Welcome to the Lansdale Life Church podcast.
If you're seeking a closer relationship with Jesus Christ, this podcast is for you.
Thank you for joining us today.
You know, I know John Kratz doesn't need a whole lot of introduction because you know him.
He teaches on Wednesday evening routinely.
He's an elder at the church.
He has a long history of pioneering new church,
founding new churches and church building, pastoring.
And he's just a real treasure to our church family.
And we really treasure his teaching.
And so let's thank the Lord for John Kratz as he comes up.
Praise the Lord.
And I want to say, you know, I was thinking,
can I swing Sunday morning, you know?
And I reached out to him and it's a long, we're about to go through 50.
We will still have prayer night.
And the reason I wanted to maintain prayer night was that we want to pray for that holiday.
That not only people will have rest and respite,
but that they will realize how important it is to give thanks to our nation of 250 years.
When you, yes.
When you think of what's going on in Iran,
and is it pink light?
I thought it was supposed to be green light.
All right.
Green, green, green.
Okay.
There are so many less fortunate people than us.
Yes.
Because of the turmoil in the world.
And I've been watching closely in Iran.
I subscribed to a fellow that his father lives in Iran,
and he gets real hot messages from his dad.
And I just, my heart goes out to those people what they have been doing.
And in light of it, and then obviously still the tyranny in North Korea.
And what we want to do on Friday is just ask the Lord that people would remember
what it is that is important.
First of all, it's the Lord God.
And second of all, it's our family.
And third, it's a blessing that we live in this country.
Amen.
All right.
Chris had asked me to change the title of my sermon.
I think it was walking away from the Lord.
So anyway, I changed it and I want to share with you 50 verses.
It will be about 1.30 by the time we leave today.
Not so.
All right.
I will only give you a brief synopsis of the chapter,
and we will then take parts of that chapter and work through them.
The application of Stephen and what he said is most important because he sets a framework
for the entire history of Israel.
First of all, he talks about Abraham, his choice, God's calling,
and the covenant that he made with Israel.
Then there was Joseph.
He, of course, he was rejected by his brothers, yet God used him.
And then Moses.
He was also rejected, and God surely used him to deliver the nation.
And then Israel's rebellion.
Doesn't this sound all nice and fuzzy here?
Moses was rejected by Israel.
They worshiped idols, and God was rejected by Israel.
That's truly an interesting chapter to go through.
And then, of course, it ends up showing us
that the tabernacle and the temple that God dwelt there
was greater than anything that we could have as far as a building is concerned.
So Israel's repeated rejection of God provides us, you and I,
with some spiritual lessons, and we want to go over those this morning.
The New Testament explicitly teaches that these events were recorded for examples to us.
Think about that.
All these things that are negative, and yet they are examples.
So we're going to go through them.
I'm wondering if you think about, and we talked on Wednesday night,
some longer time ago, about the forming of a nation, the nation Israel.
And I would suspect that Satan, when he saw this come about
and God started to move once again in the earth
and bring these people together,
that he realized that he had to do double duty
in order to withstand and put down the unification of these people.
So consequently, we have this eternal war between Satan and the people of God.
And so that's, in and of itself, an interesting element
because we know that the nation of Israel failed.
They failed to bring the promises of God to the people.
Remember, they were supposed to be a testimony,
a living testimony of God's goodness throughout the earth.
And to be honest with you, that was a fail-safe situation that never came about.
Second of all, they communicated to God through priests.
We have learned that there is no mediator between Christ and us,
except the Lord Jesus.
And here they were being educated, being groomed in sacrifices.
They were also, when they inquired of God, not like you and I,
we come and we inquire of the Lord in our car, in our prayer time or whatever,
and we can commune with the Lord.
Their communication was simply in question form.
Lord, do you want me to buy the Cadillac and he'd go to the priest
and the priest would put his hand in his vestige and bring out one of the stones?
It's either yes or no.
It was kind of a cold relationship.
But be that as it may, that's where they were in the Old Testament.
Third, there was no internal cleansing from sin.
They were told about their sin.
Once a year, they came around.
They were cleansed.
