Five Lessons of Deadly Disobedience:
- Nadab and Abihu (Leviticus 10:1-2) -
- Achan (Joshua 7:19-26) -
- Uzzah (2 Samuel 6:6) -
- Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1-11) -
- Laodicea (Revelation 3:14-22) -
Without Severe Consequences...
- DISOBEDIENCE would appear profitable.
- The Holy Spirit would appear to have been DECEIVED .
- God would appear to tolerate hypocrisy and DEFEAT / DECEPTION .
Jay Knauer - HBCPN Elder
Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above with your cursor for answers!
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00:01-00:05
For those of you who have never been here, you're probably wondering who I am.
00:06-00:07
I'm not the usual sermon deliverer.
00:08-00:09
I'm a pinch hitter this morning.
00:10-00:23
As we said in the prayer, Jeff is at Pittsburgh East, the Harvest Bible Chapel at Pittsburgh East this morning, and he is preaching there as their preacher, Jeremiah Canfield, is out of town today.
00:23-00:35
So, my name is Jay Naur, and I'm one of the elders here, and I work for the University Medical Center, that big ugly building downtown that says UPMC on it.
00:36-00:48
But I'm a systems analyst there for the Information Services Division. That's what I am. What I am not is a Bible scholar. I am not a Bible scholar. I never went to Bible college.
00:48-01:27
I went to Westminster College, which is somewhat church-related. My only credential to be up here is that I'm a guy who loves God and I constantly am amazed at what he has done for me and what he's done for us. Let's just pray for a minute. Lord I pray that the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart will be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my Redeemer. Amen. Hey, have you heard about the war that's going on?
01:29-01:30
It's going on now.
01:31-01:39
It's more destructive than World War I. It's more insidious and evil than World War II.
01:40-01:50
It's more lengthy than the Hundred Years War. It causes more More confusion and unrest than the Vietnam War.
01:51-01:55
It's more pervasive globally than the war on poverty.
01:58-02:02
It's scarier and it creates more panic than the war of the worlds.
02:02-02:03
Anybody remember that?
02:05-02:06
1938, way to go Paul.
02:08-02:13
Yeah, Orson Welles, that radio program that just freaked everybody out for a while.
02:14-02:17
This war that I'm talking about rages every single day.
02:18-02:21
And since man has walked on the earth it's been raging.
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It's claimed more casualties than all wars put together.
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And yet, it receives very little press coverage.
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In fact, it is hardly ever talked about in normal conversation.
02:36-02:37
It's like a secret.
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Its casualties are the most precious things that God ever created, souls.
02:46-02:48
They're more valuable even than lives.
02:49-02:50
What am I talking about?
02:52-02:53
Yes, my man Bob.
02:54-02:57
Yeah, I'm talking about spiritual war.
02:57-02:58
It's always raging.
03:00-03:01
Just a word about war.
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Since the 1960s in America, lots of ideas about war being itself an evil.
03:10-03:16
It used to be the conventional idea about war was that it was necessary because of evil.
03:17-03:20
The idea was that evil must be defeated and eradicated.
03:21-03:25
Now it's tolerated in our society and war itself is the evil.
03:27-03:38
This spiritual war is actually the definitive daily, hourly, minutely fight for not our mere lives, but our souls.
03:39-03:46
This is the fight that Satan doesn't want us to even think about, let alone talk about, let alone fight against.
03:47-03:50
This is a battle that must be fought on an individual level.
03:52-03:57
is achieved by doing the right thing all the time. It's simple.
03:59-04:03
We do the right thing and good wins and we rejoice.
04:03-04:06
We do the wrong thing and evil triumphs.
04:08-04:37
But it's not easy. Why? Because we're so stupid. Sorry that offended somebody but we are. It's just so stupid. We fall and fail over and over and over again to the same root temptation. The same attributes that caused Adam and Eve to sin way back in the Garden of Eden trip us up all the time every day. Pride, selfishness, C.S.
04:37-04:55
Lewis said, I think he said that selfishness was the was the first root cause of sin and other people have said pride is. Pride and selfishness is the intertwined double-headed monster. It's Satan's best tool. It's the greatest of the enemy's weapons.
04:57-05:05
He gets you to think what you want is more important than what God wants. And you know what that sounds like on a human level?
05:05-05:12
It sounds like this, "I want to do what I want to do." What it sounds like. His best tool.
