COMMITMENT OF LIFE #1

A. ROM 6:16.
1. Commitment is important. You become a servant of the one to whom you commit your life.
1. To many professed Christians know less and less about God’s Word.
2. That has resulted in a lesser and weaker commitment to God, His Church and the truth on which that Church is built.
(A) How can we perpetuate the truths of God’s Word? By teaching correct doctrine.
(1) Will this congregation be here 25 years from now? That's an important question.
(a) The answers are not found In man’s wisdom but in God’s Word.
(b) It was God who put the Church in the world, but man’s failure to cleave to God’s Word, has begun to put the world in the Church.
(2) Some men are trying to reconstruct the church and this bothers me greatly.
(a) Strange desire to have something new. Change for the sake of change.
(b) How can we change God’s Word when God Himself does not change?
(B) MAL 3:6; HEB 13:8; HEB 12:28.
(1) We have a God who does not change, a Savior who is unchanging and an
unmovable, unchanging kingdom.
(2) Some are trying to carve out something different from what we read about.
2. The New Testament Church is distinctive from all else in the World. It is build by a pattern.
a. TUPOS. A mold into which you pour lead. A pattern that produces the exact same
Identifiable object every time..
(A) People who want to change the Church make fun of this God given pattern.
(1) They ridicule us as having an old path mentality. I’m proud of our old path
Mentality. It's God's mentality that is based on the mind of God.
(a) JER 6:16.
(b) Even then there were people who professed to be God’s people, but were not.
(c) Why? They made fun of the old paths and refused to walk in them.
(2) They say there is no pattern, blueprint. Those old ways cannot be adapted
to the modern world and modern life and the new millennium in which we live.
(a) To make New Testament Christianity acceptable to our culture today we are told we can no longer observed the pattern that was followed in New Testament times.
(b) They say Christianity must undergo a spiritual and cultural change. That simply
means, “It’s ok to put the world into the Church.”
(c) When you reject God’s pattern the only thing with which you can replace it is human will, human wisdom and human philosophy.
(B) There has always been a pattern and it’s called doing It God’s way. Many examples.
(1) God told Noah, “Build the Ark according to the PATTERN I give you.”
(1) GEN 6:14-21.
(2) GEN 6:22.
(2) HEB 11:7.
(a) By faith Noah built According to the PATTERN. Why? To save himself and his family.
(b) “By faith” means to do it God's way.
(3) ROM. 17:17.
(4) If It's not in the Word of God it's not of faith and it can not save anybody.
(b) The pattern was the blueprint. It means, God’s way and not man’s way.

(3) There was a pattern for building the Tabernacle.
HEB 8:5 quotes EXOD 25:40.
(a) 1 CHRON 28:12.
(b) God gave David the PATTERN for building the Temple in Jerusalem.
b. In the New Testament, we have been given a pattern that we must follow.
(A) 2 TIM 1:13.
(1) That’s not an option, not a suggestion. It is a direct command from God.
(1) Not given the liberty to change the pattern. Not add to it or take away.
(2) The only option we are given is clearly stated. “Keep the pattern.”
(3) My wife makes a dress using a pattern. If one piece is missing then the pattern is useless and in effect she has no pattern at all.
(2) Some people in the Church are refusing to follow the pattern given in the Bible.
(a) They make spiritual, cultural changes to the pattern. How do we combat that?
(b) Stand on God’s Word. How can you obey God's Word? How can you, stand on God's truth if you don’t know what truth is or what it says?
(3) JNO. 8:31-32.
(1) Freedom comes by Knowing & Obeying God’s Truth.
(2) Truth sets us free. Not supposition, Not human opinion, Not the desire to change the pattern culturally and spiritually so you can have fellowship with those who reject the pattern.
B. Do you know why Israel went into Captivity?
1. ISA 5:13.
(A) Do you know why Israel was destroyed by their enemies, fell from grace, lost their
fellowship with God and lost the promised land God gave them?
(1) HOSEA 4:6.
(a) Do you know why people drift off into spiritual and doctrinal error?
(b) They were ignorant of God's Word.
(1) God's Word is what tells you what God thinks, what God wants and what enables you to have fellowship with God.
(1) That’s why God gave us the Bible and then asked us to follow what it says.
(2) When you reject what God says in the Bible you reject God and any knowledge you might have about God.
(B) ROM. 1:28-31.
b. There is a way to remedy that. A way to keep it from happening.
(1) Open up the Bible and learn what God asks you to do to be saved.
(B) That's why I end every lesson with that admonition of the Apostle Paul in Acts 20:32.
(1) If what you believe is taught in the Bible, believe it, obey it and you'll be saved.
(2) If what you believe is not in the Bible, turn away from it and turn to God's divinely
inspired Word and save your soul.
(3) ACTS 20:32.

Spur - 2/4/2001 am