Common Struggles (Part 2, Jude 3)

Introduction

Our great God and Father in heaven, we’re so grateful for this special day of worship for the first day of the week. That we can come to your throne and bring our praises and devotion and humble ourselves before you.

And we pray that you go with us in Jesus’ name. Amen. Just a brief reminder of some things that we talked about this morning. We began by talking about the common salvation of Jude verse 3, and yet also the common struggles that we experience. And we talked about this book that was released just this week about an undercover CIA agent, how she’s not doing that anymore. But she talked about her life as a CIA agent, and what I perceived as hardship was actually a tremendous gift, and that the process of struggle can actually create something beautiful in you, and though stretched to the very edge, you can discover who you are. And she said, don’t avoid it, embrace it. And so we talked about the benefit of our struggle, that we can be better as a result of the things that we endure as we conquer with God’s help.

And we looked at Psalm 106, a very helpful psalm about troubles, and yet God showing compassion to those who cry out to Him. Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for He is good. His love endures forever. How blessed are those who practice righteousness at all times. Save us, O Lord our God, to give thanks to your holy name and glory in your praise. Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, from everlasting even to everlasting, and let all the people say, Amen. Praise the Lord. And so in the sermon, we talked about issues that are common and challenges to our faith that all of us have know something about, who’ve been a Christian for any period of time. And so tonight, we’re going to have five different speakers who are going to further address these five topics and a song associated with each one.

And we’re going to begin with a song from Daniel before our first point, and we’ll have an opening prayer as well. Daniel.

And after this, we’ll have our another word of prayer.

And your loving Heavenly Father, we’re so grateful for the blessings you bring to us and for this wonderful and privileged opportunity of we able to come here and sing songs of praise to you. To glory is glorify your name. We’re thankful, Father, for the opportunity also to listen to portion of your word. As we listen to words about common struggles in our everyday life, Father, we have many that will come to us and challenge us many times in our life, and where Satan tries to put everything in front of us and he tries to pull us away from you. And we need to be strong, Father. We ask for that strength, that we will flee from that sin, and we will come to you in prayer and always ask for that strength and for that guidance.

We pray, Father, that the words that will be spoken today are accordance to your will, Father, that we will take in our hearts and go out and teach others about the greatest blessing of all in our life, and that’s Jesus Christ, our Saviour. And his death on the cross, how he shed his precious blood, and how he was scourged and suffered many afflictions, and we pray, Father, that every day that we live we remember that great sacrifice. Dear Lord, we pray for those who are unable to be here. If they’re at home sick. We pray for that you will help nourish them back to health. We pray for those who are going through treatments and surgeries or whatever the case may be, health wise. We pray for them, and if it’s your will that you will nourish them back to health.

Dear Lord, we pray that you will be with those who are struggling spiritually. We pray for those who have taken the path that have left you spiritually in their hearts. They have hardened their hearts against you, Father. We pray for them. That we can be an encouragement to them and they will one day listen and that they will come back to you and start worshiping you and spirit and then truth, Father, that we’ll gain more knowledge about your word and how to make it to heaven. Father, we have visitors here, and we pray that you will be with them and their journey home, and we’re so grateful for them and their encouragement to us that they showed their love to you and they come here to worship you, and we pray for them.

Dear Lord, we’re so thankful for this congregation here in this area. We pray that you will continue to be with us. Keep us strong. We’re thankful, Father, for Tony and Sherry and the work that they do here and the elders. We pray for them to guide us in the right way and the deacons and our members here. Dear Lord, we pray that you will continue to be with us every day of our life as we are tempted. That if we fall short, Father, we pray for forgiveness, that we will take that sin in our heart. We will remember that sin and flee from it as we’ve learned every single day of our life. Father, we pray that you will be with us now. Please forgive us of our shortcomings.

In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

1. Committed to the Objective: Regular Assembly

They get themed they want to talk about with their employees. Current word of the day at the company where I work is the word losses. A loss, a loss is an unexpected cost, a bad consequence that you didn’t expect to happen. There’s some bad outcome that you did not anticipate. That’s a loss. It might be it might be money that’s lost, it might be time and schedule that’s lost, it might be product that comes out not at the quality that we want. It might be in some bad circumstances, it might be losses associated with personnel safety. We take those very seriously. We expect them to be rare, but when they happen, we have to spend a lot of time thinking about those. When somebody comes into work and goes home at the end of the day and not in the same condition that he came in.

