The Desires of Life

This is the season of meetings, and two weeks ago we had a regional conference in St. Louis. I wanted to just give you a thumbnail sketch of that as a help, a little bit of a lead into my sermon, because we had in this two-day pastors conference a chance to kind of go over the plans that the ministry and the church has to fine train and ordain ministers. That is kind of the mantra, fine, train, and ordain ministers to replace those of us that are growing older. We have a number of ministers in the next few years that are going to be reaching the age of 70, and health and retirement and other issues will begin to take a toll on the ranks of the ministry.

The United Church of God is committed to providing a ministry for the congregations, a full-time ministry for the congregations. And so there is this effort to find those that God is calling to the ministry and to train them and to ordain them. And I think that we have a good program in place that, if we stay centered on the model that we find from the scriptures of discerning who it is that God is calling to the ministry, will help us find those, indeed, that can serve in that role and that God wants in that role. So your prayers on that will be very much important, but we spent a great deal of time kind of just discussing that program that is being headed up by Richard Pinelli and out of the home office. And one of the things that we did was to go through at length a discussion of the descriptions of the ministry of an elder, and some of what we call the qualifications of an elder that are mentioned in the Bible, specifically in 1 Timothy chapter 3. And we went through a great deal of discussion about that as we discussed the role of the ministry, and again, in an effort to find those who are called to the ministry. And Lot was prepared for that, and in looking at it, and after the discussion about that, it dawned on me that, you know, this is a good discussion for the purposes of finding ministers. But when you look in 1 Timothy chapter 3, you might just turn there. This is the lead-in to the sermon, so switch gears here, and that's my segue into my introduction.

When you look at what is described in 1 Timothy chapter 3 as the qualifications of a bishop, of a minister, an elder, and what we have always gone to, it is a list of a high standard, a high bar, if you will, of those qualities to look for in selecting those that Christ is calling to the ministry. But as Debbie and I were looking at it and talking on our way home, this section of Scripture is also something that applies to us in the church. Every one of us in church, all the members as well. It's not just talking about the ministry, and although it is specifically applied there, as Paul gives Timothy some guidelines to do his job into appointing men to be pastors in the church.

But when you look at the qualities there, there's not one of the qualities that are not Christian qualities that every one of us should be demonstrating, learning about, and thinking about. And when you put that together with the description that we know is described as our calling for the future in terms of being a holy priesthood, Paul Peter talked about the fact that we are a royal priesthood.

We are a called and chosen people, and that includes all of us. And we know in Revelation 20 that we are to be future kings and priests in the Kingdom of God. We are people being prepared, as half of our whole mission statement in the United Church of God describes. Then all of these qualities apply to us. And what I'd like to do here in the beginning with this sermon and finishing up in a second sermon is to walk us through some of these, all of these qualities in the first few verses of chapter 3 of 1 Timothy, and look at it from the point of view of every one of us.

It's easy to just focus in on the ministry, and again, even sometimes a member might look at the ministers and say, well, he's not living up to what it says here. And on certain occasions, you will find that the minister may not exemplify every one of these to the degree that he should.

But that's not the point for this discussion and for this exercise. What is important is that we all look at it and understand that it's really addressing issues that are pertinent to every one of us in the Church. And if we look at it from that point of view, then we can gain something.

And I think a great deal of benefit personally, as well as, even as we work together, both the membership and the ministry, to accomplish the mission of the Church. So let's begin, and let's take a discussion here of the first few verses. And actually, I don't plan to get too far in this today. When you really begin to look at it and break it down, there's a great deal of information here. And quite frankly, I'll show you. We had six pages of notes that we broke down for this whole discussion in our whole conference to begin with.

So I'm not going to get through six pages in one time, but there's a lot there is the point. There's a lot when you break down the words and the verses and really understand what is being said. There's a great deal of application for us to understand.

So let's begin here in 1 Timothy, chapter 3. And let's look at verse 1, where it says, this is a faithful saying, Paul writes to Timothy, if a man desires the position of a bishop, which is an elder in the Church. We don't use the term bishop in our congregations and traditionally in the Church, but we know that this is it's talking about an elder.

If a man desires the position of a bishop, he desires a good work. Here in this first verse, we see a word used twice, desire. Desire. Now, desire is an interesting word. And when you stop and just understand what it is saying, and it says that obviously a man who desires that position is desiring to a good thing.

