Take Responsibility for Your Life

You and I live in an environment of laws. Whether or not we like them, the laws exist. Whether or not we obey them, the laws exist. They are laws, and God put the laws of physics and also another set of laws of how to live, He put those in place to help us, to help us be happy and also to give us choices. We can either live within those laws and get along quite well, or we can choose to bump up against them. Now, some of the laws are purely physical.

How many of you have never had a broken bone in your life? Can I see your hands? Okay, that's probably half the audience. The other half of you has been bumping up against this law of gravity or some of the other laws. There are some penalties or consequences for bumping up against these laws. So far, half of us have gotten through life, and we're okay with it, with not having broken bones.

We are. And so it is, with many things in life. You can go in harmony with them, or you can fight them. Now, I have some other friends who, one in particular, has had almost every bone in his body broken at least once. And, you know, he's gung-ho and all for life, but at the same time, it takes him a little longer to get up in the morning than me and get everything going in harmony.

We live in an environment of choices, the decisions that we make. Many of you are living in harmony with the laws that God put in the Bible. There are others who tend to like to bump up against those laws, and they get to sleep in pink underwear in the tent city out here. And, you know, they're in and out, and in and out, and in and out. They just keep kind of bumping up against the laws.

And there are those who like that kind of lifestyle of breaking the laws and trashing a marriage and getting remarried and trashing the kids and trashing the law and trashing their bodies and trashing their health. But, you know, they keep coming back. Life is like that. The choices we make have consequences. And the consequences really are our responsibility. We make our own lives. Let's go to Philippians 2 and verse 12.

In this introduction, I just want to lay down the fact that you and I are being taught to mature as children of God and as children of our physical parents. We are being brought and taught to a place of maturity where we will, of and by ourselves, for the most part, be able to make good choices. It begins with being a child. It begins with being told what to do in everything. Philippians 2 and verse 12. Paul says, So obedience is very important. We are always to obey God the Father, to Jesus Christ, to obey the rules, to obey our parents. We never stop obeying the laws.

But at some point in our training and our development, the responsibility begins to transfer more from our parents, our teachers, our tutors to ourselves. And so he goes on, he says, Notice the context of that phrase that we use so often. Work out your own salvation, fear and trembling. But what is the context? The context is your teacher, your director, the one who you obey, that middle upper level of authority is not always going to be there. You could say the very same thing to our children.

You know, you've obeyed me my whole life, but now as you're getting older, I want you also to obey me when I'm not there. In other words, keep the rules, not obey me. But I want you to obey and live by the laws of proper living and life based on the Bible. Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God who wills to work in you, I'm sorry, it is God who works both to will and to do in you for his good pleasure. This ultimately is coming from a higher source. Just because the Apostle Paul wasn't going to be there didn't mean they were orphans.

You are responsible to God the Father. I am responsible to God the Father. Jesus Christ comes in as an upper high level of authority as one who assists us, helps us, mediates for us. He is our Savior, our Helper. Below that there are some other offices that he put within the Church as well. In verse 14 he says, do all things. Aha! Now it's not just a matter of having the truth, knowing the truth, or being the right people, or in the right place.

It starts coming down to me doing something. Verse 15, that you may become blameless and harmless children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation. Every parent should not want their little child to obey them positively just what they say for their whole life. I hated it if Rayan still lived in bedroom number 2. And every day I said, Rayan, time to get up and get that husband of yours up too.

And those three kids and your dog. Today you're going to wear the yellow dress and put on those shoes, and your breakfast is ready. And no, you can't have pancakes. You know? No, we don't want that for our kids, do we? We shouldn't. Some parents make the mistake of telling their child everything they have to do and not sort of noticing that the child's getting taller and older.

And when the child then gets an opportunity to go to university and live in a dorm, what happens? They walk out the door and make their first decisions. What do you think those are like? Crash and burn? In the midst of a crooked and perverse generation. Pretty scary. However, among whom you shine as lights in the world holding fast the Word of Life. That's what God wants for us. Mary and I were pregnant. Actually, she was, but I get to claim part of that. And when we had an opportunity, it kind of scares you, you know, when you're going to be a parent and it's like, ooh, we forgot to take the course. But nevertheless, we're going to be parents. And so we drove up to Albuquerque to talk to a pastor whose kids we had grown up around. And they turned out, we thought, really great. Those were the kids we wanted our kids to be like. We didn't know how he and his wife got them to be like that. So we had to go find out. We called up there and we drove up and saw them. We sat in the living room and said, how did you raise your kids to be like that? We want our kids to be like your kids because they're all grown up now and they're doing fine. And he said, one secret. I like it. Just one. I can remember one.

