New and Improved

“When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot,
Thou hast taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul.”
Those words were written in the cabin of a ship that was crossing the Atlantic Ocean to Europe,
and they were written by a man named Horatio Spafford. In 1871, he and his family — he had a
son that had just passed — lost nearly everything in the Great Chicago Fire. So to begin again, he
sent his family, his wife and four daughters, to Europe. He was finishing up some business and
was going to follow them later.
As they were crossing the ocean, there was a certain point where the ship they were on ran into
another ship, and many were lost. When his wife got to England, she sent him a two-word
telegraph, and it said, “Saved alone.” The four daughters all perished there in that place in the
sea. So he immediately got on a ship and was crossing to be with his grieving wife. At a certain
point in the voyage, the captain called him up and said, “This is where it happened.” They were
crossing over the place where his daughters had perished not long before. And it was then that he
went down into the cabin and wrote the words that we just sang. What an amazing testimony of
faith — that no matter what, whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say, it is well, it is well
with my soul. Remember that when you sing that song.
I know the family of Jake Johnson, who passed last week, feel that way — that God really is a
part of what happened, and that Jake went to be with the Lord immediately when he passed.
Today at two o’clock at the Millsap football stadium we’ll be doing a service to honor his life.
Anyone who’d like to come, you can be there at two o’clock, and I’d encourage you to come and
be a part of that if you’d like to.
The second thing I wanted to mention, in a totally unrelated thing: I want to encourage you, if
you have not voted yet, to vote. That’s Tuesday, and it is an important election. I understand there
are people who have said, “Well, I don’t like that guy. I don’t like some of the things that he’s
done in his life.” I understand that. We’re now to the point where there are two choices. And as
Christians, I believe it is our responsibility to do what we can to help preserve our culture and to
save the soul of our nation, so that our children can worship in freedom and can live as they
choose. Those two directions are pretty stark and pretty different. One of the things I’ll tell you:
we’re not electing a savior. We already have one of those. Don’t need one. We’re not electing a
perfect man. There aren’t any of those, so that’s not possible. What you do is you determine
which one of these is going to vote the way that most reflects my values and most reflects the
direction that I want this country to go. And if you choose not to, then you’re saying, “Hey, I’m
just going to let other people make that decision.” I believe it’s our responsibility to say, “I
believe this is the direction.”
I may not care for some of the things this guy’s done in his life. Maybe it wouldn’t be my first,
second, third, fourth or fifth choice. But at this point, we only have two. So choose the direction
that most closely follows what you believe are biblical values. And I’m not going to tell you who
to vote for. If you want me to tell you, you can come ask me after the service and I’ll be happy to
tell you what I believe about that, but I’m not going to do it right here. That’s all I’ve got to say
about that.
Now, here’s what we’re going to do in the weeks ahead. We’re a society that’s inundated with,
and really taken in by, this idea that things that are new and improved are better than the old
things. When we go to a store — and I would do the same thing — if I’m getting a product and
there’s some of the old product there, and then there’s the same product right by it and it says
“new and improved,” I want the new and improved one. I don’t want to miss out. I don’t want to
buy the old one that doesn’t have all the new stuff.
But when it comes to the ways that we live our life, when it comes to the ways that we choose to
do things, how we’re going to operate, how we’re going to look for the person that we believe
God wants us to marry — how are we going to date? How are we going to live as a husband?
How are we going to live as a wife? How do we live in this world that’s telling us, this is the right
way to do it, this is okay, that’s not okay? How do we choose which operating system we’re
going to go by?
There’s people here that love Apple stuff and you’re all into iOS, and there’s Google people — I
don’t know what the operating system is for that one. What is it? Android. Yes, thank you. And
then there’s operating systems and computers that are totally different. When it comes to
computers, I don’t really care. Choose whichever one you want. But when it comes to operating
systems for life, there are those that are going to take you in the direction you want to go, and
then there are those that may in the short term seem better, or seem easier, or more popular, or
new and improved — but they’re going to lead you to a path of destruction. So which one are you
choosing?
