God’s Perfect Course Corrections for You

As been said before, God sets. He works out what He's going to do, and then He keeps doing what He's going to do. And we get this remarkable privilege of participating. That's all we do, to participate. When we came here in the early 90s, we had Janesville and Rockford.

And it was my first pastorate, too. I guess this is where they set us all to be trained, you know. And I came in, and it was exciting. And there was all these things happening, and new people were coming all the time. And it was an interesting place. And we loved being here. We enjoyed it. We lived up in Janesville. And I do remember the Smosens Club, and I remember the Bible studies, the end of the Bible studies. Because people would drive all, you know, we had one down in Dixon. We'd have 20 people at a Bible study once a month in Dixon. And staying up too late, after Smosens Club, a bunch of us would go to a restaurant and not get home to 1.30 in the morning, because we were younger then. And then came the sweat in 1995. And the shock of that is, you know, somehow God would not let this happen. God wouldn't let this thing happen. So God's going to work it out. God's going to work it out. And then He didn't. And we had well over 300 people.

We ended up with about 170. You know, that's how we ended up in Beloit. We took the Rockford and the Janesville churches and combined them here in Beloit. So, you know, it felt sort of normal, because we had about as many people as we had in each church. And that time period, though, I look back at that, and there's a number of things that had long-term impact beyond the congregations. Now, I remember in 1994, meeting up in Madison with this good news television thing, which we're going to produce, you know, public access TV with no money. Now, I had some background in radio, but I didn't, you know, I had a couple college classes in television. I knew nothing about being in front of a camera. And I'll never forget they brought in somebody from Pasadena out to tell us how to do it. Our total budget was $400, which we bought an oak table. Remember that? Where's Galen? Remember that oak table? That's it! Now, there's no budget left. It's gone. And they came out, they taught us what we're going to do, and the next day we were going to go to Madison and do our first program. And I'll never forget after everybody left, Galen and I are sitting in his house just staring at each other. And I said, Galen, you know this is the dumbest idea. And he said, yeah, but only you and I know that. Do you remember that? And I said, okay, then we better not tell anybody else. We'll just go on here. And here we are, much of what we do and beyond today, today, goes back to that. It was that. It was in that little dark room in Madison and Steve Meyers went through there and Daresby Daly went through there. That's how everybody sort of learned a little bit what we were doing. We still don't know what we're doing. We make it up as we go along. Although now, I think about that little studio. Now we sit in this studio. You know, there's 40 people there. There's actual teleprompters, which we ignore sometimes. But there's the poor, the hardest job in television is the poor person running that teleprompter, because we're off of it. You know, they tell us they call it going rogue. Oh, you want rogue!

We have teleprompters. We have four cameras. There's cameras zooming across the, you know, taking pictures up and down. There's 40 people. There's that clock's, you know, 26.45, 26 minutes, 45 seconds. It ends at zero, zero, zero, zero. There's that media wall. You know, so we plan that out, and you're looking to monitor, and something pops up there, and you turn and read it off the wall, and it's there when you look at it. It's so different than what we started.

Of course, none of us got paid. Chris said, we don't get paid much now. But the staff, the staff got, we get a little bonus every year. We, at least we have a paid staff. Okay, the staff got nothing. Of course, we got nothing back then, too. So, and look what happened with that. The winter camp in 1995, they asked me to come help form a camp system, which I had no background doing, and we did. We created the UCG camp system, and we started winter camp with no money, no staff, and no place to have it. What's your budget? You have none. Okay, and it's still going today. In our dining room, which was a real small dining room up in Janesville, my wife and five other women sat down and created a Sabbath school program. And for two years, that was the Sabbath school program for the United Church. Because there wasn't anybody in the home office yet. There wasn't a big enough home office staff to create one. And they created it at the table there. I still have boxes of that stuff at home, and that's what over 100 different congregations used for two years. So you don't realize the impact. At the time, you don't think about it at all. You just do it, right? So here we have a church that, wow, it's lasted 50 years. How many people are not here? You know, it'd be how many people died over the last 50 years in the faith? That's the big... how many died in the faith? How many moved away, but they're still in the faith? There's some that aren't. But you know, they had that same problem in Ephesus. That's a problem in Jerusalem in the first century. Every church has that. But there's still something here. And there's something for other people to come to. There's something... a place for other people God's working with to come to. And never discount that. You know, I think Christ is coming back soon. What if He didn't come back for another 50 years? There may not be a church in Nashville. There may not... you know what I mean? We don't know how long God works in a place. And then He doesn't. And then He doesn't. But He's worked here a long time. He's worked here a long time. And in terms of... you look at the Scripture, 50 years. And a lot of people have been affected in a very positive way because of that. And I'm sure God's very pleased with all of that.

