October 10, 2024 • 27 mins
We like to go our own way. We like to do our own things. And many times, we choose our will above others. But is this what we need? Will this give us the life that is best for us? Pastor Guy Roberts has a different perspective in his sermon today.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Your God loves you, and so when you hear his
word and you hear of his law, keep in mind
that he loves you. He wouldn't give this to you
if he didn't love you. But he loves you.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Good morning, and welcome to peace. To you from Peace
Lutheran Church in Arvada, Colorado. In our world today, right
and wrong seem to be turned upside down. The way
of Jesus has been rejected and reshaped, and for us
this can mean uncomfortable conversations with our neighbors, coworkers, friends
and family.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Well, it's sad to see the world drift so far
from his word. His truth remains. His will is what's
best for everyone. Broken marriages mean broken children. Dishonesty leads
to lack of trust, poor parenting produces poor adults. Sin
comes with consequences built in. And the truth is the
(01:09):
Lord loves us enough to rescue us from sin, and
he loves us enough to teach us his way. Listen today,
as Pastor Guy proclaims the simple truth of our life
in Christ, his will is what's best for us. Now
here's Pastor Guy.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
So I've come to learn something over the years, and
one of the things that I've learned is that wisdom
is not genetic. Seriously, it's not cooked in. It's something
that's going to have to be learned. And I could
give you a bazillion examples from my own lives, and
if for having a cup of coffee, I'm sure you
could share some from your life as well, where wisdom
(01:50):
was earned, not just learned.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
How about that?
Speaker 1 (01:55):
But the one that I think of because it has
such a good lesson for the rest of life and
fits in with well, what we're talking about today is
once when I was in my twenties, and I had
a car that was kind of like a twenties person car,
you know, like a car that had some issues, and
it had some issues like it tended to have. And
I took it in and they gave me a bill
and the bill was about half as much as the
(02:16):
actual value of the car itself.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
Have you ever been in this situation?
Speaker 1 (02:21):
And so I'm sitting there looking at this and I'm like,
I don't know, I don't put all this money into
this car, you know, and it's just going to probably
need something again, So maybe I should get a different car.
And so I spent some time thinking about this and
kind of struggling with this, and I decided, after a
few days, when I had pretty much made up my
mind that it was a much wiser move to go
buy a new car and to put it right on
(02:43):
the credit there and load that up.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
I decided I'd call my dad, because.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
My dad had demonstrated before wisdom things that he had learned,
and he was not afraid to tell me exactly what
he thought. And so I called him up and it
was all prepared and ready to go, and I said, hey, Dad,
this is what I'm thinking I'm doing. And you know,
it just doesn't make sense to put money into this car,
and maybe I should just go buy a new car.
And I'm thinking that's what I'm supposed to do. And
(03:09):
I talked for a long time and then and then
I said, what do you think?
Speaker 4 (03:13):
And this is what he said.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
It's always cheaper to fix the car you have than
to buy a brand new car. And I was like, wisdom,
Wisdom probably learned the hard way in his case. In fact,
later on I did learn that that's how he had
learned this, and so this is kind of what happened.
(03:36):
And he spoke this truth to me, and it made
me realize that, yes, that's certainly true. If I was
to go purchase a new car, I might have a
new car. But what's the upset of having a new car?
Is that a great investment now? And in order to
get into that investment, what would I have to do
go into debt.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
As a twenty year old something?
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Is that a good wise use of your money in
your twenties when you only need to drive like five
min else to working back?
Speaker 4 (04:02):
Right? And so my dad was wise, and I ended.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Up following, begrudgingly following his words of wisdom. And then
a few years later, I'm driving with my brother in law.
We're headed down the road and he's telling me about
this truck that he wants to buy.
Speaker 4 (04:17):
It's a Chevy Supersport, but it was only going to
cost this much and his payment would be this much.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
And then he said, what do you think? And what
did I get to say? A wise man told me
once that it's always cheaper in the long run to
invest in what you have than to go into debt
for something else. Oh, and this is how wisdom works.
(04:47):
Learned sometimes a hard way. Sometimes we learned from others.
But this kind of is the example, I wanted to
share with you about how it works for us, For
we have been given wisdom that is a part from
us that has been handed down from generation to generation
and is led along and given to us by.
Speaker 4 (05:04):
The power of the Holy Spirit, and.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
So we definitely need this. So I want you to
be a part of this. Since I've been doing this
all morning. You're not unique all morning. We just have
to be able to say this to one another over
and over. Say this to ourselves. You have bad instincts.
Oh good, I didn't even ask you yet, but you're
(05:29):
just right there. We could say to ourselves, but it's
more fun always to say it to someone else. So
turn to your neighbor and say, you have bad instincts.
All right, Yeah, don't shake your head. I see it
out there. No, she enjoyed it. Okay, you were not
(05:51):
saying that to her. Smart that's wisdom, all right, son.
You turn to your neighbor and say you have bad instincts,
and now you have to say back, I needed that.
Speaker 4 (06:08):
Now.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
It's fun to say, but it certainly is true, and
there's a reason for it. All you have to do
is go back to Genesis to see it. It's right
there in the Story of Creation chapters one and two.
