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Discover how to integrate ancient biblical teachings into modern life and uncover the enigmatic power of God’s instructions. By examining the true meaning of prosperity and reflecting on the delicate work of applying scriptural principles, this sermon offers a practical guide for enhancing one’s spiritual journey. With vivid examples and relatable anecdotes, you’ll see how routine meditation on these timeless teachings can radically enhance your wisdom, making you like a tree planted by waters that bears fruit in its season.
SPEAKER 01 :
My sermon today presents a small problem to me in the sense that it is almost too simple. And yet, it is a principle which can and will, if you can apply it, change your life forever. Now, are you interested? And I’m talking, of course, changing your life is no trick. You can change it for the worst almost any time, just like that. That part So obviously that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about changing it for the better. It is a principle that you can. It’s just so easy. It is so simple. It’s within the hands of every person here to apply what I’m talking about, and it will bear results. The principle is expressed in a psalm. It’s a psalm that I suspect many of you in this room have memorized. Everybody knows it. And yet, somehow, the principle that I’m talking about in this psalm goes largely unnoticed. I’m not entirely sure why. The psalm is the first psalm. You remember it, don’t you? Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scornful. Just such a simple principle. straightforward expression of the obvious. It’s a good thing for a man that he not walk in the counsel of the ungodly. The counsel of the ungodly. The counsel of the ungodly. What does that mean? Well, ungodly men in our world today, by and large, adopt a rather cynical posture. It’s a posture of looking out for yourself first. It’s a policy of, fine, help your neighbor as long as it doesn’t cost you too much. You know, it’s a cynical, selfish advice about how a person ought to live his life. Counsel, that advice, that way. Nor, he says, stands in the way of sinners. That’s not hard to understand. Sinners have a way that they live their lives. Interestingly enough, this verse, and people have pointed this out, I’m sure, before in sermons and sermonettes, it says, not only do you not walk in the way of sinners, You don’t stand in it. You don’t get out in there and stand and let the currents of that way flow around you. It’s a bad place to be. Don’t be there. Nor sit in the seat of the scornful. People who, you know, make fun of God. Who scorn godly conduct. These things are well known to all of us, aren’t they? What is not so simply understood, though, is exactly how it is that you don’t do these things. They are all basically negative, aren’t they? The person who doesn’t do these things shall be blessed. Okay, instructions on how not to do something are kind of hard to come by. You know, it’s a negative. What is it exactly that a person should do with their life in order that they might be in this place, and what difference does it make if they are? Read on. His delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law does he meditate. day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that brings forth his fruit in his season. His leaf also shall not wither, and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. Now I ask you, are you interested in that last sentence applying to your life? So that whatever you do shall prosper. Well, who wouldn’t be? Now, the problem, of course, here’s another misconception. We often think of prosperity almost entirely in terms of money. If you want to prosper, that means when you write a check, it doesn’t bounce. It means that when you get a job, it pays well. That’s prosperity. But that’s not really the sense in which this is used. If I were going to transfer or translate this expression into modern vernacular, I would say that this man, his life will work. His life works. And I know what it feels like. And I know you know what it feels like to have your life just not work. Things don’t work out. Plans don’t come to fruition. Things you hope for don’t come to pass. Well, here is a very simple, as I said, it’s tough to approach it almost because it’s so simple. You say, well, what’s he telling me this for? Everybody knows that. My problem is how do I do it? And what’s funny about it is You’ve just been told. His delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law does he meditate day and night. But there also is a misconception. Somehow or other, when we find ourselves back in the law of God, and we read along through Exodus or we read through Deuteronomy, so many of us are hung up on the idea of law as That the law is that the law prescribes, that the law limits, that the law locks us into a certain pattern of behavior. That the law is there to regulate the things we do. And therefore we feel that if the law says you’re supposed to put a ribbon of blue on the fringe of your garment, well you sort of feel guilty when you read that scripture if you check, no ribbon of blue. Well, maybe we could wear it on our underwear. You know, maybe some of you do. I don’t know. We won’t go into that right now. But we look at the law in terms of prescription, in terms of regulation. What’s interesting about this passage is that the word is Torah. We’re familiar with the word. It’s the word the Jews used to describe the first five books of the Old Testament, the Torah. It’s the word consistently translated law. I think there may be other expressions for laws and commandments and statutes and judgments, but it is the definitive word for law in the Old Testament. It’s Torah. And when you come to the New Testament and you find the Greek word that is used in the same way as Torah, the word is nomos, and it’s almost exclusively translated law in the New Testament. What does it mean? Well, what do I mean? What does it mean? It means law, doesn’t it? Well, not exactly. If you come down once again dealing with our language, And the way we look at things, and this is what we have to do if we’re going to try to communicate to 20th century man. I’m going to try to communicate to you people out here. The problem is that with your background, and so many of you who have been a part of another religious