Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / February 28, 2016 | Route 66 Overlook - The Story Of My Life

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February 28, 2016 | Route 66 Overlook - The Story Of My Life · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

0:17
SPEAKER_01: Unless you stopped going to restaurants, stores, turning on the radio, you've heard that song sometime in the last three years since the British group Run One Direction sang it in 2013.
0:30
SPEAKER_01: And it happens to be the title of my message this morning.
0:35
SPEAKER_01: If you're visiting today, we're taking a road trip through the Bible called Route 66.
0:41
SPEAKER_01: And last week we completed the first of the two legs of that, the Old Testament leg, 39 out of the 66 books.
0:49
SPEAKER_01: So I had a decision to make.
0:50
SPEAKER_01: Do I continue right on into Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John?
0:54
SPEAKER_01: And I decided that since Easter, Palm Sunday's coming up, that we'd take a five-week hiatus and then re-enter Route 66 after Easter.
1:03
SPEAKER_01: And so what I uh intend to do uh this week and next week, this week I'm gonna look back, sort of do an overlook.
1:12
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna do a Route 66 overlook back at the uh Old Testament entitled The Story of My Life.
1:18
SPEAKER_01: And then next week, uh having been deluged with emails and texts and whatever saying please do the blank page in the Bible between the Old and New Testaments, the intertestamental period.
1:31
SPEAKER_01: I was at a conference in Dallas uh Monday through Wednesday this week, and I'm carrying these four books, you know, and sitting in the back as people, as a Jewish evangelism convert, I'm sitting in the back because I'm reading, these are four books on the intertestamental period.
1:47
SPEAKER_01: And uh and even though they were boring, the books were more boring.
1:51
SPEAKER_01: But no, I'm it was just, and I thought, I need another week on this.
1:55
SPEAKER_01: This is gonna be hairy.
1:57
SPEAKER_01: So, so in order not to kill you next week, uh, we're not preaching on that this week.
2:02
SPEAKER_01: This week uh uh is is something that I just sat down with a blank piece of paper and wrote down some words that I think capture uh capture the story of the Old Testament.
2:16
SPEAKER_01: And I want to give you the story of the Old Testament in ten words, but before that, I want just as a review to show you a little five-minute video entitled The Story of the Old Testament in five minutes, okay?
2:30
SPEAKER_01: So this will sort of warm you up to the 39 books of the Old Testament.
2:35
SPEAKER_01: Let's see that.
2:41
SPEAKER_00: In the beginning, God created the universe and a planet called Earth.
2:46
SPEAKER_00: Humans were formed in God's image to continue God's work.
2:50
SPEAKER_00: But soon, humans decided we want to live our way, not God's.
2:54
SPEAKER_00: Selfishness and violence filled the world.
2:57
SPEAKER_00: So God started over with just one family.
3:01
SPEAKER_00: And God made a covenant with a man named Abraham.
3:04
SPEAKER_00: The land around you is now yours.
3:06
SPEAKER_00: Your family will be my blessing to the entire world.
3:10
SPEAKER_00: In just a few generations, they grew into a large nation named Israel.
3:14
SPEAKER_00: The Egyptians became fearful and forced the Israelites to be their slaves.
3:19
SPEAKER_00: Through a humble leader named Moses, God led the Israelites in a great exodus back toward their promised land.
3:26
SPEAKER_00: Along the journey, God gave laws and commands to help the Israelites follow God's ways.
3:32
SPEAKER_00: Finally, after 40 years of struggle and complaining in the desert, the Israelites arrived back home in the promised land.
3:40
SPEAKER_00: In victory, the people worshipped God, but soon after, they turned from God and lived their own rebellious ways.
3:48
SPEAKER_00: This became a pattern from generation to generation.
3:52
SPEAKER_00: Israel's greatest judge was Samuel.
3:54
SPEAKER_00: He followed God's ways and spoke for God as a prophet.
3:58
SPEAKER_00: He told Israel that God was the only king they ever needed.
4:02
SPEAKER_00: But they desired to be like the corrupt nations surrounding them and insisted, we want a human king who we can see to rule over us just like the other nations.
4:12
SPEAKER_00: So Samuel found a man named Saul to be Israel's first king.
4:16
SPEAKER_00: His reign began well, but before long, Saul stopped following God's ways and made many bad decisions.
4:23
SPEAKER_00: So Samuel told Saul, Because you have turned your back on God, God has rejected you as a king.
4:30
SPEAKER_00: Samuel's search for the next king led to a courageous young shepherd boy named David.
4:36
SPEAKER_00: When David grew up to be king, God blessed him and the Israelites greatly.
4:41
SPEAKER_00: But David was not perfect.
4:43
SPEAKER_00: He had an affair with a married woman and committed a murder to cover it up.
4:48
SPEAKER_00: But deep inside, David always loved God and would return to living in God's ways.
4:54
SPEAKER_00: Known as the Poet Warrior, he wrote music to God called Psalms, heartfelt expressions of prayer, struggle, and thankfulness.
5:03
SPEAKER_00: After many years as king, David gave the throne to his son Solomon.
5:08
SPEAKER_00: God also told David, One day, one of your descendants will rule with a kingdom that will never end.
5:16
SPEAKER_00: Solomon succeeded his father David, becoming the richest king in Israel's history.
5:22
SPEAKER_00: Full of God's wisdom, Solomon wrote books like Proverbs and built a magnificent temple, a permanent tabernacle, reminding people of God's continual presence.
