It's great to be together again this morning.
Last week we talked about holding fast to the doctrine of inerrancy in our doctrine of Scripture
! And the cost of compromising our view of Scripture.
This week we'll continue that theme.
Continue thinking about our doctrine of Scripture,
specifically the temptation to try to bring the Bible under our control.
To try to make it so that it works for our own benefit instead of submitting to it.
Our passage this morning is 1 Kings chapter 13.
Would you turn there in your Bibles?
1 Kings chapter 13, if you're using a few Bible in front of you,
1 Kings chapter 13, that's page 346, I believe.
346.
This is a pretty long story.
It's about 34 verses long.
We're going to read some of it.
We're going to summarize some of it.
It's pretty long, so it would be helpful, I think, if you follow along.
You can navigate there on your device.
Let's open in prayer and ask for the Lord's help.
Lord, we are grateful that you have spoken to us.
We don't take that for granted.
You have not been a silent God who has left us to try to figure out your will and your values
and your plans on our own, but you've given us your holy word.
And we know that this passage is an important part of what you've revealed to us.
We pray for your help now to understand it.
And not only to understand what it means, but what it means for us.
We pray in your name.
Amen.
I went to college in downtown Chicago at Moody Bible Institute.
And I enjoyed my time in the city.
I was from a rural area and wasn't used to the big city, but it was pretty fun.
A lot of great restaurants.
I would go ice skating a lot down at Skate-On State, you know, by the Macy's down there, I think.
Lots and lots to do.
We have a fun rivalry with the Bears.
We like our neighbor to the south.
But, you know, Chicago has a long history of corruption.
Not long ago, I was reading about a law enforcement operation called Operation Grey Lord,
which was a joint undercover operation by the FBI, the IRS, the Chicago Police Department, and even the post office.
All of these groups were working together in order to try and prosecute corruption in the Cook County courts.
Over the course of almost four years, in the 1980s, the FBI set up, it was this elaborate scheme.
They set up fake court cases, fake attorneys.
They managed to get a warrant to put the first listening device in a judge's chamber because that corruption went all the way to the top.
I mean, the ways that they were buying and selling justice.
In the end, they indicted 92 public officials, including judges and cops and even a state representative,
because officials were taking bribes to pervert the rule of law in murder cases,
in sexual assault cases, in drug convictions, and even in things like child custody.
There was all this legal corruption.
I'm sure that's very common.
I don't want to be naive.
I'm sure that everywhere, powerful people are trying to corrupt the law to avoid convictions
or weaponize the legal system to their own benefit in some way,
or exploit loopholes in order to get out of trouble.
And I think we're tempted to do this, too, with Scripture.
Like U.S. federal law or Illinois state law,
the Word of God presents an objective standard by which to measure our actions and hold us accountable.
It indicts us for sin against God and other people.
It holds us accountable with accompanying consequences.
And like we talked about last week, we want knowledge.
We want the power and the benefit that comes from knowing things.
We talked about that last week.
But we also want to do what we want to do.
And so ideally, we would love a word from the Lord that we can control.
We would love to have a word from God that tells us what we want to hear,
that supports our own actions instead of critiquing us,
that gives us a certain kind of power or influence over others
or can be used in some way against our enemies.
We could call that taming the Word of God or domesticating the Word of God.
What are some other metaphors we could use?
We could, you know, cutting the legs out from under it or removing its teeth, right?
I don't know what kind of metaphor we want to use.
But this is related to the doctrine of inerrancy
because as we saw last week in Deuteronomy 18,
an errant word, a word that is filled with errors,
lacks full divine authority.
An errant word is a tamed word.
Its teeth have been removed.
Because as we move away from the doctrine of inerrancy,
we are left with a Bible that doesn't always get things right.
And so if it doesn't always get things right,
then that means that on any given issue,
we can question it and qualify it and challenge it for our own benefit.
And this issue of trying to tame or domesticate the Word of God
is a subject of this really crazy story in 1 Kings chapter 13.
And it is crazy, but it's also deadly serious.
This is a story about the Word of the Lord.
That phrase is repeated 10 times in these 30-some verses.
10 times it talks about the Word of the Lord.
That's what the story is about.
And before we get into it,
let's just sort of catch up here
and recall where we are as we drop into the middle of 1 Kings.
Israel has split into the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom.
There's been the secession and kind of a civil war between them.
