Scripture referenced 5 passages
The passage this message was preached from, in full, with every other passage it reached for.
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Isaiah 50:10-11 opening text about walking in God's light versus lighting your own fires
10 Who among you fears Yahweh, and obeys the voice of his servant? He who walks in darkness, and has no light, let him trust in Yahweh’s name, and rely on his God.
11 Behold, all you who kindle a fire, who adorn yourselves with torches around yourselves; walk in the flame of your fire, and among the torches that you have kindled. You will have this from my hand: You will lie down in sorrow.
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Keep this verse
1 Peter 1:18-19
redemption not by silver and gold but by the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish
18 knowing that you were redeemed, not with corruptible things, with silver or gold, from the useless way of life handed down from your fathers,
19 but with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish or spot, the blood of Christ;
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Genesis 2:7
God forming man from dust and breathing the breath of life into his nostrils
7 Yahweh God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
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Genesis 2:16-17
God's command not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil or you will surely die
16 Yahweh God commanded the man, saying, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden;
17 but you shall not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; for in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die.”
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John 3:14
Moses lifting up the snake in the desert as a picture of the Son of Man being lifted up for eternal life
14 As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up,
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Recap
The message in order, in a few minutes of reading.
Ted Raven, a missionary who has worked in Tanzania for twenty-five years, brought the morning message as part of First B's missions emphasis. He preached from Isaiah 50, Genesis, First Peter, and John 3, pressing on the question of human identity and what we turn to in place of God. The sermon carried a single, persistent thread: people were made to live in God's light, and the fires we light for ourselves will never be enough.
What was said
Ted opened with Isaiah 50:10-11 and the image of God as an overwhelming, consuming light. The passage draws a line between those who trust in that light and those who light their own fires and walk by them instead. He held that image through the entire sermon: God's light is like the sun at 8,000 degrees Fahrenheit, burning without pause, sustaining all life, and no small fire we construct for ourselves can come close to it.
From there he pushed on the question "Who am I?" He walked through the ways people try to answer it, through a name, a profession, a race, a nationality, and argued that none of those answers actually reach the thing being asked. He pointed to the moment in Exodus when Moses asked God his name, and God answered "I Am," and said we cannot claim that for ourselves. The question of identity, he said, cannot be answered from the inside.
He then framed the problem culturally, using his years in Africa to draw a contrast. Westerners, he said, tend to be materialistic individualists, using money as a tool of control. Africans in his area tend to be collectivistic animists, using witchcraft the same way. He was careful not to hold one up as better, pointing out that both systems are versions of the same thing: futile ways of life inherited from ancestors, which is the phrase he drew from First Peter 1:18-19. The inherited garbage differs, but the emptiness is the same.
He rooted the broken condition of humanity in Genesis. Adam, he said, was alive spiritually as well as physically. He knew who he was because God told him. He had no reason to light a small fire because he walked in full light. When Adam and Eve disobeyed, a wall went up between them and God, and from that point on human beings have been trying to answer the question of identity by lighting fires, following them, and ending up broken.
He moved to John 3:14, the verse just before the well-known John 3:16, and the image of Moses lifting the bronze serpent in the desert. He said that when he was a new Christian, the call to simply "look and believe" seemed too easy, until he remembered the poison. The people looking at the serpent were dying. They were not sitting comfortably in Pennsylvania; they were desperate, and they looked because they knew they were going to die without it. He pressed the congregation with the same question: do you know you are sick?
He closed with a story about his friend David, a herpetologist who was struck by a black mamba in Tanzania and nearly died before reaching a hospital. David, a man who knew everything about snakes, still looked at the bite on his wrist and knew immediately that he had poison in him and would do anything to survive. Ted used that story to make the question personal and concrete: the poison is real, the sickness is real, and God has provided the cure. He called people to stop following small fires, to repent of the futile things inherited from the culture around them, and to seek God on his terms, not on terms of their own making.
Doing a Bible study?
Here is a guide we have prepared for you: the passages in order, questions for the group, and room to write.
- Ted described two very different ways people try to make sense of life: the Western tendency toward individualistic materialism and the African tendency toward collectivistic animism. Where do you see the pull of your own inherited 'empty way of life' showing up in how you think about money, identity or control?
- Ted asked the congregation, 'Who am I?' and pointed out that most of our usual answers, our name, our job, our race, describe what we do or where we come from rather than who we actually are. How do you typically answer that question, and how satisfying do you find that answer?
and 3 more questions in the guide
Read the full transcript 10,934 words
0:00
Return to you
0:55
Can y'all hear me? Good. I don't have to move. Y'all can have a seat right there. I have the most ridiculous set of long announcements and no clicker right now.
1:04
It's up here somewhere. Behind you. Behind me. There it is. I got it.
1:11
Thank you very much. Here we go. Thank you, sir. So, the long announcements. First of all, happy Mother's Day.
1:23
Happy Mother's Day twenty sixteen. Whoo. I, a lot of times, I just breeze right on past holidays. I love Mother's Day. This is my mother and my daughter and my mother is teaching my daughter to fry okra right there.
1:39
So, that's great and Tanya has no idea this is in here. That's Tanya on the day Paschal was born. So, happy Mother's Day. I've got, like I said, ridiculously long announcement so I added a few. So, a lot of y'all have been asking lately.
1:57
It's come up in the elders meeting the past couple of times. How do we communicate this? Where is the best time to communicate this? So, how we do church? What is it?
2:06
And we try to do New Testament Church as best we can. We try to do it like that. So, we have a congregational form of government governments or polity that is led by a plurality of elders. So, that's technical stuff but that's what it is. Right now, there are 10 elders in this church.
2:24
We have 10 elders on duty. Now, once an elder, always an elder. There are bunch of other people who have served in the past but right now, there are 10. There's Gary Geek. Gary Geek, where are you?
2:36
He's here somewhere. Right there. Gary, would you come in here for just a second? That's Gary Geek. That's his picture.
2:42
If you can barely see it. I had all of them text me a selfie yesterday. Okay? And Gary's was a little darker than most so that's Gary Geek. That is Eric Wakup.
2:53
That was not a selfie from yesterday. Would you stand up, Eric? That's Eric Wakup. So, Gary right now is the head elder, the chief elder. Eric is our moderator.
3:03
He serves on both the elders and the board of trustees. The other one is Carl Clemmer right there with the guitar, one of em with the guitar. That's Carl. He had Christa take his selfie. That is mine from several years ago before my beard turned white.
