Church as God's Greatest Creation

David Stockton
Series: Ephesians

We’re going to be starting a new book today: Ephesians Chapter 1 is where we’re going to be. I’m going to give you guys a little bit of insight into what we’ve been working on this whole year. We’ve been trying to sneak attack you guys a little bit.

Our leadership team went away last August. We were really seeking the Lord for the year 2019, which is the year we are in. We really felt that one of the things that kept coming up was the idea of “Family Strong.” We wanted to see how we can strengthen families. As we defined it more and more, we ultimately landed on, we wanted to see the households that you and I foster, that you and I create, that they would become more spiritually strong. So that’s something that we’ve done this whole year. We want family strong.

Up until this day right now, we’ve been focusing more on the biological family. We did Origins of Innocence where we kind of talked about generational type stuff, we did prayer and fasting at the beginning of the year. Home Full of Hope was our goal for fasting and prayer. We did things like Other Hours and all of those sermon series, Freedom Immersion. We’ve done all of those things. We did classes. Because, ultimately,  we were trying to get whatever kind of good resources we could into our households, hoping that they would become places where the good things of God could grow more easily.

What we’re shifting into now for the rest of this year is the same, exact concept—same banner, “Family Strong,” but we’re going to try to get a vision for what is church as family. When we read the Bible and we see Jesus’ life, he talks about the church, the people of God being family. Even, at one point, he said, “Who are my brothers? Who is my mother?” When his actual mother and brother were outside looking for him. And he answered that question by saying, “The people who follow God are my brothers. They are my mothers;” in so doing, in some way, kind of elevating the relationship that we have with the people of God, even above our own biological family. The Bible is very clear about making sure we don’t neglect our biological family. Some of you are like, “Man, my biological family, I’ve been neglecting for years. They’re crazy.” But that’s not exactly what we’re talking about.

We’re really trying to see the people of God, the Church family, not just here at Living Streams, but all around Phoenix, all around the world, every tribe, every tongue—it’s really a fantastic, amazing thing to get a vision for. And that’s what we’re going to be trying to do over these next few months. Not only get the vision for it, but let that vision kind of direct our lives into all that God has for us in the Church as family.

We also are going through some time as a nation and as a people, where things are a bit heavy. I wrote this in a weekly email, but I want to bring it up today, as well. 

When our eyes have been blinded by the searing pain of deadly shootings, the heavy burden of poverty’s constant ramifications, and the crippling curse that sin has brought upon humanity, we need a vision. We need a vision in days like this. We need a vision or else we’ll find ourselves succumbing to the sorrow of the Slough of Despond.

Now, that phrase comes from The Pilgrim’s Progress, which is a book describing the life of someone who’s trying to find his way into the life of Christ. As he’s going on his journey, he comes upon this bog of some sort, this swamp. And it’s called the Slough of Despond. Even when you say that, “The Slough of Despond,” that describes perfectly what I go through at times in my life. 

What that is helping us to identify with, the Bible is very clear that we, as a people, are living in a cursed world. I know we hate to hear that. It’s so frustrating and there are other truths that are just as real. But that is a fact that the Bible does not beat around the bush about. So there is a heaviness. I’ve been experiencing it recently. And it’s triggered by things in the news and all of that at times. Sometimes it’s triggered by my own soul. Or loved ones that I know are going through hard times. 

But the Slough of Despond is basically a description of what it’s like to live and be really aware of the curse that came into our world because of sin. Because Adam and Eve decided that they had a better idea than what God was leading them to do. They caught a vision that was not the vision of God and they leaned into that. And ever since then, we’ve been struggling under the weight of the curse of sin. Even when we try to do right things in our marriage, in our family, in our church, in whatever…so often we can end up hurting somebody or ourselves. And it’s a troubling place.

What do we need when we have a spirit of heaviness? We need a vision of God. The Bible says, “Put on the garments of praise for a spirit of heaviness.” And the concept there is, when you have that spirit of heaviness, you need to lift your eyes. You need to first see God and then get a vision from God for what he’s planning on doing in the world and in our days. 

So, I’ve been there recently. And some things that have come to mind: Revelation 21. I want to speak this over you, just in case you might have a spirit of heaviness today. 

1 Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven [the cursed heaven] and the first earth [the cursed earth] had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. 

And the sea represents the division of the people. 

2 I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4 ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

That’s the vision of God. That is the end of those who follow in his way. They’ll be put together like a beautiful city, like a bride. And he will wipe away every tear and every stain that the curse of death has brought upon humanity. The old order of things will be gone and remembered no more. 

I have a guy that I go to often when I’m looking for hope. His name is Jon Foreman, and he writes songs. He writes, basically in response to this, 

Until the sea of glass we meet
When at last comported and complete
Where tide and tear and pain subside 
And laughter drinks them dry
I’ll keep waiting, anticipating.

The song that he writes all of that in is called “Restless.” 

Then I had another friend—he’s not very famous—but he wrote a song that I love and I think about all of the time, again, in light of this same vision. 

We will soon be with him forevermore
Where we can walk with him on that crystal shore
And talk with all the saints of old
And bow before the might throne of God

This is a vision that is not just revelation. It’s not just a vision in the end. But this vision actually begins in Genesis, as well. This concept, God has has this vision that, “They will be my people and I will be their God.” At first, the vision was for this family, that, “They and their family will understand that, they are my people and I am their God.” And that family turned into a nation called Israel, which means “Governed by God.” And that nation turned became someone that God intended, “They will be my people and I will be their God.” And that nation kind of crumbled and faltered. Then Jesus came and gave birth to something else, called The Church.

But the vision is the same throughout. “They will be my people and I will be their God.” And it has never wavered. It has never been in jeopardy. The vision of God has always been there and always will be there. And one day it will be completely fulfilled. Right now, the Bible teaches us that we see in part. “We see through a glass dimly,” is what the King James says. It’s like we’re looking through a glass and it’s all foggy. We can’t quite see what’s on the other side. But one day we will see face to face. That day when our faith becomes sight. Oh, what a day of rejoicing it will be.

And when we come to the book of Ephesians, what we’re getting is a guy whose name is Paul, writing to us because he is getting, like a prophet, a vision of what the church is supposed to be here and now. We know what the vision in the end is. But what is the vision right now? What is God doing in this thing called the Church? We did not replace Israel. We were grafted in. And God has plans for the Jews, no doubt about it, to be grafted in again as a people that belong to him. 

The Church is much bigger than us at Living Streams. It’s much bigger than us in America. It’s much bigger than us in this twenty-first Century. It spans all ages. All nationalities.—On that road trip to Texas last week, we went to Roswell.—It might even span the aliens! I don’t know. My wife is kind of into it. She was like, “Man, there’s some convincing stuff in that little museum.” I was like, “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Whatever. Totally different discussion.

All right. Let’s get a vision for the Church. Some of you come to the Church and you have these ideas of what the Church is, what the Church isn’t. Some of you have been totally beat up by the Church. Whatever it might be. Let’s get God’s vision that he put in the heart of Paul the Apostle on what the Church his supposed to be.

Ephesians 1: 

1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God,
To God’s holy people in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus:
2 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Praise for Spiritual Blessings in Christ
3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. 

Now, that’s a bold statement right there. And when you think of Paul, who’s writing this, a couple of things we need to keep in mind. First of all, Paul is not writing in the Twenty-First Century, where Christianity has become the dominant religion; where Christianity has been able to spread its wings and touch almost every part of this planet; where you can’t go anywhere in the world now and not find some little, old lady serving people in the name of Christ. It’s the most beautiful thing in the world. 

Paul’s writing when the church was, maybe, ten thousand people. Just a very, very small movement. And yet, he’s getting a vision of what the church is supposed to be. So keep that in mind.

The second thing to keep in mind is that Paul used to be called Saul. And Saul was a jerk. He was a big time jerk. Actually, he’s introduced to us in the book of Acts as someone who was breathing out murderous threats. That was Saul. He was so upset, so in turmoil, and so frustrated that he was actually persecuting a people group. He hated the Christians, the people who were following the way, the people who were saying that they know Christ is risen from the dead and has empowered them to walk in a new way. He hated them and actually put them in prison. He tried to remove all of their authority and power. He tried to keep them on the run and persecute them into nothing; and even oversaw the death of some of them. 

We don’t know why Paul was so angry. We know he was a Pharisee. We know he was legalistic. We know he was trying really hard to be good and do right—which is really one of the most frustrating things there is, because he was doing it all in his own strength. 

And then, one day, breathing out murderous threats, breathing in the toxic stuff of life and breathing out murderous threats, he has an encounter with Jesus. And they talk some things over. And the next time we see Paul, he is someone who is still breathing in all the same smog of life, all the same cures of humanity. None of those things changed around him, but, for some reason, now when he breathes out, it’s not murderous threats, but it’s words of life and love and grace and peace. He starts all of his letters that way, basically: “Grace and peace to you. I no longer say to you murderous threats. I now say to you grace and peace from our Lord Jesus Christ.” 

What a change. What an amazing thing that Paul, who is someone was persecuted, someone who has lost everything for the sake of the gospel, someone who is living in the most bizarre places as he’s sharing the grace and peace of Christ around the world, someone who’s been beaten almost to death, someone who’s been whipped forty times, someone who’s lived with nothing at all. He writes to the Ephesian church and says, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms. What an amazing thing to be able to speak that out, to write that firmly.

My question to us and to myself is, “Do I feel like I have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms?” My answer, honestly, is, I think I’ve felt it at times. There are definitely moments when I can say, “Lord, I think I really do have it all.” Sometimes it’s been in good moments and sometimes it’s been in real, real hard moments. 

Paul is wanting us to understand that God has not withheld anything from his people. It’s not that, one day you need to gain something so that you can be more Christian or experience more of God. You have it all in Christ Jesus. All the promises of God are yes and amen in Christ Jesus. We sang about it today.

So it goes on:

4 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. 

So in this little chunk—bam. Paul is the king of the run-on sentences. I love it. It gives me freedom to do run-on sentences. He starts gushing. He’s just gushing as he’s got this vision of what God is saying to him. He’s understood what God is doing in the Church. There are four things that I want us to notice here. I put it in a little different language. We’ll catch it in Paul’s language too. 

In this, he says, first of all, the Church is God’s purpose from the beginning of time. Right there. He says, “He chose us in him before the creation of the world.” Well, that sounds a little interesting, because, really, the Church didn’t really form until after Christ, and that was two thousand years ago. But that was just the newest phase of what God has been doing since the beginning of time. Again, the vision has always been there. They will be my people and I will be their God and I will wipe away every tear. That’s the vision. That’s what God’s been doing from the beginning. 

Somehow in that holy Trinity, that triune being of God the Father, God the Son, God the  Spirit that is in community within itself, created mankind, you and I, to enjoy that same community. Jesus prayed it. If Jesus didn’t pray it, I would not feel comfortable teaching it. But he prayed in John 17, “Father, I pray that they would be one with us, even as you and I are one.” 

That’s heavy. That’s deep. That’s a vision beyond what we could ever come up with on our own.  But it was God’s will from the beginning of time. So, when he made Adam and Eve, he had Revelation 21 and the Church and the Bride all in mind. When he made a covenant with Abraham, ultimately, he had the Church in mind. When he gave the law to Moses and said, “Let’s form this into a nation that’s going to be powerful and a witness to all the other nations, he had the Church in mind. When he whispered those things to the prophets, he had the Church in mind. When Jesus Christ was on the cross, it says that “He endured the shame for the joy set before him.” The Church was on his mind on the cross. And when he rose from the dead and he imparted to the apostles, he said, “Go be my witnesses,” the Church was on his mind. She’s a beauty. She’s a wonder.

Not only that, but the second thing, the Church as family. Here, the way  Paul says it is, “In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship” [or daughter-ship. You could throw that in there, for sure.]  In love he predestined us. His whole plan was that we would be part of a family. You could picture the table in heaven and there’s a place set for you, with your name on it. 

Actually, the way the Revelation teaches us is even cooler. It says that you are going to be given a stone that has a name on it that is only known between you and Jesus. The name that’s going to be written at your seat, when you read that name, your heart is going to do a backflip. “How could he know me so well?” Because he’s your Father. In love he predestined you for adoption. He’s been watching you your whole life. He has such good plans for you to be a part of his family and to experience all that is there. 

The next thing: Church is what is glorious in God’s eyes. The way Paul says it, 

in accordance with his pleasure and will

All this was done in accordance with God’s pleasure. God’s not up there going, “Oh, man! It’s so much work trying to get these people all together. Wash them clean, give them vision. A bunch of squirrely people.” 

No, it’s his pleasure. He is so thrilled at the work that is being done in the Church and through the Church. It’s his pleasure. It’s his joy. It’s kind of like that hobby that he has that just is like, “I can’t wait to go do some more of that.” It’s kind of like that video game on my phone right now that I can’t wait to play all the time. He loves the work that he does with the Church. Which is amazing to me, because I work with you people. I work with myself. And it’s not always a pleasure. There’s pleasure in it, but it’s real and it’s hard. But for God, it’s all pleasure. It’s pure joy to make this family, to ready this bride. He loves it. “According to his pleasure…and will.” It’s not just God’s will because it’s good. It’s his pleasure and will. 

And then, the last thing is that the Church is what brings praise to God’s glorious grace. The way Paul says it, 

6 to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.

The Church is the message to the whole world of God’s grace. Bono said, “Grace, it’s the name of a girl and it’s the thought that can change the world.” And it is a mystery. Because we, as people, don’t easily understand grace. We understand rules. We understand cause and effect. We understand consequences for actions. We don’t understand grace. And so the work that God is doing in the Church, when we get it right, it’s this amazing, marvelous light that shines and shouts to the whole world of grace. Of grace. That God’s righteousness is more powerful than your unrighteousness every single time. It can’t win. No matter who much unrighteousness you do, you can’t outdo the righteousness of God. It’s his grace that is more powerful than anything else in the world. It’s a marvel and it’s a miracle, and it’s hard to grasp. But it’s the thing that the Church is called to make so clear and plain to the world.

Verse 11:

11 In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, 12 in order that we, who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory. [there it is again] 13 And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, 14 who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory.

In this little chunk that we did right there, we have the gospel in a nutshell. I just want to unpack a few words here for us, as we do this. He says here, “You have been chosen by God. You have been predestined by God.” That means he has a vision for your life and he knows how to get you there, “You have been included into his family. You have been marked—sealed in some way. Your name written in the book. And you have been guaranteed an inheritance.”

When we say “yes” to Christ, when we turn our direction from the vision that we’ve come up with, the vision the our parents gave us, the vision that America gives us—whatever vision it might be—the vision that Drake’s given us—whatever it might be—God’s plan, God’s plan, right? And we turn from those visions to the vision of God, found in Christ Jesus, in that moment, that’s it! In that moment, we move from death to life. We move from tension to grace. And we realize that, all along, we’ve been chosen by God. We’ve been predestined by God. We’ve been included into his family. We’ve been marked somehow by him as one of his one. It’s like we’ve got Stockton on the back of our shirt now. We’ve got Jesus on the back of our shirt now. You’ve been marked. You take on his name. And you’re immediately guaranteed an inheritance, the kind of inheritance we talked about at the beginning of this message.

Those of you who have made that shift and surrendered to the vision of God over your life, that’s you. Those who have not, that is not you. This is found in Christ Jesus. But today would be a great day to be like Paul, to be like me, to be like so many of the others in this room and to go ahead and take a step in that direction, and begin to walk with Jesus. It’s only you keeping you from Jesus. 

Today you really can get his vision for your life. And most of us are here because we’re so compelled by his vision for life that we don’t want to go anywhere else. And, yes, we still have pulls in other directions, but we continue to come back and say, “Ultimately, Jesus, your vision is the most beautiful.” But that’s a thing that can happen today. We’ll have opportunity for that later.

That’s the gospel in a nutshell. Let’s go on to verse 17 through 23:

17 I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. 18 I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, 19 and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength 20 he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, 21 far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. 22 And God placed all things under his [Jesus] feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, 23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.

This is the grand vision of God for the church, that we would be the body of Christ, moving at his leadership, his headship, and filling everything in every way. You can picture a frozen world as the light comes up and begins to thaw everything. That’s our job. That’s God’s vision. That we would fill everything in every way. We would bring the light and warmth of Christ to every person in every place forevermore. 

I know the Church, for you, might not be a glorious thing. It’s a little tricky because there’s the Church organization, and there’s the Church organism. The Church organization is what we’re basically doing right now, in a lot of ways. We’re in a building. We have some pastors and leaders trying to show us the way to go. We have a Starting Point luncheon happening soon. And the organization is a man-made thing, sad to say. Living Streams is man-made. Mark and Kristina started it in 1984 in their living room. And Mark and Kristina are amazing in a billion a ways. But they’s also not amazing in some other ways. So we have to live with the beauty and we have to live with the stink.

That’s what I’ve told the staff a couple of times. “Hey, I’m leading the church. You’re going to know what I smell like. You’re going to have to live with some stink.” Because that’s reality. We have a board of elders. We try to do our best. We try to be the best organization of the Church we can be. Create the best environment for the organism to prosper. But at the end of the day, let Living Streams fade and be gone, if at all it’s not helping the organism. Because that is what Christ died for. He didn’t die for Living Streams in this building and the plans we have. He died for this bride, which is a people called by his name, fit together, carrying out his work in the world. 

I’ll tell you, the Church organism is the single most dominant force for good the world has ever seen in any age, in any place. No doubt about it. No one in their right mind could argue that. Yet, the organization has had some very ugly times in world history, and maybe even in your life. I’m sorry for that. But Jesus isn’t the head of the organization. He’s the head of the organism. Hopefully he’s the head of the people in the organizations. They don’t always get it right. 

The Church organism is beautiful and marvelous. As we’ll learn as we go through the rest of Ephesians, it is so precious and vital in God’s sight. We get to be a part of it, both now and forever. Forever. This incredible vision.

Let’s take some time and pray. Now, in light of these things, I’m going to ask four questions of your soul. If you want to bow your heads and just close your eyes, you can. If you’re not comfortable, that’s fine, as well. We’re trying to create a moment where we can have a conversation with God. I’m going to ask the questions, and you and God talk about the answers. 

These questions come from that last passage we just read, where Paul prayed some things for the people of the Church in Ephesus. 

1. How are you doing in wisdom and revelation? Do you have a vision from God that stirs your heart, and when you tell it to the people around you, it stirs their hearts as well? Or are you lacking in wisdom and revelation right now?

Jesus, I pray that you would give this people, your people, your vision. You would give them revelation that would capture their hearts and compel them to walk in your ways. 

2. How are you doing on hope, knowing the hope to which God has called you? You can talk to the Lord about that. A spirit of heaviness or a spirit of hope. A home full of hope, or a home full of heartache.

Jesus, I pray that you would give these people hope, the hope that comes through Christ. Give it to me, too, Lord. 

3. How are you doing at enjoying the richness found in God’s holy people? How’s your community? Do you have the blessing of being able to impart and receive with other brothers and sisters who know Jesus and are chasing Jesus? Or is your community lacking that?

Jesus, I ask like Paul did, that you would help us to experience all the riches that are found in walking with your people. 

4. How are you doing at experiencing the power of God? Are the chains falling off? Are you able to see what you breathe in that’s hard and heavy turn into something that feels like blessing as you breathe out? 

Jesus, I pray that, as Paul prayed for the Ephesus church, that you would bring your power into this place, you would empower us to be witnesses for you. Lord, that you would bring power into these marriages so that they could be unified in that peace, and power into these families so that they could be heading in the same direction, experiencing the fullness of what you have for them.  That your power would come to the single people as they try and walk with you and fight off loneliness and temptation. Your power would come to those who don’t know you, Lord. That they would surrender to you and find your Spirit filling them and giving them a vision. Power for those who are caught up in addiction, that they’d be able to be free. Thank you, Lord.  We pray all of this in your name, Jesus. Amen.

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©️2019 Living Streams Church
7000 N Central Avenue ∙ Phoenix AZ 85020 ∙ 602-957-7500 ∙ https://www.livingstreams.org

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.

Keep Chasing Jesus

David Stockton
Series: Generational Blessing

Good morning, friends! It’s good to be back. I got all my family in a big, white van and we conquered Texas. Drove across the belly of the beast. It was fun. We hung out with some friends. And now we’re back. 

We’re going to finish up our Generational Blessing series today. Hope you enjoyed some of my pastor-preacher friends the last couple of weeks. And this is John Youngstrom. He has been our executive director over everything: administration, facilities. Facilities is what he’s done a lot with us.

As you noticed, we had videos of people sharing what the Lord has done over the seasons of their lives. John is too macho for videos. He doesn’t believe in that stuff. Not really, I’m just making that up.

But he’s going to give us a little taste The Lord is stirring some stuff in his heart. He’s going to share that and what the Lord has done over the generation of his life.

John Youngstrom:

When I was twenty years old, I was newly married to Amy. We were in the Air Force. We both became Christians about a week apart. The thing that really burned in my heart was to know Jesus, to hear his voice. Throughout the whole Bible, we can see the Lord talking to people and directing people. And I’m like, “I want that for me.”

We’re no different than anybody in the Bible. Jesus says in John 10:27 that, if we’re his sheep, we’re going to hear his voice. And then we run from him, right? No. It says we will follow him. That’s my heart’s desire.

Being in the military, about every four years or so, we had a decision to make about reenlisting or taking a new assignment. We would always pray about it. There were times when we said “no,” and times when we said, “yes,” and different things like that. 

So, after around thirty-three years in the Air Force, we were retiring. We were vacationing here and met with the Buckleys. The Buckleys are the founding pastors. We had gone here in the 1980’s and we had a relationship with them. He said, “Hey, you should come work for us. You should come be our facilities director.”

Our hearts leaped. It was something we were praying about, what we were going to do. And the Lord led us out to Phoenix. We just plunged in. We didn’t put our toes in to see what Living Streams was like. We just did a cannonball in here. And this place has been so gracious to us—you guys and all the people we work with. Just wonderful. And we’ve grown a lot. My wife has blossomed. I’ve blossomed in just all kinds of ministry.

About a year ago, I started getting stirred in my spirit. I’m like, “Lord, what are you doing?” Kind of like in the Old Testament when the cloud would start to lift. You know, there were like a million Israelites. East, west, north and south. And the cloud would start to lift, and they’re like, “We’re moving again. Go through the stuff. We’re going to have to start back.” And they’d take all this time to get everything together. And they’re putting together the poles, put it through the ark, you know.

And the cloud hadn’t left yet. Well, about three weeks ago, we were visiting my parents in Missouri and it became pretty clear to her, then me, that my parents are in their nineties. They need some help. We feel called to go assist them. You know, older people are not like kids. You know one day your kids are going to get potty trained. It goes the other direction. And you’re like, “Mom’s never going to get it back.”

And that’s a big task, but we feel like the Lord’s leading us back there. So that stirring and getting ready, which we didn’t know as I watched the Lord add pieces to Living Streams, raise up people out of the congregation, raise up people that work here to help me do different things. And it’s like there’s a person involved in everything I’m doing. So, it’s not like there’s going to be a big hole. There’s going to be like tug-of-war, you notice when someone’s not pulling, but it’s not going to be a rout or anything. The Lord’s really good.
So, we’re moving to Missouri when we sell our house. So we’re going through our stuff. It’s one of these deals. I say, “Can I throw this away, honey? You don’t need this anymore.” And she says, “Can I go through your tools?” And I said, “Keep it.” That’s where we’re at. And you guys are a real blessing to us.

David Stockton:

All right. Thanks, John. Amy, will you come on up. John and Amy have been awesome in a million different ways. They have really invested, like he said. It’s neat to see what they’ve done. John, on the practical side. He’s obviously cared for the facility—saved us lots and lots of money. Got a lot of systems up to date. And Amy, first service, when I said, “Amy, would you come up here,” she went “gasp.” It’s not her favorite thing. But she has definitely taken up the torch for us in prayer and prayed for us, and sends me emails all the time to encourage and tell me what the Lord’s been saying.

