Talk—Matt Richerzhagen
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
So I just wanted to bring before us in the in the brief time that I have, I just wanted to bring before us three things. And the first thing I wanted to talk about is knowing, and this is very similar, what our brother just shared, knowing what is true. We live in a world that is so full of pressure that we cannot stand against it on our own.
We used to go a lot to the Yakima River when my kids were little.
Littler. And there was a day that we went and there was a spot in the river that wasn't even knee deep. It was like it wasn't up to my knees. And I went to walk across that water and it just swept my feet right out from underneath me. It was so fast. It was so powerful. I don't know how many people in here have been to the beach and they've been smashed by a wave.
Water is so powerful and the current of this world is so powerful, you will not stand against it.
On your own, you can't. You're not strong enough.
We need the Lord's help to be preserved in this scene. And it says be careful if you think you stand, lest you fall. And the first thing I want to talk about, I'm going to start in the same verse that our brother just read in John 18.
John 18, verse 38.
And it's this verse right here. What is truth Pilot verse 37 art thou a king Then Jesus answered, thou sayest that I'm a king to this end was I born and for this cause came I into this world that I should bear witness unto the truth. Everyone that is of the truth here with my voice and Pilate said what is truth. The truth is being attacked so much today that you interview. I don't know the percentages, but there.
So many people that do not long that do no longer believe in absolute truth.
They don't believe in absolute truth. Well, that might be good for you today. Maybe something else would be good for you tomorrow. You can't build a life like that.
You can't. It doesn't work. Things are true or they aren't true. You may not like that the answer, but it is true. People have this old long time debate. If a tree falls in the wilderness and there's no one there to hear it, does it make a sound? How many? How many people can answer that question? Raise your hand.
It makes a sound, absolutely. And there are people who don't understand that. They spend their whole life going in circles and circles and circles. It's either raining outside or it's not. And we can debate in here all we want, but if you step outside, either you get wet or you don't. There is truth. Where do we determine? How do we find truth?
This is a question and answer. How do we, you and me, how do we find truth?
Through God's Word, absolutely, and we know that this is true because of the author and because of all the proofs inside it. Like someone said earlier that the people that argue against the accuracy of Scripture, they look at Daniel and they say it was written afterwards because it's so precise, it's so true. It couldn't have possibly just.
Happened.
You don't walk along and see a building and say, oh, a whole bunch of matter blew up and there it is. Life doesn't work that way. It doesn't work that way right now and it never worked that way. You know good and well from playing with Legos or from those of you who are carpenters. Stuff doesn't just blow up and make something. It never has and it never will. We need to have a basis in this book.
Right here we need to have an understanding.
And let's turn to.
Romans, chapter 12.
There are different worldviews that our brother mentioned.
And there's a way that people change their mind. Thinking leads to beliefs. Beliefs lead to expectations. Expectations lead to attitudes. Attitudes lead to actions. Actions lead to habits. Habits lead to character. Our character leads to our destiny.
How do people go? Like I've talked to somebody who grew up in this assembly, he doesn't believe in God. How can you get from Sunday school to I don't even believe in God? Because you keep thinking and thinking and thinking and thinking different thoughts and you start to reason and you try to understand and explain all this stuff and you get to where you believe something that's completely off the track.
00:05:13
Read this with me in Romans 12 verse one. This is the apostle Paul and I want to say this to you guys in Hebrews, the apostle Paul says 13 times, let us I'm not here preaching at you. I'm not talking down to you. This is worked in my life. This has changed my life. I'm sitting in this wheelchair full of joy. I wouldn't be anywhere else in the world because I believe the Lord has set me in this chair.
And I am so thankful for the opportunity to talk to you.
I'm not talking down to you. This is this is life. This is what he has for us in this life that we can face.
Any circumstance with confidence, and with joy and with power. He says this in Romans 12/1. I beseech you, therefore, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice. You know what A sacrifice is hard to keep on the altar when it's a living sacrifice. Do you know why it squirms off the altar? Because it hurts.
It hurts. It's gonna hurt your flesh. If you're gonna seek to serve Christ with all your heart, there's a part of you that says no, I don't want that.
If you really want him, you're gonna, you're gonna pursue him. And that's that flesh is gonna come off of you and it's gonna come off of you and it's gonna come off of you, and you'll be more and more comfortable and you'll have less and less resistance that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. We're not ours. We're not ours. We're not in this world for.
50 years to make money and have a perfect life and that's not what makes us happy.
That's not how we're fulfilled as human beings, and God knew that.
