The 4 L's

Thank you again, Mr. Bumgardner. At least I'll attempt this. I shouldn't say attempt, but this time last week I was a little concerned about getting out the sermon, but this week is doing quite a bit better. Now, I want to think, and you've all read Proverbs and Ecclesiastes and probably Song of Solomon, and if you're like me, you read the song and say, what in the world is he trying to say there? But when Solomon wrote the book of Ecclesiastes, he was looking back on a life that had seen a lot.

He'd accomplished a lot of amazing things. He'd done many things that he wanted to, done some things that he didn't want to, and looked back with regret. But at the time he was writing it, we get the clear sense that life suddenly seemed to him to be passing away way too fast. Suddenly he said, where did all the years go? He realized he'd made some very big mistakes, and as he contemplated the life for him that he saw suddenly seemed to be nearly gone, he wrote some advice for others. And one of the most important things he wrote we can find near the end of the book in Ecclesiastes chapter 12.

Ecclesiastes 12, and I'm going to read verse 1. Ecclesiastes 12 verse 1, he said, Remember now your Creator. I want to emphasize that now, because he's saying, remember now your Creator in the days of your youth, before the difficult days come, and the years draw near when you say I have no pleasure in them. He was writing this as an older man, someone who'd reached the highest highs, and he wrote that. He looked back and said, I've done everything I ever wanted to do, but he'd also had to admit that he'd reached some of the lowest lows.

He'd done a lot of things that he probably said, boy, I should have known better, and I've learned some lessons the hard way. But his advice to young people was, remember. And to remember something, you have to have some idea of it in the first place, but remember God early in life. Don't wait. This inherently implies that young people can know God. Now, they can learn his way of life, and they can live their life based on his word. The wisest man in the world advised young people that the most important thing they could do to have a happy and fulfilled life was look to God.

Look to their Creator. Get to know Him. Live the way He wants you to. Now, this was our theme for summer camp this year. I said I wanted to come back to that. Our whole theme was, remember now your Creator in the days of your youth. For our daily Christian living classes, we broke this down, and we had five sub-themes. We had five days that we'd be teaching class. We wanted to help the young people to see some of how to get to know your Creator, how to remember Him.

It's one thing to say, remember your Creator. They might be saying, yeah, what do I do about that? I would want to ask, because you might be looking at me saying, you might have overlooked that we're not teenagers here. We're not. Is it too late for those of us who are older? The book of Ecclesiastes and much of Proverbs, something, well, you read it when you're a teenager, and then forget about it. Well, one thing I would say is age, of course, is a matter of perspective. We all tend to look back on our earlier times and think we've come so far. Now we know so much better.

What's interesting is it seems that human beings tend to think that almost no matter where they are in life. I've even noticed Connor starting to notice babies, and oh, those little babies, they don't know anything yet. He's only coming up on his third year. Even more, I don't know if you're like me, you've noticed the series of commercials. And you might not have. Sue never pays attention to commercials, and I think of them as an art form, so I pay attention.

But there's a series of commercials for a cable TV service where it shows these kids that are about, they look like they're about nine or ten or eleven years old, and they're talking about the little kids who are only six or seven. And they're saying, oh, these kids, they wouldn't have made it in our day.

They don't know how easy they've got it. They can move their TV to any room in the house, and they can download stuff real fast and watch streaming video. And they say, you know, kids have it easy these days. And of course, it's funny to us, because we're looking and saying, what do you mean the old days?

Your kid's yourself. And so the ones talking the old days were three or four years ago. Now, I wonder, I think maybe the point of those commercials is to make us think things have changed so much in three or four years. Since you last signed a TV provider contract, things might have changed, and they're trying to get you to reconsider. But we could make the same case in a way that we are all still children. We're all in our youth spiritually. Certainly, compared to God, who has always been and always will be, you know, we're just embryos.

Solomon wrote, Remember your Creator in the days of your youth. Now, what did he think of himself? Just look, if you will, turn with me back to 1 Kings chapter 3. Did he mean only a number?

You know, did he think you were only in your youth if you were below 15 years old or some other age? I wanted to look at his own perspective on what we might consider youth. If we look at 1 Kings chapter 3, we'll notice some of what he said early on in his reign.

1 Kings chapter 3, beginning in verse 5. Now, this is, of course, after he built the temple and offered great sacrifices. Or, actually, I think before he built the temple. But at Gibeon, the eternal appeared to Solomon in a dream by night, and God said, Ask, what shall I give you? Boy, what an opportunity! The God of the universe appears to let me know what you want. Solomon said, Will you show great mercy on your servant David, my father, because he walked before you in truth, in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart with you? You've continued this great kindness for him, and you've given him a son to sit on his throne as it is this day.

Now, O Lord my God, you've made your servant king, Solomon talking about himself, instead of my father David. But I'm a little child. I don't know how to go out or come in. And your servant is in the midst of your people whom you've chosen, a great people too numerous to be numbered or counted. Therefore, give your servant an understanding heart to judge your people that I may discern between good and evil. Or who's able to judge this great people of yours?

Now, it's interesting. I looked, and scholars debate, how old was Solomon when he said this? He said, I'm just a little child. I read one article by a Jewish author who concluded that Solomon must have only been 12 years old. And I said, really? And he said, well, if he called himself a child, then he hadn't had his bar mitzvah yet, which happens at 13.

I don't think that's correct, to be honest. I think that's incorrect. Partly because we know Solomon... Now, what's interesting is the Bible does not tell us how old Solomon was when he ascended to the throne. It does tell us for most kings. I'm not sure why it doesn't for Solomon. But it does tell us how old his son, Reboam, was when he took the throne.

