Brother Gary Sunday Morning 8/26/12
1Sa 15:22 And Samuel said, Hath the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and
sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.
Last week I dealt with the thought of “How did Saul get into
such a thought pattern of wanting his son Jonathan to murder David?” We saw that he got there by rebelling against
the Word of God.
What does the Bible say about obedience? It is a blessing and a big subject. Obedience is a wonderful thing.
Isa 1:19 If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat
the good of the land:
If we will be willing and obedient the blessing of God will
rest upon us.
Isa 1:16 Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of
your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil;
God made mankind in His image. We became sinners because the nature to sin
was passed to us from Adam and will be passed to all generations. From a child we go into sin. A child is covered by the atoning blood of
Christ until they reach the age where they know what sin is, the age of
accountability. As we grow, we become
well acquainted with sin and need to be washed.
“In that day a fountain shall be opened.”
When God instituted tabernacle worship not only was there a
sacrifice for sin but there was a laver to wash in as you went into the holy
place. The promise of God for our
initial washing is that if we confess and repent of our sin he will wash our
sins away. This is real today and will
be as long as this world exists.
When God tugs upon the heart, the thought is not of
condemnation, but of “I’ve come to cleanse you.” This cleansing is not only for the committed
sin but also of the nature to sin. This
nature can be washed out.
This cleansing and washing continues through our lifetime,
not in the thought of sinning, but you tell God, “God I want to be more like
you.” The individual that wrote the
song, “More like Jesus.” was undoubtedly saved and knew God but they wanted to
know more about God and have more of Jesus.
In our lives, as we love God, we can expect Him to help you
and me to know things that we need to be washed of as we walk with God.
2Co 7:1 Having therefore these promises, dearly
beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit,
perfecting holiness in the fear of God.
It is a wonderful thing to have promises. Yesterday I was thinking children don’t
forget promises. They may forget
instruction, you give children a job and they get distracted and forget the
job. You tell them that you are going to
do something and they will remember that.
We have a heavenly Father that has left promises for us.
This promise was written to those that were saved. Cleanse ourselves from all ‘filthiness of the
flesh and spirit perfecting holiness in the fear of God.’ We love God and God loves us so we need to
have the attitude that we want to be cleansed because He loves us; the
expression was, “Dearly beloved.”
Some have the misconception that because God corrected us He
is mad at us. No, God is not mad at you
when He corrects you. When we don’t take
the correction then He gets unhappy with us.
As ‘dearly beloved’ He will correct us and cleanse us from things in our
lives, our shortcomings.
I encourage the husbands to look up the scriptures that deal
with them. I encourage the wives to also
look up the scriptures that deal with being a wife. When I married Karen I wasn’t thinking of all
that was required of me in being a husband; I just knew that I loved her and
wanted her to marry me. The Bible
teaches us to confess our own fault and not the faults of others.
As I’m praying and seeking after God, I hunger for God; I
thirst for God and want more of Him. I
tell God that. When we tell God that
then we’re telling Him as the Psalm 139 says, “Search me O God and see if there
be any wicked way in me.”
When you ask God to
search you then you are not asking Him to complement you on all your good
traits. I tell God, “Tell me the worst
of my case now.” God has much respect
for a humble and contrite heart.
Our thought is “Oh God, we want to be cleansed.” There are many mysteries in the world
today. We may not understand something. You may say, “I don’t understand salvation so
I don’t want it.” Well I don’t
understand electricity, it is a mystery.
I’m afraid of electricity.
The lines that go through the alley are not very big around,
but there is enough electricity to feed our house and the church. There are bigger lines that come to our house
than those that carry the electricity.
It goes through a transformer and from there into my house.
I enjoy electricity; I enjoyed it when it was so hot and you
could turn on that electricity and cool down the house. In the morning when I get up it is dark and I
like to be able to turn on a light. I don’t know a lot about electricity but I
sure enjoy the results.
We must come to God with the attitude, “God I want to be
obedient so I’m coming to you and want you to tell me if there is anything in
my life that you can cleanse me of so that I can be obedient.
I prayed after I got saved that I wanted to be real and
genuine. God began to deal with me in my
language, I had lain off the swear words but I had a lot of slang words in my
vocabulary. God said, “I want your yea
to be yea and your nay to be nay.” I
said, “I want to please you and obey you; I’ll leave off those words with your
help.”
When we got up in the morning, my dad would be singing, but I
was moody in the morning. God helped me
to know that I needed to be cleansed from that moodiness. I changed through His help and I’m really
glad I did, my dad was snatched into eternity by a logging accident. I’m glad that I don’t have to look back to
that time with regret.