5:32
SPEAKER_00: But Solomon strayed from God, marrying corrupt wives who led him into worshiping false gods.
5:39
SPEAKER_00: Civil war broke out, dividing the country into a northern kingdom called Israel and a southern kingdom called Judah.
5:47
SPEAKER_00: Soon, both of these kingdoms were led by corrupt kings who ignored God's ways.
5:52
SPEAKER_00: During this time, prophets were sent as messengers, calling the Israelites to return to God.
5:59
SPEAKER_00: They warned of the destructive consequences ahead.
6:02
SPEAKER_00: The prophet Elijah, a wild and rugged man, showed up false prophets by calling on God to give an awesome display of fire.
6:11
SPEAKER_00: The prophet Elisha followed him, bringing a boy back to life by causing him to sneeze.
6:17
SPEAKER_00: These prophets challenged the Israelites and their kings to return to God's better ways.
6:23
SPEAKER_00: But the Israelites would not listen.
6:27
SPEAKER_00: Distracted in their own rebellion, other nations swept in and conquered both of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah.
6:34
SPEAKER_00: God's people were forced out of the promised land, and many were taken away to be slaves once again.
6:41
SPEAKER_00: The temple was destroyed, and the people lost everything.
6:45
SPEAKER_00: This was a time called the exile, where many of the Israelites, now called Jews, were scattered across different lands.
6:52
SPEAKER_00: One prophet named Daniel was sent to a city named Babylon.
6:56
SPEAKER_00: The law demanded that everyone pray only to the king of Babylon, but Daniel refused and prayed to God three times a day.
7:04
SPEAKER_00: So Daniel was thrown into a pit of hungry lions.
7:08
SPEAKER_00: But God closed the mouths of the lions, and Daniel emerged the next morning without a scratch.
7:14
SPEAKER_00: Though scattered, God was still watching over the Jewish people, and God gave them hope, speaking through the prophet Jeremiah's words.
7:23
SPEAKER_00: I'll make a new covenant with the people of Israel, returning them to the promised land and filling their hearts and minds with my ways.
7:32
SPEAKER_00: Sixty years later, this hope was realized.
7:35
SPEAKER_00: The Persian Empire freed the Jewish people to return to their promised land.
7:40
SPEAKER_00: A small number gathered back in the capital city of Jerusalem, and a new, smaller temple was built under the leadership of Ezra.
7:48
SPEAKER_00: Reunited, they celebrated and shouted with joy.
7:51
SPEAKER_00: But the elders wept in remembrance of what was lost.
7:55
SPEAKER_00: Prophets like Malachi and Isaiah pointed to the future and a coming king, a Messiah, one who would fully restore Israel and bring a new kingdom of peace.
8:06
SPEAKER_00: So the Jewish people waited and hoped.
8:10
SPEAKER_00: And God would not speak through the prophets again for 400 years.
8:18
SPEAKER_01: Well, that's the history of the Old Testament, history of Israel, and uh it in five minutes.
8:26
SPEAKER_01: What I did is uh I sat down with a blank piece of paper and a pen.
8:30
SPEAKER_01: And I thought to myself, um, is there a way of hanging the story of the Old Testament on a few tent pegs, a few key words?
8:42
SPEAKER_01: Is there some way of doing that?
8:43
SPEAKER_01: I've just finished going through these books, and so uh I just started and I started writing down words in order of the story of Israel and the story of the Old Testament.
8:55
SPEAKER_01: And to my surprise, at the end, when I looked at the ten words, when I looked at the words I had written down and counted them, it it was ten.
9:02
SPEAKER_01: At which point I knew that this was all from God, that it was inspired I'm joking, that it was inspired.
9:09
SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm not sure that it's inspired, but I want to share those ten words with you, the ten words that I think uh you can hang the Old Testament on.
9:18
SPEAKER_01: And then I want to tell you in the second part of my talk how I think that touches you and me.
9:25
SPEAKER_01: All right?
9:26
SPEAKER_01: The first word that I came up with, obviously, would be the word creation.
9:31
SPEAKER_01: Creation.
9:32
SPEAKER_01: And I'm thinking not so much of him creating the stars and creating the land.
9:36
SPEAKER_01: I'm thinking of the fact that the most important thing in Genesis 1 and 2 is the creation of you and me, creation of man and the creation of woman.
9:45
SPEAKER_01: When I was growing up, uh my dad and mom had this idea that not only should we memorize like mega numbers of verses, but we needed to memorize, know at least one verse from every book in the Bible.
9:56
SPEAKER_01: And so uh on the door going out to the back porch, my mom hung this uh big yellow sheet of paper when I was a kid, and it had all these verses on it, and it had at least one verse from every book.
10:08
SPEAKER_01: And the and so I want to share with you those key verses when they, because those key verses actually from Old Testament books actually uh uh illustrate these ten points.
10:20
SPEAKER_01: And of course, the key verse from Genesis that we had to memorize was in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
10:27
SPEAKER_01: The second key word from the Old Testament is the word fall.
10:30
SPEAKER_01: Uh because as you know, God created people, Adam, Eve.
10:34
SPEAKER_01: They chose their own way instead of God's way.
10:37
SPEAKER_01: They sinned, and as a result, they fell.
10:41
SPEAKER_01: They listened to the devil instead of to God.
10:43
SPEAKER_01: And a fall is always followed by, and this is the third word, judgment.
10:48
SPEAKER_01: And so they were expelled from the Garden of Eden.
10:50
SPEAKER_01: You know that story.
