Accountability

This is a topic that's been on my mind for some time. And, you know, as we look around America, as we look at how our lives have changed, how society has changed, you know, we see vanishing, vanishing character traits that used to be almost a hallmark of life among people, certainly in the church and outside the church as well. Today we see those things just sort of waning by the wayside. We watch news and we kind of see, you know, personal responsibility just sort of no longer being there. And we watch people's lives and we watch some of the things they do. And we then watch the results on the news and we see why there's just some things that are just missing in our lives. If we don't have a trait that's been lost in America or that is quickly being lost in America, then our lives are going to fall apart. It's a trait that keeps us responsible to who we are, to our bosses, to our loved ones, to God, to each other. Now, without it, corporations often will fail. Now, you know, the barometer for a successful corporation is their stock market. And sometimes when you see something that happens in corporations and they fail to do this, their stock price falls. And then when they take action on it, it increases again because people pay attention to what you and I are doing. People pay attention to what corporations and groups are doing. And we have a responsibility to them to do what we say we're going to do, mean what we say, we mean, stand for what we say we stand for. Of this trait, you know, I've got a couple quotes. One is from Thomas Paine. He's one of our founding fathers, if you will. He said, a body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.

If you're not accountable to anyone, then you shouldn't be trusted. Because if we're accountable only to ourselves, we see the mess that in America we seem to be going more and more toward.

There has to be someone we're accountable for or we get off the track very quickly. That holds true for groups as well as individuals. Ronald Reagan more recently said, we must reject the idea that every time a law is broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It's time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions. And today when we look watch the news or maybe we watch the things that go on in our our neighborhoods, things that go on in our communities, we see accountability is no longer anything that people really pay attention to.

We watch the news and people that can be caught red-handed in something that they do. The first thing they do is plead not guilty. It irritates me. You know, there is accountability. If you're caught, you did it. Admit it. And in society today, it's more a game of how much can I pay the attorney, which which attorney can I get, and if I can spin a story or create something to get myself out of this, then that's what I'm going to do. It's a dangerous, dangerous syndrome that America is in.

Corporations can fall into that that situation as well. You know, corporations are entities, if you will, and when I was working, you know, we worked a lot in health care, big health care corporations, as well as smaller ones. We held ourselves accountable for what was being done. We would often introduce new programs that were cutting edge in health care with some of the doctors that were working in some of those areas, and we held ourselves accountable to make sure that everything was going right and that if there's something did go wrong, we were forthright about what would happen and or what happened and make amends toward it.

Corporations groups have to do that. Let me give you a definition of from the business dictionary of accountability. It says, it's the obligation of an organization to account for its activities, accept responsibility for them, and to disclose the results in a transparent manner. And so even today, many corporations, in their statements of practice, they will say that they are accountable to the community, accountable to the customers that they serve, and they're transparent. They are an open book. But when you look at it so many times when things happen, it's not so much an open book. There's a lot of things underneath the scene that's there, and there's a lot of stories that go around to cover up and cover up and cover up, and sometimes the companies would just open up about what they did.

People would be forgiving. We make mistakes. We should have done the research ahead of time to make sure that those mistakes aren't there. But corporations, any group, any group, needs to be accountable. That includes the Church of God, maybe more so the Church of God than any other than any other group. Because the Church of God, we stand for one thing. We preach one thing. We preach truth. We're supposed to be living by truth. And the Church of God, as it marches forward and as Jesus Christ founded it, he would expect his group, his church, his body of called-out ones, to be very accountable to his word, to his precepts, to his law, and to live by those standards.

And like humans, we can make mistakes at times and things can happen or maybe not occur in exactly the way we thought. But you know what? Just like in our personal lives, groups need to be accountable for what they do and be very transparent about what they do. They need to say what they mean. They need to mean what they say. They need to do what they say they're going to do.

And they need to be accountable for the results of what they take on. Even more so, individually, this is one of those things in accountability. You've got groups. We're part of a group here in Orlando, part of a larger group that's the Church of God worldwide. And we have individual accountability that we need to be paying attention to in our lives as well. Let me read you from Webster's on what accountability is. It says, it is the quality or state of being accountable. I always like Webster's because when you read it, you know, it says like, well, what is accountability?

But there's a reason I read that first part. An obligation or willingness to accept responsibility for one's actions.

Now there's words in that definition that we can pay attention to. Accountability is equality. It's equality. It's a trait that we all need to have. And you know, we all wear many hats. No matter who we are, no matter what our employment situation is, we all wear many hats. We're accountable, we're accountable to our boss, our immediate boss. We're accountable to our spouses. We're accountable to our family. We're accountable to any of the authority that's above us. We are accountable to God, ultimately. And, like I said, ultimately to God. We are there. We're accountable to keep the laws in this country and to be good citizens. We are accountable for all those things. And we are accountable to many people. And so we should be, and we wear many layers. It is equality and a trait that we need to have, that we need to demonstrate, and that we need to hone in our lives. It's also an obligation. It's not something that we just kind of take upon ourselves voluntarily. God obligates us to be accountable. When we were baptized, when we took on His name, and we said, yes, I'll take on your name, I'm baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, we became obligated to be accountable to Him.

