God Corrects Those He Loves

In the late 1800s, tens of thousands of men were building something that the world had never seen before quite like it. Some of them started in Omaha, Nebraska, and some started in California. Who knows what I'm talking about? A few. They decided on doing this grand, the U.S. government, grand thing, this big thing. Abraham Lincoln was the first one to present it, then of course he was assassinated. But they were going to build a railroad all the way across the United States. Now that sounds like an easy thing to do, right? We're going to build a railroad across the United States. It was an undertaking not quite like anything ever done on this continent before.

Two groups of men building tracks thousands of miles apart, and they're supposed to meet at a very specific time and place. Now they're all trying to compete with each other to get there first, but you know they have to keep moving. And how do you plan that so that they meet at the same time and place? Not only that, building a railroad is hard. Building a railroad then was almost impossible. The the trades that they had could not move up steep grades or go down steep grades. Now you're crossing thousands of miles of prairie, rivers, deserts where they just sink, they would just sink into the sand. And let's not forget the Rocky Mountains. You can't go around them and you can't go over them, which means you have to blow holes in the Rocky Mountains. Thousands of men died in this. They launched these two projects and they had to meet together, and they had to go through things they never imagined they would have to go through. I mean, who would have thought? Swamps out in the prairie. Some places they were crossing had never been seen except by the natives who lived there. So they didn't know what was there.

In laying this track, one of the most important things they had, or aspects of it, were the surveyors. The surveyors would go out. Sometimes they're alone or in pairs, or just a few of them, for long periods of time surveying where they had to go. They might come to a canyon and they have to figure out how to go around the canyon. They have to go up and down the canyon, find a way to go around it, or find a place where they can build a bridge, and then come back to the exact same spot on the other side. Rivers. And they would build bridges over creeks and rivers, and they'd get washed out, and they'd have to go back and rebuild them. Because as they surveyed across this, they had one great problem. What if you got off by two feet, and now you're laying the track, instead of straight towards where you need to go, you're laying it by two feet? That's not much, is it? Two feet a day? If you did that long enough, you're not headed towards California, you're in Canada. If you do that long enough, you're not headed towards California. At some point, you reach the Grand Canyon. In other words, you reached an impossibility. Or you'd reach out in the desert someplace where you couldn't get to build a train track. Or you'd reach a part of the Rocky Mountains you could not burrow through. Everything depended on this being exact, and it was the surveyors who did it. It was the surveyors who marked the line. And they would have to go back and say, tear up the last 10 miles of track, we're off too much. We got to reset. And of course, nobody liked that. We always talk about God's purpose for our lives. And in the daily life, which seems so complicated, sometimes we can't figure out what's going on. We have trials, we have difficulties, things that hit us from all directions, job problems, money problems, family problems, everything, health problems. Everything just piles up on us, and we feel sort of lost in our Christianity. And then sometimes we think, why is God correcting me? Why is God doing this to me? What is God doing? Why is God being harsh on me? Why is God giving me these trials? There is a specific time and place in history where you're supposed to be. A very specific time and place in history that you're supposed to be, and God is taking you there. And God is surveying your life and pointing you to that exact time and place. Because in all of history, there is a real time and a real place where Jesus Christ comes back. And either we are alive or we're resurrected. It doesn't matter at that specific time and place you are there, and that is what God is doing in your life. Everything else is secondary. Everything else in your life is secondary as God prepares you for that time and place, because that is what He's chosen you for, is that time and place. And He's preparing you for that.

And He has to survey the ground you're on. None of our paths are exactly the same, but we're all in the same place. I mean, our journeys are quite different all over the place, but we all have to end up in the same place. Now, let's think of that and let's look at a scripture that maybe we can look at a little differently today. Hebrews 12. Hebrews 12. And let's start in verse 5.

He says, and you have forgotten. He's talking to Jewish Christians here. They had forgotten something. He says, you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as two sons. It goes from the Old Testament. My son do not despise the chastening of the Lord. Now there's the punishment of the Lord, nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him, for whom the Lord loves, He chases and scourges every son whom He receives. I mean, scourging means He actually, you know, there's something uncomfortable that happens. In other words, He actually spanks. Okay. This is the terms that He's using for the way God interacts with us.

