Hello, down a bit guys, and the echo echo echo. There's also this little gold bobble that was found. It's got some stuff on it, some little white flowers, almost look like Mayflowers, as I said last week. You don't pick that little bracelet up, it's mine.
So goodness and I have been trying to track down whoever owns it. So if you own it, I've got it here. All right, up here in the jewelry department. All right, let's turn our hearts to the Lord and we'll pray.
And hopefully the sound stuff will be ironed out during that time. Father, we thank You for our Savior, the Lord Jesus. We thank You for the power in the blood of Christ, the wash us from all sin. And Father, we just ask that You would help us this morning as we look into Your Word, that You would guide us and direct us and through the work of the Holy Spirit, that You would impart the Word of God to the hearts of all of us who hear.
And I pray that You would change those of us who know the Lord Jesus to become more like Him. And Lord, if there's anybody here and I'm sure that there is, who does not know the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior, that today they may turn their hearts to Him and trust the One who is the only Savior of the world. We ask it in His name, amen. Guys, did you read that I switched to the podium, Mike?
Okay, goodish. All right, it's good to see you all today and welcome. It's wonderful. I think I saw, he's too big to miss.
Did I see Paul Reimer here? Paul, are you here? He's missing in action. Okay.
So Paul is back from his trip around the world with the Canadian Navy. So we're thankful to have Paul back. And I'm sure Lindsey, you're thankful to have Paul back. I do see Lindsey.
There she is. Thumbs up from her. So that's good. So it's wonderful.
And if you're here today visiting, a special welcome to you. I'm glad that you're here. We do have people who we know who are visiting with us. And we have people who we don't know who are visiting with us.
So welcome to all who are here this morning. We're studying through the book of Genesis. And this morning I want to look at Genesis chapter 13. So if you have a Bible, if you could take your Bible and turn to Genesis chapter 13, if you have it on your phone or device, and if you don't have either one of those, perhaps your neighbor does and you can read along with them.
And we're going to read Genesis chapter 13. Reading from verse 1. So Abraham went up from Egypt. He and his wife and all that he had, lot with him to the Negeb.
Now Abraham was very rich in livestock, in silver and in gold. He journeyed on from the Negeb as far as Bethel to the place where his tent had been at the beginning between Bethel and A, the place where he had made an altar at the first. And there Abraham called upon the name of the Lord. And Lot who went with Abraham also had flocks and herds and tents so that the land could not support both of them dwelling together, for the possessions were so great that they could not dwell together.
Then there was strife between the herdsmen of Abraham, between the herdsmen of Abraham's livestock and the herdsmen of Lot's livestock at the time of the Canaanites and the pair of the herdsites were dwelling in the land. Then Abraham said to Lot, let there be no strife between you and me, between your herdsmen and my herdsmen, for we are kinsmen. Is it not the whole land before you? Separate yourself from me.
If you take the left hand, then I will go to the right. If you take the right hand, then I will go to the left. And Lot lifted up his eyes and saw the Jordan Valley and that it was well watered everywhere like the Garden of the Lord. So that reference to the Garden of the Lord would be the Garden of Eden that he's speaking of, like the land of Egypt in the direction of Zor.
This was before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. So Lot chose for himself all the Jordan Valley and Lot journeyed east, thus they separated from each other. And Abraham settled in the land of Canaan, while Lot settled among the cities of the valleys and moved his tent as far as Sodom. Now the men of Sodom were wicked, great sinners against the Lord.
And the Lord said to Abraham, after Lot had separated from him, lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward. So all the land that you see I will give you into your offspring forever. I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring can be counted. Arise, walk through the length and the breadth of the land.
I will give it to you. Abraham moved his tent and came and settled by the oaks of memory, which are at Hebron. And there he built an altar to the Lord. May the Lord bless the reading of his word this morning.
So I am trying to get this in. Oh, here we go. So I am going to just quickly go through, because not everybody has been here for the last number of months, just quickly go through where we are in Genesis and how we got to where we are. So the first chapters of Genesis, 1 to 11, they take up about 200 to 2,500 years of history.