It’s going to be a gap, for sure. But when they were telling me this, and when I was thinking about what God’s trying to cultivate in our hearts through this sermon series is exactly this. Not that everyone is supposed to move—please don’t! But just that they would hear the call of the Lord to something like this and feel like God cares just as much about this as he does, maybe doing some big mission or church plant. There’s all these great things, but I think this is beautiful as well in the economy of heaven, that they are going to go care for John’s parents and be there for them.

We’re going to pray a blessing on them and obviously you can talk to them after the service about any of that stuff.

Lord, Jesus, I thank you so much for these two. I thank you for what they have placed in our hearts. I thank you for this last five years of assignment that they’ve had. And I thank you that you’ve given them a new assignment. I thank you that, in retirement, they’ve received more challenging assignments from you than not in retirement. And I just think that’s beautiful, Lord. And I pray that they would continue to have the strength, the hope and the patience to keep chasing you, to keep chasing your presence, chasing your glory. And I pray that there would be a great, big, generational blessing that is imparted to them and all the people they care about as they go on this task. And I pray that there would be a lot of joy in it. I thank you for them, Lord. And keep changing our hearts into the hearts that please you. In Jesus’ name, amen. 

Thank you, guys. I think it’s so honorable what’s going on there.

The Bible is very clear that we’re all going to die someday. And there are a lot of people who don’t believe the Bible tells the truth. But on this one, it’s not that hard to go with the Bible because everybody dies. It’s been going on for a while. And yet, the Bible has a different perspective about death that I think it fits with our Generational Blessing. Psalms says that it’s precious in the eyes of the Lord every time one of his faithful servants dies. Paul said, “To live is Christ and to die is gain.” 

We all know this kind of Easter verse that says, “Where, O grave, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” Because Jesus has come to take all of the darkness, danger and sting and pain out of death, when he rose from the dead. And our life here in this context, in this season, in this frame, is very short and small and brief. In James, it says that our lives are just a vapor. There it was. Gone. In light of eternity. In light of the life that God has planned for us after this life—the next life. If that is everlasting, and you compare that to what these seventy, eighty, ninety years are, this is so brief, so small. And death is actually a graduation. 

What the Bible also teaches about death is that it is appointed once for a person to die, then after that comes judgment. And the grace of God, and the cross of Christ, hopefully, is permeating enough to where we’re starting to understand that, when God talks about judgment, he’s actually wanting to judge you so he can find the good in you, so that he can reward you. That’s God’s primary reason for judgment. To get you from Kindergarten to first grade, or wherever you might be at. That’s what the judging is. That’s what the testing is. He’s wanting you to bring you to the new next place.

And yet, it is true that God’s judgement does come toward wickedness, rebellion and sin, no doubt about it. And it’s heavy and painful. But if we’re really honest, we actually want God to do that, as well. Just like when I was driving across Texas with my family, and, yeah, I was camping out in the fast lane a little bit. I was going too slow, I wasn’t paying attention. And I was getting passed by one car, and then I got passed by a second car. It was the second car when it dawned on me that I should probably get out of that lane. 

They didn’t know I had been driving forever. And the second guy that passed me, he was right to kind of like, “Hey, man, you shouldn’t be in that lane.” I get that. I’ve done the same thing. He was not right to say those things and to show me those fingers and all of the other things he did. I had gotten the message. I didn’t need all the exclamation points. 

I was right to not say anything or to do anything with my vehicle. I don’t know if I was right about the things I was thinking inside my mind and heart. But I can tell you that there was a great moment when, all of a sudden, he realized that there was a police car about five cars ahead of us and he slowed down really quick as he got up to them. I’ve never seen this before, but the cop slowed down, more than him, popped right behind him, pulled him right over. And I didn’t say anything or show him anything as I drove by. Which was great. Which was really great.

Again, that is a joke or whatever. But the truth is that we want God to punish wickedness, rebellion and sin. We don’t want him to punish it whenever it’s us. But when there is real evil in this world, which there is, devastating, breath-taking evil, we want God to rise up. We want him to do these things. So the judgment of God is actually something that is a good thing. And it’s something that, if we’re going to have the right perspective for generations of blessing, we’ve got to understand this broader perspective.

In the first message, I kicked it off, I talked about Psalm 90, where it says Moses is teaching and saying, “Lord, help us to number our days so that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” And teaching us to number our days is coming to that humble reality of understanding how finite, how brief our life is. When we’re young, it’s just a joke. You say your life is brief and it makes no sense at all. But everyone you talk to that is in those latter years of life, they consistently tell you, “I don’t know where the years have gone. It makes no sense to me how quickly it has gone.”

It is so brief. And so we’ve got to gain this understanding. We’ve got to find a way to believe what the Scriptures say—hear about life and the way the Scriptures teach it so that we can make sure we’re not missing the blessing in the generation right here and right now. 

When I say “generation,” we have to define that word, too. We’ve kind of defined it three different ways. If it’s been confusing, then now you know why. The three ways different ways we define “generation” is like Jim Watkins taught in the first video. Zero to twenty seems to be a generation of our lives that is different from twenty to forty. Twenty seems to bring a big change. And then forty seems to bring a big change.

I was looking at the lines on my forehead as I was driving to church today. I was just like, “Those are deep, man. Oh, no. I’m just going to get more of those all the time? Wow.” Stop staring at them right now. Look over here or over there or something. Don’t stare. But then, sixty, I’ve heard, seems to be a big shift in life. And then eighty a big shift in life.

So we have generations in that. You want to find what is danger and what is the curse and what is the blessing in those seasons that God has planted there. 

We’ve also talked about generation as far as your age demographic. There’s the different generations. There’s one of them that we make fun of all the time. What’s that? Millennials. Sounded like millennials were saying that. Come on, we make fun of Millennials. It’s fun to do, for whatever reason. 

But we actually make fun of everybody. I mean, the Generation X kind of snuck in there. I think there weren’t as many of them, or they’re just not very loud, so they didn’t get made fun of as much. 

But, Baby Boomers? Give me a break. They’re all crazy. 

And then you’ve got the Traditionalists, who we don’t make fun of anymore because we want to honor them and they’re old. But they can’t hear you anymore, so feel free. And even if they can hear you, don’t worry. You can just outrun them if they get mad. They’re not going to catch you.

And then there’s the Generation Z that’s coming up and we’ll make fun of them too, once they figure out what’s wrong with them.  

But that’s another way to define generations. Each generation has been passed down some sort of idolatry, some sort of problem; but then they also create their own problems. And yet, there’s also a blessing in each one of those. I believe the Millennials are going to be the greatest missionary generation there ever has been. And I’m saying that with truth, but I also can make fun of them in the same way. Because they love to live off of other people’s money, and they don’t want to work for their jobs. No, just kidding. But no, I’m saying that seriously. And see, I can’t tell a joke because it takes away. But I really believe it’s true and I hope our church is totally going to be a part of that belief and we’re hoping to see it happen here.

The third way that we defined generations is your family legacy—hat has come before you and what you’re passing on to those coming after you, whether that be in society or in your actual family tree. 

I heard a quote from John Adams last week. He said, “The best time to start raising your children is five generations ago.” That’s a good time to start. And that’s a very biblical perspective. That’s a “teach us to number our days” perspective. That’s what we’re trying to get into our hearts in this fast-paced, youth-worshiping culture that we’re living in, that is so different from the way the Bible teaches.

With that being said, we want to make sure that we are finding the blessing, and the Lord is teaching us how to use our days wisely. With that, I want to go to 2 Kings 18, and then we’re going to go to 1 Kings 15 and 2 Kings 12.  The reason I’ve just taken a selection, it’s actually this reoccurring kind of thematic way the Bible talks about the kings of Judah and Israel. I want to read this to give us some perspective and then we’ll run from there.

1 In the third year of Hoshea son of Elah king of Israel, Hezekiah son of Ahaz king of Judah began to reign. 2 He was twenty-five years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem twenty-nine years. His mother’s name was Abijah[a] daughter of Zechariah. 3 He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, just as his father David had done. 4 He removed the high places, smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles. He broke into pieces the bronze snake Moses had made, for up to that time the Israelites had been burning incense to it. (It was called Nehushtan.[b])

5 Hezekiah trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel. There was no one like him among all the kings of Judah, either before him or after him. 6 He held fast to the Lord and did not stop following him; he kept the commands the Lord had given Moses. 7 And the Lord was with him; he was successful in whatever he undertook. He rebelled against the king of Assyria and did not serve him.

So it’s a description, an accounting, 1 Kings, 2 Kings,1 Chronicles, 2 Chronicles are recounting—they’re telling the story of the kings that came and went in Israel, those who ruled. So they’re  talking about Hezekiah, and they’re saying he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, according to his father, David. And then it goes on with a list of how that went. 1 Kings 15:33-34

33 In the third year of Asa king of Judah, Baasha son of Ahijah became king of all Israel in Tirzah, and he reigned twenty-four years. 34 He did evil in the eyes of the Lord, following the ways of Jeroboam and committing the same sin Jeroboam had caused Israel to commit.

So here’s a second one. Hezekiah did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, according to his father, David. Baasha did what was evil in the eyes of the Lord, according to the sins of Jeroboam. He followed in that line. And now, we’ve got this third one. You didn’t think there could be a third category, but there is. 2 Kings 12

 12 In the seventh year of Jehu, Joash became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem forty years. His mother’s name was Zibiah; she was from Beersheba. 2 Joash did what was right in the eyes of the Lord all the years Jehoiada the priest instructed him. 3 The high places, however, were not removed; the people continued to offer sacrifices and burn incense there.

So here is another category. Joash did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, however, he didn’t remove the high places, the idolatry of his day. He didn’t follow the Lord as David, his father, a man after God’s own heart. 

So there are these three categories, which I think are interesting. As we’re facing judgment and we’re trying to figure out, “Lord, where’s the blessing? How can we be the biggest blessing?” I think this is what we need to understand, that God is wanting us to do what is right in the eyes of the Lord, and to remove idolatry from our lives.

Now this chart—I love this chart—first the kings of Judah and Israel, look at this and get a perspective. We’ll get it bigger in just a second. Saul, David and Solomon are the top three. Those are the kings of all twelve tribes of Israel, when they were all united. Then you have the kings of Judah, which are the southern two tribes, and the kings of Israel, which are the northern ten tribes. Because after Solomon, the nation was divided. Not as a civil war, but just not together anymore. They did fight each other later on, but it was just kind of a sepration that happened.

So we’re going to go through those kings.  

This is 1 Kings, 1 Chronicles, 2 Kings, 2 Chronicles all in chart form. So here on this side we have the kings of Judah. I don’t know if you can see it, but there’s a thumbs down, thumbs down, thumbs down, thumbs sideways, thumbs down, thumbs down, thumbs down. I love this chart. This is so good for me.

Up here you have Saul with the thumbs down, David with the thumbs up, Solomon with the black thumbs sideways. Then you have like a white thumbs sideways. Then, on the kings of Israel over here you have thumbs down, straight up, every one of them. Way to go. Awesome

Now pop up the next slide, which is the bottom half. 

Over here on the kings of Judah you have thumbs sideways, thumbs sideways, thumbs sideways, thumbs sideways, thumbs up, thumbs down and down bedoop, bedoop…..

Then over here on Israel you have thumbs down. 

Now, those thumbs mean something. The key that they did on this chart, and again, I love this chart. Thumbs up means they did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, according to their father, David. Thumbs sideways means they did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, but not as their father, David, had done. They did not completely rid the land of idolatry. And then, thumbs down means they did evil in the eyes of the Lord, which, again, they did not remove the idols from the land.

So there you have it. We just conquered 1 Kings, 1 Chronicles, 2 Kings, 2 Chronicles. That’s it. But we have these three categories. We have these three different ways that we are doing our life. Sad to say, in these stories, the way that the king went was usually the way the people went. 

The way that the father went was usually the way that the son went. And they’re using David as this kind of mark because he was not the father of all of these people, but basically, he was the king that all of them followed after when they became king. 

And Jeroboam was the king that took over the northern ten tribes and basically, all of them that followed Jeroboam as king of Israel did wicked in the eyes of the Lord. And they say, according to the sins of Jeroboam. They connected to him. It was the generational curse that he passed down. 

And there are a couple of different things here. It says they did what was right in the eyes of the Lord. And did they remove the idolatry. I want to unpack those things real quick for us.

Doing what is right in the eyes of the Lord. This is so important to me, that we understand that doing right in the eyes of the Lord is not just staying away from evil. We, as Christians, as the church, have spent way too long saying righteousness is just staying away from bad things. That is exactly what the Pharisees were doing. Jesus said, “Unless you have a righteousness that surpasses the Pharisees, you will not inherit the kingdom of heaven.” 

The righteousness that God is trying to produce in your life is not just something that will keep you away from wrong, but it will empower you to go into the places where there is wrong and make it right. That is the righteousness of God, where Christians, where the people of God are righting wrongs. That’s what the righteousness of God is all about. Not separating ourselves so much from anything could potentially be wrong in culture, and being this kind of isolating thing on this side. I’m not saying that we don’t have to remove sin from our lives and watch out for certain things. Definitely. But if it stops there, you haven’t yet found the righteousness of God. You’re on your way but you’re not there. And Jesus had a lot of words for the Pharisees who were in that mode. We have to do the things that God asks us to do. 

That’s what I love about John and Amy, and their move right now. They are righteous. The’ve been made righteous by Christ. They’ve been walking a life of purity. They’re in this place, but they know that’s just the beginning. God gave them righteousness so that they can go into the unrighteous situations and—boom—make righteousness. And they’re going into a situation back home where things aren’t quite right, they could be more right. And they’re going there to make right happen. And they’ll do that, not just in their own family, but they’ll do that everywhere they go, as well. 

We’ve got to understand that we’ve got to do what is right in the eyes of the Lord. Actually, the way the Bible describes sin is “to him who knows what to do, and doesn’t do it, to him it’s sin.” It’s just such a different way than thinking sin is just don’t do the things that are bad. It’s doing the things that God is asking you to do. That’s what he’s really looking for. 

It’s like with my kids. I can’t stop them from doing wrong things. They’re bad kids. And they’re not even meaning to do wrong. They’re just breaking things all the time. I never taught them to do the wrong. They just know how to do it. And they love it. They think it’s so fun. 

And what we’re trying to teach them is, “Hey, look. You’re going to do wrong. You’re going to make mistakes. Sometimes on purpose, sometimes not on purpose. But the most important thing is that you learn how to make a wrong right.”

And so we’re trying to do that. Like, “Let's go apologize. And then, if you broke something, let’s try to figure out how you can fix it. Let’s try to make it right. Because you’re never going to win the battle of never doing wrong.”

The other day, my daughter had made my wife mad, real mad. And all I know is I was in my room one time and she had put all these instructions for how to have a really nice peaceful evening, she had bought all these things. She had done all these things for my wife to kind of say, “Mom, I want you to go do all of these things, because I think you’ll love these things.” So, she knew she did wrong. Instead of just saying, “Sorry,” she actually figured out how to make this thing. And my wife went in there and she said, “This is amazing!” And whatever was wrong now didn’t feel so wrong and it was made right. 

That’s the goal that God’s trying to get us to do. That’s what these kings were judged on. Did they do what was right in the eyes of the Lord? And it doesn’t matter if you’re seven or seventy, God has an assignment for you. And if you walk in it, not only will you be walking in righteousness, but you will be imparting a blessing to everyone around.

The second thing that they were judged on was whether ornate they tore down the idols of their day, tore down the Asherah poles, remove the high places, cut down a grove. I don’t even know what that is. But basically, they had to go and find the things in their lives that were not of God, or that were set in the same plain as God, and remove those things. 

I remember being in Belize, in this town called Gales Point, where things move very slow. And I ran into a guy named Brother Hugh. And he was seventy years old. He was really the only adult male in the village that knew Christ and followed Christ, that we knew of. I remember him sitting me down one time in this very sleepy, slow village, and he said, “I want to tell you some things.”

And I was like, “Okay.” I mean, just being there, I’m already, “Why is everything moving so slow?” And then, when you talk to the seventy-year-olds in the village—whoa! It was like, “Hi…David…I want to tell you…about my life.”

I was just like, “Okay, man. Let’s do this thing.” But, whatever. I had time. And so he started telling me. And it was so interesting. I’ll never forget what he said. He started to talk about how, when he first started following Christ as, like, an eighteen-year-old, he said at that point he thought he was going to follow Christ. And the Lord would keep adding things to his life and building him up, strengthening him. 

But he said what he has realized as he looks back, it was almost like he was carrying this wheelbarrow, and as he walked with God with this wheelbarrow, Jesus kept pointing to one thin in the wheelbarrow and saying, “I want to talk to you about that.” And they would talk about it, and eventually, it would be, “Okay.” And he would take it out of his wheelbarrow. And as soon as he did that, Jesus would be like, “Now what’s that thing over there?” And he would be like, “Well, it’s this.” Jesus would talk to him about that. 

And he said, what he’s realized now that he’s seventy years old is that, following Christ has been a lot more unloading things than adding things. And he said, “First it was selling drugs. I felt like Jesus told me to stop selling drugs.”

I’m like, “Okay. I’m listening.”

And then he said, “I was supposed to stop gambling. Then I was supposed to stop smoking.” And then he continued on and on, talking about the things that he was supposed to offload, or remove. And I’ve never forgotten it, because I think that is such an accurate picture of walking with Jesus. In two ways. 

One is, if you’re not perfect, just keep walking with Jesus. If you’re having struggles, just keep walking with Jesus. You might be in more of a hurry than he is. Now, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t hate sin and he doesn’t want to remove these things. Absolutely. But it’s got to be him or it’s never actually going to happen. You have to really walk with him to find out what he’s wanting to do in your life. Because he’s the one who can actually get anything done. He’s the one that can change the leopard’s spots.

And the second thing is just that God is always going to have something that he wants to remove from you. You’re never going to get to a point where, all of a sudden, “Hey, the wheelbarrow is empty!” That’s when we move on to the next stage of life. Heaven.

I’ve kind of come up with this short, little thing. It might be helpful, or not. It’s not biblical but it’s been in my heart so I want to share it with you. It’s this concept of surrendering. As I’ve tried to put some generational blessing idea to some of these Scriptures, I’ve noticed that it seems like, and this is generalization, that God’s asking us to surrender our plans around twenty. “I wanted to be this, and now I feel like I’m going this way.” Or, “I was going to be this and this injury.” Or, “I was going to be this, but now she’s pregnant and I need to adjust.” Whatever it might be.

And this happens more than just at that time. But that seems to be a real big moment. And I don’t want you to miss what God’s doing there.

And then, when you’re forty, you surrender your power. You have to start realizing that you’re not going to grow in strength anymore. I think this is what midlife crisis is all about. We keep saying, “Oh, yeah, throw that job responsibility on there.” “Oh, yeah, throw that bigger job on there.” “Oh, yeah, throw the car on there.” “Throw the house on there.” “Throw the boat on there. I got it.” “Oh, yeah, throw marriage, throw a kid, why don’t throw another couple ofkids? Why don’t we throw on some foster kids?” “Why don’t we try this?” And we just keep going.

And then, eventually, our strength starts to go down, but our mentality keeps adding it, and then all of a sudden, for a guy or a lady, you’ve got all of this weight and you don’t have the strength to carry it. And you don’t have the humility to unload things one at a time; so you just run. And it all comes crumbling down. That’s not the way of God. There’s no blessing in that. 

And then when you’re sixty, you surrender your position. And I’ve been watching some people that I really love and respect go through this. It’s painful to not be seen for what you know you have been and are capable of. Even though God still sees you that way. It’s a humbling thing. And you can fight it, but you’ll probably lose the blessing. 

And then, surrendering your possessions, which is interesting. I had to talk to some eighty-year-olds for this. I think you possess physical abilities, and you’re surrendering to those, and having to adjust, come to terms with it. You surrender mental capabilities. Not quite as quick as maybe you were. And there’s blessing in that, if you can surrender. Surrendering whatever possessions you might have—a house, home, finances, clothes, I don’t know.

But there is constantly surrender happening. There is constantly this humility that we need to have as we approach the brevity of life, if we want to find the blessing and pass on the blessing.

I love what the ninety-five pieces that Martin Luther nailed to that church in Wittenburg, the ninety-five things that need to be corrected—ninety-five idolatries that he felt like needed to be removed in the Catholic Church. But the very first line on top of those ninety-five high places that needed to be torn down, he says, “All of life is repentance.” All of life is surrender to the mighty hand of God.

The one idol that I feel that God has brought to mind—obviously money, sex, recreation, that guy you’re with, that girl you’re with, an image that you have of yourself, comfort, possessions, food—we can make an idol out of anything. You can make an idol out of church. It happens all the time. But the idol that I felt God was highlighting and wanted me to say to us is the idol of convenience. 

Because, ultimately, that’s what Jeroboam’s sin was all about. Up in the northern ten tribes, Jeroboam didn’t want all of the people to go back to the southern tribes, to Jerusalem where the temple was, because they might want to move down there. So what he did was, he made a temple in the northern ten tribes, and made a system of worship there so there was more convenience for all the people. But the presence of God wasn’t there. And all of the kings that followed him did what was evil in the eyes of the Lord. 

We’ve got to watch out for convenience. Convenience looks like this:

Prayers where we say, “God will you bless my plans? I really want to do this job.” Or “I really want to go to this place. God will you bless me there?” That’s not the way he works. He’s not a genie that we can just rub and say, “God, I want this, this and this.” So often, that’s what our prayer life is like. Just a bunch of rubbing on a lamp.

Another way it looks is, we try and make Jesus fit into our schedule. That’s a big joke, because he’s huge. It’s like trying to find the right time to have a baby. When it fits within your schedule and plans. No, that baby comes and—kaboom. All the plans and schedule, everything is gone and you just reorder from there.

We want God to bless us here and now, instead of saying, “God, take me to the Promised Land. Bless us here in Egypt, O God.” And God says, “No, I’m not going to bless you Egypt. I want to lead you to the Promised Land.”

And that’s what I love about John and Amy and what they’re doing, too. They would much rather just have God bless them here and take care of their parents over there. Burt God never asks us to do something that doesn’t require faith. We’ve got to learn those lessons so we don’t miss out on anything in this life.

Let’s pray:

Jesus, we do thank you for teaching us, for caring about our souls even more than we do. For being the author and perfecter of our faith. For being the one who is in charge of our spiritual formation. The one who is leading us from glory to greater glory, in ever increasing measure, as we just take your hand and walk with you. Lord, please, in this moment, as we quiet our hearts before you, show us the idols in our lives right now—the idols in our families. The idol in our age demographic. The idol in this season of our life. Help us to tear those things down. 

As you’re listening for the Lord to bring some things to mind, I’m going to read some definitions of idols from Tim Keller:

“What is an idol? It’s anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give. A counterfeit God is anything so central and essential to your life, that, should you lose it, your life would feel hardly worth living at all.”

So, Lord, search our hearts. We want to walk in what is pleasing to you. We want to tear down the idols so that the blessing can be passed on. We want to keep chasing you, even if it’s inconvenient. Amen.

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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.

Lion Heads and Bear Rugs

Lloyd Baker
Series: Generational Blessing

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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. 

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©️2019 Living Streams Church
7000 N Central Avenue ∙ Phoenix AZ 85020 ∙ 602-957-7500 ∙ https://www.livingstreams.org

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.

Family on Mission

Gary Kinnaman
Series: Generational Blessing

Video (Betsy Butler):

I guess God’s timing is never our timing. I would have healed me way back there But he let it go on, and maybe I needed that. God knows what we need better than we do. My Name is Betsy Butler. I’m 81 years old. As I look back, I can see so many good things God has done in my life. 

The very first, really good thing he did for me was he gave me godly parents. I have very fond, very early memories of my father. On Sunday morning, we would sit on the front porch in a big, old chair and he would read me the funny papers. When we finished the funny papers he would arrange me on his left knee, and on his right knee he would lay out a big, black Bible. He would go from the funny papers to going over and fine-tuning the Sunday school lesson that he would teach to the men and women in our church that morning. 

That was the beginning of my learning about God, learning to know who God is, to love him, and especially to love his Scripture. See, God knew that that little girl, three or four years old, sitting on her daddy’s knee, would be teaching that same word of God when she is eighty-one years old. 

