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Upland Indonesian SDA Church

Eric Walsh: Road Map to Heaven

Eric Walsh

God’s Word as our Guiding Light

Good evening We start by reading in the book of Mark the sixth chapter Mark chapter 6 started verse 1 Scripture says in Mark 6 verse 1 And he went out from thence and came into his own country, and his disciples followed him.

And when the sabbath day was come, he began to teach in the synagogue, and many hearing him were astonished, saying, From whence hath this man these things?

And what wisdom is this which is given unto him, that even such mighty works are wrought by his hands?

Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James and Joseph and Hoses and of Judah and Simon and are not his sisters here with us?

But Jesus said unto them, a prophet is not without honor, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house.

And he could there do no mighty work, save that he laid hands upon a few sick folk and healed them.

And he marveled because of their unbelief.

And he went round about the villages teaching.

Our message tonight is entitled, God's Word is Our Guiding Light.

Father God, we just ask for your Holy Spirit.

And Lord, as we go through your word, Lord, you would show us great truths and great teachings.

This is our prayer in Jesus's name, amen.

It's interesting, this story, because Jesus actually returned to where he was from originally.

And after all of the great things that Jesus had done after his reputation preceded him you would think that going back home he would have received a hero's welcome but the scripture says that even when Jesus went back home and when he landed back where everyone knew him, they could not make the jump from Jesus the carpenter, Jesus the son of Mary.

They knew his brothers and his sisters and they could not make the leap from Jesus as a simple young man to Jesus the Messiah.

So they doubted his word and the Bible lets us know here what are the results of questioning God's Word when we disbelieve that God's word is true.

The Bible says in verse 5, he could do there no mighty work.

Jesus's, I don't want to say his ability to work miracles, but his propensity to work miracles was blunted.

He did not do what he did in a lot of other places because the Bible sets up a contrast.

If you go back 1 verse, 1 chapter, sorry, in Mark 5 and you read the end of the chapter, you find that there is this leader of the synagogue who really should have had no dealings with Jesus, but his daughter had fallen ill.

And Jesus was kind of heading his way, so he sent for Jesus.

And as Jesus was leaving to come to his house, A woman with an issue of blood stopped Jesus.

I really didn't stop him, just barely touched the hem of his garment and was healed.

Jesus stops and tells her that because of her faith, she's been made whole.

While all of that is going on, someone else comes.

A messenger comes from this man's house and says, you know what Jesus, there's no real reason for you to go all the way to the house anymore.

Jesus says in Mark 5, when you look at what he says, he says in Mark 5 and verse 36, he says, and as soon as Jesus heard the word that was spoken he said unto the ruler of the synagogue be not afraid only believe.

Jesus takes a few of his disciples Peter James and John and they run and he cometh to the ruler of the synagogue and said and and he saw the tumult the Bible says why make this a do and weep the damsel is not dead but sleepeth people laughed Jesus to scorn but I want to show you the contrast the ruler of the synagogue believed and watch what happens the Bible says in verse 41 He took the damsel by the hand and said unto her, Talitha kumai, which is interpreted damsel, I say unto thee, arise, and straightway the damsel arose and walked, For she was of the age of 12, and they were astonished with great astonishment." So there are 2 contrasts.

When you believe God's word, even though someone is dead, they can be brought to life.

The Bible says in John 1 and verse 1, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

So powerful is God's Word that when Jesus speaks, it is a divine procession coming out of his mouth.

So the same Jesus that says, damsel, arise, is the same Jesus who said, let there be light.

And just as when he spoke into full darkness, the words let there be light, light appeared, so when he speaks into death, arise, even death disappears.

So powerful is the life-giving force that is Jesus, that when Jesus, when Lazarus died, Jesus took his time to get there, because Jesus said, had I been here, had Jesus just been in the room with Lazarus death would not have been able to take Lazarus so powerful is the life-giving Word of Jesus that when he calls Lazarus from the grave he has to say Lazarus arise because had Jesus just said arise come forth every dead person who was righteous in the under the sound of his voice would have gotten up and walked so powerful is the Word of God yet the Word of God is under attack you see there are many who are now thinking that they are so smart, so wise, so filled with manly and earthly brilliance that they want to question God's Word.

And ironically, the greatest doubters and attackers of God's word now come not from outside of Christianity or outside of where Jesus really should abide, his hometown, his own church.

Ironically, the greatest antagonists against the Bible as the word of God, as infallible truth, come from Christian scholars.