And he wrote out a prescription for us. He said, I am come that you might have life and that you might have it more abundantly. And we're going to talk about our worldview in just a second, that we believe that's what faith is. Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. How do we experience this? We don't fall asleep and wake up. We don't fall asleep on the Bible and wake up in the morning and be more spiritual. We got to read it.
We got to seek to understand it and we say, Lord, I don't understand, what does this mean to me?
What do you want me to get out of this? And he'll teach you. He promises that if any lack wisdom, let him ask. How do we know what's true? It's right here in the word. Right here in the word. What's one of the biggest things that we're facing with question about what is true in our in our country right now? One of the biggest things you see everywhere, at least I see everywhere.
It's a question about.
Who just said that? That's awesome, thank you. Alex. What is a man and what is a woman? I want to read you a verse. This is not that complicated you guys. This isn't that hard. Turn with me to Genesis chapter #1.
It says in Proverbs the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. And it says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
Understanding what he says and applying it to our lives. Knowledge is one thing. You can know the whole entire encyclopedia, but that doesn't mean you're going to have a good life.
That doesn't mean you're going to live, right? It's the application of the knowledge. It says right here, chapter one, verse 26, let us make and God said let us make man in our image. Verse 27. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created him, male and female created he them.
Way back.
In the very beginning.
In the very beginning, on the 6th day of creation, God made a man and he made a woman. And they're different creatures. They're fundamentally different. Fundamentally, one is not right and one wrong. They're both beautiful. And what our culture is trying to do is trying to blur the distinction so much that neither one of them is anything.
And it's wrong. It's wrong and it's a deception. It's a lie.
From the devil, from the pit of hell. And it's trying to make men become more effeminate and it's trying to make women who are supposed to be feminine more and more and more and more male. And it's ruining God's design. And we're seeing the effects of this in our culture. And people are all confused. And the people that are confused aren't happy. This isn't a path to joy. Well, I don't know what I am and I feel confused. That's not that's not the path of.
00:10:21
Really, it's not.
And I want to say this to my dear beloved sisters in this room. I'm not telling you what to do. I'm just telling you your calling is a high calling.
What God has created you as a woman? It says. The woman is the glory of the man.
It's a beautiful thing. Don't listen to the lies of the enemy that would say, well, you know, you should just go be like a man. Don't give up what only you can do.
I implore you to go do what a man can do.
You're too special for that. You have a calling that's so high than that, so much higher than that. And I'll tell you, my wife went to college to go do stuff and she gave her life to me and to my children.
To raise them to serve me. You want to know how much I love that woman? I love that woman so much. You know what her deepest dividing emotional need is? Love.
Her service created that in me. That's the way God designed it. That's the way God created the world. Give and it shall be given unto you. Press down, shaken together and flowing over. That's Luke 638. It's so important to understand. We need to know the truth and we need to know we can't do it on our own. And I'm not saying that if someone here is single, I'm not saying.
That you're not valuable. You weigh that before the Lord. The Lord is calling everyone to walk individually.
Even if you're single, you're going to have relationships with someone else.
OK, the second thing I want to talk about is relationships, and all of us are going to have relationships. Every single person. We're going to have brethren. We're going to have people that we run into.
The only reason people fight.
Is because their feelings get hurt.
The only reason, only by pride cometh contention. That's Hebrew, That's Proverbs 1310. And I can still see that sticker. Rob Morell had that on his toolbox in his shop, and I can still see it. It's burned into my mind Only by pride cometh contention. And what usually happens in a marriage or with your children or with someone else is you feel like you're not being heard, so you feel like you have no value.
If we just listen to each other, usually the the biggest issue is not the issue.
The issue is I don't feel heard so I get mad, so I withdraw. Listen, listen, listen, listen, listen.
Number two, other people, I hate to tell you this, other people are going to slow you down. If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. That person that is your spouse, if you're going to be married, is not like you. The other person, if, if they were exactly like you, one of you would be unnecessary. It's like 2 puzzle pieces.
My wife is so different than me. You don't have to be the same.
That's not how God designed it. God designed it so that the compliments would go together like two puzzle pieces, so that what I'm good at makes us a better team. What she's good at makes us a better team. OK. And it's beautiful. God designed it that way. I wish I had more time to talk about that.
Let me I was gonna plug this in. This is the third thing I want to share with you.
How many people can you hand me that? How many people know what this is?
Answering machine no, it's a good guess.
