wages of sin is death.

We deserve death. A righteous and holy God said that to us, but thanks be to God, he has given us a way to escape that death that we deserve. We escape that death because he died for us on the cross.

He was pure, he was righteous, he was holy, but he went to the cross for me, and he went to the cross for you. And when you are baptized into Christ, you put on Christ. Just like he went into the tomb dead, and he walked with newness of life out of that tomb three days later, we symbolize that by going down to water baptism, we walk out of the baptistery with newness of life.

And then Paul is encouraging us here that now that we have been born again, we experience the grace and the mercy of God, we are to live for him for the rest of our lives. And when we go to him in eternity, or he comes back to take us home, that is where we'll be in the eternal realm, with eternal life, experiencing the love of God forever. That is possible because of the good news of Jesus Christ.

I took advantage of this message when I was 15 years old. I knew I was lost. I knew the decisions that I had made in my life were not adding up to me having a good, happy, fulfilled life.

When someone shared the good news of Jesus Christ with me, I couldn't wait to start over. I wanted all my sins washed away. I wanted a clean, blank slate, for I could try to serve my God in this life.

That convicted me. Maybe there's someone among our number who needs to start over, who's never truly obeyed the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ. If that is you this morning, tomorrow is not guaranteed or promised to any of us.

I beg you, hear the simple plan of salvation, take advantage of the simple commandments that we have to do to access the mercy and grace of God, and start your spiritual life over together with us today. If you are someone who has been a bit fuzzy on how to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with someone in your neighborhood, in your workplace, a family member, I would encourage you to look at your notes that you took, and simply walk someone through this train of thought. It is deep, it is spiritual, it's sometimes complex, but the simple saving grace and love of Jesus Christ and how to access that is not complicated.

You can do it all from one simple book of the New Testament. If you have a need to obey the Gospel of Jesus Christ, to have your sins washed away, or you need the prayers of your loving church family this morning for any reason, please respond by coming forward and talking to me or seeing one of our shepherds at the doors. If you have a need, please come forward now as we stand and we sing.

The Greatest Word in Scripture

Hi. I was out last week, I had the crud. I'm not sure what you call it here in middle Georgia, but the crud is kind of universal, isn't it?

It's called toddler time. Dismissing here, two to four year olds to go out these middle doors. Where's our slide?

That's my question. It was up. Well, I just ignored it.

Yeah, well, I can't blame Vicki for that one. Okay. Excuse me.

We are going to be talking about what I believe is the greatest word of all the New Testament this morning.

The greatest word I believe in scripture is the word love. It is the great motivator. It is the great impetus behind God reaching down from heaven, revealing himself to his creation, to mankind, and to show us why he was so willing to allow his son to be born into the world and to die on the cross to pay for our sins and to give us a chance to live a good life here in this life and then a great life in the afterlife with him for eternity.

As we're trying to focus in on the idea of what it means to talk about love in the scriptures, I want to go back to our scripture reading we just finished and discuss how we are taught in scripture to first of all learn to love God. We go over to John 13 verses 34 and 35. Jesus said this to his disciples, A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.

And by this, all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. I want to emphasize for later reveal that this is found in the gospel account of John. This is going to be significant for a couple of reasons, as we'll find out in our discussion this morning.

I want to emphasize how Jesus qualified the idea of how we are to love one another, just as he loved them. Jesus loved his disciples. He was giving them an example of what it means to love each other the way that Jesus loved his followers.

So as we learn how Jesus loved his followers, we then learn how we are to love one another. Y'all with me? Kind of a little convoluted sentence structure there, but hopefully you'll see what I mean.

If we look over in the Gospel account of Luke, we find this. In Luke chapter 6, beginning of verse 27, But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies. Do good to those that hate you.

Bless those that curse you. Bless those that curse you. Pray for those who abuse you.

To one who strikes you on the cheek, Offer the other also. And from one who takes away your cloak, Do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who begs from you.

And from one who takes away your goods, Do not demand them back. And as you wish that others would do to you, Do so to them. And here's the qualifications as to why this teaching is so significant.

Verse 32, If you love those who love you, What benefit is that to you? Because even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, What benefit is that to you?

For even sinners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, What credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners to get back the same amount.

But love your enemies and do good, And lend expecting nothing in return, And your reward will be great. You will be sons of the Most High, Because He is kind to the ungrateful and to the evil. Be merciful even as your Father is merciful.

This is a high ask of all of mankind. It's a great demand. For Jesus to tell His followers, if you want to truly be like Him, you have to be more and more like God, our Father, and Heaven.

We have to be willing to forgive and to pray for and to be even grateful for those that oppose us. Because being merciful to those that have not been merciful to us is being more and more like God. So we ask ourselves, when Jesus said, You are to love one another just as I have loved you, He gave us a great command here in Luke chapter 6, 27 through 36.

How did Jesus love the world? He loved those that did not love Him back. We see that very clearly if we turn over to Luke chapter 23 and verses 32 through 43.

I've had a hard time this week trying to condense love, one of the greatest words in the entire Bible, into a readable text for us. And so I've given us a little bit of context with each one of these verses to show us how thorough this theme of love is in Scripture. So again, Jesus said, if you want to be merciful like your Father in heaven is merciful, then you are to love those that don't love you back.

Luke 23, 32, talking about his crucifixion. Two others who were criminals were led away to be put to death with him. And when they came to the place that is called the skull, there they crucified him and the criminals, one on his right and one on his left.

Jesus said, focus on this, folks, focus on this. Jesus said, Father, forgive them because they don't know what they're doing. They were not aware that they were about to kill the great, only begotten Son of God, the Lamb of God, as he's called in the book of Revelation.

He was asking for forgiveness from those that were guilty of trying to kill him on the cross. Now, he commanded his followers in Luke chapter 6, you need to bless those that curse you. And here he is, living the life, showing us the example.

They cast lots to divide his garments. The people stood by, watching, but the ruler scoffed at him, saying, he saved others, let him save himself, if he is the Christ of God, the Chosen One. The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine, and saying, if you were the king of the Jews, save yourself.

There was also an inscription over him, this is the king of the Jews. One of the criminals who were hanged, railed at him saying, are you not the Christ, save yourself and us. The other rebuked him saying, do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation?

And we indeed justly, we are receiving the due reward for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong. Listen to this, verse 42. He said, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.

He said to him, truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise. The greatest word in all of scripture is love. Jesus showed love to those who were guilty of crucifying him.

He showed love to even the one that was guilty of the great trespass of being a thief, was being crucified next to him. He extended his love to even him. This word love is so great because it explains to us why God is motivated to give us the sacrifice of Jesus.

