Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / February 22, 2017 | Men's Fraternity - Spring 2017, Session 7

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February 22, 2017 | Men's Fraternity - Spring 2017, Session 7 · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

0:00
SPEAKER_01: Good morning, men.
0:02
SPEAKER_01: Actually, with uh Wes standing up here, thank him again for the great breakfast.
0:06
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna let him make a quick announcement.
0:10
SPEAKER_02: Good morning, gentlemen.
0:11
SPEAKER_02: Uh my name is Wes Gordon.
0:13
SPEAKER_02: Um I obviously go to this church.
0:16
SPEAKER_02: Um we I'm in the sexual purity group on Sunday nights um with Bill Gobel.
0:23
SPEAKER_02: Uh I don't know if you guys have seen on the Sunday that uh there is a series that's coming careful, Jim.
0:29
SPEAKER_02: Uh there's a series that's coming to TBC called the Conqueror Series.
0:33
SPEAKER_02: It deals with sexual purity.
0:35
SPEAKER_02: Um I know myself I struggle with sexual purity.
0:38
SPEAKER_02: Struggled for since I was about six years old.
0:41
SPEAKER_02: Um I know that's a big deal.
0:44
SPEAKER_02: Um and uh I don't know if any of you guys struggle.
0:48
SPEAKER_02: If you don't struggle, or if you struggle some, don't, or if you know somebody that does, it's just a great series to get informed for wisdom so that you can help other people or help yourself.
1:03
SPEAKER_02: Um but it starts March 5th, 6 o'clock.
1:06
SPEAKER_02: I believe it's gonna be over in the College Avenue building downstairs.
1:10
SPEAKER_02: Um we'd uh like everybody to come.
1:13
SPEAKER_01: So here in this building down here?
1:15
SPEAKER_02: Uh I believe it's oh no, not College Avenue Building.
1:18
SPEAKER_02: Um Mulvane Building downstairs.
1:20
SPEAKER_02: So um if you have any questions, you can I know call Bill Gobel or you can talk to me and I can figure figure out whatever you need.
1:28
SPEAKER_02: So thanks.
1:31
SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Wes.
1:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and and uh let me add, just not only for you your benefit, or somebody you know, your sons and your grandsons too, you know, given the the electronic age these days and how readily available it is on a on a cell phone.
1:45
SPEAKER_01: So anyway.
1:47
SPEAKER_01: Which kind of uh leads into, you know, as I was kind of reading back through the uh the chapter this week on uh Judas and uh just thinking about how uh how God deals with sin.
1:57
SPEAKER_01: He cannot tolerate it, he can't uh look at it, um, but yet on the other hand, he is uh infinitely merciful and graceful.
2:05
SPEAKER_01: And uh thinking about Judas, and uh one of the questions was about do you ever know somebody who uh has uh imploded as a result of their uh uh their sin?
2:14
SPEAKER_01: And and all of a sudden, as I'm driving in this morning, um uh that guy came to my mind, the um uh uh subway spokesman just came to mind thinking about that guy had had built uh can't remember his name.
2:28
SPEAKER_01: Um Jared, yeah.
2:30
SPEAKER_01: Built a career on uh losing weight and eating subway sandwiches and uh gosh, seemed to have things going.
2:35
SPEAKER_01: I think he was speaking, and man, then all of a sudden his sin found him out and uh you know in prison now, imploded.
2:42
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, it isn't that uh that we might not suffer the consequences uh of sin, but yet uh, you know, had Judas, you know, he confessed to the wrong people, if he'd gone and confessed to uh to Jesus, he would have been forgiven.
2:55
SPEAKER_01: Um but I don't think he believed that Jesus was the Messiah.
2:58
SPEAKER_01: So uh anyway, uh he also talks about uh kind of reminds us about um uh uh putting Jacob's hip out of place and he had that constant reminder.
3:08
SPEAKER_01: And then I remembered uh Paul saying uh that he prayed uh that God would take away uh an affliction, but God left it for him to uh to remind him to keep him humble.
3:18
SPEAKER_01: So uh you know sometimes uh those things, while not directly caused by God, might be a consequence and a and a reminder.
3:24
SPEAKER_01: So uh anyway, I'm gonna turn it over to Jim and uh let him take us uh through the rest of uh and Derek 2, rest of uh chapter on Judas.
3:39
SPEAKER_03: Thanks.
3:41
SPEAKER_03: You should have a mic too.
3:47
SPEAKER_00: Pretty decent meal.
3:48
SPEAKER_00: I thought you guys were just gonna heat up uh last week's leftovers, but uh there's good stuff up there fresh.
3:58
SPEAKER_00: Um we have had some sports events this last week.
4:02
SPEAKER_00: Hawks uh gonna play TCU at home tonight to see if they can cinch a tie for a record tying third, isn't it, 13th?
4:10
SPEAKER_00: I think it's the 13th uh Big 12 title.
4:15
SPEAKER_00: And uh this was the game against Baylor.
