Good morning. So this one, we can all you.
Here we go. I'm going to use this one
because I'm prone to wander Lord.
I feel it. New building.
We're finally here, right? Yeah, it's amazing as it, you
know, like any project on this scale, you know, you get
everybody together and say, what do you want?
And we end up with a less like this and then we go.
Yeah. But the budget is this, right?
And then you got to try and Whittle it down to two, you
know, the priorities and all that kind of stuff, and make it
fit the budget. Some very smart people at hook
and we have done that and done an incredible job of that.
And I God has been abundantly gracious and I think that what
we've ended up with is just spectacular, I keep wandering
around the place and I think they thought of everything here,
you know, it's just great. So once we iron out all that,
all that all the bugs and make sure all the light switches work
and all of that. And when everyone is back from
holidays, we'll do a big, a big launch on February, the 12th and
Invite everybody around and and do a big big kind of public
event and it'll be really cool. There's still a few, you can see
still a little few little bits and pieces to do these.
Big Windows mother took above me here.
Need replacing, they're not windowing anymore and so when
they were replaced in these screens will go up on the wall.
And so there's lots of little bits and pieces like that, but
III Max, I'm so excited the other elders and I are very
excited really about what the future holds for us as a church.
And And as a church family in this facility.
And so I want to say a very big thank you to those who hosted
our church groups while we didn't have this facility.
You know, had lots of delays due to covid and covert supply chain
things, and, and all of that. And so it's taking longer than
we wanted. And so, thank you so much for
your perseverance. You know, there's a lot involved
in that and so I want to thank you for that.
And you know, it's true that the last couple of years Actually, I
shouldn't do this first. A happy New Year, happy New
Year. The last couple of years, it's
actually been really difficult to predict what's going to
happen next. You know, Andrew said, just
before, you know, we were going to a new year kind of look into
the Shadows. It's kind of difficult to know
what's coming up. And I've been rereading this
book that I read about five years ago, and it's called the
principle of the path. And once you a couple of points
out of that, that I thought really cool.
And the idea here is, wouldn't it be really cold if you could
predict your future, if you could predict your future?
Wouldn't that be awesome? What we're going to do is I want
to spend a few minutes kind of laying out some ideas and asking
some questions and then we'll get into Matthew 7 and we'll see
what sort of Jesus said about that, right?
And so I want to the intros got to be a little bit long.
So I don't want you to think. Is he going to use any Scripture
at all? Yeah, we're going to get there,
right? Jesus is going to answer the
questions for us, but This idea of predicting the future in
2012, our family was living in Scotland and we were doing some
church, WIll glitch planting house churches and our oldest
son, went to Bible College in the US and so we would send them
money each month about, you know, the banks charge
horrendous fees, you know, for those International transfers.
And so I was looking at trying to figure out a way to avoid
those charges, all right. And so I looked at all these
different kind of options and one of the things I Continue was
this really new thing called Bitcoin, right?
And these things cost 70 cents and you know you sort of by
these. And I thought now I can buy like
a whole bundle of those and just send them some of those every
month and then he could change them into money in the feasible
way lower than the banks are charging.
That might be an option, right? And so it sort of looked at it,
but it was kind of, I don't know was all but unknown, it was all
new and so I never bought them. They were 70 cents.
Each. This is what I looked up on
Friday. That's how much they get with
it. The moment.
Thousand two hundred and forty dollars and 89 cents.
New Zealand. Each I could put in for 70 cents
but like my wife tells me once I got to a dollar forty able to
solve them all on got. Whoa.
Double my money, huh? You know so it doesn't matter.
So I don't tell you that to tell you to buy Bitcoin don't do that
like you know like it and that's their thing's crazy right?
What I'm telling you that for is just to tell you I'm really
really bad at predicting the future.
You're right. And I think a lot of us are but
I am getting better at it right. And I think you You are too and
and this is the reason I think you're getting better at it
because all of us have said something like this at some
point, right? Why didn't I see that coming?
All right. Oh, I should have known.
That was going to happen, right? Have you ever said that?
You found yourself saying that. Maybe you haven't, but maybe
you've you've found yourself saying this.
Why didn't you see that coming? All right.
You should have known. That was going to happen.
All right. And so we're going to kind of,
you know, look at this is, you know, sometimes you know, when
you're you know, why didn't you see that coming?
It's kind of like watching a train, wreck happened, isn't it?
