SPEAKER_00: This podcast is the Ministry of Grand Parkway Baptist Church.
SPEAKER_00: For more information in our church, please visit grandparkway.org.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: You can have a seat.
SPEAKER_00: If you have a Bible, I invite you to take it open to Deuteronomy chapter 6.
SPEAKER_00: Deuteronomy chapter 6.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't have a Bible, there's one on your roll.
SPEAKER_00: I'm on page 151.
SPEAKER_00: And we're in a series right now.
SPEAKER_00: If you're visiting today or if you are new to our church, we're in a series on the church.
SPEAKER_00: We're talking about the church, not as the building or the organization or the institution.
SPEAKER_00: That's not what the church is.
SPEAKER_00: The church is the people, and it's an organism, and we're the body of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And so we thought it would, since all that is true, it would benefit us to understand what the Bible says.
SPEAKER_00: And last week we started a series called The Purpose of the Church, and we're the bride of Christ, and we're using the acrostic wife.
SPEAKER_00: Last week we talked about worship.
SPEAKER_00: And this morning I want to talk to you about instruction.
SPEAKER_00: Instruction.
SPEAKER_00: One of the things, and tragically, uh Amos the prophet said this.
SPEAKER_00: He said, The days are coming, declares the sovereign Lord, when I'll send a famine on the land.
SPEAKER_00: Not a famine of food or drink, but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: He says, In that day, the lovely young women and the strong young men will faint because of thirst.
SPEAKER_00: And tragically, I think we're in that day now where it's kind of like when you go to church, you get everything but instruction from the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: And so we just want to instruct you.
SPEAKER_00: And instead of me talking to you about instruction, I want to take a section of scripture and let God kind of instruct us from what the Bible says to us this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: You with me?
SPEAKER_00: You good with that?
SPEAKER_00: Deuteronomy chapter 6, verse 1.
SPEAKER_00: This is what the Bible says.
SPEAKER_00: It says, now this is that Moses is talking, he says, now this is the commandment, the statutes and the rules that the Lord your God commanded me to teach you, that you may do them in the land to which you are going over to possess, that you may fear the Lord your God and your son and your son's sons, by keeping all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you all the days of your life, and that your days may be long.
SPEAKER_00: Hear, therefore, O Israel, and be careful to do them, that it may go well with you, and that you may multiply greatly as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has promised you in a land flowing with milk and honey.
SPEAKER_00: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
SPEAKER_00: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.
SPEAKER_00: And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.
SPEAKER_00: You shall teach them diligently to your children.
SPEAKER_00: You shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise, you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.
SPEAKER_00: You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
SPEAKER_00: Clearly the Bible's intention, and God's intention is it is that instruction be a part of our life.
SPEAKER_00: He kind of incorporated in the warp and woof of everyday life.
SPEAKER_00: And it and I just want to take those nine verses and just kind of ask God to instruct us, just kind of unpack, because there's six things that in the text that I that God kind of points out, I want to bring to your attention.
SPEAKER_00: And the first one is in verse one, and basically it's this that the learning, he seems to be saying, the learning is for the living.
SPEAKER_00: The learning is for the living.
SPEAKER_00: What do you mean?
SPEAKER_00: Verse one, he says, now this is the commandment.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, notice that that's singular.
SPEAKER_00: He says, This is the commandment, because I'm gonna get to it in just a minute, but I want you to know that what Moses says is basically one thing.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a whole bunch of things.
SPEAKER_00: As a matter of fact, I want you to listen this morning, not for that.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna give you six points, and you're like, I thought preachers could only do three, and they had to all rhyme or start with the same letter.
SPEAKER_00: Uh I'm gonna give you six, and you can just jot down the one, you can jot them all down, but here's what I want you to do.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to walk out of here in a few minutes with one thing that you take into your week, just this one thought or one truth or one concept from the Bible, and you just go home today and you start praying, God, instruct me around this one thing, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Because it's really just one thing that he says and kind of unpacks it.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, the book of Deuteronomy really is three sermons that Moses, three talks that Moses gives up, stands up and gives to the people of God, the children of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: Because Moses is not going to go into the promised land.
SPEAKER_00: He knows that.
SPEAKER_00: They're on the precipice, they're on the banks of the Jordan, they're heading over into what God promised.
SPEAKER_00: And he says, by the way, the learning is for the living.
SPEAKER_00: That's what verse 1 means.
SPEAKER_00: He says, now this is the commandment, the singular one thing.
SPEAKER_00: And then there's statutes and rules that the Lord your God commanded me to teach you that you may do them in the land which you are going over to possess it.
SPEAKER_00: See, it's not just teaching for the sake of teaching, it's it it's teaching so you will hear it and receive it and then do it.
SPEAKER_00: You say, Well, I don't know what you mean when you say the learning is for the living.
SPEAKER_00: You see, that's God's intention all along.
SPEAKER_00: If you you can get in a lot of discussions about the existence of God and this, that, and the other.
SPEAKER_00: And let me just say this: one of the greatest statements about the reality of God is the obedience of God's people.
SPEAKER_00: Let me say that again.
SPEAKER_00: One of the greatest statements, don't get into arguments at work, don't go to work this week and say, well, you know, and someone says, Well, how could there be a God?
SPEAKER_00: How could a good God let things like that?
SPEAKER_00: Have you seen?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, what's going on in the world?
SPEAKER_00: Our U.S.
SPEAKER_00: embassies are getting overrun and blah, blah, blah.
SPEAKER_00: Where is God?
SPEAKER_00: The greatest statement about the existence of God is the obedience of God's people.
SPEAKER_00: That's what, if you look all through the Bible, Old and New Testament, James chapter 1, James says, hey, don't be hearers of the word only, but doers.
SPEAKER_00: Because if you're just a hearer and not a doer, you deceive yourself.
SPEAKER_00: None of you got up this morning and you woke your wife and kids up and said, Hey, shave your legs, honey, let's go be deceived.
SPEAKER_00: All right, let's go.