10:51
SPEAKER_01: Now, this story of fall or sin, followed by judgment, is of course a theme that runs throughout the whole Bible.
10:59
SPEAKER_01: Their children, Cain and Abel, illustrate it.
11:03
SPEAKER_01: For remember, out of jealousy, Cain killed his brother Abel.
11:07
SPEAKER_01: And immediately there was judgment.
11:09
SPEAKER_01: God expelled, he exiled him far away.
11:13
SPEAKER_01: And then just a couple of chapters later in Genesis chapter six, remember, God looked down.
11:18
SPEAKER_01: It had been many years now, but the whole earth was filled with violence and chaos.
11:23
SPEAKER_01: And God saw its corruption, its sin, and so what happened was judgment, what we call the great flood.
11:31
SPEAKER_01: And then a few chapters after that in Genesis, it happens again.
11:34
SPEAKER_01: We have the story of Sodom, the righteous man Lot, and the sinners there, and that fall, that sin was followed by the great judgment, the earthquake and the fire on Sodom and Gomorrah.
11:47
SPEAKER_01: Now, the key verses of the Bible books that my dad and mom had us memorize that illustrated this, and most of them were pretty easy because we were little.
11:57
SPEAKER_01: Numbers 32, 23, be sure your sin will find you out.
12:03
SPEAKER_01: Another one of those key verses was Ezekiel 18.20.
12:07
SPEAKER_01: That's the verse we memorized from Ezekiel.
12:09
SPEAKER_01: The soul that sinneth, it shall die.
12:12
SPEAKER_01: Which is a lot like the wages of sin is death, a verse that you know from the New Testament.
12:17
SPEAKER_01: The key verse in Amos, prepare to meet thy God.
12:21
SPEAKER_01: So the first three words were of creation and then fall or sin, followed by judgment.
12:28
SPEAKER_01: And as you look through the Old Testament, then you see the fourth word, it seemed to me, at least that's what I wrote down, was promise.
12:34
SPEAKER_01: Because all of a always after this sin and this judgment, then God comes along and he says, like this is Abraham, supposedly, and he says to Abraham, listen, I've got a whole different plan.
12:46
SPEAKER_01: I want to redeem you.
12:48
SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm gonna, and through your descendants, I'm gonna bring the Messiah and so forth, and on and on to every one of the forefathers, and then to Samuel, then to David, and then to Isaiah.
12:58
SPEAKER_01: There was always a promise.
13:00
SPEAKER_01: Things will get better.
13:02
SPEAKER_01: The promise verse we memorized out of Isaiah was Isaiah 118.
13:07
SPEAKER_01: Come now and let us reason together, saith the Lord.
13:10
SPEAKER_01: Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.
13:13
SPEAKER_01: Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.
13:17
SPEAKER_01: The fifth word was that the promise came true in what's called what I labeled as salvation.
13:24
SPEAKER_01: You could call it deliverance, you could call it rescue.
13:27
SPEAKER_01: It's pictured, of course, by the ark.
13:29
SPEAKER_01: God saves Noah and his family on top of the waves, on top of the judgment.
13:35
SPEAKER_01: God saves Lot and his family out of Sodom and Gomorrah.
13:39
SPEAKER_01: And in the greatest salvation story in the Old Testament, God saves the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt.
13:46
SPEAKER_01: They crossed through the Red Sea.
13:48
SPEAKER_01: And that's the picture of the redemption, the salvation that everyone, including you and I, have.
13:53
SPEAKER_01: And the verses that my dad and mom had us memorize, the key verse of the verse we had to know from Exodus was Exodus 12, 13.
14:02
SPEAKER_01: The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are.
14:05
SPEAKER_01: And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be on you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.
14:12
SPEAKER_01: And my mom would explain to us that what happened in Egypt is what happens to every person who trusts in Jesus Christ who died on the cross, the blood of Jesus Christ, in a sense, is then over us, and the angel of death will not take us on the final day.
14:28
SPEAKER_01: It's only been more recently that I've realized when you think of the picture of the blood on the lintel and on the doorpost, that's the Hebrew letter high, which means life.
14:41
SPEAKER_01: Another salvation, the key verse from Leviticus that they had us memorize was also a salvation verse.
14:46
SPEAKER_01: The life of the flesh is in the blood.
14:48
SPEAKER_01: And I've given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul.
14:55
SPEAKER_01: They seem a little stilted, it's because we back then the only version in the entire world was the King James.
15:02
SPEAKER_01: So we memorized them all then.
15:05
SPEAKER_01: So the first five, uh creation, a fall judgment, a promised salvation, end with the, say, a person or a nation becoming a redeemed people, becoming the true children of God.
15:19
SPEAKER_01: The last five words are the life of a a nation or a child of God.
15:25
SPEAKER_01: And of course, immediately it starts off with failure.
15:28
SPEAKER_01: Israel no sooner gets to the Red Sea than they arrive at Mount Sinai.
15:34
SPEAKER_01: And Moses comes down the mountain to find out that they have built of all things a golden calf.
15:40
SPEAKER_01: Failure.
15:41
SPEAKER_01: Sin.
15:42
SPEAKER_01: And shortly after that, you remember the story in Numbers 13 of the spies going up and checking out the land.
15:48
SPEAKER_01: Then they come back, and in unbelief, ten of twelve of them say, the giants up there are too large.
15:55
SPEAKER_01: We can't go.
15:57
SPEAKER_01: We learned a failure verse, the last verse of Judges.
16:01
SPEAKER_01: In those days there was no king in Israel.
16:03
SPEAKER_01: Every man did that which was right in his own eyes.