It tells us Solomon reigned 40 years. And it says, then Reboam took the throne and Reboam was 41 years old. Okay, that means that when Solomon became king, he already had a one-year-old son. So I'm pretty sure he wasn't 12 years old when he came to the throne. You know, but I'm guessing he probably was young. Perhaps he was looking at the age of majority for serving in the Levitical priesthood. Maybe he was not yet 20 or close to 20. Maybe he was only 30.

As I said, I don't know that it matters, but it goes to show you can be an adult and still look to God and say, I'm just a little child. I need help. Solomon realized he was a little child in God's eyes. And I think that's a good attitude for all of us to have. And of course, you might be thinking ahead of me, it's certainly not just my idea or one from Solomon.

If you want to turn to Matthew 18, we'll see that that's exactly the attitude that Jesus Christ tells us to have. Matthew 18 begins in verse 2. We commonly look at these passages when we do the blessing of little children, but let's look at it here. Jesus called a little child to him and sat him in the midst of them, that is, his disciples, and said, Assuredly I say to you, unless you're converted and become as little children, you'll by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.

Therefore, whoever humbles himself as a little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. So we need to make ourselves like little children when it comes to being able to learn and grow and come to know God. We're looking ahead to eternity. It's good to remind ourselves of that, especially on the times, and I know I'm one of the younger people in the room, but sometimes I feel a little old, and that's probably when I shaved off the whiskers, I looked down at the sink and I saw a lot of white stuff down there.

And I remember when I first could grow a beard, it was all black. But we're looking ahead to eternity, and from that perspective, even the eldest members here are just as babes. So realizing that we're still in our youth, let's consider some of the lessons that we tried to convey to the teens at summer camp this year.

And I say, we did, of course we did at Camp Catubic. They're wrapping up two of the sessions now at Woodman and High Sierra. There is another one of the teen camps yet to go in a couple weeks up in Oregon. Our teens, you know, they might be ahead of us, so maybe if we get to talk to some of them, they can help us review some of this.

But as I said, we developed five basic lessons. I condensed them into four for the sake of the sermon, and for memorization sake, each of them began with an L, which I thought, boy, that's making someone feel young, because I thought they all had Ls. So if you remember the old days of Sesame Street, we could have said, this sermon is brought to us by the letter L. I'm not sure. Well, I don't think Sesame Street says that anymore. I'm kind of disappointed. But the first sub-theme was, look to your creator.

Look to your creator. If you want to remember him, first you have to look to him.

And the one I want to combine with that is, when we do that, we'll also learn to fear God. Learn to fear God. As I said, when we know who and what God really is, we'll have that proper fear, or it comes easily. Now, this brings us to what I call, or what many scholars call, the first article of faith.

If you want to have faith, the first thing you have to believe is what we find in Hebrews 11 and verse 6. I've quoted this so many times, I'm just going to cite it. Well, I've got it written here, but I could do it from memory. But he who, or it says, without faith, it's impossible to please him. For he who comes to God must first believe that he is. You've got to believe that God is, that he exists, and that he's a rewarder of those who diligently seek him.

And that's right. I think, look to your Creator implies a great many things. Early on in camp, I told a story of the Constitutional Convention. And having just had the Fourth of July, of course, which the dates coincide differently, but at the Constitutional Convention, they reached a deadlock trying to decide, you know, the representatives from the big states wanted proportional representation. They wanted the bigger states to have more members of Congress. The smaller states said, no, no, we've got to be equal. They wanted it to be like it is in the Senate, where each state sends the same number. And they were worried that the whole thing was about to break up.

They were about to break up and everyone go home and not find a new Constitution. And they really feared if they did that, probably the United States would break up into several smaller countries and become prey to being conquered by European powers. And at that point, and by the way, they were in the middle of July by then. They'd agreed to meet in secret, so they kept the windows closed. They were wearing those wool suits that were the only thing they had to wear back then, so they were just miserable, hot, and uncomfortable.

And two things happened that historians point to. And most historians point to the second one. I want to point out the first one. Early on, Benjamin Franklin, well, not early on, but I mean when they reached this deadlock, Benjamin Franklin made a motion. He was the oldest member there. He hadn't said much, but he had a speech in it that said, if not a sparrow can fall to the ground without the knowledge of our Creator, is it likely that we could raise up a great empire without his blessing? And he made a proposal that they start opening every session when they met with prayer. They hadn't been doing that before. He said, we need to pray. And soon after that, the deadlock was broken. They reached what's called the Great Compromise. They formed the Constitution, and of course, the United States went on to become the greatest nation in history.

Now, I could tell that story and say, look, if we want to look for a solution to why our nation came into being, look to your Creator. Most historians, though, today look to something else. There's records of the climate and meteorology is what I was looking for, and a cold front came through at nearly the same time as Benjamin Franklin made his appeal, and the cold front came through and suddenly things got comfortable. People calmed down and relaxed, and they reached the Great Compromise. You could look to either explanation for why things worked out. I think we're wiser to look to our Creator, to believe that there is a God. We had a question and answer session near the end of camp, and so the dorms come together. The Sabbaths are long. Remember, we basically had Sabbath on the longest day of the year, so keeping all those teenagers occupied can be a challenge, although if you wear them out for the whole week, they're happy to rest on the Sabbath. But one of the things we did is we had brother-sister dorm get together with their dorm parents and just have a Q&A session. Hey, we're here. I told him, you got a minister sitting here listening to you to answer whatever questions you have. One young girl asked a very good question.