Mr. Radford said, I don't know how much time you'll have left. I said, it doesn't matter. I'm used to 26.45.

Just put up a clock. When He hits zero, I stop. It's just the way we are. In the late 1800s, tens of thousands of men were working on one of the greatest engineering feats of all time. We don't think about it much today. They were building a railroad from Omaha, Nebraska to California. Now, that's easily done today. Just have enough money. You can hire the people to do it. They really didn't know what they were doing.

Railroads back then could not go upward, just because they weren't powerful enough, the engines could not go up or down a grade more than about 2 percent. Unless it was very gradual. They're crossing a continent, and they don't even know what's in front of them. They don't even know. What's out in front of us? Well, out there some place is the Rocky Mountains. How far is it? They had surveyors that had to go figure out every place and come back constantly and say, no, there's a swamp up here and we can't bridge that thing. And they would have to move the tracks. But understand, you can't move the tracks without getting back in a direct straight line. You can't. I mean, when they came to mountains, they had to blow them up. A lot of men died blowing up poles in mountains. When they came to rivers, they had to build bridges. And a lot of the bridges collapsed, and then they had to rebuild them. A good-sized creek, even if it was dry in the summer, how do we get across that? When you can't fill it in, you bridge it. Everything had to be remarkably exact for these two sets of tracks to hit each other at a certain time. Think about what would happen if you one day laid the tracks 10 feet headed in one direction. That's not much. No one would even notice it. And that went on for three months. Just the smallest degree off. And sometimes they did get off. They'd have to go back and tear up track and relay track because you can't get off. These surveyors are going out and back and forth all the time. Coming back and saying, this is what we have to do. We have to keep readjusting and correcting the course. We correct the course we'll meet at this point. I mean, if they would have got off a little bit to the south, over time they would have ended up at the Grand Canyon. But you can't bridge that one.

It's an interesting thing. They had a point and place and time in reality they had to come to. And surveying that was everything. It wasn't just building it. It was surveying it. And always changing course to make sure you were where you were supposed to be. There is a place and time, a little place and time that you have an invitation to. Jesus Christ is coming back and there's a place and time. It's real. It's going to happen.

And you are supposed to be there. You're called to be there. And every day of your life, every day of my life, God is laying track, taking us to that place. And you're going to be there. Taking us to that point in time. It's a place. We know it's the Mount of Olives. We know the place. We don't know the time. We just know it's there. And we know we have to get there. And we have no idea what happens between now and then any more than they knew what would happen as they went along this laying track. But it's there. It's waiting for you. And every day you and I have to trust the surveyor to tell us where to go. That surveyor has to set that course for us every day. Because if he doesn't, we don't even know we're off. We just keep going. We can become experts, experts at laying track and end up nowhere. Absolutely nowhere. We won't end up at the point where we are supposed to be. We talk about God's purpose for our lives. We talk about how God's purpose for having congregations. God's purpose why he called you. We all know that. It's to be at that point in time.

But sometimes that point in time seems so distant we lose track of it. It doesn't seem important. Or just the birds of life seem like we just forget it. The stress is a job. The stress is a family. The stress is of health. All the things that we have to deal with every day. No matter how old or young you are, every day there's something that keeps you from looking at that point in time. Because it's so far out there. I wonder if they would have known what the Rocky Mountains were if they would have really tried it. I mean, they had mountain men come back and tell them what it was like. But it's one thing to think about the Rockies. It's another thing to see them. To see, we got to go through that?

We have that point in time. And for us to be there, God has to do something with us. He has to survey our lives and keep telling us, go this way.