05:13-05:34
Number one cause of road rage. And Satan's sitting there, he's somewhere, he's howling with pleasure at even these little victories he gets. Okay, well it's simple just to find out what is the right thing and obey. But we don't all of time. And by the way, God demands it.
05:34-05:35
Did you know that?
05:35-05:36
He demands it.
05:37-05:51
He requires all of us to obey 100% of the time. If we fail and sin even one time, we are guilty of the punishment that God set up.
05:51-06:28
We can't be with God if we sin, because his nature is sinlessness we are separated because of sin from God so question again while you get a drink what is this punishment hey open your Bibles Romans after six I mean you probably know it already verse 23 What's the punishment? Yeah, death. Death is the punishment. Seems pretty severe, doesn't it?
06:29-06:32
Is that really true? Sometimes I just, you know, I just do a little sin.
06:33-06:40
Just a little sin. Steal a pencil from work. Steal, I don't know, lie, steal, and cheat.
06:41-06:49
I actually will lie, steal, or cheat. But on a small level, is that really deserving of death? Really?
06:50-07:09
Let's look at a few of these examples. Now, in your Bibles, on those papers, there's a bunch of names. The first couple is Nadab and Abihu. Please take your pen or pencil and write this verse next to it.
07:09-07:37
Leviticus 10 1 through 2. Aaron's sons Nadab and Abihu took their censers, put fire in them, and added incense. And they offered unauthorized fire before the Lord, contrary to his command. Okay, it just kind of told you there who Nadab and Abihu were. These two guys are sons of Aaron, okay, the brother of Moses.
07:38-07:42
What Priests, that's right, they were priests.
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These are not just your average Joe that's wearing jeans and has a stink bug on his leg.
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So these guys were kind of important in Israel.
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To talk about the first verse when it says "censors", what is that?
07:59-08:00
They took their censors.
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Does anybody know what that is?
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Anybody know what a censor is?
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Say no.
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Yeah, it's a container, it's a vessel that has hot coals in it, and they dump incense in them, and they're called censers, okay?
08:15-08:25
So they took these censers and they put fire in them, they put hot coals in them, they added incense, and they offered this fire before the Lord, contrary to His command.
08:27-08:29
Then in verse 2, here it is.
08:30-08:31
What was the question again?
08:32-08:37
The question was, is the punishment for disobedience really sin?
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Okay?
08:39-08:40
That's the question.
08:40-08:42
Now, you can guess in verse 2.
08:42-08:48
So fire came out from the presence of the Lord and consumed them, and they died before the Lord.
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Disobedience, instant death.
08:52-08:53
They were dead immediately.
08:54-08:57
So yeah, how does that make you feel?
08:58-09:01
I'll give you a little fuzzy, a warm feeling inside.
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How many people have seen the movie "The Patriot"?
09:07-09:13
Now, in "The Patriot", this is the movie with Mel Gibson, and he had a son.
09:13-09:25
And there was a colonel in the British Army that came to their house, captured his son, his oldest son, Gabriel, which was played by Heath Ledger.
09:26-09:37
Now, they were taking him away, and the second oldest son said, "Dad, aren't you going to do anything?" And dad was like, "Cool it, cool it.
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I'm generating a plan, OK?
09:40-09:47
Working on it." Kind of gave him that look because he couldn't say that to him, but I don't think the son understood because he ran after him.
09:48-09:58
And this colonel, Colonel Tavington or something like that, sitting on his horse, takes his long pistol out fills the guy's chest with a metal ball.
09:59-10:03
This little 15-year-old boy collapsed and died right in front of his family.
10:05-10:10
Thus, in my mind, I know a lot of people in this congregation love superheroes and stuff.
10:11-10:14
I don't, I just love heroes, human heroes.
10:15-10:24
But what happened after that was that the father went after and got his eldest son back.
10:24-10:29
And what that scene created was, in my mind, the greatest bad guy.
10:30-10:33
One of the greatest bad guys in history.
10:34-10:40
And here's why. I think it was a little later in the movie, maybe it was a lot later in the movie, they meet up again.
10:40-10:43
Colonel Tavington and the father meet up again.
10:43-10:50
He says to the father, Mel Gibson, he says, "Oh, I remember you and that stupid little boy.
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The guy that he shot and killed.
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calls him stupid.