organization which took a very legalistic approach to the law, when I say the word the law of God, something comes to your mind that may not be entirely accurate. The word means, the word Torah means, instruction. Now, let me ask you, do you see any difference between the word instruction, as you understand it, and the word law, as you understand it? Oh, yeah. You don’t have a lot of trouble with that. There is a difference. There’s a very strong difference. For example, you understand that the law says that you’re supposed to drive 55 miles per hour. It’s arbitrary. It could just as easily have been 57 or 58 or 54 or 62. And if you get the statistics, they might very well find that the most safe speed to drive is not 55, but it’s 57 and a half. But you know, 57 and a half is hard to deal with, so the law says 55. And because it’s hard to enforce that right to the line, most police will not pull you over unless you’re doing 61 or 62 in a 55-mile-an-hour zone. And we all know that, so we all drive 60 in 55-mile-an-hour zones. What are you laughing about? Well, of course we do. Well, so this is law. It is rooted in what’s good for us. It’s rooted in these things, but it is regulatory. And if you drive beyond it, you get arrested. Now, when you come to the Old Testament, there are laws, of course, that we understand. You break the law and the death penalty ensues. We understand that law, thou shalt do no murder, be an absolute. And if you murder somebody, God says he who lives by the sword shall die by the sword. All these things we understand. But you see… When the word that is used to gather all these laws together, all the way down to things like wearing a ribbon or a fringe of blue on your garment, all the way down to simple things like how do you handle things when you borrow tools from your neighbor, these laws are all grouped into the word instruction. Now, instruction, the problem with it is it’s not always easy to apply in the same way at every time and in every place. You have to think about it. It says here, his delight is in the law of the Lord and in his law does he meditate day and night. What does meditate mean? Think. So he thinks about it. Once again, the problem with so many of these things is that through the Judeo-Christian heritage that’s come down to us today, We tend to think in terms of religious exercise. We think of Bible study as a religious exercise. We think of meditation as a religious discipline. We think of prayer as a religious discipline. And they are practiced as discipline. But there’s nothing terribly complicated about this. You know what this verse is really saying? It’s saying this man’s delight or his pleasure is taken in the instruction of God and he thinks about it routinely. It’s a routine part of his life. to think about, ponder the instructions of God. Now, is there anyone here who doesn’t understand this simple little principle that we’re laying out here before you? It’s really easy, isn’t it? But you see, there is one more misconception that hangs down in our consciousness about these things. Why is it or how is it exactly that it works? Picture yourself, let’s say, somewhere around God’s throne as maybe an angel standing in the wings or one of the 24 elders watching all the comings and goings of angels going back and forth to the earth. And they’ve been walking to and fro on the earth and going up and down in it, bringing back their reports to God. And, of course, God is handling prayers daily and routinely coming back and forth. Now, here’s God looking down and he sees you. There you are studying your Bibles. And it’s been six months now and you have not missed a day studying your Bible. And you have engaged in a religious discipline of meditation on that Bible every day for six months. And God looks down upon you and says, do you see what he’s doing? Isn’t that a terrific attitude? Let’s reward him. What shall we give this person, this woman, this man, who is being so diligent in studying my word and reading the Bible and knowing what the Bible says? I know an angel standing by says, let’s give him a new car. I haven’t quite got it right. Who’s that guy on Price is Right? He has it. You know, when he says a new car, he says it like that is absolutely the greatest prize that they could ever give to anybody, anywhere, anytime. Now, let me ask you this. Honestly, when you think the time for reward comes, reward, can you imagine God giving you a new car as a reward? Now, I will tell you, God’s idea of reward is more along the lines of saying, you know, see what a good job he is doing? Let’s reward him with more work. Well, now here you are laughing again. But, you know, you’ve read your Bible, and you know how God thinks. He says, well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful in a few things. I’m going to make you ruler over much. You take control of ten cities. Folks, that’s work. He is not going to reward you with a trip to the Bahamas to lie around in the sun and soak up the sun all day. He may well reward you by sending a poor person to your door who needs help. He may reward you by getting to make a sacrifice. That’s the way he rewarded Abraham. He was such a good man, he allowed him to go through the process of taking his own son up to a mountainside someplace and sacrifice him. That’s what God’s rewards are like. But you see, there’s a funny thing about this. This is not a reward at all. It’s not a reward, it’s a result. And there is a difference. God in heaven… does not have to lift a finger to change your life if you do this. It’s results. Look at what it says. He is like a tree planted by the rivers of water that brings forth its fruit and its season and its leaf doesn’t wither. Do you imagine for a moment that God Almighty in heaven has to lift a finger, say a word, direct a cloud, do anything at all to make a tree that is planted in the right place flourish. Now, he did that a long time ago. Why does he need to do anything else about it? That was all built into the design. The fact that the tree bears fruit and has great leaves is the result of where it’s at. Now, can you understand where I’m going? That the man who takes great pleasure in the instruction of God and who thinks about it routinely, will see results in his life. Now, there’s a different way of looking at this, and it’s an important difference, because I’m afraid so much of the