All right, well, welcome, Calvary Chapel.
I'm going to pray and we're going to give you my testimony,
which a lot of you may have heard just from being in the
groups and stuff, but some of you haven't.
I kind of felt like the Lord was going to allow me to do that
cautiously because, you know, we're up here to preach the
Word. But the testimony is what God
has done in my life. So let's pray, you know, as
secure. I'm security in this church and
I pray with my eyes open all the time for you guys.
So just be mindful of that. But anyway, we had Lord, we come
before you today humbly asking for your hand to be upon us.
As always. We can't get out of our minds
our brothers and sisters that we know that are hurting.
We have Dave Reynolds daughter Grace bicycle accident had
surgery where we pray that you would continue to touch her and
heal her. Our sister Deb Rossovic lost her
mom couple days ago where we lift her and her family up to
you Lord that you would as always.
You're always with us Lord that you would touch them.
We pray for Deb de Zembo who works in a nurse.
She had a knee replaced and Lord again, you know, you, you touch
us all, you heal us all, or we ask for your hand upon her.
And thank you for the report we got from Ruby with her cancer.
Lord, we just, we just thank you for your, your goodness in all
things, Lord, for today on our, on our body, Lord, that you
would be glorified and, and what we do here, Lord, you're
glorified in the worship, Lord, and, and in your word, Lord, and
we just thank you for your faithfulness to us always.
And we just thank you in Jesus name, Amen.
So I'll, I'll tell you a little about a little bit about who I
am and try not to take too much time with that, but there is a
clock there and I'll be mindful that as best I can.
And I wasn't sure how much to prepare because I don't know how
long it would take me to do or say what I So you could be here
for two hours, you could be here for 15 minutes.
I don't know. We'll see how it works.
I'll get you out in time. So I've been part of this church
for 26 years. I had to ask my wife that
because again, I don't keep track of stuff really well.
She told me 26 years. I'm an elder here.
I teach a men's Bible study in the front for at 9:15 in the
morning for guys that can come, me and Tom Brubaker and and
Steve Eichelberger, we'll teach that.
I, I always put that out to guys.
You're, you're more than welcome to come.
It's just guys, we're going verse by verse through the
Bible. We're in Colossians and it's,
it's good. It's, it's a time for us to have
fellowship. It's our discipleship.
These guys disciple me. You know, iron sharpens iron,
you know, because when you're not that sharp, you get
sharpened. And these guys are great guys.
I love your, your husbands that come and husbands, sons and
whoever can come. But you know, I always say, if
you got, if you're a man here and you got a bunch of kids and
you got a wife and you got issues, you, you need to take
care of that before you come to Bible study.
You need to be with your wife Sunday morning and help her get
the kids. So don't ever feel pressured to
have to come to something like that.
You do what the Lord tells you to do.
You need to take care of your family and but you know, most of
us sitting back are older guys. So we're past a lot of that.
But so I told you, I'm I'm the youth leader right now along
with my son Sam helping out and maybe some other guys and gals
as time goes on. I'm also, like I said on
security. We do have the armed security
here as best we can do. We're going to get more
training, but we are here to defend you, protect you no
matter what. And you saw what happened here
last week and I think it was Minneapolis.
It's it's horrifying to me to think that somebody would do
that to people. But you know, I don't want to
get real involved with all that. But it disturbs me greatly when
the Chief Police says I can't understand this or we didn't
have any cause to suspect him. They're like no hints with
mental illness. And I'm like, he's a guy
identifying as a woman. He's got mental and spiritual
problems. He should not been allowed to
have a weapon. But when your culture says it's
OK to be that way, then that's what's going to happen.
And I don't hate those people at all.
They need to come and they need to find Jesus and they need to
get their life straightened out because it's, it's just not
right. You know, it's, it's not right
and things like that happen. But you know, I feel horrible
for those families and those kids.
But we, we will do everything in our power to protect you here as
best we can with our lives. OK, so I was saved when I was 8
years old, you know, one of those deals where my dad put me,
put me to bed and asked me if I wanted to ask Jesus into my
heart. And I did.
And I believe that at that time, I was his.
I don't ever remember a time in my life where I felt like God
was away from me or didn't want me.
I had a godly mother and father. I that's just the way I lived.
I, I can't ever remember not wanting to be in church.
You know, I, I was always wanting to be in church.
And Wednesday night, it's different.
Like a lot of kids didn't want that.
And I always told people that I was 50 years old when I was 12.
I always felt like I was old. Now I look in the mirror.
I feel like I'm 16 years old. And I look in the mirror and I'm
like, man, that's long gone. You know, I need to bend down to
pick something up. And a couple times in the last
two months, I hit the floor because my something happened in
my back right down on the floor. So 16 is long gone.
A biggest part of my life besides my parents is I, I went,
I worked at a camp when I was a kid.
I went there from the time I was 8 till I was 15.
It was a Christian Boys Brigade camp, sort of.
I don't know. We had a stockade, A flagpole.
They blew revelry and taps and you had to line up in formations
and we had captains, sergeants, corporals, and, but it was
teaching you godly things, teaching you crafts.
And then when you got older, you, you got to go to get
training for that. So I did that and it was sort of
like a boot camp where we, we ran 3 to 5 miles every day.
