When Good Goes Bad

God began the Bible by having the very first word that he created the heavens and the earth. Everything in the sky and everything on the earth was created by God. The reason he does this is he wants to establish at the very beginning of this religious book the most important principle that we have in life, and that is that there is someone in charge of all of this, and it's God, that he made everything that's here, he knows what it's about, he makes all the animals, makes all the people, everyone is created by God. This is done to establish the most important thing that God wants us to understand. He is in charge of everything in the universe. To recognize that that's true is a critical thing for us. For to recognize that there is someone in charge who's responsible for everything that takes place takes the randomness out of life for us. To understand that there are certain kinds of rules that are in existence to help us understand what life is about helps us to know what's dangerous and what isn't. It gives us safety, security. Throughout the story of the Bible, one clear principle is shown, that the most difficult thing that human beings have ever faced is acknowledgment of the fact that God is really in charge, he's the authority. The Bible tells a story of how man has rejected the authority of God, and all the terrible consequences that have come as a result of that rejection. And the story that I want to use today, it's the heart of this issue between Jesus and the Pharisees. They have come to say, we don't believe that you are the messenger that God has sent. We reject the authority of your message, and we reject your ministry. This very beginning of the scripture, God is in charge. And they say to Jesus, you are not in charge. They'd seen him do a lot of things that no one else they'd ever known could do, but they rejected the fact that he was the son of God. When he healed someone who was unable to see and unable to speak, they could not, because of this predisposition against Jesus, accept that and said, this is a demonic act. Jesus responded by saying, you will be held accountable in the judgment day for what you've just said. For when you said the Holy Spirit's action was really the action of the devil, you have shamed the Spirit of God. And when you stand before him in the final day, judgment will come to you. In front of all the people, they tried to cover themselves. They said, well, you know, we don't have quite enough information. Then Jesus tells them something that's really important for all of us to get. God always gives us enough information to trust and follow him. See, sometimes we don't think that, but it's true. These Pharisees said, if we could only have more information. Then some of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law said to him, teacher, we want to see a miraculous sign from you. Here's what they were saying, okay, you've accused us of not following you, but just show us something else. He answered, a wicked and adulterous generation asked for a miraculous sign, but none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it. For they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now one greater than Jonah is here. The queen of the south will rise at the judgment with this generation and condemn it. For she came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon's wisdom, and now one greater than Solomon is here. What the Pharisees and the religious leaders were saying is, you know, we would believe if you just did something that was so overwhelming that we would know that it was an act of God, and then when we saw this wonderful miraculous thing, we would say, you are the messenger of God, and your words are from God. But what we've seen up to this date is not convincing to us. But you know, if somebody's already decided that they don't want to do something or they don't believe something, no amount of evidence will ever change that. There are people today, in spite of what you see from space, who look at the earth and see that ball hanging in the sky, who believe that the earth is flat. There's actually a society, the flat earth society, for people who still believe the earth is flat. There are some people who just can't change their mind, they've already made it up. There are people who believe we never really put people on the moon. There was just a man in a church I used to be a part of, he said, that's just TV stuff. I said, well, you know, you could see them there. He said, well, TV, Superman flies through the sky too. They just made it up. There's no amount of evidence you could take to show him to change his mind, nothing to convince him, because in his mind he already said no. Jesus knew that. When they asked for a sign, what they were doing is what a small child does when they don't want to do what you tell them, and they say, why? Explain it to me. Well, you know, when a child doesn't want to clean up your room and explain why they should or to eat the vegetables on their plate and you explain why they would, I've never seen one, heard one, or heard a family say, as soon as you explain it, they say, well, thank you for explaining. I'll just go do it right now. Never happens, because when our minds are made up, all we want is an excuse to keep doing what we want to do. Jesus said, the reason you can't believe what you've seen already is because of two things that are wrong with you. One is you're an evil generation and an adulterous generation. The word evil simply means people who