In verse 7, He says, if you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons, for what son is there whom a father does not chasten? But if you are without chastening, of which you have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons. I want to stop there a minute and let's look at this and what He's saying. We believe God punishes us for what? Oh, He did something bad, and He's angry, and He's punishing us. Sort of like God's being mean. Right? Like a little kid. Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. No, you're still going to get punishment. Or maybe you came from a family where your dad's punishment was really out of line. I mean, he punished you for things you didn't do, or his punishment was way too harsh. And we say, this is what God is doing to me. God is waiting for me to mess up so God can punish me.

And that's not what He's saying here. Because He says, if God does not correct our course, we are illegitimate children. And that's exactly what that means. We use a harsher word there, but that's what it means in Greek. You're not children of God. You're illegitimate. If He does not correct us, so we have to be corrected from time to time. But what is the purpose? Is it because God likes exerting power over us? I mean, sometimes you'll see a man who just likes correcting kids because it makes him feel powerful. And that is not correction. That's a problem that man has. Why do we do what we do? If we love our children, we correct them to keep them from what? Hurting themselves. Or we keep them from developing traits in them that are evil or bad or will ruin their lives. Most children don't like to learn how to work. I didn't. But I'm glad I did.

But I sure didn't like it when my parents made me do it. But I remember telling my mom once that washing dishes was women's work. I still remember that.

Now, I had to take my turn washing dishes. I'm glad. I'm glad I took my turn washing dishes.

What is the reason? Is she just being mean? I read Calvin and Hobbes every day. He is absolutely assured that every adult is out to make his life miserable.

I'm tired of words like responsibility. He just gets upset with those words even. And yet, we have to learn those things. And our parents have to teach us those things. If they love us, they teach us. Even though we may not like it at the time. This is the point he's making here. God has to correct our course. We're like little children. If we're allowed to do what we want to do, what would you do if you had a five-year-old and you let that five-year-old do whatever they want? Ah, you want a whole box of Oreos for lunch? That's fine. You know, all you had for breakfast was a big bowl of some kind of sweet cereal.

And dinner? What do you want? Three hot dogs? No problem. And then they get sick. As a parent, I mean, we would all look at the adult and say, that child's sickness is whose fault? The parent's fault.

So let's look at God now in a little different way. He's not being vindictive. He's not being mean. He's looking at children that are headed for disaster. And he's coming along and saying, child, let's do this a different way. He's going to correct us.

Let's look at what he says here in verse 9.

He says, Furthermore, we've had human fathers who corrected us, and we paid their respect. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the father of spirits and live? For they indeed for a few days chastened us as seen best to them. But he for our prophet, that we may be partakers of his holiness. Now no chasing seems to be joyful for the present, but painful. Nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness and those who have been trained by it. Now I want you to think about this. What is he saying? We think, well, God is punishing us. Why? Well, just to make us feel bad for doing bad. And it's sort of a pittance. You know, I did bad, so I have to suffer. And God now feels better because I suffered. But that's not what it says. It says God does this so that we can have what? Peace. God brings correction into our lives because we're on a journey. And if he doesn't survey where you and I are going, we end up nowhere.

We end up at the edge of the Grand Canyon. We end up someplace in the Rockies up in Canada, we all freeze to death, or we die in some desert someplace that we can't get across. That's reality. That spiritual wasteland. And he has to keep laying the tracks. And sometimes he comes back and says, you laid those tracks wrong, tear them up, and move them over by two feet. If two feet, that's nothing! Of the course of a long of a lifetime, two feet off means you're not even in the same place. You're off so far you don't know where you are.