3:20
Matt Lutzman, I think he had just run an Ironman race at the end of the day. That's where he took that picture. He's not quite as stern but where's Matt? He's in Montana. Okay.
3:33
Good. He's not that mean. I did put up the picture he sent me though, okay? So, Mike Mayer, is he in the house this morning? Sometimes, they come to the second service, Mike Mayer.
3:43
He's one of our eldest Florine, Eon. That's Florine. Martin Murphy. Martin Murphy is back there in the back. He's waving back there next to the sofa.
4:00
That's Martin. That's Steve Landis. Steve, where are you? There he is in the back corner. Steve with the vest back there and Todd Lampa.
4:09
I put that there because he sent me that one. I know he was joking but I wanted you to see that he and Matt have a similar look but but they're not the same person, okay? This is the other one he sent me the for real picture. So, that's Todd Lampa right there. He's back in the back, right there.
4:26
So, he and Matt, that's not Matt Lutzeman, that's Todd Lampa. From the way that our slides go, it's hard to tell. Right now, there are 10 elders. These are the guys and they are all approachable men. They're not perfect but they are forgiven.
4:39
They are Christians and they love Jesus and they love you. So, if you would see them anytime about anything that has to do with spiritual stuff or church stuff, they'd all be glad to talk to you about it. They all also happen to be married. They're not polygamist. They have one wife.
4:57
So, Diane and Gary, Eric and Colleen, Carl and Krista, Tanya and Ray, Matt and Amy, Mike and Amy, Violetta and Florine, Becky and Martin, Sandy and Steve, Jennifer and Todd. Our wives are a big part of what goes on here and you all know that already, but I thought I'd just say it. There are three guys who work here. We are full time paid guys who work here. You can tell that that's Renzy by his name on his jumpsuit and Ray and Carl right there.
5:28
We work here. We get paid to be here to do this. I'm the lead pastor. Carl is associate pastor and worship leader and Renzi is the youth director. So, that's what we do.
5:38
We get paid to do. The rest of the guys are ministering professionals. We are professional ministers, alright? I think that's all over. No.
5:48
Ten ten elders are overseeing five Christian life commissions and this is kind of the way that we split it up to make it a little bit easier to manage because there's a lot that goes on here. Y'all know that. You hear the announcements every week. You know what's going on but our outreach guy is Steve Landis. Stand up again, Steve.
6:04
If you don't mind. The worship guy is Carl. He's already standing. Connect hour is Gary Geek. So, the any connect or fellowship events, my goodness, this is a loud thing.
6:16
Is Gary Geek? He's back there at the door greeting people as they come in, having people connect with the place. Todd Lamp and Mike Mayer are both working the service department and Matt Litzman's working on what we call the growing commission which basically covers, it covers lots, lots in kids ministry, men's ministry, women's ministry, adult education, all kinds of stuff. So, that's the way that we do it. The commission heads, missions is Steve, like I said, I wanted to mention this because we have a missionary speaking today that gave me a chance to make this slideshow instead of my slideshow in Romans five.
6:49
Ongoing work in over 25 countries. This this church supports ongoing work in at least 25 countries and probably closer to 35 or 40 each year. Supporting at least 20 different missionary units each year. That's on an ongoing regular basis. We sponsor people to go on short term trips.
7:07
So, if you have something you feel God's laying on your heart and you wanna tell us about it, we will try to help if we can. Interacting with local ministries to help people here like Turning Point, Good Samaritan, and a few other ministries in town. We fund special projects from time to time. We have helped some with Ted's project in Tanzania. We're always fervently praying for the advance of the gospel and for the building up of Christ Church.
7:30
So, that's what the missions does. I won't spend as much time on the others, maybe some other Sunday. Commission head, worship. If you've got an idea for worship or you would like to sing maybe in the second service, you'd like to sing a special, something like that. Talk to Carl.
7:43
He's the guy in charge of that. If you feel like, hey, I'm a hospitable person and I love people and I'd love to help people connect better to the church or hey, I am plugged in to this church. I know what's going on but there are a lot of people who don't. Connect commission. Talk to Gary and see if you can help spur people on to love and good works and speaking of good works, service commission.
8:03
That's Todd's deal. That's what he does. So, talk to Todd or Mike Mayer about that and then the growing, Matt Lutzman, he's in Montana. Don't worry about him this morning. How do I connect?
8:14
Next week, next week, like next week, next Sunday, twelve noon to 3PM, you can connect to this place and this church by eating together. There's a reason scripture said eat together. You know, break bread together. So, we're gonna have a whole church picnic right out here with a tent and it's the same day as the Awana Grand Prix. The big deal, race of the year.
8:37
Here's the photo finish from last year. Slow motion. Slower than I thought. Woah. There it is.
8:49
Alright. There it goes. So, it's an all church picnic. Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. Next Sunday, May 15 starting at twelve noon.
8:58
Probably go till about three. Please be here. It'll be fun. I promise. And how do I serve?
9:04
If you wanna know that, talk to Todd Lampa back there in the back in the white shirt, drinking coffee this morning, May 21. We are doing a first B spring cleanup day. That's a cleanup here at the church and so we'll be cleaning up around here on the grounds and inside too. You can talk to Todd for more information but it's eight to noon. So, first B Spring Cleanup, eight to noon, May 21.
9:26
My sister's closet is a clothing issue. I told you they were long before I started. My sister's closet is a clothing exchange type sale that has happened here in the past. It's happening also on May 21 in the Fellowship Hall. Talked to KC McCooey for details.
9:42
Is she in here? KC. No. Okay. No picture of KC.
9:47
Sorry. Camp Bethel. Camp Bethel is happening also next weekend. That's May thirteenth through fifteenth. Renzi Reno, the youth director.
9:55
We are taking off on Friday, skipping school. If you're a middle school or high school and we'd love to have any of you that would like to join. We've got about, I think, nine signed up right now. So, we've still got room in the 15 passenger van and if we need more room, we can make that happen as well but we leave this Friday. It's Friday, Saturday, back Sunday.
10:13
So, it's a great spring retreat for us all to enjoy ourselves. Ray was gonna go. He can't go. I'm taking Carl instead.
10:20
Sounds good. Alright. Thank you and skipping school. Talk to Renzi Reno. There's his picture, alright?
10:27
Are you a first time or expecting mom? If you are, there's actually a Bible study for you. Friday mornings at 11AM. This is in the bulletin this week and it is Colleen Wakup, not that guy, Colleen Wakup, alright? She is gonna be doing it.
