Sermon Notes from 5/30/09

I preached a True Love Waits sermon last night.

The text I used was Proverbs 7. In this text Solomon, the writer of Proverbs, perceives a situation from his window of a young man being successfully seduced by an adulteress.

There are a couple key factors that doomed this young man and led to his fall into sexual immorality. First he lacked sense. To put in short, the young man was not a godly man; he did not desire to follow God. Second the adulteress was wily of heart. This means that in her heart she wanted to deceive her victim into believing what they were doing was okay.

She gave him four reasons/excuses as to why he should go home with her.
1. She was right with God. This is an outright lie.
2. She prepared her bed with great feeling linens from Egypt (Egyptian Cotton I presume) and great smelling perfumes. This is not a lie but a very enticing offer.
3. She appeals to his desire for sex. She says, “let us take our fill of love until morning”. That’s a pretty heavy come-on.
4. She says her husband is gone and will not be back for a while. aka: this is a total freebee, and no one will know.This woman is a liar and deceiver.

I tried to put a twist on the passage by symbolizing the adulteress with our world and our culture. Our culture seduces and deceives our young people every day. Millions fall into sexually immorality and most don’t know that God hates it. That is because ultimately Satan is behind this deception and he loves it. He loves it when unwed people engage in sexual activity.

The best way to fight this deception (any deception) is with the Truth. Having God’s word in our hearts and mind and confessing Jesus as Savior is the only way to fight this deception successfully. If we do not have Jesus in our life we will ultimately fall to Satan’s deceptive ways. We will become one of his many victims.

Wipe Out

For the rest of the summer the Rock Youth Group is going to be over at the Jarrett’s house (my house) hanging out, starting at 6:30pm (pool, pool, ping-pong, trampoline, frisbee, etc.) and watching Wipe Out at 8:00pm. Tomorrow night is the premier and I’m fairly excited about watching people “wipe out”. There is just something about seeing people fall painfully into a body of water that is pleasing to the soul.

Home For The Summer

I am really excited for this summer. Here’s why…

1. I’m youth pastor at The Rock
2. My bro is getting married this coming Saturday
3. And most of all I’m getting married July 25th

Now, reason number three would be enough in and of itself to have me super pumped, but I also get the privilege of serving as youth pastor at The Rock, alongside my Dad, and being Rayford’s best man in his wedding. What a great summer! Today was my second Sunday as youth pastor at The Rock, but it was really like my first because last Sunday I had only been home for a day and I had no clue what was going on. This week I was actually able to answer most questions and make announcements about our action packed summer. I am really excited in aiding our youth in their spiritual growth. It’s going to be an awesome summer.

To Whom It May Concern

I’ve been coming across the importance of community lately in my scripture reading and discussions in class and with friends. And I cannot get over how central the church is to each Christian. You see, I feel like it is a current trend to think that “I don’t have to go to church to be a good Christian.” That is such a legalistic attitude. What? Yes, a legalistic attitude. And it’s funny because the people who say, “I don’t have to go to church to be a good Christian” are saying that because they think going to church every Sunday is legalistic, when really they are missing the picture completely. Going to church is not a matter of legalism, it is a matter of the heart. The bible makes it clear that Christians desire to be with other Christians. It is one of the main functions of Christians. God called us to be one in Christ. You can’t be one in Christ if you never express a desire to be with other believers. There are plenty of passages in the bible that show us the importance of being in the community of faith. It would take forever to comment on each one so I’m just going to list some passages I’ve been reading lately that stress the importance of being apart of the Body and meeting together, and assume that if this post concerns you, you will read them. Hebrews 10:24-25 “not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some”, 1 Corinthians 14:26 “when you come together”, Paul assumes that the Christians at Corinth come together regularly, Ephesians 2:11-22 especially in 16 he says “and might reconcile us both to God in one body though the cross” both meaning Jew and Gentile, what this passage means is that we must reconcile with other believers, so we can become one body, in order to be reconciled to God. Still some of the strongest support for being apart of the church is found in 1 John 4:20-21 “if anyone says, ‘I love God’, and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.” How can we love our brothers and sisters without meeting together to worship our Lord regularly. Loving non-believers is great and necessary, but it cannot come at the cost of loving our fellow Christians. It is clear that our priority as Christians is to meet together with other Christians and worship God. If you are struggling with why you should go to church then you should read these passages as a start. I’m learning this myself, but it is a true sign of spiritual maturity to view church as somewhere you want to be rather than somewhere you have to be. It is a heart issue.