time, when we look forward to the reward of God, and we trust God to give us a reward, but we’re anticipating that reward when Jesus Christ comes back to this earth. And we live a lot of our lives and we do good things and we look around and nothing happens. No gifts fall out of the sky. No checks come through the mail. No new jobs show up on the horizon. And while we don’t necessarily lose faith in God, we don’t have any sense of immediacy about a reward. But you can understand, can’t you, the very slow, cumulative process of results when a tree is planted in the right place, in the right season. Can you see it grow? No. Can you actually see the progression of fruit? Can you stand there and watch the bud and see the change taking place? No. But can you come back tomorrow and notice a difference? Possibly. Can you come back the week later and see a difference? Oh, certainly. And when you see those first little green hard peaches on the tree, You can stand and watch it, you know, in vain. But if you come back, you will have a nice, large, yellow, and peach-colored peach. Because they’re juicy and ripe. And all this stuff happens as results. And slow. And here it is telling you that the person who delights in the instruction of God and who routinely thinks about the instruction of God will see similar types of results in his own life. They are sure. They are certain. They are slow, but they are cumulative. And over time, they add up. It works. How does it work? Well, let’s play a game with it if you want to. Let’s work our imaginations a little bit. Let’s say you’re at home, wherever that is, and let’s say that it’s a Sabbath morning. And you’ve got yourself propped up in your favorite chair, your footstool in front of you, a nice hot cup of coffee on the table beside you, and your Bible open in your lap. And you turn your Bible back to what shall we say? Exodus, the 21st chapter, should put us right in the middle of the law. And that’s what we’re talking about. Exodus 21 and verse 28. And let’s consider what we’re looking at here and how this might work in your life. If an ox gore a man or a woman that they die, then the ox shall surely be stoned, and his flesh shall not be eaten. But the owner of the ox shall be quit. In other words, not guilty, released, and left alone. Now, if the ox were prone or wont to push with his horn in time past, and it has been testified to his owner that he has done this, and he has not kept him in, and he has killed a man or woman, the ox shall be stoned, and his owner shall be put to death. My, that’s serious. Now, you also understand, don’t you, what you’re reading here? It is a simple, basic law of liability. It says that when you know something that is a danger to other people and you neglect to do anything about it, you are liable. And the Bible seems to put you at extreme liability all the way down to life for life, although it does go on and mitigate that slightly. it says, if there be laid on him a sum of money, I presume instead of putting him to death, then he shall give for the ransom of his life whatever is laid upon him. In other words, if they want every dime he has, every animal he’s got, if they want his house and his land, it’s gone. He will pay whatever is laid upon him, whether he’s gored a son or gored a daughter, according to this judgment, shall it be done to him. Now, if the oxen goes on to talk about the some other things that are involved in it rather curious things having to do with men servants and men servants and the relative difference in value to sons and daughters that is also something to think about but you have to bear in mind it’s another time and another place and that these are instructions now the difference really boils down to this I can see some people who are bored with all that and they say well it doesn’t apply to me I don’t have an ox now on the other hand While you’re sitting there, if you just lay your Bible aside for a moment and pick up your cup of coffee and stare out the window for a while and think about this, let’s imagine that it comes back to mind that two days ago your dog bit one of the neighbor’s children. You know, broke the skin. We checked the dog out. He didn’t have rabies and the neighbors weren’t mad about it or anything. And then you also recall that the other night you were getting ready to move your dog’s food bowl and he snapped at your hand and almost got you. You will remember as you read this that there is a principle of liability. Now you know that it is not only true in God’s law, it’s true in this world, right? So the next morning you get up, or maybe later that day you get up, load old Fido in the car, take him down to the vet, and have his teeth pulled. Well, that’s a lot kinder than having him put to sleep, isn’t it? And your neighbor’s kids are not going to mind being gummed by your dog. And it would be a lot safer for you if you’re moving his food bowl. It makes all kinds of sense to me. They say that a schizophrenic dog will do that kind of thing. And that if you don’t want to have them put to death, you can keep them. But you’ve got to have those teeth pulled. And they’ll be just fine. You can keep them for quite a long time. Let me ask you this. Could this dog biting a neighbor’s child have any effect on you prospering? Uh-huh. I see heads nodding. You understand what I’m talking about, don’t you? Nowadays, when somebody’s liable to say, well, you know, you’re liable to open the door in the morning, add to a knock on the door and somebody slaps a subpoena in your hands. What’s this? Well, your neighbor down the road is suing you because your dog bit his kid. He said he bit him last month and you didn’t do anything about it. Uh-oh. Your neighbor’s going to own a whole lot more than your dog before all this is said and done. So here is just a simple biblical principle that for the person who sits and reads it, then sits back and thinks about it for a while, and how would this apply to me? How would it affect my life? What does it really mean? It could actually mean the difference between keeping the money you’ve laid up for your children and your children’s children and losing your shirt because of a liability lawsuit. It continues. If a man shall open a pit, or if a man shall dig a pit, verse 33, and not cover it, and an ox or an ass fall in it, the owner of the pit shall make it good and give money