10:40
She's standing out, sitting right over here with a baby in her arms. Would you stand up for a second? That's Colleen. If you wanna talk to her, there she is. Oh, gracious.
10:48
A taste of the GLS. That's a global leadership summit is happening at the Presbyterian Church. That's Friday, May 13 from twelve to noon. I mean, from, yeah, from twelve to noon. From noon to one, sorry.
10:59
And then one more, I think. Young adults, the mud season community cleanup. This is all of Jackson Wide. It it's been going for a while now. There's a mud season community cleanup, Philbox Park, young adults, please meet at 9AM at May 14 and y'all be cleaning up the town, helping out and then after that, there's a mud themed potluck here to follow at 06:00 in the evening.
11:24
So, mud themed food. Whatever that means to you, bring it on. Alright, Phil Box Park in the morning and then here in the evening and happy Mother's Day. Now, we have a skit that is happening before y'all get up and greet one another. Listen.
11:40
Why don't you do this? Why don't you get up and greet one another, and then we'll have this
11:43
If you can start making your way toward your seats, we're gonna invite up our skit members so this can get underway.
12:13
Okay. Get ready. Mom's back from the store. Come on. Get the card.
12:21
Why do I always always have to hold the card? Every year. Okay. When she comes in, let's yell
12:28
happy Mother's Day.
12:29
What else can you yell? Happy Father's Day,
12:43
Honey,
12:45
I'm going straight to bed. I feel awful. Can you unload the groceries? And and kids, can you bring me some some Kleenex and the flu medicine, please?
13:07
Can't she at least come in
13:09
here first?
13:10
Well, I'm gonna finish up my game.
13:13
Yeah. Mom must mom must feel real bad.
13:17
Mom's never sick.
13:19
Yeah. I can't remember the last time.
13:21
Dad, what are we gonna do? Dan.
13:27
Will? What do you mean Dan?
13:29
Quit it.
13:30
We'll get by... Son,
13:32
turn that off.
13:33
I'm gonna need your kids to help me out, but we can do this.
13:38
Chair practice. You don't get off work till five. Practice starts at five.
13:43
That's okay. Can the coach give you a ride or something?
13:46
Mom is the coach.
13:48
What
13:58
about school? Who's gonna take us?
14:01
Well, I can take you to school. Wait. Where is your school?
14:10
How am I supposed to know? I go into sleep mode before I even get there.
14:14
Well, there's always the bus.
14:16
Oh my goodness. We are doomed. Mom could have the flu for weeks.
14:24
Relax, kids. We can do this. We'll survive. We'll get by.
14:28
I'm allowed to clean boxers. I may have to ride the school bus with my embarrassing brother. I can't do it.
14:46
We can get by through this, kids. Just... I need your help.
14:50
I'll have to check the mail.
14:53
I'll have to pay the bills.
14:59
My bathroom is gonna get so gross. I need to find some recipes.
15:07
Oh, this means I'm gonna have to cook.
15:11
I don't know where she keeps her recipes. Who's gonna feed us? Can't forget to feed the cats.
15:24
Wait. Mom's calendar. This will tell us what to do. Cats to the vet, hair appointment, coffee with Nancy, make food for downtown shelter, women's Bible study, dentist to get kids teeth cleaned.
15:50
We'll just not go.
15:56
Grocery shopping, weed the flower bed, piano lessons, PTA meeting. I never knew mom did so much.
16:10
Honey? Honey? Where's
16:13
that medicine? We're clueless.
16:22
Verses taken from Proverbs thirty one ten through 31. A good woman is hard to find and worth far more than diamonds. Her husband trusts her without reserve and never has a reason to regret it. First thing in the morning, she wakes up, dresses for work, rolls up her sleeves, eager to get started. She's quick to assist anyone in need and reaches out to help the poor.
16:50
She keeps an eye on everyone in her household and keeps them all busy and productive. Her children respect and bless her and her husband joins in with words of praise. Charm can mislead and beauty soon fades. The woman to be admired is the woman who lives in the fear of God. Happy Mother's Day.
17:12
Stand with us and sing if you would. Come on, listen.
17:28
Alright, he takes our place. He takes our place and stands in front of God on high. He speaks some knobby caps since we don't have the right. He pleads before the God who judges such a man. He gives you the sentence for us.
17:51
And one guy, there is only one
22:44
Amen. God, we do, sing that. You you really are great. You really do love us. I think of the verse in Psalm 63, because your love is better than life itself.
22:55
Our lips will glorify you. And it really is. And I and I would ask God that if if there are those who just really don't know it, please make it known. Make it known through the message, this morning. Make it known through song.
23:08
Make it known through creation just screaming at us the greatness and glory of you. Amen.
23:17
Your loving, greedy, undamaged, bursting inside us.
23:45
We cannot
26:46
Y'all can have a seat. I'll ask the front line to come forward as we're participating here in worship through giving. Let's pray. God, I thank you for, you've blessed us with so much. I think of all the...
26:59
Just the the spiritual blessings alone that you've given us, our incredible grace and peace, and these these gifts that you give through the spirit and then and then on top of that, you bless us with these physical gifts and here you're sustaining us. And we thank you. And and giving is just a way to say thank you. I trust you here. Here's my life.
27:22
Here's an open hand to you. And I pray that you'd use these gifts just to multiply them. Use them for your glory. Use them to build up your church, your kingdom, to draw people to yourself. I pray in Christ's name.
27:33
Amen.
29:13
Okay. So, in the last service, Ray totally butchered the introduction. So, I'm up here this time because as you can might have figured out, missions is so super important to both of us and we had the pleasure of sitting and eating and listening to Ted speak last night and if it did not make me homesick for Mexico, it ached my heart for Kenya and Roseanne could hardly stand it. The way Missions works with Ted is the way ideally for us is is perfection. And I can mess this up too speaking of butchering, but John Piper said at the Lausanne Conference in South Africa a few years ago that there's been a split between the proclamation of the gospel and the social gospel.
30:05
And his point was, why can we not be concerned with all human suffering, both temporal and eternal. It's an important point for this gentleman for seeing and hearing what is happening over there. It touches my heart. It makes me homesick, and I cannot wait to go see him. He has been married for twenty nine years, almost thirty years, to his beautiful wife Kim who we've not met but I've seen pictures.
30:35
The pictures up there, I don't know that he goes through them during this presentation but the people are people that he loves and he serves and they serve him and the stories are precious and just we're blessed to live here. We're blessed to have shoes on our feet and we're blessed to have a wanted tape on the floor of our sanctuary. This building is used for a million things, and we are so blessed to be able to use it to hear about things and blessings like this. And so would y'all please welcome Ted Raven on?
