“Following God's Lead” | Sunday AM | Pastor David K. Caruthers

Original Broadcast of Sunday Morning 10 AM Bible Class, 07/12/2026

Speaker: Pastor David K. Caruthers

Message Title: "Following God's Lead" 

We invite you to join us in person 

Sundays at 10am & 11AM 

Wednesdays at 7:30 PM

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Today, Romans 8 and 14 says, For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. And today we want to talk to you, teach to you for a few minutes, following God's lead, following God's lead. And we follow God's lead by his word, by his presence, by his voice, by his purpose, and his direction leads us and guides us. And these tools that God gives to direct us and to lead us all work together in unity. They don't conflict with one another. That's a good sort of clue of whether you're really hearing from God if it starts conflicting. And so we open our hearts and allow God to lead us and direct us and guide our paths. I think we should all have that consistent prayer that Jesus prayed, let your will be done and not ours. Let your will be done and not ours. And sometimes we're saying that because we need to remind ourselves of that, right? Because our natural thing is to do our will. Our natural tendency is to do what we want to do, to live, to act, to interact, whatever that happens to be, in our way, in our thoughts, and our opinions. And we have to constantly submit ourselves to God and allow God to lead us and direct us. So today I want to I want to just focus on these areas. I'm going to get the handout out so I can kind of make sure I'm getting to where you are on the handout and not giving you false hope that I'm going too fast and I'm going to finish soon or something. I'm afraid, like most of the time when preachers preach, we spend a long time on point number one, and then we're rushing to close out the other points. You know, that's kind of how it seems to work for us. But that would be uh that would kind of be appropriate this morning because uh one of the ways, and the first way I want to talk about that we are led by God, is that we are led by God's word. And if you don't hear anything else today, that's an important thing for us to embrace today, that we are led by God's word. The famous verse in Psalm 119, of course, Psalm 119, the entire Psalm is focused on the Word of God. And verse number 105 says, Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. If you were sort of raised up going to church, going to Sunday school, you probably remember that verse from all of those years ago, or maybe a few years ago, but for some of us, a long time ago. And you remember those words because they're so foundational that we teach them to our children. We want them to know this in their hearts and their minds, to remember this, and that guide sort of guides us throughout our lives. That God's word is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. And that we need Him to be that in our lives, and that we always, we are always able to go to His Word and find His guidance, His direction, His instructions, and His foundation for our lives and our purpose that He has called each one of us to fulfill. And so it's just so important that we begin by standing on the Word of God. If we're going to be led by God. However, whatever vernacular we use to say that God is leading us, sometimes people say God spoke to me. Sometimes people said I felt like God wanted me to do something, or any of those kinds of things, we need to start with the Word of God. Amen. We need to start with the Word of God. In Luke chapter 21, and also in Matthew 24 and Mark 13 in the Synoptic Gospels, each one has this same verse or phrase where Jesus said, Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. That his word endures beyond the earth, beyond everything that we can see, all the tangible things that we can see around us, no matter how long they last or how soon they decay, God's word supersedes all of that. And in Matthew chapter 5, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, For verily I say unto you, Matthew 5 and 18, till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till it all be fulfilled. Not even the smallest of grammatical notations. Not even the smallest of the grammatical notations. Now we would maybe call that the dot that's over the eye or something like that to denote that small sort of notation. Even those things in God's word will surpass the heavens and the earth. I need a like a silaw moment right there, right? Just to stop for a moment and think about that. Let that settle into our minds and into our hearts. Even though it may be fulfilled and we may be sort of receiving it in a different way, it's still the word of God. And I would use that to talk about even things in the Old Testament, because a lot of times people treat the Old Testament as if it is just background information. But it's not background information, although you need that background. It is the word of God. And it's still the word of God today. And it still stands today, even though some of it was fulfilled in the New Testament, so it may not have exactly the same focus or action today as it did before the New Testament. For example, the Passover. Passover is still critically important for us to understand and for us to acknowledge and for us to embrace. The Passover wasn't done away with. Didn't go away. It's still there. It's still the Word of God. And while we may not need to celebrate some, you know, special meal, although we could, we don't need to celebrate that, but we we certainly need to celebrate Jesus being the Passover Lamb. We certainly need to take the time to do that. Certainly need to do that. And in some ways, in some ways, you know, we set that aside even on our calendar today. So the Word of God continues, it is the foundation, and I'm not really telling you anything new in saying that, I'm sure, to all of you and all of us, because we're we're accustomed to that, but it's become increasingly more critical for us to understand and embrace the Word