And in 1 Kings chapter 12, the passage right before ours,
King Jeroboam, the ruler of the northern kingdom,
is concerned that his people are going to travel south into Judah,
down to Jerusalem,
to worship at the temple and to make sacrifices there.
And that's a pretty good concern that he has
because that's exactly what God has commanded them to do.
God has commanded all the people of Israel to go to Jerusalem to worship.
But Jeroboam is afraid
that they are going to become disloyal over time, right?
Because they're going to worship somewhere else.
And so what he does is he creates two calves of gold
and he installs one in the very northern part of his country
and one in the very southern part of his country
at a city called Bethel.
And he creates a new calendar of worship
and it's an alternate worship, right?
Don't go to Jerusalem, just stay here and worship my golden calves.
And Bethel is an important site for worship
because that's where the king has built an idol
and that's where they're supposed to worship.
And he's worshiping, he's making these illegitimate sacrifices
to these idolatrous calves that he's set up.
And that brings us to our story.
If you want to write this on your bulletin,
it takes place in four scenes.
It is a long one, as I said.
The first scene is in verses 1 through 10.
1 through 10.
The second scene is verses 11 through 19.
The third scene is verses 20 to 25.
And then the fourth scene is verses 26 to 32.
And we'll look at each of these sections
and then we'll put it all together at the end.
Here's what it says at the beginning in verse 1.
And behold, a man of God came out of Judah by the word of the Lord to Bethel.
And Jeroboam, the king, was standing by the altar to make offerings.
And so right away at the beginning of our story,
the Lord sends a man of God to confront King Jeroboam for his idolatry.
And it says here that he's sent by the word of the Lord.
That's the first of these occurrences of this expression, the word of the Lord.
And there's no doubt about Jeroboam's guilt
because he finds him in the act of making sacrifices
on this illegitimate altar that he's constructed.
Now, why is he called here a man of God
instead of the usual word that we would expect,
which is a prophet?
Well, this term man of God is used quite often in the Old Testament.
It's a label that is used for Moses and Samuel and Elijah and Elisha and David
and a number of other people.
And interestingly, whereas the word prophet can refer to a false prophet or a true prophet,
the word man of God is always used of a true prophet of the Lord.
So I think that the reason it calls this person a man of God here
is to distinguish him from a false prophet that we're going to meet later in verse 11.
This man of God is not named or identified in any way.
And that's probably important because it doesn't matter who he is.
It doesn't matter.
He's there to deliver the powerful and the true word of the Lord.
That is his task and his job.
And he's there to confront the king.
And we've got to give him some credit.
That would take some guts.
Because he's on the king's turf.
He is coming to confront the king at Bethel,
the headquarters of the king's idolatry,
right after one of the king's religious feasts,
while the king is making a sacrifice.
This is a place of power.
And now the man of God is coming there to confront him.
And that's what we would expect because God's power confronts every human,
every human power, religious, political, social.
God's word speaks against those things.
And he proclaims God's word against the altar in verse 2.
And he predicts three things, right?
Verse 2.
First, he predicts that a future king named Josiah will be born to the house of David.
Then number two, he predicts that Josiah will kill the idolatrous priest that the king Jeroboam has employed.
And three, that Josiah will desecrate this altar.
But he is predicting something 300 years in the future.
So who is going to believe a thing like that, right?
Just because the man of God says it.
And so in verse 3, he announces a sign.
And a regular sign is just an indicator.
It draws attention to something or it's a reminder of something.
It serves as a promise of something.
And often it isn't miraculous at all.
We have signs in the Old Testament like just a word, someone's word,
or a rainbow in the sky,
or a pile of stones is a sign of something.
It can just be a reminder.
But the Hebrew word here for sign is a special word.
And it would really be better to translate it as wonder or a miracle.
This man of God is going to do something.
He's going to do a miraculous sign to prove the authenticity of his word against King Jeroboam.
And so he says that the altar will split open
and the ashes that have accumulated from sacrifices will spill out.
And that demonstration of power now will validate the long-range prediction of King Josiah 300 years in the future.
Right?
When you see the miraculous altar split open now,
you will know that God's word 300 years in the future will come true.
Now, in verse 4, when King Jeroboam hears this,
his first response is to persecute the man of God.
The word of God is a threat to him.
It's a threat to his program of idolatry and his power.
And so when he hears the speech of the man of God,
look what it says in verse 4, right in the middle.
One translation says that his hand withered.
