Life Lessons From The Lord

I know during the summer, we've been purposing to go practicing through Proverbs. I got the call this week to teach class this morning in Pastor Steve's absence. He's traveled out to Denver, Colorado to see to the condition of his mom, his mom's health not well, and he's traveled there.

We could pray for him, pray for the family that he'd be used of the Lord to witness in his family. Their background is Mormon religion, and as with any religion, it grips people. It is something that some people just go through, go to that church because that's all they ever know.

That's where they grew up in, and yet there is a blindness that comes when you must perform in a religion, and you just kind of get stuck in that, and that's all you know, and it is only, of course, by the power of God that any of us were delivered from the condition that we found ourselves in before we became Christians, if you're a Christian here this morning, and we would pray that God would be strong on Pastor Steve's behalf as he's over there and seeing to those needs.

Well, let's pray before we come to the class this morning. Our Father in heaven, how grateful we are to be able to be here this morning. We thank you for your great kindness to us. We look back upon this week, and we can see that it was just a wonder of your marvelous works to keep us.

Lord, you preserved us. We cannot keep ourselves. We are not strong enough. We are not capable. We don't have the ability. We don't have the strength, but you strengthen us. You care about your people.

I was reading in the word of God even this morning in the book of Psalms that you daily load up our carts, so to speak. You give us, as the Lord Jesus said, our daily bread, and we're thankful for that.

We're thankful for the very word of God. We pray that you would help us this morning, the ministry of the Holy Spirit, and by his ministry, we would be taught of our God. We'd be encouraged to go on in the faith.

Lord, that you would just increase us, not only in what we know, but increase us in strength, increase us in stamina, increase us in faith to be able to be strong soldiers as we march in your army. We thank you, and we praise you, and we ask that this time would be a great blessing, not only for Sunday school, but in the church service this morning, that it would be a great time of worship and praise, and I pray particularly for the other classes that are going on at this time where our children are being taught by faithful teachers.

Please equip them, strengthen them too, and give them much grace to be able to teach the word of God with clarity so that our children's lives and hearts would be touched and changed. For Christ's sake we pray, amen.

Lessons God Teaches His Children Through Life Experience

Well, I have on the sheet before you, of course you can see, Pastor Dave has done it again. He has deviated from the course. At such a short notice, I needed to think of, what was I going to teach? And I have volunteered for Proverbs.

I will be doing a segment, as with some of the other men, but I thought, and I'm off the hook because Pastor Mike, when he sent me an email, he said, you can teach whatever you'd like. So here's whatever I like.

And I like to challenge those that put the messages up on the website. You can see the title at the top. It's like, how do they fit that one in, right? You know, that big, I'm terrible. Deb knows, we've talked about I'm terrible with titles, but there you have it.

Lessons that God has taught me in my short life upon the earth to this date. How do you like that one? I was just thinking, this was last fall. It was about the beginning of September. I was at lunch, at work, and I was just thinking of how good the Lord is and how much he teaches his children.

He, the Psalmist said, teach me thy ways, O Lord. Psalm 25, the desire of the person who is in relationship to God through Jesus Christ, and God is there. God is the God of that person. Wants to be taught of God.

And God delights to teach his children things. And I began to think about the Apostle Paul and how the Lord had taught him, brought him aside, and just revealed the truth of Jesus Christ to him. I see and read his testimony in Philippians chapter three, in Acts chapter 22 or 26, in Acts chapter nine, you read of what happened to Paul.

And you just see that as he writes, he is just declaring the things that God had shown him. And I'm not saying that this by no means is this anything like what they wrote. What they wrote, and of course what we come to know is the word of God.

I'm just sharing a testimony. This is not a salvation testimony, so to speak, although that it may come out like that. I mean, you all know what that means when somebody asks you to share your testimony, you share what it is that God, what your life was like before Jesus Christ saved you, how it is that God saved you through Jesus Christ, through the cross of Christ, and then how your life has changed.

This is the part where your life has changed. I trust that everybody in here, as we go through these, and there's, of course, no way that we're gonna get through all of them. You can see it's just jam-packed.

I just begin to write these things down on my lunch break. What is it that is just overwhelming truths that have just kind of rung the bell all through the years that I've been a Christian, all through the years that God has so graciously worked in my life, and I started doing it kind of personalized.

