Questions & Answers

Bethlehem Bible Church iconBethlehem Bible Church

0 views

0 comments

00:00
It's a stimulating time, certainly you'll see examples of that in the scripture where they were dialoguing with the scripture.
00:06
Last week we looked at cloning and this whole issue with cloning. I still think this group, it's a farce, but we won't review last week.
00:14
We looked at John 3 .16, and typically when you look at John 3 .16, you tend to think of God's love for how many, but the passage really talks about the intensity of God's love and how he really loves with an intense fervor towards his people.
00:31
Does God save people on their deathbeds? And we learned last week the answer was yes. Who originated crucifixion?
00:37
The Persians. There's that new slogan out, what would Jesus drive? And we looked at that in detail and that was, to use my quote last week,
00:45
Lewis, we looked at, I said that was stupid, and you know, and all my kids are like, we don't say that word. And then we looked at manners and customs and why when you study the
00:53
Bible, it's important to know the particular manners that were going on back then. We have 2 ,000 years of history to bridge and language and everything else, and so those were the questions last week.
01:03
If you need a tape, that's fine. We'll do one more this week, and then we'll continue back in the book of Hosea when
01:08
I return. All right, the question tonight, and you may initially hear this question and then think, well, what's this all about?
01:15
I thought it was going to be a stimulating time of question and answer. I'm going to ask you the question first, and then I'll give you the answer that I think is biblical.
01:22
Question tonight, number one, why study genealogies? Why do we study genealogies?
01:29
Begats, and he was born to, and so -and -so begat so -and -so, and probably in the heart of hearts, at least at some times, you've come across the genealogies, especially in reading the
01:40
Bible through in a year. Maybe some of you have started that, and all of a sudden you come to a passage and you think, here's all these begats.
01:47
What do you do? You typically just kind of go, kind of speed scroll down, and then keep going.
01:53
My question to you is, why are genealogies important, and why should we study them?
01:59
Anyone? Yes? Okay, historical evidence, good.
02:05
Nice background in terms of where we came from, and in fact, just like you said, historical evidence.
02:13
I want to say something, but I'm going to save it for this. Good. Next? Anyone? Yes? Okay, that this is not just some fictional account, good.
02:25
Wes? Okay, there's lots we can learn, remember, and Wes gave a good point for the tape's sake.
02:46
Genesis 5, remember, and he died, and he died, and he died, and he died. That's a genealogy of death, and you harken back to Genesis where the serpent said to Adam and Eve, go ahead and have that fruit.
02:57
You won't die, and he died, and he died, so that's another good thing. What else? Is there anything kind of uplifting we could get?
03:04
Could you give a congregation a good message on something better than, here's what I was taught when
03:09
I was a kid, it's good to study genealogies because you're reminded that God loves families. He loves families.
03:15
It's true, he does love families, yes, Dave. That is a great point.
03:41
We're going to go to Matthew 1 here in just a moment, but did you get that? The Jews were very concerned about pedigrees back then, and they had to have a royal pedigree, and you had to have a pedigree going back to the
03:51
King David if you were going to be the Messiah. What has happened now to all the Jewish records? You couldn't go ahead, here's what the
03:57
Jews do if you want to show somehow they've got some kind of genealogy. A typical Jew would say today, my last name is
04:03
Kohen, translation in Hebrew is what? Priest, therefore
04:09
I come from the Levitical line of priesthood, and it's just very generic and vague, but now if someone said,
04:16
I'm the Messiah, let's say Jesus wasn't, and they come and they say, I'm the Messiah, how could they prove it? The records have been destroyed.
04:22
Let's, as a matter of fact, turn to Matthew 1 and look at that very thing, that we need to know genealogies, and if I can get anything across tonight,
04:29
I want to get across that when you come to a genealogy, dive in a little bit, look at the study notes, and say to yourself, since God wrote this, he wants me to read it.
04:38
Since it's God breathed, he wants me to understand it. Is it profitable for me to study genealogies? Yes.
04:43
Are they inspired? Do they help me? Yes, and we're going to look at this genealogy of grace tonight in Matthew 1, verses 1 -17.
04:51
Typically, you just go right down to verse 18, let's go to the birth of Jesus and get going, but there's so much in this,
04:57
I have to be careful because it's going to turn into a whole sermon during Q &A night, where we're going to see this divinely inspired genealogy, the
05:05
Holy Spirit using Matthew to tell us about this, and we're going to see that Jesus was born by Mary's blood, if you will, but by, legally,
05:15
Joseph's line, so he could be king either way. Now, let me just read some of these, and we'll make some comments as we go, and then we'll get into this genealogy of grace.
05:23
Verse 1, the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.
05:29
This is the exact phrase, as MacArthur says, of Genesis chapter 5, when it says the book of the genealogy, exact same kind of terminology when you look at the
05:38
Old Testament Greek. The son of David, the son of Abraham. To Abraham was born
05:43
Isaac, and to Isaac Jacob, and to Jacob Judah and his brothers. I want you to start looking at the words, begat, if you have
05:50
King James or New King James, and was born, if you have NAS. Verse 3, and to Judah was born
05:57
Perez, and Zerah by Tamar, and to Perez was born Hezron, and to Hezron, Ram. Now we're starting to get to the point where you want a self -pronouncing
06:06
Bible right now, so here we go. And to Ram was born Amimadab, and to Amimadab was
06:14
Nashon, and Nashon, Salmon. Salmon was born Boaz by Rahab, and to Boaz was born
06:20
Obed by Ruth, and to Obed, Jesse. And to Jesse was born David, the king. And to David was born
06:26
Solomon, to her who had been the wife of Uriah. And to Solomon was born Rehoboam, and to Rehoboam, Abijah, and to Abijah, Asa.
