This song requires passion, so make sure to sing it with your all on the first.
O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder Consider all the worlds thy hands have made.
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder Thy power throughout the universe displayed.
Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to thee, How great thou art, how great thou art.
When through the woods and forest glades I wander And hear the birds sing sweetly in the tree.
When I look down from lofty mountain grandeur And hear the brook and feel the gentle breeze.
Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to thee, How great thou art, how great thou art.
And when I think that God his Son, not sparing him to die, I scarce can take it in,
That on the cross my burdens gladly bearing, He bled and died to take away my sins.
Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to thee, How great thou art, how great thou art.
When Christ shall come, witch out of acclamation And take me home, what joy shall fill my heart.
Then I shall bow in humble adoration And there proclaim, my God, how great thou art.
Finish out strong now. Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to thee,
How great thou art, how great thou art. Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to thee,
How great thou art, how great thou art.
Amen. Good start this evening. Brother Gabriel, could you open up the service, a word of prayer?
Amen. If you could please turn your hymnals, song number 515.
We'll be singing song number 515, What a Day That Will Be. Again, that is song number 515.
Song number 515. Lift it up to the Lord now on the verse.
There is coming a day when no heartache shall come.
No more clouds in the sky, no more tears to dim the eye.
All is feast forevermore on that happy golden shore.
What a day, glorious day, that will be lifted up now.
What a day that will be when my Jesus eyes shall see.
And I look upon his face, the one who saved me by his grace.
When he takes me by the hand and leads me through the promised land.
What a day, glorious day, that will be on the last hour.
There'll be no sorrow there, no more burdens to bear.
No more sickness, no pain, no more parting over there.
And forever I will be with the one who died for me.
What a day, glorious day, that finished out strong now on the chorus.
What a day that will be when my Jesus eyes shall see.
And I look upon his face, the one who saved me by his grace.
When he takes me by the hand and leads me through the promised land.
What a day, glorious day, that will be.
Amen. Good singing this evening. At this time we'll go through our announcements.
All right, good afternoon. Welcome back to service for Foundation Baptist Church.
Let's take our bulletin, look through the announcements real quick. Anybody need a
bulletin that didn't get one earlier? Anybody? All right, look down at your
verse of the week. It says, how shall they preach except they be sent. As it is
written, how beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace and
bring glad tidings of good things. We went out and did that this
afternoon. Do we have anybody that got a salvation out there today?
Anybody? I think my wife's probably working on one right now. I don't know.
She's got one of those heart cases, I think.
Bill and Jesse are still out, you know. They needed the
everlasting gospel apparently, so. All right, well hopefully they better
come back with some salvation so they're in deep trouble. No, I'm just kidding.
All right, our service time is 10 30 a.m. for the morning service.
Sunday evening for the evening service is 3 30 p.m. We're in Joshua chapter 7
tonight, and then Thursday evening Bible study
will be in 1 Chronicles chapter 18. And so many times for the rest of the
week are below there. Our praise report, you can see the
salvations and all that good stuff, the stats on
that page below there. An
praise report, and hopefully you're doing well in the
New Testament challenge. You're ahead of the game.
Sundays are rough. Sundays are hard to get it done.
I try to get myself ahead so that I could just go home and
knock it out. So anyway, we'll see how I do today, but
I can always catch up. You got those couple grace days, but
I'm a couple days ahead, so I'm all right.
But anyway, hopefully you're staying on that
and trying to get that done. And the Super Saturday we have this month is
January 18th, Super Soul Winning Saturday 12 to 3 in Brush Prairie.
And the Indy one-year anniversary is coming up February 1st and 2nd,
and there'll be Soul Winning, lunch, and bowling on Saturday, and I'll be
ordaining brother Justin as the evangelist
on Sunday morning, and then I'll be preaching
hopefully with Pastor Jim Weeb on Sunday afternoon.
And the Sweetheart Banquet this year is going to be on February 15th,
and Pastor Weeb will be here to preach for that.
It's going to be a Western theme, and he'll be preaching also Sunday the 16th
for one of the services and the KJV conferences.
It's going to come faster than you realize. It's only five months away,
but we're already getting some good ideas.
And if you want to, you know, help decorate or do anything like that,
I think Miss Bobby's got some decoration ideas going on.
She likes people to help in the way that she wants them to help, so
if you want to help, you must go through her gauntlet.
So, but she definitely probably wants help in some areas, right?
Okay, all right, so I think we're going to get,
are you wanting to get a new banner? Is that what you're, new banner, okay.
And some other stuff, so we're going to change up the theme a little bit, but we
got a lot of stuff that we already need, so that's great.
And I think that's pretty much it. We sang Happy Birthday. Yeah, let's move on
with the service and get rolling to our next song. Oh yeah, and the giving
statements, I'm just going to do giving statements for everybody, so if you gave
online, you'll get an email. They'll get that
emailed to you. If you gave both, you'll get
probably two different statements, so that's how that works.
If you're at one of our church plants, then you're
still going to get statements, but it just might, you know, it'll be towards the
end of the month. So anyway, I just want to let you know about that.
That's all I have for announcements. Go ahead and sing another song, and we'll
receive the offering after that.
Song number 52, Come Thou Fount, song number 52.
Give another song number 52.
Song number 52, lift it up to the Lord now on the first.
Come thou fount of every blessing, tune my heart to
sing thy grace. Streams of mercy never ceasing, call for songs
of loudest praise. Teach me some melodious sonnet,
sung by flaming tongues above. Praise the mount I'm
fixed upon it, mount of thy redeeming love.
Here I raise mine Ebeneezer, hither by thy
help I'm come, and I hope by thy good pleasure
safely to arrive at home. Lift it up now. Jesus
sought me when a stranger wandering from the fold of God,
he to rescue me from danger, interposed his
precious, well I'm gonna last now, oh to grace how great a debtor
daily I'm constrained to be. Let thy goodness
like a fetter bind my wandering, hearts finish out
strong now, prone to wonder, Lord I feel it,
prone to leave the God I love. Here's my heart, oh
take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above.
Amen. Good singing.
Heavenly Father, thank you so much Lord for this church and this day
gathering in your house. Let the evening service go past in your
spirit and give us your selection. We bless the offering of the
Lord.
All right go ahead and open your Bibles to Joshua chapter number seven.
Joshua chapter number seven, if you don't have a Bible there should be one
underneath the seat in front of you.
Be in Joshua chapter seven.
