Watch Yourselves

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Kyle Douglass; Deuteronomy 4:9-31 Watch Yourselves

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Welcome to Recast Church, where we're growing in faith, community, and service. You're listening to a message by Pastor Kyle Douglas from the book of Deuteronomy from a series entitled,
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Clinging to God on the Way from Here to There. If you'd like more information about Recast Church, check us out at recastchurch .com
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or you can find us on Facebook. Here's Pastor Kyle. Welcome to Recast.
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We are glad that you got out of bed this morning and came to join us here at church.
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Hopefully when you came in, you got a worship folder, and that's that little piece of paper with a picture on it. It has a bunch of announcements, and we always encourage you to go through those, read up on those.
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It gives you some info on some things that are happening. Inside there, you'll find a connection card. It's a little card where you can fill out your name and address information, some other stuff, and we can be in contact with each other if you'd like.
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If you have prayer requests or would like to request information from us on something specific, use that thing.
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There's also an envelope in there. That's where you put all of the cash that's in your pocket currently, and then give it to us.
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Just kidding. We want you to have your giving between you and God, but if you feel led to give a donation, you put it in there.
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And then the connection cards and the envelope go in that back black box, which is on the table. It's kind of hidden there.
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If you're a new visitor or you just lost your old one, you can take a mug as well that has recast on it, and you can think of us all week.
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So that's pretty cool. Also, just a quick announcement that we are kicking off our student ministries tonight.
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So 180, which is our junior high, our middle school program, and then Gravity, which is our high school program, is meeting here, 6 to 8 p .m.,
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both students and parents. So it's a student -teacher kickoff.
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We have some games, we eat some snacks, and we basically give you the information about what we're doing for this semester.
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And we're changing some things up, especially on the high school end, and it's an important meeting. We would love to have you there.
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So I had a friend that I met with every week for a couple of years, and his name was
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Rob. And I was invited to meet with Rob by another friend named Ted. And Ted was my football coach, sometimes he shows up here at church, but a great friend, great friend in the
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Lord, he was my FCA leader, and he asked me at one point, hey, I'm meeting with this guy named Rob, and he went to Schoolcraft too, and he really needs some help, he needs an accountability group.
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And so we would meet together every morning weekly, not every morning, but once a week, and we would meet at McDonald's, and we would study the
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Word, and we would pray together, and kind of have a discipleship group. Well, Rob would often show up a little bit shaky.
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Oftentimes we'd be sitting there, reading the Bible, talking, praying, or whatever, and he would simply doze off.
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Ted and I would be having a conversation, we'd look up, and Rob would be, his head tilted back, snoozing.
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He would oftentimes break out in a cold sweat for no reason, and it's because Rob was on methadone, and Rob was on methadone because he was a recovering addict.
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He used lots of drugs, but he was a heroin addict, and methadone is a narcotic that helps you recover, or at least manages your addiction, doesn't give you the ups and downs of something like heroin.
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And Rob had lived a very difficult life, he had walked away from kind of anything healthy or God -like, got into a lot of trouble, and then went to church with his mom later in life after his addiction was well established, and came to the
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Lord. And he knew he needed to change, and he knew he needed help, and he wanted to grow in Christ, and so this weekly
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Bible study was a part of that for Rob. It was a community around him, and we would meet, and we became good friends, and even as I watched him come in, and sometimes more or less losing to his addiction,
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I could tell that his faith was sincere. That he really had come to a point where he had accepted
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Christ, and he loved Him. And even though he was tearing his mind apart with the drugs, he had a brilliant memory, he could memorize
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Scripture better than I could, it was really fun to meet with him. We ended up kind of breaking apart for a while, you know,
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I'd done that for two years, and then Ted would still kind of meet with him for a while, but I wasn't meeting with them as regularly, and then
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I heard some rumors about Rob, that he was having a real hard time. Some people had seen him on the side of the street, the highway, yelling and shouting, and this and that, and so I kind of feared that it was getting the best of him.
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And then Ted called me at one point and said, Rob's gone.
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And he had ended up face down in his apartment, he had OD'd, and died. And I was asked to do the funeral, and when
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I spoke at his funeral, I had to talk about how Rob was a child of God.
