King Saul

Episode Transcript
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(00:06):
Good morning, Springhouse.
Today we're gonna talk about
Saul. And we're going to read a passage of Scripture
that doesn't have anything seemingly to do with Saul until I
tell you what it has to do with Saul. Cause it's actually from the
New Testament and actually the first time that you stand to read

(00:29):
you're only going to have to read one verse. But as we get
further into the end of the sermon and you guys
get hungrier and sleepier, we'll stand again and we'll read
a much longer passage. But would you stand with me and
let's read from Hebrews
chapter 12 verse one. Therefore,

(00:51):
since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of
witnesses, let us throw off everything that
hinders and the sin that so easily entangles,
and let us run with perseverance the race
marked out for us. Father I thank you for your word, I
thank you for the presence of the Holy Spirit in this place because

(01:14):
without the Holy Spirit, nothing happens. I pray that the
Holy Spirit would quicken our hearts, our minds,
give us ears to hear in Jesus' name, amen. You may
be seated.
Saul and Saul, there are actually two prominent

(01:34):
Sauls in the Bible. Most of you know that but maybe some don't.
The Old Testament Saul was king of Israel, First King of
Israel. The New Testament Saul
was an apostle whose name was later changed to Paul.
It's not unusual for people when they come
to Jesus for their names to change because they

(01:57):
change. When before Peter came to Jesus,
his name was Simon. And that meant a reed blowing in the wind
and Jesus he came to Jesus and Jesus met him and he could
see that reed blowing in the wind cause that's what Peter was.
But he said, you're gonna have a new name and it's going
to be Peter, not Simon anymore. A

(02:19):
rock. And so Paul, used to be
known as Saul. He came to Jesus, his name changed.
We don't know who wrote the Book of Hebrews but
Paul is one of the names that's often mentioned. And the writer of
Hebrews mentions a phrase that I, that I hope you caught as we went
past. You'll, you'll catch it now but the phrase is this, the

(02:41):
sin that so easily entangles.
We all have such sin And you
may or may not be aware of what that sin is in your
life. Now if you're not aware of what that sin is in your life, you
may think, well, I don't, you know, I don't know what he's talking about.
But if you are aware of that sin

(03:05):
that's in your life, you're closer to God than the one who goes, I don't
know what they're talking about. Because the closer you get to
God, the more clearly you see your own
sin, your own inequity. As a matter of fact, you may think you know what
that sin that so easily entangles is in your
life, but you may get closer to God and find out oh no, that

(03:26):
that wasn't even it. There's even one, there's even one
more than that. When Isaiah saw the
Lord and this is Isaiah, he
said, I am undone. Woe is me. I'm a man
of unclean lips. I dwell among an unclean
people because I have seen the Lord. And

(03:47):
so just because you're not necessarily aware of sin doesn't
mean you're doing okay. In fact, it probably means you're not doing okay.
That was free. For some the sin
that so easily entangles is obvious. And for
others it's not so easily identified.

(04:08):
Now in in our in our culture, certainly in our
church culture because it's kinda been
passed down to us for a few hundred years. When we think of the sin
that so easily entangles, one of the first things that comes
to mind is immorality. Because immorality, I mean
that's sin for sure. And it's it's

(04:30):
talked about in the Bible. Paul certainly talks about it for
sure. And it's easily identified. I mean, you
know others may not may not necessarily see it in your
life, but you know
Crickets. But you know for
sure. On the other hand in our

(04:53):
particular culture we have a sin, just as deadly and
perhaps even more deadly that we celebrate
pride. That's right, and I'm not talking about
immorality and pride mixed, I'm talking about pride.

(05:13):
Drunkenness. Drunkenness is that's a
real sin. And you know what? Not only do you know it,
sometimes you don't know it. But everybody around you knows
it if that's, if that's what's going on. I mean they, they can,
they can see what's, what's happening. And
you know, but on the other hand there's this

(05:35):
sin because I, now drunkenness is wrong.
Don't get me wrong, I mean it's, it's definitely a sin and it
certainly entangles people.
But on the other side there, Jesus didn't say too much about
that. He did say a whole lot about being
judgmental. He did have a lot to say

(05:57):
about that. And it's pretty easy to look at the
drunkenness and kinda go,
And it's even easier to be judgmental when you're
driving.