I use the first person pronoun sometimes, and then I do we, then I get to preaching, and this thing is just, I mean, it is just in a horrible shape. These are just notes off the cuff, but I just wanted to share some things with you, and I hope that maybe we could have a little bit of interaction, and we could open up some conversations here so that you can kind of say, oh, yeah, that's what the Lord's done in my life.

Well, this is a verse that really means a lot to me when it comes to that point also, or I see exactly what you're saying, yes. It's basically like the psalmist said, come and hear all you that fear God, and I will declare what he has done for my soul, and one of the things that God has done for my soul and for the soul of anyone here who is a believer is, of course, he's rescued it from hell.

He has saved us from eternal judgment, which is do our sins, and as the psalmist said, he has lifted us up out of a horrible pit and out of the miry clay, and he's set our feet upon a rock, and he's established our goings.

Well, in our goings, it's not like we're saved and we're ushered right straight into heaven. When we are saved, the grace of God, as it says in Titus chapter two, teaches us. God, by his gracious acts towards us, teaches us.

The Holy Spirit of God, one of his ministries is to teach us, and what does he teach us? Here's some of the things here. I'm gonna just start right off the bat. We're gonna go through it. If you have a question, if you have a comment, if you'd like to testify and say, I understand what you're saying, Brother Dave, that's, you got that one right.

The other 99, not that great, but I like that one there. Just feel free to raise your hand. First off the bat, there is no one like the God of heaven and earth. There is no one like God. First Samuel 2 .2 is Hannah's declaration of praise after God had taken away her barrenness and had given her her son Samuel.

The desire of her heart was to bear a child, and God gives her a son, and she says, there is none holy as the Lord. There is none beside thee, neither is there any rock like our God. That's what Hannah said, basically in First Samuel 2 .2.

And I remember I went to a shepherd's conference four years ago or so, and you've heard me maybe say this before, but Mark Dever, pastor, I believe he's in Washington, DC, got up to preach a message, and his first phrase out of his mouth was that one over to the right there, God is not like us, and aren't we glad?

Aren't you and I glad? You know, the problem with people is they want a God that they can fashion, right? They want a God that they can kind of put in their pocket and take God out like a lucky charm.

And of course, we as believers don't believe in luck, but as the worldly phraseology would be, as a lucky charm, I'm gonna take God out of my pocket and I use him when I need him. And then when I don't need him and everything is okay, I'm gonna put him back in there.

And he is a God of their imagination. He's a God that people make up, a grandfather God, a Santa Claus God, a drive through the fast food lane God. I can get whatever I want, but God is not like us. And God is not what we think he is.

His ways are above our ways. His footsteps, the psalmist said, are in the sea. Just, was it last week, the week before last, my son at his company won, because of his performance, won an award and he was in the President's Club and he could take anybody he wants on a trip.

And I went with a, that's where I was, one of the Sundays when I was gone, I was preaching, I think one weekend, I haven't been here for three Sundays, preaching one and was in Aruba. He got a trip to Aruba.

And one of the things that we did was we went out on a boat and we got in the water and we did some snorkeling in the water. And that was, I can tell you all kinds of stories about that. It was just the wonder of God's creation.

As soon as you got in the water, there was just color. I mean, all those little fish that you see in the fish tank, those things are really in the water. I mean, they're swimming all over the place. It was just gorgeous.

It was beautiful. And we were only in 60 feet of water, the sunken ship on its side, World War II German vessel that when the allies were coming into Aruba, the Germans scuttled it because they didn't want the allies to get it.

It's laying on its side and the fish are everywhere going through. And it was just gorgeous. And why did I go talking about Aruba? Can anybody tell me? I have no idea now. I just got, I got, yeah, I was, the beauty of, thank you, Lewis.

Give me back on track. I knew. I was just totally overwhelmed. Oh, I know how I got there. I just got the click back. It was just beautiful. And that is just his creation. But the Psalmist that I believe in Psalm 27 says, we can worship God in the beauty of his holiness.

God is beautiful. There is no one like our God. And how I got to Aruba in the ocean was his footsteps. Remember his footsteps are in the sea. God's footsteps are in the sea. I was reading this morning that God rides upon the heavens.

