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A Man After God's Heart

Series: A Kingdom Divided
February 21, 2021 - David Stockton

It’s a day for a new sermon series. We’re going to be going into the book of 1 Kings, if you want to grab a bible and turn there, or flip there or scroll there, whatever you do on your phone. 1 Kings. It’s in the Old Testament. Not everybody in the world calls it the Old Testament, but it’s definitely a part of the library of scriptures that we hold to as being very important and relevant. We think it’s inspired just like the New Testament. We’re so thankful that we have the New Testament to help us interpret the Old Testament in order to make application of it today.

We’re going to be in 1 Kings for a little while and learn from some ancient writers and some ancient prophets and see what the Lord was doing in that time. Because I think it actually is very relevant for our time today.

It’s a good time to be a Christian, even though it might not feel like it. As the world around us, at least in America, society seems to be less interested and less excited about the ways of God through the library of scriptures and Christian doctrine and Judeo-Christian ethic. It actually is a time where Christianity shines brightest, whenever there’s an adverse situation it finds itself in. I’m not saying it’s the most enjoyable for Christians. But the more adverse, usually the more powerful Christianity shows itself to be. So it’s a great time to be a Christian.

It’s a good time to be part of Living Streams. We’re kicking off a bunch of new things. We’ve got our Explore class going on right now. Some new people being added to the number of people who are knitting their lives together here. We have a bunch of Life Groups, which are our primary discipleship vehicle. We always make sure that everybody who comes on Sunday mornings for this hour, that they remember that following Christ really is not a one-hour a week deal. Being part of a church community is going to be very shallow, empty and maybe even trivial if you are only a one-hour a week type part of the community. So make sure you find other ways to connect with people outside of this. And obviously serve the Lord outside of this, as well.

That being said, 1 Kings is where we’re going. It’s going to be a fun book. The challenges that we’re facing today are real and are large, but the bride of Christ is alive and well all over the world. I got some letters in the mail this week from non-profits, Christian non-profits. I was just sitting there thinking about these and how they represent so many others—churches around town, churches around the world, Christian organizations around town, around the world that are fighting for what’s right, that are fighting for the unborn, that are fighting for justice, that are fighting to make sure our homeless, our elderly, or people with addictions or people in sex trafficking, that someone is really advocating and fighting for them.

I just think the challenges are so great and the sadness is so real, but it really is cool to see that there are so many people, you and I included, that are actually trying to see the kingdom of God come and his will be done right here on earth as it is in heaven.

So I was encouraged. I was discouraged and encouraged at the same time, if that makes sense. Okay, it’s going to be a little tight this morning. I get it. No problem. No problem.

You know I make fun of second service a lot, right? Everybody’s with me on that? Like, first service I was thanking them so much for being first service, I said, “I don’t thank the second service people for anything really.” And I’m going to say this, too. I tell people who are guest speaking here that, just because second service doesn’t laugh or give them any kind of feedback, doesn’t mean they aren’t with you. They really are.

And I know you guys are. As I was watching you worship, I was feeling like the Lord was saying, “These are people are hungry. These people want to see me move.” So I know that’s true. But sometimes I wonder with you guys. Sometimes I wonder.

Anyway, 1 Kings was written by Jeremiah, tradition tells us. Jeremiah was a prophet of God. He was actually called the Weeping Prophet, because he lived in a time of Israel and prophesied to the people in a time when they had great prosperity, but for some reason they did not really continue to serve the Lord. What Jeremiah saw—I want to put a few images in your mind—was basically like that old adage we hear all the time about the frog that you put in the boiling pot of water. I know it sounds weird. But I’ve heard, I’ve never done this because it seems a little mean. But if you take a frog and put it in a boiling pot of water, it’ll jump right out because it’s hot. But if you take a frog and put it in a cold pot of water and then you turn up the heat, it will actually die because it will never actually notice what’s happening and it will burn to death or something. People talk about it all the time as a good illustration. Man, it’s brutal.

But anyway, so that was one thing that I want you to see. That’s what was happening in Israel’s day when Jeremiah was prophesying. He’s like, “The water’s getting hotter! Do you understand? The water’s getting hotter!”

And the people were like, “Ah, Jeremiah and his hot water stuff.”

And they just never would listen until, eventually, Israel found itself in exile, taken over. The Assyrians took over the north and the Babylonians took over the south. They basically had seen their people be ripped from their own land. The temple of God was destroyed. And now they were living as slaves in another place. And Jeremiah watched all that happen.

Another image that comes to mind is, I don’t know where it came from, I feel like it’s Jack and the Beanstalk or something. You’ve got the big giant and they didn’t know how to beat the giant, so after he fell asleep they tied him up. And then, when he woke up he couldn’t do anything. And that’s the idea of this big giant that’s so powerful, but as it falls to sleep, it’s susceptible.

Which made my mind then go to Samson because I’m a Bible guy. And I was thinking about Samson who had all this power and strength and was able to deliver the people of God in great ways. But he didn’t take seriously the Nazarite vow that he had committed to. He was playing around with it. He was with Delilah. He started to even mention his hair. “If you tie my hair up I’ll be weak like anybody else.” He just kind of slowly but surely compromised. He didn’t think it was a big deal but, ultimately, I think he started to feel so secure in his own strength and wisdom that he wasn’t sure he really needed all that hair. So he told her, “If you cut my hair I’ll be weak.” Then one of the saddest verses in the Bible happened. It says he woke up, the Philistines were upon him, and he had no idea that the Spirit of the Lord had departed from him.

And Jeremiah was constantly calling to the people of God, “You’re going to wake up one day and not realize that the Spirit of the Lord has departed from you.” And it wasn’t just a spiritual thing, but it was a real, practical thing, as well, as they watched the armies besiege them and take away all their young people, and, ultimately, take away everybody to become slaves in Babylon.

Then, also, the image of Jesus when he’s teaching about the parable of the sower, and he talks about the goodness that was there and then it gets choked out by the weeds. Little by little, the choking happens until, ultimately, all the good seed, all the goodness that had been there has died out.

So this is why Jeremiah was called the weeping prophet, because he was just continuing to see this decline. So he’s writing this book probably during the time of the exile; so all of that has now happened. He prophesied against it. Now that it’s all happened, he started to write a book, the annals of the kings or the history of that time period. And he’s talking about what happens. And he talks about what kings helped the people follow the Lord and what kings didn’t help the people. And there are very few that actually helped the people follow the Lord.

And this was probably circulated after they had come back from the exile, back to Jerusalem, back to Israel to kind of build back better, so to speak. And there in that place Jeremiah said, “I want to make sure everyone knows this.” And it was circulated, this book of First and Second Kings so people would be reminded how they got to that place of exile, that they would never forget the slow and steady decline that took place. They’d take heart next time to know there were divisions; because there are divisions all over this book. It’s a nation divided, a people divided.

Then all the secularization that came, where they never stopped worshipping Yahweh, they just started adding other things. It would be like in this place; if one day you saw there was no cross there, but instead there was some other sign of some other religion up there. You would be like, “I think Living Streams might have changed a little bit. I think something’s a little different here.” And you would be right. That should be a real indicator you should go somewhere else.

But what they did is, they never took down the cross, so to speak. They just put something else over there, and maybe a little something else over there, and it just was slowly, it became this kind fo pluralistic idea. “If one God’s going to give us goodness, then how about all these other gods? Maybe we can get all the goodness they can give us.” Not realizing that the God of the Bible is a jealous God. He doesn’t want to be one of our many wives. He says, “It’s all me or I’m out.”

And this is the state of Israel at this time. The divisions include—for those of you who are bible students some of this might ring a bell and if it doesn’t, you should probably read your bible more—but Saul versus David. We have that division of the people, where Saul was a guy who kind of started out all right but then he started to care more about what the people thought than what God though. And God said, “I’m getting rid of this guy because I want someone who’s going to be in here that only cares what I think.” That’s why David was called a man after God’s heart. Even when public opinion was going the opposite way, David said, “No, we’re going this way.”

David versus Absalom. Davis was king and his own son, Absalom rose up a coup and tried to take over power. So we have that here.

Adonijah and Solomon in this time period, and that was actually in chapter 1 where David’s two sons kind of were fighting for power after David passed away.

Rehoboam versus Jeroboam. And this comes that, Solomon, after he passed away, Rehoboam was his son. And Rehoboam decided that, instead of listening to the older elders and advisers and kind of going easy on the people and easing in and earning a voice with them, he listened to the younger people who said, “If you really want to be strong, you’ve got to impose taxes and you’ve got to tell these people who’s the boss right now.” So he did that. He just imposed taxes. He tried to really be strong and the ten tribes of the north said, “Nah. We’re good.” And they just broke off and made Jeroboam their king. Super confusing. I wish they could have had different names, because I never know. Was it Jeroboam in the north or Rehoboam in the south? Come on. I mix the names up.

But Rehoboam was Solomon’s son and he maintained power over the two southern tribes; whereas Jeroboam maintained power over the northern ten tribes. Then we now have a divided kingdom, which we’ll talk more about later.

Israel versus Judah. The name of the northern ten tribes remained Israel, but name of the two southern tribes became Judah.

Jerusalem versus Samaria. Jerusalem was the capital of the southern tribes, and that’s where God was worshiped. That’s where his temple was; whereas Samaria was the capital of the northern ten tribes, and Jeroboam didn’t want his people going to worship in Jerusalem, so he built his own temple and basically his own form of worship, worshiping Yahweh but not in the ways of Yahweh. Very bizarre.

Yahweh versus Baal. Monotheism versus polytheism, like we discussed. They didn’t stop worshiping Yahweh, they just added other gods.

Do we want to be like the other nations? Or are we good with being set apart from the other nations? This is always a constant question to Christians. We don’t like being the alternative community. We don’t like being countercultural. We want to be like the other nations. We want to be cool. We want to be hip. But as soon as we do that, we lose. We lose. We lose so much.

More taxes versus less taxes was actually a big theme in this book, which is funny these days, right? You guys aren’t laughing at that? Why aren’t you laughing at that? April 15th, how are you doing?

God’s ways are old fashioned versus God’s ways are right and true, was a big debate in this time. It was a huge debate in this time, as we’ll see in just a minute.

So, ultimately, you have the nation of Israel was in slavery in Egypt for four hundred years. The Lord brings them out with a great deliverance. He gives them a land and he starts making them into a nation. And you have all this wonderful time where God is their king. But the people want to be like the other nations so they say, “Give us a man king.” God’s like, “It’s not going to be good. Men aren’t that cool. Women, you’re not that cool, either.” But he felt like they were rejecting him as king, but he said, “I’ll give you what you want.” So he gave them Saul as king. When he passed away David became king. And when he passed away Solomon became king. And then that’s where that divided kingdom. So three kings of a united kingdom and then like twenty-five different kings within the divided kingdom. And First Kings helps us understand that whole process.

Are you with me? You’re like, “Is this school or is this church?” It’s both. It’s church school, maybe. I don’t know.

I want us to notice this one more moment. Because you’ll have some of these revivals. We’re all praying for revival. We want an awakening in our America. We want awakening in our church, where people will just really run back, will catch the vision for the righteousness of God, will hunger and thirst for that above everything else so that we won’t be tossed to and fro by all the winds of doctrine and all the people claiming to have the high moral ground right now. Yes, that’s what we want.

So there were times where that took place in First and Second Kings. One of them was on the top of a mountain called Carmel. There was Mount Carmel, and they were up there. And Elijah is the prophet of Yahweh. He feels like he’s the only one left because of the gross secularization by the king and his wife Jezebel. And they basically brought in the worship of Baal as a mainstream thing.

So Elijah calls then prophets of Ball to a duel, a battle. So he’s up on the top of Mount Carmel and opposing him are four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal. And all the people have gathered around, and the setup is in First Kings 18:21, it was in our video too.

Elijah went before the pope and said, “How long will you waver between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; if Baal is God, follow him.”

So he sets up this mighty duel. I wish I could do this, but I don’t know. But he says basically, “What we’re going to do is we’re going to both make a sacrifice, and whatever God answers by fire will demonstrate that he is the true God and we should follow him.”

So Elijah is up on this mountain and says, “You guys go first.” So the four hundred fifty prophets of Baal gather together animal sacrifice. They put together their altar and they start doing their Baal worship type stuff. They get to the point where they’re just screaming and crying out and they start cutting themselves because they want to show how sincere they were in their worship. They’re doing all these things and it just goes on and on and on.

And Elijah is sitting there watching, all the people are watching, and there’s no fire coming, nothing happening. Then Elijah says to them, “Maybe you should just scream a little louder.” Seriously, Elijah is talking trash. I didn’t know you were allowed to do that, but you are. And then that doesn’t change anything and he’s like, “Oh, you guys. Maybe he’s in the bathroom or something. Maybe just keep going because he’ll come back out if he’s in the bathroom.” I’m not joking. This stuff is in there.

And then nothing happened and eventually they give up and Elijah says, “Now my turn.” So he just puts some stones together in a very Mosaic law kind of way. He prepares the sacrifice just like ordained in the the law of Moses. Then he actually says to everyone, I don’t know why, just to show off, he says, “Why don’t you go get all the water you can find,” even though they were in a drought, “and pour it all over the sacrifice. Actually dig a trench around here and let’s fill it with water too.”

And then he just prays a real simple prayer. “God will show them? Will you show them?” And fire comes out of the sky and consumes all of the water, consumes the sacrifice. And there’s this moment, momentary sad to say, but a moment where the people’s hearts were once again turned back to the Lord. They got to see that, got to experience that. Their hearts were turned back to the Lord momentarily. Momentarily.

So there are these moments of revival that happen in here, which are so encouraging. And that’s what I’m praying for us in our day and age, that we will somehow be inspired by God to go and create moments in people’s lives where they can see the reality of the power and goodness of God. I’m not saying you should go and challenge somebody on the top of Square Peak to some sort of sacrificial fire deal. I’m saying we should listen to what the Spirit is leading us to do and we should go for it with all of our hearts. We should be bold and courageous, whatever it might be, and God will show himself faithful.

First Kings chapter 2 is where we are going to begin, because First Kings chapter 1 is kind of a weird fight. It looks like in First Kings chapter 2, as we read this, that there was a peaceful transition of power, but actually in First Kings chapter 1 you realize it wasn’t that peaceful. Then if you keep reading in chapter 2 and3, it still wasn’t that peaceful. A lot of challenge for who wants the power there.

First Kings chapter 2:

When the time drew near for David to die, he gave a charge to Solomon his son.
2 “I am about to go the way of all the earth,” he said. “So be strong, act like a man, 3 and observe what the Lord your God requires: Walk in obedience to him, and keep his decrees and commands, his laws and regulations, as written in the Law of Moses. Do this so that you may prosper in all you do and wherever you go 4 and that the Lord may keep his promise to me: ‘If your descendants watch how they live, and if they walk faithfully before me with all their heart and soul, you will never fail to have a successor on the throne of Israel.’

So this is his charge as he’s telling Solomon, “Hey, I’m about done here. And I want you to become king.” He says to him, “I’m going to go the way of all the earth.” There’s a humility there, an understanding, this is the destiny of us all, that our strength is failing, our strength is not enough. And he says to him, “I want you to observe all that the Lord has commanded you. And I want you to walk in it. I want you to obey what the Lord has commanded you. Don’t just observe it. Don’t just be a hearer, but be a doer as well. Observe all the Lord has commanded you in the law of Moses, all the decrees, all the laws, all these things.”

And as you’re reading it, you just get more and more bored. All these words. These are the most boring words in the world: decrees, commands, laws, requirements, right? Ugh. And in the law of Moses? “Oh, Dad, don’t be talking about Moses again. Moses is so old.” This is probably about four hundred or five hundred years after Moses was around, that David is charging his son as king, “Follow the way of Moses. Remember all of those words, those laws, those decrees that are found in the book of Moses, in the Torah. Observe those. Learn those. Get them into your soul. And then walk them out.”

You can imagine a young man who has grown up his whole life in a palace. All he’s ever known of Israel is that it’s a world power. Prosperity galore. Victory over all the other nations. Immense popularity for his dad, the king. And here David’s telling him, “You need to keep real close watch to all of those old, old, old laws and decrees of Moses. And not only jus observe them, but do them. Walk in them. They will be a guide for you. They will bring you to prosperity.”

And obviously I hope you get what I’m getting at here. There is a real challenge right now in our society to say, “Those things, that Judeo-Christian ethic, that library of scriptures, that’s old news. That’s antiquated. In fact, that’s oppressive.” It’s the same thing that David was saying to Solomon. “Don’t listen to that. Don’t listen to that. Maintain these things. This is what will lead you to preparing.”

And I’ve said before the Judeo-Christian ethic that has been kind of the shaping of this nation and other nations, whenever the Judeo-Christian ethic is applied to a society, it creates the most freedom and the most flourishing. And yet, for some reason, we want to get rid of it.

And David is saying, “As for me and my house, we listen, we observe, we obey these things. We don’t consider them old and antiquated. And Solomon, if you will do this, you will experience prosperity.”

Now, I know for many of us in the church, we hear that word and that sounds great. We want to prosper. But we’ve got to be so careful to interpret prosperity through the New Testament and what God is actually saying. I’m not saying that God doesn’t want to give you riches, doesn’t want to help you with the American Dream and all those things, what God has. But the prosperity promised by God has a lot more to do with the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, meekness, gentleness and self-control. It has a lot more of being able to overcome the challenges that you face, than never having to face a challenge.

Please hear me, you guys. Following Christ does not get rid of all of the challenges, but it gives you the strength, by the power of the Spirit, to overcome the challenges. And then you wake up the next day and, guess what? New challenges. Because some people are starting to think, “If I really can’t seem to get free from this thing, then maybe God isn’t real and he doesn’t really love me.”

No. God sometimes will heal you and set you free from something completely, but oftentimes he gives you the strength that you need to overcome every single day. And for those who persevere, for those who hang on, there is the reward. But the prosperity is the strength that you need. The prosperity that he gives you is found in Psalm 23.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. He leads me beside still waters and green pastures. He leads me and is with me in the valley of the shadow of death. It’s not that he doesn’t ever take us through those things. My cup runs over even in the midst of those situations.

One of the things that I think is the best gift of all that he can give to an American is peace, enough peace so they actually sleep at night. It just seems to be one of the biggest banes on our society. So many of our challenges and problems are because people can’t sleep anymore. They’re too stressed out. They’re too busy, too distracted. Their brains don’t know how to shut down so they can actually sleep. That’s part of the prosperity. The Bible actually says, “He gives his beloved sleep.” You get good sleep, all of a sudden it’s like, “Hey, life’s not that bad anymore.”