06:35
And it just keeps going. You say, where are we going to go with this, pastor? Let's just read it, and we'll talk about it.
06:40
And to Asa was born Jehoshaphat, and to Jehoshaphat, Joram, and to Joram, Uzziah.
06:45
And to Uzziah was born Jotham, and to Jotham, Ahaz, and to Ahaz, Hezekiah. And to Hezekiah was born
06:51
Manasseh, and to Manasseh, Ammon, and to Ammon, Josiah. And to Josiah was born
06:57
Jeconi, it's actually in Jeremiah, it's Conii, and his brothers at the same time, deportation to Babylon.
07:06
Okay, just a few more, hang in there. And after the deportation to Babylon, to Jeconiah was born
07:11
Shealtiel, and to Shealtiel, Zerubbabel. And to Zerubbabel was born Abahud, and to Abahud, Eliakim, and to Eliakim, Azor.
07:21
And to Azor was born Zadok, and to Zadok, Achim, and to Achim, Elihud. And to Elihud was born
07:27
Eleazar, and to Eleazar, Mathane, and to Mathane, Jacob. And to Jacob was born
07:33
Joseph, the husband of Mary. Very interesting here. By whom was born Jesus, who is called the Christ.
07:39
Therefore, all the generations from Abraham to David are 14 generations, it's a rounded off number, so very
07:47
Hebrew, can't get into that. From David, the deportation to Babylon, 14 generations, and then the deportation to Babylon to the time of Christ, 14 generations.
07:57
Okay, now let me ask you a question. I call this a genealogy of grace. What kind of grace do you see in this genealogy?
08:04
Yes, Louis. Okay, Rahab the harlot, Ruth was a
08:12
Moabitess, good. Bathsheba, she was an adulterer, right?
08:19
Probably hard to say no to the king, but she did anyway. She was married, yes. I'm thinking of two more.
08:28
Okay, well, that was certainly gracious, good. How about let's go to the people? I'm thinking of two more people. Yes.
08:39
Okay, that's good. How about you guys, how great is it to preach to people and give them more information than I really need?
08:46
I'm just looking for the five people's names in the account, or five people that are talked about in the account. We've got two more to go.
08:52
We've got Ruth, we've got Rahab, we've got Bathsheba, we've got two more. Well, Judah, he was a scoundrel, right?
09:01
And who was he a scoundrel with? It's in here. Tamar. Tamar, right?
09:07
And then who's the final one? We got more scoundrels than I thought. How about five scoundrelesses?
09:16
How about five females? She wasn't necessarily a scoundrel, although they thought she was, and her name was
09:24
Mary. Let's look at all five of these, and I want you to see just how much grace oozes out of this passage, so the next time you read
09:31
Matthew chapter 1, 1 through 17, you'll never ever just zip through there. You'll think, my God is a gracious God.
09:37
He shows grace all the time. Look at the pedigree of Jesus. Let's look at Mary first.
09:44
Look at verse 16 of Matthew 1, and to Jacob was born Joseph, the husband of Mary, by whom feminine, you might want to just put above that relative pronoun in your
09:55
English text, that's a feminine. This is not born by Joseph. Joseph wasn't the real dad, true or false?
10:03
True, he was not the real dad. And so, by whom was born Jesus, who is called
10:09
Christ. The other thing you'll notice here is you don't see the word born or begat in the sense that, as your study
10:17
Bible will probably say, this is the only entry in the entire genealogy where the word begat is not used, including those where whole generations were skipped.
10:25
The pronoun whom is singular, referring to Mary alone, and all of a sudden we get this kind of highlight saying, this is not the regular birth announcement.
10:36
Why don't you turn to John chapter 8 and I'll show you even more about that. People, even though for us, we think of the
10:41
Virgin Mary and the virgin conception and the virgin birth, but people running around those days, especially unbelievers, would think of what?
10:47
They would think this is a child conceived out of wedlock, and the stigma is gone pretty much in America, but the stigma was big back then.
10:56
You could even die for something like that, and everybody would try to rub it into Jesus. Can you imagine meeting Jesus?
11:02
You think about how wicked kids are, and all of a sudden you're talking with children, and they try to pick on you, and they're trying to say bad things about you, and you're daddy and you're mommy and all this stuff, and even when
11:12
Jesus was older, these Pharisees and the scribes and the hypocrites would go after this very point.
11:18
Jesus, you mean nothing to us because you were born out of wedlock. Take a look,
11:23
John chapter 8, verse 39, an amazing, amazing passage, and they answered and said to him,
11:31
Abraham's our father. Hey, we get to heaven because of our dad, Father Abraham. Jesus said to them, if you're
11:36
Abraham's children, do the deeds of Abraham. If you're so righteous, act like your father, but as it is, you are seeking to kill me.