I preached out of Psalm 113 when I was down in Rhode Island and said that God condescends, not only to look at the things of earth, but God condescends or he must, as it were, humble himself or look down, not only to look down upon heaven, that makes sense, I mean, on earth, right?

But God in Psalm 113, it says that he humbles himself to look down to heaven. Even the thing, we think heaven is that place that's just so highly exalted and it's just so wonderful and fantastic. And it's above the earth, yes, but God even rides upon it.

I mean, God's greater than heaven. God's greater than the earth. He's greater than any of us. There's no one like unto him. And yet he's pleased to have a relationship with people like you and me. Awesome.

Our God, I was humming it on the way in. I know it's an old hymn or song. Our God is an awesome God. He reigns from heaven above. I mean, God is, and there's no one like him. Any comments about the Lord?

I mean, in this case here. I mean, if God was like us, we would be doomed. We would be doomed because we need someone greater than us, someone who can deliver us from this position that we find ourselves in as sinners and only a perfect, holy, righteous, merciful God can do that, which is the second point, I believe.

Our God is incredibly merciful. In Psalm 86, 15, I'll turn there and read that. Wow, it took a long time to get through that bullet. Might take a little while to do the rest of these. I can see a five-part series coming out of this Sunday school class.

Psalm 86, and in verse 15, but thou, O Lord, art a God full of compassion and gracious, long-suffering, and plenteous in mercy and truth. God is a God who is not only full of compassion, gracious, but he's plenteous in mercy.

Why is it that we rejoice so much that God is a merciful God? What do you think? I've already touched on it, but what do you think? Why is it that we as sinners, there's a clue, are so grateful that our God is a merciful God?

Give me an idea. Peggy? Well, we all deserve death, and he's merciful to give us life, and not only do we all deserve death, but what kind of death? Eternal death, the second death, hell, and then the lake of fire forever.

Have you ever thought this thought? I mean, maybe you haven't. Maybe you haven't, it's the first time, but really, when Adam fell into disobedience, could God at that time have obliterated mankind? He could have, right?

But God's ways are above our ways, and he thought differently, and we're thankful. The mercy of God is God, to me, very simply, and don't take this as the theological depth of a definition, but really, the mercy of God is God not doing something to us that ought to be done, to me.

I mean, that's one of the things, that's one of the ways that I see it. God could pour out his wrath upon us, but he's a merciful God, and he looks with pity and compassion upon our condition, and he sent his son, Jesus Christ, that we might be saved, and God then is gracious, and grace, to me, very simply, is God doing something for us that we don't deserve.

The other one's a withholding of his wrath, and also here, it says, not only is God incredibly merciful, but he is a savior by nature. Titus 3 .5 tells us that not by works of righteousness, which we have done, but according to his mercy, God has saved us.

According to his mercy, God saved us, and if you look in the book of Titus, you see in Titus chapter one, it talks about God. You see that in the scripture. When you see God our savior, that's great. That's great news for us, because it's not always God our judge.

If you see that, I mean, if that's what we have to face after this life, we're hopelessly lost, but because God is a savior by nature, and it pleases God to save people. I was thinking just this morning, I was thinking about Zacchaeus, and how wicked that man was, and yet, there he is, climbing up in the trees so that he can see the whole commotion, what's going on, and Jesus comes, and he stops right where Zacchaeus is.

I was thinking of the blind Bartimaeus. Jesus calls Bartimaeus to come to him. When you see that happen many times, Jesus had to go through Samaria, John chapter four, to talk to, he says, he must needs go through Samaria.

That wasn't the most expeditious way to get where he was going, but he needed to go through there because there was the woman at the well. Philip, Acts chapter eight, he is used of God to intersect the chariot with his one Ethiopian eunuch out in the middle of the desert, on his way home from worshiping in Jerusalem, but God ordained that Philip would go there for one soul.

And aren't you glad that the same thing happened to you? I mean, it is as it were God stopped to take notice of you and stopped to take pity upon you and to save you from the course that we were going, as it says in Ephesians chapter two, that we were all children of disobedience walking after the course of this world.

And where were we walking? Headlong towards hell and God by a savior rescued, as a savior rescues us. Any comments there? Yes, hey Bruce, hi. Yes, just for the sake of the recording, Bruce said, every sin that we commit is high treason against God.