31:08
You can have that. Hello, everybody. Good morning. It's my pleasure to be here. It's just an exciting opportunity.
31:15
It's the second time I've been in Wyoming. I actually hail from Pennsylvania. I was born there, but we've been working for twenty five years in Tanzania, East Africa. I raised my kids there. They spent all their lives there.
31:27
They speak Swahili. We speak Swahili in Tanzania when we communicate with people. They grew up in a third culture setting. They've come to love African people. We love African people.
31:34
They're our family now, and we feel almost more tied into Tanzania than we do America in some ways but for living there for that long period of time. We're involved both physically and spiritually working with local people. We recognize the needs of the whole man are not just spiritual, not just physical but spiritual and physical And so our goal is to impact impact the whole man. We work with small scale farmers. We want to help them make a better living through farming.
31:59
We try to help them identify and utilize underdeveloped natural resources. The people in our area aren't beekeepers traditionally, but I'm a beekeeper trainer. I train beekeepers how to produce honey and wax from their hives so they can sell them in terms of retail sales of honey and wax and it can add to their diversification scheme as a farmer. Some of you guys are farmers. You probably don't do one thing.
32:21
You probably do four or five different things to make a living. Well, it's the same way out there. Trying to help those guys say, what can what can we do to make a better living and earn the respect and the ability to share something important which is Jesus Christ and so, we're not helping anybody if we teach him to be a better farmer and they're still afraid to go to the outhouse in the dark at night from the ancestors and all the spiritual witchcraft and things that they're involved in. They need to be they need to be encouraged, emboldened physically by learning better things but they need to come to the love and and and just joy of Jesus Christ and the peace that he brings through through his sacrifice on the cross for their sins and so pray for us. It's a big task.
32:59
Working in Tanzania is is a different place with people that think totally different than you think. Totally different than you think. Me give you a quick illustration. My son is married. He works in Northern Tanzania.
33:09
He works with small scale farmers as well. He works doing business there and he's helping small scale farmers, 3,000 farmers produce a better product for the marketplace. So he's working with the the farmers in an area called Arusha. Well, he he called me last week. He said, dad, I have a funny story.
33:26
Now this story illustrates how different Africans think from us here in America. He said that one day his wife had her one girlfriend over, and they were sitting on the sofa talking in the little house that they rent in Arusha. And as they're talking, Anna sees something out of the corner of her eye coming through the kitchen door, and it's a cat. Alright? Now, they don't own a cat.
33:45
Alright? And the cats in Africa are not cared for like your kitty at home. Okay? These things look like groundhogs. Okay?
33:52
Or raccoons. Alright? They're not the kind of thing that you walk up and pet. You're afraid of them when you see these cats. Right?
33:57
So, this cat comes in from the kitchen and Anna right away is startled. She's like, what in the world is going on? What what is this cat doing in my house, right? And so, she calls Colton on the phone. Now, a cat to Colton isn't high on his threat list, alright?
34:10
But she calls Colton on the phone and she says, Colton, there's a cat in our house and Colton said, well, what's it doing? You know, and she said, it went back in the kitchen. He said, follow it. So, Anna followed the cat back in the kitchen and when she got in there, she saw the screen window was slid open and the cat was going out the window. Somehow, it used its paw to open the sliding screen window, and it came in, and then it went back out the window.
34:31
So she said it went out the window. Now, her girlfriend at this time says, there's another cat trying to get in the back door at this point. Right? So she said, Colton, there's another one. Right?
34:41
So Colton came home, and that night he said cats were on the roof. They were running back and forth on the roof. So Colton rents his house from a guy named Rogers. Okay? Take Roger, the word Roger, and throw...
34:52
Roll the r and put an s on the end of it. Alright? Is his name. Alright? So Colton calls Roger.
34:58
He says, Roger, have a cat problem. There's cats trying to come in the windows and stuff, and, they're running back and forth on the roof. What are you gonna do? We're we're renting our house from you. You're our landlord.
35:07
How can you help us with the cats? Right? And so, Rogers, he says, no problem. I'll take care of it. Next morning, Colton sees Rogers in the driveway, and he's got a big plastic jug of a clear liquid.
35:19
And there's a hole in the top of the jug. He drilled in the lid, and he's shaking this clear liquid all over the side of Colton's home, and all over the car that Colton drives, and up on the roof of the house, and around the corners of the property. Alright? So Colton's getting ready to go to work. He comes out and he says, well, Jess, he says, what are you doing, man?
35:39
What do you what do you have in the in the jug? And he says, this jug. He said, yeah. That... What's that?
35:44
What are you shooting? Is it poison? Are you trying to, you know, know, keep the cats away with poison? And Roger says, no. It's not poison.
35:52
He says, it's holy water, he says. Right? Now, Africans see everything spiritually. There's a spiritual cause for everything. It's not a physical problem.
36:00
There's a spiritual problem they have to address. So Roger says, everybody knows that cats are are scared of holy water. If you put holy water out, the cats won't come back. So I went down to the Catholic church and I asked the priest and he got me some water. He prayed over it and he did his thing, and I'm bringing it here, and I'm taking care of your cat problem.
36:18
He said, you know? And so I I think you probably, if have cockroaches in your kitchen and your exterminator showed up with a bottle of holy water, you probably wouldn't take him serious. Alright? Well, in Africa, people think differently. In Africa, there are spiritual ramifications for every facet of life.
36:35
It's not in here. We like to to empirically try to decide if something is true or not true. We'll look at the facts, and we'll say, we have to treat that in a physical way. In Africa, everything is treated spiritually. If somebody falls unconscious, there's a spiritual reason.
36:49
They have to seek out that spiritual reason so they know how to deal with the problem at hand. And so that's just an illustration, a small illustration of what we find in Tanzania working with the people. Let's begin. Let's begin today. I wanna I want us to open our Bibles to Isaiah 50.
37:06
Isaiah 50 verses 10 through 11. I think this is a powerful... Two powerful verses in the Old Testament and I think they really speak to our hearts as human beings. It says here, Isaiah 50 verses 10 through 11. It said, who among you fears the Lord and obeys the word of his servant?
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Let him who walks in the dark, who has no light, trust in the name of the Lord and rely upon his God. But now all of you who light fires and provide yourselves with flaming torches, go and walk in the light of your fires and of the torches that you have set ablaze. This is what you shall receive from my hand. You will lie down in torment. We have a picture painted for us here of God being light.