How do we know this is the right church? That's no small thing. And some of the other adults with me talked about how we teach the truths of the Bible, and you can test these things. And these were good answers. But I came back, and after that I said, there's something even more fundamental.

Each person needs to prove to himself or herself, be convinced in your own mind before anything else that God does exist. You've got to believe there is a God. Now, the Bible can help, but of course, you're going to only believe the Bible if you already believe there's a God, so you also have to look outside. I'm going to look to one of the things the Bible tells us first. If you look at Romans chapter 1, Romans 1 and verse 20, this isn't necessarily proof that there is a God, but the Bible is telling us, hey, if you want to believe, this is one way you can know for sure.

Romans 1 and verse 20 says, since the creation of the world, his, that is God's, invisible attributes are clearly seen being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so they're without excuse. There's no excuse to not believe there's a God if you're willing to look at the things that are made. Now, that doesn't necessarily tell you that the Bible is his word. We'll address that in a moment, but we can just look at what exists around us. Look at matter, and scientists are able to look at it much more thoroughly and in ways we couldn't in the past.

They have telescopes pointing out to all the stars and all the matter out there, and they say, the universe is expanding. It's constantly moving away from some central point where it had to have started at one sometime, and they trace it backwards and they come up with a theory. Now, they don't want to say God created it, so they say there was a big bang. You know, well, we say, maybe there was a big bang, but if so, God's the one that made that bang, but it couldn't have always been. It had to have a starting point. Radioactive material tells us the same thing. They've discovered radioactive elements are decaying. If you have uranium sit long enough, it'll decay and become radium, and if radium sits long enough, it decays and becomes lead.

Well, if there were no point of creation, all we would have is lead. Well, not all we'd have is lead, but we wouldn't have uranium or radium that it would have long ago turned into lead. So it had to have started at some point. How did it start? Well, we believe there's a creator. Now, some would say just the big bang, and we don't know anything beyond that, but there's other things we can see. Science has proven over and over again that you can't create life from non-life.

Life only comes from something pre-living, and you know, we see that evident around us all the time. I've been watching baby geese at our lake. You don't get baby geese unless you have adult geese.

You don't get frogs unless they start from polywogs, and those come from the eggs that come from frogs.

And scientists, they've tried everything, and they try to get some muck that they're going to run electric current through to make it come to life. Can't do it. And there's the interdependence of life, the fact that all these things work together. You know, people like to ask which came first, the chicken or the egg, but a better question might be which came first, the flower or the bee.

You got to have them both. And that's one of the biggest, one of the best evidence against evolution, because they would have had to both come into existence in the same season, or we believe in the same week. You know, that six days of creation, seven days if you count God creating the Sabbath, God created the plants, then he created the bees and the other animals to pollinate them, and thus they've continued. We can look and see evidence of design in the universe. And that's one of the favorite theories you hear, the theory of intelligent design, because we can see the evidence of design. One of the favorite stories people say, if you went out and found a pocket watch laying on the ground, you wouldn't look and say, oh, all these parts must have gradually evolved over the years, and now it works. You'd say, no, somebody puts this together.

The same goes for all the intricacies of this world and of living creatures.

I'll make another reference. You might have, trying to think when it started, a few years ago, I started hearing references to a book called Darwin's Black Box, and I heard enough references that finally I said, well, I ought to get that book and read it, because everybody else in the world seems to have already. So if that makes you feel bad because you haven't read it, you can get it out of the library like I did. It's an interesting read, written by a molecular biologist. I think his name is Behe, B-E-H-E, but he studied cells, and he's shown that they have what's called irreducible complexity. You think, because scientists used to think that things got less complex as we get smaller down to the building blocks of matter in our life, and they thought cells are probably just little blobs, and they don't do much. But with advanced microscopes, they discovered they're incredibly complex. A cell is just as complex and needing every moving working part to work perfectly or not work at all. It's like that pocket watch. One gear is out of place. The whole thing doesn't work. Our cells are just like that, and that's why they say it's irreducibly complex. All of it has to be so complex, every little part of it has to work perfectly, or none of it works at all, which is a strong argument against evolution. It says there has to have been a creator. There was a creator God, and we need to look to him. I almost forgot to put this in my notes. I was taking the fundamentals of theology class from Dr. Ward. I did that online this past winter after having taken it in college years and years ago. Dr. Ward presented several logical arguments to prove that God exists. Then he said, you know, all those are fine, but I like this. The most basic one is the official name is the a priori argument, which I couldn't... I'd have to look at it to tell you how to spell it. But he said, what it says is nothing else makes any sense. Is there a God? There has to be, because there's no other explanation that really makes any sense. And when we think about when we're honest with ourselves, we see that to be true. Now, it's good to go through those other proofs, but we all come down to that eventually. And as I said, for a young person saying, how do we know this is the right church? Starting point is, do you believe there's a God? Prove it to yourself. That's the first article of faith. He who comes to God must believe that he is. And then, by observation, as it said in Romans 20, we can start learning about God by looking at the things he made. What kind of God is he? He's a God who appreciates beauty.

Look at the beauty he made. Look at the order. God is a God of cycles and rhythm. You know, the seasons come and the seasons go, whether it's winter, spring, summer, fall, and winter, or the wet season and the dry season. You know, in some parts of the world, we seem to be having a combination of those two here. But he's a God of cycles and order, a God of tremendous variety, or who loves variety. Look at the different types of creations he made. How many different kind of beetles are there in the world? I think it's something like 80,000 that scientists have catalogued, which to me seems ridiculous, but God wanted a lot of different kind of beetles.