SPEAKER_00: But the Bible says if you come to church and you just hear things and you don't walk out and do them, you don't incorporate them into your life, you don't receive instruction, and then hang your life on that instruction, you're just deceiving yourself.
SPEAKER_00: By the same token, it's why Jesus stood up in Matthew chapter 7 and he's teaching the Sermon on the Mount, and he says, after Matthew 5, 6, and 7, a big long teaching narrative, Jesus says, by the way, anyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a man who builds his house on the rock, and when the storms come and beat against that house, it stands up.
SPEAKER_00: Moses says the same thing back in Deuteronomy 6.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Hey, don't just fill your heads up with information.
SPEAKER_00: Get ready to do something with what you hear today.
SPEAKER_00: You're going to enter into the land, and God's giving you this because he wants you to do these things.
SPEAKER_00: Because in doing these things, your life is going to make a statement about the reality of God.
SPEAKER_00: Second statement he makes us this morning is simply this don't confuse the consequence with the commandment.
SPEAKER_00: Don't confuse the consequence with the commandment.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 2, he says, Do them in the land of which you're going over to possess, verse 2, that you may fear the Lord your God, you and your son and your son's son, by keeping all his statutes and commandments, which I command you all the days of your life, and that your days may be long.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you're not careful, you can confuse the consequence with the commandment.
SPEAKER_00: There's two consequences of keeping the commandment.
SPEAKER_00: They're basically this: you fear the Lord, and secondly, your days may be long.
SPEAKER_00: You say, No, what do you mean?
SPEAKER_00: Don't confuse the consequence with the commandment.
SPEAKER_00: Don't, in other words, don't try to produce in your life what God will produce if you just kind of focus on this one singular commandment that goes all the way through the Old and New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: We'll get to that in just a minute.
SPEAKER_00: But don't confuse.
SPEAKER_00: He says, hey, here's the consequence.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the byproduct of you doing what the Bible says.
SPEAKER_00: You coming and receiving instruction and go, you know what?
SPEAKER_00: That's just not a great idea.
SPEAKER_00: That is a great invitation.
SPEAKER_00: That's my identity as a Christian.
SPEAKER_00: I get to live out what the Bible talks about.
SPEAKER_00: And the Bible says, here's two things that happen.
SPEAKER_00: Number one, you fear the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Not like being afraid, like not fear, but reverence and awe and priority.
SPEAKER_00: But also notice this what he says in verse 2.
SPEAKER_00: He says that you may fear the Lord your God.
SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't stop there.
SPEAKER_00: You and your son and your son's son.
SPEAKER_00: That means you and your children and your grandchildren.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you're sitting in this room right now and you're single, you're thinking that doesn't apply to me.
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, it does.
SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you about my crazy grandpa Janaway, okay?
SPEAKER_00: When I was a kid, I come from a crazy family, dysfunctional, divorce is prevalent in my family.
SPEAKER_00: And so I was born in Phoenix, Arizona.
SPEAKER_00: And my my my when I was little, like five or six or seven years, oh, I was, no, I was four or five, because I came to Texas when I was five.
SPEAKER_00: I was like four or five.
SPEAKER_00: And my crazy grandpa Janaway lived in Harkehila, Arizona, which you've never heard of.
SPEAKER_00: It's like in the middle of Australian outback.
SPEAKER_00: It's just flat desert out there.
SPEAKER_00: And they managed a grain, a meal, like a grain elevator.
SPEAKER_00: People would come and they'd process the grain, and there was the grain elevators and the silo, and they had a trailer house.
SPEAKER_00: And in front of that trailer house was a white station wagon.
SPEAKER_00: And then there was my crazy grandpa Janoa who rocked the flat top, and a dude wore butchwax.
SPEAKER_00: Anybody remember what butchwax was?
SPEAKER_00: Anybody?
SPEAKER_00: Because in the morning, every morning I would hear this.
SPEAKER_00: And then he'd brush that thing up and give it a little kick up in the front, and he would say crazy things, and he rocked it like the V-neck white shirt, and I was kind of like, this crazy old man's gonna just set it off in here today.
SPEAKER_00: Here was my favorite part.
SPEAKER_00: At night, I mean I don't mean like 6:30, 7 o'clock.
SPEAKER_00: I mean 10:30, 11:30, midnight.
SPEAKER_00: He would come into my in the bedroom and me and my brother were sleeping with a flashlight.
SPEAKER_00: He would click it on and go, Who wants to go chase jackrabbits?
SPEAKER_00: And we were like, whoom! And we we would sleep in our clothes in anticipation that the crazy man would come in there.
SPEAKER_00: I'd be laying there going, mighty power from above, come a swooping like a dove.
SPEAKER_00: Please let the crazy old man.
SPEAKER_00: And he'd come in there and he'd click, Who wants to go?
SPEAKER_00: And that's right.
SPEAKER_00: We would get in that station wagon, we'd go out in the desert, no trees anywhere, just flat dirt, as far as you could see, just flatness and huge.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, like biggest German shepherds, jackrabbits.
SPEAKER_00: And we'd get my grandpa's station wagon and he'd go, roll the windows down, boys.
SPEAKER_00: This is before power windows.
SPEAKER_00: And we'd hand crank those windows down, and I don't mean like 10 or 15, I mean 70 miles an hour, turn that and dirt, and by the way, when you go in dirt, it doesn't go, it goes more like you're just sliding around.
SPEAKER_00: Dirt's flying everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: The inside of the thing, it was so dusty inside the station wagon, and there was no, I don't know if you know this, there was no seat belts in the back seat back then.
SPEAKER_00: We were like marbles in a shoebox.
SPEAKER_00: And it was the greatest thing we just go, you boys holding on, and we're just all over the place.
SPEAKER_00: We're on the floor, boy, we're getting up.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it would go on for 20 minutes, and then he'd just slow roll back to the house, and I would be sitting back there laughing so hard, I'd get the hiccups.
SPEAKER_00: When's the last time you laughed so hard you had the hiccups?
SPEAKER_00: That's your problem right there, people.
SPEAKER_00: And I'd be hiccuping, and somewhere between hiccuping and trying to breathe, I would think to myself, I want to be this way when I'm a grandpa.