Another translation says that it shriveled up.
The king has been debilitated.
Then, apparently at that same moment,
if we look at verse 5,
the altar splits open and the ashes pour out
and now we have two acts of God's power.
The king's hand has shriveled up as a reaction to his attempted persecution
and the altar has broken open as an immediate miraculous sign
that confirms the prophetic word.
And then in verse 6,
the man of God restores the shriveled hand of the king
and there's a third miracle.
He heals him.
And now there is no doubt at all
that God's word is true
and he cannot be resisted
because there's been three miracles in about 10 minutes.
Well, it didn't work very well for the king to persecute the man of God.
So in verse 7, he decides to take a different approach.
He invites the man home for lunch.
He says, look at verse 7, he says,
come home with me and refresh yourself
and I will give you a reward.
Well, that sounds pretty nice.
I mean, now he's being invited to be a guest of the king in the palace.
I'm sure the man of God has had a long journey from Judah
and he wouldn't mind some delicious food
and a rest and a beautiful room
and besides, the king says something about a reward.
Use your imagination.
That sounds pretty good.
But the man of God categorically refuses the offer
and he says that God has forbidden him from going home with the king.
Look what it says in verse 9.
Well, that seems strange.
Those are strange instructions.
First of all, why would the king invite the prophet home with him?
And second, why would God specifically command the prophet
not to go home with anyone
and not to eat or drink with them?
It seems weird until we realize that this has attempted corruption.
The king is saying, let's see if we can make a deal.
Why should we be enemies?
He says to the man of God, come home.
Let's talk this through.
I'll feed you.
I'll give you a reward.
Let's see if we can work something out here.
Eating and drinking together imply fellowship
fellowship and fellowship implies corruption
and God is prohibiting the man of God
from eating or drinking with anyone
or returning the way he came
because he doesn't want any interference
with the man of God's mission here.
Any attempted corruption.
If the persecution doesn't work,
then the king thinks to himself,
well, I'll just kind of tame or domesticate God's word.
I'll bring it into my own house.
I'll bring God's word under my own authority.
I'll control it for my own purposes.
But the man of God says, no, I'm not going home with you.
I'm going home a different way.
And look what it says in verse 10.
So he went home another way
and did not return by the way that he came to Bethel.
Okay, so far so good.
That's the end of scene one.
God's word confronts human powers,
even the king and his government.
God validates his word with three powerful miracles,
including protecting his man of God,
his prophet from persecution.
And when the king tries to corrupt
or domesticate God's word
and bring it under his roof
and under his authority,
God says, no, we're not going to do that.
His word has to remain free.
It has to be nonpartisan.
It has to be independently authoritative.
All right, scene two, verses 11 to 19.
Verse 11.
Now an old prophet lived in Bethel
and his sons came and told him
all that the man of God had done that day in Bethel.
They also told their father
the words that he had spoken to the king.
And so in the second scene,
we're introduced to an old prophet
who lived in Bethel,
that same town,
that same place of idolatry
that the king had set up.
This is the headquarters of the king's idolatry.
And it does not say here
that he's a true prophet of the Lord.
Prophets were often sort of employed by the king
to tell him what he wanted to hear.
But all it says is he's a prophet.
He's supposedly someone
who receives a message from the Lord
and then delivers it.
And when he hears about this confrontation
that had taken place
between the man of God and the king,
he sets out to find this man of God.
And his sons saddle a donkey for him.
And he gets on the donkey.
And even though the man of God
had obeyed the Lord
by going home a different way back to Judah,
he finds him.
The old prophet finds him.
And he rides up to him on his donkey.
And he finds the man of God sitting under a tree.
Obviously taking some sort of a rest,
you know, on his long journey.
And look at the middle of verse 14.
And the old prophet said to him,
are you the man of God who came from Judah?
And he said, I am.
And then he said to him,
come home with me and eat bread.
I mean, what is it with these hospitable people?
They're so hospitable.
See, the old prophet hears
about the power of God's word.
The power of God's word
to make the king's hand shrivel up
or to make the altar split open
or to heal the king's hand.
And he wants some of that.
He wants some of that power.
And so now he tries
to bring God's word under his roof.
God's word represents influence and power.
And he thinks, come home with me.
Let's talk this through.
See if we can make some kind of a deal.
Let's see if I can use God's word
for my advantage and my personal status.
And again, the man of God refuses.
