Welcome to the Potter's House Salmon Arm podcast. We are a Bible-Believing Church located in
beautiful British Columbia, Canada. We are proudly part of the Christian Fellowship Ministries
with 3,000 churches around the world. We are a church focused on world evangelism, discipleship
and church planting. Here we will share recent sermons from P.H.S.A. Church and other sermons
from throughout our fellowship. I am Pastor David Bickford and I will be your host for this
podcast. I thank you for listening today and we hope these messages are a blessing to you and
bring you closer to God. Hello and welcome back to the podcast. Thank you for coming back again.
Today I have a message entitled, The Dangers of Distracted Fighting, Distractions, Confusion,
and Corruption. The text we will be working off of is Mark 4, 1-9. Before we jump into that,
it has been an exciting couple of weeks. Over here we have had lots of snow since the beginning
of January and it is a lot of fun to be able to get outside and get your cardio in by shoveling
just tons and tons of snow. Anybody who is in this area or lives in a snowy environment knows
what I mean. It is like the gift that keeps on giving in winter and it has been a lot of fun,
but it is also kind of tiring and I am quite sore from it. I came outside this morning before
recording this and yes, it was snowing again. I get to look forward to quite a bit of shoveling
after I am done recording today. It is another glorious winter day here in Salmon Arm. The text
we will be working from is Mark 4, 1-9. If you have that, you can go ahead and turn there.
We will be jumping into that in just a second. The title of the message is, again, The Dangers
of Distracted Fighting. With that, I found this article from Wired. It is an opinion piece.
Wired is a tech magazine if you are familiar with it. They do a lot of articles about technology,
computers, such that stuff. Anyway, it says, without proper guidelines, smartphones on the
battlefield may kill more soldiers than they say. This was written by John Spencer, the chair
of Urban Warfare Studies for the Modern War Institute of the United States Military Academy.
It says, We almost lost the entire patrol, said the lieutenant. It was horrific. We rocked right
into an enemy ambush, he continued. They easily picked off my men one by one because they were
looking at their screens. Thankfully, the young lieutenant was not describing an actual firefight
from Iraq or from Afghanistan. It was a recent live action simulation that used laser tag-like
equipment and a new tablet device that displays maps, live drone footage, and other critical
information. But if the military doesn't recognize the threat of soldiers distracted by the buzzes
and whistles of the latest technology, real lives could soon be lost. So let's jump into our text
here this morning. The Parable of the Sower. In verse one, it says, Again, he began to teach beside
the sea, and a very large crowd gathered about him, so that he got into a boat and sat in it
on the sea. And the whole crowd was beside the sea on the land, and he was teaching them many
things in parables. In his teachings, he said to them, Listen, behold, a sower went out to sow.
And as he sowed, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured it.
Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and immediately it
sprang up, since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose, it was scorched, and since it had no
root, it withered away. Other seed fell among the thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it,
and it yielded no grain. And other seeds fell into good soil and produced grain, growing up and
increasing and yielding, thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold. And he said, Who has ears,
let him hear. So it's a good piece of scripture for us to use as a jumping off point, and we're
going to dig into the reason why I'm attaching this to the idea of this sermon being dangers
of distracted fighting. But as we look at this, I think we can all see this in our own lives. We can
all see ourselves being distracted constantly throughout the day. It's a never-ending battle,
oftentimes, to go through life and trying to keep on task or on purpose and not allowing ourselves
to be distracted by all the new technology and all the new bells and whistles that are in this
world. In 1 Peter 5, 8, it says, Be sober-minded, be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, prowls
around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. We all know the dangers that digital
devices can cause. We have laws dealing with distracted driving. Maybe you've seen videos of
people texting and walking and falling into wet cement or a mall water fountain. And the funny
thing with those videos is we're watching those videos typically on a device laughing at someone
who's distracted on their device. So it's just kind of ironic that we would sit there and laugh
and judge, but at the same time, we oftentimes are just doom scrolling on our own devices.