SPEAKER_00: I can't wait to get my grandkids liquored up on like red dye number five and caffeine and sugar.
SPEAKER_00: Here's some cookies, eat them as you go back into your house now.
SPEAKER_00: Tell your mom Madison I said hi.
SPEAKER_00: Come to grandpa's house next weekend, too, kids.
SPEAKER_00: But the Bible, look at me.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what the Bible says: the Bible says you are setting the spiritual trajectory of your life and your children's life and your grandchildren's life.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Moses says when he says, Hey, fear the Lord, not just you, but your son and your son's sons.
SPEAKER_00: You, all of you in this room, are setting the spiritual trajectory of your descendants, whether you know it or not.
SPEAKER_00: By the way I live my life, I'm not only affecting my children, but I'm also affecting their children.
SPEAKER_00: That's what he says when he says, Hey, don't miss this.
SPEAKER_00: Don't confuse the consequence with the commandment.
SPEAKER_00: The consequence of you obeying this one command is that you fear the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And secondly, that your days may be long.
SPEAKER_00: That's what it says right there in the Bible in verse 2.
SPEAKER_00: Look at it.
SPEAKER_00: He says, hey, I'm not yanking your chain here.
SPEAKER_00: He just spells it out very simply and says, hey, it's not rocket science.
SPEAKER_00: By keeping his statutes and his commandments, which I command you all the days of your life, that your days and that your days may be long.
SPEAKER_00: You know how much money's gonna be spent this year alone on longevity, on length of life, supplements, food, all this kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_00: And God says, hey, here's the deal.
SPEAKER_00: The byproduct of you doing this one thing is that you will fear the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: You will prioritize God in a way you pri you don't prioritize anything else.
SPEAKER_00: And secondly, you'll live a long time.
SPEAKER_00: It's not it's not hard.
SPEAKER_00: Third piece of instruction Moses gives us is Moses says to us this morning from Deuteronomy 6, thirdly, do the math.
SPEAKER_00: Do the math.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse 3.
SPEAKER_00: Hear, therefore, O Israel, and be careful to do them, that it may go well with you, and that you may multiply greatly, as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has promised you in a land flowing with milk and honey.
SPEAKER_00: Now, let me draw your attention to the middle part of that sentence where he says, that you may multiply greatly.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to just, if you've got a pen or pencil, I want you to underline that or circle that in your Bible, those two words, multiply greatly, that you may multiply greatly.
SPEAKER_00: That's been, and I'm gonna tell you this, that's been the intention of God's heart from the very beginning, since he created everything.
SPEAKER_00: You say, What do you mean?
SPEAKER_00: What's that got to do with do the math?
SPEAKER_00: When I say do the math, what most of us do is we do addition, and and and that's kind of the way we do life.
SPEAKER_00: Like since you were here last Sunday, how many of you were here last Sunday?
SPEAKER_00: Can I see your hand?
SPEAKER_00: Hello?
SPEAKER_00: Hold up real high.
SPEAKER_00: The rest of you, shame on you.
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, it's just a joke, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: Uh if you're here last Sunday, uh you have a good day, let's just say a good day, you give yourself a 10, right?
SPEAKER_00: You kind of get to the end of the day, you kind of, oh, it was a good day, didn't do anything I wasn't supposed to do, didn't look at anything inappropriate on the internet, didn't do this, didn't do that, didn't overeat, didn't overdrink.
SPEAKER_00: I was nice to my wife, I I I bought lunch for a coworker, man.
SPEAKER_00: Today was a good day, a 10.
SPEAKER_00: If you had the best day you could possibly have since last Sunday, it's been six days.
SPEAKER_00: The best you could hope for.
SPEAKER_00: If you put 10 plus 10 plus 10 plus 10 plus 10 plus 10, you had six incredible days.
SPEAKER_00: The best you could hope for is a 60.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: See, because we do addition.
SPEAKER_00: We that's the way we do it.
SPEAKER_00: You know, those people come to the 8 o'clock service, they're kind of like, can I get a 15?
SPEAKER_00: I came to the 8 o'clock service.
SPEAKER_00: No, you get a 10.
SPEAKER_00: That's it.
SPEAKER_00: We do addition.
SPEAKER_00: But here's what I'm gonna tell you.
SPEAKER_00: All along, God has done multiplication.
SPEAKER_00: You say, What's the big deal?
SPEAKER_00: That's what he says right here.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, God will multiply you.
SPEAKER_00: Look, if you just change, the numbers stay the same.
SPEAKER_00: Just change what you do with them.
SPEAKER_00: 10 plus 10 plus 10 plus 10.
SPEAKER_00: 10 plus 6 times is 60.
SPEAKER_00: But if you made 10 times 10, times 10, times 10, times 10, times 10 equals what?
SPEAKER_00: Somebody just said it.
SPEAKER_00: Say it again.
SPEAKER_00: One million.
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
SPEAKER_00: There's some smart people in here.
SPEAKER_00: Some of y'all are going, one, two, three.
SPEAKER_00: The engineer guy's got a million.
SPEAKER_00: I can just add zeros up and came in.
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
SPEAKER_00: You can have sixty.
SPEAKER_00: You just, you, uh, well, it's addition.
SPEAKER_00: You know, God, I did this, and then, and then, and then, okay, I did this, and then, and then, oh, what about this day over here?
SPEAKER_00: You drank two beers.
SPEAKER_00: Well, they were like beer.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, you get 10 for that, all right.
SPEAKER_00: You just think, look at me.
SPEAKER_00: That's behavior modification.
SPEAKER_00: That's all that is, is you trying to tell God, I did enough to deserve your approval today.
SPEAKER_00: And what Moses is saying to you and me is, you have God's approval.
SPEAKER_00: You're his kids.
SPEAKER_00: He's not looking down, kind of going, Well, what how are you gonna prove today that me loving you is a good idea?
SPEAKER_00: It's not the God of the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: You say, What do you mean?
SPEAKER_00: Go all the way back to Genesis.