Laid out there in chapters one and two, we have
this perfect paradise of a world in which humanity was
created to live, to take care of God's things, to
be fruitful and multiply, and to follow him. That's what
(06:31):
we were created for. That is perfect and good. But
when the serpent came along and lied just a little bit, saying,
surely you will not die, but rather your eyes will
be open, knowing the difference between good and evil, he
only lied apart about the death part. He was telling
the truth about what would happen if they took of
that fruit, if they had asserted their own free will
(06:53):
and declared independence from God's will, that their eyes would
be open and they would be left then in a
world curve with them having to try to make decisions
about right and wrong with bad instincts. In fact, you
might even say it's not even bad instincts. You were
just never created to ever have to have those situations
(07:13):
in your life at all. So it's no surprise when
we hit those crossroads that we don't know what to do,
that we call good things bad and bad things good.
This isn't a surprise. And so for us as we
live in this world, we as Christians, certainly should know this.
Speaker 4 (07:28):
We call it sin.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
This is the thing that has not only separated us
from God but made a mess of every single thing
in our lives. And so we definitely need to know
about ourselves that we have bad instincts, so that we
can rely not on our own wisdom, or our own will,
or our own ability to handle things, but to follow
and look to the one who has put us here,
(07:52):
who has claimed us and redeemed us and made us free.
This is what it means to be His disciple. Is
that we reject this free, independent, rebellious will to say, Lord,
it's not about me, it's about you. Do we reject
and say, Lord, we deny ourselves that we may follow
(08:12):
after you, and that we trust in all things that
His will for all of creation and for each one of.
Speaker 4 (08:20):
Us is what's best. That it's what's best.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
Now we belong to a God who has done something
about this, and we know the story the Lord has
sent into our midst his word. And I want to
tell you a story. This is from another guy. This
is another guy who had learned this wisdom, and he
taught this in a church that I first started serving
with a fellow pastor, and he talked about his family
and his family they grew up and they didn't have TVs.
(08:47):
These little kids running around up till like the first grade,
no TVs. Can you imagine, there were no TVs in
their lives. So they never had to talk about TVs
and have to have rules about TVs that have to
do anything with TVs and tell their kids one day
went over to a friend's house and what was there?
And now, all of a sudden, they were introduced to
the wide world of screens. So they had to bring
(09:11):
them home. And this was back before the internet was
a thing. This is just TV and cable and stuff,
and they had to bring them back home, and all
of a sudden, for the first time in these kids' lives,
their eyes were open to the TV. And they had
to talk about what the rules and the boundaries were
so that their kids could make wise decisions about TVs.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
Because what we know about.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Kids is that if you just leave them with the screen,
they'll be like, oh, my screen time is up, and
now a time to be done right, And so this
is the world all of a sudden, now they were
introduced to something that they didn't even want their kids
to have. But all of a sudden they're in the
midst of this, and so they give these rules because
they love.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
Their kids and they want them to be able to
manage this. This is how we should.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Think about God's word to us, especially his law. The
best definition of God's law or the Ten Commandments, is
that this is nothing other than God's will for his
creation written down before Adam and he fell into sin.
He didn't have to talk about it. They just followed God.
They live in this perfect place. But once they decided
to assert their own will and have their eyes open
(10:17):
and do their own thing and follow their own hearts,
then all of a sudden God had to write it
down for them because they just wouldn't make the right decisions.
Speaker 4 (10:29):
And so this is an act of love.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Like the little kid who's running across the thing and
he's going to go touch the hot stove, what would
we all do, now, go ahead, that'd be fun. Nobody's
gonna do that. We would say, no, please, don't do that.
But yet we all know a kid whose parents said
no to them about a million times that decided to
(10:50):
what and what happens every single time they get burned.
Will is what's best for us, not just us as Christians,
but for every person who lives on the face of
the earth. And when we do things His way, they
are the best way, and they work out better than
if not. We read that in the Deuteronomy passage here today,
(11:12):
there's this phrase, teach your children to do this, that
it may go well with them.
Speaker 4 (11:19):
You see this, Your God loves you.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
And so when you hear his word and you hear
of his law, keep in mind that he loves you.
He wouldn't give this to you if he didn't love you.
But he loves you, and he loves you so much
that he was not content for his word to just
be written down, but that the word became flesh and
made his dwelling amongst us. In John one, we learned
that the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
(11:43):
Then all things were created through him, and he was
not content for us to be alone. But Jesus came
as the very word of God incarnate and.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
Lived with us. He taught us, he laid it all
out for us.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Then he went to the cross, and he died in
our place, that we may have freedom that just the
consequences of sin, but not the condemnation of sin, will
be our life. And so he certainly lets us have
these moments and these consequences baked in saying I wished
you had followed my way, but I'm still here for you.
Speaker 4 (12:14):
This is how Jesus is.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
But we get to do all of this as redeemed
children of God. The victory is won, and our Lord
then is not content to just leave us here on
our own. That gospel lesson we read today, that's pretty
heavy gospel lesson. You should go and read that again.
It's in John chapter fourteen, verse fifteen through twenty one.
(12:38):
But I want you to hear just a few things
and remind you of a few things from this in
John chapter fourteen, verse twenty three, when he's talking to
his disciples. This is right after he said I'm the Way,
the Truth, and the life. He says to this, if
anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my
father will love him, and we will come to him
and we will make our home with him. And this
(12:59):
is who you are as a disciple of Jesus. You
have been called into his light. You belong to him.
Baptized and redeemed, and now following him. In verse twenty four,
it says, whoever does not love me does not keep
my words. And the word that you hear is not mine,
but the Father who sent me. And so these words
are the word of God that we have in Christ Jesus.