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God being heat. Okay? And he says, walk in my light. He says, you know, Isaiah, you know, talks to the people and says, walk in the light of the Lord. The Lord is light.
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Light like nothing you've ever seen before. The brightest light you've ever seen can't compare to the light that God issues issues forth. He said, but those of you that would light would light your own fires, those of you that would follow your own paths, that would make your own your own purposes in life, that you would you would see as the most important thing, then you follow those fires. You follow those fires, those small fires. And he said in the end, this is what you'll receive from from me.
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You'll lie down in torment. You'll be disappointed. Your hearts will be broken because you followed your own small fire when God is an is is an intense light, a burning bright light that is available to you as a human being. And so I think this speaks to us as people. So often, we are tempted to light small fires.
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So often, we have things in our lives that we see as being important, and we follow those things instead of following God. We forget that he is the light that is offered to us and a light that can impact us in such a tremendous way. You know, the funny thing is I I I would like to ask you guys a question today. And maybe it's a question you haven't asked yourself for a while, but I want you to ask yourself today, who am I? Who am I?
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Think about that question a little bit. Who am I? I think it's an important question, and we all ask it at some time in our lives. What is the essence of who I am? And if somebody were to ask you that question, I think the first thing you might respond is, well, I'm Ted Rabinall, my name.
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But your name is really something your parents have given you. Right? It's like a handle. It's an identification that tells people, okay, when this this... You see this person go by, that is that person.
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It's it's it's your name. It's not who you are. Maybe you would say your profession. I'm a missionary. I'm a teacher.
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I'm a carpenter. I'm a farmer. But really, that's what you do. It's not who you are. Right?
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Brothers and sisters, am I right on that? It's what you do. Maybe you would say, I'm a Caucasian. You identify yourself by your race, but that's really your race. It's not who you are.
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Maybe you say, I'm an American. That's where you live in the world. You know? But if you delve deeply into that question, it causes you some consternation, doesn't it? Because I don't think we really we really are able to answer the question.
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Why can't we answer the question? It's a simple enough question. It's a simple enough question. Who are you? Who are you?
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What is the essence of who you are? And I think our culture often tells us that we need to answer the question, and we need to do it maybe by asserting it. When you see a football player makes a touchdown, what does he do? He takes the football. He slams it on the ground, and he thrusts his chest out.
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Right? And he says, ugh. Right? Or they do the dance and they dance around. And you know what?
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They think at one point in their lives, they finally decided who they are. And they do it by asserting it. They're basically saying, I am. Right? I exist.
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Look at me. Behold me. They're seeking to answer the question, who am I? But what does it say in the Bible in the old testament, brothers and sisters? It says this.
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It says when Moses went to God in the burning bush, and God said, take off your sandals. You're treading on holy ground. Moses took his sandals off and he approached the burning bush, and God said, set my people free. Go to Egypt and set my people free. And Moses looked at the burning bush, and he said, who shall I tell them that you are?
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And God said, I am. So we both can't be right. That football player that says, I am. You know? He gets the touchdown.
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Everybody looks at him. It's his moment of glory, he says, I am. But God says instead, I am. I am. And we seek to answer this question so many different ways by what we do.
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Oftentimes, we seek to answer it by what we do. We we we seek to answer it through our culture maybe, but maybe we were not meant to answer the question. Maybe the question is answered outside of who we are. Israel walked in the Old Testament. As they walked in the Old Testament, at one point, after after the time of Judges, they cried out to Samuel, the prophet.
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They said, as a nation, we want a king. Right? Remember that? They said, we want a king. As a nation, we want a king.
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We wanna look to something. We want a small fire. We wanna look to a fire. We wanna have something to warm our hands by. And and God said, give him a king.
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Give him Saul. Was Saul a good king? He was for a while in the beginning, wasn't he? He he he started well, but he didn't end well. They pursued their own desires.
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God... They followed God as a pillar of a cloud in the daytime. They followed the pillar of cloud, and at nighttime, a pillar of fire. They walked after him, and they they they followed him as Moses led them through the wilderness, but they said, give us a small fire. We want a king.
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We wanna be like the other nations. We want something to worship. What is it you worship, brother? What is it you worship, sister? How do you seek to answer the question, who am I?
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What do you put in there? You know, let's look in let's look in the Bible. It takes us... Let's look in the in the book of first Peter one verses 18 through 19. First Peter one verses 18 through 19.
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It says here, for you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver and gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. Amen? Amen, brothers and sisters? Amen. Amen.
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He handed down... We've been handed down something from our ancestors, and it's an empty way of life. Okay? We've been handed down a futile way of life, other translations say. And that futility, when it says it comes from our ancestors, what does that mean?
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Does it mean it came from grandpa George? It doesn't... I don't think it means that. I think it means it comes from our society. There are things that we accept and that we we believe and that we take as being true that come from our society, but really oftentimes they're empty.
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They don't give us what we really need. We accept things. Westerners, me included, all of us, we're materialistic individualists. That's what we are. Okay?
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That's how we live. That's how we... That's our grid that we operate in. Okay? That means that with the individual, as being an individualist, the individual has ultimate say, has ultimate importance.
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Whatever I think is being important is what's important, right? That's what's important as an individualist, okay? And we're materialists. We care very often. We care very often more about things than the person sitting next to us.
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And I think if you were to take an... If you were to take a survey in America, some people care more about their phone than the guy sitting next to them. And this is to our shame, brothers and sisters, as westerners. Now I'm a missionary. I've been in Africa for twenty five years, but I'm just a materialistic materialistic individualist working in Africa.
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I wish I wasn't. I tried to curb some of the excesses of my culture working with the African people because they're they're not like that. But the Africans have their own set of difficulties. They're collectivistic animus. Okay?
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A collectivistic person is somebody that believes the clan has ultimate say. That that means the people group has ultimate say. In Africa, change doesn't begin with you. It begins with us. You understand what I'm saying?
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In other words, the elders have to decide if something's good for you as an individual or for us as a clan. And if it is, then they will act. Nothing changes unless the elders of the clan agree that it's a good thing. So everybody's locked into a grid work. They cannot many times even progress because they're tied into the clan.
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And then they're animistic. In America, as materialists, we use money for control. If we have money, we have control of our environment around us, of the things that we do, the people that are involved in our lives, where we live, how we operate. We we recognize money is the thing that helps us control life. That's what we use as our control unit.
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In Africa, an animistic person uses witchcraft. If I have witchcraft, I can control the world around me. If I want a certain woman, I'll go see the shaman. I'll pay him a certain amount of money. I'll give him a chicken, a goat.
