Transcript for:
Romans 15:1,7 -The Strong Believer- Pastor Rick Beaudry 2023-11-19

And we have a really fun Bible study today, and I'm very excited. I've been excited all week. I believe that there's some aspects of this Bible study that can really, really help us to be able to cope in the days and weeks and months ahead. It's so incredibly simple, and yet so many people, those who think they're wiser than the gospel, smarter than the Word of God, they come up with insufficient solutions to the problem of being a human being, the problem of sin. And the churches presently are hiring enormous amounts of so-called counselors. Churches more and more are becoming therapeutic in that you need to go talk to a counselor. Why? Because you can't cope, because things are tightening now. The prosperity is almost over. You're sensing it's almost over, and now your faith in Jesus is being tested, and you're reeling. You're bopping back and forth, and you need some answers. You need some help. And rather than teaching the Word of God and pointing you to Jesus and allowing the Holy Spirit to comfort you and to strengthen you, they want to put a band-aid on it as you talk about your unique problem that nobody else in the entire universe has ever experienced, and you need someone to talk to and hold your hand. And so I'm not that guy. But I will point you to Jesus, and Jesus is a great physician. And man, He can cause your roots of faith to grow deep in Him in a time of crisis like you've never seen before, you know? And that's the gist of where we're going this morning. All right, Romans 15, 1 through 7. Would you open your Bibles and please stand with me? I'm going to make a lot of enemies today if I haven't already. All right. We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak and not to please ourselves. Let every one of us please his neighbor for his good to edification. For even Christ pleased not himself, but as it is written, there were reproaches of them that reproached thee fell on me. For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope. Now the God of patience and consolation grant you to be like-minded one toward another, according to Christ Jesus, that ye may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Wherefore, receive ye one another as Christ also received us to the glory of God. Father, thank you for your holy word. We're excited, Lord, to be gathered together to be living in such a time as this. Lord, we thank you that you have not called us to walk in darkness, not the blind leading the blind falling into the ditch. But Lord, you promise us that you loom in our heart and mind, that you'll be our teacher, that you've sent the comfort of the Holy Spirit to open the scriptures to our understanding. And Lord, we want to know. Lord, we want to know you better. We want to enter in to a greater, deeper relationship with you than we've ever known you. And Lord, we ask again this morning that you'd nourish us, that you'd feed us, that you'd comfort us, that you'd give us your peace that surpasses all understanding in the midst of the world, the chaos of this world. We know that you're not the author of confusion, that the wicked one is, that he's using great, great deception to cause people to be bewildered. And Lord, we want to be equipped. We want you to equip us today that we can rescue those who are fainting, those who are having difficulty coping, difficulty living the Christian life, just living life in general. Lord, bring people to Christ. Bring people to Jesus. All throughout history, people have gone through far worse than we're facing by relying upon you. And Lord, we want to enter in to that secret place. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Would you please be seated? Jesus said in Matthew 5, blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth. Meekness is not weakness, but strength under control. We like to look at the MMA fighters and the boxers and everybody who's the strongest. We want to glorify who's ever the strongest, the richest, the best, the prettiest, whatever it might be. But meekness, meek is not weakness, but strength under control. And so it's illustrated with a very powerful horse, very powerful horse that up until the time of meeting its master would just be rogue, would just be totally rebellious and living unto itself and going crazy. And then somehow, someway this master grabs hold of this horse and is able to train this horse and bring this horse to the place of breaking. Breaking what? Breaking its bones? No, not breaking its bones, breaking its will, bringing its will into conformity with the master's will. So too for you and I as Christians, the Lord will use things in our life to bring us to the place where we willingly surrender our will unto Jesus Christ. We still remain strong. We still have the strength, just as much strength as any other guy out there. But we hold back. We don't use it in the flesh. We allow a greater power to be operative in our lives, the power of the Holy Spirit. So we're able to refrain from evil. We're able to refrain from saying things of insults and such. We're able to love like Jesus loved. Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. That's meekness, strength under control. At any moment, Jesus could call fire down from heaven. And when these people are spitting on him, pulling his beard out and saying, you that saved others, save yourself, come down from that cross. He could, but he didn't, did he? He didn't do that. And so meekness is not weakness, but strength under control, being controlled by the Holy Spirit and our walk and relationship with others, many times may be misconstrued as weakness. Just as when Jesus was being crucified, it might appear as the epitome of helplessness, but in point of fact, it's the complete opposite. In John 10, Jesus said, I lay down my life that I might take it again. No man takes it from me. I lay it down on myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. And when he's standing there before Pontius Pilate, Pilate's asking him, from whence art thou? And he answered him, not a word, in John 19. And Jesus, Pilate says, don't you know that I have power to crucify you and I have power to release you? Then Jesus speaks up. You have no power except that which is given you from above, right? It's a delegated authority for such an hour as this, at this point in time, and that's the only power that you have. And he that delivered me has the greater sin. And so Pilate was really nervous. His wife had had a dream and all. He wanted to find a way to let Jesus loose, let him go. But it was so politically charged, as the Jews said, we have no king but Caesar and all. So Pilate's put in a place of being labeled treasonous and being a traitor. And so the Jews are going to persecute Jesus and kill him because of blasphemy of the Spirit, because he's claiming himself to be God. And the official charge of the Romans is treason. He claims to be a king and all. And yet we see it was all planned, all ahead of time. No man takes my life from me. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. He said, destroy this temple in John 2. Destroy this temple, and in three days I'll raise it up. And when he was crucified, his enemies, the religious leaders, remembered that. And they said, put a guard around the tomb. Put something around the tomb, lest his disciples come and steal the body, and this becomes worse than it already is. And so a criterion of soldiers, the Roman soldiers, with the seal of Rome upon that 2,000 pound stone. And Jesus, you know, there in Joseph of Arimathea's tomb, just using it for the weekend and such. And the soldiers, when the angels appear, the soldiers are like dead men quaking on the ground, just shaking in their boots. And the stone is thrown uphill, a 2,000 pound stone, not to let Jesus out, but to let the world in, to let people see that he's not here. He's risen, as the angels said. And so we see the blessedness in that Jesus had a plan, he had a purpose in laying his life down. So the strong believer is what we want to look at this morning. Three things. The strong believer is number one, selfless. Notice verse one. We then that are strong, are you strong? Are you a strong believer? Are you a weak believer? Some are strong and they can eat anything. Others are weak and they can only eat a few things. You know, some are strong in their faith and others might be stumbled and all, might be just starting out in the faith and they've got a lot of baggage, a lot of things going on. So you that are strong, you need to bear the infirmities of the weak. You can be meek. You don't need to exercise your power in that case. You can be weaker. You ought to bear the infirmities of the weak and not to please ourselves. So the strong believer is selfless. So we've all seen the toddler that grabs the toy and says, mine, this is mine. And we laugh and we think, oh, that's kind of cute and all. And another, another kid in the daycare is wanting it. And pretty soon a scuffle breaks out, they're fighting and all. And then we, we see, you know, our kids, as they get a little bit older, they're, we want them to be aggressive. We want them to be assertive. We don't want them to be a doormat to the other kids in the neighborhood and people and all. So we're teaching them to, you know, just not lay down for other people that are trying to, you know, manipulate them, if you will. And then we have mature adults. Maybe our kids, as they're in college, as they're progressing in their career and all. And rather than saying you're acting like a two-year-old in your, in your selfishness, you know, and all, only think of yourself, your narcissistic, you know, tendencies and all. The world would say, no, that's great leadership. That's taking control. He's now, she's now in control. The strong forcing their own will upon the weak, i.e. the globalists, right? Forcing their will upon, upon everybody else. So the strong being served by the weak is their, is their modus operandi. That's what Jesus said. The Gentiles, the powers that be, they, they posture themselves to rule over, to master over you and cause you to be a servant unto them. But Jesus said, in my kingdom, you know, the greatest among you be the servant of all. So the inverted greatness of a child of God of laying their life down. Meekness is not weakness, but strength under control. We choose to serve. So the strong forcing upon the weak, manipulating, exploitation of the weak, being served by the weak. And so this is nothing but selfishness. It's not the way that Jesus did. In Matthew 20, 25, he says, you know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them and they that are great exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be so among you, but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister, your servant. And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant. Even as the son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give his life a ransom for many. So Jesus sets the example. In John 13, when they're coming to partake of the Passover, they come into the room and all, and they come to this place that they're going to use. And none of the disciples wanted to do the work of the lowliest of the servants, that of washing the feet. So you'd enter a home and your sandals have been out in the dirt and the feet are dirty and you're going to sit down on the ground and you're going to kind of lounge as you eat, you know, as how they eat. They don't have the big tables and and chairs and stuff like we do and all. And so leave your leave your shoes at the door and then the servant would take a basin of water and wash your feet and then dry, dry, you know, your toes and your feet and all and you'd be nice and clean and all. Well, the disciples were so obsessed with who's going to be the greatest, who's going to sit on the left hand, the right hand and all, none of them would, you know, humble themselves to do that duty. So Jesus went and did that duty. He did the priestly duty and he went over and began to wash their feet and the whole thing. And afterwards Peter says, you're not going to wash my feet? And the Lord Jesus says, if you don't, if you don't, you know, if you don't let me wash your feet, you have no part with me. And Peter says, not just my feet, but my whole body. No, he that has bathed, you've already been bathed, you've been washed in the blood of the Lamb. We only need to wash your feet, Peter. You just need a washing, if you will, and a representative or illustrative of defilement as we go through this life, as we go through this world. You and I have been washed, we've been washed in the blood of the Lamb, we have positional justification of righteousness, but we sin. If we say we have no sin, we're a liar and the truth isn't in us. And so as a means of fellowship, if we confess our sin, he's faithful and just to forgive us of our sin and to cleanse us of all unrighteousness. The blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, continually cleanses us of all unrighteousness. So all the defilement, a work of sanctification, of continually changing us, transforming us into the image of Christ as we yield to the Holy Spirit. And as God washes away the filth of this world, the filth that's trying to grow in our minds from the filth of the times that we're out there in the media and in public and all the curse words and the ideas and the pictures and all the different means of coming through the eye gate and the ear gate and all, we take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. And we as husbands, we wash our wives with the washing of God's Word as we listen to Bible studies, as we attend church, as we read the Word of God. And the Word of God washes away the defilement. And so it's a means of servanthood. You're going to serve your wife. You're going to serve those around you by ministering God's Word unto them. So a selfless attitude. So choosing, it says, to bear the infirmities of the weak. That word bear in our text means the same word used of Jesus bearing his cross. In Galatians 6-2, you that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak. And so we carry the infirmities, we carry the load. Hey, you can't carry it, you know, I'll help you carry that. So the strong live sacrificially in love, laying down their lives for others. Husbands, love your wives like Christ loved the church and laid down, you know, his life for the bride, for his church. It's not a position of weakness, it's a position of strength. And so wives, submit to your husbands. She's able to submit as you love her the way she's supposed to be loved. As you lay your life down in submission to Jesus, she finds it easy to be in submission to you because you're in submission to Jesus. And so he says, other-centered, wanting to please others to please God. So not the old psychological term from many years ago, that of codependency, meaning seeking approval from other people. You don't want to be in that mode. But instead, you're serving others to be pleasing unto God. It's whatsoever you do, do it heartily as unto the Lord, not unto man. And so we serve others, but we do it in actuality, we're serving the Lord Jesus. And we're serving them the way that he would want us to serve them. And if they appreciate it or don't appreciate it, it doesn't mean anything, because our work is as unto him. People come and go, people appreciate us one day, past their appreciation month, and then the next month, mom appreciation month, daddy appreciation month, you know. It's like we're appreciated at certain times, certain times we're not. But we continue to do what God's called