Romans 15:16 - The Offering Up Of Our Prayers (02/05/2023)

Well, you're saying our new song leader didn't last very long. My son Matt stood up here last Sunday and announced that he had been asked to be the new music minister and he would accept that challenge and now he's out, ill today.

So you guys did a good job of trying to get out of the responsibility, but not successful. So anyway, we hope Matt's better and back next Sunday and he's started to put together special music too, but even when he's not here, we always have special music.

Thank you, Glenda. That was beautiful. So anyway, about John and Charlotte, when we first got, no, you don't get the microphone. I got the microphone. We might let you have it eventually. But anyway, when we were first saved and moved back to Mahea, we went back to the church we grew up in and they were attending that church at that time.

First Baptist in Mahea and it was a joy. John was a deacon, probably hadn't been a deacon that long at that time, and a new deacon I guess, or I'd just say at least a young deacon in the church and they invited us over to their home every week and we'd go, they'd just take us through, I think the one I remember we started in the book of John, just started reading through the book of John together informally, but just reading through it and talking about it.

And that was our first real exposure to just a real Bible study. Everything else we'd ever had in our lives was just like a quarterly thing or something, how churches have quarterlies, but this was just going through the Bible together and it's great.

Then another couple joined us and he had been like one of the most popular kids in school. His name was Eddie Boyd and he had gotten saved and might've been the last person high school kids would have thought would be saved, right?

But then most of them weren't saved either, so who are they to judge? But Eddie got saved and his wife and they came and joined the Bible study. So it was the six of us for a long time. I don't remember how long, maybe a couple of years.

And then John and Charlotte are the ones who introduced Charlotte and me to Dr. Rocky Freeman against my will. I didn't want to go because I was afraid of him and John was sitting there dialing the phone.

I'm going, stop, John, don't dial the phone. And he says, hey, brother Rocky, Dave and Charlotte want to meet you. And they drove us up to Fort Worth and I'll never forget that day. I can remember very much details of little small things that happened that day, but so much of the spiritual growth in my life I owe to these folks here.

So thank you for being here so much. And I will say this and you wouldn't want me to say it, but I'm going to say it anyway because it's a fact. They're such good people that a lot of our modern churches after a period of time can't stand it.

And John usually will end up an active deacon in whatever church they're in. And the devil will raise up people against this couple and attack them. And they end up having to leave because they don't want to create trouble, so they leave in peace.

And that happened a few weeks ago again. I mean, the church we were in in Mahea, it happened to you a lot. We left first. You should have listened to us, but you didn't. But maybe you didn't want to follow a cult leader, I don't know.

Because our first pastor sort of was a little bit something that the two of them saw through, but me and Charlotte didn't, but later we did. But anyway, same church ended up problematic as it just continued down the road there.

So they ended up leaving and had a wonderful experience, which they ended up going to First Methodist Church in Mahea. And they felt obligated to explain that to me and Charlotte at one point. Well, yeah, we're not like, we're not Methodist, but like, they don't know anything.

It's like teaching, it's like you got a whole new audience, you can just teach the same stuff we know, and it's awesome because they've never seen it before. And so how long were you there, three, four, three or four or five, five years.

And they taught a class and the pastor there allowed them to do it and they taught, you had not had real Bible studies like that. And it was second largest church in town, I guess, maybe Church of Christ, maybe it's the third, but, and the Lord allowed them to do that.

And then they felt they need, you probably need to be fed some yourselves. So you ended up moving to Fairfield and all this time they were in Mahea, which is where we are. And that's where we all grew up together, but then they moved to Fairfield.

And at the time they loved the pastor at the church where they were there. And then I don't remember what happened, but he moved on. And then the new pastor that's been there lately, not so much, and he actually allowed this trouble to happen.

The pastor did, in my opinion, but, and I've never even met him, but I just, it just eats on me when I see you guys go through this, but you, you just go through it like the Lord would humble and, you know, just go through it.

So bless your hearts. It's a great loss to both churches, by the way, that you two left. So by the way, how long did it take you to get here? Like 30 minutes, it took me, took me, took me 42 minutes. So kind of the same.

So just saying, anyway, so everybody, oh, you want me to pick you up? I would have, but, so everybody treat them real nicely long enough to get them to come here and then get mean later, right? We have, we haven't had a problem in our church and we're a share.

