Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / February 15th, 2015 | Route 66 - Deuteronomy

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February 15th, 2015 | Route 66 - Deuteronomy · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

3:51
SPEAKER_04: Sing with me, how great is that I will see her grave.
4:48
SPEAKER_04: Jesus love His mercy and love at the feet of Jesus.
5:03
SPEAKER_04: We cry holy holy holy We cry holy holy holy We cry holy holy holy cause that we don't make us cry on the Holy Oh, that was a sit-down, not a get away, right?
7:54
SPEAKER_00: That wasn't get out of here, that was a sit-down.
7:56
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
7:57
SPEAKER_00: Just wanted to make sure.
7:57
SPEAKER_00: Well, glad you're here to worship with us.
8:00
SPEAKER_00: And uh this has been a long Valentine weekend, and I hope that that brought uh a good thing to your life.
8:09
SPEAKER_00: That may be an anticipated uh holiday, it may be a dreaded holiday, but one thing I do hope is true is that when you think of Valentine, you think of that perfectly Jesus Christ for you.
9:57
SPEAKER_00: You can be a double, maybe you can't get it.
10:15
SPEAKER_00: So the Saturday morning, uh right down below us will be at seven thirty on Saturday morning, will be our managed breakfast.
10:22
SPEAKER_00: Many of you came to a night of worship where we in a sense inaugurated or asked for God's blessing on that new building across the street, and we did it through a time of worship.
10:33
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna have another night of worship coming up on March the first.
10:37
SPEAKER_00: So that's Sunday, March the first.
10:39
SPEAKER_00: Uh be looking in your calendar in the church.
10:42
SPEAKER_00: Um put it on your own personal calendar, but it'll be in the evening, and we'd love to see you come out for that.
10:47
SPEAKER_00: And also, Easter's coming up.
10:49
SPEAKER_00: And with that, Jeremiah Divine would love for me to invite you to be a part of the orchestra or a part of the choir.
10:56
SPEAKER_00: And you can do that by contacting him at jeremiah at discovertbc.com.
11:01
SPEAKER_00: So that's just five of the announcements that are in your bullet, and there's also a whole lot more that might affect or influence your life.
11:08
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the student ministry uh group that's here for after going through a big weekend.
11:15
SPEAKER_00: Give yourselves a hand.
11:21
SPEAKER_00: It's been a big, long weekend, so I just want to warn you that the ushers have been instructed.
11:27
SPEAKER_00: They have they have long prods that they're gonna walk down the aisles if anybody's sleeping.
11:32
SPEAKER_00: They'll just give you a little nudge.
11:33
SPEAKER_00: So you might tell the person next to you wake me up if I fall asleep.
11:37
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to get rid of it.
15:01
SPEAKER_04: Stop as we play and see all the steps.
22:40
SPEAKER_02: This is your chance to turn to your neighbor and say hello.
25:44
SPEAKER_01: That's what happens.
25:49
SPEAKER_01: Got some cynics out there.
25:51
SPEAKER_01: I play a love video.
25:52
SPEAKER_01: It's Valentine's Weekend, and people go, oh.
25:58
SPEAKER_01: But it is cute.
25:59
SPEAKER_01: I start this out.
26:00
SPEAKER_01: By the way, hi's everybody doing.
26:02
SPEAKER_01: Hi.
26:03
SPEAKER_01: Great to have.
26:06
SPEAKER_01: Great to have from 1 to 3.30 taken up by you guys with your blue shirts.
26:13
SPEAKER_01: Big weekend.
26:16
SPEAKER_01: I start with that video about love, not just because it's Valentine's Weekend, but because the theme of my message of the stop along Route 66, the book of Deuteronomy, is, I believe, L-O-V-E, love.
26:31
SPEAKER_01: True love is a journey.
26:33
SPEAKER_01: I really think that I know that very few people think of the book of Deuteronomy, which is the fifth book of the Pentateuch for Christians, the fifth book of Torah for Jewish folk.
26:45
SPEAKER_01: Most people don't think of any of those first five books as being anything but law and rules and so forth, but no, this is the book of love.
26:54
SPEAKER_01: This is the book of love.
26:55
SPEAKER_01: So I want to tell you about that, and I want to talk to you.
26:59
SPEAKER_01: We're uh in a series called Road uh Road Trip through uh through the Bible Route 66, uh, which, if you're visiting today, is uh one message for each book in the Bible, which means we're on number five, so we've got how many to go?
27:18
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we've got a long, long way to go.
27:21
SPEAKER_01: And uh so this is Deuteronomy, and and the theme of Deuteronomy, each week I'm trying to give you, figure out the theme of the book and give that to you uh is God gives us a second chance.
27:35
SPEAKER_01: So today is all about love and it's about missed opportunities and it's about love's second chances.
27:43
SPEAKER_01: Uh a girl named Sherry felt like she'd missed an opportunity but was getting a second chance when late in life, as she uh uh was sitting in the retirement center, she saw her old lover Jack, her friend that loved each other since fifth grade.
28:01
SPEAKER_01: Jack came into the retirement home.
28:03
SPEAKER_01: I've told you the story before, I know, but it's the perfect beginning for this because she they had loved each other since fifth grade.
28:12
SPEAKER_01: But she always felt like they'd missed a golden opportunity uh uh in high school.
28:18
SPEAKER_01: You see, uh he'd always had a wooden eye.
28:23
SPEAKER_01: And and when he, yeah, and and when he's and when he said to her, uh, would you like to go to the prom?
28:31
SPEAKER_01: And she said, Would I, would I?
28:34
SPEAKER_01: And and he didn't speak to her again for 50 years.
28:37
SPEAKER_01: So, but now he's missed opportunity.
28:40
SPEAKER_01: Now he's coming, true story, true story, and now come into the home.
28:46
SPEAKER_01: Maybe not a true story, but that Deuteronomy's story, missed opportunities, second chances.
28:54
SPEAKER_01: One of the most famous stories of uh missed opportunity is uh story of, and it happened uh some years ago.
29:02
SPEAKER_01: Walter asked his friend Arthur to take a trip in the car with him, and so they drove out of LA, southeast quite a ways.
29:12
SPEAKER_01: Later on, uh Arthur would describe it as saying, we went and we went and we went and we went and we went.
29:17
SPEAKER_01: So they kept going on the highway and finally got off the highway on a dirt road and then went through uh grove after grove of grove of trees and finally came out on this sort of barren wasteland, this big field, and all there was in the field were a few horses grazing and some dilapidated shacks, and Walter jumped out of the car.