(06:17):
I can't believe that they do that. You
know, what Michelle and I call it Sleepy
Smyrna.
And if you don't know why we call it Sleepy Smyrna then you're probably
part of the problem.

(06:38):
Because you know, sometimes people just and there's
Enon Springs Road, the new part where it's got
one lane going here and a big old median and then one lane going
this way. And and I'll admit the speed limit is ridiculous,
35 miles an hour.

(06:58):
But 28?
Yeah, you got the right, but I'm sitting back here thinking, you're just
doing
that. The first service didn't hear any of that.

(07:18):
Slothfulness, I mean yeah, people who are lazy and don't
work and blah blah blah blah blah. Yeah, that's a sin that easily
entangles people. Greed on the other hand is pretty good stuff. I mean
I'm a I'm just a go getter, you know. So
anyway, some of it is, some of it's pretty easy to see, some of
it's a little more difficult to recognize. Today we're gonna look at the

(07:40):
sin that easily entangled the Old Testament Saul.
And it's a sin that also entangles many
who may not think they have an obvious besetting
sin, because this sin is, is somewhat of a
chameleon and it masquerades as, as many things
and probably the most damning thing that it

(08:04):
masquerades as is wisdom.
I'm just being wise in what I do.
But it's sin nevertheless and it has a name and the name is
simply this, fear.
Fear. There's a reason why the

(08:24):
Bible tells us almost 70 times
to not fear. And there's a reason why over
in Revelation 20 one:eight when it lists, those
whose fate is damnation, the first on the
list is the fearful. Fearful, this is
this is serious stuff. This is pretty, pretty important stuff.

(08:47):
And fear, if I were to say okay, well what's the opposite of fear? Well
you'd, we'd probably jump into saying courage.
No, no, no. Because you see, well actually
courage doesn't exist without some element of fear. I mean fear's
actually got to be there for for courage to exist. And the

(09:07):
opposite of courage isn't fear, the opposite of courage is cowardice.
Now fear can produce cowardice, but it's not the same thing.
Now fear is an antonym for
another f word which is faith. It it
is the opposite of faith. You may say,
Well I thought the opposite of faith was unbelief. No, the opposite of

(09:29):
unbelief is belief.
Little English lesson here, right? And
and he got it.
You know, you can actually believe and not have faith.
There are people who believe that God exists, who believe

(09:52):
that Jesus Christ is His only begotten Son, but they don't have any
faith in Him. Because
belief is passive, faith is active.
See. Faith is
required to please God. And
it is also the means by which we are we are saved.

(10:15):
And and so no wonder the Bible keeps saying, don't
fear, don't fear, don't fear because fear
is the opposite of faith, is the antithesis
of faith. And Saul, King Saul
had three specific fears that the Bible brings out and

(10:37):
we're gonna look at those and we're gonna see, you know, how maybe that
might relate to us. And the first one, first one is this,
fear of the enemy. Over in
First Samuel 13, Saul and
his army were encamped and the Philistines were encamped
and they were gonna engage one another and the Philistines

(11:00):
more and more kept coming. I mean, they there just seemed to be an
endless supply of Philistines, but the Israelites on the other hand, when
they saw the Philistine army and how strong they were, how many
people they had, they started melting away. They started deserting. They
started going back home. They started hiding
and hiding out. And Saul

(11:23):
was kinda getting freaked out by this. Now he was supposed to wait for Samuel
to come and offer a sacrifice to the Lord before they could
start the battle. But as he saw the
Philistines increasing and the Israelites
decreasing sim seemingly,
excuse me, I live in Tennessee. As