(13:21):
And then he says this, these things I have spoken
to you while I am still with you.
Speaker 4 (13:25):
But your God loves you so.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Much, even though he's going to ascend into heaven, as
it says here in verse twenty six, but the helper,
the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name,
he will teach you all the things and bring to
your remembrance all.
Speaker 4 (13:41):
That I have said to you.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Our God loves us so much that we live in
this world not alone, but with God in our midst,
leading and sanctifying and making us holy and being there
to forgive. And this Holy Spirit is in our midst.
Wherever God's word is proclaimed, wherever it is taught, wherever
it is gathered around, you can count on the Holy
(14:05):
Spirit being here, just like he is right now.
Speaker 4 (14:11):
Now.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Earlier in the service, I told you to turn to
your neighbors and tell him knock it off.
Speaker 4 (14:16):
Remember that we got to get better at this. We
got to get better at this.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
Collectively, with all the things we've learned and all Jesus
has taught us. Where it can be there for each other.
You are a gift to one another. I don't recommend
using knock it off. That's not a good conversation starter.
It's fun to say, but not a good conversation start.
But maybe try this. We're gonna try it. We're gonna
do some repeating again, because your neighbor's probably offended sitting there,
(14:46):
going fine, I will knock it off. It starts like this,
can I share something with you? Are you open for
me sharing something with you? I learned this from someone
much wiser than me. And then you have an opening
to say, maybe you should consider God's will in this?
Does that make sense? That's a nicer way of saying
(15:08):
what knock it off? But if you need a few more,
you could say this one. This one we use in
our household with permission from one another. It's time to
get over yourself. Anybody, do not say that to your
spouse unless you've talked about it beforehand.
Speaker 4 (15:26):
That is not helpful. You will be in Pastor.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Tim's office for marital counseling, maybe post marital counseling. We
got to get better at this though, because the Lord
loves us and we love one another, and we can
trust that he loves us enough to give us his
will and it's what's best for us. And so we
(15:49):
need to know each other, We need to be in
each other's lives. And this isn't every person in this
room that you're going to know enough, but you will
know some, and you'll have loved ones, and you can
speak the truth of God's word with confidence that is
what's best because it's his will, and you can speak
it in love and charity and humility. Now, over the
last few weeks we have been going through three basic
(16:12):
truths that it's all his He saves, and now today
his will is what's best for you. These are not
all the truths of the Christian faith, but they are
certainly enough to stand upon. These are the big ones,
the ABC's, the things that have to be firmly in
place for us who are His disciples, those who are
called by and follow Him. Amen, we pray, Almighty God,
(16:36):
your words castoleics seed into the ground. Now let the
do of Heaven descend and righteous fruit abound. Amen.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
Good morning, pastor guy, good morning. Thank you for that message.
And you know, Jesus will is best for us. But
why doesn't that sink into us? You know? And like
you said, I mean, the things are just getting kind
of turned upside down.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Yeah, we don't have much guidance apart from His word
and the teaching of the church these days. So for
us we almost have to be a lot more diligent
than we used to.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
Right, And you know, and some people say, well, that's
the old way of thinking, you know, And people kind
of tend to gravitate towards man's rules and man's thoughts
and that type of thing, and they're and if they're
pulling away, and now I can the simple answer I
suppose is that Satan pulling us away. But there seems
(17:42):
to be more going on, especially in your Bible studies,
talking about marriage and family and that type of thing.
You can see it here.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
When we're left to kind of figure it out on
our own, we come to the conclusion really quick, as
we said in the sermon, and had people say to
one another, we have bad instincts, we're not equipped for this.
And so if you're not reading the scriptures, if you're
not studying God's word, if you're not asking yourself on
a daily basis, what is the Lord's will for me?
(18:12):
Then you're definitely probably going to be left to just
figure it out on your own. And that doesn't always
go so great.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
No, No, you know when it comes back to who
created us? Like you said in the sermon, you know,
we have bad instincts, that's for sure, but you know,
we need to look at the one who placed us here,
who created us. And there are people, of course, you know,
in the secular world, a lot of times people come
(18:40):
up with new ideas of how we were created or
why and all that good stuff, which doesn't really hold
any water. But you know, we have to look at
the one who put us here.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Yeah, so we have bad instincts, so we either turn
to ourselves, and then there's also just a lot of
bad influence all around us, and so we turn to others.
Speaker 4 (18:58):
And it's kind of like that.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
When you're in great school and you would learn things
from your friends and they were rarely true, but your friends.
You trusted your friends, so you listen to them, and
it usually didn't work out all that well, and when
your parents found out about it, they had to like
reprogram and help you figure it all out. Well, that's
kind of what's going on in our world today. Is
since we as Christians and as church are either hesitant
(19:21):
or just kind of negligent to be honest in teaching
what God's will is are our people are left to
either trust their own bad instincts or be influenced poorly
by the world around them.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
And that's that's easy to do. And I think that
especially when it comes to kids. You know, I taught
Sunday school for a very long time, and sometimes kids
are embarrassed to go against the grain of the secular world.
You know, it says do this, and if I go
gainst the grain, well I'm to be looked down on.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Sometimes adults are yes, I mean we're I'm guilty of
that too. Uncomfortable conversations are uncomfortable, Like it's it's not
enjoyable to have to defend Christ in his way when
it comes to things like marriage or sexuality or i
mean gender now, I mean, these are weird things that
(20:11):
no one would have thought we would have to talk about.