11:44
Implied, that's not what an Abraham's son would do. A man who has told you the truth, which I heard from God, this
11:50
Abraham did not do. Verse 41, you're doing the deeds of your father.
11:55
Now in my NAS, it says small f, and that would be correct because which father are they referring to? They said to him, we're not born of fornication.
12:04
We have one capital F father, even God. You were born because your mother slept with somebody before you were even married, and it wasn't
12:11
Joseph, and you were born of fornication. It gets worse.
12:17
Jesus said to them, if God were your father, would you love me? You know the answer to that question.
12:23
For I proceeded forth and have come from God, for I have not even come on my own initiative, but he sent me.
12:29
Why do you not understand what I am saying? It is because you cannot hear my word. All unbelief, mark this, is a moral issue.
12:36
It's not intellectual. It's not theological. It's moral. When there's a generic problem, you've got the wrong daddy.
12:43
This is a genetics issue. You are of your father, the devil, and you can see them start reaching right down now to pick the biggest rock up that was by them, and you do the desires of your father.
12:53
He was a murderer from the beginning, meek and lowly Jesus is saying this, and he does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him, therefore there is no truth in you.
13:01
Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies, and you are too, in other words.
13:09
Now, we're still going to go after this birth issue, but because I speak the truth, you do not believe me. Which one of you convicts me of sin?
13:16
I speak the truth. Why do you not believe me? He was of God. Here's the words of God. For this reason, you do not hear them because you are not of God.
13:24
Here's another slur. That's where I recall it. The Jews answered and said to him, do we not say rightly that you are a
13:31
Samaritan and have a demon? You're no Jew. First, you're born of fornication, and now you're like a dog.
13:37
You're worse than a dog. You're like a Samaritan, and you're coming around saying you're a Messiah, and you have messianic credentials.
13:44
You're born out of fornication, and you're a Gentile. Worse. No, you're a Samaritan. I like what
13:51
Jesus said. I could just keep reading, but we better wrap this part up. Jesus answered that, I do not have a demon, but I honor my father, and you dishonor me.
14:00
Therefore, you dishonor my father. So they were after Jesus, and they would call him names. You can read a lot of the accounts, and they would say
14:06
Jesus was a good man, but he was born out of wedlock. It's a very common thing in history.
14:13
Now let's turn to Genesis chapter 38. Let me show you the second woman who shows that God is gracious in this genealogy.
14:21
Why should we study genealogies? Because you can learn about God keeps his promises, and he died.
14:26
About how God protects Jesus in the virgin birth, and about how God is so gracious.
14:32
This is going to be the account of Tamar. Can you imagine? People do all kinds of family trees.
14:40
What do you do in your family tree if you've ever done one? You get on the computer, and you get to a site that's probably run by Mormons, by the way.
14:47
You get there, and you do all your research, and you think, oh, there was some sports star in my family tree.
14:54
There was somebody who was like a princess for a day. There was some great Scottish king, and he was a friend of the nephew of the relative of William Wallace, and I'm related to him.
15:08
Those ones where you say, well, that person was a bum, and that person was homeless, and that person was a murderer.
15:16
We just kind of put those in small fonts. But here in this account in Matthew, the fonts, if you will, are all the same, but they would be large, at least in your mind.
15:26
I want them to be large, so you think, I see grace everywhere. Look at Tamar.
15:32
She's in the genealogy of Jesus. Genesis 38, 13, I'll just read it without many comments, and certainly the
15:40
Bible is not Victorian in its prudishness. This is a woman who played the prostitute.
15:47
Genesis 38, 13, and it was told to Tamar, behold, your father -in -law is going up to Timnah to shear his sheep.
15:53
She removed her widow's garments and covered herself with a veil, wrapped herself and sat in the gateway of Enam, which is to the road of Timnah, for she saw that Shelah had grown up, and she had not been given to him as a wife.
16:06
Remember she had been told, you just have to stay as you are. When Judah saw her, remember she's in a veil, she's got a costume on, if you will.
16:15
He thought she was a harlot, for she had covered her face just like the other prostitutes did. Prostitutes could either cover their face or they would be brazen and they would be shaved.
16:25
So he turned aside by the road and said, I mean, Judah, this is another way
16:30
God's gracious that he would work through somebody like Judah, but Judah said, as he turned aside to the road, verse 16, so he turned aside to her by the road and said, here now, let me come into you.
16:44
For he did not know that she was his daughter -in -law, and she had said, what will you give me, that you may come into me?
16:49
What's the price? Well, the price is I'll send you a kid from the flock. She said, moreover, will you give me a pledge until you send it?
16:54
I need some collateral, I need some security for this. You know the story.
17:00
The pledge is, verse 18, the seal, the cord, the staff that is in your hand. I mean, can you imagine, in the genealogy of Jesus, why don't you go to Genesis chapter 19 and back up a little bit and let's look at Ruth for a minute.
17:17
Just an amazing account. Ruth, Ruth was born like everyone else in terms of she had a sin nature and she wasn't that bad, but she comes from a people that were bad.
17:30
Ruth was, who said it earlier, what country was Ruth from? Moab. Have you ever seen your Bible? In the maps, if you look at the
17:38
Middle East, and you'll see down here, there's Moab. Down below, on the east side of the
17:44
Dead Sea, and it's deserty, and it's down right there where Petra is. She was a Moabite. Well, how did the
17:49
Moabites come about? In a way that is exactly opposite of what you would think of when it comes to grace.