It's amazing, as I preached last weekend on campus at Loma Linda, a student stopped me as I was trying to get away after the last session.

And he said, listen, I'm a student at La Sierra University.

And in this class, it seems as if they're attacking God's word.

And when he began to explain to me some of the things that were being taught and said, I said, that's satanic doctrine.

Some of these ideas basically are saying you can't be lost, that God is so merciful that no 1 will ever be lost.

I want to submit to you that knowing God's word comes not from understanding that can be accomplished simply with your 5 logical senses.

But if you are going to know God and get to a real understanding of his word, there is a sixth sense that must come into place, and that is faith.

You must begin to be able to see that which is invisible if you're going to understand God's word and accept it for yourself.

But the problem in our modern era is everything is touch and feel and smell and taste.

And we see and we're so confident in the intelligence of the scientists who invent the phones that we carry and design the cars that we drive.

And we're so confident in man's intelligence that we often miss man's stupidity.

On YouTube, there's a big debate going around.

There's a man who's probably the descendant of Christians.

And I have a book called The Celtic Connection.

And it speaks of how the man that we call St.

Patrick, When he began to evangelize the British Islands, he was a Sabbath keeper, an apostolic Christian who preached the gospel on the British Isles and converted all of the pagans of the British Isles to Christianity.

And it's amazing when I hear A man on 1 of those aisles would speak with such intellect and yet such stupidity as he tries to destroy God's word.

If there was an intelligent being in control of this universe, the universe wouldn't look like this.

If there was no 1 intelligent in control of the universe, would you really believe that everything around you could have happened by chance?

The chances of winning the lottery are between 1 in 4000001 in 40 or 50 million if you're playing 1 of the Powerball games back east.

The chance of getting struck by lightning are 1 in 400, 000.

Lightning is usually, except for these few years of these big hurricanes lately, lightning is usually the number 1 weather-related death scenario.

Normally, every year, more people die of lightning strikes, basically, than any other weather condition.

Now, how many of you really ever worry, especially in Southern California where it hardly even rains, how many of you really worry, even in a thunderstorm with lightning, that you're going to be struck by lightning?

Yet the chances of being struck by lightning are often 40 to 1, 000 times better than you winning the lottery.

And guess how many people play the lottery every week?

They say the lottery is tax for people who don't know math.

Because if you really knew your math, you wouldn't waste your money on the lottery.

Now, I say all of that because they want you to believe that the entire world came into existence by accident.

If you can't by accident win a lottery, do you believe by accident you could have the perfect mix of nitrogen and oxygen and carbon dioxide in the air?

By accident, the Earth would be placed just the right distance from the sun so that the atmosphere and the temperature would be conducive to human and all of the other life forms that we have on Earth?

You think by accident the water would be made of H2O just the way it's made and our systems would be designed so that we could drink water and be replenished, because ultimately by weight, we're 70% to 75% water.

You think it's by accident that you have the ability to see.

1 of the most complicated things in all of the universe is human sight.

It would have taken, even evolutionists agree, it would have taken millions of years for human sight to evolve.

Now, if you need it, and so you evolve to have it, what do you do all of the million years you didn't have it?

You need it, so you evolved to have it, but it takes millions of years to get it.

So for millions of years, you're blind, but you really needed to see.

I submit to you that even in their wisdom, They are made foolish.

Staying on the Path to a Healthy Lifestyle

We're going to go tonight to the book of 1 Corinthians, ninth chapter.

Tonight we're going to talk on the topic, Staying the Path to a Healthy Lifestyle.

It's kind of what the Panama Canal was before they cut the canal.

So you could walk from Central America to South America over a piece of land.

Because of this, the Corinthians were a people who had a lot of trade, a lot of spices, a lot of goods.

They actually had a very, very busy pagan worship practice where they were.

When you read the books of 1 and 2 Corinthians, you find that Paul deals with a whole lot of different issues as he deals with them.

1 of the things that Corinthians were big into was sports.

At the time, the Greeks had what is called the Olympics.

They actually restarted the Olympics at the turn of the last century.

Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 9, 24 to 27, he uses the analogies of this Olympics to make some really good points.

So he had to understand sports, because he does a good job of using the sports of their day.

The sports of their day were wrestling, Greco-Roman wrestling, boxing, and of course, racing, foot racing.

Now, they would pick 1 young man from a town, and he would train for 4 years in between each Olympics.

He would train, and he would do everything he could to go to the Olympics and win.