It begins with the formation of the universe, formation of life and of mankind, male and female he created them in the first two chapters. And then we get into chapter three where we see the first sin, where Adam and Eve, who got created perfect in the garden, chose to follow after the advice of the serpent and their own lusts, questioned and doubted the word of God and fell into sin. Then after that we have the promise of the deliverer in Genesis chapter three verse 15. We are told of one who was going to come of the seed of the woman who had crushed the head of the serpent, who was Satan.
Even though Satan would bruise his heel, he would crush the head of the serpent. And then wickedness just grew and grew and grew in all the earth and then the flood came. God had enough of the wickedness of the earth. In fact, it was so bad it was said that the only imagination of all our hearts was only evil continually.
After the flood, you think we have the great reset here and it's all new. Eight people come out of the ark, well, it wasn't very long until rebellion starts growing again. They moved into cities. They did all these things and they centered in this area called Babel, which is likely in modern day Iraq.
And there they built a tower. They're going to prove themselves to be as mighty as God and maybe reach into the heavens. But we are mighty. We're going to make a name for ourselves that says in the scriptures.
Well, God would have none of that. So he sent confusion of their languages. So we have the formation of language and cultures that couldn't speak to each other anymore to build this tower. So they spread out through all the earth.
And then we get to Genesis chapter 12, to Genesis chapter 50. And it takes up 300 years of history. Interesting. The first 11 chapters, first 11 chapters take up about 22 to 2, 500 years of earth history.
The next 39 chapters take up 300 years of history. The focus is on people, not on formations, not on processes, not on creation. It's now on the people and the people of God. We see the formation of a nation.
We're going to look at this. The nation of Israel. It begins with Abraham. Abraham, whose name means exalted father.
Almost 100 years old, he still has no children, but he goes around with the name Abraham. Who are you, exalted father? Oh, how many kids do you have? None.
Nice. But he's revered by three major religions in this world right now. Christians, Jews, Muslims, all look to Abraham as the source of their people. The Christians as the father of faith.
The Jews as the father of the Jewish people through his son, Isaac. And the Muslims through the son that was born outside the bowl of God, Ishmael, as being the foundation of their faith. He is held as an example in the New Testament of justification by faith. Romans chapter 4, Galatians chapter 3, Hebrews chapter 11.
Abraham is spread throughout his faith, is spread throughout the New Testament as an example to us. He's called a friend of God, 2 Chronicles chapter 20, Isaiah chapter 41 and James chapter 2. So what of this Abraham? So first of all, he descended from Shem, the son of Noah.
He lived in a place called Er in Mesopotamia. And he was called by God to leave Er, to leave his family and to go. So then you're wondering, okay, go where? Just leave.
Oh, where am I going? Oh, destination unknown. Okay. So this, he's off to head into this unknown destination to be led by God.
But the thing is, he brought his father with him and he brought Lot with him, his nephew. Disobedience number one, he was told specifically and clearly, leave your family and go. He brought his family with him. As disobedience would have its way, it usually leads to disobedience number two.
That's just the way things go when we disobey God. So then he goes to a place called Haran and he stops there with his father and his family and with Lot until his father dies. So when his father dies, he moves on and he's going into this land where God is leading him. And then he goes to this place and he says, God, are you really leading me to this place?
Because there's no food here. There's no food that people are starving to death. So I have to fix this, God, sorry, but you're taking me to the wrong place. So I'm going to go to Egypt.
Disobedience number three as the way disobedience goes. You have disobedience number one or compromise number one if you want to call it. And then it leads to number two and then it leads to number three. So he heads to Egypt.
When he gets to Egypt, this is where it just shows that, okay, Abraham, you're kind of stepping outside your man. He gets Pharaoh's looking over and say, oh, that's one fine woman over there. And it was Abraham's wife, Sarah. And he says, wait a second now.
If they know that you're my wife, what they are going to do is make you a widow so she can be yours. Say you're my sister, okay? Just let's go along with this. Well then Pharaoh takes Sarah into his household and all of a sudden things start going very very wrong for Pharaoh.