Go this way. It's the only way to be there at the appointment that you and I have. Now, I want to think about that a lot today, about this concept of correction, of course.

Because you have to. Because sometimes we have a wrong viewpoint of how God deals with us in what we call correction. Let's look at Hebrews, chapter 12. And this is one of those passages that has been read many times. You've all heard it many times over the years. And let's start in verse 5, breaking in the middle of a thought. But he says, And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as the sons. Now, this is a very positive. It seems like a very negative passage, but it's not. He says, you forget that you are children of God. That's the point that he's trying to make here.

Sometimes we see God as this distant being that is just looking out to punish us.

Just waiting for us to mess up and do something about it. Like that has nothing better to do in life, right? Just look at all of us running around saying, oh good, I get somebody to punish today. But that's what it feels like sometimes. God is always trying to punish me. Now he says, you are children. You're children of God. He says, my son, and this is a quote of the Old Testament, do not despise the chastening or 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. And when you read that and think, oh, what, I'm blessed? Could God punish me? I want to start thinking, you think of this, not as just in terms of, I've done something wrong. God's going to punish me.

You know, if you see a child that only sees their parent, you know, if you see a child that sees dad, and it's just somebody that punishes me when I'm wrong, there's nothing else to the relationship, that child will learn all kinds of bad behavior. They'll learn how to lie. They'll learn how to sneak. They'll learn how to actually do things they would not have done, especially boys, right? Because you'll find another group of boys in the same boat, and you'll go out and do all kinds of things. Because that's the only reason God, or my dad deals with me. He's mad at me all the time. He yells at me, and he beats me all the time. Now here says God punishes us. But he says, verse 7, 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. That's another important point. If God has to come along and change our course, and we don't respond—and by the way, God doesn't give up easily.

But, you know, your track as you headed towards Canada instead of, you know, the track coming out from California, God's going to come along and say, no, no, we got to change course. We got to put this back where it's supposed to be. Because you have an appointment with me.

We have a set appointment with God. You have an appointment with me, and you've got to get there.

He says, but if he's not correcting our course, that means he doesn't care, or we're illegitimate. We're not really children of God. Furthermore, we have had human fathers who corrected us, and we paid them respect, showing up more readily, being subjection to the Father of spirits and live. For they, indeed, for a few days chastened us as it seemed best to them. But he, for our prophet, any time God interferes—I see—interveres, intervenes—we think he's interfering, any time he intervenes in our lives, it's for our prophet. God never punishes us for His prophet. You know, as parents sometimes, we punish our kids because why? We're angry, or they hurt our feelings, or they embarrass us in front of our friends. We can punish children for the wrong reasons. God never punishes us for the wrong reasons. He does it not for our pain. He does it for our prophet. God intervenes in our lives because we're laying the tracks in the wrong direction and we'll miss the appointment.

He says, think of God as a great surveyor. And he comes back and he says, you can't lay tracks in that direction. There's—they literally quicksand up here. They didn't have lots of problems with quicksand as they got farther to the west. There's quicksand up here. Trains will just sink into the—your train's going to sink right into the sand. We've got to move this so many degrees this way and then back this way. Wait, you're laying the track. That makes no sense because you can't see the quicksand. See, the people laying the tracks can't see what's way out there. They have to trust, oh, I have to do this. I have to do that. But it's work. You mean, I have to rip up five miles of track and relay it? Yes.

That happens to us all the time. But he says it's for our profit.

Why? That we may be partakers of his holiness. We may become what he wants us to become. Now, no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful. Nevertheless, afterward, here's what happens. Afterwards, we're sorry and we're crying. We're begging God for repentance. Well, that can happen too. But what is the ultimate result of God correcting our course? It says, it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by.

God's purpose is to keep us going in the right direction. So we're there where he wants us to be and when we understand that, even when we are having difficult times, we're learning, or even when God is correcting our course, we can find peace.

We actually can find joy in what God is doing. Now, God corrects us in a variety of ways. The easiest way that we get corrected by God is when we are close to Him and our conscience is open. He just guides us through the Holy Spirit. He probably at some point said something to somebody and later thought, you know, I shouldn't have said that. That person is a weak person and that probably offended them and I think I'll give them a call. Okay, that's your conscience. God can, when we're at that state, correction doesn't take much.