17:56
Genesis 19, verse 30. This is amazing. You just think, this is something that you shouldn't talk about.
18:02
This is one of those family secrets. I'll never forget the day, I've told you before, my father's dying of cancer. They said they'd give him six months, they gave him a year.
18:10
This was 14 years ago, and I remember sitting on the deathbed with my father, and I had a really good secular boss, and he said, go home and spend a lot of time with your dad.
18:18
So I'm sitting there, what do you talk about? All kinds of things. I'm never going to get to talk to him again, maybe. So I'm one other time after that, and I said to Dad, I said,
18:26
Dad, anything that popped in my mind, why don't you celebrate anniversaries?
18:31
We never had to get him anniversary gifts. They never went out of town for anniversaries, and he just looked at me and kind of curled up his lip a little bit with that kind of smirk, and he just said, which one?
18:41
I said, what do you mean, which one? And I knew what he meant, but I had to say it out loud. Which one? I married your mom.
18:47
I was a real jerk. I divorced her, and a year later or so, we were dating. She got pregnant with you, and so I decided to marry her, and we've been married for 30 years.
18:56
We married on two different dates. Nobody would ever talk about that in our family. That was the family secret.
19:04
Nobody discussed that, and then I said to myself, no wonder Grandma, my mom's mom, no wonder
19:09
Grandma and Dad didn't get along. I could put it all together, but that was our family secret, and this is skeletons in the closet, and you don't talk about this, and all of a sudden, the writer,
19:20
Matthew, under the divine inspiration by the Spirit of God, says, now remember, not every name is in these genealogies, and they're set in a very easy way to memorize, but all of a sudden, with these huge punctuation marks, you see these names,
19:35
Ruth, Tamar, and here, how did we get Ruth? What's happening?
19:42
Why is it so significant? Genesis 19, 30, and Lot went up from Zoar and stayed in the mountains, his two daughters with him.
19:49
Remember Sodom and Gomorrah? What was happening there? Getting wiped out. Brimstone and fire.
19:55
What happened to Lot's wife, by the way? It was just figure to figure, a pillar of salt, right?
20:01
She just fell down. It really wasn't salt. I think she turned into salt.
20:08
That's what it says. It didn't say, as a pillar of salt. It says, pillar of salt. I think, matter of fact, Jesus reiterates it in the
20:13
New Testament, doesn't he? About Lot, his wife, pillar of salt. Look at what happens here.
20:20
Stayed in the mountains, and the two daughters with him, and he's afraid to stay in Zoar, and he stayed in a cave. He and his two daughters. Then the firstborn said to the younger, our father's old, and there's not a man on earth to come into us after the manner of the earth.
20:30
Come let us make our father drink wine, and let us lie with him, that we may preserve our family through our father. Same thing happens with the next daughter, and down to verse 37, 36, they were both, the daughters of Lot were with child by their father, and the firstborn bore a son, and called his name
20:48
Moab. Can you imagine? Ruth was a Moabitess.
20:55
The other lady I have on here, besides Bathsheba, and besides Ruth, is
21:00
Rahab, a true or false. Rahab's always called the harlot in scriptures.
21:07
Whenever you meet Rahab, Rahab comes up, Rahab who was a prostitute, a Rahab the harlot.
21:12
True or false? Every time the word Rahab is used, it says Rahab the harlot. Think. Now, I want to say true, and I was going to say true, but I thought
21:22
I'm going to stand up and speak for God tonight, and so I'm going to look up everything I can. The first thing I found out was, every chapter she's mentioned, she's called
21:30
Rahab the harlot. But in Joshua 2, she's called a harlot, she's called a harlot, then she's just called Rahab.
21:35
Chapter 6, she's called a harlot, and then she's just called Rahab. In the Psalms, you'll read about Rahab, which is another word for Egypt, and there was this weird mythical sea monster that lived in the
21:48
Nile that didn't really do anything except float around. But in Hebrews chapter 11, it's
21:55
Rahab the harlot. In James chapter 4, it's Rahab the harlot. How would you like to have that name,
22:00
Rahab the harlot? The only place she's ever mentioned in the Bible that she's not called Rahab the harlot, or at least have been called that earlier in the chapter, is in one place, and where's that?
22:11
Right here in Matthew. Look at Matthew chapter 1, this is so great, she's just called Rahab. You don't even necessarily have to look at it, she's called not the harlot.
22:21
This is a family secret that I don't want to be a secret anymore, because God is a gracious God, and God is showing
22:27
His grace towards people. You can just read it on your own, and she's just called
22:33
Rahab. So I ask the question again, why study genealogies?
22:38
Well all Scripture is inspired and profitable, you can learn a lot, you can look and see if their names end in EL, which talks about Elohim, or JAH, or YAH, Yahweh, but I think you can study them because you can learn a lot, and in this particular passage,
22:51
I learned that God is a gracious, gracious God. And if I had one prayer request for this church this year, it would be this, that we might live in grace.
23:00
As Paul says to Timothy, be strong in grace. We live in a society that says, do this, be this, here's the legalistic do's and don'ts.
23:11
We're not to live like that, we're to live in the power and grace of God. Alright. Boy, that was a long -winded question, answer rather.
