Principles Of Consequence
Tom Shrader explores the biblical principle that our choices today have inevitable consequences tomorrow, using Galatians 6:7-10 to show that God has established a spiritual law of sowing and reaping. He contrasts Judas (who was religious but lost) with Peter (who failed but was truly converted), emphasizing that while failure is never fatal for believers, we must still take responsibility for our actions and understand that what we sow determines what we reap. Shrader challenges listeners to teach this principle of consequence to their sphere of influence, especially in a culture that increasingly disconnects actions from their outcomes.
“You can hang around Jesus, you can hang around church, you can study Bible, you can memorize these things, you can take notes, none of that means that you're a Christian.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Principles (2009)
Recorded: 2009 at Cannon Beach Conference Center
Duration: 1 hr 1 min
Themes: consequences, choices, responsibility, failure, conversion, religion, transformation, influence, struggling with failure, questioning salvation, religious but not converted, parent teaching children, mentor, new believer, feeling like a failure, young adult
Scripture: Galatians 6:7-10, John 9:1-2, Romans 8:28, Proverbs 16:20, Proverbs 16:25, Deuteronomy 7:9, Proverbs 23:13-14, Hebrews 12:5
Theological Themes: sanctification, spiritual fruit, regeneration, true conversion, religious hypocrisy, biblical authority, spiritual maturity, sowing and reaping
Full Transcript
Johnny's Ministry
Yeah, I got no chance right now. This is my worst nightmare. Right now. We'll have Johnny belt out a few songs, make people cry, and then they'll go, what time is Tom done? So, apologize for that.
John, that's incredible. That is terrific. The voice doesn't really matter much, John, because it's not about the voice, it's about who you are. That's what makes that work—it's just real to you. It's not just a gig, and it's not just music, and that's why that works. So on behalf of everybody here, thank you so much. We really appreciate you and your giftedness, and Judy, your willingness to lead.
Two Hot Buttons: Judas and Peter
I want to do two things. I got some stuff to talk about, but there are two things. I have like these little hot buttons, and one of them is Judas, and the other one is Peter. So let me talk about both of those, because I don't know where you got that, I don't know what that was from that you read, but I'd love to have a copy of it.
I love this about Judas. This is a gigantic point. This is huge. When they're at the Last Supper, and Jesus says, one of you all are going to betray me, in our minds, we think there would be 11 pairs of eyes that would go right to Judas. That is the assumption that we make as we step back, because we think of Judas as this guy with like one giant eyebrow that starts on one ear and goes all the way over the other, this sinister looking guy, but He wasn't that at all.
The Reality About Judas
Remember the disciples didn't have a lot of dough, so whoever they're going to entrust the money to is a guy that they're going to have some level of respect and trust for, and the treasurer for this gig was who? Judas.
So it is really important to get—this is huge. You can hang around Jesus, you can hang around church. You can study Bible, you can memorize these things, you can take notes. I don't know, you all take notes, I don't know, I always wonder what people do with notes because I can never keep them. You got notes, you got Bibles marked up, you're singing in a choir, you're teaching in a church, you're a pastor in a church—none of that means that you're a Christian.
That is huge to get. That point that Judy made is really big, it's the point I was trying to make today. We can be very religious and still not be followers of Christ. It's really important, really important for us to get that.
True Fruit of the Spirit
When God speaks through His words, speaks through the Apostle Paul, and He says, here's what it's going to look like. When the Holy Spirit comes into your life, He's going to produce fruit, and the fruit of the Spirit is—and He didn't say Bible study or quiet time or prayer, not that those aren't important, but He said the fruit of the Spirit is a transformed life, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.
I mean, I've spent my time teaching railing against religion. I'll have people that come up to me and they'll say to me, did you have your quiet time today? Well that drives me nuts because the only reason you'd ask that question is you want me to ask, did you have yours? And then you're going to say, oh, the Lord and I had a sweet time, and I'm going to say, then why don't you all keep it to yourself?
So when you come up, do I have a regular quiet time every day? Here's my answer. I don't mean to rock your world, but no. Sometimes I just don't get at it. Sometimes I'm just like you, man. I'm sleeping along. I got a lot on my plate.
The Security of God's Love
I'm not trying to please God. This is so big. I'm not trying to make God love me more. Get this. There's nothing you can do, if you're a Christian today right now, there's nothing you can do to make God love you any more than He loves you right now. And this is really big. There's nothing you can do to make Him love you less.
So all the shame, now that moves me right—this is a great transition—that moves me right from Judas into Peter. It moves me right into Peter's life.
Peter's Denial
There's this moment where Peter, and I believe this, man, he's saying, we'll go, we'll die for you. I'll lay down my life for you. I absolutely believe with all my heart that He meant that. When He said, listen, we'll go and die, and Jesus said, you're not even going to make it through the night, my man. Three times. You're going to deny me three times. And hear that cock crow. And I got to believe Peter's going, there is just no way.
And yet, He's confronted by that little servant girl. Then by another one. Then by another who says, wait a minute, you must have been one of Him. Your dialect gives you away. And Peter says, no, no, no, I never knew Him. And then you hear, er, er, er, er.
The Moment Their Eyes Met
Luke is the only gospel writer that tells us, and this to me is riveting drama. If you have any sort of imagination at all, you can just pull yourself right into this story. Luke tells us that at that moment, Jesus and Peter's eyes met. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine what that scene had to look like?