And Pharaoh says, I'm hearing rumblings that she's actually not your sister Abraham. That's your wife. Yeah, but you would tell me if I said she was my wife. Get out of here, you and everybody go and get out of here.
And that's kind of where we left it the last time. So disobedience, it just has its roots in doubt. God has said this. I kind of believe it, but I'm not so sure.
So here's Abraham. We've left him the last time down in Egypt and sitting there in doubt. So let me refresh versus one to four. So Abraham went up from Egypt.
Okay. Down in the corner there, told him to get out. That's a pictogram. That's not an actual photograph of the day.
They didn't have one. I couldn't get one. So Abraham went up from Egypt. He and his wife and all that they had and walked with him into the Negeb.
Now Abraham was very rich in livestock in silver and gold. It seems that he actually got richer when he was down living in Egypt. He gathered more stuff. There's a point to that I want to talk about.
And now he journeyed on from the Negeb as far as Bethel to the place where his tent had been at the beginning between Bethel and A.I. To the place where he had made an altar at first and there Abraham called upon the name of the Lord. And it is that I want to bring this verse that I put at the bottom here. Why are we talking about this?
I mean this happened thousands of years ago. Why are we talking about this today at Northbrook Bible Chapel? This verse has come up to be a few times in the past couple of weeks. First Corinthians chapter 10 verse 11 says, Now these things happen to them.
It's speaking of the children of Israel. It's speaking of a different time. It's a little bit later. It's about 300, 400 years later.
It says, Now these things happen to them as an example. But they were written down for our instruction on whom the end of the ages has come. We're studying this because it is written for our instruction. All of the scriptures are written for our instructions.
That's the value of the scriptures. In fact, I've hardly found a situation in life that I can't address somehow with the scriptures. I can't think of any situation in life that the scriptures does not speak to. So Abraham now he goes up from, it says in verse 1.
He goes up, he goes up from Egypt. I like what I read something that says he went up geographically, up North from Egypt. He went up spiritually. I no longer doubt.
And he went up relationally. The title I put over the top of this is that doubt is hazardous to your spiritual health. You see, when Abraham was down in Egypt, he started getting into all of these compromises. He started lying about who his wife was.
He started getting sucked into the culture. He accumulated it and accumulated it well thinking that that's going to satisfy his soul. And it didn't. So he left.
And when he left there, he left with more than he had when he got there. So the second thing I want to say is that riches can be hazardous to your spiritual health. Now Abraham was very rich. It seems he obtained so much more while he was in Egypt.
Egypt is a picture of the world and being away from God. Egypt is always a picture of being away from God. It's always a picture of the world. Whatever you read of Egypt, there's an account that's given a little later on when the children of Israel who were slaves are taken out of Egypt.
They're delivered. They're rescued from slavery. They were harshly treated. They were whipped.
They were forced into labor. They had absolutely nothing. And then as a wandering through the desert, as God is leading them to a better place, they start to complain. They're saying food every day, man, I can't stand this.
Man, oh man, oh man. And they're getting manna every day. I can't stand this anymore. Why can't we go back to Egypt?
We had so good back there. We had onions and leeks and garlic and big macs and fries and all that stuff back in Egypt. But here we are. This desert going through and it's just God feeding us.
We used to feed ourselves really well back there. That's completely lie. They were whipped. They were starving.
They were tortured to work. You can read that in the early chapters of Exodus. It's a dry, barren wasteland. And that's what the world is.
You may get wealthy. You may increase in your riches, but you will increase in your misery. In this return to Bethel is what Abraham did. He went up.
He left Egypt and he went up. He went to Bethel. What did he do? He went to where he once worshipped to the house of God, to the place where he built an altar.
You see, you come to your senses when you come into the house of God. I've been encouraged you and I don't have time to read it today. But read Psalm 73. Psalm 73 speaks of a man named Asaph.
And Asaph looked at all the wealthy around him. He looked at all that they had. They have no aches. They have no pains.