But there was no relief like you and I have in the Holy Spirit.
Think about that.
I mean, how many know when you sin and you come to the Lord
and you just ask the Lord, Father, forgive me,
how the Lord just cleanses your heart and you feel so clean on the inside?
They could never have that to the degree that we do
because there was no Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit brooded over the face of the earth,
but he wasn't inside the individual people.
So, the last one before we get into it,
Stephen's epitaph is our warning.
He talks about rejecting.
He talks about what they didn't do.
And I want you to understand that these things are for our admonition,
like it says, they are examples to us.
So, let's take a look at one of the things that we will be working with today
is there are four questions that I will be asking you throughout this presentation.
And I want you to take it, think about it, and answer it in your own heart.
I won't ask for a show of hands.
All right.
So, the first theme that Stephen had was Israel's rejection of God.
Israel had repeatedly resisted God's chosen servants
and their messages thereby rejecting God.
So, I want to give you examples, all scripture-based here.
Joseph was rejected.
He was the son of Jacob.
And it says in Acts 7-9,
and our ancestors moved with envy and sold their brother Joseph into Egypt, into slavery.
Think about that.
God was going to use Joseph and yet they were going to want to,
first they wanted to kill him and get rid of him.
And then they sold him.
So, they didn't cooperate with God's plan.
And the theme for that is basically where the brothers rejected God
who wanted to save them through Joseph.
They thought, well, listen, he's conceited, he knows, he always tells us he's right,
and we don't want him, and we're going to get rid of him.
And so, consequently, they did.
But as you know, God brought an opportunity there for Joseph to save his whole family.
They rejected Moses in 7-27.
It says, who made the ruler and a judge over us?
Remember when he wanted to help his own people?
Well, unfortunately, they didn't want help.
They came to him and they said the following,
this Moses, whom they rejected.
He's not our leader.
And poor Moses, in all his life, he had, I think he had a complex, to be honest with you.
And all the rejection that has gone through our minds as we read the scriptures,
that man, he had to be drawn to God to get patience and mercy.
7-29 says this, but our ancestors refused to obey Moses.
They rejected him and wanted to go back to Egypt.
Imagine that, all that he's done, all that he interceded,
and pray for it at the mountain, and that all of a sudden thing go,
I don't want to do this anymore.
I'm going to go back to Egypt where the leaks are.
And then 7-41, it says, and they made a calf in those days
and offered sacrifices under the idol and rejoiced in the works of their own hands.
Imagine the visitation that God had through all the miraculous,
and they're saying, no, we don't want this.
We want to go back.
Okay, so we're setting the stage for these things.
And the theme for that is, again,
Israel repeatedly resisted God's deliverance and God's word.
So they rejected the prophets.
And this is a damning statement from Stephen.
He said in 7-52, is there one prophet that your ancestors didn't mistreat?
Not one, they rejected all of them.
And the failure is that they didn't recognize God's authority
in the spoken words of the prophets.
All right, to understand Israel's repeated resistance,
I always wondered, well, why did they resist?
Why were they so stiff-necked and rebellious?
So we must first look at the origins of these patterns in the generation's past.
Because you know what happens?
Generationally, we go along, and some of us are grandparents in here,
some of us are parents, and you see the traits of your children.
You see them being reproduced in their very lives as they go along.
And my son now, he's just 50 years old, and he called yesterday, and he said,
Dad, he said, for all the things that I didn't think were right,
and all the things that I thought you needed to do,
he said, I'm finding myself doing these very things.
So it is an omission that he understands what life is about.
So now let's take a look at the conflict
and the failures seen in Abraham's descendants going forward.
They reappeared in history.
Think about the—oh, excuse me.
The focus of Stephen's question then is this,
that Israel's treatment of the prophets was not an isolated situation,
but it was a total failure in long-standing
and a pattern of resisting God's purposes and God's representatives.
So now we have a pattern that is developing in these people.
So let's explore going back in time and find out what the issues are.
All right, we'll start off with Isaac.
And just remember this, if you can't see the writing,
think of the red lines, because all these red lines are red flags
when you look at the qualification of these people as servants to the Lord.
