Hello, everyone. Welcome to Snow Church at the Wilton Baptist Church. I'm Pastor Steve. I hope that you're staying safe and warm today on this intensely snowy day. Well, there are a couple of announcements I'd like to share with you, and then we'll proceed to our message in Psalm chapter 106. So please find Psalm chapter 106 in your copy of Scripture. We'll let you know a little bit later about possibly having Iwana. We're just not sure about different things. So be safe today, and let's have a great Bible study, a good message. In April, that'll be Easter, it'll be here before you know it. There's a lot of other things between now and then. But on April 6th, we're having Friends and Family Sunday. I'm just letting you know now so you can start praying and plan on who you would like to invite. And the idea is that we'll have people come on April 6th and then come each Sunday until we get to Easter. on April 20th, and we'll have a message about the power of the gospel and why the cross matters today. So I hope that you'll make plans for that. Start praying now for that if you would. Tomorrow night, that'd be the 10th, we have our kindled Valentine dinner. If you've not yet signed up, we'd like to have 30 people. I think we have 26, so there's room for you. We want to have 30 or more, so if you're an individual, if you're a couple, then let us know you're planning to come. Email us at info at wiltonbaptistchurch.com. Info at wiltonbaptistchurch.com. So there's still time for you to sign up, and we hope that you'll be there. There's going to be some good games, some great food, and fellowship together. We'll be having an encouraging time together, and this is part of our walking with others. And so I hope that you make plans to be at our kindled Valentine dinner. Then one more thing there's giving and online giving is something that you could do today if you like and you could scan that little QR code. Otherwise each Sunday there's also giving envelopes in the lobby. You can also go to our wiltonbaptistchurch.com our website and then find our under giving the site where you can give there. Now, I get a report every month about giving and from January of this year, January 2025, compared to January 2024 and two years before, January 2023, our giving is down 75%. That's pretty significant. I don't know if that means that we have less people giving, or if we have the same amount of people giving less, or maybe a combination of the two, but I do know that that's not very good when it comes to you know, projecting ahead with our budget and meeting all the needs. And so if you would, please pray. If you want to give, that'd be great. But we are 75% compared to the last two previous years. That's just for January. So if you want to help catch us back up, that would be amazing. And if you would pray for that as well. Okay, so we're in Psalm chapter 106, the doxology of broken people. I'll go ahead and pray, and then we'll have our message for today. Father, we thank you for this time together. Even though it's online, we can pray together like we are. We can anticipate and look forward to your work in your church. Continue to provide and meet all the needs of our local church, of all the missionaries that we support, and all the different ministries that are conducted here in this place with your people. We also pray that you'll bless the Valentine dinner tomorrow night. We pray for others to join with us, and we pray that'd be an amazing time. We also look ahead to April. It's a long way off, but we anticipate and look forward to sharing the gospel with others. And we can even now start to plan about who we will invite to the Friends and Family Sunday. Bless now our study. We thank you for this opportunity. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Okay, Psalm chapter 106, I had the opportunity to meet Dr. Kelvin Cochran this last week, and he's the former fire chief of Atlanta, the Atlanta Fire Department. Dr. Kelvin grew up in Shreveport, Louisiana, and when he was five years old, He heard the sirens off in the distance and he walked to his door and he looked out at five and he saw firefighters rescuing people from a house across the street and putting a fire out. And at age five, he said, that's what I want to be. I want to be a firefighter and he proceeded to become a firefighter he received the training and by the time he was just a young adult he was in on the fire firefighting force there in Shreveport Louisiana and he was so determined had such a good work ethic that it took just really record time for him to move through the ranks and become the fire chief of the force there in Shreveport, Louisiana. What normally took people 10 or 15 years to go up to the next level took him maybe one or two years. He really moved through the ranks rather fast. Well, fast forward a few years then, after working there for a long time, the mayor of Atlanta called him up and said, you're our guy. We want to have Atlanta be a model of firefighting and you're our guy. We want to hire you as our fire chief. And so he moved to Atlanta and was the fire chief. He was there for some time. And then President Obama asked him to come and be the fire chief for all firefighters. And I guess there's like a national firefighter, fire chief for all of the United States. And he was that person. So he reached the pinnacle of that vocation. And he was in that role for a little while. And then the Atlanta received a new mayor and that new mayor flew to Washington, D.C. and begged him to come back to Atlanta and said, we want to have the safest city in America. We'll give you whatever you need. And would you come back? And he went back to Atlanta. Now, during all this time, Dr. Cochran was also a teacher of like a men's Bible study at his church. He'd written a book about things that are described in Genesis. And he had described how a man is a man and a woman is a woman. He spoke basic biological truth and