When I was eleven years old, my father died. I was so mad at God. And out of that anger came rebellion, sadness and loneliness. But life went on and the next really big good thing God did for me was to give me a wonderful husband. And God knew I needed it.

Four years and two babies later into our marriage, we were living what we considered a really good life. We went to church on Sunday, but we were not serious about God. We gave him very little time during the week. So God allowed a reality check to come into our life. I was about twenty-five or twenty-six and I became very sick. I had a sudden, severe onset of rheumatoid arthritis. All of life became a struggle. 

My husband, who will forever be my hero, sold everything we had, took his little family to Arizona for a hot, dry climate. When we got here, we found hot and dry, but we found what we really needed, and that was God. God plunked us down into a Spirit-filled Episcopal church that believed strongly in the healing power of God. They prayed for us. They helped us. They did everything they could to encourage our faith. And we began to grow. 

In the next few years, we began to study the Bible intensely, as if we thought it might be snatched out of our hands any minute. All the time we were believing that God would heal me and we read scriptures about Jesus healing people over and over. And we thought, why not heal me?

What I was doing became more important than the healing. And so I made a promise to God that no matter whether he healed me or not, I was going to love him, I was going to serve him every day of my life. Down the road, God did heal me through miraculous, divine appointments. I am cured of an incurable disease. 

Now, when I look back at my life and I look at those hard years that we went through, I know that Satan was trying to destroy us and to destroy what we had, because that’s what he does best. But the goodness of God is greater than all the evil schemes of Satan. 

God is faithful when we are unfaithful. God is good when we’re not so good. He can be depended on.

Ryan Romeo:

Isn’t that great? I love that. It’s funny. I oversee Communications, so I’m always telling the Communications people we’ve got to get things short—you know, we’re in a society where we don’t have much attention span. This is one of those that’s like, “Okay. Just take it easy. Just breathe a little bit. Let’s hear some stories.”

And if you were here last week, we had Jim Watkins. He did the same thing. A flyover of his life and some major points in it. And that really is the heart behind this sermon series Generational Blessing, that we would have cross-generational blessing. For those of us who are a little bit younger in years, that we could glean from those who have been around a lot longer than us. 

And that’s our heart, to really honor and love each other in the series. Our prayer really is that Psalm 133, when it says, where unity is God commands a blessing, our prayer really is that God would command that blessing as we unify, not just with a group of people that we connect with, but cross-generationally. That we would really connect with generations that are different from us. That out of that unity we really believe that God’s going to command a blessing on our church.

That’s the series we’re in right now. Generational Blessing. And now it’s my pleasure to introduce our speaker, Gary Kinnaman. Gary started a little church called Word of Grace that eventually became a little church called Hillsong Phoenix here in Phoenix. He’s also been a real great friend to us. He’s an author who’s written a lot of books that are really great. But he’s known Mark Buckley a long time—back when Mark showed up here in Phoenix. So please join me in welcoming Gary Kinnamam. 

Gary Kinnaman:

Good morning. So, I’m the old guy, you know. Yep. I’ve been in ministry here for decades. That’s pretty much it. How many of you have family, or you come from a family? That’s great. I want to make sure this is a relevant message. 

How many of you have people in your family you just love them to death? How many of you have people in your family you do not love them to death—you pray for them to die? You love them, but you don’t like them. Is that another way to say it? All right. “I love them, but I don’t like them.”

My wife is here. She’s actually sitting through two services, so we’re going to take a special offering for her after this service. She’s right there. My wife, Marilyn. So, I have a family that brought me into the world, and I have a family that I brought into the world. Marilyn and I have been married forty-eight years. We have three children. You can figure out how old I really am. The oldest son turns forty-six in the fall. We have a daughter, forty-three. My oldest son has a full-time ministry in Southern California, in Ventura, and he has three children.  You can do some adding here. And then our daughter’s in Denver. She has four children. What was she thinking? And then we have a son who’s thirty-six and he’s got two children. He’s in the Navy, serving God and country in the United States Navy. He’s got a really tough job. He plays the trumpet in the Navy band. What do you think of that?

So let’s pray:

Heavenly Father, thank you for this day, for your presence here in this church. I thank you, Lord, for the friendships that I’ve had here in this place, Mark and Kristina, and so many of the people who have served ministry here and we’ve encouraged each other, we’ve comforted each other. I thank you for David Stockton and the marvelous transition that this church has been experiencing. And it’s growing and people are giving their lives to Jesus. And I pray that, as we talk about family this morning, you will be present with us and show us how amazing, how transcendent family really is for us in all the best times and in all the worst times. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

How many of you have seen this book or read this book? This is for older people. The Purpose Driven Life. Rick Warren—this was his best-selling book. He had a book preceding this called The Purpose Driven Church and now he did this book and this book sold so many copies that he paid back the church for the salary they had given him for twenty-three years. I did some math. I’m a writer and my books haven’t done quite that well. But anyway, I did some calculations and in fact, he made that much money on his book in like three months, ninety days. It’s unbelievable. But they give away an extraordinary amount of money. I think they give away like seventy, eighty, ninety percent of their income. He really is a great Christian leader.

So anyway, I especially like the subtitle. Everybody knows The Purpose Driven Life. Do you know what the subtitle is? What on Earth Am I Doing Here? Why don’t we say that together? What on earth am I doing here? You’ve never asked that question, right? And maybe I love even more the first sentence in the book. What’s the first sentence? “It’s not about you.” I want you to just look at the person next to you and tell them, “It’s not about you.”  Some of you have been wanting to say that to your spouse for years. So tell them again, if it felt good. Just say it again. "It’s not about you.” I have a hunch before the day’s over you’re going to say that again. Not for fun. 

I’ve come to believe that there are two principle themes in the Bible. We’re addressing one of those themes, but I want you to see it in context. To me, there are two major themes in Scripture that tie everything together. The first theme is community. Family. Or community. Relationships. Where we learn to live with differences. Where we’re loved. Where we love. But where we’re also placed with people that we don’t love. We don’t like them. Community. That’s what develops us as people. 

But the community has a purpose and this is the second theme that’s all the way through Scripture. It’s the kingdom. Jesus prayed, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” And he begins by saying, “Our Father.” That was novel. That was revolutionary to begin a prayer by saying, “Our Father.” So, it’s about family. But it’s about family with a purpose. And God has a purpose for your family, in your life, and you have a purpose for your family and all the people that are around you. 

These are the two major themes. The better witness we are, the more effective we are in expanding the kingdom. God doesn’t just want us to preach at people, he wants us to live out the life that he’s given us. How do we learn life? We learn life in family, for good or for evil.

I’ve done countless weddings. I have forced the couple to say, “For better or worse. For richer or poorer. In sickness or in health, until one of us dies. Until death do us part.” But that’s about how life in family is terribly difficult at times, but it teaches us how to become more like Jesus. Or we can become more like the devil. Both happen. 

There are two main themes: community and kingdom. Here’s my message today in a nutshell: You and your extended family—past and present—have a mission. It’s about your family, your extended family, all the people in your family. You know, the immediate family is kind of a myth, because it takes more than two adults to raise one child. We need help. We need the extended family. 

My brothers were part of our family growing up. We helped each other with our kids. And right now, my son, David, is in Denver because he wants to spend a lot of time with his brother-in-law, my daughter’s husband. They have two boys who are in their early teens. And they want to spend time with them and nurture them. And sometimes an uncle can do more for a teenager than dad.

There’s this myth that we can just do it alone. But we are a community of people and we need each other. The extended family, past and present, are very powerful. So let’s see how this unfolds in Scripture. I have a bit of my personal theology about the family. Let’s begin in Genesis 2, talking about the creation. This is the creation.

And God said, and I’ve got to pause there and say the Hebrew word for God is Elohim. And that word, oddly, is plural, it really means Gods, and yet the Hebrews were the only ancient people that were monotheistic. The great statement of faith of the Hebrew people is “Hear O Israel for the Lord thy God is one God.” “Hear O Israel for the Lord (Yahweh), thy Elohim (Gods) is one Elohim (Gods).”

And from a Christian perspective we say, “Well, this is telling us about the trinity.” So we look at Genesis 1:26-28

26 Then God [Elohim] said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, 

God makes us in his image, in eternal community. God is community and he makes us a community.

…so that they may rule…

There’s the kingdom. So there’s family, community…”so that they may rule.” They need each other to rule because life is difficult.

 over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

And I kind of think that implies the serpent. There’s natural domion. There’s also spiritual dominion. 

27  So God [Elohim – the Gods] created mankind in his own image,in the image of God [Elohim] he created them; male and female he created them.

He started with two people—very different, and the world’s been a fun place ever since. He didn’t just make Adam. He made Adam and Eve in this creation account. And why? Because that’s essential community. He brings people together who are not the same, but are very different.

28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; 

That would be family and community.  

fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

In the old King James it uses the word kingdom. And we use it in the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.” And a kingdom is a king’s dominion. The dom comes from dominion. That’s what a kingdom is.

So there’s the creation account. We see this idea of community and kingdom doing things, serving God, representing God together. Then there’s the call of Abram. That was his name before God came to him and renamed him Abraham.

Genesis 12:1-3 
The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; 

So there’s this extenderd community.

I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

We are children of Abraham. What does it say? “And all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

It’s not about you. It’s about what God wants to do through you. And family is about getting you to that place where you are really trusting God. You understand that life is wonderful. Life is also complicated and sometimes painful and difficult. But you learn about God and his provision and you get into his presence, and then you have something to offer to the people around you.

This is incredible. It’s the promise in the ancient book Genesis that initiates the narrative of human history, especially spiritual history. It’s God’s holy family with a lot of unholy people who become the bearer of his purposes to redeem a fallen world.

Isreal was God’s chosen people, his children, his family chosen for mission. I don’t have any more fear. We sang it over and over. Because I’m a child of God. So God becomes a part of our family. That was always his intention. It’s why Jesus says, “You must be born again.” Because, where you are, your family is dysfunctional and you need some new genes. I call it “re-gene-eration.” You know regeneration. It really means you get new genes. You get the nature of Christ.

I have a number of things to say about this next point. This is my third and main point. I want to talk about the spiritual power of the family and I want to start by talking about this odd little phrase in Exodus: a lamb for a house. Exodus chapter 12.

So now you’ve got Israel and through the story in Genesis, there’s been a famine. And Joseph is in Egypt, and his brothers come to Egypt for food and he’s reunited with his family. They end up there and they become enslaved. So God raises up Moses to lead them out of slavery, through the Red Sea. He parts the sea and we go into the desert. There’s sort of a process of life before we can enter into everything that God has for us. So there’s a wilderness and then we get into the Promised Land. That’s not heaven. That’s finding God in life.

It says this: While the people of Israel are in Egypt, God institutes a very permanent religious ceremony and event. 

Exodus 12:3-4
Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lamb for his family, one for each household. If any household is too small for a whole lamb, they must share one with their nearest neighbor, 

What’s the lamb? It’s a symbol of Jesus. And they’re going to execute the lamb and they’re going to take the blood and paint it on the lintel, the top of the door, the panels on the side, because the angel of death is going to go through Egypt—the angel of condemnation and judgment. And when the angel sees the blood, he passes over the house. (That’s why it’s called the Passover.) He doesn’t look inside to see if the family is praying together. Because, you know, “the family that prays together stays together.” They just look for the blood. And, for all we know, there were family arguments going on. But, because they’re under the blood, there was no condemnation. 

And it’s a lamb for a house. This is a very powerful image. It’s not individual. Sometimes I grieve the way we do communion. It’s very individual. It’s not really family-oriented. It’s not around a table. Sometimes worship centers have a sign on the door: No food or drink in the auditorium. Well, how do you do communion? Originally, communion was a table. It was a family event. Jesus was with twelve people and he broke the bread and he said, “This is my body.” And then they had dinner together. And after the dinner, he took the cup.

So the Passover is a lamb for a house. Jesus was celebrating the Passover with his disciples. And that weekend he was becoming the Lamb of God who would take away the sins of the world. It’s all so powerful. It gives me chills. I’ve been doing this stuff for years and I still get chills when I talk about this. (Some people would say, “It’s neurological and you need to see a doctor.”)

Anyway—it’s a lamb for a house. And they must share with their neighbors. If the lamb is too much for the house, get a few more people in there. 

The spiritual power of family is so clearly stated in the Ten Commandments. For those of you who need a review of the Ten Commandments, I have a list. 

The first commandment: No other Gods.

The second commandment: No idols

The third commandment: Don’t take God’s name in vain

The fourth: Sabbath

This is something very few people really know or understand. You have three commandments about God. You have the Sabbath, which takes God to us. And the next six commandments are about our whole life. The Sabbath is about how we have to bring the God that we love and serve and submit to into all of these different areas of life—from family to possessions to shopping. There’s a commandment about shopping. It’s the last one: Thou shalt not covet. And that’s what you do when you go to the mall. You don’t buy anything You just go to see what you might want. Just to ruin your day.

The fifth: Family

That’s the first one because everything starts in family: good, bad, wonder, evil, abuse. It all starts in family. So you’ve got to first bring God into that part of your life. What does this say? 

Exodus 20:12
Honor your father and your mother as the Lord your God has commanded you, [This is the only commandment with a promise.] so that you may live long and so that it may go well with you in the land the Lord your God is giving you.

This is awesome. It’s the first commandment. It’s about family. If you don’t get it right there, you’re going to take all that crap—excuse me, I’m only here maybe once in every two years—you’ve got to take that into all your other relationships: what happens in your family, and how you deal with it. 

God says that, “If you honor your father and your mother, you’re going to live long and I’m going to bless you.”

I’m sure there are many people in here who have no interest whatsoever in honoring their father and their mother. Because their father was abusive, or their mother was abusive, or they got divorced. Or maybe you don’t even know who your father is.—you never met your father. Or maybe you were adopted and there’s always that shadow: “Who am I, really?” 

It’s okay to ask those questions, because family is such an important part of the plan of God. I call it transcendent. It’s not just about human stuff that they can figure out with a theory of evolution. It’s a transcendence. You feel it when you go to a wedding. When two people get married you feel the presence of God. It’s human, but it’s not just human. There’s something spiritual happening here. 

I’ve got a friend who does pre-marriage counseling in the Catholic Church, he and his wife. I had breakfast with him a a few days ago and he was talking about how this works out. He said, “You know, people come and want to be married in the church, even though they have no relationship with God. And maybe they have some history of being Catholic, and they bring their boyfriend or their girlfriend and they want to be married in the church.” Why? Because marriage is about God.

So, the Ten Commandments. “Honor your father and your mother.” It doesn’t say “like them,” or “spend time with them until you need to see a therapist and take medication.” You honor them because you wouldn’t be here if they hadn’t sort of got together, if you know what I mean. You wouldn’t be here. And so, you have to see the origin of your life as something that’s planned by God. 

I’m going to go into this pretty deeply when I talk about my family tree and Jesus’ family tree. Look what it says: So you honor your father and your mother and the power of family—families are for the lonely. So God’s plan is to place people into families when they don’t have a family. That’s what the church is about. The church is the family of God. So the writer says:

Psalm 68:5-6
A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling. God sets the lonely in families, he leads out the prisoners with singing; but the rebellious live in a sun-scorched land.

I like the way it’s translated in the Message. Not quite as religious. 

Psalm 68:5-6 (MSG)
Father of orphans, champion of widows, is God in his holy house. God makes homes for the homeless, leads prisoners to freedom, but leaves rebels to rot in hell.

Nobody said “Amen.” Some of you wanted people in your life to rot in hell, okay? Because they’ve put you through hell. Let’s get realistic here. This isn’t just about punishing bad people and getting even. The fact is, rebels rot in hell because hell is the absence of God. The more you do life on your own, as a rebel, the more you will have hell in your life. You need God and you need your family, all the people you love and the ones you don’t like. You have to see the plan of God in that.

When Paul talks about the body of Christ in 1 Corinthians, he talks about members of the body need each other. The eye can’t say to the ear, “I don’t need you.” How many of you have said that about some other person in your life? “I don’t need that person in my life!” But Paul says “God has placed all the members of the body right where he wanted them to be.”

And that’s about relationships. Paul’s talking about relationships. So I can say the same thing about family. My son in-law discovered this. When you get married, you don’t just marry your spouse, you marry her family—all of them. The good ones. The dysfunctional ones. It’s not an accident. Human life isn’t random.

The next reason why families are so spiritually powerful—I don’t know totally what this means, so I’m just going to let David explain this when he gets home. You show him this verse and say, “Would you explain this? Because Pastor Gary just read it and didn’t explain it.”

The spiritual power of families is crazy-amazing. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7:12-14:

… If any brother has a wife who is not a believer and she is willing to live with him, [if she’s willing to put up with his religion] he must not divorce her. And if a woman has a husband who is not a believer and he is willing to live with her, she must not divorce him.

But look at this. This is so transcendent. I can’t fully explain it, but I know it’s a lamb for a house.

For the unbelieving husband has been sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife has been sanctified through her believing husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.

It’s a lamb for a house, even if people in that house are not believers. But if you are the only believer in the house, you are the hope of that home. This is incredible. The children are made holy, the unbelieving partner is made holy. It’s incredible. I can’t explain it. I’m going to let David Stockton explain how that works. You say, “You mean, they’re all going to heaven?” I don’t know. I just know what the Bible says here. 

The family is a church in miniature. Paul says “the man will leave his father and mother,” he quotes Genesis, “and cleave to his wife and the two will become one flesh.”

And he says right after that, “I’m speaking about Christ and the Church.” That a marriage is a symbol of Jesus and his bride, the Church. This, to me, is why weddings are so holy. I always talk about this at weddings. “If you feel religious right now, or spiritual, it’s because this beautiful, perfect couple is the best they’re going to look in their whole life.” It’s a picture of God in us. 

I want to read something to you. This is going to blow you away, some of you:

The Christian family constitutes a specific revelation and realization of ecclesial communion, and for this reason it can and should be called a domestic church. It is a community of faith, hope and charity. It assumes singular importance in the church, as is evident in the New Testament. The Christian family is a communion of persons, a sign and image of the communion of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. [We talked about that from Genesis, right?] In the procreation and education of children, it reflects the Father’s work of creation. It is called to partake in the prayer and sacrifices of Christ. Daily prayer and the wording of the word of God strengthen it in charity. [This is where we learn how to live out the fruit of the Spirit.] The Christian family has an evangelizing and missionary task. —Catechism of the Catholic Church

This statement is from the Catholic catechism. It couldn’t be worded more powerfully. 

So, this from my catechism—I wrote one, too.

The family and the church family are places that God has created where we learn to live with differences. Learn love and grace in conflict. We find our future together. The church becomes our family when we’re born again. It’s a place where we learn to love one another and the world around us, and are nurtured to serve one another and advance the kingdom of God.

Now I want to talk about beyond the immediate family: genealogy. Where you come from will determine who you are. If you’re adopted, if you don’t know who your parents are, if you are perfect (which is never the case), it helps you find your future. I want to show you a picture here. This is a picture of the stairway of my daughter’s house. When you walk in to the house, there’s a living room to the right and dining room behind the living room. There’s a stairway to the second floor. I gave her most of these pictures, but she collected some of them as well. At the very bottom is a picture of my mother and dad getting married. As you make a turn on the landing is a picture of my wife and me getting married. And a picture of her husband’s dad and mom getting married. It all culminates in these two couples who end up bringing Jeff and Sherry together in marriage, who now have four children.

The next slide is just my family. The bottom picture is my mom and dad getting married and my grandfather is doing the wedding. Then there’s a picture of my grandfather and his wife, Theodore and Dorothea. It goes all the way up there. I have the marriage certificate from my great-grandfather Kinnaman. They were married in the late 1800’s. And I have a love letter that he wrote to my great-grandmother (neither of whom I ever knew).

I look at those pictures and I never am at Sherry’s house without standing in front of those pictures. And I think to myself, all these people fell in love and they had sex. And here I am. It’s like God had to do a lot of work to get to me. And those people weren’t thinking about me, the next generation. They weren’t thinking about me sharing God’s word with you. But God was thinking about that. I’m not an accident. 

A lot of things have happened in my family. Terrible, bad, they appear to be accidents; but nothing is an accident in God’s plan. This tells me two things. God is in control. Is he in control when bad things happen? “Well, I don’t know.” If that really troubles you, I have a Bible verse for you:

Romans 8:28 (ESV) And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

If you think your life is random, or it’s just an accident—people did stupid things and you’re just a victim: All things work together for good for those who love God. So whatever happens, somehow God fixes it.

While I’m freaking you all out—how does the New Testament begin? It begins with a chapter on the genealogy of Jesus. It is a happy, dysfunctional genealogy. There are all kinds of famous people in there, but it doesn’t pull any punches. One thing is that there are four women in the genealogy and nobody ever did that at that time. Gals, sorry to say that. Women were never mentioned. But it’s not just four women, it’s four women who have unique stories. 

The first woman that is mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew Chapter 1 is Rahab. Does anyone know what her profession was? She was a gentile and she was a prostitute. And she was in the genealogy of Jesus.

And then the next woman that is mentioned is Tamar.  Jesus is the Lion of the tribe of Judah. That sounds really regal and awesome. Jesus—he’s the lion in the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. He’s the Lion of Judah. So Judah begat Perez (he’s the first hispanic in the Bible). Judah begat Perez by Tamar. Tamar wasn’t his wife. Tamar was his daughter-in-law. It was incest. I won’t tell you the whole story. I wish I had time, but I’ve ruined so much of your day already. Judah had Perez. (Twins. I can’t remember the other name, I think it was an Irish name.) Anyway—by Tamar, who was his daughter-in-law. And that’s in the genealogy of Jesus. 

Then it says David begat Solomon and it doesn’t mention Bathseba’s name. It says, “David begat Solomon by the wife of Uriah.” That’s how it’s in the genealogy. 

And the last woman was Ruth, who was a Moabite. She was a lovely, holy woman. But she was a Moabite. She was a gentile. And so, they’re telling the whole world that Jesus had gentile blood. 

Who is in your genealogy? What kind of nasty, evil, weird, wonderful people are in your genealogy? It took God a lot of work to get to you. How did God get to His Son, who was promised in the Garden of Eden? He went through a whole series of human relationships, who didn’t know that they were in this chain of life that was going to lead to the birth of the Messiah. 

Of course, God corrected some of that when it was the Holy Ghost who came on Mary. He gave Jesus the nature of God himself. He ended up with two genealogies.

But this is so powerful. I’ll say it again: God is in control. When you think he isn’t, at least you have the promise: All things work together for good. 

When terrible things happen to us and we start saying we’re a victim, we’re really denying that God’s in control. Or we’re denying that, whatever happens to us, there are some things that God can’t fix. You’re a miracle! 

My fifth point here is the Communion of the Saints. It’s in the Apostles Creed. It doesn’t mean what you think it means, that the communion of the saints is that we’re in church together. Let me explain what it means. The Communion of the Saints in the Apostles Creed:

I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried; he descended to the dead. On the third day, he rose again; he ascended into heaven, he is seated at the right hand of the Father, where he will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Christian church and the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.

What is the communion of the saints? In Latin, it’s communio sanctorum. It refers to persons. It is the spiritual union of the members of the Christian church, living and dead. It’s not just living people gathering together, it is the fact that everybody in your genealogy is still alive. They’re just not alive here. I’ve said a lot of stuff to put you into a tumble. This is really freaky. They’re here with us. They’re what the Bible calls the “great cloud of witnesses.” Catholics pray to the saints, It’s not my thing. I’m not Catholic. I’ve mentioned them a couple of times. They pray to the saints. They acknowledge the saints. They have a sense that the saints are living with them.  And they’re much better about keeping this “great cloud of witnesses” in their faith and reality and practice.

Look at Hebrews 12:1

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, [that would be all the amazing faith people in Hebrews 11, or in your genealogy] let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith,

I have family in heaven. I wish I had time to tell you how they still impact my life. My mother. My grandfather, who was a pastor. My great-grandfather, who was a pastor, came to America as a missionary, a German immigrant. They still speak to me. I don’t know. Are they watching? If I played football, I know they’d be watching me play football. It’s what they do. 