We know His law. We read the Bible. We hear sermons. We read articles. We read the Word. We know the Ten Commandments. We know the way of life. And the more we read it, the more we understand it. And it's not just a physical obedience to the law. It's a whole-body, whole-mind experience that God has called us to. So year by year, decade by decade, we understand more the accountability that we have to God and to do the things that He asks us to do to change our mind, to change the way we are, that we become the people that He wants us to be. We do it willingly, as the definition said. No one here was forced to come to church. When God called you, no one was standing at your door, made you come to church. You did it on your own. No one made you be baptized.

You did it willingly. You committed to God. You counted the cost. And you said, everything you say, I will do. And so you did. And so we are here. And so we have committed to God. And so we are accountable to Him to do the things that He said and that we committed to.

It's personal accountability, accountability and a very high stake that we should place on what we feel about our accountability to God. Let's go back to Psalm, Psalm 15.

Maybe a good place to begin here is to talk about the type of person that God will have in His kingdom, the type of man He's looking and woman that He's looking to you and me to be. In Psalm 15, it doesn't hurt to review this every now and then and see the qualities that God would have us have. Psalm 15, verse 1 says, Lord, who may abide in your tabernacle?

Who may abide? Or who may dwell in your holy hill?

He who walks uprightly and works righteousness. He who follows the commands of God, He who obeys those, He who understands those, He who is diligent and careful in his life to be sure that he's living by the Word of God. That's one quality of the people that will be there. And as we talk to this today, that's kind of a given. I'm not going to dwell a lot on keeping the commandments. We know that, but that is certainly part of the accountability that we have. He who walks uprightly and works righteousness and speaks the truth in his heart. Now, that one's a little tougher because our words can sometimes be a little bit untruthful or words can sometimes be a little bit misleading. We all have a challenge with that. There's not one in this room that is perfect in the words. James 3 is quite clear when it says the tongue is unbridled and it's an enemy of us. We all have misspoken. We've all said things that we shouldn't have. We've all used tongues and words to kind of escape maybe a little bit of the accountability that we should feel in some sense. But here it says this is a person who speaks the truth in his heart.

He knows what truth is. He's not looking to do the cover-up. He's accountable. He's accountable, and he knows what it is that he needs to do and what it is he's done. He doesn't backbite with his tongue. He doesn't do evil to his neighbor. He's like Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ was persecuted. He was tormented. He was put through agony. But what did it say? We read it every year in Passover, Isaiah 53. He didn't revile again. He didn't lash out in them and like kind. He took it. It was part of what he was doing. He didn't hate them. He forgave them. He doesn't backbite with his tongue. He doesn't do evil to his neighbor, and he doesn't take up a reproach against his friend.

Maybe his friend had something to say about something about him, and he's a little mad about it.

But a person who is going to be in God's kingdom understands the concept of accountability, understands the idea of personal accountability to God and His way, and using His Holy Spirit to allow God to transform him into the person God wants him to be. In whose eyes a vile person is despised. He doesn't want to hang around with people who are apart from God's law, who obviously display the principles that would be opposite of the way God lives. Despise is a tough word. We don't hate anyone, but we would tend not to want to be around them because they are not of the same mind of us. And whose eyes a vile person is despised, but he honors those who fear the Lord.

His friends, those, they're of like mind. They're of like spirit. They get along with one another. They have the same mission. They have the same vision. They're marching in the same direction.

And here's one for personal accountability that can be tough sometimes. He who swears to his own hurt and does not change. Now that's one that can be tough, right? Sometimes we can say, you know, this is what I'm going to do. You know, on Sunday, May... what are we at today? May 12th, I'm going to do this. You know, and it can be this noble thing we're going to do. But on Sunday morning, May 12th, we think, you know what? It's kind of a nice day to sleep in. I don't really feel like doing anything. It's not that important. I'll just cancel what I say I'm going to do.

Well, you know what? That's not being accountable, is it? That's not being accountable. There are little things that we can do, little things that we have responsibilities for, little things that we've said that we will do. And sometimes we just take it for granted and just say, meh, not today.

Not today, fellow church member. I'm not going to be... do that today. Not today, God. I'm not going to do what you ask today because I'm tired, don't feel well, that whatever reason it might be.