He thinks big. Look at a mountain sometimes. God thinks big, but he pays attention to painstaking details, all those complex things I was talking about in each living cell. And the God that we worship is powerful. He did make this vast universe. He made everything we feel and see when the thunderstorm comes and we feel that, and there's the boom, and you feel your house shake. All that's small compared to the God who made it.

In our lesson at summer camp, it included a quote from a poet about visiting Niagara Falls. I didn't write down his quote because I've been to Niagara Falls. When I read it, I said, that's true. Anyone here who hasn't been to Niagara Falls always advised it's worth going to see. It's one of the seven wonders of the natural world, and it's within a day, day, and a half drive.

But when you go, you see the beauty. But then you also, if you get close, you feel that thunder, power, 170 million cubic feet of water every minute. Now wait a minute, that's not right.

It's six million cubic feet, falling 170 feet. I hadn't...that's why you write numbers down.

Falling that 170 feet and pounding against the rock, and you feel the spray. What I learned the last time that I was there, Sue and I went and visited, it's probably been eight or nine years ago now, but you can pay a price, and there's actual tunnels dug into the rock that go behind the fall, behind the curtain of the fall, and there are a few tunnels that were bored out to where you can see the water rushing through. And you can feel the whole...it feels like a mountain vibrating and shaking from that sheer power. And when you feel that, I think that's a sense...what do we mean when we say the fear of God? Feeling that power that He built into the universe. I think that's...that reminds us, maybe puts us on the track. Another part of the lesson, talk about visiting the Grand Canyon. Seeing that great expanse of nothingness and the beauty, and it fills you with a little sense of dread. Although, I haven't been to the Grand Canyon. I've read a lot of accounts of it. I'm not sure if I felt it, but I watched on TV a couple weeks ago when that fella walked on the wire across a branch. Any of you watch that? If you didn't see it, it's...maybe you should have. Not because...I didn't want to see him fall to his death, but they had these high-definition cameras on a wire next to him. And then you'd see a helicopter shot pan out, and you see this vast nothingness and this little tiny figure walking across that cannon. Canyon. And of course, as I said, with the high-definition, you saw the beauty, and it just made you feel small. And you thought, wow, there's a God who made all this. I mean, I don't feel small when I'm sitting in my car or doing my daily business. And then you look at the vast expanse of the universe. That tells us a little bit about what kind of God he is. You know, one aspect of the fear of God might be fearing to get crosswise of him. You don't want to disobey him knowing what power he has. But we're also reminded, and first, I'm going to just quote this one. 2 Timothy 1 verse 7 is where Paul wrote, God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.

So some people said, well, there's a contradiction. We're supposed to fear God, but it said he hasn't given us a spirit of fear. Well, to fear the Lord doesn't mean to be afraid or to be filled with terror. It means to be in proper awe of God. It can include being afraid, as I said, to sin and bring his wrath. We can find a biblical definition of what the fear of the Lord is.

Now, we often cite 1 John 5 verse 3 to get a biblical definition of love. This is the love of God that we keep as commandments. Let's turn to Proverbs chapter 8 to find a definition of the fear of God. Proverbs 8 and verse 13. Proverbs 8, 13 says, the fear of the eternal is to hate evil.

I like that. I'm not sure that that's something that says everything that there is to say about it, but that's a pretty distinct, this is that. I like those those kind of scriptures to use. The fear of the eternal is to hate evil. Pride and arrogance in the evil way and the perverse mouth, I hate. Evil, we could define as anything that's the opposite of God and God's ways. God is love. God is goodness. You know, what is good is defined by what God is. So, for something to be evil would have to be opposed to God. Now, I want to circle back to that idea of how do we know this is the right church and proving that God exists and then what we do once we do. But, as I said to me, it seemed natural to tie in the idea of once you know that God exists and you understand something about Him, that you have the proper fear of God. And once we've accepted the Bible as His word, that's telling us, hey, the fear of God is to hate evil, to hate wickedness, we could say. I'm drawing wickedness as a synonym to evil because I want to turn to Psalm 101 to remind us of something else. Now, this is a lesson we especially wanted to bring out to young people, which we did at camp, because young people are still learning what's out there in the world and sometimes need to be reminded that not everything out there is good. There is wickedness and evil out there. Psalm 101 in verse 3, David wrote this, he said, I will set nothing wicked before my eyes. I hate the work of those who fall away, it won't cling to me. I'll set nothing wicked. The fear of God is to hate evil, that wickedness. And there are a lot of wicked things that we want to not put before our eyes. As I said, I wanted to share that. That's one of the things we're telling our young people, because they've grown up in a world dominated by screens.

There are movie screens, television screens, computer screens, now telephone screens that can bring all kinds of things into the world, or into their vision. And a lot of what's on those screens is not good. A lot of what they can view is wicked. Knowing what a great God we worship should encourage us to stay away from those things. There are a lot of movies, a lot of TV shows, a lot of video games, I forgot those screens, are based on breaking God's laws.

They include a lot of evil wickedness that can have a great influence on our minds.