4:18
SPEAKER_00: Uh they surprised me as they have been several times this year, picking up that win in Texas.
4:25
SPEAKER_00: That little guy, isn't that amazing?
4:27
SPEAKER_00: He's what, five foot ten or something?
4:30
SPEAKER_00: He's short guy Frank Mason, but he's got the heart of a lion.
4:35
SPEAKER_00: And uh how are you doing, Bob?
4:37
SPEAKER_00: And then K-State really needed a win, as you know, and they beat Texas in Texas with DJ uh tipping in, uh tipping in the ball with one and a half seconds to go and getting fouled and hitting the foul shot.
4:51
SPEAKER_00: And is it tonight they play?
4:54
SPEAKER_00: They have a home game.
4:56
SPEAKER_00: Did they play last night?
4:58
SPEAKER_00: They play tonight, they have a key game tonight.
5:00
SPEAKER_00: Uh K-State?
5:01
unknown: K-State.
5:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, K US.
5:04
SPEAKER_00: K-State is a big game.
5:05
SPEAKER_00: K-State has to kind of win, win out, or win most of its games to get in the tournament, I think.
5:11
SPEAKER_00: And I think they're good enough to, but so.
5:15
SPEAKER_00: Uh listen, put this up.
5:17
SPEAKER_00: This is uh Kenny here, and uh don't know if you know his son Kenny.
5:22
SPEAKER_00: Uh his dad was named Kenny, he's named Kenny, and his son's named Kenny.
5:25
SPEAKER_00: Kenny got fourth in the regionals.
5:27
SPEAKER_00: That's dad there on the left with the sunglasses.
5:30
SPEAKER_00: I thought you looked pretty suave there, Ken.
5:33
SPEAKER_00: So and uh and that's his boy who uh finished fourth this week in the uh and he was on the city wrestling honoral, fourth in the regionals, going to the state.
5:47
SPEAKER_00: You're go you're going down there, aren't you?
5:49
SPEAKER_00: This week.
5:50
SPEAKER_03: Does that start Friday?
5:51
SPEAKER_00: Friday, uh wrestles 138 is I think his waiting wait.
5:57
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
5:58
SPEAKER_00: I was I came from wrestling family, Derek.
6:00
SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, some families are my son here in town has a is a soccer family.
6:05
SPEAKER_00: I had uh I had five brothers out of the dozen kids.
6:10
SPEAKER_00: There were five brothers directly under me, all of us in a row.
6:13
SPEAKER_00: And uh I didn't wrestle.
6:15
SPEAKER_00: I was first, but the my son next to me was about like Kenny, he was really big, went into high school, wrestling coach came up to him and says, We have nobody at uh at the higher weights.
6:25
SPEAKER_00: You look like you weigh about 180.
6:27
SPEAKER_00: He said, He said, Would you like to wrestle varsity?
6:31
SPEAKER_00: And he did, and his joke was 15 times that first year, he said, I got to lay there on my back and examine the ceiling.
6:38
SPEAKER_00: He got pinned, but he got pretty good.
6:40
SPEAKER_00: My senior year, and the rest of uh the four younger brothers after them all wrestled, and they got better and better.
6:47
SPEAKER_00: So I love wrestling.
6:49
SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
6:51
SPEAKER_00: Wish we were football, but we weren't.
6:54
SPEAKER_00: So um anyway, uh by the way, thanks, Wes, for that uh plug for um for the Conquer series.
7:02
SPEAKER_00: We advertised it on Sunday with the, you know, remember the fighter pilot and all that?
7:06
SPEAKER_00: Now we're gonna advertise it in a different way this Sunday.
7:09
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna interview Bill Gobel uh from the stage and we're gonna talk about it.
7:13
SPEAKER_00: And so it's 11 days from now, and it'll meet right here.
7:17
SPEAKER_00: I'll be here on Sunday night.
7:18
SPEAKER_00: We're hoping you know there'll be hundreds of guys here.
7:22
SPEAKER_00: You know, I've looked at part of the series that looks really good.
7:25
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and like um Paul and Wes were saying, I think Jim was saying too, not just for people who are necessarily struggling with it, though that is available for for you as well, but just to be equipped to know you know what what's the current state of things, how does technology play in, how can we help other people, sons, grandsons, friends, whoever, because it is a huge deal.
7:52
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
7:53
SPEAKER_03: And I mean if you guys have looked up any any stats about it, it's also it's not just a huge deal in the fact that it's really bad, it's a huge deal in the fact that tons of people are making millions and billions of dollars off of this thing, which is which is not right.
8:12
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I wish they had this a few years ago, because when I was raising boys, uh when they were entering their teenage years, I took each of them, you know, alone to a hotel in Kansas City and gave them several days just fun and talked to them, you know, about this.
8:27
SPEAKER_00: And uh But I mean it's it's tough.
8:31
SPEAKER_00: I mean what um you know, and they'd confess that they were looking at stuff and masturbating and but you know, I really didn't have any good tools to give them, you know, like this, and try to help them and sympathize with them.