The world we live in is full of these kind of distractions. These distractions can be entertaining,
but they can also lead us into calamity. And as Christians, we're called to remain vigilant and be
sober-minded. Our calling, every one of us, is to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is the great
commission that gives us purpose, or at least it should. Now the world is full of entertainment
that can distract us, but even worse than ungodly entertainment is the realms and reams of material
out there that strive to distract, confuse, and corrupt the people of God. Oftentimes this stuff
will come in slowly and seem innocent, but before you know it, you are questioning your faith in the
Bible itself. These corrupting, confusing distractions are not limited to the entertainment
like movies or art. You can find this in political movements, philosophy, tenets of other faiths,
or offshoots from Christianity. As long as time, humans have questioned the word of God,
and it seems to alter it into individual interests. Adam and Eve had a direct relationship with God,
but we're still distracted, confused, and corrupted. This is why it's so important for us as Christians
to remain vigilant. We are in a spiritual battle, and we must hold the line for Christ
and keep our focus on the great commission. This brings me to my first point, which is distractions,
and we jump back into our article. Never mind soldiers for a second, pedestrians glued to their
handhelds have become public hazards in major cities, a distracted bullseye for cars and
crosswalks. Since the ubiquitous explosion of cell phones in the U.S., emergency room visits for
pedestrian injuries tripled between 2004 and 2010 alone, and some cities have gone as far as to
making texting while crossing the street illegal. Imagine the peril one might face in a war zone.
War overwhelms every sense of the body. Fighting in urban environments, combat as hell is the worst
place to make war. Soldiers are exposed to extraordinary environmental stimuli and potential
threats that research has shown makes simple acts such as walking down the street extremely
stressful on the mind and the body. Every window holds a potential sniper, every pile of trash,
an improvised explosive device. Each soldier on patrol is expected to be scanning for threats,
observing the world around him, and now picture a group of soldiers walking down the street
where most are looking into their chest or wrist-mounted smartphones.
The moral here is that distraction can cost you your life. Even more important, it can cost you
your soul. Let's look at our text again. In verse 3 it says, Listen, and these are the words of
Jesus, Listen, behold, a sower went out to sow, and as he sowed, some seed fell along the path,
the birds came and devoured it. Other seed fell on the rocky ground where it did not have much soil,
and immediately it sprang up since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose, it was scorched,
and since it had no root, it withered away. Other seed fell among the thorns, and the thorns grew up
and choked it, and it yielded no grain. In this parable we see the sower casting seed. Now the
disciples did not fully understand this parable either, and they asked him to explain. So this
was Jesus' response. In Mark 4 we pick this up again in verse 10. And when the sower came
and when he was alone, those around him with the twelve asked him about the parables, and he said
to them, To you has been given the secrets of the kingdom of God, but for those outside of everything
is in parables, so that they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand,
lest they should turn and be forgiven. And he said to them, Do you not understand this parable?
How then will you understand all the parables? The sower sows the word, and these are the ones
along the path where the word is sown. When they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the
word that is sown in them. And these that are the ones sown in the rocky ground, the ones who, when
they hear the word, immediately receive it with joy, and then they have no root in themselves but
endure for a while. Then when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word,
immediately they fall away. And the others are the ones sown among the thorns. They are those who
hear the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of the riches and the desire for
those other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. But those that were
sown on the good soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirtyfold,
sixtyfold, and a hundredfold. When I read this portion of scripture, I can almost imagine Jesus
rolling his eyes, you know, almost like he's imploring his disciples to wake up, pay attention,
just as the first lieutenant from our article, it is like, come on guys, keep your heads up,
your ears open, your eyes on the prize. In the text, he draws a clear picture of the gospel
being spread out like seed. We all received the same seeds of faith from the gospel, and in those
of us who are saved, it has taken root. Hopefully, it has taken root deeply, and we are producing
fruit and a harvest. But wait, let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. Let's go through the
parable. The first of the seed fell where? It fell along the path. We might think this is great. The
path is well traveled. Surely the seed will find a home here. Nope, as soon as the seed is laid out,
it's stolen by the birds. You can look at advertising example, you might see an ad or get
an email from something and think, oh, that looks good. But then immediately after you see it,
you see it. You see after seeing the ad, you you read a bad review or someone says
that looks like a scam. And so poof, you delete it, you ignore it, and you never think of it again.
It could be someone left a flyer or an invite for church and you never see it because someone
comes right behind you and takes the flyer and throws it away. Maybe you see a Christian
message pop up in your feed, but right away you see someone in the comments mocking it,
or the next thing in your feed distracts you and steals away the conviction you felt from the word.