And so part of fearing God is to shun those things. And we remind young people, and I say, most of you here today who are parents are also grandparents. But we're facing an epidemic of something we didn't have even when I was younger, and particularly of pornography. That it's so accessible, and coming on those screens, and a lot of young men are at risk. It's overtaking them, and they find they're getting addicted to it before they even realize it. And it's something that the church, well, we have to deal with in a sense that we want to warn parents and warn young people, look, don't dabble in that. There are some things that are addictive, or that are potentially addictive, that in small amounts are okay. Alcohol causes some people problems, but if you don't get addicted, a small amount of alcohol, even on a regular basis, can even be healthy. There's no small amount of pornography that's good, just like there's no small amount of cigarette smoking that's good for you. It's all harmful. And I had a discussion with some of the other ministers, and I'm bringing this up because talking about camp, this issue has come up at summer camp, talking to the young men there more than once. And we had to discuss, we don't really want to make this the focus of our summer camp discussion. We want to focus on good and positive things, but the young men are telling us we need to warn parents and parents of children to shield their kids, because the greatest way to prevent the harm is to avoid it in the first place.

And of course, we also, as I said, I take the check, well, we want to protect our kids, but we should never let ourselves fall under the trap of saying, well, I'm an adult, I can handle this stuff. Now, we need to become as little children ourselves. As I said, you know, we need to be as little children. We are little children spiritually. We need to be as little children, humble ourselves, and not set anything wicked before our eyes. We need to hate evil and fear God.

And as I said, I'm getting ahead of myself. I wanted to come back to that question. How do you know this is the right church? Because that's leaving to my second main point. After you prove to yourself that there is a God, and I think that will inherently lead to the proper fear of God, well, the next thing you need to do then is learn what does He want of you. If there's a God that exists, and He's obviously an intelligent Creator, He made us... does He communicate with us?

Does He let us know what He wants of us? And if so, we need to learn to listen to His words.

So that was the second L, listen to God's Word. Now, most of us are here because we believe that there is a God, and we believe that He communicates through the Bible.

But a young person might ask themselves the question, is the Bible the Word of God, or is it just a set of fables that some people put together a long time ago?

Now, I can answer that. My own personal belief, I know, and I know that I know right through to my core, that this is God's Word. I've gone through and studied the literature. I've proved it to myself. And one of the strongest proofs, of course, is put it to the test. Follow the principles that it teaches, and as it says, by their fruits you'll know them. That's talking about people, whether good or bad, but by the fruits of living by this book will show us if it is true or not.

But there's other ways to prove it, and actually most of those ways are outside the scope of what I wanted to cover in the sermon today. The church does produce some booklets, and we've printed articles to help guide someone through that. So I would just say any young person, and anyone who hasn't done it before, should walk themselves through those steps of proving and knowing, settling it in your mind that you believe this is the authoritative Word of God. And once you're convinced of that, then we've got to listen. Listen to what we know to be God's Word. I'm going to turn to 2 Timothy chapter 3. So I said I spent some time thinking of some of the proofs that God exists. I'm skipping by proving that this is God's Word because it's something that I'm going to take for granted that you have done or will do, but I want to go to once we know that. 2 Timothy chapter 3 and verse 15, Paul's Word to Timothy, who he was confident knew these scriptures. He says, From childhood you've known the holy scriptures which are able to make you wise for salvation through the faith that's in Christ Jesus. All scripture is given by inspiration of God. It's profitable for doctrine, reproof, for correction, for instruction and righteousness that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.

We cite this a lot because it's such an eloquent way of putting it. I've got a copy of the English Standard Version for these translations. And the English Standard Version in verse 16 says, All scripture is breathed out by God. You've probably heard where it says all scripture is inspired. That word could mean breathed. God breathed, but I like it. It's breathed out by God.

And it's profitable for these other things. For doctrine. That is our teaching. Or policy.

For reproof. For pointing out when we're wrong. For pulling us up short and giving us a warning sign. Scripture is good for that. For correction. Just like a parent would tell a young person, Don't do that. Do this. So the Bible, God's word, is profitable for that.

And for instruction and righteousness. God's word can teach us how to live. It does teach us how to live. If we'll listen to it. And what's the point of all these? As it says in verse 17, So that a man of God, almost just ran over that, a man of God or a woman of God, someone devoted to that Creator that we want to look to in our youth. So that we can be complete. So that we can be whole. Have everything we need. Another word for complete can be even mature. And also, thoroughly equipped. Given all the equipment we need mentally and emotionally. God's word gives us all that we need to get through life. So, as little children who are spiritually begotten by God, we need to continually look to Him, knowing that He is real. Knowing that He is an awesome God. Every time I see that there's a song that says that, I can't remember the tune, Our God is an awesome God. It's funny, I found myself at camp. I kept saying awesome a lot. I said, boy, I'm going back. Now it's like I'm 15. Boy, that's awesome. But knowing this, we should want to learn from this God. So we all need to be as young students. We tell our teenagers, listen to God's word. Even when we're older, because we're spiritually becoming His little children, we need to realize that we haven't yet learned at all. And I'm saying we, because even in the ministry, that's when you start realizing how much you really don't know.

All of us, we need to read. We need to study. Even work on memorizing God's word.

Takes me back to Herbert Armstrong in the latter years of his life.

Many of you remember seeing him do the TV program, when he pulled out that big magnifying glass. He had a large print Bible. And it's funny, then when he finally couldn't even see that, he put it aside. And he just, his programs got a lot better because he just told us what it said. And it's interesting. Then we realized he didn't have to read it. He knew it. He'd put it in his head so well, he could just tell us what the Scripture said. That's a goal for all of us to strive for.