8:45
SPEAKER_00: But you know, so anyway, this should be really good for that.
8:50
SPEAKER_00: So we're doing the apostles of Jesus.
8:52
SPEAKER_00: We've uh done Peter the leader and James the warrior, John the lover, Andrew the connector, Philip the realist, Matthew the businessman, and we're in Judas the greedy thief.
9:04
SPEAKER_00: And uh so we're in part two, open chapter 10 if you have a book with you.
9:10
SPEAKER_00: And uh um we want to talk about this guy, his name remember literally Judas Iscariot.
9:18
SPEAKER_00: Iscariot means man of Cariot, and uh so he comes from a town south of Jerusalem.
9:26
SPEAKER_00: And last week, this is a little review.
9:28
SPEAKER_00: If you turn to page 162, this is the greed side.
9:32
SPEAKER_00: And we talked about guys we know, remember, who have been greedy or who grasped for stuff, and we we told stories at our tables of people who are side have been sidetracked by greed, just maybe stolen money at work that you see doing stuff like that.
9:48
SPEAKER_00: So uh money is the root of all kinds of evil, we said.
9:53
SPEAKER_00: Our theme verse, 1 Timothy 6.10, we read that together.
9:57
SPEAKER_00: Um let's move to page 170.
10:00
SPEAKER_00: We have only two points today.
10:02
SPEAKER_00: I'll take the first.
10:03
SPEAKER_00: Derek will take the second, and we'll share with each other.
10:07
SPEAKER_00: On page 70, under the heading I Tell You the Truth, the question is asked, have you ever trusted someone so much you missed some very obvious clues regarding that person's sinful motive?
10:21
SPEAKER_00: He says, This is easy to do.
10:23
SPEAKER_00: All of us find it difficult to believe that a person who claims to be one thing could be the opposite, especially when they have an important position in the Christian community.
10:33
SPEAKER_00: This happened to the apostles.
10:35
SPEAKER_00: They missed more than the obvious when it came to Judas's evil intentions.
10:41
SPEAKER_00: Under the time has come, he moves to the um to the Last Supper.
10:49
SPEAKER_00: Uh the time had come, John 13, 1 and 2, for Jesus to leave this world.
10:55
SPEAKER_00: And the devil had already prompted Judas to betray Jesus.
10:59
SPEAKER_00: He'd already gone to the uh to the authorities, remember, and who he knew hated Jesus and said he would give him up at the right time.
11:10
SPEAKER_00: Uh and asked for money, and they gave him thirty pieces of silver, which I don't know if it's a coincidence, was the same as the price to buy a slave, typical slave in those days.
11:24
SPEAKER_00: So um they gave him thirty of these shekels, they were solid silver in those days.
11:30
SPEAKER_00: Uh I bought one one time when I was over there for I think four hundred dollars just so I could have it.
11:39
SPEAKER_00: Uh and um I hope it's not one of the ones that Judas touched, but um but anyway, um so there's some greed involved there.
11:55
SPEAKER_00: We were talking yesterday, Derek, and I confess to you, you know, I've I've certainly missed it.
12:02
SPEAKER_00: And I'm sure I'm guessing those of you who've hired people um and you don't have to have hired people, just befriended people.
12:13
SPEAKER_00: You've been surprised at times.
12:16
SPEAKER_00: I've been surprised at some of my friends you know, in the ministry, who one of my best friends in town some years ago, pastor of a large one of the three largest churches and um really significant.
12:36
SPEAKER_00: And my wife's family had sort of my father-in-law had sort of led him to the Lord decades before.
12:42
SPEAKER_00: And we did a lot together, we'd hunted together, and and I heard a bad rumor about something he'd done, and I called him and he said, No, Jim, I wouldn't do anything like that.
12:54
SPEAKER_00: But later find out that he had, you know.
12:56
SPEAKER_00: And lost the ch he lost the church.
12:58
SPEAKER_00: And but you know, just you just get really surprised by people.
13:03
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes positively, right?
13:06
SPEAKER_00: But sometimes sometimes negatively.
13:11
SPEAKER_00: One time I knew a pastor who um I mean I always believed him, I was told that um you know, this guy's and I knew he was.
13:27
SPEAKER_00: He would counsel women alone.
13:28
SPEAKER_00: He was married, had a couple little kids, and he'd counsel w pretty women alone.
13:32
SPEAKER_00: It seemed like they were all pretty girls or pretty women with his door closed.
13:36
SPEAKER_00: And I confronted him and he saw everything was fine, but you know, ended up uh leaving his wife and kids and remarrying and what a mess.
13:50
SPEAKER_00: I mean I j I you know, you think you uh you think you can I used to tell people I had a gift of discernment.
13:59
SPEAKER_00: What a crock.
14:00
SPEAKER_00: You know, because you realize you just sometimes you just can't tell.
14:03
SPEAKER_00: I feel a lot of sympathy for the disciples not being able to think, you know to figure out Judas.
