favourite band?
Praise the way you breath out
The wind blows in my way
Praise the way you breathe out
The sky is looking bright
Praise the way you breathe out
The wind blows in my way
Here comes the King
All the way down
With a new voice, yeah
Here comes the King
All the way down
You won't hear me again
I need more time
You won't hear me again
I can't put my eyes back
You won't hear me again
Praise the way you breath out
The wind blows in my way
Here comes the King
All the way down
With a new voice, yeah
Here comes the King
All the way down
Yeah
You are the King
Yeah
You are the King
All the way down
Lift up your voices up today
You are the King
All the way down
Here comes the King
All the way down
Lift up your voices up today
You are the King
All the way down
Good morning, good morning, good morning.
Alright, so we're going to say a little bit more in a minute
and we're going to just work through our schedule.
I noticed that Brother Ron is a little late
or wherever he's at this morning,
he was scheduled to pray,
so I'll take his place
and then I'll call on somebody to finish.
We've got a little bit of illness going around,
so we're missing some folks,
and so pray for them.
Brother Tony Tate is traveling today,
so pray for them.
So we'll see you guys tomorrow.
Brother Tony Tate is traveling today,
so pray for him.
He has his surgery tomorrow morning at 7.30 in the morning.
I get to get up and go get him and take him to get his surgery,
so I have to get up at like 2.00, 6.00, and 6.30,
which that's a little bit early for me.
So hopefully that all goes well.
Alright, so I'll pray,
and then I'll call on somebody to pray right after me.
Alright, here we go.
Father in heaven, we do thank you so much for letting us be here today,
for the music, for the place,
for the fun that we have together,
the learning that we do when we go to your word.
Lord, we pray that as the weather changes,
not too many of us would get sick with the viruses and stuff that are going around.
It's that time of year.
I pray for the students in school.
First quarter is almost finished up already, Lord,
and time is flying by.
We pray for the worship that's here today, Lord,
that it honors you in some way,
and the message from the Lord that we can learn something and grow,
is a pretty important teaching,
that we pray that we would take it in and that it would affect us.
Lord, I pray for Sherry, who's been knackered back.
I pray for Mike with his knee,
Lord, and I know he didn't sleep good last night,
so I pray that you just heal him and help him and get him through.
I pray for Miss June,
she's trying to quit smoking, trying to get ready for her surgery.
I pray for Carrie, I know her vehicle is down.
Lord, there may be others as well,
but those of you who are still on the way here,
we just ask you to intervene on our behalf,
and we pray all of this in Jesus' name.
And I choose Caitlin.
Lord, I pray that you watch over those of us who are still on the way here,
and we're thankful that we are all here to be able to learn your message,
and not only learn and understand it,
but also apply it and share it to others who may not know it.
And Lord, I pray that this message can touch everyone in the room,
and that the kids can learn the message as well.
So we pray that all of you can say Amen.
Amen.
All right, so we're going to stand up together, except for Tim.
He's allowed to sit. He's the only one.
Everybody up, come on.
Good morning. It's still morning.
Stretch. Barely.
No calisthenics.
I'm just having fun.
When the night is so blue, my hope is found.
Here's my mind, my strength, my soul.
This chorus song, this solid crowd,
Down to the business ground and store.
One heart, one soul, one depth of peace.
When fears are still, when strength is gained.
The comfort of my rolling on,
Here in the love of Christ I stand.
In Christ alone, who was on death,
For who's abound in hell can stay.
This gift of love and righteousness,
Spored by the ones he came to save.
Till on that cross, where Jesus died, The breath of God was satisfied.
For every sin on him was paid, Here in the death of Christ I live.
There is no ground with God in it laid,
Like the world by God his slain.
Then bursting forth, in glorious fame,
Out from the grave he rose again.
And as he stands in victory,
Since Christ has lost his grip on me,
For I am his, and he is mine,
Once with the precious blood of Christ.
No guilt and life, no fear and death,
This is the power of Christ in me.
From last Christ, in final breath,
Jesus commands my destiny.
For a thousand years, I'll see no end,
Never does he close his hand,
Till he returns, or calls me home,
Here in the power of Christ I'll stand.
Alrighty, children can take to the front, spread yourself out, give yourself some arm space.
Come on, there's plenty of room up here.
She's going to walk you through it, it's not hard.
Follow her, follow my line.
Put your hand in the hand of the man who sealed the waters.
Put your hand in the hand of the man who called the sea.
Take a look at yourself and you can look at others differently.
I put your hand in the hand of the man from heaven's sea.
I've looked into the water, walked down a strangle.
When I think about the kind of things that heaven and sea have to offer.
For a thousand years I've been telling you,
We've voted for you, and now I have no question.
And it cost me way to know I'm not the one that I should be.
Put your hand in the hand of the man who sealed the waters.
Put your hand in the hand of the man who called the sea.
Take a look at yourself and you can look at others differently.
I put your hand in the hand of the man from heaven's sea.
You told me how to pray before we came to seven.
I'm down on knees, that's when I'm close to heaven.
Daddy, listen, sometimes it's a hands-on fight.
You know what you want to do.
But it shows me something, what it takes to get to a move.
Put your hand in the hand of the man who sealed the waters.
Put your hand in the hand of the man who called the sea.
Take a look at yourself and you can look at others differently.
I put your hand in the hand of the man from heaven's sea.
Like when it says, like take, like the sacros that the song is talking about,
it's like the devil telling you that you can't go on or the devil trying to hold you back.
But when it mentions when God takes the sacros off her hands so she can place him,
it shows that God's not going to let the devil hold you back.
Man, that's very good. I think that's exactly what she's saying about it, that song. Very good.
Alright, anybody else?
I had a good conversation on the phone yesterday. You got something?
I just wanted to say I love everybody.
Alright, do you know all the words?
I just wanted to throw that away.
Do you know all the words?
Most of them.
You ready to bust out right now, Acappella?
No solo from that solo today, huh?
Alright, so I was on the phone yesterday. I was talking with Brother Tony Tate.