Little things that we think don't mean a lot. And maybe in the scope of human reasoning, they don't mean a lot. But to God, they do mean a lot. Keep your finger there in Psalm 15. Let's go back to Zechariah 4. Zechariah 4 and verse 9. It says, the hands of Zerubbabel... Zerubbabel was one who went over to rebuild or build the Second Temple in Jerusalem. Then under his jurisdiction, the foundation was laid. So as the hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this temple, his hands shall also finish it. Then you will know that the Lord of hosts has sent me to you. For who has despised the day of small things? You know, it's a verse we've all heard. Who has despised the day of small things? And we can easily in our mind say, this is inconsequential. This is meaningless. This is not anything that God will care about. You know, yes, I said I do this. But I don't feel like doing it now. Yes, I said I'd give you this. But I don't feel like giving it to you now. Yes, I said I'd buy this from you. No, I'm not going to do it now. Yes, I said I would be there for this. But I can't do it right now. And we might just habitually just take our own feelings into account and just say, not doing that today, not doing that today, and saying, and not even taking a second thought about it. Where is the personal accountability in that? Where is the personal accountability in that? You know, when we despise the day of small things, because God, you know, we live in a time where there's a lot of small things that happen in our lives, a lot of small trials, a lot of small opportunities to develop character, a lot of small things that could come out of our lives, and we can just throw them off and be like the world and say, not today, I just don't feel like doing that now and whatever. God is looking to see what is it that we do. Does our yes mean yes, as Jesus Christ said? Or does our no mean no?

Are we learning to be people of character? Are we learning to be people that our word means something? So when someone hears you say something or someone hears me say something, they say, you know what, I can count on it. I can count on it. I know that that person will do that because that's their history. They don't have a history of just shoving off or just because it hurts a little and isn't what they want to do that time that they just say no more. Don't despise the day of small things. Don't despise these days. Don't take lightly the times that we're in now. God is using the little things in our life to help us build character. And if we ignore them, then we are missing. We are missing something big. And when the day of big trouble comes, when the day of big things come, we won't have taken the opportunity and we won't be ready to stand and take accountability for those things. Use the time now that God has given you to do those things and don't take them lightly.

Don't take them lightly. Use them as opportunities because everything we do, everything we do builds our responsibility, our accountability, our commitment to God, to each other. Whether it's at work, whether it's in our neighborhood, whether it's in our families, whether it's in our church, no matter where we are, we have to be people unlike the world that is looking to shirk accountability, trying to get out of everything. Accountable for our actions, accountable for our words, accountable for our deeds, just being people who are looking to God. Let's go on here in Zechariah 9. It says, "...who has despised the day of small things? For these seven rejoiced to see the plumb line in the hand of Zerubbabel. They are the eyes of the Lord who are scammed to and throw throughout the whole earth." You know there's that concept of the plumb line. I'm not a construction guy. I don't really know much about construction. Some of you are. You know what a plumb line is? If I have a plumb line, I can drop it over this podium here. And if this podium is perfectly vertical, if it's perfectly vertical, that plumb line is going to go straight down because when you drop a plumb line down, it's just perfectly straight. So when they drop a plumb line down, they can see, is that wall perfectly straight? We got some things going on in our house here in Jacksonville. Not Jacksonville, where are we? We're in Orlando here. One of those two places. The house here in Orlando. And one thing, my wife has worked with one of the contractors that is doing some stuff on the house here. And one thing that she tells me that kind of comforts me is everything he does, he has a level in his hand. And every time he lays a tile, he's got a level. Every time he puts up a wall or a board, he's got a level. And he's found some things that just weren't perfectly straight. And so there's some corrections that have to be made in that house. But that's what God does. You know, when you when you have a plumb line that's laying right across that wall, it's perfect. You know what God looks at us? He wants us to be standing perfectly straight, straight up and down, in line with his law, in line with his precepts, in line with his principles. None of us are there yet. But if we are accountable, if we are doing the things that God said, if we feel a responsibility, an obligation to him, if we have a responsibility, an obligation to each other, we'll find ourselves doing that more and more. And as time goes on, we will be more close to that measure, the stature of fullness of Jesus Christ, who is the measure in the barometer that we have as to how we are doing. That's the accountability what God is looking for. That's what he wants us to do. And as he talks in Psalm 15 about the qualities of those who will be in his kingdom, we shouldn't take any of these lightly. We should look at the words. We should study the words. We should see what he's saying.

He who swears, we were in verse 4, he who swears to his own hurt and doesn't change. You know who the perfect model of that is? Jesus Christ and God the Father, right? Before the foundation of the earth, they determined that there would be a plan in stake and that Jesus Christ would be born flesh and blood. That he would live a life, a perfect life. That people would ridicule him, people would mock him. In the end, they would torment him, they would torture him, and they would kill him. And if Jesus Christ was on earth, and as that time came, who could have blamed him if he said, I don't want to do this. I don't want to do this. But to his own hurt, he committed before the foundation of the earth, and he was faithful in accomplishing what he said he would do. And because he was that, we have faith in him. And God the Father was faithful, too. He stuck to the plan because it couldn't have possibly been easy for him to stand by and watch Jesus Christ suffering the way he was, with imperfect people yelling at him, wanting him dead, wanting him to hurt more. And yet he stood by and he watched it happen because it was part of the plan. And he was faithful to resurrect Jesus Christ from the dead. Oh, they're the perfect model of swearing to your own hurt and does not change. We need to be the same way in the little things and in the big things in life. We've all made commitments. We've all been there, and we've all done it. And God expects us, and we said, no matter what the trial, no matter what the temptation, we will follow you. He goes on in verse 5, and he gets into some things that's, you know, just about our attitudes, you know, that we can have. He does not put out his money at usury. Well, you know, that's the way of the world. I've got money. I'm going to make money off of you. He does not put his money out at usury, nor does he take a bribe against the innocent. Now, there's plenty of bribes going on in America today that we don't hear about, probably. You know, one of them that we could we could look at here is just those people who enter the not guilty pleas, right? What do they do? They go out and they spend big bucks on an attorney who is very clever, very clever at spending a story in some way to get them off, because they don't want to be accountable for their actions. And they believe the more the right attorney, the right story will keep them or get them off of the hook.