We're enemies of God, fighting against God. And yet Christ died for who? Romans five, Pastor Mike brought it out, Christ died for the ungodly, Christ died for sinners, Christ died for his enemies. It's just amazing, he did not have to do that.

Christ as the Believer's Life

Okay, the next one, Jesus Christ is my life. Philippians 121, for to me to live is Christ. That's the first part of that verse. And every single thing else takes second place. If you are a believer, and if you have anything else first, if you have anything else that is your life, your priorities are wrong.

They're just, your focus is in the wrong place. And I find that not only just is this my doing, of course, this is the grace of God, but in my life, the Lord has shown himself so strong, so beautiful, so caring, so merciful, so gracious in my life, and has totally and radically changed my life and yours if you're a believer, that what else can you do than to say, I am what I am by the grace of God, Jesus Christ has made me who I am, and he's everything to me.

Christ is all in all, there's no, I mean, he is everything. If you say my life is my job, as most folks do, or I am defined as, I mean, do you ever notice that when you meet somebody, and you're talking, or you see people meet, what is one of the first ways that they identify themselves or qualify themselves?

By their occupation, right? What do you do? As if what we do as far as a job has, it speaks everything about us. I mean, that's just a part of our lives, is it not? But it is not our life, it's a part of our life.

Our family is a part of our life, our spouses are a part of our life, our children are a part of our life, are the things that we do for entertainment, a part of our life, our hobbies, the things that we read, but our life is all wrapped up, and not a plan, not a job, not a society, it's wrapped up in a person, and that person is Jesus Christ.

Is that not true for a believer? My life is Christ, I would not be who I am without the grace of Christ, without the cross of Christ, without the power of Christ changing me, without the life of God within my soul and the spirit of Christ indwelling me.

I think it's in John chapter 15, where Jesus said, John 15, I believe he said, without me, you can do nothing, nothing. My life is Christ. So be careful when you talk about your life that then you give a testimony, when you talk to other people, and that's why when you meet other people, it's great to say, I'm a Christian, I'm a believer, I'm a child of God, I'm someone that God has saved.

I would not be who I am outside of what Jesus did when he came and entered into my life and broke into my life and saved me, and to have it revolve around him. Okay, wow, I'm never gonna get through this.

The Brevity of Life, Death, and Judgment

Life, yeah, life is very short. James 4 .4 talks about our life being like a mist, like a vapor, like a bubble that just pops. And death is so very short. Hebrews 9 .27 is appointed unto man, wants to die.

Heaven and hell are so very real. John 14 speaks about a place that Jesus prepared. Luke 16 talks about the rich man who died and went to hell. And everyone must be prepared to meet God. Hebrews 10 .31, it's a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

And 2 Corinthians 5 .10 is the one we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ. These are truths that for me, there are motivating truths in our lives. There are things in the scripture as we keep going back to them that just kind of jolt us at times.

When we think about it, they re-energize us, they charge us, but they drive us to go on. Like 2 Corinthians 5 where it talks about the love of Christ presses me in, the love of Christ to my soul. And one of the things for me every once in a while is just the fact that I have only so many seconds, only so many minutes, hours and days and weeks and months and years upon the earth.

And be very aware of that and concentrate upon that and realize that when we leave this world, there is the next. And not only for us, we're grateful if we're believers that God has saved us and we're on our way to heaven, but also there are a multitude of people around us that are perishing, that are lost, that are outside of Christ.

And guess who it is that God has commissioned to let them know that there is good news which can save them from the peril of hell and bring them into a relationship with Christ? It is us, the believers, it's the church.

And we ought to think these ways, not only be prepared ourselves, but talk to others. How about this next bullet? If God can be trusted to save and keep our never dying souls, he certainly can be trusted to take care of our day-to-day earthly lives and physical needs.

And in Matthew chapter six, those verses there, it talks about the birds and how God takes care of them, feeds the sparrows. And it talks about the lilies of the field that neither toil nor spin, yet they're taken care of.

Don't take thought about what you're gonna have for food and drink and all of that, because the Lord knows what you need before you even have that need. And when it comes to like the bird, the sparrows, Jesus is teaching and he says, those birds are taken care of by your heavenly father.

