Who’s Responsible

Have you ever noticed in the news that somebody else is always to blame? It's Trump, the Democrats, the Russians, the Venezuelans, the North Koreans. Do the rules apply to you, or can you always find an exception? Have you ever had an unreasonable expectation of favorable treatment? Do you only feel remorse when you get caught? Have you ever done whatever it takes for short-term gratification, regardless of the long-term consequences? Now, be honest with yourself. I don't want a show of hands. Have you ever faked sweetness, sympathy, honor, or respect to gain attention or to save face? Have you ever let other people do mundane things because you have finally risen above all of that? Have you ever said to yourself, the church is to blame, the minister is to blame, my spouse is to blame, my parents are to blame? If you've answered no to all of those questions, then either your name is Jesus Christ, or possibly you cannot see yourself as you truly are. Most of us look to pass the blame or pass the buck on to other people before we accept it on ourselves, myself included. Since I've been a pastor, I have heard the church has too many activities, and then we don't have enough activities. I'm always asked if someone, you know, gave me an opportunity to serve. I never have an opportunity to serve. And then it's very common in churches to put a sign-up sheet on the information table asking for volunteers, and have them virtually empty after weeks of verbal reminders. And yet still, people come up with all sincerity, why didn't you ask me to help? I didn't know there was a need. And what's funny is, I have been guilty of almost everything I just mentioned at some point in my life. How about you? It is natural for us to shrug responsibility. It's natural for us to blame other people. But God expects something different from those who go first, His first fruits. Something unique from you is required.

What I want to do in today's sermon is define what God expects of us. Later, Mr. Cooper is going to come and fill in some information from the New Testament of how it applies to us today. So in the first part of the sermon, I'm just going to lay the groundwork. Establish the matter. God expects you to have personal responsibility for your own salvation. God holds you personally accountable, no matter what anybody else does.

No matter what anybody else does.

You can't blame other people for your walk with God. That is between you and God. There's a reason and a good reason why He puts responsibility on you and you alone for your walk with Him. There's a good reason for it. And right now, I just want to establish the fact that He puts it on your shoulders alone.

Let's start in Ezekiel 18. Ezekiel is all about responsibility. Ezekiel talks about responsibility throughout. Ezekiel 18 and verse 20, a very famous scripture, The soul that sins shall die. Ezekiel 18.20. The soul that sins shall die. The Son shall not bear guilt of the Father, nor the Father bear guilt of the Son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon Himself. And the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon Himself. But if a wicked man turns, and this is the point of today's theme, If a wicked man turns from all his sins which he has committed, and keeps all my statutes, And does what is lawful and right, he, not they, not them, not the congregation, He shall surely live, and he shall not die.

God does not allow us to blame the ministry, the church, our brethren, whatever, whoever we might blame, Circumstances for our personal failings. Now it's not that the ministry, the church, your spouse, your parents don't make mistakes and cause big problems. That's not God's point here. God's point is only you affect your relationship with Him. He's not judging you on how other people treat you, good or bad. He only judges you and I on how we behave.

God holds every person responsible for their life. And here, God is asking people to avoid His punishment for their personal actions. Let's step back in Ezekiel and go to chapter 14. In Ezekiel 14, God is talking about when the day of wrath comes, and when He finally says, Enough is enough, and He's going to punish. Notice how you can't blame or hold on to your leaders in that day. It's not that your leaders are important. They are. It's not that your teachers aren't important. They are important. They fill a role. But when it comes time for you to answer for what your life was all about, it's only you.

Ezekiel 14, verse 13, Son of man, suppose the people of a country were to sin against me, and I lifted my fist to crush them. Put yourself in that place. Your day of reckoning has come. I've lifted my fist to crush them, cutting them off from the food supply, and sending a famine to destroy both people and animals. Notice this next verse. Even if Noah, Daniel, and Job were there. Now those are some pretty significant leaders in the Bible. Moses, Daniel, and Job. Even if Noah, I'm sorry, I said Moses, it's Noah, Noah, Daniel, and Job were there, their righteousness would save no one but themselves, says the sovereign Lord. I'm reading from the NLT, by the way. Sorry to throw you off. Guys at the sound table. Verse 15. Or suppose I were to send wild animals to invade the country, kill the people, and make the land too desolate and dangerous to pass through. As surely as I live, says the sovereign Lord, even if those three men were there, they wouldn't be able to save their own sons or daughters. That's right. In the day of reckoning, not even. It doesn't matter who your parents are.

