A Sermon Delivered on Wednesday evening, February 2
nd, 2022, by
Evangelist PAUL ACQUAH, Live on MZ Radio London, UK
The stories given in Scripture about how people related to God, and the accompanying positive or negative results, are recorded for our benefit. You see, you do not have to embark on an uncharted path to find God.
The process can be simplified by simply believing the map that God has given man – the Bible. While the
stories of the Bible can sometimes seem frozen in a different time, they offer us the opportunity to learn
valuable lessons we can apply to our lives. God has given us a wealth of wisdom in the Bible. And we need to rise above the noise of this world and dig into His word to find answers for this life we are living. The purpose of this message is to encourage you to learn and apply the stories of Biblical characters to your life.
Life-tested wisdom on how to live from faithful servants of God whose faith were tested and proven. Living wisely is the art of learning to live at the centre of God’s will. This is where the wisdom of lives that have already been lived can be of immense aid – a source of forward-facing resolutions, borrowed from people who have long died, having lived, by God’s standard, honourable and generous lives. Lives full of hope and substance, irradiated by their faith and ideas that have endured across the ages to make other lives more liveable. Here are few such ideas that make for life-expanding resolutions. The Bible records the events of the lives of some Old Testament saints. To understand and learn from them, we as believers must appreciate the truths as beauty in the stories themselves. Some of you may say these were Old Testament figures. I just want to show you the importance of learning at the expense of other people, so you are not to figure everything out on your own.
Let’s look at 1 Corinthians 10:6-11 “6 Now these things became our examples, to the intent that we should not lust after evil things as they also lusted”. This is talking about the Israelites, when they came out, and we learn some things through them.
.
7 And do not become idolaters as were some of them. As it is written, “The people sat down to eat and
drink, and rose up to play.” 8 Nor let us commit sexual immorality, as some of them did, and in one day
twenty-three thousand fell; 9 nor let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted, and were destroyed by serpents; 10 nor complain, as some of them also complained, and were destroyed by the destroyer. 11Now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages have come”. So twice in verse 6 and verse 11, it says: 6 Now these things became our examples, to the intent that we should not lust after evil things as they also lusted.
11 Now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages have come.
All the things recorded in the Old Testament are recorded for our benefit so we can learn through them.
This is one reason so many people find themselves in a mess today. Their life is out of control because they don’t know what the word of God teaches. By using the examples of the Old Testament people, we can learn how to live through them. Hebrews 11 records those Old Testament saints as cloud of witnesses to follow. They have been tremendous and awesome examples to us. The chapter refers to the lives that they lived, the challenges, difficulties, troubles, and hardships they faced. We are to look at the trials they went through and how they responded as well as what God did in their lives. It’s been fascinating, reading about the lives of Moses, Abraham, Isaac, Joseph, David, and Daniel. Men whose lives I can relate to. Seeing how God worked in their lives, and thinking that my situation is slightly similar, it makes look again at how God worked in my life, and I see clearly that the principles have not changed. I’m inspired by reading and searching for how God worked in the past, and the more I do this, the more encouragement I get. I say “God, the way you worked in their lives is the same you will do for me”.
You may look at your situation and say, “God, this is unfair to me”. But look at Joseph who was falsely
accused and imprisoned. He could have said, God, where are you? But He was faithful to God. He came
from no hope as a prisoner and became the Prime Minister of Egypt. And so, when I look at how things
have been unfair to me and my loved ones, I recall and think about Joseph. I think about how the race of
life can be rough and full of troubles. Then I think about David, how many times he ran from one cave to the other, escaping from Saul who was determined to kill him. I also think about the short cut Moses took
by killing an Egyptian and what he went through – living in the desert as a result. He took a short cut for
the plan of his life for the nation of Israel. Once we discover God’s will, that’s not the end of the story; now we have to walk it out. One of the hardest parts about following God’s will is moving in His timing. Moses tried to bring God’s will to pass when he moved in his own strength and killed an Egyptian (Ex. 2:11-12 and Acts 7:24-28). Attempting to rush God’s timing actually set Moses back thirty years (Gen. 15:13 and Ex. 12:41).
David is one of the greatest examples in the Old Testament of the good things to do and at the same time, the bad things to avoid or not to do. David was one of the best in many ways and one of the worst in many ways. Every person learning about David will find something in the life of David that you can apply to yourself. If you don’t study the word of God and learn these things at someone else’s expense, then you are destined to fall into the same mistakes yourself. We can learn for example, how David’s sexual sin with Bathsheba affected his family and the nation of Israel. There were tens of thousands of people who died because of David’s sin. By the help of the Holy Spirit, we can learn not to commit adultery, we can learn how to keep ourselves seeking the Lord even when things are not going on well. We can learn these at David’s expense. That’s the best way to learn. If you want to learn something about prosperity, you can go to a person who is homeless, and you can learn about somethings not to do. You may see some behaviours and some actions that have caused the situation that he/she is in, and there may be some benefits, but you don’t want to go to a homeless person to get financial advice. You want to go to someone who is successful in the area of finance.
These lessons are not about a person who lived four thousand years ago, and they have no applications to us today. See 1 Cor. 10:6-11. These scriptures were written for us today so that through them we can learn not to commit adultery, or do the negative things that David did, but rather do the positive things that He did to get the positive results he got. There are several lessons from scriptures we can apply to ourselves.
The Bible is brutally honest about people. If somebody was writing a biography, they might cover up some things, but the Bible doesn’t cover up anything. It shows every little worth and every little blemish. There’s no air brushing to cover up blemishes on any of these characters. Taking time to go through them will keep us from making serious mistakes. We can also find encouragement from engaging God’s word. An example for encouragement is like what we find in 1 Sam. 17, where David killed Goliath. The scriptures recount how David trusted God and believed in Him to achieve the feat of defeating Goliath. I have learnt great lessons from that, I have applied that to my life.
God has used his life to speak to me and it has kept me from making many mistakes. Many are praying and asking God for help and may be thinking I don’t need a message about David, or I don’t need a message about any Old Testament saint or biblical character, I need something new. However, from the story of David, we see how God blessed and prospered him when he was seeking the Lord and we see something totally different when he turned from seeking the Lord. We see that he opened the door for the devil when turned from the Lord, and it cost him and his family greatly. It didn’t end there, even the nation Israel was also affected by the action of David. These things were written for your benefit. If your life is totally out of control and you need help, this is for you. If we will take lessons from David and other Bible characters, and learn to apply them to our lives, it could revolutionise the way God is moving in our lives.
There are examples of those who failed and those who succeeded. There are also examples of those who God accomplished His purposes for their lives. You see, one of the very important things in living a life worth living, is to have encouragers. Who are the most important encouragers in your life? No matter where you are in life, do you feel good when you think about them? Everyone of God’s children needs encouragers like that. That’s part of living an abundant life because it’s not going to be easy all the time. We have encouragers around here on earth and in heaven. There are a whole vast of witnesses in heaven that we can read about in God’s word to enable us to understand what the Christian life is all about. Our greatest role model is the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.
Christ is the only saviour of the world. Have you received Him? If you will, please pray this prayer after
me, saying every word from your heart…
Dear Lord, I recognise that I am a sinner and need to be saved.
I understand that Jesus died in my place and suffered the judgment of all of my sins.
I believe that Jesus rose from the dead and He is at the right hand of the father.
Lord Jesus, I surrender my Life to you.
Come and Live in my heart and be my Lord and saviour.
Thank You for saving me. Amen!