10:55-11:16
Oh man, as a father, I just went nuts inside. I mean, this is a bad guy. This is a real bad guy. At the end of the movie, what happens? Mel Gibson kills the guy. He tells him, he's gonna, I'm gonna kill you very calmly. He says, I'm gonna kill you. Sooner or later, very soon, I'm gonna kill you.
11:16-11:17
And he does it.
11:17-11:26
And at the end, you know, the Americans win the battle and stuff like that, and What did that leave you with inside?
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What kind of feeling that leave you with? Good feeling?
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I mean, some people are honest and going, "Yeah, yeah, it kind of made me feel good." Why doesn't this make you feel good inside? Let's read another one. Akhan, okay, a little background.
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What happened with Nadab and Abihu, they were actually not long out of slavery and they were were at camped, the tent of meeting by Mount Sinai.
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Achan, this incident occurred as Joshua was now leading Israel to the Promised Land.
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And they had just plundered, they had just defeated Jericho and they had plunder.
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And what God told them to do with the plunder was keep it in Israel, keep it in the church.
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So, by the way, next to Achan's name, Joshua 7, verse 25.
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I'll just give you a quick synopsis of what happens.
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What happens is that Achan steals some of the plunder for himself, and he keeps it, and he buries it somewhere, and the Lord reveals this to Joshua.
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They find out that Achan, he's basically done wrong.
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done what the Lord had not commanded and I'll start with verse 19 because then Joshua said to Ahan, "My son, give glory to the Lord, the God of Israel, and give him the praise. Tell me what you have done and do not hide it from me." Now these guys they were just celebrating their victory over Jericho so everybody's energized or in a good mood and then this happens.
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Ahkan replied, "It is true. I've sinned against the Lord, the God of Israel. This is what I have done.
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When I saw the plunder, a beautiful robe from Babylonia, 200 shekels of silver and a wedge of gold weighing 50 shekels, I coveted them and I took them. They are hidden in the ground inside my tent with the silver underneath. So Joshua sent some guys, some messengers, and they ran to the tent and there it was, hidden in his tent with the silver underneath.
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They took the things from the tent, brought them to Joshua and all the Israelites and spread them out before the Lord. Then Joshua together with all Israel took Ahchan, the son of Zerah, silver, the robe, the gold wedge, his sons, his daughters, his cattle, his donkeys, and sheep, his tent, everything that he had to the valley of Achor. Joshua said, "Why have you brought this trouble on us by your disobedience?
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The Lord will bring trouble on you today." Then all Israel stoned him, and after After they had stoned the rest, they burned them.
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Over Akan they heaped up a large pile of rocks, which remains to this day.
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Then the Lord turned from His fierce anger.
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Therefore that place has been called the Valley of Akor ever since." Now I don't know about you, but I read this.
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I didn't really have that same feeling that I had when I watched The Patriot or saw any the numerous scenes in Lord of the Rings where good prevailed over evil.
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We don't have that same feeling.
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However, there's a parallel there because good did win out.
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God's commands are good.
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You break God's commands, you will die.
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That's simple.
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You don't have to like it, it's just simple.
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But it's not easy.
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Let's look at Samuel, this is a short one.
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2 Samuel 6, this is Uzzah.
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Uzzah, look at chapter six of 2 Samuel, verse six.
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Now, the background to this is that David is bringing the ark to Jerusalem, right after defeating their hated enemy, the Philistines.
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Okay, they actually defeated them twice.
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Okay, so they're rejoicing and they're having a great time.
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rejoicing in the Lord because the Lord was with them. Now, verse 6 says, "When they came to the threshing floor of Nacchan, Uzzah reached out and took hold of the ark of God." What is the ark of God?
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It actually symbolizes God's earthly throne. It's like God's lordship is in the ark. And David so wanted this to be in Jerusalem because he wanted to show the world that he wasn't the end-all, okay, he wasn't the greatest leader, but God was. That he submitted to God. Very important to him to have that Ark of God in Jerusalem, okay. So Uzzah reached out and took hold of the Ark of God because the oxen had stumbled and And then the Lord's anger burned against Uzzah because of his irreverent act.
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See, no one's supposed to touch the ark of God.
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It's the rule.
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That's God's mighty just rule.
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Therefore, God struck him down and he died there beneath or beside the ark of God.
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Instant death.
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Disobedience, deadly.
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Now, I don't have a warm fuzzy over that, but it's God's law.
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We live under it.
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We have to abide by it.
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We have to be obedient to it.