29:35
SPEAKER_01: And and he says, Um, Arthur, listen, I I'm I've got a project, and it's gonna be big, and everybody's gonna really like it, and I have enough money for my project for this land, but you're my buddy, we've always been neighbors and and friends.
29:51
SPEAKER_01: I'd like you, you have the money, I'd like you to buy up the surrounding real estate because it's gonna go wild.
29:57
SPEAKER_01: This real estate's gonna be worth a lot.
29:59
SPEAKER_01: And and uh uh Arthur says, I thought at that point, what could I say?
30:08
SPEAKER_01: Um because I knew he was wrong.
30:11
SPEAKER_01: I thought, oh my gosh, to put up a bunch of merry-go-rounds out in the middle of a cow pasture is ridiculous.
30:17
SPEAKER_01: Who in the world is gonna drive 25 miles out of town to ride a merry-go-round?
30:22
SPEAKER_01: But I didn't say anything.
30:24
SPEAKER_01: I knew that he'd let this dream get the best of him, but I didn't I didn't want to hurt his feelings, and so I mumbled something about being tight minded and I'd think about it and so forth, but but I didn't, and I didn't buy any real estate.
30:36
SPEAKER_01: And that's how Walt Disney's friend, radio and television uh guy, uh Art Linklet, I don't know if you ever heard of him, that's how art lost his golden opportunity to buy up all of the land surrounding yeah, God's just come down.
30:56
SPEAKER_01: He comes and goes in my message.
30:58
SPEAKER_01: That's how I know.
30:59
SPEAKER_01: And that's how art lost the opportunity to buy up all of this land around Disney World, which of course now is worth five, ten, twenty thousand dollars.
31:11
SPEAKER_01: Billion dollars.
31:13
SPEAKER_01: I mean, all that in Orange County now, my goodness.
31:17
SPEAKER_01: And the interesting is as Disneyland rose from the ground, we're talking middle 50s here, early 50s, as Disneyland started rising from the ground, Linkletter knew that he had missed a golden opportunity.
31:29
SPEAKER_01: All of the land was immediately snapped up, and and and he felt awful about it.
31:36
SPEAKER_01: Plan to come back to that story at the end.
31:39
SPEAKER_01: But but you know, and I know that this is not just an art Linkletter story.
31:44
SPEAKER_01: This is a story of all of us.
31:45
SPEAKER_01: We all wish at times that we had do-overs.
31:50
SPEAKER_01: Um we we find ourselves in situations where we go, and I'm not I'm not talking about the little ones.
31:56
SPEAKER_01: You know, every single morning you have a brand new opportunity, you know, right?
31:59
SPEAKER_01: You get out of bed and you have an opportunity, you could wear weird clothes, you know, uh, or you you, I'm joking, you know, like sandals and t-shirts, you know, like kids wear in freezing cold weather.
32:09
SPEAKER_01: Or you could, I mean, you could wear all kinds of stuff.
32:11
SPEAKER_01: And then you get in a car and you could drive, you could have driven today to church a brand new way and seen a house you've never seen before.
32:17
SPEAKER_01: A big whoop, right?
32:18
SPEAKER_01: I mean, these are small ticket opportunities, but you have opportunities every day to eat, to see, to talk with every person you meet is an opportunity, right?
32:26
SPEAKER_01: They might become a best friend.
32:30
SPEAKER_01: Uh but then there are bigger opportunities.
32:32
SPEAKER_01: I mean, the fact of the matter is you could you could walk up to someone this morning and meet them and ask them out for coffee, right?
32:40
SPEAKER_01: Like this.
32:41
SPEAKER_01: Or you could decide this morning that you're gonna join a small group, or you're gonna come to Sunday school class next week, or that you're gonna go on a on a on a on a mission trip this summer, you know, that you weren't planning on, maybe one to Haiti or or the Dominican Republic.
32:56
SPEAKER_01: You could you could make that decision, and that decision might turn around and make you.
33:00
SPEAKER_01: And the fact of the matter is, you know, there are big ticket decisions that only come around once in life, like like what college you go to and how you spend your college years.
33:09
SPEAKER_01: I frankly am, I've I I wish I could do college over.
33:14
SPEAKER_01: You know, I didn't use those four years very well.
33:18
SPEAKER_01: Then my mother would always say, Oh, but oh, but Jim, you turned out so well.
33:21
SPEAKER_01: And and thank you, Mom.
33:22
SPEAKER_01: And that's true.
33:23
SPEAKER_01: But you know, I just I turned out fantastic.
33:26
SPEAKER_01: But you know what?
33:27
SPEAKER_01: When I look back on those four years of college, at the opportunities I had that I just and and you have those opportunities as well.
33:35
SPEAKER_01: And those there, because these are big ticket items.
33:37
SPEAKER_01: What college you go to, how about what job you're going to take?
33:42
SPEAKER_01: You know, your career.
33:44
SPEAKER_01: That's a that's a big decision.
33:46
SPEAKER_01: Where you're going to live, the person you're going to marry.
33:51
SPEAKER_01: We won't stop there about the regrets part, but but uh these are huge decisions, and many times you look back on those, and if you do, then you're a lot like the nation of Israel here in the book of Deuteronomy.
34:05
SPEAKER_01: Because the nation of Israel missed a golden opportunity 40 years before.
34:11
SPEAKER_01: They are at this point, as the book of Deuteronomy begins, they are on the eastern side, they're in the present-day land of Jordan, at sort of the top of the Dead Sea, and they're looking west, and they're looking into, whoops, this is west, looking into the promised land, looking at this land that God's promised, but it's not the first time they've been on the border of the promised land looking in, is it?
34:31
SPEAKER_01: Because 40 years before, their parents, and some of them, when they were little, up through age 19, they were there at a different place, Cadish down south.
34:40
SPEAKER_01: They looked in, remember, and they decided the whole nation, we're not gonna go in, those people are too big, they're giants, we're gonna go back to Egypt, things are safe down there.
34:49
SPEAKER_01: And now, where they are, looking into the promised land, they have been blessed by God with a second chance.
34:56
SPEAKER_01: They're in the plains of Moab.
34:57
SPEAKER_01: You can see the uh the northern tip of present-day Dead Sea there.
35:01
SPEAKER_01: It used to go a couple miles farther north before it started all evaporating, and and that's the promised land across there, and they're standing there, and Moses is now going to give them some sermons, uh, some heartfelt sermons about how they should grab hold of this opportunity, this second chance that God's given them.
35:24
SPEAKER_01: Many of them are still mourning the fact that they missed their first chance.
35:31
SPEAKER_01: There are illustrations of uh John Greenleaf uh uh Greenleaf Whittier's famous line of all the sad words of tongue and pin.
35:39
SPEAKER_01: The saddest are these, it might have been.