This is what God's correction is. It's to produce the peaceable fruit of righteousness, right relationship with God, right relationship with others, and righteousness means that we're right before the law. It is to bring peace to us. We resist God's correction because we're like little Calvin, who says, I always know what's right and all adults are after me. We think God's after us. And the truth is, he's just trying to keep us from going where we should not go and where we cannot go. Now, God will correct us in a lot of ways. One is if you and I have an educated conscience, we have really studied the Scripture. We're in a close relation with God. We're in prayer. We're in a close prayer life with Him. We're doing self-examination in light of the Scripture and with prayer. Then He's just going to guide us through His Holy Spirit. And a lot of times that's just you'll be doing something and a thought. A lot of times the thought comes from here, right? You'll be about to do something and you might receive that a message will come into your mind that says, you know, do not offend the least of these, my little ones. Yeah, that person's wrong, but I still can't say what I was about to say. Okay. God will actually work with us through His Spirit and He'll correct us. That's the easiest level to be corrected at. At that level, when we say, okay, I better not do that, we step back and handle it differently. That's all the correction we need. In other words, the tracts didn't teach me much change. It's just, okay, there we go. Keep going. Unfortunately, usually when we get in trouble, it's because we're not close to God. So we're not submitting to those prompts through His Spirit. So another way that He will correct us is through the Scripture itself. You'll be reading the Scripture and suddenly you'll read something and say, ah, that applies to me. Now, if you read the Scripture and never feel like and never understand that applies to me, your tracts are really being laid in a wrong direction. And sooner or later, He's going to have to correct you one way or another. So the second way is that's the reason why we talk so much about study your Bible, study your Bible, you study your Bible. And every time someone says they don't have time, then your priorities are wrong. Your priorities are wrong. Something's wrong when you don't have time every day to at least study your Bible some.

Something's wrong. Okay, what is it? My boss is more important than learning from God. My what? My friends are more important than learning from God? My, you know, just add it up. Now, this is really hard, by the way, when you have little children. When you have little children, you don't have a lot of control over your time sometimes. The crisis has come out of nowhere, right? It's like, oh, good, I can sit down and read my Bible, and then you hear one of the kids throwing up all over the living room floor. I mean, that's the way it goes, right? But you still have to find some time. You have to find some time, because he's going to keep laying our tracks through the Scripture. He's going to tell us how to lay the next set, because if you're done with this set of tracks, guess what you have to do? Put down the ties and put down two more tracks. They laid it in sections all the way across the United States. At some points, they had men running. They could lay down the ties. They could build the grades, lay down the ties, lay down the track, and hammer them in all day long like a machine with thousands of men running, just moving, moving, moving, and lay down miles and miles of track. Sometimes in life, that's what God does with this. You're doing good. We're going to push it. And He does that sometimes. But if we see Him as a surveyor—I mean, He is our Father. He's the sovereign of the universe. He is our judge. We need to be aware of that relationship with Him all the time. But a surveyor is another thing He does. He helps you lay your life.

He helps you lay your life. And all of us have been through some time in life where we suddenly sort of wake up and realize, you know, I've been drifting. But think about laying tracks. Or maybe you just drift it into a swamp. Go back and re-figuring that is difficult. If our conscience is right before God, we react very quickly, and all we need is prompting. If not, it's through the Bible study. Of course, if we're not studying the Bible, we won't be prompted by God's Spirit because He's going to prompt us through the Scripture. Sometimes He corrects us through another person. Another person walks into your life and shows you something you're doing wrong. We've all been through that, too. They walk into your life and you say, yeah, you're right. First of all, it is, I don't like this. Who are you to tell me? Then it's like, yeah, you're right. Your first reaction is very negative to begin with.

But the bottom line is we respond to people when we hear them telling us what? The ways of God. Sometimes people just give you their opinion, opinions or opinions. But sometimes you've got to listen because sometimes that person is telling you something that's from God. I don't mean directly inspired by God, but they're looking at you. They're seeing something in the Scripture. And sometimes it may be inspired by God, but they're seeing something in Scripture and they're saying, look, you've got a problem here.

Then sometimes God allows us just to suffer the consequences. It's like, don't do that. Don't do that. Don't do that. Oh, is that going to hurt? That's God. I mean, He could stop us all the time. God will just let us suffer the consequences. And when we suffer the consequences, what do we do with that? We're going to talk about that in a minute.

And then sometimes in the worst case scenario, He's going to punish us to stop us from doing it. Just like you will punish a child from running into the street. And, oh, that seems so cruel. It's better than getting hit by a truck, right? You will punish a child to keep him or her from running into the street.