This is a core issue for Christians today. We are meant to be sewers of the word, but all too often
we are distracted by the world and instead of sowing, we just let the world steal the seeds
of faith from those around us. The next picture was a picture of the seed on rocky ground. Jesus
tells us that this is like a sinner who gets saved, but has no depth. And once the persecutions of
the world come, they falter and they lose the small amount of faith they have. Rather than
cultivating their faith and nurturing it with the word, with prayer and Christian fellowship,
they let the world come in and cast judgment. The next picture is the person who allows all the
pressures of the world to choke out the message. The seed tries to take root, but they are so
crowded with their responsibilities and troubles of the world that they do not give the word room
to grow in their lives. All of these examples have a similar root cause. Whether us as Christians
or unbelievers, we are allowing ourselves to be distracted away from the purpose of God. And that
brings me to my second point, which is confusion. 1 Corinthians 14 33 says, for God is not a God of
confusion, but of peace. Have you ever heard someone bring up the name of angels that are not on the
Bible? How many angels are there? Michael and Gabriel are the only named angels. You also have
Lucifer, Satan or Abaddon, Apollyon. The issue here isn't angels and I don't want to get hung
up on that. But the reality that some can try and use this to confuse you and question your
understanding and mix you all up. That is my point. I did a quick internet search and I found an
article that said there were 15 angels. These other angels come from non-biblical or apocryphal
sources. They're of a story or statement. Something, an apocryphal source is something that
is doubtful authenticity, although it's widely circulated as being true.
There are a number of these areas where Christians and non-Christians can get blown off course.
Other world religions like Islam, you know, believe in Jesus as a prophet, but not as the son of God.
Others like the Jehovah's Witnesses believe he is only a small God and not very God. All of these
things are distractions that are merely meant to confuse you to inaction. In Mark 13, 5 through 7,
and then we'll jump to 22 to 23, it says, and Jesus began to say to them, see that no one leads
you astray. Many will come in my name saying I am he and they will lead many astray. And when you
hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed. This must take place, but the end is not yet.
Jesus calls us to persevere for his name and not to allow the distractions of this world to confuse
or distract us from our purpose. I know this can be very hard for us as Christians and quite frankly
simply just as people. It's not easy to ignore the craziness of the world around us, but it is what
we are called to do. In verse 22, it says, for false Christs and false prophets will arise and
perform signs and wonders to lead astray, if possible the elect. But be on guard, I have told
you all things beforehand. When he uses here elect, I'm not a Calvinist and so I believe the elect
is those who hear the gospel of Jesus Christ and they turn to Christ. And I believe that all can
turn to Christ if they persevere. And it's not anything that we do, it's that after the election
it's that as the seed is laid, sometimes in your life you might not be willing to hear the gospel
of Christ, but it you know God can soften your heart and over time you can hear the gospel Jesus
Christ and turn to him. So even when it looks like there is a power from an ungodly things,
we are supposed to test these spirits though, but we're supposed to test the false prophets
against the word of the Lord. The scriptures are our first weapon against false prophets and false
teachings. Secondly is our discernment through the Holy Spirit. That does not mean that we ignore the
word for the sake of the Spirit, but rather the word of God is the rule book and the Spirit
confirms the word of God. This is how we are meant to protect ourselves from being confused in this
fallen world. This is the story that it's as old as time. I kind of touched a little bit on Calvinism
and I believe these are that's a tertiary or a secondary theology within the within Christendom.
And it's also something that I don't want people to get hung up on. I believe that as a message
of Jesus Christ goes forth, the gospel of Jesus Christ, you can you can hear it and it can trigger
something in you from God that is going to allow you to receive the word of God, come to Christ in
faith, repent, accept him as your Lord and Savior, and be saved. That is the fundamental belief and
that is the fundamental purpose of the gospel and the reason for going out and preaching the word of
God so that others might hear the word and be saved. I don't like getting hung up on anything
else outside of that because my purpose and the goal of the church here at Salmon Arm is to
preach the gospel of Jesus Christ so that people can be saved. Simple, simple as that.
In Jeremiah 14, 14 it says, and the Lord said to me the prophets are prophesying lies in my name.
I did not send them, nor did I command them to or them or speak to them. They are prophesying to
you a lying vision, worthless divination and the deceit of their own minds. In Ephesians 5, 6, it
says, let no one deceive you with empty words for because of these things, the wrath of God comes
upon the sons of disobedience. So these two verses of scripture really highlight some of the stuff
that comes in from the edges that are trying to confuse and distract you as a Christian.
Or even as someone who's unsaved, they're trying to confuse and distract you so that you can't
receive the word of Christ. They want to make you so confused that you you're stuck in a state
of inaction. So whether it is in Jeremiah's time and the Old Testament or in Ephesians,
the New Testament, we have a clear direction of God to follow God's pattern. What do I mean?