Joshua seven, the Bible reads, but the children of Israel committed a trespass
in the accursed thing for Achan the son of Karmi, the son of Zabdi,
the son of Zerah of the tribe of Judah took of the accursed thing
and the anger of the Lord was kindled against the children of Israel
and Joshua sent men from Jericho to Ai which is beside
Beth Avon on the east side of Bethel and spake unto them saying
go up and view the country and the men went up and viewed Ai
and they returned to Joshua and said unto him let not all the people go up
but let about two or three thousand men go up and smite Ai
and make not all the people to labor thither for they are but few
so they went up thither of the people about three thousand men
and they fled before the men of Ai and the men of Ai smote of them about
thirty and six men for they chased them from before the
gate even unto Shebarim and smote them in the going down
wherefore the hearts of the people melted and became his water
and Joshua rent his clothes and fell to the earth upon his face before the ark
of the Lord until the even tide he and the elders of Israel
and put dust upon their heads and Joshua said
alas oh Lord wherefore has thou at all brought this people over Jordan to
deliver us into the hands of the Amorites to
destroy us would to God we had been content and
dwelt on the other side of Jordan oh Lord what shall I say when Israel
turneth their backs before their enemies for the Canaanites and all the
inhabitants of the land shall hear of it and shall environ us round and cut off
our name from the earth and what will thou do unto thy great
name and the Lord said unto Joshua get thee up
wherefore lies thou thus upon thy face Israel hath sinned and they have also
transgressed my covenant which I commanded them
for they have even taken of the accursed thing and all have also stolen
and assembled also and they have put it even
among their own stuff therefore the children of Israel could not stand
before their enemies but turned their backs before their enemies because they
were cursed neither will I be with you anymore
except you destroy the accursed from among you
up sanctify the people and say sanctify yourselves
against tomorrow for thus saith the Lord God of Israel there is an accursed thing
in the midst of thee oh Israel thou canst not stand before thine enemies
until you take away the accursed thing from among you
in the morning therefore you shall be brought according to your tribes and it
shall be that the tribe which the Lord taketh shall
come according to the families thereof and the family which the Lord shall take
shall come by households and the household which the Lord shall
take shall come by man shall come man by man and it shall be
that he that is taken with the accursed thing shall be burnt
with fire he and all that he hath because he had transgressed the covenant
of the Lord and because he has wrought folly in
Israel so Joshua rose up early in the morning and brought Israel by their
tribes and the tribe of Judah was taken and he
brought the family of Judah and he took the family of the
Tsar Heights and he brought the family of the Tsar Heights man by man
and Zabdi was taken and he brought his household man by man
and Achan the son of Carmi the son of Zabdi the son of Zirah
of the tribe of Judah was taken and Joshua said unto Achan
my son give I pray thee glory to the Lord God of Israel
and make confession unto him and tell me now what thou has done
hide it not from me and Achan answered Joshua and said indeed I have sinned
against the Lord God of Israel and thus and thus have I done when I saw
among the spoils a goodly Babylonish garment and 200
shekels of silver and a wedge of gold of 50 shekels wait
then I coveted them and took them and behold they are hid in
the earth in the midst of my tent and the silver
under it so Joshua sent messengers and they ran
unto the tent and behold it was hid in his tent in the
silver under it and they took them out of the midst of
the tent and brought them unto Joshua and unto and unto all the children of
Israel and laid them out before the Lord and
Joshua and all Israel with him took Achan the
son of Zirah and the silver and the garment and the
wedge of gold and his sons and his daughters and his oxen
and his asses and his sheep and his tent and all that he had
and they brought them unto the valley of Acre
and Joshua said why has thou troubled us the Lord shall trouble thee this day
and all Israel stoned him with stones and burned them
with fire after they had stoned them with stones
and they raised over him a great heap of stones unto this day so the Lord turned
from the fierceness of his anger wherefore the name of that place was
called the valley of Acre unto this day brother Eli we pray first
amen amen all right we're in joshua 7 it's
been a while since he's been here over the holidays
and stuff like that so just a quick recap and the title of
sermon is sin in the camp this is uh probably inspired many sermons
by the same title and it's definitely a great picture of
how sin can affect everybody in church or everybody in the congregation
by one person doing something a lot of people will say well
you know my sin doesn't affect anybody else but of course
by reading this story you can tell it's just not true if you're paying
attention but just a quick recap though that Israel
defeats that stronghold city of Jericho that's where we were at last
after the walls fall down flat by the power of God just like the bible says
children of Israel run up the rubble into the city kill everyone and
everything and destroy it with fire just like God says to do and the
the last sermon I preached about I talked about how the archaeological
record shows that what is described in the bible
is exactly what happened in the book of Joshua
even the modern the modern the last person that excavated
tries to throw shade on the archaeological record but
insane it's 150 years before Joshua would have gotten there that
that happened and tries to say that the city was not burned but they you
know that person just obviously doesn't believe in God and they wanted
to just throw shade on the story but Joshua is not only a religious book
and perfect inspired inerrant word of the living God but also a historical
document that is accurate and matches what is
found in the in the historical record because a lot you know a lot of people
say well the bible just stands alone and I agree
with that a hundred percent if they never found the tell of Jericho
and never were able to find some of these things that they find in the bible
I would still believe the bible is true but the fact that
when they find these places in history you know from the historical record
that were in the bible all these places are were real places
you know that should add validity to the fact that the bible is true
and in archaeology when it comes to biblical archaeology has
a wealth of proof that backs the bible up
so but people of course will you know they'll say
like that Kathleen Kenyon when she excavated it that she was the
third person that did it even though she shows that the wall fell
down and she draws the bricks that she found
I mean you can go and find her notes you know she just still says well I was
looking for this one piece of pottery that I didn't find it's like
all the other potteries there that should have been there but she was
looking for this one piece and because she didn't find this one specific piece
because where she excavated was in a poorer part
of the of the city and they probably wouldn't have been
able to afford that specific kind of pottery she was looking for so she was
like yeah well it's that puts the date at 150
years before the time of Joshua and so you know people people want to
gravitate toward her findings quote-unquote
so that they can say the bible's not true
but I mean I've I've been watching this this one biblical archaeologist and
he even takes one of the guys from her team that's still alive
and he admits that everything was exactly how the bible says even though
he doesn't believe in God himself and that's the funny thing is that
these archaeologists will they won't they don't believe the bible
but they still find it and say exactly you know it matches completely with what
the bible says so anyway Ai is the city that is next on
the destruction list but the problem is that someone has
taken the accursed things and they were specifically told not to
touch those things and only certain things were going to go
into the treasury right let's just flip back to chapter 6 and
look at verse 17 real quickly before we move into the
main part of the the the preaching here joshua 6 17 says and the city
shall be accursed even it so the city itself and all that
are therein so all the people all the animals
all the stuff the clothing any knickknacks anything that they could
plunder from the city now and just so you know this is the only city that
they're not allowed to take stuff from this is this is like the tithe this is
the one city out of all the cities that they conquer
in the promised land they're not allowed to take stuff from
this one belongs to God they're just it's kind of like the
the tree of the garden in the garden they're not allowed to touch it
and take stuff from it only the stuff that God says
and they are not allowed to keep anything it's only stuff that's going
into the treasury it says only Rahab the harlot shall live
she and all that are with her in the house because she hid the messengers
that we sent and ye in any wise that means in any way
or manner keep yourselves from the accursed thing
whatever you do do not touch these things keep yourself from them
lest you make yourselves accursed when you take of the accursed thing so
what happens if they take from the accursed thing
they're cursed aren't they and make the camp of israel a curse and
