Protecting Your Future - Part 2

Welcome to this weekend's In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley. We've all made decisions without considering the long-term consequences. Don't want to make that mistake again?

Here's part two of Protecting Your Future. What is the biggest mistake you ever made in your life? You say, well, I've made so many, I'm not too sure I know what the largest one is. Well, we all make mistakes. Sometimes they're small mistakes, sometimes they're big mistakes. Sometimes they have little or no consequence. Sometimes they have very long-lasting consequence. We all make them. Now, some of them, we can just sort of say, well, forgive me and move on. Or, I'll correct this.

Some of them are irretrievable. You can't go back. You can't make it right once it's happened. And one of those mistakes that I want to talk about in this message is one of those mistakes that many people are making and do not even realize it. If you ask them, do you think that's a mistake?

They'd say no. And so, I want you to turn, if you will, to the twenty-fifth chapter of the book of Genesis. And here is a very graphic picture of a mistake that many people are making in their life. And what they're doing is simply this.

They are simply sacrificing their future for the pleasure of the present moment. So Esau, who is the hunter, has been out hunting and he comes in and he's tired and so he says to his brother who, looking at that stew, says, I'd like to have some. Imagine this. And he says to him, you want some of this stew? Sell me your birthright. Well, that's a rather ridiculous request.

And yet, Jacob was a very shrewd person and he's known in the Scripture for being shrewd in sort of a deceiver. And so, he makes in his proposition and he says, all right, you have the birthright, give me some stew. Give me a big bowl of this. Now, what's significant about that? Here's what's significant about it. We sacrifice the future for the pleasure of the moment when we are blind to the values in life. He was willing to give up his birthright for one bowl of stew.

Now, we look at that and say, well, that's just ridiculous. But let me ask you a question. Is there a bowl of stew in your life? Is there something you're into? Thinking about a decision, something you've been contemplating, some relationship you have. That when you look at it very carefully, it could influence and affect the rest of your life. It could impact your whole future. If you make the wrong decision about this, it could impact your whole future. So, that's one way you can sacrifice your future for the pleasure of the moment. A second way that it's revealed is this. When our focus is on the temporal things of life rather than eternal, we'll make that mistake.

Think about this for a moment. We said, here's a bowl of soup, and let's say that bowl is a big bowl of soup. It had everything in it that Esau loved. He could tell before he ever got there what kind of soup it was. He couldn't wait for it.

But notice what's happening. His eye and his mind is on soup. Well, let me ask you this. How long does it take you to eat a bowl of soup?

Say, well, a few minutes. Let me ask you a question. Would you give a half a million dollars for a bowl of soup? No. Would you give up one of your children for a bowl of soup? No.

The soup's only the symbol. What is it that you're willing to give up the best in your life for? And how many people would say to us today, if I had it to do over again, I wouldn't do thus and so. The purpose of this message is one single thing, protection. To help you to think before you make decisions. Think soberly about is this a temporal or an eternal decision?

How long is this going to last? What's the effect of this? Think about this. You turn away from Christ. You say, well, that's just one decision in my life. Don't give me that Bible stuff in church and all that.

And I'm not interested in that. Right now, things are going good and you've got plenty of money and plenty of this and plenty of that and on and on and on you go and everything's just fantastic. You know what you're doing? You're sacrificing your whole eternal future on things that are temporal. Think about this. Would you sacrifice your whole eternity? Separated from God, suffering for eternity over any one thing in your life or over everything that you have? And this is where the world's think, this is where the world thinks, they think in terms of temporal things.

Why? See it, touch it, feel it, enjoy it, and besides, I don't have it right now. Don't tell me about this eternal life at yonder somewhere. Don't tell me about when I, don't give me this stuff of eternity and Jesus coming and judgment and all that. I'm living now. I've got to live right now.

You sure do. But you better live right now for the future because it's coming. And if your sense of values in life are such that you've got to have it right now, and that's the only way you're going to think, you are going to be eternally regretful. Well then also, when we make irrevocable decisions in periods of weakness and physical and emotional weakness, here's what we're doing. We're sacrificing our future for the pleasure of the moment.