But the consequences are so great, you have to do something. And God's like that. It's like the consequences of this. You're going to die in the desert here. You're going to go over a canyon someplace. I've surveyed where your life is going, and you won't listen.

So I'm going to have to do something to get you to go back and follow my surveying where I'm sending your life, where I'm directing you. Because remember, only He knows the exact time and how to get to the place we're going to. Only He knows it. The men working on those railroads had no idea where they were going, what they were doing, what laid ahead. They just laid track. Only the surveyors knew. Only God knows. And we have to have faith in that. Let's look at a couple or a few biblical examples here of people who were corrected by God and their reactions.

Genesis 3. Yes, back to Genesis. I think probably in the different sermons and sermonettes we get here, at least once a month, we're back in the first few chapters of Genesis. Genesis 3. We know the story. God had told Adam and Eve to eat this, don't eat that. It wasn't like the tree had magic qualities. It was don't eat that tree because if you do, you're disobeying me and you're making up in your mind a decision that will change who you are.

It will actually change who you are. It's like, oh, if I eat this, something magic happens to me, which is exactly what Satan told him. The magic's in the fruit. You eat that and you'll be like God. The fruit was probably nothing. It's just a fruit. It might have been the only tree ever made like that. It wasn't magic in the fruit. It wasn't like in the molecules, there was some kind of poison.

It's like I made a decision and the moment I eat this, I have broken my relationship with God. They were cut off from God in a very intimate way. And we've spent the rest of humanity, what? All of us trying to get back in relationship with God in an intimate way. That's what our whole lives are. Our whole lives are trying to get back into that relationship with God. Well, they lost it. They lost that relationship with God. And God's still there, but it's not the same. You can imagine for the first time feeling anger, confusion, shame, guilt, all these things they had never felt before.

It's flooding into their minds as they have now broken a very close relationship with God. Look at verse 12. Well, you know what happened. God comes walking through the garden. They hide from Him. That's very important. They hide. They never hid from God before. When they understood God's presence was there, because it was always there, but they would have only known it at certain times, they were ecstatic. They were filled with joy.

They were happy. That happiness is gone. Now they feel fear. They actually, they feel fear around God. And He confronts them. In verse 12, the man said, the woman who you gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree and I ate it. Yes, I did something wrong, but you can't really blame me for my behavior. It was her fault.

You can't really blame me. So here we have correction from God. You are really in the wrong direction here. And the first thing He does in this state of guilt, the state of fear, the state of all these things are going through His mind, is He says, you know what? Okay, okay. I might have done something wrong, but it's really not my fault. Yeah, it's her fault. And then what does she say?

And the Lord said to the woman, what have you done? Why in the world did you pick? Now, He knew all of it. He's getting their response. And the woman said, the serpent deceived me and I ate. You know, what they're saying here isn't necessarily a lie. Yeah, Satan came along and deceived me and I did it, so it's his fault. Yes, my wife, who just batted her eyes at me, so I ate it. It's her fault. When God corrects us, one of the things we have to understand is that we can't blame someone else for our behaviors, even if they were the cause.

I mean, we've all done something because someone maybe made us angry, and then later said, I shouldn't have done that. Well, I shouldn't have done that means I can't let that other person control me because that's what happens. We let other people control us all the time. We all do that. When God came along and said, you have a problem, their response was, it's not really my fault.

We have to be careful because we will literally think that our reasons for committing the sin outweighs the evil of the sin. Do you understand? My reason for doing this sort of makes this not as bad as you think.

But my reason for doing this isn't really what you think, right?

How many young men, especially teenagers, have stolen something because their buddies dared them to do it? In order to prove their manhood, they did it. And what are you going to do? Blame it on somebody else, right? I felt like a little kid this week, and I felt myself doing that very thing. Gares McNeely is giving a presentation. Now, if any of you know Steve Myers, that man will mumble under his breath the funniest things you ever heard, and he'll do it on purpose. And I'm sitting there, and at one point he said something, and I literally jumped and looked at him, and then realized what he was doing was too late. I'm laughing. I'm trying not to laugh. He did that like two or three times. So afterwards, Dares walks up to me and says, I'm looking out there, and you're sitting laughing in my presentation. And I was like a 15-year-old boy. I said, it's his fault! And I was just smiling like this. No, no, no, I can't leave you guys alone for a minute, can I? And it sounds like a teacher at school, right? And it's like, I'd been through this before when I was 15. But Steve knows what he's doing the whole time. He knows he's going to get me in trouble. And of course, he knows it too. Steve's got him laughing. I'm going to go act like what's your problem, man. So I get caught with this kind of stuff. But we do that, right? It's not my fault. It's really not my fault. It's this guy's fault. It was his idea. It was his idea as a boy. I don't know how many times that one came up. It was his idea. Well, so what?