They have no sickness. They have no fatness in their eye. They're just, everything is just great and hunky-dory for them. And he was just so taken up with us and consumed with it.
And then one day it says he went into the house of the Lord. And he realized their end. And he realized he cries out, who have I in heaven but you? It is fair better to have nothing and have God than it is to have all the riches of the world.
There's a song we're going to sing at the end. I'd rather have Jesus. Okay. All right.
But they were asking for a song for the end. And we were struggling with what they had. So now you know where I'm headed. All right.
So he pitched his tent between Bethel and A.I. And he says, you know Bethel means house of God. You Bible scholars probably know that. But now I know it too.
You know what A or A.I. means? I bet you you do because it's on the wall behind me. It means house of ruins.
So here he pitched his tent between the house of God and the heap of ruins. Do you know where we're living today? We're living between the heap of ruins, this world that's just falling apart and our heavenly home, the house of God. We desire, we long to be in the house of God.
We desire and long to be in the presence of God forever. But we're stuck in between, we're living around this house of ruins until that time. So he went and he's between the two of them. But he pitched his tent facing towards the house of God.
That's where he was facing. In all of this going back, this is, this is, I totally lost my place here. Sorry. It's going to be a half a second here.
Yeah. So going back to the, yeah, I want to go back to the thing on, you know what? I am on it. I'm on the wrong page here.
Sorry. This is, I confused myself. So going back to the riches that he had. So I guess I, I said the house of God was on the wall behind me.
It wasn't, was it? No. I wish somebody shook their head, but nobody shook their head. Nobody to give me direction.
I just sat here and made all these blunders. Back to riches. So he wasn't, here he is in Egypt, all these riches and he's coming back with all these riches. One of the things I want to say about riches, this is the warning about riches.
You know, money is a neutral thing. Money is nothing. Well, it used to be paper, but now it's plastic, plastic and aluminum. But here's the thing.
It affects people. The product itself is nothing, but it affects people. It affects you. It affects me.
How we view money will affect how we look at this world. How we look at money will affect how we look at God. There's many warnings in the scriptures and I just went through these the other day and I just pulled these up. There are many things, there are many, believe me, there are many promises of the Lord prospering you.
There are many promises that if you do this he will prosper you. It doesn't necessarily mean he's going to deliver a lot of cash on your doorstep. It does not. So don't mistake that.
But there are some severe warnings in the scriptures about what money can do to you. Proverbs 11 verse 28, whoever trusts in riches will fall, but the righteous will flourish like a green leaf. Mark chapter 4 verse 19. Jesus is telling the story about seed falling in the soils.
And he comes to one soil and he says, the seed started, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desire for other things enter and choke the word and it proves un-fruitful. Now I read that and think, I've always been brought up to think, okay, that's speaking of those who don't know the Lord, those who don't know. I look at it and think that is for me today. Because I am probably, and you're probably like me.
I like stuff. I like a new car. I like a new house. I like a new iPad.
I like this. I like new stuff. I like getting a raise at work. I like getting a bonus.
I like taking a trip. I like doing all that stuff. But if I get consumed with those things, if I get consumed with the material things in this world, it will draw me further and further away from God. I'm going to tell you a real story.
This is a real confession from me. Many of you know I lost my job about four years ago. And I remember sitting in my office after I had lost my job. It was the first day.
It was the first day that I, in 30 years that I did not have anything to do that day when I got up, other than to sit there and read my Bible, which I do anyway. And I read my Bible. And I closed this and I started to pray. And I realized that the one thing that was taken away from me was consuming my life.
I had been successful in my job. I was getting paid a very good salary. I had a good position. I had all of this stuff.
On May the 1st, 2020, it was gone. May the 1st, I'm sitting there. I have no job. I have none of those things.
My position, unemployed. My income, a severance, that is going to end. And I sat there and I thought, God, I have to confess a sin to you. A great and hideous sin in my life.
Right now. I have in my mind become self-sufficient. I can take care of any problem. This is the way I was up until the 30th of April.