SPEAKER_00: Don't turn that, it'll come up on the screen.
SPEAKER_00: Genesis chapter 1, verse 28.
SPEAKER_00: God creates everything, he's getting ready to create his utmost.
SPEAKER_00: So far, the order of creation is God said it, it was so, and it was good.
SPEAKER_00: And then God creates Adam and Eve.
SPEAKER_00: And look at what he says.
SPEAKER_00: He says, and God bless them.
SPEAKER_00: I ask people all the time, hey, what would it look like for God to bless you?
SPEAKER_00: You know what they say all the time back to me?
SPEAKER_00: Why do you ask that?
SPEAKER_00: It's like we don't have a frame of reference for that.
SPEAKER_00: That's nutty and crazy.
SPEAKER_00: God doesn't want to do that.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, let you know why you say that?
SPEAKER_00: You know why you think that way?
SPEAKER_00: Because when it's really hard, you know what to do.
SPEAKER_00: But if it ever got good, most of you wouldn't know what to do.
SPEAKER_00: It'd be like you have no arms.
SPEAKER_00: How do I pick stuff up?
SPEAKER_00: The Bible says, and God blessed them.
SPEAKER_00: And God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the heavens, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.
SPEAKER_00: What I'm saying to you this morning is what the Bible said, what more importantly, what God has said all along is my intention is to multiply you.
SPEAKER_00: My intention is not to do math, is not to do uh addition, but to do multiplication.
SPEAKER_00: Not for you to try to earn my favor and think, okay, today plus this plus this equals, you gotta answer my prayer now.
SPEAKER_00: The intention of God's heart all along, if you believe the Bible, is to multiply.
SPEAKER_00: And let me ask you this simple question.
SPEAKER_00: What if this is really the heart of God and has been from the beginning?
SPEAKER_00: What if this is really?
SPEAKER_00: If you're here and you're like, you know, I hadn't been to church in a while, a friend of mine invited me, I don't know about this.
SPEAKER_00: You need to think about this today.
SPEAKER_00: You may have had a bad experience with Christians or with a church or with a bunch of religious, kooky people.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know, it's not my fault.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not that person.
SPEAKER_00: But don't let people obscure your view of God because this is the heart of God.
SPEAKER_00: And God says way back in Genesis, what Moses repeats here in Deuteronomy chapter 6.
SPEAKER_00: Fourth thing the Bible instructs us with this morning is this that monotheism matters.
SPEAKER_00: Put a star by this.
SPEAKER_00: You say, No, I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: Mono one, theism, God.
SPEAKER_00: That there's one God matters.
SPEAKER_00: Deuteronomy chapter 6, verse 4.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
SPEAKER_00: Let me read it again.
SPEAKER_00: It's real short and sweet.
SPEAKER_00: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
SPEAKER_00: Now keep in mind that for these people they are fresh out of the Exodus experience.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, that they saw God take them out of a bondage in Egypt and part of the Red Sea, and they walked across, and Miriam, Moses' sister, bursts into song and said, Who among the gods?
SPEAKER_00: Said to God, who among the gods is like you?
SPEAKER_00: Awesome in glory, majestic in holiness, working wonders.
SPEAKER_00: It's like they just tore their clothes and were throwing confetti in the air.
SPEAKER_00: We're like, oh my gosh, who is like you?
SPEAKER_00: They this was practical knowledge to them.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't read this in a book, they didn't see this in a movie, they didn't hear about this.
SPEAKER_00: This is not, oh, well, you know, I heard about it.
SPEAKER_00: No, they saw it, they were like, oh my gosh, we walked right out of Egypt, and the gods that were really no gods, the the false gods of Egypt, couldn't do anything about it.
SPEAKER_00: And Moses says, Hear, O Israel, don't forget this.
SPEAKER_00: Become convinced of a thing that I'm deeply convinced about.
SPEAKER_00: Hear, O Israel, and never forget that the Lord our God is one.
SPEAKER_00: You say, What's the big deal?
SPEAKER_00: Because we live in a culture that does not believe that.
SPEAKER_00: Now, when we say we believe that, that we're monotheistic, that we believe that there's one God, that there's not this God and that God, if that works for you, great.
SPEAKER_00: Well, if you believe this one and that one doesn't stop working for you, you're not getting what you want, then pass on that one and pick this one.
SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you something.
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like I told you a while back about Elvis at the end of his life.
SPEAKER_00: He had a crucifix and he had the Buddha in his house, and he had some Jewish stuff.
SPEAKER_00: He just had all the world religions just kind of covering.
SPEAKER_00: Somebody said, You know what?
SPEAKER_00: He said, I like to cover all my bases.
SPEAKER_00: Beloved, let me let me make a really strong statement.
SPEAKER_00: To live your life, that's called polytheism, many gods.
SPEAKER_00: To live your life, to say, I want to cover all my basis, is to cease to be a Christian.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the terms are that dire.
SPEAKER_00: To say, well, I just want to cover all my bases, you are insulting the very nature of God who is one.
SPEAKER_00: And what Moses is saying, and more importantly, what God is saying, is that, hey, by the way, you believing in me is a good idea because there is no one else.
SPEAKER_00: And you say, Well, how do you know that?
SPEAKER_00: Because for there to be another God, you would have to create him as a figment of your imagination, or someone would have to come up with some system of belief.
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, I saw riding bikes in my neighborhood just yesterday, and some of my neighbors were out, and I jumped out and I stood up on the running board of my truck and said, Hey, hey, my brothers, right here, some good prospects right here.
SPEAKER_00: Come and tell them about your gospel.
SPEAKER_00: And my neighbors were like, We hate you.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, Enjoy the Mormons.
SPEAKER_00: And I drove in my driveway and got out and walked in.
SPEAKER_00: And they turned their bikes around and here they came.
SPEAKER_00: Now today when I go home, I'll have flat tires on my van.
SPEAKER_00: My neighbors are like, awesome.
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, they believe that they're not bad people.
SPEAKER_00: Matter of fact, most of them are more committed to the wrong thing than you are to the right thing.
SPEAKER_00: But see, because I believe there's one God, I don't believe that what they believe.