35:44
SPEAKER_01: And every one of us can look back on opportunities, on things that that might have been.
35:51
SPEAKER_01: I I looked back on people who I wish I'd said either I'm sorry or I love you too before the Lord took them home.
36:00
SPEAKER_01: Or I looked back as you do on opportunities to witness to someone who needed Jesus, and and I let that opportunity slide, and I may never get that opportunity again.
36:11
SPEAKER_01: There are opportunities that you've had and that I have, and if you're here this morning, you still have a lot of these opportunities to make a huge difference in a younger child in a child's life.
36:22
SPEAKER_01: There are opportunities that you have in relationships that you've let slide.
36:28
SPEAKER_01: You could mend or heal a relationship and it would it would reverberate across families.
36:36
SPEAKER_01: And the question is, how are you going to respond to that opportunity that God gives you when he says you've got a second chance?
36:42
SPEAKER_01: Well, Moses' sermons in Deuteronomy go like this.
36:45
SPEAKER_01: He gives us on the back of your study.
36:47
SPEAKER_01: See, he gives us four lessons.
36:49
SPEAKER_01: And the first, he says, is this time around, I want you to listen.
36:53
SPEAKER_01: And he starts this as the first verse of the book.
36:55
SPEAKER_01: He says, These are the words Moses spoke to all Israel across the Jordan in the wilderness.
37:00
SPEAKER_01: Those, the first words, these are the words in Hebrew Elahadevarim, are the title of the book.
37:09
SPEAKER_01: Moses didn't call this book Deuteronomy.
37:11
SPEAKER_01: The Israelites never heard of the word Deuteronomy.
37:13
SPEAKER_01: This was not called Deuteronomy until about 1200 years later when the Septuagint, it's called, when Jewish scholars translated the Hebrew book into the Greek, and they looked at it, they go, oh, there's a lot of laws in here that we've read before.
37:27
SPEAKER_01: In fact, the Ten Commandments are repeated in Deuteronomy 5.
37:30
SPEAKER_01: Let's call this book second law, Deuteronomy.
37:33
SPEAKER_01: And so that's why it's called Deuteronomy.
37:36
SPEAKER_01: Not a good name for the book, because Moses is not a lawgiver.
37:40
SPEAKER_01: He's not spouting laws in here, he's explaining them in a heartfelt way.
37:44
SPEAKER_01: So he spoke to all Israel.
37:46
SPEAKER_01: Verse 3, in the 40th year, Moses told the Israelites what the Lord told them to say.
37:51
SPEAKER_01: He began to explain this law.
37:53
SPEAKER_01: Here's the key.
37:54
SPEAKER_01: Moses in this book is a lawgiver no more.
37:57
SPEAKER_01: He is a dying man who is preaching his heartfelt, closing, pleading messages to Israel, begging them to take advantage of this second chance.
38:08
SPEAKER_01: He's a pastor delivering his final sermons.
38:11
SPEAKER_01: Now he does lay a little zinger in here in verse 2, doesn't he?
38:14
SPEAKER_01: Because he says, it's an 11-day journey from Horeb or Mount Sinai to Cata Sparnia by way of Mount Search.
38:22
SPEAKER_01: You know what he's saying there?
38:23
SPEAKER_01: He's saying we could have been here in 11 days.
38:29
SPEAKER_01: It's taken us 40 years.
38:33
SPEAKER_01: You know why it took us 40 years instead of 11 days?
38:36
SPEAKER_01: Of course.
38:38
SPEAKER_01: You wasted the opportunity that God gave us 40 years before because of unbelief.
38:44
SPEAKER_01: And now I want to help you seize the second chance.
38:49
SPEAKER_01: Now, let's be honest, the Bible is full of missed opportunities, right?
38:54
SPEAKER_01: Nod your head.
38:55
SPEAKER_01: You know the Bible, right?
38:57
SPEAKER_01: Yes, it is.
38:58
SPEAKER_01: For example, right, starts in Genesis with Adam and Eve had this golden opportunity to walk and talk in the Garden of Eden.
39:05
SPEAKER_01: Missed this opportunity.
39:07
SPEAKER_01: And as you go through the Bible, you find, I mean, the people in Noah's Day missed the opportunity to be saved instead of drowned if they had just said yes, if they had asked to get into the ark.
39:16
SPEAKER_01: And then you come to, I mean, even the stories of the Good Samaritan, the priest and the Levite miss their opportunity.
39:21
SPEAKER_01: The Good Samaritan grabs the opportunity to help the wounded man.
39:24
SPEAKER_01: Jesus tells a story of uh of talents, the ten-talent man, the five-talent man, they sees the opportunity.
39:29
SPEAKER_01: Who wasted their opportunity?
39:30
SPEAKER_01: The one-talent guy, right?
39:32
SPEAKER_01: Or take the thieves on both sides of the cross, right?
39:35
SPEAKER_01: Thief on the left side of Jesus, he goes, Hey, if you're such hot stuff, why don't you help us get down out of here?
39:40
SPEAKER_01: And the thief on the right side said, Whoa, watch your tongue.
39:44
SPEAKER_01: I mean, this guy's done nothing wrong.
39:46
SPEAKER_01: And he turns to Jesus and says, Will you look on me?
39:48
SPEAKER_01: Will you have mercy on me?
39:49
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus says, You'll see me today in paradise.
39:51
SPEAKER_01: Question, do you think the thief who was hanging on the left side of Jesus has any regrets?
39:56
SPEAKER_01: Do you think he feels like he missed an opportunity?
39:59
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think so too, but a lot of people missed the opportunity in that day.
40:03
SPEAKER_01: John 1 says that Jesus came to his own people and his own what?
40:08
SPEAKER_01: They received him not.
40:10
SPEAKER_01: But as many as received him, listen to that.
40:12
SPEAKER_01: If you've never received Jesus by trusting him as your personal savior, you need to grab hold of that opportunity.
40:20
SPEAKER_01: More important than anything else you hear this morning, seize that opportunity.
40:25
SPEAKER_01: Don't miss that opportunity.
40:27
SPEAKER_01: Grab that opportunity so that you don't, at the end of your life, find yourself saying, if only, wish I had do-overs.
40:35
SPEAKER_01: Would like a second chance.
40:36
SPEAKER_01: God says, I gave you second chances.
40:39
SPEAKER_01: Now, for me, the bitterest tears shed over graves, and I think you'll agree with me here, are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.
40:46
SPEAKER_01: It's not so much the opportunities, the chances that I grabbed that I failed at, a lot of those, that I regret.
40:52
SPEAKER_01: It's the chances that I didn't take, the things I didn't say, the deeds I left undone.