basic Bible truth. Well, somebody informed the mayor of Atlanta and the city council of Atlanta, and he was terminated. He was fired. The case went to, I think, the Supreme Court. It worked its way up through the courts, and eventually, it took about 10 years, I believe, but he won the case. Wrongful termination because of his religious conviction and faith. Today, Dr. Cochran has served as a minister. He also serves as a speaker. He goes around to different conferences. He's part of the Alliance Defending Freedom, and he speaks about suffering. He talks about how sometimes persecution may happen because of your faith. Now, he talked about how suffering may come about. And he gave two instances or examples. Now, all of us deal with consequences, whether it's good or bad, based upon whatever it is that we are doing. He spoke about suffering, two kinds of suffering. The first kind is the result of our own sin. We may suffer because we make the wrong choice. We sin. We know we go and do something that's wrong, and we have consequences for that. And the second type of suffering is something that may happen because we're doing the right thing. It's not because of sin. And it could be that God is using that circumstances or that persecution or that suffering to refine us. It's mold us and to shape us to ultimately give Him the glory. And so Dr. Cochran spoke about these things. I was so blessed to meet him and to learn about his story. And the same is true for us. I'm not talking about if you're doing something wrong. Of course, there's going to be consequence for that. But even if you're going to do something right, sometimes there's consequence for that. In his case, wrongful termination. He was persecuted for speaking truth. In Psalm 106, we find that broken people answer to the Lord. There's going to be consequence or blessing based on our actions. And sometimes, even if you do the right thing, there could be some bad results that come about, at least in the short term. Broken people praise the Lord, they believe the Lord, they wait for the Lord, they pray to the Lord, and they obey the Lord, and now they answer to the Lord. Broken people answer to the Lord. I'll read the passage and make a few comments as we go through. Here's some sins that broke the Hebrew people. And let's begin reading in verse 28. They joined themselves also unto Baalpeor and ate the sacrifices of the dead. Thus they provoked him to anger with their inventions, that means deeds or practices, and the plague break in upon them, some kind of a pandemic or an epidemic took place. Then stood up Phineas and executed judgment, so the plague was stayed. Before Phineas had executed judgment or took decisive action, 24,000 people had died. the Bible tells us. You can read about it in other passages of the Old Testament. And it was counted unto him for righteousness unto all generations forevermore. They angered him also at the waters of strife, so that it went ill with Moses for their sakes. You know who the one that's being angered or upset by their choices? It was God. They were sinning against God. Now Moses, he is going to react in this situation And it does not go well with him, as the Scripture says, so that with Moses, it went ill with Moses for their sakes, because they provoked his spirit. They were creating a contention and a rebelliousness even in his own spirit, so that he spake unadvisedly or thoughtlessly with his lips. They did not destroy the nations concerning whom they commanded them, but were mingled among the heathen and learned or exercised their evil works, and they served their idols." The word serve here means to become a slave to. They became a slave to, they served their idols, which were a snare unto them. Yea, they sacrificed. Are you kidding me? They sacrificed. They slaughtered their sons and their daughters unto devils and shed innocent blood, clean blood, free from sin blood, or exempt. They shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and their daughters, whom they sacrificed into the idols of Canaan. And the land was polluted with blood. Thus were they defiled with their own works and went a-whoring with their own inventions. You may want to write spiritual infidelity. spiritual infidelity. You could write that beside verse 39. What a tragic description of God's people. There are several sins that broke them. The first is idol worship, and apparently they had these feasts to this Moabite god that is called Bel-Pior. and he's a form of Baal, and they had Baal worship, so they had a feast. Sacrifices to this dead idol is how it's described here. And then there was also Molech and Baal worship that's very similar as you read both of them in the Old Testament. Here's a Molech, here they're doing bail worship in the passage, but Molech and Baal is different. The image would be a little bit different. But they both would have arms reached out. And so, according to this passage, they had a feast, they had prostitution, they had these different immoral things taking place, these Hebrew men finding these Moabite women as kind of a cult-like, intimate-type type sacrifice to God with men and women, and then they sacrificed their babies. And this is the most tragic one. You can see they would heat up this huge statue and then place the baby on its red hot hands and it would burn to death. This is just mind-boggling to me, that they would do something like this. This is God's people who were sacrificing to these dead idols, and it describes them as being dead, sacrifices of the dead. False deities are lifeless. They are breathless. They are thoughtless and motionless. But according to this passage, and you can read more about it in Numbers 25, And in other places, this is what they were doing. Now, in the lobby, there's a book called Claiming New Territory. It's a book I wrote over 20 years ago. It has a chapter describing some of this idol worship and some of the events of what took place