I know when the girls were small, and I was trying to get their attention, I would try to lift them up in front of me and hold them like this and say, look me in the eye. Can you imagine how that had to feel? Your little legs are dangling around, had to be as helpless as you can be, right? But I'm going eye to eye, because there's something about that contact eye to eye. I've got two or three people that I meet with that are amazing to meet with because, man, it's just eye to eye. Their eyes just follow you everywhere.
Jesus' eyes hook up with Peter's eyes. And it says, that moment, that Peter went away and wept bitterly.
Comparing Judas and Peter
Now, interesting, let's take these two guys now and put them together. Because fundamentally, what Peter did is about the same as what Judas did. It's just that Judas made some dough on the deal. Fundamentally it's about the same. Both essentially denied. Everyone betrayed Him, and I understand that. What's the difference? By the way, both wept bitterly. Judas went away and wept
bitterly. Judas expressed real sorrow over what had happened. But Paul tells us, as he writes to the church at Corinth, that there's a big difference between human sorrow and repentance. Both of these guys wept bitterly. Both in essence had denied and sold Christ out.
The difference was, Judas was playing a game. He was religious. And Peter was a transformed man. He had a relationship. He knew Christ.
Failure Is Never Fatal
So here's what I get from Peter, and I love it. Failure is never fatal. You're going to screw it up. I think there's a tendency on two parts that I deal with.
Literally a month from now, I'll be at summer camp down at Point Loma University, and we'll take five or six hundred junior high and high school kids. Everybody always gets concerned about what I do with them. Here's what I do. I teach them exactly like I teach you. I change the illustrations a little bit, but exactly like I teach you. I just take them right to the Bible. That's what we do.
I think we have a problem when we sometimes deal with junior high and high school students. We underestimate the pain in their life. We underestimate how much pressure they're under, how real their hurt is. I had a little boy that came up to me at summer camp two years ago, and he was a cool kid because he was a basketball player, and all the guys looked up to him. He got in a way where I was over on this side of the platform, and he came up to me. He turned in a way that nobody could see him, and he said, "Listen, I've got to figure out something when I get home."
Now this kid's in seventh grade. He said, "My mom wants me to live with her, my dad wants me to live with him. Tom, I'm not old enough to figure this stuff out." That's real hurt.
I think there's a tendency—now let me go the other end—when you get to be like you all, to think that sometimes you are older, which you are, and you've been around, and you've seen a bunch of stuff. I think sometimes we fail to understand you still screw up big time. You still sin huge. And you need to hear those same words: Failure's never fatal. God's never going to love you more than He does right now. He's never going to love you less than He does right now.
Peter's Transformation
What drives me nuts about Peter is that we only talk about Peter in the gospel. We never get to the book of Acts, and we see Peter who delivers this incredible spirit-filled sermon and 3,000 people respond. They're pierced to the heart when they hear the word. The Spirit of God—we said the most powerful force on earth. When the Spirit of God applies the word of God to the heart and the mind of a person, of a child of the King, when that thing happens, this most powerful, transforming effect that you have on all the earth, and 3,000 people say, "What should we do?"
And Peter says, "Believe, repent, be baptized." And it says 3,000 moved into the kingdom that day. It's Peter. Two chapters later, now I get it. He's denied Christ. Got it. Figured it out. Understand it.
In Acts chapter four, they take Peter, and they put him in jail, and they're trying to figure out what they're going to do with him. And they're saying, "Listen, knock this off," and Peter says, "I can't stop talking about Him, because there's no other name under heaven by which one might be saved."
That's got really nothing to do at all with the lesson, but it's pretty good stuff. I mean, and it flows right out of that. I love that so often, because people kind of go, "What are you going to teach about," and then coordinate the music and all that, whatever. The Holy Spirit will figure this stuff out. It happens every time. You plan this, you're going to end in a C, and then go to a D, and then Johnny will sing this song. I hate that. Just get up and do it. Just do it, just like John did. John did it perfect. Judy did it perfect. That's God bringing that together. Those are really powerful moments.
The God of Second Chances
And I love Judas as a picture of a lot of people that are in church, that are on their way to hell. And I love Peter as a picture of a lot of people who've screwed life up, and God says, "You know what? That doesn't matter."
That's what He said to Jonah. He comes to Jonah and He says, "We're going to go over to Nineveh," and he says, "No, I don't think I want to do that." So he spends three days in the belly of a fish. And then it says, "And the word of the Lord came to Jonah." What's the phrase? A second time, because He's the God of the second chance, and the third chance, and the umpteenth chance.
You know why? Because I'm going to screw it up and sin umpteen times. But His depth of forgiveness is beyond my capacity to sin, and my capacity to sin is pretty big. That's huge.
Your Sphere of Influence
Open your Bibles, if you would, to Galatians chapter six. We're talking about leaving a legacy, and the premise here is that there are people around you—sphere of influence, right? Remember this? We're not isolating it to family. So often we think of legacy, we think of money and family. Well, I'm not talking about either one.
By the way, tomorrow morning we're going to teach you something that if you get—I don't say this often—if you get the principle we're going to talk about tomorrow morning, your life is changed like that, instantaneously.
When we talk about legacy, we're talking about your sphere of influence. I want to kick it out beyond family. I'm sure there are young people that will come to John and say, "I want to sing, I want to do that." What do you do? And John has an opportunity to have an impact on them.
You have people in your life. Maybe they're old business associates. Maybe they're people that hang out in the neighborhood you're in. Maybe you have coffee
The Foundation: Teaching What Was Never Learned
People that God's brought into your life. Well, the idea is to leave a legacy. And it's built on two premises. One, that you're going to provide for people stuff they've never been taught. There's a growing number of that. More and more young people we deal with have not got the foggiest idea about the very basic things of life. Or you're going to deal with people who are like me, who were taught these principles, but I was smarter than everybody else and decided to reject them.