Is desire wrong? I don't think so. Let's look at desire for you and I. Let's look at the desires of life. Every one of us is filled with desire. The word means here, from the original Greek, it means to aspire to. To aspire to. To stretch oneself. To stretch forward to something. When you understand it from that point of view, you can understand that this is talking about having a motivation in your life to stretch yourself for something.

Desiring something. Now, what have you ever desired in your life? Think about your desires.

Sometimes we desire a big fat steak. You ever desired a good steak dinner? So hungry. Not just hungry, but you're hungry for one particular thing. And you desire something so strongly, you make sure you either go out to the store and buy it, cook it just the way you want it, or you go to your favorite steakhouse and you find it. We desire a better job. We desire a bigger home. We desire status. We desire to be somebody. We're all filled with desires in life. We aspire to something. We want to accomplish something. We desire to finish school. We desire to get that degree so that we can get a good job, so that we can buy all the things that we want, provide for us and our families, and receive the particular satisfaction in life that we want. We have these desires. Life is full of desire. In a sense, another word for it is a dream. We all have dreams. I think, in a sense, desire builds toward the dream. Desire promotes and inspires the dreams that we hone in on in our life. But it all begins with this desire for something, to be somebody, to have something, to have a good, to have a solid relationship where somebody returns affection to us and cares for us. That's why we get married. That's why we have friendships. We desire someone to love us, to take care of us. We desire to give ourselves to someone in a relationship that is bonded and committed for all of our physical life. We desire that. And sometimes that desire takes people into some extreme actions or some very dedicated lifestyles to be able to achieve those things. Sometimes the desire may be so imbalanced that it leads to erratic type of behavior that isn't balanced in our life and a desire to have a friend. You ever had someone who desires to be your friend so strongly that they attach themselves to you and cling to you in a way that it gets uncomfortable and it becomes a dependency that is set up. Or maybe we've done that with some other relationship. But the desire is so strong it's really talking about an aspiration deep within us to do something and to be something, to be somebody. Now Paul's applying this in a sense, in a very strict sense, to the idea that a man desires to be a minister. But what is it about your desire? What is your strongest aspiration with your life? And have you met those desires? Have they been satisfied? It's easy to satisfy a desire for a steak dinner by just cooking a steak and eating a 16-ounce porterhouse and you know just sitting there just bloated, you know, bloated, not gloating, but bloated and saying, I can't believe I ate the whole thing. But we don't have a desire at that moment for a piece of red meat because we've satiated it. We've met it. Some other things are a little harder to meet. Take a little bit longer and maybe we'll present a few frustrations. When it comes to the deep issues of our life, of love, meaning, purpose, those are desires too.

People spend their whole life looking for meaning for their existence, for the meaning of life in its, you know, the whole encompassing life, or just to find, you know, a happiness in their own life. Those are important issues to every individual and sometimes we find it and then sometimes we lose it. Fate can take a chance in our life and people can leave our life through death, through divorce, or they just walk out of our life.

A parent walks out and the desire of a child for comfort, for security, for a father or a mother figure is gone and they may spend their whole lifetime trying to find something. I've known people who lost, in one case I know of a person who lost a mother at a young age. She died.

Sometimes mothers walk out of the house and people spend their whole lifetime trying to replace that mother in their life. By the person they marry, by the way they deal with people, there's a hole there. There's strong desires. That's why I say sometimes we meet our desires, we accomplish them, we have them fulfilled, and sometimes we lose it because life takes different twists and turns. And then sometimes, you know, it's like the song by you too goes that we still haven't found what we're looking for. There are moments when God's truth brings it all together in a crystal understanding, when we see the kingdom of God in our lives and we know it works and the truth works. There are moments in our life when we're happy, when we're content, when we're fully alive, and we wish that we could hold it all forever.

You ever experienced happiness and contentment at a certain point in your life? Everything's come together and you know it's there. Your kids are doing fine, your health is there, your mate loves you, or you're happy with yourself, or whatever state you find yourself, as Paul said, and it all comes together. And there's a season in your life when it's all there.

You know, there are moments at times when you experience certain things with people or with life and it's just kind of like it's perfection as best you can get. I liken it to some of the afternoons we've had recently in the autumn, or the weather is, you know, it's what they call autumn haze. The sun is at that angle that produces the hue and the colors with the working off of the leaves, the trees, and the atmosphere is different in the fall than it is in mid-July. And that's because of light in the atmosphere and things like that. But certain times at this time of year, the sun will be just right, the atmosphere will be just right, and it's a perfect moment outside in the woods or in your backyard or on your street. And you look around and you say, boy, this is good. This is good. And you wish you could kind of hold it, like Jim Croce said one time, wish you could hold time in a bottle and just kind of capture it and look at it.