trouble it so the camp of israel is called what the
congregation in the wilderness that's what it's called in the new testament
and so a congregation another word for congregation is what
church the church in the wilderness so to say that there was no congregation in
the or church in the wilderness is not true because the word church and
congregation are used synonymously in the bible and so what's he saying well
if you bring the accursed thing into into you
you know if you touch the accursed thing you bring it into the camp
you're going to make that camp that of israel a curse
and what trouble it so god's real clear here don't touch
these things don't bring it don't don't mess around with it it's going to cause
the whole camp to be cursed and trouble the camp so it says
but all the silver and golden vessels of brass and iron are consecrated unto the
lord that means they're set aside those things can come into the into the
unto the lord they shall come into the treasury of the
lord so that word consecrated me they're
declared sacred there's something that's set aside for god's purpose and they're
not to go into your house they're to go into his house
so number one tonight israel is defeated at ai
look at joshua seven one it says but the children of israel committed a
trespass in the accursed thing so the very thing
he tells them and warns them not to do before they go into the city
they do but the children of israel committed a trespass in the accursed
thing for aching the son of karmai the son of
zabdi the son of zera of the tribe of judah
took of the accursed thing and the anger of the lord was
kindled against aiken is that what it says no against the children
of israel now this kind of flies in the face of what i was saying this morning
doesn't it that everybody's responsible for those sins that they commit
but here's the thing now this is true but when it comes to the congregation or
to the church we're all one in christ right as you know
new testament christians we are one in christ but there's also that
congregation in the wilderness so here's the thing the sins that we
commit that are really wicked sins there are
certain sins that would get us kicked out of church now
right but not all sin gets us kicked out of church
but there are certain sins that would be punishable
by death and god was saying that hey if you commit
this trespass in in and you touch or take anything that's accursed
you're going to be accursed and so it's it's basically
you're you're going to trouble everybody that lives here
you're it's it's not just you affecting yourself it's you're affecting
everybody it's it's kind of like well let's move on here and i'll explain
it a little bit more but people say that their sin does not affect
other people in the church they're dead wrong about that
and literally in this chapter he is dead wrong about it because he's dead at the
end of the chapter and his whole family and that's the
other thing is like what i explained earlier in my first
sermon was that a son doesn't get put to death for the sins of his father
nor the the father for the sins of his son
but then you see his whole family is killed at the end of this chapter
how do how do you explain that well i'll work on explaining that as this chapter
goes on here it's kind of a i'm putting like a
conundrum here this tonight so but i'm going to try to explain
it so it makes sense and hopefully you understand it at the end here so
but one man though commits the sin that god
is angry with with the whole congregation
but it's obvious though how it does translate with the new testament
look at romans chapter 12 just keep your finger in joshua 7
turn to romans chapter 12 and of course i don't have time to develop the whole
doctrine of us being many members with one body but i'm just going to show you
in in a couple scriptures here but this is what the new testament teaches
but there is that sense of unity in the old testament too and look they were
they had a covenant that they made with god
the old testament the old covenant and they had this agreement with god and
they all unanimously said that they were going to keep that covenant
right so when one person breaks it they're all kind of breaking it when
adam and eve broke the commandments in the god the only
commandment that god gave them what happened to the whole human race we
all suffer we're all born sinners because of one of two people messing it
up for everybody else so your sin does affect other people
romans 12 4 says for as we have many members in one body
and all members have not the same office so we being many
are one body in christ and everyone members one of another so we're not just
one when we all come together as the church we are one
member in christ is what it's saying we're many but we're one body
in christ jesus and so you know the fingers
the toes the the feet you know all different body parts make up one
body right and so you might be the nose or the
ears or the the hair or whatever it is that makes up
that body so if your arm just gets lopped off
tomorrow it's going to affect you isn't it
so when when something happens to the to the body of christ
it affects the whole church and if one member
is committing you know sins that would get you thrown out of church
then it affects the whole body how well i mean think about what his sin is
what's his sin his sin is stealing he stole something that belonged to
god he coveted he stole
and then he tried to hide what he did right and so
what is coveting is one is that one of the things that would get you thrown out
of church it is so the the old testament's teaching
us something that's still in effect in the new testament so
hopefully that makes sense why everybody else is going to get punished
you know corporately for something that one person does
so and this is why god is so serious about tossing you know
those people that would commit those sins because it affects the rest of the
church because if one person has a covetous
attitude and spirit it rubs off on other people
if someone you know commits fornication because they have their covetous after
that specific thing or it commits adultery
then and it doesn't get dealt with then the
rest of the church is infested and infected
by that and it's called what leaven right that's why the
you got to get rid of the leaven out of your church and this is why karmi
i mean not karmi but uh aiken the son of karmi
had to be excommunicated and he got excommunicated in a way that we are not
allowed to do anymore so you know i don't really know that i
want to do that but uh you know we live in the time of
grace you know grace and truth came through
jesus christ and i'm pretty i'm glad about that you know i don't know
that i'd want to make this you know the rock throwing
contest or whatever but anyway look at verse two back in our text
joshua seven two
it says and joshua sent men from jericho to ai
which is beside beth haven so right now nobody knows that
that aiken has done this thing but ai which is beside beth haven on the
east side of bethel and spake unto them saying go up and
view the country and the men went up and viewed ai and
they returned to joshua and said unto him
let not all the people go up but let about
two or three thousand men go up and smite ai
and make not all the people to labor there for there but few
so this is classic overconfidence and this you know if anybody has played
sports knows this that you start overlooking
the weaker teams and that's a recipe for upset that's a
recipe for disaster with your team that you're already looking past the
team that seems weak they don't they don't have you know as
good of players as your team does and you go
and then they they beat the pants off you because
you were just looking past them so obviously in this situation
you know they could have had they could have sent their whole army and god
probably would have sent them packing because the curse of god is upon this
congregation right now but this is overconfidence and god's kind
of probably letting this happen like oh yeah we could
just send a couple thousand people these guys are weak
right so there went up thither of the people about three thousand men
and they fled before the men of ai and the men of ai
smote of them about thirty and six men for they chased them from before the
gate and even unto shep sheparbim
and smote them in the going down wherefore the hearts of the people
melted and became as water so i'm not sure how many people
there were in ai but they sent the two or three of the
three thousand people packing they were running scared from them and
they they killed 36 men now that doesn't seem
like a catastrophic loss you know if you're talking big
military numbers i mean israel has you know hundreds of thousands of
soldiers and they you know could overwhelm them with the
numbers or whatever but they just thought let's just send these guys in
here it's gonna be an easy victory but that's
not the case so verse six and joshua rent his
clothes and fell to the earth upon his face
before the ark of the lord until eventide
he and the elders of israel and put dust upon their heads
and joshua said alas oh lord wherefore hast thou
at all brought this people over jordan to deliver us
into the hand of the amorites to destroy us would to god that we had been content
and dwelt on the other side of jordan oh lord
what shall i say when israel turneth their backs before
their enemies for the cananites and all the inhabitants
of the land shall hear of it and shall environ around us around and
cut off our name from the earth and what wilt thou do unto thy great
name and so joshua's kind of discouraged here
and he's like already saying hey maybe we should turn around go back where we
came from you know god what are you going to do
about this what's going to happen to your great name