He's talking about how sometimes we're going through stuff and we make decisions that do not honor God or are not what God would want.
And sometimes we make what we think is a small decision, like we'll do a little thing,
and we're like, well, it's no big deal, just this one time or just this one little bit,
and we do what we kind of think we shouldn't do, what God doesn't want us to do.
And then that's a failure because we did what we shouldn't do, right? We gave into temptation.
And we were talking about how maybe we're seeing it backwards.
When we get to heaven, before we go into heaven, it says there will be an accounting for how we handled what we were blessed with.
In our case, it's the knowledge about Jesus, knowledge from the Bible, or how we handled it.
And I wonder if maybe the mistake that we're making is we think, well, I'm making this one little mistake,
or I'm having this one little failure and I can handle that,
rather than realizing that every success that you have is like a hundred successes, like a hundred blessings.
And God's going to count every time you chose to do what God wanted you to do,
instead of doing maybe what you were tempted to do, God's going to count that a hundred times more.
We know that our righteousness is not ours anyway. It comes from Jesus.
If you're saved and you've been forgiven of your sin, then that's because of Jesus' righteousness,
because Jesus died on the cross for our sins.
So then, now that we're saved, he wants to know what are we going to do about that?
And when you live for him and you give him temptation, you go, oh, well, just this one time.
I don't know how much that counts for, but it sounds really bad.
Like, if your parents were in the room and could see what you're doing and you still did what you know they don't want you to do,
that's not going to be good.
Like, right in front of them, you did exactly what they said or did exactly what they told you not to do, that's not going to be good.
And it's like that with God, because he can see everything that we do.
But at the same time, if your parents were in the room and they saw you about to do something and you went,
oh, wait, I don't think that's good. That's not what I want to do.
And you chose to do the right thing, that's going to be good.
They're going to be like, yes, he or she did the right thing.
So I think it's like that with God.
Instead of thinking about, oh, I can slip in this one bad thing and I can give him this temptation this one time,
I think we need to think about how if I do the right thing here, if I make the right choice,
it's worth a hundred times how much that one little wrong choice hurts me.
So, man, if we would just change our attitude, change our perspective about making the right choice
and how powerful that is, how good that is.
I have a verse written on my wall at home that says essentially that we will receive as a reward for all the things that we do, good and bad.
And so that encouraged me.
So the next time I'm in my moment of temptation, I'm thinking about doing something I shouldn't do,
that I will go, well, this one, this little bad thing I could do, it's not that big of a deal.
But if I do the right thing here, that's worth a hundred times as much or maybe infinitely more.
So I encourage you with that today. All right.
So, let's see, who's good?
Arjay. And then if you call on somebody when you're done, right.
Yeah, actually, I have one thing to say before I break.
There's a song that I listened to the first time I heard it was a word which is where I hear a lot of songs.
But one of the guys I worked with, he was like, oh, this is like my favorite song ever.
And I was listening to it and it's a country song they came on.
But it sounds like it would be like a kid talking to their grandpa
because they ask, well, what's this picture, it's black and white, it's not real clear.
And then he goes on to tell this story of like these different pictures that are all in black and white.
And he's at the end of the song, he says, well, this is my story, this is my life laid out in black and white.
And as a Christian, we shouldn't see ourselves, we shouldn't see a life of black and white.
We should see a life fully in color and in its beauty.
And the song is actually called In Color because it talks about how if you think we were scared,
then you should have seen it in color where it's more clear.
And as a Christian, that's how we should see everything.
We should be able to see things clearly.
We should be able to never have to think, well, what is this really like?
Because when you're walking with God, it's not black and white.
When you're walking with Christ, it should never be a black and white blurry picture.
It should be crystal clear.
You should never be, one of the things that I've said a lot to the youth group, for example, is you're either all in or you're all out.
There's no on the fence.
You can't be riding, walking that fine line.
You have to be either all in or you have to be all out.
Because if you're walking that line, it's so easy to get pulled one way.
And usually that way is towards the devil.
I mean, usually it's easier to fall back in your old habits.
I've struggled with that for my entire life.
And especially if I were on stage, I still struggle with getting pulled back into my old habits.
But like I said, when I was listening to that song, I'm like, you know, my picture is clear.
I know where I'm going, where I'm done here.
I know what my future holds.
And there should never be a reason I should walk that line anymore because I know what my end is.
How about you pray for us and then call us in?
Dear Heavenly Father, I don't think for this time.
Thank you for everyone here, Lord.
I just pray that everyone here just opens their hearts to you and learns to understand your communities and your teachings.
God, I pray for the message later today and the kids that go to their lessons.
I pray that they learn from you, grow from you, and you just reach them however you see fit, Lord.
And I just, again, I pray for everything.
I pray for my mom.
She's got a council appointment to have hand surgery on Wednesday, and she's really nervous about it.
But God, I just pray that you comfort her and comfort anyone else who's here.
And we'll do this name. Mr. Tonga.
Dear Lord, thank you for another day to give us.
Thank you for this time of the year.
The season changed, the coolness of the evenings and the mornings and the crispness and the sunshine that comes on us in the afternoon is so warm when the sun shines.
Thank you for experiencing this.
I ask the Lord to be with us here today. It's already been a blessing.
What we've already experienced is asking the Lord to be with us, help us to grow and learn as we hear and sing the songs.
Just ask the Lord to beautify them, offer them, take them up, bless them, use them, and if you see fit, help us to do your service in doing that.
Thank you.
Jesus, friend of sinners, the one who's right to be innocent, made the righteous turn away and the stones fall from their hands.
Help us to remember we are all that needs to be. Let the memory of your mercy bring your people to any.
Somebody does what we're born to do, what we're against, when we judge the world in. What if we put down a backstab, open the lives and lives like you did?
We must, friend of sinners, open our eyes to the one at the end of our time and vision. Let our hearts sing, let our hearts sing, of our sweet truth of the heart, the broken heart.
Oh, Jesus, friend of sinners, break our soul and bring it on. You looked out in the dark, you reached for the outcast, the lover and the pain.