Jesus said in Matthew 4 and verse 4, every man should not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. That's interesting. When Jesus said that, he was quoting from the Word of God. He was quoting from Deuteronomy. So let's read a vital passage in Deuteronomy chapter 6. Not the one that he quoted, but still one worth reading. Deuteronomy 6, matter of fact, this is another one that we quote very often because it's so powerful.

We'll start in verse 5.

Deuteronomy 6 and verse 5, Now, there are some groups that take this literally. I've got to have a copy of the Scripture tied onto my hand or on a box in front of my head, but I'm pretty sure this was meant figuratively, which is much more powerful. The Word of God guides everything we do, and it's like a filter. Everything we see or perceive comes through the Word of God. That's much more powerful than having a box on our forehead to remind us. Not that I'm going to say it's not a sin to have a box on your forehead with the Word of God in it, but it's much more beneficial to have the Word of God in the front of your mind. You'll write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

That's the way we want to be. God's Word and the way of life that it teaches is exactly that. It's a way of life. When we talk to the young children, the teenagers at camp, we tell them God's way of life isn't just for Saturdays. It's not just for when you have activities where you get together with your brethren, but it's for all the time and all the place. One thing we can say about little children is that they're busy learning all the time. I'm sure the Keithleys are aware of that, and I sure am. A toddler is learning, learning, learning, asking questions and trying things out.

They have to learn how to live. They have to learn what to do and what not to do.

We all need to learn those lessons, but on a much grander scale. We already know that we can't jump off the back of the couch and not get hurt. But there are other lessons that we need to learn, and the Bible will help us learn them. We all want eternal life. We're now as babes. As I said, even the oldest among us, we're still like little children next to God. So we need to look to our Creator and then listen to His Word so we can learn how to live. Notice I said all those L's.

And then the next step we had at camp will be that I think an obvious one. We described it as live committed to God. Had to put the L in the live, but live committed to God.

And I said we recognize that God is, and we learn to fear Him, and we begin to listen to Him and learn from His Word. When we do that, we start realizing that He's offering us the greatest blessings that could ever be. But He won't force them on us, and I appreciate that. God won't force His way of life on us. We're like little children, God's children, and because God wanted us to be children, He built into us freedom of will, freedom of thought. He didn't make us like robots, where He could just make us do the right thing. He wants us to voluntarily choose His way of life, and then commit to it. Commit to Him. That's where we come up with the phrase live committed.

Of course, God doesn't want us to do that just because He's on a power trip, and He wants to tell us what to do, but it's for our own good. As we'll see if we turn to Deuteronomy chapter 30.

I wanted to stay in Deuteronomy, and we'll read another well-known passage. Deuteronomy 30 beginning in verse 19. Of course, this is a famous section of Scripture where Moses meets with the children of Israel before they're going to enter the Promised Land, and He reminds them of their history, and reminds them of all the instruction that God gave them. After laying out the law, it's called Deuteronomy often because it's the second giving of the law. In Deuteronomy 30 verse 19 says, "'I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you. I've set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. So the choice is yours, but here's my urging.' You could say, therefore, choose life." God says, look, you can choose either way, but choose life that both you and your descendants may live, and that you may love the Eternal your God, that you may obey His voice and cling to Him, for He is your life and length of days, that you may dwell on the land which the Eternal swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them. And the alternative, of course, is to choose death, and that means eternal death.

And I think that's still how much more merciful is that than an eternal punishment? You know, burning in a hellfire or something, as some people believe. God says, okay, if you really don't want to live my way of life, I can snuff you out and you won't suffer. But God wants us to become like Him. He's committed to us, as committed as any parent is to a child, perhaps more so.

And that's where I wanted to make a turn in this, because God doesn't use the analogy of a parent with a child to explain the commitment. I think because, for one thing, children don't get to choose their parents. They're born to whoever they're born to, and they won't always be little children. So God exemplifies the commitment He wants us to make with a different relationship. We can see that if we'll turn to the New Testament. 2 Corinthians chapter 11.

A pair of scriptures here. 2 Corinthians 11 and verse 2. Paul's writing to the church in Corinth. He says, I'm jealous for you with a godly jealousy, for I have betrothed you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. So Paul's saying, I've betrothed you to marry Christ. That might have surprised some people, but Paul brings it up again a few pages over in Ephesians. Ephesians 5 and verse 31.

That same Q&A question where that girl asks a question about this being the right church, someone else brought up a question about the different roles of men and women. And I was explaining that we won't always see on the spirit world, it'll be different. We'll be like the angels without having gender or marriage, at least in the same way. But God created male and female in marriage for a particular reason, and this is much of it. Ephesians 5 and verse 31, describing that initial creation and the marriage that God created, it says, For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother, and be joined to his wife, and the two become one flesh. This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church.

Marriage is a picture of Christ and the church. And that marriage is all about commitment, making a commitment, bonding yourself together and saying, We won't separate.

And this helps us to understand, when we undergo baptism, we've made a commitment to God that is to be eternal. Marriage is the type of that. And it's interesting, it struck me because a lot of people get married when they're relatively young, you know, and the marriage itself and growing in that commitment is part of their maturing.

You know, a lot of people, you know, you get married when you're young because you know better when you're older, but you've already made that commitment. I say that in jest, of course.

I got married when I was a little older and I haven't regretted it a bit.

But when we're baptized, just think we're at the beginning of our spiritual lives, not at the conclusion. We've got a lot of growing and maturing to do.

God wants us to make the commitment early on and then we'll grow to perfection.

But we're making a commitment to God that we're going to grow within His family.

