Get It Settled
Dr. George Ridell III
Pastor, Open Bible Baptist Church, Williamstown, New Jersey
When I come to the National Sword Conference, I can’t help but think there are some there that, unless the Holy Spirit of
God uses the conference to dosomething in their heart, will go home and resign their church. Or they will resign from the mission field. Or they will leave Christian work totally.
Because they have been beaten up on, they’ve faced disappointments, they’ve faced heartaches and they’ve faced tears, they are about ready to throw in the towel.
My subject today is “Get It Settled,” and my text is Luke 21:12–15:
“But before all these, they shall lay their hands on you, and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues, and into prisons, being brought before kings and rulers for my name’s sake. See the text in verse 14: “Settle it therefore in your hearts.” The Lord Jesus says here, “Don’t worry about tomorrow, and don’t worry about how you’re going to respond to those who may criticize you, to those who may try to hurt you or to hinder your work or to stop you from doing what God has called you to do. You get it settled in your heart; you get it settled in your mind that I, the Lord, will fill your mouth. I, the Lord, will be your Guide. I, the Lord, will go before you. I, the Lord, will take care of you. I, the Lord, will defend you. Your enemies will be so confounded that they will not even be able to respond to you.”
I remember when we were facing some major trouble with some people in our church. One man came to me and said, “When we leave this church, this place is going to collapse.”
I looked at him and said, “If it does collapse, that means it was built on the wrong man. If it collapses, it wasn’t built on the Lord Jesus. If it collapses, it wasn’t built on the Word of God, so it’s not worth having. But if it’s built on Christ, it will endure. Not only will it endure, it will prosper and it will grow.”
some things settled in our life.We are not going to let people intimidate us; rather, we recognize we have a responsibility to serve the Lord Jesus with all of our heart.
CONSIDER CALEB
There’s an Old Testament character named Caleb who is a most interesting man. The Scriptures tell us that he fully followed the Lord. Caleb was one of the twelve spies that Moses sent to spy out the land of Canaan.
You need to realize something here. These men were on a reconnaissance mission. They were not to get entangled in any kind of warfare. They were not to get into battle. All they were to do was simply survey the land and the cities.
“And Moses sent them to spy out the land of Canaan, and said unto them, Get you up this way southward, and go up into the mountain: [Now this is what they were supposed to do.] If you are going to be an invading army, you must find out some things about the upcoming conflict. They weren’t going to invade at this point; they were only there to gather information. Let’s see what is going on.
“And what the land is that they dwell in, whether it be good or bad; and what cities they be that they dwell in, whether in tents, or in strong holds; The Lord wanted them to survey the land, look around and see what was going on, see what kind of cities they were living in, see if they were strong cities or strong people and bring back the report.
There were twelve spies sent out, of which Caleb was one. Ten of the twelve spies came back with a totally negative report. “We can’t do this!” You know what? They were right. They couldn’t do it. But they left out one important element—God said
He would do it! God wasn’t looking for them to do it.
Dear friend, we must get something straight: “Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it” Psalms 127:1.
We put so much pressure on ourselves as if we are the ones that must get this done. Now we are the ones who must work. We are the ones who have to train people.We are the ones who have to preach. But if the Lord doesn’t do it, it’s not worth having!
Do you want a testimony that honors the Lord? It’s not about who has the largest church. It’s not about who’s the best-known preacher, how far our name is flung around the world. That’s not what it’s all about.
Do you know what it is all going to come down to? How well we followed Him! The bottom line at the judgment seat of Christ will be how well we followed Him.
Could you say with me that the consecration of Caleb was solid? If you want to look at a man who was wholly given over to the Lord and follow such a life, then study the life of Caleb a little bit.
Isn’t it interesting how the words “wholly” and “fully” go along with Caleb’s name, showing his faithfulness? Wouldn’t you like that by your name? I would like that by my name.
Caleb’s Courage
Caleb’s courage was without question. Think about it. How many people came out of Egypt? Several hundred thousand men, besides women and children. He was among the twelve spies among that multitude—and one of only two men out of so many who said, “We can go in and take the land.” Only two!
The other ten spies stood up and said, “We can’t do it!" Why, good night! We’re as grasshoppers in our sight, and we’re as grasshoppers in their (the giants in the land of Canaan’s) sight!” You see, there was a problem.
What a shocker that must have been! After all those years in Egypt during which God had shown Himself true and faithful so often! Come on, what are they thinking?
God had promised the land of Canaan to the children of Israel. But the difficulty was that God had not told the Canaanites they were moving. You can see the difficulty!
