Richard Ellis Talks

Richard Ellis: I'd like to say there's hope for America, but there's no hope for America unless you believe there's hope for individual Americans. And there's only hope for Americans if they repent.

So you say, "Well, what do we need to repent of?" I don't know. Climb in your closet and ask God what's up with you. You say, "Well, I don't have the problem," and that's the problem.

Guest (Male): Welcome to Richard Ellis Talks with Richard Ellis. Richard's going to take the next few minutes to share some great words of hope and insight for you. And in today's broken world, that is something everyone is desperate to hear.

Richard shares unapologetically the truth of the Bible in a way that's clear, relational, and uplifting. So thank you for taking this time to listen. We know it will bless you. And when you have a moment, you might want to check out our website so we can stay connected with you, richardellis.com. But right now, let's go ahead and get things off and running with today's talk. Here's Richard Ellis.

Richard Ellis: The title of today's message is We Hold These Truths. So let me read you a little bit of this. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. Very fastly, the word "created" is used in the Declaration of Independence. That they're endowed by their Creator, so we have a Creator creating, with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Unless you happen to be a slave, of course, at that time. That didn't work out so well for you.

So you say, "Well, but you're slamming America." You know, it's okay to slam a country because sometimes countries screw up. Sometimes people screw up. But people can change and countries can change. And this country has changed. And I find it very fascinating that you don't find many people fleeing this country for all of its terrible stuff. They're still coming. They're still trying to be made American citizens.

Am I proud to be American? Sure. But I am more humbled by the fact that I'm a Christian. So I'm only going to be American for so long. And no matter where you're from, your citizenship needs to be on the other side, not just on this side someplace.

I didn't know I was going to read this, but I'm going to read it now. So I'd like you to turn to Jonah chapter three. Without getting into Jonah screwing up, which, by the way, the book of Jonah does not end with Jonah being thrown up by a large fish that God had prepared on a beach somewhere and then never using him again. So if you think you've screwed up, rebelled, gone the other direction, and God can't use you, read Jonah.

But I want to highlight here Jonah chapter three. And this is one of the coolest verses in scripture, verse one: "Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time." So God comes to us and says, "Okay, here's what I want you to do," and we say, "No thank you," and we go the other direction. And then God allows circumstances, situations, things fall apart, he's got consequence in our lives, and he gets our attention and he says, "Okay, let's try this again, a second time." For me, it has been a first, a second, a third, a fourth, a fifth, innumerable count on how many times God has shown me mercy and said, "Let's try this again."

So this is Nineveh. And Nineveh is on the verge of total destruction, of annihilation. And the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time saying, "Arise, go to Nineveh, the great city, and preach to it the message that I tell you." So Jonah rose and went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, a three days' journey in extent. So it'd take you three days to walk across it.

And Jonah began to enter the city on the first day's walk. Then he cried out and said—so this is clearly what God had told him to say to the city of Nineveh—"Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!" So the people of Nineveh believed God. Now you say, "Well, is that possible?" This is what we expect from a nation. We say, "Well, this is a screwed-up nation and we need to just blow it all up and start over." Okay, well then what are you going to have? Who's going to run it? What kind of laws will you have?

So we don't like it that nations screw up. But nations don't change until individual people in a nation change, because nations are just people, right? The United States of America is a place filled with people from here, from around the world. Everybody came here from somewhere. And so here we are, this collective. But who we are as a nation is determined by who we are as individual citizens.

And if you don't like your country, find a mirror. You say, "Well, what does that mean?" It's never going to change if we don't change. See, I want my country to change and we want to wag a finger and call it this and call it that. And God goes, "Wow, how fascinating you observe all these things about your nation. What about you?" And what we need when we go to repent is we need mercy. So we have to extend mercy. We have to forgive. We have to acknowledge that in the same way people in the past screw things up so terribly, things can go terribly wrong, the same is true about me.

I've been extended tremendous mercy. You cannot repent without experiencing mercy because God says, "Okay, I've warned you. You heard the warning and you heeded the warning." So look what happens. He cries out, "Forty days, Nineveh will be overthrown." So the people of Nineveh believed God, proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least of them. So all of a sudden, it's panic mode, so much so that they literally declare a fast. "We're in trouble."