to the owner of them, and the dead beast shall be hid. Oh, my goodness. I had been digging a hole in my backyard, you know, the guy says, for a septic tank. And a septic tank, you know, you dig it fairly straight down the sides, and it’s not a very big hole. And while you’re down there working on it, you may look at the sides of that hole every once in a while yourself and wonder, trying to save some money. And you went in last night and went to bed, you know, and cleaned up, went to bed, and didn’t bother putting any barricades around it. You had some sheet plywood you could have put across the top of it over some tuba floors, and you didn’t do that either. And here you are on a Sabbath morning, drinking your coffee and reading your Bible, and sure enough it says a pit. Not only could it be an animal that falls in it, it could be one of the neighbor’s children that fall in it. Children can’t resist a hole in the ground. You know, they can’t resist things like they’ve got to look down in the bottom of it, they’ve got to drop stones down it, they’ve got to get close to the edge of it. And edges have a way of caving in. And then the kid gets down there and something could cave in on top of him. You could wind up very liable, and that could be the least of your problems. There could be your conscience that says, I could have done that. You know what’s going to happen when somebody draws you into court and says, here it was, you had a pool put in your backyard and you didn’t even put up a fence. Why didn’t you put up a fence? You dug a hole in your backyard, you put no barricade or light on it, you did not protect it from neighborhood children. Why didn’t you do that? You knew your dog was prone to bite. Why didn’t you do something? Do you know what you’re going to say to the attorney, to the judge, to your neighbor, whoever? I didn’t think. Aren’t you? You didn’t mean to hurt the child. You didn’t mean to be negligent. You didn’t mean to cause a problem. You just didn’t think. His delight is in the instruction of God, and he thinks about it. Routinely. One simple chapter of the Bible here that lays out principles of liability in living with neighbors, and every one of these principles is firmly rooted in our legal system. That we are held liable for things that we know and could have done something and didn’t do anything about it. A heightened awareness of this could have more to do with your prosperity in direct financial terms than you can imagine, not to mention your peace of mind. Let’s turn over into chapter 22 and take a look at verse 14. Another simple little principle. He says, If a man borrows anything of his neighbor and it be hurt or die, the owner not being with it, he shall surely make it good. Now, I am highly unlikely to borrow anything of my next door neighbor that is alive. But it’s not inconceivable that if my lawnmower were broke, I could go over to my next door neighbor’s house and borrow his riding lawnmower. I could. However, having just read this scripture, I recall that if this thing breaks while I’ve got it, I am responsible for making it good. It doesn’t matter if his clutch was already nearly worn out. If it goes while I’ve got it, I’m going to have to make it good. Right? That’s all very clear. Maybe what I ought to do Well, let’s see what the rest of the scripture says, because actually there is a principle, you know, further than even this in it. Let’s see, verse 14. If a man borrow anything of his neighbor, and he hurt or die, the owner of not being with it, he shall surely make it good. But if the owner thereof be with it, he shall not make it good. If it’s a hired thing, it came for its hire. I know what I’ll do. I’ll let my fingers do the walking through the yellow pages, and I’ll call up this guy and tell him to bring his mower over here, and he’ll cut my grass, and I’ll pay him for it. And if it breaks, it’s his problem. I’ve sold up all my liabilities right there. I have to pay that amount of money to get my yard mowed, and if his equipment breaks, that’s his problem, not mine. It came for his hire. You know, again, these are such simple things. I told you when I started out, this sermon had a problem with it. But it was so simple. And yet the principles that are being outlined here for us to live our lives by can affect our prosperity. You can understand why then he would say, That blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly, who doesn’t stand in the way of sinners, who takes pleasure in the instruction of God and thinks about it day and night. Whatever he does will prosper. It really will make a difference in his life. Come on down a little further. There are some more principles right in this same section that are really valuable. You shall neither vex a stranger nor oppress him, for you are strangers in the land of Egypt. You know, I don’t know why it is, but Down through history, men have been prone to take advantage of strangers, people who don’t belong, people who are not part of their community. And these stories have been written time and time again. We are told that our forefathers were strangers at one time, and we have been strangers. Every one of us has been a stranger in a strange place. I thought I’d say a strange person, but not all of us are strange persons. But we’ve all been strangers. We’ve been in strange places, and we’ve been alone. And sometimes it can mean so much to stop by and ask someone directions who’s standing alongside the road. and to have them, oh yes, and then give you directions and advice and so forth. Wouldn’t it be awful, though, if a person sent you deliberately in the wrong direction, where it wasn’t safe for you to go? Could he? Sure he could. We operate a great deal in our world on trust. Now, I know I really don’t need to tell you folks to do that, but you see, one of the reasons I don’t need to tell you is because you have already come to an understanding of this principle through the teachings of Jesus Christ. But nevertheless… It is something that as children oftentimes we engage in mischief deliberately with strangers. One of the reasons why children hate to change schools is because they know what children in their school have put new kids in their school through. It’s a principle. Maybe we ought to consider teaching our children some of these principles. You shall not afflict any widow or fatherless child. This