It matters what you have done between you and God. God puts that much responsibility on each individual to answer to him alone. It's between you and God alone at the very end.

They alone would be saved, but the land would be made desolate. So what are some basic responsibilities that God would have you and I accomplish during this lifetime? What does God expect of you and me? I know this is kind of a heavy way to start off a regional weekend, but it's an important thing that we do, that we establish the matter. And we'll show you how God will get us through in the end. But right now, let's establish this matter. God holds each one of us personally responsible for the choices we make, for the life that we live. What are the things that God would have us do?

First, God would have us be responsible, personally responsible, to learn his word. Personally responsible to learn his word. It is not enough that you just come to church and listen and be taught, but that you personally take responsibility into his word.

Let's go to Proverbs for this one. Proverbs 9 and 11. Again, I'll read from the New Living on this one, NLT. Proverbs 9, verses 11 and 12. Wisdom, it says, verse 11, wisdom will multiply your days and add years to your life. And then the biggest little word in any language, if. If you become wise. Now that word, if, means that you have a choice to make. You and you alone have to choose whether or not you will learn from God. Or you will remain numb to his word. If you become wise, you will be the one to benefit. That's right. You will benefit. Now, yes, later you can benefit other people. But primarily, if you learn God's word, you gain the benefit. But reading on, if, and there's that choice that you have to make again. If you scorn wisdom, you will be the one to suffer. It is on you whether or not you learn the Word of God. You have so many resources available to you to learn today. But I would give one word of caution. There are sermons. You can log into different congregations and find your favorite teacher and listen to that teacher. And I am not opposed to that.

There are booklets that the church put out. There's Google. You can Google a question and come up with all kinds of articles. But I caution us not to neglect directly reading the Word of God. Or if you don't learn by reading, get a smartphone, download one of those free apps that will talk the Bible to you. And listen to the Word of God. But do not neglect direct contact with the Word of God. Try to make a habit out of it every day. Find a time when you can actually concentrate on the Word of God.

As a minister, it would be easy for me to just settle on doing Bible study when I'm preparing a sermon. I mean, technically that is Bible study. But you know what? That's not just personal Bible study. I actually make an effort to read something that I'm not going to speak on. That just happens to be personal study that God will teach me because I have an awareness that I am responsible to learn the Word of God.

My father was a minister for 54 years before a stroke made him retire. And he told me at the very end of his ministry, as he was writing a new book that he never finished, was, Rod, I'm learning new things. There's no way you can learn everything that you can possibly learn from the Word of God. There's no way you can do it in a lifetime. And he was 70 some odd years old, probably close to 75 when he told me that, that he was learning new things. There are all kinds of resources out there for you to learn the Word of God, and I encourage you to use them.

But do not neglect direct study of the Bible itself. God will speak to you through his Bible. So the first thing that God holds you responsible for, that you have a choice to make, is to study his Word. Once you study his Word, the next thing that you need to come to is take personal responsibility for your sins. You are responsible to repent. You are responsible to change your life. The Word of God is actually supposed to be put into action. Just learning it, just having the head knowledge, just being able to quote Scriptures.

I was at a seminar for homeschool the other day, and I was impressed. There was a young lady, a teenager, sitting in the audience, and the speaker said, Can somebody quote to me Psalm 19 versus something to something? This young lady, and she just wanted it read. The speaker didn't have her Bible open, and she just said, Would somebody read this Scripture to me? And in homeschool conventions, they're very religious. They have no problem quoting the Bible. So she assumed everybody would have a Bible. So ladies were getting their smartphones out of their purse and pulling up their Bible apps, but they didn't need to.

This young teenager just quoted Psalm 19 off the top of her head. Had it memorized. Very impressive. And I hope that that young lady puts it into action. Because if it's just in your head, and it doesn't apply to you, but you can quote it to everybody else, good for you. It has done you no good. You have wasted your time. You are responsible to turn your life around based on the choice of learning God's Word.