14:10
SPEAKER_00: You know, you think Judas probably left some pretty darn big clues.
14:15
SPEAKER_00: But um So anyway, one of the things you ought to talk about at your table is an answer to this question.
14:23
SPEAKER_00: You ever trusted someone so much that you missed some very obvious clues?
14:30
SPEAKER_00: So how about you?
14:32
SPEAKER_00: You have any thoughts on that?
14:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
14:34
SPEAKER_03: I mean sometimes sometimes there are clues there, and you know, depending on our relationship with that specific person, sometimes we just kind of blow it off and say even if it's something little, maybe it's not even something necessarily bad, but you just feel like something's just not quite right about this for some reason.
14:58
SPEAKER_03: And you say, Oh, well, he's good, you know, I like him.
15:02
SPEAKER_03: Maybe he's just having a bad day, or I don't know, something like that.
15:06
SPEAKER_03: And then we come to find out maybe, you know, weeks, maybe years later, that it was maybe the start or in the middle of building up to something that was a lot more serious, a lot more significant, and it's like, man, I I kind of had this inkling, but I didn't say or do anything about it.
15:25
SPEAKER_00: Years ago, I had a guy, it wasn't a close friend here at TBC, but he was definitely a friend.
15:32
SPEAKER_00: We'd traveled across country, gone fishing together in another state, and um, you know, gone camping with my kids, with my boys.
15:43
SPEAKER_00: And um but something, you know, you're just talking about you're not you can't put your finger on it.
15:50
SPEAKER_00: He was a traveling salesman, and I begin to hear that, you know, for some reason he would be taking off in the evening to go on a sales trip.
16:00
SPEAKER_00: His wife would go, What's with that?
16:02
SPEAKER_00: He just says he has to do that, or you know, yet here he hadn't gotten home when he had told his wife he was going to.
16:09
SPEAKER_00: And then came the day, just blew me out of the water.
16:11
SPEAKER_00: They wanted to she asked if they could come and talk to me.
16:15
SPEAKER_00: And and he he had a gambling addiction.
16:18
SPEAKER_00: And he had been spending all night.
16:20
SPEAKER_00: He'd leave to go on a so-called sales trip, and he'd go up here to one of the two casinos up north of town and he'd spend all night.
16:30
SPEAKER_00: And he was telling me the figures, you know.
16:32
SPEAKER_00: He'd said, Well, last week he said I want a hundred thousand dollars.
16:36
SPEAKER_00: I said he said um sorry, up or down since the beginning of the year, he said I'm down four hundred.
16:45
SPEAKER_00: Four hundred thousand dollars.
16:47
SPEAKER_00: He lost his home.
16:49
SPEAKER_00: Lost everything.
16:50
SPEAKER_00: He had a really nice home.
16:53
SPEAKER_00: He lost all the money in the bank account, lost his wife eventually.
16:59
SPEAKER_00: And uh I just totally missed it.
17:05
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, it's really sad.
17:08
SPEAKER_00: So, and the story as you go on here in pages uh 170, 171, 172, Jesus is here's the interesting thing when you read the account, he washed Judas's feet.
17:19
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
17:20
SPEAKER_00: He washed all their feet, and he washed Judas's feet, and it says on page 171, underneath that unconditional love heading, one of the reasons the other 11 apostles were deceived by one of their own is that Jesus had loved Judas as much as he loved all of them.
17:38
SPEAKER_00: He had washed his feet.
17:40
SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, remember he had said uh, you are clean.
17:45
SPEAKER_00: He'd said to Peter, you are clean though not every one of you.
17:49
SPEAKER_00: By that he meant saved.
17:51
SPEAKER_00: I explained that in a sermon a week or two ago.
17:53
SPEAKER_00: Uh washing feet is like daily forgiveness for a Christian.
17:57
SPEAKER_00: The cleanliness, the bath is what happened when you trusted Christ and you got perfectly clean past, present, future, eternally.
18:04
SPEAKER_00: And he says, You're clean, you're saved, basically, though not every one of you, meaning Judas.
18:10
SPEAKER_00: And they're looking around, especially then later, Jesus goes, by the way, one of you will betray me.
18:15
SPEAKER_00: And they're going, What?
18:17
SPEAKER_00: You know, and nobody still can figure it out.
18:19
SPEAKER_00: He's giving them big hints.
18:22
SPEAKER_00: One of you isn't clean or saved, one of you will betray me.
18:26
SPEAKER_00: And then even when Judas leaves, it says, immediately after Jesus, Jesus says, One of you betray me, it's the one to whom I hand the morsel, and he hands it to Judas, who's on his right, I think, or John was on his right, Judas on the left, maybe.
18:41
SPEAKER_00: Satan entered into him, Jesus said, What you're gonna do, do quickly.
18:44
SPEAKER_00: No one at the table knew why he said this to him.
18:47
SPEAKER_00: Some thought since Judas had the money back, Jesus was saying, buy what we need for the feast, or he should give something to the poor.