Over in the book of John chapter 3, I know everyone knows, hopefully, verse 16 of John 3. For the sake of context, let's go to John chapter 3, verse 13.

No one has ascended into heaven, except he who descended from heaven the son of man, Isaiah's great title for who the Messiah would be. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the son of man be lifted up. We just read about the crucifixion.

That whoever believes in him may have eternal life. And here's the verse that is so familiar to us, verse 16. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son.

That whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. Today you'll be with me in paradise, he said to the thief next to him. Because God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only son of God. And this is the judgment, that light has come into the world. And people love the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.

For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light so it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God. Love is the greatest word in Scripture because love is the motivating force, the motivating factor behind God sending Jesus into the world.

Jesus commands his disciples to love one another just as he loved them. He loved them enough to sacrifice himself on that cross, to be the propitiation for their sins, to be their sin offering, and to be the lamb of God.

Loving God is so significant as even the paramount command in the Old Testament. Over in Mark chapter 12, beginning in verse 28, we find this. This is a very unusual passage, because you have a scribe of the Pharisees answering honestly.

It's a very rare occurrence in the New Testament. Mark chapter 12, verse 28. One of the scribes came and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he, Jesus, answered them well, asked him, which commandment is the most important of all?

Now, before this context, what we've seen is the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the scribes come to Jesus, and they're asking him questions trying to trip him up, trying to trap him into saying something that they can accuse him in a corner theologically. And they have been, up until this point, unsuccessful. It's almost like this guy knew his Bible pretty well or something, right?

It's weird. The Word of God knows the Word of God? How weird is that?

But here's a scribe saying, Lord, which is the most important commandment of all? Now, it's almost tricky because how of the 618 commandments of the Old Testament do you just pick one without minimizing the others? How?

Verse 29, Jesus answered, The most important is, here's a Shema, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and with all your strength. That's the most important commandment of all.

So when we say that love is the most important word in Scripture, there's loving God being the most important commandment of all the Hebrew Bible. He even adds for the scribe, verse 31, The second is this, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.

If you were to ask Jesus, what's the most important word or emotion in all your life? He's going to say, love God, love your neighbor. Love God, love your neighbor.

Now, look at this. This is so unique. Everybody with me?

We don't find a lot of this in Scripture. We don't find this. Verse 32, the scribe said to him, You're right, teacher.

You have truly said that he is one and there is no other beside him. And to love him with all the heart, with all the understanding, with all the strength, and to love one's neighbor as oneself is much more than all the whole burnt offerings and sacrifices. Now, keep in mind, that's a blasphemous thing to say if he's wrong.

To say all the commandments about sacrifices are nothing compared to these two commandments. If he's wrong, he's blaspheming the sacrificial order of the Hebrew Bible. But luckily for him, he wasn't wrong, he was right.

When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, folks, you are not far from the kingdom of God. After that, no one dared to ask him any more questions. This guy was on the right track.

This scribe knew the law, and it seems like sincerely wanted Jesus to answer the question about the law, which is the most important. The most important was love God with everything that you have and everything that you are, and love your neighbor as you love yourself. He was so close to the kingdom of God.

So we know that loving God is important. We have to grow that. We have to develop that to obey the commandment of Jesus to love one another as Jesus taught us how to love.

We're also commanded, and we see in scripture, that loving one another is so significant. Now, again, I mentioned before to you, I can't say one another without thinking of some energetic, enthusiastic elder we have here. He's made an impression on me.

Loving one another is so important in the Word of God. Before worship began, I had five whole minutes to shake George's hand, to hug Anita, shake Earl's hand, and I saw Dave over there, and he skirted around the people. I saw that look in his eye, and I said, you know, I wasn't here last week.

I miss these people. Can you believe that? I missed you all.

I know you didn't miss me, but I missed you. To see all you people again, I'm like, you know what, it's only been a week, but I miss seeing you. I've never, unfortunately, felt that.

Anywhere else I've been. There are people that I love, like their family members, where I've been before, but just you all. I've never felt that before, so I guess thanks.

When you see in Scripture how important loving one another is, that's how we learn to love the family of God, how we learn to love God more, because you're made in his image, I'm made in his image, we love each other, we love God's image. Over in Galatians chapter 5, let's turn there. Well, I'm already here, so you turn there.

Galatians 5, 14. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Well, that's a good idea, Paul.

I wonder where you learned that from. Verse 15, but if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you're not consumed by one another. But I say, walk in the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh, because the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh.

For these two are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things that you want to do. If you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now, the works of the flesh are evident, fornication, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these things, I warned you as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Now, notice this. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness. Now, sometimes I have little pet peeves.

I don't know about you, but I have these things that just bother me way more than they should. One of them, I've mentioned to you before, whenever a preacher calls the book of Revelation, revelations, I lose my mind. Whenever someone says the fruits of the Spirit are these, that blows my mind.

It's fruit singular. The product produced from the work of the Spirit in your life are things like this. And all these things describe not just what the fruit of the Spirit is, but the very nature of our Creator, God Himself.

The very first one is love. Now, hopefully you understand the importance of loving one another in the church family. That's significant.

But did you know that even in your own family, love is to be displayed? Did you know that?

Let's pick on the husbands, why not? Ephesians chapter 5 and verse 25. Husbands, love your wives.

There we go, verse done. Not quite. There is qualifications here on what it means to love your wife.

And these are important, because they're big. Husbands, love your wives loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies.

He who loves his wife, loves himself, amen.

For no one ever hated his own flesh. Well, you sure, Paul? I don't know, but he nourishes and cherishes it just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.

Therefore, the man shall leave his father and mother, hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. The mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

Now I love the fact that whenever I've taught this passage, some woman somewhere from the peanut gallery yells out, is never commanded for the wife to have to love the husband, though. Well, true. It's hard to love us sometimes, isn't it?

When Jesus says, Disciples, I want you to love one another just as I have loved you, he's giving all of us an example on how to love one another and to love in our own family units. It's a beautiful picture. It's a beautiful image.

Let's close out where we began. The author, the Apostle John, had a lot to say about the idea of what it means to love. Over in 1 John chapter 4, beginning in verse 7, this is a longer text, bear with me, 7 through 21.

Beloved, here is the Apostle John, let us love one another. This is the command that John wrote about in his Gospel account. Let us love one another, because love is from God.

And whoever has been born of God and knows God, anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is what? Love. In this, the love of God was made manifest, or clearly seen among us, that God sent His only Son into the world that we might live through Him.

In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved, we also ought to love one another. No one has seen God.