He repeats the instructions
that were given to him by God in verse 16.
And this is important.
It's important because it tells us
that the instructions were clear.
It tells us that there is no confusion
in the mind of this man of God
about exactly what he was supposed to do
and not do.
He knows what God has commanded.
Do not go home with anyone
to eat or drink.
And then, verse 18,
the old prophet invents
a prophetic word on the spot.
Remember we talked about this last week
in Deuteronomy 18.
What happens when a prophet says,
hey, I just heard from the Lord
and it's a lie.
He invents it on the spot.
Look what he says in verse 18.
I also am a prophet as you are.
And an angel spoke to me
by the word of the Lord saying,
bring him back with you
into your house
that he may eat
and eat bread and drink water.
But he lied to him.
The old prophet says to this man of God,
hey, how would you like a second opinion?
I'm also a prophet.
What a coincidence.
And you may have heard from the Lord,
but so did I.
And he told me something different.
He gave me a different word of the Lord.
And the old prophet makes an explicit claim
to divine source and divine authority.
He says, an angel spoke to me.
Wow, that's impressive.
And it was by the word of the Lord
that this word came to me.
And he wants you to come home
and eat and drink with me.
He is by definition a false prophet.
Because he has spoken a word
in the name of the Lord,
but it is a lie.
It is a word that he has just invented
and fabricated.
And the man of God knows
what God has commanded him.
He has repeated the instructions
twice in full.
He has seen the word of God
validated by three miracles.
And now this false prophet
directly contradicts
what God had told him to do.
It should be obvious
that this is a lie
and it is not really from the Lord
because God would never
contradict himself that way.
But he compromises.
Look at verse 19.
So he went back with him
and ate bread in his house
and drank water.
Maybe he thought,
well, you know,
I guess it's possible
that God's original word
was in error.
I suppose it's possible
that God told me one thing
but now it's been superseded
and he's changed his mind.
I suppose it's possible
that this is a new
and improved word of the Lord
that we all like
a little bit better.
It's more relevant.
It's certainly easier to accept.
It comes with concrete benefits.
I wouldn't mind some lunch.
I mean,
does this sound familiar?
Do we do this?
We have been taught
all our lives
that the Bible is God's word
and we believe that.
And then we hear something
that directly contradicts
what God's word says.
Something from a friend
or something from a book
or someone that we respect.
and it just sounds
so attractive.
It sounds so loving.
It sounds more generous.
It sounds more open.
It sounds more flexible.
Surely that new word
is what God really wants.
Surely that new word
is what God really thinks
or at least what I wish
he would think.
and we compromise.
It says in verse 19
that the man of God
went home with the old prophet
and the word of God
has now been domesticated
and tamed.
Or has it?
Let's look at verse 3.
Scene 3.
Scene 3, verses 20 to 25.
The man of God
and the old prophet
are sitting at the table
enjoying lunch
in direct disobedience
of God's word
and suddenly
the old prophet
who we have been told
is a false prophet
speaks a true word
that really is from God.
This is when the story
really goes crazy.
Right?
Suddenly the false prophet
speaks a true word
from the Lord.
It's a big surprise
but in some ways
it shouldn't be
because God
is not limited.
We read in Numbers chapter 22
that God speaks
through a donkey.
We read in 1 Kings 19
that he speaks to Elijah
in the sound
of a low whisper.
We read in Daniel chapter 5
that God communicates
to a king
by writing on a wall.
And here in 1 Kings chapter 13
he communicates
through a false prophet.
Look at verse 21.
He cried to the man of God
who came from Judah.
Thus says the Lord.
Because you have disobeyed
the word of the Lord
and have not kept
the command
that the Lord your God
commanded you
but have come back
and have eaten bread
and drunk water
in the place of which
he said to you
eat no bread
and drink no water
your body shall not come
to the tomb
of your fathers.
It was not
that the man of God
was confused
about the contents
of the word of God.
He wasn't uncertain
about what God
had commanded him
he just disregarded it.
He compromised
and he didn't
have to do that.
And as a result
the old prophet
predicts
through the word
of the Lord
that the man of God
will not be buried
with his fathers.
Now there's no response
from the man of God.
He finishes his meal.
He saddles
the old prophet's donkey.
And look at verse 24.
As he went away
a lion
met him on the road
and killed him.
And his body
was thrown in the road
and the donkey
stood beside it
and the lion
also stood beside the body.