us to do, being a mom, being a dad, being a pastor, as unto the Lord. No matter what, if they love us, like us, reject us, we just keep being mom, we keep being dad, we keep being grandma and grandpa. Their immaturity doesn't stop us from doing what we're supposed to do. Pastor Chuck had a saying that's kept me going. He said, minister to those you minister to, minister to those you minister to. So people here I love, you guys hate me today for some reason, you leave. Now I could spend all my time worried about you that have left, and I'd miss out on ministering to those that are here. So what I choose to do is I choose to respect your decision, you're free to hate me, not like me, whatever, go somewhere else. I respect that, I'm not going to hound you, follow you, or bother you, because I'm going to focus on those that have shown up. I'm going to minister to those I minister to. If I cease to minister to you, then why are you here? Find a place where you can be ministered thereunto. If you're not receiving the Word of God by the power of the Holy Spirit and causing you to grow and your family to grow, then you need to find a place where you can receive the Word of God and grow. That's the most essential aspect of being a Christian, is that you be fed the Word of God. Without the feeding of the Word of God, you're not going to grow. And so I recognize that in the last days, there'll be many people that come along and trying to coerce me, manipulate me, and get me to be a teacher, because they have itchy ears, and they're going to want me to teach what they want to hear, and they're not going to want to hear about hell, or repentance, or dying to self, selflessness, these kind of themes. They don't want to hear that. They want to hear about, how can I be great? How can I be affluent? How can I have my best life now? How can I make the problems all go away, Pastor? And I'll say, well, you know, maybe God's ordained for those problems to be there for now. Maybe God's brought this affliction as a part of His will for your life. Well, that's not what I want to hear, you know. Well, Jesus promised you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I've overcome the world, right? Tribulation is pressure. Are you under pressure? Yeah, I'm under a lot of pressure. There's a lot of pressure on me. Well, that's a promise. Put it in your promise jar. It's there. You can expect it. It's not an anomaly. It's not a strange thing. Think it not strange when you find yourself in a fiery trial, right? You're normal. You're a normal Christian. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers them out of them all. There's nothing wrong with you, you see. I set you free. I set you free because the false teaching puts you in a spot where there's something wrong in the formula. It's working for those guys, but it's not working for me. I'm trying to live a righteous life. I'm trying to live according to God's Word, but all these problems are starting to happen. What happened, you know? Is there sin in the camp? There's something going on? No, we're doing the best we can, Pastor. I know you are. I know it. Kathy and I watched this movie the other night called The Hill, and it's about a kid that's crippled as a little boy, and his dad's a pastor. They're in Texas, and it's a cute movie, but it made me laugh. It made me cry. It's just kind of eye-opening. This poor family, this guy was preaching. This guy was preaching, man, and there's a woman in the church, a small little tiny church. There's this woman spitting into a can. She's chewing tobacco, remember? And I told you, you're not supposed to smoke, chew, or run with girls that do, and she was chewing and spitting right there, okay? Then there's this other guy smoking in church. Just see everybody butts everywhere, and the pastor gained the courage after the service to tell them that's unacceptable. You know what they did? They kicked him out. They told him to get out of that church parsonage, and you're out of here, bro, and they had nowhere to go, and then they're driving along, and they're driving this biggest beater car you ever saw, and it runs out of gas. And then a storm's coming, a huge storm's coming, and then they have grandma in the car, and she's telling them what a loser he is. She just keeps telling them, and his wife's this godly woman of faith, and the kids are in the back seat, and I'm just like, this is what it's like. This is how it is, and then he had to sell the spare tire to get enough gasoline to get out of town, and then they get out on the road, and the storm starts coming, and then the tire pops, and then they're like, well, let's put the spare on. Oh, I sold the spare to get the gas, and we're out of gas right now. So it's just like, Kathy's like, Rick, you're cursed. This is you, Rick. You're just so cursed, Rick, and it's like, well, it just comes in waves, right? But he didn't give up. He kept preaching and kept going for it, and then this car comes by. Hey, you need a little help, you know, and then he takes him to a neighboring city where he gets a parsonage, and he gets a little church, and the church is all dilapidated, and guess what? Same kind of people show up smoking in church, but this time he didn't say anything. Didn't say a word to them. Let them smoke it out, you know, smoke in church. So don't smoke in church, all right? We'll get kicked out of here. But in any event, sometimes it can just be so brutal, you know? It can be difficult serving the Lord. So don't have a misconception that you come to Jesus, and everything's going to always go right for you. When you find yourself in difficulty, you know, ask yourself, how were the apostles treated? How were the early Christians treated? How were Christians treated in other places around the world that haven't enjoyed this type of prosperity that we have here, you know, in America? And so it says in Philippians 2, the kenosis, the description of Jesus emptying himself of the free exercise of his deity and taking on the form of a man. He says, let nothing be done through strife or vain glory, but in lowliness of mind, let each esteem others better than themselves. Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. So not selfish, not self-pleasing. And then he says, verse 2 here, let every one of us please his neighbor for his good to edification. So the strong believer is used of God to build up the weak, not to tear him down, not to ridicule, not to mock him, to make him even more valuable, even more useful. So I apologize to anybody that's been offended in me mocking the whole COVID thing and wearing a mask or taking the jab and all that. If your faith was such that you thought you were doing the best thing at the time, that's your decision. I told you when you were contemplating that, that I also do funerals, and I will do your funeral. There I go mocking you again. I'm mocking you. I can't help it. It's in me. So, but I'm trying. I'm trying really hard. I'm trying really hard to be sensitive to, because I know there's people starting to have heart problems, starting to have all sorts of physical difficulty. At the gym this week, we had a young guy, very young guy, that passed out and he was in seizures. He had seizures for about an hour. And I thought at first, oh, maybe he just needs some sugar. It's diabetic. You know, no, it wasn't. And it was horrible. And I prayed over near him, you know, and a bunch of people around him. They brought the paramedics and everybody to haul him away. And I'm so incredibly insensitive that I kept working out while everybody huddled around him. So that's the pastor you have. There's nothing I could do after praying with him. I prayed with him, nothing I could do. So that's how I feel concerned in a lot of these things is that, you know, I'm not God. And you do your best to warn people. You