So we're just giving you some things that have to be present in your life so you can pass them on. That's the premise of the series. That's the premise of what we're talking about. So we've really talked about faith. We've really talked about the idea of conversion and how that takes place.
Today's Principle: Decisions Shape Tomorrow
Here's the principle for today, for tonight. That the decisions you make today affect tomorrow. It's passing on the principle of consequence. I don't know if there's ever been a time in the history of our nation where the idea of consequence has been more debated.
Let me read you a story. You need a little setting here. It's from the Los Angeles Times. There were some kids and they're heading out to the beach. It's just a normal day at the beach. I guess it's what you would typically do at the beach if you're kids. They're going to go and play volleyball, hang out, surf a little bit. And in this case, they're going to drink a little beer.
So they're hanging out at the beach and they're having a little beer and they're on their way home. They're driving home and one of the guys is driving and one of the other guys is videotaping. As they're driving along, you see on the distance up in the sidewalk, you see a lady. We find out later it's a 37-year-old mother of two. She's got a baby in the stroller and she's got a baby that she's walking. Well, the kid's driving along and they're messing around and then he puts the car up over the curb onto the sidewalk and kills one of the kids.
The Shocking Response to Tragedy
He is then brought to court and tried for killing this kid. The judge apologizes profusely for the severity of the sentence and sentences him to 10 years in jail. Here's a story from the LA Times. It's the reaction of the parents.
His family and friends began crying hysterically and hugging each other across three rows of the courtroom as the sentence was announced. The defendant appeared stunned. Danny is not a criminal and he does not deserve jail. He's not a criminal and he's never been. There were shocks at his sister, who felt state prison was too harsh for her brother. It's very appalling that the judge did not consider housing him in a more humane place. He's not a criminal.
What is he? He's a murderer. He killed this kid.
The Great Disconnect of Our Time
Now I pick that. You could pick a thousand kind of news stories that just simply emphasize and re-emphasize this point. There's this massive disconnect in our world between what we do and the consequences. So you live in a... and it wasn't like this when you were a kid.
My dad, my father passed away two years ago, but my dad would be 82 or 83 now and my mom is roughly the same age. They weren't raised, and you weren't raised in an environment where you were always a victim and never a villain. I remember coming home. My dad didn't jack around with me very much.
A Different Era of Accountability
I remember coming home one day and I was raised by the nuns, the Sisters of Mercy. There has never been a group of people more misnamed than these ladies in their entire life. They never saw mercy in their whole life. They never saw mercy. I always wondered, who named these ladies? Man, I would have named them like Bruno. That's what I would have named them. Tough, tough ladies.
I don't remember what I did, but one of the nuns knocked me around and hit me a few times that day, beat me up a little bit. So I go home, and I'm looking for a little sympathy. So I go to my... My dad comes in. How was your day? I said, not good. He said, what was the problem? I said, well, Sister Mary Laurent. She hit me today. He said, come here. Bam! Bam!
I'm looking for due process. I'm looking for due process. I'm thinking, well, he's going to want to understand my side of the... And I said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. It wasn't my fault. She said, he would... He said, she wouldn't hit you if it wasn't your fault. Well, he was wrong, I'm sure. But, I mean, you didn't jack around, right? It's that principle of consequence. What you do today has ramifications to it.
Your Opportunity with the Next Generation
So you all, when you're dealing with that sphere of influence, especially when you're dealing... And more and more of you, my suspicion would be, are going to have this opportunity to have a huge impact into your grandkids. More and more, we're seeing grandkids who are either ending up with their grandparents, who ended up with their grandkids, or having clearly an opportunity. And you kind of have. You've got time, and you've got some freedom, and probably have a little bit of cash. So you have an opportunity to really have an impact here.
Well, one of the things that they have to learn is this idea of consequence. They have to learn this principle, that what we do has ramifications.
God's Word on Sowing and Reaping
Galatians chapter 6, verse 7 through 10, Paul writes this, "Do not be deceived, God is not mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction. The one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. And then here is just a weird verse, let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up, therefore we have opportunity. As we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers."
Let me start on kind of a negative side, I'm going to move along, because I want to make sure we get done on time. You had ice cream to eat. But just kind of set this up. If you're dealing with somebody who doesn't get this
Characteristics of Those Who Reject Consequence
Here are some of the things you're going to see in the life of someone who operates under the principle of consequence. Number one, their choices are going to be more driven by desire. I want what I want when I want it. I'm not thinking long term.
I used to hear Larry talk about this, and it had never happened to me until about six months ago, when I sat down with a guy, and this is exactly what he said to me: "God wants me happy, my wife makes me unhappy, God wants me divorced." Well there's a flaw in there somewhere, and I bet we could find it if we looked for it a little bit. But I began to say to him, "What do you think this is going to be like? What do you think it's going to be like when you get to Thanksgiving and you get to Christmas? Who's going to tell the kids? What's it going to be like when that daughter of yours gets married, and in comes the mothers of the bride, and the fathers of the bride?"
I did a wedding maybe a year or two ago, and I'm telling you, you absolutely needed a program to figure out who the parents were. There were four or five parents on each side of this thing, all because somebody was too selfish in the course of a relationship to be the spouse that God called them to be. But if you don't get consequence, you're emphasizing choices based on desire.