Wow.
There's this
sudden act of violence.
The lion kills
the man of God
on the road.
And that could be
a coincidence.
I mean we know
that lions are very dangerous
and they were dangerous
in ancient Israel.
But what is weird
and very unusual
is that after killing
the man of God
the lion just stands there.
He doesn't eat
the corpse
of the man.
He doesn't eat
the donkey.
The lion is just
standing there.
It's weird, right?
And it's so weird
that it says
that when people
see this
they go into the city
and they start
talking about it.
Hey, did you guys see
what was on the road
over there?
But did you notice something?
The lion
doesn't eat.
The man of God
ate
against the word
of the Lord
even though God
had commanded him
not to.
But the lion
stands there
on the side
of the road
as a symbol
of the man of God's
compromise
and disobedience
of the word
of the Lord
because even though
it's a lion,
even though it's
just an animal,
it doesn't eat.
And that's the end
of scene three.
All right, quickly,
scene four,
verses 26 to 32.
When the old prophet,
the false prophet,
hears about the corpse
of the man of God
lying on the road
and the lion
and the donkey
standing there
next to it,
he recognizes,
wait a minute,
that's the man of God
that I just had
over for lunch.
Look what he says
at the end
verse 26.
It is the man of God
who disobeyed
the word of the Lord.
Therefore,
the Lord has given him
to the lion
which has torn him
and killed him
according to the word
that the Lord
spoke to him.
Now,
I'm guessing
that this old
false prophet
has probably
invented
every prophetic word
he has ever spoken.
He is probably
a serial liar.
It's probably his job
to just make things up.
But now
that his own word
has come true
when he told the man
of God,
you will not be buried
in the tomb
of your fathers,
he recognizes
that the word
of God is true.
And so once again
in verse 27,
he saddles a donkey
and he goes
to find the body
and he finds the body
of the man of God
and look at the end
of verse 28.
The lion
had not eaten
the body
or torn the donkey.
The narrator
tells us again,
he wants us
to notice this.
The lion
did not eat.
And the old prophet
takes the corpse
of the man of God
and look at
verses 30 and 31.
He laid the body
in his own grave
and they mourned
over him saying,
Alas,
my brother!
And after he had buried him,
he said to his sons,
When I die,
bury me in the grave
in which the man
of God is buried
and lay my bones
beside his bones.
So there's two things
we need to notice here.
First,
the word of the Lord
came true again.
The man of God
was not buried
in his own family tomb.
And second,
God had told
the man of God
not to accept
hospitality in Bethel.
And the irony is
that not only
has he come
to the old prophet's house
for lunch,
but he is buried
in the old prophet's tomb
and he will remain
in Bethel forever.
He will be
a permanent resident
in the place
of the king's idolatry.
That is ironic.
And in verse 32,
the old man
concludes
what all of us
are supposed to conclude
at the end
of this wild story.
Look at verse 32.
For the saying
that he called out
by the word of the Lord
against the altar
in Bethel
and against all the houses
of the high places
that are in the cities
of Samaria
shall surely
come to pass.
The word of God
cannot be stopped.
It is true.
It will come true.
And when we look
over in our Bibles
at 2 Kings chapter 23,
we find out
that 300 years later,
King Josiah
did tear down
that altar.
He did kill
the idolatrous priest.
He burned human bones
on it
to defile
and desecrate it
according to
the word of the Lord.
It came true.
Everything has come
full circle.
The word of the Lord
against Jeroboam
will come true.
Well,
there's a lot going on
in this story.
So let me summarize
two points
that lead us
kind of toward
the main theological
point here.
First of all,
the main conflict here
is an attempt
to domesticate
or tame
the word of God.
First,
the king invites
the man of God
to his house.
He's attempting
corruption.
He wants the word of God
kind of off his case,
get off my back.
He wants to remove
the pressure
of conviction
and condemnation.
And then,
the old prophet
invites the man of God
to his house.
He has a different motivation.
He wants to
harness that power
to use it
for himself.
And I think
this is why
we keep hearing
about donkeys.
Doesn't it seem like
there's a lot of donkeys
in this story?
The donkey
takes the old prophet
to find the man of God.
It stands by the man of God
when he's been killed.
It carries the man of God's
body to the tomb.
I think donkeys here
are symbols
of these compromises.
Second,
despite their attempts,
actually,
the word of God
will not be domesticated.
It will not be tamed.