One of the things that we’re going to do in the weeks ahead is we’re going to evaluate: what does
the Bible say about marriage? What does the Bible say about sex? What does the Bible say about
how to live, and how to operate, and how to live with wisdom? And what does the world say?
And where are those things different? Because one of the things that we see a lot is that a lot of
what the world is teaching has crept into the church, into believers’ lives. There are people that
come to church and their lives look just like somebody that’s not following Jesus. That’s a
problem. And it’s also going to be destructive. We want to look at that.
I want you to be willing to look honestly and say, “Okay, here’s what I believe.” This is a
question I ask people a lot. As I’ve talked to people that I don’t know about the Lord, they’ll say,
“Well, I just think that this is the way God is,” or, “I can’t believe that God would do that. This is
what I choose.” And I always ask: what are you basing that on? Where are you getting that from?
What’s the foundation of that? “Well, that’s just the way I feel.” Okay, but just because you feel
something don’t mean it’s true. Where is that coming from? It’s important to get to the basis, to
the foundation. That’s one of the things that we’re going to do in the weeks ahead. Today I’m
going to talk generally, and in the weeks ahead we’re going to talk specifically. One of the
biggest areas is: what does God want a man to be like? What does God want a woman to be like?
And when there’s a marriage, or there’s raising kids, or there’s other things involved, what does
that look like? How does Scripture say it’s supposed to look? We’re going to look at those things.
We’ve had some great thinkers. I don’t know what a thinker is — I guess it’s somebody that sits
around and thinks about stuff and then writes it down. But there’s all these great thinkers, and
they’ve come up with philosophy, and now we have all these philosophies and thoughts and ideas
about how man’s supposed to be and about how the world’s supposed to operate. But where is
the foundation of that?
God talked to people a long, long, long time ago. We haven’t had any direct revelation from God
in a couple thousand years now. God speaks through His Word. He speaks through those that
He’s called to speak to His people, yes. But we haven’t gotten any Ten Commandments on a
mountain, updated version. “Hey, guys, I’m going to give y’all new and improved. Here’s the
new and improved Ten Commandments. All right, here they are.” We didn’t get that. So we’re
still relying on things that we’ve had for thousands of years. Are they still good? That’s a good
question. Are they still good? Are they still true? Are they still right? And what are we supposed
to follow, and how are we supposed to do it?
The first thing that we’ve got to look at is this. I want us to see where they come from. What is
the source? What is the base of what we would call biblical wisdom? It always goes back to God
Himself. God’s the one that gave us the Ten Commandments. He said these things. Now, you’ll
hear all kinds of people say, “Well, that’s not true anymore.” Why is it not true? What does the
foundation say? And can we trust that?
We’re going to start out in Isaiah 55:8-9. If you’d please stand in honor of the reading of God’s
Word. “My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord. “And my ways are far
beyond anything you could imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so
my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.” Thank
you. You may be seated.
The first thing is, His ways are higher than our ways. He sees things from a different perspective
than what we see them. We see things on the plane that we’re living in. We see, “Well, this is
how I’m doing things. How does it relate to what these people are doing? What do people
generally think is the right way to do that?” We see it in that context. And sometimes the things
of God tell you to go a different direction — what may feel like swimming upstream. So you ask
the question: well, what is the real way? But what God’s telling you is that He has a perspective
that you don’t have.
I went one time with my family, my kids, and we went to one of those maze things. Y’all ever
been in one of those? They have cornfield mazes, and then they have others where you go in and
you have to figure out how to get out and you can’t see above the walls. But there’s always a
platform. Either the maze itself has somebody up there that can give you a hint if you get stuck,
or you put somebody up there and they can see over the top. And they can say, “Hey, man, you’re
on a dead end. You need to turn back and go this way.” They have a perspective that we don’t
have. You can be down in it and they tell you something and it may not make sense to you — “I
don’t think that’s right, because we already did that.” But they can see. They see how it all works
out.