There's a reason that you came, for I want the love of God, and I want the outcast, but you never said you'd just like me, a place forever at your feet.
You are God, you are God, and your love endures forever.
We must, friend of sinners, open our eyes to the one at the end of our time and vision. Let our hearts sing, let our hearts sing, of our sweet truth of the heart, the broken heart.
Oh, Jesus, friend of sinners, break our eyes for what it brings you.
And that was the lost cause, and that was the outcast's pain. You died for sinners just like me, a place forever at your feet.
Oh, Jesus, friend of sinners, break our eyes for what it brings you.
Worthy is the Lamb who was saved, holding holy his feet. Sing a new song to him who sits on heaven's mercy seat.
Worthy is the Lamb who was saved, holding holy his feet.
Sing a new song to him who sits on heaven's mercy seat. Holy, holy, holy is our God Almighty, who was and is and is to come.
With our creation you sing, ready to become a king. You are my everything, and I will adore you.
Rose and red rose of living color, blushing and bright, you are my founder.
Blessing and honor shaking, glory and power free, to you the only one I see. Holy, holy, holy is our God Almighty, who was and is and is to come.
With our creation you sing, ready to become a king. You are my everything, and I will adore you.
Filled with wonder, awesome wonder, at the mansion of your name. Jesus, your name is power, breath of living water, such harmless mystery.
Holy, holy, holy is our God Almighty, who was and is and is to come.
With our creation you sing, ready to become a king. You are my everything, and I will adore you. Holy, holy, holy is our God Almighty, who was and is and is to come.
With our creation you sing, ready to become a king. You are my everything, and I will adore you.
Do you want to take notes?
But I like it.
Alright.
When I was about 15, 16 years old, which I think some of you can relate to, I heard a sort of just like a joke, and I didn't catch it at first, and it was about sugar, and how dangerous sugar is for you.
And they had done a study, and they said if you feed rats, who of course love sugar, equal to 10 times their body weight in one day, they all die.
And I didn't pay attention to the numbers, because I was just kind of glancing over everything, and so if you think about 10 pounds the body weight of anything will kill it, it will probably drown, right?
So if you ate 10 pounds, 10 times your weight in sugar, you would die. You would drown in sugar, because there's no way to put it all inside of you.
So I didn't pay any attention at the time, and then later, about six months, a year later, whatever, I caught that it was 10 times the body weight of the rat, that they were feeding it, and that it would kill it, and I thought, oh, well then maybe sugar's not all that bad for you.
The fact is that everything that's in this life can both be good for you and bad for you.
Just the same as inside every person is sort of like two people wrestling with, am I going to do the right thing, or am I going to do the wrong thing, and if Jesus comes in, then Jesus helps us kind of bring that to union and try to do the right thing, right?
And just like that's like that inside of every person, it's also like that inside of creation. I love motorcycles. I have an endorsement on my license, but I've not been able to own one for quite a while, but I love to ride a motorcycle.
Have you noticed riding a motorcycle, RJ, that you see a lot more than you do in a car?
Yeah. Have you noticed that you can kind of go places in traffic and get places faster than cars can?
Have you noticed that you can get going faster from a stop than cars can?
Yeah. However, have you noticed that if you drop your motorcycle while you're driving it, it hurts a lot?
Luckily I've never dropped one, but yes.
Well, you're doing better than I am. I dropped my first motorcycle like a week after I got it, so.
I dropped a dirt bike, so yeah, that.
Yeah, it hurts a lot, right? There's no protection. There's no airbag, there's no seatbelts, and you can wear a helmet. It'll protect your head, but you'll still be nursed back to life over months if you drop a bike at high speed, because it will cripple you.
Lots of good things about motorcycles. I love them. But also some very dangerous things.
Let's get down to very simple. Anybody in here like steak? Do you like steak? I love steak.
Steak is my favorite thing. I love steak. Okay? And a well-done steak. Not well-done. My wife says well-done, and she means like charcoal on it.
I mean, well-done. It's just barely brown in the middle. It's perfectly brown, so it's not bleeding, but it's not crispy.
Not crispy. Crispy is something else. That's like charcoal. But I love a steak. But did you know that if you eat too much steak, it's bad for you, right?
Your body has a hard time digesting. Did you have a question?
Steak is also a good protein.
It is. Very much so. And you need that protein to build muscle and keep your muscle mass, otherwise you will lose your muscle mass.
And you can get it in other ways, right? But steak is very good, but it also has its bad side. And you can do that. You literally could go down to everything.
Too much of any good thing, right? And that's why some philosopher somewhere said all things in moderation. Is that true? All things in moderation.
It is not true. Because there are things that are just flat out bad for you, and you can't have them.
And then there are things that are so good for you that you definitely should have more of them. Water being an example, right? All things in moderation.
If you drink one or two cups a day of water, that would be a moderation. But you're supposed to drink like half a gallon of water. That's like eight cups in a day, right?
And so most people don't do that. Most Americans are dehydrated all the time. You think you're tired, your allergies are acting up, your immune system is failing you, whatever.
You could be dehydrated, because most of us are. Okay?
I thought you said you'd be prepared for the apocalypse if you're able to drink half a gallon of water a day.
No. That is the actual number you are supposed to drink. That's not something special.
I actually am supposed to drink two-thirds of a gallon a day, because I have a condition where I get dehydrated easily. And I struggle, believe me, I struggle to do that.
Alright, so we're going to talk about something today from two aspects. It's going to go by really fast. You're going to have to hold on to your hats.
But we're going to talk about something from two aspects. First of all, we're going to talk about what you just can't have.
And then we're going to talk about what you just better have. And they're both the blood.
Last week when I read through Deuteronomy chapter 12, I passed by some verses and I said, don't worry about that. We'll hit them next week. And we're going to hit them today.
There they are. Alright, so take a breath if you would. Get a little excited with me. Say amen something as we go to Deuteronomy chapter 12 one last time. Amen.
This is God's word. It will change your life if you let it. A little bit of focus right now would be important.
Deuteronomy 12, 16 says, only you shall not eat the blood. You are to pour it out on the ground like water.
