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Bristol SDA Church

Ten Commandments

Garhett Morgan

1. The Importance of the Law

2. No Other Gods

3. Name Above All Names

4. Temple Made of Time

5. A Pile of Rocks

6. Murder? Me?

7. Insatiable Desire

8. Prince of Theives

9. Two Witnesses

10. The New Covenant

Well, let's have a word of prayer before we get started, shall we?

Father, Lord, we thank you for this day that you've given us, and we praise your name that there was a little bit of sunshine this morning.

And, Father, we want there to be sunshine in our souls today.

So, Lord, as we read your word, and as we look on how we can be good and faithful witnesses to you.

May your Holy Spirit be in this room, Father, that people wouldn't hear my words, but Lord, they would hear yours.

Let's go ahead and take a look here at Isaiah chapter 43.

And today what we're going to be doing is we're going to be looking at what God has asked us to do when it comes to being a faithful witness, Isaiah chapter 43 And verse 10, Isaiah 43 in verse 10, God has asked us and he says, "'Thou shalt not bear, ' what kind of a witness?

And in saying that, when God says that we shouldn't be a false witness, what is he assuming?

That we should be what kind of witnesses true witnesses, right?

So the best way I believe in order for us not to be false witnesses is to be true witnesses Amen Don't focus on what you shouldn't do but focus on the things that we should be doing And we find this in Isaiah chapter 43, look here at verse 10.

He says, you are my witnesses, saith the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he before me there was no God formed neither shall there be after me I love what God says there in this poetic language but he's saying I have always been and before me which there was no before God but before me there was no God and after me and God is always gonna live right and after me there is not gonna be any God so what's God saying there I'm the only God and I'm always gonna be around I love that amen the verse 11 he says I even I am the Lord and beside me there is no Savior." Where's the only way that we can find a path to salvation?

I have declared and have saved and have showed when there was no strange God among you.

Therefore you are my witnesses, saith the Lord, that I am God." God has put in our hands as Christians a very important responsibility, hasn't He?

Not only has He told us not to bear false witness, but God wants us as Christian people to be living a good witness, amen.

Now, I don't know about you, but have you ever felt, since God has given us such an amazing message to proclaim, have you ever felt underqualified for spreading the word of God?

And most of us in this room have said that.

Have you ever felt like, wow, this message is so amazing and there's so many things I want to share about it, but I'm just not qualified to share it.

I really don't even like people that much.

That's what some of us say I have a hard time getting out of my comfort zone knocking on doors is out of the question I don't like sharing tracks with people I'm just under qualified to share the gospel of Christ and a lot of people feel that way and believe me I feel that way all the time.

Look here in the book of Luke, Luke chapter 19.

Luke chapter 19, Jesus says something, a little bit of tongue in cheek, I think, but I like what he has to say.

And here's the Pharisees here, Luke 19, 39.

And it says, and some of the Pharisees from among the multitude said unto him, master, rebuke your disciples.

And Jesus says in verse 40, and he answered and said to them, I tell you that if these, talking about disciples, if the disciples should hold their peace, what would immediately cry out?

So Jesus says, you know, if humanity didn't cry out that I am God, If humanity didn't cry out and spread this news that I have asked them to spread, then I could say, hey, why don't you rocks go ahead and do it?

And the rocks would proclaim that Jesus is God.

Now, when I read that, something that I am tempted to think is this, maybe rocks would do a better job.

Like often 1 of the reasons that the gospel message in Christian faith so often has been misconstrued and had a false witness accondinated with it was because we as humanity can sometimes represent the gospel wrong.

And sometimes I think if God would use the rocks, this message might get proclaimed a little faster.

If God would use the rocks, maybe it would be proclaimed in its pure form without any bias.

And sometimes I am tempted to think that it might be an advantage if God would simply use the stones out there and not use me or you.

But I'm telling you, my friends, that God has not seen that fit to happen.

God has not said rocks cry out because He knows that witnessing is not just good for us to share, but it's good for our own faith with Him as well, amen?

When we're witnessing to others, we often think that we're doing them a favor when in fact we can be, but who are we really doing that favor to?

Spreading the word of God and the gospel message to other people is a vital, vital part of the Christian faith.

But maybe you're still thinking, you know, Garrett, I just feel underqualified to spread the truth of God.

And I'll tell you this right now, none of us are qualified to spread the gospel message, not any of us.

Not the pastor, not the general conference president, not Billy Graham, Nobody has ever been qualified to spread the gospel of Christ, but God has called each and every 1 of us to do it, and he will equip us because he's given us that duty to do.

I want to look at a story today, and this story has 2 different kinds of witnesses in it.

There's a false witness, and there's a true and faithful witness.

And this story is probably familiar to a lot of you, but we find the story in Numbers chapter 22, if you wanna look there with me.

Numbers chapter 22, and we find a man by the name of Balaam.

Numbers chapter 22, and we're gonna start here in verse 1, and then we're gonna give a little bit of context to it.

Numbers 22 and verse 1, you're gonna wanna be there because we're gonna be reading a bit.

Numbers 22 and verse 1, and This is what it says.

And the children of Israel set forward and pitched in the plains of Moab on the side Jordan by Jericho.

So here we have the Moab or Midianites and the Midianites are there and they see Israel right at their doorstep.

Now Israel had just conquered all of these other nations and wherever Israel was going up against another nation, guess who was winning?

Why do you think the Israelites were winning so much?

And so this King of Midian or Moab was looking around and he saw the Israelites right at his doorstep, right on the edges of his kingdom.

And he said, Oh no, the Israelites are undefeated because of their God.

Because they're going to come and take over my kingdom.

And if you do a little bit of study, we don't have time to read all of this today, but he heard of a man that lived a little further off, actually quite a little journey away, and this man used to be a prophet of the Lord, but he had fallen away into basically being a soothsayer.

He once knew God, he once listened to God's voice, but he had become so distracted with things of this world that he was no longer a prophet of God.

Well, the king of Midian saw the Israelites and was nervous about it.

And he heard of Balaam who once knew God and whose curses and blessings seemed to work.

He decided to want to employ this guy by the name of Balaam to curse Israel and hopefully the Israelites would lose.

And so we see this whole story play out look at this in Numbers chapter 22 and verse 21 We see what takes place.

Well, actually we're not gonna read that where I'm gonna look down here 22 and verse We're gonna look at 10 and Balaam said unto God Balak the son of Zippor king of Moab has sent unto me saying behold there is a people come out of Egypt, which covereth the face of the earth.

Peradventure I shall be able to overcome them and drive them out.

And God said to Balaam, thou shall not go with them, thou shall not curse the people for they are blessed.

So the king of Midian sends these messengers and the messengers have a bunch of gifts of gold and money and who knows what all and says, Balaam, if you will simply curse the children of Israel, we will give you all of this.

And Balaam says, well, let me ask God first.

And he does, and we just read, what does God say?

Don't go with them, and do not curse the children of Israel because they're blessed.

And so he goes and he tells the servants, you know what, sorry guys, God told me I can't curse his people.

He shouldn't have even had to ask, right?

But then he looks at the servants and the servants plead with him and say, listen, Is there any way you can do what we've asked you to do?

Stay the night, stick around for a while, and I'll ask him again and we'll see what happens.

And Balaam prays to God and guess what God says?

And so Balaam sends those servants away and the servants go back to the king of Midian and the Midian king says, well, I guess I must have not offered up enough money.

And so he sends the servants back with even more gifts and even more money.

And they said, Balaam, please, will you curse the Israelites?

Series

Ten Commandments

9. Two Witnesses

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

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