of God as the truth. Not a truth, the truth. Not my truth, the truth. The truth. We need that standard because in our culture today, there's a there's a strong, how can I say this? I'm trying to be nice to people, but there's a strong demonic undertow of pushing people towards rejecting truth. That truth is all subjective to you, just whatever you think it is is what it is. And we see that sort of displayed all over the place in our culture. And so it's more important than ever that we embrace the truth of the word of God, and all that we do in following God is based on the truth of His Word. And that also means for us that the Word of God is the sort of final arbiter, it's the final referee, it's the final measure of everything else. Everything else you would say God is leading me in, if it doesn't comply with the word of God, it is not God speaking to you. I mean, we can just say that absolutely. We can say that absolutely. If we think God is speaking to us in some other way that is contrary or contradictory to the word of God, we can know. We can know that the word of God is truth. And if something contradicts the word of God, it is not true. We don't have to understand all the details about everything to know that. We can just stand on God's word in trust and confidence in God's word. Any voice not agreeing with the word of God is not from God. It's just not from God. And there's no sort of gray area there. Now I understand that we may not fully know or understand the word of God at times or what God is instructing us at times. So sometimes our understanding is limited of the word of God, but that doesn't change the truth of the word of God. Doesn't change it. So it's important for us to start there today. Start there by just establishing if we're gonna be led by God, the word of God leads us. Of course, that sort of pretends the next step, that sort of moves to the next step, suggests the next thing we need to keep in mind is that we must know the word of God. So if the word of God's gonna lead us, it's really important for us to have knowledge of the word of God. So, how long do you study the Word of God? Forever. Your whole life. And you're not gonna know as much at the beginning as you do later. But you're never gonna run out either. You're never gonna get to where you know so much you don't need to know anything else. So I want to just, I mean, I kind of want to just drive home that whole idea of how important the word of God is to us, how important it is for us to know the word of God, how important it is for us to continue to study and to learn and to grow in the word of God. And I'm sure that every one of you have, you know, uh, you know, you've read the word of God, you've heard the word of God, you've heard preaching, you you've experienced a lot of things. Maybe you've even taught uh a number of times or a lot of times, or uh yourself, and and uh and you feel like you you have a pretty good understanding and you know how to search out the scriptures if you don't have a good understanding, but even when you're you know, even when you're there, even if you had a lot of initials after your name saying you were a theologian of some kind, you still find things in the scripture that you didn't really recognize before. And so it's like a sort of like a you know a treasure chest of uh things you haven't quite uncovered yet for yourself. Some of that's because, of course, at certain times of our lives or certain situations, something doesn't seem as relevant to us. It's not that it's hidden from God or that we have our own private understanding of the word of God, it's just that we are at a moment where we can receive what God is saying to us. But I will also say, if you've studied the Word of God very long, at all, whatever that is, you've read something out of the Bible and you say, Wow, look what that says, and blah, blah, blah, and in your mind, this is the meaning you came up with. And then you started digging out the word of God and said, turns out I didn't understand that after all. Yeah, I was wrong on that. Now, how many of you, I didn't ask the other, so I'm gonna ask this though. How many of you have found a scripture and said, Look, that means, and then you started studying the scripture and it didn't really mean that? How many of you have we try uh to stay true to the word of God in our preaching and what we're doing? Obviously, sometimes uh there's a scripture that uh has a larger context to have its understanding, but we try to stay true to the word of God and everything that we're preaching. But all of us, all of us, have heard somebody preach something even out of the Bible, and we went back and looked for it, and turned out that it wasn't really there. I mean, it said something like that, but not what they were saying it said, right? Have you ever experienced that? Oh, we'll just say some TV preacher somewhere that nobody knows, right? So we've we've all experienced that. We can be wrong, we cannot understand, but that does not change that the word of God is true. And I I just this is our, you know, exploring God's Bible class with our adults this morning. So I think we can say that and and know that sometimes we have to correct our own understanding by looking at the word of God. But whatever it is, my opinion of it and my thoughts about it is not the same as the word of God. And that seems to be one of the most common things that's happening in modern American Christianity, is we tend to read what somebody said about the word of God rather than the word of God itself. And what someone said about the word of God may be good, but it's not the word of God. And so the word of God is the primary way that we are led, and it's the primary way we judge whether we're really hearing from God is through the word of God. So let me move on. That was only a third of my time, so let me move on and talk about some other ways that we are led by God. Sometimes we are led by God through his presence. In Exodus chapter 13, verse 21. Again, this will be very familiar to you also. The word