16:07
SPEAKER_01: And naturally, what happens after failure is God says, I have to discipline you.
16:11
SPEAKER_01: And you find that throughout the Old Testament.
16:14
SPEAKER_01: There was 40 years of wandering.
16:16
SPEAKER_01: God said, This generation will not go into the land, the generation that refused to believe.
16:22
SPEAKER_01: And so there was a discipline upon them.
16:24
SPEAKER_01: And even after they got in the land, because they would wander away from the Lord, God disciplined them.
16:30
SPEAKER_01: Book of Judges tells about this, by bringing on the Midianites and Philistines and Edomites who would take them captive and defeat them.
16:38
SPEAKER_01: That was God's discipline.
16:39
SPEAKER_01: And finally, God's discipline came to a climax in 600 BC when he said, My gut's full of you guys.
16:46
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to kick you out of the land entirely.
16:49
SPEAKER_01: And he allowed Jerusalem and the temple to be burned down by the Babylonians, and he sent his people into exile.
16:56
SPEAKER_01: A disciplined verse that we had to learn, key verse of Proverbs, which my mother used to use on us quite often, was Proverbs 16, 18, pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.
17:09
SPEAKER_01: But what always happens in the Old Testament, and hopefully has happened with you, is this return where God's people suffer under Midianite rule or under the Philistines, and they return, they cry out to God, they pray, they ask forgiveness, they say, We have sinned.
17:25
SPEAKER_01: Lord, please restore us.
17:26
SPEAKER_01: Even King David, remember, a man after God's own heart, had sinned horribly.
17:31
SPEAKER_01: Nathan had to confront him.
17:33
SPEAKER_01: And David breaks down and he returns to the Lord.
17:37
SPEAKER_01: He repents with the words, I've sinned against the Lord.
17:42
SPEAKER_01: And what happens after that is that God restores you.
17:45
SPEAKER_01: God restored the children of Israel after they repented by sending them into the land, and the walls of Jericho fell down before them.
17:52
SPEAKER_01: And when the Midianites, you know, had them in their thrall after Israel repented, Gideon, remember, and his 300 defeated the Midianites.
18:02
SPEAKER_01: God restored the people from Babylon.
18:04
SPEAKER_01: 50,000 exiles got to come back to the land.
18:08
SPEAKER_01: One of the things you see in the Old Testament is this sort of a roller coaster, this sort of a cycle where you have God's people disobeying, and then there's a disaster.
18:20
SPEAKER_01: God sends someone to oppress them.
18:22
SPEAKER_01: Then the people cry out to God in repentance, and so God rescues them.
18:26
SPEAKER_01: And the sad thing is that happens over and over and over again to them, as it does to us.
18:34
SPEAKER_01: And the verse that we memorized, that we had to memorize from 2 Chronicles, was the famous verse 714 if my people which are called by my name shall humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and forgive their sin and heal their land.
18:51
SPEAKER_01: And those are the first nine.
18:53
SPEAKER_01: The tenth that I wrote down on my sheet of paper is actually future.
18:57
SPEAKER_01: But the Old Testament is full of predictions of this bright future where God's people will, in a sense, get to go back to the Garden of Eden, and the Lord will then dwell with them.
19:09
SPEAKER_01: And there were a number of verses that my folks had us memorize that illustrated that.
19:14
SPEAKER_01: The last verse of Psalm 23, I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
19:20
SPEAKER_01: The verse from Job 19, for I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that the last day he will stand upon the earth, and after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God.
19:31
SPEAKER_01: And that verse we preached on just a few weeks ago from Zephaniah, that one day the Lord will take delight in us and quiet us with his love and rejoice over us with singing.
19:43
SPEAKER_01: And that's the story of the Old Testament, it seemed to me, in ten words: creation, fall, judgment, promise, salvation, failure, discipline, return, restoration, paradise.
19:56
SPEAKER_01: So I sat there and looked at that sheet, and with ten words, I knew immediately it was God's will for me to go with those.
20:03
SPEAKER_01: I said, you know what's interesting is I think that's the story of my life.
20:08
SPEAKER_01: I think that's the story of all of our lives.
20:10
SPEAKER_01: I think the story of the Old Testament and the story of Israel is a story of each one of us.
20:16
SPEAKER_01: And I think you would agree with me that every life is a story.
20:19
SPEAKER_01: We sometimes, especially at Easter, have have someone stand up.
20:23
SPEAKER_01: And what I do is, you know, I say, Would you stand up on Easter morning and in five to ten minutes, would you tell us your story?
20:31
SPEAKER_01: Because every life is a story, isn't it?
20:34
SPEAKER_01: Remember when you fell in love with her or fell in love with him and you got to know them and you thought, wow, we have stuff in common.
20:40
SPEAKER_01: And then you stayed up super late, you know, and you wanted to know their whole story.
20:46
SPEAKER_01: You wanted to know, you know, which children, which of their brothers and sisters they got along well with.
20:51
SPEAKER_01: You wanted to know what they like to do at recess when they were in second grade.
20:54
SPEAKER_01: You wanted to know everything about them.
20:58
SPEAKER_01: You and I have a story.
21:01
SPEAKER_01: And that story is very important.
21:06
SPEAKER_01: About 80 years ago, Helen Keller published the book, The Story of My Life.
21:12
SPEAKER_01: We love autobiographies like this.
21:15
SPEAKER_01: Maybe the most recent one that many of you have read that we love is the story of Louis Zamperini's life, entitled Unbroken.