This is Adam and Eve, and this is a normal now human reaction to being.

Corrected by God. As we simply say, it was my idea. So I'm not as guilty as I seem.

A second way that we improperly deal with correction from God is found here in just another chapter, chapter four of Genesis.

Genesis four.

Cain and Abel, right? They bring their offerings before God. One is acceptable to God. One is not.

Now, God comes to Cain and tells him, let me tell you how to correct this.

It's not like he came to Cain and said, oh, I don't accept your offering, you stupid idiot, and I hate you, and you rotten person, and because of this, I'm going to punish you. He came and said, we can correct this. Let's correct this course of action. You don't understand your relationship with me. And what does Cain do? He kills his brother. A very interesting response, but it's not just this thought my fault, like his parents. It's a different reaction to correction here, and it's a reaction just common among us, too. So, verse nine, then the Lord said to Cain, where is your brother? And he said, I do not know, am I my brother's keeper? And that's an interesting statement. Of course he knew. Of course he knew. Now, I don't know, and I would guess he did not intend to kill him, because God doesn't kill Cain, which is actually the penalty for first-degree murder. What he does is he gives him a curse. He gives him a punishment, but he doesn't take his life.

I don't know. I don't know if Cain had ever seen a living thing die.

I don't know. Maybe they had killed some animals to eat. Obviously they were doing sacrifices. So I guess they would have had to kill an animal, but they'd never seen a human being die. They'd never seen a human being die. And he hit him and he killed him.

And he says, hey, I don't take care of my brother. He's around. Who knows where he is? And he said, what have you done? The voice of your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground. So now you are cursed from the earth, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. When you kill the ground, it shall no longer yield its strength to you. A fugitive and a vagabond you shall be on the earth.

He said, here's what's going to happen to you. The family, as it was growing, is going to drive you out. You're not going to be able to be around the rest of your family because it's the only people on the earth at the time. His brothers and his sisters who were having children and this is growing. You know, it would have been... population would have grown pretty quickly. I don't mean into millions, but I mean there was a whole lot more than just a few people very quickly. And he says, here's your punishment. You can't live with other people. You can't live with other people. Now you think what would be his response. I was wrong. I begged forgiveness. Adam and Eve didn't say we were wrong. We begged forgiveness. They just said, it's not as bad as it seems because this other person is willing to blame. He just says, my punishment is greater than I can bear.

He saw Abel as some... it was unfair. It was unfair that God gave Abel a blessing. It was unfair that God accepted Abel above him. Right? If it's fair, everybody gets exactly the same. But the problem is that's not about fairness. This has nothing to do with fairness. It has to do with pleasing God and loving God in your relationship with God. So what did he do? I was justified in doing this to him because he was making my life miserable. And then what does he tell God? This is unfair. Your punishment on me is unfair. I can't even bear this. He didn't say, I repent. Please show me mercy.

This is how we respond to God's punishment all too often. This isn't fair. This just isn't fair. Why are you doing this to me?

I mean, the only reason I did that was because the other people were wrong. The other people were unfair. The other people... I'm not being treated the way I want to be treated. I'm not getting what I want to get. I'm not being blessed the way I want to be blessed. Just fill in the blank. It's unfair. And the fact that God doesn't deal with it the way we want, he's unfair. This will drive you and drive me, once we get into these attitudes, the total opposite direction of where God wants to take us. We can't get there with this attitude. It's very interesting. Look at Proverbs. Proverbs 3.

Proverbs 3 verse 5.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lead not to your own understanding. And all your ways acknowledge him and he shall direct your paths. In Hebrew, that literally means he'll make your paths straight.