Move this over a couple of people. Okay, because why? Because we're readily available. We're listening. But don't you wish we could be in that state all the time? No, we're not.

We move all over the place in life. It's messy. Life is always messy.

So then, God will work to us through the Scriptures. You'll be reading something or somewhat you'll be listening to a sermon. You'll read the Scripture and you'll think, no, I need to be more serious about that. What's he doing? He's correcting your course.

So the Scripture will correct our course. But the more we resist, the worse this gets.

So if we can respond with conscience to begin with, that's great. Scripture, that's great. If not, he'll usually send a person to do it, which we really don't like at all. Yeah, somebody will come along and point out.

I recently got an email from someone from one of my Beyond Today programs. They said, you totally misused this word. I went back and looked it up. I looked at the script.

I looked up what the word means in Greek, and I wrote back, I'm sorry, but you're absolutely right. And I will do that again. I had no defense. What am I going to do? Well, I said it, there it's true. I mean, I had no defense. So then the person comes along and is like, man, if I would have caught that earlier, by being more true to the Scripture, more true to God's leading, I wouldn't have made that mistake and had this person, I had no idea who they are, rightly, because they were quite mad. Because they were quite mad.

Oh, the worst thing I ever thought, God, was, I hope you go to hell a bird. But I, you know, that's, this person was that mad. Okay.

Sometimes God does this, and we think it's Him punishing us, it's not. He will just let us suffer the consequences of what we did. You get drunk and wreck your car and break your leg, and your car's totaled and say, oh, God punished me. No, He didn't. God was saying, oh, is this going to turn out badly? That's all God was saying.

Don't do that. I think God is all the time. Don't do that. Oh, we're going to have to fix that child. That's, it's a mess. And so we blame that on God, and it's not God punishing us. It's us doing it, and we're just getting the consequences of what we did. And then there is a time when God can actually punish us to get our attention. But, you know, it's just like a child. You bring harsh punishment on a child only when you have no other choice. You've run out of the options for the child to learn. You know, and because, okay, you're going to run out in the street, you are going to get a spanking. You believe in spanking? I sure do. If my child's going to run out, if one of my grandchildren is going to run out in the street after I've said no, after we've given instructions, after everything we've done, they're getting a whack from Grandpa, because that's easier than getting killed by the car.

And that's what God does. Everyone else is like, sorry, son, but you're going to need a whack. You just won't listen. But what's His purpose? So that He's not mad anymore? Because He's frustrated with you? His purpose is, we just read it, it's for your profit. It's so you don't get hit by a car.

So we started looking at Dad as God, as Father. But the problem is, if you had a bad father, you have a hard time doing that, don't you? I've had so many people come over to me and just say, I need to talk to you, because I cannot see God as a father.

Because my dad did this and this and this. Okay, how can you see God? And usually you work through, I can see Him as sort of a, I had a teacher one time, or I can see God as this, I can see God as, okay, let's start working through that until we eventually get God as Father. I mean, it's too big for us to understand anyways.

Right? I mean, at this point, you can only grasp so much about God. And it's just, it's like David said, this is, I love that one song, which is literally translated, this is too big for me. That's too big for me. And so we have these different ways He corrects us. What's really important here, how do we respond to that? Remember, this is about course correction.

Course correction. Now, I had a different sermon I was working on, and I gave this in Murfreesboro last week, and Kim said, you're going to just give this a second. And I said, I'm going to give this a second. And I gave this in Murfreesboro last week, and Kim said, you're going to just give this one. We're looking at 50-year history. There's still people here on course. There's still people here laying tracks. God's helping them lay tracks. They're still going to the same direction. So tell them that. I said, that's a good point. She helps me with lots of my sermons. It was the other day, a couple weeks ago, I said, I'm going to give a sermon on the heretics of Jude.

And she said, that's a little heavy for this week. I mean, why don't you just... So I didn't. I'm still going to give it, but I didn't really. Let's look at a couple cases of how people responded to course correction. They were in a correction from God, and their response ended up disastrous. I'm just not looking for negative examples here. But the reason they're so important is because they're so natural for us to respond this way. First one is Adam and Eve.