But darkness comes, rain moves in, the leaves fall, winter comes, seasons change. Life is like that.

Our desires are met at times and sometimes then we find ourselves yearning for something. Desire drives our dreams, as I said earlier. And I think desire drives our search for a meaning in life. And it's desire that writes good music, a great symphony, a beautiful poem, a story or a novel that lifts and moves us to good works. It's desire that builds friendships and lifelong relationships with a mate that we choose. Desire does that, and that desire is good. When we understand it, when we react properly to the desires of our life, it keeps us from shriveling up inside and dying on the vine. Too often, people make decisions and they accept who they are, where they are, what they are, as just getting by. And we just get by.

You're asking somebody, how are you doing? They say, oh, just getting by. Just getting by. And it's, you know, more than sometimes it's more than just a phrase to to respond to. It actually means, yeah, you know, I'm just getting by. And sometimes we are just keeping our head above water. I know that. But there's other times when we have to realize that we've got to do more than just make do. The same old same old is not good enough. I think that it's this desire that starts a person on the journey looking for life's meaning and looking for purpose. And when Paul uses this term here and we apply it to ourselves in our Christian calling, we come to understand what the meaning of life is. That's why we went searching for it and knew that there was something that we didn't have wherever we were when it came to the big questions and the big issues of life. We've entered into a journey, a lifelong journey, with the truth of God, with the calling that God has given us as we accepted that calling. And it has made a it has made the difference in our life. Whether it's made a positive difference or not is up to us. It's up to how we've used God's Spirit, how we've responded to God's law. We're all on a journey. We get tempted to compromise and to detour. We get tempted to just get by to accept certain things and let it go with that. Sometimes we're tempted to even give up.

The great tragedy of life and of the converted Christian life, the great tragedy of that is if after tasting the power of the world to come, after tasting the Spirit of God and the power of the kingdom of God, we just come to settle in our own personal lives for the same old, same old, and become mediocre Christians. What is being addressed here in 1st Timothy 3 is more than being mediocre. Specifically, yes, it's addressing a man's desire to be an elder.

And that's not mediocre. That can't be mediocre. As you know, a mediocre elder is one of the saddest things that the church could experience. A mediocre Christian is one of the saddest things that can be experienced as well.

A Christian who has just accepted the status quo of their life and the relationship to God. I'm not talking about ditching the church or ditching your mate or ditching your friends and abandoning God's way of life as rejecting the status quo. That's not what I'm talking about. That's extreme, unbalanced, ungodly behavior in the context of this whole subject and this message. I'm talking about not really using the Spirit of God, the truth of the Scriptures, the way of life that we've been called to, and aspiring and stretching ourselves forward with our life to achieve the real deep desires of our life within the calling that we have been given.

To be more than just a mediocre Christian.

You know, regardless of the choices that we make as we go along within the church, we can make compromises with the desires and the dreams that we have and not work hard enough, not submit ourselves enough to God, not humble ourselves before the hand of God enough.

We make compromises. We can still be caught up in the spirit of the world. We can let money, its pursuit, be a God and a goal. And later on in this section, that is addressed. We can make compromises and choices that keep us from really accomplishing the full measure of the desire of our calling. Hold your place here in Timothy and let's look at Matthew 16.

Matthew 16.

In verse 26, we'll look at verse 24. Jesus said to His disciples, If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. Again, we desire to follow Christ. Whoever desires to save his life will lose it.

We can desire to settle in our life for mediocre. We can desire to chase something that is not going to let us achieve our full spiritual potential. We can be caught up in trying to marry the world to Christianity, and it will always be mediocre. Whoever desires to save his life will lose it. That's looking to the physical and to the things of this physical life and of this world. Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it for the sake of the kingdom of God. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? Ask yourself if you've sold your soul to save your life. Squelched your desire to gain the world. And stop aspiring to a higher calling, to higher ground.

Stop stretching ourselves spiritually to achieve a deeper walk with God, a deeper relationship with God and his spirit working in our life. That can happen to us. You and I can sell our soul and settle for second best and stop desiring, stop dreaming, because of things that we find ourselves in. Our marriages, our families, our jobs, our relationships, and not fully utilize the power of God's Spirit. And allow ourselves to be trapped into the walls of life without really moving beyond that.

My second favorite movie of all time is a movie entitled Shawshank Redemption.