We swam for 1/2 hour every day. We had Bible study.
We had to learn how to take care of horses, learn how to use
weapons, take, you know, teach kids how to shoot bows.
We worked in the kitchen. We just learned everything about
the camp because we were training to serve.
And when I became 16, I did that.
It was a several week program. And I'm not the kind of person
that that just likes to hike to nowhere.
And involved in that training was these 20 mile hikes on the
Appalachian Trail, like 4 days, 80 miles, full pack.
And back then we didn't have good packs.
They had bad shoes. And you know, we hiked them
kids. And I hated that because I don't
hike to nowhere. If I hike, there's a fishing
pond at the end of it or an elk on a mountain somewhere.
I'm hiking for a purpose. And that hike in the nowhere,
like my son Daniel plays the bass.
He, you know, he likes to hike and take pictures and all that.
I got to have something at the end of that hike besides the
pitcher, You know, I mean, I love the scenery and everything,
but. But anyway, we did that.
We, we canoed them for miles on the Allegheny River, mostly to
test them to see what they're made of because these were the,
these are going to be corporals in charge of your, your, you
know, your kids at the camp. So they, they put me through
that. And then I in turn with another
fellow put them through. I, I did the training after that
for two years. I was part of the leadership
growth program to train these guys to be counselors.
So we had to get them in shape. They had to get an advanced life
saving card. I mean, Francis, I think, got
one of them or was working on that.
So you got to swim because you had to work the pool too.
You had to be a lifeguard. So I was a lifeguard for a
while. But that formed a lot of good
things in my life, a lot of good relationships, and helped to
take some of the things out of my life that didn't need to be
there. Because even though you're saved
at 8 years old, sin is always creeping at the door, right?
Sin is always there. And the Bible says to not let
sin reign in your mortal body. So that won't be master over
you. And I was taught, you know, by
my dad at a young age to read proverbs.
You know, you hide the word of God in your heart so that you
won't sin against them. All the different scriptures
poured in there, but sin is still there and going through
programs like that and camp and all that just, it made, made
more of a man out of me than I guess I would have been left
onto my own because given to my own devices, I wouldn't have
been there. I, I worked in a shoe repair
shop for five years in Greengate Mall.
I don't know if you guys ever remember that I was in there
fixing shoes when I went to school college.
I went to Pitt and got a degree in administration of justice.
I wanted to be a policeman, but went and did an internship in
Edgewood and, and was it was so boring at the time.
I just couldn't handle it. I wanted Miami Vice, you know,
the TV stuff and it was all paperwork and I could do it now
really good. But that's that's where I was
out that I also when I was 14 years old, I started doing
taxidermy work. I saw an ad in the back of a
magazine and I got the books on how to do it.
And I've been doing that for 51 years.
I asked God as a young man to give me the ability to be able
to do that, You know, 14 years old, I, you don't know, but I
really enjoyed it. And to this day I'm still doing
that. I still enjoy it.
I love the work. It's provided extra money for
the family and just I'm the kind of person like I love you guys.
I love being at church. This crowd I love, but I don't
like big crowds. And if you left me to my own, I
would sit in my basement and work like 1620 hours a day.
I'm good with that. But the Lord doesn't want that.
He wants you out amongst people. But I'm, I'm, I'm not a big
crowd person like concerts and things like that.
The only big crowds I like is this you guys and the Pastors
conference. I love the pastors conference.
You know, 1200 guys singing and worshipping is awesome.
I worked at Westinghouse Electric for 39 years.
I was a inspector for 25 years or more, very boring, mindless
job, very boring. But I did it to pay my bills,
right? We got to work.
You got to pay your bills. If you don't work, you're and if
you don't work and you can work and you're not taking your
family, you're worse than an infidel, The Bible says worse
than an unbeliever. So I had to work and I did the
job and I had a lot of good relationships with a lot of
people there, made a lot of friends.
But the last 10 years of work, I, I got a technician's job,
Best job I ever had in there. I had it for 10 years.
It fit me as who God made me. You know, when you get tests,
when you're in middle school, they test you to see where you
are. I think it was middle school.
I found the paper when my mom passed away.
My sister gave it to me. We're laughing because it has
here I'm just an average guy. Average, average.
Average comes the spelling, 20%. You know, I can't spell cat, you
know, terrible. But then it went in one spot.
I was 80%. So I'm looking at it.
And I never saw that thing before.
I think my mom was embarrassed to show me, you know, But the
80% was, I don't remember the exact words of it, and I
couldn't find a paper. But it had something to do with
these reasoning and technical skills.
Well, my parents didn't know anything about my dad said, you
know, go to college, but I had the technical things in me.
So when I get this job at work, it's all technical.
I'm making standards, setting up machinery, ultrasonic test on
dimensions and stuff, testing things down to A10 thousandths
of an inch. That's like if you took your
hair and pulled it out, it's, I think your hair is like 3000.
So you'd have to split it 30 times to get a 10,000.
So we're running these tubes through and, and here's this
guy, here's this dummy and they're setting them up.
And I can't spell the words, but I can set it up, you know, and
I, I enjoyed the work for 10 years.