And God has that perspective on our lives. So even though when God says, “Don’t do this, do
this,” we might think, “Well, that doesn’t seem logical. That doesn’t seem like the easy way. That
doesn’t seem like it’s going to really work out the way that God said.” God’s Word says, don’t be
yoked with an unbeliever. “Yeah, but man, I can’t find a Christian young man. I can’t find a
Christian young woman — or any age, whatever — that wants to marry and have a family. I can’t
find that person. So shouldn’t I just try to find the closest thing I can get?”
So we have these conflicting ideas based on our perspective. And we have to choose in that
moment whether we’re going to trust that the One whose ways are higher than our ways and
whose thoughts are higher than our thoughts is telling us the truth, and whether we need to follow
that direction, or we just need to do what we think is best in the moment. Always trust the One
who has a better perspective. God’s ways are higher than our ways. His thoughts are higher than
our thoughts.
So we need to always learn: if I’m trusting what God says, what is the result? We’re going to get
to that in a minute. But if I just do things based on, “Well, I can’t help it, this is just the way it is
now” — if you go by that wisdom, there are going to be results to that too. We’re going to talk
about that in a moment.
One of the things you need to understand is who it is whose advice you are rejecting when you
say, “God, I know what you mean there, but I don’t think that’s — maybe that was true for my
grandparents, but you can’t do that now.” When you choose to go a different path, here’s the
deal. 1 Corinthians 1:19-21: “As the Scriptures say, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and
discard the intelligence of the intelligent.’ So where does this leave the philosophers, the
scholars, and the world’s brilliant debaters? God has made the wisdom of this world look
foolish. Since God in his wisdom saw to it that the world would never know him through
human wisdom, he has used our foolish preaching to save those who believe.”
You cannot reason your way to an understanding of God. And you also need to understand that if
you choose a philosophy of life, or a way of life, or an order that is different than what God
commands and calls you to do, He’s in opposition to that way. And He’s still active. That’s the
thing. God’s been around since the foundations. He’s still around. And more than just being
around — there’s people that think, “Well, God gave us this, but now He’s distant and way off
there, and we’ve got to figure this out on our own.” That’s not true.
It says in Colossians 1:15-17, “Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed
before anything was created and is supreme over all creation. For through him God created
everything in the heavenly realms and on earth. He made the things we can see and the
things we can’t see — such as thrones, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities in the unseen
world. Everything was created through him and for him. He existed before anything else,
and he holds all creation together.”
So not only did Jesus create everything, He upholds it. He keeps it together.
There’s an old story — and some of the things I’ve read said it’s just a made-up story, and other
things I read said it was true, so I don’t know whether it is or not. But the story is that Henry Ford
was the first one to build an assembly line to make cars, to make them affordable for people. He
made this one car, one model, and if you wanted to order a color, you could not, because they
were black. That was it. You want this car? It’s black. That’s the way it comes out. That’s the
way we make it. Everybody goes down the line. We don’t change it. Everybody knows what
they’re supposed to do. And so they were able to produce those.
Well, the guy that made and designed the line inside the factory had retired and moved on. But
the assembly line broke down, and so nothing was happening. It stopped all the production. They
worked on it for days, couldn’t figure it out. Henry Ford’s starting to get desperate — I mean, this
is in the early days of the company. So he sends for this guy to come in and fix it. The guy comes
in, asks a few questions, goes into this room, tinkers around with a couple of things, pulls some
switches, turns them off. Then he goes down to the main thing, flips it on, boom, things start
working perfectly.
Henry Ford is ecstatic. “Man, thank you. Just send me a bill. I’ll pay you.” He was there a total of
about forty-five minutes, maybe. And Henry Ford gets a bill for ten thousand dollars. That was a
lot of money back then — that was when you could buy a full meal for a quarter at a restaurant, a
nice meal. Ten thousand dollars would have gone a long way. And Henry’s like, “Ten thousand
dollars? You kidding me? I ain’t paying that. The dude was there forty-five minutes.” So he
sends him back a letter and says, “Would you please break down and itemize your bill?”
So the guy says okay, and he got an itemized bill back. And it said: for tinkering around and
flipping switches for forty-five minutes, seventy-five dollars. For knowing where to tinker
around and what switches to pull and how to do it, nine thousand nine hundred and twenty-five
dollars.