We know what happens here in Genesis 3. God tells Adam and Eve, don't do this, do this. And if you do this, bad things are going to happen. I'm sure they understood how bad that could be. I don't know what they mean. I don't know if they understood you will die when they've never seen anything die. But I do know that when they did eat the fruit, it changed who they were, and they went and hid. Can you imagine experiencing guilt, shame? All these things you and I have experienced in our lifetime. They've never experienced being separated from God. These were all new experiences, so they just ran and hid like two little kids.

You ever have a little kid hide behind the couch? Where is she? You can hear them giggling. They weren't doing that. They were hiding in absolute fear behind some trees or some bushes. Maybe God can't see us back here. They were devastated. Their minds had been changed. They didn't know how to think.

They didn't know how to feel. And of course, what did they do? Well, God says, Adam, what happened? And he stood up and told sort of half a truth. It's her fault. It's her fault. In fact, it's your fault, because you gave her to me. He shifted off of himself into her. God came to correct them, and what they did was shift the blame. This is so common. We do this all the time.

I'm not responsible for that. They are because they did this. And what God says, I don't care what they did. I don't care. We've been staying with our daughter and her husband for the last few days with the six grandkids, which I just love being with the six grandkids. But I always have to laugh. It's just such an open review of human nature. I'll watch one of them take a toy. The other one take it back.

The other one take it back. The other one throw something. The other one slap the other one. And I'm just watching. And so there's this screaming, hollering, and crying going on, and nobody can tell even how it started anymore. And as soon as Mom walks in, it's... and they scream because the other one's fault. They started it. They started it. So I usually take one side every once in a while and say, let's talk. We have the grandpa talk.

Although Maddie, a while back, asked me a question about God. And I said, I don't know. I mean, God's so much bigger than me, I don't know. And she got distraught. She said, but if you don't know, who knows? I said, nobody knows. That's the point. I don't know. I'm not God. Like, I'm supposed to know every... When your grandpa, at least until they get a certain age, you're so old, it's like you know everything. Well, you probably knew the Apostle Paul, right?

We fix blame. We fix blame. Instead of saying, God changed my course. Show me which way to go. I am wrong. Part of it is we're afraid what He's going to do to us. We're afraid what God's going to do. So we fix blame. Because then we have to give up the fact somebody else hurt me or did wrong.

Because much of the time when we're doing something wrong, it's because somebody else did do something wrong first. So we just blame them. The second thing is Cain. We know Cain's example. He kills his brother out of a fit of anger. One Jewish source says he couldn't have done it as a premeditated act because God would have killed him.

He was a premeditated murderer. He always has a death penalty. He had to do it out of a fit of rage. So he had to be punished the rest of his life. I thought that's a pretty interesting viewpoint. I don't know if that's why God made his decision, but it is an interesting viewpoint. This was just pure rage.

And what's interesting, though, when God says what's happened here, He justified himself. I'm right. I'm right. This is the most scary way of defending yourself. But I'm right. If you knew my background, you would know why I do this. And God says, I know your background and I don't care. We think if he loves me, he'll know every...he'll understand. He says, no, no, no. If you love me, you'll understand.

Which is, you can't be that way because these tracks get so far off course, you'll never be there at the appointment. You'll never arrive where you're supposed to arrive. You can't because you're just going off and off and off. So he comes back and he corrects it, and we justify and justify and justify. We must be justified by God. And that's why Jesus gave the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. The Pharisee did fast. The Pharisee probably had never committed adultery. The Pharisee had kept the Sabbath all his life. And he thumped his chest and said, thank you, God. I'm not like other people in this temple.

And the tax collector just said, please forgive me for I sin. And Jesus said, that one's justified before God. Justification needs to be able to happen. God gives us the right to have a relationship with Him. If He doesn't give you and I that right, guess what? We don't get to have a relationship with Him. You and I can't force God into a relationship with us. We don't have the power to do that. But we're justified. He says, you have the right to have a relationship with Him.