18:53
SPEAKER_00: I mean, really?
18:55
SPEAKER_00: What?
18:55
SPEAKER_00: It's like a Thursday, Friday evening.
18:58
SPEAKER_00: Or but after receiving the morsel of bread, Judas immediately went out.
19:02
SPEAKER_00: And John, who is full of figurative stuff throughout his book, goes, and it was night.
19:08
SPEAKER_00: And it sure was.
19:09
SPEAKER_00: It was darkness forever for Judas after that.
19:13
SPEAKER_00: So the disciples are clueless about that.
19:15
SPEAKER_00: And then he betrays him an hour or two later, going a couple hours later, going at once to Jesus.
19:21
SPEAKER_00: Judas greetings, Rabbi, and kissed him.
19:23
SPEAKER_00: So that's a sad story.
19:25
SPEAKER_00: And uh, Derek, why don't you take away the other big point?
19:29
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, kind of the next huge section is is titled, He Went Away and Hanged Himself.
19:34
SPEAKER_03: And then the question is, have you ever watched people disintegrate and ultimately destroy themselves and you couldn't do anything about it?
19:44
SPEAKER_03: And so this is kind of the big, the famous section about Judas, about you know, where he he does hang himself.
19:51
SPEAKER_03: And Matthew 27, uh verses one through five, when daybreak came, all the chief priests and the elders of the people plotted against Jesus to put him to death.
20:02
SPEAKER_03: After tying him up, they led him away and handed him over to Pilate, the governor.
20:07
SPEAKER_03: Then Judas, his betrayer, seeing that he had been condemned, was full of remorse and returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders.
20:18
SPEAKER_03: I have sinned by betraying the innocent blood, he said.
20:21
SPEAKER_03: And then they say, What's that to us?
20:24
SPEAKER_03: See to it yourself.
20:26
SPEAKER_03: So he threw the silver into the sanctuary and departed.
20:29
SPEAKER_03: Then he went and hanged himself.
20:32
SPEAKER_03: So you imagine you're you're Judas, you've you've taken this bribe previously, and but you're also kind of expecting to make bank.
20:43
SPEAKER_03: You're you're expecting to come out pretty high off of this whole Jesus scandal deal.
20:50
SPEAKER_03: And then he sees Jesus going to be killed, and Judas is probably like, Well, I thought I was gonna make all this money.
20:58
SPEAKER_03: This was my you know my cash crop right here, and now he's gonna die.
21:03
SPEAKER_03: So what's gonna happen to me?
21:06
SPEAKER_03: And then he feels this guilt, he feels this shame in what he did, and he goes back to the chief priests and says, Hey, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
21:17
SPEAKER_03: Take the money back, please.
21:19
SPEAKER_03: And they they're like, We don't want anything to do with that.
21:22
SPEAKER_03: We we've got Jesus, he's getting ready to be killed, you're whatever.
21:28
SPEAKER_03: The bribe that even we gave you, just go ahead and keep that.
21:33
SPEAKER_03: And Judas comes back, throws it into the temple, and then he w he goes and he hangs himself.
21:42
SPEAKER_03: And it's just that that disintegration, he thought that he was going to come out on top, he thought he was going to have this kind of high, rich lifestyle.
21:55
SPEAKER_03: One thing changed, he saw Jesus going to be killed.
22:00
SPEAKER_03: This guilt comes on him, and um Get says it in here on 174 is that he kind of Judas put this blame for for what was happening squarely on his own shoulders, and he says, unable to cope, Jesus tossed the money into the temple and left the scene.
22:18
SPEAKER_03: And then that very last paragraph I thought was really good.
22:21
SPEAKER_03: He says, Sadly, Judas chose to reject God's offer for forgiveness to all people, no matter what our sins.
22:29
SPEAKER_03: In our own heart, he seems to have taken a step beyond the point of no return.
22:35
SPEAKER_03: Ironically, Satan deceived Judas into believing there was no hope.
22:39
SPEAKER_03: He died at his own hands and entered a Christless eternity without crying out for mercy.
22:46
SPEAKER_03: And so he Judas could have.
22:48
SPEAKER_03: Judas could have asked for forgiveness just like the thief on the cross who was on the cross next to Jesus asked for forgiveness.
22:56
SPEAKER_03: But for some reason and somehow, Satan had made Judas believe that that there was basically no hope for him.
23:04
SPEAKER_03: That because he had done this horrible thing, that he was just doomed for death, and and there was there was gonna be no redemption.
23:13
SPEAKER_03: And it's it's sad to see some people like that.
23:16
SPEAKER_03: Um there was a when I was in high school, there was an eighth grader, and I I knew his family a little bit, um, and his family it was kind of a a really, really dysfunctional family.
23:33
SPEAKER_03: Um basically the parents would you know let the kids just go run around and and do whatever, not really any accountability, time to be home, kind of anything like that.