(11:46):
he saw that happening,
Samuel's not here, we gotta do something. We gotta engage before
this thing gets totally out of hand. Bring the sacrifice, I'm gonna
offer the sacrifice. The thing that he knew he wasn't
supposed to do, he did and and as is often the
case virtually immediately after

(12:09):
he did it. Who shows up?
Yeah, you all were in the first service.
Samuel. Samuel shows up and
just as he finished the offering, Samuel arrived and
Saul went out to greet him. What have you done?' Ask

(12:32):
Samuel. And Saul replied, well when I saw that
the men were scattering and that you did not come at the
set time, it's really your fault that you did not come at the
set time and that the Philistines were assembling at Michmash.
I thought, now the Philistines will come down against me at

(12:52):
Gilgal and I have not sought the Lord's favor. So I
felt compelled to offer the burnt offering. You
have done a foolish thing, Samuel
said. Now we all understand
fear of the enemy or, or think that we do.

(13:14):
But we seem unaware that this
fear of the enemy tempts us to act in our
own strength, tempts us to do
something instead of trusting in the Lord
and waiting on the Lord, waiting for him. You
have done a foolish thing, Samuel

(13:36):
said. Proverbs three:five through
six says this, trust in the Lord
with all your heart and and lean not on
your own understanding. In all your ways
acknowledge Him. Acknowledge that He's there and He'll make
your path straight. He'll straighten

(13:59):
that thing out. When you trust in
the Lord, you don't panic.
You don't go chasing after a solution.
You wait for it to come to you. I used to play racketball.
And I know that doesn't sound like it fits, but I'm just gonna

(14:21):
tell you something here. I was pretty good.
But when I first started out it was
such exercise, it was so exhausting,
and it was so frustrating to lose so much.
Because I was, I was going here, there, there's the ball,

(14:42):
there, you It all changed
when I learned to just stand in the right place and
wait and let it come to me. And
when you trust in the Lord, you can do that with life. You stand in
the right place, you wait, you let it come to you.

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Psalm fifty six eleven says this, in
God I trust and I am not afraid.
What can man do to me? What can man do to you?
Oh, I don't know, you know, kill me? Maybe?
Well Jesus had something to say about that. I tell you my friends,

(15:25):
do not be afraid of those who kill the body
and after that can do no more. So what can what can
man do to you? I mean I'm asking that question.
Can man make fun of you? Take
money away from you? Take stuff away from you? What can man do
to you? Psalm

(15:47):
fourteen one says, the fool says in his heart there
is no God. Samuel said to Saul, you have
done a foolish thing. To give
in to fear of the enemy is to discount
God.
That was more profound than many of you think that it is. But

(16:10):
to give in to fear of the enemy is to discount God because it's
basically saying, Hey, I'm afraid of
them. You ain't enough.
Not all enemies we face are people. I mean, most of you are
familiar with Paul saying we don't wrestle against flesh and

(16:31):
blood but against powers and principalities and high
places. And and to be honest it's not
actually the the enemy that we fear anyway, it's the enemy's
weapons that we fear. An enemy who has no
weapons, no.
I've got a nine year old grandson who lives next door

(16:55):
and occasionally we fight.
We wrestle. He ain't
ever beat me and
I'm He probably isn't going to for another year or

(17:15):
two. I'm
not afraid of him. He doesn't have the weapons.
But our enemy has weapons. This is Memorial Day
weekend and, not many of us face the military
type of enemies that these

(17:36):
people face that we celebrate, that we honor. That's
really probably a better word for it. But we
all face dangerous enemies. We face their weapons.
I'm gonna mention three. There's there there are more but I'm I'm gonna mention
three and just throw it up against the wall and see if any of
it sticks. First one is

(17:58):
want. One of the enemies of
the weapon one of the weapons of the enemy is
that we come against is is want. I
can't do that. I I can't give that, I can't
because I may need it. I
I mean seriously if I if I if I if I

(18:20):
tithe, that that's a financial thing, but if I
tithe, what what am I gonna do if I need it?
You know? Or if God says, you know, we'll we'll
feed that person. Well, I I don't know if we got enough food,
you know? Clothe that person. Well, I, you know, I I might
need

(18:43):
I I I need some of these 17 shirts that I've got in
here. I need some of those 18 pair of
shoes that I've got.
Fear of want. The day You know I haven't worn no shoes
in two years but one of these days I'm planning on wearing
them.