It's a story of prison life in the 1940s and 1950s up in, I think it's in New England, where it's set. And a story of specifically two men and what prison does to them and how they, in a sense, seek to redeem themselves through the experiences. It's a very good movie in many ways. But there's a line from the movie that I think is helpful because it, as the movie focuses on men's trials and temptations of being in prison, there's one scene that, when I first saw it, really hit me. And one of the men, his name is Red, he's played by Morgan Freeman in the movie, Red, who's the ringleader of all the other prisoners, he explains what happens when you've been in prison too long behind those walls. And he says, at first these walls, you hate them.

They make you crazy. After a while, you get used to them. You don't notice them anymore.

Then comes the day you realize you need them. And so there in one sentence, they've gone from hating them to making you crazy, to ignoring them, to a dependency upon those four walls that make up your life. As he describes, decades of incarceration behind prison walls. And as he, you know, essentially a man in prison like that, man or woman in prison, comes to the point where they prefer slavery to freedom. They prefer death to life. And some of them can't move beyond that. And it's very, very difficult to move beyond that after being there for many, many years. You feel like you need those walls. Sometimes we get surrounded by walls of life that we may at first hate, or drove us crazy, and we can't move beyond. And then we finally accept them, and we just live with them. And we can't live then without them in our life. And it squelches desire. And we need to be at times awakened. This is what is being addressed here in the idea of a desire for a Christian, and in our life, to stretch ourselves to be useful instruments in God's hands for the kingdom of God and for the mission of the church. And we have to understand that. There's a wonderful story in John chapter 4. John the fourth chapter is the story of the woman at the well. And it's a story of a woman with desires. And it's instructive for all of us in this matter of searching for what we really want and need in life. Christ left Judea in verse 3, and He departed to Galilee, but they went through Samaria. And He came to a city in a city of Samaria called Sakhar near a plot of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph in verse 5. And there was a well there, Jacob's well.

So Christ was tired, and He was worn out from their journey thus far that day. Verse 6 tells us He sat by the well. And it was about the sixth hour, which means it was about the middle of the day. The sun was up, high noon. And He sits down by the well. Now, a woman of Samaria came to draw water. And Jesus said to her, Give me a drink. His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.

And the woman of Samaria said to him, How is it that you, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman? For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. And Jesus answered and said to her, If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, Give me a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water. You already begin to get the point that this was more than just a chance meeting, and that Christ is asking for more than just a drink of water.

And the woman hasn't caught on to that. And so often in the dialogues that Christ has, either with His disciples or other people, they don't really get to hold just of His question.

They don't read between the lines. And it's reading in between the lines that we get to this issue of desire here, and understanding something about the deep issues of life. Because this is really what He is addressing. He said, You would have asked for something, and I would have given you living water. And the woman said to Him, Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where then do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself as well as his sons and his livestock?

Jesus answered and said to her, Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again. Speaking of the water that would come out of that well. Whatever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. Now that's the water that will quench a desire. You really had a desire for a good cold glass of ice water, middle of the day of atonement every day, right? Every year. Or other times when we've really been working hard, and we've got to have a drink of water. I mean, there's been times when I've eaten things and, you know, salty and whatever, and I don't have enough water, and I may be driving, and I can't wait till I get to the next interstate section or quick store or whatever so I can run in and buy a big bottle of Dasani bottled water because I've got this thirst that I've got to have. And I have, and I've got to slake it with some water. But it'll come back again. And he said, Whoever drinks of the water that I give will never thirst. But the water that I shall give on him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life. Now that's water that satisfies. Christ used this again in John 7 when He talked about the rivers of living water flowing out from him. And this is really the water that satisfies. And the woman said to him, Sir, that's the water I want. I want that bottle. I'll pay $3 a bottle for that one if I can drink something that's going to take care of all my needs. Fill all my desires.

This woman had a lot of desires. Let's read on. The woman said to him, Sir, give me this water that I may thirst nor come here to draw. And Jesus said to her, Go call your husband and come here.