And the Pharisee, because he thought He was so good, never believed He needed justification. So when we justify ourselves, I can justify myself by saying, look at how good I am. Look, I've never done this. I've never done that. Look how good I am. Cain, of course, justified himself. It's not my fault. Proverbs 3. Look at what Solomon says here in one of the Proverbs. Proverbs 3 and verse 5. Proverbs 3 and verse 5. 3. Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.

4. And all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths. If you find that, that can be translated. Many translations will translate it this way. Make straight your paths. He's going to correct your path so it's going where it's supposed to go. Because He knows where it's supposed to go. He called you to go there. He called you to be there. He's worked with you all this time. That's why He doesn't give up on us easily. He's worked with us to get us there. But He's going to come along and say, I need to make your path straight. Your track isn't going anywhere.

2 Thessalonians, a New Testament scripture here. 2 Thessalonians 3. This is a very simple sermon. Because we need to remember, wherever we are in our lives, wherever we are in the history and course of our congregations.

I have a congregation in Jackson. It had six people in it. I hardly ever went there. Having two others and doing the other thing. I just can't ever get there. I send whoever I can. They've now grown to like 22 people. They're growing all the time. I have no idea why God's doing it. Because if you look at what's supposed to make a church grow, they don't have anything to make a church grow. I mean, in an old beat-up Masonic lodge. Their pastor shows up when he can. And other people come out and give sermons and so forth. But there's nobody within a hundred miles of where they live. As far as the leader of the church. And yet, there they are. I pretend to say, new people are.

I'm not doing that. I can tell you that.

We have no idea what God's going to be doing in any given place. Second Thessalonians 3 and verse 3. Verse 3.

The Lord may make your path straight again. Let's get you back on track. Let's get you where you have to go. On a very personal level. What Paul says is very personal. He's talking to the church in Thessalonica, but it's a very, very personal letter. He's talking to each member. And then verses 3 through 5 there are very personal. You have patience to do because why? First of all, God is faithful. God knows how to survey the land and he knows where you're going. Two, he's going to be faithful to do that. Three, you have patience and confidence he's going to do it. And then he says, and he will. He'll lay your track for you. He'll show you how this goes. He'll show you what direction you have to go in. So that we can never see very far down that track. You have the problem with laying track. You can turn around and see where you've been.

Well, there's nothing out here.

That's the problem with laying track. You can't... You're not looking out and saying, oh, look, this track goes a mile that way. It's right in front of you. You're just laying track.

And then the third example is the example of Saul. We know this, and I want to talk again once again, what we're zeroing in on here is the great... Like all these stories, there's all these remarkable things we can learn from them. We can give a sermon on each of them. One of these. I'm just zeroing in on how did this person respond to God's correction, God's guidance. And in each case, they failed. And in each case, it was disastrous in their lives. Adam and Eve, Cain, and Saul. We know that. Let's go to 1 Samuel. That God told, gave specific instructions to Saul. And Saul disregarded those specific instructions.

And he comes back. He was supposed to destroy these cities, kill everybody in them, and kill all the animals, burn everything. He said, this is an evil place. I don't want Israel to have anything to do with this. And he didn't. He brought back the kings. Well, there's a reason for that. If you captured a neighboring king as another king, it was a great honor. That was the greatest honor you could receive. Also, he brought back all the cattle. I mean, all the stuff that was worth something. They live in an agricultural society. All these animals have huge value. Survival depends on all these animals. So why would you not kill them? Because you brought them back. So God says, Samuel, to talk to Saul. And he says in verse 24, because Samuel says, look, you didn't do what God told you. Once again, course correction. Here's a chance to say, God, get me back on track. 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. Now this is very interesting.

He seems to be repentant, but he's not. He's not throwing himself down before God, I have sinned, have mercy on me.

Because Samuel had said, you're going to be rejected as king. What if he would have said, God, I have sinned so greatly. Send me in the exile and let everybody know what I have done. You think, who would do that, David? Remember Psalm 51?

Remember he committed murder by proxy and then committed adultery and murder. And he's exposed, and he writes a song and says, God, forgive me, and I will sing this song to you over and over. All the people will sing this song to you. You know what's amazing? You can go into a Catholic church, any Protestant church, an Orthodox church, and a Jewish synagogue, and you will find some version of Psalm 51. God held, God took him literal. Yes, son. Every generation will know.