I can take care of any problem in my life. I can pay for anything we need. I can look after anything. I can manage these people.
I can tell them to do this and they will do that. That's kind of the way it went. I can tell them to do this and they will do this and some of them will do that. But I can do all these things.
And in one day, it was all gone. And it struck me in my heart. I have committed the sin of being self-sufficient and not depending on the Lord God. That's what riches can do to you.
It can blind you. It can taint you. Ecclesiastes, chapter 5, verse 10. He who loves money will not be satisfied with money.
He who loves wealth with his income. This also is vanity. We all know the misquote of this verse, 1 Timothy 6 and for the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. And through this craving, it is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.
Be very, very careful. Be very, very careful that you do not love money. Do not love it. Do not make it your partner.
Do not make it your spouse. You can do that. Psalm 106. And I'm only going to be part of this.
10 to 15. It speaks of the children of Israel. And they know they complain to the Lord. Stop sending us man.
We want something else. We want wail. We want just give us some meat for stuff, for instance. That's what we want.
Enough of this. So he gives them what they want. But do you know what it says in Psalm 106 verse 15? He gave them their request but sent leanness into their soul.
The leanness that was sent into their soul was like a wasting disease. In some cases literally was a wasting disease and destroyed them. The Lord may give you what you want if you ask for it enough. You might say, okay, you know what?
You've asked me for this so many times. I'm going to give you exactly what you want. You'll have the fatness of the land but the leanness in your soul will destroy you. Be very, very careful.
That's my warning on riches. In fact, the riches caused a conflict between Abraham and Lot. It caused a conflict to the point that their herdsmen were fighting. We've got so much now.
We've got so much that it's actually causing a problem. So what are we going to do? They're going to separate. So here he comes back from Egypt.
He returns to Bethel. I like what it says that he came back to where he was in Bethel. He first built an altar. It reminds me of what you read in Revelation chapter 2 about the church in Ephesus.
Remember the church in Ephesus? They had a great youth group. They had a good. They even had a water program.
Church in Ephesus did potluck every week. They had great preachers. Man, they were on fire. Right when the bread was full.
They got together midweek. They did other things. They didn't have a problem with their ESL classes. They were full.
They didn't even have to use Zoom. They all came together in the place and did it. They shared food. They did all kinds of great things.
But I have this against you. You have left your first love. They did all of these things. They functioned like the greatest church around.
But they had left their first love. So what does the Lord instruct them to do? He says, remember therefore from where you have fallen. Repent and do the works that you first did.
If not, I will come and remove your lampstand from its place unless you repent. Remember, repent, return. Abraham set the standard, the model for that, didn't he? What did he do?
The first thing he did? He remembered. You know, I remember Bethel. Bethel was the place where I was close to God.
I built an altar there for him. I'm in the wrong place. He turned around and he headed back to Bethel. He returned to what he did before.
Abraham now goes back and his focus is not on riches. His focus is not on himself. His focus is now on the Lord God. Now we have this conflict breaks up.
And I read this from 5 to 10 about the herdsmen that were fighting amongst themselves. There was not enough room. So Abraham says to a lot, I'll sum this up. He said, I'll tell you what, we need to separate.
We're not getting along. Your herdsmen can't stand mine. You're sheep are fighting my sheep. I'll fight him.
Am I kidding. So he said, I'll tell you what. You go to the left, I'll go to the right. You go to the right, I'll go to the left.
Choice is yours, boy. Now, really that was very kind and gracious of Abraham. Abraham is, he's in tune with God now. He's back to worshiping God.
He's looking at the Lord. His eyes are on the Lord. And he's saying, you know what? You're a young fella.
You make the first choice. Thanks uncle. Thanks uncle. I'm going to pick the good land.
Thank you very much. That's beautiful down there. Look at that. There's cities.
There's fertile land. I'm going to look after myself. Thank you old man. You can somehow make something grow in that desert.
And then a lot leaves. When a lot left, Abraham is now satisfied, his nephew and all the guys that were causing trouble are gone. They've gone to that well-watered land down there. And then we get to see the difference in the two men.