That’s a serious thing. We think about those losses, and we have some regular activities that are dedicated to the subject of understanding how these losses happen. And as it turns out, most of those losses happen because of human behaviors. We can blame structural failures, we can blame all kinds of things for the reasons why bad things happen. But ultimately, it comes down most of the time to a question of a human behavior that was not as it should have been. And so, because we are not in the habit of doing work thoroughly or correctly or whatever, sometimes there are bad consequences. One of the activities that’s associated with talking about losses and loss prevention is a series of regular meetings, not just for management, but for everybody.

Now, it doesn’t sound terribly revolutionary to say we’re going to get everybody in a room and talk for a while. That idea has been around since just about the beginning of time. Nothing revolutionary about the idea. But the purpose of those meetings is to talk about how we do work. We talk about good practices that we’ve learned. We talk about bad practices that have resulted in losses that we need to consider. We talk about problems that we found somewhere along the way that didn’t actually cause a problem but could have, and we talk about how to what kinds of practices, what kinds of work habits will prevent those things from happening again. Every time something less than adequate. We don’t like to call things bad. We don’t like to say people have failed.

We like to refer to things that just turned out less than adequate. It was something less than what we expected. Every time that we find something that is less than adequate, we want to sit down and talk about how did it happen, what human behavior was associated with it, and how do we keep it from happening again. You can figure out, I bet, how this subject is related to the question of worship impediments and the value of coming together to worship and study and talk about how we do our work as citizens of the kingdom. The real secret about those regular meetings, and everybody is expected to participate, by the way. If you are there, you are expected to participate. That’s just an expectation of the job.

But the real secret of those meetings is that they aren’t just about the specific situations that we discuss. We use some specific situations as examples. Here’s a bad thing that happened, here’s how we could have prevented it, here’s what we need to do to keep it from happening. And we use specific examples. But the real purpose of those meetings is not about those specific examples. It’s about making sure that every employee who leaves at the end of that meeting is in a frame of mind that says every time I do a piece of work, I want to look not for the fastest way to do it, not for the easiest way or the most convenient, I want to do it the right way. And that attitude has to pervade every piece of work that we do for every client along the way, is that this work must be done right.

And the purpose of getting together every once in a while is to instill that mindset. It is the work and not the meeting that is the real objective of those discussions. So those discussions work for people who do two things. First of all, they commit themselves to the idea that doing things right the first time is important. They are committed to the objective that the discussion is around. And secondly, those discussions work for people who actively participate in them, not just for folks who show up and kind of tap their feet while other people ramble on and they’re just kind of waiting for it to be over. You can tell people who are engaged and not engaged. But the people that it works for are people who are committed to the objective.

People may not participate in our worship services because they don’t feel like it, or because they have something else they’d rather do, or because the last time they went, they didn’t get anything out of it, or whatever the reason may be. And by the way, before I go any farther, let me just point out everybody here is here on a Sunday night. And we appreciate that. Good job. You came out to hear about the same things that you listened to this morning. You are committed to the objective. And that’s good. But if we’re committed to the principle that we need to honor God in our lives, not just when we’re here, but in everything that we do, in all of the activities that we undertake that are outside this building.

If we’re committed to that principle, then we will be here when the Lord’s people assemble. We worship so that we can live worshipfully throughout the week. And we talk about faithful lives so that we can live faithfully throughout the week. That’s why the scripture says that one of the purposes of our assembly is to provoke unto love and to good work. It is about the things that happen outside this building. When we are here, we want to build spiritual momentum that will carry forward into the things that we do throughout the week. And if we do that, if we are committed to keeping that momentum going by regularly participating with God’s people, that momentum will help with all of the other impediments that we’re going to talk about this evening.

Let’s pray together. Heavenly Father, we are thankful to you for times like this when we can assemble with your children to worship you, to consider the things that you have revealed to us. Help us as we go forward through our lives to maintain the habit of thinking about you in everything that we do, that we might always honor you and build up our brethren. Amen.

2. Relationships: Go and Tell Him His Fault

Our book only has a couple of them, so we elected to use the slides. But if you’d like to follow, it’s 557. Humble yourselves inside of the Lord Humble yourselves and the side of the Lord And he will let us sing for joy to the Lord salvation our hearts in worship before the Lord our Maker For He is our So humble yourselves inside of the Lord Humble yourself inside of the Lord and he will be I’m going to talk to you about relationships. I’m going to read from Matthew, the 18th chapter. Moreover, if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and he alone. If he hears you have gained your brother. But if he will not hear, take with you one or two more, then that by the mouth of two or three witnesses, every word may be established.

And if he refuses to hear them, tell it to the church.