If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected or completed in us. By this, we know that we abide in Him and He in us because He has given us His Spirit. And we have seen and testified that the Father has sent His Son to be the Savior of the world.

Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him and He in God. Verse 16. So we have come to know and to believe that the love that God has for us, God is love, and whoever abides in love, abides in God, and God abides in him.

By this is love perfected with us, that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as He is, so also are we in this world. We know that God is love, and therefore to be more godly is to be more full of love. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, for fear has to do with punishment.

Whoever fears has not been perfected in love. Verse 19, we love because he first loved us. If anyone says, I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar.

For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. In this commandment we have from him, whoever loves God must also love his brother. It's a very long way to say simply what we read at the very beginning.

Jesus commanded, love one another just as I have loved you. I have one more statement to make. This is one that's based more on tradition than scripture.

I want to emphasize that point before we read it together. In the fourth century, there was a Christian writer whose name was Jerome. And Jerome has a commentary on the book of John.

And on the comments under the inscription where we read, Jesus commanded that we love one another just as He loved us, Jerome has a story about what traditionally the Apostle John would do when he was well advanced in years. We know that he lived to be at least 100 years old, which back in the day is quite a long time. And the story goes that he would have to be carried into a building to worship with the saints when he was well past 100 years old.

And he would use a cane or a walking stick to move around. And they would always ask the old Apostle John to preach on the Sunday morning. And he was old, his voice was weak, he was trembling in the knees, but he would stand before the assembly, and he would beat his cane into the ground.

And his sermon was very short and sweet.

As he beat his canine to the ground, his sermon was this, little children love one another. Week after week after week after week. All he would say is little children love one another.

He had a younger man ask him, why do you always preach the same message? And as legend goes, because, John replied, it is the Lord's command. And if only this is done, it is enough.

We've read the Gospel account of John this morning to open up our conversation about love. We've read in his first epistle how significant love for God and love for one another is. It is absolutely the most important word in all of the Scripture.

If you don't leave the assembly this morning.

Knowing that God loves you, that Jesus loves you, and that we love you, we have failed, folks.

Love is the most important thing in this world, because God shows us what love truly is. If you have a need to respond to your loving church family this morning, you can come forward and talk to me for a moment. We'll pray for you right now.

Or if it's a more private matter, you can see one of our shepherds at the door. If you have a need to respond to the very love of God, please do so now as we stand and we sing.

Follow Me

nyway, what an encouraging verse of scripture. Isn't that right? Matthew chapter 10.

There is a point, though, I will tell you. That last little bit in that passage we just read from the scripture reading, to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow him, is one of the most important charges that any person can ever hear. Whenever Jesus called his disciples, he would say the simple words, follow me.

Now, you may look at that and say, well, physically, they would set down their nets, and they would literally follow after Jesus. But every single Christian in the world is called to follow after him. Not just physically, but in a spiritual way, in an ethical way, in a moral way, following after the ways of Jesus.

And so this morning, what I'd like to do is to examine some simple things that we can be reminded of, of what it takes to be a follower of Jesus. We have to have certain attributes about our own character, our own selves, to be a true follower of Jesus. And you may be thinking, why did you pick this the week after Camp Canaan?

Well, the reason is, we were busy at Camp Canaan all week. And so I went through the archives of Hornbuckle Homiletics. And I said, do you know what's the one that I haven't done here?

Following after Jesus. If I already got the outline, I already got the slides. So I got a lot of praise for the Prodigal Son last week, and I do not anticipate receiving as much praise for this one.

However, because it's from the Word of God, it is useful, it is beneficial. It's a good reminder of what it takes for us to be a follower of Jesus. The first thing that I would recommend for us scripturally that we need to have as a part of who we are on the inside to follow after Christ is to have courage, to have courage.

The direction of Jesus is counterculture. It is against the tide of what the world tells us that we should be striving after. And so to be courageous enough to fight the torrent of the world's exposure of telling us how we ought to live and to follow after our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, courage is absolutely necessary.

One of my favorite passages is in Joshua chapter 1, verses 6 through 9. In this moment in time and history, you have the great leader and mediator Moses leaving this earth, not going to the promised land. And you have his second in command, Joshua, taking up the reins where Moses left off.

And he is supposed to lead the people through the Jordan River into the land of Canaan and to guide them to conquer the land of Canaan for the Israelites. In Joshua chapter 1, beginning in verse 6, God says, Be strong and of good courage, for to this people you shall divide as an inheritance the land which I swore to their fathers to give them. Only be strong and very courageous, that you may observe to do to all the law which Moses my servant commanded you.

Do not turn from it to the right hand nor to the left, that you may prosper wherever you go. The book of this law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.

Have I not commanded you? Be strong and of good courage. Do not be afraid nor be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.

Now, if you notice how many times that God had to remind Joshua at the beginning of his great journey in leadership, the idea of being strong and being courageous is repeated three times in this passage. So for Joshua, he needed to be instilled with the idea that God was with him, but he needed to have the courage to follow after God's instruction. The same thing is absolutely true for us.

When we are following after God, he's with us, we need to have the courage to follow him wherever we are led. Now, the conclusion of what we see in Joshua chapter 1 is kind of shown to us at the end of the book. In Joshua 24, you may have this piece of wood somewhere in your house.

I've seen those before, right? You may have this. Joshua 24 verses 14 and 15, Now therefore fear the Lord, Joshua says to the people of Israel, serve him in sincerity and in truth, and 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 that were on the other side of the river, or the gods of the Amorites and whose land you dwell, but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. We see that character progression from chapter one, where God had to remind him that God is going to be with Joshua every step of the way. He needs to be strong and have courage.

And we see the ending arc of his character at the end of the book, where he says, I have learned who God is. I have been courageous and following after his commandments. As for me and my house, we will continue to serve the Lord.

We also need courage as Christians, obviously. In 1 Peter chapter one verses nine and ten, Peter wrote these words, who himself was called after Jesus by the simple instruction, follow me, 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 into his marvelous light, who once were not a people, but now are the people of God, who had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy. We have learned through who we've become by following Jesus that we need to have that courage to identify ourselves as a follower of our Lord.

And John wrote these words, Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called the children of God. And therefore, the world does not know us because it did not know him. The world rejected Jesus as Lord, and yet we choose to follow Jesus.

Because of that, we need great courage to follow after his footsteps. Not only is courage needed, but also the idea of compassion. If you're thinking about words that characterize who Jesus was, he was a man who was full of compassion on those that needed that kind of compassionate love.

In Matthew chapter 9, verses 35 and 36, I clicked the button, nothing happened. Vicki, save me. There we go.

Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news or gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people. But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered like sheep having no shepherd. Don't miss the irony here.

We have the good shepherd seeing the people. They were trying to follow him. They were tired.

They were almost lost. And Jesus saw them like sheep without a shepherd. In Matthew chapter 14, verse 14, when Jesus went out, he saw a great multitude, and he was moved with compassion for them and healed their sick.

So if we're trying to follow after Jesus, we have just two passages here of many, where Jesus saw the people and had compassion on their physical and their spiritual needs, we too should be full of compassion. That compassion of Jesus is so significant because it qualifies him to be our high priest. In Hebrews chapter 5, verses 1 and 2, every high priest is taken from among men and appointed for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins.

He can have compassion on those who are ignorant and going astray, since he himself is also subject to weakness. A man as your high priest understands what you're going through. And the good high priest, the great high priest Jesus, also lived in this world, had compassion on the sinfulness and the weaknesses of mankind, and has compassion on us.

Over in 1 Peter chapter 3, verses 8 and 9, he says, finally, all of you be of one mind, having compassion for one another, love as brothers, be tender hearted, be courteous, not returning evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, blessing, knowing that you are called to this, that you may inherit a blessing. Now, I've been here for two and a half-ish years so far. I know when I'm in the right spot, because it feels like so much longer and feels just like yesterday.

That's how I know where I'm supposed to be. Whenever I read a verse that has the one another's in it, can you guess who I think of immediately? Brian Rogers.

Our interview on the phone call, the phone call interview, the in-person conversations we had when I was here for my tryout, and almost every conversation somehow, I don't know how he weaves it in there, we always come back to the conversation of the one another's. This is one of those passages. Where to be like Jesus by following his example, he had compassion on the people that were trying to follow him while he was here on the earth ministering unto them.

He can be qualified as our high priest and have compassion on our weaknesses, and then we are commanded by Peter through the Holy Spirit to have compassion for one another. The idea of having that love, that grace towards one another is a great thing. And Jude, chapter 1, verses 20 through 22, reads this way, But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life, and on some, have compassion, making a distinction.

We have influence over others, and how well they're walking after our Lord by how we treat one another. One of those Brian phrases. Looking out for one another on our way towards heaven.

So we have the idea of being courageous, going against the tide of what the world tells us we should be doing, instead following after our Lord. We also, just like Jesus, need compassion, that love and that grace that we show to one another to encourage each other on the way towards our reward. We also need the idea of conviction.

And what I mean by that is not just the way that we talk about the idea of I'm convicted to follow the Lord and have that resolve. That's good and all. But my point is, we need to recognize that without Jesus, we would be convicted of our sins.

A daily reminder of why Christ was necessary is kind of a good kick in the pants, if you will. You say that here in Georgia? Something like that?

Okay, that translate to Georgian? Okay, the idea of knowing that without Christ, without his love, without his grace and mercy, I would be guilty, I would be convicted of my sins is a good motivating factor. Jude, chapter 1 and verse 23, here's the rest of the passage we just read, but others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire, hating even the garment defiled by the flesh.

Knowing our sinful state is a good motivating force to allow ourselves to be forgiven by Jesus and to show others the reality of sinful ways. In Acts chapter 2 and verse 40, you probably know Acts 2, 38, don't you? Talk about it a whole lot for good reason.

But this last passage here, Acts 2 and verse 40, and with many other words, talking about Peter and the apostles, he testified and exhorted them, saying, be saved from this perverse generation. The sermon in Acts chapter 2 wasn't concluded with, repent and be baptized, it's concluded with Peter admonishing the listeners, the hearers of the message, be aware of where you stand in light of God's judgment without the forgiveness of your sins. In Romans chapter 3, verses 21 through 23, but now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God through faith and Jesus Christ to all and on all who believe.

For there is no difference, why? Because all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. The standard of God's holiness is unattainable without His love, His grace, and His mercy.

And being aware of that, we are reminded that we are simply sinners who have been redeemed by God's love through Jesus. In Galatians chapter 3, Paul put it this way, in verse 22, but the scripture has confined all under sin. We are all guilty that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.

Before faith came, we were kept guard under the law, kept for the faith, which would afterwards be revealed. And therefore, the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ that we might be justified by faith. That's kind of a complex way of Pauline writing this, but here's the meaning.

We have been instructed by the commandments of the Old Testament, the law and the prophets, that we are not able to live up to the standard of God's holiness. We're taught time and time again by animal sacrifices of the Old Testament that there is no solution for sin. It can be covered up for one year at the most, but there has to be a better sacrifice.

And then Jesus comes, and He is that great Lamb of God. We're brought to faith by Jesus to know this is the way to be justified by sin. After faith has come, we are no longer under the tutor.

For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek slave nor free, male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

The way I usually think about this is we are all in the same boat, folks. We all have the same problem, and there is only one solution, and there is not a single thing that you can do to earn the salvation for your sins. We are all saved by the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ by obeying the commandments of our Lord.

I'm no better than you, you're no better than me. We all have a sin problem, and God's love through Jesus Christ washes away our sins. Now, if that doesn't motivate you to teach people about the way to have their sins forgiven, I'm not sure what will do it.

You are guilty, I am guilty, they are guilty, but we're all saved the same way. Amen? Finally, what does it take to be a follower of Jesus?

It takes commitment. It takes commitment. We bought a house here in middle Georgia.

How about that? Long time coming. Everywhere we've gone, we're like, well, we'll just keep renting, we'll keep renting, just in case, we'll keep renting, get to Georgia, we're buying a house, right?

The idea of making a commitment is very important. I got married at 18 years old, she was 17, parents signed her away, that was a commitment. Bought a house in middle Georgia, an interest rate that wasn't that great, we're still making a commitment, that's a commitment.

But when you say you're following after Jesus, that's a huge commitment. Over in Luke chapter 14, beginning with verse 25. Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, let's pause right there, get the picture in your mind.

We have a great multitude of individuals that are literally following Jesus around. Now he turns back and sees the crowd, and you might think, well, that's good. A lot of folks recognize who Jesus is, and they want to follow after him.

Maybe he's just the miracle man that can heal your diseases, but many of them know he's the Messiah, and they want to follow him. And you think that Jesus would be happy and do all that he could to foster that dynamic relationship to gain more followers for himself. That's what men typically do, right?

You see someone following you, you want more. There's this thing called social media. Have you heard of it?

Apparently it's important how many people follow you. Here's Jesus with a great number of followers. Here's the message he has for them.

If anyone comes to me, verse 26, and does not hate his own father and mother, and wife and children, and brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. He lost a lot of followers.