The secret is, give your child as much responsibility as they can handle as early as the child can handle it. I'm like, what? I thought he was going to give me 20 points. One point. Give your child as much responsibility as he can handle as early as they can handle it. It's the opposite of always telling your child, always being there to make all the decisions. You know, it can't even, you know, whatever. So we got on it. And, you know, when your child has their own budget and cash in envelopes for clothes to buy and other things, and you get the opportunity to teach them to buy clothes before they get to high school, and about how much money remains if you buy labels versus if you shop other places and other ways.

Kids, when they get into college, or, you know, before they even get out of high school, that's their own deal. And when the child gets to go to college and has their own loan that they are responsible for, if they need help, they get a loan, and they have to work to pay off the loan, and during college, you see, there's a responsibility going on there.

And so it is that we come down to a responsibility of being, starting out, being told what to do, and end up being mature Christians who can go through the midst of a crooked generation, and yet holding fast the word of life as a light. How does that happen? How does that happen? Today I want to take a look at the topic, Take Responsibility for Your Life, and encourage each of us to revisit this topic and to claim the choices and the responsibility for the choices, and also the result, the consequences for our choices, physically and spiritually, in every part of our life.

Through history, there have been many types of assistance that God and Jesus Christ have used, layers of authority or responsibility. You can go back to the time when there was God the Father, Jesus Christ in the cloud, in the pillar, and there was Moses and the high priest, and the priesthood. There was a time following that when Moses, that layer was removed, the Joshua-Moses layer was removed, and we had priests still, but we had judges. Remember Deborah and Samson were just some of the judges during the judges period.

There was another time when there was a different type of layer that came in, the layer of a king. The king was not the sole authority. He was the physical, the administrative authority. The high priest was the spiritual authority and the priesthood. There was another time when Jesus Christ came and died and abolished the physical priesthood, replaced it with a spiritual ministry, abolished the high priest, took that himself, and yet his teachings were taught to twelve men, primarily, along with a few other followers that went along. And these twelve would become responsible, then, to teach the masses, including you and me, through their writings, and through their sermons, through their teachings.

They would form a core foundation of the church. Let's notice how the apostles were formed. If we go to Acts 1 and look, first of all, here in verse 21, let's see how an apostle was defined. Now, the term apostle, the Greek term, if you break down the definition of the word, it means, it can mean, one sent, one who was sent. But what was an apostle as far as an apostle being appointed?

Well, here we see one of the disciples is missing, and they became apostles once the Holy Spirit was given to them. And in verse 21, Peter is saying, Therefore, of these men who have accompanied us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John to the day when he was taken up from us. In other words, an eyewitness of Jesus Christ, he says, One of these must become a witness with us of his resurrection.

In other words, an apostle had to be a witness of the resurrection of Jesus Christ by his definition. Now, let's go over to 1 Corinthians 9 and verse 1. The apostle Paul happened to be a witness of Christ, Christ's life and Christ's resurrection.

Notice how when the apostle Paul is called into question as to whether he is an apostle, how does he define himself as being an apostle? What's the definition he uses? 1 Corinthians 9.1. Am I not an apostle? Am I not free? How does he answer this? Have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord? Now, I think that is very revealing as to what an apostle is. This is the last apostle mentioned in the Bible.

The apostle Paul was the last apostle who was chosen. He was appointed by Jesus Christ. The Bible says he was an apostle, and by the definitions that they themselves have used, they were eyewitnesses of Jesus Christ's resurrection because Jesus Christ taught the apostle Paul in person after he was resurrected.

Now, perhaps we could also look at the statement that the apostle Paul made where he said, the church is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ being the chief cornerstone. If you look at the apostles then as the foundation of the church, you see that their writings and their deeds formed what we call doctrine. Jesus Christ came and gave the commandments and the law expanded. The apostles then wrote those down, noted them as what we call the doctrines of the church.