And you and you alone are responsible for that. At the end of the day, when you face God, you can't say, but my minister was boring. It doesn't count. It doesn't cut it. Ezekiel. Still in Ezekiel 33. Ezekiel 33. Verse 1. Once again, a message came to me from the Lord. Son of man. Again, I'm new living translation, guys. Good. Son of man, give your people this message. When I bring an army against the country, okay, here we are again. We're at Judgment Day.

A reckoning has come. You're starting to see a theme with Ezekiel. God is bringing onishment. So he's bringing this army into a city. It's the same exact thing that we just went through in Chapter 14 and Chapter 18. Now in Chapter 33, Verse 2. Son of man, give this message. When I bring an army against a country, the people of that land choose one of their own to be a watchman.

When the watchman sees the enemy coming, he sounds the alarm to warn the people. Okay, right. Army coming. Watchman on the wall. Sets an alarm. Makes sense so far. Verse 4. Then if those who hear the alarm refuse to take action, it is their own fault if they die. They heard the alarm, but they ignored it. So the responsibility is there. What about the Word of God? If you hear it, but you don't turn, you don't act on it, your death is on your head.

It's not on the head of the guy who was up on the wall saying, hey, danger is coming. He warned you. You did nothing. You heard the Word of God, but you didn't act. They heard the alarm, but ignored it. So the responsibility is there. Verse 5. If they had listened to the warning, they could have saved their lives. Notice the personal responsibility for acting on the Word of God is on the individual. It's not on the group. It's not on the church. It is on you.

Verse 6. But if the watchman sees the enemy coming and doesn't sound the alarm to warn the people, he's responsible for their captivity. They will die in their sins. They're still going to pay the price for sinning, but I will hold the watchman responsible for their deaths. If the ministry does not give you strong messages, if the ministry doesn't warn you, hey, you know, that might be a problem. You might want to avoid that area. If they don't do that, then yes, they are partly responsible. But you will still die for your own sins, and the minister will die for his sins, and he will be held responsible for not warning you. That's why I'm going to warn you. Verse 7. Now, Son of Man, I am making you a watchman for the people of Israel. Therefore, listen to what I say and warn them for me. If I announce, and here's the point, this is the point God was getting at. If I announce that some wicked people are sure to die, and you fail to tell them to change their ways, then they will die in their sins, but I hold you responsible for their deaths. But if you warn them to repent, and they don't repent, they shall die in their sins, but you have saved yourself. God will no longer hold the ministry or the church accountable if they have taught you, and you did nothing about it. Personal responsibility. God holds each individual responsible for their own salvation, their own walk with Him.

Verse 10. Son of Man, give the people of Israel this message. You are saying, our sins are heavy upon us, we are wasting away, how can we survive? What does that mean? Oh, we hear it all the time. We say this all the time. We just use different words. This is the blame game. It's not my fault. It's too hard. God doesn't love me. When what we really should be saying is, wow, I need to repent. I need to take the Word of God, and I need to read it every day, and I need to act on it. That should be our response. But our response instead is, woe is me. Verse 11. Here's God's response. As surely as I live, says the sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of wicked people.

I don't want to kill you. God says, it's not my goal to harm you. That's not why I'm holding you personally responsible. There's a whole different reason why God holds us personally responsible. He takes no pleasure in wiping us out. That's not his goal.

I only want them to turn from their wicked ways so they live. Turn. Turn from your wicked ways, O people of Israel. Why should you die? What's God's response to woe is me? His response is, why do you want to die? Woe. Really? His response isn't, oh, you poor thing. God doesn't care about how many Facebook likes he gets. If you post, woe is me, this is what's happening, God's not going to go, oh, honey, I'm so sorry for you, and he'll get a bunch of like, like, like, like, like. He doesn't care about that. You know what God's response is? I don't want you to die. Turn. Brethren, we're all responsible. You're responsible for you. I'm responsible for me. Yes, we care for each other. Yes, we'll talk about all of that, taking care of each other in later seminars, in later days. But right now, today, we're talking about personal responsibility. Nobody walks your walk for you. Nobody lives your life for you. And you might say, that's not fair! To which God responds, I don't want you to die.