Oh, they found it to be everything God said it was! It is a land flowing with milk and honey just as God had already told them. All of that was verified by the spies. They even brought back some of the fruit of the land. The people said, “This is magnificent! It is wonderful!”
“It’s great, but we can’t go in.” Let me tell you how much “can’t” ever accomplished—nothing!
So here Caleb is. The giants in the land didn’t stop him. He was ready to go in. He said, “They’ll be like bread unto us. We can go in. Let’s go do it! Let’s get it done!”
The other spies said, “We can’t do it. It’s not possible.” Even as the people got up arms, Joshua and Caleb were not afraid. They looked forward in faith, despite the giants in the land. Then the congregation said, “Let’s stone them. Let’s get rid of these guys!” I think they were thinking something like, We don’t need these independent, fundamental, premillennial, temperamental preachers! We just don’t need them! Let’s stone them to death! Let’s get rid of them!
Even as the people got up arms, Joshua and Caleb were not afraid. They looked forward in faith, despite the giants in the land. Then the congregation said, “Let’s stone them. Let’s get rid of these guys!” I think they were thinking something like, We don’t need these independent, fundamental, premillennial, temperamental preachers! We just don’t need them! Let’s stone them to death! Let’s get rid of them!
That didn’t change Caleb one iota! That didn’t stop him. “You want to go into the land? We can take the land! We can do it. Let’s rise up, and let’s do it!” So what is he saying? “Let’s just follow the Lord!”
But how are we going to follow the Lord?
Follow Him fully even as Caleb and Joshua did.
Caleb’s Altitude
Remember Joshua, chapter 14, where they were ready to divide up the land. Caleb went to Joshua and said, “Forty-five years ago when I was forty years old, Moses promised me this land, Hebron. I want it! I want that mountain, and I want those giants in the mountain! I’m eighty-five years of age today, and I am as strong today as I was when I was forty years of age. I’m ready to go get now what we should have all gotten fortyfive years ago.”
Caleb was a man of lofty altitudes, a man who wasn’t willing to be just run-of-the-mill. He wanted to be above the pack. He was a man of lofty altitudes, and his attitude would determine his altitude. It always does. It always will. Caleb wanted the mountain, and he would have it.
Think about some of the other men of God. Some had character problems, but not Caleb! Some men are like Samson, who was a great man, but he had moral problems.
I’ve said something like this to our businessmen, “What you are in that motel room when your wife is not with you and all you have with you is yourself, the television and the Spirit of God residing in you is who you are. What you watch is exactly who you are. I don’t care what persona you project out in public. I don’t care how godly you come across in public. If you are immoral in that motel room with the television or any other type of thing, you are an immoral man.”
Samson had a problem, just like many men do today.
All of us who have been around at least six months have seen preachers with moral problems. I’ll be honest with you; my heart breaks for them. I could not imagine, first of all, becoming disqualified from doing what God has called me to do. I could not imagine that.
I’ve said to my wife over the years, “Sweetheart, I would rather be dead, I would rather be in my grave—and I mean this from the bottom of my heart—than ever have to look at you and say, ‘Honey, I violated our wedding vows. I violated your trust and confidence in me.’ I could never imagine breaking your heart like that!”
I said, “I could never imagine having to look at our three kids and having to say that Daddy blew it.” I could not imagine having to sit down with my grandkids and tell them that; I couldn’t imagine that.
Our oldest grandson is now sixteen. In fact, the other day he said to me, “Well, Pop-Pop, I’ll be getting my license.”
“You will?” I looked at him and said, “Son, you’ll get your first car like I got my first car.” Samson had moral problems. I could not imagine disqualifying myself from the ministry; I’d rather be in my grave. I mean it.
Think of Solomon. Has anyone ever begun like Solomon began? Solomon’s life—Song of Solomon written in the first part of his life, Proverbs written in the middle of his life, and Ecclesiastes written in the last part of his life—began in a magnificent way but ended in disaster. Why? For one reason: he married wrong.
Think about Abraham. On two occasions he lied and was not willing to trust God.
How about Moses who got angry and disobeyed God, causing God to say, “You are not going into the Promised Land.”
How about David? David, filled with lust, took another man’s wife, then had her husband killed, and the product of that union died. His family was destroyed because of the immorality. His kingdom was destroyed because of the immorality. All the judgment of God upon him because of a moral issue! There are other men of God that we could look at and see a different story. Think about Enoch.