It was a great blessing. It was, it was my ministry, my
mission with my Co workers and friends there.
The God puts us all in places, work, family, retirement, not
retired. He gives us mission wherever we
are. You don't have to be in Peru or
Haiti or the Dominican. I've been there.
I've, I've went on mission trips.
I loved it, but I never felt called to live there.
I felt called to live here, work in the factory, work in my shop,
come to church, serve you guys and to love you guys.
And, but work was good and you know, I survived that whole
aspect of it. I met my wife when I was at Pitt
when I was getting my degree and I asked her to marry me one
month after I met her. I don't recommend that for
people, but it worked out really good for me and we were engaged
for three years. I also don't recommend that.
That is that's just stupid torture.
You know, you want to marry someone, you don't have a dime,
you know, any money. And I think my parents should
have said, you're in love with this girl, you're going to
marry, just get married, move in with us or something because
three years. And when we got married, we were
both virgins. So three years, terrible thing
to do to a person. Terrible.
Don't do that. So back to high school.
So I went to Hemfield High School.
I graduated in 1979. I think in my graduating class
there was 600 some people in there.
And I was kind of the middle average guy, except they
couldn't spell just the middle guy.
And I wasn't super athletic and I wasn't super smart.
So I was just the regular middle of the road guy.
But I had friends that I had from, you know, grade school and
middle school and in the high school I lost most of them
because, you know, they went a different way.
I was going to do what the Lord wanted me to do.
And I I just didn't do the, the drinking and the pot smoking.
And he's not perfect. He's still, you know, you look
back on regrets and things, but the Lord kept me out of a lot of
that stuff. And I mean, that's what you want
for your kids, right? You don't want me up here
telling you I did all these terrible things.
I did a lot of bad, mischievous things.
But you prefer your kids live and do what you want them to do,
what God says, what the word of God says.
But you know what? I love it when someone comes up
here and says, I was into this stuff and the Lord took me out
of that. I mean, it's awesome because God
saves us whenever he chooses to. And I fully believe that if he
wouldn't have saved me at 8 years old, I would have been a
disaster. I mean, I would have hurt a lot
of people. I just know it because you know,
what's in your heart like that, that that bad part of us in
there. God pushes it away.
But there's that potential in there.
And God kept me away from all those things because I always
wondered what holds people back. I know what held me back.
But for unbelieving people, to me, a lot of them are tame.
And I'm like, what holds them back?
Well, God held me back. He had to.
And so I lose all these friends. I was never unfriendly with
them. I just wasn't close friends with
them anymore. So when I left high school, I
had one friend left, Christian friend, good friend, not the
acquaintances. And he went to another school
and him and I are still friends. And I met friends after that
through different things. My buddy Pete that I hunt with,
I've known him for a long time. And Pastor Jeff up in Warren, I
met through Pastor Clark at a conference and we hunt elk
together and his son and my sons.
And you know, I have lots of friends, but and in high school,
I wasn't mean, I wasn't mean to people.
You find the 1979 Hempfield yearbook and you'll find me in
there. I think there might be one
picture, but it says I was runner up for most courteous.
So that tells me that I wasn't, I wasn't mean to people.
So I was like, I guess I was nice, but you know, I just, I
didn't have the close friends because of, you know, the
lifestyle that we choose to do. It's just you have decisions to
make. And that carried on into my
adult life. I got to go to Japan and Korea
for work for a couple weeks. Again, they needed some stuff
inspected and they picked me and another person because they
thought we would morally not shame the company, you know?
And so they send us over there and we're just grunts working in
a factory. We're not engineers, you know,
we're just, I tell you, I'm just, there's the middle and
there's the spelling and backup. But they send us over there and
we got all these business meetings with engineers, really
smart people and one guy from work, smart guy, nice to be
with. But you get in these meetings
and in Japan, they do a lot of drinking and smoking and stuff
like that. And I did have a couple of
drinks with the guys and I don't even drink, you know, but I
drank a couple drinks with them. And the one guy said to me,
perhaps you'd like one of our women.
And I'm like, no, I'm, I'm married.
And he said, you're married even here in Japan.
And I said, yes, I am married, you know.
And again, there's a language barrier there, but they got the
point. Not to be mean, but you know,
I'm married. I went on a hunting trip one
time with an older guy. You know, he's 30 something.
I'm like 20 years old in college.
We drive down to Delaware. I have my dad's car and he we
get there and the first thing he wants to do is he wants to go to
a House of ill repute and Smyrna, DE And I looked at him
and I'm like, you're married and you got two kids.
You got this beautiful wife, two kids.
I said, I am not going there and you're not taking my car, you
know, and of course, you know, find out years later he's
divorced and all that kind of stuff.
But God calls us to be a certain way and we're saved no matter
where we are. I had someone asked me one time,
the lady at work said, you know, you say all these things.
You say the Bible says this and that, but you're not like you're
just like everyone else. You said if if I put a a
beautiful naked woman in a room, kids hold your ears.
Put a beautiful naked woman in a room and I put you in there and
nobody would ever know it. And you'd, you'd, you'd, you'd
do this or that. And I said, no, I wouldn't.
I'm not accountable to you. I'm accountable to God.
