Trust Decides Everything
Rom 8:29 - 30, Gen 2:16-17, Gen 15:1-6, Deut 30:16-20, John 3:16, Acts 16:31
October 4, 2002
I. When people decide to accept Jesus as their savior they come to a point in there lives where they are ready to put their trust in God instead of themselves.
A. When any of us accept Jesus as the only way that we can be right with God we are turning at least a certain amount of control in our lives over to him.
B. And most of the time there is a feeling of relief because we realize that God loves us, and we understand in one way or another that if God loves us that much then He’s going to do what is best for us.
C. The problem is that for some reason the longer we are a Christian and the more the new wears off the relationship we start to develop an "I" problem.
D. It happens in marriage too. The couple is in love and they can see no wrong in the other person, and everything is new, and great and then reality sets in, and they realize that life is going to go on.
E. The fact that if you live on love you will starve to death sets in, because love doesn’t buy food or pay bills, and responsibility gets in the way of things.
F. The daily grind takes its toll and if you are not careful the relationship begins to be routine. The excitement of it all gets lost in the day to day race to get all the things done that have to be done.
G. And then if you’re not careful you can begin to feel that the person that used to make you so happy is trying to keep happiness from you, and you start having an "I" problem.
H. I don’t ever get to.....I wish you would ... all I do is work all the time... I need more time to do what I want...and you can fill in the blanks, but I starts getting in the way a lot, and suddenly that person that you loved enough to make a relationship commitment to becomes an obstacle to your happiness.
I. You start to see them as the enemy. They are the one that is keeping you from doing and having what you want. They don’t understand you at all.
J. And, you start saying I, I, I, I...I am not going to let you keep me from having life the way a want it. I am not going to let you run my life. I am not going to let you keep me from having what I want.
K. And, if you are not careful this person that brought you so much joy can become the enemy, and a lot of times what ends up happening is what "I" want becomes and obsession and you decide to abandon the relationship, because you want more control in you own life.
II. Used to wonder why God made men and women so dependant on each other and so different. I used to wonder if God didn’t create man and woman and put them together in the garden and then look over at the Angels and say, watch this its gonna to be a hoot.
A. But I realized one day why God makes us so different and dependent on each other, why we have to work so hard at times to keep the relationship between us what it should be.
B. The reason that I came to was the working on our relationships with other people and especially with our spouse is training for working on our relationship with him.
C. You see we get the same "I" problem in our relationship with God that we get in our relationships with other people.
D. When we become a Christian usually it is because we realize that there is more to God and more to life than what we are experiencing.
E. And, we begin to question things that we have lived by, and somewhere in the process we realize that God loves us more than we ever imagined and that we need God to make the difference in our lives that nothing else can make.
F. So, we get honest with God, and find out that God really does love us more than we could ever know, and that there is more to life than we ever knew.
G. God is great, and we are closer to him than we have ever been before. We know that he cares for us, provides for us, and it is great.
H. But like any other relationship, if we don’t continue to work on the trust, and closeness in the relationship it is easy for the new to wear off, and somehow this God that we knew loves us so much can become the God that is trying to keep all these good things from us.
I. God who we once thought of us someone who loves us more than anyone, can become the one that is not providing for our needs the way he should.
J. He is not making life the bowl of cherries that we think he ought to and people many times decide, in some form or other, ok God you are not working this life thing out the way I want, so I am going to take control of this thing now.
K. You are keeping me from the things that will make me happy, so "I" am going to work on pleasing me instead of working on my relationship with you and pleasing you.
L. I have a video clip that I want to show you that is a great picture of what usually happens when a Christian decides that God is not holding up His end of the bargain, that he is not caring for them the way he ought, that he is trying to keep them from being happy, and having the things they want and it is time for them to take control and start working things out for themselves.
M. Now the female in this clip has an eye problem, and I want you to notice the t-shirt, that she has on, but her biggest problem is that she says I a lot.
N. And I really think that this is a picture of what we Christians do in our relationship with God a lot and how it usually ends up.
III. It is not that God is going to drop things on us if we don’t live like he says we should, but that we put ourselves in positions to be hurt and to damage out lives when we choose not to let God lead our lives.