It’s one of the things we really found out with the homeless community. One of the best things we could do was give them a space where they could come take a nap. They’d wake up from that nap and they could think a little clearer, feel a little stronger. They’re more at peace. We were able to do that with that house over on the west side of the campus.

But these are the prosperities that God wants to bring. And the kind of prosperity, when you’re on your death bed and you look back and these are the things you’re really thankful for. What you did in your relationship with the people that you love. That’s the prosperity he gives us. Not even to mention what happens in the next life.

But this is the call of David. And he wants Solomon to be a man after God’s own heart. Seek God. Search God. Find out what makes him happy. Get a vision for the righteousness of God. And just so you know, the law of Moses is really helpful. But don’t just get a vision for it. Then walk in it. Be obedient to it. And it’s going to take faithfulness as he says down here:

If they’ll walk faithfully before me with all their heart and soul. Faithfulness. Doing the things of God real consistently. I think this is what encourages me in the church at this time. It is the power that’s represented even in just this room. If all of us will just do the little things faithfully, that will be a lot of things that will make big impact.

So God right now is calling each of you, who is his bride, to do some things. To walk in some things faithfully. And if you’ll do that, the bride will show itself strong. That’s what David is trying to get Solomon to do, to be a man after God’s own heart.

To kind of recap that, David was a man after God’s own heart when he sought to do what was right in God’s eyes more than what was right in the eyes of the people around him, or in his own eyes. So David, it’s tricky. Because, when we say David was a man after God’s own heart, he also made a ton of mistakes. But this is when he was a man after God’s own heart. When he cared about what God wanted.

And there was a challenge. Think about that story, when he’s standing before Goliath, and all of the people, all of the army is there. And David walks up there. And he just knew in that moment what God was up to, what God was thinking. Everyone else there was either scared or unsure or confused. Even the king, Saul was just like, “I don’t know what to do here.” All of the people in the army were like, “I don’t know what to do.” David’s brothers were like, “David what do you think you’re going to do? You can’t take this guy on. You just want to be out here and get in the action. Spoiled brat.”

He was the youngest. I was the youngest of three boys. They always called me a spoiled brat. I might have been.

But nobody in that whole army, nobody in all of that was catching and willing to do what God was saying to do, except for this young man named David who just took off running down that valley, flinging his little slingshot, and defeated the giant. He caught what was in God’s heart in that moment.

And that was a great thing. That’s the way he started out. But if you remember, at one point David committed adultery with Bathsheba and then tried to cover it up by murdering Uriah, her husband. Definitely not after God’s own heart. He lost his way.

But then Nathan the prophet came to him and said, “What you’ve done is wrong.” And in that moment when David’s heart was pricked, when David realized that he had been busted, at that moment he wanted to do what was right in the eyes of the Lord and he confessed and he repented.

And then another time David was taking a census and it was kind of filling him up with pride. God had told him not to number the army. And he does this. And God’s against him and people are dying. And David catches it and figures out what to do. And then he knows he’s supposed to go buy this field and make a sacrifice and do all this type of stuff. And, as he’s about to buy the field, the guy’s like, “Dude, you can just take the field. You’re the king. You don’t have to give me any money for this field.”

And he says, “No, I want to pay full price for this field. I don’t want to skimp or compromise at all in what God is asking me to do.”

So there are all these moments when David was doing what was right in the eyes of the Lord. And those were the times when he was a man after God’s own heart. And for us, that’s what we need to be doing.

The world around us is claiming the high moral ground through its clever and cunning humanistic philosophies and ideologies. But they are just castles made of sand. We need a hunger for the vision for the righteousness of God so we can hold the line by observing what the Lord God requires and walking in obedience. That is where freedom and flourishing are found. Sorry, Cardi B. The best fruit isn’t always forbidden. It just feels that way because it’s only found through a lifetime of faithfulness to God and his ways.

So that was the first way that David was a man after God’s own heart. Now let’s read this strange next passage. Verse 5. So David gives this charge to Solomon and now he’s saying:

5 “Now you yourself know what Joab son of Zeruiah did to me—what he did to the two commanders of Israel’s armies, Abner son of Ner and Amasa son of Jether. He killed them, shedding their blood in peacetime as if in battle, and with that blood he stained the belt around his waist and the sandals on his feet. 6 Deal with him according to your wisdom, but do not let his gray head go down to the grave in peace.
7 “But show kindness to the sons of Barzillai of Gilead and let them be among those who eat at your table. They stood by me when I fled from your brother Absalom.
8 “And remember, you have with you Shimei son of Gera, the Benjamite from Bahurim, who called down bitter curses on me the day I went to Mahanaim. When he came down to meet me at the Jordan, I swore to him by the Lord: ‘I will not put you to death by the sword.’ 9 But now, do not consider him innocent. You are a man of wisdom; you will know what to do to him. Bring his gray head down to the grave in blood.”
10 Then David rested with his ancestors and was buried in the City of David. 11 He had reigned forty years over Israel—seven years in Hebron and thirty-three in Jerusalem. 12 So Solomon sat on the throne of his father David, and his rule was firmly established.

So here in this interesting thing, David is giving a charge to observe and obey the things of God. Do what is right in the eyes of God. Don’t fall prey to doing what’s right in the eyes of yourself or the people. Seek first what God is having you do.

And then the second thing that I think shows kind of another picture into the life of David. He was a man after God’s own heart because he was willing to deal with the little foxes that destroy the vineyard. That phrase actually comes from Song of Solomon. Solomon actually wrote these words about the little foxes that destroy t he vineyard. And here David is basically saying, “Okay, Solomon, when you come into power, when you have the authority, you’re going to have to consistently and constantly deal with insurrection. You’re gong to have to consistently and strongly deal with divisions. You’re going to have to constantly watch out for the little things and deal with them when they’re small so they don’t cause huge problems.”

Now David did not do this well in his own house. He didn’t deal with Absalom well. He didn’t deal with the rape that happened within his own children. He didn’t deal well even in this situation, with Adonijah and Solomon and their war. But he also did deal with things often. And this is a sign of him saying, “Solomon, when you come in, there are a few things you need to deal with right away so they don’t become massive problems.”

Now Joab was his general. Joab was the person in charge of all of David’s army. But Joab’s heart had turned, and David had seen it, but David hadn’t done anything about it. So he said, “Solomon, you’ve got to make sure and deal with Joab, or you’re going to have a big problem.”

And sure enough, as you read these passages, it happened. And David in his life, we know he tended his own soul. He was quick to repent when he found out the things that were wrong, both in his own life, and in the nation around him. Both when it was his fault or somebody else’s fault. David was quick to deal with the little foxes and not let them take root.

For us, we need to be those who are watching out for the little foxes trying to destroy the vineyard of our souls, our households, or the institutions that we’re a part of. It’s so easy for us to allow certain little compromises or hold on to different sins or weights that this world offers us. We can become dull and numb to the deceiver and the destroyer and not realize our hearts are being turned away from the things of God.

It was interesting this last summer. I felt like we were really all called to search ourselves and search our institutions to see if there was racism, or systemic racism there. That’s a good thing for us to have to do, to search our souls and search our hearts. And I know a lot of people have landed in different places. But I remember in that search I didn’t see a lot of racism in my own life and I didn’t see much racism or systemic racism in the institutions I’ve been a part of, not to say those things aren’t real and those things don’t exist; but what I did find very clearly was greed and pride. I found a lot of deception. And so I’ve really spent the rest of the time just saying, “Lord, okay, help us figure some of that stuff out.”

And greed, pride and deception can lead to all kinds of things, including racism and injustice in those regards. The scary thing was I started to see some of that stuff seep into the church, as well. And so part of the motivation for this is I want us to be able to kind of go though this time, as the kings saw this decline, as they saw the idolatry kind of come and take root, I want to be able, for us as a church, to be able to go into these times and really discover what is taking root in our lives. What idolatry have we allowed to come in? So that we can name it and we can get rid of it.

That’s our call as believers, to be consecrated, to seek first his kingdom and his righteousness. We have to watch out for the little foxes that are trying to take root.

So, as we conclude I want to talk about what some of those little foxes might be for you and for me. Greed shows up in little ways, a little fudging on your taxes, a little skimping on your giving to the Lord. Relying on your savings and securities instead of trusting in the Lord.

The writer of 1 Kings wanted to really make sure and help us remember that it took Solomon seven years to build the temple for God, and it took him thirteen years to build his own palace. So when Solomon was weighed in the balance by Jeremiah the prophet, he saw something that wasn’t quite right.

What God wants us to do is to build his kingdom. The reason he’s given you a brain, the reason he’s given you a body, the reason he’s given you a beat and breath, the reason he’s given you resources, talent, treasure, time, is so that you would build his kingdom. But are we doing more building of our own kingdom? It’s real easy to check. If you look at your time, if you look at your talent, if you look at your treasure, and how those are invested, it’s pretty easy to see which way you’re weighted.

And I know it might seem like, Oh, tithing is such an old thing. The New Testament doesn’t even talk about it. It talks about giving, for sure, and it’s way more than a tithe, but these simple practices defeat the greed in our lives. They keep greed from being able to take root in our lives. And I’m serious, if you think this is me just trying to get you to give to this church, please don’t. But give somewhere. Give to some church or something somewhere. I think this is a really good place and I know the integrity is really strong here, but I just know how important it is for us to fight against greed, because we are sitting in a very prosperous situation.

And we know the love of money is the root of all evil, so we ask the question, do we love money? We don’t need to ask that question. We love money. You love it. I love it. And we just have to constantly watch out and make sure it doesn’t become a first love, a love above God.

And then pride. Pride shows up in an unforgiving spirit or an unwillingness to say, “Sorry.” Pride shows up in unhealthy ambition and striving. It shows up in seeking first your kingdom and satisfaction before God and others. It shows up in hatred or belittling of others. And even if it’s just small in your life, you’ve got to pay attention to it. You’ve got to take it before the Lord.

And what’s awesome about this is the Lord has given us practices to counteract these things. For instance, worship in the place of worry. It’s always a good place to start with the scriptures. Jesus said what chokes out the good seed, the weeds that choke it out are the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth. That’s what Jesus said,

And how do you counteract the worries of this life that we’re full of? Worship. Every time you feel worry coming on, you get to your knees and you start worshiping. You remember that the big challenges or the big struggle that you face, you take it and compare it to who God is and allow that thing to shrink and become what it’s supposed to be. Worship is a powerful thing. It’s a very powerful thing. And it doesn’t just have to do with singing songs, by the way.

In the place of greed we can give. And we talked a little bit about that. If you feel like you’re a little greedy or you’re a little unsure whether you’re greedy or not, it might be a good time to start giving generously or giving faithfully or giving sacrificially.

That was one thing, as our church, we mentioned before, we qualified for the PPP, but thanks to all the giving, we were able to pay for all of our staff and not tap into our reserves. So we went through this long process and the elders decided the only we could absolutely, 100% assure ourselves that there are no little greedy foxes at all is, let’s just give it all back. So we gave it all back. And I’m not saying everyone should do that. I’m not saying that. I’m just saying, as for us, that was one way that we knew we could make sure that greed was not going to have a place in Living Streams. We need to take those assessments.

And one last thing is distractions. That was something that came up. And I know the Lord has kind of checked me a little about distractions. That Wordscape. Has anybody played that little app? Dude. I’m into it for some reason. It’s just like relaxing, but then it’s not. I get all stressed out because I’m like, “I don’t know what that one word is.” And the next I knew I was playing it a lot.

That’s one silly thing, but think about all the distractions at our fingertips these days. We really need to be those who are cultivating silence and solitude, just like Jesus did. And if we’re not actively cultivating those in our lives, we’re way too distracted.

Let’s pray:

Lord, we thank you for your word that doesn’t let us stay stuck, that doesn’t let us find our way back to slavery. And I pray that we would not just hear it, but that we would really receive it deep into the fibers of our being and we would walk in it, Lord. Thank you, Jesus.

We’re going to finish with communion. But everyone’s going to take it on their own. Just want to create a little time for you and Jesus to be one on one today. To remember his broken body. To remember his shed blood. To kind of recommit your life to him or, if this is the first time you’ve ever committed your life to him you can do that by receiving the broken body and the shed blood of Jesus in this way. But talk to him about whatever little foxes might be there. Confess those things and ask him to give you the strength to overcome them. If some shame has come in through something that’s been said today, remember the blood that cleanses you and forgives you, as we sing this last song, take this time with the Lord.

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Guest User 2/14/21 Guest User 2/14/21

Extravagantly, Relentlessly Loved

Series: As For Me and My House
February 14, 2021 - Don Worcester

And if you ever get introduced, make sure it’s Veronica introducing you. So a weird praise report, I found a gift card just the other day. I don’t know if that connects to anything here, but, Praise God! I’m going to go spend it this afternoon.

Welcome to our online community. Wish you were here. But some of you are in different time zones and different zip codes. Thank you for being with us and bless you, and I hope that we’re a blessing, too.

So this weekend, some couples did a Marriage & Go experience from Living Streams. Don and Renee Worcester put that together. It’s couple that I know. Here’s what Marriage & Go is. We’re hosting it. Living Streams is hosting it between — some folks did it this weekend, but it’s going to be live on the Living Streams website until February 28. So that’s two more weeks. Here’s the deal.

If you have a chance to get away somewhere, what the Marriage & Go is designed to do is: if you can get a little time and a little space, last spring we had a whole bunch of folks who we were going to get to be with in person, and then Covid changed everything. One of the pastors that we were going to be with said, “Hey, could you possibly put something together that would be fun, engaging and helpful, and you could package it?” And I just go, “Wow, I don’t think we can. But we’ll pray about it.”

So we prayed about it. We got some other people praying with us. We got a team around us. And we started putting together some different elements, kind of with an idea that we could deliver this kind of via the internet. So if you have an internet connection, if you have wifi, we put the whole package together. So there’s teaching in there. There are activities in there. There’s other engagement things for couples. And if you can get away, there are four major sessions and if you can get somewhere, that’s awesome. But we’ve had couples that have done Marriage & Go on their back patio after their kids went to bed, over the course of a couple of nights. You can decide. I had one couple that did it in their car because they have five kids and that’s the only place they could kind of get away from their kids.

It’s going to be on the website until the 28th. Here’s the thing. If you need a little wellness shot for your marriage, this just might be a little something to just affirm and confirm good things that are happening. If you’ve got a few things going on and you’re a little. Stuck, or a little sideways, we’re going to have some conversations that could really be helpful. And if you’re just stuck and going on the rails, maybe this would just kind of give you the beginning of a fresh start. Marriage & Go. It’s on the Living Streams website. If you take a look at it, see what you think.

Okay. It’s Valentine’s Day. I want to tell you that I remembered that today was Valentine’s Day. How many people here remembered that before today, that it is Valentine’s Day. Yes. God bless you. I see your hand. Not as many from the guys. But I will tell you, the very first year we were married—Renee and I have been married twenty-five years—and the first year we were married, I got to February 14th, and quite frankly, there’s a whole bunch of things I did that day, but it did not occur to me, maybe in the back of my brain, February 14th, what is that? I don’t know. But when I walked in the door at the end of the day, and Renee had this beautiful table set, it just looked lovely, and she looked lovely, and there was a Valentine’s card right there. And I walked in, and my ADD distracted brain goes, “It’s Valentine’s Day!” Okay? It’s hitting my brain just as I’m getting a hug from my amazing, beautiful, thoughtful wife. And I kind of panicked. Okay? I mean, so busted!

I’m just looking for anything to distract. I go, “Oh, you got me a card!. Yeah, I couldn’t find a recycled card that I thought would capture my feelings, so I just wanted to share them.” I am just making stuff up. I am so totally busted. I’ve got nothing, right? And she’s got dinner and she’s got the rest of it, and I go, “Okay, so I guess in your tradition, you celebrate Valentine’s Day on the actual day. Is that what you do? You know, we’ve never even talked about this. That’s so interesting. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with, if you want to do it today. I wish we’d talked bout it.”

I mean, I am just trying to not look like what I am—a totally clueless, brand-new husband who dropped the ball. And she was so gracious. You know, she goes, “Okay. Yeah. Did you want to keep running with this whole theme, or do you just want to have a nice dinner?”

I go, “Okay. I totally forgot everything.”

She goes, “Yeah, yeah. It’s pretty clear. Okay. I love you. I’ll bet you’ll do better next year. Let’s have dinner.”

So gracious. So kind to sort of kind of just invite me in in this gracious way. You know, there’s something gentle and good about the kind of love that draws us in, even when we drop the ball. Particularly when we drop the ball. Today is St. Valentine’s Day. So when David said, “Can you preach on February 14,” my brain now, many years later, goes, “That’s Valentine’s Day.”

So I do want you to know that there really is a St. Valentine. He lived in the third century in Rome. He was a member of the clergy at that time. Claudius II was really bent on building up his forces at that time. Claudius came to this observation that bachelors fought better than married men. And so, in an effort to kind of keep his military strong, he banned marriage. He said, “None of you guys can get married. We want to keep you focused on being a soldier. Marriage gets you all distracted.” So he banned it. It was illegal in Rome during Claudio II for people to marry.

As a member of the clergy, Valentine said, “Well, I’m going to continue to marry people. If they’re in love and they’re ready to make a commitment…” He was warned to not do that. This was really against the law and Claudius had been really clear about that. He continued. He would not repent. He would not relent. He was arrested and ultimately beheaded because he just wouldn’t back down.

Here’s the thing. It wasn’t that Valentine was in love with love. He was not. He wasn’t in love with love. He was in love with God. And he felt like he was walking out and working out the call of God on his life to say, “Two people that love each other and are committed, that is a good, holy thing. I’m going to continue to do that.” He wasn’t in love with love.

He was also kind of, not necessarily, I think he thought love was awesome, I don’t know if he would have a love is love tee shirt, but he would certainly say what John tells us, that God is love. However great love may be, that he would say, “God is love.” Right? It’s not that God is loving as a quality or characteristic, that he is the very source of love. He’s the very definition of love. It’s not a quality about him, it’s actually him. He is the definition, if we want to know what it is.

Valentine sort of had this foundation that motivated him and pulled him. Romance is great. Romance kind of really took off in Europe in the 1800’s, when there was a lot of industrial revolution going on, saying, “Life is all about work.” And the enlightenment was saying, “No, life is all about thinking.” This idea of going, “Yeah, but we have hearts and relationships.” So romanticism sort of emphasized those things, it was a pretty significant movement. There is part of that in our culture. Romanticism and tenderness and affection, those are really good features of a relationship. But they’re not always a sufficient foundation for a relationship. But they’re really good features, right?