I'm not going to do it. And she said, you're a liar.
And I said, well, you can think that, but I'm, I'm not, I mean,
I'm not perfect, but I'm not going to do that.
I don't want to do that. I was going to read something to
you out of Peter here. And again, you have to excuse me
if some of my stuff's like a little scattered, but Peter,
chapter 4, you don't have to turn to these things because
I'll, I'll read them to you. You know what I was going to
say. There isn't that, but there is.
I was in the wrong book here. OK, let's see, I had this verse
right now, says there in verse 7 in chapter 4.
First Peter, the end of all things is near.
Therefore, be of sound judgment and sober spirit for the purpose
of prayer. Above all, keep fervent in your
love for one another because love covers a multitude of sins.
Be hospitable to one another without complaint, as each one
has received a special gift, enjoy it, employ it, and serving
one another has good stores of the manifold grace of God.
Whoever speaks is to do so as one who is speaking the
utterances of God. Whoever serves is to do do so as
one who is, who is serving by the strength which God supplies,
so that all things, so that in all things God may be glorified
through Jesus Christ, to whom belongs to glory and dominion
forever and ever. If you go back before that,
though, in verse 3, it says for the time already passed is
sufficient for you to have carried out the desire of the
Gentiles, having pursued a course of sensuality, less
drunkenness, carousing, drinking parties and abominable
idolatries and all this, they are surprised that you do not
run with them into the same excesses of dissipation and they
malign you, but they will give an account to Him.
So you get maligned, you get made fun of when you don't do
the things that the world wants you to do.
But I would tell you that you got to do what God calls you to
do, especially young people, you know, So I tell these young kids
all the time. One girl even said, you know, I
get tired of you talking about we were in Proverbs for a while
and every other verse was about the immoral woman and man.
And, you know, I felt bad in a sense because I got to keep
pounding this. But that's like the biggest
problem with people. I mean, look what the apostles
told the Gentile believers. Simple.
Hey, this is what we're telling you.
Abstain from sexual immorality and meet sacrifice from idols.
In other words, stay away from immorality and stay away from
the world. And that's our, our call to, to
all of us, myself, all of us and our children to stay away from
that kind of stuff. God has a better purpose for us,
you know, So when we come here, when Pastor Clark or Lewis or
myself or one of the guys on Wednesday night, we're teaching,
it's the same stuff. It's over and over again because
we need to keep hearing it till the day we die.
Pastor Chucko, he said if it's new, it's not true.
If it's true, it's not new. You're going to hear the same.
Now, it might be new if you never heard it before, but if
you've been in a word, you're going to hear the same stuff
over and over again because we got a message for you.
Follow the Lord and when you mess up, he's full of grace and
mercy and love and he forgives you.
I was telling the guys this morning, I was listening to
Pastor John Corson the other day and he was talking about our sin
and how good, you know, we know God has forgiven us for past sin
and we know that he'll forgive us for everything in the future
because we're his, right? And he paid the price for us.
But he said, you know, he's forgiving you.
He's forgiven you while you're in a course of sinning.
And that struck me because it's like when we look at our kids,
we we forgive their past sin. Well, we know we'll forgive them
in the future, but while they're sinning, that's hard to deal
with. And God deals with it.
His Son paid the price for that sin.
He forgives us while we're doing it.
That's grace upon grace. And you know, Paul said that,
you know, with all that grace, you know what stops us from just
taking liberty with that and sinning?
And Paul said, may it never be that we would do that.
A God that would lay his life down for me and for you and
sacrifice himself like that for people that are against him and
often times hate him. And he, he loves us so much that
he forgives us no matter what. So I'm, I'm forgiven all the
time and it doesn't give me license to sin because I don't
want to do that. And you know that too.
As a Christian, the minute you think something wrong, God has
that touch in your brain. Hey, you shouldn't have done
that. The minute you say something
wrong, he catches you. I told the guys, you know,
probably told the kids too, was there was protesters when we
were coming in, might have been even coming in for Bible school.
There was some protesters up at the courthouse holding all kind
of ridiculous signs. And I, for whatever reason, I
rolled the window down and I hollered at them losers.
They did lose. But I shouldn't have done that.
And I, you know, I thought about that.
Why did I do that? I couldn't have, you know, best,
like Pastor Lewis said, keep your mouth shut, you know,
because once you let it out, it's too late.
And I thought, what if that was one of you guys?
I just called you a loser. I have to talk about that after
church. If you were there in the crowd,
you know, I'll explain it. But, you know, you just don't
want to do that. We got to watch what we say.
We slow to speak. So anyway, I tell you those
things about myself so that, you know, saved at 8 years old.
But still, we're all so imperfect and when you're, when
you get saved, when you're young, you tend to look at other
people that are smoking the pot and drinking the beer and you
start to look down on them and you start to think you're better
than them. There's that self righteousness
in there and I, I'm sure I had that.
I don't remember a lot of those days, but I can see, look back
and think maybe people thought that about me.
And but the older you get, you start to realize, here's your
walk. You start down here at 8 years
old or 38 years old or 78 and you're climbing up towards,
you're pressing for that high call what God wants you to do.
But there's always some dips in there.