You're responsible to learn the Word of God, and you're responsible to repent when you see that the Word of God has shown you that you're going the wrong way. A third thing you're responsible for after you repent is to live a life of obedience. It isn't a one-time deal. Okay, I repented. Now leave me alone! But rather, walk in the Word of God. You'll learn it, you'll turn because of it, and then you'll walk with God. And you and you alone are responsible to do that. You cannot say, please get this point, because I have seen this particular error made by so many people since I was a child. I was at Ambassador College one time, and my mother was walking along with me, and it was a troubled time in the church. The troubles hadn't really surfaced yet, but they were brewing. And we could tell that they were brewing, and there was an attack on keeping the law of God. You don't have to keep the law anymore. You don't have to keep the Sabbath. And it was an attack. It was heresy. It was brewing in the church. And it was an uncomfortable time. And here I was at Ambassador College, trying to learn the Word of God from some people who believed the Word of God and other people who really didn't. And I remember my mom visited one time, and we were walking along the beautiful campus in Pasadena. We were down in front of the auditorium, and we were talking about the troubles in the church, and she told me, Rod, when you see your leader's sin, she said, notice I didn't say if you see your leader's sin. I said, when you see your leader's sin, do not let it throw you. In other words, she was telling me, you are responsible, and you alone, for your walk with God. You cannot use the excuse. The church told me to do it. Everybody else is doing it. Well, it just makes sense to me. You can't do that and walk with God. I remember in the 1970s, and there will be no names given because it doesn't matter anymore. You and I, in personal responsibility, is the point, not what happened in the past. I only use it as an example not to blame. But there was a very popular man in the church who disagreed with the leader of the church, and he was making some points that were actually true. He wasn't wrong in his accusations. Let me be very clear. His accusations were actually correct. The leader didn't see it. He later did and fixed it. This popular guy who led a rebellion and started his own church should have just waited. The problem would have solved itself. But he didn't. And he came to my house because my father was a senior pastor over the entire state of Florida. And this man's strategy was, I'll turn the senior pastors, he'll turn the pastors, and I'll take the entire ministry away from the leader.

And so he did. He came and he brought all these big evangelists, these big names. Some of you old-timers would recognize every single name that was in my house. I mean, these were big names. And my father turned them down flat. Forget it, guys. What you're asking me to do is division. We're not going to do it. We're going to stay and we're going to fix the problem. And you know what? Those who did stay did fix the problem. The problem did get solved. And that gentleman went off and started his own church. But there were those who were responsible to listen to the Word of God and do only what it said that would not follow the crowd. What about you? What about you? Do you follow the crowd? It's so easy to do. I remember a few years later, Tammy and I were married, but we didn't have any kids yet. And the church that I was born into, grew up in, and knew was the true church of God.

A leader came in that tried to bomb everything and do away with the law. And the Word of God is very clear. You are to leave a heretic. And we had to do one of the hardest things that went against every fiber of our being. And that was to leave the association that we were in and join another group. And there were other groups that left prior to us that we were critical of at the time that I'm not so critical of anymore, in retrospect. I thought they jumped the gun. They went too soon. When I look back, God probably guided that so that those people who were being harmed by the changes that were going on would have a place to go. So I'm actually not nearly as critical. I don't look at when the United Church of God formed as, you know, this is the one and only organization that houses the Holy Spirit. We can no longer make that claim. But there was, in our congregation at that time, this huge crowd mob uproar going of buying into the changes. Isn't it exciting? Some of the local elders were getting involved, and other elders were being moved in from the headquarters to sort of infiltrate and be cheerleaders for the new changes. The heresy, the doing away with the Word of God. And the crowd was getting worked up. But we knew that we alone were responsible to follow the Word of God. My walk with God is mine. Tammy's walk with God is hers. And your walk with God is yours. You and I are responsible to learn the Word of God, to repent when we see we've done wicked ways, but then to walk in the Word of God all of our life. And that responsibility resides on you. Hey, that's heavy. That's a weight on your shoulders. Don't worry. There's encouraging news coming. I'm just establishing the matter today, in the morning. We've had many splits since we formed the United Church of God. In recent times, the United Church of God, in the past 20 years, has had people walk away because there was too much government. And then the opposite, having not enough government. In other words, according to them, not accepting the one man that was the rightful leader that should have taken over the United Church of God. And all these little groups formed. And later, we were supposedly doing away with the sanctity of the Sabbath. But Tammy and I knew that wasn't true.