I want to wrap this up with a story. I want to show you a picture here of family. This is my wife’s sister, Annette and her husband, Jeff. They’ve been married fifteen years. She’s never had children. He had a daughter from a first marriage, who committed suicide. They’ve had a lot of pain in their life. They live down in Saddlebrook near Tucson. But for most of their life, they lived in Escondido, where my wife was born. My mother-in-law adopted Annette. She was an RN who worked at a little clinic in Escondido. A nineteen-year-old woman came in. She didn’t have an abortion, she had the baby. And Marilyn’s family adopted that baby, and that’s Annette.

Annette has always wondered where she really came from. She’s had 23 and Me, but she had not been able to find her real family. She didn’t know if wanted to. She felt rejection. “My mother didn’t want me. Why should I be interested in knowing about her?” She’s 63 years old and she still brings it up. So her husband, who’s sort of compulsive, and I call him a sleuth. Last weekend he went online for about three hours and he found her mother! Next picture: The woman in the middle is my wife’s adopted sister’s birth mother. And that’s her husband on the other side. And that’s her son-in-law, and that’s Marilyn’s sister’s birth sister. They have the same father! She got pregnant out of wedlock, and this is the way it was in the early 50’s. They sent her to California to have the baby. She came back and nine months later they got married. And they had three more daughters.

My sister-in-law, Annette, has been on the phone all week, every day, talking to this sister in Michigan. And they’re laughing and they’re crying. What’s up with that? It’s family! It is the power of family! I can’t explain it. I say to young women who are expecting, I say two things (I love to say this): “Right now, you love that baby. You can’t wait for it to be born. But when you’ve had that baby in your arms, you will not be able to describe how much you love that child.”

You hold a child and there’s a bonding that takes place. In fact, Annette’s birth mother was not allowed to hold the child. She had the child and the child was taken out of the room.  

There’s a bonding. How do you explain that? How many of you love your children? How many of you love your children more than you love the neighbor’s children? How many of you love your children more than you love the neighbor’s children, even though the neighbors have better children? What’s up with that? This is transcendent.

There are two things I say to young women. “You’ve not going to believe how much you love that child. You’re also not going to believe how difficult it is to raise that child from the colic to hormones.”

I said this to my daughter-in-law, and you can tell I’m kind of sideways. And she had her first baby, and she’s nursing little Oliver. They thought it was going to be a girl. She had all girl stuff. Some mistake with the ultrasound. She had a boy. We were outside the delivery room. There was screaming and yelling, they were saying, “Oh my God!” And they didn’t have a name for him for about three days. The hospital said, “We can’t let you go home unless you name this child.”

So she’s nursing little Oliver. And I said to her, “Do you hear that sucking sound? It’s going to last at least twenty years! You have no idea how much work this child’s going to be. And this child will not appreciate you until this child has children.”

Which has led me to believe that this is a promise in God’s word for grandparents: 

Vengeance is mine, says the Lord. I will repay.

Could you lift your hands to the Lord? And could you say this prayer with me?

Heavenly Father, you had to do a lot of work to get to me, but you gave me life through my mother and father, and I’m grateful. I’m a miracle! And I believe, Lord, that you are in control. I belong to you. I’m not only a child of my mother and father, but I’m one of your children, and I say, ‘Hallelujah and Amen.’”

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©️2019 Living Streams Church
7000 N Central Avenue ∙ Phoenix AZ 85020 ∙ 602-957-7500 ∙ https://www.livingstreams.org

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION® NIV®,
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Scriptured marked ESV is taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

Generational Blessing

David Stockton
Series: Generational Blessing

Video (Jim Watkins): 

“In terms of a legacy, let me recite a saying that I picked up out of a book that said, 'Push back against the age as hard as it pushes against you.’ I look at life, and most people do, I think, in four quarters. You know, there’s 1-20, 20-40, 40-60, 60-80. In that first quarter of life, 1-20, I thought I knew God, but as I reflect on it, fortunately, God knew me. As I look back at some of the reckless decisions and shameful behaviors that I had during that time of life, I realize that he was really giving me cover. I wouldn’t see that until hindsight. After I had accepted the Lord and I look back on my life, and I look at all of those times that things could have just gone off the rails—even to the point of death—and think that the Lord’s hand was upon me, saving me for a relationship with him.

“I was married, starting to raise children, trying to get established in my career. It was toward the end of that second season when I went and met the Lord. That was a significant change in my life, It was interesting. My wife told me that after I came home from that week all zealous, that I would be tested. She said, ‘Expect that you will be tested.’ Well, the following week I found out that I was going to lose my job—it had been eliminated. So, during that second season, after I had met the Lord, he had other things in mind for us, and brought us into the desert.

“In that third season I began to go deeper in my faith. I started getting involved in Bible studies, I started teaching Bible studies and facilitating them.

“The fourth season, which is the one I’m in right now, things were good. Empty nest. Kids were gone, off the payroll. Things were good there. And then there was a speed bump. My wife got breast cancer. During that period, I never got mad at God. ‘Why is going this way? Why does it have to end this way?’ I thought The Lord’s will in this will eventually be apparent to me. 

“It was an opportunity to take my relationship with my wife even deeper. I can remember a few days before she died, I asked her, ‘Are there any wounds that I’ve caused that I need to ask forgiveness for?’ 

“It was one of those priceless moments because she said, ‘I’ve never felt more loved.’ Little did I know when we had that conversation that within two or three days she’d be gone. So it was a nice way to end our life together.

“So after several months, I talked with Mark Buckley and said, ‘Mark, you know, I’m feeling isolated and kind of lonely. I’d like to try to find a companion.’

“His answer was straight out of Genesis. He said, ‘It’s not good for a man to be alone.’

“As an example that you can teach an old dog new tricks, I went online, used social media, went on Christian Mingle, and connected with my second wife, Angie.

“In terms of an overarching theme, I think I can only respond to that in the current time. I can’t go way back and say, ‘This was my theme going forward,’ other than, at the time, I wanted to be a good father, a good family man, I wanted to be full of honesty and integrity in my life; but as I look at an overarching theme now in terms of how do I want to finish and how do I want to finish strong, I think that theme would be: Build on the past, always be consciously grateful for what the Lord has done in my life; and whenever there’s a scintilla of doubt, just look back on how he’s gotten me through so many problems. The Lord has always been there. He’s never failed me. And I know he’ll never fail me in the future.”

Amen to that. We are starting a new series called “Generational Blessing.” There’s going to be a lot more of that. We ‘re going to try to get some perspective from the Bible, but we’re also trying to get a little perspective from some of those who have walked a great many years in this life, and walked a great many years with Jesus—learning things. It’s going to be interesting. A little sobering, hopefully, at times—a little humbling. But it should be really good.

We actually have four things that we hope this series produces in us as a church family. We want to resist our culture’s urge to honor the young and famous, and try to figure out how to be more biblical and honor the old and humble. It’s definitely the way of the Bible. We want to engage with and embrace those outside of our generation. We’re hoping this series will stimulate you to say, “Man, I want to call somebody who’s older or younger and find the riches that are there in that multi-generational life.”

The church is made up of every tribe, every tongue from every corner of the earth, from every age. The Bride that Jesus Christ died for and is drawing together is a bride that literally is not just millennial and baby boomer. It’s all ages since the beginning until the end. There will be people that are a part of that Bride of Christ, part of that heavenly body that come from every age. It’s just mind-blowing. And God’s vision is always so much bigger and broader than ours.

Another thing we hope is that we will begin to acknowledge and appreciate the frailty and brevity of life that will let the winds of eternity blow in and, though we can’t comprehend them, we’ll let them stir in us and help us understand that really our life is very short, very frail, very brief and very precious. Every breath is a gift. Every day is a gift and can be used in good ways and ways that aren’t so good.

And another thing we to happen is that we will get to know Jesus more, as always. We want to grow more dependent on the faithful Rock of Ages. Set our feet more firmly into that Rock that has been faithful for all time and will be faithful forevermore.

That’s what we’re hoping for. Trying to build our lives on the good things. We know that there are different generations, even alive today. I just had the opportunity to go camping with Jim Watkins, the guy on the video. He’s the chairman of our elder board. He invited me—he’s invited me multiple times to go to the Black River, fishing with him. It hasn’t worked out, but then this year it did. I told a little bit of those stories. But it was incredible to be with a guy who’s in his mid-seventies. He drove his truck until, literally, you couldn’t go any further because he had run over so many trees. We were like, “What’s that smell?” Well, basically, that’s trees under us that are burning because we’re just romping right over them.

We get there and everyone gets their heavy backpacks on and we hike down this mountain about an hour and a half. He’s just leading the charge, no problem. It was really amazing to be with a guy who’s fortunate enough, by God’s grace to be at that age and still really healthy in a lot of ways. But he does have a weakness. I was following him down this trail. We were just hiking and hiking. Again, I’m going, “Man, this guy is so incredible.” And I hear a rattle snake. It’s rattling really loud. But he just kept marching through. He has been bitten by a rattle snake in the last year. And I’m thinking, “Man, this guy is so tough that not even a rattle snake moves him.” He’s just walking right by. And I saw the rattle snake. And I was just,  “Ahhh! Jim! A rattle snake!”

He came over and he was poking it and prodding it. He’s like, “Yeah. Look at that rattle snake.” 

I’m like, “Man, this guy is hard core. He’s really hard core.”

Later on, I was asking him, “How many rattle snakes have you seen out here?”

He said, “I’ve never seen any rattle snakes. Maybe one time when I first came, thirty-five years ago or something.”

I was like, “Wow. That’s crazy,”

So, then when we’re hiking out, there were four of us, and Jim’s leading the way. We’re all trudging through and he’s having no trouble. We get to the top and we’re just about back to the  car when, all of a sudden, I hear that rattle again. I was freaking out and saying, “Rattle snake! Rattle snake!”

He’s like, “What’s that?”

He turned around and I was like, “There’s a rattle snake right there!”

This thing was just so loud. And Jim comes over and he’s like, “Wow! There he is!”

And I go, “Jim, can you hear that?”

He goes, “It’s making noise?”

I was like, “It’s screaming at us! It’s so loud!” I turned on the camera and I was like, “Listen to this!”

And the first time he didn’t have a hearing aid in and he couldn’t hear it, which makes sense. The second time, he had his hearing aid in, but whatever the frequency, he couldn’t hear it. He literally looks at me and says, “Maybe that’s why I haven’t seen one in thirty-five years!”

I was like, “Oh, my goodness!”

We were about done with the trip. But I vowed that, any time I’m with Jim I’m staying right next to him because I don’t want him to get bit by another rattle snake.

I tell that story, One, because it’s amazing what he is able to do all of that, but I can’t emphasize to you enough what a privilege and blessing I feel right now to have somebody like Jim in my life. I’ve told him this numerous times and, this isn’t a surprise to him, but just to have a guy like that who’s rooting for me, cheering for me—and he’s the chairman of an elder board. So, in my position, I have a bunch of volunteer elders who are all just trying to say, “We just don’t want this guy to fail. How do we keep correcting him when he’s getting off and encouraging him when he’s not?” They are literally trying to make me succeed in everything I do. It is such an honor and a privilege and a joy and a strength. I’m so thankful for it. 

Jim and I have had many talks. We’ve been on adventures together. It’s just so rich. And if you don’t have something like that, I would encourage you to start praying very, very fervently that the Lord would bring something like that into your life. And if you’re saying, “Everybody older than me is dead, because I’m really old,” then go ahead and pray that the Lord would start showing you who you could be that for. It is so needed and necessary in this Christian life, let alone life in itself. We need each other.

Our goal at Living Streams is to be a multi-generational church, which is the most miserable way you can do church. Right? It’s like, “Let’s be all young with our everything and then at least the young people are happy.” And the old people are grumpy. “All right. Let’s just make it a little  more old with everything. We’ll get the old people happy.” “Let’s be multi-generational.” Then everybody’s unhappy. Right? I mean, that’s basically what we’ve said. “Okay, Lord, we’re going to be multi-generational.” But it’s because we believe there is a treasure and a richness there that we desperately want. It’s worth whatever kind of discomfort or misery we might go through.

The generations that we know are alive today: 

The Traditionalists born before 1945. Again, the dates aren’t quite as important, they’ve discovered it’s more the collective experiences that that age group has gone through. The Traditionalists went through World Wars, the Great Depression, and they remember when they got sliced bread, I guess. 

The Baby Boomers are those who remember living through Vietnam, the Cold War, Civil Rights Movement, Moon Landing, Woodstock and when they got their first TV.

Generation X. Both parents worked a lot, so less supervision. Music Videos changed everything. And they remember when they got their first computer as a family.

And then the Millennial generation. They remember all the technological advances. They remember when they got their first phone. Facebook, Instagram. The world got a lot smaller because of the ease of travel and communication. This is their shared experience. You guys keep thinking I’m going to make fun of them. “You said Millennials, where’s the joke?” It’s all right. We’re trying to honor everybody right now. I’ll make fun of you later.

Generation Z. Those that are born from 1996. Basically, there are four necessities of life: Air, Water, WiFi, Food. Basically, that’s it. “Food is okay, as long as I’ve got WiFi.” Their online personality and relationships are just as important as their offline in time spent and investment. Now, I don’t think anyone would actually say that at this point. But it’s kind of interesting that they’ve always lived with kind of an online personality. So the two of them are very important. Their interactions in both places are very important and they shape them differently than the other generations.

Again, when the Bible is talking, it’s not just talking about America in 2019. It’s speaking things that are relevant way beyond America, way beyond our generations that we can name at this point: every age, every nation, every tribe, every tongue. 

I want to turn to Psalm 90, if you would. We’re going to work through Psalm 90 a bit. It’s a Psalm by Moses, which is weird if you know anything about the Psalms. It’s the only Psalm by Moses. All the other Psalms are written by David, or a lot of times were at the same time that David was alive or just after that with Asaph. This Psalm by Moses had been preserved by the Israelites into the Psalms. It’s been preserved by both those involved in Judaism and Christianity today. 

Psalm 90 is the start of a new book of Psalms, Book Number 4 of Psalms, which, if that doesn’t make sense, do a little research. It’s kind of fun. A little breakdown of the book of Psalms. 

We don’t know exactly, but Moses was probably old—real old. What we know of him, he was about eighty when he started his relationship with Jahweh, the God of the Bible. And so, it’s after that, between 80 and 120, somewhere in there is when Moses was probably writing this thing. You’ll see how that makes a lot more sense as we go through this Psalm. 

Psalm 90: 

1 Lord, you have been our dwelling place
   throughout all generations.

2 Before the mountains were born
    or you brought forth the whole world,
    from everlasting to everlasting you are God.

Moses starts out and we don’t know what is stirring in him that is causing him to pray at all, or to pray specifically in this way. You guys know there are times in your life where all of a sudden you’re stirred to pray. Maybe you have a need or lack, or maybe you’re just feeling caught up in something you’ve seen that’s beautiful, and so you’re stirred to pray. But then, what you pray actually is also coming from what you are experiencing in life. We don’t know exactly, except that he’s old. And he’s come to this point where the intensity of his mortality is great. He’s probably thinking about death a lot more than when he was younger. 

There are people in this room who are at that stage. They are thinking about their mortality. It is yelling at them. It’s tapping them on the shoulder. “Hey. Hey. Hey.” All the time. Now, all of us know that life could end at any minute, but Moses was probably in that stage where he was dealing with the reality of death. And he’s saying, “God, you have been a refuge to every generation. I know that you are way bigger than I could ever comprehend. That you are not just my God and the God of my time, but you are the God beyond time.”

And he even talks about, “You are ageless, going back. Timeless, going back. Timeless, going forward.” This is an interesting concept for Moses to be grasping. This is eternity, which is a very, very vast concept that causes even our great scientists to stumble and kind of falter in trying to explain eternity. Basically, no beginning and no end. 

That’s different that you and me. The Bible teaches that we are not eternal. It might sound funny, and, obviously it’s semantics. We don’t inherit eternal life from God, even though that’s what the interpretation is. We inherit everlasting life. The difference is that we have a beginning. God has no beginning and no end. We have a beginning and we have no end. 

Moses is grasping in this moment the reality of God being timeless, not ever dealing with mortality. Not ever dealing with limit. Not being finite. 

Then he goes on to say:

3 You turn people back to dust,
    saying, “Return to dust, you mortals.”
4 A thousand years in your sight
    are like a day that has just gone by,
    or like a watch in the night.
5 Yet you sweep people away in the sleep of death—
   they are like the new grass of the morning:
6 In the morning it springs up new,
    but by evening it is dry and withered.

Again, Moses is trying to be in this moment, and he’s saying, “Not only are you eternal and immortal and limitless, but when I look at humanity—pitiful. So brief. So frail. So small.” And he’s just caught up in this reality. He knows that death is coming at any minute, no matter how hard he fights, no matter how much he flexes, no matter what he does, he can’t beat it. And he’s been experiencing it little by little his entire life. 

Death is not something that’s brand new in his life. Death is something that’s always been there. And we, mankind, though we think we’re so fit and strong and big, we’re just like a blade of grass that grows up in the morning and is gone in the evening. 

And then he says: 

7  We are consumed by your anger
    and terrified by your indignation.
8  You have set our iniquities before you,
    our secret sins in the light of your presence.
9  All our days pass away under your wrath;
    we finish our years with a moan.
10 Our days may come to seventy years,
    or eighty, if our strength endures;
yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow,
    for they quickly pass, and we fly away.
11 If only we knew the power of your anger!
    Your wrath is as great as the fear that is your due.

So here, Moses is speaking to the pain of life, not only is God limitless, immortal, infinite, and we’re so brief and frail, but this existence that we have here in life is rough. It’s full of pain, challenge, loneliness, loss,  heartbreak. Welcome to church, everybody, Hope you’re really getting built up by this. 

And he says,“You know, I understand that this is linked to our sin, that we hurt each other, that wars happen, that people are brutal and angry and spiteful. Not only do we have pain in our bodies, but we inflict pain so often.” He’s just being honest. It’s like all of this truth is being presented to him and he’s not rejecting or ignoring it. He’s just embracing it.

It’s funny. In Ecclesiastes Chapter 12, there’s another writer in the Bible. He speaks to aging. He speaks to old age, It’s the wisest man, Solomon, who is writing. 

In Ecclesiastes 12 (NCV), he says it this way:

1 Remember your Creator
    while you are young,
before the days of trouble come
    and the years when you say,
    “I find no pleasure in them.”
2 When you get old,
    the light from the sun, moon, and stars will grow dark;
    the rain clouds will never seem to go away.
3 At that time your arms will shake
    and your legs will become weak.
Your teeth will fall out so you cannot chew,
    and your eyes will not see clearly.
4 Your ears will be deaf to the noise in the streets,
    and you will barely hear the millstone grinding grain.
You’ll wake up when a bird starts singing,
    but you will barely hear singing.
5 You will fear high places
    and will be afraid to go for a walk
Your hair will become white like the flowers on an almond tree.
    You will limp along like a grasshopper when you walk.
    Your appetite will be gone.
Then you will go to your everlasting home,
    and people will go to your funeral.
6 Soon your life will snap like a silver chain
    or break like a golden bowl.
You will be like a broken pitcher at a spring,
    or a broken wheel at a well.
7 You will turn back into the dust of the earth again,
    but your spirit will return to God who gave it.
8 Everything is useless!
    The Teacher says that everything is useless.

We can read this, and I think everyone is here because they are somewhat able bodied. We kind of laugh a little bit, even though some of us might feel a lot more of this than others. But this is real. If you’re ninety, maybe you can laugh at this, but it’s a different kind of laughter because you’re feeling it. 

Every one of these things is just a reminder that death really is what’s happening. Death really is a reality. And, just like Moses is describing, our life lives under the shadow of death. There is a curse over this life.  It’s true. Adam and Eve were in the garden and there was paradise. There was no death, no pain, no sorrow, no shame, no guilt. There was none of these things that he describes. And then, one day mankind, Adam and Eve, decided to trust something other than what God had said. Whether they trusted the word of the serpent, whether they trusted their own discernment and understanding. Whether Adam trusted Eve or Eve trusted Adam—it’s hard to know exactly. But they trusted something other than what God had sad. And immediately there was a curse on this world and this life that we endure every day.

Now, by God’s grace, God said, “Let us not also let them eat of the tree of life and let them live forever under that curse. But let us get them out of the garden so that, at some point, they will die so that they can once again be free from the curse.”

Moses is alluding to the curse, the reality of death and the shadow, and that death is having its work in us each and every day.

He goes on in Psalm 90, in light of all of that, the agelessness of God, the frailty of humanity and the curse that we live under, this is what Moses prays for, what he asks for towards the end of his life:

12 Teach us to number our days,
    that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

He doesn’t pray, “Lord, could you make my hip stop feeling like that? Or could you just give me one tooth back so I can chew? Lord, will you just take me away and let death come right now?” He doesn’t pray any of those prayers. He says, “Lord, will you help me to know how best to use each one of the days that I have left?”

It’s sad, I think, to the Lord and maybe to Moses, that we would have to wait until the end of our life to pray prayers like that. Hopefully somehow we can stir up a little bit of that understanding. Then he also prays:

13 Relent, Lord! How long will it be?
    Have compassion on your servants.
14 Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love,
    that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.
15 Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us,
    for as many years as we have seen trouble.

I think this is a very interesting prayer here. Again, he doesn’t pray that God will take away the reality of death and what it works in our bodies and in our lives. But he says “God, I pray that as death increases, as the pain of aging increases, I pray that your joy, your unfailing love and your gladness would increase at a greater rate; because I know that you are more than enough for me. You were more than enough for me when I faced Pharaoh and the Egyptian army. You were more than enough for me when I faced the Red Sea. You were more than enough for me when I walked through the wilderness with no food or water. Lord, you’re shown how sufficient you are. That you really are the I AM. And I pray that now, as I face this whole different kind of enemy, I pray that once again you would be more than enough for me.”

That’s a beautiful prayer. It’s the kind of prayer that I’ve been praying for my daughter, Bella, who’s in a wheel chair. I would love for the Lord to heal her and not make her go through a lot of the things she goes through, but when I prayed those prayers, it just felt like ‘eh. And I remember at one point I was stirred by the Lord to pray a prayer like this:

“God, I just pray actually that you would heal her in the way that’s most significant for her relationship with you. And I’ll just butt out, if that’s okay.”

And I felt like the Lord said, “Now, I hear you. Now I hear you. You don’t even know the moment I have set up between me and her.”

I said, “Okay. And I’ll just do my best to fill her with joy and love and gladness so that she can overcome whatever hard may come.”

And it’s true for all of my kids, not just her.

And then he goes on to pray one more prayer:

16 May your deeds be shown to your servants,
    your splendor to their children.
17 May the favor of the Lord our God rest on us;
    establish the work of our hands for us—
  yes, establish the work of our hands.

He first prays that the Lord would teach him to number his days, to make the most of them, to have a wisdom for how to use them in a wonderful, beautiful way. But then he prays not that God would remove all the pain from his life, but that God’s sufficiency would be more than the pain. That’s a prayer that God loves to answer, by the way.

And then the last thing he prays is that, “God, somehow, in light of all of this, you would produce something from my life that lasts beyond my life. I just want something I do to be meaningful for those who come after me. Establish the work of my hands.

The way he says it there, “May your deeds be shown to your servants, your splendor to their children.”

“Lord, I pray that you would do something in me that helps my kids and their kids and their kids all be able to pray the same thing that I’m praying. Lord, you have been a dwelling place to every generation.”

Moses could think of the stories that had come before him, how God had been so faithful. He’s praying that now his kids and their kids would look at his life and think, “Wow, God, you have been faithful.”

And I love it that he’s kind of ending his prayer with the beginning. He’s saying, “Lord, establish the work of my hands.” 

And yes, we know Moses for a lot of other things, but in this Psalm, the very prayer that Moses prays God actually preserves in answer to his prayer. Do you see what I’m saying? He prays, “God, let something that I do, something of my life last beyond my life.”

And God says, “Well, I’m going to take this prayer you just prayed and I’m going to make that the very answer to the prayer you just prayer.”