Aren't you more special than they are? Don't you mean more? Aren't you of more value and worth and preciousness to the Lord? And of course, certainly we are. And in the verse in Romans chapter eight, and in verse 32, you've heard Pastor Mike use this verse quite often in his preaching.

It's the one where it says, if God spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all. What does that mean when God delivered his son up for us all? What is that talking about? Somebody help me. The cross.

Thank you, brother, back there. He gets the special giveaway gift afterwards. Thank you, Brian. But God spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all. If God did that, the argument of the greater to the lesser, what does it says?

How shall he not with him also freely give us all things? If God gave his son for us, Jesus Christ to die for us in Calvary, take our sins upon himself and save our souls, our eternal souls. Is God just going to say, okay, I'll save you and hands off.

I'm just gonna back away. You're on your own. No, the Lord loves his children, those who he saves and everything that we need. And we can read through the scripture. Everything that we need for this life and for the next is coming to us from our caring and heavenly father.

And then why are we so concerned when we look in the checkbook balance or we look in the savings account and it's not there and we get worried. And then it's like, well, how is this gonna, how am I gonna swing this or what happens?

What if? And we begin to worry. And you know that the old adage is true. 90 of the things that we worry about never come to pass anyways. And the scripture tells us, what is the scriptural position when it comes to worry?

What is it? Sin, right? And it tells us what? Don't be anxious for anything, right? Don't worry about anything because worry really is doubting and a lack of trust in the God who has saved us. And if he saved our spiritual, our souls, if he saved us, certainly he's gonna take care of us physically.

And one of the things that you learn in life as you go on, as bleak as things are, you can't see how it's going to happen. I can testify so many different times from the beginning when God saved Deb and I and there were times literally where we had, when I was in the military, I was making $800 a month.

When we paid the bills, we had $10 left for the month. And that was just for incidentals for the month. And yet God was faithful to us. There were times when we didn't have two nickels to rub together and we needed $32 or I'm just making up this figure, but we needed $32 and 50 something cents to pay a bill.

And it would come in an envelope by somebody whose God's heart touched to be generous to us or there'd be something sitting on the front seat of our car. I have an old record book. I wish I had kept it.

But when there was a period of time when I was not making much money in the occupation that I was in and I was serving as a full-time Christian teacher at a school and you all know when it comes to Christian education, there's not always a lot of money when it comes to providing for the folks there.

So I had to work part-time and I wasn't making enough to really cover our bills. But over and over again, groceries, somebody said that they would pay a bill. Somebody would pay a bill and I not even know it.

One time I was driving with friends to Houston from, we were living in San Antonio, Texas and we drive into Houston. We stopped halfway between at a restaurant, the four of us, Deb, myself, and two good friends of ours from way back.

And we bowed our heads and prayed. We ate our meal. We went to pay the meal. And the waitress said, it's all taken care of. And it was somewhere in the area. I mean, this is like in the 80s. This is like for the four of us, it was somewhere in the area of like about $8, $8 to $10.

We go to Houston, do everything we need to do and we're getting close to where all the money that we had was spent. Now we got to get back to San Antonio and we didn't have any gas in the car. And guess about how much money that we had between the four of us.

It was about $8. And we put the gas in the car and made it back home. And now you could say that's coincidental when it comes to any of these things. I mean, we have a kick around my house. It's just a really neat thing.

Our children kind of smile and other people when they hear it kind of smile. But my wife is a prayer warrior when it comes to getting the discounts at the store. And those of you that are chuckling, know exactly what I'm talking about.

Because when it comes to getting something for the house, we don't want to go out and pay full price for that thing. We would much rather save and be economical and try to pinch a little bit and use the money elsewhere.

And I'm surprised that sometimes when Deb prays, we just don't walk in the store and they just say, Mrs. Jeffries, here it is free. You can have this today. And I'm sorry that I'm embarrassing you. But I'm just, if you haven't gotten this already, this is not the typical Sunday school class.

This is like a personal testimony thing. I am over the years just totally amazed that these things that God has taught are eternal truths. And yet it ought not just to be dry. It ought not just to be, oh yeah, I know that.

We live them. You live the truth. And if you say that God has saved your soul and you're a believer, the God of heaven who owns the whole heaven and earth, he owns the cattle upon the thousand hills and the hills themselves, the sea is his, the earth is his, everything is his.