There are only a few verses in the Scriptures that speak about him, “Enoch walked with God: and he was not.” Can you imagine the intimate fellowship that Enoch must have had with our Heavenly Father? I believe he just walked right on up into Heaven. He walked with God and was no more.
Remember Joseph. It didn’t matter what the difficulties were. Joseph was a man who would continue to walk with God. Under the most adverse circumstances, he walked with God.
Think about Samuel. Faith in God and obedience to Him were Samuel’s hallmark!
How do you get to the point that you are willing to walk with God no matter what the cost? You get it settled! “This is the way I am going to live. This is what I am going to do. I’m not going to be tossed around by every wind of doctrine that comes down the highway. I’m going to be an independent, fundamental, premillennial, pretribulational, temperamental Baptist preacher! That’s what I am going to be!”
You’ve got to get it settled! You must get it settled in your own heart and life about soul winning. You must get it settled about the Word of God. You must get it settled on ecclesiastical separation. You’ve got to get it settled on personal separation. You must get those things settled.
Once they are settled, then it is over. You don’t go back and revisit it. You don’t go back to reevaluate it. You don’t go back and look it over again and say, “Maybe we ought to rethink this.”
Listen, folks, if it was wrong forty years ago, it’s still wrong today. Nothing has changed that way. If it was right forty years ago, it’s still right today.
The problem is that we have brought in so much gray area that we don’t know what is right and wrong anymore. The truth is, so many among us don’t even know what fundamentalism is anymore. There has been such a mixture with anything and everything that the truth has been diluted and eroded. We must get it settled in our heart.
Let me tell you two points about Caleb’s life.
I. HE POSSESSED A DIFFERENT SPIRIT:
“But my servant Caleb, because he had another spirit with him, and hath followed me fully.…” Numbers 14:24
He had a different spirit than the ten spies who declared defeat. The others said, “We can’t do it.”
Yet he said, “We can do it.”
His spirit was steadfast; their spirit was unstable. He had a spirit within that said, “We can do what God has called us to do!”
We can always do what God has called us to do. The reason we don’t get accomplished in our lives what God has called us to do is not that God is not able to get it accomplished, but that we do not get it determined that it is going to be accomplished.
We do not determine that we will have a settled spirit. We do not get it settled within our heart that this is what God called us to do!
I tell our young preachers, “What you need to do when you take over a church is to get out a drill and a bit, take your shoes off and right behind the pulpit drill holes for your shoes. Put a screw in there with a nut on the other side and just slide in there every Sunday morning. You are just not going to move! You are there. Get it settled.”
One thing that has kept my wife and me at Open Bible Baptist Church all of these years is that we knew we were doing what God wanted us to do, where He wanted us to do it and how He wanted us to do it. That’s important!
Once you have that settled—this is God’s will—then that’s it!
He had a different kind of spirit. It was a steadfast spirit. He was a different kind of man; he had a different kind of attitude. When others said it couldn’t be done, Caleb said, “Yes, it can!” Why? Because he had it settled.
His Spirit Was One of Confident Obedience:
That’s something a lot of Christians have difficulties with—living obediently with the Word of God. This Book is not a cafeteria. We don’t come to it to take out what we don’t like and leave in what we do like. This is a life lesson for us!
My prayer early this morning was, “God, give each person at least one Bible principle from the message today which they can apply to their life. That’s all. I don’t care if they don’t remember who preached it. I don’t care if they don’t remember the title of the message. Just give them something that will help them in their spiritual life to grow a little
bit closer to You and that will help them go a little bit further for You.”
The psalmist wrote, “Make me to go in the path of thy commandments; for therein do I delight” Psalms 119:35
Is this Book your delight? Or is it a bore? Does this Book challenge your heart?
Do you remember how when you first got saved everything was brand-new, everything was so exciting! “I didn’t know that was in there!” You looked and searched the Scriptures
His Spirit Was One of Complete Faith:
“If the LORD delight in us, then he will bring us into this land, and give it us; a land which floweth with milk and honey."
“Only rebel not ye against the LORD, neither fear ye the people of the land; for they are bread for us: their defence is departed from them, and the LORD is with us: fear them not.” Numbers 14:8, 9.
There’s the key! It doesn’t make any difference what those ten spies said. It didn’t make any difference about the million people who wanted to stone Joshua and Caleb. Caleb had it right. Hear me on this:
“If the LORD delight in us, then he will bring us into this land.”
He will bring us exactly where He wants us to be. This is where God has led. This is where we are going to serve. This is where we are going to live and die. This is what we are going to do. Why? It is settled.