A. Every time that we begin to think that God is not doing what is best for us, and that he is not looking out for our interests the way he should, so by George it is time for us to just start doing things our way and see that we get what we need cause God is not doing His job right, we put ourselves in a dangerous position.
B. We set ourselves up for a lot of hurt, we can do things that might well damage our lives for the rest of our lives, and we hurt God, by the bad choices that we make.
C. God created us with the ability to make choices, and if you don’t get anything else out of what I say this morning I want you to get this, OUR CHOICES MATTTER!
D. Our choices can make our lives different than what God intended them to be. There are people who would not agree with that statement, because they believe in what is called predestination, which basically means that God, before we were created, mapped out our whole lives, determined that we were going to accept Jesus as our savior, that there were others that he created that were not going to accept Jesus as their savior.
E. And they base their belief in this, on a passage of scripture Romans and one in Ephesians.
(Rom 8:29 - 30 NIV) For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.
F. Let me just say before I go any farther that I don’t buy it! I don’t buy that God sat down in a cosmic script writers room and decided that there were some people that he created that would go to heaven, and some people that would go to hell, and that nothing that they do makes a difference.
G. To say that God predetermined whether or not we would go to heaven or hell means that he would have to predetermine every choice that we make in life, and there are some choices that I have made that I know that God had nothing to do with!
H. Another reason that I can’t buy predestination is it is not consistent with the rest of the bible. We can’t just look at a verse or two and say because this says this its the way it is. We have to look at all that the bible says and draw our conclusions from the whole, and not from isolated verses
I. The next reason that I can’t buy that is that I am a Father, and there is no way that I could bring a children into this world and say you will spend eternity in paradise, and you will spend eternity in torment, and you will spend eternity in heaven, and you will spend eternity in hell. No way!
J. And the bible says that God loves us more than we can even understand loving someone, so I don’t buy that he would create people for the purpose of sending them to Hell.
K. Another reason that I don’t buy it is a combination of the first two. If God decided what our lives were going to be before we were ever born, and wrote a script for our lives, then our choices in life don’t matter. And I know that our choices do matter, because in the most important area of our existence God makes it clear that we choose our destiny.
IV. I am going to look at some places in the bible that fit into three time frames, that cover the way that God has related to humans since the beginning of time.
A. The first is in the very beginning, the first accounts of how God related to human beings.
B. God created Adam and Eve, he put them in a garden, gave them everything they could want, and he gave them a choice. He said you can eat the fruit off of every tree in this garden but that one, but if you eat that fruit off that tree you will die.
(Gen 2:16 - 17 NIV) And the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."
C. Now I want to ask you something, if God had predetermined that Adam was going to eat the fruit that he told him not to eat beforehand why would he have even given him the choice?
D. If our choices didn’t matter why would God give us choices?
E. You see what God was saying to Adam and Eve was trust me. If I say that it is this way then trust me that it is right, and they didn’t trust him, and that is important so file that one away for a second because we are going to come back to it.
V. Next I want to look at some verses in the bible that happen during the time between the Adam and Eve, and how things are today.
(Gen 15:1-6 NIV) After this, the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision: "Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward." But Abram said, "O Sovereign LORD, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus?" And Abram said, "You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir." Then the word of the LORD came to him: "This man will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir." He took him outside and said, "Look up at the heavens and count the stars--if indeed you can count them." Then he said to him, "So shall your offspring be." Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.
A. Now Abraham had no children and it was bothering him because he had no one to carry on the family name, and God had told him that he was going to be the one who started God’s nation of people.
B. Abraham asked God about this, and God told him I am going to take care of it, and it says that Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness.
C. God basically said Abe trust me! And he did, it says that Abraham was considered righteous because he trusted or believed God.
D. Now if Abraham’s choice to believe God had no bearing on what happened in his life, then why did God even go to the trouble of talking with him about it?
E. If God had already predetermined that Abraham was going to trust him why did Abraham’s choice make a difference in his relationship with God?
F. Why was trust so important to God? Well, hang on we are going to answer that one in a minute.
VI. Now we have seen God dealing with Adam about trust, and Abraham about trust, now we are going to see him talking to a whole nation about trust.
(Deu 30:16 - 20 NIV) For I command you today to love the LORD your God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess. But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the LORD is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
A. God told them that he commanded them to love Him and walk in his ways, but if they didn’t they would be destroyed. Now that sounds like he is giving them a choice to me.