In Revelation chapter 2, John is writing to the churches and he kind of says in writing to the church at Ephesus, “You’ve been really faithful. You’ve been consistent. You’ve served. But here’s the one thing. You’ve lost your first love.” And he doesn’t say, “No big deal. DOn’t worry about it.” He actually says, “You’ve lost your first love and that kind of affection and love and those elements,.”

He goes, “I don’t want that to be expendable in your relationship. I don’t want to have a church that loses that love. If I have a church that loses love, it’s not a church. I don’t want your relationships to just be like the church at Ephesus to go, ‘We’re faithful. We’re good roommates. We’re doing this”

He goes, “How’s your first love? How’s your tenderness? How’s your connection?” Those elements that he says, “Hey, you know what? Go back. Actually repent and reconnect to that.” Because there is something about our hearts being connected that God goes, “That’s essential. That’s good. Don’t be casual to that.”

Now Valentine also lived in a very secular culture. He was a spiritual man living in a secular culture. In the secular culture of first century Rome, and probably a lot of our experience as well, there aren’t sacred things. There aren’t spiritual things. There are just things. There are just bodies. There are just needs. There are just ideas. And whatever is real in the world is just whatever we can see right here. Just a material world. So meaning, or purpose, or sacred, is really just some outside concept that’s not real.

For Valentine, as a spiritual man in a secular world, those things are real. Right? The secular culture just says, “Hey, this is just a marketplace. Love and relationships and sexuality are just an open market. We shouldn’t restrict it. We shouldn’t restrain it. We should just let it happen. We should just buy and sell.” That’s what the Romans did.

And here’s the thing. When we take things and reduce them down to just this secular world, flesh, we lose so much. It’s a reduction of what God has. If we’re working in that small world where we have to go, “Hey, go out and prove your value. Go out and prove your beauty. Go out and prove your significance.” If we’re living in a secular wold that says we’ve got to earn it, we’ve got to prove it, we’ve got to win it, we’ve got to deserve it, that can be exhausting, on any given day, to prove that you’re beautiful or valuable or smart or funny or capable or athletic. That can be exhausting that we’re constantly working for love. That’s not enough. That’s not it. The word of Christ says you don’t work for love, you work from love.

I’m going to pull something out and I want you to guess where this came from. Anybody? Yeah. You know what? I hear a bunch of right answers. Nobody said a lemon factory. That’s weird. A lemon factory. Nobody said a lemon kit. Right? Like, everybody looked and said, “Oh, that’s a lemon. It came from a lemon tree.” Right? And here’s the thing. This lemon wasn’t manufactured by my tree. The lemon tree doesn’t have to prove it’s a lemon tree. It doesn’t have to be popular. As far as I know, my lemon tree has no followers on Facebook. I don’t know where it gets its self esteem. I mean, no followers on Facebook. Right?

But the lemon tree didn’t manufacture this. Here’s the thing. I’ve never heard my lemon tree kind of god, “Whew. I’m tired.” It does not appear to be exhausted from producing lemons. The lemons are coming out of something that’s alive inside of the tree. It’s the fruit of the tree, right?

And, as far as I can tell, my lemon tree doesn’t even need lemons. Like, what does a lemon tree need lemons for? It’s producing hundreds of them. It doesn’t need them, right? And here’s the thing. The fruitfulness that comes out of our lives, you know what? It’s not for us. God produces fruit out of our lives. You go, “Well, what do we need the fruit for?” Well, there’s other people that need fruit. We just get to give it away, to go on. And there’s seeds to grow another lemon tree inside.

I’d say the manufacturing of our value, the manufacturing of our work, it goes, “prove it, show it, win it, wow us,” that’s a kind of secular pressure that comes on us. That is not the good news. There’s something very different, but it doesn’t intuitively make sense to us because Paul tells us that it’s really not of this world. Beyond this romantic notion, and beyond this secular notion, there’s this other kind of relenting worldview, this relenting truth.

It’s hard to recognize this in our world, because it’s not from here. And in Galatians 1:11& 12, the church in Galatia was struggling with some of these same things. All these alternative gospels of where the good life is. So Galatians 1:11&12:

11 I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. 12 I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.

Paul is kind of saying, if you’re really going to embrace this gospel love, this relentless love, you need to know it’s not of human origin. It won’t make sense through the framework of this culture. Romantically, practically, intellectually. It won’t make sense. It’s not from here. If you’re going to be gripped by this bigger love, it’s going to feel a little alien, because it is. Because it’s not from here. Paul goes, nobody taught me this. This wasn’t handed down from a tradition. And he didn’t learn it.

When Jesus asked the disciples, “Who do men say that I am?” They said, “Well, some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah.” And then, here’s the big question. He looks at them and goes, “Hey, who do you say that I am?”

I think everybody freezes for just a minute on that question. “Who do you say that I am?” And then, out from Peter, who’s kind of impulsive, he goes, “You’re the Messiah. The Son of God.” And then Jesus goes, “Peter, no man taught you that. You didn’t read a book on that. You’re not in a program on that. You didn’t go to a seminar on that. You didn’t educate yourself into that position. That wasn’t an observation. That’s not a speculation.” He goes, “My Father revealed it to you. He opened up your heart to something and showed you.”

And if God gives us a new revelation, that may be the beginning of a transformation. When God takes a truth and opens it up inside of us, that’s revelation. And that can open up spaces in us that can transform us from the inside out.

What is the gospel truth? What is this bigger truth that goes beyond romance and goes beyond a secular understand? Here’s the gospel truth. And here’s why the world goes a little sideways. The gospel truth, the gospel proclamation, declaration over all of us is this: We are each so completely broken, broken on the inside, broken. And we are completely, extravagantly, relentlessly loved and pursued by God.

Well, which one is it? And you go, “It’s both.” Unless we have both, we won’t have anything. It’s both. We’re really broken. And God wants to enter the brokenness and do something beyond what we can do. And that is, in this world and in our own lives, it’s hard to picture how we can connect to our brokenness and then connect to any kind of sense of love from God. And I think our culture kind of promotes that idea. You kind of go, “Hey, if you’re broken, you’ve got to go get cleaned up and then you can maybe qualify for something. Maybe you can put in a spiritual application somewhere and see what you can get.” And that’s not the gospel, that you can clean yourself up and do it.

My oldest son works in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He supervises a salvage yard. It’s a very big, active yard. They buy scrap metals and other things from all over the state, and even around the United States. But here’s the basis of a salvage yard. Whatever value all of these things had, and it’s a wide collection of things, but whatever value they originally had, they’re broken. And now they’re going to a salvage yard. They’re going to get parted out. There’s something inside those computer boards. There’s some metals you can melt down and extract. It’s an airplane engine, but it’s got all kinds of precious metals if you take it apart and pull them out.

Here’s a broken thing that maybe has a part that’s valuable. I think, because we’re broken the world tells us, “You know your best option? Just part yourself out, because you’re broken. And you know what you’re hiding. Maybe there’s a part of you that you can trade out. Maybe there’s a part of you that someone wants, but just go ahead and part yourself out.”

People sell stuff cheap at the scrap yard. You know what? Some of us have given ourselves away or sold ourselves cheap, too. And God does not look at us that way. God doesn’t take that perspective. If you didn’t hear Alec Seekins’ message last week on enemy love, man. Do yourself a favor and listen to a message on enemy love. And listen to Alec’s story about what happens when relentless love catches up to the brokenness of people. Something not of this world, right? There’s a bigger, more powerful message.

When people are just parting themselves out, when people are being torn apart and literally scrapped, that is a lie of the culture. That is a lie sometimes of our own hearts. That’s the guilt and the shame inside of us. But this bigger truth, that Jesus comes and he goes, “You know what? I’m not trying to salvage some part of you.” The gospel is not about salvage. The gospel’s about salvation.

Salvage is about picking through a broken thing and finding something valuable. But salvation is about a healing of all of us. Right? Jesus says he’s the Messiah who’s come to bind up broken hearts, not scrap them. He’s come to open our eyes to see new things. He’s come to release us from the places that we’re hurt and hiding, and he’s got the key. And he’s come to go, “You know what? I’m going to give you your life back. We’re going to start again. I’m going to restore you.” That’s salvation, not salvage. It’s good news. But that’s God’s news to us. That’s not something we can generate for ourselves.

My youngest daughter, Abigail, turned eighteen recently. I was so sad and so excited about that, because I do not know how this little baby girl got to be eighteen, but she did. And I’m excited. She has collected snow globes when we go places, which is a very fun little tradition. This particular snow globe is from Nashville. There’s a really cool giant guitar that is bigger than the skyline of Nashville. It’s very cool. We got this back.

Here’s the thing about a snow globe. Every part of a snow globe is essential and important. The globe is critical in a snow globe. It kind of matters. You need the globe. The snow is critical in a snow globe. You’ve got to have snow in a snow globe. The water lets it kind of shimmer and float and do all that. So you need the water. And the really cool icon, the really cool image in the center, man, that’s cool. That’s Nashville, and apparently it’s snowing in Nashville right now. All of it is essential.

God is not interested in salvaging part of our lives, cracking us open and taking out the middle. God goes, “Man, I gave you a body. You know what? No matter what you’ve done with your body—guess what? It’s precious to me. And I gave you a heart and I want to restore and redeem and bind it up. It’s precious. And I gave you a mind, and how you think and how you understand matters to me. I want to engage you, and I want to help you understand and think. And I gave you a soul.”

And here’s the deal. Our souls are always hungry for the light. Our souls are always hungry for the light. And there’s a lie that tells us we’re supposed to conquer sin in the dark so we can somehow get to the light. And that is a lie from the pit of hell. Scripture never asked us to conquer sin in the dark, because we can’t. It’s a lie. We’re not designed to be in the dark conquering sin. We’re designed to confess sin in the light. That’s what we’re designed for. That’s what wholeness looks like. That’s what the good news, that’s what love looks like, the love that enters that.

In 1 John 1:7-9, it says this:

7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.

8 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

Part of what happens, when we bring that brokenness, when we say, “I’m not going to hide this. I’m not going to try to figure this out. I’m not going to be doing this on my own and working it out so I can somehow present myself. I’m going to just say, ‘God, I’m a mess. I’m just going to open the door to your love and your grace and your mercy.’”

When we do that, when we kind of acknowledge,”You know what, I’m not doing well. This is not working out. My heart is broken. I have been hiding this.” When we open that door and the love of God floods in, something really different can happen in our lives. And part of that something is healing. And part of that something is power. And part of that something is hope. But it brings us to a different presence. It makes us present to his presence. And when we get present to his presence—which is powerful and beautiful and capable—something on the inside can really also begin to heal. It can really also begin to believe. It can really also believe to be connected, to go, “God says all of who I am is important.”

If you’ve scrapped yourself out, I want you to know, God wants you back. If somebody took something from you, God purchased it and he’s giving it back. If you gave something away and you’re carrying guilt or shame, God goes, “You know what? I brought that back to you.” Because that’s who he is. And he wants you to know who you are.

The sin and the brokenness never has the last word. God has the last word. And if he buys you back, you’re bought back. And if he says you’re clear, you’re clear. And if he says you’re good, you’re good. And if he says you’re beautiful, no matter what you’ve heard or thought or what anyone else has said, he’s right. Letting that truth get to our hearts and our lives, letting our souls have that truth, man, that opens up something beautiful.

When our kids were young, it must have been fifteen years ago because Abigail was three. She was on my hip. We went on a hike in Colorado. And we hiked back a mile or two to this waterfall. And it was a pretty good waterfall. It was coming off of a glacier. But there was a relatively shallow pond that you could walk out towards the waterfall. So we initially were just going to take a picture of the waterfall. You know. Worcesters, waterfall, cool. But Jacob and Emma started taking their shoes off. They went into the water, you know. And then they started venturing closer to the waterfall. And so, the two fo them were heading out on the waterfall, and then Abigail wanted to go. So I put her on my hip and I went out. None of us planned on going in the water. We just had our regular clothes on, but still. The waterfall, there’s something compelling about a waterfall. Something sort of like draws you in.

So we’re being drawn into this waterfall. We get all the way out to it. Jacob and Emma are doing this thing where they’re starting to touch it. And it is cold and loud and thundering. And you can see this, “I’m excited and I’m scared. This is great.” All those things. And Jacob finally turns to me and goes, “Dad, can I go in?” And I go, “Do you want to go in?” And he kind of had this “Yeah. No. Yeah. I do. I…” He goes, “Will I be okay?” And I go, “Don’t know. I’ve never been in this waterfall.” Which is another I don’t know. Right? And Emma is right on his shoulder, behind him, and he’s still pausing. “I don’t know.” Something is going to happen. Right? And then he just turns and he goes, “I’m going in!” And he steps in.

I heard the scream and then he disappeared into the waterfall. And he’s inside the waterfall somewhere and everything else. And I don’t know that he was in a long time, but he came out of the waterfall and man, he was very present. He was very alive. He was still screaming, I think, when he came out. Emma only hesitated minute. “If he can do it, I can do it. I’m going in!” She went in, screams, disappeared. Giant waterfall going on.

Abigail, the three-year-old, is watching older brothers and sisters go in. And she’s looking, and she’s got this same kind of perplexed, and I’m going, “She’s three, and I really don’t know what will happen if we go in the waterfall.” But she’s kind of got the look. And I go, “Abigail, do you want to go in the waterfall?” And she just tightens up her grip on me. She said, “Yes.” She just holds me tight. I go, “Let’s go.” And we stepped into the waterfall.

If you haven’t stepped into a Colorado glacier waterfall in a while, it’s a little brisk. A little abrupt. I think I heard myself screaming, and I think I heard Abigail screaming. And the waterfall’s coming down. It’s cold. It’s pounding. Visually, you are underneath and it is flooding you. We’re screaming. But no one can hear us. I can feel her gripping me. She just got a good grip and said, “Yeah. Let’s go in.”

Maybe you have to hold on to God a little stronger to go, “Take me in.” But here’s what happens. That’s holiness. That’s holiness that hits us and rinses us and revives us and brings us back. It’s holiness. That’s not some abstract concept. Eugene Peterson, in his book The Jesus Way, talks about what a poor definition we have of holiness. What a horrible idea we have of holiness. That it’s bland. That its stiff. That it’s restrictive. And he says in his book The Jesus Way:

But holiness is in wild and furious opposition to all such blandness. The God life cannot be domesticated or used. It can only be entered on its own terms. Holiness does not make God smaller so that he can be used in convenient and manageable projects. It makes us larger so that God can live out through us extravagantly, spontaneously. The holy is an interior fire,…

And I think of a beautiful waterfall.

…a passion for living in and for God. A capacity for exuberance in the presence of God. Holiness is the most intense experience we can ever get out of sheer life, authentic, undiluted, firsthand living, not life looked at and enjoyed from a distance.

When God’s love captures and renovates our brokenness, we’re on holy ground. We’re in a waterfall of grace and love that washes us, cleanses us, revives us. And I’ll tell you what. Things heal on hot ground. Things restore on holy ground. Things connect on holy ground. And it’s not holy boring. It’s holy awesome.

When Isaiah had his encounter with the holy in Isaiah chapter 6, he has this event. He’s going in to sacrifice to God and then the whole temple is filled with the glory of God. So he has this up-close, personal encounter with God. In Isaiah 6:5, here’s what he says. When you get that close to the waterfall. When you get that close to holy:

5 “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.” 6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar.

Isaiah is in this situation. The revelation of the glory and holiness of God is there. And he goes, “I’m a dead man.” What happens when you touch the holy? What happens when you enter the waterfall? And then he has the angel with the live burning coal coming to touch his lips.

7 With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”

I think Isaiah thinks that coal is going to burn him up. But when God touches us with holiness, it burns up the sin in us. It burns up the guilt. It burns up the fear. Maybe he thought the holiness was going to burn him out. But it didn’t. The holiness actually animates us. It burns out everything that’s not from God, which is all the stuff we don’t need and all the stuff that doesn’t make us alive. And then he says this:

8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”
And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”

The guy who was terrified and said, “I’m a dead man,” after he is touched by the furious love of God, he isn’t afraid of his sin anymore. Isn’t afraid of his capacity anymore. Isn’t afraid of going anymore. And when God says, “I wonder who should go,” there’s his hand up. “Send me. Not because I’m perfect, but I am broken. I’ve been bought back by a love that’s perfect. You can send me.”

If there’s a place that you’re hiding this morning, if there’s a place that you’re stuck, a place that you’ve given away, we’re gong to have people up. Man, don’t be fighting int he dark. You’re not meant for the dark. God welcomes us to the light. We don’t have to be afraid of his grace and mercy. We can come as we are, where we are and let him minister. If you’re hiding, don’t hide. If you’re hiding, let that love come and touch you.

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Guest User 2/9/21 Guest User 2/9/21

We Will Love Our Enemies

Series: As for Me and My House

Alec Seekins

My name is Alec Seekins. Living Streams has been my home since I was three years old. Like he said, he was my youth pastor when I was a wee laddie. I was as pudgy back then, so maybe “wee” is the wrong word. I’ve been here my whole life. Up until about year ago, I spent time volunteering or working in our youth ministry, hanging out with these guys quite a bit. I spent a chunk of that time as our mission pastor as well. Living Streams is the only church my wife has ever known. She came here and to the Lord a little bit later in life.

About a year ago we quit our jobs. We packed all of our extra stuff in our parents’ spare bedrooms in their houses. We went to an island in southeast Asia, where we didn’t have any friends and we didn’t know the language—just to the follow the Lord. And I kind of followed my wife into this ministry where we were working in anti-sex trafficking, trying to connect with women and build friendships and relationships, just to see what the Lord might do. If there were some women who were hoping to get out and to see if maybe we could help them make that happen.

When we showed up for that, I think we really were prepared to experience the love of God for the victims. That’s something we had seen enough of the lord taking people that have been kicked around little bit, people that people think are too scarred and too dirty. Sinners, people that are the lowest. We had really seen the Lord do some cool stuff with people who believe that they are lower than everyone else, people who everyone else believes are lower than them.

So we expected to build those kind of mutual friendships that the Lord so loves to use. Not those “I’m up here and you’re down there” kind fo relationships, but just like real friendships, laughing and sharing life together—those things that the Lord uses to bring healing and life and fullness to everyone involved. We expected to see that. And we were shocked to see how quickly we saw that. I was talking to someone last night.