So you have Jesus Christ as the chief cornerstone of the church and then the apostles as the foundation along with the prophets. You don't have a foundation that grows up through the building. You don't go to the 15th floor and find that the foundation is still here. It's still growing right up along with the building. The foundation is something that is laid. It's something that was established. When we find that the apostles and the prophets are a foundation from the church, we can then ask the question, was Herbert W.

Armstrong an apostle? When the idea was first floated that Mr. Armstrong was an apostle because of the definition of the word and also because of his prominence in the church, Mr. Armstrong flatly rejected it. He said, I'm absolutely not an apostle. But when you look at simply the Greek definition of the word as being one cent, he became convinced along with others that he was an apostle. The title or the term apostle may fit, it may not fit. It is one that we deduce. I am very happy with Mr.

Armstrong being called an apostle, but it's a deduction from the Greek definition of the term. It is not that he is an eyewitness of Jesus Christ or God said that he was an apostle or anything else. The reason I bring this up is because there are some who feel that Herbert Armstrong was not only an apostle, but he was the end-time Elijah, and Christ said that Elijah would come and restore all things.

One of the things Mr. Armstrong has said to have restored was himself as the apostle and a government that goes from that. So if you have a restored apostle and the government that leads down from him, and Mr. Armstrong restored that, then there's an assumption that after he died, that that must be something restored forever in the Church, and it must go on.

Was Mr. Armstrong the end-time Elijah? Again, you would have to deduce that there is an end-time Elijah. I think we are pretty certain that there must be another type of the Malachi for Elijah, other than John the Baptist, who Jesus Christ defined as being the Elijah. There would be, in other words, somebody who would come along in the spirit and power of Elijah. Elijah had the power to stop the rains in heaven for as long as he wanted, and then to pray to God and ask them to begin again.

We see in the end-time that the two witnesses have that type of power, and they also have the global witnessing of God in his way of life in Christ for three and a half years. But to look historically now at 22 years and look back and say, was Mr. Herbert Armstrong that individual? Again, we would all be left to... we could get into a discussion, an argument, we could all give our opinion on those two thoughts. But when we just look at the Bible, then, we do not see that there is any definitive type of government that's ever been used, or that the Apostle had, that we've had historically with Mr.

Armstrong, that we have now and united. These middle layers of government tend to come and go, but one thing always remains the same. God the Father is the Head. Jesus Christ is the Head of the Church. They are the ones that we must worship and honor. And they also put intermediate helpers above us that Christ appoints into the Church. And those exist at times, in various ways, down through time, and we certainly have the ministry here with us today. Now, we can get a little bit... I forget what the term is.

When you look back and you get all sanctimonious about it. But, what's that? A nostalgic thing. It's more than two syllables, so I was having trouble with it. Yes, we can get very nostalgic for the past. Even on a nice sunny summer day when the wind is just blowing right and you smell something or see a flower.

I can almost go back to when I was a child and wish for those lazy days of summer when Mama had the biscuits cooking and the fried chicken was going. And there's nothing to do but chase butterflies with a butterfly net and play a little baseball in the back. Those were nice days. And she got to choose the clothes I wore and the food I ate. Yeah, it's so nice. Nothing could happen to you. Nothing could go wrong.

Because Mama and Daddy were there and they decided it all. Now, I'd love to go back and various in the ministry, and I'll talk about this sometime. Wouldn't it be nice to have an apostle in the church? Just tell you everything. Just tell you what to do and what to believe and sort it all out. We wouldn't have to have any doctrinal committees or anything.

It's just... Here's the word. Here you got it. And yeah, it would be. And would we be ready if an apostle showed up? Oh, yeah. Absolutely. We'd just all be right there. But you know what? That would be the easy way. I know a minister who left United to go with another splinter group a few years ago.

And he told me the reason why I left is because, as a pastor, he said, I don't like making decisions. I was so comfortable under the old authoritarian way. I was told what to do, where to go, how much I could spend on this, what to preach on. I even got notes sent. That was nice. But this being out here on your own in United and having to study and feed the flock and come up with all these things, I just... I'm tired of that.

Isn't it nice to be able to just go back and have it all done for you? And I think at times we could get nostalgic about that. Let me tell you a little story here. I was once sitting in the cockpit of an airplane. Left seat. And the right seat was Mr. Burke Pool. 71 years old. And he said to me, More right rudder.