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And I believe, I stand before you today, and I believe that he's standing with Jesus right now.
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I believe that. But his life also showed us what happens when you are not careful to watch yourself, to watch your sin.
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Israel was addicted to idolatry. I think that's something that if you are even vaguely familiar with the story of Israel, you can see.
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They were addicted to idolatry and sin. Over and over and over again, they would go back to the practice of worshiping other gods.
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And in Deuteronomy, Moses takes great care to remind them of who they are.
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That they are addicts. But they got this problem inside of them that they need to root out.
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Idolatry, defined by one of my resources, is this. The worship or adoration of anyone or anything other than the
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Lord God. The worship or adoration of anyone or anything other than the
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Lord God. Idolatry includes the worship of other gods, such as those of the nations surrounding
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Israel, images or idols, and the creation itself.
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We're certainly going to look this morning at the very real temptation of Israel to worship idols.
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I mean, literally other gods from other nations, deities that they thought existed in the heavens and that they would make forms or symbols of.
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And especially in our culture today, we might think that idolatry isn't that big of a deal.
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I mean, maybe we have friends that have a statue of Buddha up, or something like that. But we may not think it's really a problem.
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You've never been tempted to bow down to a statue. But do we have objects in our lives that we are tempted to put our trust in?
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Or that we're tempted to give our worship to, our time, our adoration? Things that aren't
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God? I think when I look at my life, I have a real temptation to pull my true worship away from God and give it to other things.
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And so I think our passage today has some things to teach us about this issue of idolatry.
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But this is something that we'll find in the passage today as well. That Moses repeatedly tells the people to take care, to watch yourselves, to be aware.
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He gives them the responsibility, right? You know yourself, you know your temptations, you know your past.
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So moving ahead in the future, keep your eyes open. Be aware.
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Be diligent to guard your soul from the things that would draw you away from God.
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And in that warning, I think he gives them a recovery program. Many of you have maybe heard of 12 -step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous.
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You might participate in one of those. I think Moses here kind of gives the people a three -step program.
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It involves remembering, retelling, and repenting.
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Remembering, retelling, and repenting. If you'd open your Bibles to Deuteronomy chapter 4, we're going to read verses 9 -31.
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It's kind of a chunk. It's longer than the passages that I've been reading over the past couple of weeks. So you might have to work with me to stay with me, but try and maintain your attention.
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Take care that you don't drift away. But I would ask as we read that you would think, okay, where did
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I come up with this three -part program? Where is Moses telling us to remember?
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Or the people to remember? Where is he telling them to retell? And where is he telling them to repent?
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See if you can find those in this passage. So this is Deuteronomy chapter 4, starting at verse 9.
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We'll read through verse 31. Can anyone throw out a page number for me? 128.
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I think we'll get to 129 today. It's kind of exciting. We're just plowing right through.
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Alright, let's read. Only take care and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life.
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Make them known to your children and your children's children, how on that day you stood before the Lord your
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God at Horeb. The Lord said to me, gather the people to Me that I may let them hear My words, so that they may learn to fear
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Me all the days that they live on the earth, and that they may teach their children so.
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And you came near and stood at the foot of the mountain, while the mountain burned with fire to the heart of heaven, wrapped in darkness, cloud, and gloom.
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Then the Lord spoke to you out of the midst of the fire. You heard the sound of words, but saw no form.
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There was only a voice. And He declared to you His covenant, which
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He commanded you to perform. That is the Ten Commandments. And He wrote them on two tablets of stone.
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And the Lord commanded me at that time to teach you statutes and rules, that you might do them in the land that you were going over to possess.
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Therefore, watch yourselves very carefully, since you saw no form on the day that the
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Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire. Beware, lest you act corruptly by making a carved image for yourselves in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any animal that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged bird that flies in the air, the likeness of anything that creeps on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the water under the earth.
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And beware, lest you raise your eyes to heaven. And when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the hosts of heaven, you be drawn away and bow down to them and serve them, things that the
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Lord your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven. But the
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Lord has taken you and brought you out of the iron furnace, out of Egypt, to be a people of His own inheritance, as you are this day.