23:19
Alright, next question. How do I pick out a good study Bible? What do I look for? What shall
23:24
I avoid? Congregation? How do you pick out a good Bible? No smart aleck remarks about they need to have 66 books, and that kind of stuff, although I'll accept that.
23:37
How do you pick out a good Bible, specifically a study Bible? Maybe many of you have them, maybe many of you don't,
23:45
I'm not sure, yes. Okay, so maybe some kind of original study work, where this is the original word, this is what it meant in context, this is how the culture looked at that.
24:03
Excellent, good. Bruce? Okay, the look at the list of editors and contributors, not necessarily for the
24:12
Bible, Hosea and Micah and Joel and Amos, those would be good contributors, but the people who wrote the notes.
24:19
I even had my son ask me this week, we were watching a John MacArthur, he sent out a new video, I thought about playing it on Wednesday nights or something, but it's a five -hour special about pragmatism and churches, and so he was watching that and he said, oh,
24:31
I know Pastor John, he wrote the Bible, didn't he? I said, no, no, no, no, he wrote the study notes, he didn't write the
24:38
Bible, but you ask yourself the question, alright, Ryrie was faithful to the text, and so Ryrie's study notes, fine, or the
24:45
New Geneva Study Bible, you see the list of contributors there, so that would be important.
24:51
Good? Steve? Good. That's probably my biggest point tonight.
24:59
Assuming that you get a good translation, that's the key, and good translations can be from New American Standard, NAS 95,
25:07
I particularly like these days the English Standard version, it could be the New King James, the King James, there's a variety of other good ones,
25:14
I'd stay away from the Living, Good News, Message, those more paraphrased
25:19
Bibles, if you'd like to read those for your own devotions and things like that, that's okay, but if we're going to go verse by verse through the text, it's just a lot easier to have something that's a little more close to the original.
25:34
What else was I going to say? So assuming you have a good translation, what we're looking for, Steve, is it has notes that tell us about what the text says and means, versus how to apply it.
25:45
I know I'm going to step on some toes tonight, but I'm going to do this in love. The best study Bible is not the life application
25:50
Bible, I don't even know if anybody here has it, you don't have to raise your hand, I didn't see anybody's Bible who has it.
25:56
The text is good, but sometimes the life application things are almost too limited. For instance, if you say to yourself,
26:03
I've just learned the truth, love my neighbor as myself, the life application
26:08
Bible isn't this big, and it's only this big, and so it can only give me four or five little applications to do, and maybe there's a thousand applications of how to love my neighbor as myself.
26:19
And so that's just an idea, if you have a life application Bible, don't burn it or anything like that, don't send me a letter,
26:25
I just think there are better study Bibles. I would pick, obviously, MacArthur's study Bible is good, Ryrie's is good,
26:31
New Geneva, even the NIV study Bible I think has excellent notes. Kenneth Barker wrote the notes on there, my only comment there is, he'll give you all three options to Genesis 6, and the other guys that I just mentioned will usually just give you the one right option.
26:48
So all that to say, remember, when you pick up the book, you're saying, here,
26:55
I've got this for a reason. Listen to some of these study Bibles, this is from the latest CBD, this is something else that I would watch out for, a variety of these.
27:06
The King James Original African Heritage Study Bible reveals history, lineage, and influence of African people cited in scripture and shows how
27:13
Africans contributed to the formation of Judaism and Christianity, highlighted passages about black Bible people, paintings from Cameroon's Mafa tribe, 20 spirituals and slave songs,
27:23
Word of Christ in red. And I thought, you just don't need that kind of Bible, that's not the kind of Bible that we're looking for.
27:31
I found another one, the Life Recovery Bible, devotional readings for each of the 12 steps, special insights for all ages and types of addiction, a biblical background for the serenity prayer.
27:43
I would not recommend that one. What else did I find? King James Reformation Study Bible, that's a new one, that might be interesting.
27:52
What else is on here? These ones really kind of irk me, the NIV Sports Devotional Bible.
27:59
It's right here. Hey, my son doesn't believe in God and doesn't want to read the
28:04
Bible so I'll just do a little behind the back pass, you know, and get him to read the Bible. You're running to win the prize and beyond the physical discipline you seek to mold yourself spiritually.
28:14
These devotional Bibles pumped with insights and inspiration from popular Christian athletes are just for you.
28:21
Testimonies and favorite Bible verses from Jeff Gordon, no comment,
28:26
I've got one in my mind, David Robinson, Kurt Warner, and other sports heroes. So we've got sports
28:31
Bibles, we've also got, oh this would be good, the NIV Thinline Pastor's Bible, that might be good.
28:39
And then the other one, NIV Women of Faith Study Bible. And I just want you to be careful because most of these
28:45
Bibles, oh I forgot, there's one more, the 12 Steps for Addicted Motorcyclists Who Have Lost Their Driver's License and Can't Make It to the
28:54
NASCAR Circuit Study Bible. That would really be a bad one, no. But it just gets so segmented.
29:01
Listen, when you study the Bible, a good thing to remember is this, you want to smack the
29:06
Bible, S -M -A -C, I stole it from Wayne Mack. What does it say, S? What does it mean,
29:13
M? How does this apply to my life, A? What am I supposed to change by God's grace in my life,
29:19
C? And you smack it and you read it and you try to say not so much on the A and C until you understand what does it say and what does it mean.