One of the biggest struggles I find in relationships within the church from an elder’s perspective is deals with that situation. I can’t tell you how many times we have people that ask to meet with us to tell us about a problem they have with somebody else that’s either sinned against them or wronged them in some way. And our first question always is, well, have you talked to them? And obviously they haven’t, because they’ve came, they’ve come to us. And there’s myriad excuses. I’m too nervous to do that. I’m afraid of what they might say.

But you know, if we follow the scriptures that Tony mentioned this morning, there shouldn’t be any reason that we should be hesitant to go to anyone about anything. We’re a family here, to ask anything of one another, or to tell anything one another. And sometimes in those situations, this the situation involves gossip. It doesn’t always involve gossip, and I think sometimes that is term is used incorrectly. You know, if some if you if someone goes to someone else instead of going to you wrongly, but they’re just asking for advice on how to handle the situation, that’s not gossip. Gossip is malicious intent. You’re you’re telling someone to someone else to harm someone else. And so we need to be careful about how we use that term.

But so too many times we’ll tell someone else or we’ll just let it fester within us without saying anything to anyone. So we are it’s eating us up, and the person that’s done something against us has no idea that we’ve got something against them. So when we do take the initiative to go someone, then we need to remember Galatians 6, the first chapter, which says to do that, to do it in a loving manner and with in a spirit of gentleness. So I would implore you, if there’s something that you feel someone else has done to offend you or to sin against you, please go talk to them. I think you’ll find that I don’t know of anyone here that will take offense at that and lash out or be rude or obnoxious or put you down for doing that.

So I would implore you to do that. Let’s let’s say a prayer.

Your love for us means everything. And we pray that you will help us to have the same love for one another that you have for us. We pray that you will help us to be willing and able to share anything with one another, to go to each other if we have troubles or feel we’ve been wronged against, and that in all things we will do that in a spirit of love and gentleness, and that we will follow your word as we approach those situations.

I do my love. May be turned to life in our life.

Shine.

3. Frustration, Pain, and Weariness: The Peace of God

May be my frustration, pain, and weariness. I know that each and every one of us deals with that in our lives at one time or another. And frequently, when we deal with that, we think that no one else ever has.

But I would argue to you that we can be. We can be, and that’s only through God. In Philippians, the fourth chapter in verse 7. It says, and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Where does this peace come from? Nowhere else but God. It doesn’t come from people, it doesn’t come from things, and it certainly doesn’t come from the circumstances that we deal with each and every day in our lives. We learn from this passage that it doesn’t always make sense. We can’t always understand and put our finger on why it is that this peace of God can get us through any circumstance that we deal with. But we know when we have faith that it can.

Whatever circumstances we face, we know that God is on our side. And the peace that comes from knowing Him will be with us. Let’s pray.

Father, we don’t always understand. But we pray that you will guard us. That you will watch over us each and every day. And that we’ll take every opportunity to tell those around us of the peace that comes from knowing you. Amen. So the song’s in our book also, but we’re singing in a way that’s not in our book, that we all know, and we all know all the words to this version, too. Join me in singing higher ground. Let’s stand as we sing the song. We’re about halfway through the service. Let’s stretch our legs.

I want to say what I forgot to have for the people I will have.

4. Desires: It Always Starts With a Slight Deviation

Desires. Tony talked a little bit about desires this morning, and we know as humans, we all have innate desires within us. Some are different for some people. If we were gonna try to localize or summarize maybe the major ones we see in our society and in our church here, sexual desires, it doesn’t take much to look at the news and you see that’s a problem per base throughout our society. and then the desire for power and money. It’s a strong driving force. I mean, but however, these two things can be very good things in our life in the proper context. We have these desires for a reason. You know, in a marriage relationship, the sexual desire is entirely appropriate, as is the desire to be a good leader and make money and provide for your family and be a productive member of society.

So we see how God has put that in us with a good purpose in mind. But however, unchecked, it can become a cancer. These desires, if we allow them to fester and not allow our god our focus to be on God, but other things, that’s the real issue. So that’s the doom and gloom talk. So how do we stop it? Where do we go for a solution? Obviously, the best verse I can think of is Matthew chapter five. in verses twenty-seven through thirty, we have this example. Jesus is talking about, and you know, he starts off with lust, right? If you whoever looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. So we see this initial deviation, and because of that, you can end up somewhere as far as adultery, which has significant consequences in your life.

He goes on a little right after that to talk about the eye. The common, if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out. If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. Now I don’t see anyone here missing an eye and a hand in this congregation. But the purpose of it is that similar to lust leading to these things, the eye and the hand can cause us to deviate from our walk towards God and with God. And I think the purpose of this verse here, what he’s essentially getting at, is that it always starts with a slight deviation. It’s very small in our lives. You know, it could be innocent sometimes. But there is going to be a deviation. So in our lives, we need to stop sometimes.