You know, in slow motion and you know it's just I can't believe
he broke up with me. Right.
And you think really he's been breaking up with you for three
months you know who will be when you watch it.
You know I don't know how I got in this much debt.
That is not a surprise to any of us who know you.
You know, it's just it's just been Ticking along, right?
You are able to predict their future, right?
But here's what we're going to talk about, right?
So here's a question. Why is it?
You can see what they can't see and why is it that they can see
what you can't see, you know. Here's the crazy part of this,
right? Sometimes I think we do see we
just don't want to look. Sometimes we kind of know where
this is heading you have financially or academically or
you know, was a relationship or morally or spiritually, whatever
it is, we sort of, we kind of know it.
And every now and again, somebody drops a hint or two,
right? All circumstances drop a hint or
two and we kind of go. Yeah, yeah.
See that, right? We kind of look the other way.
We kind of face the other way and we refuse to look at it,
right? It's sometimes it's a little bit
like this, right? I'm going to use the pointer
here. So we're all we wear over here
in Hamilton somewhere over this way, okay?
And so we're in Hamilton and so, just imagine for a minute, sort
of scenario where you like me, right?
And you really struggle with the cold.
And so you think this winter, right?
What I'm going to do is I'm going to go up to the Bay of
Island somewhere you know up here or maybe even further north
and that you know, maybe up to you know.
Cooper's Beach or one of those ones where you no longer knew
what those ones way up the top and just kind of get away from
the Colleen. I go to the winter list North,
right? And so you said that's, that's
kind of the plan. But I've got this chair that I
want to buy a sword on Facebook Marketplace, it's down in
Rotorua. So, I'm just going to head down
to Rotorua, and grab that chair. And you get that chair, and then
you go. Actually, I've got a cousin that
lives in taupo. I wouldn't mind just spending a
couple days with him and so. So you head down to taupo, and
then and then you Go actually, it's Gumboot day in Thai.
Happy always. Always wanted to see that,
right? So you hit down the tire, be.
All right. And before you know it you're
standing in Wellington and as a cold, southerly blowing.
And you think man, how did I get here?
This is not what I wanted to apologize.
If you visiting from Wellington. This is just this is just a
hypothetical scenario, right? Can't be Wellington on a good
day. Yeah.
And so yeah, just called something by any think?
This is not what I wanted, right?
This is not what how did I end up here?
Right. How did I how did I end up here?
And we finally arrived at this destination and we're so shocked
and surprised but the truth is you kind of saw this coming.
Yeah you kind of saw it coming you knew and you and I have the
ability in most cases probably more than we like to admit to
predict our own future. All right?
So there's some good news in this and bad news that goes with
that, right? The bad news is this start with
the bad news? My Personal problems, can't be
quickly fixed. Right, my special problems can
be quickly fixed right? If you fix a computer or in oven
or a car or something like that, you can fix them up.
Like men that this lady out east west.
We were living, is her car got T-boned right?
And they took it to the panel beaters in the panel beaters,
going to replace the panels and match the paint, and all that
sort of stuff. And you look at that and it's
like, a brand new one, right? You can't tell, right?
And that's kind of what happens, right?
We look at it and go it's like it never Ever happened.
It's like it never happened, right?
It's like it's brand new, but the thing with people is, you
know, computers have memory and stuff, but we have memories,
right? So when you fix our car or a
computer, or oven, or whatever, it can be, like, it never
happened. But God made us far more
complicated in that far, more, complex than that for far more
complex and something that, you know, can just be unplugged and
plug back in again, right? And that's a good thing.
So, in terms of personal problems, we can cope with them,
we can overcome them, we can use them teach other people, we can
use them to show a bad example sometimes right, we can decide
not to do them again but our pastors, our past right now,
becomes part of our story, a little bit for the rest of our
lives. So that's kind of the bad news,
but the good news is well, just carrying on and they just sort
of summarizing that a bit more, right?
You can't fix. It's a person like you can fix a
car or computer, right? We're it's done and it's never
going to affect you again, right?
Because we're more complicated in that, right?
But here's the good news, right? Most personal problems can be
avoided, can be avoided there. A lot of painful things in life,
that can't be avoided, you know, some stuff just happens but but
some things can be so why we want to bring extra things into
our life that will cause us more pain, right?