29:26
And if you get one of these application Bibles, they'll run straight to that. And I don't want you to be robbed of the privilege of studying and finding out what does it say and mean, and then
29:35
God, would you apply it in my life? And then all of a sudden you've got this Bible and it says, do this, this, and this.
29:41
And if you don't do it, there's just this pressure and this, I just don't think it's a good idea. And so if I were going to get a
29:47
Bible for you, I would either pick up the MacArthur or Ryrie or New Geneva or something that helps you understand the text.
29:54
And then you say this, God, now apply this in my life, right? That's what we need to do.
30:00
Comments about study Bibles? Yes. Yeah.
30:17
Well, you know, like let's say the pastor's Bible has how to do funerals and weddings and stuff like that in there.
30:25
I'm not saying everything in those Bibles are bad. If I pick up a life application Bible, I'm not saying 99 % of the notes are bad.
30:33
I'm just coming at it from a different direction and a different slant. And so I would just give somebody a study Bible so they can understand what it means.
30:40
And then God will take care of the application. Well think about it.
30:46
If I did a seminar on sacrificial love for your spouses, husbands loving your wives like Christ loved the church and just nailed the guys,
30:54
I don't know how big a crowd I would get, but I know I'd get a big crowd if I put the sign up outside and said 10 practical ways to love your wife.
31:03
Everybody wants the practical ways. It's a lot harder to flesh out sacrificial death to self and husbands when you get home after a long day, you want to put your feet up and you want to be weighted on.
31:13
You want to read your paper and you want to have your feet rubbed. You want to have all this stuff and you come home and you open up the door and you're tired and you have a headache and all the kids come rushing in and all of a sudden your wife has been spending all the days, not just all the day working on food, but it hasn't been for you.
31:28
It looks really good, but it's going to the CVs and it's not going to you and you're like, I can't believe it. And what you need to do is you say, you know what, it's another day to die to self.
31:36
And tomorrow the door will be waiting for you to say no again to self and the next day and the next day. And we can either do that begrudgingly or we can say, you know,
31:44
God said it and I'm going to do it and I need help to do it. God help me. What a great opportunity.
31:50
That's why I think our church needs to live out grace because all these to do things don't matter unless God helps you because without Christ, we can do nothing.
31:59
Oh, we're going to evangelize. We're going to do this. We're going to do that. Well, God needs to grace us and, uh, sorry to get on a rampage here.
32:12
Again, I'm just making general comments. I'm sure every one of these Bibles I mentioned, even in a negative fashion, um,
32:19
I could probably do it this way to get out of it. Good, better, and best, right? So some of these
32:24
Bibles are certainly good. Why not study the best? All right, let me make just another controversial comment and then we'll get to one last passage.
32:35
I saw this week, New York, Reuters Health, FDA approves Prozac for children and teens, quote, according to the, uh,
32:45
Reuters. According to the FDA, Prozac is the first selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor,
32:51
SSRI, to receive approval for treating depression in children. The approval was based on two studies of children and adolescents with depression.
32:59
Side effects associated with Prozac are nausea, tiredness, nervousness, dizziness, and difficulty concentrating.
33:06
The FDA noted that in one of the clinical studies, after 19 weeks of treatment, listen, Prozac, with Prozac, children gained on average 1 .1
33:15
centimeter less in height, in 19 weeks they grew one inch less, and about one kilogram less in weight, about two pounds, compared with children treated with a placebo.
33:26
Depression affects up to 2 .5 % of children. Comments about Prozac? Now, I could get probably too wild in terms of responses, so let me just say this.
33:39
Congregation, beloved people, remember, everything that glitters is not gold. Now, I'm not going to say if you're taking
33:45
Prozac, stop it. I wouldn't tell you that from the pulpit. I might tell you that in private after talking to your doctor and working with you.
33:52
It's not, it's against the law for me to tell you anyway, but I would say this. Before you put your kid on Prozac or anything else, would you just think a little bit bigger, and here's what
34:01
I want you to think about. Be Jewish in the sense that in the old days, if you had a physical problem, and you were
34:07
Jewish, and you were in the Old Testament days, who are you going to call? Pardon me?
34:14
You'd call the rabbi. Why? Because there's a problem, and so you can get prayer, you can go to him for advice, and sometimes, frankly,
34:23
I'm the last to know if I know someone in the congregation, and they come and they say, my children's on this, this, this, and this.
34:29
I'm not your boss. I can't order you. I can't tell you what to do, but I want you to think a little bit larger to say,
34:36
I think I might have to put my child on Prozac, and then go to the psychiatric treatment center, and then make the decision with only that information.
34:45
I just would ask you to ask, why don't you ask one of the elders? Why don't you ask the pastor? Why don't you write
34:51
J. Adams or something and find out, is this, should I do this, and what are the ramifications? I'd also like you to read a book called
34:57
Blame it on the Brain by Ed Welch, and it talks about what's the difference between chemical imbalance, behavior, sin, and disease, that kind of thing.
35:06
I just want you to be careful, because I would hate to have you say, let's just create a straw man, that my child's depressed, and he needs
35:13
Prozac, and I put my kid on Prozac, and I think there could be worse ramifications than he's just not gaining weight, and he's not growing, and so you want to be very careful.