It's an alarm clock. So let me let me turn this on. Hold on. My watch is beeping. OK, let me turn this on. This is the third thing I talked about. What is truth? Where do we get the truth? It's from the word. And then we need relationships. We need other people.
Only by pride cometh contention. Seek to understand. Seek to understand. This is the third one.
If I could turn this thing on.
I should have practiced with it before I.
00:15:00
OK.
Russia, reportedly.
In the capital key, can everybody hear that?
OK, so you got that one?
The consensus of people.
Never saw you coming. OK, I really get into my music.
I was, I was trying to find the Hispanic station. I couldn't find it. OK, Do you guys realize that all this radio right here just played different music, right? It's not this radio.
Is this radio any different? What different sounds that came out of it?
Is a radio any different? No.
Why did it play different sounds?
Different frequencies. It's tuned into a different frequency. There's all these frequencies around us. All you are is clock radio. I'm just kidding. There's different frequencies all around us that we can tune into.
OK, this is faith. This is what faith is. In turn with me to Hebrews Chapter 11.
Verse #1.
Hebrews 11 verse #1 It says this Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. You know I can go through my life.
And I can be tuned into the radio station that says poor pity for me, poor pity for Matt. Look at the family I was born into. I wish I was in the Portland Assembly. I wish I was in the, the people in Tacoma are a lot nicer. The people, you know, I wish, I wish I didn't live in America. I, you know, I wish I was a communist and I couldn't do anything and didn't have any food to eat. I mean, like whatever you want to tune into, you can. There's a, there's a station out there that'll play that tune.
What faith says is that God is for me.
He wants to bless me and make me a blessing. And if I'm tuned into that radio station, I'm going to experience his presence in my life. And this isn't a theological process. This is a physical, actual reality because I believe what he says. If we believe in Romans 828, it says all things work together for good. If I believe that when I'm run over.
I believe that He is purposing this for my blessing. I'm not trying to get out of it. I'm not sitting there fussing about it. I'm looking for the blessing. I'm looking for His healing. I'm experiencing His presence. And I didn't get here in one day. I'll just say that because I've spent a lot of time walking up the road, up my Rd. screaming at the Lord. Lord, why is this happening to me? So I didn't get here overnight. It's a process. Faith is a process.
But when we believe him and we take him at his word, it transforms what we walk through. It changes it. It changes us as we walk through it. And we can listen to the radio station that says, Lord, why did you let this happen to me? Why? Like it would. Oh, Lord, poor pity for me. Or we can listen to the radio station and TuneIn and hear the Lords for me. He's working.
Being a blessing and every single day we can choose what we tune into and your life is a reflection of the radio station that you listen to, what you're tuned into spiritually. That's why it's so important to be reminded of the promises in this word. That's why it's so important to be reminded. The Lord says I am for you.
For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, to give you hope in the future.
Not because there's something in us, but because his love saw something in US.
He sees more in us, He sees more in you than you see in yourself.
00:20:07
He, the Lord, is so good.
Lord is so good.
It's, it's unbelievable. I'm, I, I should probably quit because I'm out of time. If we knew his truth, we're not going to go astray.
Right. We're not going to go straight. If we're on the path. The waves may pull us this way, the waves may pull us that way, but we're going to be preserved because we're on his truth. In Matthew 7, it says the wise men built this house upon the rock, and the waves came and the house stood.
So many people's lives, their life looks good until the waves come, and then their life is completely washed away. Their house wasn't founded on the rock. If we understand that, we need other people.
We need other people. They're not just an annoyance, we need them.
And then learn to work with them. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good. And then to choose faith.
Choose to believe.
And trust him.
It transforms our life. So on March 8th this year.
Which was just over seven weeks ago. I was at my house and I was going to go to a carrier meeting for this conference. And I was going to go. And then I wasn't going to go and I was going to go and I wasn't going to go. And I finally decided, OK, I'm going to go. And I paid my bills, which I never do on Tuesday. I always pay them on Saturday. So all my bills for the month were paid. I got in my car and I drove to the meeting and we sat there and talked. And then I thought the meeting was over, so I said, hey, let's pray and we'll go. And somebody else talked for a few more minutes.
And then I said goodnight to Ron Junior and I went out and I got in my car and I started driving on the highway to my house and I said the cruise control, 63 miles an hour. I didn't know that there was a drunk driver who was driving back and forth on that stretch of Rd. over and over. And he'd been pulled over by the Washington State Patrol. He was drunk, but the guy didn't know. The officer didn't notice that he was drunk. He didn't have any insurance and the guy didn't check for insurance.
'Cause they always ask, where's your driver's license?