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So we don't obey God because
we're afraid we might not have what we need.
How about this one? Fear of failure.
I know nobody in here
is faced with that ever.

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Well what's the worst that that can happen? I
mean, somebody gonna laugh at you?
I used to direct plays.
And we would have auditions, and people would come in and audition
for for a play. And you know, it was

(19:50):
it it it could get long sometimes, but for the most part it was
pretty good. But you know who the most fun people were
to see audition? It was the ones who didn't give a
rip if they did poorly,
you know? Yeah, I'm going to audition for
Scrooge.

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Bahamba, you know, kind of thing. You sort of go, Well
that's interesting. This is this is fun. This has
kind of woken us up. I'm gonna find a place for that person
because they'll do anything.
And we don't even know what failure is.

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We don't know. Have you ever
really wanted something and you didn't get it?
And then I don't know, a day later, month later, a few
years later you went, boy I
dodged a bullet on that one. You thought
you failed, but you actually ended up much better

(20:58):
off. And even worse, have you ever really wanted something and you
got it?
Only to find out a few months later, a few years
later, oh man, what am I gonna do now?
I didn't, I am the proud owner of a bass boat.

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We we don't we don't we don't even know what failure is. The
most obvious looking failure of all time
was the Son of God hanging on the cross
as a common criminal. We considered Him
stricken by God, afflicted by Him,
but He was wounded for our transgressions. He was

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bruised for our iniquity.
He was supposed to come and redeem Israel.
He was supposed to come and be their Messiah. Well you know what?
He came and he not only redeemed Israel, he redeemed us
all. And he is their Messiah and ours as
well. Yet to us it looked like a

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failure.
One other thing that we tend to have fear of
is tomorrow. Tomorrow.
Man, I just don't know. I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. I
got this meeting. I got this I got this interview. I got

(22:30):
this appointment with the doctor. I don't know what they're going to
say. You know, tomorrow, whoo.
Well Jesus said, don't worry about it.
You got enough to worry about today. Don't
add tomorrow's worries to today's worries.

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And you know when you get and don't and for sure don't add next
week's worries to today's worries. Yeah, not not
He said, Don't worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow will worry about
itself. It's got some worry when you get there, you can do
that. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
We don't know what tomorrow holds.

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I I One of my favorite artists is Paul Simon. And
I I really like his, sometimes his lyrics just
have so much truth in them. You know, all lies and jests, still a
man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest. True
that. Yeah. One man's ceiling is another man's
floor. True that. A couple weeks ago

(23:37):
I, I heard him in concert at the
Ryman. And he sang Slip Sliding Away.
And one of my favorite verses that he ever wrote was
through that song, God Only Knows. God
makes His plan. The information's unavailable
to the mortal man. We do our job,

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we get our pay, we think we're
gliding down the highway, when in fact we're slip
sliding away. We don't know what's gonna
happen tomorrow. We we rarely know where
where we're headed.

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In fact, you don't really wanna know about the future.
Because I promise you at some point it ain't gonna be
good. And if you knew
about it, you knew what was gonna happen and you knew when it was gonna
happen, that's all you'd think about.

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It's enough to know who holds the future. When when
I was growing up there was there was a song that we'd hear in church
for pretty often. I know not
what the future holds, but I know who holds the future.
It's a secret known only to Him.
And I trust Him. And I'm not afraid of tomorrow.