Because when he came back home, he would be a hero.

Sometimes his whole family would be given riches, and nobody would ever have to work again.

But if he lost, he really didn't want to go home.

And so a lot of young men would go, and sometimes they would never come back if they went to the Olympics and didn't bring home the prize.

That backdrop brings us to 1 Corinthians 9, verse 24.

Well, Paul says, know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but 1 receives the prize.

And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things.

Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible.

I therefore so run, not as uncertainly, so fight I, not as 1 that beaded the air, but I keep under my body and bring it into subjection, lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway." Paul is making some very serious statements here.

We're kind of going to Bible study through these passages because I believe that they are rich with what God would have us to know.

And I believe they're very applicable to those of us living in this day and age.

The first verse, verse 24, he says, know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but 1 receives the prize.

So run that you may obtain." Paul is saying there are a lot of people who sign up as Christians, but are not really serious about running the Christian race.

When these guys go to do the 100 meter dash in the Olympics, When they go to do 100 meter dash in the Olympics, these guys never get down in the blocks to run unless they are serious about winning the race.

Don't pretend you're a Christian unless you're going to run as seriously as they run.

Now, the Olympics are full of stories of these sprinters.

Actually, originally, I think, born in Jamaica, but ran for Canada.

And he ran the 100 meter dash faster than anyone had ever done so.

They found out later on he actually had used steroids and performance enhancing drugs or substances that were illegal, and they stripped him.

And 1 of the things he said in an interview was he did that because the pressure to win was so great.

He could not go to the race and not go as fully prepared as possible.

And I remember watching that race on television.

It was as if everyone else almost was standing still.

He just flew, broke the world record, shattered it actually, because he was using steroids or some other performance enhancing drugs.

Paul says, listen, when you're a Christian, you can't, truly we can't use steroids, Christian steroids, but we ought to be very serious about running the race.

Nothing should be more important than when you get down in the blocks and call yourself a Christian, you're serious about running the race.

It's interesting because I like basketball and football.

And the only reason I stopped playing football was because I got to a point where I would have to play on the Sabbath.

I went to public high school, public school.

But really, we won our football games not during the season.

We won the state championship the first year I played in ninth grade.

But you didn't win a football championship in the game.

You won football championships in the summertime.

You won football championships running up hills all summer long in the humidity of Connecticut, up and down, up and down.

You won because they would stand there with a whistle and blow it.

And if 1 guy jumped over, we'd have to run more hills or more laps.

So that when you saw us in a game and we performed in unison and we ran the ball well and threw the ball well, people would say, man, they had a good game.

But really what we had was good training.

I want to submit to you as we use these sports analogies that the reality is you can't just show up and be a Christian.

It's not enough on the weekend to go to church and dress up in suits and ties and nice shoes and shiny and polished cars and walk into the church building and all of a sudden sing the songs and sound like a Christian and everything's going right when you didn't train all week.

You see, being a Christian is as much about What happens when nobody's watching as it has to do with what happens when everyone's watching?

Just like you have to train and so I remember 1 of the players I used to hate when I was a kid even though now I love him was Larry Bird because I was a Connecticut I was a Philadelphia Sixers fan And the boss himself used to beat the Sixers every year.

And they'd go to the championship and win.

And Larry Bird would hit these weird, awkward shots, throw them over the backboard, fling them up over his shoulder, and they would go in.

What everybody didn't know is that Larry Bird showed up to the stadium, to the arena sometimes, 4, 5 hours before the game.

The janitors would still be sweeping the floors of the basketball arena, And there he would be shooting.

Because if you're going to perform when the lights are on, you must be preparing when the lights are off.

You can't expect to just walk into temptation and all of a sudden now temptation is upon you, And now you're going to be a strong Christian.

The Road Less Traveled

We've been enjoying our week of prayer here these last few days and look forward to the rest of the week.

We serve the kind of God that even though we are humans and we are imperfect yet God loves us anyways and I love knowing that I serve a God who loves me, who loved me even before I was born, and who will love me throughout the ceaseless ages of eternity.

I want to go tonight, as we talk on the subject, the road less traveled, I want to go first to the book of 2nd Corinthians, the 12th chapter, and I'm going to read verses 7 through 10.

2nd Corinthians chapter 12 verses 7 through 10.

The scripture says in 2nd Corinthians 12 and verse 7, and lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh.

