Inland Empire: Riverside
The Right Decision - Audio
This December morning. Hope you're enjoying the month. I heard the cold front is coming in. We're going to cool down and get a little snow on the hill, which is a good thing. I don't know if it'll be around for Christmas, but it might melt off. This is Southern Cow. You know, last night was a fun night. Went out and celebrated with two dear friends. It was their first 50th birthday, a great married couple. Been great a part of the Inland Empire Ministry and the L.A. Church. Super encouraged to be there with Gary and LaNita Johnson. Their 50th birthday. And a great number of you were there as well, and I thought it was very funny that the most comfortable place for Gary up at the night was up on stage with the DJ. He had some of his old high school buddies there, DJing, and Gary kept saying he said it at least three or four times. Hey, I'm 50 and I'm fly. We're 50 and we're flying. He kept saying it. He didn't dance that much, but he did like getting up there, getting that mic in his hand and rolling off some some encouragement to all of us to dancing. Didn't let anybody get out of there unscathed. So it was great being with them. I really appreciate Gary and LaNita. So happy birthday to you guys. Amen. You know, decisions can make or break our life. And a recent decision was made in my alma mater. Now many of you don't care about UCLA football, but I do. But it doesn't matter. It's going to be the intro to the point. So you can just pay attention and learn from it if you like. Well, they fired their coach 10 days ago. And so the big thing was, are they going to hire somebody new? And it's a big decision. You know, this is a multi million dollar decision. You have to make as an administration. And so they've been going through the different coaching candidates and figuring out who they're going to pick. And they asked several who just turned them down because the state of my alma mater's football has gotten to an all time low. But so they're working on making a decision. And I found out yesterday that decided on a guy named Jim Mora, former NFL coach. And I don't even know. Most don't know who he is. He was not that successful of an NFL coach. But, you know, the reality is they made a decision and they're going to have to sink or swim with this decision. Most of the alumni are not happy about it. And I'm mixed. I'm not sure. I'm going to give it. I'm optimistic. I'm going to say, OK, well, we made a decision. There's a new guy. Let's see what happens. But, you know, we do need to make decisions in life. You know, if we do not make a decision, we're making a decision to do nothing. And that's usually a bad decision. The decisions you make will define the destiny of your life. And I like making good decisions. I like when there's a traffic jam and I make the decision to get in the fastest lane, you know, and you're kind of guessing which one's going to go, right? I like when I plan an event a night out with my wife and everything goes as planned. You know, I plan night out and they don't go as planned. But I like when everything flows the way you want it to flow. You know, this summer we went on our family vacation and we were trying to figure out what to do, something local, like some staycation. But I called a friend from college. You worked for Universal and they're getting free tickets to Universal Studios and showed up right on time, just, you know, time really enough to catch him. So I got the free tickets. He had, you know, the fast pass ones. And it's like the whole day just worked out. You know, you're like, wow, this is great. Last minute decision. But everything worked out. You like when decisions worked out. Amen. And yet you don't like it when decisions create damage and pain and suffering in our life. Amen. And yet that happens to many of us. And so my title today of the sermon is the right decision. And I have one point. And that point is simply this. Make the right decision. Let's go to God in prayer. Father in Heaven, thank you so much for this time to be worshiping together here in the Inland Empire. Thank you for the Inland Empire Church of Christ. Father, thank you for the family we have, the ministry we have, the mission we have. Thank you, God, that you made the decision to send Jesus to come down and give himself for us. Thank you so much, Lord, that you have in store for us a great life. You have in store for us the hope of heaven and the actuality of heaven. And Father, we ask right now, as we study your word, that our minds would be open to it, that you would teach us from your heroes of the Scriptures who made good decisions. And you would warn us through the example of men in the Bible who made bad decisions and help us to see that we can make the right decision. Be with us now, we ask in Jesus name, amen. Let's open our Bible, so Genesis 24, and I want to talk today about a great hero who made the right decision. And as I've been studying a book called The Beginning of Wisdom, and there's a great chapter on this I've read a couple times. It's a very insightful. This is a hero, one of the greatest heroes really of the faith, and we don't really see her as that all the time. We