(25:08):
Let's go to Saul's second fear. I mean fear of the enemy we get,
but this one is probably even more pervasive among us
and it is fear of his own people.
And Saul, over in
over in chapter 15 of first Samuel, Saul
was tossed a softball by by the

(25:31):
Lord to and he was supposed to hit it out of the park but he
whiffed. He was told to go and wipe out the
Amalekites. And the Amalekites apparently
weren't much of a challenge. And so he goes and
and he whiffs because of fear. And
after that happens, guess who arrives on the

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scene? Samuel. And
now you get to stand up and do the real reading that we were gonna
do today. And I know, you know, you're getting hungry But
just just stay with me.
Samuel said, although you were once small

(26:14):
in your own eyes, do you not
So for Israel, The Lord anointed you king
over Israel and He sent you on a mission
saying, go and completely destroy
those wicked people, the Amalekites. Wage
war against them and wipe them out.

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Why did you not obey the Lord? Why did you
pounce on the plunder and do evil in the eyes of the
Lord? But I did obey the Lord, Saul
said. I went on the mission the Lord assigned
me. I completely destroyed the Amalekites
and brought back Agag their king. The soldiers

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took sheep and cattle from the plunder. The best of
what was devoted to God in order to sacrifice
to the Lord your God at Gilgal. But
Samuel replied, Does the Lord delight in
burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in
obeying the Lord? To obey is better than

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sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of
rams. For rebellion is like the sin of
divination and arrogance like the evil of
idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the
Lord, He has rejected you as king.
Then Saul said to Samuel, I have sinned,

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I violated the Lord's command and your instructions.
I was afraid of the men and so I gave in
to them. Please be seated.
And read that last sentence again in silence
and pondering.

(28:07):
You can read it out loud, Connie. Yeah. It's okay.
I love Connie. She she doesn't think she's
brave, but she has become brave since I've known
her. And that's a fact. Yeah. I usually
do this, this teaching for pastors.

(28:29):
And while this is an all too common fear for
leaders, it applies to followers as well. So don't, you know, don't think,
Well, I'm not a leader so you're not talking to me now. Yeah, yeah, I
am actually. In terms of leaders, this is
the Achilles heel of leaders.
Being afraid of their own people.

(28:52):
It's the Achilles' heel of democracy. It's why stuff doesn't get done
right because they're afraid of us.
Afraid they're not going to get reelected, you know. So we gotta please
this group or please that group or do do do something right
now rather than something that's gonna be good for the future because
those people ain't voting for me. These people are.

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It's also, the bane of the church.
When when I was growing up we we would come and worship the
Lord on on Sunday and then we'd have church business
meeting so that the Devil could get his due.
Because everybody had their own opinion that they had to bring and you know, and
they only caused divisions and all kinds of stuff.

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And I hated those things, I really did.
What if Moses had given in to the people?
We wanna go back to Egypt. You know, why why did
you bring us out of here? We don't get enough manna.
We we like more than one day supply. You know, I There was just so

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much stuff that if he had been the kind
who would give in in fear to the people, we wouldn't have
never We'd never heard about him, heard about them.
But okay, let's let's let's say we're let's say we're talking about
followers. What about your friends?
What do you mean my friends? I I don't hang out with bad people. I

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mean bad bad company corrupts good character and I don't I don't
hang out with bad people. Okay. And I'm certainly not afraid of the
people that I hang out with. Oh, okay. I I hear you. Are you any
different with them than you are when you're here?
Are are you any different at work from what you

(30:42):
are on Sunday morning? Are are you any different,
at school than you are with your family? Are you
different with someone you're trying to impress, than you are
with somebody that you think is beneath you?

