[0:00] Good morning. Thank you Enos for sharing that. The kind of headline over in my Bible over that chapter there in Titus says teach sound doctrine.
[0:18] And that if I can get across to what I want to get across this morning that goes with very well with what I want to what I want to get across this morning. I hope I can keep my thoughts together and get across what I want to.
[0:40] First of all, I want to share a little bit. Joanna's nephew, Sean, is over there in Turkey. And he did an update. And I just I want to read this just to help us.
[0:59] I think it's echoing a little bit there. I can hear it echoing to help us. In what I'm wanting to share this morning, and it's the gravity of our choices, our choices in life and where it can lead us, where it can take us.
[1:19] This young man, I think he's about 22 or 23, and he's going to definitely be a changed man when he comes when he I mean, he is I'm sure he is a changed man already. But I just I want to read this a little bit just so you can get a glimpse of what he's seeing. And then I want to go on to what I want to share.
[1:38] I guess it's better I just jump right in again, or I'll never be able to fit all there is to say. Our lives continue to hustle along as normal here in Turkey. This week has been filled with a few new ventures, including setting up tents.
[1:54] Thursday morning found us men folk headed down to and I don't know how to say his name is Antikia, I don't know with a load of 30 tents to set up. That seemed to be a very beneficial venture and we hope to take another load of tents down in the near future.
[2:10] As time allows, we will continue distributing aid to there's another town there. Quite a few men are still not back to work, making things even more difficult as the families who are already struggling financially.
[2:26] In spite of all the busyness there this week, we managed to squeeze a few Turkish classes again to keep our turkeys from rusting away to nothing. Now I'd like to take the time to share just a few stories really condensed from some of the locals.
[2:42] But sadly, justice will never be done to the pain and the heartache some of our friends and various people we meet have gone through. Everyone has a story and are longing for some listening ear to come by and share their grief.
[2:55] Zara, the young woman who had been around with us for the last few months, had an uncle, aunt's family who were trapped beneath the rubble.
[3:08] Hope slowly diminished as chances grew less and less for any survivors to be rescued. The twisted metal and concrete mounds stood on carrying and unmoved. Finally, as the two-week mark approached, their bodies began to be retrieved.
[3:22] The mother and the daughters, Zara's cousins, most likely died quite instantly as they say the walls, etc., collapsed on top of them. The father, on the other hand, must not have had too much injury.
[3:35] Living on the second floor, he somehow wiggled his way up as he fought and dug for freedom all the way up to the fifth floor. He never made it out alive. According to those retrieving his body, perhaps in mere two days previously he may have been alive.
[3:50] It really cuts deep to think about this, if someone had come. There is a man who lives right here in this town.
[4:04] And he and his family went to a friend's place for the night. When the earthquake hit at 4.17 a.m., he found out from a neighbor within minutes that his home had collapsed.
[4:15] He leaped into his car and off he went to check on some of his relatives there. Setting to work with will and might, he pulled his mother-in-law out with his own hands.
[4:27] She was dead. She had resided on the third floor. His sister lived on the first floor, and although chances seemed even more slim for her, she came out with hardly a scratch.
[4:38] Mehmet is grateful to his wife and children were elsewhere that night, but even so, it is hard for them. At least nine people lost their lives in his building alone, including his mother-in-law and another family who was his tenant.
[4:56] In, and there's another town, we heard the second-hand story of a man who, while trapped beneath the rubble, was able to call to his family and have contact with them.
[5:08] By day number five or six, contact was dropped, and he also passed away before anyone could come to his rescue. There is Fatiha, a man who had worked closely with, as we distributed tents in Antia, Antica.
[5:27] And he mentioned how when people call with news and tell the death of another acquaintance or family member, there is no longer any pain. Death has become such a normal, and their hearts are so raw and bleeding.
[5:40] Bloodshot eyes seem to proclaim the lack of sleep that he most likely has been having. In spite of it all, he is trying to be there and care for those around him, the hurting, grieving, and needy.
[5:53] He gives himself so generously as he helps us find the truly needy situations. May God reward him for it and somehow draw the dear soul to himself.