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I'll give him a I'll give him a hoe to dig with. I'll give him whatever he asks for so that he gives me... Whether it's a girl I like, whether it's whether it's political power in the village, whether I want my crops to to flourish. If I pay him, he will impact. Now listen guys, this how it works.
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You get a drink of water. I have a lot to say and I have a short time. I'm awful. Sorry. You'll go and see a shaman.
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You'll see that guy and you'll say, listen, I want these things. Help me get them. He'll say, okay. This is what it's gonna cost you. Then what he does is he realizes there's a bridge.
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All Africans realize there's a bridge from the physical realm into the spiritual realm. And if you can impact the spiritual realm, the spiritual realm will then come back again and impact you in the physical realm. Therefore, if I have a special charm, a fetish, an amulet, an incantation, something that will help me, I can then get the thing that I want in this physical realm because I've tricked, coerced, or manipulated the spiritual realm to give me that. Okay? Now that's how Africans live.
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Which one's better? To be an individualistic materialist or to be a collectivistic animist? They're both bad. Why are they both bad? Because a large part of both of those societies have inherited feudal ways from their ancestors.
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Now if I were to take a little infant baby in this congregation to Africa to be suckled and nursed by an African mama and raised in the middle of the bush, that little baby, even though it would be white, that... Or maybe Caucasian, that little baby would be raised to be the nicest little collectivistic animus you'd ever wanna see. Right or wrong? Am I right? If I were to take an African baby, bring him back here, and he were to be raised by someone here in Jackson, alright, and sent to school here, and learn all the values that you have, that little baby would be the nicest little individualistic materialist you'd ever wanna meet, you know?
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And guys, we don't ask for the garbage we get, but we get garbage. Let's face it. We get garbage. What are we gonna do with that? What we do oftentimes is we make it our fire.
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We make it the thing that guides us. We make it the thing that leads us, but it's emptiness. It's futility in its excess. Now do you need money? Yes.
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You need money to live, but it should be a hammer, friends. It should be a screwdriver. It should be something that you use as a tool. You don't amass. You don't worship.
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It should not be your fire. It should not be your fire. Brothers and sisters, the sun is 8,000 degrees Fahrenheit. It burns twenty four seven. It burns twenty four seven.
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Without the sun, we would all perish. Every single one of us would perish. If the sun was a 100 miles further away in a short period of time, everybody here would perish. It's 8,000 degrees Fahrenheit. It burns all the time, and the sun is a medium sized star in the galaxy.
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And there's a universe of millions and trillions of them, and God makes them run by the power of his word. He makes them run. And if you think your little garbage fire, the small fire that you worship and the small fire that you have lit is going to give you joy in this life when God himself can be our light. We're deceived. We're deceived.
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God says to us, repent. Repent. He says that we need to come before him. We need to see what is bad, what is futile from our ancestors, repent of that, and say, how can I use what I have for God's kingdom? To impact the people in Jackson, to show the love of Christ, and to be an arm for him here on this Earth.
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God tells us as men and women, we were made in his image. Brothers and sisters, we're different from everything else that God created. Praise the Lord. We're different. He made us in his image.
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He gave us three different ways. Different from all of creation. Three ways he made us that are make us make us different. The first way is this. He gave us something.
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That's incredible. He gave us intellect. We can understand the DNA strand. Right? We under...
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We... I mean, I wouldn't understand it, but we know there is one. You know? And and we we... There's guys though that do understand it.
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They recognize that this guy... The guy has a eye... Certain eye color because of this part in the DNA strand. They can go through... We can...
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We we know trigonometry, mathematics, history. We study. We learn all these things. But it's not to give us this knowledge that puffs us up us but rather so that we might know the one that made us. He gave us intellect so that we would know him, know his wonders, know his beauty.
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I trained beekeepers. You wanna talk about intricate and intricacy. Look at a colony of bees, how it interacts, and you will be amazed at how God made them. But it's not so that I can say, I've arrived. Now I understand bees.
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No. It's to say, look at that creator. He made an amazing thing in bees. The second way, we've given the given the ability to love. Guys, love is what?
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Love is showing self sacrifice for someone else. I don't care how nice your dog is. Alright? I don't care how nice your cat is. To give sacrificially, self sacrifice, lay their lives on the line for for someone or something is uniquely human.
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It's uniquely human, and it... And it's because we were made in God's image. Now were we made just so that we can love each other? No. We were made so that we can have a relationship with God himself.
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That's why he gave us the ability to love. The third way and this is often the problem for us as human beings. It's called free will. He'll never force these things on us. He'll never force love.
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You know that? You will love him because you've decided to love him or you will spurn him because you've decided to spurn him. Every single one of us has free will. We can walk away from God. We can reject him and God says, if you'll do that, then go ahead.
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You know? You know what Spurgeon said? He said, the worst thing that can happen to a man is that God would give him what he wants. Think about that, brothers and sisters, because we never want what he wants. We never want what he wants.
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And so the worst thing that can happen to us is when we get what we want. We wonder why we're in the political mess we're in in America. He's given us what we want, you know? And and I'm sorry, maybe not the people in this church, but he's giving us as a nation what we want. And and really, we're...
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We we struggle trying to understand that, but the free will that is put into us, he wants us to love him because we want to love him, because we see him as valuable, because we recognize that he's made everything. He's given us intellect. He's given us love, and he wants us to draw near to him because of who he is, because he is the light that can bring satisfaction to our lives. He doesn't wanna see us with broken hearts starting fires, making fires, and following these small fires. I wanna ask you a question.
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What is the first thing you think about when you wake up in the morning? What is the first thing you think about when you wake up in the morning? Could that be your fire? You know? And maybe you don't think about much.
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I oftentimes don't think about a whole lot when I wake up in the morning. You know? But but when you wake up in the morning, what's the first thing you think about? Is it is it is it maybe your job? Do you have to make money?
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You have to you have to think about... I don't know. There's aspects of life. Like I said, there's things that are important in life as well, but at the same time, what are the things that drive you? Oftentimes, the first thing we think about in the morning when we wake up is that fire.
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Is a fire that seeks to come in and steal the great light from our lives. Seeks to to to take all of our interests away from God and focus on that instead. And so it's just a good question sometimes for us to ask in our lives. Trying to answer answer the question, who am I without God as your reference point is as really as foolish as a sailor being in the middle of the ocean and trying to answer the question, where am I without a reference point. Right?
