Untitled Sermon

Good evening. I like to open with Scripture and then a brief prayer and I will get into my presentation.

Reading from For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, 2 and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, 3 and all ate the same spiritual food, 4 and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ. 5 Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness. 6 Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did. 7 Do not be idolaters as some of them were; as it is written, "The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play." 8 We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day. 9 We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents, 10 nor grumble, as some of them did and were destroyed by the Destroyer. 11 Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come.

For background: Two months ago George gave testimony on how he learned his work ethic by good example. He talked about the good example of his Dad. I wasn’t here in the meeting when he gave this testimony, but I heard it when he gave it at the men’s prayer breakfast in the fall.

What impressed me about his testimony, was how completely it was different than mine. I didn’t have a good example of a good father, but a bad one. About a month before my tenth birthday, my Mom told me that her and my Dad were going to get divorced. My Dad was seldom around anyway, but this announcement had a devasting effect on me. I was the oldest, I had a brother who was eight, a sister who was five and a younger brother who was almost three. My Mom had to go back to school so I spent a lot of my preteen and teen years unsupervised. I am not going to into a lot of detail about this, but not having a father in my life caused me to have a lot gaps in my life. I didn’t have anyone to mentor me on how to study, encourage me to do well in school and I mainly felt neglected. The biggest gap I had was process. Not really knowing how to start a task and see it through completion. Because I was good at math, I was able to get into college, but I didn’t do all that well until I got into my junior year, which is when I became a Christian and I became good friend with some good students that showed the process to become a good student myself.

It was during these ten -eleven years when my parents split up I realized I have developed a philosophy of looking at bad examples, and vowing not to be like that bad example.

If we look back at the text I read in the beginning, even though Israel were baptized into Moses by the cloud and the sea. They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink, but God was not pleased with most of them.