There's a point where you're going to.

You know, what do you mean? I've got a path. Where's it? Well, I don't know where the path's going. God says, here, let me make your path straight. Let me aim you to where you're going. If we are like Adam and Eve, we just look at things like, you know, we look at everybody. It's always somebody else's fault. It's always somebody else's fault. Or if we're like Cain, it's just not fair. I deserve more than this. If we approach life that way, we get crooked paths. And we don't know where it's going to go. Trust in God and he will make your path straight, even when it doesn't make sense to you. Because you can be looking, you can think about laying this railroad and the surveyor comes back, gets with the boss, gets with everybody and says, we have to move this and go around. There's a canyon up here. And suddenly you're building track to go off like this and around in different directions. You're thinking, this is crazy because it wouldn't be until three days later that you got to the canyon and realize you had to go around it. So you can keep going straight.

But wow, we had to change something. We had to do something different. It took extra work.

Not understanding that was the only way to really go.

Make our path straight. 2 Thessalonians 3. Look at a passage here with a Hebrew word.

2 Thessalonians 3.

And verse 3.

But the Lord is faithful, who will establish you and guard you from the evil one. So he's going to take care of us. And we have confidence in the Lord concerning you, both that you do the will of the thing He commands you. Now may the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God and into the patience of Christ. That Greek word can be translated, make straight.

In a different language, but it can be translated, make straight. So may God make straight your heart. In other words, headed towards the right path. We're so caught up in life, and it's just normal. I mean, we're physical human beings. We're so caught up in the physical parts of life that a lot of times we're not looking at, am I, on the right plotted course. Is God making my life straight? Because out here someplace in real time and a real place, I get to meet Jesus Christ. And that's where He's taking you. And we forget that all the time. We forget that all the time. We have to go ask Him, make my paths straight.

Keep me on, we say, on track, right? Yes, keep me on track. Lay my tracks for me. So that I am where you want me to be, not where I think I have to be.

One last example. 1 Samuel 15.

1 Samuel chapter 15.

I read a book one time by a very famous historian on the building of that transcontinental railroad. And all over the world people were trying to build railroads at that time, and they were having the same problems.

Just the terrain, the grades, had to be... a little hill sometimes had to be leveled, or a path cut through it. Other areas had to be built up. I mean, the amount of work is almost unbelievable when you figure they didn't have any heavy equipment. They didn't have bulldozers. They didn't have machinery, for the most part. They did this with picks and shovels, and just manpower. I mean, in the explosives they used to get through the Rockies weren't exactly the safest explosives. And sometimes they blew themselves up trying to do it.

Sometimes they went hungry. One of the biggest problems they had, these were tough. These weren't the nicest best men that took these jobs. They tend to shoot each other on a regular basis, or knife each other, or get in fights. It wasn't a good crowd. At least we're with a better crowd. You may think, I wish my congregation was nicer, but be glad you're on this railroad crew, okay? Because I guarantee you this railroad crew is a lot better than theirs was. 1 Samuel 15. We know the story.

I'll just tell you the story here and set up what I want to go through. Verse 1 says, Samuel also said to Saul, The LORD sent me to anoint you, king over his people, over Israel. Now therefore he told the voice of the word of the LORD. Thus says the LORD of hosts, I will punish Amalek for what he did to Israel. Now he ambushed him on the way when he came up out of Egypt. Now go and attack Amalek. Utterly destroy all that they have, do not spare them, kill both men and women, infant and nursing child, oxen sheep, camels and donkeys. Now that seems extreme. Why would a loving God do that? Well, you have to understand the Amalek society. You know, there is a certain level of absolute depravity God will no longer accept. He just won't.