How long has it been since we've had trouble in this church? Never, you know, it's been a long time. Well, since Otis came, right? Once he, once he got here, yes, ma 'am, you may. I know that's sad. Hmm.

So yeah, well, we will keep that in mind. First Baptist Fairfield. And anyway, we're so happy you're here today and we will treat you nicely while you're here. Turn with me to the book of Romans chapter 15, verse 16, and that's our sort of our launching point, as you know, and we launched off from that.

We're going verse by verse through the book of Romans, but sometimes when we see a verse that speaks of a major Bible theme or a doctrine, major doctrine, we'll stop and take a trip out through the whole of the Bible, looking for the lessons on that particular doctrine.

Well, this one, I'll read it first and then I'll explain. So Romans chapter 15, 16, I'm not even going to read the whole verse, but it talks about the fact that God would bless the offering of the Gentiles and make their offering acceptable.

And it's interesting because Paul, everywhere he went, he preached to the Jew first and then to the Gentile, and he was always having to convince the Jew that God would even save a Gentile. I mean, everywhere he went, it's like he's trying to let the Jew know, yes, God will save all men, not just Jews.

And so this was going on here as well. And he brings up this fact that the offering of the Gentiles is acceptable. So we kind of launched out and took a look at what the whole Bible says about this concept of the believer priest and the fact that we as Gentiles do offer up spiritual offerings to the Lord.

They're not the same, you know, as physical sacrificing animals and things like that, but they are offerings in a spiritual sense. In fact, the Old Testament offerings of the animals were pictures of the spiritual offerings that we would offer in this age.

And the scripture says in two places in the New Testament that the Old Testament was given for those of us who live in the last of the age as in samples or examples. And so everything we see in the Old Testament, all those beautiful stories, they're all real life stories of real things that happen, but they also teach us spiritual truths about the New Testament doctrines, about what the Lord has for us as well.

So the Old Testament is very, very important to the New Testament Christian. Well, so we've kind of been going out through the Bible and talking about these believer priest ideas and that, first of all, the duties, I'm trying to put that in my computers in the way down there.

We have duties as believer priests. We went through and we talked about those things. And then we sort of ended up going back and looking at the Old Testament wilderness tabernacle as a picture of as the believer priest goes into that outer court and into the inner court.

And then once a year, the high priest goes into the Holy of Holies. All of that pictures we as believer priests, believe it or not. In fact, the wilderness tabernacle or the temple, when it was made into a temple, it still pictured the same things.

It actually can be a picture of you, the believer. It's also a picture of Jesus Christ, but it can be a picture of you and me because the outer court pictures our flesh, our body, physical body that we live in.

The inner court is a picture of our soul, which is an interface between our body and our spirit. And in the Holy of Holies is a picture of our spirit, because that's the place where we meet with God. Our spirit is what is the part of us that can communicate with God.

And all of that are pictures for us to learn more about our relationship with the Lord and to learn more about the Lord. So we've been talking about that for quite a while. And in recent Sundays, we had come up to around second, if you'd like to turn to Second Chronicles chapter 29, that's where we have been lately talking about the believer priest and then really more specifically lately talking about that temple and how it's a picture of us and how it can help us to realize how we ought to live and how we can actually call upon some of the very things that God has given us to help us live right.

He's given us many tools to help us live right. And we know we're not saved by our works, are we? But we had the sermon Brother John preached, John King preached last Sunday. It was great. And effectively, you know, he gave this equation that to me when he first did it, I said, that does not sound right.

I don't know how many of you felt that way, but I felt like that does not sound right. But as he took us through Ephesians chapter two, he proved that the formula was actually exactly right. And it went something like this faith and then an equal sign and then justification plus good works.

Now, see, that does not it doesn't sound right, does it? And it wouldn't be right if you turned it around the other way, because it doesn't require a good mixture of anything to be saved, such as no good works.

It doesn't require that. It's just faith. But he was pointing out, yeah, well, faith is on this side of the equation. But once once you God gives that to you as a gift and you have genuine saving faith, justification is what comes with it, but also good works.