Everything that God tells you to do, do quickly. If we take care of things now, we never look
back and say, “I regret not taking care of that when God spoke to me.”
God is holy, He loves sinners, He came to seek and save that
which was lost. We have the attitude, I
love to serve you and am doing my best to do what the Spirit and Word teach
me. When He speaks to us we yield to Him
and He gives us the strength and power to do what He asks us to do.
Eph 5:25 Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ
also loved the church, and gave himself for it;
Eph 5:26 That he might sanctify and cleanse it with
the washing of water by the word,
Eph 5:27 That he might present it to himself a
glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it
should be holy and without blemish.
The way we are perfected is not by following a bunch of
church rules. We cannot be saved by joining
a church or signing a catechism. The way
we are saved is asking God to forgive us and then reading the Word of God and
asking God to wash us.
We hear the teaching of the Word and the preaching of the Word
from the Bible and it must line up with the truth of the Word. ‘Study to show thyselves approved.’ We must read the scripture for
ourselves. We must read until we know
that God has spoken to us.
When you get up at five to be to work by six, be faithful. Read some scriptures, have prayer, ask God to
help you that day and to help you with what you will face that day.
We need to read the word of God, and pray. There are times when we pray and then request
things of God and then say, “Amen and Amen if in your wisdom you choose to not
give me my request.”
This Word of God is a washing that will not take any good
thing from us.
Eph 5:32 This is a great mystery: but I speak
concerning Christ and the church.
God loving us and dwelling in our hearts is a mystery. When we die our spirit leaves and returns to
God that gave it, this also is a mystery.
Just because it is a mystery doesn’t mean that it is not real. We don’t know what will happen tomorrow but
we want to see tomorrow and be a part of it.
There are a lot of mysteries; this is a great mystery
concerning Christ and the church.
Everyone that is saved is a member of His church but He is washing each
of us in a different way.
Isa 1:16 Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil
of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil;
Isa 1:17 Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the
oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.
God help me to know how you feel about what I’m thinking and
what I’m planning, help me to know how you see how I’m treating my brother and
sister.
Relieve the oppressed.
Glat 6:1 we have burdens that we have to bear and we should help bear
one another’s burdens.
One thing that I have found in helping people is to be a
good listener. Let them express
themselves and after they have told you what they are so troubled about, have a
gift from God that you know how to relieve the oppressed.
The devil is the great oppressor, he takes things and makes
it look like there is no hope and there is no way out. This God that I know makes a way when there
is no way. He can cause an axe to
float. If you throw an axe from the
bridge into the river it will sink.
The axe that God allowed to float was made of material that
would sink. God has a way of relieving
the most unlikely situation. He relieves
the oppressed.
“I don’t know about tomorrow, but I know who holds tomorrow
and I know who holds my hand.”
I don’t know what you are going to face tomorrow, but if you
live for another week or year or two years you will find yourselves with your
face to a wall saying, “I don’t know how God will do relieve this situation,
but I know the God that holds tomorrow.”
The fatherless are those that don’t know God as their
father. The judgment that God is
interested in is for the sinner to know the help that He has for them. The widow is someone that doesn’t have God in
their life.
Isa 1:18 Come now, and let us reason together, saith
the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow;
though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.
Though your sins cannot be blotted out of your memory,
though there be those that know what you’ve done, Jesus put on the scarlet robe
and bore your sins. He’ll take your and
my life that has stains of sin, regret, and bitterness and take all your sin
and cast it as far as the east is from the west in the sea of God’s
forgetfulness never to be remembered again.
He says, “I will clothe you.” The father told the servants to bring the
best robe for the prodigal son. The sins
that were red will be as that fresh wool that has been sheared off of a sheep
and woven into a garment.
The greatest honor I can give God is obedience; the best
gift I can give my house is obedience to God.
Whether you are alone or have a companion or you have a household, the
best thing you can do is obey God.
The blessing of obedience to God is the most honorable
choice I can make for the family, for the church. You may want to do something for me or
Karen. The best thing that you can do
for yourself and for all of us is to be obedient to God.
You teachers, be obedient to God. Lift the bar high. Live by the rulebook, the Bible. The best thing that each of you can do for
your marriage is to be obedient to God.
I cannot provide as I used to provide or work like I used to work, but I
can be obedient to God.
The best thing that I can do for my daughters, for my
son-in-laws, and for my grandchildren is be obedient to God.