of the Lord says, and the Lord went before them, them here is the children of Israel. The word of the Lord, excuse me, the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them, to lead the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, to go by day and by night. God's presence, God's power as exhibited or revealed or expressed in a cloud and a fire, led the Israelites. It would be nice at times that it was that obvious. Right? But they were led by the presence of God, by God leading them and directing them. And they're responding to what they see in this physical manifestation of the presence of God, this cloud or this fire that is covering them, is leading them, is directing them. And so they respond to that. If the cloud starts moving, they say, okay, we've got to move, we've got to go. We've got to stay with the cloud. We've got to stay with the presence of God. Wherever the presence of God is leading us, wherever the presence of God is taking us, we need to stay there. We need to stay nearby, we need to stay close by to what's happening. And so we can see in as Moses was leading the children of Israel, they were sometimes, or in this case, led by the presence of God. Now we'll talk in a minute about God speaking to Moses, but but they were led by the presence of God. We should be able to be led by the presence of God. In fact, we should we should seek the presence of God. We should want to be in God's presence, in God's power. Now, God is everywhere. But I think we understand what we mean when we say we want to be led by the presence of God. We want to be led by how God is working, how God is moving, what God is directing us in the moment. I'm sure this presence of God was quite comforting to the children of Israel. What I mean by that is don't get the idea that they were moving all the time. Because they weren't moving every three days or something like that. I mean, they they were moving periodically, uh, largely, most likely, to follow the grazing lands and to follow the sort of nomadic way that one would live in this wilderness life, and then following the path that God wanted them to go to be prepared for what God wanted them to be prepared for, because the wilderness prepared them to be an independent nation that could not just conquer the promised land, but manage the promised land. And so they needed a lot of skills to do that. So while these while this difficult wilderness life was directly resulting from their disobedience to God, God used that wilderness life to build them into a strong nation rather than just a tribe that didn't really know how to manage them. Remember, they've lived in Egypt. They don't know how to live in a wilderness, they don't know how to, you know, to govern a new land that they're of, they don't know, they don't have a, they don't have armies, they don't have all the structure that you would need, they don't have that. They're all just dependent on God, and God would have taken care of them in the way God could if they had the obedience to follow God. But when they didn't, they spent that time in the wilderness, and those hardships made them strong. And obviously, I don't have time to talk about that too much, but just to just to get the get the idea in our minds, they're not they're not just moving all the time. And so they're comfortable with this cloud and fire. You know, most of the time it's right in the same spot it was yesterday. Right? Right in the same spot it was the day before and two weeks ago. And then, I don't know, three months. I don't know how often. It's it's a little imprecise to figure that out in the Bible, but but they did move, but I don't know how often that was. It wasn't as often as sometimes we condense it down to be. So the the the having Having the cloud and the fire there was a constant reminder that God was with them, that God was directing them. We need to sense the presence of God as a constant reminder that God is with us and God is leading us and God is directing us. We need the word of God, but we also need to sense God's nearness, sense God's presence, and to feel that to feel that relationship with God as a close relationship with God. So He can lead us and He can direct us. And there's a certain dependence that they maintained on God because they saw the physical manifestation of His presence. Now, you and I don't have that physical manifestation in such a way, but we need to live our lives depending on God. I mean, it was a constant reminder that we're following God for this generation of people, a constant reminder there from the cloud and the fire that we are following God's lead. And so, you know, it was easier in some ways for them not to go their own direction because here's this physical manifestation of the presence of God. Now, I don't know what that would look like, but that'd be kind of interesting in our life today. But the presence of God, being in the presence of God, experience the presence of God, is a constant reminder, not only that we are following God, and not only that he is with us, but that we need to be dependent on him and not on ourselves and not on our own opinions for things. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. The third way that I want to talk about for a few moments is God would lead by his voice, by a voice speaking to them. In Acts chapter 8, verse 26 through 30, it says, The angel of the Lord spake unto Philip, saying, Arise and go toward the south, unto the way that goes down from Jerusalem unto Gaza, which is a desert. And he arose and went, and behold, a man of Ethiopia, a eunuch of great authority under Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who had the charge of all of her treasure and had come to Jerusalem for to worship, was returning and sitting in his chariot, read Isaiah the prophet. Then the spirit said to Philip, Go near and join yourself to this chariot, to his chariot. And Philip ran to him and heard him read the prophet Isaiah and said, Under, do you understand what you read? I know it says, if you're King James, understandest