-Transcript-
00:36 Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to the program.
00:40 Good to be here today. Glad to have you here with me. Today we are discussing the lost and the saved.
00:46 Who are you serving today? You know, everyone falls into two categories on this earth, lost or saved, and that’s hard to comprehend in a world where everything is so complex. Read about the solar system and there’s endless galaxies out there, it seems like, and stars and planets. Get into the user manual of machines.
01:10 You know, how about a car these days? Not that a car comes with a user manual. I guess it comes with a little guide in the glove box there. But if you look at a car these days, the complexity, the mechanisms, have you ever thought about that? The way you were able to open a door or press a button and this back tailgate lifts up and, you know, everything under the sun.
01:33 The seat heats up and all of these accoutrements, all these things in a car, all of them have complexities and little motors and a lot of them have microchips, as we found out with a shortage, that a lot of these components have microchips. And it’s incredible, even someone that loves technology and works in that field, I’m blown away by the complexity. And here God says, you know, yes, there’s a lot of complexity on earth.
02:00 And here’s a simple choice. Either you’re saved or you’re lost. Either you’re serving the world and the little G-God of this world or you’re serving me.
02:08 And it’s such a simple choice. And I love to make that contrast. And I know I could do it better, but hopefully I kind of got your mind thinking in that direction.
02:14 That as a world becomes more and more complex, and boy is it complex, at the same time God’s plan has not changed and God has made it so simple. Romans 6:6- 7, the Apostle Paul writes, knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. For he that is dead is freed from sin.
02:42 See, how can we be dead but be alive? Well, what Paul’s writing about here, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is the idea that the old man, when we’re saved, the old man, okay, that is the old Adam, that’s the first Adam, Amen, that is the sinful man, that is the one that we were born in the flesh to be, that man is crucified with who? It says with him. Who’s him? That’s Christ, our Savior, Amen. See, we are dead now to sin when we are saved.
03:16 It says the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. For he that is dead is freed from sin. So we are, when we’re saved, we are giving our lives to Christ and the old man is passed away.
03:29 Behold, all things become new. To paraphrase Paul again, the idea is that we become new creatures in Christ and we are no longer to live like we used to live. If you believe that you’ve been saved or you know someone that says they’ve been saved and they were living exactly as they lived before they were saved, or if you don’t know how they were living, they’re living completely carnally or in the world, you can’t tell the difference between them and the world, you really need to check your salvation.
03:56 And I’m not trying to preach out of your salvation, I’m trying to make sure you’re secure in your salvation, Amen, because there’s a way to know that we’re saved. And one way to know that we’re saved is to know that we have the Holy Spirit living within us and that we’re no longer part of the world, Amen. There’s a movement in the church, and I won’t go on and on, I think you know about it a little bit, of baptizing people in parking lots and counting those baptisms as salvations.
04:18 Now they may in fact be saved. In fact, I went to a big church many years ago and that’s where I was saved, that’s where I gave my life to the Lord and the Lord had been convicting me for a long time, Amen, and I believe that’s where I’m saved, only God knows, but I believe that’s where I got saved. So I’m not going to criticize the big church for having large baptisms, and if they are saved, glory to God for that.
04:40 But it’s not the baptism that saves you, amen, it’s something in your heart, it’s that desire, it’s that trust in Christ that saves you, it’s that coming to that knowledge of repentance, realizing that you’re a sinner in need of a Savior that saves you. And so we have to look at what are we doing with our salvation. If we’ve truly been saved, how are we living? You know, we have a choice to make.
05:04 Joshua 24:15, and if it seemed evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your father served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land ye dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. All right, this is a famous scripture here, very familiar in our little church building.
05:28 We have a little painting on the wall of this latter part of the scripture, but for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. That’s up there, I love that. What’s going on here? What is this about?
05:41 This is Joshua 24, and this is, if you understand the Exodus story, Moses has led the children of Israel out of captivity, so they were slaves, right? And that is a picture of us being in sin, and Moses, by the working of God, splits the Red Sea, Amen.
05:59 God does it through Moses, I should say, and they get across on dry land, the children of Israel, and then the sea folds over, it takes out Egypt, Pharaoh, the armies, that great power,
06:09 God wipes them out, and everyone celebrates God, and everything is going great on the other side of the Red Sea, until people start sinning, and start living in sin, and start murmuring, and start doubting God,
06:23 and start questioning God, and start complaining about just only having manna to eat, and basically people were way too stuck up, they’re way too in the world, they were missing Egypt, they’re missing the worldly ways,
06:38 and God got very sick of it, and so he said that first generation won’t ever see the Canaan land, the Promised Land, and so they all had to die out, and in fact Moses also, too, was not able to go into the Promised Land,
06:51 and so Joshua’s appointed and anointed to lead the Israelites in, and he’s letting them know, look, who are you gonna serve?
06:58 Are you gonna serve the Lord or not? You know, on the other side of the flood, I believe that’s mentioning Noah, the time of Noah, when people were serving pagan gods, and living for themselves,
07:10 and if you look at timelines and chronologies of that time, of the saints of God of that time, you can see that it’s not that far back from Adam and Eve, because remember, they lived a really long time.
07:22 I encourage you to look at the ages of those Old Testament individuals mentioned in the first few books of the Bible. Look at their ages.