So Isaac, he was coward, he was deceitful, he had the fear of man.
Rebecca is my sister.
That's what his claim was, to protect him so they wouldn't kill him.
So consequently, he lied and both his father,
which Abraham also said of his wife, so there is some deceit there.
Esau was his favorite child.
He aided Esau's venison.
And he failed in his life's calling as a leadership of the home
to help his sons get through the quarreling,
the scheming, and the lying in their lives.
He just let it go.
So that doesn't paint a very good picture for us this morning.
No strong leadership.
So now Rebecca, his wife, well, here, now we have something.
The mother is always right and she does well.
Well, guess what?
The mother had twins and they struggled in her womb.
Jacob, the youngest son, was her favorite.
And she deceptively prepared a plan for Jacob
to steal Esau's blessing from the father.
She did this.
Isn't that something?
How many don't want that to say about your mom?
So consequently, she was devious in her actions
and she was cunning in thought.
But she was calculating the best for her son through deceit.
So consequently, we have a father and a mother
that work good qualifications for leadership,
to be honest with you.
So we have this.
Now let's go on to Esau, the older brother.
He was the oldest of the family.
And I had prepared some of this later on when,
or earlier when we were talking about the exodus
and in Genesis we touched on these things.
So I'm rehearsing.
For those of you that remember these things,
I cleaned it up a little bit
and I just want to show you a pattern that goes forth here.
He lived a wild life.
He was impulsive.
He despised his own birthright of little value
and only lived for the moment.
He sells his birthright to his brother for simple food.
And he hated his brother for doing it.
And he associated it with forbidden people.
He married Canaanite people.
He grieved his parents and he wanted to kill his brother.
So there again, you have all these traits
as history going forward.
Now we come to Jacob, which was later called what?
Israel as he fought with the angel of the Lord.
And he was the younger brother.
And you might think, well, he was special.
God saved him.
Well, guess what?
He struggled with Esau's heel in the womb of their mother.
He preferred a quieter life.
He takes advantage of Esau by bargaining for his birthright.
So he's devious also.
He's a con artist.
He schemes and he disguised himself as Esau
and he lied who he was to his father
in order to steal Esau's birthright.
Always self-centered, always motivated and calculating.
And these things are the attributes that we see
as far as history is concerned.
Just take a look at all those red lines.
You don't have to remember the words,
but they weren't very good.
So now this is how we're building a nation.
Israel's history then begins with a family
full of human weakness and dysfunction.
And you can say that.
Demonstrating that God's purpose is dependent
upon the faithfulness rather than the human perfection
that they had.
So these red line trials would become only a microcosm
of what Israel experienced in their own life.
They struggled.
And the same traits, again, that disrupted the family
would eventually be magnified in the life of Israel.
Why were they stiff-necked and rebellious?
Well, now you have an understanding
and a history of all that.
So now let's graphically bring this home.
Let's talk about the occurrences of obedience and disobedience.
And maybe when you take your picture, you want to wait.
I don't care that you do, but the graph probably
will be more explanatory as we go into this.
So just hold on a second.
Now you see at the bottom, you see the number from 0 to 24.
Those are occurrences that happened in a general sense.
We have frequent occurrences at the top.
We have moderate occurrences at the bottom.
So let's take a look at the wonderful attributes
that existed in Israel.
Some people were repented.
Some prayed.
Some worship.
Some had dependence.
Some were obedience.
And some were faithful.
Some had humility.
And you notice at the bottom, the graph
is an interpretive summary of the overall record
from Exodus to the exile.
So again, if you're counting numbers,
give me a little bit of latitude here
because when I did these things,
it was hard to put them all together
and piece them together.
But again, this is what you have.
So now there's a cut line across the top.
So they had these things.
And you'll notice that they professed
to be all these things.
And they averaged out maybe between a 6 and a 12 or a 15.
But now pile on top of that,
all these things that you have read about Israel,
complaining, disobedience, rebellion, unbelief,
idolatry, fear, stubbornness,
carnality, and hypocrisy.
Those are all the bad things.
It's like when we get our children together
and we talk about and we read in the riot act,
look, these are the things you've done.