And now, four thousand years later, we’re reading this prayer—preserved, established by Moses and God together. And I pray that we would be able to pray in that way, that we would have that picture of eternity. The parade of history is going past and we can only see this one section, about seventy or eighty years. And maybe we can look back and say, “Yeah. I heard some stories from before. Yeah, I can see the future a little bit, what’s going to happen.” But it’s still so small. And yet, God is above. He’s kind of like up in the blimp and he sees the end from he beginning, and ever twist and turn and corner. 

Moses is teaching us that, when we pray, we should try to get up with God and get a picture of what sovereignty sees, what eternity sees, and pray those type of prayers. So we can take this prayer and measure it against the prayers that we’re praying, and see if we’re too focused not he here and now—the momentary. If we’re too caught up in the economy of this world instead of the economy of heaven, and learn to pray prayers that God really wants to answer.

Why don’t we do that now. Bow your heads and close your eyes. We’ll take a moment here:

Lord Jesus, we do pray that, right now in this moment, Lord, pray that you really would breathe your breath on us, that you’d help us see things the way you see them. That you’d open our eyes to our blind spots. And Lord, you would put some prayers in our heart that are worth praying. Prayers that will honor you and bring you glory. I pray this in your name. Amen.

I want to show you one more illustration. Many of you have probably seen this. It was done by a man named Francis Chan. He was trying to give an illustration of forever vs. today. He did it pretty smooth. I’m obviously not, right now. I’m going to try this one more time. Boom. Look at that. Pretend this rope goes on a long way, way further than it went. This is forever. Basically, we’ve got this rope and it goes on forever. And that’s our plan. God says that we’re created forever. We have this life in this body, but once we die, our being exists on. God intended it that way because he wants us to experience life to the full and life to forever. That’s the way we’re made. This is what we should be thinking about. This is what we should be worried about. Instead, this is what we’re worried about. We spend all of our life, energy, time, really trying to make the most of this [tiny portion of the rope] instead of making the most of this [the whole rope]. 

The illustration is that same thing that Moses said, “Teach us to number our days.” Teach us to realize how insignificant this life is, this seventy, eighty, ninety years is in comparison with what you’ve made us for. Now, the marvel of Scripture is that what happens in this life affects the rest of this, so this is important; but, for some reason, we get so focused on this, and I think God is just going, “What are you doing? I want to talk to you about this and you’re saying, ‘We just want to talk about this.’”

But there’s something about this small section that the Bible teaches is so vitally important. Because there are two ways that we go into forever. One is forever in life. The other is forever in not life—in death. Heaven and hell is the way that they’re described. And it’s not a popular thing to say, but the Bible is very clear that what you do with Jesus Christ in this life affects what your forever is going to be like. God created hell not for people. The Bible is very clear. He created it for the devil and his angels. And yet, those people who reject Christ, who do not surrender to the love and forgiveness of Christ, God says, “Well, I’m not going to force you to receive my life. If you want to be without my life, I’ll honor that. But you’re going to have to do it over my dead body, literally, the body of Christ.” 

And some of us still, in our stubbornness and pride think we’ve got this all by ourselves. I’m hoping that, somehow, the light of all of this breaks some of that pride and you’ll come to Jesus and receive the life, the forgiveness that he wants to give.

I love the way that hymn says it. I thought this was so great. In Christ, if you’ll come to him, if you’ll surrender to him, you’ll receive “pardon for sin and a peace that endures.” And then you’ll receive God’s own presence to “cheer and to guide you along the way.”

Most of us are here because we’re experienced that. And the only one keeping you from Jesus right now is you. 

We’re going to finish with communion. We’re all going to take a piece of bread and a cup and hold on to it and we’ll take it together. If you are someone who is not surrendered to Jesus, this is a golden opportunity for you. What we do with this is remember Jesus’ broken body. He was broken so that we could be made whole. And his shed blood. He allowed his blood to be shed on that cross so that we could be washed clean, past, present and forevermore. So we take this and we remember Jesus. We invite Jesus to come in again. But if this is your first time, you could take this and invite Jesus to come in for the first time. And he will come in and he will fill you with cheer, gladness, love, and forgiveness. And he’ll lead you to life everlasting

As they are passing this out, just take a moment and talk to the Lord. Confess your sin. Confess your forgiveness. Just allow him to speak to your heart in a moment of silence.

As I was praying this morning for all of us, especially those who are here that don’t really know Jesus or haven’t really surrendered, I just had a picture that I think was from God, of someone who just kept going down these streets and running into dead ends. I don’t know if you keep trying new things, thinking they’re going to bring you new life and they just keep ending up as dead ends. But the way of Jesus is a path that shines ever brighter to the perfect day. It doesn’t end. Jesus wants to take your hand and lead you down that path, if you’re ready. If you’re ready to say ‘no’ to all the other dead ends.

So Jesus, we do come to you right now. We’re all at different stages in our relationship with you. But I pray that, as we remember your broken body, you really would come and fill us. That you would shape us and form us to be more like you. Thank you for your broken body.

Let’s take the bread.

And Jesus, I pray that you would also come once again and cleanse us. That you’d just wash away all of our shame, all of our guilt, all of our fear, all of our self-righteousness. That you would just make us clean and you’d help us to believe it, as well.

Let’s take the cup. 

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©️2019 Living Streams Church
7000 N Central Avenue ∙ Phoenix AZ 85020 ∙ 602-957-7500 ∙ https://www.livingstreams.org

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.

Scripture marked NCV is taken from the New Century Version. Copyright © 1987, 1988, 1991 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

The Other Dollars

David Stockton
June 30, 2019
Series: The Other Hours

I wrote this:

For many Christian people, their finances can be divided up between the 90 and the 10 percent. The ninety is for living expenses, ten percent is set apart for God. So far, we’ve been talking bout the 90%, we’ve talked about the economy of eternity. The economy of eternity. I’m hoping that becomes a familiar phrase for all of us. 

And when Jesus talked about money, he consistently talked about the master giving money to his servants and he went away. And then he came back and he wanted the servants, who he had given resources to, talent or whatever, to give an account for what they had done with what he had given them. And then he commends them for different things,

This economy of eternity — realizing that everything that we do now impacts the next season of life, both in this life and in the life to come. We need to be living with an economy of eternity. We need to figure out what the economy of heaven is all about, and live according to those standards, even above the standards of the economy of this world. We’ve got to keep that economy of eternity in mind.

A.W. Tozer—I want to drop this quote on you because it’s so good:

As base a thing as money often is, yet it can be transmuted into everlasting treasure. It can be converted into food for the hungry, clothing for the poor, it can keep a missionary actively winning lost men to the light of the gospel and thus transmute itself into heavenly values. Any temporal possession [or resource] can be turned into everlasting wealth.

What a wonderful opportunity and mystery. Whatever is given to Christ is immediately touched with immortality. Again, I’m not, at this point, talking about giving money to the church. (Although, I think it’s a great idea.) I’m talking about in general, that we can do things now with what God has given us that actually change our entire situation in heaven. Don’t ever forget that. Don’t ever get so near-sighted that you’re living for this economy. Please.

We talked about being a shrewd, strategic steward. Jesus shocked us in saying that the shrewd manager gets commended. People who are wise, smart and strategic about how they use their money. They have a plan. They do research. Jesus wants us to do that with the resources he’s given us. He actually punishes those who just kind of sit on it, or don’t have a plan, or don’t do something strategic with it.

Mark shared with us how integrity, generosity and wisdom will hopefully be words that are used to describe your financial life. Integrity. Wisdom. Generosity. It’s beautiful for me to be able to hear Mark teach on that because I could so easily use those words to describe what I’ve seen him do with what the Lord’s given him. It’s been a beautiful thing to watch.

Before we jump into our talk on tithing and that ten percent, I want to go through a few graphs that will hopefully orient us little bit. Some Barna research graphs. They broke down giving among practicing Christians in five different categories. Volunteering is the biggest one. They polled on emotional/relational support, monetary support, gifts, and hospitality. Hospitality was at 7%. Come on now, people. Don’t worry about that. We’re going to have a whole series on radical hospitality coming up by the end of this year. So you’d better get your house clean, because people are coming over!

Next one: Planned vs. Spontaneous Giving. I thought this was interesting. It speaks a bit to shrewdness, strategy. It has the different generations. Gen Z very spontaneous. Millennials spontaneous. Gen X. Then you can see that those elders haven’t been spontaneous in a long time.

Next one: Expressions of Generosity by Generations. Now, when you read the first three, you’re going to start to make fun of the millennial like we have for the last decade. But watch this. Monetary support obviously it makes perfect sense. Volunteering support, watch out (27%). Where are these guys coming from? It’s pretty cool. Emotional/relational support (24%). ‘Cause they’re still at home and they can still talk to you about stuff. Gifts, including food (20%). I love a generation that does food well, you know? And it is true. In hospitality, they’re beating us all, those millennials. So get off their backs for just a second. (And then you can make fun of them.)

Next one: Problems of Personal Debt. There’s no surprise here. There’s a lot of debt problem in America—and particularly those millennials. 

Next: I like this. Sacrificial vs. Surplus Giving. Kind of cuts to the heart a little bit. In the Bible it’s very clear that God loves sacrifice. To obey is better than sacrifice, for sure, but there are things that he commends, that are important. When the giving isn’t just off the top, that you don’t really feel or notice, but the giving all of a sudden becomes something that you do feel, and it costs you your comfort, your norm; there’s something beautiful about that, too.

I thought that was a good research that they did. But the way I see it, the Scriptures teach a lot about money and how we should give to God and his work.

There seem to be three main categories of giving that are consistent in the Old Testament, the New Testament, and in the teachings of Jesus—which is basically how we’re trying to shape and form our world view, our live as a whole, as a church, all of those things—get the full counsel of the Scriptures. 

The three things that I see that you can’t deny, they’re there over and over and we’ll try to unpack some Scripture for each one: The faithful tithe, generous gifts and sacrificial offering. So, if you’re going to look to see, “Am I doing okay with the ten percent” or “the ninety percent”—it can apply either way. “Am I giving or am I doing what God would want me to do with my money?”

I think you’re going to need to see a faithful tithe of some sort. You’re going to need to see generous gifts. And you’re going to need to see moments where there is real sacrifice in giving.

So I put a little extra detail on each one of these words to give us a little more clarity.

Faithful tithe: motivated by obedient worship, not begrudging duty. There’s a heart posture that’s involved.

Generous gifts that are motivated by genuine compassion, not manipulated concern. You kind of feel the manipulation of the marketing or whatever the need might be, and you’re able to move past that and say, “No, I’m giving to this, not because I feel guilty, but I am actually starting to feel compassion.” There’s a difference.

And then the sacrificial offering is motivated by radical love for God. It’s never for the praise of people. Remember Jesus talked to the Pharisees. “You’re out there trying to get commended for the way you’re giving. But there’s no sacrifice.” And then he pointed out the widow who was giving her mite. He said it was beautiful in his eyes.

Faithful Tithe. Matthew 23:23 the New Testament teaching on tithing. Jesus says, 

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter [justice, mercy and faithfulness], without neglecting the former.

There’s this New Testament concept where Jesus and the New Testament writers never talked about tithing. They never say anything about it. But Jesus is saying in his own words is saying, yes, there are more important matters than tithing. It’s not like if you’re tithing you don’t have to worry about caring for people. If you’re tithing you’re off the hook for the other important things. No. Jesus is saying these things are more important, but you shouldn’t neglect tithing.

I really believe tithing and Sabbath are a little bit of a similar type thing where God has just written into the fabric of creation that, if we’ll get rest right one day a week, he says, “I don’t care what it looks like. I don’t care what you have to do, what you need to do. You’re going to fail if you do not do what is required. If you continue to run in a way that is not the way the manufacturer has given the directions for, it’s going to fail. Rest.”

And I feel like tithing is one of those written principles into the creation. And it’s true Tithing predates the law. We’ll get to that in just a second. 

Numbers 18:26. I want to read this one just so you know something:

Speak to the Levites, [the priests, the caretakers], and say to them, “When you receive from the Israelites the tithe I give you as your inheritance, you must present a tenth of that tithe as the Lord’s offering.”

Just so you know, all the pastors around here, everybody in church work, if they’re not tithing, they’re not doing what God has asked. If they’re receiving tithes and offerings and they’re not tithing on that, they’re playing a game. So everyone here, all the pastors here, we tithe. Tithing is a big part of what we do. 

The church as a whole, ten percent of every dime that comes into this place goes straight into missions. We’re not allowed to touch it at all. And it’s been such a fun thing. It’s one of our greatest joys, at this point, to be able to see that happen. And we give more than that to missions, as well, but ten percent is automatic. 

2 Chronicles 31:4. This is talking about a moment of real revival in the people of God, in the community of God, a really precious moment.

He ordered the people living in Jerusalem to give the portion due to the priests and Levites so that they could devote themselves to the law of the Lord. As soon as the order went out, the Israelites gave the firstfruits of their grain, new wine, olive oil and honey and all that the fields produced. They brought a great amount, a tithe of everything.

I love this. Revival and tithing, revival and giving in the Scriptures. You see them go hand in hand so often.

Tim Keller, a Bible teacher from New York, actually says that when God is really moving in a community, one of the biproducts that he has always seen is radical philanthropy. Where there’s always a generosity that comes. It’s true in the book of Acts, too.
Genesis 14:19

And he blessed Abram, saying, “Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth. And praise be to God Most High, Who delivered your enemies into your hand.” Then Abram gave him a tenth of everything. 

Abram became Abraham, one of the fathers of faith. This is important because this is a time where a tenth, a tithe, was given prior to the law being given to the people of God. So, some people say, “Well, we’re not under the aw anymore in Christ. We don’t have to follow the law.”

That’s fine. I get what you’re saying. We have a greater law. We have the Spirit of God living in us. We have to follow that lead. But, as the Scriptures teach, the law of the Old Testament is still a good guideline. When it comes to tithing, it was something that was written into the fabric of humanity prior to the law being given. Again, I feel like it’s similar, along the same line as the Sabbath.

Malachi 3:8 says

“Will a mere mortal rob God? Yet you rob me. But you ask, 'How are we robbing you?’ In tithes and offerings. You are under a curse—your whole nation—because you are robbing me. Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the Lord Almighty,” and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it.”

Now, all I’m saying on this one, it’s an Old Testament promise to an Old Testament people. I do believe that many of those Old Testament promises apply to us in Christ Jesus, 100%. But I’m just saying, what if this is true? You know? I do believe it is. Just in case this might be true—that if we rob God in the 10%ish—that we actually will have curses and extra challenges in our life, and that, if we do give God that he will pour out blessings on us. I say we go for that.

1 Corinthians 16:1-3. This is a New Testament passage.

Now about the collection for the Lord’s people: Do what I told the Galatian churches to do. On the first day of every week [Sunday] each one of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with your income, [a percentage of your income], saving it up, so that when I come no collections will have to be made. Then when I arrive, I will give letters of introduction to themes you approve and send them with your gift to Jerusalem.

Paul was going around teaching, in the New Testament, to all the churches, that on the first day of every week they should be setting aside a sum of money that they should give to the Lord and the work that he’s doing. Now, for them, that meant Paul would take it back to that Jerusalem church where they would care for the poor and they would serve the people there, because that was kind of the home base. 

So that’s basically where we get the practice. We have these bags that are passed and people do it online now. But we’re maintaining that same practice so that needs can be met in our city and in our world. And we give to a lot of other churches and a lot of missions and we give to a lot of different situations. 

By the way, anyone can see our records anytime they want. We don’t keep anything in hiding. If you’re saying, “I want to check you guys out on the money side,” well, I think that’s cool. Come. We’ll talk it through and you’ll get to see everything and have all your questions answered. No problem at all. Open book policy.

The next category: Generous Gift. Acts 4:31. So, again, this is revival taking place. This is the first church, right after Jesus left.

After they prayed, the place where they were meting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly. All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own. But they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet. And it was distributed to anyone who had need. Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus, whom the apostles called Barnabas (which means “son of encouragement”), sold a field he owned and brought the money and put it at the apostles’ feet. 

Generosity is a sign of God moving. It’s been awesome in this church. We’ve got plenty of Barnabases who have stepped up and done amazing things. And we’ve got lots of Barnabases who have stepped up and their faithfulness over the years has equated to big, major things. Both have been beautiful and wonderful. This family has a rich history in this way. You guys’ generosity is legendary. I hear that from people who pass through here all the time. It’s a wonderful mark and I’m thankful for it.

2 Corinthians 9:6. 

Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously.

Generous gifts should be a big part of the believer’s life. And a couple of generous gifts, just in case you have some extra—we’d love a house that we could use for girls who have aged out of foster care. We gave up the house that we have on our property for boys who have aged out of foster care, but we need one for the girls. So all of you that have those extra houses, just let me know. We won’t even sell it. You can keep it. Whatever. Just let us use it. We also have another house at 37th Avenue and Camelback that we use for teen moms. They live in there and we’re helping them get some stability and get on their feet. It’s been a pretty cool deal.

Sacrificial Offering. Uh-oh. Mark 12:41

Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. [Nothing wrong with that.] But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins worth only a few cents. Calling his disciples to him…

Jesus saw this and it was so moving, and he didn’t want to miss this moment. He called his disciples to him. And he said, “I want to tell you guys something serious.” 

This poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others.

Because it cost her something. It cost her everything. It was only something that could be done because she desperately needed God and radically believed in Him. There was sacrifice. There was pain. She was going to go without something she needed, but she really believed God was worthy. 

Another story. Matthew 19:21: 

Jesus said to him, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”

Remember, this is a rich, young ruler who comes to Jesus and he has actually followed the law all of his life. And Jesus doesn’t say, “Ha! No you haven’t.” Jesus says, “Yeah, I believe you. There’s one thing you lack. You’ve never sacrificed. It’s never cost you anything. And if you really want to follow me, you need to go and sacrifice everything. And then come follow me and you will have the real treasure.” And the man went away sad because he was owned by his possessions. They were his master instead of Jesus.

This is the stuff you shouldn’t come to church for because it is not beyond God, even for a second, to ask you to sacrifice, to truly sacrifice for him or for the person sitting next to you, or for someone you don’t even know—maybe even an enemy. If you follow Jesus long enough, he will ask you to sacrifice and it will be miserable; but in the end, the glory which shall be revealed is not worthy to be compared with whatever you end up going through.

Matthew 26:7

A woman came to Jesus with an alabaster jar, [pretty close to when he was going to the cross]. The jar was full of very expensive perfume. She poured it on his head as he was reclining at the table. 

And you guys know the story—the woman with the alabaster jar. Many people believe this was a woman of ill repute in a lot of ways. Maybe she had made all that money in that alabaster jar by selling her body. And here she is interacting with Jesus and he has stirred something so deep in her that she is now coming to him saying, “Jesus, I need you. I want to follow you. I want to be the kind of person that I see in your eyes when you look at me.”

And she falls down and breaks open this very expensive (I forget how many year’s wages it was), but it was a massive thing. And it actually offended all of the disciples. It was so elaborate, so extravagant, so wasteful, that the disciples erupted into this argument about, “This could have been done so much better. Why is Jesus allowing this to happen?”

And yet, Jesus says, “Everywhere the gospel is preached this story is going to be told.” Because of the sacrifice. And all I can say on the sacrificial offering—I’m still trying to unpack it—I just think that, at least once in your life, you’ve got to sell out completely. I just think that’s a mark of a follower of Christ. At some point—and maybe it’s more for others, I don’t know—but where you literally just lose it all to go this way, or to give it all away to know what it feels like to only have Jesus.

It’s a scary thing to say to Americans. It’s not that scary to say to Belizeans. They’re like, “All right. You can have it. I didn’t really like it anyway. Take my car. It doesn’t run. Take my shoes. I mean, whatever.”

I have a lot of Belizean friends, so I can make fun of them. In case you’re like, “(Gasp!) Why is he saying that?” I’m talking about my friends, not the rest of the Belizeans, only my friends. 

But in other parts of the world, obviously, they don’t have so much cushion. They really know what it means to have nothing, and they’re not as afraid of it as we are. I think Jesus wants to do that. He wants to set us free from that fear. He wants us to know what it means to only have him; because, when we do, we find that we have more than enough with him. And all of a sudden, all of the stuff we have no longer has a grip on us anymore. 

I’m not saying I’m perfect in this. We’ve sold out a couple of times, but I don’t know. It’s hard to totally sell out, because then the Lord starts filling up so fast sometimes. But, it’s something to think about.

Lastly, I want to share a few stories as we wrap things up. We’re going to take communion in the end. These are more general. These have been very, very big moments in my education, as far as the economy of heaven. 

There is an old pastor I heard preach one time. He was in his seventies, maybe eighties. He always said that when he was young, he thought he was going to write the big check. And what he meant was, he always thought he was going to do something monumental for Christ. He was going to be a martyr and give his life or somehow he was going to do something that equated to like a big check. And yet, he was saying that, now that he is eighty years old, it had never happened. He had never had a lot of money. He had never been a part of anything big as far as movements. He only had, like, two Instagram followers or something. (He didn’t say that.) But his life just didn’t seem that remarkable. But he said he has grown in his appreciation and he has been so content with the reality that God had asked him to write so many little checks. But now, as he is looking back over this life and 

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©️2019 Living Streams Church
7000 N Central Avenue ∙ Phoenix AZ 85020 ∙ 602-957-7500 ∙ https://www.livingstreams.org

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.

Wisdom for Your Personal Finances

Mark Buckley
June 23, 2019
Series: The Other Hours

My topic today is Wisdom for Your Personal Finances. I’m going to be talking about finances. A lot of people cringe if they think a church is talking about money because they think the major motive is for people to give money to the church. That is — yeah, we want people to give generously to Living Streams—but that is not the primary motive for this message today.

I was thinking about three objectives I have. My goals for you are to help you maximize the impact of your life; to help free you from anxiety and insecurity about money so you can enjoy the peace of Christ; and to protect you from wasting your time, talents and money from bad financial decisions, unfruitful entanglements and wasteful purchases.

If this has an impact on you like I hope it will, it will free you. It will help you maximize your potential. It will help free you from anxiety. And it will help guard you against wasteful entanglements and bad decisions. Do we make bad decisions as believers? Yeah. 

We were teaching David and I, a Financial Forum a few weeks ago. One of the questions that was asked was, “Can you tell me your worst financial decision?” And I have a whole list of bad financial decisions. I chose the one where I forced the sale of a house for a hundred and something thousand dollars, and now that same house is worth more than a million. But because I forced the sale, someone else got the full benefit. 

I could tell you about lending out tax money that Kristina had saved to a guy I was sure was going to pay us back. And I said, “No, I don’t need the collateral of your guitar,” and she relented. Of course I didn’t have the guitar or the tax money after a few months because he never paid us back. And I could go on and on and get it gets worse, unfortunately. 

Even though, when I was a kid, I started working really hard at a young age—mowing lawns, saving the money—getting a paper route, saving the money—working in a grocery store, saving the money—by the time I graduated from high school, I had thousands of dollars. I was able to make loans. I was able to travel. I was able to buy a car. I could do practically anything I wanted. But there was one major problem with the finances I had saved. They had become polluted. 

You know something pure, something good, something you worked really hard for can be polluted. It says a few flies will make all the perfume stink. I had started cheating later in life. I cheated when I played poker with my friends on occasion. I cheated some of my paper route customers. I cheated when I worked at the grocery store by taking some drinks and not paying for them. All the money I had worked so hard for became sort of uncomfortable. I had a bad conscience about it.

Following Jesus when I was twenty years old began to free me from the grip of money, from the grip of greed, from financial insecurity. We lived in a discipleship house according to Acts 2 where we shared everything in common. We shared our cars. We would work and bring a paycheck back to the house. It would go to the needs of everybody. That was really, really good for me. I needed to start over. 

But even in starting over, and even though God has blessed us as a family, blessed us with the church, I’ve still wrestled from time to time with insecurities. Just this last week, I was talking to my daughter, Kelly, who’s a really good business woman. I said, “Kelly, I just don’t know how things are going. I suppose if I sold everything I have, I could probably make it to ninety.”