21:23
SPEAKER_01: Some of you have seen the movie.
21:25
SPEAKER_01: I mean, what a life, right?
21:27
SPEAKER_01: Of a boy who grows up, scrawny kid in LA, and he has a temper, gets beat up, and so his dad tells him to learn to fight, and he learns to fight, and he has quite a temper, he starts beating everybody up.
21:38
SPEAKER_01: And his older brother to settle him down in high school, gets him running, gets him on the track team.
21:42
SPEAKER_01: He turns out to be a great runner, doesn't he?
21:45
SPEAKER_01: He runs short races, then he runs long ones, and he runs so well.
21:49
SPEAKER_01: Runs such a fast mile.
21:51
SPEAKER_01: For example, he gets a scholarship to USC.
21:54
SPEAKER_01: And he does so well in the longer races.
21:56
SPEAKER_01: He gets in the Olympic team and he goes to Berlin, the Olympics in 1995.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: And even though he finishes about eighth or something, his whole life had changed.
22:07
SPEAKER_01: And then in the story of his life, you know, this this this high-temper volatile kid signs up for the Army Air Corps, becomes a lieutenant in World War II, about 1941, and becomes a bombardier.
22:20
SPEAKER_01: And then his plane, remember, gets shot, and then it crashes in the ocean.
22:24
SPEAKER_01: Eight out of the 11 of them die.
22:26
SPEAKER_01: So he and three others are on a life raft.
22:28
SPEAKER_01: And for over a month, like 47, 48 days or something, they float around with no food.
22:35
SPEAKER_01: But he survives.
22:36
SPEAKER_01: They land on the Marshall Islands and they get captured by the Japanese.
22:40
SPEAKER_01: And he's taken up to Japan and they're in a terrible concentration camp.
22:44
SPEAKER_01: And for several years, during the whole rest of the war, he gets tortured by these horrible people and develops this hate in his soul and absolute anger.
22:53
SPEAKER_01: And even after the war is over and he comes back and he marries this really sweet girl, and she's a believer.
22:59
SPEAKER_01: You know, he's waking up at nights with terrible nightmares of how he's killing in his mind.
23:05
SPEAKER_01: He's sweating and angry, and he's killing all of his Japanese captors.
23:10
SPEAKER_01: And she gets him to go to a Billy Graham crusade.
23:12
SPEAKER_01: That's his story.
23:13
SPEAKER_01: And at that Billy Graham Crusade, he moves into that fifth one.
23:17
SPEAKER_01: He moves into salvation.
23:18
SPEAKER_01: He trusts Christ as his savior.
23:20
SPEAKER_01: And then the rest of his story, the rest of his life is discovering forgiveness and then passing on that forgiveness to everyone else.
23:28
SPEAKER_01: The story is just, it's a great story.
23:30
SPEAKER_01: It's the story of his life, it's a story we know, it's a story we love, and his story ended in paradise a few years ago when Louis passed on.
23:38
SPEAKER_01: It's interesting that though the song by One Direction story of my life is actually a sad story of love lost, that in the video that they do, their song video, that the song video is really not about uh love and sad love.
23:55
SPEAKER_01: It's about their lives.
23:57
SPEAKER_01: Because you see this strange picture in the video of all of them singing, and it's in this gigantic room, and you see the room has got stuff hanging all over and it and stuff on the walls, and you can't see what it is.
24:07
SPEAKER_01: And so it starts moving in, and you're still wondering what it is, and it gets closer, you suddenly realize that what you're looking at is thousands and hundreds of thousands of photographs.
24:17
SPEAKER_01: Photographs, I don't know, of all of their lives perhaps, or maybe other people's lives.
24:24
SPEAKER_01: But certainly some of them are their lives because as the song goes on, you see them moving in and out of these photographs, and it suddenly struck me that the story of your life and the story of my life could, in a sense, be captured by a hundred thousand or a million photographs, a photograph of you coming out of mommy, and a photograph of you at one month old, and a photograph of you taking your first step, and a photograph of you going into kindergarten, and photographs of you all the way through your life.
24:50
SPEAKER_01: I walk downstairs in our house where Melody, you know, keeps the photographs of our many, many, many, many years of existence.
24:58
SPEAKER_01: They just they go, you know, floor to ceiling, you know, we're building on an addition to the house.
25:03
SPEAKER_01: No, I'm right.
25:04
SPEAKER_01: But, you know, I just started looking.
25:06
SPEAKER_01: I started going, picking up, they're in boxes and they're labeled.
25:08
SPEAKER_01: Melody's great at that with names of kids on them and the years and so forth.
25:12
SPEAKER_01: And I was looking through just million photographs this last week and thinking, wow, what a reminder, I'd completely forgotten about that.
25:21
SPEAKER_01: And you look through those photographs, and you realize that in a sense, your life is a number of snapshots.
25:29
SPEAKER_01: Your life, in a sense, is not just ten, but ten million little things that happened.
25:34
SPEAKER_01: But but you know, you could capture the story of her life, I think, still in these ten words creation, fall, judgment, promise, salvation, failure, discipline, return, restoration, paradise.
25:48
SPEAKER_01: Creation, when you were conceived and then you were born.
25:51
SPEAKER_01: But then, of course, all of us fell.
25:53
SPEAKER_01: We sinned, we're went away from God, because all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
25:59
SPEAKER_01: And all of us then have lived under judgment because the wages of sin is death.
26:04
SPEAKER_01: But there's this promise that every one of us received, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved.