And until this country gets to the point where it realizes that it is in trouble, and that means that we as individuals are in trouble, nothing's going to change. And I don't know if it's 40 days or 40 years, but I promise you, if you could live another two or three thousand years and Jesus doesn't return, we will be history in history. You think, "Oh, that'll never happen. America's the greatest, blah, blah, blah." The Romans thought that, the Greeks thought that, everybody thought that about their own little country. But yet corruption, sin, evil gets inside and they blow up.

So keep looking at this city. They fast, they believe God from the greatest to the least of them. Then word came to the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne and laid aside his robe, covered himself with sackcloth and sat in ashes. So all the way to the top. And he caused it to be proclaimed and published throughout Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles saying, "Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything. Do not let them eat or drink water. But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily to God. Yes, let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands."

So you say, "Well, what was their problem?" You can usually tell what a people, a truly repentant people's problem is by what they confess. And what was their problem? He just sized it up: "Everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands." It had gone to violence. "Who can tell if God will turn and relent, and turn away from his fierce anger so that we may not perish?" Then God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God relented from the disaster that he had said he would bring upon them, and he did not do it.

Now you say, "Well, is there hope for America?" You know, does that even really matter? I'd like to say there's hope for America, but there's no hope for America unless you believe there's hope for individual Americans, and there's only hope for Americans if they repent. So you say, "Well, what do we need to repent of?" I don't know. Climb in your closet and ask God what's up with you.

You say, "Well, I don't have the problem," and that's the problem. Because if you climb in the closet and start praying for revival, you realize it has to begin with me. And if revival takes place in my heart, and my life changes and I truly repent, then as I said before, the only way I can truly repent and for it to take effect is, unless he strikes me dead—which he hasn't so far—if I repent, it means and I'm still here, I have received mercy.

And so when you come out of a repentant closet, so to speak, you come out armed with mercy. You come out armed with grace. You come out armed with forgiveness. You don't come out condemning people because when you repented and received mercy, you realize that that's an individual and a nation's only hope. And even a king of Nineveh knew that. And how simple is it? What happened? God said, "Okay, I see what you're doing. You've turned from your evil ways. I'm not going to wipe you out."

It's so simple, but we are so bullheaded. We are so stubborn. We are so stuck on our sin, we will not change. We want everyone else to change, but we don't want to change. We want everybody else to give up their evil ways, but we don't want to give up our evil ways. You say, "Well, I don't have any evil ways." Here's what I recommend you do: ask the Holy Spirit if you've got any evil ways. Let him do a little searching around in there and poking around and see what he comes up with.

We hold these truths. So what are these truths? Let's go through some of these. Let's go with life. Patrick Henry said, "Give me liberty or give me death." So from his perspective, liberty is so essential that he said, "I'd rather be dead than not have liberty." Big statement. And Jesus, when he came, what did he make possible? He said, "Give me death, give them liberty," because he knew we would never be free unless he died.

Liberty. Luke 4. And this is Jesus speaking here, reading from the Old Testament basically, Luke 4:18: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord."

So what was Jesus sent to do? All these things. Preach the gospel to the poor, the good news to the poor. Heal the brokenhearted, proclaim liberty to the captives. And you say, "Well, does that apply to slavery?" It applies to anybody who's captive. Anybody ever been captive to something? A few hands went up halfway. You talk to an alcoholic and ask him what being captive to something feels like. They know. You talk to a drug addict, a sex addict, anybody addicted to any kind of thing and they just cannot not do it. They're slaves. And the Bible talks about this, being slaves to sin.

And Jesus comes along and says, "Look, you don't have to live this way anymore. I'm about to set you free." "Yeah, but I don't know anything different than this. This is just who I am." No, it's not who you are. It's something you do. It's not something that you are. Do not make sin who you are, because if it's just who you are, you've got no hope. If it's something you do and he can set you free from that, then you've got hope.

To proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. And he does set the oppressed free. Romans 6. By the way, read Romans. Don't get bogged down. Don't go, "Ah, it's too hard." My God, it's the Bible. Read Romans. You have to slow down a little bit because it's very compressed. It's a lot of very condensed stuff. But it's powerful stuff.

Romans 6, go down to verse 22. Now look what it says: "But now having been set free from sin, and having become slaves of God, you have your fruit to holiness, and the end, everlasting life." What could be better than that? You say, "Well, I don't want to be God's slave." This makes people get uncomfortable, this whole slavery thing. "Well, why would I not want to be—if I don't want to be a slave to sin, why would I want to be a slave to God?" Because when God owns you and he is your Master, there is nothing better than that.