B. As a matter of fact I know he was giving them a choice, because it is real plain when he says This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life.
C. It don’t get any plainer than that. God told them trust that what I say is right, and you will have life, don’t trust what I say is right and you have death, pick one.
D. If God had decided who would choose to obey him and who would choose not to, why would he even bother to tell them that there was a choice?
E. Why would he even bother to give them a choice?
1. And lest you think that we have to do all the things that God says to do and be perfect, to be able to go to heaven remember that this is before Jesus died on a Cross for us.
F. But that trust thing is there again? Why is the trust thing so important to God?
G. Well I want to look at one more time frame in history before I try to answer that.
VII. This is a verse that all of you probably know whether or not you have been to church much in your life or not.
(John 3:16 NIV) "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
A. That verse says that God loved you so much that he offered his son as a sacrifice for your sin and that if you will just believe in him...trust him...that you will have eternal life, or go to heaven.
B. Now if God had already determined who would go to heaven, why would he even bother to let us know that there was a choice?
C. Why would he even go to the trouble of giving us a choice if our choices had nothing to do with what the out come was?
D. Well the answer to that is, our choices do matter. Our choices matter, and they matter so much that they make the difference between heaven and hell.
E. Fortunately, the fact that we make some wrong choices doesn’t disqualify us from making the right one.
F. And the main right choice is to choose to trust God when he says, that what Jesus did by dying for us on a Cross is the only thing that will make us right with Him, and make it possible for us to go to heaven, When we do that the bible says, we will go to heaven, but God gives us the choice to believe or not believe.
G. And that finally brings us to the answer of why it is so important to God that we trust Him.
H. You can’t love someone that you don’t trust. God created us because he wanted someone to love, and someone to love him, and if we don’t choose to love him on our own, we can never really love him.
I. If God had programmed your life ahead of time, and decided that you would love your husband, or your wife our your mother and father, then there would be no way for you to love them because love has got to be a choice, and if you don’t have the right to choose to love or not there is no way that you can love.
J. God gives us the right to choose, because he wants us to choose to love him and choose trust him.
K. You see God wanted Adam and Eve to choose to love, and show him they loved him, by trusting him and not eating the fruit that he told them not to, and they blew it, and it separated God from human beings because it completely changed the way that God related to us, but when Jesus died on the Cross the barriers between us and God were removed, but there was one thing that was still missing from our relationship.
L. That was trust, what Adam and Eve chose to take away, we have to choose to give back. Adam and Eve took their trust away, God said don’t eat that fruit or you will die, and they basically said "I don’t trust you."
M. God had Jesus die on the Cross to make it possible for us to be forgiven. He fixed everything that needed to be forgiven, except one thing, and that one thing is the thing the he does not have the ability to fix, and that is for us to trust him when he says that it is enough to make things right.
N. God through what Jesus did on the Cross telling us the same thing that he was telling Adam and Eve, and Abraham, and the nation of Israel, TRUST ME! And it is our choice to make.
O. Our choices matter, and our choice to trust God, and put our faith in what Jesus did on the Cross to get us to heaven, is the most important choice that we will ever make.
P. (Acts 16:31 NIV) says, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved.
Q. That is pretty simple, and I hope that if you have not made that choice that you will today. God has put before us life and death, heaven and hell, forgiveness and condemnation, and he has said, choose life.
R. And when we become a Christian, and choose to accept God’s salvation, our choices still matter, because even though we are assured that we will go to heaven, the choices that we make in life, are choices between life and death.
S. Existing doesn’t mean that we have life. We only really have life when we follow what God says is right because he knows what life is supposed to be. He created it!
T. And if we become a Christian, and we for some reason decide that we are not getting all that we should and that we are going to do it our own way and we start saying I,I,I,...then we are putting ourselves in the position to have life come crashing down on us, because we made wrong choices that we knew were wrong.
U. Will we still go to heaven, if we trust what Jesus did on the Cross and make bad choice in life? Yes! We will have life like it was meant to be on this side of heaven? No!
V. If we can trust God with whether or not we are in heaven or hell then surely we can trust his commands about the life that we live here.
W. Make the choice to trust god with salvation, and then keep making the choice to trust God with Life.