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Think about back in the sixteenth, seventeenth century, the guys that used to ply the seas in wooden boats. They'd be in the middle of the ocean and they... To try to stand on the on the deck of that ship and look around and answer the question, where am am I would be foolishness without something called a sextant. A sextant. It's a device that they use to look at the North Star.
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And when they look at the North Star, it gives them the ability to triangulate where they are in the world. So they know where they're going. They have a reference point that helps them navigate. As men and women, our reference point is not us. And that's the problem.
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When our reference point becomes us, we get lost. We get broken. We start following things that cause us to have depression and sadness. And I believe a lot of the things we struggle with in terms of depression and and things that we struggle with in terms of seeing psychologists and needing to to have therapy is because we're... We don't really know who we are in God.
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We don't know who we are in God. We seek to find out who we are in ourselves. And we can't answer the question. We can't answer the question. Only he can answer the question for us.
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And so as a sailor in the ocean needs a sextant to be able to triangulate where he is on on this earth, we need a reference point as human beings. I wanna talk from the book of Genesis. Let's go to Genesis two seven. Genesis two verse seven. It says here, it says, the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the man became a living being.
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Brothers and sisters, think about this, okay? God in the in the beginning, in the garden, he he he pinched clay. I'm a potter. I like working on a potter's wheel. But God is the ultimate potter.
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He took clay and he shaped it, and he formed it, and he pulled it, and he straightened it, and he made the form of a man on the ground. But that form was only a form until God got down and breathed his breath into the nostrils of that still being and it said that it became a living being. God's breath brings life. God's breath brings substance. It says, you know, the scriptures are God breathed, you know.
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The reason the scriptures are able to pierce to the very innards of our being as human beings is because God's breath's in them. You know, the the the Bible people say, you know, we read the Bible, but when we read the Bible, the Bible actually reads us, doesn't it? It reads us because God's breath is in it. God's breath is in the Bible. It's in his word.
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So, in the end, we're convicted. Our hearts are convicted and we come before him with humble and contrite hearts. You know, but it says that God formed man and breathed the breath of life into him. What does that mean? It means that Adam was alive physically.
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That means his soul spirit was in unison with his body. That means he walked, talked, and and and and was able to move around physically as a human being. God gave him life but it also means that he was alive spiritually. In the beginning, it is not... It was not like it is now.
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Okay? Adam was alive spiritually with his creator. He was alive with him. He rejoiced in him. His soul spirit was in unison with God.
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There was no wall built between between God and Adam. He never asked the question, who am I? Because God told him. He said, you are mine. You are mine.
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Your being, your essence, your purpose is in me. It's not in you. Adam never tried to light a small fire in the beginning because he had the great light before him. He would never try to light a small fire. If we continue to reading, it's...
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Continue reading, it says in Genesis two sixteen through 17, the Lord God commanded the man you're free to eat from any tree in the garden but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil for when you eat of it, you will surely die. And what happened brothers and sisters? What happened at that time? You know, God... People say to me, well, that seems kind of mean.
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I've heard people say this, sharing the gospel with people. How would, you know, God is right away. He's telling them what they can and can't do, you know? But let me ask you a question. If you have somebody in your life, he comes to you and he says, hey, I have a 100 things here.
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I'm gonna give you 99 of them. Gifts. 99 of these 100 things. I want you to be blessed. I want you to have all these things.
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It's a special thing that I want to do for you. But this one thing, I I... I'm going to hold on myself. I'm not gonna give that to you. This is this is a precious thing.
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I don't want you to use this. Is that a good or a bad person? They've given you 99 things. They've given you... They've bountifully blessed you.
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No one would look upon somebody like that and say, that's somebody mean. They've given you everything they have. Secondly, brothers and sisters, when have you ever made anything that you don't plan to use yourself? Think about that. God is spirit.
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He doesn't eat pineapples. He doesn't eat pineapples. He doesn't eat chickens. He doesn't eat beef. He doesn't eat any of those things but he made them all Even before Jesus Christ came to live in the body, he made them all so that you would be blessed.
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He gave you something he doesn't need. He doesn't even think about eating pineapples. He doesn't need those things but he made them for his children here on earth. God is an amazing God. He showed such amazing demonstrations of his love to to Adam and Eve and in the end, Adam and Eve said, no.
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We want the one thing you didn't give us. We want it. We don't care what you say. We want that thing And they willfully disobeyed God, and a wall came up. And from then on, brothers and sisters, we seek to find fire.
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We seek to find fire. There's a wall between us and God. We don't see him for who he is. We've inherited feudal things from our ancestors, and it causes us to be desperate men and women. Desperate and broken.
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In Africa, when we preach the gospel, people come forth and they say, bona tedi, we'd like to come to Christ, but we can't come to Jesus right now because I gotta get rich first. Because they know in Africa to get rich, they're gonna have to take some shortcuts. They're gonna have to do some deception. And so don't tell us about Jesus now. Let us get rich and we'll come to Christ.
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And I say to them, I said, do you know where I'm from? I'm from America. I'm from people... I'm from an area of people that have four cars. You know, I may have two people and then they have four cars.
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I'm from an area where people have had multiple girlfriends and wives and big homes and all the things that you think money's gonna buy you and bring you joy. And those people, those very people, some of the wealth... Wealthy people in the world are jumping off the top of buildings. Their hearts are broken. They're following this fire that is a stench.
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It's a stench to them. They don't know how to get fulfillment. They don't know how to get joy because they follow this small thing that they think will give them happiness. And in the end, it brings them brokenness. It brings them brokenness.
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All the while, the God that made the sun at 8,000 degrees Fahrenheit says, here I am. Repent of your sin. Throw yourselves on your knees and come to me and I'll forgive you. I'll forgive this land. I'll give you strength.
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I'll give you joy. I'll give you power because you've come back to a right understanding as Adam had of who I am so that you can love me and know me and never light a fire again. I think oftentimes we stray brothers and sisters because we forget what we've been saved from. A passage that speaks to my heart, John three fourteen. And if you could look at John three fourteen.
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It's right after... It's right before the course of famous John three sixteen, but oftentimes we're so focused on John three sixteen, we forget to look right in front of it. But it says there, it says, just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the son of man must be lifted up that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life and there's a picture painted for us of Moses and the people of Israel were walking with Moses and they grumbled against God. They complained about the food. They complained about everything.
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They're like we were, right brothers and sisters? We complain so often in our hearts. We grumble in our hearts but God said, I'm tired of it. They grumble all the time. God sent snakes among them.