but i just say this that god's name is great no matter what we screw up
you know it i mean god's name might be made distinct because of the things that
we do but does it really affect him in
reality no it really doesn't affect him it
affects our reputation and it does kind of affect god's
reputation in a way but no matter what we do god's still
god god is still all powerful so and it doesn't matter how powerful or
or smart or great we are god can still make sure that the smallest
thing defeats us when we're in sin when we have a curse
upon our church or a curse upon our life god can make the the the weakest enemies
destroy us he can make sure that everything that we
do is cursed and you know they were warned to not
touch the accursed thing this is this is what happens when god
takes his blessing off of you and puts a curse upon you so
you know when we sin and bring sin into the camp
we can affect the way god allows us to fight our enemies
because ours is a spiritual battle right so
if we have really wicked sin in our church
and people aren't being dealt with for it like obviously
i don't know everything that's going on but god does know
so god in this situation nobody else knew
what he did so what does god do he says okay well
i'm gonna let you know what the situation is he tells the leadership
and the leadership has to take care of it that's the way that it is
in in a new testament church too whoever if you know about something that's a
really bad sin you're supposed to come tell the
leadership so the leadership can deal with it
not tell everybody else in the church not gossip about it on the internet
but come to the person that can actually do something about it
because what did god do he went to the leadership now god doesn't speak to me
audibly like he does to joshua in this in this
instance so he speaks to me through his word but
he's not going to like make me figure out some puzzle and say
by the way so-and-so's fornicating in the church that's not how
the new testament is so you know the only way i'm going to find out is if
somebody tells me or you know that's that's that's the way
it kind of works and so you know but if but if all the of
if pastors don't deal with sin that they know is happening
then you have this kind of aching type of situation happening where
their church is being destroyed it's like well why is the church being
destroyed well duh you can't just have a bunch of
fornicators hanging out and just spreading that leaven all over the church
and expect that god's going to bless your church
you can't have a bunch of covetous people that are
thieves and stealing and and stealing other people's wives i mean
think about this covet coveting is like a unique sin
because it's something that goes on in the mind it's something that goes on in
the heart and nobody knows that you're doing it
but when that covetousness you know brings forth it
brings forth a sin it's usually theft or adultery or
fornication or something it's it manifests itself in
a physical way once that covetousness brings forth
like in this situation what happens well he takes something
that doesn't belong to him he steals so it began with covetousness though
that's why covetousness is one of those sins it's hard to measure
but when someone commits a sin that's tied to covetousness
then it's like well you can kind of you can tell that it's like hey i need to
kick this person out for covetousness so
anyway we don't want the enemy to easily defeat us
and you know pastors need to start doing their job and not just be like oh
we just got to forgive everything no we don't just have to forgive everything
we have to obviously we do forgive and we do restore
but there's a time that you have to deal with with sin
in church and if someone's not repentant about the things that they do
they got to go and then hopefully they can get things right and come back
that's the end game that's the end goal but some things are not forgivable some
things are not things that they can come back from
cora was never going to come back from hell was he cora was
was taken out of the congregation in front of everybody
and it was very obvious where he went he went straight to hell
and people were like you killed the people of the lord it's like what are
you talking about they weren't the people of the lord
because they went to hell nobody in hell is the people of the lord
they're reprobates then they're gone they're done hos they are
absolutely going to roast there forever and ever
cora is not restorable the false prophet is not restorable
there are certain people that are not restorable and
and some pastors are just more loving than god today
and are just willing to restore some of the most vile people
or give some you know three-peat child offender
you know another chance at church it's like what are you doing
you love that child offender that child molester
that freak of nature more than you love the people in your church what's wrong
with you it's bizarre so
things will start to go wrong that should be going right when your
church is being you know cursed like this and you know we
can not be blessed just for not obeying
hey there's in our lives we can we can just not be blessed for not obeying god
you know you're like well i just don't understand why all these things are
happening to me well maybe you should just start obeying what god says to do
and maybe your life won't be cursed and people just i just don't understand this
i don't understand why all these things are happening
well you know sometimes they're trials of our faith
and sometimes they're not but i think that most people
can understand what the difference is you know if you're
lacking in a major area of your life in spirituality
you should understand look look at luke chapter 12 turn to luke chapter 12
luke chapter number 12 verse 47 the bible says
and that servant which knew his lord's will
so this you know this is talking about someone that's a believer that knows
what god wants from him and prepared not himself neither did
according to his will shall be beaten with many stripes
it's talking about beating people this morning and god
does god beat people he beats his children doesn't he
like god would never beat his children what are you talking about pastor
that's what it says god beats his children with many stripes
which ones which ones get many stripes the ones that know what god wants from
them and don't prepare themselves to do those
things and don't do according to his will
they they know better they they just know but they don't care
they become apathetic or they just they just don't do it
he's going to beat those people with many stripes and like you you kind of go
to a church which you go to a church a type of church
teaches the bible so you learn a lot of things about the bible
and so therefore you're kind of knowing what god wants from you
there's a lot of churches you can go to today you're going to get a salvation
message every 11 o'clock service and you're going to get some doctrine but
unless you go to like a sunday night service
or maybe a wednesday night service you're not going to get a lot of
doctrine but even then it's very few and far in
between the past some of the pastors are like
very soft-spoken and then they they just their bible studies are super dry
and then it becomes question answer time where the
the women in the church pop up and start saying stuff
it's like sit down and shut up you're not allowed to speak in the service
but when you have the pastors telling just allowing it to happen it's like
what are you doing
how is this edifying the church when you're doing something that
god has already said not to allow to happen it doesn't make sense
look at verse 48 says but he that knew not
and did commit things worthy of stripes shall be beaten with few stripes does it
say they won't be beaten no it says they'll just be beaten with
few stripes so they're not going to get it as bad
for unto whomsoever much is given of him shall be much required and to whom
men have committed much of him will he ask the more so the more you
know the more god expects from you and so if
you know a lot of bible you know what god's will for your life
is you're going to a church that teaches you those things
and then you're just not doing it then you know you're held to a higher
accountability than other people you're like well that's not fair
is life fair who said life is fair you know some people are born with
leukemia is that fair some people are born with deformities
is that fair some people are born with mental
handicaps is that fair for them you know life is not fair but you've
been given a blessed life for the most part
and you know if you go to a great church or if you go to a church that teaches
the bible then you're you're blessed that's a
blessing don't treat it like a curse or go you
know what i guess i'm getting taught too much i better go to a church that
doesn't teach as much so i'm not going to get beaten as badly
that's a that's a just a bad way to look at things okay
don't look at it like that number two tonight the sin
of aching the sin of aching so look at verse 10 it says
and the lord said unto joshua get thee up
wherefore lie a style upon my face he's just like what are you doing joshua
he's like laying there until it gets dark
just on his face and you know a lot of times that's a good thing to do but in
this situation god's like what are you doing
just get up this is i just this verse always strikes me funny
that he's like get up man anyway israel has sinned they have also
transgressed my covenant see why is he saying they
this one guy did this but see how he says they have transgressed my covenant
so he's holding the whole group accountable for what one person has done
because it's the covenant which i commanded them for they have
even taken of the accursed thing and have also