resist God, who resist what God says, and when God created the world, he said, this is the way I want you to live. He told people the principles by which they ought to live, and they're the same ones God lives by. They're not new ones, they're the way God lives, the character God has, his actions and behavior. You live the way I live, and you will find life a wonderful experience. Not good all the time, not pleasant all the time, but when it's over, you will see it was a wonderful experience. But we resist God. A man and his wife gets in a fight. He realizes he was wrong about what he was arguing about. He insisted it was true, but later he realizes, you know, I was really wrong. Sits down to pray one morning. God says, you know, you need to go to your wife and apologize to her and tell her you were wrong. He says, that's right, God, I should do that. Then he thinks, but you know, next argument we get into, she'll say, well, you're wrong now just like you were the other day. Remember that argument? You finally had to admit you were wrong. I don't want to hear that, God. So I'm not going to go tell her that. Resisting God. You know what he tells you to do, but you just resist it. Now, if God is in charge, and he says, I want you to go apologize to your wife, he's telling you to do what you should do, just like he tells the sun what to do and the stars what to do and everything in the world, what it's supposed to do, and he expects you to say, yes, Lord. When someone sees someone in their neighborhood who's been mean to them or nasty to them and they get really, really angry, they go in their house and get a gun and come out and shoot them. They may have thought in the beginning, you know, I shouldn't do this. It's wrong to do it, but they go ahead and do it. God doesn't see any difference between a person that shoots someone who's resisting the Ten Commandments and someone who resists admitting they were wrong and apologizing to their wife. Both of them are resistance to God. So he calls them evil. That's why the Bible says, when you break the law in one regard, you've broken it all, because what you've broken is the authority of God to tell you what to do. And once you've done that, then you're in violation of God's authority over your life. It's what the Bible begins with, and it's the critical issue of all the scriptures. And as you read through the story of the Bible, what you're reading is what happens to people who resist God, who say no to what he wants them to do, and no to what he tells them, and the terrible consequences that come to them, and how he brings them back to be obedient and submissive to him. That's the story of the scriptures. And here in this story, it's the primary issue between Jesus and the Pharisees. He calls them adulterous. Because in human relationships, the most intimate relationship we have as a husband and wife, the Bible says, this is the only way it says it, not that your children and the parent become one, which a lot of parents are so more attached to their children than they are their mates, in violation of what scripture teaches, you'll never become one with your children. They grow up. They find someone else, and they get married to them, and you're left. But when you find someone to be your husband or your wife, and you make a promise to them, I give myself to you and you alone for the rest of our lives, the Bible said, God takes these two and makes them into one. The most intimate relationship you have because you're actually connected to another person in such a way so that you're one with them. Now it's that image of what God does in human life that he talks about with his people. You've come to me and I said, I'll be your God, and you said, I'll be, we'll be your people and we're going to make you and I one. This union, when you put anything in your life to be more important to you or authoritative to you than me, then you've sinned against this marriage or this union. So if you become a follower of Christ and your husband or wife controls your life more than God does, you're unfaithful to God. If your job does, if your children do, if your passions do, your hobbies do, whatever it is that causes you to hear God say, this is what I want, and you say, well God, I would but, then you've broken this intimate relationship and you've become an adulterer and an adulteress. Now he says, this sinful generation has put your religion ahead of me. You've made your religion with all of its activities and its laws and its rules more important to you than my word to you. So when I've sent my son to you to say, this is what you should do, you've said, no, because our religion tells us to do something else and we refuse to listen to you. How sad that is. The very religion to worship the God who is speaking to them stood between them and their God. But what he was saying is, it doesn't matter what I tell you or what kind of acts I perform, because you're adulterous, that is, you put something else in your life ahead of me, your religion at this point, and because you resist me, you will never, ever accept what I have to say to you. But you know what the strange thing is? In spite of saying that to them, Jesus says, okay, I tell you, I am going to give you one miraculous sign. It will be just the sign of Jonah. Jonah was a man in the Bible days who got a message from God to go preach to people in Nineveh. Nineveh was a wicked city and God wanted to get rid of the wickedness, so he promised he was going to destroy that city because of its wickedness, wipe