[6:03] I think of another family whose apartment block began tipping over as the main pillars began to crumble and the solid interior walls began falling. Wisely, the family hunkered down until the earthquake was over.
[6:17] There seems to be no place worse than the staircase during an earthquake. The earthquake resided, and together they began picking their way over and under parts of the wall and debris as they made exit.
[6:29] According to the pictures they showed us, had they tried escaping, they may have not made it out alive. Here they were, father, mother, and son, all alive and grateful for their blessings.
[6:43] In another town, another man and his family made for a hasty escape as they rushed down the staircase to the door. They tried opening the door, but the building walls and the door were already twisted this way and that, so that out of proportion the door jammed.
[6:59] No getting out there. Only a short moment later, blocks making up part of the wall fell to the ground just where they would have been exiting. Grateful for his life and the lives of his family, this man now found refuge in a tent and told us his story.
[7:15] That's his wife and five children mingled with all the others in the tents with the others. Now they are without a home and are forced to face the brutal cold winter air, but they don't complain at all.
[7:28] Others had it much worse. Two prayer requests to especially remember this week's involves some of our dear friends. I don't know how to say the name. Has not been showing up again lately, and it seems like his family has cut off ties with us again.
[7:43] We haven't been able to contact him, thus we cannot be sure what is going on. Sarah is going through the valley of decisions. She wants to do what's right and is counting the cost.
[7:55] Pray that she could catch a glimpse of the kingdom and will be willing to give up everything for it. Thanks to each one of you as you take interest in the work here and spend time in prayer on our behalf.
[8:07] And that's Sean. And so, you know, just be praying especially for him and the ones there that he's with. But anyways, and partly why I read that, I think it's good for us just to think, you know, to know those things and think on it.
[8:24] But partly why I read that is what I want to be looking at this morning. A guy, and Merlin, you know Spencer, he made a comment.
[8:37] I had heard him there on something. He was talking about the Asheville, is it called, revivals or whatever. And he made the comment that there's death in the pot.
[8:49] He referred to, and you can turn your Bible, 2 Kings 4. You can turn to that passage. 2 Kings 4 and verse 38 is where I'm going to start reading. And he made me start thinking about this when he referred to this.
[9:03] And I wanted to start thinking and looking because there's a lot of things being said. And I don't want to get too much in the weeds on that about the revival.
[9:16] But there is some things I want to talk about. There's a lot of things being said. And I think here this has a lot of things to dig out of it. But anyway, I'm going to start reading here in verse 38 in chapter 4 of 2 Kings.
[9:31] And Elisha came unto Gilgal, and there was a dearth in the land. And the sons of the prophets were sitting before him. And he said unto his servant, Set on the great pot and seed the pottage for the sons of the prophets.
[9:46] And one went out into the field to gather herbs and found a wild vine and gathered thereof wild gourds his lap full and came and shred them into the pot of pottage, for they knew them not.
[9:57] So they poured out for the men to eat. And it came to pass, as they were eating of the pottage, that they cried out and said, O thou man of God, there is death in the pot.
[10:08] And they could not eat thereof. And he said, Then bring meal. And they cast it into the pot. And he said, Pour it out for the people that they may eat. And there was no harm in the pot.
[10:20] You know, typically when I think of this story, always when I thought of this story, I would think, And it is. It shows the great power of God.
[10:32] He protected them. You know, they had eaten these poisonous things. And then Elisha threw the meal in, and God protected them. He healed them of this.
[10:43] But what I wanted to think about, a little more look at into this morning was, you know, here, and you can see in the end of the chapter, it talks there about people bringing fruits and bringing stuff to them.
[11:00] And so, I take it that, from my understanding, it would be that these prophets and these different ones living here, they would live from, both from foraging off the land and from what people, good people would bring.
[11:16] It talks about that, they brought of their first fruits, some, and they brought the man of God their first fruits. So it's like people bringing to the prophets of their stuff.
[11:30] And so, you know, it would seem to me that they were living from, partially from foraging from the land, it would sound like. And what got to, really started to make me think a lot, is I was like, how was somebody that should, you know, if you're out a lot, y'all ones that do a lot of hiking and things, you learn to know what's out there.