Sometimes we don’t like doing that. We’re so busy. Analyze our life and look for this deviation. What’s our roadmap look like? Where are you at on your walk with God? And where are the deviations? Because where the deviations are, we need to get a big red marker and put a mark all around them. And we need to hone in on that. So after we stop, assess that, and figure out where it is, figure out where it is, then we need to act. And that’s the most important thing I can I can say to you now. I just want each of you to look at your life, get that big red marker out, and address those deviations. Let’s pray. But dear God, our Father, we pray for you to be with each of us, Lord, as we continue on our walk with you and towards you, that you would give us clarity in our mind to observe our lives, and then honesty to assess our lives, and then courage to do what needs to be done in our lives to get closer to you and closer to all the Christians in this church here.

We know that it’s with your strength that we can do these things. In your son’s name, we pray. Amen.

Yield not to temptation, number 606. I’d invite everyone to sing the harmony as we as we sing this first part of the verse, and then we break into parts directly after this.

He will carry you fruit. So he will come back that language. God came on take it in vain.

He will carry you through and sacred you have you freezer and he you disworthy to pay you. He will carry you to him every shall love and make our same what we do. He will carry you through as the makers who have you displayed to make you he will carry you through.

5. Words Are Powerful

If you want to turn with me to Mark chapter seven, we’re reading there in just a moment.

Mark chapter seven. Begin reading at verse fourteen in just a moment. How ironic we find the guy who has trouble with words to talk to you about words. But there we go. So Mark chapter seven, the scribes and the Pharisees question Jesus about why his disciples didn’t cleanse their hands before they ate, as it was their tradition. And Jesus reminds them and rebukes them about being concerned about their traditions that they’ve come up with but neglecting the law of Moses, and it gives the example of caring for their parents and honoring their father and mother. Let’s begin picking up there in verse 14. After he called the crowd to him again, he began saying to them, Listen to me, all of you, and understand, there is nothing outside the man which can defile him if it goes into him.

But the things which proceed out of the man are what defile the man. If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.

That which proceeds out of the man, that is what defiles the man. For from within, out of the heart of men proceed the evil thoughts, fornifications, thefts, murders, adulteries, deeds of coveting and wickedness, as well as deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness. All these evil things proceed from within and defile the man. Ever considered how powerful words are? I mean, consider just for a moment the words of God. God spoke the world into existence, we read in Genesis chapter 1. Jesus is called the Word in John chapter 1. In verse 3, John writes, All things came into being through him, and apart from him nothing came into being that has come into being. His teaching, example, and sacrifice can completely transform us. That’s the power of his word.

The Holy Spirit revealed the words of the gospel, which Paul writes in Romans 1 16, is the power of God into salvation. So we can see the words of God how powerful they are. But consider the words that we can speak as humans. We’re told that we confess with our mouths that Jesus is Lord, and that results in our salvation. That is an insight into our heart when we confess that with our mouths. Also consider some negative examples about our words.

So how did God put an end to that venture? He confused their words. They couldn’t understand each other anymore, and that stopped that. That shows you, I think, the power of our words. Or how about another negative example in Acts 5, when great fear came upon the whole congregation when Ananias and Zephyr lost their lives because of what they said, because of the false words that they spoke, lying about the price of the land that they laid at the apostles’ feet. Words can bring comfort when we grieve for those who have fallen asleep in Jesus when we remember that he will come again and we will be reunited with them. 1 Thessalonians 4 17 tells us to comfort one another with these words. And we can think of just the words of wisdom and teaching from our departed brothers and sisters that still admonish us and encourage us and fill us with love.

And like the works of righteous Abel, they still speak to us. Hebrews 11 4. So words are powerful.

We can see how that can cause friction. Conflicts can erupt from words. But also words can make peace and reconcile and heal. Words can hurt people deeply and discourage them, but they can also be used to build one another up, to encourage each other and to edify each other. So words are powerful in that way. They transcend space and time. We are reading words written long ago, revealed by the Holy Spirit that still encourage us. We remember things that were said and written by people long ago that still encourages us and strengthen us. So that transcends space, time, and even death. Words are powerful. And Tody alluded to James this morning, and when he calls the tongue a fire. The tongue is a fire, the very world of iniquity.

The tongue is set among our members as that which defiles the entire body. And later in verse 9, he says, with it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men who have been made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come both blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be this way. And in our reading here that from Mark chapter 7, notice the list of evil things that the Lord gives us there. In verse 21, for from within, out of the heart of men proceed evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries. Look at the ones that can be accomplished just with the tongue. Deeds of covenant and wickedness as well as deceit. We can deceive with the tongue.