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Furthermore, the Lord was angry with me because of you, and He swore that I should not cross the Jordan, and that I should not enter the good land that the
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Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance, for I must die in this land. I must not go over the
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Jordan, but you shall go over and take possession of that good land. Take care, lest you forget the covenant of the
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Lord your God, which He made with you, and make a carved image, the form of anything that the
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Lord your God has forbidden you. For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous
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God. When you father children and children's children and have grown old in the land, if you act corruptly by making a carved image in the form of anything, and by doing what is evil in the sight of the
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Lord your God, so as to provoke Him to anger, I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that you will soon utterly perish from the land that you are going over the
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Jordan to possess. You will not live long in it, but you will be utterly destroyed.
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And the Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations where the
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Lord will drive you. And there you will serve gods of wood and stone, the work of human hands that neither see nor hear nor eat nor smell.
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But, from there, you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find
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Him if you search after Him with all your heart and with all your soul. When you are in tribulation and all these things come upon you in the latter days, you will return to the
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Lord your God and obey His voice. For the Lord your God is a merciful God.
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He will not leave you or destroy you or forget the covenant with your fathers that He swore to them.
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Let's pray. Father, I thank you for your word, and I thank you for this powerful message, this sermon of Moses that reminds us of who you are, and it reminds us of the second commandment.
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God, we're not supposed to have any other gods before you, and we are not to make any image for ourselves of you.
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We're not to put our affection on anything that we've created or anything that you've created, but we're supposed to focus on you, the
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Creator. And God, I pray this morning as we go through this thing we call church, as we sing these songs and as we hear these words,
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I pray that you do a work in our heart that only you can do, that you would show us maybe places where we've made idols of things, that you'd convict us of that, and that you would win our hearts back,
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God, by your love and mercy. I pray for those who might be suffering correction,
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God, that you would wake them up and that they would be convinced that they can call on you at any time and that you'll be merciful to them if they seek you with all their heart and all their soul.
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So God, we sing these songs to you, we lift your name up high, and we give you praise because you are a jealous God, a consuming fire, and you are a merciful
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God, and it's in your name we pray, amen. Thanks Josh and crew, you guys do an excellent job week after week, you rock.
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Right? Right? Okay, as always, we encourage you to get your
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Bible, keep it open, it's just great sometimes to fact check me and see if I'm moving along in the right direction and, you know, that is the, the
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Word of God is the important thing. We try and do what we can to bring it alive to you and get you to think about it, but it's the
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Spirit of God taking these words in your life and we just love it when you're looking at it. So, that's good stuff.
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Always make yourself comfortable and get coffee, donuts as you need, the bathrooms for the adults are out the doors and then down this way at the end of the hall, ladies first floor, men second floor, just to let you know that those are there.
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All right, so we read this chunk of Scripture and hopefully you heard it, the repetitive nature and how many of you know that when you're studying the
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Bible and something is repeated, especially in a short section, you're supposed to pay attention, right?
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It's like parents with kids, you know, it's like fifth time I've told you to clean your room, maybe you should clean your room.
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So we look for these things as clues as to what's important in our passage and we see this command to take care over and over again.
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In our passage, we have verse 9, take care and keep your soul diligently. Isn't that an awesome way to say it?
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Take care and keep your soul diligently. Verse 15, therefore watch yourselves very carefully.
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Watch yourselves very carefully. What are you doing? How are you behaving? What's coming out of your mouth? Are you aware of yourself even?
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Watch yourselves very carefully. From a community standpoint, and Moses is talking to the nation of Israel, right, there's a sense that we help watch each other.
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We as a church help watch each other. Now that can get a little bit freaky, right? Some of us have been at churches where a few people have made it their job to watch you and what you do.
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I'm talking about the good kind of watching, right? Not the annoying kind, the humble kind, the one that says, hey brother,
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I think you're going down the wrong road. And I just want to give you some advice from a friend or I see how you're talking to your husband friend.
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Something going on in your heart, right? So there's a sense that we watch ourselves as a community and as a body.
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Verse 19, he says, and beware, right? Now it's not just, hey, keep an eye on stuff.
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But this is like walking up a mountain pass and there's a signpost there that says, beware!