do your best to help them in these decisions. But I do apologize if I've come across like some sort of a bully making fun of people that double and triple mask in their cars. I'm going to leave that sort of ministry to Robbie. She's much better at it than me. And she just doesn't care. And let me tell you, she's going to put a picture of you up a poster child up on up on the media. And she's doing a wonderful job showing this. And so it's getting so serious. And if we can put the fear of God in people to keep them from taking another booster or whatever, you know, that's what we got to do. But I mean, there's so many young people dying. They have a whole new industry of of a profession of of cancer centers for young people. So many young people getting turbo cancers and myocarditis and heart problems and seizures. The military is trying to say they're sorry to people to get them to come back to the military because so many, you know, refused to take the jab and such and trying to get others to join. And so, you know, the evidence is out there. It's happening, but the media still doesn't want to cover it and all. But I know at times some of you are the very, very sensitive kind of people. And I grate on you. My sense of humor and such grates on you. And I'm sorry for that. But you're going to have to ask God to change me because I don't know if I can. Some of it, some of it's just so sometimes if I don't try to make a joke out of it, I think I would be weeping because it hurts so much to watch this, you know, going on. And I tried to diffuse the tension many times with my warped sense of humor. So it may not mean that I'm a bully or picking on people. It may mean that I'm just kind of incredulous. I'm just like, how can this be happening? You know, it's just so obvious to me. But still, we need to be sensitive to those that are maybe weaker in the faith. So to build people up, 1 Corinthians 10, 24, let no man seek his own, but every man another's well. So we're to invest in people's life, equipping the saints for the work of the ministry. According to Ephesians 4, verse 12, notice verse three, for even Christ pleased not himself, but as it is written, the reproaches of them that reproach thee fell on me. So Paul's quoting Psalm 69, verse nine, that when you're reproached, when you're rejected, when you feel weak and, you know, abused and exploited and hurt by people, actually the Lord is feeling, he's acquainted with the feelings of your infirmity. It's the same way that he was treated. When the apostle Paul was on the road to Damascus, you know, to persecute Christians, Jesus said, why are you persecuting me who are out the Lord? I'm Jesus whom you're persecuting. So he's, he's acquainted with this. He's, he understands what it is to be human and to be abused, to be reproached, to be mistreated, to be insulted. And Isaiah 53, four, it says, surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted, but he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him with his stripes. We are healed. And so Jesus is the one that takes the pain away. Jesus is the one for those who are weak, in between, or strong or whatever, that brings us to that place of the atonement, the atonement, being one with God. He prayed in John 17 that we'd be one with him, even as he and his father are one. And by his stripes, we are healed. Jesus bore our reproach. He takes away the shame and the guilt of our sin. He set us free. There's been times in my life where I felt so incredibly ashamed, so ashamed of different circumstances and things in my life. And I'm so blessed to know that Jesus shoulders that for me. He carries that shame. He carries that burden of my failure as a human being. We that are strong are to bear the infirmities of the weak, just like Jesus, selfless. Love, in 1 Corinthians 13, love bears, like carrying the cross, love bears all things. Love believes all things. Love hopes all things. Love endures all things. Love what? Love never fails. And so you can never fail as you're loving on folks. Just love on them, love on them, love on them, and allow their growth to kick in. Allow their, each and every kid has a different bent, a different time of growth, and just be wise enough to allow each and every new believer to grow in their timing. Don't force them to, you know, be reading if they can't read yet. Many, many people, that might sound strange to you, many adults come in and you'll say, hey do you, who wants to read that verse? They don't want to read that verse because they're having a difficult time with reading out loud. And so give them time. Give them time to read at home. I'm so blessed to hear people come up to me saying, hey pastor, I read through the Bible. I just read through the Bible and I'm already starting to read again. You know, that is so incredibly exciting to me. Exciting to see the Word of God get in you. That will transform and change your life, getting the Word of God in you. If we were to poll how many people read their Bible each day or read through the Bible, you'd find a very small percentage of people have a habit of doing this. But that, that is the very essence of gaining strength, of being strong, is feeding your spirit, of being in God's Word. So the strong believer is number one, selfless. Secondly, the strong believer is stable. You can see the stability in their marriage, the stability in their walk with the Lord. And the way you see that stability is the storms that come against them. The house can go up in Matthew 7, that's built on the sand. It can go up quick and it can look good from the outside. The other guy has to dig down deep. He has to dig way down to pour the concrete and get the foundation in place. But we don't know what kind of foundation of your life is, your marriage is, until you face the storms. When you go through the storms of life, one of you gets cancer, one of you gets heart trouble, a loss of a job, a child, a prodigal child, a child that maybe dies, that's when you're hit. And as Mike Tyson said, everybody has a plan until they're hit. And once you get hit, then now you're reeling. Now you're like punch drunk. Oh my gosh, what just happened? How did that even, how was that even allowed in my wheelhouse? I thought there was a hedge of protection around us. Happens to other people. I didn't know what happened to me. Now we find out if your house is built upon sand or if your house is built upon the rock. Jesus Christ. And if you realize, hey, wait a minute, we built on sand. How do we know the guy that builds on sand? Because he was a hearer of the word and not a doer. The doer, the one that hears the word and then does it, applies it to his life, is bringing stability to his home, stability to his marriage, stability to his life. The one that just hears and bolts out, but doesn't apply it to his life, doesn't grow and will be exposed one day when the economy crashes, when things get tough. Because where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. If riches increase, set not your heart on it. Nothing wrong with the riches, nothing wrong with the prosperity, but it has a tendency to become an idol in our lives. A tendency to be something that we rely and depend upon rather than a relationship with Jesus. But we'll find out, won't we? All of us. So he says, for whatsoever things were written aforetime. So you look in the Old Testament, you look in examples, character sketches of the Old Testament people, Abraham, Moses and all, Sarah. So he says, for whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope. Hope is a confident expectation. You lose hope, you're done. Patience speaks of endurance. Are you an endurance runner? Are you an endurance Christian? Can you wait longer than, you know, 60 minutes, six years? What about 120 years? What if you're Noah and you're a preacher of righteousness and nobody's getting in the boat? Nobody wants to get in the boat that you're building. But you're persevering for 120 years, you're a preacher of righteousness. 