know she's great, but we don't quite get how great I think we miss it. And this is the hero Rebecca, the wife of Isaac. She's a great hero. And so, ladies, she's someone to model your life after, but men, we as well can learn so much from her. Let's begin reading and learn about how to make the right decisions in this chapter from Rebecca. Let's begin in verse 1 of Genesis 24. Hopefully, you have your Bible. If you don't, we don't have it up on the screen, but maybe somebody next to you has a Bible. You can lean next to them and want to urge you to bring your Bibles. Genesis 24, verse 1. So, Abraham was now old and well advanced in years, and the Lord had blessed him in every way. He said to the chief servant in his household, the one in charge of all that he had, put your hand under my thigh. I want to swear to the by the Lord, the God of heaven and the God of earth, that you will not get a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I am living. But we'll go to my country and my own relatives and get a wife for my son. The servant asked him, what if the woman is unwilling to come back with me to this land? Shall I then take your son back to the country you came from? Make sure that you do not take my son back there, Abraham said. The Lord, the God of heaven, who brought me out of my father's household and my native land, and who spoke to me and promised me on oath saying to your offspring, I will give this land. He will send his angel before you so that you can get a wife for my son from there. If the woman is unwilling to come back with you, then you will be released from this oath of mine. Only do not take my son back there. So, the servant put his hand under the thigh of his master Abraham and sworn oath to him concerning this matter. Let me stop right there. This is a very important matter because, of course, the promise of faith to the entire world was given to Abraham. And he responded in faith and went to the land, the promised land, and he was told to this land I will give your offspring. And all nations will be blessed through you. But, you know, he knew he needed to pass on the faith that he had to his son Isaac. You know, remember, he had been willing to sacrifice Isaac. He did sacrifice Isaac. God gave him back. Interestingly, you find out if you read prior to this. You know, after Abraham goes to Mount Moriah to sacrifice Isaac, he never talks to Isaac again, which is very interesting. And we find that he still needs to pass along the promise of God and the faith of God and the lifestyle that God has put in his heart. And yet his son doesn't have a wife and he realizes for there to be generations, my son's got to get married. And so he says, "All right, I got to get him the right kind of wife," which was traditional. And so then he sends his servant off on this great plan. Abraham was a man of great faith and he made his decisions out of faith. And I want to remember that. Look in verse 10. Says, "Then the servant took ten of his master's camels and left, taking with him all kinds of good things from his master. He set out from Aram Nairang and made his way to the town of Nahor. He had the camels kneeled down near the well outside the town. It was toward evening the time the women go out to draw water. Then he prayed, "O Lord, God of my master Abraham, give me success today and show kindness to my master Abraham. See, I am standing beside the spring and the daughters of the townspeople are coming out to draw water. May it be that when I say to a girl, "Please let down your jar that I may have a drink." And she says, "Drink and I'll water your camels too. Let her be the one you have chosen for your servant Isaac. By this I will know that you have shown kindness to my master. Before he had finished praying, Rebecca came out with her jar on her shoulder. She was the daughter of Beth the son of Milka, who was the wife of Abraham's brother Nahor. The girl was very beautiful, a virgin, no man had ever lain with her. She went down to the spring, filled her jar and came up again. The servant hurried the meter and said, "Please give me a little water from your jar. Drink my Lord," she said, and quickly lowered the jar to her hands and gave him a drink. After she had given him a drink, she said, "I'll draw water for your camels too until they finish drinking." So she quickly emptied her jar into the trough, ran back to the well to draw more water and drew enough for all his camels. Incidentally, they say camels can drink 10 to 20 gallons of water. That's a lot of work she put in, okay? We'll get back to that. Without saying a word, the man watched her closely to learn whether or not the Lord had made his journey successful. When the camels had finished drinking, the man took out a gold-nose ring, wane a back and two gold bracelets wane 10 checkles. Then he asked, "Who's daughter are you? Please tell me." "Is the room in your father's house for us to spend the night?" She answered him, "I'm the daughter of Bethule, the son of Milka, that Milka bore to Nahor." And she added, "With plenty of straw and fodder, as well as a room for you to spend the night." Then the man bowed down and worshiped the Lord, saying, "Praise be to the Lord, the God