41:00
SPEAKER_01: And so Moses is gonna say, listen, this time around, I want you to listen.
41:04
SPEAKER_01: You didn't listen 40 years ago.
41:06
SPEAKER_01: Israel, listen to what I'm teaching you to follow so that you may live, enter, take possession of the land that Yahweh, the God of your fathers, is giving you.
41:14
SPEAKER_01: And the second thing, he says that you need to do if you want to take advantage of the opportunity is to recall, think back over, and remember all the Lord has done for you.
41:23
SPEAKER_01: In the Bible, memory is a spiritual thing.
41:28
SPEAKER_01: God is a divine psychologist and he says, you know what?
41:31
SPEAKER_01: The things you remember are the things that you really love.
41:34
SPEAKER_01: If you forget me and my commands, it just proves that you didn't care about me, right?
41:41
SPEAKER_01: And it's really true, isn't it?
41:42
SPEAKER_01: We remember the things that we really care about.
41:45
SPEAKER_01: And so God says, I want you to think back over everything that God's done for you.
41:50
SPEAKER_01: Chapter 1.
41:52
SPEAKER_01: I've set the land before you.
41:54
SPEAKER_01: Moses is now recalling the past 40 years.
41:57
SPEAKER_01: He says, Enter and take possession of the land the Lord swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, their future descendants.
42:04
SPEAKER_01: But remember, you were not willing to go up.
42:06
SPEAKER_01: You rebelled against the command of the Lord your God.
42:09
SPEAKER_01: Yet you saw in the wilderness the Lord your God carried you like a father carries his son.
42:14
SPEAKER_01: So, in spite of this, chapter 132, you didn't trust the Lord who went before you on the journey to seek out a place for you to camp.
42:22
SPEAKER_01: He went in the fire by night and in the cloud by day to guide you on the road.
42:25
SPEAKER_01: And when you said, No, we're not going to go in the land, verse 34, the Lord grew angry and he swore an oath.
42:32
SPEAKER_01: None of these men in this evil generation will see the good land I swore to give to your fathers.
42:37
SPEAKER_01: Turn back and head for the wilderness.
42:40
SPEAKER_01: Now at the end of chapter one, there's a really interesting story.
42:43
SPEAKER_01: Moses says, Well, all of a sudden you realize you were missing this golden opportunity.
42:47
SPEAKER_01: You realize we do not get unlimited chances to have the things we want, and nothing is worse than missing an opportunity that could have changed our life.
42:54
SPEAKER_01: And so you decided, okay, we're changing our minds.
42:58
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna go up and we're gonna take the land.
43:01
SPEAKER_01: Chapter 141, you answered me, Whoa, we sinned against the Lord, we're gonna go up and fight like the Lord wants us to, and each of you put on his weapons of war, and you thought it would be easy to go up into the hill country and take the land of Israel.
43:10
SPEAKER_01: But the Lord said to me, Hmm, too late.
43:14
SPEAKER_01: You decided, I decided, I've already passed judgment.
43:19
SPEAKER_01: Tell them, don't go up and fight, for I'm not with you to keep you from being defeated by your enemies.
43:24
SPEAKER_01: So I spoke to you, but you didn't listen, says Moses.
43:26
SPEAKER_01: You rebelled against the Lord's command and defiantly went up into the hill country.
43:30
SPEAKER_01: And then the Amorites who lived there came out against you and chased you like a swarm of bees.
43:35
SPEAKER_01: They routed you.
43:36
SPEAKER_01: And when you returned, you wept before the Lord, but he didn't listen to your requests or pay attention to you.
43:42
SPEAKER_01: They wept for the same reason you and I weep with regret at times over great opportunities that we've had that we've missed, because the worst feeling ever is feeling like you missed your chance.
43:55
SPEAKER_01: Now, here's the remarkable thing in chapters one through five that Moses says, even Even though the Lord was ticked at you because you rebelled sent you into the wilderness, still think back over those 40 years how God has loved you and cared for you every single day in the wilderness.
44:12
SPEAKER_01: Chapter 2, verse 7.
44:14
SPEAKER_01: The Lord your God has blessed you.
44:16
SPEAKER_01: He's watched over your journey through this immense wilderness.
44:19
SPEAKER_01: He's been with you the past 40 years.
44:21
SPEAKER_01: You've lacked nothing.
44:22
SPEAKER_01: I mean, he says, What great nation is there that has a God near to it, as the Lord your God, our God, is to us whenever we call to him.
44:32
SPEAKER_01: And what great nation has righteous statutes and ordinances like this law I set before you today?
44:38
SPEAKER_01: Chapter 4.
44:39
SPEAKER_01: The Lord selected you and brought you out of Egypt's iron furnace to be a people for his inheritance.
44:45
SPEAKER_01: You say you're reading a lot of scripture, Jim.
44:48
SPEAKER_01: No, I'm reading someone else's sermon, so that's okay.
44:50
SPEAKER_01: I don't have to preach my own sermon today.
44:52
SPEAKER_01: It's Moses' sermon and it's really good, isn't it?
44:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
44:55
SPEAKER_01: So Moses is preaching, he says, I want you to recall what happened.
44:59
SPEAKER_01: And look, the Lord saved you out of Egypt.
45:02
SPEAKER_01: And by the way, isn't it, as you recall back, isn't it an amazing thing that you're saved, that God, if you've trusted Christ as you're saved, do you realize how fortunate you are, how blessed you are.
45:14
SPEAKER_01: There are millions of people around the world who do not know Jesus Christ as their Savior through very little fault of their own.
45:22
SPEAKER_01: What makes you so blessed, so fortunate that God would save you?
45:28
SPEAKER_01: I mean, there are probably people in this world that think no way they're getting to heaven, right?
45:34
SPEAKER_01: There are gonna be some people, when you make it to heaven, are gonna go, that's a surprise.
45:40
SPEAKER_01: I thought they'd come out the other end of the tunnel dead.
45:44
SPEAKER_01: In fact, there's a story, a guy named John Howard, University of Indiana, Bloomington, Indiana, has this river runs through it, Jordan River.
45:51
SPEAKER_01: It's called, believe it or not, Jordan River, and so it's overrunning its banks.
45:54
SPEAKER_01: And and 20-year-old uh John, Howard's playing with his other guys, and he falls in, and the and the current's so bad it whips him around the corner, takes him into a tunnel, into the drainage tunnel.
46:05
SPEAKER_01: Big tunnel.
46:06
SPEAKER_01: Goes almost a mile.
46:08
SPEAKER_01: Water's filling it.
46:10
SPEAKER_01: Fortunately, there's an inch of air in it.
46:13
SPEAKER_01: John stops fighting it.