The woman answered and said, I have no husband. Jesus said, You have said, Well, I have no husband. Verse 18, For you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband, in that you spoke truly. Now you know why this woman came to the well in the middle of the day. In this period of time, with the communal well, that was the only water system. They didn't have pipes running into their homes and a tap they could turn on to get water anytime they wanted. They had to go to the well. And it was the woman's job to go to the well. And the woman went early before the heat of the day. If you were hauling five gallons of water every day, you'd go six o'clock when it was cooler. You wouldn't go in the middle of the day. All the women of the community went early, and they lingered, and they talked, and they got their water, and you know how people do, not just women. But they talked. They caught up on all the gossip. And then they went back to cook, to wash, to do the things with the water. This woman came out, it says, about the sixth hour. That was the middle of the day. Why'd she come in the middle of the day? Why did she come in the middle of the day? By herself? Think about that. She didn't want to interact with the other women. Why? She had five husbands. Was she the town tramp? Was she the one they all talked about? Was she just sick and tired of the women of the village? She didn't want to be with them. That's why she went, probably, why she went in the middle of the day. She could get her water, go home, be private. She didn't have to interact with people. What kind of a self-esteem do you think she had? What kind of a woman marries five men? What kind of a man marries five women, for that matter?

I mean, think about this. You marry once, why do you marry once? Do you want someone to take care of you? Do you want someone to love you? Do you want a relationship? There's an attraction? You're looking for something. It blows up. You marry a second time. You marry a second time. What are you looking for the second time? The very thing you didn't have the first time. Someone that loves you.

Someone who won't beat you. Someone who won't run out on you. Someone who'll be home every day.

Someone who won't drink the paycheck away. What happens if that falls a second time?

You marry a third time looking for it. How many times do you have to marry to find it?

Now, look, I've known a lot of situations and a lot of people over the years. I've seen some people who do quit after the first.

And they say, you know, it just isn't going to work. Or maybe they've been married a number of years and they're widowed or become a widower in middle life. They still got many years ahead of them, but they realize, you know, I had the best. I'm never going to find anybody like him or her.

And they live 20, 30 years alone, satisfied that they had the best and they're not going to find anything anymore. Then I've known some that married two, three, four times and still don't find it.

What are they looking for? They're looking for a desire to be filled. This woman was looking for something to be filled in her life. We're all looking for desires to be filled in our life.

And until we really drink of the right water, the waters of God's Spirit, and use that in our life and aspire and stretch ourselves to something beyond, we're going to keep going back to the well that doesn't provide for our thirst and doesn't fill our desire. We're going to keep going back to that. We hope this doesn't take us five husbands, five wives, five phases of our life or whatever. Sometimes, as I said, people give it up and understand. This woman had five husbands and then, as Christ said, she was living with one that wasn't even her husband. They, you know, common law, shacking up, cohabiting. He didn't say any of that, but that's what was going on.

Well, it's an interesting story. It goes on beyond into other things that we won't have to go in for. But you look at this and this is the way Christ dealt with people. He basically is saying, what is your desire? What is it you're looking for? Whether it's a lame man sitting in the pool, waiting for the water to be rustled? He said, what do you want? What is it you desire? And Christ had what everyone of them desired. You know, there was one occasion where they actually literally tore the roof off of a house to get to Christ, to get what they wanted. That's passion. But that's also a realization that what he had, they wanted and needed to where they would climb up on a house and rip the shingles off and the plywood. You know how much work that takes? You know how much effort that takes to get to what it is that they wanted to fill that desire? It takes a lot. That's the whole point. What is it that we desire? Christ on another occasion in Matthew 7, he says, ask, seek, knock. Sometimes we have to beat on that door and keep knocking at the door to get to what we need.

Christ said that he had come that they might have life. And to experience the kingdom of God now in this life is why he came. That's why we are here. That's why he was here. That's the desire that every one of us want. When we see a nice autumn haze in the afternoon, I sometimes think, you know, that's, boy, it doesn't get any better than that. I remember one time having dinner with a group of friends at a restaurant, and it was just kind of, you know, as the one line from another movie said, it was magic.

The conversation, the group of friends, the food, everything kind of came together on this one particular occasion. And I remember just kind of detaching myself from it and looking, I just quit talking and looked at everybody and looked at what they were going through and where they were and where I was. And it was just kind of a moment with a group of people, and it was perfect.