So, though we're still spiritually immature, relatively speaking at that point, we strive to understand what a serious commitment it is. And let's review in Luke 14. This is something we always turn to when we're discussing baptism. Luke 14 verse 26. I say this applies to someone considering making that commitment to God. And I'd say you'd only have to lower it a notch or two to discuss the commitment that a man and woman make to each other in marriage. But Jesus said this in Luke 14.26, If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father or mother, and we know the Greek there doesn't mean hate, but it means by comparison, love less. His father, his mother, his wife, his children, his brothers or sisters, even his own life. He can't be my disciple. And whoever doesn't bear his cross and come after me can't be my disciple. That might sound like a lot, but really it's another way of expressing what the first commandment says. In Exodus 20 verse 3, it says, You shall have no other gods before me. That's the commitment. Nothing before God.

And that should be easy to commit to when you understand, when you learn to look to God as the great Creator and build that fear of Him. And as I said, we make that commitment while we're young spiritually, and we're all young spiritually, and we stick through it through all trials, through any temptations, through whatever difficulty we have, just as a married couple. You know, a real marriage is going to go through disagreements, trials, temptations, weariness.

Let's go to Titus chapter 2, if you will. Titus 2 will begin reading in verse 11.

This describes somewhat our commitment to God.

I'm going to try to read in the right chapter. Titus 2, 11.

The grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lust, we should live soberly, righteousless, righteously, and godly in the present age. In other words, make that commitment now that even in this evil world, we're going to live righteously and godly, looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ. And then it talks about the commitment He made, who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself His own special people, zealous for good works. He's already made that commitment to us, and He stays true to it. So part of remembering our Creator is making a commitment and living up to it to Him. And then I want to add one more thing, one more L lesson as far as what we do as part of remembering our Creator, and that is preparing to lead. Learn to be leaders.

I mentioned Mr. Armstrong earlier. If we think years ago, and I still remember him saying this, he reminded us that we're not called now just to save ourselves. We were called early, way ahead of most of mankind. Most of mankind will wait for the second resurrection after the millennium. But God called us now. Why did He do that? Because we're better? Because He needed us, our special skills and talents? No, Mr. Armstrong always said He called us to do a job. He called us to get some work done now. And we need to prepare now, in the process of doing that job, for even bigger jobs in God's kingdom. That's what I want to emphasize. In the past, some people got a little bitter, you know, when they came into church and expected to start writing articles to the Plain Truth magazine, or, you know, I'm going to be ordained in the ministry within five years. And when that didn't happen, some people said, oh, I'm only here to pray and pay. Pray and pay, that's all we do.

But I think that misses an understanding that we're preparing, that we're spiritually still youth. We're in a training process, preparing for the real role we're going to have in the world tomorrow. Let's look over a few pages to Revelation chapter 1. Revelation 1, beginning in verse 4. This is part of John's message to the seven churches, and he says, Grace and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come and from the seven spirits before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, the ruler over the kings of the earth, to him who loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and has made us kings and priests to God his Father, to him be glory and dominion forever. So he's saying he made us kings and priests. Now God calls those things that are not yet as though they were, because none of us are kings and priests right now, but he's preparing us for that.

And another thought along that line we can find in 1 Corinthians chapter 6. 1 Corinthians 6, the Apostle Paul had a clear idea of what lies ahead for all of us.

1 Corinthians 6, beginning in verse 2. It's interesting here, he's actually chastising some members of the congregation here for going to court against each other, because he's saying, knowing what you're preparing for, why are you doing stuff like this? He says, don't you know that the saints will judge the world? That's what we're preparing for. If the world will be judged by you, are you unworthy to judge the smallest matters? Do you not know that we'll judge angels? How much more are things that pertain to this life?

Some have pointed out that the Greek word judge can include even more like administrative, like managing angels. I haven't delved into Greek itself, but it means basically we're going to be given positions of authority, of power. Now, governments and corporations, if they wanted to prepare people for a high-level leadership role like this, they'd probably put them in some extensive class and training program. No, we could say God is doing that for us now. We're in a training program. Now, sometimes it doesn't seem that we are, because we look around and say, well, we're all just living our lives, and we're going through different things.

But I like to think of it as we're each in a customized program. It's not going to be the same for each of us, because God knows exactly which traits we need to develop. He knows our strengths, and he knows our deficiencies, and he's probably got a clear idea. This is the part I wonder, does he already know which job he has in mind for us? Or is he developing that as he goes along? And I don't know the answer, but I know he's saying, well, he might be looking at me and saying, well, if I'm going to use Frank for this job, I've got to wear off that rough edge, and I've got to strengthen this particular ability. And whatever that job is he has in mind, he's going to get me ready for it. And getting ready might not always be pleasant. We don't know the specific syllabus for our training program, but we know some of the general outcomes God has in mind.

Jesus Christ is the leader of leaders. He's the King of kings, the Lord of lords. So, if we're to be leaders underneath him, it wouldn't hurt to look at some of his character traits to see some of the things that we need to develop. I'm going to pull out five for now, five traits that Jesus Christ exemplified that are necessary for leadership that we need to develop. So, we're going to jump through some scriptures here. Most of them are in Matthew. So, if we'll go to Matthew chapter 7, we'll see the first one. Matthew 7 and verse 29. Sorry, I'm looking at my watch. I thought I was going to fall short today. I think I still might end a little bit early, but not as much as I feared.