So I go back to when I was 8 years old and thinking about
those people. It's, it's such a wrong thing to
think those were friends, family.
The things aren't right, but God loves those people and he loves
the people that I worked with. And for all the faults, you
know, we have a different message to him.
It's not that I'm better than you or anyone else.
I'm a Sinner saved by God's grace.
And that's the message that we have to give people.
I had a friend at work who asks me all the time I worked with
them for. He was probably there 15 years.
He was in a tech job with me. Really nice guy, really smart
guy, way smarter than me. But he was living with his
girlfriend and we'd been talking on like I had my Bible on my
desk. I had all my different stuff
pinned up there. People knew I was a Christian.
Yes, they could convict me of being a Christian at work.
The evidence was there. I was going to jail, but he
would ask me, am I going to go to hell for living with my
girlfriend? And I always told him, no, you
go to hell for rejecting Jesus Christ as your savior.
But I said, are you asking me if that's right or wrong?
And I said it's absolutely wrong.
This is what it's called in a Bible.
It's called fornication. You, you not to have relations
with a woman till you're married.
And you know, he's, I'm still friends with them.
But he asked me that a lot of times.
I was never mean to him. He, he knows and knew that I
loved him and you know, I would do whatever for him.
But you still have to speak the truth, right?
Just like with this crazy person that shot these people.
It's not loving to tell people you're OK when you're not.
It's not loving to condone transgenderism and homosexuality
and bring them into church and tell them, you know, we're all
God's children, we're all part of this and you're OK.
It's not OK. God loves you, but He wants
something better for you. And it's very unloving to let
people go and not hear the word, to condone things that are evil
and not speak of it. And it's to be done in love
again. I, I had friends at work that
were lesbians and I never hated any of them.
But they knew that I disagreed with the way they lived.
And when I got to talk to them, I would tell them, because it's
not what God wants for you. It's destructive.
And it was evidenced by, you know, their lifestyles.
You know, there's all kind of crazy things that happen, but
getting down to what I really wanted to talk about today is
and I'm never going to get it all done, I'm sure.
But I come to church here to serve, to be with you guys.
I don't know all your names. Even if you tell me your name 10
times, I might forget it because I'm it's just, it's just not
there, but your faces. So I see you all.
I love you all. I'm greatly encouraged by you
all. I feel bad for people that that
can't come to church. There are people that cannot
come. I get that.
I feel bad for people that can come and don't come.
You know, if you look in Hebrews chapter 10, you guys all know
this verse. And this is not to bring
condemnation on anybody, but it is for me, because I know even
on days where I might not feel like coming to church, the Bible
gives us a command, right? It's Hebrews chapter 1019, Dawn
says. Therefore, brethren, since we
have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of
Jesus, by a new and living way which he inaugurated for us
through the veil that is his flesh, and since we have a great
high priest over the House of God, let us draw near with a
sincere heart in the full assurance of faith, having our
hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience.
Thank God for that and our bodies washed with pure water
again, thank you, Lord, let us hold fast the confession of our
hope without wavering for he who promises faithful and let us
consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds.
I mean, that's what happens when I come in here with you guys,
especially with the guys, like in the in the men's breakfast,
you know that one of the guys teaches and John Leeds worship
and we talk, we discuss Proverbs.
That's what happens in Bible studies.
And I'm sure in the ladies Bible studies and all the studies,
we're stimulating each other to love and good deeds.
We're talking about the word of God, how it applies in our lives
and what a difference it makes. And I have to have that.
So I have to come here to be with you.
I can study on my own. When I'm in my workshop, I'm
listening to our radio station. If I work 8 hours, I get 8 hours
of Bible teaching and music in there.
If I would work 16 hours a day, which I really can't anymore,
you know, too many things going on, but I would do that.
But it's still not the same as sitting down face to face with
you guys and having that fellowship.
And it isn't that I got to run up and give you a hug or
anything like that. It's your face and your
presence. You know, I come in again, I
come in on a Wednesday night and Gina's up here and maybe
Daniel's over there and they're practicing.
They start worship and I look and there's like 2 people and
then, you know, I go do other stuff and I look and then
there's 20 or whatever, how many come and that's, you know,
whatever God brings, that's fine.
But what I'm, what I get out of that is here's, here's these two
or three so faithful to come in here and worship the Lord.
Whether anyone shows up or not, they're going to worship.
But it's great pleasure when you come in and there's people and
you get to talk to them and see them.
It's encouraging. So I'm, I'm sure it's
encouraging for the pastor, pastors and those.
When I teach on Wednesday night, I'm OK with like 10 people.
I'm OK because afterwards we get to discuss things.
That's the benefit of Wednesday night.
We're teaching through the Psalms.
When we stop, you got time to ask questions.
Like there's no time today, but you got time to ask questions.
And I love that. That's why I like with our men's
Bible study and, and the men's breakfast, we get the time to
talk and we get to, you know, stimulate us to love and and
good deeds. So it says to stimulate one
another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling
together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one
another. And all the more as you see the
day drawing near. So the day is drawing near and
we don't know when Jesus is coming back.
Could be any day, right? We believe that Jesus could come
any day and we got to be ready for that.
And I want to be encouraged and I want to be with you guys.