Justifying Actions Through Personal Rights
Here's the second thing: you're constantly justifying your actions by claiming personal rights. We had just moved into our new building, and we're teaching in there, and on two consecutive Sundays, someone passed out during the service. Now I thought it was the power of the Holy Spirit being delivered through the message. Others have suggested it's an extreme that people go to to get out of one of my lessons.
Well the second lady that went down was right smack in the front, right exactly where Judy is, just right there. She's standing and singing. I mean, we're singing along, and she just went, bam. She was gone. She was gone on the way down. So there's nothing you can really do with that. I mean, I couldn't say, "It's a lot like Ananias and Sapphira, take her out of here, we'll keep preaching." So I said, "Why don't we stop, and let's pray for her and her family, and the paramedics."
And then at that point, the paramedics come in, and it's disruptive to the service, obviously. So we get her set, we get her settled, we get her going. Here's the first thing somebody asked me. What do you think it would be? "You guys have insurance for something like that?" I didn't even bother to go, "Hey, is she still alive?" But we're in such a litigious society. You see it all the time.
Somebody said this: "Teach a society its rights, and you incite rebellion. Teach a society its responsibilities, and you incite revival." Which side of the corner are we living on? Rebellion.
Rejecting Responsibility and Authority
Here's the third thing you'll see in people: they reject all sorts of responsibility. They keep transferring blame. They're constantly blaming someone else. I gave you the phrase, it's one of my favorite phrases. I meet people all the time, they're always a victim, never the villain. It's always someone else's fault. It's always the devil or his representative made me do it.
The fourth thing is, they do not want authority around them. They don't want authority anywhere near them. I love this, there'll be guys, and I tend to drive, I don't think I'm excessively fast. I'm around the speed, I'm with the flow of traffic. That's how I drive. And this will happen all the time, and I have friends who are policemen and highway patrolmen and they'll say this. They'll pull somebody over and the guy will get so mad at them and start yelling at them. And they'll go, "Man, you're going 80 and it's 65." And then they'll come up with this line, you said, I'll hear it all the time: "Why don't you go and catch a real criminal?" Here you go. He did. You're going 80 and it's 65, but we don't want anybody around us. We don't want anybody to tell us what to do.
Larry used to tell the story and it's absolutely perfect. You would be out and you'd take a drive up into the mountains of Arizona and you'd see these beautiful yellow signs, "curve ahead." These wonderful, like they're brand new yellow signs. "Bumps in the road," beautiful signs. And then you would come to one that would say "no shooting," it'd be filled with bullet holes. And if you go and look, you'll see it, it's like, "No shooting, nobody's going to tell me what to," I don't want nobody telling me what to do.
Life Becomes Random Without Understanding Consequence
And then obviously, and it only makes sense that if these people don't get consequence, they have a very difficult time trying to figure out yesterday with today. So life becomes for them very random, rather than see that there's this deep, deep, deep connection. And this has to be something that we capture again as a culture.
Is there a biblical principle here? Obviously, that's why we're in Galatians 6. It's a biblical principle, but the absence of this is destroying our society. The culture we live in, and I got to tell you, I hate to do this because I keep trying to tell you, let's be up, let's be excited, engage the culture. Here's the problem. And I'm by nature, here would be my life's verse: "Every silver lining has a cloud," okay? That's how I tend to see things. I tend to be very pessimistic. I got it. So if you think it's bad and you're down, come on, brother, I can take you deeper, okay?
The Cultural Crisis We Face
But we live in a time where things are just down cycling. Schools are teaching stuff that has nothing to do with anything we need to learn. And parents and society and culture and authority, they're gone. There's no structure. There's no rules. When I talk to the people, because I would say by and large, the schools are fairly screwed up. Now, that is not a reflection often of the teachers or even the administration. It's the system that's a mess. You can't deal with a kid in the classroom. Well, we got to capture this again.
So look at the text. "Do not be deceived." Put it another way: "Don't kid yourself." Literally, do not turn your nose up at God. God is not
There is a consequence to what I do. It's a principle. It's a law. He's designed this system. And it's this whole system of sowing and reaping.
There's a principle here. If you plant corn, you get corn. If you plant wheat, you get wheat. You don't plant beans and get watermelon. If you sow strife, you're going to get strife. If you sow rebellion, you're going to get rebellion. It's just a law.
Well, I can't see that law. It's kind of like gravity. You may not like it. You may not see it. You may not even believe it. But if we take you back to Portland and take you up on one of those big old high-rises and say, "Hey man, I know you don't believe in that gravity, so give it a shot here. Let's go." I'm guessing about the 10th floor on the way down, you're going to subscribe to the theory of gravity all over again. And what God's given us here is a principle, a spiritual principle, like gravity.
Spiritual Laws Work Like Physical Laws
I haven't seen one of these in a long time, but I've been on a call just a short time, and I'm selling something. And I'm going into this guy's office, and he had to step out. Maybe you all have seen him or used to see him. And he had on his credenza like a frame. It was just a frame, a metal frame. And then there were these eight balls hanging on there. Did you ever see that? They don't make them so much anymore, but they'd be there.
This must have been a guy who clearly had nothing to do. What happened is you take this ball, ball one, and you pull it back and you let it go. And ball two, three, four, five, six, seven wouldn't move, and ball eight would go like this. And then it would come back and it would go boom. And it would start moving back and forth. You'd get this whole motion going. And that isn't just some trick. That's just physics. That's just distributing energy. And I couldn't see it, but I know that that principle works.