Abraham was walking with God. Abraham esteemed the other greater than himself. You can take the best if you want. You take whatever you want.
God's going to look after me. I'm going to let God choose from me. You make your choice. My tent is pitched towards the house of God.
And that's where I want to live. I'm okay. You just stay right here with my tent pitched towards the house of God. He made a very wise decision.
He resisted the temptation to say, you know what, I'll tell you what, you take that land down there. I'm going down into that rich fertile valley down there. He didn't do that. I would rather stay here with nothing pointing towards the house of God.
You go and you take that land. You see, here's what Lot was the character of Lot. He was walking with Abraham, not walking with God. He was just kind of tagging along.
I'm just going to tag along and enjoy the blessings. I hope you're not here this morning because you're kind of tagging along with Christian parents or a Christian friend thinking, you know, it's kind of nice. I'll just tag along. I'm out of touch with God.
But I'm just going to go along with this. You see, that's the way Lot lived his life. He had totally different appetites. Abraham had an appetite for God.
He wanted to serve God. He wanted to follow God. He wanted to be with God. What?
He just wanted it all if it was going to satisfy him. His appetite was 100% for himself. He loved the world. You see, James tells us not to love the world, not to be part of the world, not to flirt with the world.
And he flirted with temptation. It says he moved near Sodom. And you think, OK, well, but that was before God destroyed Sodom. But do you think that the sin of Sodom wasn't unknown?
It says in verse 13 that there were wickedness of Sodom was great. The wickedness of the men of Sodom was great. That was known. The reputation of Sodom traveled through yet he chose to go down there and live in those cities.
It speaks of the days of Lot. We hear the days of Noah, what it's going to be like in the coming of the Son of Man. But in Luke chapter 17, these are the words of the Lord Jesus. It says, when the Son of Man returns, it will be like Noah's day.
In those days, people enjoy banquets and parties and weddings right up to the time that Noah entered his boat and the flood came and destroyed them all. And the world will be as it was in the days of Lot. We usually stop at the days of Noah. But it says in the days of Lot, people went about their daily business eating and drinking and buying and selling and farming and building until the morning Lot left Sodom, then fire and burning sulfur, rain down from heaven and destroyed them all.
Yes, it will be business as usual right up to the day when the Son of Man is revealed. By accident, it came across a little documentary. I wasn't a documentary. I don't know what you'd call it.
This Israeli girl hired a guide to take her into these caves. In Sodom, she said, Taurus, don't go here. There's nothing here but heaps and heaps and heaps of salt. You think that's this is a fictional story.
You should watch this. It's 260 feet deep, the salt. It's deposited. It looks like little layers of wafers.
Layer upon layer and upon layer. There are flames, blue flames still coming up through it in some places from the burning sulfur and tar underneath. Horrific judgment upon Sodom and Gomorrah. We'll read about that in another time.
But this is where Lot choose to go. This is what his choice was. I'm going to head there. I'm going to, yes, God judges sin, but I'm going to go and live there.
Horrific choice. In the end, the choice was good for Abraham. He's now living in obedience. He left his family.
He's now free from his family. Lift as God had asked him to do in the beginning. The Lord speaks to him now at this point in time. He doesn't even lift up his eyes.
He doesn't say anywhere that he looked around until at this point. Lot is now gone and the Lord says to him, OK, Abraham, lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are. Look north and south and east and west. For all the land that you will see I will give to you until you're offspring forever.
I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring can also be counted. Arise, walk through the length and the breadth of the land I will give to you. So Abraham moved his tent and came and settled by the oaks of memory, which are at Hebron. And there he built an altar to the Lord.
The people who were protesting in our streets should probably read this chapter. They should probably read this account. The people who are talking about from the river to the sea should probably read this account. This is the land that has been given to the Jewish people through Abraham.
This is the land that is theirs. The offspring of Abraham will be greater than the sand of the sea. It will be greater than the dust of the earth. How?
Through faith. We are the offspring of Abraham. Through faith. What does Lot get?