26:12
SPEAKER_01: And if you've taken that step, if you've believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, then you've entered salvation.
26:18
SPEAKER_01: For by grace you were saved through faith.
26:20
SPEAKER_01: Not of yourselves, but the gift of God.
26:23
SPEAKER_01: The problem is that even though you became a son or a daughter of God at that point, and you joined the family, and I would guess that most of you are at that point, you you know that almost immediately failure becomes a part of your life.
26:40
SPEAKER_01: Even the Apostle Paul said, I don't do the good I want to do, but the evil I don't want to do.
26:47
SPEAKER_01: This I keep on doing.
26:48
SPEAKER_01: And so, of course, God disciplines you.
26:50
SPEAKER_01: For the Lord corrects and disciplines everyone whom he loves, and he punishes every son whom he accepts and welcomes to his heart.
26:58
SPEAKER_01: Hebrews chapter 12.
27:00
SPEAKER_01: And as a result, if you'll return, then you'll be restored.
27:05
SPEAKER_01: For if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sin and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
27:13
SPEAKER_01: Now, one thing, therefore, that we have to look forward to, all of us, is paradise, because God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him shouldn't perish, but shall have everlasting life.
27:27
SPEAKER_01: And that's your story.
27:29
SPEAKER_01: Not just the story of the Old Testament, but my story and your story.
27:33
SPEAKER_01: And my question to you this morning is have you gotten stuck along the way in your story?
27:40
SPEAKER_01: Have you gotten stuck along the way in your story?
27:44
SPEAKER_01: It seems to me there are two places in our story where most people tend to get stuck.
27:50
SPEAKER_01: A lot of people get stuck after the first four they're born and they fall, and there's judgment, and there's a promise, but then they get stuck.
28:00
SPEAKER_01: They haven't yet trusted Christ as their personal say, haven't yet taken that step.
28:04
SPEAKER_01: They're still trusting in them, sort of in themselves to sort of an appeal to God.
28:10
SPEAKER_01: And if there is a heaven, to get to heaven.
28:12
SPEAKER_01: And they get stuck right there.
28:14
SPEAKER_01: The other place where people get stuck, it seems to me, is after they become believers, that there's a failure and there's a discipline, and then perhaps they do return and they're restored, but then they fail again and again, and finally they just stop and they stop confessing their sins and they start losing their fervor for God.
28:33
SPEAKER_01: And you say, well, does that really happen to Christians?
28:36
SPEAKER_01: I say, of course it happens to Christians.
28:38
SPEAKER_01: God himself says, My people are determined to turn from me, Hosea 11, 7.
28:44
SPEAKER_01: And it seems to me that the more spiritual and mature you are, the more you see in yourself the tendency to get stuck there and to get on that roller coaster.
28:54
SPEAKER_01: Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the Prince of Preachers in England, in his commentary on Psalm 119, 176, on the words, I have gone astray like a lost sheep.
29:05
SPEAKER_01: Finish that sentence, I have gone astray like a lost sheep, often, willfully, wantonly, and even hopelessly, save for thy grace.
29:16
SPEAKER_01: Even now I am apt to wander, and in fact have wandered already.
29:21
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, God restore me.
29:26
SPEAKER_01: And every Christian, I think, who's honest about his life, will say that at times I've been on a spiritual roller coaster.
29:35
SPEAKER_01: I conform to the world, sin.
29:37
SPEAKER_01: I suffer God's discipline, suffering.
29:40
SPEAKER_01: I cry, help, Lord, supplication.
29:42
SPEAKER_01: And then God delivers me.
29:44
SPEAKER_01: That's salvation.
29:45
SPEAKER_01: It's the story of the book of Judges.
29:47
SPEAKER_01: It's the story of so many of us.
29:50
SPEAKER_01: Even though Einstein or someone said insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, we don't seem to be able to help it.
30:01
SPEAKER_01: And we get stuck there and we stop confessing our sins.
30:07
SPEAKER_01: But because we know better, I think Charles Finney was exactly right when he criticized us by saying Christians are more to blame for not being revived than sinners are for not being converted.
30:23
SPEAKER_01: So that's my message and that's my question.
30:25
SPEAKER_01: Where are you in the story of your life?
30:28
SPEAKER_01: Where are you along this path?
30:31
SPEAKER_01: Have you gotten to salvation?
30:34
SPEAKER_01: Have you gotten to the point of return and restoration?
30:38
SPEAKER_01: Are you on the way toward the end?
30:40
SPEAKER_01: Are you moving in the story toward paradise?
30:44
SPEAKER_01: For that's where the whole Bible aims.
30:46
SPEAKER_01: And you don't want to get stuck.
30:48
SPEAKER_01: You want to keep moving toward the climax of it all.
30:53
SPEAKER_01: If there's ever any way I can possibly shoehorn the Lord of the Rings into a message, I'll do it, of course.
31:01
SPEAKER_01: And in that in the Lord of the Rings and Minus Tirith, when it looks as though evil will conquer and evil will win, the little hobbit Pippin looks up at Gandalf as the walls are about to be broken in and says, I didn't think it would end this way.
31:16
SPEAKER_01: And Gandalf says, end?
31:18
SPEAKER_01: No, he says the journey doesn't end here.
31:22
SPEAKER_01: Death is just another path, one that we all must take.
31:26
SPEAKER_01: The gray rain curtain of this world rolls back and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it.
31:33
SPEAKER_01: Pippin.
31:34
SPEAKER_01: What?
31:35
SPEAKER_01: Gandalf?
31:36
SPEAKER_01: See what?