[11:56] You don't just pick something that you, a brand new thing, and eat it, and take of it. You know, we're careful. You learn, if you see something, you might find an older person or somebody that knows a lot, or you go study and found out what it was or what it is.
[12:14] And it wondered me, I was like, why did this man, it says it was a wild vine, and I'm guessing it looked good. I'm guessing the fruit, it must have looked good.
[12:28] It must have looked a lot like, probably looked a lot like something else he had ate. And, you know, he just took it and put it into the pot without finding out for sure what it was.
[12:42] And that's what I want to talk about. I want to compare with these, with these things like this that's going on with the, with the Asheville revival, that we need to be careful and have discernment.
[12:54] And just because something looks good and something, you know, is happening that we don't just run and, yeah, we don't need to just sit here and just cut everything that we're not a part of down or to pieces.
[13:10] But, it can look good. And, and the, the devil has a way of doing that, of, of, of making things look like something that is good.
[13:21] just like this, this, this wild, this gourd and wild vine. It, it apparently looked good to this man or he'd have never brought it and put it in the pot for these people to eat.
[13:33] And, I think we see that so much in, in what is happening with these different, different revivals and different things that are happening is people discernment.
[13:48] We, in our, in our lives today, we, we have a lot of choices and, you know, a lot of little choices that don't mean a whole lot necessarily from day to day that we make, what we're going to eat, these things.
[14:02] But, we have two choices for eternity that mean everything. And, you know, that, that's what another, I want to read a passage here, just a, or not a passage, but just a couple scriptures here you can turn to if you want to.
[14:17] Joel, Joel 2, Joel 2, Joel 2, verses 12 and 13.
[14:35] This is God's calling them, them to repentance. He says, Therefore, also now saith the Lord, turn ye even to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and with mourning, and rend your heart and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful and slow to anger and of great kindness and repenteth him of evil.
[14:59] That, verse 13 there, is what caught my attention. And rend your heart and not your garments. You know, so much of this stuff, we can get caught up in excitement, we can get caught up in, you know, the thrill of things.
[15:17] God wants a broken, he wants a broken heart. And if we don't understand and come to that point, we can just, we can get a thrill, we can get, you know, from the things that we're doing, from the, you know, the excitement.
[15:32] But we need to come with a broken heart. And that's what, I'm afraid that a lot of these people that are in some of these things don't understand.
[15:44] And to come with a truly broken and repentant heart, we have to understand who we are. I heard, and one person, this was a guy from Bethel Church, he said, in the recent past, that he said, do you ever notice that when you see Jesus, it's just like you looking in a mirror and you see yourself.
[16:09] And I was just totally taken aback. I'm like, either he has a very low view of Jesus or a very high conceited view of himself, one or the other. And, but you have, we have to come to the point where that we see ourselves for what we are in some Bible reading.
[16:31] Job 25 really caught my attention this past week. Bildad here was talking and I believe he really saw, was seeing who he was in God's eyes.
[16:53] Then answered Bildad the Shuhite and said, Dominion and fear are with him. He maketh peace in his high places. Is there any number in his armies and upon whom doth not his light arise?
[17:07] Now then, can man be justified with God or can he be clean that is born of a woman? Behold, even the moon and it shineth not, yea, the stars are not pure in his sight.
[17:20] How much less is a man that is a worm and the son of man that is a worm? You know, without God, without Jesus in our lives, we are nothing.
[17:33] We are less than nothing. And we have to come to have true repentance and true change in our life. We have to come to the point that we realize that.
[17:43] We have to come to that point. Psalms 8 verse 4, what is man that thou art mindful of him and the son of man that thou visitest him.
[17:55] We have to understand that as man we are nothing. And it also, I can't remember the verse that Dan, you read last Sunday in Jeremiah, but do you remember it right off that Jeremiah 23 or something?
[18:11] I should have wrote it down, but that we, the man, what man's path, I can't remember it now, but what is man, something about man doesn't understand, understand the paths that.
[18:25] Jeremiah 10 23 or 9 23? Probably 10 23. Do you have it right off or not? Well, when you find it, read it. I'm thinking it was 10 23 because I remember 23 something.
[18:37] Okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah. That's the verse I was, that had come to my mind that, you know, if we try to direct your steps, we're going to end up in one ditch or the other.