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Like trail ends kind of a thing, right? Beware! Watch ourselves. Verse 23, again, take care.
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Take care. He's trying to tell them something. He's telling them that they have to be very careful, that they have a responsibility as redeemed, chosen people, given the law, to do their very, very best to not fall away.
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But this isn't just in our passage, it's really a theme in the Bible as a whole, alright? A few verses.
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Proverbs 4 .23, what do you think this means? Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.
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Keep your heart with all vigilance. Be careful what you start to love.
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Haggai 1 .5, God's kind of giving His people the what for?
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And He says, Now therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts, consider your ways.
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Consider your ways. 1 Corinthians 11 .28, let a person examine himself then, and so eat the bread and drink the cup.
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Paul was saying that before you come to communion, examine yourselves. Make sure that there's nothing evil, wrong, off in your heart right now.
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Take it as a time of reflection. That's what communion is supposed to be for us. It's a time of remembrance, but it's also a time of reflection on our own lives, right?
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2 Corinthians 13 .5, examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves.
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Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you, unless indeed you fail to meet the test?
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Examine yourselves. Hebrews 2 .1, therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.
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Hebrews 3 .12, a little bit later, take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living
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God. And of course, he's using the example of Israel to teach the people about the danger of falling away.
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He's like, don't forget, your people, your ancestors, time and time again, didn't listen to what they heard, and they let their heart be drawn away.
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They had unbelieving hearts, so take care. They ought to take care. 1
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Peter 5 .8, be sober -minded, be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.
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So this isn't just like an Old Testament thing. It's not just a Moses thing. It's a thing that we are to do, all of us, in the faith.
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And it's really just a part of life, right? If you're at a job, and you've been given responsibility, do you think you should kind of be watching your own performance?
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Should you be checking on yourself? Or is that just your boss's job, to always be looking over your shoulder?
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Or do you want to do well? Do you want to perform well? Do you want to make sure you're accomplishing the responsibilities that you've been tasked with?
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So we do this all the time. It's really, it's not anything super -spiritual, but what happens in the faith is that the risk of screwing up is exponentially greater.
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And just to clear up, you know, maybe a question, we're not exactly talking about salvation, although there are some things like failing the test of faith to see if Christ is really in you that may result in you finding out that you're not even in the faith.
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But we're not talking about watch yourself so that you do all the good things right, so that God will save you.
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We're talking about people who are saved, who know better, and ought to be living like their
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God wants them to live, who ought to be doing everything that He's made them to do, and yet are at risk of falling away from their first love.
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That's what we're talking about here. So we watch ourselves spiritually.
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And I think this is the process, if we could summarize it. We watch ourselves spiritually lest we forget who
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God is. And forgetting who God is and what He's done leads to losing our fear of Him and our respect for Him, which leads to disobedience, which leads to correction and pain in our lives.
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Do you see that progress, that progression? We forget who
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God is, so we lose respect for Him, and now we're not really concerned about following Him, we're concerned about following ourselves, and consequences follow.
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Sometimes I watch these weird shows on TV, you know, like these documentaries, and one of them's like when, you know, when wild animals attack or whatever, you know, you ever seen one of those?
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And especially when you have like domestic animals, or I think there's a show called Animal Hoarders, right?
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And it usually ends with the person getting eaten by whatever they're hoarding, you know? And the danger of keeping a wild animal as a pet is that the familiarity with that wild animal can lead to a disrespect for what it really is, right?
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They get too comfortable, and they stop respecting it, and they get careless, and it mauls them, right?
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It's like, come on, dude, that's a bangled tiger you're putting your head in its mouth.
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What was supposed to happen, right? How often do we treat
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God like our pet? We know He's wild.
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He can do some powerful things, but we got Him under control. He's tame.
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We lose our respect for Him, and we don't pay attention to Him like we should, and the results can be severe.
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I think another way to put this before we move on to Moses' recovery plan, as I call it, is to think of watching ourselves like this.
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How many of you have heard in the New Testament the fact that we are filled with the Spirit, God's Spirit lives in us, but then as Christians, we are to walk directed by the
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Spirit or filled with the Spirit as we go about our daily lives. Anyone heard that before? Okay. Now, one of the terms in there, this idea of being filled, was also used at times in the nautical world for the idea of wind filling a sail, right?