thou what thou readest. Do you understand what you're reading? Philip was led by the voice of God. And the voice of God said, Go, and Philip went. And the voice of God. God didn't say, go over here and pick up this hidden treasure. God didn't say, you know, the kind of human things that we might say. God said, go over here, because there's somebody that I need you to minister to. I need you to share the gospel with. That's completely within the context of the Word of God. So it wasn't just a random voice. This is the kind of thing that God would want. And we know declared them to do in his word. He may still remember, if he heard them directly, the words of Jesus, telling them to preach the gospel to the whole world. And so this is just an extension of what he already knows is God's plan. And he can be sensitive to that and go. He said, Arise and go to the south, and then go near and join yourself. And Philip responded to that. 1 Kings chapter 19, verse 11 and 12. Again, very familiar scripture to you with Elijah, and God said, Go forth and stand on the mountain before the Lord, and behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains and breaking into pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind, and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake, and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire, and after the fire, a still small voice. God speaks through a voice to us. But it's a voice we can hear in our hearts and in our minds as God speaks. However, God does occasionally speak with an audible voice too. In Exodus chapter 33, verse 11, the Bible tells us about a unique relationship God had with Moses in leading Moses. And it says, the Lord spake to Moses face to face as a man speaks to his friend. So God actually had verbal conversations with Moses. Now, probably God's not having verbal conversations with you, but that doesn't mean that he never does. And in this case, Moses had this special relationship with God, which is important for his leadership. It's important for what he was doing for God at the moment, not just because, well, he's a you know a powerful person, but because he had a big job that God had putting him in charge of. And it seems as we read, as this mantle of leadership was passed down, that God also had at least something similar in speaking to Joshua. In John chapter 10, it's talking about the role of the shepherd. It says, and the shepherd, when he puts forth his own sheep, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. A few verses later, Jesus said in verse number 27, John 10 and 27, My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. There's a familiarity with a voice that's important here. We need to learn the voice of God. Because just because you thought something doesn't mean it's the word of God or the voice of God. And again, I think we've all been around people that think everything that passes through their minds, everything they think about, is God speaking. And it may be good, but not necessarily God. Can I say it that way? Maybe good, but not necessarily God. We need to learn to grow in our relationship with God. If you're not sure about the voice of God, there's a measure that you begin with. It's the word of God. Because if you think the voice of God is speaking to you and it's contrary to the word of God, then it's not the voice of God that will help you learn the voice of God. But it also requires you to have a close relationship with God. And why did the sheep know the voice of the shepherd? The first part of this is like an when when I read it, let me put it that way, it's it's not real, it's not real uh, it's not real crystal clear in the scripture. So I don't want to say this is what the Bible says. I want to say this is kind of how I visualize it. At the first part of the scripture, it's it's almost as if there's this uh corral, I will say, or this area where the sheep are, and various shepherds bring their sheep to this place, and then when they start to leave, the shepherd comes and he calls his sheep, and since his sheep know his voice, only his sheep respond. And that's kind of the image that that I read in portraying this. Of course, again, I'm I'm maybe putting a little bit more in there than you can read in just the verse, but it sounds like that's what he's saying. They're saying, you know, there's sheep out there, but when when this shepherd speaks, those sheep are so familiar with his voice that only those sheep respond to his voice. And they get up and respond while the other sheep stay, waiting on the voice of their shepherd. And so I think the idea here is that we learn the voice of God. So learn the voice of God, to be led by God, to follow God's lead, learn his voice. Number four, God has a purpose or he has a bigger plan. God has what he is wanting to accomplish, and sometimes that leads us the way God wants us to walk. So that helps us to follow God's lead, is knowing what his plan is or what his purpose is. One of the things that's important in understanding this is you may not understand your role exactly and what God's bigger purpose is. You may not understand precisely what your role is, but you can understand that God is doing something here, and my piece of it or my part of it is working along with God's plan, even if I'm not the primary person. We don't all need to be Apostle Paul's. But somebody needs a prayer meeting at the river for the Apostle Paul to come to. You see what I'm saying? Somebody needs a Bible study, somebody needs something else going on, somebody needs a small group of people gathered, somebody, somebody's got to be the cornelius that Peter comes to. We don't all have to be Peter, but somebody, we need some corneliuses too. We need some, we need some people that's gathered some people together and said, we want to hear the word of God. But I mean the way we do it, because these characters in the Bible are the central characters of reading about, we all sort of put ourselves in those roles, but there's a lot of other things that fulfill the purpose of