But yet all of that stuff is now up for debate.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
And I remember in your Bible study on Sunday you
talked about cohabitation and how difficult that is to talk
about that. Is that what Christ wants for us? Is
that what Jesus talked about? I mean to cohabitate with somebody.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
Yeah, and that's a sixty year old conversation and that
is gone. That's long gone. I mean Christian's vast majority
of Christians cohabitate before marriage, as if it's no big deal,
even though every secular study that shows what's best and
how you should get into relationship and how you should
see it shows that that's a bad way to do it.
(20:55):
I mean, the consequences are just kind of baked in.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
Yeah, it's rare that those type of relationships survive.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
Yeah, it's about half. I think it's I think it's
a it's increased a little bit. But I last percentage
I saw I was about forty five percent of those
marriages end. And it's a much higher rate than those
who do it God's way, sure, and that's not I mean,
that's not a surprise. God's ways are what's best. And
(21:22):
you know, we're not supposed to have multiple partners in
life and be wondering if we're as good, you know,
as the other people. You know, our intimacy is supposed
to be reserved for one person, and when you do
it that way, it just works best. It just works better,
and you're free of a whole bunch of stuff, a
whole bunch of junk that you were not meant to experience.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
The plan is there, and the commandments are there, And
as you said in your sermon, he wrote him down
for us. I mean, how difficult didn't that be? Read them?
And like at my old buddy's zig Ziggler is a
motivation kind Christian love listening to him, And when they
were tearing down the commandments off the courthouse in Kansas,
(22:07):
he said, I didn't understand which one don't they agree with? Man,
it made a lot of sense to me. Then it's like, wow, well, yeah, yeah,
that's true. They're all very pertinent and that's God's plan. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Well, in marriage is supposed to be a sacrificial give
all to the other person. When you start to cohabitate
and try each other on like clothes, all of a sudden,
it shifts.
Speaker 4 (22:28):
Suddenly.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
You probably don't even understand it's happening, but it shifts
to not what am I going to do to serve
this person for better or worse, rich or poor and
sickness and eath, But what is this person going to
do to serve me? Do they fit me?
Speaker 4 (22:40):
Do they meet my needs?
Speaker 1 (22:41):
And when you turn you're already inherently selfish in marriage.
When you make the whole thing of marriage about a
mutually beneficial partnership and does that person benefit me, you
just change fundamentally what it is. And so it's no
surprise people get divorced at a much higher rate because
they chose a bad partner. And no one would stay
(23:02):
in a bad business relationship with a partner that's not
pulling their weight. I mean, there's a there's a logic
to it. It's just it's just a corrupt, broken logic
that leads to a lot of mess.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
So, and what you're saying is that it's not all
about me this.
Speaker 4 (23:18):
Wow, Yeah, that's kind of Jesus.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
The something like love the Lord your God with all
your heart and soul, mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.
The only time we enter in there is to just say, listen,
you love yourself a lot. Maybe you should love your
neighbor that much.
Speaker 3 (23:31):
Oh, you know, and yeah, and that's the one that's
really really difficult to do. And when people just don't agree.
And I've you know, we've talked about this friend of
mine that's just some I just go lock horns with him.
I mean, we're still friends, but it's like he just
does not get it. Yeah, he doesn't want to get it.
And he told me once, he said it just sounds
(23:52):
like it's too much trouble. You know, I've got to
do this. I've got I mean, these commandments are just
too demanding.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Yeah, I mean, the Christian life begins just like our
worship service. I don't have is figured out. I have
no chance. My hope is Jesus, forgive me Lord. It
starts with repentance. Our life begins with repentance, which is
a turning away from ourselves to follow after Him and
admitting that that's what's best for us, is his ways
or what's best.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
You know, I was going to talk about we're running
a little short of time, but I was going to
talk about John fourteen twenty three and talk about Judas
not as scary, just asking Jesus, you know we're understanding this.
But you're not, you know, letting the world know. And
that's I think what's your point was that that's our
job to let the world know.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Yeah, and also just to kind of understand that without Christ,
without him coming and making us as children opening our eyes,
we will always just follow our own way, either the
bad instincts or the bad influences, because we just don't
know anything better. And so not only is it our job,
we have opportunity to help people because they don't even
(25:00):
know what they're missing, and the world is such a
hot mess right now that a little bit of stability,
a little bit of God's word goes a long ways.
Just helping them where they're at today, absolutely, and then
there'll be opportunity to teach them what it means to
have a savior and a Lord. But this is God's
ways are what's best, and He's given us these ways
(25:21):
because he loves us.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
Amen.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
So again, thank you for that message, and God bless
your week.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
I have a blessed week.
Speaker 5 (25:33):
Thank you for joining us for peace to you from
Peast Church in our bad to Colorado. If you have
no church home, we would be delighted for you to
join us on any Sunday Our address is five six
seventy five Field Street in our bat of Colorado. Our
services are at eight and ten thirty am. Bible classes
(25:54):
for all ages are at nine to fifteen am. You
can easily access our sermons online at www dot p,
s Lucret dot M, or at Pasarbada at YouTube dot com.