it off the face of the earth. And so he said to Jonah, I want you to go and tell the people that they're wicked and they're not living the way I tell them to, and if they don't change their minds and live a different way, then I'm going to destroy this city. Jonah didn't like the Ninevites. They were mortal enemies of the people of Israel. It's like saying to someone, I want you to go rescue your worst enemy. He didn't want to do it, so he ran down to the port, got on a boat, headed for Spain, the opposite direction of Nineveh. He didn't want to do what God told him. God wasn't through. He brought a great storm and the boat was tossed all around. In this event, we discovered a phrase we use a lot. People on that boat, the sailor said, we got somebody here God's trying to kill. Okay, you fess up. Who is it that has offended God so greatly that he wants to kill all of us to get to you? He said, when we find you, we're going to throw you overboard and he can take you and the rest of us will be safe. Who's the Jonah on board? We use that word. When someone's a Jonah, they're always causing us trouble. That's where it comes from. The Jonah was Jonah. He owned up to the fact he was running from God. They threw him overboard. A great fish, not a whale, but a great fish swallowed him. He should have died in that fish. Every reason in the world to believe it. People read this story and say, well, it's just fiction, you know, that doesn't happen. You're right. That's the point. It doesn't happen naturally. God did something inside that fish, we don't know what, that he kept alive for three days. Finally, threw him up on the shore. Soon as Jonah got out, he went straight to Nineveh as fast as he could go. Learned his lesson. He got there even though he hated those people and he told them what God wanted him to say and they repented and God rescued the city. Now he said, Jonah's message was authenticated by the fact that three days he was in that fish and God kept him alive. When he got out of that fish, he had the stamp on his life, this man has been called and sent by God. Who could deny that? And when he came to preach and could tell that story, they would say, whoa, God has gone to extraordinary efforts to tell this man to come to us, we'll listen to what he has to say. Now Jesus said, I'm going to give you a sign. The time is coming when I'll be buried in the earth for three days and then I'll be brought back to life. There's your sign. Who has that ever happened to? Can you think of anyone in the history of the world that's been buried in the ground for three days and then comes back to life to live forever? No. Can you think of anyone who's ever had that kind of experience in the history of the world? Great religious leaders of any kind? No. When you see that sign, you will know that the words that I've spoken to you are the words from God alone for only God could do that. And it is his stamp on my life. This man is from me. And you will know it's true. Do you know these people watched Jesus tried, watched him crucified, watched him buried, heard about his being raised from the dead, and they still didn't believe it. Even though he told them, they still didn't believe it. For what Jesus was saying to them is you already have enough evidence to trust me and no other evidence, even the greatest evidence in all the world is not going to be enough for you. Get rid of your resisted heart and your unfaithful life, and then faith will come to you. I'll tell you, Jesus said, what's going to happen to you guys. In the final judgment day, when the judgment day comes and you're standing before the Father and he says, get away from me, I don't even know who you are. These people from Nineveh that believed, they only believe now because this man came and said, if you don't turn to God, you're going to die. They didn't have any of the scriptures, they didn't have any of the presence of teaching of my life, Jesus' life, they didn't have any of the Bible to read, they didn't have the presence of any of these experiences, none of this, just that little bit, and they believed it, and their lives were saved. And they will stand, and the Father will say to them, come on into the place I've prepared for you, and they'll go stand with those who are going to be with God. And then you'll step up, and you'll look at these foreigners that the Jewish people hated, and you'll say, how could they get into God's heaven, when we the Jews are the ones that belong there? And you'll step up to the bar, and he'll look at you, and he'll say, I don't know who you are. You're resistant to me, and rebellious to me. And these hated foreigners will get in the kingdom, and they will testify to the fact that you had far more knowledge of God than they did, but they made it in, and you didn't. Their presence in the kingdom of God will condemn you, will say to you beyond any shadow of a doubt, you knew more than we did. Why did you not turn and say, yes, God? Then he said, the queen of the south is Queen Sheba, and Solomon the king was on the throne of Israel. He asked for wisdom, and God gave him wisdom above anybody in his age, anybody in his time. All the book of Proverbs, the collection of this wisdom of Solomon, and you read it, it teaches you how to live, and how to raise your kids, and how to manage your money, and all the great mysteries of life are found in that book. She heard about the wisdom of Solomon. She lived down on the coast, on the ocean, and she came all the way across the Sinai Peninsula to come to