So we did not follow the crowd in any one of those splits. Because we're personally responsible.

Let's read the Scripture. Exodus 23, verse 2. Did you know this is a law? That you can't blame the ministry when they make a mistake? Like, oh, you can't even do that? No. You can't even do that. Wow, that's heavy! What a burden! Yeah, there's a good reason for the burden. Stay tuned. God is brilliant. He knows what He's doing. And when He puts a heavy burden on you, it's for good reason. He's doing something really special for you. And you have to be responsible. Exodus 23, verse 2. This is a law.

New Living Translation. You must not follow the crowd in doing wrong. Did you know that was in the Bible? That it is a sin to follow a crowd when false witness is being given. It is actually a sin you can't say to God at the end, the leaders told me to do it and have God be okay with it. Why? Why would God put that on you? It's so confusing. What do I do?

Why is God seemingly so burdensome with such heavy responsibility on the individual, on you? There's a good reason.

You must not follow the crowd in doing wrong. When you are called to testify in a dispute, do not be swayed by the crowd to twist justice. You and I are individually responsible, and we stand before God alone at the end. I know that we will be tested on this again, because that warning is in the Bible from the very beginning, in the book of Exodus. Do not follow the crowd. Your personal and my personal responsibility is to follow the Word of God only. What if your minister started to preach that keeping the Sabbath wasn't necessary anymore? Okay, I know that's a softball, but I just want you to get the point. What if I started to preach that it's not necessary to keep the Sabbath anymore? That that's actually legalistic? I would hope that there are some men who would walk up on the stage and rebuke me to get off the stage in the name of Jesus Christ. I hope that you have that level of personal responsibility to the Word of God.

What if everybody around you started to drift away and not keep the Sabbath? Would you follow the crowd? Could you use that as an excuse? No. God holds you and me personally responsible, not only to learn His Word and not only to repent from wrongdoings, but to follow His Word all of your life. You can't blame the church, you can't blame the ministry, and you can't blame the crowd. You and I are personally responsible to serve God. And you know what? It doesn't stop there. What? What? Doesn't stop there. There's one more thing you're responsible for. Are you kidding me? We're responsible to learn the Word of God, to repent, to follow God's Word, even if everybody else doesn't follow God's Word, and there's something else we gotta do? Yup. There's something else. We are responsible to serve God, not just personally obey God, but benefit other people on His behalf. And we are responsible. We will answer to God for that. He is going to keep account of that in the end. Joshua 22, 4-5. This is interesting. Joshua has gone through his entire life after Moses gave him his marching orders, and Joshua did it right. And then Joshua was about to die. And so he's giving marching orders to Israel. Now the first thing he does in Joshua 22 is he sends the tribes, the men from the tribes that live across the river, that they stayed with the army the entire time, and they didn't go farm their farms all of those years, but they stayed with the rest of the congregation of Israel, and drove out all the enemies. So that everybody could inherit their land, even though they already had their land across the Jordan River. And Joshua is about to send them home. And he says this in chapter 22, verse 4, New Living Translation. And now the Lord your God has given other tribes rest. So everybody on the west side of the Jordan River, they have their inheritance, they have rest. The other tribes rest as he promised them. So go back home to the land that Moses, the servant of the Lord God, gave you as a possession on the east side of the Jordan River. But listen to this, what he told them after all of those years of Moses telling him. But be very careful to obey all the commands and instructions that Moses gave to you. Okay, we've already covered that in the sermon. Love the Lord your God and walk in all his ways and obey his commands. Hold firmly to him, but that's not enough. And then he says, serve him with all your heart and all your soul. It's not enough to just obey. But you actually have to give back. And God wants to see how much you give back. But you and I have a personal responsibility to walk with God. And you carry your own burden. You carry your own burden. Galatians 6, verse 4. But let each one examine his own work. And then he will have rejoicing in himself alone and not in another. For each one shall bear his own load.