stolen and dissembled also and they have put it even among their own
stuff which this kind of leads me to think
that maybe the family is in on it a little bit and this might
explain why the family is thrown in with the rest
with aching also because i mean they're all living in the same tent like
they don't see the holy dog in the middle of the tent
like he's just you know what i mean like the family kind of becomes an
accomplice at some i mean the bible doesn't say that but
why is he saying and they have put it even among their own stuff
he's saying they them you know i mean obviously he's still making the
whole group accountable but at the same time he's also kind of saying
they have hit it among them stuff their stuff
so like i mean it's it's not beyond reason that some of his
family members what he didn't tell his wife that he had
all that stuff i mean men do keep secrets sometimes but usually
you know check out this babylonian garment yeah
you know when we move yeah yeah well the wedge of gold the silver on top of
it he didn't tell his wife i don't know i
don't know if i believe that but um
so but here's the thing god is going to reveal sin
and we as christians unfortunately sometimes for us
you know it's we don't get to get away with things that we got away with when
we were not saved you know the unsaved seem to get away
with things a lot but their punishment is in hell
but we as christians like this is something i had to learn early on as a
christian that i just don't get to get away with
the things that i used to get away with that's like everybody at work can be
late for work but when the christians late for
work for whatever reason they just nail you to the wall that's because
god is making sure you're nailed to the wall
you know you just or you say something to the boss
you know you talk back to your boss but everybody else you you get in trouble
but everybody else doesn't get in trouble
or you make a mistake at work everybody ridicules you
your boss ridicules you but if somebody else does it
it's not a big deal so you know you don't just get
if you say a cuss word at work but everybody else can swear like a
sailor but if you do it then you're like oh i thought you
were a christian you know ah you know you get nailed for it so
like i'm just saying that as christians we don't just don't get to get away
with stuff anymore and that's good but it feels
bad when you have to suffer you know for doing something
wrong but you just don't get people are like i
just want to go back to my old life and the way things used to be
this is why the children of israel always complaining oh wood to god that
we can go back and have the leeks and the garlic and all the great things that
we used to we used to have fish to the full and you
know they're just whining about all the stuff instead of just saying hey god can
you you know throw some leeks into this you
know instead of just asking god for the things
he's already given them all this free manna and
you know quails till it comes out their nostrils but
you know they're just constantly complaining about stuff constantly
complaining about how hard everything is when all they have to do is just ask god
for the things that they want instead of whining about it but they're always
wanting to go back to their old life and they think that it's going to be
easy but when you go back to your old life it's not easy
you're just you can't that saying you can never go home is true for christians
because you you think it's going to be the same but it's never going to be the
same
let's see verse 12 therefore the children of israel
could not stand before their enemies but turn their backs
before their enemies because they were accursed
neither will i be with you anymore except you destroy the accursed from
among you so and then translate this to the new
testament what does god say about throwing people
out he says take you know get that wicked person
throw that wicked person out right um he's you know we're not supposed to
suffer people to stay in church that commit
really wicked sins verse 13 up sanctify the people and say sanctify yourselves
against tomorrow for thus saith the lord god of israel
there is an accursed thing in the midst of thee
oh israel thou canst not stand before thine enemies
until you take away the accursed thing from among you
in the morning therefore you shall be brought according to your tribes and it
shall be that the tribe which the lord taketh
shall come according to the families thereof
and the family which the lord shall take shall come by households
and the household which the lord shall take shall come
man by man and it shall be that he that is taken with the accursed thing
shall be burnt with fire he and all that he hath because he has
transgressed the covenant of the lord and because he hath wrought
folly in israel so the guy's gonna die it's like already said the death
penalty is gonna happen and so joshua rose up early in the
morning and brought israel by their tribes
and the tribe of juda was taken and he brought the family of juda and he
took the family of the czar heights and he brought the family of the czar
heights man by man and zabdi was taken and he brought the household man by man
and achan the son of karmai the son of zabdi the son of zera of the
tribe of juda was taken now if you remember who zera was zera is
the young child who was born of fornication
through whoredom basically of juda when he impregnated his
daughter-in-law she pretended to be a harlot and zera
is the one whose hand came out and they tied the the scarlet
thread on his hand and then his hand came
back in the womb and then his brother uh brought broke forth and breached
through so i preached a sermon about this where
you know obviously god through his foreknowledge knows that this line is
going to be ended because of the fact that he's killed in this
chapter but he chooses the other twin instead of
you know the one with the scarlet thread they thought oh he's the firstborn but
he's not the firstborn god's like nope i got other plans and
then he just you know squeaks out the other one so um
what was his name perez yeah so anyway i preached a whole sermon about
that in the earlier chapters and i think first chronicles so anyway and it says
in verse 19 and juda or excuse me and joshua said unto
achan my son give i pray thee glory to the
god of israel and make confession onto him
and tell me now what thou hast done hide it not from me so you know you also
have to understand in the old testament things were a lot
more brutal things were a lot more harsh intentionally
you know god is trying to show that you know it's not grace
necessarily it's the letter of the law people are punished more harshly
and you know he says hey confess say what you've done
but even though he confesses he still is killed
isn't he but in the new testament you know
grace is a big part of the new testament people still die in the new testament
for committing these same acts but you know i'll show you you know later
on i'll show you something where they have
a chance to do the same thing and then they lie about it and then they still
die anyway so but anyway verse 20 and achan answered
joshua and said indeed i have sinned against the
lord god of israel and thus and thus have i done so he
admits it he comes clean you know but there's no mercy coming
here the mercy is not going to happen it says
when i saw among the spoils a goodly babylonish garment
and 200 shekels of silver and a wedge of gold of 50 shekels weight
then i coveted them so i mean you see that
you know normally you can take the spoils he sees this he's like oh i
coveted him i looked at him i wanted them i desired
them and took them so coveting leads to what
him stealing them he took them and behold they are hid
so he does the crime and then he hides the fact that he does it that's what
most people do when they commit some sort of sin they want to hide the sin
that they've done in he said he hid him in the earth in
the midst of my tent and the silver under it so
he covets the bible says thou shall not covet
you know the we're not so you know it's one of the ten commandments he broke
so has he broken the covenant yes he has that's what the bible says
and that's why he said he's broken my covenant
thou you know he took he took them the bible says thou shalt not steal
he broke another commandment there and then
he hid what he did he covered up the crime and then he's only confessing
because he gets caught it's not like he voluntarily
you know he probably he had earlier that night he could have just came forward
and said you know i did it here here it is i
give it back i don't know if that would have changed the circumstances any but
he didn't do that he waited till god just rooted him out
and said it's this tribe it's this guy it's this guy
and then it's like oh it's him it's this dude
so verse 22 says so joshua sent messengers
and they ran unto the tent and behold it was hid in his tent
and the silver under it and they took them out of the midst of the tent and
brought them unto joshua and unto all the children of israel
and laid them out before the lord now turn to numbers chapter 32 verse 23
numbers chapter 32 verse 23
the bible says in numbers 32 23 it says but if you will not do so behold you
have sinned against the lord and be sure your sin
will find you out it's a very scary verse in the bible
because you can commit all the sin and do all this stuff but at some point
your sin will find you out it's going to rat you out it's going to
tell on you it's kind of an interesting way to put it but
god's going to make sure that it's found out and
you know sometimes that can be very embarrassing
when your sin finds you out i'm sure this was pretty embarrassing the whole
congregation is just like who is it who is it who is it
it's that guy you know and he's embarrassed you know