of my master, Abraham, who has not abandoned his kindness and faithfulness, my master. As for me, the Lord has led me on the journey to the house of my master's relatives." The girl ran and told her mother, her mother's household, about these things. Skip with me over to verse 49, hang with me here, skip on down to verse 49. After he explains his whole story now to the household, he says to verse 49, "Now if you will show kindness and faithfulness to my master, tell me, and if not, tell me so that I may know which way to turn." Laban and Bethule answered, "This is from the Lord." We can say nothing to you one way or the other. Here's Rebecca, take her and go, and let her become the wife of your master's son as the Lord has directed. When Abraham's servant heard what they said, he bowed down to the ground before the Lord. Then the servant brought out gold and silver jewelry and articles of clothing and gave them to Rebecca. He also gave costly gifts to her mother and her brother, to her brother and her mother. Then he and the men who were with him ate and drank and spent the night there. When they got up in the morning, he said, "Send me on my way to my master." But her brother and her mother replied, "Let the girl remain with us ten days or so, and you may go." But he said to them, "Do not detain me. Now that the Lord has granted success to my journey, send me on my way so I may go to my master." Then they said, "Let's call the girl and ask her about it." So they called Rebecca and asked her, "Will you go with this man?" "I will go," she said. So they sent their sister Rebecca on her way along with her nurse and Abraham's servant and his men. And they blessed Rebecca and said to her, "Our sister, may you increase the thousands upon thousands. May your offspring possess the gates of their enemies." Then Rebecca and her maids got ready and mounted their camels and went back with the man. So the servant took Rebecca and left. Now Isaac had come from beer, Lei Haroi, where he was living in the Negev. He went out to the field one evening to meditate, and as he looked up he saw camels approaching. Rebecca also looked up and saw Isaac. She got down from her camel and asked the servant, "Who is that man in the field coming to meet us?" "He is my master," the servant answered. So she took her veil and covered herself. Then the servant told Isaac all he had done. Isaac brought her into the tent of his mother, Sarah, and he married Rebecca. So she became his wife, and he loved her. And Isaac was comforted after his mother's death. Great story. Let me tell you the significance of what Rebecca is really doing here. What's amazing is what you have to understand is that even our very faith here today can in many ways be attributed to Abraham the faith that he had. We all need to have his faith to be faithful to God. We have to imitate the faith of Abraham, and he needed to pass that along to his children. But we find that Isaac really wasn't making it happen. We know he had faith, and we read later, and we finally did follow through with a faith and a blessing. But if it wasn't for Rebecca, he may not have passed along the faith of his father Abraham. In fact, as we study, we find that he hadn't really done anything to reveal. He was getting the big picture that Abraham had given him, and yet he married very well. And Rebecca really is responsible. We learn later, I'm going to read this thing, we learn later that Rebecca is responsible for Isaac choosing the correct son of the two sons they had. And then passing on the correct blessing of God to Jacob who goes on, and then Jacob has the twelve sons who become the twelve tribes and the rest of history. But without Rebecca, that wouldn't have happened. Rebecca was a woman of great faith, and she was given a choice to make a decision, right? And she made the right decision. You can imagine, here she is in her land around all her relatives, and here comes this guy. And she's given this opportunity to go. Now she found out he was wealthy, and she realized he was of the same family. And ultimately, she heard the hand of God working behind the scenes. And she was given the opportunity to go and be married to this man. And she says, "I will do it." She makes the right decision, and it really changes the history of the world. Her right decision made a tremendous difference. What does it take to make the right decision? Well, we know it must be based on faith. It must be based on what will honor God. And I want us to glean, what was the heart and mind and character of Rebecca? How did she make this decision? And there's multiple areas in your life you're going to need to make the right decision about. Certainly the first one is you're going to have to make the right decision about yourself. We have to make the right decisions about our own lives, and what I find is very insightful is if you notice it says, "Rebecca was very beautiful." And I thought a moment about that, and I realized, you know, we make the right decision about ourselves. When we make choices that make us beautiful both on the inside and the outside. And you know, just on a practical basis here, you know, we have the end of the year, we have the holiday season, we