46:15
SPEAKER_01: He just sticks his nose up there, scraping the surface, and he can't stop himself and he's whipped through it.
46:20
SPEAKER_01: His friends run to get the cops.
46:22
SPEAKER_01: Sergeant O'Neilly's waiting at the other end.
46:25
SPEAKER_01: Twenty minutes later, out comes John.
46:30
SPEAKER_01: It's a miracle.
46:31
SPEAKER_01: He's still living.
46:32
SPEAKER_01: I love Nealy's uh Sergeant Nealy's line.
46:34
SPEAKER_01: He says, all I expected to see out the other end of the tunnel was a dead guy.
46:42
SPEAKER_01: And you know what?
46:43
SPEAKER_01: There are some people in this world, probably all that they expect to see at the other end of the tunnel of your life is a dead guy.
46:49
SPEAKER_01: Because you and I don't in and of ourselves deserve to be saved, deserve to go to heaven.
46:54
SPEAKER_01: Amen there?
46:55
SPEAKER_01: Okay, and if you can't say amen for yourself, you can definitely say amen for the person next to you, right?
47:00
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
47:01
SPEAKER_01: They don't deserve it, right?
47:03
SPEAKER_01: And it's just a miracle.
47:05
SPEAKER_01: And have you ever stopped to think what an amazing thing?
47:07
SPEAKER_01: Recalled what the Lord did for you when he drew you to himself and he saved you, not because you're cool, not because you're smart, not because you're good looking, none of those reasons, but in spite of yourself?
47:20
SPEAKER_01: Indeed, 432, ask about the earlier days that preceded you, from the day God created man on the earth, from one end of the heavens to the other, has anything like this great event, Israel's salvation and yours, ever happened?
47:34
SPEAKER_01: Or has anything like it ever been heard of before?
47:38
SPEAKER_01: Has a God ever attempted to go and take a nation as his own out of another nation, Israel out of Egypt, by trial, signs, wonders, and war, by a strong hand and an outstretched arm, by great terrors.
47:49
SPEAKER_01: As the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes, you were shown these things so that you would know that the Lord is God.
47:54
SPEAKER_01: There's no other beside him.
47:56
SPEAKER_01: He lets you hear his voice from heaven to instruct you.
47:59
SPEAKER_01: He showed you his great fire on earth, and you heard his words from the fire.
48:03
SPEAKER_01: Because he loved your fathers, he chose their descendants, he brought you out of Egypt, drive out before you nations greater and stronger than you, and bring you in and give you their land as an inheritance, as is now taking place today.
48:16
SPEAKER_01: Recognize, keep in mind that the Lord is God in heaven above and on earth below.
48:20
SPEAKER_01: There is no other.
48:21
SPEAKER_01: Recall everything the Lord has done for you.
48:24
SPEAKER_01: Sometime, if you're ever, ever going to get to the place where you become the person that you want to be and that God wants you to be.
48:34
SPEAKER_01: You must genuinely appreciate all that God has done for you.
48:39
SPEAKER_01: And you do that by recalling all of his blessings, how he saved you and how he has cared for you ever since.
48:46
SPEAKER_01: Amen?
48:47
SPEAKER_01: Number three, the side, the third thing you do, okay, you listen carefully, then you recall what God's done, and now here's the heart of it and the heart of the book.
48:54
SPEAKER_01: Love him and obey him.
48:56
SPEAKER_01: Love him, obey him.
48:57
SPEAKER_01: It divides into two parts because you're in a covenant relationship, five through eleven, because he gives you covenant rules, 12 through 26.
49:05
SPEAKER_01: Chapter 5, the Lord our God made a covenant with us at Horeb, Sinai.
49:10
SPEAKER_01: He didn't make this covenant with our fathers, but with all of us alive here today.
49:14
SPEAKER_01: The Lord spoke to you face to face from the fire on the mountain.
49:17
SPEAKER_01: You're in a covenant, like a marriage relationship with the Almighty God.
49:22
SPEAKER_01: How cool is that! All right?
49:25
SPEAKER_01: And then he says in chapter 6, 4, and 5, and we get to the pledge allegiance of the Jewish faith.
49:32
SPEAKER_01: It's called the Shemah.
49:34
SPEAKER_01: Say that with me.
49:34
SPEAKER_01: Shema.
49:35
SPEAKER_01: Shema means to listen or to hear.
49:38
SPEAKER_01: That's the first word here.
49:39
SPEAKER_01: Shema Israel.
49:42
SPEAKER_01: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.
49:46
SPEAKER_01: All right.
49:46
SPEAKER_01: Adonai Elahainu, Adonai Ahad.
49:49
SPEAKER_01: Very, very famous Orthodox Jews that say verses 4 and 5, twice a day, and recite the Shema twice a day.
49:58
SPEAKER_01: This is extremely common.
50:00
SPEAKER_01: I happen to believe that this probably doesn't mean what a, you know, what a lot of them would say it means, which is the Lord is one.
50:07
SPEAKER_01: It's the monotheism, even though I agree with that fact.
50:10
SPEAKER_01: I think the point is here, Yahweh is God, Yahweh alone.
50:15
SPEAKER_01: That is, he is unique.
50:16
SPEAKER_01: You should worship no other idols.
50:19
SPEAKER_01: He's absolutely, absolutely and totally unique.
50:22
SPEAKER_01: Paul, by the way, picks that up in 1 Corinthians chapter 8 and says, uh, says, uh, he talks about the Father and says, says, the Lord Jesus Christ is one.
50:32
SPEAKER_01: It's amazing.
50:32
SPEAKER_01: What you can say about Yahweh, God in the Old Testament, you say about Christ in the New Testament.
50:37
SPEAKER_01: And then he says, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength.
50:41
SPEAKER_01: Have you ever heard those words before?
50:44
SPEAKER_01: Of course you have.
50:45
SPEAKER_01: Who said them?
50:47
SPEAKER_01: Oh, come on.
50:47
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, it's the right answer to every question.
50:49
SPEAKER_01: Jesus.
50:50
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
50:51
SPEAKER_01: Jesus said these words.
50:53
SPEAKER_01: Why did he say these words?
50:54
SPEAKER_01: Did you know, if you had to guess of the 39 books of the Old Testament, which book Jesus quotes the most?
51:01
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
51:02
SPEAKER_01: You cheated.
51:02
SPEAKER_01: If I had asked you what I was preaching through Psalms, what would you have said?
51:05
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
51:06
SPEAKER_01: No, there are actually four books in the Old Testament that Jesus, Peter, Paul, the apostles quote more than any other, quite a bit more.
51:12
SPEAKER_01: There's Genesis and there's uh Isaiah, Psalms, and Deuteronomy.