We talk, I talk a lot about faith and about believing and using things that I can't see or understand. Electricity would be one of them. I don't get it. A computer would be one.
We Believe in Many Things We Cannot See
One day somebody sent me this email. One day an eight-year-old girl was sitting in a classroom. The teacher was explaining evolution to the children. The teacher asked a little boy, "Tommy, do you see the tree outside?" "Yes." "Tommy, do you see the grass outside?" "Yes." "Go outside and look up and see if you can see the sky." "Okay," Tommy said. He came back a few minutes later. "Yeah, I can see the sky." "Did you see God?" "No, I didn't see God." The teacher said, "That's my point. We can't see God because He isn't there. He just doesn't exist."
A little girl spoke up wanting to ask the boy some questions. And so the teacher agreed. So the little girl asked the boy, "Tommy, did you see a tree outside?" "Yes." "Tommy, did you see the grass outside?" "Yes." "Did you see the sky outside?" "Yes." "Tommy, do you see the teacher?" "Yes." The little girl said, "Do you see her brain?" "No." "Then according to what we've been taught today, she doesn't have one."
Now obviously, fiction. But you get the point.
God Is Sovereign Over Some Things
God has this. Now here's what I want you to see, because I believe God's sovereign and in absolute control. And there are things that come into your life over which you have no control. So we'll talk about some of that tomorrow night.
So in our life, we've had those big moments in our life, in our family life. My daughter one night is driving along, driving home. She's actually riding with a girl, and it's after a basketball game, and they were cheerleaders, and they're obeying the law. The girl's parents are in the car in front of them. The light turns red. They stop. Parents go on. Light turns green. They pull into the intersection. And three guys in a pickup truck, drunk, T-bone her, and she ends up in intensive care, brain seizures, and all of that. She had no control over that. There was nothing. She did everything right. We have those.
My wife has cancer. She's had cancer for four and a half years. She's been dealing with this. She's been essentially on chemo for four and a half years, nothing you can do about it. I mean, there it is. Can't control it. There it is. Boom. We've got those things that happen in our lives.
A lot of you are probably just like me. In fact, some of you in this room can feel the pain way deeper than I can. You had this stack put away for retirement, and then last November, that stack went from like this to this, didn't it? And you played by all the rules. It really makes me mad. I played by all the rules. I did all the things.
Personal Frustrations With Injustice
There's some ads. Let me digress here. There's some ads on TV that set me off like a rocket, and one of them is where this guy goes, "I owed the IRS $300,000 and only paid them $1.49." Well, I want to hit this guy with a shovel and say, "You owe them," because I'm paying it, and you're paying it. This is a joke. "I owed the credit card company $27,000, but I only paid them $2,000." Well, you're a crook, my friend. You said you were going to pay them. You didn't pay them. That drives me nuts.
We Still Have Control Over Many Things
Well, you've got some of these things that come along in your life, and you just can't help them. But I don't want us to become so into the sovereignty of God that we fail to understand what God is saying to us in His Word, that what we reap is what we sow, that we are constantly planting, and we're going to decide, in some instances, what that harvest is going to be.
And again, I want to come against this idea of fatalism. There's a difference here when we talk about fatalism and we talk about God's sovereignty. Fatalism is the idea that nothing's controlling anything, and it's all random.
So here's what Oprah says. Oprah says this often. Oprah will say this, "I believe everything happens for a reason." I've heard Oprah say that many times, and you will hear other people say that. You'll be sitting at a Starbucks or Seattle's Best or wherever you hang out, and you're sitting there, and you'll hear somebody
talking, and it wouldn't be uncommon for somebody who's in these counseling sessions, having coffee and counseling one another, to say, "Oh, you know, I know that's tough, but everything happens for a reason."
Well, I'd love to sit down with one of these people and go, "Think about what you just said." If everything happens for a reason, then somebody has to be in control. If everything happens for a reason, it can't be random. It can't be chance. It can't be nothing. Jonathan Edwards, the greatest mind that America ever produced, defined nothing as what a rock thinks about when it dreams. So it can't be nothing. This whole thing isn't just a crapshoot. We didn't just land here by some sort of cosmic chance.
You get that? That's a huge point. When somebody says to you—they may not accept your faith—"I think everything happens for a reason," I'd be all over that if I was you. I'd say, "You bet it does." But if that's true, then what that means is somebody, something, some power has to be moving this. Something has to be controlling this.
God's Sovereignty in All Things
We know God causes all things to work together for good to those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. We know that. That's what Paul says. That's how Paul says everything happens for a reason, Romans chapter 8, verse 28.
If that is the only verse you have—let's say you have a Bible with one verse in it, and it's that verse—then that verse alone tells you God is all-powerful and all-knowing. That verse alone demands that He knows all things and He has power over all things. Because He has to know what's going to happen if He's going to work it together, and He has to have the power to do it.
So again, we'll talk about this more tomorrow afternoon, but just take Sarah's accident. I believe with all my heart, if God wanted to stop that, He could have stopped it just like that. He could have had that light turn red a little different, and those guys come along at a different time, but He didn't do it. Everything that comes into our life is either caused by or allowed by God.
Now that's the sovereign side. The human responsibility side is, I still have to take responsibility for the things that I do. He says it in verse 8, look at it: "The one who sows to please the sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction. The one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life."
The Question of What You Want
So the question becomes really quickly in your life, what do you want? You want destruction? You want eternal life?
Isn't that what's so frustrating, sitting down with young people in particular—it could be all ages, but young people in particular—and saying, "You know what? They have no long-term view at all." Long-term for them is like a week. According to the last high school survey I saw among seniors, 47 percent of high school seniors said they could not think of one thing they would die for. Not country, not family, nothing.
