When God says it, do it anyway. I'll explain on this edition of key life. We're now listening to key life where the Bible becomes relevant to your daily life. I'm my Kellogg, and here is our teacher, Steve Brown. Thanks, Mike. If you have your Bible, turn it to 1st and 2nd Samuel. As we continue with our study, our Old Testament Survey, and we're spending whatever time it takes to introduce and look at some of the wonderful teaching in the Old Testament. It's my hope that this will inspire you to spend more time in that first part of God's Word to His people. A book of great grace and great mercy and God's long suffering. And you can understand the New Testament unless you understand the Old Testament. Like ripping out half of a novel and trying to make sense out of what's going on. And so we're taking the time to do this. And yesterday, what we're doing is, in 1st and 2nd Samuel, was taking two incidents out of the lives of the three main characters, Samuel, the last judge, Saul, the first king, and David, the great king. And we're taking two incidents out of each of those lives and spending some time with it. Yesterday, we were looking at 1st Samuel 8-4-22. And I'm not going to take the time to read that again. But that's the place where the people are tired of Samuel, the judge, and they want a king so they can be like the pagans. And Samuel was not really happy with that. And God tells Samuel to go ahead and give him a king. He said, and God said, they've rejected me, they haven't rejected you. And so Samuel, in obedience to God and running against his nature, does something that he just doesn't want to do. And he creates a king. We're going to talk about maybe tomorrow next week. We're going to talk about Saul and the king that he found. But in any rate, Samuel is obedient when he doesn't want to be obedient. You ever do that? Now, if you're not obedient, God still likes you. I mean, the imputed righteousness of Christ means you're covered. But let me tell you something. The sweetest music someone has said in heaven is the music sung by those who are obedient against their nature. Oswald Chambers has meant a lot to me, and I suspect he has to you, if you've ever read his utmost, my utmost for his highest, great devotional book and hundreds of thousands of Christians have been blessed by that. Oswald Chambers, and he wrote a number of other things, and those things are magnificent too. Oswald Chambers died as a young man, and sometimes you look at his life and you wonder how in the world did God use him in that way. Now, I don't want to lay a works trip on you, but I want to give you a poem that Oswald Chambers wrote the night before he said, all right, I'll do it your way. For he said to God, I don't like this one bit. I don't like where you're leading me. It's dark and it's cold, and I don't want to go there. But you're God, and I'm not. And so I'm going to do what you say to do. Now listen to this poem. Push. There comes the sound of weeping of my spirit, vanely seeking through the passions of another sphere, and its pain, voice, ever calling, and its great tears ever falling, rotten my life with fear. Never can I live in gladness. Never can I turn from sadness, but I must well in tears. I'll tell you, that's why Oswald Chambers was used. Now, not because he was perfect, or because he was good, but because he was bloodied, and he kept following God and the dark, and by the way, he didn't have to live his life without gladness. He didn't have to turn from any kind of good things. He didn't have to dwell in tears. God doesn't abuse his children. But in his willingness to be obedient in a hard place, some really good stuff came. I remember my mentor when I was a young pastor. His name was Dr. John Stanton. He was serving a big liberal church and one of the major cities in the Northeast. And he got convicted. He needed to be obedient to God. Now you've got to remember he was a press material. And those of us who are a press material know that we do everything properly and in order. Well, he decided that they needed a revival in this town, so he asked Gypsy Smith to come and put on some meetings, and Dr. Stanton was going to support it. Now, press materials don't invite Gypsy Smith to do anything. But he did. Gypsy Smith was a colorful evangelist. I'll tell you what, Dr. Stanton tried to get the other pastors in the city to help, and they wouldn't. So he rented the skating rink in his town, went and got the chairs and set them up. Did the advertising everybody thought he was foolish that he had lost his mind? But I want you to know, when I would talk to Dr. Stanton, and he was an old man that I knew him, and I would talk to Dr. Stanton, and he would go back to the days when God became real to him. It was when he was obedient, and he didn't want to. Can we talk? Sometimes I am, and sometimes I'm not. Now, if you're obedient all the time in a hard place, what I'm going to say now won't mean a thing to you. So you don't have to listen. In fact, why don't you turn off your radio right now? Now, for those who are honest who are still with me, I want you to know that there is an added benefit to obedience and the dark, and that is God's presence in a significant and deep way. And I love you, whether or not he cares. He'll hold you, you don't hold him, but I want you to know, do what he says to do. Doing it his way is a better way. You think