SPEAKER_00: Now, by the way, monotheism doesn't make you angry or violent.
SPEAKER_00: Because this God of the Bible doesn't need force to accomplish his will.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't need money to blow themselves up.
SPEAKER_00: He accomplishes his will.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't have to violate his nature to accomplish his will.
SPEAKER_00: See, for there to be another God, stick with me just for a minute.
SPEAKER_00: Let's think a little bit, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Can you think a little bit?
SPEAKER_00: For there to be another God, you would have to create him, which explains the first two commandments.
SPEAKER_00: You say, You lost me there.
SPEAKER_00: Let me say it again.
SPEAKER_00: For there to be another God, you would have to create him or make him, which explains the first two commandments, which let me just read them to you.
SPEAKER_00: The first two commandments says this God says, For I am The Lord your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
SPEAKER_00: You shall have no other gods before me.
SPEAKER_00: That's the first commandment.
SPEAKER_00: You remember that?
SPEAKER_00: Have you read them lately?
SPEAKER_00: If you're looking for something to do this week, just begin your day by getting up every morning and reading the Ten Commandments.
SPEAKER_00: Pretty interesting.
SPEAKER_00: I know you used to.
SPEAKER_00: See, back when my crazy grandpa would chase us around, would drive us around chasing jackrabbits, you'd go in the courthouse and the Ten Commandments would be on the wall.
SPEAKER_00: And they used to be in the school.
SPEAKER_00: But we don't need them in the school anymore.
SPEAKER_00: The school's got it all figured out.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to this.
SPEAKER_00: You shall have no other gods before me.
SPEAKER_00: And it's just, it's almost as if God pauses and goes, Oh yeah, second commandment.
SPEAKER_00: You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness or anything that is in heaven above or that's in earth beneath or is in the water under the earth.
SPEAKER_00: See, God says, You shall have no other gods before me, because there isn't one.
SPEAKER_00: So, second commandment, resist the temptation to make one.
SPEAKER_00: See, God is radically monotheistic.
SPEAKER_00: God says, Hear, O Israel, through the mouth of Moses, hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one.
SPEAKER_00: Now we would sit here and go, that's right, boy Neil, we believe that.
SPEAKER_00: I've got a new word to use it word.
SPEAKER_00: I'm monotheistic.
SPEAKER_00: Here today, we're all monotheistic.
SPEAKER_00: We're all there's one God.
SPEAKER_00: But we'll go out in the world and we'll bow down to whatever God pays the most.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever's God's going to get me out of this situation.
SPEAKER_00: See, Moses stands up and he says to these people, hey, don't forget this, because when you get into that land over there, there's a lot of false gods.
SPEAKER_00: There's a whole lot of things.
SPEAKER_00: Some friends of mine sent their daughter off, their oldest daughter, off to college this year, and their daughter called her mom one night and says, What does marijuana smell like?
SPEAKER_00: Like, yeah, your mom knows.
SPEAKER_00: Go ahead and ask her.
SPEAKER_00: And she said, Why are you asking?
SPEAKER_00: Because I think my sweetmates are smoking marijuana.
SPEAKER_00: See, she's crossed over the Jordan.
SPEAKER_00: She's no longer in the promised land of your little house.
SPEAKER_00: She's now off at college where there's a lot of false gods.
SPEAKER_00: He called back to the next night and said, I think my sweetmate and her boyfriend, I think he's spending the night over there.
SPEAKER_00: Hello.
SPEAKER_00: See, you might want to instruct your kids because there's going to come a point, unless they invent homeschool college, you're going to have to send your kids off to that Godforsaken, forgotten territory like AM.
SPEAKER_00: Whoopsie.
SPEAKER_00: I feel some of y'all in here.
SPEAKER_00: Whoops! I feel you glaring at me right now.
SPEAKER_00: Fifth thing Moses tells us is balanced affection.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse 5.
SPEAKER_00: We're just about done.
SPEAKER_00: You with me?
SPEAKER_00: Hey, look at me.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not trying to be glib, but when it comes to instruction, you don't have to come to the you don't don't, you shouldn't have to come to church and kind of go, uh, like you're coming to the principal's office.
SPEAKER_00: Let's just go get our whipping and get it over with.
SPEAKER_00: That's not instruction.
SPEAKER_00: Matter of fact, when Jesus taught, people ran, one woman ran down the street to her house and got an alabaster jar of perfume, and she came back and she just, he was in somebody's house getting ready to have dinner, and he was just talking.
SPEAKER_00: She comes up behind him and just cracks it open and starts just sliding on his feet and just crying, like, oh my God, that was awesome.
SPEAKER_00: Which is, I'm sure, what y'all are gonna do as soon as I dismiss you here in a minute.
SPEAKER_00: I'll be right down here.
SPEAKER_00: Look what the Bible says.
SPEAKER_00: What do you mean balanced affection, verse five?
SPEAKER_00: Because when you you you get this monotheism, you can get all knocked up and you can become the you are the most abusive with the latest thing you've discovered.
SPEAKER_00: And so he says in verse five, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, in verse 1, when he says, now this is the commandment, that's singular, here's the command.
SPEAKER_00: These other things with a consequence, that's the command.
SPEAKER_00: The command is you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.
SPEAKER_00: And you're like, I shaved my legs for this.
SPEAKER_00: Are you kidding me?
SPEAKER_00: See, that's what's what he says.
SPEAKER_00: This is the command.
SPEAKER_00: This is so consequential, this is so incredible, this is so life-altering.
SPEAKER_00: One command, and this is it.
SPEAKER_00: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.
SPEAKER_00: If you just love him with all your might, you become a mean-spirited person who believes the Bible and you're mad about it.
SPEAKER_00: If you love him with just all your heart, you just kind of flit around from emotion to emotion because you think uh uh unbiblically about what the heart is when the Bible talks about heart.
SPEAKER_00: But what Moses does is what they do in Australia.
SPEAKER_00: Uh in Australia, in the Australian outback, the ranches are these cattle ranches, they are so big and expansive.