but he comes clean he does say it's him but you know at that point it's like
god's already pointed him out like what can he really say he could
have denied it but i mean he didn't
so but you know when it says your sins be sure your sins will find you out it's
just another way of saying you can't get away with your sins
forever you can't just keep hanging on to them and expecting them
to not come full circle and you know when it's talking about these major sins
that will get you kicked out of church or in the old testament would get you
taken out of the congregation and sometimes by the death penalty
you know these are things that have to be dealt with it's better to deal with
them before they come to the surface it's
better to deal with them before god just removes you out of a church
than to wait until god's punishing you for it and taking you out
first peter chapter 4 verse 17 says for the time has come that judgment must
begin at the house of god and if it first
began at us what shall the end be
of them that obey not the gospel of god so you know the judgment
that god's talking about is the judgment of
of you know things that must have you know be judged in the church
and if it begins first and us what shall be the end of them that obey
not the gospel so people that obey not the gospel are
going to hell so the bible talks about putting them to
judge that are least esteemed in the church
it'd be better for that than to take somebody to the unbelievers
so our judgment god finds very important and so it's not a light thing when god
asks us to judge something so when he in first corinthians 5 when he
tells them to to kicks that guy out of the church he's
like hey don't you know don't be puffed up kick
this guy out and let satan have the destruction of
the flesh upon him look at verse 24 back in our text it
says in joshua and all israel with him took aching the
son of zera and the silver and the garment and the
wedge of gold and his sons and his daughters and his
oxen and his asses and his sheep and his tent
and all that he had and they brought them
onto the valley of acor so and this is what i was kind of talking
about it's like earlier in the ser in the sermon i preached earlier
it talks about not putting the death the people that you know obviously
the son doesn't go be put to death for the sins of uh of the father and the
father for the sins of the son turn over to proverbs chapter 15 proverbs
chapter 15
proverbs chapter 15 verse 27
the bible says he that is greedy of gain troubleth his own house but he that
hateth gives shall live that's a very interesting verse though he
that is greedy of gain is is is he greedy of gain he is and it
says troubleth his own house what is aiken called
the troubler of israel he's troubled israel
and that's what joshua says to him in the next verse it says
and joshua said why hast thou troubled us the lord shall trouble thee this day
in all israel stoned him with stones and burned them with fire
after they had stoned them with stones
so why did he kill everybody and all of his stuff
well he is accursed the bible said remember earlier i said that if he
touched if they touched anything and brought it
they were accursed and everything that he had so
once he made himself accursed everything that he had was accursed
and i think that it's probable that he had accomplices other people that
at least knew about it and didn't say anything
and look you're an accomplice after the fact even if you didn't know right at
first i'm sure that they probably knew afterward but
it said in that proverb said if you are greedy of gain you trouble your own
house so what happened well god troubled his whole house
didn't he so i mean the scripture fits at least
there you might think well that's you know pretty mean for him to do that
well i mean what happens when we throw a whole family out because of one person
i mean it's not like if if someone's like does something that's worthy of
being thrown out and they do something really wicked and
we throw them out it's not like i'm mad at their kids
but don't their kids suffer because of what happened with that
that one adult or both those adults and they're
however many kids they have all suffer being thrown out of the church in the
new testament we don't line them all up take their cars
and all their stuff and put it in a big circle and just throw rocks at it until
it gets all destroyed and they'd all die that's not what god's called us to do in
the new testament we don't even have authority to do that in the new
testament if it's something that's a minor thing we should judge it
and what we do is we kick them out and if it's something that the police
can deal with and we can't deal with then we call the police on them
but that's the most we can do we turn them over to the people that can
actually swing the sword we can't swing the sword
we can't throw the rock we can't shoot the gun
all right so you know all these people get mad when we say oh these
homos need to be executed well we think the government should do it that's what
we say every time because that's what we believe
and then they're like they're calling for the extinction of you know
they're saying that they're you know trying to bring violence i'm
not trying to bring violence what the government's actually going to
do it they're not going to do it but that's
what the bible says should be done so yes of course we're
going to preach those things but do you see how it translates over
like god just has them all killed that's a way harsher isn't it than us
just throwing them out but you know they're destroyed by the devil on the
outside their family you know and unfortunately
the kids have to suffer because of what these idiot parents sometimes do
and getting themselves thrown out of churches look
they don't have to do the stupid things that they do and sometimes people get
marked even at a year or two later because i
find out that they're saying all this crazy stuff or lying and
i finally get like the actual evidence of it
and then like i postmark kick them out and it's just like and then they're mad
because i dared to say something about them later it's like well what it's okay
for you to just lie about me and lie about our church all over social
media and or all over to friends and try to
get them to not want to come to our church
people families in our church just let you have carte blanche
access to people in our church and just lie about me and lie about our church
members nah no you're gonna get marked and then
they're like oh i can't believe you called me a wolf i can't believe you did
that why can't you believe that that's what
you're acting like and you know what if you do something
that's worthy of being thrown out then you're gonna get postscript thrown
out it's a mark it's a blot on your record
you know what any church that takes those people in
they're harboring fugitives they're harboring vagabonds they're
harboring people that should be thrown out like cane
got got you know he got his walking papers god said hey you're gonna be a
vagabond walking about for the rest of your life and he was
like okay bye then i'll just kill my brother and then you
know we have people that have left our church that are constantly killing their
brothers well at least they say they're brothers
but sometimes it's hard to tell but you know this principle is in the
old testament as as much as it's in the new testament
it's just they're not getting rocked asleep
i mean stone to death right so look at first corinthians
actually look at hebrews chapter 10 verse 30
hebrews chapter 10 verse 30
and what and again able or aiken is known as the trouble
troubler of israel throughout the rest of scripture
36 people dead 36 innocent people that didn't deserve to
die died because he couldn't control himself
and he had to take something that belonged to somebody else
and it's like i said this morning it's not like it's a mass
casualty event like it wasn't like hundreds of thousands
look david counted people out of pride the devil tempted him to do
these this thing and 70,000 people died that's a mass casualty but the
difference is that david said let them fall into the
hands of the lord and the lord did you know he's always
going to do that which is right but aiken sin directly
and you know god said he already told him if you do this you're going to be
accursed so look at hebrews 10 30 it says for we
know him that has said vengeance belongeth unto me i will
recompense saith the lord and again the lord shall judge
other people no what to say the lord shall judge
his people this is also a scary verse if you're saved because he's talking
about vengeance and recompensing and then he says the
lord shall judge his people it is a fearful thing to fall into the
hands of the living god well who's he judging is aiken one of
his people yeah and he kills him and his whole
family and it's like well we should fear the lord especially we're
messing around in things that we ought not to be
and committing sins that we shouldn't be committing now look at first
corinthians chapter five
first corinthians chapter five
the bible says in first corinthians 5 4 it says in the name of our lord jesus
christ when you're gathered together and my spirit with the power of the lord
jesus christ to deliver such and one unto satan
for the destruction of the flesh that the spirit
may be saved in the day of the lord jesus your glory is not good
know you not that a little leaven leaven at the whole lump
what is the purpose of getting the person out of the congregation
because you don't want that sin to run rampant into the church
and what was aching sin covetousness theft if that would have been able to
just you just let that ride and just let him stay and just let it
continue to happen and don't throw him out of the
congregation then that covetousness would have spread to other people