He's talking about meat. You can eat anything you want. You can eat it like you would eat a gazelle or a deer. And he didn't say anything but any clean animal, what they consider clean.
Only you shall not eat the blood. You are to pour it out on the ground like water. Now don't be confused. He's not saying don't eat the blood because it's precious, like save it or something.
He's saying just dump it out on the ground like water. Then 23 says, only be sure not to eat the blood.
For the blood is the life, or in the Hebrew that word could mean soul. And you shall not eat the life with the flesh. You shall not eat it.
You shall pour it out on the ground like water. You shall not eat it in order that it may be well with you and your sons after you.
You will be doing what is right in the sight of the Lord. So with regards to the blood, simply put, what did he say? He can't eat it.
So it's not good for you in a lot of different ways on a spiritual level, physical level, psychological, emotionally.
People have asked the question over the years, in fact even people have done it over the years, can you drink blood?
Can you drink human blood? Can you drink animal blood? And people do it in cults and nasty places that they're getting into dark rituals and stuff like that.
And the truth is it's horrible for you. It's absolutely horrible for you to drink blood.
And to take blood in your meat you can very quickly get a condition where you get too much raw iron in your system and you can die.
It literally will cause heart damage and you can die from it very quickly.
So not only are there pathogens that are killed off by the cooking, so you've got to stay away from disease, but on top of that, right, there's too much iron in the blood of animals and in people and it's very, very bad for your health.
So you just can't eat it. God was saying don't eat the meat with the blood in it. So you can eat the meat.
In fact you're supposed to go up to the temple, kill the sacrifice, eat the meat altogether.
But if you're too far away then you can kill the animals and you can eat them wherever you are, right, because you can't take all those animals up to the temple.
You can kill them anywhere you are, but don't eat the blood. Don't drink the blood.
In the day that they're talking about there was a group of people who would ritually, they would take the blood of whatever they were eating.
They would take it out and they would dig a hole in the ground, a specific hole in the ground, and then they would pour the blood in it and then they would let it sit there like a ritual.
It was a worshipping of false God. And he said no, just discard it. Just pour it out on the ground. Just get rid of it.
Don't eat meat with blood in it. That's what he was saying.
Basically he's saying do the right thing. Remember it says if you do this it will be good with you.
So then there's, you're going to avoid those health concerns which they knew nothing about, right.
At that day and time the idea of vitamins or minerals being in your blood, they had no idea.
This is written thousands of years before that was understood, okay.
But God said to them don't do it because it will be bad for you if you do.
Now also we know they'd be following the commands of the Lord. So this is also about following the commands.
They were going to go and live among people that would eat this blood or would eat the meat.
So it was a thing that would strangle the animals instead of like chopping their head off or slicing and draining the blood out or something.
They would strangle the animal and then eat the animal with the blood still inside it.
And it was a ritual for false gods, for evil worship. Had nothing to do with God.
And they were going to go and live amongst those people. And God was saying you can't do that.
Don't be like them. Don't learn that lesson from them.
Just recently there was a big story that came out, I think came from Hollywood, but it came from California,
about an actor and an actress and one of them is very much a musician like that, who decided they fell in love and he got down on his knee.
It says he got down on his knee and proposed and put a ring up and he said will you marry me?
And she said yes I will and she took the ring and then they ended the tweet where they announced their engagement with and then we drank each other's blood.
You look it up. You can find it on Twitter.
Does that call me out of God or what?
Well, that's why we're paying attention.
So the bottom line is this, people are freaky and freaky people are even freakier than normal people.
That's the bottom line. But don't eat the meat with the blood in it. Don't drink human blood.
God says no. Period. That's it. It's a simple thing.
Now it gets a little bit more complex because he says the life or the soul is in the blood.
He says we can take the meat but we must not take the life or the soul with it. You follow? Yes?
So is it possible to regurgitate all of the previous blood of myself that I've drank in through my past?
No. It's already been digested so you're done.
We can take the meat but we cannot take the life. Okay?
So this can apply to all things in your life.
Ever seen it happen where kids go over and play with a friend?
It happens all the time in my house.
Some people come play with Ariana or when they're younger they come play with friends.
And then after they're playing for a while and it starts to get a little later in the day,
what's the first thing they say?
Can I spend the night?
Now they've been playing together for six or eight hours. They're already tired.
Whatever. It's almost bedtime.
You know, at 15, 20 minutes you're going to have to get ready for bed but can I spend the night?
It is a natural human state to want to quote,
suck the life out of whatever we're doing.
Let's take it to the nth degree. Right?
So I love to ride a motorcycle. I love to ride a motorcycle.
I never learned to ride a wheelie down the street on a motorcycle.
I had that kind of motorcycle when I was driving.
I did the first bike I had and the second time I didn't.
But I never did learn how to do that.
I watched a guy the other day.
He had one of those kind of like little race burner motorcycles
and he's going down the road and he rode a wheelie down the road for like a mile
and he went around cars while doing it.
I'm going like, that dude is trying to get the absolute nth degree out of his motorcycle.
He is trying to take it to the limit.
And that's extremely dangerous. Right?
I was coming out of the bank on Reynolds Road at Reynolds and Heather Downs some years ago
and walked out of the bank and I heard a crash.
First I heard a race burner motorcycle go by really fast, probably 90, 100 mile an hour.
And then I heard a crash.
And what had happened was this guy is going down the street and somebody pulled out in front of him.
And he went into the other lane and hit the back of a semi at 95 mile an hour.
It was the end of him.
But he was getting the most out of his motorcycle.
I submit to you that it is the human state that we try to get the most out of whatever we possibly can.
And the truth is that this can apply to all things.
And God says there are limits.
There are limits to how far you think of anything.
Now he says in 1 Corinthians, Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 10 that all things have become permissible.
So you can literally pretty much do anything.
If you are truly a follower of Jesus, you can even do things that we know are sin.
You can give into temptation and you will still go to heaven.
I was standing on the porch of a woman on Wednesday afternoon that I had to take groceries at the end of the day.