John, you've got to have more right rudder. You see, the prop is going clockwise like that. And it's pulling real hard on the plane. And the plane's going to tend to roll out of its configuration if you don't push right rudder to counterbalance all that pressure from the prop. More rudder. Oh, yeah. And a little more aileron. Get the nose up. No, not that much down a little bit.

Okay. Yeah. Your air speed. Watch your air speed. No, you're off course. A little back to the left. Not that... back to the right. Watch your rudder. Okay. Now, you know, slow up a little bit. Not that much. Okay. Now get it in a three degree angle. Okay. Hold it about there. You're getting your speed up too much. And you forgot the rudder. Uh-huh. Okay. The one thing about flying with Burt Poole was, I could not kill myself. There was no way he was going to allow that.

Because he had a set of perfectly good controls for that plane on his side as well. And no matter what I did, it was very... my wife didn't worry a lot. Because as long as Burt was in the plane, we were good to go. Six hours of this, one day it landed on the runway and Burt says, turn right there on that taxiway. Okay.

Right there. Left on this one. Okay. Slow down a little bit. Okay. Stop. Right here on the... Stop. Okay. Stop. He opened his door, got out, and he said to me through the open door, you go fly the airplane by yourself. Whoa! Oh, really? Close the door and he walked off. Well, now, three things went through my mind. Number one, I can kill myself. And I'll tell you what, it was a rush just to think that I could kill myself.

The second one was, it was kind of encouraging that he would think enough of my flying skills after six hours to let me go take an airplane that didn't belong to me all by myself and go fly it around. So I thought, that's pretty good. I have no idea what the third thing was. But with those two things alone, I then took off down the runway, and the plane without a second passenger just popped off the runway. Ooh, we're going high now.

All the rudders, all the aileron, all the stuff, the speed, and all that stuff, and getting back down, that was all up to me. That was all up to me. Hmm. I use this because it really reminds me of how a child who is told to do everything in life, spiritually, physically, in a family, God's family, your human family, comes to places where the adult says, all right, here's the keys.

You go do it. Here is the money. You go spend it. Here is the education. Here is the choice of a mate. You go make it. Here is where you're going to live and what you're going to do as a career and what you're going to study.

Here's what you're going to believe in the church you're going to attend. You go decide those things. Now, would you rather not have the risk of those things going south and therefore just stay at home? When I was a young pastor, I once had a family in my congregation where, as I recall, the adults were in their 70s, and the children were in their 30s to lower 40s, and all lived at home. All lived at home. Girls had never dated, never gone out of the house, still living in their bedrooms.

Now, they were safe in that environment. They weren't going to make any mistakes. They weren't going to get any trouble with guys. They would never have any divorce problems. There's a lot of other things, though, that they would miss and were missing in life. So rather than be underneath a direct supervisor always and be essentially told what to do, God wants you and I to mature.

He wants us to mature and to grow. God is, in fact, our encourager. He is our helper. The title of the sermon, Take Responsibility for Your Life. It doesn't mean you're being orphaned or cast out or being abandoned. It means now is the time to step out, continue on in a process of becoming responsible and making choices and living with the consequences of those choices. What's interesting is today I fly airplanes. Some 31 years later, I fly airplanes.

Some very sophisticated airplanes. I fly them Bert Poole's way. There are many ways, different ways, any of the secretities, I guess you could say, for flying an airplane. You'd think you'd just get in and fly it. But no, there aren't. There's landing approaches in crosswinds. There's various finesse. Bert Poole taught me to squeak them on. That means I like to put an airplane down to where the passengers are still holding their breath on roll-out. And they don't know we've landed yet. And I can do that in a jet, which is very, according to the instructor, is very difficult and almost unheard of.

That's because of just some things that Bert taught me to do, and it's the way I fly. Now, Bert is either over 100, or he's no longer with us. I don't know. I haven't kept up with him. But I'll tell you, he doesn't fly beside me in the airplane. And he hasn't in over 30 years. And yet, in a sense, he's right there, as far as what he taught me and the responsibility that he put into me as a pilot. That I attribute back to Bert Poole.