Well you all know that, right? I know it's a bumper sticker, but it's true. If there's nothing worth dying for, what? There's nothing worth living for. So it's going to be whatever.
A Generation Without Hope
I was talking to one of my friends who works primarily with Latino population, and he said, "I don't know these Latinos—the ones I deal with, none of them expect to live past age 30." I was talking to a girl who works in that population, here's what she said. She said, "I don't know one girl who's dreamt of her wedding day." Isn't that interesting? Because that's what our little girls did from the time they were raised. That's what they thought, "I want this, I want that, I want this, I want that music." They see no future.
Well if you see no future at all, then what are you going to sow? Well you're going to sow destruction.
Here, think about the world we've created. There is no God, you've evolved from nothing—you know the whole thing, first it was goo and then to the zoo and now it's you, that whole process—so you've got that whole thing. You start over here with nothing, you evolve from this thing, it's all chance, you're not going to live past 30, you wouldn't die for anything, then what are you going to live for? You're going to live for yourself.
The Destructive Path of Short-term Thinking
You're going to sow destruction. You're going to say, "I don't care. I don't care what's going to happen. I'm going to drop out of high school." Why? "I can get a job over here, they're paying 10 bucks an hour. I can get a job and get a car, have a little food, have some stuff, have a little money to take my girl to the movies, that's all I care about."
But now I've got to broaden that and I've got to decide right now, am I sowing long term for eternal life or am I sowing short term? Pursue delayed gratification, that's what we try to teach. Pursue it. It's hard to do. I don't naturally think that way. I don't naturally come to that.
There's everything inside of me that says, "I want what I want when I want it." There's everything in me that says, "Even if that's not good for me, I'm going to go ahead and do it because I don't really care about then, I only care about now."
A Personal Example of God's Grace
When I was growing up, my big thing is I loved to party and I loved to drink. I drank a lot. And you all probably—some of you in here probably were engaged in some of that. But by and large, I would spill in a night more than most of you would drink. And the problem with that—it's not anything like it is now—is it had to get from there to home. So I would drive myself home. So there'd be four or five nights a week that I'd drive home and not even realize how I got there.
Now it was through God's grace. So I'm trying to make a point here that even in our destructive behavior, sometimes God protects us. It's by God's grace, not my driving skills, that I didn't kill somebody or get killed or wreck this car.
But the principle is, the principle is you will reap what you sow. You're a slave, my man. You're a slave either to
money and this world or to God. There's never a scenario where you're the master. You're never the boss. You're never the one in charge. You're always the one who's subservient to something. You're either going to serve the world system and its agenda and its value systems and all that goes with it, or you're going to serve God.
There's really only two choices. Decide this day who you're going to serve. It's going to be me, or it's going to be the world. As I serve myself, I begin to desire to please this sinful nature. Don't miss it—God will not be mocked. What you do today affects tomorrow.
The Time Delay of Sowing and Reaping
Verses 9 and 10 are really interesting to me. I remember the first time I read them, I thought that makes no sense at all. "Let's not become weary in doing good. At the proper time, we'll reap a harvest if we don't give up." I thought that was so weird when I read it. How would you or why would you grow weary doing well?
Well, let me tell you why. Because this sowing and reaping thing has a time delay on it. This is just a great exercise—you do it with your kids. I think Susan and Haley were working with the boys, and they were planting sunflower seeds or something the other day. You know what it's like with a kid. You plant a seed, and he's up the next morning wanting to go out and smell the roses.
Here's what we learn: there's a time delay in here. I may sow discord, but I may not reap it for a while. I may sow a harvest of things that please God and the Spirit that reap eternal life, but it doesn't happen right away. How would I grow weary of doing well? Because doing well is tough.
Your Pastor Is Growing Weary
I have no agenda. One of the things about coming up here that I love is they never ask what I'm going to talk about. I think originally they'd send me something—I guess maybe they did. I just ignore it now. But they used to send me stuff and say, what are the titles and all that. I don't know. It's something part one, two, three, four, five. I don't know. Whatever. We'll figure it out. It'll be fine. But nobody ever tells me what to talk about, and they never tell me we have this agenda.
So let me tell you one of the guys in your life who is likely growing weary of doing well and you can change this for him. Let me tell you who that cat is: your pastor back home. This guy, if your church is anything like every other church, is getting his brains kicked in. He's working long. He's working hard. He ain't making a whole boatload of money. He's got people who are nipping at him for the dumbest things.
They're still arguing about music and seats. We remodel—here you go. We remodel our chapel. We had a great chapel, and at Pews, it was a really nice thing, but it was designed to be remodeled. I mean, that's how it was. Things grow out. We're just going to do it. Well, we were going to build this worship center, this $11 million worship center, and we decided about a year ago, let's not do that. God was good. We stopped.
Complaining About Comfort While Supporting Persecution
We had to remodel the chapel, and by going from Pews to seats, we could get more people in there. We need to get people in there. We're doing like six services now. We'd like to get more people in there. So we did a couple of things. We changed the front. We changed the seats. We had a building that had a lot of hard services, so we came in and we redid all the acoustics in there. So now the room is dead. It's perfect for music.
I hear nothing but whining from the people that are in that room constantly. "The seats are uncomfortable." These are the same people—this makes me gag. These are the same people who want to give me a book about how the church is persecuted in China, and they can't sit their can on that seat for an hour and 15 minutes. They want to talk to me about the persecution in China, and they're whining about that seat.