120 years working with your sons to build that boat out of gopher wood and taking the pitch as the atonement, the kefar to put around it. The animals have enough sense to get in the boat, but the billions of people around you just mock and belittle you. As it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the coming of the Son of Man. Nothing new under the sun. You're preaching, you're teaching, you're living, you're sharing the gospel with so many people and they don't want to hear it. You're a preacher of righteousness and all you're telling them is get in the boat, get into Christ. He will save you from the judgment that's coming. And they don't want to hear it. They want to figure out another way. There's got to be a better way. There's got to be another way. I don't want to become one of those Jesus freaks, you know. I don't want to be like you. There's got to be a better way, you know. And they just keep, you know, abusing it. They just, I can't do that. I can't do that. And so you got Abraham and Sarah, the Lord comes to them and say, Abraham, you're going to be a father of many nations. His name's Abram, but he doesn't have any kids. He doesn't have anybody. And he's trying, he's trying, and Sarah's trying. So for 25 years there's failure. Oh, but we can help God out. We can go down into Egypt. My faith will lack. There's a famine in the land. I'm being tested as Abraham, a father of our faith, a mighty man, a pillar of faith. And there's a little economic downturn. And he runs away and goes into Egypt. And in Egypt he says, you're a knockout, Sarah. You're so beautiful. People are going to kill me to get at you. So why don't you tell them that you're my sister? So he gets her to do that. And then, and then the king, the pharaoh, wants her as part of his harem. And God intervened. Don't touch her. So now Abraham and Sarah wind up leaving Egypt. And they wind up leaving with some of the spoil, some of the stuff, some of the good stuff. And it really stumbles Lot, their nephew. He gets a taste of the world. Egypt's a type of the world. He gets a taste of the world and his wife and his family, a taste of the world. Ooh, we like that stuff. That's, that's a lot better than being out here with these stinky sheep, you know. And Abraham and Sarah, they wind up leaving with a servant girl named Hagar. And they wind up going, and it's about the 13th or about the 12th year mark at that point, 11th year. And Sarah has a great plan. It's always the woman you gave me, Lord. It's always the woman that caused me to sin. And, and why don't you go into my handmaiden, Hagar? We'll help God out. And so they produce an Ishmael, Ishmael, flesh, a work of their flesh. And, and God says, you know, no, in Isaac shall they see be called later when he says, oh, that Ishmael might live before you. There's a 13 year silence until the point in time that the Lord rolled into the camp where Abraham and Sarah were by this time, she's 89, he's 99. They've waited a long time. His name's still Abram. And God said, if you could number your posterity, it'd be numbered more than all the stars of heaven, the sand and the sea. You know, that many people, you're going to be a father of many nations and all, but no seed of the promise just yet. So after the flower of life, when she's gone through menopause, the Lord comes to camp and the Lord begins to speak to Abraham and letting them know that this time next year, Sarah's going to conceive and your tent's going to be filled with laughter. You're going to name the child Isaac. These guys had to wait Abraham to wait till he's a hundred years old to see the fulfillment, the climax of his faith there. But that's not really the climax. The climax of his faith is in chapter 22, where the Lord said, take thy son, thy only son, Isaac to Mount Moriah and offer him as a burnt offering unto me. There's the pinnacle of his faith. There's the greatest part of his faith. And it says that he immediately began to respond to God's edict early in the morning with two servants and Isaac. And they had the knife, they had the wood, they had the fire and Isaac, a type of Christ, Abraham, a type of God, the father. Jesus said, Isaac, or Abraham rejoiced to see my day. And he saw it and was glad. Paul said the gospel was before preached unto Abraham. So Abraham saw the type. Abraham understood the similitude that God would have to raise, according to Hebrews 11, that God would have to raise Isaac from the dead. There's the crescendo. There's the climax of his faith. And I'm going to bring this knife down. God will provide himself a lamb for the sacrificed son. And the faith of Isaac laying there upon that altar, willingly there, rather he could have grabbed dad and said, dad, you're old, you go. But a type of Christ in submission to his father, not my will, but thy will be done. And Abraham brings the knife up. I already said, oh, that Ishmael might live before you, said no to Ishmael. If this knife comes down, you got a problem, God. It's your problem. I'm not going to lean on my own understanding. I'm going to trust you, God. And God stops him. There's a ram caught in the thicket and a picture of Mount Moriah, which is Calvary, a picture where God the father would offer his son one day. And Abraham rejoiced to see my day, Jesus said, and he saw it and was glad. And John eight, he saw up ahead. And that faith was imputed to Abraham for righteousness. He believed in the death, the burial, the resurrection of Jesus. But it took a while. Moses was 80 years old when he started his ministry. 80 years old. He tried when he was 40. Didn't work out. Jonathan, David, they had to run from David, had to run from King Saul, Jonathan's father for 10 years. Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They had to serve the Lord in Babylon without allowing Babylon to permeate them and take control of them. They had to wait for the promise of God. Daniel studying the book of Jeremiah and understanding that 70 years they would be there in Babylon. Ruth, a Moabitess, she had to wait until the Lord brought her to a kinsman redeemer named Boaz. Ruth and Boaz beget Obed. Obed begets Jesse. Jesse begets David, Jesus the root and the offspring of David. Esther, she had to deal with with Haman as she's in the kingdom of the Persians and she had to be very careful and wait for the appropriate time to approach the king. Nehemiah going to rebuild the walls. He had a Tobiah and a Samballot to deal with and the difficulty of rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem. And Jeremiah, he had a ministry of 40 years. 