And then they get, oh my gosh,
but these are the things you should do.
So this is the difference.
But the red lines are greater in number.
They go anywhere from around 15 all the way up to 24.
Complaining versus gratitude.
That says it all.
They could have been full of gratitude
for what God did for them.
How they brought, how He brought them out.
But they didn't.
They complained.
One of the most repeated sins in Israel was complaining.
The examples in Exodus, complaining about water,
in Numbers, complaining about food,
in Numbers 14, complaining about Moses and Aaron,
complaining about God's judgment.
They were complainers.
And what did God say?
He said, I'm tired of these people.
I want to kill them, kill them off.
And Moses said, no, wait.
So we have this dilemma.
And yet these were the children of God
that were supposed to represent His kingdom.
Another one, rebellion versus obedience.
You can see the contrast there.
Look, they were more rebellious than they were obedient
because of the number situation.
So we have this dilemma.
And what Stephen's message is in 7 is,
again, despite God's constant faithfulness,
Israel's dominant national pattern was one of what?
Complaint, disobedience, unbelief, and idolatry.
And that's not much to say for a nation.
And then we have the faithful remnant,
and we're going to come back to the faithful remnant
as we get through this.
Those were the people that ushered in and carried
what God wanted to do as far as the nation is concerned.
The pattern, then, is precisely what Stephen emphasizes.
He recounts, again, Israel's history.
First God visits, they resist.
God disciplines, Israel cries out.
God delivers, and now that's not the end of the story.
Eventually, they rebel again.
It's very cyclical in nature.
All right, these cycles continue throughout much
of the Old Testament until the coming of Jesus,
whom Stephen says they also rejected
completing the pattern of total resistance to God.
Now, this may be negative.
Well, John, what's the good part?
Well, we'll get to the good part, okay?
Just have to set the stage here.
All right, let's take it one step further.
Let's look at this.
The unfaithful majority versus the faithful remnant.
We talked about those things.
There's a separation.
And again, a practical estimate of many historians
is there's about two to two and a half million people
that fled and left Egypt.
And so they were in the wilderness,
and God provided for them.
You know the stories.
However, because of what we've been talking about,
there is a lot of statistics that, unfortunately,
about 80% to 95% of the people were unfaithful
in that whole grouping,
which was about two and a quarter million people
that were unfaithful.
That's a travesty.
Now, think about this.
Imagine in our congregation
that if 80% of us in this room were reluctant followers,
resisting and complaining about Chris
and the elders not doing what they should do.
They should do this, and they should do that.
So my question to you is,
and this goes back to the example of the Israelites,
what example might radiate from us?
What kind of impact would our church have in Lansdale?
Oh, sure, we're putting flyers out there for VBS,
but you know those people down there, they're crazy.
You know, they all talk about us.
Would people want to really join our fellowship?
I don't think so.
Looking at what God wants to do
from as far as the nation of Israel is concerned.
In Ezekiel, it says this.
Israel has rejected and rebelled my rules
more wickedly than the nations around her.
They were worse than the nations,
and yet they were supposed to be a testimony.
So this is the dilemma.
Now, the faithful few,
which represented anywhere minimum from 5 to 20%,
that was about a quarter of a million people.
These are the deposits of people that God worked through.
And you'd look at these names on here,
and I picked out prophets, and I picked out messengers,
and you can see that there's Abraham,
there's Jeremiah, there's Ezekiel,
there's David, there's Samuel.
The messengers were Joshua and Amos.
So these people were the preservation
of God's desire for nations to be built through,
and he's spoken to their heart.
So God preserved a faithful remnant
through whom he accomplished his redemptive plan.
Isaiah 10, 20 says,
the remnant of Israel will truly rely on the Lord.
A remnant will return.
In other words, he is working with these people.
In Zephaniah, it says,
I will leave you with the meek and the humble.
The remnant of Israel will trust in the name of the Lord.
So we have the composite of people
that he wants to deal with.
So now my question to you, number one,
are there areas where you secretly wish to return
to the comfort of your old ways?
Well, you know, this Christianity thing, it's tough.
And I tell you, it's not easy
when God deals with in your life.