SPEAKER_00: They're not called ranches over there, by the way, they're called stations.
SPEAKER_00: And they're so huge and expansive that they don't even try to mess with putting up fences because if a farmer installed fences around all its property, he would spend most of his money on that, and then he'd have to spend most of his time riding the fences to maintain the fences to make sure they're not broken down, to keep the cattle in.
SPEAKER_00: You'd say, Well, what do they do?
SPEAKER_00: They don't do fences.
SPEAKER_00: Matter of fact, if you went to the Australian outbat, you wouldn't find the fence on these huge cattle ranches.
SPEAKER_00: What they do is they go out there in this dry, barren, arid desert, and they sink a deep hole and they drill a well.
SPEAKER_00: And the cattle come to realize that there's always this cool, refreshing water available right here.
SPEAKER_00: And if I stray too far from this, off into the outback and out into the wilderness, I'm gonna die.
SPEAKER_00: So the cattle kind of, they they they they're free range, they graze over there, they go over there, but they don't go far from the well.
SPEAKER_00: And when Moses stands up in Deuteronomy 6, he's drilling a deep well.
SPEAKER_00: So deep, in fact, in the New Testament, when the disciples looked at Jesus and said, Hey, Jesus, what's the greatest commandment?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm not like a smart person.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, just give me the Bible in one phrase, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Give me one sentence to hold on to.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.
SPEAKER_00: That well is so deep, you and I still drink from it today.
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, he doesn't fence you in.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't, oh, oh, don't, don't, no, no, don't, no, do that.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
SPEAKER_00: This morning somebody said, Oh, we were, we didn't have as many people on 8 o'clock service as we had last week.
SPEAKER_00: I hope wherever they are, they're enjoying themselves.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't bother you if people don't come?
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely not.
SPEAKER_00: If you're here next week, glory to God.
SPEAKER_00: If you're not here next week, glory to God.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna chase you down, oh, oh, we're not trying to fence you in.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: We just try to drill a deep well here.
SPEAKER_00: And every Sunday you come, we're gonna instruct you from this book right here, which is not just a book, it is the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: It has a place of prominence and priority in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: So you can go to your beach house, you can go to the Texans game, you're wherever you want to go.
SPEAKER_00: I don't care.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna call you up.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, brother, missed you the other day.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are kind of like, hella.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, put me down for three absences and a cloud of dust.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, sleeping in because you're lazy is not what I'm talking about.
SPEAKER_00: It's just, hey, you don't need a fence.
SPEAKER_00: Love makes the fence unnecessary.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't come and say, oh, don't do this and don't do that.
SPEAKER_00: That's behavior modification.
SPEAKER_00: It's not what the Bible is talking about.
SPEAKER_00: What the Bible's talking about is this balanced affection where Moses digs so deep that it's still something we draw from today.
SPEAKER_00: It's like the great uh uh the Bible commentator Matthew Henry said this.
SPEAKER_00: He said, It's better to have one fountain than a thousand cisterns, one all-sufficient God than a thousand insufficient friends.
SPEAKER_00: And once you come to know God to be this, this deep and available and satisfying, you don't stray far.
SPEAKER_00: If you're straying far today, you don't really understand the nature of God.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Hey, loving with balanced affection is heart, soul, and mind.
SPEAKER_00: The heart is your, in the Hebrew mindset, it's the seat of understanding.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't the mind.
SPEAKER_00: It was the heart, it was the seat of understanding.
SPEAKER_00: The soul was the center of the will.
SPEAKER_00: And and the might, this is the place of exertion.
SPEAKER_00: This is where your understanding and your will express themselves.
SPEAKER_00: And somebody stands up and says, Love God with all your heart, soul, and all your might.
SPEAKER_00: Don't just try to love God.
SPEAKER_00: Don't leave here today and say, Loving God.
SPEAKER_00: We don't use that phrase, I'm gonna love God with all my might.
SPEAKER_00: Well, what we do is we practice religious determination.
SPEAKER_00: Man, I'm gonna do this, I'll tell you what.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Hey, love God with all your heart.
SPEAKER_00: The deepest place of understanding, realize this today, that God didn't come to fence you in, modify your behavior, and keep you and make check up, make sure you're doing what you should be doing, not doing what you shouldn't be doing, and blah, blah, blah.
SPEAKER_00: God just comes and says, drills this deep well and says, Taste and see that the Lord is good.
SPEAKER_00: And once you've tasted that, you can go run and buck and jump and freelance and have a good time, but you'll never stray far from who God is.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because that's your understanding.
SPEAKER_00: You should not have to be ruled by your determination.
SPEAKER_00: You should be ruled by your understanding.
SPEAKER_00: You just it should be that way.
SPEAKER_00: And then he says, your soul, that's the center of the will.
SPEAKER_00: This is the that's the place where, I mean, your soul, your your suke, this deep part of you, this eternal part of you, and then your might.
SPEAKER_00: See, that's balanced affection.
SPEAKER_00: If you had to pick one of those, let me give you a question to think about today.
SPEAKER_00: If you had to pick one of those that needs most needs your attention, which one would it be?
SPEAKER_00: Is it your heart?
SPEAKER_00: Is it your soul?
SPEAKER_00: Or is it your might?
SPEAKER_00: Last thing Moses instructs us with from Deuteronomy 6 is this what I call available disciplines.
SPEAKER_00: Available disciplines.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse 6.
SPEAKER_00: He says, And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.
SPEAKER_00: You shall teach them diligently to your children.
SPEAKER_00: You shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise.
SPEAKER_00: You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and you shall, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.
SPEAKER_00: You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
SPEAKER_00: What do you mean, available disciplines?
SPEAKER_00: What you have here is not another uh list of not another religious do list, not a uh a set of rules for for you to write down today.
SPEAKER_00: This is not, okay, I'm gonna write these six things down, and I'm gonna take them home, and I'm gonna nail them over here on the wall next to all these other lists of things that I've yet to kind of get incorporated into my life.
SPEAKER_00: That's not what the Bible's talking about.
SPEAKER_00: It's not saying, hey, add this.