Simple. In the Old Testament and in Judaism, it was a religion of doing work so that you might
grow to believe. But we are told in Isaiah and Jeremiah that God was going to bring in a new
covenant to his people and to the world. And this new covenant was going to bring salvation and grace
through belief in Jesus Christ and then or the Messiah and then works and fruit would follow
because of a changed heart. This means that the children of Israel were called to live a life
separate for God. They had rules and commandments that were clear as day, but they still failed.
They fell to the distractions and confusions of their day. This led them to be corrupted
countless times. The corruption of the northern kingdom was so complete that they were destroyed
by the Assyrian empire. The southern kingdom was nearly destroyed by the Babylonian empire, but God
made a way for them to be redeemed. And he also did that for us to be redeemed through Jesus Christ.
This brings me to my final point, which is corruption.
In 1st Timothy 6, 9, it says, But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation,
into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.
I see this with a lot of people. I see this with friends of mine, people who seem to be open to the
gospel, but really their primary goal is success and to some extent affluence. And there's nothing
wrong with being successful. I'm a very success driven person in my own life. And I do believe
that having ambition and having drive are good as long as you keep your primary focus on that drive
and ambition in honoring God and God in your life. But I have friends that seek to be successful.
And it's funny as they gain a little bit of success here or there, it becomes the focal
point of everything. Then it's like, well, I'm going to go to this retreat or I'm going to go
to this thing and I'm going to go do this thing. And the things they're doing are not in and of
themselves necessarily wrong. Sometimes it's wrong. Sometimes it's a total religious experience
that's going to lead you away from Christ altogether, lead you away from the conviction
of your heart. Other times it's just you think you're taking a new position, a new role,
and it's going to add tons of responsibility to your plate. It's going to take away for your
ability to fulfill your purpose in God and in Christ. So it's just important for us to
recognize that when Israel was split into the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom,
Jeroboam, the king of the Northern Kingdom, immediately led the 10 Northern tribes of
Israel in idolatry. So here he is. He's going to have all this new responsibility. God even
told him through the prophets that he was going to be the king of the North. And he had an option.
He had a choice to make here on whether or not to worship the one God, the God of Israel, or
to do something different. And so this is what he chose. He set up a calf immediately and has set
a path for them to be at odds with God. And all of their kings did evil in the eyes of God. And the
whole nation was corrupted partially because of this choice by King Jeroboam. In 1 Corinthians
1533, it says, do not be deceived. Bad company ruins good morals. Their corruption was a constant
threat to the Southern Kingdom. The people of Judah, some of their kings and the people were
led astray. The prophets of God warned both the North and the South, but they let themselves be
led astray from the word of God. So today, Christians are threatened by the same poles of the world.
We look at art, music, movies, entertainment, and we allow them to have a same value as the word of
God. We elevate the voices of those who are against God, and we refuse to judge them according to the
word. In fact, sometimes if I judge a movie, immediately people get, you know, uh, defensive
because they want to protect it because they like this story. And it's fine, you know, to, to, to
read stories, but to elevate it to the level of, of scripture or allowing it to change your ideology
that that makes that piece of work something totally different than what, than what it should
be in your life. And that's where it becomes something dangerous or even idolatrous in your
own life. So how often do you read or watch something that's clearly against the biblical
truth and you, you just let it go by? Oh, it's just a song. Oh, it's just a movie or it's a story.
I mean, we all do that to some extent, you know, but you can even almost hear people saying,
come on, man, don't be so tight. Drinking is fine after all, didn't Jesus turn water into wine?
If God didn't want us to, you know, get high, why did he make weed and mushrooms? All love is love.
All these kind of elements that are in our media today, these things permeate our world,
but how do they stack up against the word of God? Doesn't the Bible tell us that we should write
his word on our hearts, that we should remain sober minded and vigil and vigilantly watch
for his return to preach the gospel so that others might be saved, that marriage is a covenant
between God in man and a woman. And marriage is something particularly interesting because we see
that marriage biblically being just that. Yes, it's a man and woman, but it's between God,
a man and a woman. There's three parts to that marriage. It's a covenant between God and your
partner, your husband or your wife. We ignore the word of God. We ignore the Holy Spirit at our own
peril and the peril of those that we care about. As we leave behind the path that God has laid out
before us, it follow other paths. We become more and more corrupted. We begin to separate ourselves
from the presence of God, just like Adam and Eve, giving ourselves to other powers, other energies,
other spirits. In time, you will walk down these darkened paths and you will find yourself
totally distracted, totally confused and corrupted. In 2 Peter 1 verses 3 through 4, it says,
His divine power has granted us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge
of him who called us to his own glory and excellence by which he has granted us his
precious and very great promises so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature,
having escaped from the corruption that is the world because of sinful desire.