Can you imagine when he's resurrected? And everybody, even the people in the second resurrection, oh yeah, we sang about your adultery.

And David won't care. That's what's amazing. He won't care. He says, well, God forgave me. I want everybody to know that. I want everybody to know that God forgave me. So on the other hand is, come on, you pardon me, and let's go before all the elders, you know, so they see that I'm still king. In other words, it's such a compromising attitude that even his repentance is faked. Even his repentance is faked. Guys, here you have a chance to change course. He says, but Samuel said to Saul, I will not return with you, but you have rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord has rejected you from being king over Israel. And as Samuel turned to go away, Saul seized the edge of his robe and he tore it. So Samuel said to him, the Lord has torn the kingdom in 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 is not a man, for that he should relent. Then he said, I have sinned! I have sinned, begging God for forgiveness, whatever penalty, whatever it must take for me to be restored to you. But notice what he says. He says, I have sinned, yet honor me now, please before the elders of my people and before Israel, and return with me that I may be worshipped the Lord your God. We've got to at least make this look good. I have repentance, see? I have, see, I repent. Course correction means course correction. Not having an emotional experience, which he did. This man's desperate and still laying the track in the wrong direction. Oh, I'm sorry, but I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing. Doesn't work that way. What's interesting is when you go to Psalm 119, and you'll see over and over again in that very long psalm where David begs him, Show me your way. Teach me your instructions. Show me what to do. I don't know what to do. Direct my paths. Lay my track. Now, he doesn't say that, but he could say it because he didn't have trains. Lay my track. Because only you can survey this. I cannot. I can't see what's up ahead. I can't see where we're going. I don't know what good times or bad times. I don't know anything up there.

Just work with me to lay the track. And take me where I have to go. And when you do, you will end up at the appointed time. At an appointed place. You'll be at the Mount of Olives. It doesn't matter whether it's so many years from now that we all die, which I don't think it is, but whatever it is, it doesn't matter. Because you'll be in the resurrection. You'll be there. And if we are there because we're alive at that time, we'll be there. You don't want to be someplace else. At the appointed time, you don't want to be someplace else. You've probably heard this because I imagine, the only gala you probably use this story. There's no proof that this is a true story. I've done research on it. It appears in different books as a true story. Some say it was the Canadian Navy. Some say it was the British Navy. Some say it was the US Navy. No one knows because it's probably not true. But it was a group of, there was a naval number of ships, a fleet out on maneuvers. There were two battleships involved. There were a bunch of little ships. And they're in heavy fog. And the captain of the lead battleship gets up on the bridge because he has to have a hard time seeing. And he looks out and the one to look out and say, there's a light up there. There's a light in front of us. And he tells him the degrees of where it is and everything. And the captain looks at it and he says, is it moving or is it stationary? And he says, it's stationary. He says, well, we're on a collision course. Have you told them this? Oh, you're on a collision course. Probably, Mr. Brown, have you told them this? No. So they're on a collision course. And the captain sends, he says, send him a message, move 20 degrees port because we're on a collision course. And he gets back a message that says, you move 20 degrees port because we're on a collision course.

And he says, he doesn't understand. He said, you tell him I'm a captain and he's to move 20 degrees port. He wrote back, I'm a second class seaman, move 20 degrees port. And we're having an argument over course change here, right? And finally, he says, you tell him I'm a battleship, move 20 degrees port. And the message came back, I'm a lighthouse.

See, we argue with God, right? You move my course where I want it to go. Well, you know, you're going to shipwrecked. We'll wreck our ship every time. I'm always that was funny. I thought you knew that story. You never told that story?

I didn't think it was good enough. Okay.

But sometimes you get desperate. God's telling us that won't work. We won't change our course. I'm a battleship. Why do I have to change course? I'm the captain of the ship. Why do I have to change course? As was already mentioned, I control my life. Why do I have to change course? Because you're about to go into some rocks. That's why.

Why is God punishing me by making me a horse? Why is God punishing me by making me change course? See, that's what we feel like. And it's like, what do you mean? Do you realize the results of where you're going will take you? And that's the problem. We don't. We don't.