[19:02] And, um, um, there's this little, um, saying here that, um, our little story have you heard about the elderly woman on a busy street corner who was confused and hesitant to cross because of heavy traffic.
[19:18] Finally, a gentleman came up to her and asked if he could cross the street with her. Gratefully, she took his arm, but progressive, grew progressively more alarmed as he zigzagged randomly across the street to the blare of horns and the screech of locked brakes.
[19:32] Finally, on the opposite curb, she said angrily, you almost got us killed. You walk like you're blind. I am blind, he replied. That's why I asked if I could cross the street with you.
[19:44] Jesus said to the Pharisees of this day, they be blind leaders of the, they be blind leaders of the blind, and if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.
[19:56] That's Matthew 15, 14. We need to be very careful not to entrust our souls to the guidance of someone who cannot see the clear teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ.
[20:06] Our eternal destiny is too important to put at such risk. And, you know, you think about it, all these people that just go out there and they get a YouTube channel and they call themselves a prophet, and they're all out there, apostle and a prophet, and they just get a YouTube channel, and people will just blindly follow that.
[20:30] Would you go to somebody, and this person, like a I'll leave it, some of them may have even good hearts and intentions in the beginning, but are not grounded, do not have discernment.
[20:41] Would you go to somebody as a doctor that had just decided, well, I'd really like to help people and stuff, and I'll just put up a sign, and I'm going to be a doctor. You wouldn't go to somebody like that that didn't study medicine and understand, and that's just your physical life.
[21:01] people are entrusting these people with their spiritual lives, with eternity, and that's why I read that from Sean, those stories.
[21:12] I wanted it to sink into us this morning of eternity. That's what we're, these are big choices that we're making. It's eternal choices, and another thing that I had heard, well, going a little bit with that too is, you know, we can have a lot of good worship in singing and things, but we have to have the word of God preached.
[21:44] We have to have his word for discernment. There was somebody that, I don't know if they were at that Asheville Revival or if they just made this comment, but they were making this comment anyway for people that were being critical of the Asheville Revival, and he said that there's just so many people out there now that think it's God and Jesus and the Bible, and they forget that it's God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit, that they're getting too much of the Bible and they're getting religious, and I just, you know, people can make statements like that, and if you're not alert and know, if you're just somebody out there that's just a haphazard person, you might think, oh, well, that sounds whatever, you know, you get the Bible, too much of it makes you, too much of the Bible doesn't make us religious, doesn't, that's pride, pride is what makes us into a Pharisee, the Pharisees, they added burdens on to people that the
[22:47] Bible didn't even, you know, that God didn't even require, that they themselves did not keep, and so the Bible, too much of the Bible is not going to lead us into religious arrogance or however you want to put it, that's our own pride, and the thing that I also wanted to point out and emphasize at this time, too, is that the, yeah, the Holy Spirit actually, a lot of the work that he does is helps us to discern and understand the word of God, but they right away want to, and there was this guy there that was promoting baptism of the Holy Spirit, you know, and he needed to speak in tongues, that was one of the things that he was really pushing, and they were just, people were there just babbling, and they'll even say this, they'll even say, if you don't know what to say, just start saying words, and you know, it'll come, the Spirit will teach you to pray, and my thing with that is, I say right away, okay, what if somebody that you know was a wicked person wanted to teach you another language, wouldn't you be very careful how you would learn from, he might teach you bad words, and you wouldn't know what you're saying, you're saying, if you just open yourself up and just start babbling, bad spirits can put words, what's the devil do?
