I am what I am.
Notes
Transcript
Moses, just outside the promised land, assembled the people of Isreal. he had led them in the desert for forty years and now they were about to enter the promised land. Moses laid out the case for the reasons they could trust God and in one of his final addresses, he said this in Deuteronomy 30:15-20.
15 “See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, and death and adversity;
16 in that I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways and to keep His commandments and His statutes and His judgments, that you may live and multiply, and that the Lord your God may bless you in the land where you are entering to possess it.
17 “But if your heart turns away and you will not obey, but are drawn away and worship other gods and serve them,
18 I declare to you today that you shall surely perish. You will not prolong your days in the land where you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess it.
19 “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants,
20 by loving the Lord your God, by obeying His voice, and by holding fast to Him; for this is your life and the length of your days, that you may live in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them.”
What I want you to see here is that the people of Isreal had a choice.
You might say, “well that’s not much of a choice, Life or Death.” But you see, those are the consequences of their choice and we never get to choose the consequences of our actions. We only have the choice of our actions.
We are in a series about authority.
We looked at the authority of God. That He is the source of all authority.
Then we delved into the authority of the Government. That we are told in scripture to obey the government with the only exception being that if the demands of the government are in contradiction to the commandments of God.
Today we are going to shift gears a little bit.
We are going to look at the authority that you have over your own actions, decisions, and feelings.
Free Will
Free Will
The declaration of independence states, in part:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
We have liberty. We have freedom. We have freedom to choose.
God, our creator, grants us authority of the freedom of choice.
20 ‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me.
9 The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.
Have you ever seen Aladin?
The cartoon with Robin Williams as the genie came out in 1992. My kids, my daughter especially, loved it.
Last year the live action version, with Will Smith as the genie came out, and my grand kids love it, so I have seen it a bunch.
In both the cartoon and live actions, when the genies lays down the rules of the wishes to Aladin, he said that he can’t make someone fall in love with them.
Neither can God. The reason is that love can’t be forced or taken, or manipulated. It can only be freely given. Otherwise it is something other than love.
C.S. Lewis in his Screwtape letters said this:
God cannot ravish, He can only woo.
Illustration about a guy asking a girl out and she rejects him.
And God loves you and wants you to love Him. Therefore Has to give you the choice to accept him or reject him.
He gives us the freedom and autonomy to make our own choices.
The Problem
The Problem
We willingly give up our own freedom for comfort, security, instant gratification.
Rather than make the choices we should make, or want to make, we often give up the freedom of our choices based on the influence of other people.
In balance, this is compromise. The lunch debate.
Another way to put it is that we will often act based on what we think the person, or people we care about most, think of us.
This is why a battered woman will escape one abusive relationship and end up right into another one. They have been programmed, if you will, to believe that that is how they deserve to be treated.
Peer pressure is another example.
“If all your friends jumped off the Mississippi River bridge, would you?”
Response to
But everyone else is doing it....
That is us wanting to fit in.
This is why angry but otherwise peaceful protestors can be ignited by just a few agitators.
Peer pressure is such a strong factor in our actions, the bible deals with it directly.
20 He who walks with wise men will be wise,
But the companion of fools will suffer harm.
33 Do not be deceived: “Bad company corrupts good morals.”
Codependency
Dependent: Two people rely on each other for support and love. Both find value in the relationship.
Codependent: The codependent person feels worthless unless they are needed by — and making drastic sacrifices for — the enabler. The enabler gets satisfaction from getting their every need met by the other person.
The codependent is only happy when making extreme sacrifices for their partner. They feel they must be needed by this other person to have any purpose.
Dependent: Both parties make their relationship a priority, but can find joy in outside interests, other friends, and hobbies.
Codependent: The codependent has no personal identity, interests, or values outside of their codependent relationship.
Dependent: Both people can express their emotions and needs and find ways to make the relationship beneficial for both of them.
Codependent: One person feels that their desires and needs are unimportant and will not express them. They may have difficulty recognizing their own feelings or needs at all.
Addiction -
Another way we give up our freedom to choose is by falling into addiction.
We are familiar with:
Alcohol
Drug
Gambling
Pornography
I have heard it said that it starts out you choosing the drugs and then the drugs choosing you.
Facebook
Twitter
Snapchat
Instigram
Youtube
The Social Delima
“If you are not paying for the product, you are the product.”
There is actually a new condition that psychologist and plastic surgeons alike are concerned with called shapchat dysmorphia - where people are wanting to have plastic surgery so they can look like their filtered selfies.
Debt: Easy credit and ever present advertising make for a bad combination.
Average household debt.
Under 35: $67,400
35–44: $133,100
45–54: $134,600
55–64: $108,300
65–74: $66,000
75 and up: $34,500
7 The rich rules over the poor,
And the borrower becomes the lender’s slave.
We have free will, but don’t exercise it. We consistently give away our freedom to choose. We become slaves to our peers, our unhealthy relationships, addictions, or our technology.
We become slaves to sin.
20 For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.
Benjamin Franklin once said:
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
satisfaction
comfort
High
We have to get our freedoms back from the people and things that we willingly gave them to.
This is going to sound counterintuitive.
If you tell a non bike rider that they are headed into a curve to the right and they need to turn the handlebars to the left......
If you want to become free. I mean truly free. You have to submit yourselves to God.
You have to come to a place where you can say with sincerity and honesty, not my will Lord but yours.
24 Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.
1 It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.
17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
33 They answered Him, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never yet been enslaved to anyone; how is it that You say, ‘You will become free’?”
34 Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin.
35 “The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son does remain forever.
36 “So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.
If you want freedom. His freedom. This is what you have to do.
Know that you have sinned and that that sin has separated you from God.
Know that the only sacrifice for sin is blood. (yours or anothers)
Repent of your sin.
Believe and confess that Jesus, the son of God, willingly gave his life for the sin debt that you owed.
Believe and confess that Jesus was raised from the dead on the third day.
Results
You will be come a new creature. You will act different, be different, think differently.
You will have the Holy Spirit as a helper come live inside of you.
What do you choose?
15 “If it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve: whether the gods which your fathers served which were beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”