And I don’t know how much of it was the culture of where we were or how much was the Holy Spirit going before us. But we didn’t find a lot of barriers to building relationships with these women very, very quickly and to calling them friends very quickly, to celebrating birthdays and sitting down and laughing with them and playing games with them. And also, just having serious conversations with them and sharing struggles and sharing joys with these women. Like I said, I think we really were prepared to experience the love of God for the victims when we got there.

What we were not prepared for was to experience the love of God for the violators. I don’t think we were ready for that at all. I don’t think we were ready to have pimps and traffickers that we called “friend.” I don’t think we were ready to have violators that have meaning to us, that we care for. I don’t think we were ready to celebrate birthdays and exchange gifts with people who were actively engaged in something I think we could all rightly call evil. But the love of God is a lot bigger than my heart. It’s just so much bigger.

The way I’ve been thinking about it is, like in my life, I don’t know when I’m going to used to the reality that God’s love is bigger than I think it is. It feels like, every once in a while I turn a corner and I see a new facet of his love and I’m like, “Whoa. Where did that come from? There’s no way that was there before.” But also, there’s no way it hasn’t been there forever. And then I think that’s it. I’ve seen the fullness of the love of God. That’s as big as it gets. There’s no way it could be bigger than that. Then I see there’s another corner and I turn it and it’s just bigger. Eventually I hope to just figure out that his love is just bigger. I hope to be amazed but not shocked at the greatness of his love and the power of his Holy Spirit.

I didn’t say this last service, but I just want to say this. If there’s nothing else that you hear me say today, I would just say, please figure out how to hear the voice of God and then just obey and follow. Whatever that means. If that’s crazy, if it’s mundane, there’s so much richness in following the Lord. I never thought I was going to see the things that I saw the Lord do this last year, and yet I’ve seen them and it’s amazing, and it’s beautiful.

In March, as we know, things got a little weird. And on this particular island where we were, about 60% of the economy is tourism. So, as you can imagine, it dried up real quick. And these women that we had come to love and call friends, there was this bitter sweet situation for them, and for us as we engaged in a relationship with them. On the one hand it was sweet, because these women we had come to love and call friends, they were no longer being purchased quite so frequently by men who didn’t know their true value. But it was bitter because they were no longer able to purchase food quite so frequently for themselves.

So the ministry we were working with over night decided to shift gears and try to figure out how to meet this immediate physical need and, in the course of it, continue to build new relationships and strengthen existing ones. So we pivoted and starting trying to bring food to these women. And I really want to thank Living Streams, because you guys funded about 80 to 90% of the project that came out of that. And for three months, 80 women, and whoever was peripheral to their lives, every single week got these giant bags of fruit and veggies and proteins and rice. And it opened doors that literally led to actual freedom, both physical and spiritual. And I think those doors are still being walked through. So there’s no way to really even count the impact that you guys had on the kingdom.

So there was this one particular brothel that we would go to, among all the brothels that we would go to on a weekly basis. And for some reason, there we just had a lot of favor. We had more and more and more significant relationships. And our relationships were growing deeper and deeper and we were even occasionally having conversations about Jesus and about freedom in this particular brothel.

And in this brothel, there was a pimp. And we’re going to just call her name Grace, which I know might be a little surprising, but actually there’s a significant minority of the pimps who are women. And Grace had the kind of presence that you might imagine from a pimp. She had a very oppressive and heavy and aggressive presence to her. When she walked in the room, you could see shoulders kind of tighten up, and when she walked out, you would see an emotional, almost spiritual sigh of relief when she wasn’t there anymore.

And Grace was personally responsible for deceiving, trafficking, capturing and pimping out a number of our friends. And I remember on one particular day when we were there—we would often play games with the women at this location. A lot of the kind of games that we would play with the youth like Ninja, and that weird water bottle game where you throw it around, and ultimate spoons and stuff like that. And we were playing this game where we throw a water bottle around and Grace decided she wanted to join the game. So, obviously, a good number of the women who were on the fence decided they no longer wanted to play the game.

As we were playing this game, I remember connecting with Grace. And I remember feeling like the Lord was saying, “Hey, I want you to really develop this connection here.” And I saw her laughing and having fun for the first time. And she was overjoyed when she won because we let her win. Yeah. It was definitely a “let the Wookie win” kind of a situation. I just remember feeling the weird dissonance in my heart, of loving this woman who was actively engaged in oppressing and violating friends of mine. But it was the love of God and there was nothing I could do about it. Because his love is just so much bigger than my heart.

And I even realized later that day that this is the same woman who had been kind of pushing against Colleen a little bit in a weird, passive-aggressive way, walking around saying, “This is my wife,” on a day when I wasn’t around. (Which is very upsetting to hear.) And, fortunately, my wife is strong and capable and knew how to say, “Huh-uh,” in a way that didn’t rock the boat too much. But there was nothing I could do about this love that was creeping up.

Let’s rewind a little way back. I remember before shut-down there was a prayer meeting we were having. We always had these long prayer meetings before any outreach. And I felt like the Lord started to tell me that he wanted me to begin praying for pimps that they would go from being captors to liberators. So I started praying that prayer on a regular basis. I prayed it for a few months. But I really need to be honest with you guys. It didn’t matter how boldly the words were coming out of my mouth every time I prayed that prayer, there wasn’t that much bold going on on the inside.

On a really good day, all that was happening in my mind and my heart was something like, “God, I know you can do this, but you’re not going to.” And on a bad day is was more like, “God, do you do this? Are you good enough? Strong enough? Powerful enough? Real enough to do this kind of stuff? I’ll just pray anyway.”

But Jesus wasn’t joking when he talked about mustard seeds. He knew what he was saying when he said, “Just a little bit of faith can move mountains into the oceans. And just a little bit of faith can take captors and turn them into liberators.” And I’m so grateful for that reality.

So fast forward back up a couple of weeks after that interaction, playing a game with Grace, and all of a sudden at that location, we hear something crazy is going on. And we don’t know. There was some drama and we’re concerned it might have had something to do with some conversations we might have had with someone about Jesus or freedom. So we thought maybe we need to lean back a little bit. And the next thing we know, Grace and about half the women from that brothel have disappeared.

No one is responding to text messages or phone calls, and we’re super concerned about it. And then, after a few days, we hear back from a couple of women who are saying, “Hey, Grace just took us all and we’re scared and we want to go home.” And we start to get a trickle in of conversation. On one particular night, maybe a couple of weeks after they had all initially disappeared, a few people from our ministry team started hearing back from Grace and all at the women with her at the same time. They were texting and they were saying, “Hey, we want to talk. We want to meet. Can we talk right now? Not tomorrow. Not in the morning. Right now. Where we can we meet? When can we meet? Where are we meeting?”

So our friends dropped their plans for that evening and they went to meet with Grace and these women and they found that what had happened was Grace had had some sort of a disagreement with one of the other pimps, and Grace said, “I’m going to take these women and I’m going to start my own brothel.”

So she took these women and she tried to start her own brothel, but then she failed. And she had this thought, “Maybe I need to be done.” And she knew that our ministry had been an off ramp for women in the past. She knew she couldn’t wait for the morning. Her resolve might change. So they reached out and they had this meeting. Our friends began to talk with them about what freedom might look like and what Jesus looks like and what freedom in Jesus might look like. Then they began to pray. They began to worship. And the Holy Spirit came down in that room and started moving in the hearts of these women who barely even knew his name.

And the Holy Spirit planted something in Grace’s heart that night that really took root. And that oppressive spirit began to be replaced with a joy and lightness. To make a long and beautiful story—that is still very much in process—short, we were able to find a place for these women to live. We were able to find legitimate income for them. Grace was actually able to get a job with a local pastor for a few months where she was working in his Corona side gig and getting bible study and discipleship every morning along with the rest of the staff. These women got hungry for the word of God.

Grace, when we would talk about the word of God, or when we would pray or worship, she would have this weird, goofy smile on her face, and would almost rock for the joy that was in her. And we knew that this was real, because the women around Grace were starting to relax around her, and starting to feel comfortable letting her know when they were leaving, instead of trying to slip out like they were before.

And then, eventually, they started inviting us into this home to do like a little mini church with them every week to worship and pray and talk about the things that they were giving over to Jesus this week. And I got to see the power of God in a way that I’ve never seen it before, because God gave us the love for an enemy.

In Matthew 5, Jesus says this,

43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that?

I read this passage a couple of weeks ago as I was starting to prepare for this message. And all of a sudden, what Jesus is talking about, that reward that you get—it brought a whole new light for me. I’ve known for a long time it’s not this weird, flimsy theology of prosperity gospel that you do what Jesus asks and then boom there’s a bonus at work, or a raise, or you find a bunch of miracle money. I’ve actually, some of the few legitimate miracles that I’ve experienced in my life was miracle money. And the money itself was pretty lame. The promise that God gave was way more meaningful. And I’m still holding on to that. The money disappeared years ago. It didn’t last that long. Money tends to not last long. But that promise is still sticking around.

So I started thinking that, maybe the rewards that are eternal that the Bible talks about, maybe I could just imagine them like there’s this room that the Father’s preparing for me. In that room there’s this treasure chest that’s kind of closed. And every time the Lord’s like, “Here’s a gift for you,” he hides it in that treasure chest. And one day, after Jesus comes back, I’m going to go into that room, I’m going to pop open the treasure chest and be like, “Oh, that’s the reward you gave me on that day. Oh that’s so cool. What an awesome mystery that’s not a mystery anymore.”

But I don’t even think of it that way anymore. Because I feel like I’m holding some of those rewards in my hand today. I feel like those rewards are continuing to grow in value. And there’s going to be a day when their value is going to skyrocket. When Jesus comes back to say, “Behold, I make all things new.” And the value is going to be more significant of an increase than anybody who bought stock in GameStop last year. It’s a big deal. Jesus knows what he’s doing. He’s got some good rewards for us.

And Jesus says, “What reward, if you love those who love you? Maybe they’ll buy you lunch after you buy them lunch. Maybe you show up for them at a really hard time, and later in life they come into some money and they buy you a free car. That’s pretty cool.” But lunch is gone in a couple of minutes, if you’re a fatty like me. And a car is gone in a few years.

But I have this friendship with this amazing, redeemed woman that we’re calling Grace. And I got to see the power of God at work in an enemy, in a way that I never imagined I would see the power of God. Paul elsewhere says that our battle is not against flesh and blood, it’s against spirits and principalities. Usually when we read that verse, we read it as a spiritual call to arms. And it is that. But lately, I’ve been focused on our battle is not against flesh and blood. Our enemies are not really our enemies.

I think that, if we think we have enemies that have flesh and blood, I think it’s very likely that we’ve actually been deceived by the real enemy, that our enemies are just decoy enemies. That if we think people, any people, regardless of what evil they do, or what wrong things they believe, if we think they’re the enemy, I think we’ve been deceived by the very same enemy that deceived them into believing or doing the things that we find so reprehensible. We’re missing the real fight. If evil people are our enemies, it’s the spirits that are deceiving them.

And the way we fight the real enemy is not with fists or with Facebook, but it’s with enemy love. It’s with sacrifice. It’s with turning the other cheek. It’s with walking an extra mile with an oppressive authority who’s forced you to carry their burden for one. It’s with giving our shirt to people who would steal our coat. That’s how we fight the real enemy.

I think our enemies are actually like the redemptive power of God pressed into something like potential energy. Like a spring that’s been pressed down, waiting to be released so it can come into life. Or like a battery that’s been hiding in a drawer alone, waiting to be plugged into some device of God and bring it to life. Because God is wanting to take your enemies and show off his power and his goodness in the midst of their darkness.

One of the greatest joys, I think, of my life to date, is that I have another story to share with you this morning, of another captor turned liberator. We’re going to call him Bapok. That’s just a common honorific in this particular part of the world, on this island.

Bapok, he’s a really big, bad guy. Bapok is not just a pimp who owns a decent-sized brothel in the second largest red-light district that we know of. There’s usually about 150 women working there on any given night. Bapok is also part of the association of pimps in that area. Bapok is also part of the local mafia, and he’s also a low level government enforcer. You don’t mess with Bapok for good reason.

When we started going there, early on last year, we met Bapok and we met his wife. She was really hungry for something good and clean and right in her life. So she would invite us and chat with us longer than anyone else. We would talk with her for hours. It wasn’t long before she was inviting us in for meals. It wasn’t long before both of them were asking us to pray for them over and over and over again. I’ve never prayed for anyone more than this couple, because they continually asked for it. We built relationship and we were invited to birthday parties.

Then there came a point in our relationship where we trusted them so much, and felt the next step was actually to invite them to our home, where we sleep, for a meal. And we prayed about it. We talked together, me and Colleen, and we talked to our oversights in the ministry. And we felt like, yeah, this is where the Lord was leading. Because we just loved them that much and we just trusted them that much.

And we began to see the Lord change their hearts. And we began to see the way they interacted with the women who were under them changing and holding them with more of an open hand. Letting them leave if they wanted to leave. We learned about the fact that Bapok actually had cancer, has cancer. Because of at the state of health care over there, it’s just unclear whether he’s just got months or many more years to live.

There came a day where there was a woman from another brothel in that red light district who had upset her pimp somehow, so he kicked her out on the streets and blacklisted her. She ran to Bapok for safety. And Bapok harbored her at their place. Then that other pimp took Bapok to the association of pimps to bring his grievance before them, and said, “This man is harboring a woman that I blacklisted. Do something about it.”

And Bapok addressed the association of pimps and he said this. He said, “We have been living in sin our entire lives. I don’t know how much longer mine’s going to be. How am I going to get clean?” He said, “I don’t really care what you do or say. This woman’s going to be safe with me until she’s ready to go home.” And that was the end of the situation. That woman was safe with him until she was ready to go home.

Then, a little while later, Bapok and his wife made a really significant, earth shattering decision. They decided that they were going to enable all of their women to go home. As soon as they had all gone home, they were going to close down their doors, and they were going to reopen as a community center, where kids could come and hear about Jesus, and learn English, where they could get tutoring in the morning. There’s hopes this next year to put something like a little clinic in there.

And then, a week later, the boat started rocking. And Bapok’s wife had a dream in the night. And she heard a voice after that, saying, “I have medicine for your husband.” So she got up early in the morning before the sun was up. She didn’t tell her husband where she was going, and she went to a Hindu temple to pray for a day and a half. And then, as you can imagine, that upset him. It caused some issues between the two of them. Our whole team that was heavily involved in community with them was really concerned. What’s going on? She’s hearing from these other spirits right at that time when it felt like something really good was happening.

But I felt like the Holy Spirit was saying, “You know, this isn’t another spirit she’s hearing from. She just doesn’t understand what I’m saying.”

So we went to their house and I asked her, “Would you tell me about the dream you had?”

She said, “It wasn’t just a dream. I had a dream and then I woke up and I had a waking vision. Then I heard this audible voice.”

And I said, “The Holy Spirit, I think, is the one speaking to you. So would you tell me and I’ll ask the Holy Spirit what the meaning is?”

And the dream was essentially this vision of her, this dream of her on top of this giant, beautiful valley with waterfalls and rainbows and all this kind of stuff. And it was the Holy Spirit telling her, “I’m calling you into the kingdom fo heaven. This is the kingdom of heaven and I want you to enter into it.”

And then she woke up from that and she went outside. It was still dark, like two or three in the morning. And she saw a light that had no light source. And she went to the light, and as soon as she got to the light, it disappeared. And she didn’t see a light bulb or anything that made any sense. And she was so confused. And this was the Holy Spirit saying, “You’ve been pursuing me, but that’s not how it works. I pursue you. You surrender to Jesus. You let Jesus come after you and that’s how you enter into the kingdom of heaven.”

And then the voice that she said she heard said, “I have medicine for your husband.” That’s the Holy Spirit saying, “I have medicine but it’s not necessarily for his body. I have medicine that he really wants for his spirit to be cleaned.”

And a week later, they were both in the hospital. Him with complications from his ongoing condition, and her with typhoid. One of our friends from the ministry went to go visit them. In the course of that visit, Bapok’s wife gave her life to Jesus. Right after that, so did he. And a few weeks later, it was two days before Christmas, and that former brothel hosted a Christmas party. Sixty women from the surrounding community showed up. And they heard the story of the birth of Jesus, and they heard the gospel. And they heard the testimony of one our good friends about how Jesus saved her from the sex trade, and then he saved her from sin and death. And there was weeping in that former brothel, but the kind of tears that come from hope.

Jesus is pretty powerful. Jesus has a very different way of dealing with evil than our natural inclination. Our natural inclination, our best efforts on our own, they just fall short. And they’re just lame. And they tend to just make the problem worse. You hit me in the cheek, I’m not turning the other cheek. I’m hitting you back in the face. That’s what I want to do. You come at me with a sword, I’m coming back with a sword, or a gun, if I can find one. But Jesus didn’t fight with a sword. He fought with a sacrifice.

And I know that that is really controversial right now. But it’s not new. It’s always been offensive. It’s always offensive. It has always been offensive to love the enemy. It has always been hard to turn the other cheek. It has always felt like just lying down for evil. But we’ve seen Jesus’ way start to take root in some really powerful ways. Over the last couple of hundred years, for some reason or another, there have been more and more men and women who have followed Jesus in this way of enemy love. And it has made a marked difference on goodness, righteousness and justice here on earth.

We’ve seen men and women like Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu. People like Mother Teresa, William Wilberforce, Rosa Parks. And even people like Mahatma Ghandi, who don’t follow Jesus, but just take his words really seriously. And it has made a notable difference for goodness in the world. Because the way of Jesus is powerful. Because enemy love is tapping into the love of God. And he knows what he’s talking about. He’s not messing around when he says it’s time for us to turn the other cheek. It’s time for us to love our enemies.

I have been watching through my phone this last year and the last couple of weeks, as I’ve gotten here, as this strange divide is kind of welling up around us in our culture. I’m not here at all to say there isn’t truth and there isn’t a lie, that there isn’t good ideas and good ideologies, and bad ideas and bad ideologies. But I think if we’ve landed on either side of the strange divide, I think we’ve landed on the wrong side. Because Jesus has never been on the other side of his enemies.

When Jesus showed up in the Old Testament to talk to Joshua and Joshua said, “Are your on our side or on their side?” And Jesus said, “Nah. That’s not how it works.”

When the Pharisees would ask him, “Is it this or this?” And he would say, “No, it’s that.”

When the Scribes would say, “Is it this situation or is it like that?” He would say, “You just don’t get it.”