He paid the bill, because here’s the deal. He had all these people trying to figure it out. But what
he did was, he went to the guy who made it. He said, “Hey, there’s a problem.” And the guy came
in, asked some questions, figured out where the problem was, and he fixed it all in just a few
minutes, because he understood how it all worked together.
See, when we’re looking for wisdom for life — one of the things that amazes me is the people
that people go to for advice. If you want to know how to have a godly marriage, go to somebody
that’s got a godly marriage, that’s stuck it out over years or decades. It is good to find people on
this earth that can help you with wisdom and point you in the right direction. Make sure they love
the Lord, and make sure that what they’re doing lines up with God’s Word. And then find people
who’ve been able to persevere and do it. That’s good. But ultimately, those people should always
point you back to God’s plan for how things work.
It’s amazing to me the people that folks will listen to and go to for advice — these influencers.
I’m not even sure what that word means. And hey, if you’re an influencer, I don’t mean to insult
you. Influence away. But influence people for Christ. You know what I’m saying? Be careful
about where the source of your information is.
When you follow God’s way, you’re following the One who created not only the earth, but who
upholds it. He’s still active in creation. He also created you. He knows how you work, how you
operate, how things are supposed to be. And when He says to do something — you know what,
there’s never been a time, I’ve never heard a testimony of somebody getting up and saying,
“Man, I really did my best to follow the Lord for this number of years, and man, I regret that.
What a disaster. I wish I’d gone the other way.” Have you ever met anybody that told you that?
No. Now, I’ve met plenty that said, “Man, I went my own way. It didn’t work.”
Because if you want to know how something works, you go to the source. Who created us? Who
knows how everything works together? Who has a perspective? And who gave us clear
instructions about, “Hey, do this. Don’t do this”? Go to the source. He existed before anything
else, and He holds all of creation together. Jesus and God are active in the world. They didn’t just
create everything and run off and say, “Hey, you guys handle it how best you can.” They’re still
here and they’re upholding all things.
Well, what about nature? We can learn a lot of things from nature. Yeah, you’re a hundred
percent right. But it’s not a good way to look at nature and decide this is how you live. Does
nature have a purpose? Absolutely. And you can look at all the things in nature and come to a
conclusion — you should. And here’s what it is. Psalm 19:1-4: “The heavens proclaim the
glory of God. The skies display his craftsmanship. Day after day they continue to speak;
night after night they make him known. They speak without a sound or word; their voice is
never heard. Yet their message has gone throughout the earth, and their words to all the
world. God has made a home in the heavens for the sun.”
All of nature testifies to one thing: that there is a God, and that He created everything that we see.
Now, you find all kinds of ways that people have decided that they don’t want to believe in God.
And one of them, to me, is absolutely ridiculous — and if you’re a scientist working on this, I’m
sorry. You ever heard of the Big Bang theory? Y’all have heard of that, right? Yes, there’s a TV
show, but that’s not the one I’m talking about. I’m talking about the actual theory of the Big
Bang, about how the world was created. We’ll talk about TV shows later. I’m not trying to pick
on you.
But here’s the deal. The key word in that is — what’s the last word? Big Bang theory. You want
to know what a theory is? Something somebody dreamed up in their mind and decided that must
be it. That’s what a theory is. There’s zero proof. Somebody decided that two rocks collided
together and boom, out of that sprung life.
Now, any of y’all ever — if you’re a guy, I know you’ve done it — you’ve banged rocks together
at some point in your life. Did any of y’all bang two rocks together and a frog hopped out? Just
out of the spark, boom, there’s a frog. Anybody? Any kind of animal, or life, or anything? No.
And yet somebody decided — because they couldn’t come up with anything else, and they
wanted to find some way to explain away all of this creation. If you can look at all the world and
look at people and animals and ecosystems and stars and the earth and the atmosphere and the air
that we breathe and the water that we drink and the food that we have, and how it all works
together, and think that that all happened because two rocks ran into each other, then man, you’ve
got way more faith than I do, because you’re believing in something that is way harder to believe
than the fact that God created all those things. You look at all that, and the whole world testifies
there’s a God. This isn’t an accident. All of this works together. Nature does testify that there’s a
God, and that He created us, and that He made us, and that He knows how we work.