51:17
SPEAKER_01: Jesus quotes Deuteronomy more than any other book.
51:20
SPEAKER_01: This is the book, by the way.
51:21
SPEAKER_01: Deuteronomy is so significant.
51:22
SPEAKER_01: This is the book that every king and prophet in the Old Testament had by their bedstead.
51:26
SPEAKER_01: At the end of writing this book, Moses says, I want this book to be next to the Ark of the Covenant.
51:32
SPEAKER_01: Ten Commandments are inside the Ark of the Covenant, Book of Deuteronomy, next to the Ark of the Covenant from now on.
51:37
SPEAKER_01: This is such a significant book to Israel and should be to us, because this is a book of love, right?
51:45
SPEAKER_01: This is a book of sermons.
51:46
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
51:47
SPEAKER_01: And this command, love the Lord your God with all your heart.
51:51
SPEAKER_01: So it's got to start with your heart.
51:52
SPEAKER_01: Moves out to all your soul, which means your whole body, and with all your strength, means everything you own, everything you possess.
51:58
SPEAKER_01: And the next words are you need to teach it to your family.
52:00
SPEAKER_01: So not only is this an inner, a heart thing, it's also a family thing.
52:03
SPEAKER_01: The next thing he says it ought to be on your hand, ought to be on your forehead, you know, ought to be on the, you know, the outside your door, and you know, and so forth.
52:10
SPEAKER_01: So it's got to be a public thing as well.
52:12
SPEAKER_01: This is just the key to all religion, is the single most important command in the world, Old Testament, New Testament, that you love him.
52:21
SPEAKER_01: And you find this throughout this whole book, chapter 7, the next chapter.
52:26
SPEAKER_01: The Lord chose you, not because you're more numerous than all people, or cool, or good looking, for you are the fewest, but because the Lord loved you.
52:34
SPEAKER_01: And so he brought you out with a strong hand, he redeemed you from slavery, from Pharaoh.
52:38
SPEAKER_01: Know that Yahweh your God is God, the faithful God who keeps his covenant loyalty for a thousand generations with those who love him.
52:44
SPEAKER_01: There's the love.
52:45
SPEAKER_01: Keep his commandments, that's the obey part.
52:48
SPEAKER_01: And chapter 10.
52:49
SPEAKER_01: Now, Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you?
52:52
SPEAKER_01: Except to fear the Lord your God by walking in all his ways, to love him and to worship the Lord your God with all your heart and soul.
52:58
SPEAKER_01: Keep the Lord's commands and statutes I'm giving you today for your own good.
53:02
SPEAKER_01: That's love, that's obey.
53:03
SPEAKER_01: Chapter 11 says the same thing, love and always keep his statutes.
53:08
SPEAKER_01: 11 13, if you carefully obey my commands I'm giving you today, to love the Lord your God and worship him, then I'll bless you.
53:15
SPEAKER_01: I mean, this is amazing.
53:16
SPEAKER_01: As you go through this book, full of love and full of obey.
53:20
SPEAKER_01: Now, here is the key to this.
53:22
SPEAKER_01: Love and obey in Deuteronomy, as John revealed, Gospel John, are two sides of the same coin.
53:30
SPEAKER_01: The test of your love for God is graded on your obedience to God.
53:40
SPEAKER_01: The measure of your love for Christ is the measure of your obedience to the words of Christ.
53:48
SPEAKER_01: Jesus put it this way, not once, not twice, but three times in John 14, in the upper room to his disciples the night before he died.
53:55
SPEAKER_01: If you love me, you will what?
53:58
SPEAKER_01: You will keep my commands.
54:04
SPEAKER_01: I didn't tell this on the other two, but I'd heard there was a park in Europe.
54:09
SPEAKER_01: There was a sign trying to get people not to pick the flowers in the park.
54:14
SPEAKER_01: In three languages, the German.
54:16
SPEAKER_01: In German, it said, don't pick the flowers.
54:20
SPEAKER_01: In English, it said, please don't pick the flowers.
54:23
SPEAKER_01: In French, it said, if you love the flowers, you won't pick them.
54:27
SPEAKER_01: That's perfect.
54:28
SPEAKER_01: Perfect.
54:29
SPEAKER_01: Love issues in obedience.
54:34
SPEAKER_01: I love a story.
54:34
SPEAKER_01: A high school English teacher asked the kid, wrote the word L-O-V on the board, says that, that, is that a verb or is that a noun?
54:40
SPEAKER_01: Love.
54:43
SPEAKER_01: Guy raised his hand.
54:45
SPEAKER_01: He said, Well, I think on Friday and Saturday night it's a verb, and the rest of the week it's a noun.
54:54
SPEAKER_01: It's really not bad.
54:57
SPEAKER_01: Because, you know, what he meant, of course, is that on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, he's looking at the cute girl across the aisle and he feels this incredible emotion for her, but she sits there like a lump.
55:05
SPEAKER_01: But on Friday, you know, he can ask her out Saturday, whatever.
55:09
SPEAKER_01: And hold her hand.
55:10
SPEAKER_01: Come on, what were you thinking?
55:12
SPEAKER_01: And uh so you see, it becomes a verb when you act on it.
55:16
SPEAKER_01: Well, listen carefully.
55:17
SPEAKER_01: In Deuteronomy and John and in the Bible, love is almost never a noun.
55:21
SPEAKER_01: The word love is almost never a noun in the Bible.
55:24
SPEAKER_01: It's always a verb.
55:25
SPEAKER_01: Love is not love unless it acts.
55:27
SPEAKER_01: Love is not love unless it obeys.
55:30
SPEAKER_01: If you love, you will obey.
55:33
SPEAKER_01: In fact, the proof of your love is your obedience.
55:37
SPEAKER_01: Jesus says then in 1421, the one who has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me, and the one who loves me will be loved by my Father.
55:44
SPEAKER_01: I also love him and reveal myself to him.
55:46
SPEAKER_01: Now he says something more.
55:48
SPEAKER_01: He says, I don't want to hear your love sung in church.
55:52
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to hear you swear your love.
55:53
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to hear you speak about your love.
55:56
SPEAKER_01: If you are leaving church, if you're going out and from Monday through Saturday, you are deliberately disobeying what you know I want you to do.
56:03
SPEAKER_01: I don't want you to be a hypocrite.
56:05
SPEAKER_01: The proof of your love are your actions.
56:09
SPEAKER_01: And if you love me, then we will love you and we will actually reveal ourselves to you.
56:16
SPEAKER_01: And you say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on.
56:17
SPEAKER_01: I thought God loved us.
56:18
SPEAKER_01: I thought he loved us all.