When you follow after Jesus, everything else in your life has to be second, at the very least. He has to be number one, or you can't follow him. He's asking a whole lot of commitment from his followers, isn't he?

Whoever does not bear his own cross, now, we say that kind of cliché because, well, you have to carry a cross, have a cross around our neck and earrings and tattoos and all that, a cross, right? No, back in the Roman world in the first century, bearing your cross is an excruciating, shameful way to be a symbol to the entire community that what you did to end up on a cross, everybody else shouldn't do. Jesus says, take up your own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.

Big crowd sifted through by these great commitment statements. If we keep reading in verse 28, here's the reasoning that Jesus uses. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it?

Now, I grew up in Gloucester County, Virginia. No one's ever heard of it. But small little rural country on the east coast of Virginia.

Next door neighbor is a crabber. That's his profession. So we're blue collar working folks.

You give me a blue crab, I know exactly what to do with it. You get some old bag, get some newspapers out. It's good old times, right?

That's how I grew up. And Trailer Park was half my life. House was other part of my life.

And we moved to our house in Gloucester. And there was this house on the corner of the street of Lowcountry Road. Now, Lowground, Lowcountry Road was always underwater because of the floods.

And on the corner was this little house. And it was this tiny looking little thing. If it had two bedrooms, I'd be shocked.

It was a tiny little house. And the owner of that house decided to make an addition. Can you see where I'm going?

My entire childhood, we would be on a school bus, drive past this house with an addition on the side. I didn't know what it was supposed to be, but all I read, my entire childhood, folks, was Tyvek on the side of the house. They put the walls up, they put the framing on there, they put that Tyvek wrapped around it, and they couldn't afford to finish that addition.

They couldn't. It was there my entire childhood, from fifth grade till graduating senior, Tyvek, Tyvek, Tyvek, Tyvek. That's what Jesus is talking about here.

If you're going to build something, figure out a budget for it so you don't get halfway through, and you have to read Tyvek for the years and decades to follow. Verse 29, Otherwise, when you've laid the foundation, you're not able to finish. All who see it will begin to mock him, like I'm doing right now.

Tyvek, Tyvek, Tyvek, saying this man began to build and was not able to finish. Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he's able with 10,000 to meet him who comes against him with 20,000. The odds are stacked against you, right?

And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace, which is the wise move. It's not a slaughter then, if you just say, well, we can call it a draw and just have peace. Here's the kicker.

Verse 33. Here's the application. So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.

That's not how you gain a multitude of followers. That's how you lead out to the ones who are truly full of commitment. When Jesus says, deny yourself, take up your cross daily, and follow me, that's what he means.

Are you willing to follow him through whatever he leads you through? If so, you need courage, you need compassion, to be convicted of your own sin, and to have commitment to deny all others in following him. That's what it takes to follow after our Lord.

This morning, the invitation is yours to honestly look at yourself before the throne room of God and see, are you truly following after him? You can begin your journey this morning by being baptized into Christ, or if you're following him but you've lost one of these things that you need as a part of your character, allow us to encourage you, to have compassion on you, to encourage you, to lift you up, so we can keep following him together. If anyone has a need, you can talk to me for a moment by coming forward, or see one of our elders at the door.

So if you have a need, respond now as we stand and we sing. Thank you.

The Prodigal Son

Good morning. I'm uncomfortable wearing a T-shirt on Sunday morning. I'm just going to own it while I'm up here.

I've never done this before, but you know what, Camp Canaan deserves it. We have been working hard to make sure the camp is prepared. We've got the right people in the right places.

We've got our snack crew, we've got our arts and crafts, we've got this director guy who thinks he knows what he's doing. We've got all these things in places just to make sure this year we have a great time out there teaching our children about Jesus and the lessons that he taught us while he was here on this earth. And I'll tell you what, we've got a lot of people working behind the scenes to make sure it's success.

So everyone that's involved with camp was encouraged to wear their Camp Canaan t-shirt this morning to worship. A couple of people didn't do it anyway. That's fine.

I did it to be an example to you. Again, I'm uncomfortable not wearing a suit jacket, but here we are opening the Word of God together this morning and worship to Him. We are going to go to the Book of Luke, Chapter 15 together, and examine one of the parables that we will be going and teaching our children this week in Camp Canaan.

Luke. What? Hey, there's a toddler time going on right now.

If you are age two to four, go enjoy your time together learning about God's Word. I'm going to forget every single week. I was given this symbol.

I'm like, time out for what? For what? Time out.

Quit talking about Luke 15.

Toddler time, okay, two to four year olds. Get out of here. We love you, but get out.

All right, Luke 15. In this particular chapter of Luke, you have three different parables that are given about the idea of being lost. At one time or another, all of us could be said in a spiritual way that we are lost.

And these three stories, these three parables, show us what being lost and being found is all about. The word parable comes from the Greek word parabolos. We get the idea of a cast or throw alongside of being the literal rendition of that Greek word.

And so you have a story that's cast alongside of, if you will, a spiritual truth behind it. And by, if you understand the simple story, then you may understand that deeper spiritual principle. So we're examining parables.

In Luke 15, one through seven, you have a parable or a throw along, throw alongside of the idea of what it means to be a sheep, and one of them is lost. You have 99 that are present where they should be, and one who is lost. The shepherd goes out and finds that one lost little sheep, and when he recovers it, they rejoice.

And in verse seven of Luke 15, just so I tell you that there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents, and over 99 righteous persons who need no repentance. And so the idea of gaining just one soul back through repentance is a thing that we should rejoice about. We then have verses eight through 10, a parable of a lost coin.

If you have 10 coins and you lose one, you search the entire house, top to bottom, under all the beds and all the drawers and all the dressers, and you find this one lost coin, and then you can rejoice. Then verse 10 of Luke 15, just so I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents. And then we transition in verse 11 to the well-known parable of the Prodigal Son.

Now, I was thinking about this story, this parable this week, because I listened to a guy named Dave Ramsey. If you know Dave Ramsey, you know he's all about money, financial advice. He has these little clips of his podcast that he puts on YouTube.

And I'm in the car. I don't feel like music, don't feel like a really deep podcast. I'll just turn on some funny calls he gets on the radio and the internet show and listen to people's stories and their situations and just say, well, I'm just glad I'm not that person.

It's what happens in my mind. And there's a lady who called in this week, and she's like, well, I have my will done, and we are fairly wealthy. And I just want to get your advice about this.

I got an 18-year-old son, and he's a senior in high school, and he just ran away from home, and is living with another family, and he won't text us, he won't call us, he won't talk to us. And the question that she had was, do I take him out of the will? I just thought that was an interesting dilemma.