It was actually when I was into my Sabbath.
I was standing on her porch, talking with her.
I was talking to her for 45 minutes.
And basically she was professing to be a Christian.
She said I believe in God.
I believe in Jesus as the son of God.
I believe he is my Lord.
That means he tells me what to do when I do it.
I believe that he is my Savior, which means he paid the price for my sins.
She said she believed all of that.
But then I asked her what she was doing about it.
She wasn't going to church.
She wasn't serving.
She wasn't giving.
She wasn't loving other people out of the way she loved her family members as much as she knew how.
She was taking care of her house, but she wasn't doing it in a way that honored God.
I said are you praying even?
Do you talk to God?
She said no, I really don't do that.
She said I think about God.
I think about God things, but I don't talk to God at all.
And I said okay, so what you're saying to me is Jesus is Lord, but you're not doing any of the things that Jesus has told you to do.
She was doing all of these other things which are permissible, but she got wrapped up in doing all of the other things that were permissible
and never got around to doing the things that are profitable.
It makes sense to follow God.
It makes sense to pray.
It makes sense to worship.
It makes sense to read the Bible.
It may make sense to come and sit and worship in here with our friends and family and have a little bit of fun and whatever.
That does make sense too, but we can do that a lot of other ways.
We come here because it's about God.
We come here and we spend time together, and you need to lead the person next to you to be looking toward God, right?
To be praying, to be worshiping, to be serving, to be giving, to do the things that God would want us to do.
All things are permissible, but not all things are profitable.
Paul goes on to say, and I will not be mastered by any.
Now, if you know somebody who slipped into an addiction, they say that people who get back surgeries,
70% of people who get back surgeries get addicted to opioid-based medications, oxycodone, Percocet, whatever.
So the wise in us try not to take them at all, but once you take them, to some degree you're addicted.
That's the bottom line.
70% of people who take back surgeries are addicted, and you might hurt your knee like Mike did,
or you might pull a muscle, or you might twist your wrist, and they'll go to the doctor and say, oh, I'm in a lot of pain.
Okay, here's some Percocet, here's some oxycodone, right?
And once you start taking it, tons and tons and tons of people, high percentages, get addicted.
It's very addictive.
And in the early days, they would prescribe a little too much of it,
and by that time people would be so addicted that they couldn't get off it.
But when you're in a lot of pain, sometimes the only thing you can do is take something that's going to stop your pain,
so that you can heal, so that you can rest, so you can get some sleep, so your body can do what it needs to do.
So opioids are a good thing, and they're not going to take them off the market,
but they're also a bad thing because it's really super easy to get addicted.
And alcohol is an example, right?
Alcohol is given primarily for medicinal purposes, for those who are suffering near to death,
or the poor who are just bereft or broken or whatever for comfort.
But we shouldn't really be drinking it.
But if you're going to drink it, you definitely can't drink it to excess.
But guess what? It's addictive.
So if you drink it, it leads to drinking it to excess.
A lot of things are like that.
TV. TV is good.
You sit there, watch TV, you watch an hour of TV, and it lets you relax your mind, your brain, your body.
You decompress. You're just like, oh, I'm in a fantasy world.
I'm somewhere else. I'm not worrying about all my problems.
And so in that sense, it's good.
But it's also addictive, and it can become controlling.
Oh, I've got to watch the next episode.
I've got to stream it until I've seen it all.
Right? It's easy to do that.
We have a tendency as a human being to try to pull the life or the strength or the soul out of a thing
and think about now, what can we use this for?
It's said that the American Indians, for example, when they would kill a deer, they would use every piece of the deer,
every bit of it from the hoof to the top of the ant, and they would use all of it.
Right? And they would find something to use every bit of it for.
And that's our tendency.
We don't want to waste.
But then what happens is we get kind of running on ahead, and we wind up wasting lots of stuff.
Right? You go to a restaurant.
They give you a drink. They refill your drink.
You leave it on the table.
You just wasted 15 ounces of something.
Right? Because why?
Because it's a free refill anyway.
Because why?
Because if you go to a restaurant and they don't give you free refills, people are like, this place is cheap.
I don't like this place.
I like to go where I get free refills.
You know?
But we're wasting what we get for free and the good stuff.
Right?
When we first got Netflix streaming in our house some years ago, we did not have unlimited Wi-Fi.
That was back in the day when they charged you for data on everything.
Right?
And we didn't know it, but Netflix will keep playing.
If you turn the TV off, we had started, it'd keep right on playing.
And so for the first month, we watched something on Netflix, and then we didn't stop Netflix.
We just turned the TV off.
We didn't know you had to stop.
We figured we'd just stop at the end of the episode, but it would eventually play the next episode.
And so the TV was playing, or the streaming device, which was a Roku, because that's what we've always had,
a Roku was playing movies while nobody was watching.
So at the end of the month, we got a bill for $300 for our Internet,
because all these shows had streamed on Roku, and we knew nothing about it.
Our TV was turned off.
It's easy to waste.
It's easy for things to get out of control.
But what he's saying is you can take the meat, you can take the part that you need of something,
but you can draw the line at taking too much.
You can say, yeah, I'll watch TV, but I'm not going to watch too much TV.
Yeah, I'll participate in sports, but I'm not going to overdo it.
Yeah, I'll eat a dessert every day, but I'm not going to eat three.
Right?
Or I'm not going to eat too much of that cake that I have in the kitchen.
You can draw the line, and that's who's saying you've got to draw the line at what's good for you.
But it's worse than that, because pursuing what's good for you can take you to a place where you don't want to go.
Paul says the pursuit of money or riches or wealth is the root of all evil.
If you're following along, your Bible is turned with me from 1 Timothy chapter 6.
We've already done the first point, which was don't eat meat with blood in it.
Pour it out.
The second is the life or soul is in the blood, and we can take the meat,
but we must not take the life, and that's where we're at right now.
So we're going to 1 Timothy chapter 6.
I warned you it was going to go by fast.
So 1 Timothy chapter 6, I'm going to read verse 17 to 19, and then verse 11.
That's how we're going to do it.