We can't be people who think that way. We have to be accountable for our actions, and we have to take them to heart, and we have to learn from them. Well, let's go back and see a few places here where God talks about the accounts holding us to account. Luke 16. Luke 16. Luke 16, verse 1, we have a parable of an unjust steward. Here's a man who had stepped out of his bounds. He wasn't being true to his profession. He wasn't being true to his calling, if you will. Chapter 16 of Luke, Christ, speaking to his disciples, said there was a certain rich man who had a steward, and an accusation was brought to him that this man was wasting his goods.

Well, you know, God gives us things. He expects us to use them judiciously, not to just waste them and be wasteful with it. This man was wasting his goods. So he called him and said to him, what is this I hear about you? Give an account. Give an account of your stewardship.

You tell me what you're doing. You tell me, you explain to me, how you've handled this position that I've given you, for you can no longer be steward. Well, the man doesn't come clean. He doesn't take responsibility for what he has been doing. He doesn't take accountability for it. What he does is go the way of the world. He goes out and he looks at other people, and he thinks, I'll make deals with all these people so that when I get fired from this job, at least someone's going to give me one, and I'm not going to end up penniless. And so he goes about that. At the end of the parable here in verse 13, Christ comes to the conclusion, no servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You can't serve God and mammon. You have to be accountable to God. Money is an important part of everyone's life. It's kind of the way every society has ever been. There's always been a currency, and it's always been there. But you have to have your obligation and your loyalty to God first. Now going on in verse 14, it says, the Pharisees who were lovers of money. That was what their religion was about. The Pharisees who were lovers of money also heard of these things, and they derided him. And he said to them, you are those who justify yourselves before men.

But God knows your hearts. Oh, he struck a chord. When he talked about that, the Pharisees kind of knew, oh, this is us. This is us he's talking about. Well, what are we going to do? We're going to do what humans do. First, we're going to kind of make fun of them. We're going to fire back at them. We're going to say, you know, what are you talking about? You don't know what you're talking about?

All these things. And Jesus Christ said, I know what you're doing. You're not taking accountability for what you know to be right. You're justifying yourself. You've got a lot of words to explain what's going on here. But the fact of the matter is, God knows what's in your hearts.

It would behoove us to know what's in our hearts and to ask God what's in our hearts, that when we speak and we may use many words, as we'll talk about in a little bit, to cover something up, that we really understand and ask God what is the real motive here? Because he knows what the real motive is. And sometimes we can even fool ourselves as to what the real motive is.

But here in this parable, you know, Christ speaks to an incidence of lack of accountability and what people do when they're uncomfortable, when something is brought to their attention.

We go back to Luke 12, four chapters back. Luke 12 and verse 48.

Last sentence there, or the second sentence, in Luke 12 verse 48, says, For everyone to whom much is given. We've all been given much, haven't we? We can speak of that from a physical sense. We've all been given much. We live in a land that is so richly blessed we don't even know how richly blessed it is. We all have so many things that most of the rest of mankind couldn't even imagine what we have. And certainly spiritually, we've been given more. We've given more than we can even put into words. For everyone to whom much is given from him, much will be required. When we take these gifts from God, when we appreciate what he's given, we are accountable to him. And to whom much has been committed, of him they will ask them more.

And so we come to the point where we begin to realize our entire lives. We are entire lives to God the Father and Jesus Christ. We owe everything literally to him.

It's easy to take an account of something when you realize you owe everything to someone else.

Everything. Not this part reserved for me. Not this part that I'm holding back. Literally everything, if I'm looking at accounting of myself, literally everything is owed to him.

Everything.

In Romans 14. Romans 14.

Verse 7.

None of us lives to himself. Verse 7. And no one dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord. And if we die, we die to the Lord. This is written to you and me and all the people of God. Therefore, whether we live or die, we are the Lord's. He bought and paid for us. We owe him everything. For to this end Christ died and rose and lived again, that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living. But why do you judge your brother? He says, why are you holding him to account? Why are you looking at him? Why are you looking at him and saying, you know, he's not doing this right and he's not doing that right? Or why do you show contempt for your brother? Why are you looking down on him? You're all of one family. You've all been put into one body. We're all working toward the same mission, the same vision, the same thing that God has called us to, to be part of his kingdom. We're all in this together.

There's not supposed to be any schism or division in the body. There's not supposed to be anyone looking down on us. Jesus Christ on each other. Jesus Christ called or God called us to be one with each other and him. The way he and Jesus Christ are are one. Why do you judge your brother? Why do you show contempt for your brother? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ.