And I think who you are, and a lot of the character traits you have, you'll attribute to your parents, if they were good parents, and to your teachers. And some of the spiritual traits and things that you live by, you'll probably attribute to Mr. Armstrong, your pastor, a minister you once knew, etc., etc., you see? But are those people the ones that continue to tell you and direct you and guide you?

If you're older, if you're mature, you probably are making most of those decisions on your own. Let's go...well, if we look back in our history, I can recall the time when God called the weak of the world, He called a lot of farmers, a lot of people who grew beans and soybeans and cotton and corn, and they came out to Ambassador College and literally didn't know how to live.

They didn't know how to bathe. And so Ambassador College, back in the late 1940s, and the Church of God as a whole, Mr. Armstrong just took on as a group of children. Taught them how to shower and bathe and taught Church members how to wear and put on a tie, and that you ought to use some deodorant and what kind, and that you ought to eat better than what you're eating and what you ought not to eat, and how your house ought to be cleaned. He would teach us things like you ought to buy finer things, buy good quality, rather than the trash that's going to break down.

The good quality costs more, but it's going to last a lot longer, and you're going to enjoy it a lot more. And so just some principles like that were taught and reinforced, which was very good and needed. We had books and booklets on everything from how to date, how to marry, to, you know, whatever, whatever. Well, that was many years ago, and Daddy died, you know? That's how I like to put it.

Daddy died. Mr. Armstrong died. And I miss him terribly. I really, really loved what Mr. Armstrong stood for, what he did, what he did. I was never on the corrective side of Mr. Armstrong, so, you know, I never experienced some of that, which some did. But I'll tell you what, in that sense, I miss him. Let's go to Hebrews 5 and verse 12. Hebrews 5 and verse 12. Paul says, For though by this time you ought to be teachers, part of our development is not always to be told everything.

He's talking here not to the ministry, he's talking here to church members. There is a time to be taught and taught the milk of the Word, and at some point you really ought to grow to where you can teach others. You ought to grow to where not that the new information somehow is coming out of you, but that the Word of God is rightly divided by you. One who rightly divides the Word of God, doesn't get confused by it, but understands it enough to teach others. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God, the sayings of God.

They just hadn't progressed anywhere. They were always told what to do by God, and they never went anywhere. And you have come to need milk and not solid food. You're not becoming responsible.

You're not able to live by the Word of Truth. You're not even able to teach it to others. Somebody needs to come back and teach you again. Now it's wonderful to drink milk, especially if you're a little baby. We've got one in the family. I know some of you others do.

It's fabulous. When milk comes in such cute containers and it's always there, it's always warm, it's always the right temperature, and you know what? It's always the saying. You just don't have to worry about anything. It's just great! And you can say, I just want to be in the church. Just always, same thing. You don't have to worry about whether you like carrots or somebody's going to feed you some broccoli, or whether you like meat, or whether you're going to get fries. No, just milk, and it's great. But who wants to just have milk? Well, you're going to miss a few things, like filet mignon and some really old ripe brie that's kind of oozing out through the carton.

Wow! And some little bit of red bordeaux to go with that. Cut the edge off a little bit. Some of these things in life just get great. Mushrooms and olives, not just olive olives, I mean the stuff from the Middle East that's kind of oozing in oil and stinks really bad when you open the container. That kind of olive.

Oh, I mean there's so much more than just milk. There's lamb, and there's lamb chops, and there's little rack of lamb with the seasonings that go on that. It's like, oh, take me away. And we want to stick with milk? Well, it's safe. You're not going to get any heartburn probably off of it. You're not going to lose weight on it, for sure.

Being told everything is not necessarily where we want to be. Notice verse 13. For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a baby. Well, unskilled in the work of righteousness brings danger. You can wrongly divide the word of truth and end up going astray based on misunderstandings of the writings of Paul.

That's what Peter tells us, and many have gone shipwrecked doing that. So to avoid that, stay with milk.

But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, the margin said, mature. Those who are mature, spiritually mature. That is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.