40 years and nobody responding. Nobody getting saved. Nobody getting in the boat. What a ministry. Everybody's saying he's a crackpot. He's crazy. All the false prophets, all the lies and things that have some traction until finally years later they're exposed as false. But in the short run, people get away in Kitsap County with false teaching. But there's a day coming where they'll no longer get away with it because the truth will be made apparent. And so the patient speaks of fortitude, endurance, a triumphant adequacy which can cope with life. So none of these guys ever relied upon a therapist. None of them went to the doctor and said I need a pill. I can't cope with the difficulty of waiting upon God. He's unfair. He's making me wait so long. I didn't even mention Job and his wife and family, you know. What are they to do? Hey, I'm neurotic. We come up with all these different names that we have for mental illness and so forth. But we're men and women of faith. So at the end of the age here, is the gospel inadequate? Is the word of God inadequate? Is Jesus inadequate that we need the help and the wisdom of men to make us whole so that we can cope with life? You're degrading my Jesus. You're diminishing the gospel. You're diminishing his glory. If the gospel is not the power of God and the salvation to everyone that believes, then what is it? If the word of God is inadequate and we need the help of German psychiatrists to make us whole or a pill from Pfizer or whoever else to change your behavior and make you so you don't murder anymore, you don't rage anymore, how's that work? What are we going to do? The fortitude, the endurance of triumphant adequacy which can cope with life. I had a teacher one time tell me that, you know, we know more now than Jesus knew. Really? Really? He's the alpha, the omega. He's the creator of the universe. And you think, doctor, that you know more now about how the brain works than Jesus who made the brain. What have you been smoking, doc? So we need scripture to back it up, right? We need the word of God. We have a confidence in God's word that we're going down the right path. Because if the word of God is inadequate, and like I told you, one of the vogue hip things, prominent things in our community and all over the country are for the staff of the larger churches to be filled with quote-unquote therapists. During COVID, a lot of people were isolated. They didn't get to talk to people. They didn't get to be with people. The churches were locked down and people are filled with anxiety. Now think about it. Think about how many churches are filled with people that took the jab and they know that they know that they know that these symptoms they're developing are exactly what Dr. Sherry Tempeny and McCulloch and others have warned them about. They're getting the strokes. They're getting the seizures. They're getting the myocarditis. People are dying around them. Imagine how filled with anxiety you would be if that was starting to happen to you and your loved ones and such. And so where do you point people? Where do you point them if in fact, hey, I made a mistake. I compromised my health. What am I going to do? We point them to Jesus, don't we? We point them to Jesus. We point them to the great physician. We ask the Lord to give them wisdom because maybe there's a detox program. Maybe there's a way to take some different types of meds that might alleviate some of the symptoms or whatever it might be. We use both, right? We use wisdom in the medical field, but we also look to the great physician, to Jesus, the comfort, to minister to the spirit. And how do you know that some of the folks that are getting these things, it's these various things that bring them to the end of themselves and they cry out to Christ. This is the very thing that's going to bring them to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. They're finally at that point where they're going to trust in Jesus. And second, Peter, chapter one, you can turn there if you want. Second, Peter chapter one, very important to show the adequacy, the sufficiency, all sufficiency of God's word. Peter says, Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ. He says to you who are of like precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and our savior, Jesus Christ. He says grace in verse two, grace and peace. Now think about that. The anxiety people are going through grace and peace be multiplied unto you. How, how am I going to have God's unmerited favor, his grace and peace be multiplied unto me in a time of crisis, in a time where I can't cope? How am I going to get through this? Right? Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge as you get to know Jesus, through the knowledge of God and Jesus our Lord. According as his divine power, he's given us everything, everything we need for life and godliness. He's not inadequate. The gospel's not inadequate. Freud and Roy don't have something Jesus didn't know about. He's given us everything according to his divine power, his power. He's given us everything we need for life and godliness through the knowledge, through the knowledge of him, through the knowledge of God who has called us unto glory and virtue. He's called you and I, he's invited you and I unto glory and virtue. And then verse four, whereby are given unto us exceedingly, according to his divine power, exceedingly great promises according to his divine power that we would share in his divine nature, escaping the corruption of these bodies, a corruption of this world through lust. So he's given you a new nature. He's given you a divine nature. As you get to know him, you're being transformed by the renewing of your mind. You're being transformed to glory, to glory. Nicodemus, you must be born again. You're converted. You're no longer body and soul. Your body, soul, and spirit. And as you purpose to get to know him through all things that he's given you for life and godliness, all the junk of this world pales in comparison. Now you can cope because you're getting to know the Savior. You know you're in his will. You know that everything happening in your life is according to his plan and purpose because he's the almighty sovereign whereby are given us exceeding great promises that he would, according to his divine will, that we'd take on that divine nature and be saved, that we'd escape the corruption. You see how corrupt this world is? You're escaping the corruption of this world by receiving a new nature, by being born again, entering into a relationship with Jesus Christ. So don't ever tell me that we need a program, that we need to start a program, that the gospel's inadequate, the word of God's inadequate, and we need a program to deal with this market, this target group of people that are falling through the cracks. No, no, no, no, no. We that are stronger to bear the infirmities of the weak, we're to bring them to Jesus like Andrew did. He kept bringing people to Jesus. Keep bringing them to Jesus. Keep pointing them to Jesus because those little band-aids, those little cisterns that can hold no water are inadequate, grossly inadequate to deal with the pain within their heart, the confusion within their head. Only that peace and grace multiplied that Peter promises is going to be able to assuage that pain and that confusion. And as they get to know Jesus, as they get to trust Jesus, there's the key, trust Jesus, trust Jesus. They've obtained that like precious faith, Peter said, that like precious faith is we, in verse one, precious faith. Don't lose your faith when the Son of Man comes. Will he find faith on the earth? Men's hearts failing them for fear. The times are going to get worse. Jesus said, a time that the world's seen, nor will never see again, the tribulation period. Get ready. How can I get ready, pastor? Just sit at Jesus' feet, get to know Jesus, devour his word, sing songs unto him, worship him, allow him to transform and change, allow him to change you rather than the circumstances. Take the approach of meekness, meek, give your lives control, allow the Holy Spirit to control you, to take control, to be led by the Spirit. So the strong believer is stable. Adversity just causes, what's adversity do to the strong believer? It causes the roots to grow deeper unto Jesus. It causes you to seek the Lord with your whole heart rather than half-heartedly. The winds and storms of life have been used of God to limit, to limit your options. The Lord takes away every other thing you used to depend upon. The storms of life come to limit your options. You got one option, one thing, Jesus. And this one thing, this one person won't be taken from you. Martha, Mary. He's got a jealous love for you. He saw you were busy with a lot of other stuff, good stuff, but he misses you. And he's got a greater purpose and plan for your life. So he begins to strip you of all the other things that compete for your time and