Lot makes this selfish choice. He desires the best for himself. There's no acknowledgement. Did you never notice that Lot never speaks of the Lord?
Never. He doesn't mention him at all. It's not part of his life. I don't mind hanging around my religious uncle Abraham because look I prospered.
But that's God thing. I mean, maybe it's a good thing if I can separate from him and he does he separates from him. But we do read later on where Lot is called righteous Lot. I'm thinking what?
Righteous Lot. But he is. He stands out amongst the people inside of the Magamora. The thing is he's run towards the wrong choices and he makes the wrong choices.
And it's going to have horrible consequences. We will see that and he gets kidnapped in the next chapter. And then inside of the Magamora he's almost destroyed. He loses his family.
Abraham will grow his family. Lot will lose his family. Choices. We all make them.
We all make them every single day. Many, many times. So what are your choices? What choices do you make?
What do I make? This is where I want to bring it home to us here at Northbrook Bible Chapel this morning. We all make choices. Abraham made choices.
I'm going to follow the Lord. I'm pitching my tent towards the house of God. Lot made his choice. I want to satisfy my soul with the fat of the land.
We have to be careful with our vision first of all. What do you set your eyes on? I mean, that's where your heart is going to go, isn't it? What thrills you the most?
Is it my job? Is it a greater position? Is it more money? Is it having more than the person next to me?
Is that it? That's a bad choice. If my desire is to become more like Christ, be conformed to his image, to know the Lord God, to know what God wants from my life, that's a good choice. What do you set your eyes on?
Do you set your eyes on the Word of God? Our brother John's been encouraging us as we go through Joshua with him, the life of Joshua. He just wrapped up last week. Spend time with God.
Spend time looking and reading and listening to the Word of God. You will not go wrong there. You will never go wrong there. If you look at the world around you, you will go wrong.
I'm telling you you will. But if you look to the Word of God, you will not go wrong. What are your values? Where do you set your heart?
It's important to you. Joshua came to the very end last week. John spoke on this. He said to the children of Israel, they're all lined up in front of them.
The whole tribe. Okay. I'm going to set before you life and death. I'm going to ask you, choose life or this arm.
Jesse, choose life. Again, he comes to them at the end and he says, if it's evil for you or if it's good for you, who are you going to serve? Choose this day whom you're going to serve. As for me and my house, I'll serve the Lord.
Where do you set your heart? And finally, most importantly, where do you set your faith? Do you have your faith? Have you chosen to follow the Lord Jesus Christ?
Have you come to that point where you've heard that he is the only Savior of the world? He could be your only Savior and you said, I will follow him. I choose Christ. Or he said, no, not right now.
Maybe later. Or I don't know if that's the right thing for me. Bad choice. Choose Christ.
Jesus himself said these words to a man named Nicodemus. He says, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son. However, believes in him, there's a choice. There's a choice.
Believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him, again, here is ultimately the final choice. Whoever believes in him is not condemned. But whoever does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only son of God.
The choice is clear. The choice is laid out. You do have a choice. I have a choice.
May you choose Christ. Choose life. Father, thank you this morning that you have provided these examples for us in the Scriptures of these men of God. Father, we realize that each day we make the various choices.
Some seem so inconsequential, but some have great consequences in our lives. A father for each person who is here today, I pray that they choose Christ, that he is, as he said himself, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father, but by me. Father, may we all see and know that Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world, save sinners.
And in that, Lord, if there is anybody here who doesn't know you, that they may choose life. If you ask Jesus' name, amen. Now while your heads are still bowed, I would ask that if there is anybody here who does not know the Lord Jesus Christ and you want to know him, and you are still struggling with, I don't know, I don't know whether this is the right choice or not. I don't know how to come to him.
I want to, but I need someone to point me to him. There are people here who can point you to Christ. You can come, you can ask me, you can ask many of the men and ladies who are here, and they will take you to somebody if they can't lead you to Christ. But I've asked that today, if you're thinking of these things, that you don't leave this building until you know you've chosen Christ.
May God bless you. Amen.