Changed Yet? Series

Series: Changed pt 2

The song “changed” was played twice this morning before our service and this is how and why this song was written:

Rascal Flatts’ new single, “Changed,” co-written by Gary LeVox, Neil Thrasher and Wendell Mobley, came about from a true story told by Neil. His oldest daughter came to him, wanting to be baptized. He found a pastor that would baptize her on the beach at sunset and walked away inspired.

“Neil and his wife and his other daughter are standing on the beach,” Gary said, re-telling the story. “All you can see as the sun is setting is the Pastor standing there and Allie, his daughter. And he sees her, she comes down, brings her back up, and she just raises her hands up, praying.”

Neil visited Gary not long after the baptism and shared the story with him along with the beginning of the song he’d started writing about the experience. He sang the opening lines to Gary who was moved deeply by the lyrics.

“I just fell apart,” Gary said. “It was just like, ahhh. That melody never left my head. The story never left my head. And one day I said ‘Hey, let’s get a day together and just go out to the farm and write this thing.’”

‘This thing’ resulted in “Changed,” which is not only the name of their latest album but their current tour.

Thesis: We need to learn the lessons from the past and be changed – this is why we have all the examples of the OT and historical past of Israel to gleam from. The stories of the OT are lessons to be learned – We need to learn from the past and not make the same mistakes that they made. But I believe many are not learning from history and desiring to be changed! How about you?

Summary of sermon 1 and 2 from our series “Changed”:

We learned that God is watching us in our lives on a daily basis. He sees if we sin - he knows if we are repentant or not – he sees into our hearts. We cannot deceive God – He is truth and He knows all things!

We discovered last week that we need to make sure that we are not listening to deceptive words. Deceptive words or philosophies that are contrary to the teaching of the Bible are meaningless and worthless in the scope of life and eternity.

Deception is running ramped in this world every night and day on TV’s, internet, movies, sitcoms, certain news stations, certain churches are teaching deception, sin is being ignored and even celebrated yet God has not changed His mind on what is good and evil. We have and we have to change our hearts and minds back to His truth not our manmade distorted lies.

The Bible warns us that in the last days even the elect will be led astray by deceptive words and we need to make sure we are not one of them. I see this happening all around us today – some churches are compromising God’s truth –some even trying to rewrite the Bible and distort God’s truths.

Jesus has placed us Christian’s on this planet in such a time as this to make an impact on our culture. The culture should not be changing the church is – instead the church should be changing the culture but as I look around I see little change for the good – but I see a lot of change for the celebration of evil. For us to make a difference for God requires us to change our ways to completely follow Jesus’ teachings and direction through the Holy Spirit. God has not changed and He will not change – we have to change!

We have been spending our time in Chapter 7 of Jeremiah for a few weeks now. I will be honest with you I wanted to be done with this section of Scripture two weeks ago. But the Lord keeps bringing me back to it. I cannot get it out of my head or my heart. I hear His voice telling me there is more that I want my people to see, hear and understand. So here I am again back in this section of the Bible for another week or two!

I want to remind you that this is a key center piece to the book of Jeremiah and it’s a main teaching called the “Temple Sermon” very similar in importance to Jesus “Sermon on the Mount” teachings. Jeremiah is conveying crucial spiritual truth to God’s people. The people of God are not listening but God is still speaking through the prophet. God warned Jeremiah that they would not listen because their hearts were hardened and deceived.