When I go away. I, I hate to leave my family and
I don't like not being at church when I come back.
I'm at church like I'm leaving Friday.
I'm going elk hunt. And oh, happy New Years by the
way. September 1st is the new year
for people who hunt. January 1st is meaningless.
September 1st is the first day of dove season.
I know if we're little doves, but it's dove season.
So for a person that hunts January, I could, I could go to
bed at 9:00 on New Year's Eve. I don't care when September
starts. It's the new year for me and I'm
going hunting. So I'm, I'm going, I'm going out
to Colorado with my older boy Daniel that plays the drums and
my buddy Pastor Jeff and his boy and a bunch of other guys that
will meet up out there and just enjoy the time and getting away
and being up in the mountains and chasing elk.
One of the simple pleasures in life.
You know, my, my buddy Pastor Jeff, he says that we're driving
out last year, you know, and he says almost like almost apology.
He says, you know, so I have to tell you, I really love this.
And I said, well, I do too, but he's a pastor and he can't say
that he loves something else besides the Lord.
And I said, there's a difference.
I don't love El Cunton more than I love the Lord.
I don't love El Cunton more than I love my wife, but it's just
something we do. I love it, but there's a lot of
different words for love. We only have one, you know,
there's a lot of different meanings for it.
And I said, it's OK, man. I, I really, I love it too, but
I love the Lord more. I love my wife more, my kids
more, but I still go, I, I don't like to leave.
I don't like to leave my wife and my kids, but, but we go.
So if you got a hunting license, happy New Year, good weather's
coming. We thank the Lord for the, the,
the good weather. So I'm going to go over to
Colossians and I know I'm not going to get through all this
stuff. I, I really wanted to talk to
you today mostly about our love for one another and how it's
evidenced in the way we get together, the way we serve one
another. Like Brad and you know, with the
kids and all the workers over there helping the Bible school
thing. I was blessed by the teens that
came out and helped, you know, so there's a lot of maturity in
these young people to come and serve, to give up their time.
I was blessed by that. You know, Pastor Lewis talked
about and James about true religion.
I think he got to that part. But this is true religion that
you take care of widows and orphans in your in their
distress and you remain unstained by the world.
Stay away from the bad things of the world.
But look out for the the least of these, right?
You have John and Kelly go to the old folks homes and those
are the least, you know, they've been there alone.
Great ministry you have Dave and Dana adopted a couple little
girls from a broken home, taking care of orphans in air distress.
And so, you know, we, we look for that as believers and the
word calls us what to do. Like I said, I'm not an
administrator. When I was at camp, I, I reached
the rank of captain, but I was really just a Sergeant because I
needed the captain to tell me, John, you get those boys up at
6:00 AM, you run them for five miles, you'll be back here at a
certain time. I needed to be told everything
to do. He was a guy that planned out
all the stuff for the next trip. I, I can't do that.
I can barely plan myself, you know, But I like the word of God
because it tells me what to do. It's not a Gray area to take
care of people that are hurting. It's not a Gray area for us to
come to church. It's not a Gray area for us to
love one another in first Peter, it says love covers of multitude
of sins. You think about that.
You know we're to love one another.
There's so many verses in there. Gina sent me this thing with all
these love one another verses on here and I got some of them, but
I'll probably never get to them all.
There's no doubt if you read the New Testament, any Old Testament
that we are called to love one another.
You don't have to like be an agreement with everything.
We're going to disagree on stuff.
You might not like this or like that, but love covers a
multitude of sins. And when Jesus paid the price
for our sin, he covered everything.
So who are we not to forgive each other and to love each
other? I, I had a, a friend at work and
honestly, I don't remember which one it was now, but he was
saying some stuff about me that it wasn't true.
And he's my friend, you know, so I was talking to this other
person and he said, how can you even be friends with him?
How can you even talk with him anymore?
He said this about you. And I thought about it for a
second and I said I'm no better than him.
I said I may have said stuff about him and I don't remember.
And I would hope that he wouldn't disown me as a friend.
Love covers a multitude of sins. So you know in your, your
closest relationship, if you're married, your wife, you know my
wife has to cover a multitude of my sins and she does the same
for me. My advice to people is never go
to bed angry. Don't let the sin go down on
your anger. Make amends.
Say you're sorry, men, man up. Even if it's her fault, you tell
her you're sorry. God holds you responsible for
your household. Bring peace because love covers
a multitude of sins. Sorry about that.
Let's see Colossians chapter one, verse 3.
I'll read these to you. Hopefully I wrote the right
things down here because sometimes I'll write something
down that's the wrong thing. We give thanks to God the Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ. Praying always for you since we
heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and the love which you
have for all the Saints because of the hope that is laid up for
you in heaven of which you have previously heard in a word of
truth, the gospel, my footnote in this Bible says in regards to
that love which you have is says one of the visible fruits of
true saving faith is love for fellow believers.
And a lot of the verses that I poured out of here were love for
fellow believers. At the very basic minimum, it's
you guys. Me and you, you and whoever,
it's love for us as brothers because the Bible says if they
see the the love in you, it makes the difference.
I don't know. I had a quote.
I say I didn't have it up there. I probably didn't give it to
him, but I wrote it down. You guys heard of Tertullian?