And we’re doing the same thing right now in our culture, saying, “Is it me? Or is it me?” And Jesus is saying, “No. If you’re on the other side of your enemy, you’ve missed it completely. You should be on the same side of your enemy. Not to say you agree with them or follow them in wickedness, but you should be standing next to your enemy and loving them, even if it hurts. Even if it costs you your life.”

And if God himself would reach across that strange divide of sin and death to love us, to save us, and to even die for us, then what are we doing drawing lines in the sand that end with anything else but us standing up and saying, “Neither do I condemn you.”

Jesus has laid out a very different way.

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Guest User 1/24/21 Guest User 1/24/21

Serve the Lord

Some of the things we’ve talked about, we’re longing for this hunger for this God. And whether it’s happened or not, I love what Meister Eckhart says. He says: The soul must long for God in order to be set aflame by God’s love;… It’s true. It’s wonderful. That’s what we’re praying for. But then I love this. He says: …but if the soul cannot yet feel the longing, then it must long for the longing.

Series: As for Me and My House

David Stockton

Some of the things we’ve talked about, we’re longing for this hunger for this God. And whether it’s happened or not, I love what Meister Eckhart says. He says:

The soul must long for God in order to be set aflame by God’s love;…

It’s true. It’s wonderful. That’s what we’re praying for. But then I love this. He says:

…but if the soul cannot yet feel the longing, then it must long for the longing. To long for the longing is also from God.

I love that. It’s a little bit of ease, a little bit of comfort a little bit of saying, “It’s okay, young one. It’s okay if don’t have it all figured out. Just come close. Draw near to the Lord and he will draw near to you.”

We talked about what John Tyson says:

The soil of secularism doesn’t have the nutrients for the human heart to flourish in environments like this. We need more for times like this than our culture has the capacity to give us.

And that’s something that’s been so evident and true and on grand display last year, 2020 in particular, how there was so much energy, effort and ideas being offered, and yet there was no real satisfaction in anything that was being offered to us by our culture. That’s why we need the Lord and his word.

Then Mark Sayers, a guy from Australia who’s kind of like a cultural prophet in some ways, he describes the progressive vision fo the word that’s been inundating us as:

We want the kingdom without the King. We want all of God’s blessings—without submitting to his loving rule and reign. We want progress—without His presence. We want justice—without His justification. We want the horizontal implications of the gospel for society—without the vertical reconciliation of sinners with God. We want society to conform to our standard of moral purity—without God’s standard of personal holiness.

So there are all of these visions of what righteousness looks like, what justice looks like in our world. We’ve been told over and over and over again by many different people, “This is what justice looks like,” Then we have people saying, “No, that’s wrong. This is what justice looks like. This is what righteousness looks like.”

So what we’re saying is we don’t want to hear anything else. We want to silence our own hearts. We want to silence the world around us, because we want God to speak. We want to hear what his vision of righteousness is. We want to be like Jesus said in the Beatitudes. We want to hunger and thirst for his righteousness. We want to seek first his kingdom and his righteousness; because that’s the only righteousness that comes with the promise that you will be filled.

So that’s what we’re doing. We’re just really jumping in there. I’ve already got our next two sermon series dialed in. It’s all going to push us further into getting that vision for the righteousness of God. I’m excited about that. I’m not a planner so this is really weird for me to have the next few months all planned out. But I feel like it’s because the Lord is guiding us.

This is more personally, and as a church, as a pastor I felt there were a few things the Lord wanted us to focus on first. They come from 1 Thessalonians 5. They are:

As for me and my house, we will cultivate gratitude. Something so necessary ad we’ll see that in the scripture. And we talked about that two weeks ago.

As for me and my house, we will consecrate ourselves. We see that in Thessalonians 5. We talked about it last week. It was kind of a serious message. I had to shave my mustache because I didn’t feel like I could preach that message with a mustache. It just didn’t seem to fit for me. I’m weird, I know.

And then, today we’re going to be, As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

So 1 Thessalonians 5, let’s jump in there:

12 Now we ask you, brothers and sisters, to acknowledge those who work hard among you, who care for you in the Lord and who admonish you. 13 Hold them in the highest regard in love because of their work. Live in peace with each other. 14 And we urge you, brothers and sisters, warn those who are idle and disruptive, encourage the disheartened, help the weak, be patient with everyone. 15 Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always strive to do what is good for each other and for everyone else.

And then he says in this next section, what we talked about two weeks ago, cultivating gratitude:

16 Rejoice always,
Anybody joyful today? Well, you all have to be, because the Bible says.
17 pray continually, 18 give thanks in all circumstances;
Does he say that because things were great in Thessalonica? No. He says that because they needed a reminder because the circumstances were rough.
for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.
19 Do not quench the Spirit. 20 Do not treat prophecies with contempt 21 but test them all; hold on to what is good, 22 reject every kind of evil.
23 May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24 The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.

Again, that last part we talked bout last week. The sanctification, what that means, the being blameless, the testing everything, avoiding evil, clinging to what is good; and then the beautiful promise at the end there is at the end of the day you’re going to fail, but you’ve connected your life to someone who is faithful beyond measure and he will do it. He will do it. It’s such a relief to fall always into the hands of God’s grace.

Now we’re going to look at this first section. Serving the Lord. This is what Paul is writing again to the people of Thessalonica. He didn’t get to spend a lot of time with them, so I think he was a little nervous as a father in the faith, as a pastor. He wanted to give them some final instructions at the end of this letter to try to help them. This is how you keep going. This is what you put into practice after what we’ve experienced together. And in this first part, he says, “Now we ask you, brothers and sisters, to acknowledge those who work hard among you, who care for you in the Lord and who admonish you.”

Now some of this might be coming because t he people that were put over the people in Thessalonica were pretty new. Paul, as far as we know, only got to spend a a few months in Thessalonica. As he was doing his missionary travels, he would go to a town, he would go to a synagogue, he would preach the gospel. And everyone int he synagogue would get all fired up and half of the people would be like, “We want to hear more.” Half of the people would be like, “We want to kill you.”

He would talk to the people who want to hear more and he would kind of form a little bit of a fellowship. And they would meet regularly. In that time, over time, getting to know the people, he would recognize who had authority, or who was really getting the gospel in clarity and he would appoint them as elders or deacons in those fellowships. And they were supposed to continue on in the Lord. And then Paul would move on. But he would be able to write back letters. They would be able to interact and he would be able to support them from afar. That was kind of the rhythm he was in.

So when Paul is saying this to the people in Thessalonica, he’s probably going, “Hey, you know those two people I put in charge? You need to be okay with them. They might be new. They might not get it right. They might not be perfect, but I’m putting them in charge over you and I want you to respect those who work hard among you. I want you to respect those who admonish you.”

Now, this is a very anti-American thing, where we have to set ourselves aside and be able to live into the kingdom culture described in the scriptures. Because we rebel, right? No taxation without representation, man! Give me some tea, we’re going to throw that in the river. We have this rebel spirit. It’s been a good thing. We have this rugged individualism. In some ways it’s served us well, but in some ways it’s really, really served us poorly.

Because, if someone, especially nowadays—and I’m sorry millennials, but this is true of you—if someone was to admonish you, you would react very interestingly. You would “unfriend” them or something. It’s true within all of us, though. If someone wants to admonish us, if someone sees something that is lacking in us and brings that to attention, whether they do it in the right way or the wrong way, in our culture these days, we don’t receive any correction at all. We just rebel about it. We make excuses for it. Or we call them some sort of bad person. Or we find fault in them and we say therefore everything they say doesn’t count. It’s an absolutely foolish way to live.

Paul is saying, “You guys need to be receptive of those admonitions, those challenges that come to you.”

Then he says, “Hold them in high regard because of their work.” So the people who are working for you. You can think about this. The leaders. Whether those are church leaders—hey! —or civic leaders or you know, people within your organization. Your bosses, those type of things, employers. This is a consistent theme throughout scripture. Whether they’re getting it right or wrong, you still honor them.

One of the key commandments in the Ten Commandments, the ten boundaries that God gave his people, right at the core of the Judeo-Christian ethic is “honor your father and mother.” And then there’s a caveat: if they get it right. No, that’s not in there. It’s not. It’s just honor your father and mother.

Now, honor, obviously you have to define. It’s not do everything they tell you to do even if it’s going against God’s law. No. Absolutely not. But even if you had to go in a different direction from them, you would do it in an honorable way. We’re supposed to honor those in authority over us. There’s a lot of humility necessary for that. And we don’t do it necessarily to make those people feel good about themselves. We do it because we love Jesus. We do it because he’s worthy and he’s asked us to do it. It’s a way that we can serve the Lord.

It’s important in our day and age, right now while there’s so much animosity built up and there’s so much frustration built up. And I’m not saying that everything our leaders have been doing and saying is right. Please. No way. But we still need to figure out how to be that alternative community, that kingdom culture, that finds a way to honor those in authority over us.

Then he goes on to say, “Live in peace with each other. And we urge you, brothers and sisters, warn those who are idle and disruptive, encourage the disheartened, help the weak, be patient with everyone. Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always strive to do what is good for each other and for everyone else.”

I asked Dan Riccio, our resident scholar to kind of unpack these things. He said these really come out to disciplining the ones who do anything unhelpful and also the ones who aren’t doing anything that is helpful. Right? You have both kinds of unhelpful. Ones who don’t do anything. But also the ones who are doing things that are unhelpful and damaging. And we need to admonish them. We need to give them a piece of our mind. There’s a time and a place for that. We need to speak out against, stand against, bring correction and discipline. It’s absolutely true.

But then he goes on to say we need to encourage the timid, help the weak, be patient with everyone. Make sure nobody pays back wrong for wrong. Try to be kind to each other and everyone else. There’s this moment of, yes, we need to give people a piece of our mind, but then he almost goes into a much fuller and longer exhortation that we need to give people a piece of our shoulder.

And what I mean by that is, so often we come to people and we see some of the struggles they have, we see some of the things that they’re doing wrong and we’ll just kind of blast them. And though there is a time and a place for that, I think what overarchingly you see in the scriptures, and even in this little passage, you see what God really wants us to do is lend people our shoulder, to figure out what’s really hard for them, what burden they’re carrying. Instead of just saying, “Why are you doing that?” Or “Why is that so bad? What decisions have you made to bring you to this place?” Instead to just come alongside of them and say, “Can you put some of that burden on my shoulder and we could walk to gather for a little while?”

So there’s that little imagery. Serving the Lord, yes. There is a time to give people a piece of your mind, to give them the truth. But so often it’s much more important to give people a piece of your shoulder, to get your shoulder under the burden they’re carrying. Because then, over time, you’ll start to realize things. Walk a mile in their shoes and then you’re admonishing, or your piece of mind might change, and how you might change what you would speak to them.

That’s 1 Thessalonians talking to us about serving the Lord. Some practical things from Paul there. We have a whole Bible that’s always continuing to challenge us and call us to serve the Lord. Actually, the phrase, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord,” comes from way back in the Old Testament, where Joshua had led the people into the Promised Land. He formed them into a nation. It’s carrying on the work of Moses, delivering the people who were slaves into a nation. At the end of it he says for them blessings and curses. He says, “If you follow the Lord and do these things you’ll be blessed. If you don’t follow the Lord and do these things, you’ll be cursed.” So he said, “I set these things before you. But as for me and my house, we’re going to serve the Lord. We’re going to serve the Lord.”

Then you have all this time through the scriptures. Basically, think about the very beginning. What did it mean to serve the Lord for Adam and Eve, who were basically gardening. Right? Gardening and then not eating of that one tree, which didn’t work out so good.

But then you have the very next story that we kind of come across. You have a guy who’s serving the Lord, building a big boat. I guess for his family, serving the Lord was not thinking their dad or husband was an absolute fool, but kind of joining in the work.

Then you have a guy that serving the Lord for him meant leaving his father and mother’s household and the ways that would worship, and going to a place and becoming a sojourner. In some ways Abraham was the first missionary, just going to wander around and helping people know what it looked like to have a relationship with this God that he knew very little about.

And you continue on. And you have Moses. Serving the Lord meant going back to face past demons and helping to set slaves free and lead them into a Promised Land. And on and on it goes. All these different ways. The reason I’m saying this is because serving the Lord has so much creativity. There’s so much diversity. God has made you and fashioned you as a specific tool, unlike anyone else in the world. And, what the scripture tells us in Ephesians 2, he’s also formed works for you to walk in. He’s formed opportunities. He’s set things up in your life that you’re going to stumble into. And you’re going to realize you’re the only person that has been uniquely designed to actually serve in this way. God loves to see those moments when you are able to serve him in the way that he’s created you to serve.

But I can’t get up here and say that, if you really want to serve the Lord, you’ll become one of the singers. And sometimes that’s the way we feel. If you really wanted to serve the Lord, you’d be up on this platform preaching. The rest of you are just kind of so-so servers. In the scripture, the preachers? Usually not doing so well. Usually God’s having to yell at them. But each one of us is called to serve the Lord. And each one of us has to find what the Lord’s calling us to do. It’s actually a very exciting thing, a very wonderful thing.

Isaiah 58, right here in the middle of the Old Testament, we have this passage in the Message (MSG) Translation. I think this is really helpful to help us understand the heart behind serving the Lord. He says:

1-3 “Shout! A full-throated shout!
    Hold nothing back—a trumpet-blast shout!
Tell my people what’s wrong with their lives,
    face my family Jacob with their sins!
They’re busy, busy, busy at worship,
    and love studying all about me.
To all appearances they’re a nation of right-living people—
    law-abiding, God-honoring.
They ask me, ‘What’s the right thing to do?’
    and love having me on their side.
But they also complain,
    ‘Why do we fast and you don’t look our way?
    Why do we humble ourselves and you don’t even notice?’
    “Well, here’s why:
“The bottom line on your ‘fast days’ is profit.

Basically, you’re seeking the Lord as kind of a genie. You kind of rubbing the lamp with your fast to get what you want instead of really submitting to the Lord.
You drive your employees much too hard.

You fast, but at the same time you bicker and fight.
    You fast, but you swing a mean fist.
The kind of fasting you do
    won’t get your prayers off the ground.
Do you think this is the kind of fast day I’m after:
    a day to show off humility?
To put on a pious long face
    and parade around solemnly in black?
Do you call that fasting,
    a fast day that I, God, would like?
“This is the kind of fast day I’m after:
    to break the chains of injustice,
    get rid of exploitation in the workplace,
    free the oppressed,
    cancel debts.
What I’m interested in seeing you do is:
    sharing your food with the hungry,
    inviting the homeless poor into your homes,
    putting clothes on the shivering ill-clad,
    being available to your own families.
Do this and the lights will turn on
    and your lives will turn around at once.
Your righteousness will pave your way.
    The God of glory will secure your passage.
Then when you pray, God will answer.
You’ll call out for help and I’ll say, ‘Here I am.’

That’s the kind of fast that God is after, that he longs to see us. You get on to the New Testament. You have Jesus, who comes on the scene, representing the perfect reality of what it looks like if God were to be here and to walk among us and to serve. He said he came to seek and serve. And what he says is the Spirit of the Lord was upon him and because he had anointed him to proclaim good news to the poor. He said, “He sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners, recovery of sight for he blind, to set the oppressed free and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. “

That sounds like a lot of shoulder work to me. A lot more so than giving people a piece of his mind. And guess what? He saw clearly. And he did. He definitely stood against. He definitely spoke out against. He gave people the truth. But he got his shoulder underneath the burden of the people he walked with. It’s so amazing.

One of the most fascinating things about Jesus, I think, is when it says that the common people heard him gladly. It was like the people that have their stuff together, the people that weren’t educated, they really liked to be around him. And I think that’s fascinating because Jesus is God, totally. He knows everything. If they really could see who he was in some ways they should shudder in fear. But instead, the way he came off, full of grace and truth, it caused people to just want to be around him. I think that’s the way Christians should be, too. People that others really want to be around.

And then, James 1:27. James, the brother of Jesus, kind of sums up for us real simply what it looks like to serve the Lord, as far as he’s concerned. He says:

27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

This is kind of a joke I always say in our Explore Class—that’s a big part of what our Explore Class is—just so you know, it’s coming up soon—is to kind of help people move through a process where ultimately they’re done with those weeks and they know what God is calling them to do at this point of their life. They know what gifting the Lord has given them, and they know, maybe, how they can put those into play right now in 2021 at this church, or in this city, or whatever situation they’re in. So, if you’re not quite sure, if you have some of those questions, it would be a great class to go to.

But in there I always talk about how, at the end of this class, if you’re still not quite sure, just find some orphans and some widows and start there. Literally. I mean you’re just not going to go wrong if you go there. And if you need help finding those, we can help, for sure. But I mean, at least you could start there and you know you’re getting it right. It might be that God has something else for you, or something more specific, but that’s a great place to start. It’s a great place to start.

So, with all that being said, that’s the biblical perspective of this. The way that this has been kind of fleshed out in my life really comes down to these three words. When I think about what it means to serve the Lord, what I’ve discovered serving the Lord is, the first one is sacrifice. We actually kind of played with changing the title from “As For Me and My House We Will Serve the Lord” to “As For Me and My House We Will Figure Out What It Means to Do Sacrificial Love” but it’s a real long title. But sacrificial love is really something that we need to think about when we talk about what it means to serve the Lord. Then support. That’s when we’ll talk a little more about the shoulder. And then faithfulness. Faithfulness.

So when it comes to serving the Lord, sacrifice. That was a big deal for me. Because all of my life, growing up, until I was about eighteen years old, I was really important to myself. I mean, I still am, more so than I want, but I was one of the most arrogant, condescending individuals you could ever meet. My brothers, I have two older brothers, and they called me The Tyrant. Which is a little strange, right? Because I was small and weak. They were big and strong. And yet, still they would call me the tyrant. Because I had a lot of confidence. I had a lot of arrogance. I thought I was better and what I thought I wanted was more important than everybody else.

I had one friend. I won’t mention his name. But all my life I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him because every time we would hang out, he would start to get so uncomfortable in all these situations. But I realized, literally, what I thought was wrong with him, was actually him uncomfortable with me being so arrogant and condescending everywhere we would go. And I never realized it until later on. So, anyway… enough about me.

That was a huge shift. When I gave my life to the Lord and said, “Okay, Jesus, I want to follow you,” that was the salvation that came to my life. All of a sudden I actually was aware of others. Now, again, I know this sounds so ridiculous and horrible—and it really was. But it was like, all of a sudden, someone else’s pain mattered to me. And I cared about it.