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(26:15):
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(26:39):
Now from the entire broadcast team at Peace, Lupmchurch and Arbada,
I am Reuben Holiday and may the Peace of Our
Lord you with you today and always
Your God loves you, and so when you hear his
word and you hear of his law, keep in mind
that he loves you. He wouldn't give this to you
if he didn't love you. But he loves you.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Good morning, and welcome to peace. To you from Peace
Lutheran Church in Arvada, Colorado. In our world today, right
and wrong seem to be turned upside down. The way
of Jesus has been rejected and reshaped, and for us
this can mean uncomfortable conversations with our neighbors, coworkers, friends
and family.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Well, it's sad to see the world drift so far
from his word. His truth remains. His will is what's
best for everyone. Broken marriages mean broken children. Dishonesty leads
to lack of trust, poor parenting produces poor adults. Sin
comes with consequences built in. And the truth is the
(01:09):
Lord loves us enough to rescue us from sin, and
he loves us enough to teach us his way. Listen today,
as Pastor Guy proclaims the simple truth of our life
in Christ, his will is what's best for us. Now
here's Pastor Guy.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
So I've come to learn something over the years, and
one of the things that I've learned is that wisdom
is not genetic. Seriously, it's not cooked in. It's something
that's going to have to be learned. And I could
give you a bazillion examples from my own lives, and
if for having a cup of coffee, I'm sure you
could share some from your life as well, where wisdom
(01:50):
was earned, not just learned.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
How about that?
Speaker 1 (01:55):
But the one that I think of because it has
such a good lesson for the rest of life and
fits in with well, what we're talking about today is
once when I was in my twenties, and I had
a car that was kind of like a twenties person car,
you know, like a car that had some issues, and
it had some issues like it tended to have. And
I took it in and they gave me a bill
and the bill was about half as much as the
(02:16):
actual value of the car itself.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
Have you ever been in this situation?
Speaker 1 (02:21):
And so I'm sitting there looking at this and I'm like,
I don't know, I don't put all this money into
this car, you know, and it's just going to probably
need something again, So maybe I should get a different car.
And so I spent some time thinking about this and
kind of struggling with this, and I decided, after a
few days, when I had pretty much made up my
mind that it was a much wiser move to go
buy a new car and to put it right on
(02:43):
the credit there and load that up.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
I decided I'd call my dad, because.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
My dad had demonstrated before wisdom things that he had learned,
and he was not afraid to tell me exactly what
he thought. And so I called him up and it
was all prepared and ready to go, and I said, hey, Dad,
this is what I'm thinking I'm doing. And you know,
it just doesn't make sense to put money into this car,
and maybe I should just go buy a new car.
And I'm thinking that's what I'm supposed to do. And
(03:09):
I talked for a long time and then and then
I said, what do you think?
Speaker 4 (03:13):
And this is what he said.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
It's always cheaper to fix the car you have than
to buy a brand new car. And I was like, wisdom,
Wisdom probably learned the hard way in his case. In fact,
later on I did learn that that's how he had
learned this, and so this is kind of what happened.
(03:36):
And he spoke this truth to me, and it made
me realize that, yes, that's certainly true. If I was
to go purchase a new car, I might have a
new car. But what's the upset of having a new car?
Is that a great investment now? And in order to
get into that investment, what would I have to do
go into debt.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
As a twenty year old something?
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Is that a good wise use of your money in
your twenties when you only need to drive like five
min else to working back?
Speaker 4 (04:02):
Right? And so my dad was wise, and I ended.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Up following, begrudgingly following his words of wisdom. And then
a few years later, I'm driving with my brother in law.
We're headed down the road and he's telling me about
this truck that he wants to buy.
Speaker 4 (04:17):
It's a Chevy Supersport, but it was only going to
cost this much and his payment would be this much.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
And then he said, what do you think? And what
did I get to say? A wise man told me
once that it's always cheaper in the long run to
invest in what you have than to go into debt
for something else. Oh, and this is how wisdom works.
(04:47):
Learned sometimes a hard way. Sometimes we learned from others.
But this kind of is the example, I wanted to
share with you about how it works for us, For
we have been given wisdom that is a part from
us that has been handed down from generation to generation
and is led along and given to us by.
Speaker 4 (05:04):
The power of the Holy Spirit, and.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
So we definitely need this. So I want you to
be a part of this. Since I've been doing this
all morning. You're not unique all morning. We just have
to be able to say this to one another over
and over. Say this to ourselves. You have bad instincts.
Oh good, I didn't even ask you yet, but you're
(05:29):
just right there. We could say to ourselves, but it's
more fun always to say it to someone else. So
turn to your neighbor and say, you have bad instincts.
All right, Yeah, don't shake your head. I see it
out there. No, she enjoyed it. Okay, you were not
(05:51):
saying that to her. Smart that's wisdom, all right, son.
You turn to your neighbor and say you have bad instincts,
and now you have to say back, I needed that.
Speaker 4 (06:08):
Now.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
It's fun to say, but it certainly is true, and
there's a reason for it. All you have to do
is go back to Genesis to see it. It's right
there in the Story of Creation chapters one and two.
Laid out there in chapters one and two, we have
this perfect paradise of a world in which humanity was
created to live, to take care of God's things, to
be fruitful and multiply, and to follow him. That's what
(06:31):
we were created for. That is perfect and good. But
when the serpent came along and lied just a little bit, saying,
surely you will not die, but rather your eyes will
be open, knowing the difference between good and evil, he
only lied apart about the death part. He was telling
the truth about what would happen if they took of
that fruit, if they had asserted their own free will
(06:53):
and declared independence from God's will, that their eyes would
be open and they would be left then in a
world curve with them having to try to make decisions
about right and wrong with bad instincts. In fact, you
might even say it's not even bad instincts. You were
just never created to ever have to have those situations
(07:13):
in your life at all. So it's no surprise when
we hit those crossroads that we don't know what to do,
that we call good things bad and bad things good.