We know that.
But is there areas that you'd rather go back to?
I just want you to remember these things
that before they physically had an idea
that they wanted to go back to Egypt
and the old life, it was in their hearts already.
It started there.
Well, you know, what about this?
And what about that?
And the difference of opinion that we may have
and the disgruntledment.
I want you to remember that.
Please obey God's word, even when it's difficult.
When God speaks to you and he speaks a ramah to you,
it's sometimes not where we say,
okay, we'll take this and we'll run with it.
Oh my gosh, Lord, you want me to really do this?
You know, when I moved from my castle
and my hobbies to Meadowood
and I prayed, so Lord, what is the next opportunity here?
All I saw was in bits and forms,
400 people that didn't know the Lord.
That is a ministry in and of itself,
because I'll be honest with you.
Some of you young people would be invited there,
but for them to listen to you about the Lord,
it's probably more difficult than it is for me
because they look at my life and say,
okay, you're old and craggy anyway.
Not really, but okay, so what's different about you?
And then you can give testimony.
And that's many opportunities there.
So Israel rejected Moses
because they didn't like where obedience was leading them.
I don't want to do that.
But yet, it was wonderful in the obedience that they had
that they listened to God and the remnant went forward
and preserved what God wanted to do.
Guard your heart from unbelief.
Do not make idols of your own desires.
Listen to this.
They rejoiced in the works of their own hands
when they made that camp.
They weren't disappointed.
They said, man, look at this.
We made this.
And they gave the Lord the mighty God that they saw
do all these miracles for a golden calf.
And we won't, again, elaborate on it
because you know the story.
In Philippians 3.13,
forgetting those things which are behind
and again reaching for those things which are before,
our objective is looking ahead.
Not in life, gee, I wish I did this
and I wish I wouldn't have done that.
Now, Stephen's second theme was resisting what God wanted
in the fact that they lusted after visible Gods
because they couldn't see God,
but they wanted to see God.
So they made idols.
So the Israelites continually struggled
with a divided heart.
Tell me about how to work in life
and how to divide it hard at some point in time.
Yeah, I mean, you know, it's tough.
Should I do this or should I do that?
You're back and forth and maybe you know.
So they had a divided heart.
They exchanged worship of the creator
for the false promises of man-made Gods
and they sought security.
They sought guidance and satisfaction from these.
I mean, looking back on how could you have that?
It's something made of wood, something made of stone.
So now here are excerpts right from the chapter.
In 719, Stephen says this,
they rejected Moses.
We said that our ancestors refused to obey.
Again, they rejected him and wanted to go back to Egypt.
Now, let's make Gods.
That's what they said.
By making idols, they offered sacrifices
and burnt offerings and prayed for guidance to the idols
when they had the blessing of the Lord right in the camp.
The golden calf hands out another treatise in 741.
And they made a calf in those days
and rejected the works of their hands.
742, worshiped the sun, the moon, and the stars.
God turned away and gave them up to worship the host of heaven.
Now he gets disgusted with him.
Moloch was something they dealt with.
You carried the tent where the God of Moloch was worshiped.
Remember, all these things were done
during the visitation of God going through the wilderness.
And yet they had two divided lives.
743, they took along the star of your God, Radom.
Seeking guidance and security through false spiritual power is idolatry.
Understand that.
Idolatry simply means this,
that you're not merely bowing down to something.
And oh, by the way, we love the Lord.
You are giving yourself to someone or trusting
or giving devotion or worshiping or being obedient
and have affection that you shouldn't have
because God wants you to worship him, not these created beings.
Now think about this.
Here are these things.
All these occurrences happen during their travel.
They made a calf.
They rejoiced in their works.
They carried the tent with the God of Moloch,
and they took along the star of your God, Radom.
So how was it possible for Israel to carry the tabernacle
while also carrying these idols during God's visitation?
Let's make this graphic.
Think about this.
That little print down there, you probably can't read.
That's for me.
All right.
Here we have a congregation.
Some of you are saying your rosaries.
Some of you are reading the Qur'an.
Some of you are chanting Buddha chants,
and yet we ask for the presence of God.