One day, just like that unjust steward, we will be standing before God and we will be giving account of what we've done. For it is written, as I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God. Every man, woman, and child. Every one.

So then each of us shall give account of himself to God. Everyone will give account of himself to God.

What will I do in that day? What will you do in that day? What account will we give? How will we handle that situation? Because we know what's right and we know what's wrong. We know what the Bible says. We know what God expects of us. We've heard it for years, some of us, in sermons. We've read it for years in the Bible. We know what God expects. When we give account, what will we say? How will we handle it? You know, there's a time that all mankind, let's go back to Revelation 20, all mankind will stand before God. All mankind will be accountable for what they've done. Revelation 20. In verse 12, we have the second resurrection. The second resurrection we know is after the thousand-year millennial reign of Jesus Christ. All the rest of humanity is resurrected at that time. Every man, woman, and child, whoever lives is going to be resurrected if they weren't called during this time, didn't die in the spirit. They'll be resurrected at this time. Revelation 20, verse 12. And I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God. And books were opened. Those are the books of the Bible. They only have the same understanding that you and I, that God has given us today. I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God. And books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged according to their works.

The dead were judged according to their works. They were held accountable before God according to their works by the things which were written in the books. The same books that you and I read, the same books that you and I look at, hopefully many times during the week, certainly on the Sabbath day. They will be judged, they will be held accountable by the things written in the books.

The sea gave up the dead who were in it, the death in Hades delivered up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one according to his works. Every one of them. What will they say when they stand before God? Will they stutter? Will they try to make excuses? Or will they or will they be accountable for what they did and handle it the way that God would want to do? Well, that's every man, woman, and child. Every man, woman, and child that's going to stand before God, that's the people later that are going to be there. Let's go to 1 Peter 4. 1 Peter 4, verse 17.

That's for them. For the people of God today, you and me. Those who God has called, those who God, those of us who have repented, those of us who told God, I will take your name.

I will follow you through thick and thin, through good times and bad times. I will remain loyal to you, nothing will take me. Nothing will take me off the path that you've put on me. I will use your Holy Spirit. I will follow you wherever you lead. Who made that statement when we were baptized, I am putting my old life behind and my new life, the new life that you are going to write on me. Verse 17, verse 4. For the time has come, Peter writes, for judgment to begin at the house of God.

That's us. Today there's accountability. Today God is looking at me and saying, are you giving account for what you did today? Are you giving account for what the resources that I gave you are? He's looking at you and me. He's looking at his church. He's looking at the body that he's building, the temple that he's building individually and collectively, that he's going to return to. And he's holding us accountable today, right now. The day we, some of us might say, the day of small things. Life is kind of relatively easy. We don't have active persecution going on. We don't have tribulation going on. We don't have people knocking on our door, threatening to throw us out of our neighborhoods. And because we keep this day that no one else keeps, it's time. Time that we can be building character. Time that we can be building resolve. Time that we can be building the relationship with God and the accountability and the reputation that we need to stand those tougher times. The time has come for judgment to begin at the house of God. And if it begins with us first, what will be the end of those who do not obey? The Gospel of God.

You know, no one knows how long it is before Jesus Christ returns. Could be very short.

Could be years. No one knows except God the Father when he's going to send him back.

No one knows when none of us are going to die. Any one of us could go home tonight, be it an auto accident on the freeway or whatever we go home in. Now we, our time on this earth, could be over. We have to be resolute and we have to be always in a state of urgency.

If indeed the kingdom of God is important to us, if indeed it's something that we are seeking with our whole heart and soul. If it is, then we need to be holding ourselves accountable for those things because God is holding us accountable. He's looking at what we do. Yes, he's looking to see, are we keeping commandments one through four the way he wanted them? Are we growing in the understanding of that and are we keeping those commandments? Yes, he's looking at commandments five through ten. Are they learning to love one another? Are they doing this in spirit as well as physically? He's also looking at our attitudes. He's looking at our willingness to follow him the whole way we conduct our lives because he didn't call for us to just be physical people, but all our minds, all our being, not just a little, not just 90 percent, but all. And it's something that takes the rest of our lives to do. Let's go back a few verses here in 1 Peter 4. Let's go back to verse 12. Look at the verses that Peter wrote leading up to his proclamation here in verse 17 that the time has come for judgment to begin at the house of God. Verse 12, he says, Beloved, beloved, that's God's people. Beloved, don't think it's strange concerning the fiery trial, which is to try you as though some strange thing happened to you, but rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ's sufferings, that when his glory is revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy. If you are reproached for the name of Christ, blessed are you. If you have some trials in life because you do things differently than the people around you, because you keep a holy day that's different than what they do, or don't keep a holy day that they want you to, if you do things the way God says as opposed to what the world around us would say, and believe me, there are many things around us that the world would say in the situations we're in. You should do this. You should do this. You should trust in this. You should rely on this. You should try and that there's nothing wrong. There's nothing wrong in looking to this and doing this and whatever. But if you say no, I'm doing it the way the Bible says. I'm doing it because I'm accountable to God because I said I would put my faith and my trust in him, that he would see me through the trials that I have in life. There may be many, there may be many who reproach us. Peter says, if you're reproach for the name of Christ, blessed are you, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. On their part, he's blasphemed. He's minimized. He's just part, maybe part of what their awareness is, but not who he is, which is supreme over every single situation in our life. On their part, he is blasphemed, but on your part, he's glorified. And in verse 15, but let none of you suffer as a murderer, a thief, an evildoer, or as a busybody in other people's matters. Isn't it interesting that he throws that in along with these, you know, other what we might consider really not good sins.

Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in this matter.

You may look different. You may take some guff off of your employer. You may take some guff off of your family. You may take some guff off of the people that you come in contact with because you don't do this and you say, I trust in God. You may take some guff. God says, don't let that worry you. Be accountable to me, he says. Don't be accountable to them. Be accountable to me.

It's me who you will ultimately answer to. Just like we obey the laws of the land. Obey the laws of the land, God says. Obey the laws. Obey the principles. Obey the policies and regulations of your employer. Do it. But if it comes to choice because one of those counter or contradict the law of God, be accountable to him. Be accountable to him to be willing to take the reproach. Be willing to take the penalty or whatever it is that comes your way. But be accountable to him, he says.

You know, there's things that we do in life, things that we say in life. People will come to see us based on what we do, based on what we do and how true we are to our word.

You know, we've all taken on the name of God the Father and Jesus Christ. We said we will do things his way. And in the early days, you know, we do. We tell our families, not going to do that anymore.

Not celebrating that day. Can't do that on a Sabbath day anymore. Going to keep it holy.

Not doing that. Not eating these meats. Yes, I'm going to give my son or God with my time, with my substance, with my body, with everything. But then over time, what do they think about the Church of God? Do they think, oh, you're not so different. You're willing to bend on this, and now you're willing to bend on that. Are we being accountable to God, and are we being a good witness to others by the things that we do of God's way of life? When they look at us, they say, well, they go to church on Saturday, but other than that, they're just good people. They kind of do the things the rest of us do. The only difference between them is they go to church on Saturday instead of on Sunday or not at all. The fascinating difference they see in us, we may not be being accountable to God for everything that He wants us to be accountable for. There should be people who say, you know what, they are pretty loyal. They are pretty loyal to what they believe.

They do explain that if it's in the Word of God, I do it, and I follow Him, and I trust Him.

They may swear to their own hurt, and they do it anyway. I knew they took a loss on that job, but that's what they said they were going to do it for, and they did it anyway.

I knew that they had something else to do that day, but they said they were going to be there and do it, and they did it anyway. We're accountable. We're accountable to God for our actions. We're accountable to each other for our actions as well. Let's go back, and I just want to look at two things today. Two things today on accountability. You don't need to turn. I'll just talk about this for a minute. A couple of things where we're accountability, we might look at ourselves and say, are we really being accountable? One of them is, how do we react? How do we react when someone holds us to account?

We could look at the example of Adam and Eve, right? Adam and Eve. They were walking with God.

One day they were there. God told them he created them. God put them in the Garden of Eden. He was instructing them. They knew who he was, and then he allowed Satan, in the form of a serpent, to come to them. Satan never forgets. Satan is very, very clever, very, very cunning, very, very convincing, very, very deceptive. Revelation 12.9 says he deceives the whole world, and somehow he was able to convince Adam and Eve that God was the evil one, and he was the one to follow.

Despite everything they saw and everything they knew, it was Satan convinced them, follow me, forget him, reject him.

Don't ever minimize those thoughts that are in your mind that tell you, this is okay, this is okay, God doesn't care about that. Adam and Eve fell prey to the same thing. Now, what did they do? What did they do in Genesis 3? When God held them to account, and he was walking in the garden that day, and he said to Adam, where are you?

Adam said, I'm hiding myself from you. I don't want to see you. I'm naked. And God said, who told you that? Adam didn't want to be held to account. What did he do? Did he say, I sinned God. I took the tree. I took of the tree that you forbade us to eat. He didn't say that. He said, the woman you gave me, she gave it to me, and I ate it. God looked at Eve and said, it's the serpent you created that you put in the garden. He's the one who led me to do that.

What did they do? They blamed everyone else. They blamed everyone else. They weren't accountable at all. They didn't look at themselves and say, I messed up. I sinned. I rejected you. They had a finger pointing in every direction. This isn't my fault. It's their fault. If they hadn't done that, I wouldn't have done that. If we ever find ourselves giving, putting blame and pointing the finger at someone else, you know what? We're not being accountable. And that's not what God wants us to be. You can mark down in your notes there Isaiah 58. I believe it's verse 9. There you know that Isaiah 58 is the fasting chapter, and it talks about the kind of fast that God wants. And I always am fascinated, and remember that verse in verse 9, that talks about if you put away these things from you, if you put away the pointing of the finger, you did it. He made me do it. The devil made me do it. Be accountable. Be accountable is what God said to do. We can look at Aaron, an example right there, another one that you kind of marvel and scratch your head. How could that have happened? Aaron just days, weeks after God delivered Israel out of Egypt. Moses was up on the mountain. Aaron, the people are getting all scared. Aaron, who's the leader left behind, they say, let's build a calf. We'll give you all our gold. We'll build this golden calf. Let's worship this calf. Aaron gives in to the people. He was more accountable to them. He feared them more than he feared God. And when Moses came down, he held Aaron accountable. What did Aaron say?