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And so I've heard this sometimes, preachers will talk about how we are like a sail, and God is like the wind, and He comes in and He fills us, and He leads us where He wants, okay?
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So if we take that metaphor, and we understand that our lives are to be like a sail,
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God has sown us together, He's given us the experiences that we have, the talents that we have,
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He's sown us all together, and we are to raise ourselves up to be available to Him so that when
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His wind blows, our life can be filled and we can be pushed where He wants us to go.
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Now, do we have a wind pedal on the boat? Can we command the wind? No, that's
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God's job. It's His power that comes and moves us. But do we have some responsibility for the sail?
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I think we do. I think we are to watch our sail closely, we're to inspect every seam and see if there's any part of our life that's beginning to unravel, if there are any stitches that are starting to pull out, and what would happen if those stitches were uncared for and those seams were unwatched?
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Eventually, it pulls apart, and what happens when the sail pulls apart? It can't receive the full effect of the wind, and I think that's what
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Moses is telling us to do. He's not telling us to blow the wind ourselves, but He is saying watch your seams.
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Take care to pay attention to those areas in your life where you might start splitting apart and be unavailable to the influence and the work of God in your life.
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So He gives the Israelites this recovery plan. He knows they're addicted to idol worship, and He tries to instruct them, and He fleshes out this second commandment in order to help them understand how they might stay close to God.
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And the first part of that recovery plan is remember. Remember He says, right?
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Think back on what God has done. And the first thing we have to recognize is that God has acted in history, right?
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Our God has acted in history. He has come down to us, into His creation, and He's done stuff, sweet stuff, right?
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Amazing things. Not only can we see Him in creation, but He's actually come and done miracles. He's rescued people out of Egypt, 10 plagues, right?
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Not child's play. Separated an ocean so that people could walk by on dry land.
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He fed them in the desert, right? All these things that they saw. When He came and gave the law, He did not show
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Himself, but the mountain was on fire, right? And then they were led by a cloud and a pillar of fire throughout the wilderness.
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I mean, this is like, this is major stuff. These are not stories in a Bible. People actually believe this happened.
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Like me, right? Francis Schaeffer wrote a great book that basically said, like, we have a
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God who entered space and time. He's not a fairy tale. He's actually moved in history,
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He's revealed Himself. Christ coming to us was Him revealing Himself to us, right? And so what are we to remember?
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We are to remember back on the things that God has done in history because they prove that He's real and they prove
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His Word. They are to remember first that they saw
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God's power, and he, of course, is talking to, like, the first generation, people who were in the desert, who did hear the voice and saw the fire on the mountain.
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Seeing is believing, and they got the privilege of actually seeing. They were terrified when it happened, but they saw.
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And Moses is saying, don't forget what you saw. And more than that, they are to remember what they saw, or better,
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I think we could say, what they didn't see. So they saw manifestations of God's power, but they never saw
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God's form. They never saw a shape. It wasn't like, oh, look in the sky, it's a bearded lion with a monkey face and a sun behind his head, right?
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I mean, it wasn't a tree, it wasn't a stone, it wasn't like the moon. They didn't see any image of God.
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This summer when I took the high schoolers to a mission trip to Detroit, good times, right?
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Gravity? What? We went to the Detroit Institute of Art, and I was walking through most of the exhibits, and especially the cultural stuff, and you know what struck me?
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Was that almost all of the things that I saw in there were related to some form of worship, some idolatry, some representation of a spirit, or a form, or a
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God, and that's what these cultures are defined by. That's what their art is. It's their best attempts to capture the spirit world in visual form.
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Like I mentioned, we may not think that we're idol worshipers today, but what do, what person or what object do you spend most of your time with, or do you spend most of your time on?
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What things are you most afraid of losing? What things, if you didn't get, you wonder if you could really live well?
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There should be one answer to that, and that's God himself.
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Do you have clear memories of what God has done for you? I mean, if I asked you right now, you know, tell me when
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God has shown up in your life, or times where you think that you saw God moving. Could you tell me what those were?