Even though the man of God
faces down
the king of Israel
in the epicenter
of his system
of idolatry,
in all of his power
and high position,
the king's hand
shrivels up,
the altar splits open,
the king's hand is healed,
God is in total
control of that situation.
And even though
the man of God
compromises
and disobeys
and goes home
with the old prophet,
God speaks
through the old prophet.
He's not limited.
It's not like God says,
well,
I had one
true prophet
and I've lost him
so now there's no way
I can communicate.
No,
then he just speaks
through the false prophet.
His word cannot be stopped.
And when the old man
is killed,
I'm sorry,
when the man of God
is killed,
the lion,
a ferocious beast
that usually probably
can't control its appetite,
does not eat.
And when the false prophet
sees God's word
come true,
he realizes that
what the man of God
predicted about Jeroboam
and his altar
in the future
will also come true.
The word of God,
despite all these attempts,
cannot be corrupted,
it cannot be tamed,
it cannot be domesticated,
it speaks
with absolute truth.
And absolute authority
to every human power.
Here I think
is the big idea
of this story.
The word of God
cannot be domesticated,
it is true
and authoritative.
That's our big idea.
The word of God
cannot be domesticated,
it cannot be controlled,
it cannot be tamed
or leveraged
or harnessed
or corrupted,
it is true
and authoritative.
But,
the man of God
compromised
by assuming
that God's word
was in error,
by assuming
that God's word
was open to debate
and he ended up
dead on the side
of the road.
It's like we said
last week,
either
God's word
in scripture
is a merely
human text
with some good ideas
and some bad ideas,
with some things
that the authors
got right
and some things
that they got wrong
and if that's the case
then we can just
safely disregard it
because it's just
a couple of guys
and what they think.
Or,
the other option is
that God's word
in scripture
in our Bibles
is the independent,
true,
reliable authority
to which we are
all accountable.
And if that's true,
then we must
obey it
and believe it.
And those are really
the only two options.
When we compromise
our doctrine of scripture,
when we say
that the Bible
has errors
and that it gets
some things wrong,
what we are saying
is that at least
to some extent
it is a merely
human text.
We're trying
to domesticate it.
We're trying
to tame it.
We're trying
to kind of
knock off
some of those
sharp edges
so it isn't
as embarrassing
or so that it
fits our world view
or our experience
a little bit better
or so that it
isn't so offensive
to people
or so that other
people will like
it more.
And like the man
of God,
we know
that God's
revelation
has been validated
by miracles
and we know
that this is
the word of God
that has been
passed down to us
through countless
generations
of the people
of God
and we know
that this
is the word
that has been
recognized
by the people
of God
as inspired
by the Holy Spirit
and breathed
out by him
and we know
what it says
and we know
what it claims
but then
like the old prophet
someone with
some other kind
of authority
comes along
a scientist
or a scholar
or a politician
or a celebrity
or a good friend
and they say
well I'm not sure
the Bible means
it quite that way
I'm sure that God
is a little bit
more flexible
than that
and then we say
like the man of God
okay let's have
lunch at your house
I can think of
a couple of ways
that we might be
tempted to compromise
our view of the Bible
there are others
but here's two
one temptation
is to compromise
to protect the Bible
from being offensive
the good news
of inerrancy
the good news
of the doctrine
of inerrancy
is that we don't
have to pick
and choose
the whole Bible
is important
and nowhere
in the Bible
are there any
false claims
but of course
that's also
the bad news
right
inerrancy
means
that those
passages
in Scripture
that seem
embarrassing
or are really
out of step
with our culture
are the authoritative
word of God
and must be
believed and
accepted
our culture
is at the point
now when the
Bible
and the views
that we hold
from the Bible
are viewed
as evil
sometimes the
Bible has a
sharp
contradiction
with culture
that everyone
has a sin
nature
that Jesus
is the only
hope of
salvation
that marriage
is between
only one man
and one woman
that it is
wrong and
sinful
to entertain
ourselves
with certain
things
that consumerism
is a sin
and spending
all of our
money on
ourselves
instead of
submitting it
to the Lord
is a sin
how do we
respond to
that temptation
to kind of
tame it
so that it's
less offensive
we have to be
determined
to be loyal
to God
first
and to make
everything else
secondary
we have to
cultivate a
love for
scripture
even the
moral laws
we have to
recognize that
God prohibits
things because
he loves us
and he wants
our good
he knows
that those
sins will
destroy us
and they will
destroy the
people that
we love
the second
temptation
is to
compromise
our view
of the
Bible
in order
to excuse
or allow
for personal
sin
one time
I heard a
New Testament
scholar say
that many
people
compromise
their view
of scripture
in college
because they
want to be
sexually
promiscuous
we've heard
these stories
we've heard
stories of
people caught
in adultery
or moving
toward adultery
and then
it's amazing
suddenly they
find out that
scripture
doesn't prohibit
adultery
people
conveniently
ignore
what the
what scripture
says about
the sin
of divorce
people ignore
what scripture
teaches about
loving our
enemies
even our
political
enemies
but
what we
need to
do
is follow
scripture
as the
absolute
guide
to what
God wants
from us
confess
repent
do not
put up
with any
hidden
sin
that will
weaken
you
don't
allow
small
compromises
to grow
and lead
to bigger
ones
in C.S.