Now watch this. Do you know when Satan is the most dangerous in your life? Do you know when you are the most susceptible to temptation? You remember this little word I gave you and give it to you every once in a while?

H-A-L-T. Don't get too hungry, don't get too angry, don't get too lonely, and don't get too tired. Now look at Esau. He'd done nothing to feel hunting, and he was very hungry. Now let's skip the anger for a moment.

Out there by himself, he's probably lonely. And when he came in, he was dead tired. Now what happens when you physically and emotionally become very weak and tired and weary?

Oh, let's just add the anger to it, and you're angry. What happens? You cannot make wise decisions. And people make unwise decisions.

And here's what happens. They say, Well, I feel lonely. Okay, so what?

Does that give you the right to commit sin because you feel lonely? Well, I feel, I'm very, I just feel angry. Does that give you the right or the privilege or is it wise to you to vent your anger on someone else? Well, I'm very hungry. I'm just going to take whatever I can find.

Whoever it belongs to doesn't make any difference. I'm tired and weary. I need somebody to bolster me up.

Anybody can give an excuse for their wrongdoing. But I'm just saying to you simply this. Satan loves to get you in a halt position. Too hungry, too angry, too lonely, too tired. Or just get you hungry, angry, lonely, and tired. And then what happens?

Then he begins to feed your mind. Well, you know what? You don't have to be by yourself. And besides that, there's, you've got money.

You can buy anything you want. Why don't you just go out and live it up and just enjoy yourself? I mean, you're just down in the dump, so go to the mall. Spend some money.

Or go find somebody you can spend the night with. People sacrifice their whole future for the pleasure of the moment because they allow their emotions and their physical being to overpower them in life. And what people don't realize is you can't, listen, people don't want to believe this. There is a simple law that God has given us. And that law is this. Whatever a man or woman sows, we reap what we sow, more than we sow, later than we sow.

Isn't it amazing how we can blind our eyes to the truth? That that's the irrevocable law of God. And that irrevocable law applies to every single aspect of my life and your life. The more love you give, the more love you're going to receive.

The more acceptance you give of others, the more you're going to receive. The more you give to God in any way, the more you're going to receive. That's the law of God. But if I'm living in such a situation where deep down inside of me somehow there's this feeling that I got to have it now and it's what I feel and I'm lonely or I'm tired and I'm weary and so forth and God understands.

Let me just say this. God understands many things. He does not understand to the point of just ignoring me when I break the law of God. And what Esau did, he came in famished, tired, weary, hungry, thirsty, and for the moment that bowl of soup looked so good, so absolutely satisfying to him that in that weak moment he made an irrevocable decision. How many times do you think he regretted and asked himself the question, do you mean to tell me that over a bowl of soup I gave up my whole future? People do it every day.

Because here, watch this. You see, what we don't know is we can't look at that bowl of soup oftentimes and tell what the repercussions are going to be. Then of course, we sacrifice our future for the pleasure of the moment when we have no respect for spiritual things. No respect.

And so this is what happened to Esau. He had little or no respect for the birthright, which was an awesome, valuable thing. And so when a person says, don't give me that Bible stuff, no respect for the Word of God. Don't tell me about Jesus being the only way, no respect for Jesus. And we can just go right down the line. When people have no respect for the things of God, they're going to make a terrible decision in life.

So ask yourself the question, watch this. By the way you treat the Word of God alone, how much respect do you show for it? If I came to your house, and I know I'll never get invited now. If I came to your house and I just walked around and looked around, let me ask you a question.

Where would I find a copy of the Word of God? Would I have to look for it? Would I find dust on it? Or would I pick it up and look at all those marks you put in it? What does it say to me?