23:42
SPEAKER_03: And during one of the football games, um this kid, this eighth grader wasn't a player, but he he just came to the games to watch.
23:52
SPEAKER_03: And I think because of the crowd that that he was running with, and he would pretty much run with whoever, because there's no real accountability or oversight on it, um, he ended up taking these pills from one of these older guys who was in in high school with me, and come to find out the next day that he hanged himself.
24:13
SPEAKER_03: This this eighth grade kid who was a great kid, he was a funny kid, kind of all these things, but he got sucked into the wrong crowd, and also the wrong crowd obviously influenced him pretty heavily, and ended up doing that.
24:35
SPEAKER_03: If you if you guys have ever known somebody who's who's done that, sometimes you just you don't even have words to to express it.
24:43
SPEAKER_03: You just say why and how, and you know, there could have been help, there should have been people there to help.
24:50
SPEAKER_03: Maybe I could have helped, maybe this could have happened, but it's just one of those one of those scary things that somehow Satan works his way in, and there it does seem kind of like a hopeless situation.
25:05
SPEAKER_03: And maybe it's not even as far as you know, somebody hanging themselves or taking their life, but maybe it's something just really destructive.
25:14
SPEAKER_03: And I, Jim, you probably know some families like this, but when I was in Indiana, there was this uh family that I knew, and the dad was the doctor, and the mom stayed at home, you know, four kids, lived in a big house out in the country, went to church every Sunday, kind of, you know, all this stuff, kids are in sports, all this, good grades, all that kind of stuff.
25:36
SPEAKER_03: And there there seemed to be some little signs along the way, like maybe sometimes she would stay longer at a place than what she was supposed to, or maybe he would say that he's staying longer at work than what he's supposed to, and um, just little things like that.
25:55
SPEAKER_03: And come to find out, you know, he was kind of having a little affair, and she was having a little affair kind of on the side, and things were really dysfunctional at home, and she would actually go out with some of her lady friends, and they would just drink and drink and drink and drink because that was, I guess, their maybe her way of coping, maybe her way of kind of handling the situation.
26:23
SPEAKER_03: And but on the outside, other than those things, they look like a great family.
26:28
SPEAKER_03: You know, they they've kind of got things together, they've got money, they've got cars, they've got animals out back, really nice house, take well taken care of, all these things.
26:38
SPEAKER_03: And a few years later, you know, some more information came out and they ended up getting a divorce.
26:44
SPEAKER_03: After all the kids were graduated from high school, they divorced, you know, he moved away, she moved away, she went into kind of an alcoholic rehab thing.
26:55
SPEAKER_03: And so you just see kind of this slow progression, even though sometimes they look like they're doing the right things.
27:02
SPEAKER_03: Going to going to church, being around godly people, pray before their meals, kind of all these things, but somehow there's something inside of each of them that's not quite right.
27:14
SPEAKER_03: And you know, this family that I was telling you guys about, my great aunt and my great uncle, and so it's really it's just sad to see stuff like that happen.
27:25
SPEAKER_03: And somehow, for some reason, people feel like there's no hope and they need to continue in that sin because they feel like that's kind of their their only way to deal with it.
27:37
SPEAKER_03: And I'm sure you've had some people like that too.
27:40
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
27:41
SPEAKER_00: So many stories come to mind.
27:43
SPEAKER_00: It's a problem with having been in the ministry so long.
27:47
SPEAKER_00: I think of um there's a verse in 2 Peter 2, it talks about you know, there's this warning, it's worse to have started on the road to righteousness and fallen than never to have started at all.
28:00
SPEAKER_00: It's a strange thing for it to say, but I find that to be true.
28:04
SPEAKER_00: I would rather that people commit moral hairy carry and never have gone to church like uh the last 36, 48 hours is my birthday this week, so I gave myself the gift of reading uh unbroken.
28:16
SPEAKER_00: I'd only read the first hundred pages years ago.
28:19
SPEAKER_00: And so I I just finished the book actually this morning on the way on uh also had it on tape.
28:24
SPEAKER_00: So I listened to the last few pages like driving in.
28:28
SPEAKER_00: And this guy, Louis Zamperini, was an Olympic runner, he's phenomenal, and then he went um, you know, fastest mile in America.
28:37
SPEAKER_00: He was superhero, super famous.
28:39
SPEAKER_00: He goes, he's flying in a plane, he gets shot down, sets a record, he and another guy somehow survived 46 days on a raft in the Pacific Ocean, get captured by the Japanese, spends two and a half years getting absolutely beat up, nearly killed, comes back to the States, marries a beautiful girl, he's famous, but he still can't sleep.
28:58
SPEAKER_00: Memories of getting beaten up uh cause him to just have PTSD or whatever.
29:04
SPEAKER_00: He's and he comes an alcoholic, he's just his life spirals out of control.
29:08
SPEAKER_00: But he's never been a Christian.
29:10
SPEAKER_00: This is my point.
29:11
SPEAKER_00: He's never been religious.
29:12
SPEAKER_00: Praise God.