31:37
SPEAKER_01: Gandalf, white shores.
31:40
SPEAKER_01: And beyond the far green country, under a swift sunrise.
31:45
SPEAKER_01: Pippin says, Well, that isn't so bad.
31:48
SPEAKER_01: And Gandalf says, No, no, it isn't.
31:53
SPEAKER_01: You see, if you if you look down the road and you see paradise and you're longing for it, maybe that helps you not to stay stuck where you are.
32:03
SPEAKER_01: It was one of those nights at the Congdon household when we had four children between the ages of six and thirteen, one of those nights that I hoped God had a good sense of humor.
32:14
SPEAKER_01: Because our family devotions had turned into an utter chaos.
32:18
SPEAKER_01: And our family devotions, we would, with our four kids, consisted of three parts.
32:24
SPEAKER_01: There was the Bible, we'd read a chapter, there was singing, each of the kids would sing and lead us in a song, and then there was prayer.
32:31
SPEAKER_01: And we'd opened the Bible as the first part, and our chapter for that night had been one of those chapters out of the book of Samuel or Leviticus or something where it has some embarrassing parts in it.
32:43
SPEAKER_01: And there was a word that the boys didn't understand.
32:47
SPEAKER_01: And so they were desperate to learn the word of circumcision or such.
32:51
SPEAKER_01: And with my wife on the far couch going, you know, no, no, still I decided, being a teacher, that somehow it was wise for me to explain that word.
33:01
SPEAKER_01: Well, by the end of the time, my sweet 13-year-old girl, Adriel, had the Bible up over her face, and she was absolutely red, but the boys were hooting and they were hollering with delight.
33:12
SPEAKER_01: And so I figured, well, forget it, scratch the rest of this chapter.
33:16
SPEAKER_01: Let's move on to singing.
33:17
SPEAKER_01: In singing, we would always start with the youngest child.
33:20
SPEAKER_01: So we we started with uh Craig, who was six years old, and we'd have him go up to the piano.
33:26
SPEAKER_01: This picture was taken uh just a few nights uh away from the night I'm talking about, and you'd go up to the piano and you'd stand there.
33:33
SPEAKER_01: If you could play, you could play and lead in singing.
33:35
SPEAKER_01: Otherwise, you'd sing a song, and if you wanted everybody to sing, you'd ask everybody to sing.
33:40
SPEAKER_01: We'd start with the youngest, and so Craig started.
33:43
SPEAKER_01: But uh Craig just named the song that night, and then as we started to sing, he didn't sing, he just waved his arm like this.
33:51
SPEAKER_01: And I stopped the song.
33:52
SPEAKER_01: I said, Craig, no, I uh you can wave your arm if you want, but you have to sing.
33:57
SPEAKER_01: This is not where we sing, this is you sing.
34:00
SPEAKER_01: And so it turned out, he so he said, okay, so he started singing, but he couldn't move his arm at the same time, and because he couldn't do two things at once.
34:08
SPEAKER_01: So he finally gave up the singing and just did the arm.
34:11
SPEAKER_01: And the boys, his older brothers, were so convulsed by the idea he couldn't do both of them that they were starting to roll on the floor, and so that ruined the singing time.
34:21
SPEAKER_01: And uh we kept going, but by the end of the singing time, all four of them were marching around the living room, singing, marching in the infantry, fighting in the cavalry, shooting the artillery, and it was total insanity.
34:35
SPEAKER_01: So I moved us on to prayer, down to your knees, each one of us, starting with the youngest.
34:41
SPEAKER_01: And I thought we had re- restored a little bit of sobriety.
34:45
SPEAKER_01: When one of the boys, whose mind was completely disconnected, started his prayer like this.
34:50
SPEAKER_01: He said, Dear Lord, thank you for the food.
34:53
SPEAKER_01: Thinking we were at the supper table.
34:56
SPEAKER_01: Well, immediately somebody snorted, and then that caused the rest of us to roll on the floor, and and devotions were in effect over.
35:04
SPEAKER_01: And then it was time to wheelbarrow them downstairs to bed.
35:08
SPEAKER_01: Uh one of them kept yelling back at me as I was wheelbarrowing him down, Daddy, faster, faster.
35:13
SPEAKER_01: So I decided to go faster down the stairs, and his arms gave out, and he took the last ten stairs on his nose.
35:21
SPEAKER_01: His siblings absolutely loved it.
35:24
SPEAKER_01: His mother didn't, and and and we had to bandage his nose.
35:28
SPEAKER_01: So anyway, I throw him into bed downstairs, and I'm thinking, what a waste.
35:34
SPEAKER_01: As I, you know, I did the uh uh uh nighty night, sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite with a lot of bed bugs and so forth.
35:42
SPEAKER_01: But as I'm walking out, turning out the light, I'm thinking, what a waste of a night.
35:46
SPEAKER_01: Maybe we can do something of eternal worth tomorrow night.
35:50
SPEAKER_01: But then as I started to leave and go back upstairs, I heard a quiet little voice.
35:55
SPEAKER_01: You know, that special quiet voice that your child gives you when they're very, very serious and they care for something very, very deeply.
36:03
SPEAKER_01: And he said, Dad, um, Jesus is coming back, right?
36:08
SPEAKER_01: And I said, a little startled, especially after the hilarity of the evening.
36:13
SPEAKER_01: I said, right.
36:14
SPEAKER_01: He said, how soon is he coming back?
36:17
SPEAKER_01: I said, uh, wow, I don't know.