All right?
So 17 says, instruct those who are rich in this present world not to be conceited
or to fix their hope on the uncertainty of riches.
Now, first of all, I want to ask you, what are riches?
This is written in the context of money, but what are riches?
Go ahead.
I don't know what you're taking my answer out of.
I was going to say money.
Okay, so a lot of money.
Not a dollar in your pocket.
That wouldn't be riches, right?
But a $100 bill, for most of us, that would be riches, right?
$100 a week.
For many of us, that would be riches.
$1,000 a week would definitely be riches, right?
So we understand the scale, don't we?
When you have more than you need.
But is it only money?
How many people in this room have a gaming system in their house?
Okay?
All right.
Now, keep your hand up.
Keep your hand up if you have something newer than a PS2.
How about newer than a PS3?
Newer than a PS4?
Okay, most hands are going down a couple.
So we have a couple PS5s, all right?
So for those of you who have a PS4, does PS5 look a little bit like riches?
No.
I mean, why don't you have a PS5 then?
Like, well, I don't want to, right?
I don't need to.
I don't need to step it up.
But you can.
I mean, it's literally the same thing with a little bit of upgrades.
Right.
But yet, some people have it.
And that's kind of the...
It's over $1,000 on release.
I understand.
So that's the point.
Well, I mean, whether it's a waste or not is determined by each individual.
But if they waste too much time playing it instead of doing what God would have them do,
then it becomes a problem, right?
There's nothing wrong with having a PS4 or having a PS5.
But see how it can be riches?
That's all I'm saying, right?
You could make it about Xbox.
You could make it about motorcycles.
You could make it about newer, fancier cars, better houses, more land, horses, whatever it is.
If you have something that you don't necessarily need, then it's riches.
All right.
And then he says, if you're rich in this life, do not be conceited.
Don't fix your hope on the uncertainty of riches.
So in other words, it could come and go.
Even the people who are in this room who have a PS5 may not eventually have a PS6.
You may or you may not, if there even is one, right?
They may name something completely different.
And you might go, well, I'm not going to buy the next version.
But 10, 15 years now, when they're on PS Extreme and it's like the 15th version,
your PS5 won't play the games anymore, you might, right?
And that's talking, again, that's about games.
You say, well, I'll never own a horse, right?
But if we go back into the dark ages where cars don't work anymore, maybe you'll own a horse.
Who knows?
But the point is riches are uncertain.
The good things, when you go beyond that level, it's uncertain.
So if you place your hope on that, if I can go, I want to go deeper, I'm going to suck more out of the day.
I'm going to do more, see more, going to have more money or have a better car or have what I'm going to go deeper.
That's uncertain.
You don't know that that's going to happen.
You just want it to happen.
But rather, he says, hope on God.
God richly supplies us with all things to enjoy.
So in other words, all of that that's out there in the world is all good.
You can enjoy it.
But what you can't do, again, is try to suck the life out of it.
You can't find strength in it.
You can't find hope in it.
You can't feel better about yourself because you own a PS5 than somebody else who only owns a PS3.
You can't do that because then you are trusting or hoping in the riches, which actually are supplied by God.
He gives us all things to enjoy.
But instead, he says, instruct them to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share.
In other words, if you have riches, listen to me, if you have a PS5 or even a PS4, you are obligated,
required by God, to do more for other people than those who do not have a PS4 or PS5.
You follow? Go.
So I did the right thing when I gave my friend an early birthday present by letting her play Minecraft for the first time.
Sure. Yep.
So we are supposed to be generous and ready to share, storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future.
All that stuff that we like, all the things that we do, the TV that we are watching, movies, foods that we are eating, all of it,
it's all grist for the mill. It's all going to be gone tomorrow.
Do you remember what you had for dinner a month ago?
No. But if you hadn't had dinner a few days in a row, you would remember the period of time at which you didn't have dinner a few days in a row.
Right? If you don't eat for 48 hours, not by your choice, you are going to start to go, man, I'm hungry.
I wish I could eat and I don't have any food.
And then in a few months, you are going to remember that time when you didn't have any food for a few days and you were hungry and you wanted to eat, but you couldn't.
But do you remember every meal you eat?
No. We do what we do for our sustenance, but then when we get something that is considered rich as something that is a blessing,
number one, you don't try to suck the life out of it.
That's not where our hope is found. You cannot feel better because you bought yourself something.
You cannot feel better because you saved more money.
You cannot feel better because you watched another episode.
When you start to do that and suck the life out of that, that's a problem.
You are putting your hope in something that will go away.
It's all going to be gone.
Instead, he's saying, store up for yourself treasure of a good foundation for the future.
Do the works of God. Be good to people. Be generous. Be caring about others.
And as you do that, you are building something that will last, something that will be eternal.
Finishing that sentence, it says, storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future so that they, and who is the they?
The they is those who have riches, those who are doing well.
They may take hold of that which is, watch it, life indeed.
See it? So when you, for them it was, I'm going to eat an animal.
Can't eat the blood. I can eat the meat, but not the blood.
Now the meat is not life, right? If you can eat meat and still, by the way it happened, right?
Salted meat lasts for a really long time.
And so in the age of the tall ships, ships would carry salted meat on board.
And so they would almost never run out of food because they could have that salted meat which would pack it in salt.
And even though they didn't have refrigeration, it would last for months.
They could take months worth of salted meat.
But when they got out to sea, they didn't have any fruits or vegetables.
The English used dried peas and they would reconstitute them with water and those would last quite a while.
But you get real tired after a while. All you have is peas, pea paste really, it's not even peas.
It's pea paste and meat. That's all you got, right?
And so after a while the peas run out and the bread gets weevils in it, bugs.
They got little bugs in there and they hatch out and they start crawling in the flour and they get baked into the bread and whatever.
And so all you got is meat.
And after a while all you have is meat, you get scurvy.
One of the first symptoms of scurvy is you get blisters on your gums and your teeth start to fall out.
You can't just eat meat. It's not life, right?
But the truth is what he's telling us, just eating meat and vegetables also is not life.