So this message and we're going to see this is we get into Jesus
words in Matthew 7, it's kind of based around a principle and we
have to kind of explain what is a principle because Principal is
not like a rule or a law that you can break, you know, like a
speed limit, you know, is a law and you could, you can break
that, or not break it, or whatever principles kind of a
little bit different to that. The good way to explain.
This is Archimedes. Some of you might remember
Archimedes from high school, right?
You know, the guy that jumped in the bath and then jumped out and
went Eureka right Archimedes around 250 BC and Archimedes
figured out this principle of why rocks usually a sink and
ships usually float, right? It's a lot more complicated than
that, but you know, I'm thinking back a long time to high school
but right, but it be, he worked out this principle of how these
way. This thing works.
How this thing works. So the principle is not just
kind of a law that you choose to follow or not, a principle is
something that's just their right and it affects you whether
you know about it or not, right? You think that's kind of unfair.
But, you know, that's that's kind of how principles work.
But if you understand how the principle works, You can
leverage it, right? You can, you can use it to your
advantage or you can ignore it, which will probably be a bad
thing, right? So we're going to look at this
principle of the path. And so, principal deposit is
kind of like this, right? When we get lost, we need
directions, we need to reactions and you need to know two things,
right? If you get lost, right?
What are two things? You need to know.
Shout it out. Where you are?
You got to know where you are. It's just that we've got to
figure out where you are and then what do you need to know?
Yeah, we want to go ahead directions, right?
To get to, to get to where you want to go.
When we first moved to Korea, we just sort of arrived in and
wouldn't have data on our phones yet.
And our daughter went for, I went for a walk in around the
local neighborhood and then she found out and said I'm lost,
right? And so, the first thing we had
to do is try to figure out where she was, right?
So we said, what can you see what?
I can see a pizza place. And I can see, we're trying to
figure out there and then once we worked out, wish you was,
then we could figure out how to get to her and bring her back
right to us. And that's going to kind of how
it works. Now, when people see a counselor
or a pastor and or whatever, you know, and they say look, here's
my problem right? Here's what's happening with,
you know, my marriage or my work or, you know, my alcohol
addiction or drug addiction or, you know, my career.
Or here's what's happening with my finances or whatever, that
is, whatever. The problem is the, the the
counselor or the pastor can't fix the problem.
Are they can't fix the problem. The problem was caused by
traveling in the wrong direction.
All right, so they can only provide a path that will take
you in the direction that you need to be going.
That makes sense. Yep, so but here's the thing
with it, with the principle of the path, you can be living your
life, hit it in the wrong direction, and you might be the
happiest you've ever been, you can be moving in that direction
that you don't want to be going in and have no idea.
I have no idea by the time. You know, you realize you lost
your really lost it, you know, it's going to how it works and
and sometimes you can be a living in the wrong direction
and it's not going so well. Oh well, you know he seemed like
a dream guy, right? Or this thing like a dream job
or this seemed like the most fun thing and your friends are all
jealous. But now it's looking a little
bit wobbly. Right.
You know, it was a really nice car but now you're struggling
for to pay for it and things are getting tough.
And you think, man, I need to get this fixed.
I need a solution. But there isn't a quick fix,
because you living in the wrong direction, you're moving in the
wrong direction. All right, here's the good news
though. If you change direction, things
will eventually change. If you change directions, things
will eventually change. Now, Jesus often talked about
this and Jesus tells a parable, a parable is kind of a story
that has a meaning to it. Right.
As a something to teach us this is part of what's called The
Sermon on the Mount. We Jesus is kind of teaching his
sort of go to sermon and and at the end of it, Jesus does a
summary. And he says, this is from
Matthew 7:24. And this is fairly well-known
passage. If you've been in church for a
long time, or even if you went to Sunday school, when you're
young, you probably. There's a song that goes with
it, which I'll try not to sing. Right?
But here's what he said, he said, therefore everyone who
hears these words of mine or anyone who listens to my
teaching and obeys me is wise like a person who The house on
the rock. right, so he says anyone who listens to my
teaching and does them right now, that's important, right?
You know, I think for a lot of people, you know, they're
they're a lot of people's kind of religious experience is to go
to church and feel bad about themselves so that they could
feel close to God from Fright. But that's not only says right.
He says, you know, here's these teachings and puts them into
practice and doesn't so right he said, therefore everyone who
hears these words of mine and puts them into practice will
experience, immediate relief, relationally financially
etcetera, That's not what he said but that's not what he
said. Always read your Bible, right?