He goes on in verse 6 that we should leave the elementary principles. A lot of people want to go back to a time in the church when the church was in its spiritual infancy and had to be told everything, written out very plainly, and we had to learn some of the foundation from the apostles. That's a very good place to begin. But notice what he said. Leaving the discussion of the elementary things of Christ, let us go on to perfection, or to maturity. That is what the Hebrew word means there. Let's go on to maturity. Let's move on. Let's go to maturity. Not laying again the foundation of, now he goes through six doctrines. Repentance, dead works, faith towards God, baptism, laying on of hands, a resurrection of the dead, and the eternal judgment. In other words, we know those things. We don't have to go back and relay a foundation of those things. We know those things. Let's move to the spiritual application of the doctrines in our life. When we look, then, at the layers of responsibility that help us at every level, those are important. But ultimately, let's remember, you are responsible to God the Father. Jesus Christ is to help you make that relationship with the God the Father maximized in its potential. Because He will assist, He'll encourage, He'll help, He'll forgive, He'll clean the slate, He'll take away the wall of partition between you and me and the Father. He's there to help us all along the way. And He's called individuals to help us, encourage us, feed us on His behalf. But ultimately, we are the ones who are responsible for the choices that we make. Solomon wrote the Proverbs to try to teach children, children of God and children of families, to accept responsibility. If we just start out in Proverbs, Chapter 1, just look briefly at parts of the first chapter.

Proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel. To know wisdom and instruction, to perceive words of understanding, to receive instruction of wisdom, judgment and equity. Why would we want those things? I don't need those things. I just need somebody in the church to tell me what to do so I can be in the kingdom. Tell me what it is. Tell me what color car to drive. Tell me what house to buy, who to marry. What to put in my body, what to believe, and I'm good to go. As long as you're there, I'm all set. But that's not what he said here. You need understanding. You need justice, judgment, equity, wisdom, knowledge, to give prudence to the simple. You're not staying there. To the young man, knowledge and discretion. A wise man will hear and increase learning. A man of understanding will attain wise counsel. Verse 7, The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction. So we begin. We're starting in a journey. We're starting towards a maturity. In verse 22, How long, you simple ones, will you love simplicity? He goes down and says, Surely, in verse 23, turn at my rebuke, surely I will pour out my spirit on you, I will make my words known to you. And he has. Because I have called and you refused, I've stretched out my hand and no one regarded, Because you disdained all my counsel and would have none of my rebuke, I will laugh at you in your calamity. I will mock when your terror comes like a storm. We live in an age of terrorism. And God is saying, if you do not make right choices, the consequence is going to be disastrous. But you have to use the wisdom, the knowledge, the understanding, and you have to become responsible for your life. In verse 33, Whoever listens to me will dwell safely, and he will be secure without fear of evil. Again, you are responsible for your salvation. You're responsible for your happiness. You're responsible for your marriage, for your family life. You're accountable. Responsibility in the Webster's dictionary is defined as being answerable, being accountable, and being liable for an action. We can't go back and have somebody take that liability for us. Daddy and mommy can't do that for us anymore. I'm not talking to you little kids. If you're an adult, daddy and mommy can't take that liability for you. They'll try. They will try. But you, ultimately, are now the one who is liable. If you apply that to every part of your life, your salvation, your family, your career, your home, the purchases that you make, your health, your church life, the pizzazz, the enjoyment of your life, these are all largely under your control. And you're to choose. If you need help, there's plenty of advice. Otherwise, you are responsible. The key to having a happy life is how you respond to the laws that I spoke of at the very beginning. The physical laws, the laws of the land, and the spiritual laws of God. How you respond to those laws is really going to affect how your life turns out.

And God has given us His mind on paper. He has given us some of His mind accompanying our minds. We have every opportunity to use the counselors that He's provided in the Bible, the ministry, the printed literature. If we choose to do so, our lives can really benefit. Our lives can be very happy here on earth. And we can qualify well for being in the kingdom of God. 1 Corinthians chapter 10, in the first 12 verses, let's just notice this. 1 Corinthians chapter 10 and verse 1. Moreover, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware that all our fathers were under the cloud, all passed through the sea, all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. They all ate the same spiritual food and they all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of that spiritual rock that followed them and that rock was Christ. And you and I have the exact same thing in reality today. Those were types for them. But you and I have the real baptism and the real forgiveness. We have the real bread. We have the real water of God's Holy Spirit. We have all of that. It says in verse 5, But with most of them God was not well pleased, for their bodies were scattered in the wilderness. So they made wrong choices, even though they had the right information. You and I are told to make right choices.

In verse 11 it says, Now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition. As kind of a... Here's the consequence if you do it this way. Upon whom the ends of the ages have come. Therefore, let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.