So he said, go kill these people, or they're going to hurt you. Now God has a greater plan, right? God is understanding of the future. He's understanding of the second resurrection. The Israelites went and they did this. But Saul did not do what he was told to do. Saul went and killed everybody, but he stole everything that was good. And I say stole, who'd he steal it from? Not the Amalekites. He killed them. It was from God. God wanted all that the Amalekites had destroyed, basically as an offering to him. Don't take their gold. Don't take their sheep. Don't take what they have. It's all tainted with who they've been. We just don't want to accept that God will not live forever with evil. We love sinners because we're sinners. But don't, and God loves sinners, or we, none of us would be able to have a relationship with him, right? But don't confuse God's love of sinners with God's simple, you know, oh, he just accepts everybody as they are. He accepts all evil. No, he doesn't. And you know who teaches that really strong? Jesus, the one who is used to say all the time, well, if you have the love of Jesus, you'll accept everybody just the way they are. Oh, yeah? Read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and you're going to find a different Jesus than what you think. He taught we have to love each other, even our enemies. And then he says there's a point where he will not accept certain people. He says it straight out. I will not accept you. Such as in the Sermon on the Mount. So we can't downplay the greatness of God's goodness, what it makes us understand is the remarkable amount of love and mercy he does have. But he will not live with evil forever. And here he said, it's enough. Go take care of this. And they did accept. They didn't. They took all the gold, the silver, all the animals, and they left the Kings. You think, well, why would they leave the Kings? And that day and age, the honor of a king was greatly expanded by other kings that he conquered. You bring a king in and parade him through your capital city that you conquered him. This was like the greatest acclaim that a king could get.

So there's reasons for what he's doing. Look at verse 24 then. So God now is going to correct him for this.

Then Saul said to Samuel, oh no, let's go to verse, let's start in verse 22. Because I want to catch what God actually says to him here. So Samuel said, has the Lord his great delight in burnt offerings? Because he said, oh, I brought all these things back to offer to the Lord. Okay. Look, I'm doing a nice religious deed. I didn't obey God. I'm doing something better than obeying God. I'm doing a nice religious deed. As the Lord has great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord, we all do obey his better than sacrifice and to heed better than the fad of Rams. For rebellion is as a sin of witchcraft and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he also has rejected you from being king. Now this was the words of God that Samuel had been told and he gave to him. This is direct correction from God. And what does he do? At first, it seems like Saul is headed in the right direction, but he's not. Then Saul said to Samuel, I have sinned for I have transgressed the commandment of the Lord and your words, because I feared the people and obeyed their voice. Now therefore, please pardon my sin and return with me that I may worship the Lord. Oh, well, Samuel, you're right. I did something wrong. So please pardon me so God will take me back. Well, Samuel doesn't have the right to pardon anybody. Only God can pardon him. He's not reaching out to God. He's seeing this. This is a big play that he's doing here. Well, you're God's man. You just do your hocus pocus stuff and I'll be okay. And Samuel said to Saul, I will not return with you, for you have rejected the word of the Lord and the Lord has rejected you from being king. And as Samuel turned around to go away, Saul seized the edge of his realm and tore it. So Samuel said to him, the Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you today, and has given it to a neighbor of yours who is better than you. And also the strength of Israel will not lie nor relent, for he's not a man that he should relent. And here's what Saul says, why I have sinned. Yes, yes, yes, but honor me now, please, before Israel, and return with me, that I may worship the Lord your God. We have to show the people. Samuel, if you correct me and walk away, I'll lose face. All the elders of Israel and the leaders of the tribes won't follow me. I may have a coup on my hand here. Please, before the people, show them what got him in trouble. I did what the people wanted, not what God wanted. But it is his concern still. It is not what God wants. His concern is, at least we have to look like I repented. What we have here is that his reaction to God's correction was a religious show, deep inside who he was. He wasn't repenting before God. He didn't say, Samuel, please, let's get a bird offering. Let's take all the animals I brought back. Let's go sacrifice them to God, or whatever he wants. We'll just go kill them, sacrifice, take me before him, and ask him, or I will repent, and maybe God will just banish me. I will take whatever punishment he gives me because he is right. None of that attitude is here. I mean, it's easy to say, why is God being so hard on him? Because he's not repenting. He's doing a religious act. He's not truly repenting before God. He's not accepting the correction. You're right. You're right. I did something wrong. So we can fix this right. I did something wrong, but we can fix it. There's no real repentance before God. Psalm 119. Psalm 119.

And verse 33.