The messenger of Satan to buffet me lest I should be exalted above measure for this thing I besought the Lord thrice that it might depart from me and he said unto me my grace is sufficient for thee for my strength is made perfect in weakness most gladly therefore will I rather glorify in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake.

For when I am weak, then am I strong." If the Christian life is a journey, if we are going somewhere, depending on the age in which you live, you would need fuel to make the journey.

In our age, Of course, we use automobiles.

If we look at it from a spiritual standpoint, I want to submit to you that the gasoline that it would take to spiritually reach your destination is humility.

In order to get from what you are and who you are to where God wants you to be, the fuel that will drive you there, that will power you there, the engine is humility.

Well, what I mean is As you are going through life, you have forces working upon you.

1 of them is 1 that will always want you to preserve yourself.

But more than just preserve yourself, in our society, it will cause you to want to exalt yourself.

And this is why we are given parents and we're nursed in the way we are, the way that even our minds develop.

So the studies show that even in adolescence, even in our teenage years, the human mind is still developing to the point where they, even in the teenage years, humans still need the guidance of those who are older and wiser.

Because at the end of the day, especially when you're a teenager, You kind of feel like you are invincible.

He gave us aunts, uncles, grandmothers to help to guide us so that we wouldn't, in thinking We are the center of the universe.

When I was a teenager, I can tell you I pretty much did think I was invincible for the most part.

And we did all kinds of crazy things that when I look back on it, I can't imagine how we even survived.

Some of the fights that we got into on the basketball court, sometimes even being chased by people who had guns, and so forth.

I look back on it, and I wonder how did we ever make it through?

And as I look back on it, I realize that God even begins to protect you before you're wise enough to know to protect yourself.

With that said, I want to illustrate my point for tonight from an Old Testament story.

So we're going to flip back to the book of Judges, the 16th chapter, because I want to set the stage for what I think is 1 of the lost pieces of lost secrets, I should say, of Christianity.

You go back to the book of Judges, and you find in Judges the 16th chapter, you'll find 1 of my favorite Bible stories coming to an end.

There was this great, strong young man who, like many young men, thought he was invincible.

And I grew up reading comic books until a preacher came to our church and preached against comic books.

And my mother made me throw them all away.

And I love this idea of people having super, super strengths and super, you know, being superheroes.

So Samson always, I just love Samson because he was the 1 true super strong superhero the world probably has ever known.

As a matter of fact, even in his growth, in the way he was developed, God made it plain that Samson's mother was not supposed to drink alcohol, even before he was born, and set the stage for his life.

But Samson, as he grew stronger, bigger, I'm assuming more handsome, Samson had a problem.

Samson, it turned out, liked women Far more than he was supposed to.

And ironically, he didn't like the women of the church.

For some reason, for Samson, the women of the Philistines seemed far more attractive than the women of Israel.

Maybe in Israel they didn't wear makeup or jewelry.

Maybe their clothes was more conservative.

So maybe he found the women of Israel more boring.

Sometimes, you know, as when you're growing up, you kind of have, you crave sometimes what you know you're not supposed to have.

In our church, it's 1 of the things I always talk about is the fact that so many of our young women seem to want to get with the guys who are the most trouble.

And you know, as when I was a youth pastor and I'd talk to these young ladies, I'd say, now what in the world do you want with this boy?

He's flunked out of every high school in the Inland Empire.

What possibly do you think he's going to do for you?

And a dentist didn't put the metal there.

His breath smells like a bag of quarters.

I mean, what would you want this young man for?

They have the idea that, well, he's cute.

And of course, later down the road, it all plays itself out.

And he goes from the cute thug to every foul name in the book.

Now, I have to admit, as a Christian, God designed men to like women.

Fundamentally, And I'll tell you, in this day and age, I'm actually glad when I hear men do like women.

I run across so many nowadays that don't.

But Samson was dealing with some serious issues.

So here he is, super strong, able to take the jawbone of a donkey and slay 1, 000 of the Philistines, tie the tails of foxes together and burn down their crops and destroy them and take the gate off of the off of the wall of the city even with the post and walk it up to the top of the hill and plunge it into the hill.

He was a strong, strong young man with the ability to literally deliver Israel from her enemies single-handed.

Now let's make sure we get the full depth of the story, because Samson really represents the fact that he had the ability to do, if we were to kind of convert it to our situation, he could preach the gospel with the kind of power where souls would give their lives to the Lord.

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Eric Walsh: Road Map to Heaven

God’s Word as our Guiding Light

Transcript

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