Now, Romans 1:18-22: “But God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked
people who suppress the truth by their wickedness. They know the truth about God because
he has made it obvious to them. For ever since the world was created, people have seen the
earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities —
his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God. Yes, they
knew God, but they wouldn’t worship him as God or even give him thanks.”
See, here’s the deal. There’s nobody that’s going to be able to come up to God in that last day
with an excuse. “Well, I didn’t know you existed. I mean, God, have you not heard of the Big
Bang theory?” God is going to tell them in that moment, “Yeah, you knew. I made it obvious to
you.”
But here’s what happens when people reject that there’s a God. Here’s what it says happens:
“And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like. As a result, their minds
became dark and confused. Claiming to be wise, they instead became utter fools.”
And that can and does happen to us, when we say, “You know what, I just can’t believe that
about God.” And look — there are things in the Bible, if there aren’t things in there that make
you uncomfortable, then you ain’t read it. There’s things that I don’t understand that God said do,
and things God said don’t do, and I don’t understand it. But here’s what I can do. I can either
accept God for who He is and recognize that I don’t understand a hundred percent — His ways
are higher than my ways, His thoughts are higher than my thoughts, He knows things I don’t
know and can never know — and I accept that He’s God as He is, as He has revealed Himself in
Scripture.
Or I have another choice. I can reject the parts I don’t like and make a god of my own choosing.
And there’s a name for that. It’s called an idol.
The Bible talks about idols. They have mouths, but they cannot speak. They have hands, but they
cannot feel. Here’s the deal. If you choose to make up in your own mind a god the way you want
God to be, that’s called idol worship. And you know what it says? It goes through all this list
about things that an idol can’t do — he has eyes but cannot see, ears but cannot hear — and it
says those who worship him will become like them. If you worship an idol, you’re going to
become like the idol. And the problem with that is that the god that you’ve created, that people
have created, is not really God. And you’ve rejected the true God.
Used to, we would see that you’d have the church, and then there’d be other religions or people
who believed other things. When I was growing up back in the 1900s — you know, when we’d
go to church on horseback and stuff — whatever, you could go from one church to the other. It
might even be a different denomination. And you know what? We might believe something a
little bit different, but ninety-eight percent of everything we would agree on, because it was
scriptural. We might say, “Well, we think this is more important than this,” and they’d say, “We
think this is more important than that.” There’d be some minor differences. But nearly all of them
were the same. You cannot say that anymore. Not even close.
A lot of these places that call themselves churches are not worshiping God. They’re not following
the God of the Bible. They’re following the god that they’ve made up in their own mind. And
there’s a consequence to that. “They began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like. As
a result, their minds became dark and confused. Claiming to be wise, they instead became
utter fools.”
I ain’t saying any names, but one of the people running for office here in Texas said that God was
non-binary and that He loved trans kids. That’s not the God of the Bible. For one thing, I don’t
even know what non-binary means. Do you? I’d like to know. What does non-binary even mean?
But here’s the deal: you don’t get to just make Him up to fit your agenda. And if you do that —
y’all probably heard some of those phrases and you’re like, “That just sounds dumb.” Because
claiming to be wise, they instead became fools.
And that is what happens to us. That’s what we’ve got to be careful about as believers. Every
now and then we’ve got to examine: okay, what am I doing in life? Does what I’m doing in life
match the way God said to do it? What are the decisions that I’m making? Am I making decisions
that are along the lines of how God says, “Hey, if you do this, this is what you’re going to get”?
Or am I just choosing based on what I want?
So what is it we need to learn as believers? Colossians 2:8: “Don’t let anyone capture you with
empty philosophies and high-sounding nonsense that come from human thinking and from
the spiritual powers of this world, rather than from Christ.”