Now we use that phrase a lot, you know, let him take heed, you know, who thinks he stands lest he fall. Well, look at the context here. It's within the arena of those who have God's Holy Spirit. Those who have Jesus Christ leading them. Those who have the laws of God, who think they stand. Most of them fell. So you and I have to be very careful then. Have to be very careful.

I guess the question is, do we want to do those things that bring about success? Do we want to be adults? Do we want to be mature? Do we want to make the right decisions?

If we stop and look back at a time when the Worldwide Church of God ended in 1995, something came back around at that time. And I don't know about you, but I found myself in the same position as with Burt Poole, when he was standing talking to me through an open door. Because God the Father and Jesus Christ remained, but all the middle layers of authority were stripped away. And essentially there was no, for a time, there was no infrastructure of the Church. And I could kill myself spiritually. Wow, was that a rush! No boss, no superiors, no ministry, no church, just my wife and myself having resigned and been disfellowshipped because of continuing on with the Church. And, wow, the choices you can make. You're now responsible. Wow. Here's the Bible. Here's the Word of God. Here's what you've been taught by Mr. Armstrong, by the Church, all the things. Here's your Bible. You can kill yourself. What are you going to do? Wow. I'll tell you what. Two things came to my mind. Number one, of course, I can kill myself. And this time it's eternal. That was a rush. The second thing is, God feels competent in me that I can make the right choices and lead Church members without the tutor, the instructor, the one who was always in the seat beside me guiding the way. That was pretty exciting. With God's help, many of us in the ministries armed with our Bibles then formed what is the United Church of God today. And it doesn't have really the superstructure of spiritual leadership. In other words, somebody isn't up there calling the shots and necessarily telling you what to do. We have administrative structure for the facilitating of the administration, the ministry, the running of the church, the finances, and things like that. But now it is all the ministers in what we call the general conference of elders, all four or five hundred ministers, seventy-some percent of them, I think seventy-five percent, all have to agree on a doctrine for it to be changed.

That's where doctrinal change comes from, and no doctrine has changed. We don't have an apostle, and yet the understanding of the church has really matured. It's not that we have a whole bunch more doctrines, we don't. But the understanding of the church has matured. The understanding of those doctrines, the application of those doctrines continues to mature, and we can be happy for that. Just as a human being can never say, well, I trained myself. No, your parents or somebody trained you as a child, and you grew up, and you owe them a debt and an honor, and always should give them honor. Whether you think they have a good personality or not, you should always honor them and give them honor.

But at the same time, haven't you matured beyond what your parents taught you? Haven't you gone and experienced and seasoned and deepened? Same principle, but the application, the understanding and the living it, has probably deepened quite a bit.

And so, God continues to lead us and guide us. And that's a very wonderful thing.

Proper instruction is good, and then once you hand off, it can really be great. Burt Pool was good for around the patch. My parents were good for around the house. Around the patch is kind of a term you use for the airport. Pretty much you're doing touch and goes a lot. You take off like you're going to go somewhere, but you don't really. You just get in the downwind landing formation. You come back around and land.

And you take off like you're going to go somewhere, but no, just get back in the landing formation and you land. And so, you learn a lot there. Once in a while, as time goes on, then you get to do what's called a cross-country. You get to go to an artificial destination that the guy in the right seat chooses for you. I want you to fly up there and then fly over there and fly back there. Prove that you can actually take a trip, but don't really take one, you know?

And so after 45 hours, I got a little piece of paper from the Canadian government that said I was a pilot. And at that point in time, Bert Poole said, Goodbye, you're a pilot. Have a nice life.

Now, Bert quit flying with me that day. I don't think we ever went flying again.

Kind of missed Bert, but at the same time, I'd never really flown except around the airport and to the other airports he had me fly to.

Those had gotten kind of boring.

All right? Touching goes are just boring as all get out.

So what I told my wife was, you know, I got this piece of paper, which incidentally no one has ever seen other than me.

I don't know why they give you a pilot's license. No one ever looks at a pilot's license.

I had one from the Canadian government for probably 25 years or 20 years, and I've got one from the U.S. government to go with it.

And no one's ever seen him. I don't know who's flying the planes up there if they really got the certificates or not.