56:19
SPEAKER_01: I thought he died on the cross because he loved us.
56:20
SPEAKER_01: And the answer is yeah.
56:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, he did.
56:23
SPEAKER_01: We love him because he first loved us.
56:26
SPEAKER_01: But this passage is saying, as is Deuteronomy, there's a special love that God reserves for those who love him, who show their love, prove their love by their obedience.
56:37
SPEAKER_01: And in fact, God will actually come to them.
56:40
SPEAKER_01: You want to walk with him and talk with him and tell, you know, and he walks with me.
56:44
SPEAKER_01: Remember that song, talks with me, tells me I am his own, and the joy we share is we tarry there, none other is ever known.
56:51
SPEAKER_01: How do you get that?
56:52
SPEAKER_01: Is that magic?
56:53
SPEAKER_01: I mean, do you have to go through some hoops?
56:56
SPEAKER_01: No, it's just really simple.
56:58
SPEAKER_01: God will do that with whoever really loves him, but the people who really love him show it because they do what he says.
57:08
SPEAKER_01: And that and then he says the same thing in 1423.
57:11
SPEAKER_01: If anyone loves me, he'll keep my word.
57:13
SPEAKER_01: My father will love him, we'll come to him and make our home with him.
57:15
SPEAKER_01: The one who doesn't love me won't keep my word.
57:17
SPEAKER_01: Now, I think you and I know this.
57:19
SPEAKER_01: I think I think it's in our movies.
57:22
SPEAKER_01: Well, the greatest movie of all time, of course, is Princess Bride.
57:26
SPEAKER_01: Now, you guys have never heard of this movie because it's like 27 years old.
57:29
SPEAKER_01: But uh Princess, it's this incredible movie about these wonderfully named uh people named Buttercup, Princess Buttercup, and uh Wesley with a T, yeah.
57:40
SPEAKER_01: Not Wesley, but Wesley.
57:42
SPEAKER_01: And and the thing, she asks amazing things of him, ridiculous things of him at times, but he always answers the same way because of his incredible love for her.
57:50
SPEAKER_01: He always says, As you wish.
57:52
SPEAKER_01: I said, you know, why does he say as you wish?
57:55
SPEAKER_01: Same reason that someone who loves God, who loves Jesus Christ, says as you wish, every time God says, do this, do that, don't do this, don't do that.
58:03
SPEAKER_01: You do it because of your incredible love for him, right?
58:07
SPEAKER_01: Now, Deuteronomy ends this way.
58:09
SPEAKER_01: He says, Listen, you always have a choice and it always makes a difference.
58:13
SPEAKER_01: There are promises and warnings.
58:17
SPEAKER_01: If you love me and obey me, if you faithfully obey the Lord your God, chapter 28, 1, careful to follow his commands, all these blessings will come upon you.
58:26
SPEAKER_01: You'll be blessed in the city, you'll be blessed in the country.
58:28
SPEAKER_01: But now, 2815, if you don't obey, all these curses will come upon you.
58:34
SPEAKER_01: You'll be cursed in the city and cursed in the country.
58:37
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it makes a difference.
58:40
SPEAKER_01: Your choice actually matters.
58:43
SPEAKER_01: Last year, George Jones passed away.
58:45
SPEAKER_01: One of one of the great, I know a lot of you guys aren't in the country.
58:47
SPEAKER_01: I have this radio program in a country station, so I listen to country.
58:51
SPEAKER_01: I love George Jones.
58:54
SPEAKER_01: He nearly died back in 1999.
58:56
SPEAKER_01: He was an alcoholic, he ran his car off the road, he hit a bridge, everybody thought he was gonna die, and he lived.
59:02
SPEAKER_01: Six months later, the next song he wrote was, I'm living and dying with the choices I made.
59:09
SPEAKER_01: But the fact of the matter is, you're living and you're dying with the choices you make every day, and I'm living and dying with the choices I make.
59:18
SPEAKER_01: The choices that we make to take the second chance that God offers us.
59:25
SPEAKER_01: Say, I'm listening to you, Lord.
59:26
SPEAKER_01: I'm recalling all you've done for me.
59:29
SPEAKER_01: I will from this moment on show that I love you by obeying your word.
59:36
SPEAKER_01: Maybe the best story that I know of this, why it's hard for me to even keep cool without crying at this story.
59:46
SPEAKER_01: And Call of the Wild Jack London.
59:48
SPEAKER_01: Jack, I don't know if you know the story.
59:49
SPEAKER_01: It's the story of, you know, Thornton, John Thornton's the guy's name, and everybody thinks of the story when they're around the campfire nearly freezing.
59:57
SPEAKER_01: He has ten dogs and a lead dog, and the lead dog's name is Buck, and it's just barely survived, and it's really cool.
1:00:02
SPEAKER_01: But the story that I'm thinking of that I just love is close to the end of the book, where they've run out of all their money and they have hardly anything left, and they limp into this town and he's in a saloon.
1:00:13
SPEAKER_01: John Thornton's in a saloon, and maybe he's had a little too much to drink or something, but some guy who's definitely had too much to drink is bragging about his lead dog, and he says, My lead dog could pull a sled with 500 pounds on it, 100 yards.
1:00:29
SPEAKER_01: And another guy has my dog could pull one six, 600, uh, with 600 pounds.
1:00:35
SPEAKER_01: Somebody else goes 700 pounds, and Thornton, my buck could pull a sled, he says, with a thousand pounds on it, 100 yards.
1:00:43
SPEAKER_01: At that moment, Matthewson, uh, you know, super wealthy guy there in the Yukon up there in frigid coal, last it's 60 degrees below zero outside, he says, I've got a sled outside with a thousand pounds on it, with 20, 50 pound bags of flour.
1:00:58
SPEAKER_01: It's been sitting there for three hours.
1:01:00
SPEAKER_01: I'll put a thousand dollars down right here.
1:01:03
SPEAKER_01: How much you?
1:01:04
SPEAKER_01: I'm calling your bluff.
1:01:05
SPEAKER_01: Now Thornton's sort of caught.
1:01:09
SPEAKER_01: And he can't get out.
1:01:10
SPEAKER_01: He wonders, can my 150-pound dog, as beautiful as he is, as wonderful as he is, as packed with muscles, he is with his glossy coat, can can Buck actually do this?
1:01:19
SPEAKER_01: I love my dog, but can he actually?
1:01:21
SPEAKER_01: And he said, and he said, How long's your sled been sitting there?
1:01:24
SPEAKER_01: The guy said, three hours and it's frozen into the ice, but that's part of the deal.
1:01:29
SPEAKER_01: And Thornton can't back out, and he goes to a wealthy guy and he says, Could you spot me?