His Spirit Was One of Consecrated Selflessness:
Caleb wasn’t looking out for himself. He wasn’t looking out for his own comfort. The other spies were. The other spies said, “We can’t take this. It’s going to be uncomfortable and painful. There might be some people who will die.”
Nonetheless, Caleb’s spirit was not filled with self-will. His spirit was of one who was going to trust God. He might as well have said, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.” That was Caleb’s desire—to present himself unto the Lord and to follow the will of God. Romans 12:1
My dear friend, do you know what we need in preachers, in missionaries, in Christian workers and in husbands and wives today!
We need people who are consecrated, people who are totally, fully, wholly given over to the Lord. That’s what we need.
The problem is that many of us are double-minded, and many people do not understand the principle that “a double minded man is unstable in all his ways” James 1:8
We are talking about being consecrated to the Lord. 1 Thessalonians 4:3 says, “For this is the will of God, even your sanctification.”
I see many preachers agonize over the will of God. “Am I in the will of God?” You are in the will of God where you are. Serve the Lord where you are. If God wants you elsewhere, He’ll get you there! Don’t worry about it.
Don’t keep praying, “Lord, take me out of this place! I don’t like this place. They talk funny here. They eat funny food. Lord, you know how uncomfortable I am here. Get me out of here.”
That is not the way to discern the will of God. Look at that verse again: “For this is the will of God, even your sanctification.” Now we all know that “sanctification” means being set aside for God’s use.
The will of God for every person here for every man, woman, boy and girl is for you to be a sanctified
Christian. What kind of Christian is that? Like Caleb was!
Caleb illustrated sanctification. The Bible says that he fully followed the Lord. He always followed the Lord. What a man of God he was, and what a testimony he had!
His Spirit Was One of Constant Perseverance:
He stood firm. It was a persevering spirit. When others were not willing to go forward, he was willing to go forward. Others were unstable as water, but Caleb could have said with Paul: “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord” I Corinthians 15:58
Let me ask you, what is your spirit like?
Watch your spirit in the work of God. By the way, if you develop an angry, bitter spirit, it will be a root of bitterness that will affect others. You cannot hide it.
I don’t know where you are in the ministry, but you have a choice to make. You can have a different spirit, a Christlike spirit, a confident, obedient spirit, one that will serve the Lord and honor Him because you have it settled in your heart that this is where God wants you to serve. There’s no greater joy than knowing you are in the center of God’s will.
2. HE PURSUED A DIFFERENT COURSE:
Not only did Caleb have a different spirit, but he also pursued a different course.
“But my servant Caleb, because he had another spirit with him, and hath followed me fully.…” Numbers 14:24
You see, others only want to follow the Lord when it will be comfortable. If the Lord had killed all of the Canaanites, then the other ten spies would have said, “Sure, let’s go in and take the land!”
But God wasn’t about to do it that way. God wanted them to fight the battle. He would fight it for them, but He wanted them in the battle. Caleb didn’t care if the way was smooth or rocky; he wanted to serve the Lord. He wasn’t in it for his own comfort.
He wasn’t in it for what he could get out of it! All Caleb ever wanted to do was to follow the Lord! He had it settled in his heart! “I am going to serve God.”
It doesn’t matter what the cost is, what the difficulties are, what the heartaches are, what the trials are, you are just going to keep on serving the Lord exactly where God has placed you!
One thing I like about Caleb: he didn’t consult the polls. He wasn’t swayed by the opinions of others. He knew the will of God, and he did it! He pursued a different course.
Joshua said, “But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD” Joshua 24:15. Caleb could have said the same thing. Get it settled!
Remember one thing too. Principle is more important than personality. Much of God’s work today, I’m afraid, is being done on personality rather than “thus saith the LORD.”
Caleb was a godly man, a man who possessed a different spirit, and he was a man who pursued a
different course. The reason why he had those two things in his life a different spirit and a different course was that he had it settled
“And it shall turn to you for a testimony.
“Settle it therefore in your hearts, not to meditate before what ye shall answer:
“For I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all your adversaries shall not be able to gainsay nor resist.”
“And see the land, what it is; and the people that dwelleth therein, whether they be strong or weak, few or many.” Numbers 13:17, 18.
“And what the land is, whether it be fat or lean, whether there be wood therein, or not. And be ye of good courage, and bring of the fruit of the land.” Verses 19, 20.
“Why can’t we go in?”
“Because we can’t do it!”
“Sure!”
“That’s fine, son!”
“Now you can buy me a car!”
"How’s that?”
“You’re going to buy it!”
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