your attention. He's got a jealous love for you. A love where he separates you unto himself that you might know him. You discover he's your portion. He's your portion forever. He's patient. He endures experiencing the comfort of the scriptures. That's how you endure. The comfort of the scriptures, not man's wisdom. That he might have hope. He's a confident expectation. He's confident that God is going to complete this work that he's begun in my life, that he's not going to throw me aside as a piece of trash when he's done with me like the devil will. He says, I know the thoughts that I think towards you, thoughts of peace and not of evil to give you a future and a hope. Call unto me and I'll answer thee and show thee great and mighty things which thou knowest not. Call upon him. Enter into all that God has for you. Like Abraham, he staggered not at the promises of God through unbelief in Romans 4 verse 20, but was strong in faith, giving glory to God. Like Paul, when I'm weak, then I'm strong. I didn't get my way. He didn't heal me. I'm going to have to go through life a cripple. I'm going to have to go through life with a physical infirmity, a tent stake by Satan that gives me migraine headaches. There's no medication for it. I've got to go into a dark room. I've got to just close my eyes and lay there and pray till it passes. But I'm getting to know the Lord Jesus. Or like Fanny Crosby, she's born blind. The first person she's going to see when her eyes awaken is Jesus, right? So many that have gone before us, the adversity they face, the adversity they go through compels them to drive toward Jesus, run toward Jesus, invest in Jesus, pour their heart in Jesus. When I'm weak, then I'm strong. Be strong in the Lord and the power of his might if you want to do battle as a warrior in Ephesians 6 verse 10. Second Timothy 2 on strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus, the unmerited favor that's in Christ Jesus. The strong believer is selfless. The strong believer is stable. His life is built upon the rock, upon Jesus Christ. And thirdly and finally, the strong believer is of the same mind. Verse 5, now the God of patience and consolation grant you to be like-minded one toward another according to Christ Jesus. God patiently waited for me. The shepherd has to wait for the weakest, the slowest of the sheep. The shepherd, the leader, the captain, whoever it is, this leader has to wait for the weakest of the soldiers, the weakest of the sheep, the weakest of Christians. Can't run up ahead and leave him behind, no man left behind. Got a minister to put a bandage, bring the balm of Gilead, bring the healing, have ears to hear, spend time, remind them of how very much God loves them. The comfort of the Holy Spirit. God patiently waited for me. I was 20 years old when I came to Christ. He patiently waited for me. God patiently waited for you. How many years did God wait for you to finally come to the end of yourself? If the Lord would have come sooner, where would you be today? But God patiently waited for you. He's been waiting almost 2,000 years for you to come to the realization of your need of him, that you need Jesus. You didn't know you needed Jesus, didn't think you needed Jesus, but you know it now. God's long-suffering, he's not willing that any would perish, but that all would come to repentance. No man, no woman, no family left behind. We don't kill our wounded, we restore them. Verse 6, that they may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. The body is incomplete without you. You're free to go, you're free to come, but as part of the body of Christ, the body is incomplete without you. You are important, you're a part of the body of Christ. You have gifts, you have abilities, you have a place within the body of Christ that you fit, that you minister, that you serve the Lord Jesus as he ministers unto you. No dysfunctional body in the body of Christ, no divided body that God might be glorified. I've been in churches, I've been a part of a church where we're divided, where we're fighting, where we grieved and quenched the Holy Spirit. It was horrible, absolutely horrible. Don't ever want to experience that again. God loves each one. I don't know why we follow the tricks of the enemy and begin to bite and devour one another, rather than love one another. In Acts 4, 24, they lifted up their voice to God with one accord. They're harmonious as they're praising God. The Christ that unites us is able to form harmony out of our differences. I don't impose upon anybody that they need to be like me. How boring that would be. I feel sorry for you. I don't impose upon you that you need to be like anybody else except Jesus. That's the only one you need to be like, and we're all in all shapes and sizes and backgrounds and all of it, and we celebrate our differences. Isn't it amazing that God made us unique? I see some people, they're meant to be marathon runners. Their body's built for it. Others are sprinters, man. Others, they're designed by God to make me cookies, you know. I had a lot of peanut butter cookies this week. I'm swelling up. I'm just getting ready for Thanksgiving, but man, my wife's got a good recipe. All my grandkids kept saying, Papa, she's got a good recipe. I said, yeah, I know, I know, I know. Here, you guys take some of these. I'm blowing up. But we all have our gifts and abilities, and we celebrate, and we're so thankful. You're thankful for grandma's pie that only she could make. You're thankful for the way your papa, what he did in your life, the things, the way he joked, or various talents, gifts, abilities, and such that you're unique unto him and the family, your brother, your sisters. Many times we're competing and fighting and all that, and then we begin to think, you know, it's so cool the way God's made us. It's so cool, the difference. I'm just in awe of how smart many of you are, how gifted many of you are. I'm like a one-trick pony, that's it. You got one thing, this right here, that's all I got. And even this, I got so much to learn. I don't have a multitude of talents and abilities. I've failed on every side, but the Lord's kept us going, kept me going, kept this little fellowship going. If we just stay in our lane, if we just stay and do what we're supposed to do, we're going to make it, right? I don't need to worry about the other guy in their lane. I should celebrate the difference, the abilities, the joy, and the blessing. Wherefore, receive ye one another as Christ also received us to the glory of God. Who are we to reject somebody? Who are we to say to somebody, you're not welcome here? Why? Their hair's too long? Hair's too short? They're too big, too small, too poor? From the wrong side of town? What criteria? What do they have to meet that they're good enough to be in your church? You ever been to a church, you weren't good enough to be a member? You ever gone to a church and because you were previously divorced, you're not good enough? You can't be there? They don't accept you? What kind of family you're from? Do they treat certain types of people better than they treat you? Do they tolerate you? Or do they make you feel loved and accepted and valued? I'm thankful for the church I went to. I'm thankful they not only let me in, they let me keep coming. And then I'm just blown away that Pastor Chuck would let me become a pastor. Why would he take a chance on losers like me? Doesn't he know the potential of me embarrassing him? A Calvary Chapel pastor? Don't you want the really smart guys? Really brilliant guys? You're going to use drug addicts and losers? And so many of the Calvary pastors were ex-drug addicts. I wasn't a drug addict, but I mean, you know, you delve in things. You know where you're from. I didn't come from a Christian home, alcoholic home and such. And he came from a beautiful Christian home. Wonderful mother and father that love Jesus. I didn't come from a home like that. Number one, why would God save me? Number two, why would his plan for me within the body of Christ to be that of being a pastor teacher? How's that work? I just know that it does. I don't understand it. Why would God make you a father? Why would he make you a mother? Why would he make you a sister or brother? Why would he make you a person with musical abilities or whatever your giftedness is? You know, it comes from him. That you can stay at it for 40 years, providing for your family, going down into the shipyard and banger and key port and and do it day after day, year after year to provide for your family, to be a spiritual leader in your home, in your community. We all have our part. Philippians 2, being like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind. Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation and took upon him the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of man. This is the kenosis. This is the God-man, setting aside the free exercise of his deity to become a man. Being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, not just any death, even the death of the cross. So we're to have the same mindset as Jesus. Let this mind be in you. The same attitude as Jesus. The way of looking at life. God resists the proud, but he gives grace to the humble. Our call should go out to whosoever will, let him come, regardless of our differences. In Revelation 22, 17, and the spirit and the bride say come and let him that hearsay come and let him that is a thirst come and whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely. Are you thirsty? Is that thirst a spiritual thirst? If it's a spiritual thirst, the things of the world won't satisfy that thirst. God has made you, according to Romans 8, verse 20, with a void, an emptiness that only God can fill. All creation was subject unto a vanity and that by reason of him who subjected the same in hope. You have a hope, a confident expectation. You're looking for God. God made you with that desire to look for him. That's why it's so wrong for adults to squash that sensitivity that children have toward the things of the spirit and wanting to know God, to break their faith, to stifle their faith, feed their faith, cause their faith to grow. But God's made you with a God-shaped hole in your heart that only he can fill. As the deer in Psalm 41, as the deer pants after the water brooks, so pants my soul after thee, O God. Is yours a thirst for God, to know God? He said, seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you. Keep seeking, keep asking, keep knocking. Seek the Lord while he may be found. You're the woman, maybe, that's been in five different relationships in John 4, the Samaritan woman. And none of those men could fill that void and that emptiness in your life. On the human level, they're grossly inadequate. And I remind Kathy of that. Kathy, I can't fill that greatest need you have. I'm pretty great, but not that great, honey. Only Jesus can fill that need, can fill that void. Only your walking relationship with Jesus. And when each of us understands that husband and wife, then we don't expect, you know, that part that only Jesus can fill from the other person. And then our relationship begins to work because Christ is at the center. So woman, I have water that you can drink of, you'll never thirst again. You'll never thirst. Jesus said, if any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. As this scripture said, he that believes in me, do you believe in him? Out of his belly shall flow torrents of living water. The flow, the continual flow of the Holy Spirit in your heart and life. Only Jesus can satisfy, only Jesus can bring that satisfaction. Mick Jagger sang it, he sang it. I won't do it. I can't get in. So men may have rejected you, but Jesus won't. Jesus said, all that the father gives me shall come to me. And him that cometh to me, I will no wise cast out. Why aren't you a believer yet? Because you haven't come. Well, if I come, he won't, he won't receive me. He'll reject me because I've been such a bad sinner. Why don't you try? He said, all that come to me, I'll no wise cast out. So why don't you come? He invites you to come. The Spirit and the bride say, come. Whosoever will, let them come. Are you thirsty? Want to try some, some of Jesus? You want to, want to partake of Jesus? Taste and see that he's good. What do you got to lose? You go, go back to your miserable, wretched life. There's always time to go back to your miserable, wretched life, right? But if you're wrong, if you're really giving up corruption, if you're really giving up corrupted fruit that you think so good in your darkness, your sin that you think you can't give up, he has something so much greater. He has himself, he's offering himself unto you that he might fill your heart and life with his goodness, with his love and deliver you from the bondage of sin and death, the guilt and the shame that you're experiencing. He wants grace and peace to multiply in your life. And he's more than adequate. He's more than sufficient. He's more than able to meet your greatest need, which is to know him. The strong believer is selfless, stable, and of the same mind. We that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak and not to please ourselves. Meekness is not weakness, but strength under control. Are you surrendering your heart to Jesus now? Are you wanting to surrender your heart and life unto him, to yield unto him, to surrender to his sovereignty, to call him Lord, which means master? Anyone here this morning? You want Christ. You want to be a strong believer. Your strength is found in your relationship with Jesus Christ. Anyone here this morning? You want eternal life. You're turning from your sins. You're crying out to God, God be merciful to me, a sinner. Jesus, change me. Jesus, change my heart and mind. Jesus, take away the pain. Take away the shame. Take away the guilt, the abuse, the things that I've done, the things that have been done to me. Make me whole. Make me new. Give me a fresh new start. If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation. The old things are passed away. All things have become new. This could be your birthday, your spiritual birthday, a point where you start afresh. You start over. Anyone here this morning? Just lift your hand up. We want to pray with you. We want to lead you in prayer. Jesus said, if you confess me before men, I didn't ask them to close their eyes. They're all watching. If you confess me before men, then I'll confess you before my father and the angels of heaven. If you deny me before men, then I'll deny you before my father and angels of heaven. You come publicly. You come humbly. And all that come to him, he'll know why he's cast out. Father, thank you that each and every person here has got a smile on their face. They're saved. They're not weaving back and forth with worry and wringing their hands. They're experiencing that peace magnified, multiplied, your grace being multiplied in our lives. And Father, we worship you. Only response we have is worship, ascribing worth unto you, Lord. We're just in awe of you. We're just in awe that you would save us. That you'd reach down and say, you'll do. And Lord, we want to do. We want to be about our father's business. We want to be found serving you when you come. Occupy until you come. So God, anoint. Let us move and work, not in the arm of the flesh, in the power of the flesh, but in the power of your Holy Spirit, Lord. Set us apart from the world. Set us apart from the gimmicks and the schemes. Let people see Jesus in us. And Lord, use us to share your glorious coming, the glorious good news of your soon return. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.