"What Does Being an Heir Mean For
Me?"
By Brother Andy Giebler
February 23rd,
2014
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notes in pdf format.
Good morning. I’ll tell you, I was thinking about what to
share about, and I’m looking over the song list—I know that a lot of
times the songs we sing sometimes are newer songs, sometimes they’re
songs that we’ve sung for years—but, as I look through the song
list—the songs we did today—I try to look at them on the light of what
we’re talking about for the month. Were talking about being
an heir, having an inheritance, having a Heavenly Father, and that’s
the kind of theme that I try to put into these songs, and look at it
from that view. “Sweeter Gets The Journey Every Day,” it’
sweeter because I know what my inheritance is. “You Are My
All in All,” we have a god worthy of praise this morning. We
have a God worthy of giving glory to. “Jesus Is the Lord of
the Way I Feel,” I know that there’s going to be times when we not
going to feel good, but, when we have something we want to do, we can
get up and do it, if it’s in the flesh, and even more so, Jesus being
the Lord of the way that we do our things. “My Chains are
Gone,” “Here I Am to Worship,” “Lord, I Lift Your Name on High,”
“Praise Song,” those are all—I like to look at those songs in the light
of what we’re talking about at the moment. We’re talking
about being an heir, I was thinking, “What does that mean for
me?” I took the tie to go back through some Scriptures, and
go back and look at what does it mean to part of the Kingdom of
God? A lot of what we’ve talked about and listened to in
these last three messages: What does it take to be an heir,
what does it mean to be an heir, and what is our inheritance?
Parrish shared about the bickering and fighting sometimes at a
funeral… I look at that from a different point of view
sometimes, and I’m more on the humble side, and I think, you know, when
my dad dies, I’m not so much worried about—sure, I know there’s things
that are there; I have two sisters, I know that we’re going to split up
that inheritance, okay. Sometimes people don’t want to talk
about it, but this is one that, it’s okay to talk about it.
There’s no bickering about it; there’s no fighting. I mean,
your inheritance is between you and your Heavenly Father. I
don’t have to fight with any of you for my inheritance; I don’t have to
get a lawyer and figure out who gets what. I don’t.
My Father and—it’s according to what I’ve one, not according to what
anybody else has done. The other side of it is, do I expect
to get an inheritance? What am I doing here in this day and
age?
We talked about, so what is our
inheritance? Our salvation? What do I
get? Eternal life? We talked about
salvation. Sometimes we throw that out as a term, in
churches, “Are you saved?” So, what exactly does that
mean? Right here, right now, am I saved? Just
because I got baptized, does that mean I’m saved? Being in
the family of God is where I see my salvation, because I know that
day-to-day I’m walking with God. I know that day-to-day I
have a choice to make. Y salvation is sue because of the path
I’m on, not because I did one act. That’s a key thing to
remember as we’re going through our Scriptures.
Jesse shared something that
really struck a note: A woman, when she gets an engagement
ring, she’s showing it off. She starts every greeting with,
“Hi,” showing off that ring. It’s an exciting day; she’s
excited about something, and if we listen to the rhetoric of maybe TV
commercials, and hear, “Oh, he went to Jared.” They’d have
you think it’s about the ring, but it’s not about a piece of jewelry,
nice as it might be, and as much as the woman likes to put in on her
finger. She’s not showing off the ring, just for the sake of
saying “I got a piece of jewelry.” What’s the next thing
after she shows off that shiny ring? She’s talking about her
fiancé. The man’s no different; he talking about it, he just
doesn’t have a piece of jewelry to show off. He’s excited
about that relationship. He’s showing it off; he’s telling
about it. Just the same, he talked about the pearl of great
price. Someone went and that one pearl, that one thing he
wanted, and went and sold everything he had to get it. We’re
talking about the relationship between a man and a woman, and that’s
awesome, that’s something to get excited about, but we’ve got something
even better than that. We have that relationship with our
Father; we have that relationship to show off; we have that
relationship to tell people about. If a woman is showing off
the ring, and telling about her fiancé, she’s saying, “He’s mine, and
nobody else’s.” I have a God that, He can be your Father,
too. It’s not exclusive. It’s something we can take
pride in.
God gave us power.
John 1:1-5, 12-13
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.
All things were made by Him; and without Him was not any thing made
that was made. In Him was life; and the life was the light of
men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness
comprehended it not. (12) But as many as received Him, to
them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe
on His name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will
of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
He gave us power; He gave us a
choice. I have a choice. I can’t choose who my
natural dad is. That’s something well beyond my
control. But, being born again into this kingdom—it’s even
called an adoption—being born into that is my choice. It’s my
choice to take it or leave it. He gave us free will, just
like Adam and Eve in the garden: Thy had a choice whether to
sin or not. All through the Old Testament, men and women had
choices. We have our choice. We have many that have
paved the way to show us that choice. For another Scripture
abut being born into that:
Romans 6:1-6
What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may
abound? God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live
any longer therein? Know ye not, that so many of us as were
baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?
Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as
Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so
we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been
planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the
likeness of his resurrection: Knowing this, that our old man
is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that
henceforth we should not serve sin.
In piecing all this together and
thinking about it, Jesse shared about someone had to die, and He had to
rise again. By the same token, we had to die.