You say, "But how can I be free if he's my Master?" And I've shared this before and you know this, that a slave could be set free back in the day and in ancient times and go and publicly literally be marked and say, "I am free, but I choose to go back and serve my Master." What in the world? What they were acknowledging was, "My Master cared for me and no one's going to take better care of me than him."

So here's what got tricky for me when these things started to make sense. I had a window of time where I realized I was free. I was out of the prison. Like, set free, like, boom! This is unbelievable. It's too good to be true. And there can be a period of time where you kind of go "Wahoo!" You kind of go, "Well, this could be taken advantage of. I'm free no matter what I do. I'm going to be forgiven. There's grace, there's mercy."

And then you get out there over your skis and go, "Wait a minute, this is not what this is talking about." And you bring it back in and realize that freedom is not doing whatever I want to do. Freedom, true freedom, is being in a place where you're willing to do whatever he wants you to do. You say, "Well, I'm not free then." That's the freest free you're ever going to be.

Now look at your life, look at my life. If I just from today forward, let's just give it a week, and I'm just going to go "I'm free to do whatever I want to do and I'm just going to go do it, whatever I can get away with," I'd be in prison by Tuesday. Right? Because there's consequence. You can't live that way. There is no freedom without responsibility.

And we fear, we think it's the proverbial, "If I give my life to God, he's going to send me to Africa." What if that's where you're supposed to be? He's probably not going to send you to Africa. He's probably going to send you to work and ask you to be who you're supposed to be there and show them who he is there or wherever you live. We think if we make him Lord—we want to make him Savior, we want to be saved from hell, but we don't want to lose our lives. And we think if we give up our lives, we're going to lose our lives. And that's where the lies continue. The devil says, "Oh, God's trying to withhold something from you."

Look at verse 23. Let me read you 22, Romans 6:22 again: "But now having been set free from sin, and having become slaves of God, you have your fruit to holiness, and the end, everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord." So the wages of sin—you want to work for sin? The payment? Hell will pay you for your sin. You know what they'll pay you with? Death. And then the contrast from wages is the gift. But the gift of God is eternal life. You didn't do anything to deserve it. He just says, "Here's eternal life."

Second Corinthians 3:17. Second Corinthians chapter three verse 17 and this is pretty simple, but it says: "Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." And this word literally means personal freedom from servitude, confinement, or oppression. I try to explain this to people: no one has ever taken better care of me than Jesus. My daddy tried the best he could. He was not a perfect father. He screwed up, he was an angry man, he had all those issues. But he tried and he provided. But no one has ever taken better care of me than Jesus.

And you will never take better care of yourself than Jesus will. It's not going to happen. You'll say, "Well, I want this." And we'll get into this in a second on the happiness thing. You'll say, "Well, I think God wants me to be happy." If you truly want to be happy—we'll get into this in a second—ask him what he believes will truly make you happy.

Let's go into that pursuit of happiness. By the way, in scripture, there's no real distinction between happy and joy. People try to spiritualize joy. They're interchangeable. You say, "Well, you can have joy when your mom dies, but you can't be happy." It's very close to the same thing. How can you have joy when your mom dies? We think happy is "I feel good all the time, I'm just happy." And I want to be happy.

And by the way, this is a nightmare. Because people start down this path of happiness. "I have the right to be happy." No, you have the right to be silent. "Well, I'm not happy." You're not going to be happy all the time in the world sense of happy. But in God's sense of happy, having joy, same thing, you can be all the time, even if something terrible happens.

Look at Psalm 16. And by the way, if you're on this pursuit of happiness, go back and read Solomon. I mean, he took off. He just said "game on." Houses, plants, just you name it, women, a thousand women: 700 wives, 300 concubines. The shoe closets alone just kind of blow my mind. That's not happiness. You say, "Well, but that's a different woman every day for over three years. Rotation. What could be better than that?" I'll tell you what can be better than that: what God intended. One man for one woman till somebody dies. That's what God intended.

You say, "Well, how did Solomon get away with that?" Because if you want to be a fool, God will let you be a fool. "I thought he was the wisest man that ever lived." He started out that way, but you can be wise and end up a fool. He prayed for wisdom and he used it for a while and then got off track. "I thought God gave him wisdom." If you ask for wisdom and God gives you wisdom, you've got to use some of the wisdom to use the wisdom and do what he's telling you to do.

