A Larry Clegg

  Six Things God Doesn’t Know Original Concept/Outline: Dr. A. Lawrence Clegg First preached June 23, 1956 Expanded: Larry Clegg August 2026     I.                     God Doesn’t Know: a sin he doesn’t hate - Proverbs 15:8 - The sacrifice of the wicked is detestable to the Lord, but the prayer of the upright is His delight. a.       God hates all sin                                                               i.       Proverbs 6:16-19 – 16 Six things the Lord hates; in fact, seven are detestable to Him: 1...

Shepherds were in the fields watching over their sheep at night. Many of these sheep were destined to be sacrificed for the sins of the people. That was God’s plan. Sin had to be punished, but there could be a substitute. Centuries before, God told Abraham to take his only son, Isaac, up on a mountain and sacrifice him. Once on the mountain, Isaac asked his father where the sacrifice was. They had everything else they needed, but no sacrifice. Abraham told Isaac that God would provide the sacrifice. And God did provide. Let’s go back to our shepherds in the field. An angel appeared to them and told them that a Savior had been born in Bethlehem, that they were to go find him. He would be wrapped snugly in cloths and lying in a feeding trough. The shepherds went looking for one LITTLE Lamb.   That one little Lamb, the baby Savior, grew up and became a Teacher. One day he told a story about a shepherd that had a hundred sheep. If one of those sheep wandered away, he asked, would...

One Sunday afternoon, when I was eight years old, my dad asked me to come into his bedroom. I immediately wondered what I had done wrong and why I was in trouble. You see, our parents’ bedroom was something of a sanctuary. We kids simply didn’t go in there. Getting called into their bedroom meant we were about to get punished for something. On this particular day, we sat on my parents’ bed and my dad talked through things that I had heard at church (and in our home) my whole life. He told me that everybody is a sinner. He told me that God can’t be with sin and sinners. He told me that Jesus died to take the punishment for our sins. He told me that Jesus offers us this free gift and all we have to do is accept it. That Sunday afternoon, October 22, 1967, the Good Shepherd left the 99 sheep and came looking for the one lost sheep. On that day, I was the one lost sheep and Jesus found me and saved me. My life since that day hasn’t been perfect. I haven’t been perfect. But God ...

I run early every morning. I run a 3-mile trail that goes out my front door a mile and a half and then back again. I’ve been walking and running this route for about 6 months now and I know it well. There are landmarks along the way, and I know how long it should take me to get to each point for a good run.   There are streetlights at both ends of my run, but no light for the majority of the distance. As the days shorten, I am running in the dark, so I run with a headlight that is aimed at the ground about ten feet in front of me. The main goal is to not trip and fall! I’ve discovered that since I am running ten feet at a time instead of landmark to landmark, my runs seem to be easier. I used to think, "I have to run past the next bridge, then I can walk some" or "If I can make it to the turn-around...". Running with my headlight, I can’t see those places until I get there, so I’m just trying to run ten feet at a time. As long as my light is just in front of me, I...

I once heard a story about a grandfather clock that was being built. When it was finished and the clockmaker wound up the clock, the grandfather clock started thinking. “My pendulum will swing and I will tick sixty times a minute. “That comes to three thousand six hundred times in an hour. “I will tick eighty-six thousand four hundred times every day. “That’s thirty-one million, five hundred fifty-seven thousand, six hundred ticks every year. “If I live to be 100, I will have ticked three billion, one hundred fifty-five million, seven hundred sixty thousand times.” So, in anticipated exhaustion, the poor grandfather clock stopped running.   If I could have seen up front everything that my life would hold, I don’t think I could have handled it. We don’t have to live our whole life at once. Just take one minute at a time. That’s only sixty ticks. I can do sixty ticks.

Somehow, for years I missed this little gold nugget "buried" in the story of Lazarus being raised from the dead: "If anyone walks during the day, he doesn't stumble, because he sees the light of this world. If anyone walks during the night, he does stumble, because the light is not in him." John 11:9-10 Couple that with: "I am the light of the world. Anyone who follows Me will never walk in the darkness but will have the light of life." John 8:12 Walk in the Light so you won't stumble!