here with Phineas standing up and executing judgment. But they had idol worship, and they had idol inventions in verses 29 through 31. idol inventions. And let me just back up for a minute. When it comes to this idol worship and the idea of the sexual things that they were doing, the immorality, and then sacrificing their babies, there's a lot of that that still happens today. The idea of free sex with no accountability, the idea of do whatever you want to do in the name of inconvenience and in the worship of the God of humanism and the God of individualism. Babies or innocents, as is described, are sacrificed daily in America. And that's a sad, sad thing. but it's still going on. They also had idle inventions, and instead of purposely running after God, they ran after evil inventions or idle inventions. You could say it's evil practices. They provoked Him to anger with their inventions, and then a plague came out upon them. Phineas was bold about their wicked deeds and practices that were carrying them away. Now, he was not executing some kind of like a Wild Wild West vengeance or something like that. Phineas was a civic leader, he was a tabernacle leader, he was a priest of the Lord, being one of the sons of Aaron, and he was called, or grandson of Aaron, he was called to this responsibility to serve God and to serve the people, and he was very bold. Here was Zimri, this is in Numbers 25, a Semionite man, and Cosby, a Medianite woman, who were committing immorality. And here comes Phineas, and he stabs them both through and executes them. And then, and only then, was that pandemic or that epidemic stayed or stopped, as the Bible says. And if you read Numbers 25, there were 24,000 people who had died by that point. God was fed up with their idol worship and their idol inventions. You know, if you're not purposely running after God and purposely doing what is right, it's easy to coast and choose to do what is wrong. The Hebrew people saw these women, they saw these idols, they saw this sin, and it was enticing to them. Instead of proactively serving God, They ran after sins of the flesh and these demonic type things instead of running after the Lord. Now the people were thirsty by the time you get to 32 through 33 and they angered him also at the waters of strife so that went ill with Moses and so they had an insurgency. an insurgency. If you read Numbers chapter 20, they get so angry about this that they act like, hey, we want to get another leader. We want someone to take us back to Egypt where we had plenty of food and water. Yeah, we were slaves, but we want to go back to the way that things were. And maybe they started to even vote about who are we going to have lead us. And you can see this rock here. This is in Saudi Arabia. The tourism industry in Saudi Arabia claim that this is the same rock that Moses struck. It's in in southern Saudi Arabia. So it's possibly the rock, the place is called Refitem in the scriptures, and it's not too far from Jebel al-Lawz, that's the mountain I've been telling you about, that's probably the one where God gave the Ten Commandments. So this rock is fairly close to that. Now apparently, you see how it's split in half when he struck the rock? it split, water gushed out. When you go there, people that have explored this area say, from the rock moving down, so be towards the screen as you're looking at it, are rocks that appear to be like a creek bed or a river bed. like they've had water rushing over them. I'd love to go check that out sometime. You want to take a road trip or a flight over to look at that? That'd be pretty neat. Anyway, that's possibly the location where this took place. You can read all about it in Numbers chapter 20, and I encourage you to go and look at that if you like. Well, instead of speaking to the rock, because God told him to speak to the rock, Moses hits the rock with that staff. Now, I believe Moses hit it with the staff because at one point God had told him to, but that was at a previous moment, as they were trying to get water out of a rock previously. But here, instead of speaking to it, like God said, he hits the rock. Now, I believe God had him speak to the rock instead of hitting it, so that he would know the power was not in the rod itself, but the power for it was from God. But at any rate, Moses disobeyed God. He didn't believe that. Instead, he strikes the rock twice. God answers and responds with water. But this is the moment that it went ill with Moses. He's not able to go into the promised land. And he even said something like, must we fetch water out of this rock? Referring to him and Aaron, because he had Aaron's rod there. It was all a miracle of God. And so he took too much upon himself in this moment. Now, verses 34 through 39 tells us another thing that broke the people that's insubordination. Insubordination. And notice in verse 34, they did not destroy the nations concerning whom the Lord commanded them, but were mingled among the heathen and learned their works. Instead of doing what God commanded, They said, let's just intermarry with these people. Let's not wipe them all out. By the way, you can see in Deuteronomy 6, Deuteronomy 9, 1-6, the reason wasn't because of the righteousness of God's people. The reason God had them destroy these enemies were because of the evil of the enemies. Think about the idol worship. Think about the child sacrifice. Think about these immoral, cultic-type worship things that were going on, and that's why. And that passage that I just flashed across the screen, that tells you why. It wasn't because of the righteousness of God's people. It was because of the unrighteousness. God was judging them. Sometimes God will use one nation to judge another nation. And this was an example of that. And finally then, verse 39, there's infidelity. Thus they were defiled with their own works and went a-whoring with their own inventions. And so a spiritual infidelity. Now, the