29:13
SPEAKER_00: So when Billy Graham comes to LA and he has a miracle happen in his life, and his wife trusts Christ, she's uppercrossed, she trusts Christ, gets him to go, and he becomes a Christian, it's amazing.
29:27
SPEAKER_00: Then it transforms his life.
29:31
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
29:32
SPEAKER_00: On the other hand, it's awful when people have have, let's say, I think of I think of this wonderful couple used to sit on the front row with their two little kids here at TBC years ago.
29:44
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the kids would, the boys would draw pictures.
29:47
SPEAKER_00: These two boys would draw pictures of whatever I was preaching about and hand them to me every Sunday.
29:51
SPEAKER_00: I still have loads of them.
29:53
SPEAKER_00: She was my wife's best friend.
29:54
SPEAKER_00: We did so much with them.
29:56
SPEAKER_00: And then she went back to Washburn.
29:59
SPEAKER_00: And I'm sorry, I love Washburn, but you know, when a woman is married and has children, she's gone back to school.
30:06
SPEAKER_00: There's one time in my ministry I counted 10 women I knew who had gone back to college after having kids after being married and had cut out on their spouses because you go back into a setting where life is fun, you have no responsibility.
30:20
SPEAKER_00: All the other girls, all the other kids over there are having a good time, and they go, What the heck am I doing?
30:26
SPEAKER_00: stuck with this husband.
30:27
SPEAKER_00: So she starts going out to bars every night for a while.
30:32
SPEAKER_00: My wife was going with her to spend time with her, but I mean, and then she leaves her husband.
30:37
SPEAKER_00: Today, neither she nor her husband nor her two kids, these two boys planned as they approach teenagehood to go into the ministry.
30:45
SPEAKER_00: None of them go to church.
30:46
SPEAKER_00: None of them, I mean, it's just, and I think, I wish none of them had been Christians when this happened.
30:52
SPEAKER_00: Because you know, it's so much easier for you to get kids, for you to get totally lost kids from Topeka West.
30:58
SPEAKER_00: That's where all the lost kids are now, I know.
31:00
SPEAKER_00: And and you sorry, that school's got troubles.
31:05
SPEAKER_00: But anyway, you know, and and rather than to get kids who've grown up in a certain way, and then yeah, yeah, I could tell lots of stories.
31:14
SPEAKER_00: I I don't want to ramble.
31:16
SPEAKER_00: But I didn't even mean to tell that story.
31:21
SPEAKER_03: I think kind of the main point at the end of this section is and we might even get to it in the last principle.
31:28
SPEAKER_03: Um because God is patient and loves us even when we violate his will.
31:33
SPEAKER_03: We must not interpret his patience and love as approval of our sinful lifestyle.
31:38
SPEAKER_03: You know, Paul says that a couple times.
31:41
SPEAKER_03: So should we just sin because there's so much grace and God's gonna love us anyway?
31:46
SPEAKER_03: Well, God does love you anyway, and there is so much grace, but that is not a just a license to go out and sin and do as ever you do whatever you please.
31:55
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's a balance, it's so tough because you know I try to talk, I'll talk with a young man, teenage boy, who won't who stopped praying, you know, he confesses to me that he he can't uh I talk with my own sons this way too, who don't feel like they can pray anymore.
32:10
SPEAKER_00: Why?
32:10
SPEAKER_00: Well, because I can't get rid of this my masturbation, I can't get rid of the porn.
32:14
SPEAKER_00: I keep doing it again, so I'm sure God hates me.
32:16
SPEAKER_00: So he said, No, no, no, no, God still loves you.
32:19
SPEAKER_00: You know, I used to tell my my son mouth flopped open when I said, do your best, even when you're masturbating, to pray.
32:27
SPEAKER_00: And he said, What?
32:28
SPEAKER_00: I said, Well, it'll help you help you get that one picture out of your mind and get another picture in anyway.
32:33
SPEAKER_00: And uh because God's so gracious.
32:36
SPEAKER_00: On the other hand, on the other hand, some people like some people that I confront because a guy is you know into porn or whatever, and thinks, well, God still loves me, or the guy that I drank coffee with, one of my best friends, who said, Well, God will forgive me for leaving my wife and kids for this other woman.
32:56
SPEAKER_00: He said, You know, I'll do it and then I'll ask forgiveness.
33:00
SPEAKER_00: And and he did it.
33:01
SPEAKER_00: And and yet this point is so good, like the prodigal, you know, who's who's who's drinking and who's whoring and stuff like that.
33:11
SPEAKER_00: That you know, the fact that God still loved him and his father still loved him didn't mean it was okay for him to stay there.
33:17
SPEAKER_00: So that's this point.
33:18
SPEAKER_00: And you know, let me just mention I put up some pictures because we're in the ministry field, and and this is a problem, I think, in the pastorate.
33:26
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and these are some famous older ones celebrity pastors or celebrity Christians.