one is rather interesting. If you afflict them in any way, you know, it does not even say deliberately or intentionally or unintentionally. It just says if you afflict them in any way and they cry at all to me, I will surely hear their cry and my wrath will wax hot and I will kill you with the sword and your wives shall be widows and your children shall be fathers. Now, I don’t know about you, but he’s got my attention. on this one. A lot of you are probably in business situations or operating situations from time to time where you do encounter widows or fatherless children or helpless people of one kind or another. How do you respond to them? You know, it is so easy to take advantage of a widow. We had an interesting situation up in Minnesota this last summer where a woman whose husband had died and left her alone She was a member of the Church of God International, but she was over in, I forget the name, Bemidji, I think, Minnesota, a long way away from any minister, or as far as I knew, from any other members of the church. And she wrote down, she wasn’t really asking me for anything, she was just concerned about her situation. This was Minnesota. She had no firewood in yet, and it was starting to get late in the summer. She had her husband’s pickup truck that she was trying to sell, and she’d been around to two or three car dealers, used car dealers, asking what it was worth, and she had the very distinct impression that they were trying to steal her pickup truck legally. And she wrote, just kind of helpless and talking about being alone. So I wrote her back and said, well, now do you mind if I give your name? I said, are there people in your area that we know about? They were people on the extended church. Do you mind if I give your name to them? Because you’ve got to be careful nowadays. You can’t just give people’s names around willy-nilly because you never know what people are going to do. But I asked her, because of her situation, if she’d mind it, and she didn’t mind, so I gave her name to two other people on the extended church who happened to be in Bemidji, and also let Scott Erickson know, who’s a minister up in Orem, Minnesota. Well, between Scott and him going down there and working with her, and the other two members in the area helping her out, she’s got a load of firewood in for the winter, they sold her pickup for $400 above wholesale, she’s got everything all straightened out, and next summer she’ll be able to move back near her friends and family back over in St. Paul. And, you know, this is the kind of thing, now, You might ask yourself, why should I need to do this? That’s her problem, not mine. People can do that. I know you all wouldn’t do that. Why wouldn’t you do it? Because of the scriptures, one reason. I’m not bringing something to you that’s new to you. You already know what your attitude and your response is supposed to be. But you know, in the various business situations we get involved in across the country, my wife is in real estate. And when she gets a widow… she bends over backwards to do what needs to be done to help. Because she doesn’t want, you know, there’s a selfish side of the thing of not wanting that widow to cry out to God and say, well, this person took advantage of me. That’s one side of it. The other side of it, which is much stronger, is the care that gets bred in us over time because we are routinely delighting and taking delight in God’s instructions and we are routinely thinking about them, builds in us an attitude of mind. Now, What do you suppose happens when a widow is helped? When somebody not only doesn’t take advantage of her, but bends over backwards to help her in whatever way they can? Well, one of the things she’s going to do is to pray and thank God for that person and ask God’s blessing for that person. Is that worth anything to you? Another thing she’s going to do is she’s going to tell people about you. She’s going to tell them how you helped her and how you took care of her. And your reputation is going to go up a couple of notches as a result of what you did. Did you ever hear of the law of 250?
SPEAKER 1 :
250?
SPEAKER 01 :
It’s a salesman’s law. It means for every person you make mad at you, you turn off 250 potential customers because that is the circle that most salespeople, I mean most people know, about 250 people. Which also means in turn that if you really build up a reputation for good, you also affect about 250 people because of the way people network in this world. And your reputation can get stronger and stronger. Now I ask, if any of you people here are in business for yourself, is your reputation worth anything in dollars and cents? Oh my, you know it is. You know how precious it is. And therefore the things that you do to build that reputation, and that’s what, you know, some of this has to do with your reputation. And some of it has to do directly with God. I don’t know which one you think is the more important. I think I do. But the fact is, if you don’t care about anything else except your reputation, you’re going to prosper because you think about this law routinely as a part of your everyday life. Notice what it continues to say, work our way down this. It says, if you lend money to any of my people who are poor by you, you are not to be to him as a usurer, neither shall you lay upon him usury. In many cases, the reason why people are in trouble financially is because they lack the discipline or the self-control or the knowledge in many cases to be able to keep their purchasing under control, and because of 18% and 24% interest rate on the things that they buy, they wind up going further and further in debt, and finally they get so far down, there is no way out for them. And so it comes to you and says, could you lend me some money? Now, if you then lend money to a person in that situation, charging interest, all you’re doing, you are no better than the finance companies or the loan sharks that have been taking advantage of them and got them there in the first place. Now, you can, if you’re dealing with a brother in the church who says, I’d like to borrow some of your money to help me out in my business, and he says, if I make any money, I’ll give you some of it, that’s okay to take interest in that kind of situation. We’re talking about poor people. You are, A, to lend them money. You really aren’t supposed to do it. And