the leaven would have would have been moving on to other people
it says purge out therefore the old leaven
you may be a new lump as you're leavened for even christ our passover is
sacrificed for us go back go down to verse 11 it says but
now i have written unto you not to keep company if any man that is
called a brother be a fornicator or covetous or an
idolater or a railer or a drunkard or an extortioner with such and one
know not to eat and what will i do to judge them that are without
do not judge them that are within but then that are without
god judgeth therefore put away from among yourselves
that wicked person so what does that mean
don't hang out with them don't don't try to restore that person
that person is under the curse of god and so we need to stay away from them
once they're marked let them be marked let them be accursed
let them deal with satan he's the one that's dealing with them god is using
satan to destroy their lives at that point
and look if you want to touch that curse thing then
you might fall into that curse too and that's why we should stay away from
people that are marked and not just hang out with them anyway because
you don't agree with what the pastor said
that's that's garbage homie don't do that
you might disagree you can disagree all you want but what
god has uh loosed in heaven he's loosed in heaven but he's bound on earth he's
bound on earth and whatever the judgment of the church
is that's what you should be going with and you're like
oh i don't agree with that well then go someplace else
that agrees with what you agree with because that's
that's what the bible teaches friends it really is
so in the new testament our version of kicking someone out is throwing them out
of church that's our version of killing them okay
killing them for a capital crime now and not all not all these sins that are on
that list are even capital crimes in the bible
but there's things that god doesn't want in his church
he doesn't want in the congregation so but the the new testament grace
is the theme so aching could be forgiven and restored for what he did
in the new testament couldn't he have but
again if some child molesters found out then they are to
go forever with the curse of god upon them
if some false prophet is found out in this church
then the curse of god is to go out with them forever they're not coming back
so that is what god's proclaimed now ax chapter 5 turn to ax chapter 5
here's a new testament story of something similar happening it's a
little bit different but it is a new testament story you're like well god
doesn't still do that yeah he does but here's the difference
look at ax chapter 5 verse 3 ax 5 3 says but peter
said to ananias so this is the story of ananias and sapphire
why has satan filled thine heart to lie to the holy ghost and keep back part of
the price of the land see everybody's selling their land and
giving it to the apostles and and they decided to keep back part of
the price and lie about what they sold it for
whilst it remained was it not thine own and after it was sold was it not
thine own power why hast thou conceived this thing in thine heart
thou hast not lied unto men but unto god so what's the sin that they've
committed they lied to god they lied to the apostles
and said they sold it for a certain amount that they
actually sold it for more and they're keeping back the money
the fact that they kept back money isn't the problem the fact that they lied
about it why would they do that to look more
spiritual isn't that why i mean to look holier
than thou or whatever and then actually deceive and connive
and it says ananias hearing these words fell down and gave up the ghost
and a great fear came on all them that heard these things
and the young men arose wound him up and carried him out and buried him
now in today's society if this happened at our church and someone just did this
well first of all you know we don't have the power that
the apostles had but we couldn't just get guys to go bury
somebody in the backyard of the church you know it'd be
difficult in the concrete and everything like that anyway
but like we just it would just not be lawful to do that but
you know they didn't even invite anybody to the funeral maybe they didn't have
any family i don't know but things were a little different back then
i guess but it says and it was about the same the space of three hours
when his wife not knowing what was done came in and peter answered unto her
tell me whether you sold the land for so much and she said yay
for so much then peter said unto her how is it that you have agreed to
gather to tempt the spirit of the lord behold the feet of them which have
buried thy husband are at the door and shall carry thee out then
she then fell she down straight away at his feet and yielded up the ghost
and the young men came in and found her dead and carrying
her forth buried her by her husband and great fear
came upon all the church and upon as many as heard these things
so this is kind of like one of those things that
the doctrine of firsts you know in the new testament
but what is it what's their problem they're covetous
they're covetous and they're self-righteous and there's
they're hyper spiritual but what do they do they
so their covetousness caused them to lie to god
and lie to the apostles i mean even though he said you haven't lied to us
you lied to the holy ghost you lied to god
but what happens so they have a chance to actually tell the truth here don't
they he says did you sell the sell for this
price yeah yeah uh-huh uh-huh then they lied now the difference between
them and aiken is aiken actually told the truth
he said yep this is what i did admit it then he's killed
but then these people come and they say they lie about it and then
they lie when they have a chance to confess the truth and get right
and then they die they just drop dead so i mean i guess in the new so but what
do you think would have happened if they would have said yes we did
we're sorry we repent do you think god would have allowed them to die
probably not i don't think he would have but you know i don't really know for
sure but it's just an interesting story it's
like it's not like god has changed but our ability to do like we're we are
not new testament the nation of israel as in we have
military power or might to do these things that they didn't in
the old testament israel was its own nation like
that had power and god's power backing them
and god told them to go conquer the promised land
so we he hasn't told us to go conquer vancouver washington
and use like military might to do these things so again we're just
the new testament's completely different that way so
what did aiken do turn what exactly did he do well
let's look at malachi chapter 3 verse 8 i'm almost done here
just hang on for a couple more turnings of the page malachi chapter 3
verse number 8 now god says when you don't tithe you're
robbing him right malachi chapter 3 verse 8 the bible says
will a man rob god yet ye have robbed me but you say wherein have we robbed thee
in tithes and offerings you're cursed with a curse for ye have
robbed me even this whole nation so what aiken did that what
where was all that stuff supposed to go in the treasury of the lord in the
lord's house so that first that first conquest
all that instead of them being able to take that for themselves which they can
do on the neck all the next places they conquer
they can take the spoil this is what soldiers were allowed to do
you taught you if you read the bible there's a lot of times when you see
about them taking spoil taking spoil while they were this is the one they
were not allowed to take the spoil and he's taking the spoil but that
spoil belongs to god that spoil belongs to the house of lord
that spoil belongs in the treasury of the house of the lord
look at verse 10 says bring ye all the tithes in the storehouse
that there may be meat in mine house and prove me now herewith saith the lord of
hosts if i will not open you the windows of
heaven and pour you out a blessing that there
shall not be room enough to receive it so god even promises hey if you bring
the tithe you pay you know you give your tithe
he's going to bless you this is like one of those promise
you know testing passages where god says hey
if you do what i say here i'm going to bless you
and you won't have room enough to receive it
and then he says i and i will rebuke the devourer for your sakes
who is the devourer i mean i would say i would say it's satan or one of his
angels right i will rebuke the devourer for your
sakes and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground neither shall your
vine cast her fruit before the time in the
field sayeth the lord of hosts and all nations shall call you blessed
for you shall be a delightsome land sayeth the lord of hosts
so he's reproving them and rebuking them for what
stealing from him robbing him and by robbing him he's just saying you're not
giving what you're supposed to but isn't that what aiken's doing too he
robbed god he took money he took wealth that
belonged to god and took it for himself and so that
that's part of his crime he coveted he stole
he didn't just steal though from people because that that belonged to god he
stole from god that is a very serious
crime to steal from god to rob god let's look back in our text here
joshua chapter 7 verse 26 it says and they raised over him a great
heap of stones unto this day so the lord turned from the fierceness of
his anger so what appeased god in this that they
killed aiken that they did what he said and
god was a you know he turned away from his fierceness
wherefore the name of the place was called the valley of acor
unto this day and this doesn't you know might not seem like a big deal
but this this actual this chapter is a big deal