My grandson, they spend the summer down in Tennessee, and they live up here in Fond du Lac during the winter. And he and I, we sort of bond. He reminds me of me. Okay, when I was young. But he's, what is he, eight? Eight. And he was seven last year. He wants to be like this mountain man. So he's always trying to figure out how to survive in the woods by himself. But in the backyard, he had built some bricks and put a metal grate over it. And they went to his dad and he said, is it okay if I start a little fire under there and I toast some bread? He said, sure. So he put some dry grass under there and a few sticks. And his dad went up to get the eggs out of the chicken coop. Coming back, he was just crying and running down the road towards him. And he looks in his entire backyard, which is prairie grass, is on fire.

We don't know the consequences, right? The next day I took him, we have a national park. There was a national, there was a Civil War battlefield there. I took him to the national park because they were having a controlled bird. And he got to watch how they bird prairie with professionals. And they came over to him. They saw him watching and he got to ask questions and everything. And I said, so you grow up, you want to join the National Park Service? Because they just travel all over the country. That's all they do, these birds. He said, I want nothing to do with fire.

I said, good, of course, change, boy.

Good, of course, change. Because we don't know where our decisions will take us. Only God does. Last scripture, Proverbs 4.

It seems to me, my wife says, why do little boys do things like that? You have to understand, at the moment, it makes perfect sense. It just does to us. It makes perfect sense. I can toast some bread out here like a mountain man in the backyard. No idea that the grass, I mean, when the wind caught that, and all that dry grass around it would just go. Proverbs 4. But that's the way we are with God. That's the way the guy is in the story with the, you know, he's the captain of a battleship. He's doing everything right in his mind. Everything is exactly right. Except he doesn't know it's a light.

Proverbs 4, verse 20.

Solomon here is writing to his son, saying, My son, give attention to my words, and climb your ear to my sayings. Do not let them depart from your eyes, and keep them in the midst of your heart. For they are life to those who find them. This is what God is doing. We think, God's being so harsh, God's being so cruel, all he wants to do is punish me. And no, God is saying, I can give you life, and what you do will produce sorrow and death.

So let me change your course once in a while. No, actually, it's all the time.

For they are 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. Watch the path that's being laid right out in front of you, because you can't see out there. So right in front of your feet, look at that path. Make sure those steps right there. This comes down to every day. Every day we look where God is taking us. Every step counts, because you don't know, and I don't know what's out there. We have no idea. When I had COVID a year ago, they thought I was going to die. Fortunately, I didn't know it. You know, you don't have a lot of oxygen. I'm just like, oh, this is cool. I mean, I'm just you're just out of it. You really are. And I was like, calm and collected and all the doctors and nurses, they kept telling me, you know, you're a blessed man. Oh, really? I know. No, no, really. You are. One doctor finally said, you're my only patient that's getting better. You're my favorite person. But I don't know why. And then it's like, and then it started dawning on me, oh, oh, okay. Maybe I shouldn't be this calm about all this. But, you know, God, God was doing something. I didn't even know it.

He takes our path. You know, a year from now, I may not even be here, right? We don't know what's going to happen in the next year. We, day by day, we take our steps. We take our steps day by day.

Ponder the path of your feet. Let all your ways be established. Do not turn to the right or to the left. Remove your foot from evil. I find that interesting because he literally makes it walk foot step by step. That's your focus. Now, yes, we look out there and know he's taking us someplace. Every Feast of Tabernacles, right? That's what we do. We go look at that place, that literal time and place. That's where he's taking us. But today, it's step by step.

Today, it's letting God take us what we do. We're here today because he taught us the Sabbath and we come here because this is an appointment with God. That's what it is. Well, you have another appointment with him out in the future. In your life, there are prairies to be crossed and rivers to be bridged and tunnels to be blown through mountains. God does it. He uses us, but he doesn't. And we always have to remember that. That means we have to have faith in the Great Surveyor because he knows what's all out there. He knows how to get us to that point. He knows exactly where the point is. He knows exactly where the time is. We don't.

We have to trust the Surveyor. We have to follow his course and his corrections. We have to do it day by day, step by step, because he promises us. And we can go and tell him, but you promise us. He won't get mad at you for saying this. God, you promise to take us where you want us to go.