The people made me do it. Not, man, I can't believe I did that. I can't believe I was so short-sighted and so, I'll use the word, stupid, to give in to the people. And I knew that was wrong. I shouldn't have done it. I was wrong and I admit it and I confess my sin to you, God. He didn't say that. He blamed the people. If all we are, when we are held accountable for something that we've done, when things go wrong in our lives and all we do is, and the first thing in our mind, because it is a natural human trait, right? We've all done it. We've all done it. You know, if the first thing we do and we hang on to that, it's their fault. It's their fault. We're not accountable people and we're not doing what God wants us to do. 1 John 1, 1 John 1. Because, you know, God knows that we're imperfect. He knows we're going to sin. He knows we're not perfect. He knows we're going to spend the rest of our lives building the character to say no to self, understanding these things about ourselves, correcting what's wrong, becoming more like Him, letting that plumb line of Jesus Christ be measured against us, that we should be standing up straighter and straighter toward every year of our lives. 1 John 1, verse 9 says, if we confess our sins, if, if we confess our sins, He's faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. There's that board, if. People that will be held accountable, they will confess.

They will acknowledge. But there's some. There's some who won't confess. No, Jesus Christ died that our sins could be forgiven. But we must confess. We must confess our sins. We must take account. We must be accountable for them and come before God and say, you know, I've sinned. My attitude stunk in that situation. The words that I said, I shouldn't have said.

The intent of my heart in that was to mislead people into something else.

The example I set in that situation was horrible. I shouldn't have done that because, you know, I take accountability that when I did that, I might have allowed others to think that that's okay to do because we have an accountability to God. We have an accountability to each other as well.

How many people come into God's church and they see others doing something and they think, oh, that's okay. Look, those people have been in the church a long time. They do this and they do that, so it must be okay. Wow. Don't we've led someone else astray? Then we're accountable. We're not being accountable to each other. We all are accountable to each other to live God's way. That's what we're here to do. That our yes is yes. Our no is no. That when we make a mistake, no one's going to despise us. No one's going to condemn us. No one's going to do those things. We all make mistakes. We bear with each other. It's so much easier when we come and we confess to God. And if we need to confess to someone else that we've offended, then we do that as well. That's taking accountability. If we confess, David knew this. Let's go back to Psalm 32. You know, David made some big mistakes in his life. He made some little mistakes in his life, too. We don't have all those listed, but like us, he had to learn. God's way. Psalm 32, verse 5.

He writes, I acknowledge my sin to you and my iniquity I haven't hidden. I didn't try to cover it over by words. I didn't try to blame someone else. I didn't say it was her fault. Bathsheba shouldn't have been out there on that roof that night. She should have known better.

I'll confess my iniquity I have not hidden. I said, I'll confess my transgressions to the eternal, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Confess. God will forgive. He promised he would forgive. But go, as Jesus Christ said to the lady in John 8, go and sin no more. Determine that she won't be doing that same thing again. And if you do, confess again. Go to Proverbs 28.

Proverbs 28, verse 13. He who covers his sins will not prosper.

Well, we've all done that somehow, right? We've all covered our sins, and we'll look at an example of that here in a minute. We've all tried to cover our sins. Man, I don't want them to find out I did that. If I just say this, and if I say that, and if I can cover this up somehow, that's a good thing. He who covers his sins will not prosper. But whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy.

See what God is looking for? He's not looking for our cover-ups. We're not fooling Him.

We're fooling ourselves if we think we're fooling Him. We're fooling ourselves if we're playing the way of the world if we think with our many words and our many adjectives and our many explanations that somehow if we can convince each other that we're right, that somehow we are right.

We're missing the point when those things happen to us.

Well, we don't want to blame each other, and if we find ourselves blaming, we might want to stop and think, you know, I need to hold myself accountable here. No, I'm not going to blame my wife, my kids, my neighbor, the person in church who did this, that I'm following their lead and thinking it's okay. I'm not going to do any of those. I'm not going to blame anyone. I'm going to blame myself. I'm going to be accountable for it. I'm going to confess to God because I see that I'm doing something contrary to His word, the detail of His word, the small things in His word as well as the big things, and be accountable to Him. The other thing that we can do is, as I've been talking about here, our words. You can write down Acts 5, verses 1 through 11. I'll tell you the story. You know, it's the story of Ananias and Sapphira. There in the days that Ananias and Sapphira lived, we had the disciples, many of them, who were selling their property and giving it all to the church, giving it all to the church. And Ananias and Sapphira, they wanted to do the same thing. It's a noble thing. I'm going to give it all to the church. I'm going to sell it all. And so, well, let's go back. Let me just read Paul's word here, Peter's word, Acts 5.

