Berean Break
May 18, 2003 broadcast
Gods Rights (part 1 of 2)
by George Sinkie
[advance to: Gods Rights - part 2]
Greetings and Good Morning on this
new Lords Day morning. My name is George Sinkie and
I am so glad that you have joined me this morning. It is
such a privilege that you have given me this time from your day.
And it is such a responsibility that I have as a teacher
to present the truth. As we begin today lets go to
God in prayer,
Great and Loving God in heaven,
We thank You so much for this day in our lives, We pray that
each one of us will use this day to Your glory. Father,
I ask that you help me, as the teacher, to only teach Your will.
And Dear God, help each one of us to open our hearts and
our minds to Your will. We thank You now for Your word,
That we can study. And we thank You for Your Son, Jesus,
Who gave His life to pay the debt we owed. We pray that
each of us will obey Your will, So that we can be saved. In
Jesus name, we pray!! AMEN !!
Rights. That is what I would
like to talk to you about today. Most of you who are listening
to this program are here in the United States and most of you
are American citizens. We hear a lot about rights here
in America. Our country was founded upon certain rights.
We have the right to free speech and assembly and religion.
Now we have to remember that even though our country allows
us freedom of religion, if we want to be right with God we must
choose to follow His will. Our country also is founded
upon the right of every person to keep and bear arms. That
means that every one of us has a right to own a gun, that is
not dealing with hunting, it is dealing with self-protection
and protection from the government, if the government should
become a tyrant. Our Constitution and Bill of Rights establishes
many more rights for us here in the United States. But
people are demanding more and more rights. The problem
is that more and more people want more and more rights with less
and less responsibilities attached to them. This is seen
in many ways many fight for a womans right to an
abortion and yet in fighting for the womans right they
deny the childs right to have life. Now many times
they use the emotional argument about a woman being raped or
in cases of incest, or if it jeopardizes the life of the woman.
But in order to make this emotional argument work they
have to de-humanize the child by calling it such things as fetal
tissue or the product of a pregnancy. The abortionist does
not want to talk about what goes on in an abortion and I will
only deal with it here in a very mild way. I suppose that
if this were a TV program it would have a warning before it that
it may be offensive. It is not my intent to offend any
of you, if you are offended I apologize, but the real offender
is the one who promotes abortion. One of the newer methods
of abortion is called partial-birth abortion. In this procedure,
the baby may be up to full term. This child is completely
able to survive outside the womb, with the normal care given
to any baby. In this procedure, the doctor,
and I have quotation marks around the term doctor, dilates the
cervix and grabs one of the childs legs. The legs
are delivered and then the body and the arms followed by the
neck and the lower part of the head. But then the doctor
stops, before the last couple of inches of the head are delivered,
the doctor then pokes a hole into the base of the
skull and inserts a suction tube and removes the brain. Then
the dead baby is delivered. They want to call that a right
but in Gods sight it is a murder. It is a murder
just like the person who would take a gun and shoot a doctor
who did this to the baby. It is a murder just like Jack
Kevorkian does when he kills someone. Yet many say this
is a womans right. But I ask you, is this any different
than the young woman who delivers her baby in a bathroom and
wraps it in paper towels and throws it in the trash? It
is no different in the sight of God, but people demand the right
for the one, and in general we still condemn the other. Another
interesting observation about people is that if someone were
to perform a partial-birth abortion upon a dog, they would be
arrested, tried, and convicted for cruelty to animals. The
way it is reminds me of what God said in Judges 17:6
6 In those days there was
no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his
own eyes.
Over
the next two weeks I would like to share with you a little article
that I came across one time. It is entitled Gods
Right and the author is unknown to me. I will go
through and read it and then we will go back and comment on it.
Gods Right
God has a right to a
definite part of your time
He has the power to take all of it.
God has a right to a
definite part of your money
He has the power to take all of it.
God has a right to be
glorified through your tongue
He has the power to take all of it.
God has a right to be
honored through your influence
He has the power to take all of it.
God has a right to your
life
He has the power to take all of it.
God
has many, many rights and yet that seems like a strange way to
say it. God has these rights because of who He is and what
He is. As we look at these various things the one basis
for Gods right to each of these is because He is God. As
God He is the one who created all things and therefore all these
things belong to Him. God has entrusted us with each of
these things and therefore we are only stewards of the time,
money, tongue, influence, and life that we now have. One
day we will be called before God to give an account of how we
used each of them. Now lets consider each of these
points for a little while.
TIME. God has commanded
that His people assemble together and the Hebrews writer wrote
of this in Hebrews 10:23-25
23 Let us hold fast the
confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised
is faithful;
24
and let
us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds,
25
not forsaking
our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging
one another; and all the more, as you see the day drawing
near.
But
it is also important that all people take the time to consider
what God has done for them. In Luke 14:16-24, Jesus tells
a Parable about a dinner. We are not going to read it right
now but I encourage you to check it out. Again in Luke
14:16-24. In this parable, the invited guests didnt
have the time to come to the dinner. Many today dont
think they have enough time to give any time to God. They
say they have to make a living, but they fail to make a life.
They say they need to rest and relax but they will miss
out on the eternal rest. I hope that you will give God
time each day to learn His will and that you will obey His will
and assemble with His people.
MONEY. God has a right
to a definite part of your money. Now I dont want
you to think that just because you give money to God that you
are right with Him. You cannot buy your salvation. You
can only be saved by submitting to Gods plan of salvation.
God does not expect the lost to give money to Him, He expects
them to give themselves to Him. For those who are Christians
though, God has a right to a part of your money. There
is nowhere in the New Covenant that God commands Christians to
give a tithe. The basic guidelines of the New Covenant
are very simple. We are to give as we have prospered as
it says in 1 Corinthians 16:2
2 On the first day of every
week let each one of you put aside and save, as he may prosper,
that no collections be made when I come.
And in 2 Corinthians 9:7, we
are told several guidelines.
7 Let each one do just
as he has purposed in his heart; not grudgingly or under
compulsion; for God loves a cheerful giver.
Our giving is to be purposed,
a Christian should never come to assembly and at the time of
assembly open their purse or wallet and see what they have to
give. Also note that it is as he has purposed in his heart.
It is not what someone else has decided he should give.
That leads into the next section not grudgingly
or under compulsion. No one can be forced to give to the
Lord. A friend told me one time about a man-made denomination
that he was a part of in this area. This group had their
members fill out pledge cards and if a person did not give the
amount they pledged, this denomination would actually take the
person to court to force them to pay. This is just another
proof that denominations are not from God. Since the person
has purposed what they want to give and they have not been forced
to give, therefore they give cheerfully. And I ask you
why not cheerfully? Since a Christian will realize that
everything that they have is a gift from God and everything they
have they want to use for God, why not be cheerful that you can
give to God.
Next week, Lord willing, we will
look at the right God has to our tongues, our influence, and
our life. As we close out for this week, I want to encourage
you to live for God. The only way to live for God is to
obey His will and His will is revealed for us in the Bible. God
wants you to hear His word, which is what you are doing here
on the Berean Break. He wants you to have faith based on
that word. And based on that faith he wants you to repent
of your sins, confess Jesus, and be immersed in water for the
forgiveness of your sins. These things do not earn you
salvation, they are submission to the will of God. And
without submission to the will of God you cannot have the salvation
He offers to all mankind. What choice do you make
submissive obedience and eternal salvation OR rejection of Gods
offer and eternal condemnation? It is your choice.
[advance to: Gods Rights - part 2] |