And verse 33. David says, Teach me, O Lord, the way of your statues, and I shall keep it to the end. Give me understanding, and I shall keep your law. And, indeed, I shall observe it with my whole heart. Make me walk in the path of your righteousness. He understood this is a way. In fact, in the New Testament, what we call Christianity, you know what it was originally called? The way. It's a path. It's a track. How we walk that track. And God helps us lay the track. Because he tells us where we're going. We have to walk in the way. And if you go all through Psalm 119, plus all any of David's writings, you'll see that. I talk about that all the time. Help me in your way. Help me to walk your way. Direct my paths. Make me straight. Make it straight. So I'm not going someplace else. We can misunderstand where we're going unless we're very sensitive to God's correction. It can seem right. One of the greatest problems we face today is a philosophical Christianity that turns right in the wrong and wrong into right. But the arguments can seem right. They can seem right, and they're not. They're dangerous. Especially when it comes to what love is. Love is accepting anything and anybody. No matter what. But God doesn't say that. Oh, then you don't have love. You're not a Christian. It's a very detailed argument that has become it's amazing how that is argued in our society at so many different levels. So we can think we're going in the right direction, and we're not. There's an old story that no one knows if it's true. I've read it for years. It has to do with some battleships. It's been the British Navy, the American Navy, or the Canadian Navy, depending on who you're reading. No one really knows if it's true. There is no official record of this happening. I think it's made up, and it just got passed around. It's become part of the mythology of certain nations. And you've probably heard it. It's about a group of navy ships that are out of maneuvers being led by two battleships. And they go into this incredibly dense fog. It's so bad the captain of the lead battleship gets up on the bridge, and he has all the experts up there trying to navigate where we're going or where they're going because they can't see. I mean, they're using all their instruments and everything, but they just can't see. And suddenly, when the lookout yells, there's a light up ahead. So he says, is it moving? No. Where is it? So they all find it, they all look at it, and they realize they're headed for a collision course. So he says, radio that ship and tell them that we're on a collision course and to move to the stern so many degrees, and we'll just pass each other. And they keep their radio in, and what they get back is advisable that you move to the stern so many degrees. He says, what kind of captain does this?

So he sends out a message back. He says, I'm a captain. Change your course by, I think it was 20 degrees. Change it by 20 degrees. We're going to have a collision. And he gets back, I'm a seamen second class. Change your course by 20 degrees. And now this, the captain's just furious now, and he says, okay, tell him I'm a battleship. Change his course 20 degrees. So the radio man says, we are a battleship. Change your course 20 degrees. The answer they get back is, I'm a lighthouse.

See, you can think you're on course, but in the fog, sometimes we're not. That's why we have to be sensitive to God's correction. We have to be making our life's decisions based on His truth, based on where we're going to meet Him at some point, not on all the craziness that happens around us all the time. Proverbs 4 is our last scripture. Proverbs chapter 4.

Proverbs 4. In verse 20, Solomon writes to his son, My son, give attention to my words, and climb your ear to my sayings. Do not let them depart from your eyes. Keep them in the midst of your heart. For their life to those who find them, and health to all their flesh. Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of its springs the issues of life. Put away from you a deceitful mouth.

And put perverse lips far from you. Let your eyes look straight ahead, and your eyelids look right before you. Ponder the path of your feet, and let all your ways be established. Do not turn to the right or to the left. Remove your foot from evil. Stay on track. God's laying the track of your life. And it's tough. Because I don't know when we all reach that point. In real time, in real space, right? It's a real place. I don't know exactly when we reach there. But I know between now and then, there are prairies to be crossed. There's tornadoes. They had tornadoes. They had dust storms. There's deserts. There's mountains. There's rivers. There's flash floods. We have all that. We have all that. And in all that, we have to trust that there's one great surveyor who is telling us every day, as we pray, as we study, as we come here together, as we share life with the people of God, because you don't want to do this yourself. It's very lonely to live this way yourself, the way of God.

We need each other, too. That as we do this, we realize He's laying our track. He's leading us where we have to go. We're following. And through all those other things, it doesn't matter. Because just like those two tracks meant, they actually met, and they were able to hook them together. God is going to make sure you let Him lay that track, trust Him as your great surveyor, trust Him to guide your life. And when that time and place comes, which is His place, His choosing, His time, you'll be there.