SPEAKER_00: Here's a bunch of instructions for an already overcrowded life.
SPEAKER_00: Do your best.
SPEAKER_00: That's not what it is.
SPEAKER_00: You say, what do you mean, available disciplines?
SPEAKER_00: Here's the availability.
SPEAKER_00: Like when he breaks it down phrase by phrase, when he says, sit in your home, that's a reference to eating.
SPEAKER_00: You eat in your house, we eat in my house.
SPEAKER_00: And we don't eat breakfast, we don't eat every meal together.
SPEAKER_00: My kids go to school at different times.
SPEAKER_00: My high schooler goes at 7:30, my fourth grader goes at 8.10.
SPEAKER_00: I get up, just walk around early in the morning.
SPEAKER_00: I get up about 6 o'clock in the morning, get a cup of coffee.
SPEAKER_00: My high school is scrambling around, I just walk around drinking coffee, going, by the way, I don't care what they tell you, you're never gonna do algebra again.
SPEAKER_00: She's like, thanks, Dad.
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, well, just and by the way, I don't I don't have algebra today.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna take your mom to lunch.
SPEAKER_00: So you enjoy that when you're having that little sack lunch up there with all your little friends over there.
SPEAKER_00: That cesspool of hormones you call high school.
SPEAKER_00: Can I just stay home and drink coffee today?
SPEAKER_00: You think that's what I do is stay home and drink coffee all day?
SPEAKER_00: Is that what you think I do?
SPEAKER_00: Well, no, but I mean you get to do what you want because I'm grown and you're not.
SPEAKER_00: Now go to school.
SPEAKER_00: Go learn stuff, 90% of which you'll never use again.
SPEAKER_00: That's my morning ritual.
SPEAKER_00: But at night, we sit down as a family because I married Paula Dean.
SPEAKER_00: And that's where we connect as a family.
SPEAKER_00: That's where I look at my kids and say, How are you doing?
SPEAKER_00: How was school today?
SPEAKER_00: Anything out of the ordinary happen at school today?
SPEAKER_00: And I get the report.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes they start telling me, and so-and-so likes so-and-so.
SPEAKER_00: Stop right there, stop right there.
SPEAKER_00: I could care less about so-and-so liking so-and-so.
SPEAKER_00: That's just two ticks and no dog, okay?
SPEAKER_00: I'm not interested in that.
SPEAKER_00: Then he says, When you walk by the way, it's transportation.
SPEAKER_00: That's the way they got around back then.
SPEAKER_00: They'd be walking down the road, and the men of the house, the fathers, dads, I'm talking to you, would strike up a spiritual dialogue with their with their wife and kids.
SPEAKER_00: When's the last time you had a spiritual dialogue with your wife?
SPEAKER_00: Not an argument, but a dialogue where there's give and take, where there's she talks and you listen.
SPEAKER_00: You don't pontificate.
SPEAKER_00: Every once in a while, I don't think I pontificate until my wife raises her hand and says, Uh, you don't need to preach to me.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I wasn't preaching.
SPEAKER_00: It kind of sounded like it.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I was just practicing.
SPEAKER_00: Don't practice on me.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Hey, when you walk by the way, this is trans.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, we don't do this because we have raised our kids to where they cannot just be alone with their thoughts or carry on a conversation.
SPEAKER_00: That's why in the back of the headrest of your SUV is the video monitor.
SPEAKER_00: Or like the kid yesterday, I'm in Sam's, and there's a kid walking around with his PSP or whatever it is, and walks right into the side of my shopping cart.
SPEAKER_00: And his mom said, I am so sorry.
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, and I'm sorry for you.
SPEAKER_00: You let your kids walk around.
SPEAKER_00: This is Saturday at Sam's.
SPEAKER_00: They got samples everywhere, and he's doing this.
SPEAKER_00: Are you kidding me?
SPEAKER_00: There was a part of me who wanted to slap that thing out of his hand on the ground and go, look around, son, there's a world around you.
SPEAKER_00: But that wouldn't be good.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, some of y'all were probably there.
SPEAKER_00: I'd have to go to jail or something.
SPEAKER_00: Local pastor, a cost nine-year-old.
SPEAKER_00: But I did just give him the stink eye.
SPEAKER_00: I just looked at him.
SPEAKER_00: Hoping.
SPEAKER_00: Do you ever just look at people hoping they'll ask you what you're looking at?
SPEAKER_00: That's what I was just like, please ask me.
SPEAKER_00: Please ask me.
SPEAKER_00: Because here's what I would have said.
SPEAKER_00: You think the world can be explained by that little two-inch screen?
SPEAKER_00: See, when you don't when you don't fill up this time that's purposeful, that's just like I ask my kids every once in a while, what's capturing your imagination these days?
SPEAKER_00: You ever ask a nine-year-old that?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, 45 minutes later, I get a word in edgewise.
SPEAKER_00: Thirdly, he says, when you lie down, it's bedtime.
SPEAKER_00: And then he says, and when you rise, that's morning.
SPEAKER_00: Why are you telling us this?
SPEAKER_00: I tell you all that to ask you this.
SPEAKER_00: What rituals do you have, if any, that shape these times in your life?
SPEAKER_00: I go in my kid's bedroom at night.
SPEAKER_00: Every night.
SPEAKER_00: I rub my youngest feet.
SPEAKER_00: Dad, rub my leg.
SPEAKER_00: Dad, rub my back.
SPEAKER_00: Dad, tell me a story I've never heard before.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I hear a story you never heard before.
SPEAKER_00: You don't need me to rub your feet anymore.
SPEAKER_00: And then somewhere in the midst of that, I just say, So, what's on your mind these days?
SPEAKER_00: How can Dad pray for you?
SPEAKER_00: And she says the same thing every night, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: Who could I call that would know how I could pray for you?
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: And I know what she's saying.
SPEAKER_00: What she's saying is, Dad, I got nothing.
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to talk about this.
SPEAKER_00: You think, oh, your preacher's kids are probably like, let's pray for all the missionaries in the world.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: They look at me like, what are you doing?