35:22
Even for Ritalin, you know, the children get on Ritalin all the time, and the FDA's only had studies, at least as of last year, for only six weeks knowing about children on Ritalin, so you just want to be careful.
35:35
That's all I want to say, and it's just a very controversial thing, and I just get sad when people say,
35:43
I've got a problem with my kids, and that's my first resort, is I'm going to put them on drugs. I'm not saying there's never a reason why you shouldn't, but I haven't heard too many good reasons yet.
35:53
Comments, by the way, before we go to one last passage? I know it's controversial, maybe not as controversial as I thought.
36:06
All right, last thing. We're probably going to go past our 45 minutes, but that's all right.
36:12
I didn't get to preach this morning, so 45 times 2 is 90. All right. A man won the lottery, remember, last week, and he won how many hundred million dollars?
36:23
170. He took the buyout, and the state didn't even have enough money, and he tithed on it. Ten percent of his money, 17 million divided between three churches.
36:32
You can read John Piper's article about that to find out if that would be good or bad. John Piper said, at our church, happened to be similarly named, at Bethlehem Baptist Church, he said,
36:43
I will never knowingly take money that has been given to me by gambling. We can maybe talk about that next time, but here's what
36:49
I want to talk about. Money is not as good as you think it might be. There are problems that come with money.
36:57
I know most of you, and I don't know your checkbooks, and I don't look at your giving or anything else. The only time
37:02
I'll ever look is if you send something in the mail and it doesn't say financial secretary. I'll just open that letter up, and then
37:07
I'll say, oh, that's a check. I need not see that. But turn to Ecclesiastes 5, and I want you to know that if you have a lot of money, it will bring you disadvantages.
37:17
Remember that old 60s show, The Millionaire, black and white, it was kind of like the Twilight Zone, and the butler would show up at somebody's house, knock on the door,
37:25
I have a million dollars cash free to give you, and it would chronicle what would happen to that person, and usually it was positive or negative?
37:33
Negative. Negative. I thought, if I was in Hollywood still, living in that area, I want to have a new show called
37:38
Lottery, and we'd have these people, and they would win the lottery, and then we would find out what would happen to them.
37:43
But I already know what would happen to most of them. Most of them are going to have big trouble. And as J.
37:50
Vernon McGee once said, when God wants to judge people, He usually does it by giving them a lot of money. Who needs
37:57
God if you've got a lot of money? Look at Ecclesiastes 5. I find seven disadvantages, and we're going to zoom through these.
38:06
Number one, riches can't ultimately satisfy you. Verse 10, he who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves abundance with its income.
38:15
This too is vanity. You have money, and then you have acquisitions, do those things satisfy you?
38:23
I mean, I know what it's like, you get something brand new, you get it and you walk back to the car from the strip mall and the shopping center, and you have to open it while you're driving to see, and you're all excited, and then the next day, it's just the next day.
38:38
Riches can't satisfy anyone. It's a mirage to think that it can, or that they can. USA Today 10 years ago said, how rich is rich?
38:47
According to a survey of people who ought to know, the answer is 1 million to 5 million. Investment managers
38:52
Neuberger and Bergman sponsored the survey of people who stand to give or receive inheritances, about 500 ,000 each.
39:01
Paradoxically, 55 % of those whose assets range from 1 million to 5 million don't consider themselves wealthy.
39:09
Are you rich? Oh, I only got 5 million, nah. Like Dwayne Thomas of the
39:16
Dallas Cowboys, remember him, back in the 70s? After they won the Super Bowl, a reporter said, how does it feel to win the big one?
39:25
And he said, I mean, this is the best. If it is such a big game, why don't they play another one next year?
39:34
First Timothy says, verse chapter 6, those who want to get rich fall into temptation.
39:40
Not only that it cannot satisfy you, look at verse 11. When you have a lot of money, you just need a lot of more money, more money.
39:48
Verse 11, when good things increase, those who consume them increase. So what is the advantage to their owners except to look on?
39:55
I know this from experience. I started off with Duracell batteries in 1983. I made $14 ,400 a year.
40:04
And in sales once, I made a lot more money than that. I didn't really have a bunch of money extra anyway, because my living expenses increased.
40:13
And that's exactly what's happening here. Taxes go up, you have more friends, you have your bigger circle of dependents.
40:20
You got to have staff to deal with it all. Look at verse 12. Money can't satisfy, money takes more money to operate on, and riches make you anxious.
40:29
Verse 12, the sleep of the working man is pleasant. If you're a blue collar worker, you go home and what happens to you?
40:35
You lay your head down on the pillow because you've worked physically, and also you don't have to worry who's going to get your money, and who's going to steal it, and what's going to happen when you die?
40:44
Well, the kids fight over it. But the stomach of the rich man does not allow him to see he's got a full stomach, and in those days that was a big deal.
40:53
You just didn't walk down to the 99 saying, I'd like to have some, you know, steak and eggs or whatever you have down there, or I was thinking of buffalo wings.
41:02
No, you'd think that would make you sleep. I got a full stomach. You know what it's like on Tuesdays, and it's noon, and you have a big lunch, and it's like, oh, and if you don't do that when you're pining away, who's going to get that money?
41:16
Not only that, verse 13, it's going to give you pain. Money has disadvantages. In this case, it's pain.