33:32
SPEAKER_00: There's Jim Baker, Jimmy Swaggard, Robert Tilton, uh, Mike Wernkey uh wrote about demons and so forth, and the whole thing was a lie.
33:40
SPEAKER_00: You know, this is 25 years ago.
33:43
SPEAKER_00: And those guys excused what they were doing while they were doing it, while they were doing it, by the fact that God was gracious and forgiving.
33:51
SPEAKER_00: And this point is no, no, no, no, it doesn't work in now today.
33:55
SPEAKER_00: Even in the last, we're talking now the last three years or four years, some of the most famous young pastors in America, Billy Graham's grandson, Chividian, steps down from a megachurch in Florida after admitting an affair.
34:06
SPEAKER_00: This didn't happen a lot.
34:07
SPEAKER_00: Three megachurch pastors.
34:09
SPEAKER_00: We're talking now, even I could have listed Catholic priests, I could have listed Buddhist monks.
34:13
SPEAKER_00: This is happening all over, you know, with a lot of people.
34:16
SPEAKER_00: These are just that's that's Bob Coy there.
34:18
SPEAKER_00: Megachurch pastors in Orlando in the last three, four years have resigned over adultery.
34:25
SPEAKER_00: The bottom left, very famous guy, he was head, head of all of an organization over all the evangelical churches in America.
34:32
SPEAKER_00: Ted Haggard, National Association of Evangelicals, Colorado Springs.
34:36
SPEAKER_00: We were using his best-selling book here at TBC.
34:39
SPEAKER_00: We started a whole, you know, he was talking about certain kind of small groups, and he confesses to having an affair, you know, with a male prostitute, this gay prostitute, you know, exposed him.
34:52
SPEAKER_00: And and then here really recently, this guy's really famous.
34:56
SPEAKER_00: In fact, he just spoke two weeks ago at Liberty University, you know, Steve Fertig, Elevation.
35:04
SPEAKER_00: God and Greed was the headline, you know, in the magazines and newspapers, Pastor Stephen Fertig's House from Heaven.
35:10
SPEAKER_00: You know, he hid the fact that he was running the, you know, he ran the money through his one of his elders who collaborated with him for about a two million dollar house hidden in the woods, but he told his church, you know, that it was just a little bungalow.
35:24
SPEAKER_00: And they were interviewed by the paper.
35:26
SPEAKER_00: It took the, it took the North, the Charlotte, I think, rented a helicopter, they suspected more, to fly over the forest and to take this photograph from above to expose the fact he was he was lying about that.
35:39
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it just so anyway, so so um it's kind of I don't want to be negative, but uh and God, you know what, uh you know what I really like?
35:51
SPEAKER_00: You know what Paul said?
35:52
SPEAKER_00: I think he's right.
35:53
SPEAKER_00: And if Judas had gone to Jesus, Jesus and confessed, you know, we'd have been fine.
35:58
SPEAKER_00: He wasn't a Christian before, but Jesus would have forgiven him.
36:04
unknown: Yeah.
36:05
SPEAKER_03: I think that's the hopeful message.
36:07
SPEAKER_03: No, well, all of these things are possible, and we need to be aware and we need to see, you know, different signs, not just in other people, but also if we see some of these signs in ourselves and they start to creep up.
36:18
SPEAKER_03: But also just knowing that there is always forgiveness in Christ.
36:24
SPEAKER_03: And doing these sinful things, um, they're not they're not the answer, they're not gonna solve anything, they're not gonna make our life better or the other person's life better, whoever's you know, struggling.
36:38
SPEAKER_03: It's it's only going to get worse if we continue in that behavior.
36:42
SPEAKER_03: But we have a really cool opportunity to remember that for ourselves and also to to help others by just sharing the gospel, just sharing the good news of Jesus, and that there always is forgiveness for everybody.
36:57
SPEAKER_00: So let's do the memory verse again, shall we?
36:59
SPEAKER_00: You want to take them through it?
37:01
SPEAKER_03: For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.
37:06
SPEAKER_03: Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.
37:14
SPEAKER_03: First Timothy 6 10.
37:17
SPEAKER_00: Coming week, we're going to move into a new chapter.
37:19
SPEAKER_00: Matthias, he was the disciple that got added after Judas uh disappeared from the scene, Acts chapter 1.
37:26
SPEAKER_00: And small group discussion.
37:28
SPEAKER_00: You can find questions on 170, 173, and 180 and pray for each other.
37:33
SPEAKER_00: Lead us in prayer.
37:34
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
37:35
SPEAKER_03: Lord, thanks for this opportunity to be here again this morning for uh the wonderful breakfast, the people who prepared it.
37:43
SPEAKER_03: And God help us to recognize some of these maybe greedy tendencies or negative tendencies in other people and in ourselves.
37:51
SPEAKER_03: And help us to follow you.
37:53
SPEAKER_03: Help us to become holy as you are holy, and remember there's always forgiveness in you.
37:58
SPEAKER_03: In Jesus' name.
37:59
SPEAKER_03: Amen.