And so they bring their gift. They sell their property and they come before Peter, and they're presenting this as, we have sold it all, and just like everyone else, look at our motives. We're giving it all. We're just as big-hearted people as the rest of them.

Acts 5 verse 2. Ananias says, kept back a part of the proceeds. His wife also being aware of it. She was part of this plot they had, and they brought a certain part and later at the apostles' feet. But Peter said, Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and keep back part of the price of the land for yourself? Why did you do that? Well, it remained. Wasn't it your own? After it was sold, wasn't it into your control? Why have you conceived this thing in your heart? You haven't lied to men, but you've lied to God. You know, if you had said, I'm giving 50 percent, that would have been okay. But you wanted to say that I was doing something that you really weren't. You were trying to mislead. You were trying to deceive. You were trying to show something that wasn't the case. Ananias paid dearly. He dropped right there.

His wife had an opportunity, and she did the same thing. She did the same thing. She dropped. It's a lasting example to us. We have to be accountable for what we do. Yet you're yes, be yes. You're no, be no. Tell the truth from the inward part, from the heart. Don't let words. Don't let words. Don't think you're clever with words. Boy, so many, when you listen on TV, they're so clever with their words. That's political speech. I can cover this up. I can answer a question not in the way it's been asked, but I'll give you my opinion of it rather. Let your yes be yes and your no be no. Don't fall prey to what's going on in society around us, that every word is used to cover up and make things seem the way they aren't. I don't think that's happening a lot, but it can rub off on us, and we can think that's okay. That's okay. It's not okay. That's not who God is looking for.

He's looking for people who will feel the responsibility of accountability to Him, to His Word, accountability to each other. That they won't be looking to blame and pointing the finger and using every excuse in the book to excuse themselves. They will say, no, I did it.

They won't be looking words and think, I got a really clever argument, just like Satan had a really clever argument. He had a really good excuse. He really was clever in what he said, but they will just simply own up to the motives in their heart and tell it the way it is. That's what God is looking for from His people, from you and me. You know, when it talks about that we'll all give account, and Matthew 12, 36, you know, says, we will give an account for every idle word we speak. I mean, every idle word we speak. I can't even imagine how many idle words I've spoken in my life. But I know, you know, I know time when we're resurrected, time won't be, but, you know, God would say, you know, this is going to take years, Rick. This is going to take years. There's a lot of idle words you've spoken, and you're going to give account for every single one of them.

And I hope on that day I won't be saying, but he said this, and she said this, and this is what it was. It'd be, yes, you're right, you're right, I was wrong. And I hope that as we go through lives, we even see that in ourselves now. And we think back on conversations, think, no, no, that isn't what, that isn't what should have been said at all. I need to go back and confess to God and confess to whoever, you know, whoever was party to that. Well, there's a lot more I could talk about, about, about accountability. So big, big subject, something that should be on our mind. But let me, let me close here in James, James 5.

James 5. When we hear James 5, we think of verse 14, if any among you sick, let him call for the elders of the church, let him pray over him anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. Verse 15, the prayer of faith will save the sick and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. But then there's verse 16, where it says, confess your sins to one another, or confess your trespasses to one another. And since doesn't just have to be, I broke this 10 command, one of the big 10 commandments. I had a bad attitude. I misspoke.

I misled. I tried to deceive. I wasn't honest with you. Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. And often we look at that word healed and we think, oh, that's part of the physical healing. Could be. But when you look at the Greek word for healed, it means restored, made whole. And so when it's talking in verse 16, it talks about something we can talk about at another time, you know, and something that God has built into our relationship with each other and the body. He says, you know, be open with one another. You're going to talk about Matthew 18.15. We can talk about Matthew 5.23. Be open with one another. You know, if you misled someone, say it. Pray for one another that you may be made whole. You know, once in a while in our announcement bulletin, we have a prayer list, and it lists the people who have physical problems that we pray for. That's good. You know, made whole, made whole, as in the Greek word translated, healed there, every single one of us could be on that prayer list. Every single one of us needs to be made whole. Every one of us has spiritual problems that we should be praying for each other with. Every single one of us needs to be made whole spiritually and need to be made aware by God of where those holes are. Sometimes we're not going to be made whole physically until we're made whole spiritually. Sometimes God uses one to help us identify the other, and that verse talks about that. It's all about accountability. Looking at our lives honestly, looking at what God had said, looking at His Word, looking at our lives and saying, am I accountable to God? Am I accountable to God?

Don't forget that our ultimate example of accountability is Jesus Christ and God the Father. They were accountable to you and me. Jesus Christ was accountable to God the Father. God the Father was accountable to Jesus Christ. They did their plan and they're working their plan perfectly at their own cost, at great cost to them. You and I owe it to God. You and I owe it to each other. We're here as part of this body in the temple that God is growing, individually and collectively. We all said that we would follow Him. We all said that we would be part of it. We all said that we would commit to Him and be accountable to Him. Let's be sure that we're living up to what we said.