If I get up in the middle of the night, I can find my way all over my house in the dark. It's not a problem at all. My eyes have adjusted to the dark and I can see enough to not run over anything and I can get by just fine. When I get up in the morning (before daylight), I go to the living room and turn on a light and have my quiet time there. Still no problem seeing because I have a light. If I then go into my bedroom (no light) or my bathroom (no light), I can't see a thing. It's DARK. I do notice, however, that the longer I stay there, the better I can see in the dark. You probably already "see" the metaphor. The longer we stay in spiritual darkness, the more we get used to it and the less it bothers us. The more we spend time with the Light of the World, the more darkness becomes a problem for us. Our spiritual eyes adjust to our environment just like our physical eyes do. Lately, I see more and more spiritual darkness pushed on us. The goal is to ge...

One Sunday morning in church we were singing Sunshine in My Soul (written by Eliza Hewitt). As many times as I have sung this hymn, when we sang the second verse, it just kind of hit me. There is music in my soul today, A carol to my King, And Jesus, listening, can hear The songs I cannot sing.   It's a sort of flip side of Romans 8:26. "In the same way the Spirit also joins to help in our weakness, because we do not know what to pray for as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with unspoken groanings."

Let me paint a word picture of Romans 8:28 for you. In case you are drawing a blank right now, "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose." I love to bake. I love to bake cheesecakes. My favorite cheesecake recipe is a Cinnamon Roll Cheesecake. What is the connection? Have you ever tasted plain cinnamon? Just plain cinnamon all by itself? NASTY stuff. What about cream cheese? All alone, it is terrible. I’m not talking about cream cheese mixed with something to spread on a bagel. I’m talking about plain cream cheese. Yuck! BUT, when I combine those two things with some butter, sugar, vanilla, eggs, and such, they become incredibly delicious. All things "work together"! Even cinnamon and cream cheese.

I decided to fix myself some banana nut muffins for breakfast this morning. As always, I started out by setting the oven on "Bake" and "425". I mixed my milk and batter, greased the pan, and put the batter in the cups of the pan. I looked at the light that said the oven was still heating up. Our oven makes a nice loud click when it is at the selected temperature, so I sat down at the table (with my back to the oven) to wait for the click. Like most of us, I picked up my phone. Then it hit me. My life is just like making banana nut muffins. It goes kind of like this:   Me: Ok, I did all the prep work. Let’s bake some muffins! God: Wait for the click. Me: But I got everything ready. And I’m hungry. Let’s get started! God: Wait for the click. Don’t you want the muffins to be right? Me: Of course, I do. I’m going to put them in the oven. God: Wait for the click. At this point, I’m getting like the dog in the old Beggin’ Strips commercials. Me: Muff...

Nitpicking for a moment... I have seen a lot of posts on social media saying, "God is in control." I disagree and I agree. I agree that God is Sovereign (One that exercises supreme, permanent authority). God has the ultimate authority over all of life and He will exercise that authority at the time that His perfect will and wisdom dictate. However, I disagree with the statements that God is in control. God allows man to exercise free will. He does not control all of our thoughts and actions, and sometimes He allows us to go through consequences that come from the free-will actions of others and our own free-will actions. God has also allowed Satan to temporarily be the ruler of this world. (See John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11 and Ephesians 2:2-3; 6:12) At times, God steps in and directs human history, based on His sovereignty. At other times He does not. Either way, eternity is in His sovereign control. For examples of each, read the stories of Daniel and his friends in th...

In mid-December of 2010, I started having trouble with pain in my upper left back. There was severe pain under my left shoulder blade running down my arm all the way to my hand. After weeks of treatment to try to relieve the pressure on the pinched nerve in my neck, I called Dr. Eric Amundson of NewSouth NeuroSpine in metro Jackson, MS for an appointment. A friend in choir at church recommended NewSouth. I met Dr. Amundson on December 28 th . After describing my symptoms and what we had done to treat it up to this point, he said that he was pretty sure that I had a bad cervical disc that would need to be repaired. He said that what I described as my pain and what I could do to relieve it somewhat could have come straight out of a textbook. He said we could get the surgery done before the first of the year if it would be financially beneficial to me. I decided to wait until after our wedding anniversary, which is January 4 th . We did an MRI of my cervical spine on January 3 rd , whic...