Choosing Faith: The Power of Free Will

Devotional

Sermon Summary

Bible Study Guide

Sermon Clips


God cannot make a man holy without his making a choice, very important to understand that, because if God makes a man wholly obedient to him without that man's personal choice, the man is a robot. And I'll give you examples of robots that obey God perfectly: the planets, the Stars. [00:01:00]

Man is above all of these creation because of two things: we have a free will and a conscience, and the direction in which we exercise our will, depending on whether we listen to our conscience or disobey our conscience, determines whether we become sinful or holy, whether we end up as children of the devil or children of God. [00:02:23]

There's a verse in Galatians which says every man will reap what he has sown. If you sow potatoes, you've got potatoes. You sow tomatoes, you get Tomatoes. Whatever you sow, you sow wheat, you get wheat, you sow rice, you get rice, and the quality of the seed determines the quality of the fruit. [00:04:08]

The other thing we got to understand is you read much more than you sow. You plant one seed and it comes up into ten, 15, a hundredfold in a crop. That applies to good and bad. You just sow a little good action and you reap a hundredfold a reward from God. [00:05:24]

Because you don't reap the punishment immediately for what you sow, people keep on doing evil, thinking they'll never reap a harvest. Think, for example, if every time you told a lie or you got angry, your tongue got a little paralyzed, and then next time you got angry and yelled at somebody in anger, you got a little more paralyzed. [00:07:06]

God allows Satan to tempt us so that we can be holy. It's like the man goes to a gym and exercises his muscles against resistance. If there was nothing to exercise your muscle against, you'll never be strong. You can eat and eat and eat and even become obese and fat, but not strong. [00:11:45]

Jesus got an education in obedience. You see, he could never learn obedience when he was up there in heaven. He could with the father from all eternity. How could he be an example for me? I have to learn to obey God, so he became a man and learned obedience when that obedience involved suffering. [00:15:19]

He learned obedience when obedience meant suffering, and like that throughout his life. When people called him the Prince of Devil's Beelzebul, tempted to say, well, God will teach you a lesson. Isn't that a natural reaction? But he would not react like that. He'd say, you're forgiven. [00:18:31]

The temptation is, let me count the number of my soldiers and see how many countries around me I can defeat. In other words, I don't depend on the Lord to win my battles. I depend on the strength of my army. That is the temptation. It's a very subtle temptation. [00:26:21]

David was like us, but he said, no, I will not take it free, Ornan. I will pay a price for it, and he gives you a reason. Because if I take it free, my offering to the Lord will cost me nothing. And verse 24, I will not offer to the Lord an offering which costs me nothing. [00:44:04]

Today God is building his true house where people will say the same thing: I will never offer to God in my life some cheap sacrifice. That's why we don't preach tithing in this church. Tithing is saying the tithing was income tax, by the way, the Old Testament tithing is saying, Lord, 10% yours is 10% is yours, 90% is mine. [00:47:49]

We don't count numbers in a church. We don't spend time counting the amount of money we have in the bank account. You have to be careful with our money. It's good to know how much you have in your bank account so you don't overspend, but don't let your confidence be in the amount of dollars you have in your bank account. [00:49:50]

Ask a question about this sermon