Proof of insurance. He didn't have any, so he shouldn't even have been on the road. He was driving back and forth on that road and I was driving, you guys don't know where it is. But anyway, part way home and this guy was coming at 105 miles an hour. He's driving so fast and I got almost even with him and he turned right into my car head on. I was going 63 miles an hour and I'm thinking it it, I was still awake and I'm like, why would you run into me? I was just like.
Just like baffled, like, 'cause it, it seemed like he did it on purpose and I'm just like, why would you do that? So I'm sitting there in my car and I was like, OK.
I've been in a car wreck, OK, like trying to, because it was a pretty big crash, you know, trying to, you know, gather my wits and everything, and I move my leg. I knew I had a broken leg and I moved my hip and I knew I had a broken hip. So I, I remember unbuckling my seat belt. The guy that pulled me out, he said he unbuckled my seat belt. So maybe I misremember that. But my car caught on fire and I still hadn't moved. And there were people that had stopped alongside the road and this man who had just been passed by the drunk.
He was driving down the road and the drunk driver passed him and he came around just a little bit down the road, and here's a car wreck. He gets out of his pickup and he comes over and he climbs into a burning car. He doesn't know me. And he says to me, he tried the driver's door, which was broken. He said, you got to get out of here, your car's on fire. And I'm like, right, yeah, that's a great idea. I got a broken leg and a broken hip. Anything else we should do?
I wasn't trying to be funny. He put his arms underneath my arms and nothing happened.
And he tried my seat and the power was out. The battery was burned up or it blew up in the car wreck or whatever. And so he put his arms back underneath my arms. And he said, Lord, help me get this man out of here. And my guardian Angel lifted me. I went like this up against the ceiling, over the back, over the seat, into the back seat. I have never in my life. It wasn't like somebody pulling on me. It was like a forklift moved me. It was so.
And it hurt like crazy because I was obviously kind of broken up and I got in the back seat and he couldn't Get Me Out of the car. He had to go get someone outside and they came and they drugged me outside and I was bleeding to death because my femoral artery was cut. So they stopped the bleeding in my artery and something blew up. It was really super exciting. It was like being in a movie. I'm not kidding you. That's what I thought. I was like, wow, this is really cool. Like a movie, but I'm the stunt dummy.
00:25:03
Anyway, so then they drugged me down the road, they got the bleeding stop and here's an ambulance and I'm not watching my watch.
But I'm like, wait a minute.
You know, it takes a while to call 911 and it takes a while because we're out in the middle of nowhere. It takes a while to send an ambulance. Well, these amazing EMT people and the police, the fire department, they were doing EMT practicing exercises and they ended at 9:00. They're all suited up, all ready to go, and they were just a couple miles down the road. So 911 call comes at 9:10 or 913 and they send an ambulance and they're right there. And I'm like, no possible way.
So they get me in the ambulance and they drive to town and they ask me my name, my birth date, my phone number, my wife's name, my wife's phone number. They didn't ask me her birthday. I don't know why.
Anyway we got to the hospital and they did a CT scan and my whole my I had a broken.
Talis bone crushed in 17 pieces of broken leg Bone 3 broken ribs A burst small intestine, large intestine, colon.
And a fractured pelvis you could put two hands through into my leg.
And my insides were, they did a CT scan, I was completely full of blood and feces. So they cut me open but and they kind of cleaned me up, but they couldn't, I wasn't stable enough to do surgery on because I was so beat up. So they put me on life support for a couple days to where I was strong enough they could get my blood pressure up to 75 / 50 so they could do surgery, which is on Thursday. And all this time the Lord watched over me.
Like I shouldn't have survived that accident.
Just the impact. And I should have bled to death right there. And I should have, you know, I should have, I should, I should, I should have. And I'm just like, OK, Lord. And I just want you guys to know I don't understand. Like this makes no sense to me, but I trust him.
And I'm not through this. I am like way far from being through this. I can't even walk on my own. I walk with crutches. But I started thanking the Lord. Thank you Lord, for this trial. And I cried when I thanked Him the first time. It hurts, but you know what? There's blessing in what the Lord passes us through.
For every, for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. If you have a little trial, there's a little opportunity for blessing. If you have a great, big, huge trial, there's a great, big, huge opportunity for blessing. And that's what I'm looking for. Thank you guys all so much for listening. I love you guys so much. You guys are the future. I know it, Jesus knows it, and the devil knows it. And every resource is there for you.
So follow after him. So go ahead. I already prayed for the refreshment so.
God bless you all, I love you.