There are all kinds of people out there that are trying to influence folks. There’s all kinds of
things going around about how to be a man, how to be a woman, and a lot of it is complete
nonsense. It appeals to people because it appeals to their baser nature. “Well, I like that. Yeah,
that’s right.” But is it godly advice? Is it advice that goes back to the One who said, “This is how
life works”? Or do you just want it to be that way?
So we need to be careful and not let anyone capture us with empty philosophies and
high-sounding nonsense that come from human thinking. And that goes back to: what are you
basing it on? If you’re listening to somebody and they’re going, “Hey, this is how you be a man.
This is what you’ve got to do. This is how you’ve got to look. This is how you’ve got to dress,”
blah, blah, blah — if they can’t go back to what they’re basing that on, “I’m basing that on this
Scripture and these Scriptures here, and this is what God told us to do” — if they’re not, stay
away from it and be careful. Because the Bible says that in the last days they will long for
somebody that’ll tickle their ears, that’ll tell them something new and improved.
Beware. Don’t let anyone capture you. Test everything. Is this coming from a good source?
There’s plenty of things that you can listen to and go, “You know, that sounds good. Let’s see
what this guy’s got.” And you get sucked in. Be very careful.
1 Corinthians 3:18-20: “Stop deceiving yourselves. If you think you are wise by this world’s
standards, you need to become a fool to be truly wise. For the wisdom of this world is
foolishness to God. As the Scriptures say, ‘He traps the wise in the snare of their own
cleverness.’ And again, ‘The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise; he knows they are
worthless.’”
“Stop deceiving yourselves.” That’s the most dangerous deceit. It really is. It’s not somebody
else deceiving us — it’s when we decide we’re going to deceive ourselves. “Well, I would never
choose to do that.” Yeah, some of us have. You want to know why? Because we’re doing things
in opposition to the way God told us to do it, but we’re still expecting God to bless it and make
something out of it. So be careful that you’re not going to be trapped in the snare of your own
cleverness.
Man, I’m so glad this is fall-back Sunday. That means I get a whole extra hour to preach. Some
of y’all are really nervous right now. I was just kidding. Okay, I’m not really going to preach the
extra hour.
But here’s something that is true going back to the foundations. It’s true spiritually, and it’s true
in nature. Listen to this. Galatians 6:7-9: “Don’t be misled — you cannot mock the justice of
God. You will always harvest what you plant. Those who live only to satisfy their own sinful
nature will harvest decay and death from that sinful nature. But those who live to please the
Spirit will harvest everlasting life from the Spirit. So let’s not get tired of doing what is
good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up.”
See, let me tell you what’s happening here. Some of us — even believers — you see this all the
time. If you want corn, you should go out and get corn seed and plant corn seed, cultivate it,
watch over it, water it if it needs it. And in the end, you get corn.
But here’s what some of us are doing. You’re going out and planting other things. What you’re
sowing is not what God has said. If you want to end up with a life that pleases God — if you want
to end up with a man that loves Jesus and have a godly marriage and be able to raise a godly
family, or a woman that loves Jesus, because some of y’all can’t find him — here’s what you’ve
got to do. You’ve got to sow the right seed.
And if you choose to go the world’s route of doing these things — “Well, let’s see. Oh, that one,
he looks spiritual. Let’s try that.” Some of the older people are looking at me like, “What is he
doing?” I’m swiping. Yeah, never mind. Ask one of the younger ones later. They’ll tell you what
I’m doing. And I don’t even remember which way you swipe. But anyway, whatever way. “Oh,
he’s cute, I bet. Let’s see. Oh, it says he goes to church. Bang. That’s the one.” And we try it.
And then we go through and we compromise on all these things. But we’re like, “I’m still hoping
and praying that God’s going to make me some corn out of these super beets that I sowed over
here.”
I don’t have anything against super beets, if y’all do, whatever. But you can’t sow something by
your actions — if you sow things that are outside the will of God and the ways of God, don’t
expect to reap the blessing you’re looking for. God is not mocked. You cannot mock God. You
will always harvest what you plant.
And if you choose the world’s way of doing things and you go down that route and you do it the
way the world tells you to do it — “You can’t even know if you want to marry him unless you
live with him for a while” — that’s not what God’s Word says. You’re not going to reap what
you want to reap.