That’s the beauty of it; we die to our old man, we die to our sin, I
died to my sin, so that they’re not there any more. But, then
again, there is a resurrection. In baptism, we are raised to
a newness in life. Being in this family, having this
inheritance, it’s a matter of sticking with it. It’s a matter
of living according to this new family that we’ve found ourselves a
part of—that we’ve become a part of, that God has given us—when with
our mom and dad and brothers and sisters at home, there’s rules to
follow. I’m not one to preach about rules and such, because I
don’t like the, but they’re there for a reason. In your
family, there are consequences if you didn’t follow the
rules. If you didn’t do what you needed to do, you might miss
out on something. The same in Christ—a lot of people want to
say that, “I’ve been born again.” Okay. “Now I have
something that’s there forever, that can never go away.” I
wish that were true, but the Bible goes on to talk about a lot of
things, such as living in the spirit. What do I have to do?
Galatians 6:7-8
Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that
shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of
the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of
the Spirit reap life everlasting.
We have a job to do. We can
choose what our life is. We can choose how we do
things. A lot of—one of my pet peeves is people that say,
“Oh, I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning,” or, a couple
of things go wrong, and they say, “Oh, it’s just going to be a bad
day.” Why? You have set your day forth; you have
made your decision that it’s going to be a bad day by doing
that. I have a boss, and he’s got a coffee cup that has
Grumpy Smurf on it. Somewhere along the line, he has gotten
the title of Grumpy. He’s accepted it, so he proudly carries
this thing around at work. Our life is what we make of it, in
our workplaces, in our family, our life in God is what we make of
it. We don’t have to accept the lies that Satan tells
us. We have this heritage, which is such a privilege, that,
even when Satan says, “You’ll never make anything of yourself; you’ll
never—you can’t do anything more than sit in that chair. You
can’t even open your mouth and share a Scripture.” That’s
just a lie, you know, to say that you’ve got this sin in your life or a
problem in your life that you can’t get rid of and you just have to be
a slave to it for the rest of your life. That’s a
lie. Just as we have the power of choice—you know, I have the
power of choice to wake up in the morning and spill my coffee or
whatever, I have a choice to make my day better. I have the
choice to say, “Okay, I’m going to have a good day.”
Spiritually, we have that choice to make as well. A lot of
times people say they want these things in their life, and wonder how
to get them.
I read this Scripture earlier in the
week, and a brother corrected me on how I read it, and it makes a
difference in how I look at it.
Galatians 5:19-22
Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery,
fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred,
variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, Envyings,
murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell
you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do
such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. But the
fruit of the Spirit...
This is where the brother corrected me.
I was saying, “…the fruits of the Spirit…” The
fruit. When we plant a tree, we get a fruit. When
we live for God, we bear fruit. The fruit is what you see
that comes from that tree; it shows you what type of tree it
is. That fruit of the Spirit—we read back in Galatians
chapter 6, it says if we to the Spirit, we will reap
accordingly.
Galatians 5:22-25
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering,
gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there
is no law. And they that are Christ's have crucified the
flesh with the affections and lusts. If we live in the
Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.
We have the ability to bear those
things, but, let’s look at in the natural: If I
want an apple tree, I’ve got to plant an apple tree, don’t I?
If I want the fruit of that Spirit—to be those things, if that’s the
Spirit that I want to obey in my life, if I want to be a servant of
God.—then I have to do the things that cause me to grow in
God. That’s part of having this inheritance; that’s part of
having this heritage; that’s part of having a privilege in
God. The question is, “How do I sow to the spirit? What
things do I do that increase my spirit, or increase my
godliness?” That’s what we do here. We come to
church; it’s about the inheritance. I don’t come to church
just to have church. It’s fun to play a song, and to sing,
but I come to draw strength from the people that are here—from my
brothers and my sisters. That’s why we come together and have
our men’s fellowship. That’s why the women got together on
Saturday morning and had fellowship at breakfast. That’s why
we go to help each other out, and we have our Wednesday night Bible
studies. Those are all sowing to the spirit; those are all
causing that seed to grow. Getting together, I learn
something from everybody. That goes for other
things: our prayer time, and it’s one of those things that—in
the flesh—and it’s a choice. Do I take the time to get on my
knees and seek the face of my God? Am I sowing to the spirit
in that way? You can look at it in a human relationship,
whether it’s brother or sister, your cousin, a good friend, your
husband, your wife—if you want that relationship to grow, you’ve got to
spend some time on it. A lot of people say, “Oh, look at you;
you’ve got the perfect marriage.” Realistically, there’s no
such thing as the perfect marriage. If you see those people
that have that marriage—and there are people that have wonderful
marriages, don’t get me wrong and it is a wonderful thing—but there’s
people that you see, and you wonder, “How did they get there?
How did they do that?” Well, there’s things that you don’t
see that they worked at. You know, you see someone that’s
spiritual, you see someone that’s seemingly got it all together, you
see someone that knows all the Scriptures,, the didn’t just get there
by chance. God didn’t just say, “Poof,” you know, “instant
elder.” No. It just doesn’t happen like
that. It’s all about taking the time to become
spiritual. It’s a responsibility, as well. We have
a responsibility for each other. We have a responsibility to
lift one another up. As I said, that’s why we come here; it’s
not just a matter of having church. Amen.
Sermon
notes by Pete Shepherd
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