visit Solomon. You couldn't write books or get on television and say these things. She had to come in person to hear him, and she brought all of these gifts to him, and she spent time with Solomon to listen to what he had to say, to know the great wisdom and truth of God. All she had was Solomon, and pieces of what we would say are the book of Proverbs, said to her by Solomon himself, and yet she said, these are the words of God for me, and she followed them. So when the final judgment day comes, and she'll come, the Lord will say, you listened to what Solomon told you, and you lived by these principles that I gave him. Come in because you trusted me, and you obeyed what I asked you to do. And then you will come, and he will say, depart from me, I don't know you. And you will say, this is a woman getting in the kingdom of heaven, a Gentile getting in the kingdom of heaven, an enemy of ours getting in the kingdom of heaven. How can she get there and not us? And the Father will say to you, I gave you the words, I sent you my son, I showed you what his power was, I put my stamp of approval on his life by burying him in the ground and raising him three days later to show that my power was there in his life. And to all of this you said, I don't think so. And you will stand and see people who had far, far less knowledge than you who enter the kingdom of heaven. Now here's the frightening part for us. We know more about God that's found in the book of Proverbs because we hold the whole Bible. We know more than the people of Nineveh because we have more than the book of Jonah. We have the whole Bible. We have from the beginning of creation all the way to the end to the prophecies of what's going to happen when the world is over. We have the whole story laid out before us. We not only know that, we know that Jesus Christ, the messenger, was buried in the ground dead and was raised from the dead. The most miraculous, powerful thing that has ever occurred. Given a new body that will never die. We're astonished by that. You have everything in the world you need to say, hey, God is in charge of this world. I'd better listen to everything he says and believe it and do what he tells me. That's what faith is. Believing what God says and living as if it were true. I'd better do that because he is the Lord. And when you say, I don't want to, I'm afraid I'll be embarrassed, I'm afraid of what people will say, I might cry, I've heard all these kind of things people say, it's why they don't want to stand and say, I give my life to Jesus Christ. You can say whatever you want to say, but at the heart of it, there's one reason people don't do it. They resist God. He says, give your life to me. And they resist. I've heard people talk about how they just sat and they held on to the seat and their knuckles got wide and they panicked and they held on and they were thinking they were going to faint. There are all kinds of things people do to try to not do what they thought God wanted them to do. You may think, you're in church, you're hearing a sermon, you think you ought to go forward, that not going forward is just kind of a choice you've made, but remember what Jesus called the people who resisted what he told them to do, you're evil. And you're adulterous. You see, God takes this seriously. If he tells you you should work in Hoisington to help with that, and you say no for whatever reason even though you know he's told you that, you're saying, God, you're not smart enough to know what I really can do or what I really have time to do, and I'm sorry you're so limited in your knowledge of this, but in my great wisdom, I don't have time, I don't have the ability, I don't want to. He says, that's evil. You may read the Bible every day, you may memorize it every day, but to resist God is evil. And so the time comes, you see, when you've heard what God has to say to you. Maybe you've read the Bible, maybe you've been talking to God, maybe God's been talking to you and he's put in your mind some things that you really ought to do. And you've been thinking, well, that's a suggestion from God and I'll do it sometime. I want you to understand that this is serious with God. When he takes the time to say to you, this is what I want, he's expressing the authority of the creator of the universe. He expects you to stop, listen, and do it. Because he is the Lord. Would you bow for prayer? I'm going to ask you in this moment of quietness to say to God, what is it you want me to do? First place you start is giving your life to Christ. If you know you've never said to God, I give my whole life to you, that's what you need to do today. If you've given your life to God and you know it's wandered away, there are things in your life you know God's not happy with, you quit doing what you used to do and you're not doing what you know you should, this is serious to God. He may say to you, here's what I want, renew your devotion to me. You may want to come and just kneel at the front right now. He may say to you, I want you to become part of this church family. You may have a lot of reasons why you don't, but if you're sure that's what God said, this is serious with him. And he may have said to you, there's something I want you to do for me, teaching class, sponsor one of the children's camps or youth camps or teach a class or work at home. Hoisington, God will tell you. On this moment of quietness, I'll be at the front, there'll be other counselors here. This is the time I want you to do what you know God said you should do.