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Fear of others causes us to lose our real
self. We don't know who we're
all who we are after a while.
I found it hard being a preacher's kid
for a number of reasons. The most obvious of which was,

(31:23):
everybody's looking at you. And you got, you
got you're held to a different standard from everybody and they're
all focusing on you. But
probably even even more difficult than that, though
at the time I didn't recognize it, was the fact that your parents or
your father or mother, whatever, is

(31:45):
up there in church and they're who they are and then they come home
and maybe they're somebody else.
And you and you kind of go, I don't like what I see behind the
curtain.
My parents were quite good at being the same as home

(32:06):
as they were elsewhere, as they were anywhere, actually. But you
but you know the thing is that when you're when you're 10, when
you're 13 and God help you when you're 16 and
17, you know. Just the tiniest little
crack gets magnified. You kind of go,
well you know, you you say this but

(32:28):
you you are that
and I'm not gonna be that way.
Really?
Well let's take this a little a little bit deeper. Let's get specific
with Saul's third fear. And Saul's third fear was fear of the

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Lord's favor on another. And
that other was, was David. He was afraid of
David. First Samuel eighteen twelve
says, Saul was afraid of David because
the Lord was with David and had departed from
Saul. Well what what caused

(33:12):
this fear? Really?
Because you see, there are
There's a man I know who used to be
here at the church. He was actually on staff.
And he seemed extremely

(33:34):
confident. And, in fact,
he'd tell you right now, I'm not afraid of anything. Not afraid
of anything, anybody.
And he was good. He was good at his job.
And and I love this guy but we've reconnected
many years later and, you know, he's kind of admitted two

(33:58):
things. Number one, was actually I was afraid
of you. Oh, okay.
Afraid of me? I don't get it but you know,
he's not telling me what I've heard say that so, boo.
And but the second thing is I was
afraid that people were going to find out

(34:20):
that I'm just, that I'm not that good. I'm
afraid people will find out who I really am.
You afraid of anybody? You you
afraid of people finding out who you really are?
Afraid of people getting to know you?
Seeing behind the curtain?

(34:44):
The main issue is this, it's not jealousy, it's not envy,
it's not really even insecurity. The main issue is this,
it's misplaced identity.
You draw your identity from the wrong source.
Retirees suffer from this real often, especially pastors. You know,

(35:06):
they're used to being in charge and they're used to
people honoring them or or whatever, you know. And then, all
of a sudden they aren't that anymore and it's kind of like, well who am
I? Sometimes teachers,
businessmen, you know, whatever it

(35:26):
is, you know, if that become if your
position becomes your identity,
then you got some reason to be afraid.
One of the issues we had here for, for several years, and occasionally it
pops up again, is people unwilling to step aside from their

(35:49):
position for others.
In fact, there'd be times that they weren't even doing the job anymore,
and then we'd say, well, you know what? We're gonna,
we're gonna we're gonna let Wade start doing that job. Oh no, no, I'm
ready, I'm I'm ready to do it now, you know.

(36:09):
And they weren't ready to do it now, they just weren't ready to let it
go.
Saul feared for his kingdom.
He wasn't afraid that David was gonna kill him.
He he wasn't afraid that David would be bad for Israel, I
mean come on. David fought Israel's battles.

(36:33):
David protected Saul. David had Saul's back.
But he was afraid that he was gonna lose his
kingdom. David was gonna get
it.
And so he was unable to receive the greatest gift

(36:54):
that God gave to him, gave
to his kingdom. David,
couldn't receive it. When you know who you are
in Christ, it changes the calculus on everything. When
your identity is rooted and grounded in Christ, it changes the
calculus on on everything. When it shifts

(37:18):
from who am I to who am I in Christ.
Yeah I know I'm running a little late but,
just hang on.
I used to do a lot of my major in college was
theater, and I used to do a lot of acting and before I came to

(37:41):
the Lord I mean I was, I was doing that all the time. And you
know what, I was good.
I was good, and I knew it. And I
felt like I'm a really
good actor. And so I enjoyed acting.
I did not enjoy going to the theater, Because when I

(38:04):
went to the theater, one of two things would happen. I would see somebody doing
a role that I should have been doing.
And they weren't very good. And I would be sitting there the whole
time instead of into the play, I'd be sitting there the whole
time going, yeah. That's
not how I'd do it. And it was even worse if they were

(38:26):
great and much better than I could
do it. Because I would sit sit there,
something inside of me, kind of
falling apart I guess, crumbling.
And then I came to Jesus, came to Jesus in
in in my mid twenties and and I didn't know this was gonna happen

(38:49):
because I didn't know it was a problem. Because I
was stupid, and ignorant, and away from the Lord, and
couldn't see things. But I started enjoying
going to the theater. Because if I went and somebody
was really good, I would, wow, that blew me
away. I really enjoyed that. And if someone was

(39:11):
really bad, I just go, you know,
God love you. I mean look at what they're doing.
They don't even know their path. They're just up there, they're just up there
having fun and enjoying life and and living it
big. That's, I mean it changed everything.