Your son ran away from the house, and you're calling Dave Ramsey in Nashville, Tennessee to ask him, do I cut my son out of the will? That seems to be a low priority at this stage, right? Hey, get ready for Camp Canaan, folks.

We're ready, we're prepped. All right, so that was an interesting call, but the whole time that she's talking about this situation, this dilemma that she's in about her son who ran away from home, and asking about the will and financial matters, the story of The Prodigal Son just kept coming to the back of my mind. Like, that's the priority is your son, not the idea of a will.

But who am I? I'm not Dave Ramsey. Let's go to Luke 15 and read this story, because we're going to find ourselves in this story one way or another.

You're in here somewhere and I'm in here somewhere. Verse 11, and he, Jesus, said, there was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the share of property that is coming to me.

And he divided his property between them. This younger son has the gumption. Is that a word you use in Georgia?

Okay, good. All right, same language. He has the gumption to walk over his dad and say, Hey, give me the one third that I'm owed.

I know my older brother, who's the heir, gets two thirds of the inheritance, but give me my one third inheritance now. And the father gives in to his request and gives him one third of the wealth that would be his when the father passes away. Verse 13, not many days later, the younger son gathered all that he had and took a journey into a far country.

And there he squandered his property in reckless living. Well, I'm glad I've never blown a paycheck on reckless living before. I'm sure you've never done that either, right?

He's using the wealth that his father gave him, that he worked so hard for, no doubt, and he wasted it in reckless or riotous living. Verse 14, when he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and he hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country who sent him into his fields to feed pigs.

Now, one nuance here that you may pick up on, and you may not, is that Jesus is a Jew. He's Jewish by heritage. And so he's talking to people who are likely Jewish.

From their culture, swine or pigs are unclean animals. And so it kind of multiplies the embarrassment and the shame that the younger son is feeling here in this dilemma because, first of all, he's asking his father to give him a third of the inheritance. And he goes out, and it seems like in a very short time, he wastes all those resources that his father gave to him.

And now he's working for a man who's a foreigner, so probably not Jewish, in taking care of pigs, these unclean animals. In verse 16, it got so desperate for him. Here's how Jesus describes his living conditions.

Verse 16, and he was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate, and no one gave him anything. Now, I've been hungry before, but I've never been so hungry. I look at hogs food and say, you know what, I wish I had some of that.

But that was the younger son's living conditions. In verse 17, everything changes. Verse 17 is my favorite verse of this entire parable, because I can relate to this particular moment.

Verse 17, but when he came to himself. So unique phraseology. It's not when he lo behold, opened his ears and his eyes.

It's not that. It's the phrase when he came to himself, meaning he was having almost a disassociation with what he was choosing to do. And now he realized all of a sudden, what am I doing?

Have you ever had a moment where you just began going down a certain course of life and you get down that path and then you just wake up to the reality of where you are? If you can't relate to that, then good on you. But I can.

I've had moments in my life where I'm like, what, how did I end up here? I just made these little decisions that led me down this path. And then all of a sudden you're like, how did I get here?

What is going on? When he came to himself, he said, how many of my father's hired servants, very polite way to say it, slaves, have more than enough bread, but I'm dying here with hunger. I am starving to death, but my father's household servants are eating well.

I will arise, I will go to my father, and I will say to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your slaves, your hired servants.

That's the speech he wants to tell his dad. He's preparing all this beforehand. No doubt he is shameful.

He's anxious. He's worried about being received back into his own household. He's got this whole speech prepared, written down the back of his hand, I'm sure.

He is ready to go back and humble himself, fall prostrate on the ground, and then just be able to say, Father, I'm so sorry. I made a mistake. I want to come back home just as a slave.

It's all that I want. Verse 20, he arose. He came to his father.

But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion. He ran and embraced him and kissed him. Now, in this parable, we have this dynamic where all these individuals and these circumstances represent something else.

It shouldn't shock you that the father here in this particular parable is a representation of God the Father, God the Father. This is the only time in Scripture that we find the idea of God doing a physical action like this. It's very unique in Scripture.

Here, God sees him a long way off. He feels compassion, and God runs to his son. He embraces him, and he kisses him.

The son is looking at his hand, or he wrote with that ballpoint pen his speech. Verse 21, The son said, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. He's halfway through the speech.

I am no longer worthy to be called your son. And you know what he wants to say, where his heart is, where his sentiment is. But, verse 22, the father said to his servant, bring quickly the best robe, put it on him, put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet, bring the fatted calf, kill it, let us eat, and let us celebrate.

He can't even get through the speech because the father cuts him off and says, no, you're back home now. We have a party to throw. Because you were away, and I was worried sick about you, and now you're back home.

That's all that matters right now.

Verse 24. Why is the father so joyous? Because this my son was dead, and is alive again.

He was lost, and is found. And they began to celebrate. Now folks, I know I've been here for that younger son was.

I had it good. And I decided that I would have the gumption to go out and make decisions about my life despite God trying to give me instructions about the best thing for me and my circumstances. And I go out and I try to make these decisions and live life the way that I want to.

And then one day I wake up and I realize how in the world did I end up here? This is not working out for me at all. If I just go back to my father, maybe I can just sign on and have my needs met by being a servant of him.

And then when you go back home, you're full of shame, anxiety, disappointment, and you try to humbly come before God, your Father in heaven, and say, I know where I've been. I've been away. I just want to come back home.

And sometimes in our own minds, we may think that God's disappointed in us and maybe doesn't like us anymore, or maybe we don't deserve to even call him our Father in heaven. This story tells me that Jesus, the Son of God, describes God the Father. When you want to come back home, no matter where you've been, He runs to meet you.

And He embraces you. And He kisses you. And He wants to celebrate you, no matter where you came from.

Because you were dead, but now you're alive. You were lost, but where are you now? You're found.

That's how God describes us wanting to come back home, folks. And if that's not reason to come together, to worship Him, to thank Him for His marvelous grace, I can't think of a better reason than that right there. But, folks, the story continues.

I said you're going to find yourself in this story. Maybe you can't relate to the father that well. Maybe you can't relate to the younger son that well.

But maybe one other character that you might be able to relate to. Let's keep reading. Verse 25 Now his older son was in the field, and as he came and drew near the house, he heard music and dancing, and he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant.

He said to him, Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fetid calf, because he has received him back safe and sound. But he was angry and refused to go in. I'm not going in there to celebrate my younger brother, who took a third of the money away and wasted it in his riotous living.