There's something more than that.
Real life is in serving God. It's found in being good and doing what God would have us to do.
And that's the foundation for an eternity with God.
And that's why God would say, don't drink the blood and you'll do well.
Don't try to suck the life out of the thing. Just enjoy it the way God gave it to you and move on.
And then the third thing I want you to see in here is spilt blood represents Jesus' sacrifice.
Now every time we spill blood on the ground to some degree, if it's not done in violence, it represents Jesus' sacrifice.
When you kill an animal and eat it, that animal is giving its life, not necessarily intentionally because maybe you didn't give it the choice, right?
But it's giving its life so that you can eat.
That's the way God set it up.
He first created the creation. For example, he created the seas.
And then he put fish in the seas. He created the dry land and then he put animals on the dry land.
And after he created everything for everybody to eat, then he created people to eat it.
We weren't even allowed to eat meat until the age of Noah.
We're two points done, one to go. This is the last one.
Don't eat meat with blood in it. Don't suck the life out of the thing that you're enjoying.
And last, the spilt blood represents Jesus' sacrifice.
I'm going to rattle through a few sets of verses here to kind of give you the point.
Jesus in Matthew 26, 28 said this, For this is my blood of the covenant poured out for you.
That's from the Lord's Supper.
In fact, Jesus said, Unless you eat of my flesh and drink of my blood, you will not be saved.
You will not see the kingdom of God.
So we don't drink the blood of animals and we don't literally drink the blood of Jesus.
But we understand that the power of salvation is in the blood of Jesus.
And that's why we take the Lord's Supper, which we use juice to represent the blood.
In Hebrews 9, 14, the author says that this blood of Jesus is sufficient to cleanse your conscience.
That means the part of you that recognizes when you've done wrong from dead works.
In Ephesians 2, 3, it says, We were brought near by the blood of Jesus.
In Acts 20, 28, it says that he was to shepherd the church of God, which Jesus purchased with his own blood.
1 John 1, 7, But if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another,
and the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin.
Hebrews 9, 22, And according to the law, one may almost say all things are cleansed with blood,
and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.
If Jesus did not shed his blood on the cross, you would not be forgiven for your sins.
For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins, but the blood of Jesus can do so.
Therefore, whoever eats the blood and drinks the cup unworthily or in an unworthy manner shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord.
God was working a work in shedding the blood of Jesus way before Moses lived.
Way before you or I lived, of course.
He knew that Jesus' blood would be poured out to cover the sins of people.
He knew that they would fillet his back with the cat of nine tails and rip the skin and muscle off his back
so that he was bleeding out every surface of his back.
He knew that he would be nailed to a cross, creating additional wounds.
He knew that he would have a crown of thorns in his head and beat him with a rod, creating additional wounds.
He knew that the night before he was arrested, he would pray so fervently about what he was about to do
that his sweat glands would break open and begin to be, it's called hermatrodosis,
it actually happens when people are under high distress, which would make him all the more susceptible to his body being ripped open.
He knew all of that before Moses.
He knew it all in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve when they sinned.
He knew what was going to happen.
So when the blood of the creature then is presented and poured out on the ground every time that blood is poured out,
God remembers, God sees.
When Cain killed his brother Abel, and Abel was laying in the brush and his blood draining out on the ground,
and God comes and He confronts Cain and He says, where's your brother?
And Cain says, what am I, my brother's keeper?
And God says, I know where he is and you know where he is, tell me what you've done, basically, and I'm paraphrasing of course.
And he says, the blood of Abel cries out from the ground because you slew him.
And he goes on to curse Cain and send him away.
And then in the New Testament, when the writer of Hebrews is talking about it,
he's talking about how the blood of Abel and the blood of Jesus are similar, but the blood of Jesus has a much greater testimony.
Because the blood of Jesus being in the ground is crying out for our forgiveness.
God loves you. He wants to draw you to Himself.
He loves you enough to forgive you for what you've done.
The question is, will you accept that forgiveness?
Now in accepting that forgiveness, let's be real.
If your mom or your dad caught you stealing some money, and they say, look, that was wrong, don't ever do it again.
Do they expect you to keep doing it or do they expect you to stop?
Jesus encountered a woman in the streets and He says, go, your sins have been forgiven you, now sin no more.
So we are expected to do what's right once we receive what's right.
And in that then, we're back to the beginning.
Don't eat the meat with the blood in it.
Pour it out on the ground, a great symbol of the sacrifice of Jesus.
Stay focused. We're almost done.
The life and the soul is in the blood.
We can take the meat, but we cannot take the life.
You cannot get your sustenance, your joy, your hope from other things.
You must get it from Jesus.
And in getting it from Jesus, you will realize how that pales in comparison.
I really enjoy riding my motorcycle, but I enjoy serving God, walking with the Lord, helping people, being generous, reading my Bible, praying, the things that God has called me to do.
More than that.
I really enjoy streaming another episode of my favorite show.
But I don't feel better because I did so or because I had the time.
I know that my hope is in Jesus.
You realize the first EMP goes off in American soil.
All the electronics go away.
How many people that are trusting in consumer electronics or that can't get away from their phones even long enough to be in church or be in a sermon or to read a paper book or to do their studies at school.
They can't get away.
When the electronics all die, how many people are going to be terrified?
They're going to be scared.
What do I do now?
Do you know how to navigate the streets of the city?
Do you know how to tell north from south, east from west?
Would you know how to drive to your doctor's office without your phone to give you directions or without somebody being able to call them on the phone to ask them?
Many people cannot do basic things.
Do you know how to cook?
Do you know how to make food not out of a box, but from scratch?
Could you go in your kitchen right now and make pancakes without looking up a recipe or using a pancake mix?
Okay, tell me what's in pancakes.
You can't just move me on the spot like that.
I can.
You spoke up.
Tell me.
All right.
So maybe not then, right?
The point is this.
Okay.
What?
Flour and eggs.
And eggs?
Milk.
He says milk.
Can you tell?
Oil.
A little bit of oil.
Yeah.
You can get there.