And we can't trust him to put bread on our table. We can't trust God to take care of not only our needs, but our children's needs, to give us the jobs that we need. Certainly we can. God has been so faithful.

And in that point there, it's just, I just think it's important for us. If we say that we're going to trust him for our soul, we can trust him for our body. We can trust him for our physical needs also.

Any comments there? Okay, we'll go on to the next one. This one here I can do very quickly. We as a church hear this often. Man is totally incapable of saving himself. Ephesians 2, I spoke about those verses, how we are dead in trespasses and sins.

And therefore, because we are incapable of saving ourselves, we are completely dependent upon someone or something outside of us to save us. And here I put, it is God alone who can rescue us from the judgment due our sins.

Jonah said, Jonah 2 .9, salvation is of the Lord. If you have a salvation where you are cooperating with God to save you, you are not saved. If you have a salvation where any part of that work for you to be saved, for your sins to be forgiven is of your effort, then you are not saved.

Now don't confuse that with, then what about repenting? What about believing? Yes, you must repent and you must believe, but where did you get that repentance and where did you get that faith? Gift of God, grace from God.

God, yet we experience it, don't we? But if you attribute any part of your salvation to you, then you don't have the salvation that the Bible is speaking of because we are incapable of saving ourselves.

Does that make sense? Okay, let's go on to the next one because some of these I really want to get to. Wow, again, I think the next point is pretty much along those lines. It takes the powerful intervention of a powerful God to save us.

Ephesians chapter one speaks of the same power that God put forth to raise his son from the dead is the same power that Paul was praying that the folks at Ephesians and in Ephesus would come to have a better understanding of.

That power was working in their lives. And that's just kind of amazing to me, the power that God used to raise his son, Jesus Christ from the dead is the same power that's working in us. So it ought to not only raise us from the dead and give us life in Jesus Christ, but radically change our lives, totally make us different creatures in Christ.

How about this? Here's a little math, some biblical algebra. I'm gonna need some help here. Biblical algebra or biblical math equation. One birth equals two deaths and two births equals one death. All right, the first one, one birth equals two deaths.

Let me see, let's look around. Is anybody kind of scratching their head? No, looks like everybody pretty much got it. Who wants to volunteer to explain that one? One birth equals two deaths. Carol. Okay, but what's the one birth?

One birth, the one birth here would be? Physical birth, right. One physical birth equals two deaths. And you just said what they were, you are gonna physically die one day and then eventually you will spiritually die because you have not experienced the second part of this equation, two births.

The one is the physical, the second is what? The spiritual, Jesus spoke about that in John chapter what? Three, John three, he said, it's a great idea. It's optional for you to be born again, right? No, he says you must be born again.

Why is it that we must be born again? I remember reading a message, reading about a pastor who preached a message about you must be born again. And he preached the message about 17 times and finally somebody came to him and said, pastor, why are you keep preaching this message in the church?

And he said, because you must be born again. There were a lot of folks in the church that were not saved. Two births, physical and spiritual, and only one death, physical, because you will not be separated from God.

That's what spiritual death is, to be separated from God for all eternity. And this is something that we have experienced as believers. Okay, let's see. Does anybody, I know if you're like me, some of you have read on, right?

Anybody looked at the back of the page? Come on, be honest. Did you look at the back in any of the bullets? Anybody turn it over? Well, maybe a couple of hands. Are there any here that you'd like to talk about?

I mean, I could keep going down here and who knows if we'll be able to go on with this lesson again. Are there any that you see that you would like to? All right, well, raise your hand if you see one.

Let me look down here and see something. How about this one here? Well, I can't pass, this is so tough to pass them up. There is no greater demonstration of love ever known than the cross of Calvary. Can you tell me, I mean, greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. Here in his love, 1 John 4, not that we love God, but that God loved us and gave his son to be the propitiation for our sins. It was because of love.

I mean, we'd be willing to die for somebody, maybe, you know, in Romans chapter five. To die for somebody we know, maybe special, you know, special, close, a loved one, a spouse, but for an enemy, for someone who is fighting against us, for someone who is throwing stuff in our faces and dishonoring us or dishonoring our name, living totally, completely opposite of what we would desire.