And she looked at me and said, “Well, Dad, what makes you think you’re going to live to ninety?”

And I said, “Well, my mom’s ninety-four.”

She said, “Dad, she’s mellow. You are so uptight. You are so stressed.”

The bottom line was, “You don’t need to worry about money because you’re going to die soon.” You know what I mean?

Anyway, I’m going to give you five principles that I think are principles of wisdom. These are things I taught my kids and some of you are my spiritual children. You’re sons and daughters of the faith and these are things I want you to have embedded in your life and working out personally.

1. Honor the Lord with your wealth. Proverbs 3:9&10 says this:

Honor the Lord with your wealth, with the first fruits of all your crops, then your barns will be filled to overflowing and your vats will brim over with new wine.

Let’s pray:

Father God, I thank you for this congregation. I pray, Lord God, that your word would help free us from insecurity and fear. Help us, Lord. Transform us into generous, wise givers who will invest in your kingdom and see an expansion of your kingdom in our lifetime. I ask, Lord, that you will guard us from those who are evil and those who would mislead, so that your truth will not only free us, but that you will bring blessings so that we can be a blessing. In Jesus’ name.

So, Proverbs 3 is talking bout honoring the Lord with your wealth. What does that mean? I think it means tithing. Abraham tithed. Jacob tithed. Melchizadek received the tithes. He was a blessing. And if you become a blessing like Melchizadek was to Abraham, you’ll be blessed financially like Melchizadek was by Abraham.

God’s desire for us is to bless us, make us so we can be a blessing to others. That was his promise to Abraham right in the beginning. So I believe it’s tithing. Some people say, “Well, that’s Old Testament.” The truth is, it’s Old Testament, it’s New Testament, and it works in the real world.

Honoring the Lord with your money is a lot more than tithing. For me, honoring the Lord was learning to be in unity with Kristina so that we made decisions together; because the impact of our decisions affected us both. As I learned to be in unity with her and learned that her discernment could give me a heads up when something wasn’t healthy, somebody wasn’t being honest, it has ended up saving us a lot in the long run.

Honoring the Lord with your wealth, in my opinion, means you pay your bills on time, because you’ve made a commitment. When you’re making commitment, those who swear to their own hurt and do not change, they are people that are blessed by God. So sometimes we make commitments and we wish we hadn’t; but when you have a bill, when you have a commitment, you pay it on time. 

It means paying your taxes on time; because we’re all supposed to be citizens who contribute to the well-being of the nation that we live in. The Scripture in Romans 13 says that the authorities are servants of God, and they’re there to bear the sword against the evil-doer and to commend those who do right So we owe them, as well. 

Honoring the Lord means all of those things.

Number 2. Be trustworthy with your money, Luke 16:11 says this:

If you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches?

There’s a contrast between worldly wealth—which is money and possessions, things that are going to perish—and true riches, which are eternal. They are spiritual gifts. It’s the power of God. It’s the insight of the word of wisdom and the word of knowledge. It’s healing grace. It’s prophetic ability to build people up. There are true riches, a lot more valuable than money. But the Lord uses money as a measure to determine whether or not we can be trusted with something even more valuable. 

Just like we give a kid a little bit of responsibility. If they can handle that, they get more responsibility. And with more responsibility comes more freedom, more opportunity, and more ability to enjoy all of life. 

When I was a young believer, we were in the Jesus Movement. We didn’t have a church, but we would borrow a lot of different churches. On one particular Tuesday night, our pastor—the guy who was leading us, he wasn’t an official pastor, he was a seminary student who was leading this Bible study—he said, “You know, we’ve been using this church now for months. I think we should take an offering and we should give it to the church for their light bill.” So everybody said, “Great.” They took an offering, and then, when the offering came in, he said, “Well, Mark, would you mind giving this to the church during the week, when their office is open?”

I said, “Sure, I would be glad to do that.” He gave it to me. It was mostly nickels, dimes and quarters and a few one dollar bills. It was just basically a big pile of change. It didn’t fit in my pocket. I put it in my truck. One thing leads to another. The next Tuesday night, we were back in there and it was a stormy night. It was windy outside, it was raining outside, and in the middle of the Bible study, all of a sudden the power went out. We were in complete darkness, and then a couple of moments later it came back on. 

The pastor leader guy said, “Wow, it’s a good thing Mark paid that light bill last week.” 

And I’m thinking, “Oh my gosh! I forgot!” You know, I had stashed the money in my truck and I never thought twice about it. It put the fear of God in me. The Lord had given me this money. This was the first time I was ever responsible for money that really was given as a gift to God. The next day I shot over to that church, gave them this whole bag of money, which probably was about $12 or something. 

But since that time, I’ve had people hand me money a few times. You know, tens, twenties, hundreds, and checks for thousands, and tens of thousands, and hundreds of thousands of dollars. And I’ve taken it with the same seriousness that I took that money to that church on that day. I don’t want the lights going out on my life and me being held accountable to be trustworthy and failing the Lord when it comes to that.

Luke 16:12 

If you’ve not been trustworthy with someone else’s property, who will give you property of your own?

I was at a pastors’ conference one time and it was being comp’ed by some wealthy foundation. They were paying for everything. I went out with another couple to dinner and it was held at a very nice resort in Tucson. We went to order dinner, and the guy that I was with ordered the most expensive thing on the menu. It was literally, like, elk plus prawns. And I looked at it and I thought, “Dude, how can you do that?”

And I knew how he could do it, because in his mind it was, “Hey, this isn’t my money.” In my mind, this is a responsibility, as Jesus said, if I’m not trustworthy with someone else’s property, or their money, who’s going to give me my own?

So I look at the prices when I go. And I look at the health, Those are my two criteria when I order: What’s the price and what’s the health benefit?

Verse 13

No one can serve two masters. Either you’ll hate the one and love the other, or you’ll be devoted to the one and despise the other. You can’t serve God and money.

And there is a conflict oftentimes. Not all the time. We all have to work. And we all make money when we work. That’s not wrong. That’s a good thing. We have to be wise about it. We have to be diligent about it. But sometimes there’s a rub. Sometimes the Lord’s calling us to give, or the Lord’s calling us to say, “No,” the Lord’s calling us to rest even though we could make more money if we work harder, the Lord’s calling us to take a vacation and invest in your kids; and you’re wondering, “Well, what’s the benefit?”

I’ll tell you the benefit as a dad whose kids are all grown up and gone. Once they’re grown up and gone, they are grown up and gone. And you’d be very fortunate if you ever get another vacation with your whole family together. Now’s the time, if you’re a young family, to invest in your family, as well as in providing for them.

Number 3, third point. Be generous and rich in good deeds. First Timothy 6:17 says this:

Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant, nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.

Command those who are rich. Most of you would say, “Well, that’s not me!” Well, when you remember the context in which this is written, the richest people in the world had no cell phone, had no car, had no airplane, had no television, had no air conditioner. You take away all those factors, and all of a sudden, you’d feel poor. They did not have the same food sources. They didn’t have a refrigerator. They didn’t have a freezer. They had never tasted ice cream. They were poor people, you know? 

They were still considered rich because they had more than enough to live on. We’re all rich. It’s just a matter of degree. Therefore, a command to those who are rich applies to us. That’s my point. Not to make anybody feel bad about it. Because he’s basically saying don’t be arrogant or proud. Don’t put your hope in the wealth, because it’s uncertain. Put your hope in God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.

So who is our God? Who is our Father in heaven? He’s the one who didn’t just make one super high protein banana. He made a banana and a peach and a berry. Not just a strawberry, but a blue berry, a blackberry and a raspberry. He didn’t just make a desert. He made a beach and he made mountains, he made lakes, he made streams, he made us male and female, and he made sex and he made it all for our enjoyment, to bless us, to show us his goodness and grace and enable us to really have fun in life. 

People say life is tough. Life is tough. Life his painful. But life is also very enjoyable. And our God wants us to enjoy it. He didn’t make us and sacrifice his Son for us so that we would just gut it out, so that we would just endure until the day we die and look forward to heaven. I’m looking forward to heaven. I’m hoping to have a reward when I get to heaven. And because I know I’m rich in the eyes of God, then I have certain responsibilities. 

In Luke 16, Jesus also tells a parable about a guy who has got good clothes, l he’s got good food and there’s poor guy dying outside his door and just wants the crumbs his dogs are eating. And when they both die, the rich die goes to a place of torment forever, and the poor guy goes to Abraham’s bosom forever. And it’s just like a heads-up warning to the rich guys, “Don’t neglect the people who are poor.”

Now, I don’t think that means that we are supposed to give money every time we see someone standing by the street corner with a sign. I would rather fund, which I do, Phoenix Rescue Mission, or Church on the Street, or a ministry in our church that’s helping poor people, where there can be some accountability—and actually give them the opportunity for life transformation. “You really want to get on your feet? You really want help? Well, we’re going to help you. We’re going to help you in every good way.”

Verse 18:
Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, to be generous and willing to share.

Kristina’s been staying up in Christopher Creek lately. (And by the way, if you think of it, we’d appreciate your prayer because she has some heart issues and she’s struggling.) But in this little community in Christopher Creek, we have a little cabin, and we have friends in the church that have houses and cabins around the area. And what’s so beautiful about it is that they all share. If Kristina needs tools, she goes over to the Stavros’s. She’s using an ATV from the Emmons’. If she’s doing her laundry, she goes over the Kesslers’. And everybody shares. Everybody gets together at night and shares dinner. And if you’ve got friends that are staying with you, they get invited to dinner too. It’s such an expression of the fulfillment of the blessing that a community can be. 

We used to go every summer to San Diego and we would stay with some friends. And bunch of Living Streams people would rent places on Pacific Beach and Mission Beach. What was so funny to me is how much everybody enjoyed it. They paid thousands of dollars to get these little two-bedroom apartments right next door to their friends’ two-bedroom apartments, and they would have dinner together and kids would be running back and forth. Basically, for two weeks every summer, rich people paid money to live like poor people live all the time. Really. Because poor people living in apartments, they’re always sharing and kids are running in and out, and they all love it like, “This is wonderful!” Because half of them would sit in the sun and they wouldn’t even go in the water most of the time. It was just being in community. The blessing of community.

Verse 19:
In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life.

Treasure for the coming age. When I think of Living Streams and our history, I think of David’s parents, Billy and Patty Stockton, who donated a brand new truck, who donated a brand new van, who would give away their cars. Every time they would upgrade a car, they would give us good cars. They bought a house and donated the house to the church. And because they bought a house and donated it to the church, we were able to buy our first church building. And because we owned that first church building and built up equity, we were able to buy this building. And now they’re in heaven and now they’re hearing the Lord say, “Well done, good and faithful servants.” Because they invested when we really needed it and their investment was multiplied hundreds of times, because they met needs then, and it has continued to grow in the equity of the Spirit.

Don’t wait until your ship comes in to do your giving. Do your giving while you’re living, and do your giving now; because it’s like buying Microsoft or Facebook when they’re first doing their IPO’s. You know what I mean? Netflix has gone up 14,000% in its first fifteen years. Anyway. That’s a whole ‘nuther subject.

Number 4 (We’re just doing 5.)

Recognize the dangers of debt, entanglements and the love of money. These are some dangers. This morning, as I was getting ready to leave, I see our cat bending over in the sink, drinking water out of a glass that had some dirty spoons, forks and a spatula in it. There is clean water ten feet away on the counter for the cat. I’m like, “Dude, get over to the clean water.”

I’m using this to illustrate that, sometimes there are sources that are more pure than others. If you’re lazy or you’re sloppy, you’ll drink from something that you might be sorry for.

Proverbs 22:7
The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender.

What is the danger of debt? The danger of debt is that you lose freedom. You become slave to the lender. It says in Romans 13:8

Let no debt remain outstanding except the continuing debt to love one another.

Sometimes, when we’re starting out financially, we need to say, “Okay. I don’t have the cash for something. I’m going to live by faith. By faith I’m going to buy an older car, and trust that it’s going to get me where I need to go. And even if it breaks down somehow, God is going to provide. Because the alternative is to buy a car that’s going to cost me 20-something thousand dollars, and by the time I get it paid off with interest and all the rest, it’s going to be over $30,0000 (if you do the math).” 

And you would have been a lot better having a little, old car that was paid off, break down a couple of times and Uber-ing yourself to work when it’s getting repaired in the shop, than you are spending a bunch of money and paying a bunch of debt. And sometimes God wants to provide for you. He literally wants to provide for you.

Kristina and I had dinner with a guy, I saw him this morning and he probably remembers the dinner. We both were in California at the same time. I said, “Can you guys meet us?” We were on vacation. He said, “Well, we would love to, but I don’t have gas money.” And I said, “Man, I’ve been waiting for somebody to say that to me for years. You get yourself to where we are and I will pay, not only for the dinner, but for the gas.”

Do you know why I was waiting for somebody to say that? Because too many people are charging things and putting them on credit cards that they can’t afford to pay off at the end of the month. So they are paying interest for years and years and years. There are people that might want to bless you if they knew what your situation was. 

2 Timothy 2:4
No one serving as a soldier gets entangled in civilian affairs.

What does that mean? That means we’re called to be free—soldiers of Christ, available for the Lord. We shouldn’t sacrifice our freedom. Some partnerships, some business arrangements are actually traps. They are entanglements waiting to ensnare you.

The first time this Scripture came alive to me, we had a bunch of discipleship houses in Novato, San Rafael and Peteluma, California. This guy who knew about our ministry came to me. He was married to a girl that I had gone to high school with. He wasn’t a believer. He said, “Mark, Ive bought this motel right in the center of Novato.“ There were only two motels in the whole city. He said, “I’d like to do a partnership with you. You guys manage it and I’ll give you some rooms available for your ministry.”

Free rooms. It sounded great to me. We had no financial risk. Long story short, I’m praying about it, all of our people are excited, and this Scripture comes to me: No soldier entangles himself in the affairs of this world. And I’m like, “Get out of my mind. I can’t wait to do this deal.”

Long story short, I had to say “no” to him because I couldn’t shake this Scripture. “I’m sorry, Ron, we’re not going to be able to do it.”

Within that very year, the economy crashed, the motel crashed. It was not only having trouble getting anybody in the rooms, but there were weeds growing up. He went into a major financial crisis. I would have signed a five-year deal to manage a place with no money that would have taken us a ton of work just to maintain and look decent. We would have had almost no benefit. The Lord saved me from that. But it was hard. It’s hard, because sometimes the word of the Lord comes to us and it’s not what we want to hear. 

Jesus said in the parable in Matthew 13:22
The seed falling among the thorns refers to someone who hears the word but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, making it unfruitful.

Wealth has an inherent deceitfulness. Deceitful means it appears to be one thing, but in reality it’s another thing. Every new thing you buy appears to make your life so much easier, so much more wonderful. But if it’s an expensive new thing that you just bought, you’re going to have to insure it, you’re going to have to wash it, you’re going to have to clean it, you’re going to have to park it someplace, you’re going to have to deal with your frustration if somebody backs into it, if somebody borrows it and doesn’t return it right. It ends up consuming a whole bunch of your time and energy, and our time and energy and our freedom and the grace and peace God’s given us are really a bigger and more important treasure than whatever that deceitful thing was.  Yeah, we need new things sometimes. But we have to be careful not to believe a lie about the cost of those things.

David quoted this earlier today, 1 Timothy 6:9-10
Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and many foolish and harmful desires that  plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.

Why do people want to get rich? Well, believers want to get rich because you’re going to have so much to give to the kingdom, supposedly. Don’t make that your goal. One of the things I’ve learned about people who give a lot, they don’t talk a lot. They don’t say to me, “Oh, Mark, if you’ll pray for me, pray about this deal. I’m really hoping this deal…I’m going to do this and I’m going to do that and I’m going to do the other thing.”

I guarantee that almost never happens. It’s not that my prayers don’t work. It’s that God doesn’t honor the desire to get rich. He honors those who work hard, who are faithful, who are responsible, who develop a generous heart. That’s who he honors. 

5. Your wisdom, reputation and faith are all more valuable than money.

Proverbs 3:13-17

Blessed are those who find wisdom, for those who gain understanding, for she’s more profitable than silver and yields better returns than gold. She’s more precious than rubies; nothing can compare with her. Long life is in her right hand. In her left hand are riches and honor. Her ways are pleasant ways. All her paths are peace.

Why is wisdom more valuable than money? Because it can give you long life. It can give you peace. It can give you deep, meaningful, significant relationships. I have a friend by the name of Al Ells, who is full of wisdom. On his board are all these wealthy people that support him. Why do they support him? They support him because, when their marriage was in crisis they came to Al and Al gave them wisdom. When their business was in a major struggle and employees weren’t getting along, they came to Al and Al gave them wisdom. So they love this guy because he shows up for them.

If you grow in wisdom you’re going to have all the resources you need for life, because you become a great asset to your family, to your friends, and everybody who knows you. 

Proverbs 22:1
A good name is more desirable than great riches. And to be esteemed is better than silver or gold. 

A good name. That’s your reputation. Now, I was a greedy kid. When I became a believer I didn’t have, all of a sudden, this wonderful reputation. But this is what I did. I aligned myself with the best name there is. And you can align yourself with the best name there is—the name of Jesus.  

And if people realize that you love Jesus and you will treat them the way Jesus would treat them—which is to care for them, to encourage them, to bless them, to give to them, not to manipulate them, not to use them, not to deceive them—if people realize that you live for Jesus because your relationship with Jesus is more important to you than making money or manipulating anybody or even making a name for yourself—just like they invited Jesus into their heart, they’ll let you get into their heart, into their life. Just like they want to be close to Jesus, they’re going to want to be close to you. They’re going to want to be your friend because you have the name that is above every name: Jesus.

That’s an incredible privilege—that we’re part of his family. That’s why the Scripture gives us all kinds of warning, like: Don’t defame his name. He cares about his name. There’s power in his name. At the name of Jesus every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. 

Here’s our last verse, 1 Peter 1:7. The Apostle Peter is talking about trials.

These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith, of greater worth than gold which perishes even though refined by fire, may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.

Your faith is more valuable than gold. 

We had a lady in our church for many years, Louise Loper. When she was sixty years old, her husband died and she decided to become a missionary. That’s what she always wanted to do. She sold their home to fund her mission trip and she gave away all the rest of the money. After ten or twelve years on the mission field, she came back and she was living in a little apartment here in Phoenix. She became part of Living Streams. She used to pray for me every Sunday morning before the services. We had a little prayer meeting. I loved her prayers. They were full of faith and power. When she was in her nineties, I went to visit Louise before she died. She was in a home with about five other people, being cared for by some loving Christians. She said, “Mark, look out that window.” We were in her bedroom. “Look out that window. Do you see that tree? Isn’t that a beautiful tree? Do you know that every day there’s a bird that lands in that tree and that bird sings to me? Do you know that every morning they bring me a fresh pair and it’s all sliced for me.”

And she went on and on about this awesome place she lived in and how wonderful her life was. And I kept thinking, “Louise, you’ve got so much more coming when you get into heaven. This is just a little bit of a taste.” But the real gift was that God had given her the ability to appreciate her circumstances. The pear. The bird. The tree. The window. The place in life. That’s the gift of God. That’s the treasure. It’s not how much we’ve got. It’s the ability to appreciate your friends, your spouse, your family, your job. Wherever you are in life, being right here, right now, today. The kingdom of God has come in Jesus’ name. Amen?

Let’s pray together:

Lord, your goodness and grace enrich our lives in so many ways. You forgive our sins. And Lord, today we want to just say, ‘Forgive us for being greedy, For being insecure, For being fearful.’ 

Help us, Lord, to give generously. To trust you with all our hearts. You are the treasure, Jesus, the Creator of all things. 

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©️2019 Living Streams Church
7000 N Central Avenue ∙ Phoenix AZ 85020 ∙ 602-957-7500 ∙ https://www.livingstreams.org

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.

Scripture marked NLT is taken from Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Purity for the Rest of Us

Alec Seekins
June 9, 2019
Series: The Other Hours

My name is Alec Seekins. I’m the high school pastor, and I’m happy to have some of my friends over here this week. We just got back Friday morning at 12:30 in the morning. We got back from summer camp. We spent a whole week just hanging out with each other, hanging out on the beach, going to Six Flags and going to the water park—and really, just kind of trying to grow together as a family. That was the thing that we were really pressing into—this idea that church is meant to be a redemptive family.

Today we’re going to talk a little bit about that capacity for redemption that we find in Jesus. Particularly, we’re doing this series, as you guys know, on the Other Hours. And today we’re going to finish up our sub-series on sexuality within that. And we’re going to talk, not about the Other Hours this morning, but about sexuality for the rest of us.

In church, I’ve noticed something, that we have a tendency to focus on one particular facet of sexual purity, that is good and is true and is right and is holy, but really only apples to a very, very small portion of us in the room. And, as an unintended result, we end up with a bit of a distorted view of what sexual purity means. We’ve come to believe that sexual purity is only something that can be maintained. That it’s only something that we can hold on to. We forget that sexual purity for the rest of us is not something to be maintained, but it is something that can be obtained. We never find ourselves in a hopeless situation when it comes to sexual purity.

So we’re going to dive into that a little bit today. I don’t know about you guys, but I love playing in the mud. I think I probably love playing in the mud a little bit more than the rest of you because, as an adult, I have found an excuse to play in the mud. A couple of times a week I go into a ceramic studio, and I pretend to do art, but the truth is, I’m making stuff, but really, I just want to get covered in mud.

I think most of you, if you reach back into your childhood, you can remember how much fun the mud is. I remember being four years old and loving getting covered in mud. I remember we had this big back yard (it probably wasn’t that big. I was four years old and everything seems enormous when you’re four years old). But I remember, we had this back yard that seemed enormous to me. Around the edges of the back yard, there was all this grass and weeds and stuff; and there was this big tree that would hang over the back wall—I think it was a willow or something like the—and it would create kind of a cavernous room on the inside. I remember I would get really excited, but a little bit terrified, every time I went through the willow branches, and I went in there and there was this empty space in there. It was really exciting because it was dark and cool.

I remember I’d have to leave that space after a couple of minutes because it was too scary for me. In the middle of the yard there was a big dirt patch, because—Phoenix. Right? You guys know the struggle, I’m sure most of you have a spot in the middle of your yard where it’s nothing but dirt because it’s this dried clay earth and this is not a place where grass is supposed to grow.

My parents were kind enough that they would let me, and my brother, and the neighbor kids, we would get to dig holes in the big, giant dirt patch. And my brother and I had developed a giant bean-shaped hole in the back yard. And my favorite thing to do was to go out there with a shovel to dig it up a little bit, make it a little bit deeper, a little bit bigger, and then grab the hose and fill it up, and then put the dirt back in there and smoosh it up until we had this silky, smooth, creamy mud that we could play in. I think some of you are having a very nostalgic moment like me right now, remembering that mud. And we would get in the mud and we would sit down and start to scramble to see who could get the most mud—as if we were living in a world with an economy of mud. Right? Whoever had the most mud was the wealthiest person in the kingdom of mud. Whoever could build the tallest tower, the biggest pyramid of sloppy, wet mud, they were the greatest architect the mud world had ever known.

I remember the dream was that someday we might dig this hole deep enough, that I could sink in past my feet, my ankles, my knees, my waist, my chest, my shoulders and into mud head, where I would be completely submerged in the beautiful mud.

I remember Clay Face from Batman was my favorite bad guy because he was living the dream. He was all mud, head to toe. I remember thinking, “I want to be Clay Face. But I’ll be a good guy Clay Face. But I want to be made out of mud.” 

And, no matter how much I loved playing in the mud, there always came a moment when I was ready to go back inside. Maybe it’s because I was hungry. Maybe it’s because it was bedtime. Maybe it’s because my favorite TV show was on. (For those of you who are old enough to remember the days before Netflix, when your show was on, you drop what you are doing and you go, because you don’t know if the rerun is ever going to play. And that’s a serious thing. Man, Netflix is a good thing, isn’t it? It’s a bad thing, too. But it’s a good thing.)