[24:15] He tempts us, he puts things in our minds all the time, they can put things in your mouth that you don't even know what you're saying, it just, it really struck me there that you read in Titus about sound speech, I forget how it's but something about the young men and having sound speech, and I think that goes right along with it, I'm not against speaking in tongues, but only when it comes from God, and I think God, he will help us to understand and know when that is happening, when you're just, when you're just saying something just to try to get started and kick it in gear to speak in tongues, that is not, that is not, and I'll come back, and I want to come back to like I say, that the Holy Spirit, to me, we don't have to, it's so much as being pressed nowadays that you have something big happening that, you know, I'm either prophesying or I'm speaking in tongues or I'm doing this or doing that, and the, like I say, a big work of the Holy
[25:16] Spirit, of course, he's a comforter and all those different things, but back when I was, I can tell you this from myself, and some of it is getting older and, you know, understanding more, but back when I was younger, a lot of the Bible just seemed a lot like Greek to me, I mean, I don't know if y'all can, whatever to that or not, but before I was really filled with the Holy Spirit, you know, it didn't, it was more words on a page, I mean, some of it made sense, but there just so much that didn't, and that's the work of the Holy Spirit is he helps these, the word to come alive to us.
[25:57] If you're just a dead Christian that, or just somebody that's not even a Christian, whatever, because I guess there is no real thing as a dead Christian because you're not a Christian if you're dead, but you won't understand these, these words are just on paper, their words on paper, and yeah, he helps them to come alive, and a little more on that too, on the person that said about having too much, too much Bible, right away the verse come to my mind, John 1, 1, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God, the same was in the beginning with God, you know, we can't differentiate the word from God, you know, and the word is God, it's his words for us today, and also then I thought about too in John 10, John 10 verse 10, well I'm going to start it a little earlier there, see, well I'll just go ahead and start at 7, and Jesus saith unto them again, verily, verily,
[27:17] I say unto you, I am the door of the sheep, all that come, ever come before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep do not hear them, all that ever came before me, he's saying if anybody had come before him, they were just, I am the door, by me, if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture, the thief cometh not, but to steal, and to kill, and to destroy, I am come that we might, they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly, I am the good shepherd, the good shepherd, he goes on to give his, say about giving his life, and, but that's what I see here, I see the thief coming, and they come to not do anything but to steal, to kill, and to destroy, and that's where we have to have discernment, not that we can't, you know, that I sit here and would try to shut something down that has started otherwise, but especially to me, I wanted us to have answers, if we have, if we hear other people talking about these things, revival can start right here, it's you, yourself, praying, and start revival in your own heart, that's where revival starts, and if my whatever concern even too is with the great big revivals like that, if it gets so big that it's impersonal, that people can't be fed and helped along, that it's just this big impersonal thing where you come and there was just this great wave and I felt something good, that it's not going to take you on, it's not going to, you know, carry on, you're going to, my fear, I guess, is that there could be more harm done to a lot of these people than good with, they come and they think they have an experience, so they feel like they're a Christian and they don't have anything but this experience, they don't, they aren't getting grounded, they aren't finding anything in the word, here in John 10, and then it talked about in verse 12 about how that when the wolf comes and then the hireling flees and that's what I feel like with so many of these people, they just come in and number one,
[29:41] I think it's a lot about money and the fame or the name they get of themselves, but they just come in and they'll, you'll see in these things like this so often, they'll come in and as long as they're getting attention, they're there, but then as soon as that kind of wanes off, they're out of there, they flee, they're not there to feed and to help and to care for the flock and that's just, is my concern that we, that we understand these things that there's, there's nothing wrong with revival, revival is a good thing, but that we don't, that we don't get just carried away in a bunch of excitement that, that's not going to lead us anywhere.
[30:35] In 1 Timothy 1, 18, Paul here is speaking to Timothy, I commit this, this charge I committed to the son Timothy according to the prophecies which went before thee that thou by them mightest war and a good warfare, holding faith and a good conscience, which some having put away concerning faith have made shipwreck.
[31:05] And then he talks about the two there that he delivered under Satan. We have to hold to the faith and, and to, he talks about it here that we can't just be thrown away, you know, just tossed around and every little thing that looks out there good.
[31:23] He said that, that some have been made shipwreck. When they're not grounded, when they don't know what they, what they're in, when they just see this vine with, with, you know, good looking gourds on it and run out there and start picking right away.
[31:41] that it's just a, it's just a very dangerous path to go down that we need to, we need to have discernment and to understand that if we do that, the pot will be poisoned and it will lead us to a place that we don't want to go.
[32:05] And anyway, that's what I had to share this morning. I hope it made some sense to us and that we could understand and be edified, but that's what I had to share this morning.
[32:19] Thank you.