what God is doing and the plan of what's God doing that's not the person we know all this stuff about. And understanding that God has that plan is very helpful to us. We read about some things that seem a little interesting, and that's why we're using this first one with the Apostle Paul in Acts chapter 16, because the Bible says that they had gone through Phrygia and regions of Galatia, and they were wanting to go to some other places, wanting to go to Asia, and the Bible says, and they were forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the word in Asia. Well, normally we preach the word everywhere. We want to go to Asia because that's a place we want to go, and they need the gospel because they need to hear the word of God, but God said, Don't go, I want you to go somewhere else. And so sometimes we have to say, if that's the plan of God, then we will follow the plan of God. And so they went elsewhere to follow the plan of God. And so we we can work with the plan that God has for us. In Acts chapter 23, the Bible tells us about the story of the, in the story of the shipwreck of Paul and his companions, and the night following, in preparation of that, the night following, the Lord stood by him, stood by Paul, and said, Be of good cheer, Paul, for as you have testified in Jerusalem, so must you bear witness also at Rome. So God's plan for Paul was that he would testify at Rome. He's about to be in a shipwreck, and God says, Don't be afraid because you got to get to Rome. Now, some of you might choose to perish in a shipwreck before you're gonna perish in the prison in Rome. But but God had a plan and a purpose, and he said, Don't, and so there's a consolation, there's a there's a confidence, there's a strength because Paul knows I'm going to Rome. God has called me there, and all this stuff that's going on is not gonna keep God from doing what he wants to do. And so he has this confidence and this strength to stand up to these men and give them instructions and give them guidance because he knows he knows that God has this plan. In the same way that Joseph endured so much hardship, God showed him the picture of the ending of his life, of the later years of his life. He thought he would get there quick, he didn't, but that understanding of God's purpose and plan carried him through and helped him to follow God's lead through everything else that he experienced. God has a plan, a purpose, a mission, and he will lead us in that. And if we walk in that plan. So we can we can be, we can follow God's lead, follow God's lead. We do it by his word, we do it by his presence, we do it by his voice, we do it because we're accomplishing his purpose. To follow God in your life, in your relationship with God, probably all of these things will play together, will work together to lead you the way that God wants to lead you. And sometimes it'll be things that you had no idea. My wife and I were talking about just the other day. Sometimes it seems like you're not sure what to do and you're not sure how to go, and then you know you're praying God's will, God's plans, God's purpose, and then all of a sudden it's like it just moves. And God just takes you down this path, and it's like all of a sudden, well, you you feel like, okay, God's just taking us this direction. We're going this way because God is leading us down this path. It may not be the path we had in mind, and it may not be certainly not exactly how, but God is now moving us down this path. And every, every um, I don't want to say every time, uh, but in every sort of transition of our life, God often works in this way. That's just like we're wondering, we're praying, we're we're believing, and we're not sure exactly what it means, and then God just opens the door and we go down this direction with God, knowing that God is with us and seeing how God opens the doors in ways that we, well, we we we couldn't have made them open that way, but God somehow opened that door. And so what do we need to do? Of course, I've already mentioned, but we need to learn the word of God. Keep learning the word of God. But through the word of God and through what God is doing, we have to learn about God's greater purpose, God's greater plan. The plan that goes beyond me. I really need something bigger than me. I really need a purpose bigger than just me. I need to be a part of what God is doing. So I need to know where or what God's purpose is. Oftentimes I can find that here in the Word of God, and sometimes more specifically or more detailed in my life as God unfolds his purpose in our lives. I have to slow down to be led by God. I have to slow down and I have to uh sort of eliminate some distractions so that I can spend time with God to hear his voice and to learn of him. I need to stay still long enough to get past my own construction of scenarios and my own ideas and plans and let God speak to me. And I'm I don't know if you're you're certainly not just like me, but I don't know if you're similar to me in this, but but I can't help but start planning. I'm on my you know, and I start thinking about, you know, this is how this you sort of build this scenario in my mind. And then I have to stop and say, okay, God, what do you what do you want? What do you want to do? Of course, my scenarios end up with big, huge successes at the end, right? Wealth, prosperity, whatever, you know, I'm just whatever. But God has a plan, a step-by-step that I need to follow. And so I have to step back from that and say, okay, God. And that takes some, that sometimes takes some time to sort of process through that. I need to listen to God's voice. And I need to obey quickly. I need to obey quickly. Would you stand with me? It's so important that we obey God quickly. Because if we don't obey God quickly, then we will we will start to try to figure it all out. And we'll start hearing all the reasons why maybe there's a better way. And we'll start contemplating our own thoughts and ideas. Our fears will rise of why we can't. So obey God quickly and follow God's lead. Follow God's lead.