you’re not supposed to charge them any interest. Well, can I take some kind of security, some kind of collateral? Oh, yeah, you can do that. Here it is, right here. If you at all take your neighbor’s raiment, to pledge, you shall give it back to him before sunset. That’s his covering. It’s his raiment for his skin. What’s he going to sleep in? It shall come to pass, he cries to me, I will hear, for I am gracious and you are not. That’s what he’s saying. I’m gracious and you’re not, and I’m going to hear him when he cries to me. So, I would suggest you give it back. And since you’re going to have to give it back tonight at sunset, what’s the point in taking it in the first place? Now, this is not the kind of thing that if you just try to apply this as a regulatory law, you’re going to run down more dead ends than you can think about. But if you can think about this as God’s instructions, as I said, you can close your Bible and take another sip of your cup of coffee and stare out the window for a while again and think about what this means and how it would impact your life. and about the things that you have already done, and how it worked or how it didn’t work, and what really happened when I lent my brother-in-law that $20, what sort of changes were made, and the way I handled it when I asked for it back. How am I doing this? Am I doing this right, according to what I’m told here, or am I running down some wrong pathways in the process? Continue with chapter 23, verse 1. You shall not raise a false report. Don’t put your hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness. What could that mean? Well, the one thing I think you could consider is not to be a participator in spreading a rumor. Now, you would say to yourself, well, of course I’m not going to spread it. Why would I spread a false report? Oh, if it was titillating, and if you didn’t know that it was false but thought it might be true, and you thought the person you were going to tell it to would be excited by it, why, yeah, I might. Whoops. You shall not raise a false report. That’s what you had in the first place. And you’re not supposed to put your hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness. Don’t help anybody out in this kind of thing. Don’t spread this kind of thing around. Simple little principles that you ought to live by. Now, how could this affect your life? I’ll tell you one way it can affect your life very directly. Have you ever sat with someone and listened to what they were saying about old Joe or Susan or Joanna and how they were running Joanna down to you? and wondered in your mind what they said about you when they were talking to Joanna? If you didn’t, you’re not paying attention. Because if they will say this about them, they will also talk about you. Now, that’s this dirty old person that’s doing this over here. Now we’re talking about how does this affect your life? Do you want to be the kind of a person that people don’t trust? Well, if you do, if you don’t mind being a person that people won’t trust, then feel free to talk about your friends to other friends. Feel free to run people down. Because in the process of running down Joanna over here to your friend, you are sowing distrust in your friend’s mind toward you. Do you ever consider that? It’s the way it works. It is the way it works. Now here’s just a simple principle. There’s nothing complicated. Just don’t get involved in it. You shall not follow a multitude to do evil. Neither shall you speak in a cause to decline after many to twist judgment. Neither shall you countenance a poor man in his cause. That’s a curious one. Not to countenance a poor man in his cause. I’m not sure what to make of that, but I think I know one way I would apply that. Some fellow comes along to me and he really doesn’t have enough money. to go into business for himself and he wants me to invest and go into business with him. I think what I would probably do after hearing him out is say, friend, I think you ought to get a job and save up some money and maybe you’ll be able to go into business for yourself. Because whenever you take a partner in, all you’re doing is taking in somebody else that’s going to try to tell you what to do. All you’re going to have is somebody trying to direct your business. If you take in somebody that’s lending you money and expecting to get interest back, you’re going to give up so much of your profits it may not be worth it to you. I’ll give him advice, but I’m probably not going to give him much else. I may give him a loan that I don’t ever expect to see again, and therefore it needs to be of an amount that I can afford to give him, and so on. But to countenance him in his cause or to support him in his project or to finance him in his business, no, I think not. I think not. These are things that a person has to consider. Once again, it’s not a part of the law, the Medes and the Persians that is applied in the letter and never altered. These are instructions that you’re supposed to think about and find a way to apply them in your life. Now, since we’re talking about instructions and not just laws, in a sense, let’s move out of the law. Let’s go back to the book of Proverbs. The book of Proverbs is an incredible set of instructions. And I want you to imagine yourself once again this time. will have you propped up in bed at bedtime. You know, you’ve got up in bed, you’ve tucked your feet under the covers, you’ve popped up against some pillows, you’ve got the lamp on by the bed, you’ve got a glass of milk and two, not three, two of your favorite cookies. Not this kind either, the big, large, ten-inch diameter one, just two small cookies of your favorite kind. And it’s bedtime. And I want you to open your Bible. as you propped up there in your bed, to the seventh chapter of the book of Proverbs. This chapter starts by saying, My son, keep my words and lay up my commandments with you. Keep my commandments and live, and my law is the apple of your eye. Bind them upon your fingers. Write them upon the table of your heart. Now, he’s not talking about phylacteries. He’s not talking about scribbling, you know, Ten Commandments and tying them up around your fingers. That’s symbolic language or metaphor for really getting your fingers into it or having the law so close to you that it’s on your fingers and it’s written in your heart. How do you write