For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue and virtue
with knowledge and knowledge with self-control and self-control with steadfastness and steadfastness
with godliness and godliness with brotherly affection and brotherly affection with love.
For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective
or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. So in conclusion, let's look at repentance,
grace and salvation. You do not have to stay in this state of confusion, of distraction or corruption.
As long as you have breath, there is hope. Christian faith is built upon this hope. It is
established on the revelation of a risen Christ, the belief in an all-powerful God that cares enough
for us to send his only Son to die for your sins. If you will believe in him, repent of your sins,
and accept him as your Lord, Savior, King and Master, then you can be set free from the bondage
of your sin. Jesus is married also to the backslider. If you have wandered away from the path
and you find yourself distracted from the things of God, then you will be able to live
in the world of the Lord Jesus Christ. If you are not aware of the things of God,
confused by the mysticism or the hedonistic paganism that the world is offering you,
it is not too late. Turn back to the Lord.
He is waiting for you. He is calling for you if only you have the ears
and ecclesiastes. And I close with this. Ecclesiastes 12, 13 through 14. The end of the matter,
all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of
man. For God will bring every deed into judgment with every secret thing, whether good or evil.
So with that, if I could have every head bowed, every eye closed, obviously for
doing something that needs your attention, then give it your attention. But maybe if you can,
you just think of this for a little bit. Are you distracted? Are you confused? Or have you allowed
yourself to be corrupted? It is never too late to turn to God or to turn back to God, to turn to
Jesus or to turn back to Jesus. It is a very simple thing. And if this message has impacted you or
influenced you in that way, and you want to signify with it, please do that. Please do that. Because
even though I can't see it, God can and he knows your heart. And if you mean that, then it is very
simple. You can come to Christ. You can just say the simple prayer, Dear Lord God, I know that I am
a sinner, but I know that you sent your son, Jesus Christ, and that he died for me on the cross.
But that even in death, he rose from the grave to set me free from the bondage of sin. So I repent
of my sin and I accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior and I give you praise and glory for setting me
free and saving me. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. It's a very simple prayer. And if you said that,
if you said that and you meant it, and you know, I don't know if you meant it, but the Lord knows
if you meant it, then you have been set free by the grace of Jesus Christ in salvation. And this
is nothing that we do for ourselves. This is something that is only because of the grace of
God for mankind and the sacrifice that he made with his son, Jesus Christ. But it says, if you
have ears to hear. So I pray that you did say that prayer and that you meant it. And if you did, I
pray that you'd reach out to me, let me know. Because that's the whole purpose of this, is to
reach as many people with the message of Jesus Christ as possible. So the next step is that you
find a church that preaches the gospel of Jesus Christ for you. If you're in Salmon Arm, I'd love
for you to come and meet with us here in Salmon Arm. You can reach out to us. We have our Instagram
page. It's pottershouseSA on Instagram. And then our email address is just pottershouseSA
at iCloud.com. And so please reach out to us and let me know you prayed. Or if you're in Salmon Arm,
reach out and our services are 1030 on Sunday. And we're currently meeting at the boardroom
for the Salmon Arm Innovation Center. But please, if you're not close by, find a Bible-Believing
Church. Again, you could reach out because we have 3,500 plus churches global. And I'm sure I could
connect you with a great church, Bible-Believing Church. But the important thing is to just,
you know, allow God to do a work in your life. It's not going to be overnight, but God is going
to do a tremendous work in your life. So start reading the Bible. You know, find that church
to lock in to have fellowship with the brothers and pray. And praying is just simply having a
conversation with God. But I want to thank you for listening to this message and thank you for
following the podcast. If you can, you know, like, share this podcast and subscribe. It helps us with
you know, our analytics to know that we're getting out there and the message is getting sent to,
you know, to where it's getting sent to globally. So again, I want to thank you for the time you've
taken today to listen to this message and I can't wait for you to come back next time. God bless.
Thank you for listening to the P.H.S.A. Potter's House Salmon Arm Podcast. Be sure to follow us
on Instagram at pottershouse underscore salmon arm to keep up to date on what we're doing.
Join the conversation and discover how Jesus Christ can revolutionize your life.