Here’s what it says: those who live to please the Spirit will harvest everlasting life from the
Spirit. So let’s not get tired of doing what is good. It may take a while. Farming don’t happen
overnight. There’s a lot to be learned from farmers and farming. Jesus used it a lot as an example.
And in this one, if you go out and you plant, that’s just the beginning of it. You don’t come out
the next morning and there’s a big stalk of corn. You’ve got to wait and cultivate it and make sure
that it doesn’t get choked out by the weeds. Give it room to breathe and room to grow. And then
in due time, you’ll reap. And here’s what it says: at just the right time, we will reap a harvest of
blessing, if we don’t give up.
But if you’re sowing worldliness, and you’re sowing instant gratification, and you’re sowing
your own desires and your sinful nature, don’t think that somehow magically God is just going to
turn that into a blessing that you reap in the end. There’s a reason why our divorce rate is so high.
There’s a reason why people aren’t getting married until later in life — because they’re just
living together and having sex as single people. And then there comes a point where people are
like, “Well, now I’m this age and I want those things. I can’t find anybody.” But you’re just
harvesting what you’ve sown.
Now, I also want to tell you this: God is redemptive. I don’t care how far down the road you are,
how many mistakes you’ve made, how many things — because you might go, “Well, it’s too late
for me. I might as well keep going.” No. Now’s the time to repent. Turn away from it and start
sowing the seed that God called you to sow. God is redemptive, and He’s merciful, and He gives
to His children because He loves them.
But He’s also the One who designed you. He knows how you work. And when He tells you
don’t, He’s telling you, “Don’t get hurt.” I’ve yet to run across somebody that said, “Man, I
followed the things of God, I really loved Jesus, and man, I wish I hadn’t done that. What a
mess.” You ever heard anybody give that testimony? I haven’t. Now, I’ve run into lots of people
who said, “Man, I knew it wasn’t right, but I went down that road. I wish I hadn’t. This is what
happened.”
You see, God’s ways work. There’s wisdom in the Word of God about life, about how to do
things in life, that is true today. And it’s true today because the One who sees all things, who
created all things, who knows how all things work — He is God. And He said, “Do it this way.”
Here’s the deal: if people who don’t even know Christ do it the way God said, their life will work
a lot better. But people who know God, who do things the way He’s called us to do, it’s going to
work better and they’re going to reap a blessing.
It’s hard. It takes time. You’ve got to cultivate. You’ve got to work. You’ve got to plant the right
seeds. And then you’ve got to trust God. I’ve known some farmers, and man, they walk around
like, “It’s not coming up like I thought it would. I don’t know. We’ve got to do this. We need
rain, or we need this, we need that.” You can get impatient. It can be hard. But if you’ll stick with
what God calls us to do, if you’ll sow truth in your life, if you’re willing to look at it and go,
“You know what, in this area I’m not following the wisdom of God, I’m following the wisdom of
the world” —
Some of you may not really understand. We’re going to go through some different areas in the
weeks ahead, and we’re going to look at what the world says versus what does Scripture say,
because I want you to have some clear pictures about things, about the world’s way of doing
things and God’s way of doing things. And then you’ve got to choose. Am I going to do it His
way? Or am I just going to make it up and hope for the best? Good luck with that. But God’s not
mocked. You will always harvest what you plant. We get to choose what we sow, but once it’s
sown, we don’t get to choose what the harvest is going to be.
So here’s what I want to encourage you to do: look at your life. Ask yourself, am I doing this the
way God wants me to do it? Am I being obedient to His Word? Am I following His wisdom? Am
I going down the right path? Am I doing things the right way? Am I sowing what’s going to bring
me a blessing, or am I sowing what’s going to bring me destruction and decay? Those are the two
choices. Those who live to satisfy their own sinful nature will harvest decay and death. Choose to
sow life, and to sow truth.
Would you bow your heads and close your eyes, please?