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Because as Jeff often says, "He is God.
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We are not." Let's look at one more.
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This is in Acts, chapter 5.
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If you have been watching the AD, I guess it's a mini-series on TV, the story of Ananias and Sapphira was on a couple of weeks ago and it showed in graphic detail what happened in that scene.
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So write in your books Acts 5, 1 through 11.
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Now a man named Ananias, together with his wife Sapphira, also sold a piece of property.
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With his wife's full knowledge, he kept back part of the money for himself, but brought the rest and put it at the apostles' feet.
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Then Peter said, "Ananias, how is this that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money that you received for the land. Didn't it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn't the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied to men but to God." When Ananias heard this, he fell down and died. Instantaneous death at disobedience. Now great fear seized all who had heard what had happened. Then the young men came forward, wrapped up his and carried him out and buried him.
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They're not done.
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Three hours later, his wife came in not knowing what had happened.
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Peter asked her, "Tell me, is this the price "you and Ananias got for the land?" She said, "Yes, that is the price." Peter said to her, "How could you agree "to test the spirit of the Lord?
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"Look, the men who buried your husband are at the door, "and they will carry you out also." And at that moment, she fell down at his feet and died, and they carried him out and they buried him.
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Great fear seized the whole church.
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Instantaneous judgment, death.
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That's what we deserve.
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That's what all of us deserve.
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Really, instantaneous death, unless you've not sinned.
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No, I have.
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I should be dead.
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I'm not.
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Man, God is good.
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I guess this fits in with what Jeff's talking about a little bit. God is so good. I should be dead. You should be dead because you've all sinned. Now in these four examples there has been a pattern. I don't know if you've seen it, but God is actually making an example of the events. I don't know if you've, I don't know how many teachers we have in here, but I studied to be a teacher way back a a hundred years ago and when I was in college, they trained us to start out with discipline kind of harshly.
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Then you can ease up if you need to, but start harsh.
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My professor told me start mean.
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Start out mean.
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He had to tell me that because I was not mean.
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But it's kind of like the children or the students have to know that the law is serious and that it means something, that it has consequences.
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In each of these last four examples, each time a new era or a new community was instituted.
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And each time they needed to be aware that they existed for God and not vice versa.
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See, God is dead serious about sin and disobedience and they need to be shown.
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Now the fifth example is Laodicea.
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That is not a person, it is a church and it's Revelation chapter 3.
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Write that in your little paper so you're good to go back and read the story so you get the full context.
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I don't have time to do that with all these.
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So, Revelation 3, "To the church in Laodicea, to the angel of the church in Laodicea, write, these are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the rulers of God's creation." They're the ruler of God's creation.
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"I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot.
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I wish you were either one or the other." So because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I'm about to spit you out of my mouth.
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That's verse 14 through 16.
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That's a little different.
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That is an amazing thing.
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He would rather you be cold toward him than lukewarm.
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Lukewarm is worse than saying, "God, I reject you.
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Right outright." Someone that comes to church, puts on a show, puts on a good face, puts on a facade for for everyone. That, the lukewarm person that comes to church, God doesn't want anything to do with that. In fact, he's going to reject that person, spit you out of mouth.
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That's like vomit.
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He doesn't want it. Hates the taste of you if you're a lukewarm Christian. He would love you to be hot, you know, on fire, on fire for God.
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And as you're on fire for God, you want to be obedient. And that's why, because then when you're obedient, you're right with God, your relationship, Your one-on-one personal relationship with God is right there.
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It's good.
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The problem is that there needs to be severe consequences to this disobedience.
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I think on your paper, there's a little couple sentences there, right in this.
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Disobedience would appear profitable if there weren't severe consequences.
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Death is almost as severe as you can get.
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The only thing I can think of that would be more severe than death would be your soul to go to hell, because there's nothing you can do.
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You're going to suffer forever.
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So disobedience would appear profitable.
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Think about the long-range implications if God let that go.
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So he had to set an example.
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Some of you parents, it might be a good thing to do with your little kids.
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an example up right away so they know right away what the law is and that there are consequences.
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The second sentence on your outline says, "The Holy Spirit could appear to have been deceived." That can't happen. The Holy Spirit can't be deceived. It would appear that way to people in these situations. So if they think that it's going to be, you know, the Holy Spirit isn't, and if the Holy Spirit can be deceived, they're going to try it again and again and again. And the third sentence on your paper is that it makes it appear that God will tolerate hypocrisy and deception, which is completely against his nature. He can't abide in the same area with the deceiver, with sin. He has no sin.