can make some bad choices on what we do with our time, on how we eat, and we can make the wrong choices on how we conduct ourself. And, you know, the right decision, and it is a good time of year to start making that decision. I've been putting off the decision, but I've been ready to make the decision to start up again on that 90-day program of getting healthy, right? P90X. You've got to make a decision, the right decision about yourself. And you have to make right decisions about your health. You've got to make the right decisions. Rebecca clearly was making some good decisions. Certainly she was beautiful externally because of choices she had made, but also internally. You know, the Bible says the greatest beauty is that the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, right? That's what the Scriptures teach that women can make themselves beautiful. But, you know, we have to make the right decisions about ourselves. How will you conduct yourself? How will you live your life? Will you be known as a person that follows through with the Word? You know, the greatest decision that many of us can make is to realize that our Word needs to imitate God's Word. And God always held His Word. You know, one of the greatest decisions I made is I remember just the epiphany of realizing the Bible is true. I'm going to hold to it. Remember, we teach the Bible to people, and we have a study, right? We teach them the Word of God really is from God. Will you hold to it? Will you make this the standard for your life? People at the very least say, "Okay, the Bible is the standard of my life." Have hope, right? If your marriage is bad with the Bible is the standard of your life, you have hope. If your character is damaged with the Bible is the standard of your life, you have hope. If you know I've been successful in your career, you've not been successful maybe in school, but the Bible is the standard of your life, you have hope because the Bible has the answers in it. If we simply go, "Okay, I'm going to hold that. Show me. Okay, I've not followed it. I'm going to change. I've not done that. I'm going to change." I remember I didn't really want to read the Bible in early days of my college career because I had a hunch. It would say things to stop doing that I was doing, and I wasn't ready to make it the standard of my life. But we've got to make the right decision about ourselves. Amen. Rebecca did that. You know, you also have to make the right decisions about relationships. You have to make the right decision about relationships. You know, you can fit this in a little bit about yourself, but I think it's definitely noteworthy where it says there that she was pure. She was a virgin. No man had lain with her. She had made a decision about herself to hold the God's Word. She had made a decision about relationships that at some point in time I want to be married, but I'm going to do it the right way. You know, most of us don't do it the right way. In America, I mean, it is so against our culture to pursue relationships the right way. I mean, our culture is just inundated with the wrong stuff. Everywhere you go, it's just sexual impurity. Every TV show, our entire culture just inundates us with sexuality, with impurity, with violating standards, with it's about youth, about what you can get. It's difficult to make the right decision about relationships. You know, Rebecca is an inspiration. She was totally pure. She held to a total purity to honor God. You know, over the holiday season, it's one of those times it's very difficult. In our generation, it's very difficult to make that decision. I remember for years wanting to make that decision, you know, prior to holding to the Bible, I kind of had a hunch. You shouldn't be as immoral and impure as in my mind as I was being as a non-Christian, but I had no power to overcome. I couldn't do it. And the truth was, I wasn't going to make the decision to be holy and be pure, because I didn't really want to be holy and pure at the time. And I remember studying the Word of God and realizing, okay, I knew it was going to say this, be pure until marriage. I remember talking to my fraternity brothers and telling them, I am going to be pure, I'm not going to be with girls ever again until I get married and be with one woman. That's the rest of my life. And all my friends, they mocked me. They laughed at me and said, I know one does that. Who does that? I said, the Bible says it. I'm going to do it. You know, Rebecca made a decision early on, hey, I'm going to do it right. Now, I know oftentimes we don't do it right in this area. You know, driving down the freeway, you know, just yesterday on the way to Gary and Lynita's event, you know, there's some new billboards up. You know, girls, girls, girls, it's sad. It's like this ridiculous everywhere you live, you have to make a decision to be pure for God. You have to make a decision. Making a decision means you make up your mind. You choose it. It's life or death. It's God or the world. You know, like sometimes it's God or the world. You know, like sometimes it's God or the world. You know, like sometimes it's God or the world. I think it's there.
Sunday lesson by Steve Lounsbury.