That's no reason to celebrate the brother things. His father came out and entreated him. So the father ran to embrace the lost son that was now found, and then he even left the party to go talk to the older son.

What's going on with you? We're in here celebrating. Why are you out here by yourself?

He answered his father, Look, these many years I have served you, I have never disobeyed your command. Yet you never gave me a young goat that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this, your son came, now, I used to not really understand what that sentiment was.

I used to be like, why do you say it that way? Sometimes when I get home after being at the office or running errands.

And my poor wife has been with the kids all day, I'll walk in the door from the garage, and I'll put my bag down, and what do you think I hear sometimes?

Oh, so now I totally get. Verse 30.

Verse 31, he said to him, Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, because this your brother, not my son, your brother was dead, and he is found alive. He was lost, and he is found.

Son, I know you never disobeyed me. I know you've been here in this house taking care of our business. I'm sorry you feel that way about your brother, my son, but he's home now, where he needs to be.

All that I have is yours anyway. Celebrate, because he's back home. Now, if you look at the beginning of this chapter, you have the parable of the lost sheep.

You have 99 that never left home, where they're supposed to be. That shepherd goes out there and finds that one that is lost and brings him back home, and they celebrate. And then here's the illustration, verse 7, just so when that lost sheep was brought home, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents and over the 99 righteous persons who need no repentance.

Get my son out of here.

And then, you have verses 8, 9, and 10. You have 10 coins. You lose one, you search the whole house, you find it, you call your friends to come and celebrate and rejoice with you.

Why? Here's the application, verse 10. Just so I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents.

There's no verse like that at the end of The Prodigal Son parable. But it's definitely there. The meaning is implied.

There is heaven and there is rejoicing in heaven over the angels when one sinner who is lost, out there, starving, comes back home. And folks, there is a warning for all of us who've never left home, who are in the Father's house now. When we see someone wanting to come back home, to give him grace, give him mercy, and to celebrate with him because he was lost and he is home.

The Father is waiting to run to you if you are away from home this morning. If you're out there and you've woken up and you said, how in the world did I end up here? The Father's waiting for you to run back home.

He wants to embrace you, he wants to forgive you, he wants to celebrate with you. He's been looking for you for a long time, maybe. If you have a need to respond this morning to come back home, the Father is waiting, and your brothers and sisters are waiting.

Or maybe that you've been home this whole time and you've forgotten some important things about your spiritual life and you want to respond for prayers of hope of encouragement, your church family is here for you this morning. If you have a need to respond to the Lord's invitation, please come forward or see one of our elders at the doors as we stand and we sing.

A Virtuous Woman (Mother's Day 2024)

A Virtuous Wife Transcript

I talked to a friend yesterday about the idea of preaching on Mother's Day, and it's one of those difficult days for some of us because we've lost our mothers, they've gone before us, or we didn't have the opportunity to know a good mother when we were in our homes. I thankfully have never had that issue. My mother is watching online, so of course she is the best mother in the world.

I struggle, though, with Father's Day. As many of you know, I did not have an excellent Christian father growing up in my childhood. And so I can sympathize with that sentiment, though, if you struggle on Mother's Day.

And while it is difficult for me to sometimes preach about Father's Day, it's kind of changed my perspective, having two of my own little kids and being a father to them. And so what I want to do this morning is, while we're together, to worship God together, to talk about what God reveals to us in His Word about what a virtuous wife or virtuous mother looks like from Scripture. So we're going to the very famous passage in Proverbs 31, verses 10 through 31.

A small lesson about this text is supposedly written by King Solomon, which is interesting for a couple of different reasons. And also, we find that this was historically one of those documents that would have been held up as kind of a prime example of what all young Jewish women should have been shooting for in their lives. So if we look into Proverbs 31, verses 10 through 31, this likely does not describe a single individual mother that's related to Solomon, Bathsheba, for example, nor one of his wives.

But this is just kind of a template from God's Word as to what we find when you have a wife or a mother who is full of virtue, who is full of godliness, trying to be like God, her creator. So we begin famously here in verses 10 through 12. An excellent wife, who can find?

She is far more precious than jewels. The heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will have no lack of gain. She does him good and not harm all the days of her life.

Now this passage here, of course, is well known to many of us. It's one of those moments in which we find an outline of what her worth is compared to precious jewels. If you look into the Book of Proverbs, it is full of all these examples of what wisdom looks like in that Book of Proverbs.

It is somewhat interesting of a conundrum that we have all of them described as being like female attributes. Isn't that so shocking? We look at the idea of wisdom and kindness and gentleness, and they're all females in the Book of Proverbs.

Is that shocking to any of us? Again, Proverbs 3, 13-15, Bless is the one who finds wisdom, and the one who gets understanding for the gain from her is better than gain from silver, and her profit is better than gold. She is more precious than jewels, and nothing you desire can be compared with her.

I wonder why God thought it was important to use a female to describe the idea of wisdom in his Book of Proverbs. No one's laughing at that, and maybe you shouldn't, but I just think it's interesting how you never find a guy described as being wise in the Book of Proverbs. What an oversight!

It's not an oversight, guys, and we know it. In Job 28, verse 18, Job said this, No mention shall be made of coral or quartz, for the price of wisdom is above rubies. The idea of using the knowledge that we have in a wise and appropriate way is, of course, seen in Scripture as a paramount thing.

Proverbs 12 and verse 4, An excellent wife is the crown of her husband, but she who causes shame is like rottenness in his bones. Well, that's a dichotomy for you. Wearing a crown or having her bones being rotten.

This kind of gives you the contrast there of the impact that a wife or a mother can make in one's life. I've had the benefit of doing two weddings in the last two months. I'd much rather do weddings than funerals.

I'll tell you that much. Now, the idea of wedding is a beautiful tradition that we have of a man and a wife being joined together to become one before God and the witnesses present. And the idea of thinking about a beautiful bride on her wedding day and the value that she has and the impact that she has in that marriage and that relationship is absolutely key.

Because guys left to our own devices were not really a good thing, are we? The only not good thing God made in Genesis chapter 1 is a bachelor.

Amen? He knew that Adam by himself was incomplete. There was a helper that he absolutely needed, and from his side he made Eve, the mother of all living, to be able to have those two become one in his sight and to work together to fulfill their purpose there in the garden, to be an image bearer of God their creator.

So we ask ourselves from Proverbs 31 verses 10 through 12, what is her worth? Her worth is indescribable. We then go on in our text verses 13 through 16 and talk about her work.

She seeks wool and flax and works with willing hands. She is like the ships of the merchant, she brings food from afar. She rises while it is yet night and provides food for her household and portions for her maidens.