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The snakes bit the people and poison was in their bloodstream. The people started to die and they cried out to Moses as they often did when they were tormented and God said to Moses, make make a fiery serpent. Put it on a pole and lift it up and anybody that looks to the to the serpent, anybody that gazes upon the serpent will be saved. When I was a new Christian, I used to think the gospel seems so easy. It just says believe.
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It just says look and be saved. And it was it was troubling for me. I thought, how can it be that easy? And I'm... I was sitting in my affluence in Pennsylvania as a young man thinking about this, but then I remembered the poison.
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I remembered the poison. Those people that were bitten were dying. They were dying. They weren't sitting on a couch in Pennsylvania. Alright?
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They were dying. They recognized in their blood was a substance that would take their life. They felt sick. They were they were on the point of of exhaustion, and God said, I've provided a way. And those sick people, those poisoned people threw themselves on the ground and they looked upon the serpent as I didn't look upon Christ.
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They looked upon the serpent with a need, with a with a burning deep desire to be saved, to be made to be made right from the sickness, from the poison that was consuming them. They threw themselves down and they and they looked at at the serpent, and God healed them from their sickness. And there's an illustration here of Jesus Christ being lifted up in place of that serpent. And he said, all that call upon me, all that look to Jesus as the answer for life itself will be saved. But my question to you brother and sister is have you ever recognized that you're sick?
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That there's poison in your blood. That that poison will surely cause you to perish for all eternity if you don't turn to Christ. God tells us that poison is in our blood. Let me tell you a quick story before I finish. I got a buddy of mine named David, David Moyer.
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He grew up in Africa. He's a herpetologist. Alright? That means he studies snakes and reptiles. David has a bunch of jars, from alba jars with snakes in.
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Alright? Because you're herpetologist, that's... Those guys all do that crazy stuff. And he has a Gabon viper. He has a he has a puff adder.
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He has a bunch of of of really hypotoxic and neurotoxic snakes all over Africa in these jars on a shelf at home. And he and all his herpetology buddies talk about these snakes. And so David one day was driving to Dar Es Salaam in an old 1000 Land Rover with a British guy named Richard Phillips. And as they're driving along, they're getting closer and closer to the capital city, and they go through a game park called the Mikumi National Park. And when they get to the far side of the Mikumi, a six foot black mamba goes across in front of the car.
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And so David says, Richard, stop the car. I don't have a black mamba in my specimen case. So Richard pulls over the 01/2009 Land Rover and sitting behind the steering wheel, David jumps out. And now David grew up in Africa. He knows how to throw a stick.
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Finds a stout stick on the ground, goes walking off into the bush, and there's the snake from me to my brother away who was in the play this morning. That's where the snake is on the ground and he's got a stout stick in his hand and he takes aim at the stick and he tells me, he said, I was gonna break the snake's back and then subdue it, kill it, and then put it in a sack, take it home and put it in formaldehyde. That was his plan. Okay? So he sees a snake on the ground.
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He takes a stick in his hand, and he throws a stick with all his might to the snake. And he said, my whole life flashed before my eyes. He said, before that stick hit where that snake was, the snake came off the ground, struck my wrist, and was gone, and the stick landed on empty space. Okay? That's how fast that snake is.
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And David looked at his wrist and he knew he was gonna die. He started walking back to the car and he said my whole life changed in the flash of an eye. He goes, I got in the car and I looked over at Richard and he said I told Richard, he said it bit were convulsing. And he gave a living will to Richard as they're driving to Kibahua. He said that my wife doesn't know I have some money in this one place.
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I want you to tell her the money's there so she knows to get it. And so he starts telling Richard the important things in life, thinking he's gonna die. Getting closer and closer to Kibahah, but they can't make it in time. The Land Rover's a beater, and it's only going 50 miles an hour or whatever. So they jump out.
1:05:53
They wave down an... A bunch of Arabs driving a VX Toyota Land Cruiser. The Arabs get to a stop. They drag David and chuck him in the back seat, and they say, get this guy to Kibah. He's gonna die.
1:06:05
Get him to Kibah. So the Arabs take off, break deck speed, drive... And they drive a 170 kilometers an hour, which is, like, close to 90 miles an hour. And they're driving through police checkpoints. The cops jump out of the way.
1:06:15
They come driving through. The Arabs think we're gonna save this guy's life. They get him to Kibahah, show up at the emergency room, chuck him in a wheelchair, and as they wheel him away, the Arabs drive away. Alright? They feel they've done their good deed, you know, and they're off.
1:06:27
And so he gets in there. Now Richard's still following in the Land Rover. And as he's driving along behind him, doesn't know how it's gonna end out. But at this point, David is on a gurney and they start giving him anti venom. He gets three vials of anti venom, but he needs six.
1:06:42
So Richard gets there, has to take him from the hospital, get him back in the land rover, and head to Dar Es Salaam. He gets to Dar Es Salaam. They they admit admit him to the Aga Khan hospital. He gets three more vials of antivenin, and in two weeks can talk again. Okay?
1:06:56
Now the guys that are snake experts, they looked at his bite. He only had one fang print in his arm. He was only touched by one fang of that black mamba. But let me tell you brothers and sisters, he knew he had poison in him. He knew he was sick.
1:07:11
He knew he was gonna die, and he would have done anything at that point to be cured of that poison. Do you know you're sick? Do you know you have poison in you? Will you use your free will to love God, to seek him, to follow him by his way, not your way. Don't make up a god in your mind.
1:07:31
Seek him his way. Allow him to apply sov upon your eyes. Allow him to give you the ability to walk away from the little fire. Follow him, the light of this world. Follow him.
1:07:43
Let's pray. Lord, I thank you, God, so much for this day. I thank you for the dear brothers and sisters here in Wyoming, and I pray, Lord Jesus, that you might move in their hearts, God. I pray, Lord Jesus, that you would help us to move away from the fires that we have lit, to to recognize that it together with the good things, we've inherited feudal ways, lord and to give those those things to you, Lord Jesus. We repent of these things.
1:08:06
We ask for strength. We ask for power from you, Lord God, that we might live our lives fulfilled receiving the knowledge of who we are in you and not in ourselves. We pray these things in Jesus Christ holy name. Amen.
1:08:19
Amen. Ted. Would you stand up with us? We're gonna sing a song. Very fitting to this sermon.
1:08:26
In the marvelous light, we are running.
1:09:32
To come and die by grace I now will come take this take your sin Venturiously air into marbles light I run. Out in darkness, out of shade. By the cross you are the truth. You are the life you are the way. My
1:11:36
Happy Mother's Day. May God make his face to shine upon you and give you peace. Amen.
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