And you might go and you might combine some things.
You might eventually figure it out, right?
And some things are pretty basic.
It's the same ingredients that goes in cake or cupcakes or whatever.
But the point is even if you know that, you have to realize most people don't.
We're all crutching.
How many phone numbers do you know without using your contact list?
Right?
I still remember the phone number that I grew up with and my phone number of the kid down
the street and the kid down the other street and the pizza place that no longer exists
and the pizza place in Warbridge and the pizza place on Woodrow because I grew up in an era
when we didn't have phone contacts.
Right?
I still remember how to use a phone book.
Most of the people in this room, the younger people anyway, have never seen it.
These don't really exist anymore.
What I'm saying is we've gotten to the point whether it's electronics or TV or whatever,
you're crutching on, you're getting your sustenance out of things that you cannot.
You have to get it from God.
You have to find a way to put your hope only in the Lord.
So don't eat meat with the blood in it.
Do what the Lord would have you to do.
Pour out that which would be bad for you.
Pour out that which is going too far.
Just get rid of it.
Get it out of your life.
The life, the soul is in the blood.
Don't go so deep that you start to get sustenance from the thing that you're doing.
Okay?
I run role playing games.
But if I need to, I could stop like that.
I probably won't because I've been doing it for 35 years.
But I could just like that.
I don't play video games really at all.
But there's somebody in this room who would go, I play video games every week.
I don't ride a motorcycle.
But I know how.
I don't need to.
I know how to shoot a gun.
But I don't need to know how to shoot.
I know where my safety comes from.
I know where my hope comes from.
I know where my joy comes from.
And I'm asking you to feel the same way.
If you have trusted Jesus Christ, and if you live on this earth for 100 years,
when you die, you will go straight to heaven.
If you have not trusted Jesus Christ,
then you're going to go to where everybody's still groping around for their hope.
They're looking for something to come and sustain them.
Something to fill them up.
You want to know what hell is like?
Hell is a whole bunch of people looking for something to fill them up.
And there's nothing.
They want a drink, but they can't have it.
They want a meal, but they can't have it.
They want a breath, but they can't have it.
They sweat, but it doesn't cool them.
I'm not trying to make a dark picture.
I'm just saying this is what people are doing today
in trying to take the good out of things and find hope and find strength.
There isn't any.
And then all throughout, people are trying to redefine what's allowed.
Don't eat the meat with the blood, and it means do your life God's way.
Follow the directions, even when they don't seem to make sense.
The life or the soul is in the blood.
Don't go so far as to suck the life out of a thing.
To look for your hope.
To think, well, maybe you're smart, and you're going to go,
well, I'm going to be smart, so now I'm going to get up over on top of everybody else by being smart.
Maybe you're strong.
I'm going to get ahead in the world by being strong.
You don't get ahead in the world by being strong or by being smart.
You get ahead in the world because God says so.
And for those who are stuck in generational poverty,
a lot of times it's because God allows it and they've not done anything to change it.
Not that that's a bad thing, because we all have this tendency to suck the life out of it.
But it is a bad thing, because that's not where they need to be.
They can go so much further, do so much more, if they begin to build a foundation of hope for the future in Jesus Christ.
Don't eat meat with the blood in it.
Don't try to suck the life of the soul out of that which is given to you to enjoy
and realize that the spent, spilled blood represents Jesus' sacrifice,
and by His sacrifice alone, our sins are forgiven to us, from us, washed away, atonement.
Big words, atonement, propitiation, sanctification, or just say, the blood of Jesus makes me clean.
I'm here today to ask you, will you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord?
That means He tells you what to do and you do it.
And as your Savior, that means He paid the price for your sins.
Will you do that? If you say, I'm a Christian, that's what you've done.
You're becoming a Jesus, a little Jesus walking around.
Then you need to, if you do that, you need to realize you've got to follow the commands of the Lord,
do what God would want you to do that's good for you.
There are a lot of things that people are doing today that are not good for them.
Well, until I was 23 years old, I didn't believe I'd live past 26.
Once I got to about 25 years old, I started thinking, I hope I'll live past 26.
I was jumping my motorcycle over tracks. I was drinking. I was fighting all the time.
I was doing all kinds of things that were not good for me.
When I became a Christian, I started realizing a lot of that stuff just needs to go away.
Even though at times I needed it to feel okay.
But if you need something to feel okay and that something is not Jesus,
you need to repent and turn to God and say, okay God, I trust you and I'm following you.
You can be saved by having Him as Lord and by having Him as Savior.
Then you can choose to do the right thing.
You can choose not to go so deep or get stuck by not trying to suck the life out of everything that you enjoy.
Let me say a brief prayer for us today and I'm going to ask for praise to the Lord and Jesus in our closing hymn at the invitation.
Okay, we're going to pray.
Father, we thank you for this message from your Word.
I thank you for leading me not to tack it on to last week's message.
This is so important.
I don't think we realize half the time when we're trying to suck the hope or the life or the strength out of something,
go further, go deeper, do more with something than what it was made for.
Much of what is in this life was just given to us to enjoy.
Our friends, our family, the sunshine, the breeze, food, dessert,
much of what was given to us in this life was just given for us to enjoy.
Then for us to try to suck the hope or the life or the strength or the whatever, the extra value out of it,
Lord, forgive us.
We try to be bad.
Help us, Lord, to follow you, follow the instructions that you've given us,
to be your people.
For the one who is in this room, who has not accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior,
they have not been forgiven of their sins.
Even though that forgiveness is purchased, paid for, there's nothing left to be done
except to accept that free gift and then to be able to live for you after that fact.
Lord, I ask you to help them now.
Comfort them in their heart and lead them in the right direction.
I pray for myself that I will follow the leads.
I know they're not rules.
They're meant to strengthen me, to show me the way.
And I'll be your servant until I go home.
I pray this in Jesus' name, Amen.
I ask the praise team to lead us at this time.
We're going to stand.
We're going to sing this song.
If you're able to sing, sing and ask yourself,
where do I stand with Jesus today?
Where do I stand with Jesus?