This isn't a surprise. And so for us as we
live in this world, we as Christians, certainly should know this.
Speaker 4 (07:28):
We call it sin.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
This is the thing that has not only separated us
from God but made a mess of every single thing
in our lives. And so we definitely need to know
about ourselves that we have bad instincts, so that we
can rely not on our own wisdom, or our own will,
or our own ability to handle things, but to follow
and look to the one who has put us here,
(07:52):
who has claimed us and redeemed us and made us free.
This is what it means to be His disciple. Is
that we reject this free, independent, rebellious will to say, Lord,
it's not about me, it's about you. Do we reject
and say, Lord, we deny ourselves that we may follow
(08:12):
after you, and that we trust in all things that
His will for all of creation and for each one of.
Speaker 4 (08:20):
Us is what's best. That it's what's best.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
Now we belong to a God who has done something
about this, and we know the story the Lord has
sent into our midst his word. And I want to
tell you a story. This is from another guy. This
is another guy who had learned this wisdom, and he
taught this in a church that I first started serving
with a fellow pastor, and he talked about his family
and his family they grew up and they didn't have TVs.
(08:47):
These little kids running around up till like the first grade,
no TVs. Can you imagine, there were no TVs in
their lives. So they never had to talk about TVs
and have to have rules about TVs that have to
do anything with TVs and tell their kids one day
went over to a friend's house and what was there?
And now, all of a sudden, they were introduced to
the wide world of screens. So they had to bring
(09:11):
them home. And this was back before the internet was
a thing. This is just TV and cable and stuff,
and they had to bring them back home, and all
of a sudden, for the first time in these kids' lives,
their eyes were open to the TV. And they had
to talk about what the rules and the boundaries were
so that their kids could make wise decisions about TVs.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
Because what we know about.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Kids is that if you just leave them with the screen,
they'll be like, oh, my screen time is up, and
now a time to be done right, And so this
is the world all of a sudden, now they were
introduced to something that they didn't even want their kids
to have. But all of a sudden they're in the
midst of this, and so they give these rules because
they love.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
Their kids and they want them to be able to
manage this. This is how we should.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Think about God's word to us, especially his law. The
best definition of God's law or the Ten Commandments, is
that this is nothing other than God's will for his
creation written down before Adam and he fell into sin.
He didn't have to talk about it. They just followed God.
They live in this perfect place. But once they decided
to assert their own will and have their eyes open
(10:17):
and do their own thing and follow their own hearts,
then all of a sudden God had to write it
down for them because they just wouldn't make the right decisions.
Speaker 4 (10:29):
And so this is an act of love.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Like the little kid who's running across the thing and
he's going to go touch the hot stove, what would
we all do, now, go ahead, that'd be fun. Nobody's
gonna do that. We would say, no, please, don't do that.
But yet we all know a kid whose parents said
no to them about a million times that decided to
(10:50):
what and what happens every single time they get burned.
Will is what's best for us, not just us as Christians,
but for every person who lives on the face of
the earth. And when we do things His way, they
are the best way, and they work out better than
if not. We read that in the Deuteronomy passage here today,
(11:12):
there's this phrase, teach your children to do this, that
it may go well with them.
Speaker 4 (11:19):
You see this, Your God loves you.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
And so when you hear his word and you hear
of his law, keep in mind that he loves you.
He wouldn't give this to you if he didn't love you.
But he loves you, and he loves you so much
that he was not content for his word to just
be written down, but that the word became flesh and
made his dwelling amongst us. In John one, we learned
that the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
(11:43):
Then all things were created through him, and he was
not content for us to be alone. But Jesus came
as the very word of God incarnate and.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
Lived with us. He taught us, he laid it all
out for us.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Then he went to the cross, and he died in
our place, that we may have freedom that just the
consequences of sin, but not the condemnation of sin, will
be our life. And so he certainly lets us have
these moments and these consequences baked in saying I wished
you had followed my way, but I'm still here for you.
Speaker 4 (12:14):
This is how Jesus is.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
But we get to do all of this as redeemed
children of God. The victory is won, and our Lord
then is not content to just leave us here on
our own. That gospel lesson we read today, that's pretty
heavy gospel lesson. You should go and read that again.
It's in John chapter fourteen, verse fifteen through twenty one.
(12:38):
But I want you to hear just a few things
and remind you of a few things from this in
John chapter fourteen, verse twenty three, when he's talking to
his disciples. This is right after he said I'm the Way,
the Truth, and the life. He says to this, if
anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my
father will love him, and we will come to him
and we will make our home with him. And this
(12:59):
is who you are as a disciple of Jesus. You
have been called into his light. You belong to him.
Baptized and redeemed, and now following him. In verse twenty four,
it says, whoever does not love me does not keep
my words. And the word that you hear is not mine,
but the Father who sent me. And so these words
are the word of God that we have in Christ Jesus.
(13:21):
And then he says this, these things I have spoken
to you while I am still with you.
Speaker 4 (13:25):
But your God loves you so.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Much, even though he's going to ascend into heaven, as
it says here in verse twenty six, but the helper,
the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name,
he will teach you all the things and bring to
your remembrance all.