41:22
There's a grievous evil which I've seen under the sun. Rich is being hoarded by their own owner to his hurt.
41:27
There's pain when you either lose the money, or you're hoarding it and making sure nobody does get it.
41:33
All your eggs are in one basket, and all of a sudden, Black Monday happens.
41:42
Lose the money. A quick story I found, Albert Lowry set out to prove that it was easy to get rich in real estate with no money down.
41:51
He did that. In 1980, he wrote a book, How You Can Become Financially Independent by Investing in Real Estate. Bestseller.
41:58
1981, cover story, Money Magazine. His net worth was 30 million, and he was called a real estate wizard.
42:04
In 1985, though, his Success Development Institute collapsed with 2 .5
42:10
million dollars in debt. In 87, it was reported that his assets were liquidated in Chapter 7 of Federal Bankruptcy Code.
42:18
Easy come, easy go. Not only that, look at verse 15. You can't keep them forever.
42:25
Just like Luther said, why do you have fingers like this with one, two, three, four slits in them?
42:30
So money and people can just fall through them quickly. Can't grab a hold. You're not to keep your money, you're to use
42:37
God's money that he's given you for his glory. Verse 15, and as he had come naked from his mother's womb, so will he return.
42:45
He will take nothing from the fruit of his labor that he can carry in his hand, and I don't care if you take all his money and put it in the coffin.
42:53
Verse 16, this is a grievous evil. Exactly as a man is born, thus he will die. So what is the advantage to him who toils for the wind?
43:01
You work all day, you're a workaholic, you work 95 ,000 hours a week, how many would that be? 168 hours a week.
43:07
I think that's a full week. What happens? You can't take any of it with you. Seventhly, found in verse 17.
43:18
Let's wrap this up. Throughout his life, he also eats in darkness with great vexation, sickness and anger.
43:24
Riches can make you miserable. Great vexation, you've got grief and anger, cares and frustration.
43:31
You've got sickness. It's almost like psychosomatic and physical strain, anger and sorrow.
43:38
John Rockefeller said, I have made many millions, but they have brought me no happiness. W .H.
43:44
Vanderbilt, the care of 200 million is enough to kill anyone. There's no pleasure in it.
43:50
Andrew Carnegie, millionaires seldom smile. Henry Ford, I was happier when doing a mechanic's job.
43:56
John Jacob Astor, I am the most miserable man on earth. What does money gain?
44:03
Nothing. Money can give you big problems. What's the only solution? I didn't see God in this passage. I didn't see
44:08
Yahweh, Elohim. I didn't see any of that stuff. And all that stuff comes right down here when you see verse 18, and we'll just let you know that real enjoyment, whether you're rich or poor, can have only one source, and that's
44:23
God. He's the real one who gives satisfaction. Verse 18, here's what I've seen to be good and fitting, to eat and drink and enjoy oneself in all one's labor in which he toils under the sun.
44:32
It's okay to eat. It's okay to work. It's okay to do all those kind of things. But once you remember this, which
44:38
God has given him, for this is his reward, that's good. It's fitting. It's beautiful.
44:43
When you know it comes from God. Verse 19, furthermore, is for every man to whom God has given riches and wealth.
44:48
If it comes from God and you acknowledge him, that's fine. He's also empowered him to eat from them and to receive his reward and rejoice in his labor.
44:56
Here's the key. This is what you underline. This is the what? The gift of God. That's real satisfaction.
45:03
More God talk here. Verse 20, he will not often consider the years of his life because God keeps him occupied with the gladness of his heart.
45:12
So I'm not sure if that man got blessed or cursed last week with 170 million. And if you have money, why don't you just remember this?
45:20
A, it's God's money. By the way, that really helps a lot, especially when your van breaks down. All the money
45:26
I own and all my material possessions and all my kids, for that matter, and spiritual possessions, they're all
45:32
God's. And if your van breaks down, the best thing you could ever do is say, God, you know, I need that van.
45:37
You're going to have to help me. I don't have any money. And your van broke down, God. You're going to have to get that fixed. But also to say whatever
45:44
I've been given, and that's why when that man told me one day, you can always tell where your love is when you can just look at your checkbook and say, you know,
45:56
I do keep a financial diary, a spiritual diary, and it's my checkbook. Again, I don't know what anybody gives, but I know this.
46:04
I've been taught early on as a Christian. You can't out -give God. And if God has given you money, you need to use it for His glory.
46:13
Well, can't talk about annihilationism or anything else. That'll be enough for tonight. And all the people said, amen.
46:19
Let's pray. Father, thank you for this night. And Father, I know with my own tendencies,
46:26
I want to have a lot of money. And Father, I know that we struggle as people in the marketplace and people in this church with money and how much do we have.
46:38
And some men don't even have jobs. And Father, we would ask that you would give us the right thinking about money, right thinking about jobs.
46:46
Father, that you would give us satisfaction in nothing else. And we acknowledge that you have made us as worshipers.
46:52
And Father, help us. Help us by the hard school of repentance and the hard school of no satisfaction in any thing else but you.
47:01
And Father, let us just have that great peace this week knowing that we worship you, a God of grace, a God of satisfaction, and a
47:07
God who amazingly enough gets delight in His people. Father, be delighted in our congregation and in every one of us this week.