I don't think anybody really knows. I know one guy who flies fairly regularly for his company, and he's never even had instruction. He learned from some guy. He's been flying for years. Not something I'd recommend, but...

So anyway, armed with this little piece of paper, I said to my wife, dear, we should fly around the U.S.

Go on a real trip. And she said, okay, honey, I know you know best. I trust you.

With our new six-month-old baby. And so we didn't want to just do it by ourselves.

We got another couple to go on the plane with us, and off we left British Columbia and flew to Los Angeles and to the campus, and then all the way across to Big Sandy and saw the family, and then all the way through Kansas and Colorado and Idaho and Oregon and Washington and back to...

When I got home... Well, I left... When I left, I didn't have much experience. When I got home, I had a lot of experience.

My wife didn't want to fly with me anymore, but I had learned a lot. A lot.

And anyway, you know, it's a lot more enjoyable to leave home and go do some things.

Leave the instructor and go do some things. There are a lot of things out there to appreciate once you have responsibility given to you.

Once you have responsibility given to you.

The training is something that remains with you. We continue to appreciate that.

But where you go after that, making decisions, working out your own salvation on many issues, that is up to us.

That's what the Church encourages. That's what Christ encourages in all aspects of our life.

In Deuteronomy 30, verse 15, let's just notice how God encourages us to make decisions.

This is His job, His teaching, His goal for us is to be able to make mature decisions. See, He says, I have set before you today life and good, and death and evil, consequences and choice.

In that I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, to keep His commandments, His statutes, His judgment, that you may live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you.

That's what God wants for you and me, both now in this life and in the future forever.

But, verse 17, if your heart turns away so that you do not hear and are drawn away to something else, I announce to you today that you shall surely perish. You're not going to prolong your days.

And I call heaven and earth as a witness against you that I have set before you life and death and blessing and cursing.

Therefore, choose life that both you and your descendants may live.

It's a wonderful life. It really is. Lots of tremendous opportunities.

And we can certainly appreciate the instruction, the teachers that we've had in the past.

I've never come into your home and opened your cupboards and told you how you ought to eat, or what house you ought to buy, or what clothes you ought to wear.

A lot of people get upset with me because sometimes some of the ladies or some of the gentlemen won't dress or groom in a way that is mature.

But you know what? I like to say that those things reflect on the individual and there is a maturing process involved.

And I think with the church and the maturity that we have, those things will work themselves out in time.

I don't need to get down and, you know, work and comment or necessarily get involved in anything.

I understand that there is this maturing process and not everybody is going to be always making the best choice all the time. But I think we are all trying to make the best choices that we can all the time. And we will get better at it as life goes on.

So to close, we have been given a choice between two ways of life, two mentalities. We have to choose.

We have to live and we have to die. We are going to live with the consequences of our choice.

Let's close by reading Revelation 22, verses 10-14.

Revelation 22, verses 10-14.

I like to read this once in a while because it is sort of the conclusion of the whole matter.

This whole book is about choice and consequence. It begins with Adam and Eve.

Choice goes all the way through Cain, goes through David and Moses and Noah, and on through the Bible, many, many individuals. And it continues to tell us to make wise choices.

And at the end, Jesus says, verse 11, He who is unjust...

Well, verse 10, He said to me, Do not seal the words of this prophecy of this book, for the time is at hand.

Don't even seal! Don't even put the seal. Just leave it open.

He who is unjust, let him be unjust still. God has a wonderful opportunity here to test and assess.

Test and assess. We call it judging.

He who is unjust, let him be unjust still. He who is filthy, let him be filthy still. Choices.

He who is righteous, let him be righteous still. He who is holy, let him be holy still.

Sometimes we're some of one and some of the other.

But we're maturing and growing, and ultimately we become either one or the other in God's eyes.

Behold, I am coming quickly. We're being graded.

My reward is with me to give to everyone according to his or her work.

I am Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.

Blessed are those who do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life and may enter through the gates into the city.

I hope you appreciate maturity, the opportunity to have responsibility, and the ultimate responsibility that comes with making choices.

It's an awesome thing, a wonderful thing for children and also for the spiritual children of the Divine Family.

Let's appreciate what we've had in the past, what we have now, and the great future that lies before us.

And let's make the choices necessary to make our lives now and in the future totally successful.