Speaker 4 (13:41):
That I have said to you.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Our God loves us so much that we live in
this world not alone, but with God in our midst,
leading and sanctifying and making us holy and being there
to forgive. And this Holy Spirit is in our midst.
Wherever God's word is proclaimed, wherever it is taught, wherever
it is gathered around, you can count on the Holy
(14:05):
Spirit being here, just like he is right now.
Speaker 4 (14:11):
Now.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Earlier in the service, I told you to turn to
your neighbors and tell him knock it off.
Speaker 4 (14:16):
Remember that we got to get better at this. We
got to get better at this.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
Collectively, with all the things we've learned and all Jesus
has taught us. Where it can be there for each other.
You are a gift to one another. I don't recommend
using knock it off. That's not a good conversation starter.
It's fun to say, but not a good conversation start.
But maybe try this. We're gonna try it. We're gonna
do some repeating again, because your neighbor's probably offended sitting there,
(14:46):
going fine, I will knock it off. It starts like this,
can I share something with you? Are you open for
me sharing something with you? I learned this from someone
much wiser than me. And then you have an opening
to say, maybe you should consider God's will in this?
Does that make sense? That's a nicer way of saying
(15:08):
what knock it off? But if you need a few more,
you could say this one. This one we use in
our household with permission from one another. It's time to
get over yourself. Anybody, do not say that to your
spouse unless you've talked about it beforehand.
Speaker 4 (15:26):
That is not helpful. You will be in Pastor.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Tim's office for marital counseling, maybe post marital counseling. We
got to get better at this though, because the Lord
loves us and we love one another, and we can
trust that he loves us enough to give us his
will and it's what's best for us. And so we
(15:49):
need to know each other, We need to be in
each other's lives. And this isn't every person in this
room that you're going to know enough, but you will
know some, and you'll have loved ones, and you can
speak the truth of God's word with confidence that is
what's best because it's his will, and you can speak
it in love and charity and humility. Now, over the
last few weeks we have been going through three basic
(16:12):
truths that it's all his He saves, and now today
his will is what's best for you. These are not
all the truths of the Christian faith, but they are
certainly enough to stand upon. These are the big ones,
the ABC's, the things that have to be firmly in
place for us who are His disciples, those who are
called by and follow Him. Amen, we pray, Almighty God,
(16:36):
your words castoleics seed into the ground. Now let the
do of Heaven descend and righteous fruit abound. Amen.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
Good morning, pastor guy, good morning. Thank you for that message.
And you know, Jesus will is best for us. But
why doesn't that sink into us? You know? And like
you said, I mean, the things are just getting kind
of turned upside down.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Yeah, we don't have much guidance apart from His word
and the teaching of the church these days. So for
us we almost have to be a lot more diligent
than we used to.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
Right, And you know, and some people say, well, that's
the old way of thinking, you know, And people kind
of tend to gravitate towards man's rules and man's thoughts
and that type of thing, and they're and if they're
pulling away, and now I can the simple answer I
suppose is that Satan pulling us away. But there seems
(17:42):
to be more going on, especially in your Bible studies,
talking about marriage and family and that type of thing.
You can see it here.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
When we're left to kind of figure it out on
our own, we come to the conclusion really quick, as
we said in the sermon, and had people say to
one another, we have bad instincts, we're not equipped for this.
And so if you're not reading the scriptures, if you're
not studying God's word, if you're not asking yourself on
a daily basis, what is the Lord's will for me?
(18:12):
Then you're definitely probably going to be left to just
figure it out on your own. And that doesn't always
go so great.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
No, No, you know when it comes back to who
created us? Like you said in the sermon, you know,
we have bad instincts, that's for sure, but you know,
we need to look at the one who placed us here,
who created us. And there are people, of course, you know,
in the secular world, a lot of times people come
(18:40):
up with new ideas of how we were created or
why and all that good stuff, which doesn't really hold
any water. But you know, we have to look at
the one who put us here.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Yeah, so we have bad instincts, so we either turn
to ourselves, and then there's also just a lot of
bad influence all around us, and so we turn to others.
Speaker 4 (18:58):
And it's kind of like that.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
When you're in great school and you would learn things
from your friends and they were rarely true, but your friends.
You trusted your friends, so you listen to them, and
it usually didn't work out all that well, and when
your parents found out about it, they had to like
reprogram and help you figure it all out. Well, that's
kind of what's going on in our world today. Is
since we as Christians and as church are either hesitant
(19:21):
or just kind of negligent to be honest in teaching
what God's will is are our people are left to
either trust their own bad instincts or be influenced poorly
by the world around them.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
And that's that's easy to do. And I think that
especially when it comes to kids. You know, I taught
Sunday school for a very long time, and sometimes kids
are embarrassed to go against the grain of the secular world.
You know, it says do this, and if I go
gainst the grain, well I'm to be looked down on.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Sometimes adults are yes, I mean we're I'm guilty of
that too. Uncomfortable conversations are uncomfortable, Like it's it's not
enjoyable to have to defend Christ in his way when
it comes to things like marriage or sexuality or i
mean gender now, I mean, these are weird things that
(20:11):
no one would have thought we would have to talk about.