So, I would come to this point where I was read to go inside, and I would walk up to the back door where my mom would be waiting for me. I would look at her, covered in mud, and I would say, “I’m ready to come back inside.” And she would look at me. And there’s something I didn’t understand at four years old, and I’ve come to understand as an adult. There is a fundamental principle in the universe, written in the law of physics, that four year olds who are covered in mud and carpeted living rooms cannot, or at the very least should not, mix. So I didn’t understand that I couldn’t come inside like that. 

But my mom would look at me, and I”m fortunate that I had a good mom who never looked at me and said, “Ooh, Alec, you’re filthy. You’re going to be banished to the backyard. That creepy, cavernous tree is going to be your new home and the stray cats are going to be your new brother and sister. You can never come back inside because you’re just so dirty.”

No, I had a good mom. And so, she would say, “Ok.” And she would walk around to the side of the house, grab the hose, turn it on and say, “Come to me and I’ll get you clean.” And she would begin to hose me off, head to toe. She knew that wasn’t something I could do for myself. Those of you who have four year olds know better than I do that a four year old is not capable of getting themselves clean. Four year olds don’t understand that they have a bottom of their foot, or a back, or that mud can get between their ears, or maybe in their hair. They might hose their hair down and they’re like, “Oh, I’m clean.” But it’s still just more wet mud falling down their face. Four year olds are incapable of cleaning themselves. They forget that there’s mud in the pocket because they put it there because it’s money — you know, the economy of mud. They don’t know that. And so they need someone to wash them, to make them clean. 

When my mom was done washing me and every single drop of mud was gone, she would bring me inside and wrap me in a towel. And I would eat the food that she had prepared for me, sleep in the bed that she had made for me, under the roof that she and my father had provided for me. And I would be part of their family and I would be home. I needed to be cleaned.

Now, there are some children in the world, very few and far between, who, for whatever reason, manage to live their entire lives without getting so muddy that they would not be welcome in the home. I would not be surprised that there were none of them in this room. Maybe there’s one. Maybe there’s two. I imagine there are more unicorns in the forest than there are those children in the room or in our city. They do exist. There are kids who, for whatever reason, were never compelled, were never tempted by the mud. Or maybe they were a little bit, but they were a little more mature than the rest of us at that age. They looked at the mud and said, “You know, that looks like fun, but I won’t be able to go back inside once I get muddy. And I don’t want to have to go through the process of getting clean.”

There are so few of those. So, for the rest of us, what do we do when we’re muddy? For the rest of us, for whom sexual purity is a ship that has already sailed, do we have any hope? Yeah, we do. Jesus is on the side of the house with a hose, and it’s on, and he’s saying, “Come to me and I’ll get you clean so you can come inside and you can be a part of my family.” And Jesus is good at getting us clean. He knows what to do.

I think, unfortunately, in the church, with best intentions, we’ve misunderstood this. I think we’ve had a conversation where we kind of miss the mark. It’s had some really, really damaging consequences. I’ve sat in more than a few small groups or Bible studies or accountability groups. And I’ve heard someone talk about this concept of a “purity card.” Some of you may have grown up and may have actually, at some point in time had a little card that you signed, saying, “Oh, I’m not going to do anything bad, sexually speaking, my whole life.” 

And it’s great intentions. I’m not trying to knock you, if you did that. If it was effective for you, wonderful. If you ever taught that, I’m not saying you did something wicked or wrong, but I think this is where we’ve overemphasized the wrong thing. This is where we’ve overemphasized staying out of the mud as the only way we can get pure, and we’ve forgotten the good news of the gospel when it comes to our sexuality. That Jesus can make us clean again. 

And so, we have this idea of this purity card. It’s something that you’re given at birth. You only get one and you’ll never get another. And once it’s gone, that’s it and you’re done. There’s no redemption. Jesus will forgive you, but you’re still not pure anymore. For some reason we apply this to our sexuality, but not as much to any other sin or any other facet of purity. And I think it’s done something really damaging in the church. 

I have a friend. The conversation I had with this particular friend is one I’ve had with many, many people. But I can remember specifically this conversation with this one friend of mine. They were explaining to me how, when they were a child, they were sexually abused. And that left them with this question and this uncertainty about their purity. And they grew up and they were following Jesus. They weren’t making any mistakes or any failures of their own, sexually speaking, but they had this burning question: Am I still pure? Am I still clean? Am I still really a virgin?

It didn’t matter how many good leaders explained to them, “No, that was never a decision you made. That wasn’t a sin of yours. That was a sin of someone else’s. You are still pure. You are still clean.” 

It didn’t matter how much someone articulated that to them, because it didn’t jive with the concept of purity card that they had learned. Because they can say that one plus one equals two. They can add it up and it just didn’t seem to make sense. So they had this burning question: Am I still pure? Am I still clean? And they grew up and they got out of high school and they went on into early adulthood. There was a particular evening, and it wasn’t a temptation toward sexual pleasure that drew them in. It wasn’t a lie of intimacy drawing them in. But it was a temptation of getting a satisfying answer to this question that caused them to go out one night and find someone to sleep with. 

And I remember my friend explaining to me the feelings that were washing over them after they slept with this person, the first time they ever consensually slept with someone. And there was a little bit of guilt and a little bit of shame, my friend said, but overwhelmingly, those feelings were eclipsed by a sigh of relief that came from their very soul that said, “Finally I know that I’m dirty. I know that I”m not clean. I know that I’m not a virgin anymore. Finally I have a satisfying answer to that question.” 

What have we done? What have we done, that in the church, we’ve missed something so vital about the gospel, in such a pivotal part of our lives, that has led to that result? The truth is, I can guarantee you, there are a handful, if not dozens of you in this room, who have that exact, same story. And my guess is, there are probably even more of a very similar story, where it wasn’t abuse, it wasn’t something nonconsensual, it was just a decision that you made at some point in time to jump in the mud because it sounded like fun. Maybe you knew it was wrong. Maybe you didn’t at the time. But it was a decision that you made. And then you decided, “You know what?  The purity card was gone. I can never get clean again. I’m stuck so I might as well get back in the mud over and over again. I might as well make my home here. There’s no hope to get clean. Every time I get out of the mud and I start scraping it off of myself, I realize I’m still stained.”

We have missed the gospel when it comes to our sexuality. No matter how stained you are, no matter how dirty you are, Jesus can get you clean. There’s no ifs, ands or buts about it. It’s not as though, yeah, the purity card is gone forever. Jesus will forgive you, but you’re still going to be rotten for the rest of your life. No. Jesus is really good at cleaning. He doesn’t stop halfway. He is a good, good mother. He is a good father. He knows how to wash us. 

A few years ago, I started to realize and piece this together, because I was watching the sixth graders. I’ve been a pastor here for a long time. I did youth ministry for two or three years as a volunteer leader. I interned for one year and then I was the junior high pastor for three years, and now I’m just rounding out my fifth year as the high school pastor. As such, I’ve gotten to actually, a couple of weeks ago, I graduated my second class of sixth graders out of high school and into early adulthood. And I’ve been paying attention to the things that we say around church. I realize that this is an area where we’ve started to make some mistakes. 

I’ve had more than a few conversations with someone who, at one point in time was a small, innocent eleven year old child, relatively innocent and even ignorant when it came to sexuality, and I sat across from them a few years later as they were telling me about their brokenness in their sexuality, about the failings that they had made. And they’d seen the weight of the hopelessness of “I can never be clean. That card is gone.”

And when I started to realize this, I asked myself is what we’re talking about—what’s really in the Scripture? So I started looking. What does the Bible say about sexuality and about purity? And I realized something really interesting, that kind of surprised me. The Bible has a lot to say about sexuality. It has a lot to say about immorality when it comes to sexuality. It has a lot to say about purity. But most of the time it doesn’t actually overlap those two things. Usually when it talks about purity, it’s not talking exclusively about sexual purity. It’s talking about head to toe—your body, your soul, your heart, your spirit, your mind. Full and complete purity. It’s not singling out a conversation on purity. I think that’s interesting, because you guys knew when you looked at the sermon title for today, when it said, “Purity for the Rest of Us,” you knew we were continuing to talk about sex. Because, in church, when we say purity, we mean sex 99% of the time. But that’s not what we see in the Bible.

Now, there are a few places in the Scripture where those two concepts do overlap and the Bible has a lot to say about sexuality and about purity. Don’t get me wrong. I’m sure there are more that I have not been able to find. But I have, thus far, been able to find about three of them. Three places in the Scripture where those two concepts are exclusively intertwined. The first is a place where it talks about how important it is that the marriage bed remain undefiled. The second is in Corinthians, and Melissa did a fantastic job preaching on that last week. If you didn’t catch that, I would encourage you to get on our app or on YouTube and to watch that or give it a listen. There’s a lot of parallels between that.

The third place is here in 1 Thessalonians 4:3-7. It says this:

3 It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; 4 that each of you should learn to control your own body in a way that is holy and honorable, 5 not in passionate lust like the pagans, who do not know God; 6 and that in this matter no one should wrong or take advantage of a brother or sister. The Lord will punish all those who commit such sins, as we told you and warned you before. 7 For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life.

So what does Paul start off saying? He says it is God’s will for you that you would be sanctified. Now, pay attention to the verbiage here, because he’s using some active verbiage here, not passive verbiage. He’s not saying it’s God’s will for you that you would remain sanctified, that you would stay sanctified. He’s saying it’s God’s will for you that you would be sanctified, that you would become sanctified. That word, sanctified, in case you didn’t know, means to become clean, completely and totally and wholly. To be set apart. To be made pure. It is God’s will for you that you would become sanctified. 

If that verbiage wasn’t clear enough, pay attention to the next few verses. Because he says “Look, guys, here, church in Thessalonica, there’s an issue that we need to address. Some of you have been sexually exploiting others in the church.” Whew! That’s not light stuff. These are not innocent people when it comes to their sexuality. In the church that he’s talking to, these people are dirty, or broken. And he’s saying that God’s will for you is that you would be sanctified. Sexual purity is not only something that can be maintained, it’s also something that can be obtained. It’s not only something that we have to hold on to from birth, it’s also something that we can receive from the Lord as he washes us. 

Paul, here, when he’s writing to the church in Thessalonica, he’s not talking to the eight-year-old girl who’s never had a crush on a boy and telling her “Stay away from those boys who smoke cigarettes.” He’s talking to the twenty-eight-year-old woman who’s had more sexual partners than birthdays. And he’s saying, “Come to Jesus. He’ll get you clean.” He’s not talking to the four-year-old boy who still thinks that girls are ucky. He’s talking to the forty-year-old man whose pornography addiction and infidelity has cost him two marriages. And Paul is saying to him, “Come to Jesus. He’ll get you clean.” He’s saying your sexual purity is not something that can only be maintained. It is also something that can be obtained.

This is the gospel. Why have we cut it out in our conversations on sexuality, and left ourselves with only a conversation about sexual morality, and forgotten what sexual purity really means and how we get to it? Why have we forgotten that the ship has not sailed for us because of the blood of Jesus? There is no sexual brokenness that is too strong for the sacrifice that Jesus made. It does not matter.

I know that we’ve been getting scared, some of us, because there’s been so much more sexual brokenness churning up in our world, and maybe you’re seeing people that you love falling deeper and deeper into sexual brokenness that looks a little bit new and a little big foreign to you. Well, guess what? Don’t be afraid. Whether it’s you experiencing it or ones that you love, because there’s no sexual brokenness more permanent than the blood of Jesus. He an wash us. End of story.

Paul doesn’t leave them there with the idea, with this concept that maybe Jesus can cleanse you and make you clean. He actually gives some steps to take. He doesn’t leave us with an ethereal through that maybe Jesus will wave a magic wand and —ta da!—you’re sexually pure again. He says that there are some steps to take. What he says is to flee sexual immorality. Walk away from it. 

Essentially, what he’s saying is, get out of the mud and come to Jesus so he can get you clean. But you’ve got to get out of the mud. It doesn’t matter if you bring fists full of earth with you. It doesn’t matter if you’re dripping head to toe, covered completely. It doesn’t matter if every single square inch of your clothing is stained. Come to Jesus. He’ll wash you. He’ll make you clean. He’ll make you pure. No ifs, ands or buts. 

I had always believed that there were some ifs, some ands and some buts about it. I had heard that in church—in a good church. And I missed it. I just felt the blood of Jesus wasn’t sufficient for my sexual failings. But it is. The experience I’ve had in my life is that Jesus is capable of washing it all away. But we’ve got to get out of the mud.

It doesn’t matter if we fall in the mud on the way to Jesus a dozen times. It doesn’t matter if we get halfway washed and we jump back in the mud. It doesn’t matter if we have an addiction that calls into the mud over and over. Jesus can wash us. There is purity for every single one of us in this room, regardless of what your sin is. It doesn’t matter. He’s that good. It means something for me. My guess is, it means something for you. It’s a profound reality that changes the game.

I am a bit of a nerd. I know I look like a homeless person and not a nerd. But under all of this, there is a nerd, I promise. My wife will tell you the truth of it. And, as a nerd, I really love watching TED Talks. And the nerdier the TED Talk, the more likely I am to watch it start to finish. In particular, I found one of the veins of TED Talks that seems to be popping up a lot lately, that gets me excited, is neuroscienece. I know the vast majority of you in the room here the word neuroscience and think, “Boring. Next. Not watching that video.” I think, “Yes! I’m going to go deep down this rabbit hole of neuroscience talks.”

And I’ve noticed in all the conversations about neuroscience, there’s this particular buzz word that I hear over and over again and it’s the word neuroplasticity. If you’re super bored because you just heard a word like neuroplasticity, that’s all right. You can check out and come back in a minute or two and I promise we’ll loop this around for you.

Neuroplasticity essentially means that our brains are plastic, not like water bottle plastic, but they’re moldable and changeable, and they’re different. In particular, one of the areas where this has a lot of significance consequences is when the neuroscientists say, “Neurons that fire together wire together.” I’m not smart enough to know what that means, but, essentially, my understanding of it is this: 

In our brain, in our mind, in our heart, when we engage in a particular activity that has a particular response, whether it's a reward or a consequence, our brain creates a link between that activity and that response that might not have existed before. Then, when we do that activity again and got the same response again, there's a stronger connection in our mind. Then we do it again it's stronger and stronger and stronger every single time we engage in this particular activity and we get this particular response.

When we stop engaging in that activity or stop getting that response that connection in our mind it begins to erode to wither away until there's not much of a connection if any at all that remains. This is significant to our sexuality. 

It’s like this: If you've ever been off-roading, especially when it's been a little bit rainy and wet, and the roads are a bit muddy—and you go in your truck. You drive down a particular path, because you don't really have an option, because there are these these tire trenches where so many vehicles have driven back and forth over this very specific route in the road. Every time someone drives over it, the trenches get deeper and deeper, to the point where the only option that you have is to drive the exact same turns that everyone else has made before you on this road. Eventually, someone says, “You know what? I don't like that route because it's too muddy…” or,  “…because there's a big rock (or something like that), so I’ve got to change course a little bit.”

So someone goes off to the side a little bit for the first time and they clear a path through the brush with their tire tracks. The next person follows them, and over and over again until, now you have new tracks going in a different direction. Ss that's happening, these old tracks are beginning to erode and wash away.

This is what happens in our mind. How does this apply to our sexuality? We could apply this to almost any situation in our sexuality, but let's talk about maybe a pornography addiction. When you sit down and you look at a screen with pornographic images, you’re doing an activity that is connecting in your mind with a particular response, with the emotions and the chemicals and the feelings that were intended for intimacy and sexual pleasure. Your mind connects those two things and you start to build this connection to this screen. Then something unique happens with pornography that doesn't happen in a real relationship, where there is this novelty in pornography. There's something different sometimes, you know. Once or twice a minute, or at multiple times a second, you're flipping through different images, seeing different people in different acts. Your brain and your mind and your heart start to associate sexuality with novelty, with something different.

This is one of the many reasons why pornography is so destructive. We hit this point where, in order to be sexually aroused, in order to feel a sense of intimacy, I need novelty. I need different. And most people won’t tell you in person, but they'll say it on an anonymous survey— people who have a pornography addiction will admit that they are now looking at things that they found morally reprehensible when they first started their addiction. Why? Because they need more. They need different. They need new. They need something they've never seen before. One of the problems with that is that no spouse will ever be able to provide the amount of sexual novelty that the internet can. No one person can ever provide that.

So the results are that in many marriages where someone is struggling from a pornography addiction, there's a lack of intimacy. Why? Because the tracks are so deep and they're so entrenched in this direction, that they can no longer go in another this direction. They

can't get out of that rut. Some people find themselves physically incapable of responding to their spouse because their spouse is not a cellphone screen.

But there's good news, because this is actually a mechanism that God put inside of us, that God wired in our brain. The original intention of this mechanism was not for sexual immorality, but it was for sexual fidelity, was for a spouse. So in a marriage where there's not infidelity, and in a marriage where there's not a pornography addiction, what happens is, those tire tracks that are so much bad news over there, they're really good news over here. Because every time you go to your spouse for intimacy and sexual connection, those tracks get deeper and deeper, to the point where it actually becomes very easy to connect with your spouse, where you could almost let go of the steering wheel for a little bit and you would find yourself in an intimate place with your spouse. Now is it possible to take a sharp turn to the right or to the left and to jump out of those tracks, to find yourself someplace you ought not to be.

Yeah. Absolutely. Is that temptation always going to be there? Yeah. Absolutely. When Jesus defeated the power of sin, it wasn’t temptation he defeated. The power of sin is death, not temptation, but when we choose to say, “I'm going to abandon the immorality and I'm going to focus in on my spouse, whether I have a spouse or not, whether I ever even intend to have a spouse, I'm going to focus in on sexual purity, on fleeing immorality and letting Jesus wash me.” 

What happens is, these tracks over here towards the immorality begin to erode and wash away to the point where there's just really not much of a road over there at all. This is the power of Jesus this, the hope that we have in him. Sexual purity is not only something that can be maintained. It is also something that can be obtained. Sexual purity comes when we get out of the mud and we come to Jesus and we let him get us clean.

I imagine that there are a few of you in the room—and by a few, I would say probably the majority—that have felt or currently feel filthy.  You see your sexual brokenness and you say, “Oh, I wish that I could be one of those few people who was never compelled to get in the mud I wish that I had had the self-control, but I've proven to myself and to Jesus over and over again, that I love the mud too much to ever be pure.” You're not without hope.

 Maybe you say, “I tried to get myself clean. I tried to scrape off the mud, but I'm just a four-year-old and I don’t know what I'm doing and I'm still filthy.” You're not without hope. 

The gospel applies, not just in eternity but also today. Maybe your marriage feels like it's crumbling because you keep going back to the mud. you're not without hope no if ands or buts about it come to Jesus come to the side of the house where his blood is flowing through that

hose and he will wash away every single stain. You will be pure like you never knew you were before. You will be innocent like a child. He will wash away those tracks of immorality in your mind and in your heart and in your spirit. You will begin to form new ones that are pure and holy and right and clean. That’s the way sexual purity works for the rest of us.

I'm going to ask you to just close your eyes for just a minute and just have a conversation with Jesus. Because I know that hearing this is very different from receiving it. I know that receiving it is very different from living it. If you feel like you have been stained, if you feel like you have been dirty your whole life, I want you to just talk to Jesus and say, “Jesus, would you wash me? Would you help me to see how clean you've made me? Jesus, would you help me get out of the mud? Jesus, I want to come into the house I want to be a part of your family again.”

As we sing this next song, I know it might be embarrassing, but the truth is, it's like we said, most of us in the room will feel dirty. As we sing this next song, if you feel like you've been

in the mud or maybe you've been running around the backyard still covered in mud and you’re not sure what to do, trying to get yourself clean but it's been failing; if you feel like you need to take a step, maybe it's a step you'll have to take over and over and over again, but if you feel like you need to do something to say, “Jesus, would you come and get me cleaner?”  I'd ask you to just abandon your shame. Jesus isn't interested in your shame. He's interested in your

glory, in your purity. Just abandon your shame. Leave it in your seat and then come up and bow down before the Lord as we worship Him. In your heart say, “Jesus, this is me getting out of the mud. Can this be you washing me, getting me clean?”

And if you want, there's going to be people up here to pray for you, and if you want to just kind of have a time alone between you and Jesus, that's all right. You can get on the ground and just worship Him and ask him to clean you. He's doing it and he's good at it. He will not leave a drop of mud on you. 

Jesus, we come to you and we worship you. We ask that you would cleanse us. We ask that you would make us holy and pure. Jesus, I pray for sexual purity over this entire church, that you would cleanse the marriages, Lord—those marriage beds would become undefiled, Lord. That you would cleanse our hearts—that you would wash us with your blood of the mud that has stained us—that those of us who no longer have the option of maintaining sexual purity, that we can obtain it through you, and then maintain it from there. Our hope is in you, Jesus.

Make us pure again.

---

©️2019 Living Streams Church
7000 N Central Avenue ∙ Phoenix AZ 85020 ∙ 602-957-7500 ∙ https://www.livingstreams.org

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.

Scripture marked NLT is taken from Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Sexuality Part 2

Melissa Ingraham
June 2, 2019
Series: The Other Hours

Let’s pray:

Father, we thank you so much that you come running after us, that there’s no shadow you won’t light up, mountain you won’t climb up, coming after each one of us. There’s no wall you won’t kick down, lie you won’t tear down, coming after us. That, God, you have a plan and a purpose for your people this morning, and I do thank you for the privilege of speaking into that. We ask that you would receive all of the glory. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

My name is Melissa Ingraham. My husband, Gary, and I have been attending Living Streams for about a year and a half. They have really welcomed us and our ministry, Love and Truth Network, with open arms—literally. We spoke to the staff at a staff meeting before we started coming. And after we were done sharing our personal stories and our call to ministry, Pastor David came over and he was like, “Can I give you a hug?” And we were like, “Yeah! That would be awesome. We’re all about hugs!”

So we founded Love and Truth Network about five years ago. My husband had been on pastoral staff at a large church in upstate New York, and he was divided in his attention with all kinds of pastoral concerns, you know, Financial Peace University, Divorce Care, and then also really helping people deal with sexual, relational brokenness. And I’m a licensed professional counselor. We run a twenty-week program that deals with all kinds of brokenness. He realized that God was kind of kicking him to of the nest to form our own ministry so that he could work full time on equipping churches on how to develop environments of transformation for the majority of Christians dealing with sexual or relational brokenness.

When your job is to go around the country talking to churches about, basically sex, it’s really helpful to have a church that believes in you and believes in what you’re doing. So we’re so grateful to be here this morning. I’m grateful to be here. He’s grateful. He’s out of town, traveling. 

In this series, the Other Hours, we’ve been talking about how God wants to make us, not just good at church, but good at life. We’ve covered some of the major areas of our lives: relationships, work, rest. And so, think about this for a minute. If you have a troubled relationship, you can seek space for a season or go to another room, it’s your spouse or a child. Hopefully, most days, you leave work at work. If you need rest, you can take the time away from other things. Maybe you can actually schedule a vacation where you don’t run around like a chicken with your head cut off, but you actually rest, right? 

But our sexuality is something we can’t get away from. We take it with us wherever we go. Why is that? Because it’s woven intentionally into every part of our being—emotionally, physically, psychologically and spiritually—by a God who knows what he’s doing. It may not feel like God knows what he’s doing sometimes, especially with regard to sexuality. It may not feel good, because most of us, I would submit to you, have been wounded in some way in our sexuality, in our relationships, and we’ve experienced a lot of pain and a lot of shame. 

My heart, this morning, our heart, my husband and me, our heart is for the church. We love the church and we want to see reconciliation and healing come. And we want to see freedom. The reality is, we are all sexually broken. Does that surprise you? You may think to yourself, “I’ve never struggled with porn or this or that,” but we’re all sexually broken because we’re all born into sin. We all have disordered desires for different things as a result of the fall. 

We’re also living in the consequences of the sexual revolution, the breakdown of the family, fatherlessness, no-fault divorce culture; and as the boundary lines have been burned down, there’s childhood sex play, exposure to pornography, and, honestly, horrific sexual abuse. Some of you have experienced that. I experienced that. 