Psalm 16:11: "You will show me the path of life; in Your presence is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore." So you're looking for happiness, for fullness of joy, pleasures. Where are they? In his presence, at his right hand. Get close to Jesus. You want to be happy, you're pursuing happiness, then pursue Jesus. There is no happy without Jesus.

Because if you ditch Jesus, you abandon God, you say, "Forget about him, I'm going to live my life and I'm going to be happy. I have the right to be happy." Let me tell you something about chasing happy: you're not going to be happy all the time. Because sooner or later, somebody's going to do something you don't like or you're not going to get your way.

And parents who go down this road with their kids and just give their kids whatever they want—we just want to keep this kid happy—let me tell you about the monster you're raising. Sooner or later, you're not going to be able to feed happiness to that child anymore and it will eat you. It will run you out of your own house, devour you, destroy you. "Oh, but we want our children to be happy." You want them to be happy? Love them enough to discipline them. Make them unhappy for a little while because what they're doing ain't making you happy.

Now I'm about to read you something that'll make your head spin around a little bit because you say "this cannot be possible." Without faith, it is impossible to please him. Because he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. So you say, "Okay, so if the world says this is up and this is down, that's probably completely backward to what God says." So find out what the world says and flip it the other way and you're probably on track.

Because the world says sleep with everything you can, multiple partners, that's the answer. And God says one person for life. The devil's going to fuel you lies. Take control of your life. You don't need a master, you don't need a boss, you don't need someone to control your life. "I am the boss of me, you're the boss of you." And then Jesus comes along in Luke 9:23 and says this: Then he said to them all, "If anyone desires to come after me"—you want to follow me?—"let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me."

Now I'm telling you, you say "well, that's going to end up in tragedy, it's going to end up in unhappy." Then you don't know my Jesus. Because I can tell you something about not doing this. You say, "Well, I want to go after him, but I don't want to deny myself. I don't want to take up my cross daily and I don't want to follow him." Then you're just a ticket holder thinking that's all there is to it.

You want to pursue happiness, pursue Jesus, but this is what it looks like. You come after him by denying yourself, taking up your cross daily, and following him. You say, "Well, I'm going to suffer. That sounds painful. You can't be happy doing that." I'm telling you, that's the answer. Don't say it doesn't work until you try it, until you apply it.

James chapter one. James chapter one, and let's start in verse one: "James, a bondservant"—even describes himself as we're describing this, being a bondservant—"to God, of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad: Greetings." And I read this the other day, we read it again. "My brethren"—to Christians—"count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing."

So you say "but trials can't be good." God says, "Look, just trust me. I'm allowing this trial. Trust me." "But I'm going to try to get away, I'm going to try to escape." You cannot escape. It's just going to come right back. Look at—go back to Nineveh, go back to Jonah. God didn't change his mind about what Jonah was supposed to be doing. Jonah changed his mind about being willing to do what God told him to do. God's going to finish what he started, so the question is how much of your life are you going to burn up running?

"Well, I don't want to yield, I don't want to submit, I want to do what I want to do." And I can line people up in this room and beyond who pulled that trigger and chased that line of reasoning and burned up 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, 40 years and then finally got to the end and went, "What was I thinking? I burned my whole life up doing nothing. I wouldn't listen."

So this takes a tremendous amount of faith. You don't become a Christian without faith. You don't live the Christian life without faith. The only way you live the Christian life is you look at it, you read it and say, "Wow, this is so narrow, this is so backwards. But this is what he says. It must be true. I'm going to try it." And look at the people you know who live it and try it and it works.

How many people do you have to be around that have joy and are happy because they pursued Jesus to say "well, that was probably the better way"? I go back to my theory. We love our sin. We love our little blankey. That's the picture of Christians who won't grow up. Little blankey of their sin and they sit there and suck their thumb the rest of their life until they've had enough. "But I get to do what I want to do." And what you get to do that you want to do is destroying your life. It's all shut down. And it'll cost you your family, your life, your job in some cases.

We hold these truths. These are the truths we hold. The question is whether we're going to live these truths, by applying these truths and helping someone else who may not understand these truths and have no idea how to get the life, any kind of liberty, or any kind of pursuit of any kind of happiness. And somebody sooner or later's got to tell them that the only way is Jesus.

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