I think Lewis or Clark mentioned them.
Yeah. Tertullian.
He wrote something called the Apology written around 197 AD,
and this is what he had it says. But it is mainly the deeds of
the love so noble that lead many to put a brand upon us.
And this is what they say, see They say how they love one
another and how they are ready even to die for one another.
The Bible says that they'll know we are Christians by our love.
And it starts first in the House of the Lord, right with us.
You don't have to really like me.
You might think this guy's a lunatic.
He wants to go out and shoot doves and shoot elk and things
like that. But you still have to love me.
You still have to love me. We can talk about the things you
don't like and I'm willing to hear it.
I'm willing to sit and discuss, come to the Bible study, come
talk to me whenever we can talk about things.
But even if we disagree, we need to love each other.
We need to work it out. It's not just the suggestion,
right? It's a it's a commandment.
I'm going to read you something from John here real quick.
John 1334 and 35, a new commandment I give you that you
love one another even as I have loved you, that you also love
one another. By this, all men will know that
you are my disciples if you love one another.
This is how people know who we are.
I look back on my high school days.
People knew I was like good. I was morally good.
I was kind, you know, runner up for being courteous, but I don't
remember giving anybody the gospel.
And I had a friend that I met like long after high school who
said to me one time he became a Christian and he said, how come
you never told me about that man?
I just my heart just sank. I could have, I could have maybe
been the one that led him to the Lord, you know, and I always
felt bad about that. So I purposed, you know, as life
went on, when I was at work, you were going to know I was a
Christian. You were going to know I was a
Christian because I did the best job I could do.
I was respectful with people as I could be, and I glorified God
in what I did. I mean, I made mistakes at work.
I had to apologize to my boss and tell him I shouldn't have
said that, but I always apologized.
And you know, that kind of thing.
The worst example we could be of a Christian is to go to work and
not do our job, defame the name of Christ by poor workmanship or
things that we say and do. How we act needs to be present
in our work and you know it. Our, our testimony, our witness
matters greatly. But in amongst the church, I
don't work with you guys. I don't know you all that well.
Some I know better than others, but I'm called to love you and
we will love you. We're here to serve you.
None of these pastors come up here week after week to bring
you the word. We teach these, these folks work
with the kids, they do worshippers all kind of things.
The sound guys, the financial people, all the thing that goes
on in this church, all the ministries is done because they
love the Lord Jesus Christ and they love you guys and willing
to die for you. Greater love hath no man than
this. What man would lay down his life
for a friend, right? Maybe some people wouldn't do
that, and I think you guys would.
You know, people always say you don't know what you'll do in a
situation. I said you have to know, you
have to know ahead of time. You need to know that you need
to do what God calls you to do. I've tried to live my life as
best I can according to what God wants me to do, and I don't
always do it. I mean, my, if you ask my wife
or my kids, they can tell you my imperfections and things like
that. But I know that I'm a forgiving
man by the grace of God in you know, that's all a good thing.
But we're commanded to love one another.
Jesus said if you love me, you'll keep my commandments,
right? If you love him, you'll keep his
commandments. John 14 I'm going to read
something out of John chapter 15.
You read John, read first. John.
Sometimes you want to hear about a lot of love that we're
supposed to have. I mean, it's just, it's filled
with things and things that we should do and how we should be.
And John 1512, this is my commandment, that you love one
another just as I have loved you.
Greater love hath no man than this one, that that one would
lay down his life for his friends.
You are my friends. The Lord said, If you want to do
what I command you no longer do I call you slaves, for the slave
does not know what this master is doing.
But I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard
from my father I have made known to you.
You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that
you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so
that wherever you ask, whatever you ask of the Father, in my
name he may give to you. This I command you that you love
one another. Not a suggestion for me.
I cannot hide in my basement 24 hours a day and work.
I need to be out. I need to be with you.
And likewise, we're commanded to do that.
And it's a great, it's a great commandment.
Why wouldn't we want to? Even even the days where I don't
feel like occasionally might be really tired or something like
that. I get up and I drive here and a
couple minutes after I'm here. I'm blessed by your husband's,
you know, I'm blessed by these guys because we're talking about
the Lord and they're keeping me straight.
So I had a whole bunch of commands and 1st John, I'm not
going to read. I'm not going to have time, but
they're there for you. It's real simple to read.
First John's very short, but I had this note I wrote down and
said it is love that has sparked missions and ministries of mercy
all over the world. You look at what Christians have
done through love Hospitals, place things like a World
Vision, Samaritan's Purse. The Christian Church is
responsible for building the hospitals and the missions and
feeding the poor and doing all those things.
You don't hear a lot about that in a secular world.
It's our mission. It's our call to love you first
one another and to love people in the world, not the things of
the world, not the sin in the world.
Again, we lovingly call out sin. There's a reason why we do it is
to protect people to to to to be apostate in the church and not
call out sin and to let people continue on and sin is like I
said before, very unloving. If we do that, run, run, find a
place that teaches the word of God because you got to, you got
to teach the truth and lying to people just to have them sit
here doesn't serve them and it just dishonors the Lord.
I have a whole bunch of verses on what the love looks like.
I'm not going to have time to read them.