Sensuality, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness. So the tongue’s powerful, good and for evil. James speaks in James 3 how difficult it is to control the tongue and how important that is to do so. So I think we can see how important that is when we consider what it can do, how powerful the word is, the words that we speak are. So we should take special care to use that for good, as God intended, not for evil. James also writes, James 1 19, this yeah, my beloved brethren, but everyone must be quick to hear and slow to speak and slow to anger. Because it is so powerful, we should be careful how we use it, just like any other powerful tool. I thought about this. We think about the example gave of Ananias and Spire, where they misuse their tongues.

I use it for deceit. Do you think if we misuse our tongues, what it would happen? What do you think it would be like if we suffered the same fate as Anonis and Sapphire the instant we used our tongues in that way? What if we dropped over dead if we spoke deceitfully? Or if we ever slandered somebody? Or if we spoke profanely, or if we gossiped, or if we spoke ill of another brother or sister in Christ.

But we think of how harsh a fate that might be that Anna Ice and Sapphira lost their lives. Well, how much more severe a fate would it be if we lost our souls because of how we use our tongue and that we were not slow to speak. So instead we should use our words to glorify God and to encourage those around us. And just remember that even things that we speak in jest, those can be hurtful. And we need to be slow to speak those things and consider is what we’re about to say worth it? Is what we’re about to say going to be encouraging? Or could it be misconstrued and be discouraging? Because that’s exactly what we want to avoid. And if we are to be holy to the Lord, reverent and sanctified as we’re about to sing, well, we must carefully consider our words, not only our deeds, but what we say.

And as Jesus taught us here, our words are an example of what issues from the heart. So it’s a window into our heart, and we have to be careful what we fill our heart with. Let’s pray together, if you would.

So that you would show us the way and give us the words of life that we should live by. Father, please help us to be careful in how we use our words. Help us to be quick to hear but slow to speak. Please help us to consider how to encourage one another and build one another up in our words. May the words we speak this week glorify you in your name. Please help us to be peacemakers and to heal wounds and to reconcile people to one another. Help us to share your word with others so that they can be reconciled to you. And please, Father, forgive us if we’ve used your amazing gift of words in a bad way that has brought dishonor to you or has discouraged one of your children.

May we be more like you and your son in the words that we speak and in the things that we do. Father, it’s in your son’s holy name that we pray. Amen.

Ladies, I need y’all to carry the soprano line. I’ll be with the basis pretty much the whole time.

Holy, let us break us of God.

Please mark number four hundred and ninety.

Conclusion

Did that go how I envisioned it? Even better did it go. And I want to thank all the guys who helped me with this. For Daniel for the song leading as well. And you weren’t supposed to be looking at that yet. So don’t get ahead of me. One minor glitch in tonight’s presentation. That was it. I said it went as I envisioned it. This was actually Sherry’s idea. But, and a lot of good things are. But let me just say that if you want to know all the reasons why we did this tonight, I don’t have time to do that right now. But I’ll stay for an hour afterward, telling you why. The number of people that are here tonight is extremely encouraging. And I think I get frustrated when I preach, and it’s over.

It said about circumstances not having to rob us of our joy. And Dean warning us about the slight deviations and taking care of those in our lives. And for Scott reminding us to be careful when using power tools. The power of our words. Thanks, guys. To get the perspective of these other guys was helpful to me. Okay, now we can get to the slide. I recommended to a few of you the Facebook page called Scripture Every Day. And that’s because you came up as someone to recommend it too, so I did. And this is just a new site, I think, that posts a new scripture every day. And I saw this one a few days ago, which certainly fits the struggles that we’ve been talking about today.

That our enemy, the devil, prowls about as a roaring lion. But we have to be on our guard to stand firm in our faith, to act like men or to be courageous and be strong. Remember the quote we had from this morning from Brad Powell? If you need to know who he is, Julianne did the research. God uses struggles to get us where he wants us. Satan uses struggles to keep us from where God wants us. And so in conclusion tonight, I simply want to say, persist despite the struggles. Grow. Fight the good fight of faith and lay hold on eternal life. I’ve always loved 1 Timothy chapter 6 and verse 12 because he says, you can lay hold on eternal life. You can grab it and not let go and have confidence that when it’s over, you’re going to be with the living God and the Savior Jesus Christ.

Have you laid hold on eternal life? Will you fight through the struggles that present themselves as we certainly have a very real adversary? Will you live for him who died for you? You need to respond to the invitation that’s saying for hands all forsake God.