I could put anything up here, right?
Yeah, it was for like, but that's how I sometimes.
I think we want to read it. We kind of want to read it like
that. There are many religious people
who will tell you we'll just just pray and boom, right?
All your problems will be fixed, right?
But you don't see Jesus teaching that right?
He invites people to live in a different direction.
He points the way 40 points the way out Matthew 7:24.
Anyone who listens to my teachings and obeys me is wise
like a person who builds a house on Solid Rock, right?
I've just highlighted a couple of words there, right?
Why is what it, what is it? What is a wise person, right?
When you kind of get into it, you get into especially the Old
Testament. Solomon had a lot to say about
that. He was very wise, a wise person,
may not necessarily be a smart person.
Like they might be. I met some very smart people who
weren't very wise, all right. They may not be even that
talented, right? But a wise person is just
somebody that understands that things are connected, right?
The things are connected that our, that our past affects our
present and our prison is a good predictor of our future, right?
And all these, all these things kind of connect together.
The wise person, right? Is like a person who builds A
house, right builds. It's a process.
It takes time, right? We should.
We can see there. And I saw that it's taking more
time than we wanted. But, but it's a process right to
build something to build a house.
We are renovating the house just across the are, right?
It's it takes time. Takes time to do these things.
Now, in this Parable house is kind of a is like a life.
But it's your relationships, it's your money, it's your
hobbies, it's anything. That's important to you.
So, building on a rock right, building on right now, in the
first century, this was really difficult.
This was the hard way, this was the really difficult way, right?
So Paul Tim Randall, in Jonathan Linton working on the house over
there. They got those saber sores and
those things are amazing. Right piece of wood, you know
steel pole. Yeah that's cut through
anything, right? Damages for lunch just, you
know, whatever you want. That's these amazing bright in
the first century, none of that, right?
So when you're building on a ride, you're talking about
chiseling, it out of stone takes a long time.
That's the hard way. That's the expensive way, right?
But in the story, he also talks about a second person in verse
26 says this but anyone who hears my teaching and ignores it
is foolish like a person who builds a house on sand All
right, so a foolish person opposite of a wise person,
right? Foolish person lives their life
like it's disconnected like life is disconnected that now and now
is now, and later is later. And nothing's going to happen,
but even if it does, I'll just unplug myself.
I'll just count to ten and I'll put myself back in and it'll be
good, right? I'll just restart.
I'll be fine. I'll just remarry or I'll just
get a new job or all get a new hairstyle.
I'll declare bankruptcy, you do it'll be fine, right?
But that's not how life works, right?
We understand that, right? That's not how life works.
And so our heavenly father who made ourselves look, you're not
like a toaster or a, or a car or computer, you more complicated
there than that. You are very precious and so
there's not an instant fix, but I'm giving you a change of
direction, right? Building a house on Sand, right?
And so this is the quick in the cheap in the immediate way.
But everyone and listening to the story knows that the story
is not going to end well, right? And the foolish person thinks
well the weather tomorrow will be the same as the weather today
but it's very solid. Ms. And in this case, it wasn't
this 27. When the rains and the floods
came and the wind's beat against that house, it will fall with a
mighty crash and it's almost it's almost killing me.
Not to sing the song. You Know rains came down and
floods him. Yeah the implication here is
that there is no quick fix. So hey can you fix this?
My house fell down. Can you fix this?
It's like, no, we just have to do what you probably should have
done to begin with, but we have to rebuild old.
With the rebuild. You can't instantly fix a house,
right? It's going to take time now we
have to do what you really should have done from the
beginning. You really should have seen this
coming. You really should have seen this
coming. When the rain came down in the
wind beat against the house, you know?
I we do this and I do this sometimes, you know, we catch
ourselves doing this, we go, you know, the rain came down and the
floods came up and and that house on the rock Stood Still
because they were so lucky. You know that we would we do
that. When we go on man, things just
work out for him. Things just always work out for
her, you know, not me, you know, I think maybe God doesn't love
me, you know, you ever catch yourself in that mode.
And Jesus like, come on, you know, that's not how things
work, you know, that's not how things work.
We jump back to verse 25. This is this and the rain
descended and the floods came and the winds blew and they beat
on that house and it did not fall for it was founded on the
rock. In this story, The Rock
represents doing the things that Jesus said to do.