Here, this super arrogant, self-centered, condescending individually, Jesus came and totally took over my life. I look back and this is so silly, but every Friday night when I should go try and hang out with my friends, or go and try to meet a girl or something, all I wanted to do was I wanted to go hang out with thees like fourth through sixth grade. I was working at this church and I was in charge of the fourth through sixth graders. And I just wanted them to make sure they had the funnest Friday night they could.

So I would go round up like ten of them. We’d go to Peter Piper Pizza and we’d go out there. And I thought it was so fun. I was loving it. To try to help these kids have this wonderful time. And on and on it went. I just wanted to give my life away. I just wanted to prop somebody else up. It was like this salvation had come. I just wanted to serve the Lord. And whatever they were going through was more important than what I was going through. I really did happen. This shift. And now sacrificial love was now a joy for me. I did want to decrease so the Lord could increase. It was fascinating. It was cool.

Yesterday I was watching some basketball. And I don’t know if you follow college basketball, but Baylor is like number two in the country. They’re undefeated and they’re really good and all that. They were doing an interview with one of the main guys. He’s going to go NBA and he’s going to make millions of dollars. He’s amazing. They were doing an interview with him. One of the questions this guy asked him was, “Hey, you know, we heard that on Sundays you do something very different and interesting.”

And he was like, “Yeah, yeah. I’m glad you brought that up.” What he does is, he goes and works at his church. He teaches the second and third graders every Sunday at his church. It was just so shocking for me to be sitting there and being like, “Oh, this guy. He’s so cool. This guy is so big time.” And he’s just talking about how he loves Sundays, how he just learns so much from those kids. It is just so cool to be able to do that. He feels like it’s the biggest gift in his life.

And I’m just like, “Yeah! He’s serving the Lord!” He’s actually going to have a challenge because he’s going to have a lot of other opportunities to do things. So he’s going to need to stay grounded. But he’s serving the lord. He’s serving the Lord in the face of all of those other things, which is so beautiful to see.

I remember one story too, that was so interesting when this was happening. So I had gotten serious about serving the Lord, and, like I said, I was up in Oregon, I was like a worship leader. That’s what I did all the time. Down in Phoenix, they’re like, “You’re not very good at it so we don’t want you.” But that was cool. It’s cool. So I remember I had signed up to go, they asked me at the college I was at if I would lead this concert of prayer. They needed music at this concert of prayer. And I knew it was going to be. It was basically like senior citizens, kind of going there and doing that. And I was like, “Yeah, I want to serve the Lord.”

I didn’t realize that it was Valentine’s Day. And I was invited to this party where this girl that I liked was going to be at. I didn’t know her very well, but I had been trying to get to know her. So it was this opportunity. Valentine’s Day party. And guess what? You know—same time. You know, like, am I going to go lead this concert of prayer for the senior citizens or am I going to go to this party with this girl that I wanted to get to know more?

So I decided I was going to go for the concert of prayer. And I was walking across campus and—just to add insult to injury—I was walking across campus and we crossed paths, as she was going to the party and I was going to—just randomly crossed paths. And I was like, “What the heck are you doing here?” And it was so funny just to go through that experience. But just fast forward a couple thousand years—I’m married to Brittany and I like her so much. And guess when her birthday is? Valentine’s Day! So it all worked out great for me. So now the Lord’s like, “Hmm? I got you, man. I got you.” So it was kind of fun serving the Lord.

Because, you know, when you’re young, you’re like, “If I serve the Lord he’s going to give me everything I want.” And it is true, but it’s just way down the road, way down the road. So, anyway, so sacrifice. That’s sacrifice. Think that.

If it doesn’t break your heart, it isn’t love. If it doesn’t cost you something it’s not worship. Those are important things to remember.

Support. This book, Tatoos on the Heart was super helpful for my wife and then she taught me and I read the book. Here’s what he says about serving the Lord:

Here’s what we seek. A compassion that can stand in awe at what the poor have to carry, rather than stand in judgment at how they carry it.

So this is that concept. He’s just realized. He works with gangsters in L.A. He calls them home boys. And he realized that, really what they needed—more than someone to tell them they’re bad and doing it wrong, which they were already very aware of—what they needed was someone to just get their shoulder under their burden and feel what it was like to be loved in that way. Then they could see life change.

Then the last thing is faithfulness. Faithfulness. 1 Corinthians 4:2 says the one thing God requires of his servants is they be found faithful. And moms and dads, what your kids need more than anything else from you is they need you to be faithful. What a friend needs more than anything else is someone who’ll be faithful. Faithfulness.

It doesn’t count as faithfulness until it goes against your desires or will. If I went to the Valentine’s party instead of the prayer service no one would have described me as super faithful. But when you’re tired of doing something and you keep doing it, that’s when it becomes faithfulness. When you’re afraid of doing something, but you do it anyway, that’s when it’s called faithfulness. When you won’t gain anything and maybe even be criticized or ridiculed for doing something, but you do it anyway, that’s faithfulness.

And as Jesus said that when we live and die seeking God’s will and his desires to be done instead of our own will and desires, one day we’re going to stand before him, and he’s going to look us in the eyes and he’s going to say, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into your rest.”

Whether or not that’s a big deal to you now, to be able to hear those words from Jesus, I promise you, please understand that there will be a day where you will stand before Jesus and that will be the thing you long to hear more than anything you’ve ever heard before. When you stand before your Maker, who loves you so much that he served you, he gave himself to you, he sacrificed, he shows support, he’s faithful to you. And on that day, for the first time in your whole life, everything will make sense, and you will long to hear him say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” And you won’t regret one sacrifice that you made. You’ll be so thankful for every time you denied yourself for his name’s sake. Every time you got your shoulder under someone else’s burden and walked with them. Every time you served the Lord.

Just to share a little bit of a vision with you—we have a lot of opportunities for you to serve here at the church. We’re going to be laying those things out more and more. But if the Lord is stirring your heart and you know you’re not really serving the Lord, but you’d like to, please let us know. Please contact us. And we can help you. We won’t just throw you out there, but we can help you get to a place where you feel like you are serving the Lord. But also don’t need us. You can pray and see what the Lord would lead.

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Consecration

We’re going to continue in 1 Thessalonians 5. We’re in the middle of a twenty-one day season of fasting and praying for God to light a fire in our hearts that creates a hunger and a thirst for God as well as a hunger and a thirst for his righteousness. We’re doing this because Jesus promised that, if we hunger and thirst for righteousness, we’ll be filled.

Series: As For Me and My House

David Stockton

The message today that we’re going to be talking about is consecrating ourselves. I was so impressed by the Lord—and I want to say this now because we’re going to say a lot of things over the next four hours of being together (that’s a joke)—but I don’t want to miss this. Some people, I think, have forgotten that maybe ninety percent of our Christianity, ninety percent of what it means to follow is Jesus is denying yourself. It’s acknowledging that you have disordered desires that you have to say no to every single day of your life.

Jesus said, “If anyone wants to follow me, come after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow me.” It is so easy—I mean I feel like I forgot this last year, and many of us have—it’s so hard in the culture we’re living in to remember that you shouldn’t just “do you.” That will lead you to selfishness and emptiness. But you should do what Jesus is asking you to do and be who Jesus knows you can be.

It’s this challenging thing that we’re in, but denying ourselves is a huge part of our relationship with God for now. So, this message has a little bit to do with that. So, again, you should leave right now if that doesn’t super exciting to you.

I will say, denying yourself is not just a matter of God wanting you to be miserable. Denying yourself is actually a sign of your love for him. So he receives that as love for him. It’s a beautiful thing. He is worthy of that. And also, denying yourself gets you into the place where you’re going to be able to be with him forevermore. And every single thing that you’ve denied in this life will count as a reward in the life to come. And the glory that shall be revealed to be worthy to be compared with the sufferings that we go through now. These verses are in the Bible for a reason, because denying ourself is such a huge part of our relationship with God.

We’re trying to cultivate this hunger. We’re trying to stir up this hunger. I heard someone say recently, that challenged me a bunch—when the prodigal was hungry, remember the prodigal son who took all of his father’s stuff and spoiled it on licentious living, then he got to a place where he was hungry? When he was hungry, he went to the pigs. But when he was starving, he went back to the father. When I say we’re praying for a hunger, I’m not just praying for a hunger that will get us back to the pigs, I’m praying for a kind of hunger that will actually get us to go home to the father, because we’ve all gone astray.

And our world is full of counterfeit righteousness. Tables have been set before us, full of humanistic ideologies and popular political propaganda claiming to have the high moral ground, claiming that they can satisfy the hunger and solve the problems. But communism, capitalism, socialism, nationalism, progressivism—and all of their friends—have left us high and dry just like all of the societies who looked to them before us. They will never, can never satisfy the human soul and solve any of the problems that we have. Though we try to satisfy our souls with many things, we only truly live, grow and progress by feeding on God’s nutrient-rich word.

Amen? Amen? Scream ‘amen’ kind of deal I think is the only way I think we’re going to counteract the marketing and the propaganda and the populism of our day. In case that happens again, you can scream it.

Augustine said:

“You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.”

Pascal, who liked to follow science, said:

“There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each man which cannot be satisfied by any created thing but only by God the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ.”

And Ronald Rolheiser, who is a Catholic priests who wrote about longing, said:

“There is within us a fundamental dis-ease, an unquenchable fire that renders us incapable, in this life, of ever coming to full peace. This desire lies at the center of our lives, in the marrow of our bones, and in the deep recesses of the soul. Spiritualty is, ultimately, about what we do with that desire. What we do with our longings, both in terms of handling the pain and the hope they bring us, that is our spirituality.”

We have appetites. We have hunger. We have deceptive ideas in our world that play to disordered desires within us that are normalized and even celebrated in our central society. The challenge is great. The way Mark Sayers says this:

Mark Sayers describes the progressive vision of the world as “the kingdom without the King.” We want all of God’s blessings—without submitting to his loving rule and reign. We want progress—without his presence. We want justice—with his justification. We want the horizontal implications of the gospel for society—with the vertical reconciliation of sinners with God. We want society to conform to our standard of moral purity—without God’s standard of personal holiness.

Yes. That’s where we’re at. That’s where we’re at. It’s a problem. It’s a challenge. And those who deny it or try to ignore it will succumb to it. We're called to consecrate ourselves.

So what do we do with the dis-ease and unquenchable desires that we have within us? Well, 1 Thessalonians 5 is Paul, who spent just a few months with these people in Thessalonica, and God did something so supernatural and wonderful that it like stoked a fire in their hearts. And they all decided that they wanted God instead of what the world offered them. They all came together as a community and Paul was teaching them. But, because of persecution, Paul had to leave.

So this young church was just a few months old and Paul had to go on to the next town. But he wrote this letter, 1 Thessalonians, to help encourage them and give them what they need so they could go forward. He tried to give them the nutrients of God’s word so they could go forward and navigate the challenges of life. And these are some final instructions as he’s kind of summing up.

He says this in 1 Thessalonians 5:

12 Now we ask you, brothers and sisters, to acknowledge those who work hard among you, who care for you in the Lord and who admonish you. 13 Hold them in the highest regard in love because of their work. Live in peace with each other. 14 And we urge you, brothers and sisters, warn those who are idle and disruptive, encourage the disheartened, help the weak, be patient with everyone. 15 Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always strive to do what is good for each other and for everyone else.

Then, as we talked about last week, we’re supposed to cultivate gratitude.

16 Rejoice always, 17 pray continually, 18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.19 Do not quench the Spirit. 20 Do not treat prophecies with contempt 21 but test them all; hold on to what is good, 22 reject every kind of evil. 23 May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24 The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.

We’ve broken this section into three weeks. Last week we talked about how to cultivate gratitude and how that can help stoke the fire within us, the hunger within us. This week we’re going to focus on verse 20 through 24, the last part, as this is some way that we can continue to make sure the Spirit is not quenched within us. And we’re going to talk about what consecration means. Then, next week, we’ll look at verse 12 through 15 and talk about what we’re going to do to serve the Lord.

So we’ve kind of housed this all as As for Me and My House. Going into 2021, we will cultivate gratitude. As for Me and My House, we will consecrate ourselves. We’ll figure out what that means for us in 2021. And As for Me and My House, we’ll serve the Lord. We’ll talk about that next week.

So, consecrate ourselves. This is one of the things that we have to do to make sure that the Spirit’s fire is not quenched within us and within the ones that God has given us. Ultimately, God has called you not to change America and make sure all the laws of the land are perfect. I’m not saying that’s a bad work. I’m not saying we shouldn’t put effort there. But what I am saying is that what God has called us to do is take care of the ones that he has given us.

Remember Jesus? Jesus came to this earth and had a big job. And yet, he was extremely small town. Extremely small town. And in the end, when he prayed in John 17, he said, “Father, I have kept the ones you have given me.” And that’s ultimately what God is calling you and me to do. And we are so connected, supposedly, with all of the federalists, nationalistic and even global situations that are in the world—and again, I’m not saying that’s wrong or that’s bad. But sometimes it can make us feel like that’s what we’re supposed to be engaging in. And we spend all our effort doing that and we get discouraged when we don’t see things go our way. We forget to do the really most important work, just to take care of the ones the Lord has given you, that are right there in your own house.

That’s why Jesus didn’t say, “Love everyone.” He said, “Love your neighbor.” And if everyone would just love their neighbor, guess what? Everyone gets the love of Christ.

So we’ve got to take care of the ones the Lord has given us. Start there and that will make a huge difference.

Just look at Jesus’ life. He took care of the ones the Lord had given him. And Christianity’s done pretty well the world over, yeah? He just took care of the ones the Lord gave him and — bam— the single most dominant force for good the world has ever seen in every area, every season of time, every age, every nationality, every language. It has been the single most dominant force for good in the world. It’s encouraging. So, if we can do that, we can take hope that God will take that and use it to make something great.

But here we have, “Do not treat prophecies with contempt, but test them all.” This is something we learned last year, for sure. There were all these people claiming to speak the truth or speak what was right. And we learned how important it is for us to hold on a minute and test these things. We all got duped. We all got fooled quite a bit last year by very powerful marketing campaigns that really housed something that was more poisonous and toxic. And we had to do some research. We had to test everything. We had to develop our filters so that we could hold on to the good and reject what is evil. That’s something that we need to continue. We need to develop our filters.

How do you develop a filter so that you will not be fooled? You get to know the word of God. It’s that simple. I mean, some people say you’ve got to climb up the mountain and stare at your belly button for a little while. You could try it. I don’t know. But I know this will work. This right here will work. It’s served a lot of people for a lot of time that were in much more dire situations than us. It withstood the test of time. It’s trustworthy. It’s true. And it can help us so much filter out what is not good and what is not right. The Bible actually describes itself as a sword that can cut through joint and marrow and really get to the heart of everything. So we’ve got to know the word of God, absolutely.

“May God himself, the God of peace sanctify you through and through.” I love what Paul is saying to these people. He’s not saying, “You need to go and sanctify yourselves.” He’s saying, “I pray that God will sanctify you.” Just like when Jesus said to his disciples, “If you follow me, I will make you into fishers of men. All you have to do is stay close to me. I will do the work to make you into the person that you’re supposed to be.”

So sanctification is an important process of consecration. We need to be set apart. We need to be holy. We need to be other. We need to be alternative. We need to realize that following Jesus is going to require us to go against the grain. And it may require that more and more and more, depending on how our society goes. But that’s what we’re called to be, a peculiar people.

Then, lastly, he says, “May your whole spirit, body and soul be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus.” All of those matter. Body, soul and spirit are all extremely important. Your whole being is to be kept blameless.

Now this is tricky, because we think, “How am I going to be blameless? You don’t know what I’ve done. You don’t know what I’m dealing with.” It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter to God because your unrighteousness will never be more powerful than his righteousness. And through the blood of Jesus Christ, his righteousness is applied to you. How about some good news right there? The blood of Jesus, applied to your life washes out, cancels out everything. In fact, now when God sees you, he sees you as blameless, he sees you robed in the righteousness of Christ when we come to him.

And his whole goal, the work of the Spirit, the work of the word of God in our lives is to get us to the day when we go stand before Jesus, we are presented as a spotless bride. I know it’s a little weird for some of us guys, but just take the analogy. A spotless bride. Blameless. It’s what God’s plan for your life is, if you’ll hold on to him. So this is what Paul was encouraging them with.

So I want to kind of unpack consecration a little bit more. We’re going to do three things. We’re going to think biblically, which is so important for us these days. Think biblically. Think theologically. We’ve got a lot of help. A lot of people have fought some of these battles and sorted through some of this chaos before, and they’ve got some good things to say to us. And we’re going to think practically, because it’s 2021 and we’ve got to leave this place. I mean, leave the church, that’s all I’m saying. You have to walk out of this place. Not like, whoa, leave this place. Not being crazy. Test those prophecies, you know? Whatever. But think biblically, think theologically, and think practically.

First of all, biblically. It’s so important for us to be thinking biblically these days. The Bible has a lot to say about consecration. First of all—brace yourself—when I say consecration, thinking biblically, you should be thinking about circumcision. Now, it’s very rare times where any pastor is going to tell you you should be thinking about circumcision. But if you think about what God was doing in his people, he said to Abraham, “I want you to circumcise every male in your household, and this is going to be a sign that you belong to me. This is going to be a sign of my relationship with you. This is going to be part of your consecration. This is going to be part of your sanctification. I’m calling you out. I’m calling you to be different than all the other nations. The reason I’m doing it is because I want you to be an example of what it’s like to be in a relationship with me, for all of the other nations.”

So Abraham circumcised everybody, including himself. Whoa. And that circumcision carried on as a sign of God’s covenant with the nation of Israel. And there are all kinds of ramifications you can make, but absolutely, one of them is sexual. God wanted his people to be very different sexually than every other nation. Because every other nation didn’t have any boundaries as far as sexuality. Even in their worship of their gods, there was often a sexual element. But God said, “My people are going to be very different sexually.”

Sexuality is a hugely important reality for the flourishing of human society or the demise. When God created the world and there was nothing but goodness, what he did to make sure that goodness could be maintained was he created something in his image and he called it male and female, nothing else. And as soon as we start messing with male and female, we lose the greatest picture of the image of God that he gave us. And then he said that male and female, to even take this further, “I’m going to put them together in some sort of sacred, holy covenant of marriage, where they’re going to become one. And they’re going to produce family. And if everyone will just take care of their own family, then everyone will be taken care of and the goodness can be maintained.” It’s that simple.