about that. Well, tomorrow I want to tell you a little bit more about Samuel before we leave him and move on to Saul, but on Wednesdays it's my practice to answer some of the questions that you guys have sent. We get lots and lots, thousands of questions, and you always get an answer from me or a staff member, or on the broadcaster in the magazine, but you do have to write them down, and try to limit it to two or three at the most, and send them to Key Life, post office box 5,000, Madeleine Florida, 32794, or Key Life Canada post office box 32150, King Bridge Ontario in 3H5 in 3. You can email us at steeditkeylife.org with your regular mailing address if you want a response. And by the way, don't use the 1-800 key life number for questions. A lot of you guys keep trying to do that, but that's where you can order key life tapes free, you can order the pamphlets free, you can get the magazine free, you make the contribution, but you've got to write your questions out. And the only dumb question is the question you don't ask. And by the way, whenever you write a call, would you give us the call letters of this great station? And one other thing, if you haven't checked out our website recently, you ought to do it. It's keylife.org. There's a lot of good stuff there. There really is. Trust me on this. Go check it out. We're doing changes on that almost every week. You can hear today's broadcast and the previous 30 that are archive there. And there are things spot to help you in your devotional. Log it, stop. Check it out. It's keylife.org. Enough chitchat. Let's get to some of these questions. This is from a teenager. The staff person is written on the question sheet. Is an occasional white lie really that bad? Well, yes, it is. In fact, it's really bad. In fact, if you don't know Christ, and you tell just one white lie in your entire life, I mean, one, and you do everything else right. I mean, you're good and pure and honorable. You're always honest in every other situation. Everything is together. That one white lie is enough for you to lose it for all of eternity. So yeah, a white lie is pretty bad. Now, I hope you didn't turn off the radio before I say what I'm getting ready to say. And that's this. It's covered. If you know him, my white lie is bad. But you're forgiven even before you do it. And you say, Steve, you encouraging sin? No, I'm not. In fact, if you know that, if you know that you're forgiven, you'll do it better than you would if you didn't. The only people who get any better are the people who know if they don't get any better that God will love them anyway. Apedience comes from His freedom in His grace. Freedom in grace does not come from obedience. So a white lie, not their sins in terms of how they harm people that are greater than that. But don't get the idea that this is just a little sin and it doesn't make any difference. Because you de-sensitize your conscience to God. You need to be aware of what's right or wrong, whether it's a big one or a little one. Don't ever lie to yourself. Don't ever lie to Him. Go to Him with it. No matter what it is. If it's big in man's eyes or little in man's eyes, you go to Him. You'll always greet You. You'll always love You and You'll never be angry. You've got to go to Him. I had a person who was homosexual right me one time. When I said that a homosexual lifestyle was sinful. He said he was a Christian and I had no right to say that. And I said, look, I'm not a good person telling a bad person how to be good. But if you start changing what the Bible says is right or wrong, you burn the bridge to God. And there's no way you can hug you. So it isn't your sin, it's your stiffness. So I would say to this teenager, yeah, that's a sin. I don't want you to go on a guilt trip and stand in a corner and talk about what a worm you are. Ring your hands and talk about the world coming to an end because you committed this horrible sin of a little white lie. But don't ever kid yourself when you go to God. He'll love you. He'll hug you. He'll forgive you. And maybe even make you better. This is from Connecticut. What does the Bible teach about church discipline? Is there a right way to go about it? Yeah, the Bible does teach the church discipline. In fact, John Calvin said it was one of the true signs of the church, the real church, the true church. So church discipline ought to take place. Problem is that you give us an inch and we'll take a mile. You know, we read about church discipline when we think, oh man, that means we who are the good and pure people need to go after the bad people so we make the church pure. That's not what church discipline is. Church discipline is never for sin. It's always for a lack of repentance. And church discipline always takes place by sinners who are repent as they deal with sinners who aren't repentance. And by repentance, I don't mean necessarily change. It's knowing who you are and what you did and who God is and going to Him with it, and agreeing with Him about it. It's from a Greek word, metanoia. And so church discipline is important. The right way to go about it is with kindness, gentleness, and love, and concern, and without any arrogance. What's so left? Well, that's all the time I've got. Just a reminder one more time when you write or call, be sure and give us the call letters of this great station. And oh yes, Eli Fisza production of Key Life Network.