1:01:33
SPEAKER_01: I have no money at all.
1:01:34
SPEAKER_01: And the guy said, I love you, man.
1:01:36
SPEAKER_01: I have the money, I'll give you a thousand, but there's no way your beast is gonna be able to do that.
1:01:41
SPEAKER_01: And the bidding goes up, and there's bets, and it's two to one, then it becomes three to one.
1:01:45
SPEAKER_01: Matthewson says, if you can raise any more money, I'll I'll give you three to one.
1:01:48
SPEAKER_01: He raises two hundred more, and so he's put his 1,200 down again, 1,600, and they go outside.
1:01:54
SPEAKER_01: Hundreds of men are outside, they're in the freezing cold.
1:01:58
SPEAKER_01: And there's the sled, a thousand-pound sled, and this wonderful, wonderful picture.
1:02:03
SPEAKER_01: Uh that just breaks me up every time.
1:02:08
SPEAKER_01: John Thornton kneels down on the snow next to his dog.
1:02:11
SPEAKER_01: He unleashes his dog, separates him from the other ten, and still in his harness, what he does is he hooks him up to the sled.
1:02:17
SPEAKER_01: And then he gets down on his knees beside Buck.
1:02:20
SPEAKER_01: And he took his head in his two hands and he rested cheek on cheek.
1:02:25
SPEAKER_01: He did not playfully shake Buck as he usually did or murmur soft love curses in his ear, but he did whisper, as you love me, Buck.
1:02:37
SPEAKER_01: As you love me.
1:02:38
SPEAKER_01: And Buck whined with suppressed eagerness.
1:02:41
SPEAKER_01: He sensed somehow that there was something great he needed to do for this master that he loved.
1:02:47
SPEAKER_01: And people were astounded at the beauty of this dog.
1:02:50
SPEAKER_01: He only weighed 150 pounds.
1:02:52
SPEAKER_01: No one thought he could do it, but but one wealthy man said, I'll give you$800 for him right now as we speak.
1:02:58
SPEAKER_01: And Thornton said no.
1:03:01
SPEAKER_01: And then the dog went one direction, G and ha and back and forth, and it took him so long, and he finally broke this sled out just amazingly.
1:03:11
SPEAKER_01: And at the crack of the sled being broken out of the ice.
1:03:15
SPEAKER_01: You know, people cheered, and then his paws start clambering as fast as possible with his with his claws raking, you know, furrows in the in the hard-packed snow, and the sled moves a half an inch, and then an inch, and then two inches.
1:03:30
SPEAKER_01: And then the and then out of love for his master, Buck's pulling the sled down, a yard and two yards, and he gets closer to the finish line, and you have hundreds of people and hats and coats in the air, and even Matthewson himself is screaming and in amazement.
1:03:46
SPEAKER_01: And when that crosses the line and Thornton falls on his dog, his exhausted dog, and they hug.
1:03:53
SPEAKER_01: It's one of the greatest scenes in literature, it seems to me, because here is a dog who would do anything to prove his love for his owner.
1:04:01
SPEAKER_01: In fact, the chapter title of that chapter is For the Love of a Man.
1:04:07
SPEAKER_01: And I can't help thinking that what a dog would do for the love of a man, certainly a man or a woman could do for the love of their God, who's done so much for us in the past, who has rescued us and redeemed us and always taken care of us and brought us to this place.
1:04:22
SPEAKER_01: And we've missed opportunities, but yet he's watched over us somehow from afar and now gives us a second chance, says, I'd love to give you a second chance.
1:04:31
SPEAKER_01: Will you take advantage of it?
1:04:34
SPEAKER_01: I ask myself the question, would you like to have a second chance?
1:04:37
SPEAKER_01: The answer is, of course, I'd like to have a second chance.
1:04:41
SPEAKER_01: Art Linkletter took advantage of his.
1:04:44
SPEAKER_01: He saw this huge mistake that he had made, and then suddenly it was time for the grand opening.
1:04:48
SPEAKER_01: It was July 1955, and Walt Disney gave him a call and said, There's nobody that I'd love to have.
1:04:53
SPEAKER_01: I know you didn't take advantage of what I encouraged you.
1:04:56
SPEAKER_01: It's a national television, you know, extravaganza, opening Disney World.
1:05:00
SPEAKER_01: I'd like you to be the MC.
1:05:02
SPEAKER_01: Hart Linkler said, Wow, I'd love to.
1:05:05
SPEAKER_01: Can I ask you as a friend, if is there any chance that I could buy the uh concessions, Disneyland, or a whole section or Disneyland for the next 10 years?
1:05:18
SPEAKER_01: Oh, sure, he says.
1:05:20
SPEAKER_01: I'll be glad to let you have those.
1:05:23
SPEAKER_01: Our linked letter had a second chance and he grabbed it.
1:05:29
SPEAKER_01: Now the question is, will you or I grab it?
1:05:34
SPEAKER_01: Because we have a second chance.
1:05:36
SPEAKER_01: Even this morning, every morning, it's never too late to become who you or I could have been.
1:05:42
SPEAKER_01: But what the Lord says to us this morning is I've I've got a love story for you.
1:05:46
SPEAKER_01: It's my heart.
1:05:47
SPEAKER_01: I do love you deeply.
1:05:48
SPEAKER_01: And all I'm asking from you is to listen to me this morning.
1:05:52
SPEAKER_01: Recall all the love that I have shown you in the past, and then just bow your head and say, Oh, God, for From this moment on, I will love you and I will do your word.
1:06:07
SPEAKER_01: Bow with me in a word of prayer, will you?
1:06:11
SPEAKER_01: The three words, Lord, that we're left with this morning are listen and recall and love obey.
1:06:18
SPEAKER_01: And Lord, I am so appreciative, as are all of us, for the kindness that you've shown every one of us in drawing us out of the pit and saving us and bringing us to the place where we are this morning.
1:06:34
SPEAKER_01: We have regrets, we've wasted opportunities, we've missed our chances.
1:06:38
SPEAKER_01: We thank you that you're giving us another chance, and as we look over into the land of success and the land of promise, we tell you how much we love you.
1:06:50
SPEAKER_01: Jesus, you are mine, for thee all the follies of sin I resign.
1:06:57
SPEAKER_01: My gracious Redeemer, my Savior art thou.
1:07:01
SPEAKER_01: If ever I loved you, my Jesus, tis now.
1:07:57
SPEAKER_03: My gracious redeemer, my savior art I love thee, my decision.
1:08:30
SPEAKER_03: I love thee because my heart on the force on thy br I love my Jesus 'tis now in tons of glory and the eye.