Yet, we’re moving the boundaries. We’re wanting to change what God has set in order for our greatest freedom and our greatest flourishing. So he calls his people to consecrate themselves in what seems like very radical, even challenging, self-denial, sacrificial ways, but it’s not because he doesn’t love us. It’s because he’s creating the boundaries that we need for the greatest freedom and the greatest human floushing.

So not only think about circumcision—we’ll move on—think about Samson. Samson was called to be different, to be set apart. So he had this Nazarite vow in the scriptures, which was, he wasn’t supposed to cut his hair, he wasn’t supposed to go near any dead thing, and he wasn’t supposed to —anyone? Anyone? I’m saying that because I can’t remember the third one right now. I remembered it first service. No alcohol! He wasn’t supposed to go near any fermented thing. Whew. Almost had to quit the message right in the middle there. Just kidding. Samson. Nazarite vow.

Think about Daniel. Shadrach, Meschach and Abednego. They’re taken from their place. They’re young men. They’re pulled into Babylon and they’re getting to see what basically, you know, total indulgence looks like. Babylonian culture was powerful, luxurious, all of those things. And these young men just felt this need to consecrate themselves. They said, “We will not eat the king’s meat and we will not drink his wine.” And they consecrated themselves against all the others. And, in the end, they were shown to be wiser, stronger and faster, but they had that call to consecrate themselves. They understood the need, in that moment, that they would be completely overcome by the power and persuasion of that culture if they didn’t real quickly figure out how to cultivate hunger for God. They consecrated themselves.

In the Old Testament, think about Sabbath. Think about tithing. These were things that set apart that community, that they would give a tenth of everything that they made. They would just go and give it to the priest. They would give it to the community at large. That was so bizarre, so different. And that carried on.

And Sabbath. Every once in a while, one day a week they would just chill, and just rejoice and thank God for all that’s been given to them. And there were times where those lines were blurred in Israel’s society and it ended up causing them to go into exile. God was very serious about those things. God considered it robbery when they would not give him a tenth of what they had produced. These were things that would set them apart.

Now go to the New Testament. In the New Testament, the best thing, I think to do is to think about the book of Acts community. And, again, if this is hard for you to understand, you need to read your Bible more. I know I’m going through these things quickly, but you should be reading your Bible. You should be cultivating that in your life, so that when we talk about these things, you’re, “Oh, yeah, yeah. I know what you’re talking about. The book of Acts community.” This is basically the first church, and they were set apart. There was one time where it says that all the people around that first church were in awe and in fear of them, and none of them dared join them. I know that sounds a little weird. They weren’t saying that no one was joining them. They’re saying that people were a little unsure of what to do about them. And daily the Lord was adding to their number those that were being saved.

They were such an alternative community. They were a city on the hill. They were the salt and the light in their communities. It was tangible and evident. And the four things that stuck out were, they would gather together, all of them. And it wasn’t just gathering together that was so fascinating. What was fascinating is that they would gather together as rich and poor and everybody felt the same. They would gather together as Jew and Gentile. But they would love each other. They would gather together, though they all had different political backgrounds or ideologies, but it was no problem when they met together, because there was something that was stronger than all of those. That was the bond of the Spirit and the unity of Christ. And it was remarkable to everybody else who couldn’t get along. Can I get an amen here? You see how this is working out, right?

So the second things was they shared everything in common. Again, a further explanation of this tithing idea. They constantly brought things in together to make sure everybody was okay. They were generous. They were kind. They were not greedy. And it was a puzzle. It was confusing to all those who were trying to get ahead and get rich. And they cared for the sick and the poor. Like, literally, they would go and take care of lepers, even though, at that time they thought leprosy was contagious and could kill them, it didn’t stop them. When the plagues would hit and those type of things, they would go and get the dead and bury them, risking all of that danger. To where Roman writers were saying, basically, “Those Christians are taking better care of the Roman dead, poor and sick than we are, and we’re the empire.” Amen? Amen? Amen?

And then the last thing, and probably the most fascinating to everybody at that point that caused them to be so set apart and so different was the concept of enemy love. When the experienced persecution, hatred, disadvantage, whatever it was, they would respond with love. They would respond with the good news of Jesus Christ. Enemy love. Picture better than anywhere else when Stephen is being martyred and the religious leaders are throwing rocks at him. And they will keep throwing rocks until he’s not breathing anymore. And as the rocks are hitting them, he just cries out, “Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing.” He’s full of love for them.

It was radical. It was beautiful. It was alternative. It was different. It was set apart. It was consecrated. And it’s our inheritance. It’s our heritage to live up and into that. It’s so necessary for us to figure out consecration.

So that’s thinking biblically. Now let’s think theologically. This might be a little bit painful, but hopefully not. Theologically. Basically, when we talk about soteriology, that’s the study of salvation, we know that Jesus is the Savior. He came. To save us. But the salvation that is unpacked in the scriptures anymore through theology has three different aspects to it. Salvation that we experience with Jesus first of all is justification.

That’s what we receive. When we receive Jesus, when we confess our sins and say, “Jesus, I need you,” and we call on his name, we are saved. But the first step is justification, which basically, now God looks as you just as if you never sinned at all. His righteousness, the blood of Jesus is that powerful, that it completely wipes out all debt, all sin forevermore. Even to the extent where, if you sin in the future, bam, his price that he paid is counted for that as well. And so you are justified, you are seated in heavenly places. It’s done. Your names in the book. Over. Justification. It’s one of the greatest things to unpack and understand.

But when I hang out with you, I don’t see you that way. There is a reality. We all know inside of us, though we have been justified, though we are saved, though we know our place is in heaven, we’re all good to go with God, we look in the mirror and say, “There’s still some things wrong.” I hang out with you a little while and I’m like, “There’s some things wrong.” You get to know me and you’re like, disappointed.

Because there is another aspect to our salvation that is called sanctification. And sanctification is the journey. It’s the work of God every day in the life of a believer to renew them, renew them back into their original design, to get them back into the image of who God wants them to be. Ultimately, the image of Christ. And it’s this daily work. Sanctification. Sanctification. Where God is renewing, he’s setting us apart, he’s making us holy. And that’s the work that God does every day.

The way the Westminster Catechism says it, again, a theological document. It says sanctification is…

“…the work of God’s free grace,…”

Hallelujah! God didn’t make us figure this out. He said, “You’re not going to figure it out, so let me send my Son to do it.

…whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God,…

I just explained some of that. And catch this, this is so important:

…and are enabled more and more to die unto sin, and live unto righteousness.”

This is where what I said in the beginning comes into play. Ultimately, the goal of the work of the Spirit of God, yes, it’s to get you to be able to live beautifully and wonderfully and experience all that God has for you; but one of the main things that the work of the Spirit in your life is supposed to do is hep you win the battle with your disordered desires. It’s to help you deny yourself so that you’re not overcome by the sinful nature and desires that are housed still within you until the day you die or Jesus comes back.

I mean, that’s good/bad news, right? It’s bad news because the truth of the Scripture is, until the day we die we’re going to have some of these desires. We’re going to have some of these things within us that long for the things that will kill us and destroy our relationship with God.

But the good news is, you’re not alone. The good news is God puts his Spirit inside you, puts his community around you. He puts his words in you to help you combat those things so that you don’t have to succumb to those things.

And just because you have some of those disordered desires does not disqualify you from living under righteousness and being extremely fruitful in your life. And, somehow, even those disordered desires, the only reason the Lord leaves them there is because he knows they’re going to work in you a dependency on him and a sympathy for those around you, or an empathy for those around you, that’s going to be very, very fruitful.

But you’ve got to understand, there are deceptive ideas in our world that play to disordered desires within us that are normalized and being even celebrated in our sinful society. And we need that sanctification process.

The really great news is there’s one more aspect to the soteriology, the salvation, is glorification. You’ve got justification, sanctification, glorification. Glorification, summed up real easy, is when Jesus comes back or we go to be with him, no more sinful nature. No more disordered desires. We are free forevermore to just live into the righteousness and goodness of God. Amen? Amen.

Lastly, thinking practically, I’m just going to give you a little illustration here of thinking practically about consecration. Where I live, some of you have been over at my house, by where I live, there are thirteen humans, including me. Most of them are smaller. There are twelve chickens. There are two little goats. There are two giant tortoises. I think they’re still there. They’ve been underground for a while lately. There’s a bearded dragon. I don’t see him very much, but I guess he’s there.

One of the things we’ve had to do is we’ve had to build some pens, right? Chicken coop, a goat pen, built some fencing around. And we’ve done this because we’ve had animals before that haven’t made it. They haven’t made it because we have coyotes and we have bobcats and we have raccoons. They’ve got to eat too, you know?

One of the things that I’ve had to do is I’ve had to get really good at building these coops and these pens to make sure the bad guys don’t get in there to get the animals, right? And I build them, and that’s fine and all, but raccoons are smart. They’ve got opposable thumbs and they’re like, rrrrr rrrr, little by little, rrrr, rrrr, and so I have to go and do boundary maintenance. I have to continue to mend the fences. I have to continue to check and see where the holes are and build those things back up.

And I also have to do something else. I had to get a German Shepherd. It’s actually my daughter’s dog. His name is Lucky. And I leave him out there at night. He wants a job. He’s a German Shepherd. He loves jobs. And he goes out there at night and he sits in a chair. Literally, this big comfy chairs and he just sits there and watches. It’s a cartoon, but it’s my life. And we’ve got no problems. If I’ll mend the fences, if I’ll do the boundary maintenance and I’ll keep Lucky out there, we don’t have any problems. And what we’re supposed to do for our own souls and four the people that the Lord has given us, is we’re supposed to be people who do boundary maintenance.

And our society now is wanting to completely erase all of the boundaries. They think that freedom is “no boundaries.” They think that, if we really loved the chickens and the goats, we would get rid of all of those things that are holding them in. And what has happened to every society before us who’s done that, who’s tried to throw off the old, archaic, oppressive word of God and biblical boundaries—they get decimated. They get destroyed. God knows what he’s doing. He has set the boundaries in a place, not to limit our joy, but to give us the most freedom possible in this life, and to set up the greatest chance for human flourishing. But the boundaries are important.

And we, as people of God, are to be about boundary maintenance. I don’t know how to legislate righteousness. I don’t know how to vote in this or that. I mean, obviously the Democrat and Republican parties are both lost. Neither of them house the word of God. You might think one does more than another. But go ahead and talk to another Christian, and they’re going to convince you another way. We’re not building that. We’re building the Kingdom of God. And I think we should fight the federalist and nationalistic battles. We should fight for Arizona. We should fight for the things we believe in, absolutely. But, at the end of the day, what we’re measured on is what we’ve done with the ones that the Lord’s give us.

As for me and my house, we will consecrate ourselves. We will do boundary maintenance. As for me and role as a father, I will let my daughter have a phone. And I will do boundary maintenance every half hour for the rest of her life. And I do. Because there are coyotes. There are raccoons. There are bobcats. And way worse.

And it’s not that I just create these boundaries and suffocate her. But I have to figure out how to create boundaries and do boundary maintenance, and then teach her to do that for her own soul. Because, at some point, she’s gone. And if I haven’t helped her learn how to do boundary maintenance and see the beauty and wonder of it all, it doesn’t matter what I said or didn’t. And that’s what we need to be doing.

Just to unpack it a little bit more, as we’re thinking practically here. Ten Commandments. Start there. Start there. But not in King James Version. Like, start with “You shall have no other Gods before me,” and figure out what that means. “Remember the Sabbath.” Figure out what that means for you right now. “Honor your father and mother.” And on and on. Unpack those things. Those are boundaries that God has given us for human flourishing. And, ultimately, those things have become the Judeo-Christian ethic.

And the Judeo-Christian ethic is the best thing that has ever been given to a society. Wherever the Judeo-Christian ethic has been applied and embraced as a society, you have experienced freedom and human flourishing. Ever heard of Israel? Against all the opposition and challenge that they have experienced, if you go there, there is flourishing and there is freedom. And the American experiment was that same thing. Let’s apply the Judeo-Christian ethic in a Constitutional governmental form. And what has it caused? It has caused freedom and flourishing, no doubt about it.

And yet, we want to get rid of it. We want to throw it off as oppressive, abusive and archaic, and call it progressivism. As for this house, Living Streams Church, as long as I have breath in me, no. It will not live here. I don’t care if there’s two people left in this church, it will not live here. I don’t care if they shut us down. I don’t care what happens, that’s not going to happen here. We’re going to be about boundary maintenance. And we have really good boundaries, and a really kind God, who knows how to get us where we need to be. And I’m so thankful that, ultimately, I’m going to lose the breath in my lungs. And, ultimately, I can talk big, but I’m nothing. But the last verse in this section says, “The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.”

So, in my daughter’s life, ultimately, I can try, but it’s a promise of my father that he’s going to do it. And it’s a promise of the father that, if you let him, he will do it.

If you’re working ninety hours a week in pursuit of the almighty dollar, understand that you move the boundaries. The boundaries in your life are in the wrong place. There may an underlying issue that’s driving you to move the boundaries in the wrong place. So boundary maintenance would involved moving the boundary back to the right place, as well as addressing the underlying heart issues that drive you to move the boundary to the wrong place.

If someone has a sexual partner outside the boundaries of scripture, the covenant of marriage, one man, one woman, then boundary maintenance would be to end the out-of-boundary relationship, deal with the issues driving you to engage in that behavior, and do the ministering of healing the heart of everyone affected by the moving of those boundaries.

None of this disqualifies you. It’s not like God said, “Hey, you moved the boundary. Sorry.” It’s just a matter of coming home. It’s just a matter of returning to the Father, and he’ll say, “Okay, let’s get the boundaries back in place. Let’s start doing the healing. Let’s get back on track.” And here we go. That’s the good news of Jesus.

Let’s pray. Let’s just bow our heads and listen in as we close. And as you’re trying to hear from the Lord, I want to read this verse and just see if something pops out as maybe the Spirit is highlighting this. It’s Galatians 5 [paraphrase]:

The things your sinful old self want is sexual sins, sinful desires, wild living, worshiping false gods, witchcraft, hating, fighting, being jealous, being angry, arguing, dividing into little groups and thinking the other groups are wrong, false teachings, wanting something someone else has, killing other people, using strong drink and wild parties, and all things like this. I told you before and I’m telling you again that those who do these things have no place in the holy nation of God. But the fruit that comes from having the Holy Spirit in our lives is love, joy, peace, not giving up, being kind, being good, having faith, being gentle and being the boss over our own desires.

Jesus, we are undone before you. As we hear this, we are reminded of how weak and frail we are against the challenges in our lives. But Lord, we don’t lose heart. We don’t despair because you, you are able and you are willing and you are for us and you are with us, no matter what we’ve done. So restore unto us the joy of our salvation and renew a right spirit within us. Create in us a clean heart, God. And show us where we’ve allowed the boundaries to be moved and help us put them back in place, Lord. We pray all this in your name, Jesus. Amen.

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Guest User 7/28/19 Guest User 7/28/19

Lion Heads and Bear Rugs

Video (Bill Grove):
God says, “I’ll never leave you or forsake you. And God has been faithful to me all through my life in that regard. My name is Bill Grove. I’ve been a Christian, officially, for sixty years—seriously, for thirty-five years. In the early seasons of my life, God was faithful. When I was not paying attention, God was faithful, he was right there.

Lloyd Baker
Series: Generational Blessing

Lloyd Baker

Series: Generational Blessing

Video (Bill Grove):

God says, “I’ll never leave you or forsake you. And God has been faithful to me all through my life in that regard. My name is Bill Grove. I’ve been a Christian, officially, for sixty years—seriously, for thirty-five years. In the early seasons of my life, God was faithful. When I was not paying attention, God was faithful, he was right there. He protected me. He kept me out of danger almost as if, “I’ve got you. There’s something else, later, that I have planned for you.”
I was baptized and came to the Lord when I was twelve years old. At the time, there wasn’t a great deal of discipleship done for me in a little, small town in North Carolina. I pretty much lived my life knowing of Jesus, but not knowing him personally for the next twenty five years.
I was employed in North Carolina as a head golf professional at a small, private club. Politics got sideways and I was relieved of my position. My security in life was in that particular job. I can remember going in the shower one night, having lost that job, and having a small family, and I looked up into the ceiling of that shower and I can only remember one verse at that time. Odd, but that’s the way God is sometimes. “I cast all my cares upon you.”
The moment I did that, the power of God fell on me so strong that I fell down in the shower. I wept for, like, thirty minutes. I felt like I was carrying 500 pounds on my shoulders When I finally got off the floor of that shower, I felt like I could lift 500 pounds. That was why the second baptism. I turned my life over to Christ again at 37 years old and started the journey,
From that time forward, God has been faithful to my prayers. Incredible miracles. Incredible testimonies. Incredible experiences with Holy Spirit. Things that make you hunger for more each day.
I think the thing that I would like to pass along to young Christians is, and it’s in the Bible but it’s really expressed succinctly in the Message. The verse is, “Better is one day in his courts than a thousand elsewhere.” One day in his presence. One day following him, is better than a thousand days anywhere else. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Mark Buckley:

Thank you to Bill Grove. He’s an eleven o’clock guy and a wonderful man. We’ve got another wonderful guy here with us today. Lloyd and Judy Baker are here. Lloyd and Judy were sent out from Living Streams 2004. They planted Streams Church on the west side. It’s been an incredible, wonderful, fruitful church. They’ve gotten involves in missions through their daughter in Japan, in Ecuador—all over the place. They’re doing wonderful things for Jesus. I’m really proud to be their friend and I’m really thankful that David invited them back here.

He’s here because he’s got a message about the power of God. The power of a generational blessing is more powerful than any curse, any family tree that’s messed up, anything. It’s all about his grace and he’s chosen us to bless us. Lloyd, come up, preach and thank you for being with us.

Lloyd Baker:

This is my wife, Judy, if you don’t know. How may didn’t know Judy? Is there a couple our there? Yeah. She’s amazing, in case you didn’t know that. Would you agree? Okay, thank you. That’s the right answer.

Thanks, Mark. I wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for Pastor Mark believing in us. In 1999 we were attending Living Streams and he came to me and asked if I would be a part of the staff. I just thought I’d never be a senior pastor again. Thank you, Mark. He believed in me. From there I blossomed.

And I was Pastor David’s first boss here at Living Streams. I was the guy that oversaw this guy. We have had this amazing journey together. We really learned to love each other through our diversities, and through that, we became very powerful together.