things in your heart? You memorize them. That’s simple. We all know how to do that. We learn how to do that as children. The book of Proverbs, these sections of these Proverbs and parts of the Proverbs and individual Proverbs cry out to be memorized. They’re there for you, and you ought to memorize some of them, the ones that apply to you, that affect your life. You ought to sit there and repeat them over and over again until you can quote them, you know, without looking at the Bible, and so that you’ll never forget them. Write them in your heart, because they affect the way you live. Bind them upon your fingers. Write them upon the tables of your heart. Say to wisdom, you’re my sister, and call understanding your kinswoman, that they may keep you from the strange woman, the stranger that flatters with her words. For at the window of my house I looked through my casement, and I beheld among the simple ones, I beheld, discerned among the youths, a young man void of understanding. Now, if you kind of get the picture of this, we’ve got this young oaf with big feet, big hands, and not very much gray matter between the ears. He is very unflatteringly described, but of course he is young and he is awkward and he has not learned a lot of things about life yet. Passing through the street near her corner, he went along the street toward her house. In the twilight, in the evening, in the black and dark night, behold, there met him a woman with the attire of a harlot. She had on a tight leather skirt that just was about this far below the waist, you know, a little short leather-type skirt, kind of the attire of a harlot. and a real tight sort of spandex blouse that revealed everything and concealed nothing. And she was also very subtle of heart, very smooth. It says she is loud and stubborn. Her feet abide not in her house. Now she is outside. Now she’s in the street. She lies in wait at the corners. So she caught him and kissed him and with an impudent face said to him, I have peace offerings. That means stakes. I’ve got some stakes at the house. I have paid my vows this day, and I came forth to meet you. You’re the one I came out here to see. Sure she did. Right. This young oaf, awkward, ungainly, not particularly handsome, she came looking for him. She just flatters him. She says, I came diligently to seek your face, and I have found you. I have decked my bed with coverings of tapestry and carved works and the fine linen of Egypt. I have perfumed my bed with myrrh and aloes and cinnamon. You want to know what it smells like? She said and wafts her hand underneath his nose. Come, let us take our fill of love to the morning. Let’s solace ourselves with love. The good man is gone. He’s not at home. He’s gone on a journey and taken a bag of money and he won’t be home until the time appointed. We’re safe. With her much fair speech, she caused him to yield and with the flattering of her lips, she forced him You know, most of us men think in terms of the reason why women are enamored of us is our macho. We’re going to sweep women off our feet. We’re going to waltz in and we’re going to sweet talk this gal and she’s going to go where we take her just because of our masculinity. Nah. She decided. She picked him out. She forced him. Now that’s kind of humiliating when you think about it. It says he goes after her straightway like an ox goes to the slaughter, like a fool to the correctionist doctor. This woman reached out and with her little finger she could tuck it around his necktie. Just her little finger around the corner of his necktie and say, follow me. And he’ll go anywhere. Anywhere. And so it says he’ll go after her until a dart strikes through his liver like a bird hastens to the snare and doesn’t know it’s for him. she has cast down many wounded yea many strong men have been slain by her her house is the way to hell going down to the chambers of death do you suppose the night before if Jimmy Swaggart had read this scripture and thought long and hard about it the night before that he would have necessarily have been down that same street, at that same motel, with his car, with his license plate, parked out in front of him? Well, there’s a chance that he might not have been there. You know, I heard something I have not known recently. Pat Robertson was being interviewed by Larry King, I believe, and he said, you know, that Jimmy Swaggart, when he was 12 years old, was taken to a house of prostitution by his cousins or his uncles, I forget exactly which it was, as a rite of passage. And it had an effect on his life from that time forward. And I can understand how that might well be, because when you’re 12 years old, you’ve got all these things in your mind. You’ve heard all these stories from all your friends and cousins about what things are like, you know. And if somebody drags you down to a house of prostitution and you get involved in this, you’re not able to, you know, to weigh this, to deal with it, to contemplate the implications of it. And I gathered that from this, you know, he has had a lifelong obsession with pornography. Perhaps it is a result of that, but of course, you know, We have, us human beings, have a natural preoccupation with sex. To be drawn, shall we say, to listen to someone or to see someone or to follow through on something like that is a normal thing to happen. And you can easily understand how child molestation, how introduction to sex at a very young age and where that type of thing can lead can cause problems. I don’t say this to excuse Jimmy Swagger, but I got to thinking about it and I suspect, I mean, I may be wrong, But I have a feeling that there was a period of time in his life when he wasn’t doing that. I have a feeling there was a period of time in his life, in his early ministry and his working toward the ministry, when he was immersing himself in the Bible, because Jimmy Swaggart does know the Bible. I have a feeling there was a time, because of the fact that he had his nose in the Bible, that he came to hate this obsession that he had. He came to loathe and despise many of the things that he had done, and there was no way during that period of time, because he was in the Bible. that he would have done those things I may be wrong but I suspect that that is the case because you know and I think that loathing I don’t know if you heard Jimmy Swagger at any time before the scandal struck