Something's happened in your life. You know why I ask you that question? Because if you reverence the Word of God, if you reverence the church, the things of God, you see, the way you make decisions that absolutely foul up your whole future is having little and no respect for the things of God. Well, I would just mention one other, and there are others, but we sacrifice our future for the pleasure of the moment when we fail to consider the future consequences of what we're doing. When you have a contract with somebody and you have to sign your name on it, don't you read it first? Don't you ask some questions? Don't you try to think through, well now, if I sign this contract for this house, this is for thirty years or twenty years or whatever it might be. Don't you think about and consider the fact, well now, what happens if I can't make a payment? You probably, that probably crosses your mind.

Then what's in this contract? Are you the kind of person who lives every day? Forget all about the future, man. Just live your life today because after all, like Esau, I may get killed early in life or something may happen to me and so, I'm going to live it up while I can, glean out of life everything I can because just don't worry about the future.

Get in while you can. That's foolish. And so, what happens? People make mistakes. They make wrong decisions. They make foolish decisions. And my whole purpose for saying all of this is this.

Don't make foolish decisions today for some pleasure when it's going to cost you for the rest of your life. What about Achan, for example? Achan was a part of Israel and when Joshua conquered Jericho, here's what God told him. He said, you tell them, all the gold and silver belongs to God, no one's to touch it, and the consequences is death.

Achan saw it. He knew what the law was, but he ignored it. And he took it. And he was exposed.

And it cost him his death and the death of his whole family and whole household. Take Samson, for example. Samson had a bad relationship. And he wanted to please, he wanted to please Delilah.

What a decision that was. Here he was, the strongest person around, defeating the enemy for the glory of God. And here's this woman who is saying to him, oh, come on, Samson.

After all, and you know, he'd tell a few lies and then finally she got him. Do you suppose if Samson had known that one day he would spend years of his life walking round and round, pushing this big wheel, grinding the grain of his enemy day after day after day, and making it worse, blinded. They blinded his eyes. And so he blindedly walked round and round and round. And how many times did he ask, how could I have valued her caresses and her sex and her approval and her acceptance enough to be grinding for my enemy's blind? You see, because we cannot see the consequences.

We think there are one thing and there's something else. What about David? You see, David looked over the balcony of his place he lived there, and there was Bathsheba taking a bath. And he saw her. He was the king.

And there she was with all her beauty. He was the king. She had to do whatever he said do. And so he made a big mistake. It was more than a mistake.

It was one of those present moment decisions that cost him for the rest of his life. Then, for example, take Judas. Judas was a politician.

He was a renegade to some degree. And what he wanted really, he wanted to force Jesus' hand to call down the kingdom of God, to bring down those legions of angels that Jesus had talked about. Call down those legions of angels and destroy Rome and set up this kingdom that he'd spoken of. And therefore, the kingdom of God would rule once again.

And Israel would be in rulership. Wasn't God's timing. Wasn't God's way. So he tried to force Jesus' hand.

That's why he betrayed him. I'm simply saying to you, listen. Don't make foolish decisions based on your appetites, based on your wrong sense of temporal values and ungodly attitude about the things of God. Don't make decisions based on issues that are nothing compared to eternity. And if I were to ask you today, what is it you have that you'd rather keep it, even if it costs you eternal separation from God?

What is it? You've never trusted Jesus Christ as your Savior and you're making your decisions in life and you're going on and you're saying, you know what, I'm as good as anybody else and here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to have what I want when I want it. I can afford it and I can have this and have that and go here and go yonder and I'm just going to live my life the way I want to live it and one of these days it's going to be okay. No, it's not. Here's a law you cannot change.

I don't care how much money you have. What your position in life is, you can't change this law. Whatever you sow, you reap what you sow, more than you sow, later than you sow. It is a simple law of God. If you're wise, you'll ask God to forgive you of your sins and tell Him that you need His forgiveness in your life. Which means that you're willing to believe that His death at the cross paid your sin debt in full.

You need Him, you want Him in your life because if you don't have Him, when you die, you'll be eternally separated from Him. I can tell you there's not a single verse in this book that says you'll make it without Christ. I plead with you in Jesus's name to think. Am I willing for the pleasure of this moment to sacrifice my whole eternal future? Thank you for listening to part two of Protecting Your Future. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or InTouch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of InTouch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.