Evangelistic Encounter

My last post was about an assignment for my Spiritual Disciplines class. This post will be no different. Seventy five percent of my grade for this class is to keep a journal this semester. There are a number of requirements for the journal, it’s not just a “journal everyday” or “journal whatever you feel like” thing. It’s journaling….for the purpose of Godliness and the professor requires certain journal entries that he feels will help us in the process of journaling for the purpose of Godliness. As hinted in the titled we have to journal about an evangelistic encounter from that occurred during this semester. Here is my entry…

It’s Thursday 11:59 pm, about forty five seconds from Friday. Last night, Wednesday night, I had an evangelistic encounter with a guy at work. Devon is one of the store managers at my work place, which is Snappy Tomato Pizza. I started working there when I moved up here last August. I think it was September by the time I actually found a job. Anyways Devon started working there shortly after, in November I think. Upon meeting him I could tell he was not a Christian, or at the very least not at all concerned about being one. The first conversation I had with his wife, Jenny, she told me how she despised the Church because of its big buildings and wrong use of funds. Needless to say neither where interested in God, although they said they believed in “God”, I think they meant more like “a god”, because it is definitely not the living God of the Bible. Through talking with Devon over the last couple of months I gathered some information about his life. He went to Church until he was seventeen. He married at nineteen, but already had a kid by someone other than his wife. He stopped going to church because he thought it was bogus and he loves all things about wrestling, hard rock, and using foul language. But I have been praying for Devon, praying that God would allow me to talk to Devon and share the gospel with him. Wednesday night I got that opportunity. I was praying, it was a slow night and we were making dough for the next day, which normally would be a one-man job, but because it was slow and the other driver had left I was helping Devon because, as a driver, I had no other responsibilities. He said something about his sixth anniversary coming up soon and mentioned the church he and Jenny got married in. I saw my door, “what kind of church did you go to back home”. “A Quaker church,” he said. Seeing the door opening further I asked, “do Quakers have any unique beliefs?” It was quite amazing, what followed was genuine interest in my schooling and beliefs about God, the Bible, Jesus, and other God-related stuff. I was able to tell Devon that the Bible was true and the it accounts for people suppressing the truth that God is real and that he made the world and that sin is real and that God must punish sin, and Jesus was sent to save us from our sin. I was able to present the full gospel, and the highlight of the evening was when towards the end of the night he said, “well I’m sure I’ll sit down one of these days and think about all that stuff.” My response was surprisingly bold, but I think given to me by the Holy Spirit. “Well Devon I think when you finally do you’ll know in your heart and mind that what I’ve told you is true.” At the end of the night he was still holding his ground and resisting the Holy Spirit, but I’m praying that God will be gracious to him and allow him to see the gloriousness of His Truth, and the Light of the Gospel.

I’m sharing this with you now, so that you can be in prayer for Devon and his wife Jenny, that they may be saved and turn to Christ. Next I want to invite them to church so you could be praying for that too.

Glenn LaRue

Glenn is the older brother of my roommate John Michael.

I just found out he has a blog.

A blog that he does not tell too many people about, not because he doesn’t want readers, but, I suspect, because he’s just too humble to say, “hey go check out my latest blog at followandlead.blogspot.com,” and because he’s really not into the whole internet community type thing (aka: Facebook or MySpace.)

Glenn is the young adult leader at our church, Bethlehem Baptist, and he is an extremely talented leader, teacher and writer.

If you’re looking for a good word you should follow the link.Oh, and he’ll be on my blog roll from now on.

Enjoy.

Sunday…

was a great day! Church was really good this morning. The kids put on a play for the whole church and did an awesome job. They really did an awesome job.  It was the best kids play ever, and they sang out their little hearts and told the great story of Jesus.

The invitation was cool at the end of the service, Pastor Mike (Dad), invited people to come forward and get Rock Christmas cards to pass out before Christmas. There was a really good response. The Christmas cards were so cool because inside were gifts of hope, which are stories from different people in the congregation of how they came to know Jesus through unlikely circumstance, basically saying, “anyone can be saved out of any situation.” The stories were all very touching and the Christmas card handout is going to “Rock.”

We had open house tonight and a bunch of people came over, including the Hermans. It was great to see them and their kids. Meagan, Emily, and Joshua are getting so big now. There was some awesome fellowship going on at the Jarrett’s, including a little flashflight (click on the link to find out what a flashflight is.)

Kicked back a brew tonight with the future Mrs. Jarrett, Henry Weinhard’s Root Beer is the bomb. It impresses me every time I try it.

Carrie and Adam taught Laura and I how to play spades Saturday night. We played me and Carrie vs. Adam and Laura. But Sunday night Laura and I played Adam and Carrie and Laura and I, on our second night of spades, took them down in a really close match, in which the winning round we won by Laura getting fifty points for her books and me getting a hundred points for going nil (trying to get no books for the entire round.)

Going to pick up Laura’s engagement ring later today (Monday.) It’s getting resized. We are happy to be getting it back.

Merry Christmas.