Bible tells us, and this is a good application for us, this is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the Church. When you think about spiritual infidelity, God's people, and it's almost like a husband, a bride, and a groom is almost the imagery that we get from this idea, and as the Old Testament even. And he said they were committing a spiritual abomination, a spiritual idolatry or spiritual adultery, in fact, infidelity. Well, God says the bride of Christ, that's the church, and then that makes Christ the groom. And so this is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and a church. When a Christian walks away from God, he's committing spiritual infidelity. It's like walking away from spouse, and that's the analogy and the picture that God gives. So broken people answer to the Lord. Now, if this is a normal Sunday morning, I'd preach a lot more and maybe give you a few more illustrations. I've skipped over a couple already. But let's talk about course correction as we conclude here, because we do give an answer. Broken people answer to the Lord. There's intervention. What can we do about course correction as God's people? Verses 30 and 31. Here's intervention. Phineas stood up. He executed judgment. That phrase executed judgment is one Hebrew word. It means to intervene or to interpose. He stood up and did something about it. Now, he wasn't doing Wild Wild West judgment. He was authorized to do what he did in that moment and the plague pandemic was stayed. There's also intercession in verse 32. What does Moses do in here? He's angered at the waters of strife, but when you go back and look at the passage in the Pentateuch, in Numbers and the summary of these events in Exodus, you get the idea, what's he doing? Well, he immediately goes to God. In fact, Aaron goes and they're both praying, they're both interceding and talking to the Lord. Numbers 20 says, Moses and Aaron went from the presence of the assembly into the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. They were praying, they were seeking the Lord. Intercession is praying on behalf of somebody else. And so it's good when we have the opportunity to intervene and to help out and then also to intercede. The Bible says, let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Who is it that you're praying for? How are you praying? Are you praying for a miracle? Are you praying for a family member, a spouse, a child, a co-worker, an extended family member? Are you praying for your church? Are you praying for your community? I mean, who is it that you're praying for? Not for yourself, but you're interceding. We need to intercede as part of course correction, intervention, intercession, and then introspection. Not every time will somebody be there to intervene or intercede. Sometimes you've got to examine yourself. Sometimes you have to just think through in your own mind and meditate on the Scripture for yourself and consider what God would have you to do for yourself. I mean, think about this for just a moment. Verses 36 through 39, and these other verses, I mean, we're talking about immorality, we're talking about child sacrifice, we're talking about demon worship, we're talking about idol worship. You would think, with a little bit of introspection, these are obvious sins to say no to. But if you're not practicing self-examination, if you're not reflective, sometimes you can get caught up in the culture and get caught up with what everyone else may be doing. Sometimes we need to selah, stop and think. 70 times in the book of Psalms, we find a word selah. Or selah, it means stop and think. Just meditate for a moment. Think for a little bit. Consider your life. Imagine yourself compared to God. Think about your sin and how great and vast God is. Consider how easy it is for your flesh and your own mind to fall to temptation, and then remember the perfect life of Jesus. We need introspection. Job prayed for God to reveal his sin to him. David also prayed for God to reveal his heart to him. Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me, and know my thoughts, and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." You can see these verses here on the screen. On the fifth Sunday, when we take the Lord's Supper or Communion, that's the time of self-reflection, self-examination. Look at your life in light of the cross. Look at your heart in light of the sacrifice of Jesus. Search your motives. and your goals, and see if there's some godliness in your life, and then seek the will and the way of the Lord. Who do we give an account to? We give an account to God. Broken people answer to the Lord. It's written, as I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me and every tongue shall confess to God. So then every one of us shall give an account of himself to God. Romans 14, 11 and 12. How will you answer the Lord? Will you stand for what is right? Will you intervene and intercede to assist others? And then have you personally met Jesus Christ for yourself? I hope that you have. Contact me today. Info at wiltonbaptistchurch.com. You can email me there if you want to talk and we'll set up a time to talk either on the phone or in person or on Zoom. And in the meantime, friends, be safe out there on the snowy, snowy day. Thank you for watching today. Continue to pray for the church. Continue to pray for your participation in this church. And let's take these this message and these ideas here about answering to the Lord and Make them a part of our life today father Thank you for this time that we could today father Thank you for this time that we could have this Bible message help us to be more like Christ Knowing that we'll give an answer to you one day help us to choose to do what's right in No matter what the consequences are in this world, we know that the future is awesome with you. And so Lord, just help each one in our walk. We pray in Jesus name. Amen. Thanks for watching. God bless.