[advance to: God’s Rights - part 2]
     Greetings and Good Morning on this new Lord’s Day morning.  My name is George Sinkie and I am so glad that you have joined me this morning.  It is such a privilege that you have given me this time from your day.  And it is such a responsibility that I have as a teacher to present the truth.  As we begin today let’s go to God in prayer,

Great and Loving God in heaven, We thank You so much for this day in our lives, We pray that each one of us will use this day to Your glory.  Father, I ask that you help me, as the teacher, to only teach Your will.  And Dear God, help each one of us to open our hearts and our minds to Your will.  We thank You now for Your word, That we can study.  And we thank You for Your Son, Jesus, Who gave His life to pay the debt we owed.  We pray that each of us will obey Your will, So that we can be saved.  In Jesus’ name, we pray!!  AMEN !!

     Rights.  That is what I would like to talk to you about today.  Most of you who are listening to this program are here in the United States and most of you are American citizens.  We hear a lot about rights here in America.  Our country was founded upon certain rights.  We have the right to free speech and assembly and religion.  Now we have to remember that even though our country allows us freedom of religion, if we want to be right with God we must choose to follow His will.  Our country also is founded upon the right of every person to keep and bear arms.  That means that every one of us has a right to own a gun, that is not dealing with hunting, it is dealing with self-protection and protection from the government, if the government should become a tyrant.  Our Constitution and Bill of Rights establishes many more rights for us here in the United States.  But people are demanding more and more rights.  The problem is that more and more people want more and more rights with less and less responsibilities attached to them.  This is seen in many ways — many fight for a woman’s right to an abortion and yet in fighting for the woman’s right they deny the child’s right to have life.  Now many times they use the emotional argument about a woman being raped or in cases of incest, or if it jeopardizes the life of the woman.  But in order to make this emotional argument work they have to de-humanize the child by calling it such things as fetal tissue or the product of a pregnancy.  The abortionist does not want to talk about what goes on in an abortion and I will only deal with it here in a very mild way.  I suppose that if this were a TV program it would have a warning before it that it may be offensive.  It is not my intent to offend any of you, if you are offended I apologize, but the real offender is the one who promotes abortion.  One of the newer methods of abortion is called partial-birth abortion.  In this procedure, the baby may be up to full term.  This child is completely able to survive outside the womb, with the normal care given to any baby.  In this procedure, the “doctor”, and I have quotation marks around the term doctor, dilates the cervix and grabs one of the child’s legs.  The legs are delivered and then the body and the arms followed by the neck and the lower part of the head.  But then the “doctor” stops, before the last couple of inches of the head are delivered, the “doctor” then pokes a hole into the base of the skull and inserts a suction tube and removes the brain.  Then the dead baby is delivered.  They want to call that a right but in God’s sight it is a murder.  It is a murder just like the person who would take a gun and shoot a doctor who did this to the baby.  It is a murder just like Jack Kevorkian does when he kills someone.  Yet many say this is a woman’s right.  But I ask you, is this any different than the young woman who delivers her baby in a bathroom and wraps it in paper towels and throws it in the trash?  It is no different in the sight of God, but people demand the right for the one, and in general we still condemn the other.  Another interesting observation about people is that if someone were to perform a partial-birth abortion upon a dog, they would be arrested, tried, and convicted for cruelty to animals.  The way it is reminds me of what God said in Judges 17:6

   6 In those days there was no king in Israel;  every man did what was right in his own eyes.

     Over the next two weeks I would like to share with you a little article that I came across one time.  It is entitled “God’s Right” and the author is unknown to me.  I will go through and read it and then we will go back and comment on it.

     God has many, many rights and yet that seems like a strange way to say it.  God has these rights because of who He is and what He is.  As we look at these various things the one basis for God’s right to each of these is because He is God.  As God He is the one who created all things and therefore all these things belong to Him.  God has entrusted us with each of these things and therefore we are only stewards of the time, money, tongue, influence, and life that we now have.  One day we will be called before God to give an account of how we used each of them.  Now let’s consider each of these points for a little while.

     TIME.  God has commanded that His people assemble together and the Hebrews writer wrote of this in Hebrews 10:23-25

   23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful;
   24 and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds,
   25 not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another;  and all the more, as you see the day drawing near.

     But it is also important that all people take the time to consider what God has done for them.  In Luke 14:16-24, Jesus tells a Parable about a dinner.  We are not going to read it right now but I encourage you to check it out.  Again in Luke 14:16-24.  In this parable, the invited guests didn’t have the time to come to the dinner.  Many today don’t think they have enough time to give any time to God.  They say they have to make a living, but they fail to make a life.  They say they need to rest and relax but they will miss out on the eternal rest.  I hope that you will give God time each day to learn His will and that you will obey His will and assemble with His people.

     MONEY.  God has a right to a definite part of your money.  Now I don’t want you to think that just because you give money to God that you are right with Him.  You cannot buy your salvation.  You can only be saved by submitting to God’s plan of salvation.  God does not expect the lost to give money to Him, He expects them to give themselves to Him.  For those who are Christians though, God has a right to a part of your money.  There is nowhere in the New Covenant that God commands Christians to give a tithe.  The basic guidelines of the New Covenant are very simple.  We are to give as we have prospered as it says in 1 Corinthians 16:2

   2 On the first day of every week let each one of you put aside and save, as he may prosper, that no collections be made when I come.

And in 2 Corinthians 9:7, we are told several guidelines.

   7 Let each one do just as he has purposed in his heart;  not grudgingly or under compulsion;  for God loves a cheerful giver.

Our giving is to be purposed, a Christian should never come to assembly and at the time of assembly open their purse or wallet and see what they have to give.  Also note that it is as he has purposed in his heart.  It is not what someone else has decided he should give.  That leads into the next section — not grudgingly or under compulsion.  No one can be forced to give to the Lord.  A friend told me one time about a man-made denomination that he was a part of in this area.  This group had their members fill out pledge cards and if a person did not give the amount they pledged, this denomination would actually take the person to court to force them to pay.  This is just another proof that denominations are not from God.  Since the person has purposed what they want to give and they have not been forced to give, therefore they give cheerfully.  And I ask you why not cheerfully?  Since a Christian will realize that everything that they have is a gift from God and everything they have they want to use for God, why not be cheerful that you can give to God.

     Next week, Lord willing, we will look at the right God has to our tongues, our influence, and our life.  As we close out for this week, I want to encourage you to live for God.  The only way to live for God is to obey His will and His will is revealed for us in the Bible.  God wants you to hear His word, which is what you are doing here on the Berean Break.  He wants you to have faith based on that word.  And based on that faith he wants you to repent of your sins, confess Jesus, and be immersed in water for the forgiveness of your sins.  These things do not earn you salvation, they are submission to the will of God.  And without submission to the will of God you cannot have the salvation He offers to all mankind.  What choice do you make — submissive obedience and eternal salvation OR rejection of God’s offer and eternal condemnation?  It is your choice.

[advance to: God’s Rights - part 2]