Lewis's
book
The Silver
Chair
Aslan
who represents
Jesus
gives
Eustace
and Jill
four signs
that they
must memorize
and repeat
in order
to be
successful
on their
adventurous
journey
and Aslan
makes Jill
repeat these
four signs
over and
over until
she has
them
memorized
he warns
her that
once they
get into
Narnia
and the
adventure is
confusing
it will be
easy to
forget the
signs
and that
she must
repeat them
every morning
every afternoon
and every
evening
so that
nothing
can make
her forget
them
but then
as the
children are
on their
adventure
they do
forget the
signs
and it
doesn't go
well
they run
into all
kinds of
problems
and danger
and troubles
because they
have forgotten
their instructions
from Aslan
the man of
God in this
story knew
his instructions
he knew what
God had
commanded him
to do
and he
repeated those
instructions
but he
compromised
in a moment
and it led
to disaster
what do we
need to
recite
what have
we been
told about
the nature
of scripture
what do we
need to
allow to
sink deep
down in
our hearts
in order to
fortify and
strengthen us
for the
difficult days
to come
I just want
to end
today by
reciting a
few key
verses of
scripture
about
scripture
and these
will be
our signs
that we
recite
and remember
to strengthen
our hearts
to accept
the truth
and the
authority
of God's
word
numbers 23
19
God is
not man
that he
should lie
or a son
of man
that he
should change
his mind
Psalm
19
7
the law
of the
Lord
is perfect
the testimony
of the
Lord is
sure
making wise
the simple
Psalm
119
89
forever
O Lord
your word
is firmly
fixed
in the
heavens
Proverbs
30
verse 5
every
word
of God
proves
true
Isaiah
40
verse 8
the grass
withers
the flower
fades
but the
word
of our
God
will
stand
forever
Matthew
5
18
for truly
I say
to you
until
heaven
and
earth
pass
away
not
an
iota
not
a dot
will pass
from the
law
until
everything
is
accomplished
John
10
35
scripture
cannot
be
broken
John
17
your
word
is
truth
2nd
Timothy
3
16
all
scripture
is
breathed
out
by
God
and
profitable
for
teaching
for
reproof
for
correction
and for
training
in
righteousness
Titus
1
2
in
hope
of
eternal
life
which
God
who
never
lies
promised
before
the
ages
began
Hebrews
6
18
it
is
impossible
for
God
to
lie
2nd
Peter
1
21
for
no
prophecy
was
ever
produced
by
the
will
of
man
but
men
spoke
from
God
as
they
were
carried
along
by
the
Holy
Spirit
Amen
Let's
pray
Father
you
have
given
us
your
holy
and
authoritative
word
and
it
does
not
always
match
very
well
with
the
culture
in
which
we
swim
with
the
values
that
are
advanced
around
us
with
the
way
that
our
friends
and
neighbors
view
the
world
and
their
lives
and
us
and
so
what
we
need
is
the
renewing
of
our
minds
and
we
pray
for
that
we
pray
that
you
would
give
us
a
rock
steady
confidence
in
the
authority
and
the
truth
of
your
word
so
when
the
bumps
come
when
life
gets
confusing
when
we
face
situations
that
are
new
that
we
will
know
that
we
stand
on
your
unchanging
and
unerring
word
we
pray
that
you
would
convince
us
of
this
that
your
spirit
would
impress
it
on
our
hearts
and
that
we
would
not
compromise
we
pray
this
in
your
name
amen