And he proved that, of course, with Ephesians two chapter two, verse 10. Right. We're also ordained that we would do good works. That's part of God's ordained plan as well. So obviously good works come with it and it doesn't cause it.

It's the effect of it, of salvation, not the cause. But it is I mean, the whole book of James is about the effects pretty much. Some of it's about the cause, like two or three verses. But the rest of the whole book is about effects of salvation.

How when you really are born again, things change. You act differently. You feel differently. You are different. And so you have good works that you used to wouldn't even think of doing. And then you get the place where you a lot of times you don't even think of doing it and you do a good work and you might not even know you did one.

He talked about a lot of that last Sunday. Well, when you look at this. Where it takes the Old Testament tabernacle or the temple, if you get to the place where they built the temple, a picture. There are many pictures and examples in that that can show us tools that we can use together with God in our lives to live a better life and to just be better men and women.

And, you know, that's not something the new modern church talks about a whole lot. Today, it seems like we've diverted to the two groups. You have the legalist. We've got a couple of women going around.

Hey, that are just teaching horrible works, salvation stuff. And there are people that I know. I grew up with one of them. And the other one was a woman that went to our church a long time ago and just love her.

But bless their hearts there. They're off. So you have that side of it, just legalism. And then you go over to the other side where it's it's just grace. But by grace, what they mean is you can just live any way you want to.

Right. And that's kind of what we have in America now. Somewhere, you know, most places gravitate to one end of the spectrum, not in the middle anywhere. And the truth of the matter is that the cause of salvation is why we were yet in our sins.

Has he quickened us? It's called regeneration and God does it to us. And that's the cause. Everything else is an effect. And but the effects are important. And you have to add the whole book of James.

Ask the question, OK, if the effects are not there, is the person really saved? Don't you think that's what it asks? Great question. For an important question today. So let's look at some of this now.

I'll review just a hair. In Second Chronicles, 15, eight, it starts talking about how there was a king. And I believe it goes through several different kings in this study, by the way. But it started out with Asa.

It was a good king for most of his life. Charlotte hates reading about the king because they start out great and a lot of times they end up terribly. But Asa did pretty well, although at the end he did a couple of questionable things, but not as bad as most of them.

But the point is, the wonderful thing about Asa, when he was a young man, he recognized that the priests had not taken care of the tabernacle. They weren't even using it. They weren't even doing the Passover anymore.

They hadn't seen the scrolls, the scripture for years. And the door to the temple didn't even work. You couldn't hardly open it and get in there. That was the state it was in. And all of that, you think about that temple, it is at least a picture of where they met with God, right?

And so it's a picture of us in the sense that the Holy Spirit lives within us. He dwells within us. And somewhere in your brain, your spirit and his spirit become one spirit when you're spirit filled and you walk with God.

And that is a picture of that place. And they were totally deserting it, having nothing to do with it. And friends, that is a picture of us when we're in the flesh. It's a picture of us. When we choose, we make the choice to walk in the flesh for minutes or hours or days or whatever.

And we just totally neglect the temple. This is a picture of this. It's a physical in sample or example that will teach us spiritual lessons about ourselves that can be pretty powerful. So the first thing that we saw was he commanded them to go in to the inside and clean out the inside of that temple around where the altar was and to put the altar back where it worked again, put the utensils back in there and all the things they needed to do the Passover.

And so they went to the inside first. And that pictures us the first place we, if we find ourselves backslidden, the first place we got to go is to the inner man and get right, right? We've got to get right on the inside.

It doesn't help us to go out and try to do a bunch of good works because it'd be hypocritical. You got to start on the inside. So that's what that picture. And then we saw, um, if you go out to chapter 29 verse 16 and some places like that, you see that from once the inside is cleaned up, they started moving out towards the outer court, which is a picture of our body.

And we talked about different scriptures. We looked at there in the new Testament, such as in Ephesians chapter four, starting with verse 22, going down through there where it says, you know, be angry and sin not.

It teaches us a lot of things about how to treat one another kindly in love. And so it, once the inside is right with God, the outer side, the body can be used to serve the Lord and to serve each other.

And so we talked about some of the new Testament concepts that that relates to. And, um, so then just the last time that I spoke, which we had a guest speaker last Sunday, and then we were on vacation before that.