Now, this all begins with a relationship with Christ. And if you don’t have a relationship with
Christ, we want to give you the opportunity to begin one today. So in a moment, for anyone who
would like, I’m going to lead you in a prayer of salvation.
There’s three simple parts to it. It really is simple. The first one is, you’ve got to admit that you’re
a sinner and ask forgiveness of your sins. The Bible tells us clearly that all have sinned and fallen
short of the glory of God. Everybody in this room is a sinner. There’s nobody in here claiming to
not be one, because to claim that you’ve never sinned is to lie. The Bible says that too, in James.
We’ve all sinned. But the great thing is, there’s forgiveness. And that forgiveness comes through
Jesus.
And you’ve got to believe in Him — that He’s God’s Son. The Bible says, “For God so loved
the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have
everlasting life.” God sent Jesus to do for us what we could not do for ourselves. And He
became the sacrifice because He was without sin. So you’ve got to believe in Jesus.
The last thing is, you’ve got to confess Him as Lord. That means you are going to follow His
wisdom and His will and His way. You won’t do it perfectly. Nobody does. We all blow it. But
you’ve got to confess Him as Lord. Romans 10:9-10: “If you confess with your mouth that
Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be
saved.”
And if you’ve never done that, we’d love to give you the opportunity to do it today. So if you’d
like to know your sins are forgiven, that you’re in right relationship with God and that you’ll be
His forever, pray this prayer with me right now. You can repeat it after me. Just pray it in your
heart. God will hear you. But pray it with me now.
“Dear Heavenly Father, thank You for loving me, and thank You for Jesus. God, I know that I’m
a sinner. Forgive me of my sins. I believe Jesus is Your Son. I believe He died on the cross for
my sin, and I believe He rose on the third day. So today, I trust Jesus as my Savior, and I confess
Him as my Lord.”
Now, without anybody looking around, I want to ask you a question. I want to pray for you in just
a moment. But if you prayed that prayer today, would you just — I’m not going to ask you to
stand up. I’m not going to call you out anyway, but I would like to pray for you. If you prayed
that today, would you just look up at me right now and keep looking until I see you?
All right. Thank you. Yes, sir. See you. Okay, I see you. Thank you. Okay.
Now, for those of you looking up at me, there’s a way you can contact us. We would love to hear
from you. We’d love to encourage you in your new faith. There’s a QR code there. There’s a
number there. It’s also in your bulletin. Just contact us by that. We’ll get back with you, set up a
time to talk. We don’t want anything from you. We’re not putting anything on a list. It doesn’t
mean you joined the church. But we’d love to answer any questions, encourage you about the
next steps in following Jesus, and we’d love to just get to know you a little bit, and for you to
know us. So I’d encourage you to let us know. But tell someone.
And so I want to pray for you right now. And I also want to pray for those of you — you know
what, I know the enemy’s on you. Even as you’re hearing this, you’re thinking, “You’re too far
in. You can’t stop now. You can’t change direction now.” Yes, you can. That is a lie from the
enemy. But don’t decide now to change later. Repentance is for now. It means turn away from it.
It means, you know what, this may be complicated, and it may be a little difficult, and it may be
even painful, because I’ve gone down this road for a long time — but that is nothing compared to
the joy of the harvest you’ll receive by choosing to turn away from that and to follow Jesus. God
wants to bless you, and He’s given us a blueprint of how to receive that blessing. Turn away from
what you’re doing. It’s not working, but you just keep thinking it’s going to change, it’s going to
get better. Turn away from it. Turn to Him.
Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, I thank You for these that have made a decision to trust You. Thank
You, God, for Your mercy, for Your love, for Your grace. Lord, I thank You that, Father, even
those of us who have sown all these seeds — Father, that You can forgive, and You have a plan
for them, to bless them. And Father, I pray that they would turn away from the way they’ve been
going and follow You. Father, I pray for those that made a decision today to trust You, that God,
You just speak to them, You continue to show them the way. That Father, You’d help them to
find the right church, whether it’s here or somewhere else, where they can be taught the Word
and grow in their faith. And Father, we thank You for allowing us to be a part of their faith
journey. We pray and we ask these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.