36:21
SPEAKER_01: Well, he said, Do you think he's coming back before I die?
36:26
SPEAKER_01: You know, when you're young and the lights go out and it's dark, you care a lot about that and you think about that, and it scares you.
36:35
SPEAKER_01: But how do you answer a question like that?
36:38
SPEAKER_01: It's such a great question.
36:40
SPEAKER_01: It's a question I ask my dad, I remember, when I was his age.
36:44
SPEAKER_01: It's a question that nags at the edge of your mind.
36:48
SPEAKER_01: Maybe death doesn't mean as much or scare you at night as much when you get older.
36:54
SPEAKER_01: After all, you realize that work is a kind of death and marriage is a kind of death, and sitting in church is a kind of death.
37:01
SPEAKER_01: And I mean, I remember I used to pray more for the Lord to return during sermons than at any other time, you know, when I was a kid.
37:10
SPEAKER_01: But I ended up giving my son the very same answer that my dad had given me so many years before.
37:15
SPEAKER_01: And I hope it comforted him the way that it comforted me when I was terrified of the specter of death.
37:23
SPEAKER_01: Uh, what I said to him was, yes, son, I think he'll come back before you die.
37:30
SPEAKER_01: I don't know that he will.
37:31
SPEAKER_01: I can't promise that he will, but if you're asking me what I think, yeah, I think he'll come back before you die.
37:39
SPEAKER_01: And that question nags at all of us at times, and that is uh, what about the end of life?
37:45
SPEAKER_01: And it's a question that God wants us to ask.
37:48
SPEAKER_01: He wants us to ask about paradise.
37:50
SPEAKER_01: He wants us in our stories to keep moving and to have that at the end of the road.
37:57
SPEAKER_01: Last Sunday after third service, I went over to visit a good friend of mine named Jack Elliott.
38:04
SPEAKER_01: Uh his children are sitting over here.
38:08
SPEAKER_01: Uh Jack and I had become friends about five years ago.
38:12
SPEAKER_01: Uh uh I saw him sitting at uh Gary's Berry's.
38:15
SPEAKER_01: His Denise had brought him to Gary's Berries, and he was sitting there at a picnic table, and I saw this really cool-looking guy.
38:21
SPEAKER_01: This man, I sat down and I got to know him.
38:24
SPEAKER_01: He hadn't been to church in years, but he was just a super guy, and so we went to Banjo's for breakfast.
38:29
SPEAKER_01: Later on, we'd go to Long John Silvers for lunch.
38:32
SPEAKER_01: He was a veteran of, he'd landed at Incheon in the Korean War.
38:35
SPEAKER_01: He'd he'd done so many things in the military, he'd gotten the Kansas National Guard Museum off the ground here.
38:43
SPEAKER_01: And so uh we'd become close and he'd started coming to church.
38:47
SPEAKER_01: God had done this wonderful work in his heart, and and he had always been an amazing man, you know, in so many ways, and then this on top of it, you know, and started bringing, you know, his his kids to church.
39:01
SPEAKER_01: And he he said last week, a couple months ago, these fibroids started growing in his lungs or something.
39:06
SPEAKER_01: He's finding it hard to breathe.
39:08
SPEAKER_01: And last Sunday he said uh he said uh you know, he's working on his obituary.
39:15
SPEAKER_01: And I I wasn't I I I wasn't very sensitive.
39:18
SPEAKER_01: I said, I um that's a good thing theoretically, basically, I said, but I'm not near ready for you to go.
39:26
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I still haven't used you know the Christmas coupon to grandys that you that we always eat together.
39:32
SPEAKER_01: I mean, and so and so I prayed, you know, over him for at least five or ten more years.
39:39
SPEAKER_01: So it was a surprise to me and a great disappointment uh when he passed on to glory this last week.
39:49
SPEAKER_01: But he said something last week that is so important for you and for me, for all of us to be able to say.
39:56
SPEAKER_01: If we have a complete story, he said, I'm I'm ready to go.
40:02
SPEAKER_01: He knew where he was going, and I know where he is today, and and so we'll see each other again.
40:12
SPEAKER_01: There's a story in the Old Testament that's the story of your life and my life.
40:18
SPEAKER_01: It starts with you being born, it moves through sin, it moves through hopefully through you trusting Christ as your savior and getting saved.
40:26
SPEAKER_01: And even then it moves through failure and hopefully it moves moves past that failure where you say, I have sinned, I confess, and you're restored.
40:36
SPEAKER_01: Because you want to keep your story moving, you want to keep it moving toward paradise.
40:43
SPEAKER_01: Seven years ago today, we lost Paul Harvey.
40:47
SPEAKER_01: Paul Harvey is well known for saying at the end of the news, Well, that's the news, and now for the rest of the story.
40:55
SPEAKER_01: And starting today, the rest of your story starts getting told.
41:01
SPEAKER_01: It's so, so important, friends, that you keep that story moving, that it not gets stuck, that your story ends in paradise.
41:13
SPEAKER_01: Bow with me in a word of prayer.
41:17
SPEAKER_01: Father, I pray for my dear friends here.
41:20
SPEAKER_01: And I thank you that there is a paradise, there is a heaven at the end of the story.
41:27
SPEAKER_01: And thank you that um that you saw this all along, that you created us out of love, you saved us out of love, you restore us out of love, and one day you will live with us eternally in love.
41:40
SPEAKER_01: Lord, look upon us as we speak to you, as we whisper to you, as we try to get unstuck by your grace in Jesus' name.
41:51
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
41:53
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for coming.