But, uh, so the last time where we were was that we were talking about how did they get to this place in the first place? How did they get to where the sanctuary was filthy, which is a picture of the inside of us not being right.

Our spirit and soul not being right. So that the things we're doing with our body in the outer world are just wrong, sinful things, wrong things, hurtful things. We hurt other people, uh, things like what's happening in that church.

What's the cause of that? And that's what this relates to. Cause you don't have the inside, right? The outside is going to just not be right. And you're still going to think it is, but it's not because we'd be deceived, won't we?

Often. And so we're at the place now in this study where we're talking about how did they get there in the first place? So turn to second Chronicles 29, four and we'll read a verses four or five and six here together.

And he brought in the priest and the Levites and gathered them together into the east street and said unto them, hear me, ye Levites, sanctify now yourselves and sanctify the house of the Lord, God of your fathers and carry forth the filthiness out of the holy place.

Now remember where the holy place is in the, in the tabernacle. It's not the holy of holies. It's the next place as you go out. Uh, so it's the holy place is the place. Well, let's start going in. It's easier.

You've got the outer court, which is only the place they will. If they did have Gentile proselytes, that's where they had to be. They couldn't go any further. But when you go through a curtain into the next, uh, area, that's called the holy place.

And that's where the altar was where they actually did the sacrifices. And we talked about the different things that are in these rooms and what they, what they picture and all that. So I'm not going to go back over that, but that particular place is the place they were cleaning out and getting the altar back in shape where it worked right.

And all that, all the utensils in place and all of those things were happening. So they had to take the filthiness out of there because they're apparently people had taken things in there that shouldn't be in there.

And they, they profane the place and made it filthy and they had to clean it out. And so, um, look at verse six and this verse six, begins to show how this happened in the first place. And that's really what today's message is about for our fathers have trespassed and done that, which is, was evil in the eyes of the Lord, our God and have forsaken him and have turned away their faces from the habitation of the Lord and turned their backs.

And that's where we get the idea of backslidden by the way. Okay. And so here we see three things that the people before this time had done that caused it to get in this place that they had to fix it.

The problem, how did it get in this place of abuse and non-use? And the first thing is their fathers trespassed and did evil in the eyes of the Lord. That's just sin. They first had, they first allowed sin to come in to their lives and got used to it and got familiar with it and stopped thinking about walking with the Lord.

And that was the first step. And then the second step is they then forsook the Lord, which means they stopped coming to the temple. They stopped coming to the sanctuary. Um, that's how it got in a place of disorder.

They stopped using it. I kind of find it sad to look what COVID has done to the church. I mean, you know, people are slowly coming back to physical worship. And it's nice. One good thing that happened was you can gain a lot of wonderful people who can listen in through zoom through the internet.

We have our friends out there. How are you guys doing today? And, uh, that's a blessing. And, and we have many and they live too far to come here anyway. And they may or may not have a good church in their area.

They can go to, that's a wonderful blessing. But the other side of that coin is a lot of people just have gotten used to not going and they just stay home now. And, uh, so this, this is one of the things that happened.

These people had forsaken the Lord and they stopped doing the things the Lord wanted them to do, uh, that made them good people of God. And they just got to thinking about the things of the world, the things of the flesh.

And they got so ingrained into that, that sinful lifestyle and that lifestyle of forsaking God and just going after the things of the world, the cares of the world, the deceitfulness of riches, the pride of life, those things that they didn't even realize how backslidden they were perhaps.

And so they, they obviously let the temple just fall apart because that's the place where God was. That's what it pictures for them. It was where the presence of God was for us. It's a picture of God meeting with us in the heart and in our soul in the midst of ourselves is where he meets with us.

And so that is a picture of us neglecting ourselves. Think about it. We allow our body to start to be used for sin again. We allow our minds to be thinking about bad thoughts again, and then we don't bring them back under subjection as we ought to.

Good Christian ought to always be thinking about what he's thinking about. Right. And we, we stray away from that. And as we do, all of a sudden the inner part of us gets in disarray just like this pictures.

So first sin entered in and then they forsook God and didn't want to be around him. And then we see the third step that happened. It says, and they have turned away their faces from the habitation of the Lord.