She considers a field and buys it. With the fruit of her hands, she plants a vineyard. Now in my household, we don't really see the idea of her being like a ship of the merchant and going away and then providing food.

We hear the terrible news, I'm going to go to the grocery store. So I'm lost, the kids are distressed and distraught, and then she comes in the door, and mommy's back, and the world's better again. That's what our home life looks like.

So I can relate somewhat to verse 13 through 16. I come home from work, oh, dad's back. Mom comes home, mommy's home.

It's wonderful, right? Now, looking at the culture here in which this was written by King Solomon, it would not be inappropriate or unthought of that we have someone who has the rights to buy property, you see in verse 16. I think it's interesting that if you go over to the New Testament and contrast that to what we find in the book of Titus, chapter 2 and verse 5 and following, it's quite similar.

So Titus chapter 2, verse 5. The older women likewise, that they behave in reverent behavior, not slanderers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things, that they admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be blasphemed. The tradition of seeing a wife or a mother in this role in the Hebrew Bible is completed through the work also through the book of Titus in 1st and 2nd Timothy.

So the work of a virtuous woman or a mother is seen here in Scripture as being, of course, busy and providing for their own. We then move on to verses 17 through 25. And you're welcome for not shoving it all on one slide.

Here is slide one. She dresses herself with strength and makes her arms strong. She perceives that her merchandise is profitable.

Her lamp does not go out at night. So she doesn't go to sleep when the sun goes down, and she's up way before the sun rises. When does this woman sleep is my question.

There's no answer in Scripture. Verse 19. She puts her hands to the distaff, and her hands hold the spindle.

She opens her hand to the poor. She reaches out her hands to the needy. She is not afraid of snow for her household, especially middle Georgia, right?

For all her household are clothed in scarlet. Verse 22. She makes bed coverings for herself.

Her clothing is fine, linen and purple. Her husband is known in the gates when he sits among the elders of the land. She makes linen garments and sells them.

She delivers sashes to the merchants. Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come. I love two lines in here in particular.

Her husband is known in the gates when he sits among the elders of the land. Now, that causes me to chuckle inwardly just a little bit, because every preaching job I have ever had in West Virginia when I was 20 years old, in Charleston when I was 26 years old, and then here when I was 30, whatever I was when I was hired. Let's see, 33.

33, Jesus' age, right? That's when I got here. Every time I've gotten the hiring contract and the handshake from the eldership, every single time.

And Charleston, it was the funniest one I've ever had. We had a tryout when we were there, and I interviewed and I preached and I taught a Bible class, and I said, well, we like you. We have another guy we're considering.

I go, okay, so we'll bring you back for a second tryout and bring the whole family with them to see how well y'all get on. And so we had our second tryout. This guy from Texas showed up.

He tried out, and then we showed up the week after him. And it was just me and Melissa, no babies yet. And so they said late into the night, we're in this meeting with the elders, and they said, well, if we offer you the job now, will you take it?

I go, yes, sir, I would. And they go, okay, let's talk about it some more, and we'll think about it. And I go, okay, okay, all right.

So I go out into the fellowship hall, and I sit down with Melissa, and one of these guys gave me a cup of water. I'm drinking my water. I'm just sitting there on pins and needles.

And one of the elders, who was not afraid to let you know what he was thinking all the time, just came out, took my hand and said, I wanted you to know something. I go, what is it? And he goes, well, you were about as good as the other guy, but your wife got you this job.

We love her. It's like, I'll take it. Getting here, the same thing.

Well, you're okay, but Melissa, hey, we'd love to have her be a member here. You got the job. So her husband is known in the gates when he sits among the elders of the land.

Amen. That's exactly how I end up where I am. Melissa comes along with me, and she outshines me every step of the way.

That is her gift. And finally, verse 25. Strength and dignity are her clothing.

She laughs at the time to come. She knows this woman of faith, this great virtuous woman, knows that God is ultimately in control. And as long as she follows him, he will take care of her every step of the way.

Amen. Finally, we have verses 26 through 31. She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.

She looks well to the way of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness. Her children rise up and call her blessed, her husband also, and he praises her. Many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all.

Charm is deceitful, and beauty is emptiness, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. Give her of the fruit of her hands, and let her works praise her in the gates. I love the fact that in verse 26, she opens her mouth with wisdom.

This entire book of Proverbs is full of nothing but wisdom. When wisdom is personified, she is female in this text. As long as these virtuous women keep opening up their mouths and speaking the true words of God, they are speaking in wisdom.

I have said before and will say again, nothing I have to say out of my own brain is worth anything. The only value I can impart to you is by opening up the very Word of God, allowing His Word through the Holy Spirit to act on your heart and change your life the way it's changed mine. Our value of wisdom is not because of our own personal experience, per se.

It's based on the truth from God's inspired Holy Word. To summarize, nothing compares to the worth of a virtuous woman. Her work reveals her character, her grace, and her love.

Her tender, caring heart lifts up all those that are around her, especially her own family. And her wise counsel is a blessing to her friends and to her family. If you fit into this category this morning, thank you for all that you are, and thank you for all that you do.

Your impact cannot be measured in the success of your own family and your community and in this church family this morning. There is a reason, folks, why preachers know about the Big Three. Do you know about the Big Three?

Not the Father, Son, Holy Spirit. They are also Big Three, but the Big Three for preachers are Christmas, Easter, and what's the third? Mother's Day.

Why? Because we make our moms happy by coming to church with them where they want us to be all the time anyway. We know as preachers, we have the most impact to reach people that may not be coming as often if we utilize the leverage of the Big Three.

If you show up for Christmas, we can encourage you to come back the next week. If you come for Easter to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, He's resurrected every Sunday morning. If you come on Mother's Day because your mom knows that you should be here and you want to make her happy, folks, we need to make our Father in Heaven happy by prioritizing where her priorities are.

I love you. I'm grateful for you being here today. But folks, God deserves to be worshiped every first day of the week.

Again, I love you, and I say that in truth. I say it with all the grace that I possibly can, and I say it in love. If you have a virtuous mother in your life, God be praised for her.

If anyone has a need to respond this morning, to obey the gospel of Jesus Christ, to put him on in baptism, or if you are a faithful Christian, but you've been backsliding a little bit, now is the perfect opportunity to come before God and your loving family in Christ here in Thomaston Road to allow us to support you, to uplift you, to encourage you, and walk alongside you as we make our way towards those heavenly gates. If you have a need, you can respond by coming forward or seeing one of our shepherds at the doors. If you have a need, respond now as we stand and we sing.

Thank you.