An undivided congregation will not go anywhere.
A congregation that gives themselves
to what we're talking about here is a congregation
that can conquer evil and be a testimony to Lansdale.
We can make this very practical in the sense
that this is what it came down to.
Can you imagine being part of the people
carrying the Ark of the Covenant,
and here they were also carrying the tent of Moloch?
I mean, that's having like insurance in your pocket.
It really was an insurance, obviously,
but that's what they did.
So we have that connection.
That is idolatry.
So what was Israel's greatest problem?
A reoccurring tendency to resist God's leadership.
That's very, very critical.
When you come to be part of a fellowship,
in essence, what you're saying,
you're laying down your life to God,
but you're also giving yourself
to the leadership of the church,
because these are the shepherds
and undershepherds for you.
Well, I think this, no?
You give yourself to the shepherds
and the undershepherds.
That's the protection and hedge
that you have and the protection
for all that comes along in life
as you need counsel, as you need prayer,
you give yourself and God honors that.
There's always an understanding
of authority in the church,
wherever you look.
The mistrust, having doubt
or little confidence in his promises,
they substituted other things
for wholehearted devotion to him.
Does this sound familiar?
Wholehearted devotion, okay.
Where you are in your heart.
Again, I'm not going to ask
for written statements, so don't worry.
Yet, through their, throughout history,
God's faithfulness provided greater
than their failures,
proved greater than their failures,
providing both a warning against unbelief
and encouragement to trust him completely.
Now, divided hearts, what's that mean?
I think you all know what that is.
The Israel was outwardly part of the covenant.
They expressed all the things
that we've been talking about,
but they lacked the devotion
in their own hearts.
So what does that look like?
They repeated the sins of their forefathers.
We talked about that.
A reoccurring theme in Scripture
is that each generation often repeats failures
of the previous one,
and they, again, possessed an uncircumcised heart
because they were carnal.
What does that mean?
An uncircumcised heart
is a fleshly heart without God
that is hardened, unresponsive,
and distant from God.
Israel's hearts were closed
to God's influence and guidance.
Now, look at all these Scriptures.
When it said that they were stiff-necked
and rebellious,
the stiff-necked during Exodus
all the way to Acts
was nine times he said that in the Bible,
and they were proud.
That was five times.
So you could see what we're dealing with
as far as the nation is concerned.
So my second question to you is,
are you outwardly part of God's kingdom
but still dragging one foot
in the world outside this door?
Yes, it's wonderful to come in here
and shake hands
and praise and worship,
but what do you do
when you go outside their door?
When we're not around
when your brothers and sisters aren't around,
and only you can answer that.
All right, 44 through 50.
See, we're getting down.
That's not too bad.
We're coming right down
to the last of 50 verses.
The presence of God
is greater than anyone given place.
Think about this,
the presence of God
that we felt here this morning,
and if you didn't feel that,
I don't know where you were
during worship,
but that happens all over the world.
He comes and visits
as people worship
but as praise him,
the word goes forth
and people rejoice
and the same experience
that you could have
going from here to Idaho
and finding a church
that loves the Lord
walk in and you feel at home.
How many have ever traveled
and visited churches
and all of a sudden you felt home?
Yeah, I mean,
I could live here.
That's great.
That's the way it should be.
Seeking the presence of God
is the most important thing,
but the Levites
and the priests didn't believe that.
They thought it was
the structural edifice,
and if you go from the tabernacle
to the temple
and all the vivid rituals
that they have gone through
and the laws that they made,
they encumbered people
with these terrible laws
and they thought
it was glory to God.
And that's a cue
for the musicians, okay?
The temple was a blessing from God.
It was a center of worship.
It was a symbol of God's covenant.
It was a place of sacrifice and prayer,
but it was never intended
to be an idol.
So you can have idols of pagan origin.
You can have idols
of what you think
are the liturgical accepted rituals
that you go through.
I live with this.
I live in a retirement home
that they have a ecumenical service,
and every once in a while I'm asked,
and I tell you what,
with the ritual that they go through,
and I'm not impugning anybody,
but it's the fact that
it's the danyaflaxing
and the candles,
and not that there's anything wrong
with that, but oh God,
you know, there's more to these things
than just the outward form of doing.