And at times, you know, I'll walk out and I'll see a beautiful autumn afternoon or a sunlit summer morning, and the sun is just right, and it's perfect. When we see those times, we need to relate them to the perfection of God's kingdom. And let that teach us a lesson about the beauty of life as God wants us to live it in our life today, experiencing the best of the kingdom of God in our life. That is what our desire really should be. And this is what is being addressed here in 1 Timothy 3. To aspire, to stretch ourselves forward, to dream, and to desire something that makes us better. And as Christians, when we desire to be involved in the work of God, it is an involvement and a noble task or occupation that is not just a blessing for us, but also a blessing to other people. That's what it should be. And so, when we move on, we'll go back here to 1 Timothy 3. We talked a lot about desire, because I think desire here, as it's mentioned twice in this first verse, it's talking more about a man just wanting to be ordained and be in some position within the church. We have to look beyond these things and really understand what the Scriptures are talking to us about and why it isn't a man desires to be a bishop, but why is it we desire to be a Christian? And what are the deep desires of our life? And when those are being met and when they're being fed, then we are being stretched to a life that is above ourselves. Well, in verse 2, he moves on to another element here. He said, a bishop then must be blameless. Blameless. Well, at that point, brethren, I just closed my Bible and stopped preaching. I've not met any minister, much less any member that is blameless. Does that mean we give up? Does that mean we resign? We quit being a minister? Quit being a member, a Christian? No. But it is talking about a high standard again, and it is a high standard for every one of us. It's talking about our character. It's talking about avoiding not just evil itself, but even the appearance of evil. So that our personal conduct doesn't get us so close to the edge in life that we skirt with danger, lifestyles, actions, attitudes that are right on the edge on the borderline. Kind of an edgy, extreme personality. Extreme sports are the big rage today in the world. Bungee jumping. What else? You know, there's some of the extreme sports that people get. They're all over the television, things that people do to get a rush, to get some type of satisfaction and feel good entertainment and attain to something. But it's pushing danger. It's pushing the envelope on a lot of things. Sometimes you can minimize the risk, and you weigh all that in whatever a person does. But when it comes to our character and our lifestyle, if being an extreme Christian, pushing the envelope, pushing the edge with actions and attitudes and conduct is our approach, it doesn't really fill the bill. That's mediocre.

You know, the Scriptures talk about things that are sometimes lawful but not expedient. In 1 Corinthians 6, Paul addressed this. There's a lot of things that are not specifically addressed in Scripture that we have to make decisions about. We've made certain judgments over the years in the church about various forms of behavior and aspects of life that we have to go to the Scriptures and find certain principles on. And then at times, you know, as people look at that, they say, well, there's no thus saith and it's not explicitly condemned or forbidden or whatever, in some cases. And that's true in certain situations. I'm not going to try to list all of those.

The point is, we have to have an approach to our life that is blameless, spotless, that doesn't furnish anybody grounds to accuse us of not being godly, not living the values of the kingdom of God, regardless of who it is, whether it's our friends and family in the church, our friends at work, our friends at school. We've got to have an approach to life where our life will stand up under the scrutiny of impartial examination, and we will be found beyond reproach. That's what we have to strive for. And if it does require certain denial of things, we have to make those decisions. That's the liberty God gives you and I.

That's the liberty God gives you and I, to know when and how to do it, to avoid the appearance of evil. In 1 Corinthians 6 and verse 12, Paul says, all things are lawful for me, but all things are not helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any. All things are lawful. Now, how do you interpret that? Well, you can all things are lawful. Well, I think we all realize we realize that, yeah, there are certain things we might do, but we might die. You can shoot your veins up with a powerful drug.

It's lawful in the sense you've got the free moral agency to do it, but it's not helpful.

And you may not find a thus saith in the scripture that says, don't do drugs. Thou shalt not do crack. But you have to make the judgment based on the principles of God's word. And again, the liberties that God gives us. God gives us freedom to make choices. And those choices, we have to be assured, are the best ones. Paul says, yeah, things are lawful, but they're not helpful. And he says, I won't be brought under the power of any. You know, drugs bring you under the power of something beyond yourself. Alcohol does the same thing. Nicotine does the same thing. The internet does the same thing.

A lot of things bring us under the power of something beyond ourselves.

And we have to make the choices to stay as far away from that as possible. That's where it all comes down to. And that's what he is addressing here. Chapter 10 of 1 Corinthians, verse 23.

He says, all things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful for me, but not all things edify. Again, speaking of things to the glory of God. And in the context here, he's talking about meats and the questionnaire of meats offered to idols and things like that.

So it comes down to an attitude of our heart and our mind. I like to, in this section, bring it all back to, again, the matter of the desires of our life. And once we establish that, and I spent a lot of time establishing that here in the sermon this morning, looking at the desires of our life, but Paul goes on to go into some details to help us to understand how to live in order to achieve the great desires of our life. And when we do that, brethren, we are falling into the example here of the frame of mind of one who is being called to something far greater than we can ever imagine. I'm going to continue this next time, and we'll, believe it or not, finish it up next time. But with that as a foundation, that should give us some food for thought. I'll come back next week and finish this sermon up.