Now in their time, that Holy of Holies, that third place in the tabernacle where only one man, the high priest could go one time a year and not without blood and meet face to face, so to speak with, at least we'll call it the Shekinah glory, because God, the father cannot be in a place.

He's a spirit being he's, he's not in the Holy of Holies. What is in there is a bit of himself. And I look at that mercy seat as a portal that goes to another dimension or something. I don't know how to explain it, but where the father is outside of space and time, God, the father, I'm not talking about the Holy spirit and Jesus, but God, the father outside of space and time, he let a little bit of himself shine through at that one place.

And we call it the Shekinah glory. And the only person that ever saw it was the high priest. No one else could describe it, but, God met with him there. And that is a picture of God meeting with us along with our spirit, the Holy spirit and our spirit becoming one spirit.

And we become spirit filled and we now can come boldly into the presence of even God, the father, but only by being one with the Holy spirit because Bible says, no man has seen God except Jesus. And Jesus is the word who explains God to us or we would know a thing about God.

Did you realize like people will tempt you to, uh, I'm going to pluck those tail feathers. I told him I was going to say that. See y 'all. He and I both knew a preacher once where he was this hardline preacher and somebody got up and left and he thought he didn't like the preaching.

So he said, I'll pluck your tail feathers on the way out too. And the guy comes back and says, I'm just going to the restroom. Anyway, totally forgot where I am in the sermon, but I did get those tail feathers plucked.

Amen. Um, where was I? Come on, help me choir. Where was I? Um, y 'all don't know where you sleep already. Okay. I will recollect my thoughts. I think I was somewhere near the Shekinah glory. And so that, that is a picture of their way of meeting with God.

Our way is much better on this side of the cross. Our way is much better. You guys are leaving too. Okay. Don't let this thing cascade now. Y 'all be careful. Um, uh, so it's a picture of how it happens inside our innermost being with God.

And so then they got to the place where they turned their backs on this place where they met with God. Now think about what that could picture for you and me, because where is the place we meet with God?

It's not in this building. I mean, we do meet with him here collectively, and that is part of God's plan to help us be better people. So forsake not the assembly of ourselves together, right? I mean, it's important, but we know that we truly meet with God in our innermost being.

I have a theory. I think it's somewhere in our brain. I don't know where the Holy spirit lives within us. What were you gonna say? In our heart. But he meets with us in our body is the temple of the living God now.

So this, everything about this temple is a picture of us and how it works. So, so when we neglect or turn away our face from the place as they pictured the place where they met with God, it's like us totally ignoring our desire and duty and responsibility to meet with God in that place every day.

In fact, as Christians, we make moment by moment decisions rather to meet with him every day, all day. And when we don't, when we're not spirit filled, we are in the flesh. And at that point we can do anything.

We can do anything that can hurt people, hurt ourselves, hurt our families. So we have to make a conscious decision like they did. Only ours is more moment by moment to not turn our backs on that innermost part of us where we meet with God all the time.

And I think that's in a sense what the scripture meant when it says pray without ceasing. It didn't really mean be asking for stuff all the time. Do you think, but it meant being an attitude of oneness with the Holy spirit all day long, which requires some thoughtfulness.

Don't you think? I mean, it took thoughtfulness on their part to decide to go to the temple, right? And have service and to take care of it. And it takes some thoughtfulness on our part to take care of our temple, our body, which is the temple of the living God.

And to make sure that we're not trespassing and then forsaking him and then turning our backs on that temple. So that's how they got to this place in the first place. Now in Galatian, to give you some new Testament, how it ties in with this old Testament concept, actually it's the other way around.

If you really want to be honest about it, with hindsight, we have the new Testament doctrines and the teachings, but the old Testament adds color and depth of understanding to those teachings. So really, you know, when you, when you look at the new Testament, those concepts, God says, here's how it is.

And the old Testament says, this pictures it. So look at all these pictures and you'll learn even more about it. So that's what's happening. But let's look at Galatians 5, 16. It says this, I say, then walk in the spirit and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.

So that is the modern methodology for what they were doing wrong with their temple. This is how we deal with it, with our temple, the place where we meet with God, which is within our innermost being is the first clue is to walk in the spirit and you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh.

What does it mean to walk in the spirit? It's kind of like pray without ceasing. It's like having an attitude of who you really are all day long throughout the day. And I know there are duties that we have.