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It's not in his nature. So severe consequences had to occur.
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Once this all came together in my mind, some of these situations like Uzzah and Akhan, where there was instantaneous death, it kind of made sense to me, because I wasn't in that camp.
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I had that feeling that maybe that was a little too harsh, God.
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I used to think that way back when.
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In this spiritual war that we're all involved in, we talked about Satan's greatest weapon.
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What was Satan's greatest weapon?
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He gets us to be proud, he gets us to be selfish.
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It's his greatest weapon.
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Then he can just play with us.
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He has a great time.
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But our greatest weapon is this book.
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Our greatest weapon is this Bible.
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We learn truth from it, and truth transforms our minds as we learn.
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You know, I'd be dead if it wasn't for this Bible.
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I love this Bible.
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I'm actually confectionate toward it, because it's like if I kiss this, I kiss God.
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And I would love to have that kind of relationship, a one-on-one love relationship with God where I could kiss Him.
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I can't do that.
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I wish I could, because I'd really like to.
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I really appreciate what he's done for me.
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He provides the way, he provides the weapons for each of us in this battle to transform our disobedience into obedience.
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It takes work, and if we do it, we will have great celebrations in heaven.
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And we can have a church kind of like is mentioned in Acts chapter 4, verse 32 through the end of the chapter. It says, "All the believers were in one heart and one mind." Right there.
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That is fantastic. How many groups of believers are in one mind and one heart? I'll be honest with you, I've not been in many churches like this one. This one is the closest that I've ever been involved with.
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I really mean that. It's amazing to me, and I love it. "All believers were in one heart and one mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had. With great power, the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and much grace was upon them. You don't deserve it, but God gives you favor, and it's called grace. There were no needy persons among them. That's pretty amazing, too. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them brought the money from the sales and put it at the Apostles feet and it was distributed to anyone as he had need pretty amazing something like that happened in our church real recently this very example was followed that is amazing Verse 36, "Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus, whom the apostles called Barnabas," remember this guy, hung around with Paul?
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"Barnabas means," it says right here in your Bible, "it means the son of encouragement." I know Jeff would love it if you'd be a Barnabas for him.
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"Barnabas sold a field he owned and brought the money and put it at the apostles' feet." That's an incredible church.
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So, how do you become obedient?
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How can we build a church like that?
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This is how.
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Simple.
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It's not easy, but simple.
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Get into your Bible.
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Search for God inside your Bible.
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He wants to develop a relationship with you.
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Become obedient to Him.
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And I say, God is good.
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Amen.
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Let's pray.
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Father God, I thank you for your Word, first of all.
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I thank you for the church that we are sitting in right now in this school.
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It doesn't matter that it's not in a building called a church.
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I love that.
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We can meet anywhere.
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We can talk to you at any time.
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I am so grateful to that.
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But Father, I am disobedient at times.
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We all are.
29:36-29:48
Father, we pray, hopefully as a group, we pray that we will learn some of the skills that we need to become more obedient, less disobedient.
29:48-29:56
Father, we know that the wages of sin or death is death, but Lord, you promise us eternal life.
29:56-29:59
That's your gift, as it says in Romans 6.23.
30:00-30:12
Lord, I thank you just for being the kind of God that loves us and wants to have a relationship with it, not some rock, not some stone that really doesn't interact with us.
30:13-30:16
Brother, help us to go out into the world and do that.
30:16-30:17
Help us to do that to one another.
30:17-30:19
Help us to be the church that You want us to be.
30:20-30:23
Help us to be the Christians that You want us to be.
30:23-30:32
Help us to be the family members You want us to be.
Small Group Questions (Whole Group):
As we see in the Biblical examples of Nadab and Abihu, Achan, Uzzah, Ananias and Sapphira, disobedience brought tragic, physical death. Does God's Word say there is something worse? If so, what?
Warfare is constant on a spiritual level, even to Christians. We try to be obedient to God, but fail quite often and sin. What truths do you find in the Bible give us hope when we sin?
Breakout Questions:
Give one example of an act of disobedience that caused wounds in your life. Have those wounds healed, even partially? If yes, share some details around how they were healed. If no, God has the power to heal. Go to Him right now and lift up any hurting brother or sister in prayer.