I’m going to start today by taking about my daughter’s dog. Her name is Brittany. This is her dog. That is a Rhodesian Ridgeback. She graduated from medical school. She had researched dogs and said, “This is the dog I want.” This was part of her present. Rhodesian ridgebacks are a unique dog. They were, I guess created is the right word, in South Africa. When the Europeans went down there, they wanted a dog that would protect their crops and their animals. So they took this wild dog from Rhodesia and brought European dogs and bred them together until they got this perfect dog that hunted in packs. They were bred to hunt in lions. That’s what they were bred for. They’re very relational.

A year ago, at exactly this time, I was in northern Arizona. I love to pick berries. There are some wild, black raspberries in northern Arizona. I’m not going to tell you where they are. But they’re called black caps. It’s the Arkansas in me. I love to pick them and make jams and other things.

I was scouting out a spot and I had Gemma, her dog, with me. She was off leash because she’s trained and sticks next to you. We call her a velcro dog. She likes to be right next to you. And so I’m in shorts because I was just scouting. And I sat down to just pick a couple of berries. And out of the woods stumbles a black bear. I know Chad. Chad, would you mind standing? I’m not saying you’re a bear - a teddy bear, right?

Anyway, a bear came out of the forest right about there. And I turned to grab Gemma. Needless to say, she’s bred to hunt, and she lunges between me and the bear. And then the bear takes off running. Hey, Chad, because you stood up, I have some black raspberry jam. And you get some jam, and you get some jam. I’m just kidding.

So the bear takes off running and Gemma takes off chasing the bear. And they’re both super fast. I’m in shorts and now I’m running through the berry patch and just ripping up my legs. Because if my daughter gets killed by a bear — yeah. So I’m running after the bear and her dog. They’re out of sight but I know the general direction. Finally, I catch up to them, and there’s the dog, looking up a tree. And there’s the bear up in the tree. She treed a bear!

And my daughter is so mad at me. But she brags about that moment to everybody she knows. “This is my lion hunting dog who treed a bear.”

The question I want to pose to you today is, Do you have any stories where you slew a lion? Stories where you killed a bear? Stories that will passed down from generation to generation? Because these stories can bring courage to your children, and bravery to your grandchildren, and tenacity and stamina for generations to come.

Today, in the word, we’re going to learn about how bear rugs and lion heads catapulted a shepherd boy into a king. I spoke this message about seven years ago and Pastor David asked if I would share again with you today.

We’re going to be in 1 Samuel 16. King David is really introduced in the Scripture right about here, Chapter 16, verses 2 and 3.

The Lord said [to Samuel], “Take a heifer with you and say, ‘I have come to sacrifice to the Lord.’ 3 Invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show you what to do. You are to anoint for me the one I indicate.”

So, the prophet, the priest Samuel was supposed to go to Bethlehem and find Jesse’s family. They call Jesse’s family to this special feast. And that place he was going to anoint the new king of Israel. So, I can only imagine that there was a buzz around the house—that all the guys were getting ready. Cleansing themselves, putting on some Old Spice or something like that. And they all showed up to the feast.

And everyone was there, seven of the eight brothers. And David was left behind. He was out tending sheep. He’s out there by himself with the sheep and the goats. He probably was a little disappointed. Maybe he had his little lyre there and he’s singing Country/Western songs to the sheep and the goats. And my guess is he’s depressed. And everybody is there at the feast.

We all hold the life of David in great value, but his parents, his father and his brothers did not. We think he’s a man after God’s own heart. He’s a warrior. But they dismissed him as a snotty, little, younger brother; and not even his dad believed in him.

So, after the meal, all the boys are presented to Samuel. Samuel begins to look at them, and he begins to reject every one of them. He goes through all seven children, and he says, “Is there one left?”

And nobody has brought up David’s name already. So jumping down to verse 11:

So he asked Jesse, “Are these all the sons you have?”
“There is still the youngest,” Jesse answered. “He is tending the sheep.”
Samuel said, “Send for him; we will not sit down until he arrives.”

12 So he sent for him and had him brought in. He was glowing with health and had a fine appearance and handsome features.

Then the Lord said, “Rise and anoint him; this is the one.”

And you would think after that moment that, all of a sudden, his father and his brothers would hold him in high esteem, knowing that he was being anointed. But that’s not the story. They actually had more contempt for him than ever before. He got sent back to the sheep and the goats.

Daddy sends all the boys (Chapter 17), he sends all the boys to the front line to fight the Philistines, except for David. David’s left back and all David is good for is taking some snacks to his brothers. So the story goes on. He takes some Cheez Whiz in one hand and Wheat Things in another, and a couple of Hillshire Farms sausage. In Chapter 17 we see what happens:

17 Now Jesse said to his son David, “Take this ephah of roasted grain and these ten loaves of bread for your brothers and hurry to their camp. 18 Take along these ten cheeses to the commander of their unit.

See? I told you it was cheese and crackers. He takes them there for his brothers.

28 When Eliab, David’s oldest brother, heard him speaking with the men, he burned with anger at him and asked, “Why have you come down here? And with whom did you leave those few sheep in the wilderness? I know how conceited you are and how wicked your heart is; you came down only to watch the battle.”…
32 David said to Saul, “Let no one lose heart on account of this Philistine; your servant will go and fight him.”
33 Saul replied, “You are not able to go out against this Philistine and fight him; you are only a young man, and he has been a warrior from his youth.”

No one believes in David after he’s been anointed. Not even Saul, the king, believes in him. But yet, God has anointed him. This is the point. Right? If you’re waiting for affirmation, you’re going to be waiting a long time. Many times the reason people shy away from leadership and acts of bravery and their divine destiny is because they’re waiting for someone to give them affirmation. From your spouse. From your children. From your boss. From your pastor. Some of you are held captive by parents who do not believe in you.

Affirmation is not the point. Anointing is the point. Affirmation is nice, but anointing is irreplaceable. Anointing is the divine knowledge that God has specifically gifted you and called you to a task. And it’s never dependent upon man’s approval. If you’re constantly waiting for affirmation and confirmation, you’re going to spend a lot of time in deliberation and frustration. So lean into your anointing. Accept your divinely appointed task, regardless of affirmation.

I think there are so many ministries in the church that are understaffed because we pause for affirmation. And we’re frozen because of insecurity. So, again, if you’re constantly waiting for affirmation, you’re going to spend a lot of time in deliberation and frustration. So let’s see what happens:

34 But David said to Saul, “Your servant has been keeping his father’s sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, 35 I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it. 36 Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God. 37 The Lord who rescued me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will rescue me from the hand of this Philistine.”
Saul said to David, “Go, and the Lord be with you.”

David had a huge advantage over every other man standing there, facing the battle; because back home, on the mother’s side of the bed, lay a bear rug. And when she woke up in the morning, she stepped out, not on a cold, dirty floor, she stepped out on a bear rug. And when her friends would come over, she would say, “Come here. Look at this bear rug. My son was out tending the sheep—David—and when a bear came, he took his sling shot and struck that bear down and today I walk on a bear rug.”

And every time David walked past their bedroom, he saw a reminder that God rescues and delivers. He had an advantage over everybody else. Over the headboard of his bed was this lion trophy mounted on the wall. So every night before he went to bed and every morning when he woke up, he was reminded that God delivers his people.

He had an advantage. So that moment, when he looked at the Philistine, he had a flash back and he remembered the bear and the lion. He said, “If God will rescue and deliver me from this, he will rescue and deliver me from this giant.” David had a huge advantage. The bear and the lion and Goliath will be the same.

If we never answer the bell for the first round, we will never have the courage for the fifth round. You see, one small victory leads to a larger victory. All to the glory and the power of God. But that power of God was available to every man there. And only the one who had a bear rug and a lion’s head stepped up to the task. Perhaps nobody there had one. And perhaps they didn’t have all these things. So they stood there, frightened. If you don’t take on the bear, you’ll never take on the lion. If you don’t take on the lion, you definitely will never take on the giant.

The story goes on and he does some sort of Braveheart thing where he kills Goliath and he cuts off his head. We won’t go into that part of it. But one thing he does is, he takes the sword and he puts it in the temple of God as a memorial to what God had done for him. I’m not sure I would have done that. I think I would have taken it home and put it over my dining room table and then invited my father and all my brothers to dinner. And I probably would have served something like swordfish and said, “This fish reminds me of the sword that I used.” I don’t know. That’s me. David was a lot more humble. He took it to the house of God as a memorial.

Fast forward years. Davis is about to become king. People are singing songs about him. Saul gets wind of it and Saul’s trying to kill him. So they are chasing after David and he is fleeing for his life. He ends up at the temple and he asks the priest for something to eat for him and his band of men. And he says to the priest, “We need weapons to protect ourselves because we had to run away in haste.” And here’s the conversation between him and the priest. It’s found in 1 Samuel 21:8

8 David asked Ahimelek, “Don’t you have a spear or a sword here? I haven’t brought my sword or any other weapon, because the king’s mission was urgent.”
9 The priest replied, “The sword of Goliath the Philistine, whom you killed in the Valley of Elah, is here; it is wrapped in a cloth behind the ephod. If you want it, take it; there is no sword here but that one.”
David said, “There is none like it; give it to me.”

He’s fleeing for his life. He’s running. It’s a tough time. It’s a dry time. He ends up there and the priest says, “The only sword I have is this one.” And David flashes back and again and he says, “I remember that sword. There’s no sword like that sword. Give it to me.”

Because he remembers that God is a God who rescues and delivers. And this time, he’s in a tough situation. He says, “But I remember the bear and I remember the lion and I know, because of this sword, it will be okay and God will rescue me.”

Many times God gave the nation of Israel great victories. The Red Sea. Joshua is when they are going into the Promised Land and the same thing sort of happens to them there. So I want to read from Chapter 4:

5 …, “Go over before the ark of the Lord your God into the middle of the Jordan. Each of you is to take up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites,

So the Jordan River had split. They walked across on dry land. They’re on the other side and this is what Joshua’s telling the people:

…Each of you is to take up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, 6 to serve as a sign among you. In the future,

[this is really important]

when your children ask you, ‘What do these stones mean?’ 7 tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever.”

When David becomes king, he keeps up this tradition. Every victory he has, he puts away swords and shields in the temple of God so that the people from generations will know the mighty hand of God.

We’re going to fast forward a couple more years. David is dead. Ahab and Jezebel have now taken over the ruling of Israel. They had actually died. They were ungodly rulers and they brought in all kinds of false gods into Israel. So now there’s a struggle between some of their lineage and the lineage of David. So they begin to kill off all of David’s relatives, so that they would have it, but there’s one left in the civil conflict. His name is Joash. He was a young baby and they hid him in the temple. They took him to the temple and hid him. When he was about seven, the word got out that there was still one left in the lineage of David in the temple. Here’s the story of that in 2 Kings 11. These guys find out and they’re on their way to kill Joash.

9 The commanders of units of a hundred did just as Jehoiada the priest ordered. Each one took his men—those who were going on duty on the Sabbath and those who were going off duty—and came to Jehoiada the priest. 10 Then he gave the commanders the spears and shields that had belonged to King David

So these people are on their way to take this life. And all the priests who are on duty, they call everybody together and he says, “Listen, take all these swords and take all these shields from the victories of David, that God gave to David, this memorial, and now stand guard over this child.”

…The guards, each with weapon in hand, stationed themselves around the king—near the altar and the temple, from the south side to the north side of the temple. 12 Jehoiada brought out the king’s son and put the crown on him; he presented him with a copy of the covenant and proclaimed him king. They anointed him, and the people clapped their hands and shouted, “Long live the king!”

So here’s a seven-year-old surrounded by men who had the treasures of the kingdom of God that David had won in victories. So all these victories—get this—they’re protecting the future of his lineage. David’s lineage was saved because of his past victories.

Our willingness to battle issues fuels the faith of generations to come. Our victories are the stepping stones to their greatness. Joash, at age seven, became king and he ruled for forty years. And he is heralded as one of the outstanding kings of Judah. And I can’t help but think that when he was young, perhaps he was wandering around and saw all these swords and shields. And maybe he asked the question, “What are these about?” And maybe one old priest sat him down and told him all these stories about lions and giants and bears (Oh, my!) Told him the story of every victory. And he knew that he was standing there today because of the victories of his forefathers.

My oldest daughter, Sarah, had diving scholarships. She was a springboard diver. And I forced her to go to colleges to look at them. And every time we went to look at a coillege, she said, “Dad, God called me to Japan.” I remember that day.

Pastor David and I actually led mission trips around the world. We went to South African in 2002. In 2004 we took 42 teenagers to the Czech Republic. I don’t know why we did that. I think we were crazy. But we did.

So she had been around the world. She was touched, but nothing like this. But in 2005 we took a team to do a Young Life camp in Japan. And as we were coming home, on that plane, she broke down, grieving, weeping. I told my wife, “That’s the call of God.”

So we’re looking at colleges and she said, “Dad, you don’t understand. God called me to Japan.”

She left, I think 13 years ago, and she’s never moved back. I remember once I asked her to give her testimony. She said, “I don’t have a testimony, Dad.” I said, “Yeah, you do. You have a father whose step-father beat him. You have a father whose biological father left at 2 and he’s a womanizer. You have a mother who has this faith that she never was fully engaged with her family, and now you live with this heritage of victories of the past. And that’s why you’re here today.”

She was there when Pastor Mark asked us if we would pray about starting a church in the West Valley. He had this vision. I remember the conversation because I told Mark, “Can I just keep my house over here at 32nd Street and Cactus, just in case it fails? I’ll just commute for a year or two.”

And Mark said, “No. You’ve got to live with the people you pastor.”

So we were out there, looking for a house. We finally found the perfect house. We knew the house would be our church office and it would be the youth group meeting place on Tuesday night. We found a model home that would be perfect for us. We thought it was amazing. And the whole family was there, my wife and the girls. We were five thousand dollars short on the down payment, so we were a little disappointed. We got in our car and started to leave. We were a couple of minutes down the road and something just hit me. I drove back and I said to the guy, “If I post date a check for a week, would you give me a week to come up with this money?”

He said, “Yeah, I can do that.”

So we took the plot map and, as a family, my wife and my daughters and I, we walked that property and just prayed and asked for a miracle. I think she was a junior in high school and our other daughter was in eighth grade. Every day they came home—you know, we had a week. And, “Did God give us the money?” I’m like, “Mmmm, not today.” I’m like, why did I do that? I mean, that’s really bold. Day two. Day three. No. No. No. And then, day five, a very good friend of ours from Living Streams took me out for lunch. And he said, “I heard about your house.” And he slid across a check for give thousand dollars and he said, “You guys have been so gracious to my family.”

That day, when they came home, my daughter was there when she saw that miracle, that God provides. So, in her mind, she really thinks that, if you answer the call of God, he always gets your back. See, that’s what she believes. She didn’t give it a second thought.

When you have bear rugs on your floor and lion heads on your wall, giants don’t scare you anymore. Imagine a world where children saw their parents through the power of Jesus Christ confront and conquer nagging sins. Parents confronting the demons of the past, when nobody believed in you, and overcoming by the blood of Jesus Christ. Where children saw their fathers lead them and their families spiritually. Where families let faith, not fear, direct their finances. Where giving to God and the church was not negotiable.

My youngest daughters is a P.A. She went a different route. She went to school and studied. So when she first started getting her paychecks—she makes like twice what I do—she just started tithing automatically. She said to me one day, “Dad, I have no idea why people wouldn’t tithe.” That’s because she lived in a house where we believed that, if you do that, God will just take care of you.

Imagine a world where young people dared to step out and do missions. They saw where their mother shared her faith unashamedly. Where the people on Sunday, that’s the people on Monday through Saturday. Where the word of God was honored over fear of the world. Where every house of every follower of Jesus Christ was full of bear rugs, lion heads and shields.

We have bought the lie that God is more concerned with our comfort than he is our conquering. We have been given an opportunity to build a trophy room for our king, but we must engage. We must give sacrificially. We must serve unconditionally. And we must live for a purpose greater than our own. Because I know that our king is more than worthy.

Talking about my younger daughter, when she was looking at universities, she had this unique privilege. When we were at this one university, we happened to be only a couple of hours away from where I was a teenager in the Ozark mountains in Arkansas. I said, “Let’s go for a drive.” We showed up to this little church called Drakes Creek Regular Primitive Baptist Church. I don’t know if they broke off of the Irregular Baptist Church, but they’re the Irregular Baptist Church.

Anyway, there was somebody there and they opened up the church. She got to see the altar where what should have been became what the Lord wanted in my life. Out in that graveyard, she got to see the gravestone of my stepdad who, after he left us when I was fifteen, he ended up killing himself. And she saw what could have been and the place at that altar, of what became. Because it was at that altar that I committed my life to Jesus Christ. It was at that altar that I answered the call to be a minister. I walked her down to Drakes Creek, to the exact spot where I was water baptized—where the old man was buried and the new man rose. She had this amazing opportunity to see bear rugs and lion heads.

Do your children know your stories? I think that we need to have the stories and I think sometimes we have let the altar go away, for whatever reason. I think there’s power in finding those places, and telling those stories and having those moments, and having a specific spot where you can tell your children, “It was at this moment, at this time, on this date, where this is what the Lord did for me. I want to tell you that story. And I want to tell you this story, and what he provided here, and when he did that.”

Perhaps you’ve never surrendered to the grace of Jesus Christ—you have never made a decision to fully follow him. Let this altar be that altar that you tell your children about. Perhaps you need direction. You feel called, but you’re unsure. Let this altar right here be that altar that you tell your children about. Perhaps there’s a bear directly in your path, and it seems insurmountable. A lion of financial debt. A bear of sickness. A giant of memories of the hurt from abusive situations. Let this altar, today let this altar be the altar that you tell your children about.

We don’t think altars are that important anymore. But you know, when Joshua crossed the Jordan river, he said, “Go back and get stones and build a memorial—an altar for God. So that every time you pass this place and your children ask, you can say, ‘That was the day the Lord delivered us.’”

I’m going to ask you stand with me today and I’m going to pray for you. But then, after I pray for you, this is a moment for you. If you fit any of those categories or anything else, and you say, “There’s just something in my path that seems insurmountable,” I want you to come down to this altar today, and the Lord will just start doing something in your heart.

Lord, I thank you for all the times that I had to stick a bear directly in the face. And by your power, by your grace, you took care of that. Father, thank you that you’re a good father, and that you guide and you lead; and even in the tough times, I can remember all the goodness that you’ve had for me, and I can walk through with faith. Today, help us to have the courage to take up the fight, no matter what that fight is. And I pray that in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION® NIV®,
Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.