Doing the things, the way Jesus said to do them, right?
It's cause and effect, right? Sowing and reaping, it's the
principle of the path, right? And I love the way the story
ends up, right? Jesus, just finished.
Preaching this long message and it says this is number 28 since
after Jesus finished speaking. The crowds were amazed at his
teaching for he taught as one who had real Authority quite
unlike the teachers of religious law.
You know it's it's heartbreaking.
We all know this, right? It's heartbreaking.
This is to watch someone living their life in a direction that
you know, is not going to get them where they want to go.
Right, it's not going to get them the life they want.
It's not going to bring them the joy that they're seeking.
Because we know this, right? We can't wish our way.
We can't talk our way. We can't.
Pray our way back in time. So, the principle of the path is
simply this. Direction.
Determines destination. Direction.
Determines destination. The best way to predict your
future is to pay attention to where you're headed.
Right now, we've all been on tracks, we've been heading in
the wrong direction many years ago, I was down at Dunedin and
outside of fish and chip shop and it was a no, you turn Zone
and there was a lady park outside the fish and chip shop,
and she just did a big U-turn right in front of a motorbike
bang. He hit the side of that car and
he went over the Bonnet and and we were sort of watching this.
You know, how you see it. And it kind of goes into slow
motion and think of this is not going to be good.
Fortunately, he was okay. He just turned out, he just
bought about a hundred dollars worth of fish and chips for a
party. So he had all these fish and
chips, stuffed fish, and chips saved his life, right?
Is there anything that fish and chips can't do so.
He was actually okay. But the woman you know, when it
happened got it and she was distraught right?
And none of the people watching this looked at that woman went
well why does she expect she should have seen this coming
right she got what was coming right?
Nobody thought that right? Everybody's very upset for this
woman and it's the same that's the way God.
Feels about us as well, right? We take these wrong turns, we go
in the wrong direction, right? And God really cares, right?
Because like, you know, just like for us, you know, it breaks
your heart when you see someone living their life in the
direction that, you know, is not going to get them the, the life
that they want, right? And it's the same for God, and
that's why he invites us to change our Direction and follow
him. Yep, there's a good
old-fashioned word. It's just going to become a
religious word now, but it's the word, repent, and repent.
Simply means turn, around, turn around.
And so, maybe you've been hitting in a different direction
from God, and you've never connected with God, right?
You'd a new year, right? Good time.
Turn around connect with God. So, you're sorry, right?
He's a forgiving God, he's compassionate God.
Make that connection, maybe you've done that but, you know,
maybe you're just you've gone off on a track on a direction
that you kind of know, but you kind of ignoring it, you kind of
think. Yeah.
And some of your friends are kind of dropping hints.
And circumstances are dropping hints.
You know, but just kind of not looking right heading in the
wrong direction and you kind of know it and it's not going to
end. Well, it's not going to get you
the life that you want new day. New Year.
Right? Good time to turn around.
Get back on that track Direction.
Determines destination Direction.
Determines destination. Let's pray.
Father, we thank you so much for your loving grace to us for the
fact that you are a compassionate.
God. The fact that you you care,
intensely about us more than we can know.
And we just we thank you for that and we just sort of stand
in all of just who you are. Lord, thank you for this amazing
opportunity to be here this morning in this building for the
first big service. Lovely.
Thank you for Yeah you blessing Your Grace fourth, the people
that you've blessed us with that that have all the knowledge and
the skills to make this stuff happen.
Lord, we look forward to this this new year and we know
there's going to be some incredible highs.
There's also going to be some very difficult times but thank
you for just the comfort of knowing that you're with us Lord
help us to admit when we're off track to realize it, in turn
back to you, Lord. Thank you again.
Yeah, like to say, for your, for your, your forgiveness and that
you love the so much. You sent your only son to die to
get that forgiveness for us. We thank you for that Lord.
Thank you for our church family here at Oak Noe and Lord.
Thank you for you know just the joy of corporately worshiping
you together. There's just something about
that and they're just being able to sing together this morning.
It was incredible to be able to remember you through the Lord.
So their Lord, we thank you for that Lord as we go through this
year Lord we just pray for each of us as individuals that we
will seek you out and as a church family that will seek you
out as well and seek to do what you want us to do and impact the
community and the world around us and we just pray these things
in Jesus name, amen.