(39:33):
It's not time for this, I'm gonna tell it anyway.
It's a play called Frost Nixon. And it's about David Frost
and Richard Nixon, and interviews and stuff. And, and
I I I've always
thought that I could play Richard Nixon very well.

(39:53):
And, and Studio ten over in
Franklin did that play, and I thought, oh wow, I'm gonna
audition for Well they already precast Nixon and I was going, oh
well. But then the guy had to drop out and
they asked me to come and audition. And
I did. And I feel like I

(40:15):
nailed it. And they didn't cast me.
They, they cast a friend of mine,
that I had known previous years, named Robert Kiefer.
And I went to see him, I went to see the play, and
Robert was fabulous. He

(40:35):
was fabulous. And and I
remember after after the show, I was in I was in the foyer,
I think they call it a lobby. I was in the lobby and one of
the guys who had been at my audition had decided not to cast me.
I went over to him and I said, you guys

(40:57):
absolutely made the right choice. And it was from the bottom of my heart and
it felt so good to be able to say it. Because my identity was
not in the fact that I I can do a Richard
Dixon or that I was an actor or anything. My identity is in
Jesus Christ and how well somebody else did had no impact
whatsoever on who I

(41:19):
was.
Back in the seventies, people used to say, what are my rights in Christ?
Kinda go, well, you
know, because of bad teaching they thought was

(41:40):
having stuff, and, and,
being never getting sick, or something like that. You
know, having stuff doesn't make you free from want.
In fact, the more stuff you have, the more stuff you want, usually.
Having stuff, having faith makes you free for
want.

(42:04):
Your rights are to die daily,
to forgive others,
to consider others ahead of yourself.
In other words, to take up your cross daily and follow him.
Those are your rights. And if you will exercise those

(42:26):
rights, the more you exercise those right,
the result is that you you find your true self, you
find freedom, you find freedom from
fear. No fear.
Colossians two ten says, in Christ you've been brought to fullness.
Think about what that means. Do you feel like your

(42:49):
life is full? Do you feel like it's it's
fullness? If you don't, it may be because
it's not grounded in Christ.
For you died and your life is hidden with Christ in
God. Stop looking for your life in the wrong

(43:12):
places. Your your life is
not about your politics, it's
not about your position, it's not about your possessions, your pride,
hidden in
Christ. And

(43:35):
then finally, it's hidden in Christ.
And then finally,
do not fear what they fear,
do not be intimidated by them but in your hearts
revere Christ as Lord.

(43:55):
Two options, you can
fear what they fear and be intimidated or you can revere Christ
as Lord in your hearts. Those are in inverse
proportion to one another, inverse ratio.
Many of you watch the news.

(44:15):
It may be your sin that so
easily entangles you. I'm just saying that,
not to be funny, but because it's
true. Because it promotes fear.
But if you will truly revere Christ in your
hearts, your fear doesn't stand a chance

(44:39):
when you stand in his love.
Would you stand with me? Will those who are
gonna pray with people come forward? And
if you need prayer for anything,
especially if there's anything out there that you're feeling fear or anxiety
about, it may be an interview, it may be a doctor's appointment, it may be

(44:59):
a bill that's coming bill that's
coming to I mean, but anything, it doesn't have to be
about fear specifically. We're going to worship for just a few
moments, give you an opportunity, to come and
be prayed for. His brothers and sisters would love to pray with you.

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