No Regrets

Thank you, Ben. Let's pray. Lord, as we begin the next part of our worship service. Lord, as we talk about the emblems, we ask, Lord, that you will be with us now. Lead and guide us in Jesus name.

Amen. Many of you probably know or recognize the 12th hymn in our hymnal which is Joyful. Joyful, we adore Thee, God of glory Lord of love Hearts unfold like flowers before Thee Healthy as the sun above Melt the clouds of sin and sadness Drive the dark of doubt away Giver of immortal gladness Fill us with the light of day. Some of you may not know that though, as it was originally composed music by Beethoven. It comes from the fourth movement of the ninth Symphony.

And you would think you know such a beautiful, joyful song, that Beethoven himself was also a very joyful, jolly man. Unfortunately, you snickered, didn't you? Beethoven was not a joyful man. And if you know his story, he had a very difficult life. But even then, even before he became deaf and became a crabby old man, he was still.

Actually, he was unhappy even from the very beginning. The Ninth Symphony was composed in 1824, and unfortunately, Beethoven was known as. As some would describe, irascible, melancholic, hypercritical grouch. He never really sustained any long term relationships, never was married. He had mercurial relationships, friendships, as somebody said.

And he was rather sly with his professional dealings. Of course, as I mentioned later in life, Beethoven slowly but surely lost his hearing. He was still able to compose, sometimes putting his head to the piano and hitting notes. Some of his most famous works, the ninth Symphony, was after. Check, check.

Boston, can you hear me? Check. Okay.

He was able to compose.

Check, check. One, two, three. Can you hear me now? Do I still look like the sprint guy? Although he's moved on to T Mobile or wherever he went.

I hear that all the time. All right, you can't use that against me anymore. So he lost his hearing and was deaf even by writing the ninth Symphony. But even then, he was still always an unhappy man. In fact, sometimes even some of his early, great popular composed compositions.

The septum in E flat major, he once said, I wish the score was burned. And also at the same time, too, he also regretted the effects of his unhappiness, where he wrote to his friend, I can easily imagine, and you must think of me, he wrote, and I cannot deny that you have been too. That you have too good grounds for an unfavorable opinion. Maybe sometimes some of us. Maybe some of us can relate to Beethoven, because maybe we're unhappy with some of our personality or personal traits, maybe you regret them.

But even in his own flaws, he was still able to do good things. He still was able to compose. And God took that which maybe was a hardship and turned it into a strength.

You ever live with regret? You ever get a tattoo that maybe you regret? I'm sure you've seen that meme where instead of it says no regrets, it says no ragrets. Oh man, that's a big regret. I'm reminded of the story.

Let's go to Genesis. If you have your Bibles. I want to go to Genesis, chapter 25. I want to talk about a story that some of you are probably very familiar with. A story of two brothers, Jacob and Esau.

Genesis 25, a very well known story. Okay, Genesis 25, let's go to verse 27. Verse 27. And it says, the boys grew up and Esau became a skillful hunter, a man of the open country, while Jacob was content to stay at home among the tents. Isaac, who had a taste for wild game, loved Esau, but Rebekah loved Jacob.

So parents had their favorites. Verse 29. Once when Jacob was cooking some stew, Esau came in from the open open country, famished. And he said to Jacob, quick, let me do. Let me have some of the red stew.

I'm starving.

Jacob said, first sell me your birthright. Okay? This is not just a little thing. It's not like some candy. Hey, give me some of your candy and then I'll give you some stew.

This was inheritance. He was the first. He was supposed to receive everything and then distill everything to where it was supposed to go. First sell me your birthright. Look, I'm about to die.

Rather dramatic, isn't he? So Esau swore an oath to him, selling his birthright to Jacob. And then Jacob gave Esau some bread and some lentil stew. He ate and he drank and then he got up and left. And so Esau despised his birthright.

Heavy price to pay for some stew, don't you think? Could have gone hungry for maybe one meal. But Esau, he saw a quick gain, but had drastic long term results for his life after. Of course, he recognizes everything that had happened. He still went and pleaded with his father, please.

At least he was saying, bless me, bless me. And so his father did bless him. But it wasn't restored the birthright. As it was also foretold in scripture. Jacob gained the birthright.

And I wonder too, have you ever done something where maybe you thought, I will take Care of this situation. You've been so hungry and you get a meal and then you regret that meal. Maybe you're so hungry and you. You see a place, but it doesn't look like the best kind of place, doesn't look the most clean. And yet you still eat the food.

And what happens the next day, maybe even that night? Food poisoning.

I got food poisoning once, a number of years ago, about seven years ago, probably the worst three days of my life afterwards. Not fun, and yet I was hungry. I felt deep regret. You know, regret can look differently too, from the aspect of, let's say, between a faithful godly regret versus a worldly regret. Okay, Worldly regret, you're motivated by the fear of consequences.

Okay, worldly regret. Here you're worried about the consequences. Godly regret, you're moved for a love of God, for faithfulness. Who's the focus in the world? Yourself.

When you have true faith, true repentance, you're worried about God and your response to worldly regret, it's despair and excuses. When you are regretful toward God, it's repentance, humility from the world's opinion. It can lead to death and destruction. True repentance leads to hope and salvation. What kind of regret do you live with?

Do you have any regret?

As I look back and reflect on 2025, I can only speak for myself. I had a great year, but I also dealt with some challenges too. There's some things that have kind of been harboring that I thought, hey, you know, maybe it's time to deal with this. And when I finally started to deal with some things, oh, it was painful. Some of it I'm actually still dealing with.

But I know that dealing with it in the long run will lead out to better, better, better outcome. Regret forces us to run, to hide, to not acknowledge things that need to be acknowledged. And my encouragement to you because there's still a few more days in 2025. If there's any things, if there's any stones that are still new, needing to be turned over, I want to pray and ask that you will have the courage to deal with those challenges. Maybe it's a relationship that's been wronged and we need to have a talk and say, hey, either say I'm sorry.

And sometimes the harder thing to do is to say you are forgiven. And maybe there is not an actual possibility because maybe that person is no longer in your life. It might be that you might need to forgive that person, even if you never get to say it to that person. Maybe there's a mistake, something that maybe you have a ticket from 40 years ago. There's a story told of a man who.

He got a speeding ticket 40 years ago, and it was a $2 fine at the time, right? So he added $3. He wrote a note to the police department. To police department. I'm sorry, I've been carrying this traffic ticket and I've been meaning to.

To pay it off. He carried it for 40 years. So he sent $5 in, $2 for the ticket, and hopefully $3 interest. But when you do the inflation, it was really more like $20. But he carried that for 20, 40 years.

And what does guilt and regret do? It starts to weigh us down. It weighs on our shoulders. And when we deal with the things that we need to deal with, the monkey or the orangutan gets off our back and finally you can breathe. Do you want to be able to breathe freely or do you want to breathe a constricted breath?

It's kind of always there, but you never really get that full breath. You know what I'm talking about? Regrets. And sometimes maybe there's some things that. There's just no possibility of reconciliation.

But I want to have an opportunity. I want to give you an opportunity today. Today we're going to participate in communion. It's a sacred service here. So I'd like to call our elders and our deacons to please come forward.

We're going to hand out these emblems that represent the bread represents Jesus body. And the Jews also represents Jesus blood. And here, this is an opportunity that we take in that Paul, and most more importantly, Jesus set the example. And here it is symbolizing Jesus love for us, Jesus death for us, and the possibility of eternal life. Amen.