07:29 As a matter of fact, just look in Genesis, and you look at how long Adam lived, and how long Seth lived, and how long Methuselah lived, and you can trace back and say, wow, you know, Noah’s dad or Noah’s granddaddy knew, probably knew, Seth, or whatever it was,
07:45 and you really can connect the Old Testament individuals all the way back to Adam and Eve pretty easily, and so they had knowledge of the Lord, they had knowledge of creation, and they had gone astray to the point where there was nobody righteous in the whole land beyond Noah,
08:02 so God saves Noah and his family, and everybody else is wiped out, and so Joshua’s saying, look, are you gonna be like those people who obviously were very foolish, or are you gonna serve the gods of the Amorites,
08:12 who they were serving pagan gods, worshipping false gods, or are they going to serve the Lord, capital L, Lord, amen, and that is the question we have to ask ourselves today, because as we look at that context, we can see in our own lives that we’ve seen those that have been saved, or those that are in church,
08:32 you’ve seen God move, no doubt, you’ve seen, you’ve heard wonderful testimonies, but we have free will, do we not? We have the ability to turn away from God if we so choose.
08:43 We have the ability to rationalize and justify and say, oh, well, the whole crowd is gonna go this way, so we should go this way. Oh, if it was so bad, it would be illegal. You hear that sometimes.
08:54 The things that are legal in this country could absolutely kill you. It’s legal to smoke cigarettes all day, and if you did that, you’d be very sick. It’s legal to go gamble in a lot of places now, and if you did that, you’d be very poor.
09:08 So what am I getting at? The whole point is that we shouldn’t just do things because we can. We should live as God wants us to live, and the further we are away from the natural man, right, the man that was supposedly dead in sin when they were saved and born again, right?
09:28 Now, I say supposedly because you are dead to sin, you’re no longer under the bondage of sin, but many people still want to put themselves under that bondage, or put themselves under some kind of moral code or moral law, or some kind of group thing where people act a certain way,
09:44 they want to act like the group acts. You have to understand that we have a will, and what does Joshua do in Joshua 24:15 to help us understand this? He goes and says, I’m just gonna read the scripture again and point one thing out.
10:01 If it seemed evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land ye dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. Well, Joshua is talking about one group there that the fathers, okay, that’d be like the ancestors, served before the flood.
10:25 Well, how did things work out for them? Not very good, amen. And then he’s talking about another group, the Amorites, whose land they dwelled. Well, they were dwelling in the land because they had wiped out the Amorites, because God wiped them out.
10:37 And when you study why God wiped out the Canaanites, for example, they were a pagan people that God had been patient with for many, many years. And that cup of iniquity slowly filled up, that cup of sin slowly filled up, and God was patient and patient and patient. And surely he had sent people, prophets, their way to let them know to stop living like that.
10:57 And they ignored Him. They laughed at Him like at Sodom. When the angel came and told Lot, and Lot said, they said, look, the angel said, we’re gonna burn this place down.
11:06 God’s gonna destroy this place. Lot goes and tells his sons-in-laws, and they laugh at him. They think he’s joking.
11:12 And what happened to Sodom? That could be another one included in here. Amen. What we see is that Joshua’s mentioning the concept of consequences.
11:20 Consequences. So we all have a choice to make. And Joshua was appealing to the rationale of those people, of the Israelites, of God’s chosen people, saying, think of the consequences.
11:33 Look what happened to those people after the flood. And when we think in that logical, simple, but profound way, we’re able to understand that, hey, I don’t want to get wiped out by God. I don’t want to get beat up by God.
11:46 I can give personal examples of fearing God and understanding his wrath driving me to better behavior. Say amen. I’m not afraid to say that.
11:57 Any preacher, I think, if they’re honest, would say that. That they have to rein themselves in because they fear the Lord. What does the Bible say? The fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom.
12:07 Amen. This is how we become wise. This is how we understand how God wants us to live.
12:11 And Joshua’s making a very clear and simple plea. He’s saying, choose this day, right, not tomorrow, not next week, not next year, this day whom you will serve. You need to decide today, are you serving God? And if you choose to serve God and have your house serve God, take that vow very seriously.
12:31 Look at your life. And dad’s out there. Look at your household.
12:37 Is your household under control? You know, you got kids? Are they reined in? Is your household in line and in order? God is not mocked, Amen. He would not do this if it were not serious. He would not put this scripture in here.
12:52 He would not have me preaching on this today, I don’t believe, which I prayed over this message as I do all messages, that he wants people to make a choice. And if they’re gonna serve the Lord, they should say, say it and mean it and do it in sincerity and forsake the ways of the world. Don’t say, me and my house, we’re gonna serve the Lord, but we’re gonna go off to this wicked establishment and we’re gonna go gossip about so-and-so and we’re gonna go be involved in this carnal thing and that carnal thing.
13:15 That’s not serving God, Amen. And again, God is not mocked. We must make this choice very seriously and very soberly.
13:23 And Joshua appeals to our logic saying, look at the consequences of these other groups that went after false gods. And there’s times even when the prophets of the Lord or God himself will speak in the Old Testament and say, let your God save you. Those false gods, let them save you.
13:39 Let them, those ones that you worshiped, let them go ahead and bail you out. And of course they can’t, Amen. And the lesson here is, our God is all-powerful and has the power to take care of us and to provide for us and to bless us and most importantly to save us.
13:57 And so we need to prioritize serving God and making that choice today that for us and our households, we’ll serve the Lord. And that choice comes with consequences that are a blessing and it comes with responsibilities that we should take serious. I thank you for listening.
14:12 Take care. God bless and Amen.