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Some of you might have a couple of vivid memories. Some of you might struggle. I think
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Moses is telling us, remember. You remember, not just the biblical stories, that's important.
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Remembering God's law, his truths, absolutely. But think about what he's actually done in your life, because then it gets real.
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Now it's just not a story in a book or a character that you're reading about. You're acknowledging what God has done in your life.
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So we remember. The second part of the recovery plan is to retell.
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And I'm directing our kids ministry, Recast Kids, now, and it's such a privilege to do.
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And it's in front of me every week, now in a more intense way, especially as I have kids in the ministry.
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This reality that we are called to pass on our faith to our kids. And Moses says it right here.
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And it's interesting that he kind of, he uses it as a tool for them to stay close to God.
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Do you see that? He's trying to help them break their addiction to idolatry.
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And one of the ways that he says to do it is to take all those stories and take the reality of God that you know and pass it on to your kids.
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Here are some statistics. This is how you know this is a real sermon, because I'm about to share some statistics, right?
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There are lies, things that beavers make, beavers make lies, and then there's statistics, right?
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See what I did there? That was a terrible joke. I will never say that again. Anyway, now we're getting it.
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Okay, they're like, what did you say? Some statistics about our kids.
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88 % of children raised in Christian families leave church at the age of 18, never to return.
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88 % of children raised in Christian families leave the church at age of 18, never to return.
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A majority of adults no longer consider Christianity America's default faith, according to Barna.
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64 % of decisions for Christ are made before the age of 18, and 77 % are made before the age of 21.
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64 % of decisions for Christ made before the age of 18. Last one, an estimated, this is depressing, an estimated 4 % of the
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Bridger generation, otherwise known as Generation Y, I'm right on the cusp of X and Y, right?
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So 4 % of my generation will be Bible -believing Christians when they reach adulthood.
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Their grandparents' generation was 65%. Their parents' generation, 35%.
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We have an exponential decline, culturally, of kids who will someday remain in the faith.
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I think we should do something about that. Amen? Amen. At Recast, we do programs like Recast Kids and 180 and Gravity in order to help you as parents do what
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Moses is calling us to do. We want to come alongside you. We want to help teach the stories.
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We want to give the gospel clearly and plant those seeds of faith so that when they go to college, and we all know what kids are facing in college, we all know what they're facing in high school, in junior high today, but especially when they're on their own and they're making their own decisions, we want to give them the tools so that they can grow.
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That's what tonight's about. Parents, if you were kind of like on the fence about coming tonight, please come tonight because we want to help you pass on the faith to your kids.
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But I don't think that the primary responsibility for your kids' faith is on us.
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I really think that God has called you as the parent to pass on your faith to your children.
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And this freaks a lot of us out, right? I don't know the Bible well. Every time I try and quote something, I just get all jumbled up.
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I still don't know half the books. I'm a little unclear what even I believe.
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So here's the option before you. You can either say, well, I'm not very good at it.
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I doubt I ever will be good at it. So I just won't even try. Or you can take the command that you have to do it as reason for getting better.
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And you don't have to be perfect. You don't have to be a pastor. In fact, I think if you could just tell your kid why you became a
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Christian, you're off to a great start. You don't even have to quote
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Bible verses. Just tell them what God has done in your life and why you drag them to church every
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Sunday. Tell them your stories.
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Tell them your memories. And those of us who have the opportunity to teach, this is a principle that we all know.
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When you teach, you learn better. When you teach, you learn better.
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And that's why I think Moses told them to do it. Because he knew that if they were regularly passing on their faith to their kids, if they were regularly teaching them the covenant and the statutes and the laws, it would be ingrained in their minds as much as hand it down to their kids.
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But it is for them. It gives them a foundation for their faith to hold on to. It gives them stories to return to.
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Even if they go wayward for a time, you're giving them the foundation that they can go back to. And I hope they got a little cricket holding a
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Bible on their shoulder when they're at that party in college. And they might be bottoms up.
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But you know what? If you put the stories there and you gave them your faith, I guarantee you that the
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Spirit of God is in there going, Wake up, dude. Cut it out.
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This is not you. Get home before midnight.