But yet all of that stuff is now up for debate.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
And I remember in your Bible study on Sunday you
talked about cohabitation and how difficult that is to talk
about that. Is that what Christ wants for us? Is
that what Jesus talked about? I mean to cohabitate with somebody.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
Yeah, and that's a sixty year old conversation and that
is gone. That's long gone. I mean Christian's vast majority
of Christians cohabitate before marriage, as if it's no big deal,
even though every secular study that shows what's best and
how you should get into relationship and how you should
see it shows that that's a bad way to do it.
(20:55):
I mean, the consequences are just kind of baked in.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
Yeah, it's rare that those type of relationships survive.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
Yeah, it's about half. I think it's I think it's
a it's increased a little bit. But I last percentage
I saw I was about forty five percent of those
marriages end. And it's a much higher rate than those
who do it God's way, sure, and that's not I mean,
that's not a surprise. God's ways are what's best. And
(21:22):
you know, we're not supposed to have multiple partners in
life and be wondering if we're as good, you know,
as the other people. You know, our intimacy is supposed
to be reserved for one person, and when you do
it that way, it just works best. It just works better,
and you're free of a whole bunch of stuff, a
whole bunch of junk that you were not meant to experience.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
The plan is there, and the commandments are there, And
as you said in your sermon, he wrote him down
for us. I mean, how difficult didn't that be? Read them?
And like at my old buddy's zig Ziggler is a
motivation kind Christian love listening to him, And when they
were tearing down the commandments off the courthouse in Kansas,
(22:07):
he said, I didn't understand which one don't they agree with? Man,
it made a lot of sense to me. Then it's like, wow, well, yeah, yeah,
that's true. They're all very pertinent and that's God's plan. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Well, in marriage is supposed to be a sacrificial give
all to the other person. When you start to cohabitate
and try each other on like clothes, all of a sudden,
it shifts.
Speaker 4 (22:28):
Suddenly.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
You probably don't even understand it's happening, but it shifts
to not what am I going to do to serve
this person for better or worse, rich or poor and
sickness and eath, But what is this person going to
do to serve me? Do they fit me?
Speaker 4 (22:40):
Do they meet my needs?
Speaker 1 (22:41):
And when you turn you're already inherently selfish in marriage.
When you make the whole thing of marriage about a
mutually beneficial partnership and does that person benefit me, you
just change fundamentally what it is. And so it's no
surprise people get divorced at a much higher rate because
they chose a bad partner. And no one would stay
(23:02):
in a bad business relationship with a partner that's not
pulling their weight. I mean, there's a there's a logic
to it. It's just it's just a corrupt, broken logic
that leads to a lot of mess.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
So, and what you're saying is that it's not all
about me this.
Speaker 4 (23:18):
Wow, Yeah, that's kind of Jesus.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
The something like love the Lord your God with all
your heart and soul, mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.
The only time we enter in there is to just say, listen,
you love yourself a lot. Maybe you should love your
neighbor that much.
Speaker 3 (23:31):
Oh, you know, and yeah, and that's the one that's
really really difficult to do. And when people just don't agree.
And I've you know, we've talked about this friend of
mine that's just some I just go lock horns with him.
I mean, we're still friends, but it's like he just
does not get it. Yeah, he doesn't want to get it.
And he told me once, he said it just sounds
(23:52):
like it's too much trouble. You know, I've got to
do this. I've got I mean, these commandments are just
too demanding.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Yeah, I mean, the Christian life begins just like our
worship service. I don't have is figured out. I have
no chance. My hope is Jesus, forgive me Lord. It
starts with repentance. Our life begins with repentance, which is
a turning away from ourselves to follow after Him and
admitting that that's what's best for us, is his ways
or what's best.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
You know, I was going to talk about we're running
a little short of time, but I was going to
talk about John fourteen twenty three and talk about Judas
not as scary, just asking Jesus, you know we're understanding this.
But you're not, you know, letting the world know. And
that's I think what's your point was that that's our
job to let the world know.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Yeah, and also just to kind of understand that without Christ,
without him coming and making us as children opening our eyes,
we will always just follow our own way, either the
bad instincts or the bad influences, because we just don't
know anything better. And so not only is it our job,
we have opportunity to help people because they don't even
(25:00):
know what they're missing, and the world is such a
hot mess right now that a little bit of stability,
a little bit of God's word goes a long ways.
Just helping them where they're at today, absolutely, and then
there'll be opportunity to teach them what it means to
have a savior and a Lord. But this is God's
ways are what's best, and He's given us these ways
(25:21):
because he loves us.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
Amen.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
So again, thank you for that message, and God bless
your week.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
I have a blessed week.
Speaker 5 (25:33):
Thank you for joining us for peace to you from
Peast Church in our bad to Colorado. If you have
no church home, we would be delighted for you to
join us on any Sunday Our address is five six
seventy five Field Street in our bat of Colorado. Our
services are at eight and ten thirty am. Bible classes
(25:54):
for all ages are at nine to fifteen am. You
can easily access our sermons online at www dot p,
s Lucret dot M, or at Pasarbada at YouTube dot com.
Peace to You in Part is a listener supported broadcast.
If you would like to sponsor a broadcast in the future,
(26:15):
call us at three O three four two four four
four five four. If you would like a copy of
today's broadcast and no charge to you, contact us at
the same number three oh three four two four four
four five four. You can access our sermons at any
time by going to our YouTube channel, peaceharbatatube dot com.
(26:39):
Now from the entire broadcast team at Peace, Lupmchurch and Arbada,
I am Reuben Holiday and may the Peace of Our
Lord you with you today and always
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