I'm just going to read 1. I don't want to.
OK, I'll read this one. First Thessalonians chapter 1511
to 15. Therefore, encourage one
another. I wrote this down as like this
is what it's supposed to look like.
Therefore, encourage one another, build up one another,
just as you are also doing. But we request of you, brother,
in that you appreciate those who diligently labor among you and
have charge over you and the Lord and give you instruction
and that you esteem them very highly in love because of their
work. So when I look at like Brad and
Janelle and these guys back here and our pastors and people
serving the youth and the worship, like I'm amazed and,
and, and I do I, I just love it. I can't do that.
I can't do what they do, but I love it.
I love that they do it. And I'm really appreciative of
all that because, you know, it takes everybody in the body, all
the parts, all the gifts that God gives us them to make things
work. And the things that you do
outside the church, right? The church is here to sharpen
us, to inspire us, glorify God, you all to be edified, but to
take that and go out into the world and do what we do.
But again, it has to start here in our hearts with one another.
So we esteem them very highly in love because of their work.
Live in peace with one another. Pretty basic.
Be peaceful. Don't do like what I did the
other day and holler out the window.
Not peaceful could have caused a riot.
We urge you, brethren, admonish the unruly, encourage the faint
hearted. So you know, just because we
love each other doesn't mean there couldn't be church
discipline too. You know, I, I, I'm not saying
that everything's lovey dovey huggy, but love.
There's respect in love and there's things that have to
happen in love. If I, if I know you in this
church and you claim to be Christian and we get to know
each other and you're not acting the way you should be and vice
versa for me, I'm not. I would expect you to say, hey,
I see this in your life and we really need to talk about that.
And we have to be humble enough to accept that.
There was a couple that came here years ago.
And again, if lost people come in here, I expect them to be
different. I expect people not in the
church to be living together and doing all that kind of stuff
because that's what people do. It's not right.
Don't answer to God for that, but I expect them to do that.
That's just that's the world that I see all around me.
But if you claim Jesus Christ, I expect something different out
of you. And if we get to talking about
it, I'm going to lovingly say this is what God wants.
So I had a couple here. They both claim to be Christian
and they were living together. And I said, brother, you know,
that's that's just not right. You know, it's not good for you.
It's not good for her especially.
And he said, we can't afford it. So I asked Pastor Clark and
Pastor Clark said, we'll do the wedding here for free.
The people will make the food and bring it.
And then he end up leaving the church.
And he said, because I was like too mean or something like that.
And I'm like, I didn't say you couldn't come to church.
I'm just saying you claim to be Christian.
This is what God calls you to do.
And if, you know, people get saved, they don't know that they
shouldn't do that. Well, this is what the Bible
says, man. This is this is what you need to
do. You need to be pure.
You need to abstain from sexual immorality.
And this is how to do it. We want you to be married.
We want you to stay here and be discipled.
But I love you too much. It's not like lovey dovey huggy.
I love you too much to let you continue on in sin because the
Lord does the same thing for all of us, right?
He speaks to us. Hey.
Hey, John, you're not doing the right thing with your money.
I got to talk to you about that. I don't want to hear it.
Next day I hear it again and again till finally you break
down, say, all right, I give up. You're right.
He has a plan for us. We've got to listen to him.
And it takes the power of the Holy Spirit in us to live it
out. It can't be done in our flesh.
It's the Lord who speaks to us. It's the Lord who gives us the
power to do that. OK, well, I'm way out of timer.
I'm sorry I didn't. OK, so I think we need to do the
Lord's Supper and the worship team should come up.
I'll make this quick. So you got, I'm sorry it took a
little bit longer. I didn't know if I'd have 10
minutes worth of stuff for like way more.
But so, you know, we take the Lord's Supper.
To do in another unworthy manner is to do it lost and rejecting
God. We're all, you know, in reality
unworthy. But because of what Christ did,
you are worthy to take the supper.
If you believe in him, believe on him, know that he paid the
price for your sins. So I'll pray and then we'll take
the supper. Lord, we, we do love you for
everything you've done for us and how it affects our lives,
what you've kept us from and what you pull us out of by the
power of your cross, what you've done.
And we take this cup not as a ritual because it reminds us
every week what you've done for us.
And we said, we thank you for that.
It's, it's amazing. So on the very night that Jesus
was betrayed, he took the bread and he broke it and he said this
is my body which is given for you.
Eat this in remembrance of him in the same way he took the cup
and he said this is a cup of new covenant in my blood and drink
this in remembrance of me. And he said as often as you do
that you remember my death till I come again.
And I long for that day when he comes again.
And at home, I hope I'm here with you guys or with my family
doing something good. Your guys ever I should probably
shouldn't promote the movie, but you ever see the movie Joe Dirt?
You know, he always said, is that what you?
Is that what you want to be doing when Jesus comes back?
Picking on old poor Joe Dirt? I don't want to be found doing
something wrong when Jesus comes back, even though I'm forgiven,
I want to be here with you guys or I want to be up in the
mountains with my buddy, maybe shooting an elk or something
like that. I want to glorify God in
everything that I do if I can, you know, knowing it's peaceful
grace and mercy. All right, I get out of your
way. It's all yours.