You talk about a disconnect. Are you kidding me? You read about the mission field for the persecuted church, and you don't like the way the lights look? Isn't that unbelievable? And we've got to sit as a staff and mess around with this? I'll bet some of you do that to your guys at home, don't you? Are you kidding me? That's the biggest issue you've got in your whole life? That seat's uncomfortable? We are stuck on stupid sometimes, aren't we?
Multi-Generational Worship Challenges
You're sitting in a church—let me tell you, the guy's got you. Just think about your own family. You got you, you got your kids, and you got your grandkids. Now what do you want? I know what you want. We want to worship as a family. How cool is it to have three generations there?
Well, let me tell you something, my friend. If you're going to have three generations there, you better figure out the music. Because you aren't listening to the same thing your kids were listening to, let alone your grandkids. Now you know what you want to do? Let me give you a little tip. You suck it up, you quit whining, and you enjoy their music.
We had a guy who used to come to our church. When we had a guy who used to come to our church, this guy hated the music. He hated the building. He hated the way I dressed. He hated everything about it except this. He said, "I love young people worshiping and coming to Christ, and if that's what God's using, I want to be a part of it." And he was the guy writing the big checks. That's the other thing—you're the ones who have to write the checks for most of this stuff. And he was the guy writing the checks. How cool is that?
Don't grow weary of doing well.
The Seemingly Unrewarding Work of Motherhood
I think about this with my girls. Right now, they are mothering two kids, each of them, little bitty dinky kids. There is nothing less rewarding, I think, than taking care of a kid. I'm just not big on that first year and a half or two years. There's nothing rewarding about it. They may look at you and smile, but you know it's not you. They just have gas.
Parenting is one of the most thankless jobs on the planet. When you change a diaper, that baby isn't going to pop up and say, "What a job, mom! Look at that - that diaper's tight. Nothing's going to shake out of that." It's never going to happen. So why do you do it? You don't do it for immediate gratification, but because you're thinking about what they're going to be like when they grow up.
One of the great joys in my life, and certainly one of the sources of great amusement for me, is to see how my girls mothered. I made a deal with God a long time ago - though I don't really make deals, I was just talking about how long I'd like to live. I said I'd like to live long enough to see my grandkids get married, because that would kind of close the loop on my girls.
We look at our daughters today, and they're absolutely amazing. They're spectacular mothers and wives. By the way, that's got nothing to do with me. That's two things: God's grace and Susan's sweat equity. Those are the two things that created that. Susan slugged it out. She was at home with the kids. We only had one car. I took her to work. We didn't have any money, but we didn't even know and it didn't matter, because we weren't in it to get them to be three years old. We were in it to get them raised. We were in it to help them become little girls who love God, then teenagers, then women who would be good - not just great Christians, but good, solid citizens.
Living with a Long-Term Perspective
"Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially those who belong to the family of God" (Galatians 6:10). Here's the premise and what you want to teach. You've got to get it in your own head first: the decisions that you make today will affect how you live tomorrow.
Let me give you an illustration. Life is not photo snapshots, but a video - it's a film. You can take a roll of film and pictures, have them processed, and get them back. You might have one from the beach at Cannon Beach, then one up at Astoria, one at the Portland Airport, then a birthday, a Mariners game - well, actually a Mariners loss - then a Seahawks game, then a Blazers game. They're totally random photos with nothing connecting them. This frame has nothing to do with that frame. But that's not life.
Life is a film. Frame three and frame five are connected by frame four. They all run in sequence. I need to see my life not as random snapshot photos, but as a seamless film.
Understanding God's System
Let me give you a couple of practical things. In this whole process, I begin to understand that God does a great work in our lives. Here's the first thing I need to know: I need to understand that there is indeed a system.
Proverbs 16:20 says, "Whoever gives heed to instruction prospers" - literally that word means "is prudent" - "and blessed is He who trusts in the Lord." Proverbs 16:25 tells us, "There is a way that seems right to men, but in the end it leads to death." There's human reasoning. There's a human way.
If you go out to the streets of Cannon Beach and start talking about this, I fully understand that you're going to have pushback. There is a way that seems right to man, but God has His own system. Deuteronomy 7:9 says, "Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, and He is a faithful God. See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse: blessing if you obey the Lord, curse if you disobey."
I need to understand that system. By the way, no excuses. I was listening to a guy on television - he's a highway patrolman - and they were asking really practical things. When somebody stops you, is there any way to get out of it? Then the guy asked the question in reverse: "Is there one thing that guarantees you a ticket?" The patrolman said, "Every time, without exception - all the guys I know say the same thing - every time somebody says to me, 'I didn't know the speed limit,' I'm writing them up."
You may not have understood this system before, but now you do.
Diagnosing the Cause of Problems
Here's the second thing: when there are difficult moments in your life, try to seek the cause of the problem. It's important to diagnose this fairly. John chapter 9, verses 1 and 2, is one of my favorites. Jesus is moving along with the disciples when He comes into town and sees a blind man. The disciples ask, "Who sinned, this man or his parents?" Jesus answers and shatters traditional thinking, saying it was neither, but that this man might become a display case for the work of God. We'll talk about that more later.
But it is absolutely fair for me to understand that I'm in this situation and I may be there for a reason. There may be sin in my life. There may be a process that I find myself in over and over again that creates sin in my life.