This is a summary of after Christ was teaching and how different he was from the scribes and the Pharisees. It says of Jesus, he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes. He taught with authority because he knew God's Word. Makes sense. He sort of wrote it, but he knew it inside and out. He was well educated, and that's something all of us should think of as leaders. We need to be well educated in God's Word so that we can explain it with authority. So, our first leadership trait, knowing God's way, being educated in God's Word. Now, let's also turn over to Matthew 22, if you will. Matthew 22 in verse 16. Here, one of the Pharisees, I think they might have been a little sarcastic, but they did describe well something that was true about Jesus Christ.

It says, "...they sent to him their disciples with their Herodians, saying, Teacher, we know that you are true and teach the way of God in truth, nor do you care about anyone. You don't regard the person of men." Now, what they're saying is you're impartial. You're even and fair. Jesus Christ didn't worry about pleasing men. He didn't have to garner anyone's favor. So, he never gave in to peer pressure, never showed favoritism. He was perfectly impartial in dealing God's Word in his way evenly. And we need to strive to do the same. A leader can't show favorites. He has to be fair. But, of course, we can know one of the things Christ did do. He didn't show favoritism, but he did serve and give them himself. Turn over to John chapter 10. Jesus, of course, was the epitome of what we like to call servant leadership.

John 10 and verse 10, we'll see it from his own words.

John 10, 10, he says, The thief doesn't come except to steal and kill and destroy, but I've come that they might have life and have it more abundantly. I'm the good shepherd. A shepherd is a leader, but especially a servant to the sheep. I'm the good shepherd, and the good shepherd gives his life for the sheep. A higherling who's not a shepherd, the one who doesn't own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees. And then the wolf catches the sheep and scatters them. The higherling flees because he's a higherling. He doesn't care about the sheep, but I'm the good shepherd. I know my sheep, and I'm known by my own. So that's a trait of a leader, is he's willing to sacrifice himself for those that he's leading. For us to be like that, we have to learn to do service in a godly way. We have to learn to lead. It's not going to come naturally, and of course we need God's Spirit to build that in us. Another leadership trait we can see over a few pages in John chapter 5. There's one quick phrase, so I'll read it, and you'll recognize it right away if you don't get there. 5 verse 17, they were criticizing Jesus because they thought he was working on the Sabbath. He wasn't doing something was breaking the Sabbath, but he wanted to make a point. He said, my father has been working until now, and I've been working. Jesus Christ extolled the value of working. A leader needs to be able to work. As we prepare to lead, we need to be willing to work, and work hard, and work long. As I said, I don't think that I've got to explain that to the group of people in this room. I know you're all well acquainted with that. We tell the young people, and actually, before summer camp starts, when I meet with the staff, that's one of the things I always tell them. Serving on staff is fun, but it's a lot of work, and if you came here to serve, that means working. One other leadership trait that Jesus Christ demonstrated I want to consider. This one we can see in the book of Luke, Luke 9 verse 51. Luke 9 and verse 51.

And instead, there are a number of different traits we could have pulled out, but these five we thought were exemplary, and you can see them demonstrated in other places as well.

But I did like this one. Oh, there we go. This is near the end of Christ's ministry.

It says, "...it came to pass when the time had come for him to be received up." That means time probably crucified. Tortured slowly and having a hideous, painful death. When it was time for that, he steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem. He didn't say, oh, it's time, man, I wonder if I can put it off, or can I get out of this? Now, he did, he prayed to the Father saying, if there's another way, you know, I wouldn't mind, but he went to Jerusalem when it was time. Jesus Christ showed great courage, and the face of adversity, he was fearless. A leader needs to do that. For us to prepare to lead, we need to show courage by doing what's right, no matter what, to stand for what's right in every situation.

As I said, and we emphasize this with younger people, but they said, we're all youth, and Satan has a way of exposing us and making us feel like kids, so we want to settle this in our mind. Spiritually speaking, we're all young. We're all in the days of our youth. We all need to look to our Creator and ask Him to help us to learn and help us to build these traits within ourselves.

If we look back to Solomon's example, the one who wrote, Remember Your Creator and the Days of Your Youth, you know, I envision him sitting there with maybe a quill pen and an inkhorn, and looking back and thinking, where did the time go? You know, he probably expected, like I do sometimes, expected to look in a mirror and see a much younger face. And he thought, this life is fleeting. It's just a blip. And he described it as being like grass. And I think of grass that's been cut. It's nice and green, and then it's brown and blowing away in the wind. But that's physically speaking. And the spiritual eternal scale of things, our life is still all ahead of us. As I said, all the way from Raleigh Collins to Micah Kiethley. You know, we're all still babes in Christ. We're young in that perspective. So we need to remember our Creator now, while spiritually we're young.

Look to Him. Have that healthy fear and respect when we realize what He is. We need to listen to His Word and learn to live from it. And with that understanding, of course, live a life of commitment to God. And all of this, knowing that we aren't in it for ourselves, that's just the beginning. We're learning and preparing to be leaders and teachers at some time in the future.

Solomon advised others to remember their Creator in the days of their youth.

And I said, Ecclesiastes 12.1 shows that the old man who wrote these words thought it was still important. It's important for you and me and all of us. I wanted to read one other thing he wrote in Ecclesiastes 12. I closed my Bible and I forgot I wanted to close with one more verse that he wrote, because he thought of it as the conclusion of the whole matter, so I will too. Ecclesiastes 12 in verse 13 says, let's hear the conclusion of the whole matter. Fear God and keep His commandments. That is man's all. That's all there is for us. Fear God and keep His commandments. That'll serve us in good stead in our youth and in the long days ahead.