his ministry or not but I have heard very few people speak as vehemently in condemnation of sin as I have heard Jimmy Swagger and it was almost like a man who was preaching to himself it was like a man who knew the kind of pain and suffering and heartache that it could cause And he was vehement in his denunciation of it. And I suspect that it was because of the way it had affected and maybe even was affecting his life. But you know, men who think they know the Bible are very vulnerable. Because once you have come through the stage of learning it, once you have made those sacrifices and spent the hours in poring over the pages of the Bible, And you have in your mind, you’re prone when you come to a scripture like this to pass to say, let’s say, Proverbs 7, I know what’s there, let’s see what’s in Proverbs 8. And not take the time to go back and routinely think about God’s instruction. For had he done so, he probably, might not have at least, let’s say, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt, might very well not have been there that night. But of course it takes much more than one time. It takes a continual regular, consistent watering of your little plant for you to come to the place to where it’s foreign to you, to where you don’t feel like it. Now, maybe you have had this experience in your life to where, as a result of a period of time of Bible study or a period of time of really immersing yourself in God’s Word and being aware of what He said, you actually surprised yourself one occasion to realize that some sin of yours, some problem of yours, some thing that had dogged your steps sometime for years, you found yourself surprisingly not even wanting. It was not a matter that you had to resist it, that suddenly for that one moment you didn’t want it. Oh, a day or so later you probably wanted it again, and the problem went on. But you see, That closeness to God, to the mind of God, to the thoughts of God, to the ways of God, the teachings of God, has got to have an effect on your life. The book says, He who walks with wise men shall be wise, the companion of fools shall be destroyed. Whoever it is who is having the greatest impact on the way you think is going to have a profound influence on your life. Do you realize that this sermon as I’ve been going through it, is about something no more complicated than Bible study. Now, if I had started out today saying, okay, this sermon is about Bible study and how you all ought to start studying the Bible, I think I might have lost a few of you at that point in time, but you see, that’s what this is all about. Reading your Bible, thinking about your Bible, so that you know the kind of things that God instructs man to do. That’s all. And what comes from it It doesn’t involve God being pleased with you because you study your Bible, although I’m sure he is. It involves results, like watering a plant, like fertilizer. It’s nothing secret, nothing complicated, nothing difficult. Now, to make this work, you need five things. You need your Bible. You need a comfortable place. Like I said, it can be propped up in bed at bedtime, or it can be in the morning with a cup of coffee. You need peace and quiet. You need a system. And, of course, we’ve already provided for you. If you would like to have it, you can do your own, of course. But we have a Read the Bible in One Year little brochure that you can write in and get from us. We’d be glad to send you a copy of it. And fifth, you need something to keep you in focus. I suggest a pen or pencil and a pad, notepad, because occasionally you’ll want to jot down things or you’ll want to mark scriptures. I remember as students, Mr. Andy will remember this, back in the old days, some of us had, how was it, 16 colors of pens that we carried around in our briefcases. And I have a feeling if you could, I know you couldn’t mind, I suspect also, Mr. Andy, if you could go looking through some of our old Bibles, you’d be rather fascinated to see some of the color codes that show up as we study through them. But you know, as silly in a way as that sounds, it was useful in another way. Actually, it was useful for reasons I don’t know if we fully understood. It kept us in focus. Because while I was sitting there saying, let’s see, now this particular proverb is about pride. and I’m using red for pride, and I pull my little red pencil out, and I mark all the way around that scripture, my mind is on it. There it is. I’m marking my way around that scripture. And it also served a great deal of benefit in this way. To this day, I can page through the book of Proverbs and find sequentially scriptures, you know, Proverbs about subjects without having to go looking it up in concordances. If someone called on me to give an impromptu sermon, I could open up this object to number one here and say, okay, this one’s going to be on Or this one’s going to be on zeal. And I can follow through it because of something I did when I was a student in college so many years ago. It helped keep me in focus. It helped me come back to it so that I could think about it and so that it could ultimately make a change in my life. You know, it’s not difficult. It is simple. It’s easy to do. And it works. You just have to want to do it. Now, I want you to put yourself back in bed again. Imagine yourself propped up on your pillows. Let’s go back to that first psalm. The psalms are particularly good about this type of thing. It’s a good place to start, and it’s a good place to go through. Let’s say, where do you want to start? Let’s start with the psalms. Here we are, propped up in bed. Our pillows are there, and our glass of milk, and our two, not three, but two cookies. Blessed is the man that walks not in the counsel of the ungodly. nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the instruction of the Lord. And in his instruction does he think routinely, meditate day and night. It’s a part of his life. He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that brings forth his fruit in his season. His leaf also shall not wither, and whatsoever he does shall prosper.” The ungodly? The ungodly are not so. They are like the chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish. Now, finish your milk, turn out the light, pull up the covers around your ears and get comfortable. and think for a while about what you just read. The results start tomorrow.