SPEAKER_00: And I look at them like, we do this every night.
SPEAKER_00: And I just say, Well, let dad pray for you.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes I put my hand on her chest, sometimes I put my hand on her head, and I just pray over my kids.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes the other night I just blessed her.
SPEAKER_00: I just put my hand on her head and said, May the Lord bless you and keep you.
SPEAKER_00: And I look down and she had her eyes closed and was just doing this.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes I start praying, and by the time I'm done, she's asleep.
SPEAKER_00: Because you know how when they go asleep, their breathing kind of slows down.
SPEAKER_00: And I get done, and I just, amen.
SPEAKER_00: Walk out, walk across the hall, into my 14-year-old's room.
SPEAKER_00: Open the door.
SPEAKER_00: She's doing homework, but she's got music playing and a movie going on her computer.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, babe, what are you doing?
SPEAKER_00: I'm doing homework.
SPEAKER_00: It's 10:35 at night.
SPEAKER_00: Was this news to you?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, no, no, no, I'm good.
SPEAKER_00: I'm good.
SPEAKER_00: I got it, Dad.
SPEAKER_00: Anything I can pray?
SPEAKER_00: No, I'm good.
SPEAKER_00: Hmm.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I don't believe that.
SPEAKER_00: See, there's these rituals.
SPEAKER_00: There's this when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, when you rise.
SPEAKER_00: And then he says this.
SPEAKER_00: He says, write them on the frontlets of your doorpost.
SPEAKER_00: That's not a phrase you use this week, is it?
SPEAKER_00: Write them on the frontlets of your eyes and write them on your doorpost and on your gate.
SPEAKER_00: What they would do back then, Orthodox Jews would have a little wooden box and they'd put a scroll because there wasn't, hear this.
SPEAKER_00: There weren't that many complete copies of the law.
SPEAKER_00: And most people didn't have like what we would consider now a Bible.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't have like the Pentateuch, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't have the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: All they had was a phrase or two.
SPEAKER_00: And he, that's why he said, write this down so you won't forget it.
SPEAKER_00: And most people, it was Deuteronomy 6.4.
SPEAKER_00: Here, O Israel, the Lord our God is one, the Lord our God is one God.
SPEAKER_00: They would write that on a piece of paper, on a scroll, they'd roll it up in a tiny scroll, put it in a wooden box, and then they would tie it to their forehead to say, Hey, look, I'm a person for whom this matters.
SPEAKER_00: Now y'all are like, please tell me, reach under your chair, and all of you have a little wooden box.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: Look at me.
SPEAKER_00: We're just about done.
SPEAKER_00: That's why I told you what I told you, point number one.
SPEAKER_00: The learning is for the living.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to tie it to your forehead.
SPEAKER_00: Your obedience makes it obvious what you believe about God.
SPEAKER_00: By the same token, your disobedience makes it obvious.
SPEAKER_00: My disobedience makes it obvious what I think about God and what I believe about God and the priority I place upon God.
SPEAKER_00: And so when he says, hey, write these on the front lens of your doorposts and on your gate, all they had was a phrase or two.
SPEAKER_00: And for a lot of them, it was Deuteronomy 6, 4.
SPEAKER_00: For a lot of them, it was verse 5.
SPEAKER_00: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind.
SPEAKER_00: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.
SPEAKER_00: And they were like, man, that is it.
SPEAKER_00: That's a well that I could never plunge, kind of plummet the depths of.
SPEAKER_00: I will drink from that the rest of my life.
SPEAKER_00: And you say, Well, why do you tell us that?
SPEAKER_00: Because I began by telling you, asking you to think about the one thing.
SPEAKER_00: And now I want to end by asking you, what's the one thing you take away from this instruction this morning?
SPEAKER_00: See, God didn't come to make you miserable, or he didn't come to say, oh man, you're coming.
SPEAKER_00: He just came to say, hey, hey, there's only one God.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm not mad at all the other ones, all the false gods.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not mad at the Buddha or all this other stuff.
SPEAKER_00: I don't, oh no, no, no.
SPEAKER_00: Just live your life with a fresh understanding and a fresh commitment to this one reality.
SPEAKER_00: There's one God.
SPEAKER_00: And He is so good and so available.
SPEAKER_00: And you could drink from this.
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus talks to a woman in John 4 in the New Testament, and Jesus says, they're talking, he says, give me a drink, and he says to her, they're getting a dialogue about water, and Jesus says, anyone that tastes this water that I give, it'll become in them a well springing up to eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: See, when you taste and you understand, and it's not just loving God with all your might, it's not just, oh man, come on, let's go.
SPEAKER_00: It becomes heart.
SPEAKER_00: And it becomes soul.
SPEAKER_00: And it involves your might, your will, what you do.
SPEAKER_00: You never stray far from that.
SPEAKER_00: You don't need people to watch you, stand over you.
SPEAKER_00: Because you know where the well is.
SPEAKER_00: And if you I just want to ask you today, have you ever tasted, you ever drunk from that well?
SPEAKER_00: And do you know where that well is?
SPEAKER_00: Stand to your feet.
SPEAKER_00: Let me speak a blessing over you.
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, before I speak a blessing over you, when you're dismissed, don't sprint to the exits.
SPEAKER_00: Look around and greet each other.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: You're the church.
SPEAKER_00: You're not a gaggle of strangers that sing the same songs and endure the same sermon.
SPEAKER_00: You're the church.
SPEAKER_00: Hold your hands out if you would.
SPEAKER_00: Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God.
SPEAKER_00: And he's never had an ounce of buyer's remorse in him.
SPEAKER_00: He knows everything about you because he paid for you.
SPEAKER_00: And now that you're paid for and you're his, you don't need a fence.
SPEAKER_00: You need a well.
SPEAKER_00: Drink deeply.
SPEAKER_00: Let your life be a byproduct of satisfaction.
SPEAKER_00: Depart now and live satisfied lives to the glory of God and for your pleasure.
SPEAKER_00: In the name of the Father, Son, the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Bless you.
SPEAKER_00: You're dismissed.