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And here's another piece of that. They get to know you.
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I'm not talking about just preaching to your kids. I'm saying let them know who you are. Let them into your heart.
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Journey groups have started. I'm helping co -lead one of them. And one of the participants in my group was lamenting the fact that his mom, he's 61 now, his mom has passed away.
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And he's got some questions that he'd love to have asked her. Let your kids know who you are, especially your faith.
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Kyle Eidelman in his book, Not a Fan, which talks about not being a fan of Jesus but an actual follower.
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We're actually going to do that in Gravity this semester. We're going to read that book. He shares the story of a man who came up to him after one of his talks, and he had tears in his eyes, and he told him about how his daughter had walked away from the faith.
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Big guy from Texas, I guess, said he had a belt buckle the size of a Frisbee. Falling like a baby.
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And he said this, We raised her in church, but we didn't raise her in Christ. We raised her in church, but we didn't raise her in Christ.
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And you sharing your story with your kids will help raise them in Christ, not just a bunch of rules and legalisms that they need to follow.
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For those of you who don't have kids, you are not off the hook. You know, sorry, please silence your cell phones, okay?
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Man, so tacky, Addison.
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Even if you don't have kids, you know people who need to hear your story.
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You've got friends, you've got co -workers. Just figure out your story. Why you follow
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God, not why they should, not all the theological reasons about why they're messed up. Just tell your story.
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It will help you immensely in your faith. So we remember what
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God has done in the past, in Israel's history, in our own lives.
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We remember what He's spoken to us. And we learn to retell it. We learn to become retellers of the story of God.
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And then the last part of it is repentance. He says in this passage,
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If you act corruptly, so He's like, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this.
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But if you act corruptly, and after you're old and you've had children's children, you forget and you make an idol, well, what then?
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And I think He's just pointing out a reality, and He knows them, right? He knows their addicts. And addicts will always be tempted to go back.
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We pray that they don't, but they'll always be tempted to go back. He says if you do, there will be consequences.
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Mistakes happen, but there might be consequences. There's a counseling term called the dignity of risk and the right to fail.
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According to the website that I looked that up on, it was coined by Patricia Deegan, an international leader of the mental health consumer and survivor movement, to emphasize the importance of people in recovery being able to make their own choices and therefore their own mistakes, as this is a primary source of learning, she says, for all adults, including those with substance use and or mental health conditions.
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Now, she's recognized this in the counseling world, but I think it's a principle that God employs too.
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I think that He gives us the dignity of risk and the right to fail. I think that's what we see here.
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He's willing to let you show your heart for Him, and whether it's sincere or not.
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And He's willing to teach you and show you Himself and His holiness and His justice and His mercy and grace.
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And so He gives us a little bit of choice in there. In no way am I saying that God is not sovereign.
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In no way am I saying that He's not in control of everything that happens all the time. But what is clear from Scripture is that sometimes
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He lets us screw up. And I love this part because it gets into the heart of God.
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Idolatry is cheating on God. Moses reminds us that God is a jealous
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God, a consuming fire. And this word jealousy is, it's not exactly like the English word, like you got something and I really want it.
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For God, jealousy comes from His nature, the rightness of who
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He is, that we ought to be His one and only love. And when we're not, it says
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He gets consumed with jealousy. It's kind of like a parent at Christmas time, right? You give your kid an awesome toy.
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It's like the big one. You're so excited for them to play with the toy. And then what? The wrapping paper!
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Right? You don't want the toy, but you want them to love the toy.
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And it's like they choose the lesser thing and you're like, come on! Right? God's jealous for us to love the right thing, which is
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Him. Verse 25 says that our evil can provoke
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Him to anger. We can make God mad when we go away from Him.
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This week I had the opportunity to go with a bunch of other pastors and youth pastors. I hung out with Bill over there at the
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Youth for Christ Pastors Luncheon. Bill Sanders, who lives in the area, but he's a national youth speaker, was there.
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And he said something that really stuck out to me. He said, God is not jealous for your works. He's jealous for you.
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God is not jealous for your works. He's jealous for you. Imagine a wife who stays home every day, cleans the house for her husband, does his laundry for him, gets the bills paid, makes supper.