It's God visiting you.
It's God in your heart.
And this is what
the liturgical ministry was.
It was a thought of all the things
that we should do,
and all the hats that we wear,
and the authority that we have.
Stephen's central argument then
is this, Acts 4,
Acts 7, 48.
However, the Most High does not dwell
in temples made with hands.
He doesn't.
The Jewish leaders had elevated
the temple as the place of worship.
And that's what they thought.
We don't need a special location.
We go down the street
driving in our car.
We ask the Lord.
We feel His presence.
There we are.
Heaven is my throne,
and the earth is my footstool,
it says.
And then realize this,
that God's the center of everything.
Has my hand not made these things?
It's disappointing to think
that all that transpired,
He wanted to get rid of the nation, Israel.
He wanted to start afresh,
and obviously we know
that He did that
through the coming of Jesus
as Lord and Savior.
So the third question
that I ask of you is this.
What competes with God
for first place in your heart?
Are you, in Israelite,
that's following afar?
Participating in the dance,
the ritual,
all these things,
giving sacrifices,
and inside the heart
by some degree is dark.
There's many rooms in your heart.
Lord, take my life.
If you have five rooms,
are all five rooms
given to the Lord?
Or is there still
some secrets in there?
Something that you still,
again, have
that you don't want to give up.
Jesus is our authority, folks.
I got to understand
that you understand that too.
He's the authority,
both in good times and bad.
When He asked you to do things
that you want to do,
you are released
and it's a blessing.
And there are things
that He wants you to do
that you don't like necessarily.
But yet,
He asked you to do these things.
Are we not simply
a servant of God?
Are we not simply
a doorkeeper in the house?
And as God uses you
and brings you
to some level of maturity and use,
you can thank God
for what He does through you.
Not for your own good,
not for your own aggrandizement
for His glory.
So we want to submit
to His authority.
Israel, again,
I think you get the message.
Rejected Moses
and we must not reject Jesus.
The Israelites exchange God
for a golden calf.
What a trade.
What a poor trade.
And they carried Moloch's tent with them
when they went through the desert.
Again, opposite of Israel's rebellion
then is a heart
that continually trusts Christ,
obeys Him,
rejects the idols,
whatever they may be,
and follows the Holy Spirit
wherever He leads you.
Wherever.
Hebrews 3.15 says,
today if you hear His voice,
do not harden your hearts.
And the last question
that I ask you
this morning is this.
Do you trust Christ enough
to surrender your life
if you have not?
Put the fears
and the future behind you
and give your life
totally to God.
I can tell you as a matter of fact
I live both sides of a life.
And there's only one place to be
and that's in the presence of the Lord.
Alright, let's pray.
If you would like to declare Jesus Christ
as your Savior, your Lord,
and your King,
pray this prayer with me.
Father,
I come to you with humility
and gratitude.
Acknowledging that you alone are God.
You are my Creator,
my Redeemer,
and the rightful Lord of my life.
I confess that too often
I have followed my own desires
instead of your will.
Forgive me for every act of pride,
self-reliance,
and disobedience.
And today, Lord,
I surrender myself completely to you.
Lord Jesus,
you gave yourself for me on the cross
and you alone are worthy to reign in my life.
I yield my heart to you right now.
My mind now.
My will right now.
My plans now.
My relationships right now.
And my possessions even now.
My time.
And the future is in your hands, Lord.
We thank you for that.
Take away everything in me
that dishonors you, Lord.
And if you've given your life
to God before today,
there may be things that are
in the compartments of your life
and the inward struggles that you have
that you haven't given up.
But search my heart and
reveal any hidden sin, Lord.
Any idol.
Any fear.
Or any ambition that competes
with your rightful place
as Lord in my life.
Create in me a clean heart
and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
In Jesus' name, amen.
Thanks for joining us at Lansdale Life Church
as we praise God and discuss His Word.
Don't forget to join us
for Worship Lives Sunday mornings
at 10 a.m. Eastern on YouTube.
Be blessed and have a great day!