Some of the work that we do, you may be crunching numbers. If you're an accountant or you, you know, you may be crunching numbers. If you're an engineer, or you may be crunching numbers, if you're a cook or whatever you are, you may be doing mental work where you're not mentally talking to God all the time.

So that's not what I'm talking about. It's an attitude of oneness with him all the time, all day. And a prayer perhaps to the Holy spirit that, that when you get done with your mental duties or conversations that you have to have, that he would bring you back into that talking with God and walking with God so that all day long is like that.

It doesn't forbid us to talk with one another and to do the work that we have to do. I mean, picture Adam and Eve in the garden. When did it say that they met with God? You remember in the cool of the evening.

So they didn't walk with God. I mean, and it was perfect situation, but they didn't walk with God all day long. They walk with each other. They named the animals. They learned about the animals. They tilled the land and kept the garden and did their work, but they had an attitude of love for God all day long.

This was before sin, right? They had an attitude to like, if he just popped up and showed up at any time, they would love that. Right? Isn't that how they were? Can you picture it? And then he would show up in the cool of the evening and walk with them.

And who knows what, can you imagine teaching them or whatever, whatever he did, but he had to teach. God had to personally teach Adam and Eve everything that the world knew about God until the time of Moses, which was thousands of years later.

So he taught them everything they needed to teach their kids and grandkids to know anything about God until the time of Moses. So he taught them a lot. So they were, they looked forward to God showing up.

So it doesn't mean you like you, you just like a monk and all you do is think about prayer and scripture in your head all the time. Doesn't mean that it means you have an attitude of love for the Lord so much that when your duties and your conversations and the things you're doing are done, he, the Lord just comes right back in your mind and you continue that conversation with him.

And, uh, so I kind of like the drive over here because it's, if it's, I'm by myself, it's a great time to just talk to the Lord and, uh, spend time with him. But anytime you have that opportunity, then that should happen.

And that's what this is picturing. If you walk in the spirit, you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. Now in Galatians 5, 17, it says this for the flesh lusted against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh.

And these are contrary one to another so that you cannot do the things that you would. Now you remember the apostle Paul talking about how, who will deliver me from the, the body of this death. He said, I do that, which I don't want to do.

And I find myself not doing that, which I would like to do. And that's what this verse is talking about. If you get to the place where your flesh is in control, the carnal part of your mind and thinking is in control.

You cannot please the Lord. You can't have peace in your life. And it's like, it's like forsaking the tabernacle, the place where you meet with God. So the opposite of that is if we walk in the spirit, these two are contrary to one another.

So if we walk in the spirit, then the flesh cannot gain control. Isn't that cool? So it's a, it's a, it's a key to being a better man or woman is you spend more moments talking with the Lord, thinking about the Lord throughout the day, why you're doing the duties and things that you have to do in, in and around those things, but always coming back to the Lord rather than going into those fleshly thoughts that our mind can bring up.

You know, I was thinking about, I don't know why, but well, it's in my message later. I probably won't get to it, but Roman chapter one. So when you think about Romans chapter one, and there's, I believe it's sometimes I'm not sure it's exactly 21, but I think it's exactly 21 sins that are mentioned in Romans chapter 21.

You wouldn't think you'd find that many in one chapter. One of the sins is homosexuality, 20 other sins. And of course people today say that's not a sin. We were born that way. Well, why was it listed with 20 other sins?

Can't you figure that one out? But anyway, that chapter is about 21 sins and all 21 of them come start by not being thankful, not being thankful for the life God gave you, not being thankful for the things he's given us, for the air that we breathe, all that, all of those stem from lack of thankfulness.

And in that chapter, it says that there are people who get to a certain place in their life. And it has to be talking about the one sin of homosexuality. When it says this, it says that God will then turn them over to a reprobate mind to do that, which is unseemly.

And think about this for a minute. Do you know that it is a fact that your mind and my mind, if you want to talk about our old man, that part of our body that's just an organ, like our brain is like your heart or your liver, your brain is an organ.

It has been, it's like a computer that has had all kinds of foul input put in it by us from the time we were little children, especially up through the teenage years on the playground. I mean, we went to forest glade for a while.