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And when he gets home, she smiles at him, grabs her purse, her keys, walks out the door, and goes to her lover's house for the night.
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Back in the morning. Isn't that cool?
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Husband doesn't want the dishes done or the laundry done. He wants his wife.
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He's jealous for her. God doesn't want our good things, our good deeds.
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He does. Those things are good. And they can be a part of the relationship. But the relationship ultimately is just that.
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It's a relationship of love. And he's jealous for us. And when we walk away from him, even we
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Christians can find ourselves destroyed by the consequences of our sin. And sometimes God gives us what we want.
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Verse 28, he says, If that's really what you want, okay.
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Gods that can't hear or smell or eat, you call to them and let me know how that works out for you.
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Sometimes he lets us go towards what we really want. But from there, how beautiful is this?
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Man, if you guys don't take anything away from today, I pray that you get this. He says, From that place of disgrace and adultery and infidelity, all you got to do is say,
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God, I'm ready to come home. And Moses tells us, yeah,
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God is a consuming fire and he's jealous, but he's a merciful God. And you're never too far away for him to hear you when you call.
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Ever too far away. I think it was this very promise, and I literally think that Daniel was thinking back to this passage in the law, or maybe a couple others that say very similar things, that he had in mind when gripped by faith, he prayed in Daniel chapter 9,
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The people received that promise of exile and scattering. They were in Babylon.
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And Daniel is just saying, God, You told us if we called back to You, You'd come and get us.
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He's a merciful God. We don't deserve His mercy, but He's merciful to us anyway.
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Man, I love that! I need that!
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I see it like this. I can just paint a little picture for you. Israel, addicts to sin.
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Addicted to idolatry. We're no different. We're addicted to sin in our lives. Time and time again, we're tempted to go back to what is not
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God and forsake Him. And I picture us like a strung out junkie crumpled in the corner of a grimy, dingy, nasty little bar in the bathroom in a pool of our own vomit full of shame and disgrace.
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And at that point of rock bottom, we call out, Come and get me,
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Jesus. I got nothing. And what
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I see Jesus doing is He comes into that bar and He kicks down that door and He walks in that seedy place and the big, burly bar owner named
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Sammy Satan takes a pool cue BAM! Right over the back of His head.
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Jesus takes a knee. That kind of hurt. He gets up.
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Looks Him right in the face. BAM! Knocks Him out.
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Then He looks to His right and the little ratty guy that was going to jump on Him and bite His ears like, I'm good, man.
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I'm good. And Jesus walks in that bathroom and He comes to you in your puke and filth and vomit and He scoops you up and says,
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We're going home, kiddo. Carries you out of that bar and takes you home.
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Gets you cleaned up. Feeds you. Gives you a nice little room with your own bed.
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A little nightstand and a lamp. Even gives you some chores to do.
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And you start getting healthy. It's good. You get to hang out with Him anytime you want.
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But the scary part is that, at least not yet, Sammy Satan's not dead.
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And every once in a while, He texts you. Hey. Miss ya. Where you been?
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Why don't you swing by the bar? Let's have a drink. Let's catch up.
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And sometimes, because we're stupid, we leave and we go and we end up right back where we were.
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It would be right for Jesus to leave us there. But He doesn't, does
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He? You just call again. You call again and He'll come and pick you up.
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That's the mercy of our God. But I also want to warn you, if that's your pattern, if you're not really watching yourself, there could be a time when it might be too late.
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Don't let that happen to you. Stay home. Remember, retell, and repent.
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Repent fast and repent often. We have a chance to do that right now at communion. Like I read before, 1
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Corinthians 11 -28, Paul said, We're going to take this little cracker and this cup of juice and we're going to remember that Christ did die for us.
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That He rescued us out of our filth. He's given us a new home. He's cleaned us up.
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He's worthy of all of our praise. And I would ask that before you eat of it or drink of it, and this is for those who have confessed faith in Christ, that even those who are in Christ, that you would examine yourselves before you eat of it.
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And if there's anything bad in there that you find in your heart, you don't have to run away from God.
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You don't have to be excluded. But you do have to deal with it. Bring it to Christ.