it's talked about through the rest of the bible it's brought up over and over
again and it's like well 36 only 36 people
died but yeah 36 people that didn't deserve to die
and it's a it's a big lesson for us it's a big lesson in that
the sins that we commit can have an effect on the rest of our congregation
and that yes your sin does affect other people
your sin in your own house affects your household
and your sins at work affect other people at work
you know your sins in church affect other people at church
the bible says god is angry with the wicked every day
and i'm not saying you're wicked or you know we're righteous if we're saved
right but we are capable of doing wicked things we are capable of sin
our flesh is not reformable the only way we're reformable is through the
spirit of god and if we walk in the spirit daily so
punishment number three will always come for sin
but the degree of punishment that we get is based upon our attitude
about that sin so if you just think that you can just sin as much as you
want i got my grace card i got my
fire you know protection card or whatever your fire insurance
policy or whatever i've gone to allstate got the fire insurance policy
jesus gave it to me i don't have to go to hell and you have that attitude well
it's just a dumb attitude to have because that's the kind
of attitude that's going to get god fuming against you two
yeah let's look at galatian chapter six got a few more places to go and we'll be
done just real real quick stuff
they're like point three it's only one verse okay or two verses here
and there's one more point two more verses after that two more spots will be
done all right punishment will always come
for sin the bible says be not deceived god is
not mocked for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap
for he that soweth to the flesh shall reap of the flesh
or reap of the flesh reap corruption but he that soweth of the spirit shall of
this of the spirit reap life everlasting so we
don't want to reap corruption we don't want to sow to
the flesh that's sin that's corruption
and you know there's that saying that says sin takes you farther than you want
to go keeps you longer than you want to stay
and costs you more than you're willing to pay or want to pay
it's true you know you start going down those roads
into sin and it does do those things but then
at the end of it you know god be sure your sin will find you out
you know you're headed down a road to destruction
and embarrassment and you don't want to end up on that road
and if you do sin the good thing about god is that he is merciful
and you don't have to take the full blow of that punishment necessarily
because you can beg god for mercy and you can be merciful to other people
and you can be forgiving to other people because the way you deal with other
people and how forgiving you are with other
people that's how forgiving god's going to be with you
like i talked about my sermon earlier about giving your children grace
because if you never give them grace then
god's going to look at that and be like oh well he doesn't want to give his
children graceful maybe i won't give him grace either
how about that turn to proverbs chapter 28 verse 13
number four is god's mercy is plenteous for those that seek it
proverbs 28 verse 13 says he that covereth his sins
shall not prosper
so when we cover our sins we're not going to prosper because number one
you're not going to get away with it you're just not going to get away with
it but who so confesseth and forsaketh them
shall have mercy when you confess your sins
and forsake your sins you're going to have mercy and like
does that mean you have to get saved all these different times no that's not
what i was talking about once you're saved you're always saved
but you know you get your parents mad you should apologize you know and how
many times have you apologized your parents
well hopefully you do it often because you probably make them mad all
the time in reality if you're a kid especially the younger you are and some
are more disobedient than others you know some
kids are a little more of a pain in the neck to their mom and dad than others
but if you know that you're that way just tell your parents you're sorry
make it up to them first john 1 8 through 10 let's go ahead and go there
and we'll be done first john 1 8
and people will like criticize this and say oh you're just going to tell people
all they have to do is just rub the genie
god's this genie that you rub and then every time you sin you can just go and
and ask him to forgive your sins well yeah it's not he's not a genie
you don't i don't i don't rub anything and god comes out of any lamp
but i do have these promises in the bible that say
that he'll forgive me when i when i sin why would you not do that
you you want to have wrath in your life you want to get the full punishment
it's like well you're just like some spiritual catholic
you just want to get beaten the worst you possibly can
you just want to walk around with a whip just that's what catholics do
they have the little beads on the end or whatever with the barbs or
i don't know they just want to whip themselves in the back it's bizarre
but don't don't beat yourself up like that
god will lessen the blow you know they could they could be like pieces of paper
instead
first john 1 8 god will punish us for sin but it doesn't have to be
the full extent look at first john 1 8 says if we say that we have no sin
we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us hey
don't don't just think that you're okay with what you're doing and make excuses
in your mind and say that's not a sin yeah i don't
really i don't know if i believe that anymore
yeah because you're doing it it says if we confess our sin
sins he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all
unrighteousness this is a this is a promise this is a
fact if we say that we have not sinned we make
him a liar and his word is not in us don't say you
haven't sinned the the true the true forgiveness and
the true mercy you're going to get are from actually going to god and
confessing your sins and he's going to be the faithful one
we're not faithful we're a bunch of spiritual harlots
sometimes we're a bunch of spiritual whoremongers sometimes we easily
forget our path we walk out we look in the mirror and we
forget what manner of man we are sometimes
but you know what god still is faithful to us and that's the important thing
we might be unfaithful to him all the time but you know what he still loves us
and he understands that we're but you know but
dirt or whatever we're just worms in his sight basically we're but he
still loves us why i don't understand why i don't
understand why the first two people sinned and blew it
for everything and he still had this plan to save us
you know and the few people that are in this room tonight
you know we're the redeemed we're the ones that he you know
we're here on a sunday night most people don't even have sunday night church
anymore but here we are wanting to hear the word
of god wanting to hear the truth and you know
this is an important message for our church look what we do
affects other people and hey if you are affecting
other people well then you know i talked about this
at the beginning of the year like maybe there's a sin that you're struggling
with that you've been struggling with for a long time
hey you know don't give up let god help you
ask him to help you if you just keep knocking at his door
like the inopportune neighbor sugar please give a cup of sugar
a cup of sugar got some flour and god's gonna answer your prayers like
he knows what you want he knows what you need
and he's he's gonna he's gonna help you he's gonna
do what you ask but we do have to put some effort into things
and hey if you're sinning go to god and just ask him to forgive you so the
bible says he will he's faithful at least he's faithful
he's more faithful than we are so let's pray lord we thank you so much
for your faithfulness to us and lord that you will cut cut
down some of the punishment that you that you lay upon us that we deserve
and lord that we can come to you and ask for forgiveness
and you cleanse us from all unrighteousness lord i pray that you'd
help our church to be strong and that lord we would be a church that
has few problems and that that lord we would
be beaten with few stripes if we are beaten
and you'd help us to be a strong church this year
and lord that we think about the things that we do how it affects our families
how it affects the other members in our church lord that we'd be
a forgiving people we'd forgive those around us and not
hold grudges against each other and that we'd be forgiving we'd be
forgiving to our children we'd be forgiving to our fellow church members
and lord that we would have in our heart to be forgiving so that you can forgive
us and be more merciful to us lord we
thank you so much for a great day in church
and we pray that you bless the rest of our week and keep us safe and and bring
those people back that are sick back to church in jesus name we pray
amen
we'll be singing song number 323 be thou my vision again that is song number
323
so
song number 323 sing praise to the lord now on the first
be thou my vision
oh lord of my heart
not be lost to me
save that thou art
thou my best art
by day and by night
walking or sleeping
thy presence my light
be thou my wisdom
and thou my true word
i ever with you
and thou with me lord
thou my great father
i thy true son
thou in me dwelling
and i with thee one
rich as i
the man's empty praise
thou my ignorance
is thou and always
thou and thou only
first in my heart
i king of heaven
my treasure fish out strong
high king of heaven
my victory won
may i reach heaven's
just oh bright heaven's sun
heart of my own heart
whatever befall
still be my vision
oh ruler of all
amen
you