I had a guy talking to me about an event that takes place in his life that, if I described it to you, is clearly sin. I asked him, "How does this happen?" He said, "Well, on Thursday night we go bowling. I'm in a bowling league with these guys. Then once a month we all go out and have a few beers. From there it degenerates into this." Now I don't have a degree in counseling, but my advice to him was this - what would you say to him? Don't go out on Thursday night. "Wow," he said, "I never thought of that."
I had a lady come up to me one day after I was teaching and she said, "Will you pray for me today?" I said okay, but I'm not good at that because when you say that...
Understanding Timing and Prevention
Let me share a story that illustrates how consequences work in real life. A lady came up to me at the end of a service and asked me to pray with her about something. When someone asks for prayer, I've learned that if you try to just guess what they need, you never get at it. So I asked, "What do you want me to pray for, because I can pray for it right now."
Here's what she said to me, and this is great: "I have a box of turtles at home in the refrigerator." Now you know what turtles are, right? The candy - it's delicious candy. Here in town they're making them, and they're like the best. I love turtles. My mom would get these turtles and carve them with a knife as a treat - they're incredible.
So she said, "I have this box, and think about this - I have this box of turtles at home in the refrigerator. Would you pray that I don't eat them?" I said, "I don't think He's going to answer this one." The time to pray about not eating them is what we would call the point of purchase. Once you take them home and put them in the refrigerator, they've got a shelf life of what do you think - a day, day and a half? These turtles are going down. They've got no chance.
Sometimes we just disconnect that. I said to her, "You know, what I would do if I was you is go home and throw those turtles away." "Oh, I could never throw those turtles away." "Well then there's only one way for them to get out of this world, and that's for you to eat them. That's what's going to happen."
Teaching Responsibility and Discipline
Seek that, understand that, and here's the third thing: accept responsibility in your life. Proverbs 23, verses 13-14: "Don't withhold discipline from a child. If you punish him with a rod, he will not die. Punish him with a rod and save his soul from death."
We need to teach this. We need to teach these principles. We need to teach people to accept responsibility for how they live. We need to teach parents to parent.
You want to see bad parenting? Go to something like a Kids R Us and just watch these parents walk through with their kids. Then they'll do one of these: "Bobby, Bobby, stop that, stop it. One, two, three..." And the code here is five, or whatever number they have - "five" - and then he drops it and comes over.
Here's how this ought to go. Let me show you how this ought to go: "Bobby, drop it." "Oh, no." "Come here." Bam. That's it. You're not counting to five. Delayed obedience is disobedience. Counting to five - what are we doing? Teach them responsibility.
God's Justice and Timing
Then understand this, and I need this: understand God balances the scales. Because I'm looking around and sowing and reaping, and I'm thinking, "You know what, I'm doing all these things right, and I'm sucking gas. And this guy over here doesn't give a rip about Jesus, he doesn't give a rip about the Bible, he doesn't give a rip about church - he's got a new car. I'm driving a piece of junk. He's living in a great house, I've got nothing. He doesn't care a lick about this."
I've got to understand that there's a day of reckoning, and it's God's job to resolve this, not mine. "Vengeance is mine," says the Lord. He'll figure it out. He establishes the law and the principle, and He's the one to reinforce them.
Love and Discipline Work Together
Then just one last thing that I think is really important: in the midst of all of this, we really, really, really want to display love the best we can. So it's love and discipline.
The author of Hebrews, chapter 12, verse 5: "And you have forgotten the word of encouragement that addresses you as my sons. My son, do not make light of the Lord's discipline, do not lose heart when He rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines those whom He loves, and He punishes everyone that He accepts as a son. Endure discipline and hardship. God is treating you like a son."
I thought about that. I don't particularly like kids - I mean, I'm courageous enough to say it. They're alright, but I mean, I'm not a big fan. I'd be alright without them. But there are two kids, out of this whole world, that I love more than any others - that would be Sarah and Haley.
Now it's interesting. When I think about this, and loving them more than any others, I've been around other kids who desperately need discipline or spanking, to be reprimanded, but I never do it. Why? They're not my kids.
The Heart Behind Consequences
And this whole idea of consequence - that as you fail, just like we said you would (you all agreed with that early on), in the midst of that, God's going to take you to the woodshed. That doesn't mean He doesn't love you.
James Dobson says this: the greatest mistake we make in raising our children is thinking if we love them enough, we don't have to discipline them. Well no, it's because you love them that you discipline them. It's because you love them that you tell them, "If you do this, this will happen."
And I'm telling you, when you talk about you having a legacy and influencing your sphere of influence, of the people around you, there's a whole generation that simply don't get this principle at all. You need to get it.
Living Out This Truth
You know what, and I'll tell you this: in faith and some of the other things we might talk about, you may not have down cold. My suspicion is most of you get this one. So it should be really easy for you to teach it to the people that God brings into your sphere of influence, right? And then to be open to it in my own life.
That what I do, the sin I commit, the sin of omission and commission - God's going to discipline me. That I will indeed reap what I sow. Amazing truth.
Well, let's pray. Father, thank You for this principle that You share with us. It's inevitable. It's a law. We can't reverse it. It's totally, absolutely true. God, thank You that You love us, and because You love us, You do, will, are disciplining us.
Father, thank You for the salvation that we find in You and You alone, that indeed You are the source of the love that we have in our life. We love You and we acknowledge even that is because You first loved us. Father, thank You for that amazing truth. Thank You for that night. We pray for the rest of the night. We pray for the people that are here that maybe are a bit lonely.
that you might connect them with somebody over, or have an ice cream tonight, and bring them a friend. God, let us love You and love one another. We pray that in Christ's name, amen.