We need to be honest and open about facing our brokenness in this particular area, because the church is being rendered ineffective in reaching a hurting and lost world. In case you haven’t noticed, everyone else is talking about it. The media, your public education system (just check and see what books they’re reading to your kids), the government. The government is, like, legislating sexuality like you wouldn’t believe.

Dr. Howard Hendricks, a professor at Dallas Theological Seminary for over sixty years, said, “We should not be ashamed to discuss what God was not ashamed to create.” Right? Sex was God’s idea in the first place.

One of my spiritual gifts is exhortation and I like to recommend books. And because our living is made with dealing with sexual and relational issues, if I say that a book on this topic is good, it is. Dr. Julie Slattery, she was with Focus on the Family for a long time, she now has her own ministry called Authentic Intimacy. Her new book is called Rethinking Sexuality. She says sexuality is not a problem to be solved, but a territory to be reclaimed. Isn’t that awesome?

How do we reclaim it? Discipleship. Oh, its not about being mean and telling people they’re going to hell and that’s somehow going to help people want to know Jesus? No! It’s discipleship. 

Matthew 28:19&20, you know, our great commission: Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And I will surely be with you till the end of the age.

So discipleship is the integration of what we believe into our everyday lives and relationships. And, honestly, this is where it’s breaking down in terms of what the church believes and how we’re actually living. 

Discipleship involves three things:

Knowing what we believe. Maybe you’re new to the church and you don’t actually know. Oh, this is interesting. They’re actually talking about sex? I wonder what they’re going to say. What is right? What is wrong? What do they believe? What’s okay? What’s not okay? We need to know what we believe.

Living what we believe is the second part. Living what we actually believe.

And passing on what we believe.

She makes a case that we need sexual discipleship because we’ve been discipled the world’s view of sexuality and relationships, haven’t we? Think about it. Have as much sex as you want with whoever you want, and you’ll be happy, Be whoever you feel like you’re supposed to be, and you’ll be happy. If you’re not happy in your marriage, try another one. It’ll be better for the kids. The list goes on and on. All of these messages. And if that were true, that we could just have as much sex with whoever we want and we’ll be happy, the rates of depression and anxiety would not be rising the way they’re rising. I’m also here to tell you, personally and professionally, that it doesn’t work. I mean, I’ve been there. I’ve done that. 

Sexuality is so much more than just the physical act of sex. And yet, that’s the first thing we think of. As Christians, maybe you grew up and the message was, “Just don’t do it.” And then, somehow, when you get married, you cross some magical line, right? And, boom, now it’s okay. So, shame, shame, shame, naughty, naughty, naughty, and then you cross this line and it’s okay. That doesn’t work. It doesn’t.

We need to learn and integrate, really come to believe—and not just believe up here—and experience  that God’s boundaries, God’s design for our sexuality is good. He’s not a cosmic killjoy just out to spoil the fun. Within those boundaries is the best…I’m just going to say it… it’s the best sex you’ll ever have. And so, if that’s not your experience, and for the majority of Christians it’s not, we need to change that. Because we need to have an answer and real-life examples—when all of the people out in the world who don’t know Jesus and they’re running after all these other things—when they realize they’ve been sold a bill of goods and they come looking for a real answer, we need to have it. And that means we needed to look in this house first and allow Jesus to clean it out and to deal with us.

Sexuality is the totality of who we are as male and female made in the image of God. Genesis 1:27, so God created mankind in his own image. In the image of God he created them. Male and female he created them.

So sexuality includes our biological sex, our gender; but also our gender identity, our psychological and emotional sense of what it means to be male or female. It also includes our spirituality, We cannot separate our relationship with God from our sexuality, It’s not possible because we’re made in the image of God.

Identity is the condition or state of being a specific or thing. An image is a representation of the form or features of someone or something. So what does all of that mean? That means that our sexuality, how we express that, should reveal and reflect God, the goodness of God.

Dr. Slattery believes that the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, the good news of God’s covenantal, sacrificial love, is written in our sexuality. I had never heard that until she wrote it. The gospel is written in your sexuality. I don’t know about you, but that caused me to pay attention. The gospel? The good news? Yes! It’s that important. And that means we can’t just do whatever we want to with it.

For me, I felt for a long time like my sexuality was bad news, not good news—for me and for everybody else. And what is the gospel? It’s the reality that God gave everything for you to be in a relationship with him. It was costly. It cost Jesus his life. 

While God loves us just as we are, he does not accept us just as we are. That’s hard to hear. That’s the reality of sin and a holy God. Our sin is offensive to him. God’s greatest demonstration of love is not to overlook our sin, but to save us from it. So I’m just going to be honest. This is the realm that Gary and I are seeing. We’re speaking into this a lot. We’re helping churches who want to be loving and full of truth. That razor’s edge, really. And you’re part of a church that’s on that razor’s edge and that’s awesome. And it’s that razor’s edge of saying, you know what? It’s not loving to actually tell someone that their sin is okay. It’s not loving. It may be easy. It may less uncomfortable to not bring it up. But the, reality is, hopefully you heard a message that you were a sinner and you needed to be saved from that sin. Right? If you take sin out of the equation, why did Jesus die?

That’s one piece. The other piece is, either you believe that God is the ultimate authority on everything and that the Bible, in its entirety, is true, or you don’t. We can’t have both. We can’t pick and choose what we believe. 

The Old Testament tells the story of Israel’s idolatry and unfaithfulness to God. And the biggest stumbling block for them wasn’t that they entirely rejected God, it was that they added worship of other gods to their worship of God. Sound familiar? That’s what we’re doing today. We believe in God. We come to church. We generally believe that certain things are wrong and so on, but somehow, when it comes to our sexuality, we feel like that off limits to God. That’s personal. That’s my choice. When, in reality, it has everything to do with how God designed us and what he wants for you—his best for us.

Dr. Slattery writes that this is why sexuality is important. It’s a holy metaphor of a God who invites us into a convenient relationship with himself. Sexuality is that metaphor of a holy God inviting you into a relationship with him. God created you as a sexual person in order to unlock the mystery of knowing and invisible God. 

So sexual desire matters—and what we do with that desire. Sexuality is the ultimate expression of our desire to be loved. Yes, by others, but first and foremost, to be loved by God. That’s why marriage isn’t the ultimate solution. It is a picture. In Ephesians 5, it is a picture of this covenantal love—of God and his church. It’s not just about the roles of men and women, Mae and female, although that’s important in that passage, but it’s a picture of this spiritual reality that God wants us to grasp. But even the best marriages leave us longing for something higher, something deeper, something eternal. 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer said that the pursuit of purity is not about the suppression of lust, but about the reorientation of our life to a larger goal. You know what came to mind when I read that? Galatians 2:20 — I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. 

So whose life are we living? 

I want to talk about a major passage of Scripture that addresses what we’re talking about in terms of, does the Bible really say that sexual sin is wrong? Isn’t that kind of outdated and archaic? No. 

1 Corinthians 6:9-11 in the New Living Translation. I love the way it says it:

9 Don’t you realize that those who do wrong will not inherit the Kingdom of God? Don’t fool yourselves. Those who indulge in sexual sin, or who worship idols, or commit adultery, or are male prostitutes, or practice homosexuality, 

Usually, we’re like, well that’s obviously wrong, those things. But then we keep reading:

10 or are thieves, or greedy people, or drunkards, or are abusive, or cheat people—none of these will inherit the Kingdom of God. 

So this is important to understand, that, yes, we are all sinners. We commonly hear one of the arguments for being more affirming of certain identities: We’re all sinners, why are singling out, for example, homsexuality. Aren’t we all sinners? Yes! We are all sinners. We need to be saved. Absolutely. What Paul is talking about here is those who indulge and practice sin—whatever that sin is. Versus the next piece:

11 Some of you were once like that. But you were cleansed; you were made holy; you were made right with God by calling on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

There’s a difference between indulging and practicing sin, in a sense, living that way, versus struggling against sin with a desire for righteousness. That’s very, very important. Do not be silenced because, “Well, I’m a sinner, too, so I can’t really say anything.” Either Jesus is in the business of changing lives or he’s not.

My life is forever changed by Jesus—forever. My husband and I have been married almost twelve years. We have two boys, ten and almost eight. My husband comes out of a background of homosexuality. He bartended in a gay bar. He was in several relationships. I have a lot of brokenness in my background, which I’m going to tell you about. This verse here, “that’s what some you were…” That’s hope. That Jesus can actually change you. You don’t have to settle. And if you haven’t gotten freedom, deliverance, healing or reconciliation—whatever it is—you keep coming to Jesus for it, because he wants to give it to you.

Then, in 1 Corinthians 6:12-20

12 You say, “I am allowed to do anything”—but not everything is good for you. And even though “I am allowed to do anything,” I must not become a slave to anything.

In other words, we can’t use our freedom in Christ to just do what we want. That’s not why Christ died. 

13 You say, “Food was made for the stomach, and the stomach for food.” 

Now, I get this. Yesterday my good friend, Becky, and I took our boys and we went to Urban Cookie Bakery. It’s amazing. We were doing market research. No, we were! She’s looking to open a bakery. She’s trained as a pastry chef. And we had to sacrifice to do this research with her. These cupcakes were just amazing! So, yeah! My body was made for food and specifically sugar. It was yummy. But it says this is true that …

(This is true, though someday God will do away with both of them.) But you can’t say that our bodies were made for sexual immorality. They were made for the Lord, and the Lord cares about our bodies. 14 And God will raise us from the dead by his power, just as he raised our Lord from the dead.

15 Don’t you realize that your bodies are actually parts of Christ? Should a man take his body, which is part of Christ, and join it to a prostitute? Never! 

And don’t get caught up in that word prostitute. That’s what the Corinthians were doing. That was a major issue in that city at that time. These new believers were still indulging in basically cult prostitution as part of their worship. What he’s saying here is any kind of sexual sin.

16 And don’t you realize that if a man joins himself to a prostitute, he becomes one body with her? For the Scriptures say, “The two are united into one.” 17 But the person who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him.

In other words, sexual sin, sexual immorality directly impacts our relationship with God. There’s a worship going on. So either we’re worshiping God or we’re worshiping someone or something else. It could be us. It could be an image. It could be another person. So it’s clear. 

18 Run from sexual sin! 

Run as if your life depends on it. 

No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does. For sexual immorality is a sin against your own body. 19 Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, 20 for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.

So the reality is, homosexuality, living together and having sex before marriage—sexual sin is not a “worse” sin than any other sin, but it does have worse consequence. It’s spelled out right here that it directly affects our bodies, our souls, and our spirits. It can affect our ability to attach in longterm relationships. Like, if you have been “hooking up” with people—because your brain releases hormones for bonding and connectedness. 

So the issue is that those hormones are value neutral. Your brain can’t tell whether you’re in a committed relationship or in a one-night stand or you’re looking at an image on a computer screen. So if you do that over and over to your brain, it’s going to impact your ability to actually bond to a real person in the future. That’s serious business. 

And we’re seeing this. Time magazine had a cover article in the last couple of years on men—not Christians—young men who basically couldn’t perform sexually because of their addiction to pornography, in relationships with women. They could not do it. This was not about Christianity. Scientific studies are supporting what the Bible says is true. 

Living together before marriage undermines the stability of the couple, even if they wind up getting married later, because it promotes a consumer mentality. Basically, what can you do for me? And both people in the party are exhausted from trying to measure up—trying to prove they’re worth what they’re committing to. Study after study shows that cohabitation is not good. 

What about pornography as an epidemic? It’s an epidemic in the church. Upwards of 70% of men in the church are looking at porn regularly. And it’s not just a male problem. Upwards of 30% of women are now involved in looking at pornography or erotic literature online. We have to start talking about it. Not just talking about it. That’s what we’re doing this morning. But proclaiming the truth that Jesus can set you free. Jesus can heal you. I am a living testimony of that.

I grew up in a religious family. We went to church every week. I went to a religious school. And yet there was no talk of a personal relationship with Jesus. There was no integration of that spirituality into our daily life.

My parents marriage was very troubled. My dad dealt with that. They were both very sexually broken. There was adultery on both sides. Lots of stuff I won’t get into. The way that my father dealt with that was by staying away from home more and more. I internalized his absence. And I think a lot of people would experience this, if you’ve had a father that was absent in some way, either physically or emotionally, I basically internalized that as I wasn’t worth sticking around for. 

In addition to that, my mom worked full time. So my older brother, my identical twin sister and I were left home after school for hours. Latch key kids in the eighties. We had access to cable tv. There was lots of smut on there. And I found my father’s pornography in our storeroom when I was twelve. I was scared and confused and it also awaked something within me. So, combining that with my brother making sexual comments about my body—he would grab me in sexual ways—cumulatively the message was it was not okay to be a woman. It was a liability, actually. I also developed an addiction to fantasy and masturbation. Yes. I just said masturbation in church. Should I say it again? No? Cover the ears of little ones. 

Then there was this one time where my dad came home and I was standing in the hallway outside my room. They didn’t know I was there. And my mother went to kiss him and he recoiled from her in disgust. In that moment, I made a vow that I would never be like her. I would never be financially or emotionally dependent on a man. And I totally rejected my femininity.

I didn’t realize that then. I just was like, “Nope. Not going to do that. I’m going to protect myself.” And I began to develop this false masculine kind of strength, if you will. I was going to take care of myself. At the same time, I desperately needed the love, attention and affirmation that I didn’t get from my dad. So, even though I didn’t trust men, and I actually believed that all men wanted was sex. I’m just being honest with you. That’s how I internalized everything that went on in my home. I still went looking for that love in all the wrong places. And I allowed boyfriends to pressure me sexually, and I gave myself away.

Then I hit college. I’m in a longterm relationship. I get engaged. I’ve got everything going for me. Good grades at a private university in DC. My mom divorced my dad. I was like, “Good riddance.” And yet, the emptiness inside me was just growing. I was depressed. Nothing was helping. I was getting more and more withdrawn.

Through a variety of circumstances, I began to question my sexuality. I broke off my engagement and my senior year of college, I met a woman, I started dating her and I thought, “This is what I’ve been looking for my whole life.” It just felt so right to be with her. I felt connected. How many of you know what I’m talking about? That person, whoever it is. You were just like, “This has to be right because it just feels right,” 

At the same time that was happening, I began to experience a disconnect in my relationship with God. I had tried to be a religious kid. I was involved in a campus ministry. I was not a Christian, but the Holy Spirit was drawing me. And I had a distinct sense that every time I chose to be with her, that I was putting Jesus in a corner. 

So she quickly moved on from me to someone else. I was devastated. It was as if the weight of all of my broken relationships came crashing down on me. I know that a lot of you have been there. Whatever your relational, sexual history is. I was in the shower, crying, and I could barely breathe. And I said, “God, you’ve got to help me.”

Next morning, I woke up thinking I’m a lesbian. I was in so much pain, I cried out to God. The next morning I woke up still depressed, still looking. I went to my campus minister and managed to tell him, mumbling, why I had broke off my engagement. He had met my fiancee and everything. And he told me that it was okay to be gay and a Christian. I thought, “I can have both. That’s the answer. I should want that answer.” And yet, I knew he was wrong because the Holy Spirit was already working in me. 

About month later, I got saved. And I got saved because someone got up and said what nobody had said up until then, which is, just because you feel something doesn’t make it right. What? That had been my entire justification for this relationship and for this identity—that it just feels so right. And I realized I had been deceived into believing that was who I was. And so I repented of that. I gave my life to Christ. And that’s the end of the story.

Oh, no! I wish. I actually went up to the prayer minister. (You all will appreciate this. This gives you an inkling into my personality.) I went up to the prayer minister and I said, “What do I do now?” 

She’s like, “Well, did you pray the prayer?” 

“Yes. Well, what do I do now?” 

She did not have a good answer. I knew, even in that moment, and I immediately felt release from the idolatry of that particular woman and blah blah blah, and I knew that the way I was thinking about other people was distorted and diseased. I knew I was objectifying people in my mind. I knew that wasn’t just going to go away. It took about two years until I could find a group, Living Waters, where I could be honest about my struggles, my sexual sin. 

And honestly, that’s the thing. We look at sexual sin and we think, “Well, that’s the obvious one.” It is the obvious one. But there were so many deeper sins. Like my idolatry, my unforgiveness. I needed to look at the wounds I had received and the ways I had hurt other people. And the way I was able to do all of that is in community. The only way I was able to do that was in community. And I was able to experience Jesus through listening prayer. Through healing prayer. I was able to extend forgiveness by praying with other people.

Living Streams is committed to helping us—all of us—deal with our brokenness. We should be grateful. Honestly, it’s rare. There are a lot of churches that have a lot of good teaching and that’s where it ends. Living Streams is committed. They’re going to have a podcast coming up on livingstreams.online, an online course. Our ministry, Love and Truth Network is hoping to offer an eight-week women’s group in leading up to our twenty-week group. So there are places for you to experience healing and hope. So, I hope you guys will jump in with both feet. 

Thank you for having me. I’m just going to pray and we’ll have Pastor David come up:

Lord, I want to thank you for this morning. I want to thank you for these precious, beloved people here this morning. And we ask that you would come and meet us in our areas of brokenness, whether it’s shame over something that we’ve done, shame over something that’s been done to us—maybe an addiction to sexuality in some way. Lord, we give you permission to speak to us and we’re asking that your Lordship would be established again in our lives, that the goodness of your love would come and meet us again. In your name, Jesus we pray. Amen.

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©️2019 Living Streams Church
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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.

Scripture marked NLT is taken from Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Sexuality

David Stockton
May 26, 2019
Series: The Other Hours

It doesn’t matter what you’ve experienced sexually. It doesn’t matter how messed up you might be, or how unholy you think you are. A relationship with Jesus Christ can make you whole. A relationship with Jesus Christ can take whatever deformed situation you have in your life and it can reform you into something that is absolutely beautiful in God’s eyes, and in your eyes, as well. It might take time. It might take some real hardship. It might take a lot of things,  but if you take Jesus’ hand and you walk with him, you will see, in time, that he can and will make you whole, holy and beautiful.

That’s a little spoiler alert for you, in case you don’t listen to the rest of this message because I say the word sexuality so much.

We’ve been going through this Other Hours series. And I don’t know why, but for some reason we thought that sexuality should be part of it. The concept of Other Hours is that God doesn’t want to make you good at church, because that’s really just a couple of hours a week of your life. For me it’s more than that, but for normal people that’s all it is. God doesn’t want to focus on that. He wants to make you good at the other hours of life. The whole of life. 

So we broke it up into five different categories. We’ve got the relationship aspect of our life. God wants to make you good at relationships.

We talked about our work. Not just what we get paid for, although that could play, the occupation that we have. But the work that God has fashioned you for and made you to do — the work that brings fulfillment into your life.

We talked about rest. For some reason in the Bible, this God that’s revealed to us through Scriptures and through Christ himself, is really into rest. It’s very important to him. It made it into the Ten Commandments. So I think that we should take it seriously that we need rest. Probably more than we think in our Protestant work ethic type mindset. Rest is important to God. So we talked about that.

Now we’re starting this section called sexuality because we are sexual beings. And sex is obviously a very, very big topic in our world. It’s a huge motivator. It’s what all of our advertising marketers think is the easiest win. All of our comedians, when they’re not funny they know they have to start doing sexual jokes, it’s the only way to be funny these days. 

And even in our own souls, if we’re honest, there’s a lot that goes on that nobody else ever sees  that comes from our sexuality.

We have people like Sigmund Freud, who basically revolutionized the psychology industry. He said every single thing we do comes from our sexuality, our libido. And Jung, who was after him, kind of said, well, maybe it’s not all that, but it’s still basically along the same premise, that we are sexual beings and our intimacy issues for Freud, with our parents, affect every aspect of our life. And for Jung it was more like our intimacy issues with the opposite sex have basically wired us and formed us in a way, sexually, that we are basically either doing well or not so well. It’s a big issue.

In the book of Genesis, God seems to say the same thing. One of the very first things that we learn about humanity is that we are sexual beings. God ordered everything in the beginning. He created a moon to rule the night, a sun to rule the day. He created hours of life and cycles and all of that. And one of the very first things that he created was humanity. And humanity is said to be made in his image—male and female, he created them. One of the very first descriptors of humanity: male and female. It seems like in our world today we’re trying to get rid of all these labels and differences. 

But according to the Scriptures, God was saying, “Hey, I want people to know who I am so I’m going to make a part of creation that actually has my image on it. They’re not going to look like animals. They’re not going to look like trees. They’re not going to look like fish and birds. I’m going to create one part of creation. It’s going to look like me.” And so he created male and female, different but equal. And together, when male and female get it right, it’s the best picture of God that we can have. God is not male. Oh, it says “he” in the Bible. Yeah. It’s the best way they could describe who it is. God is outside of gender. He is not male. He created male. God is not female. He created female. 

And somehow, together, when male and female get it right, we get to see a picture of the image of God. Take that a little further: mom and dad. When moms and dads get it right, they’re kids get a chance to see and know what the image of God is. So I think Freud was on to something, obviously. 

In the New Testament it comes to more clarity—husband and wife. When husband and wife get it right, it releases this image, this picture of God that’s clearer than anything else than can every be seen, when it’s done right. And the truth is, I don’t know if there’s ever been one that’s been done just right. They all have their own wrinkles. But we do see this throughout Scripture. 

It’s interesting, because, when I was growing up in church, whenever we talked about sexuality, it was never about gender, it was always about desires, right? Unwanted or wanted desires. Which ones are good desires. Which ones are bad. Which ones should we go for… It was always desires. That was the only aspect of sexuality. But in our cultural moment today, no doubt about it, we in the church need to keep teaching about gender. Because there’s a lot of confusion about it. 

Different but equal, and when it’s done right, it shows us who God is. And if we can know who God is and we can be intimate with God, it solves every problem. Because Jesus taught us that, we’re not just sexual beings, we’re spiritual beings first and foremost. And it’s not our intimacy issues with our parents or the opposite sex, it’s our intimacy with God. If we have issues there, then the rest of life is going to be confusing. 

So, in the book of Genesis, we have four things that really comes out clearly that we need to make sure that we’re teaching, that we’re paying attention to, that we’re listening to. The first is this: God is the author of sexuality. “What? I thought God was trying to get rid of all of that!” No! He is the author of sex and sexuality. He was the one that thought, “Oh, this would be cool. Let’s do some of this. And let’s do some of this. Whoa! That’s cool!” It was him! And when it was all said and done, he looked at it and said, “It is good.” Sex ad sexuality is good in God’s eyes. So good. That’s not at all what the world would have us believe.

The second thing we learn is that sex and sexuality is more than a physical thing. Somehow sexuality and spirituality are very connected. And we learn this when God says that when the two come together they’re not just going to be two separate anymore. They’re going to become one. And obviously it’s not a physical thing he’s speaking about there. Two come together. Me and my wife come together and we’re one. We get that in a lot of ways. But it’s not like she’s here.

I actually asked her if she would preach this message and I could teach the kids — if she would do that. But she doesn’t love me that much, I guess. And so we understand God’s trying to help us understand that sex is a lot more than just a physical thing. Even though you can swipe left and swipe right and our world’s trying to teach us that it’s just a physical thing. It’s much, much deeper. It actually forms us spiritually. Or deforms us spiritually.

Third thing we learn from Genesis: The first and maybe primary thing affected by sin was humanity’s sexuality. What was the very first thing that happens when sin came? Immediately Adam and Eve were confused, embarrassed and hiding from God in the area of their sexuality. They were naked and afraid or ashamed. 

Basically, I think this describes where humanity is at today. All the noise. All the screaming. All the shouts. All the things that we’re experiencing today are really just cries from the hearts of people who are confused, embarrassed and hiding from God. And they don’t know what to do. And that’s the starting point for our message today.

I wrote this up and, I don’t know, it seemed like it was a good thing, but it left me feeling a bit embarrassed or ashamed. This is what I wrote:

I’m a white, middle class male. So most of the world doesn’t want to hear anything I have to say anymore. And I have never had the addictive hooks of pornography in me. I’ve never had sex outside the covenant of marriage. I’ve never felt the exciting, yet conflicting feelings of same-sex attraction. I’ve never been married to someone who struggles with sexual addiction. I’ve never been touched inappropriately by someone who was supposed to be caring for me. And I’ve never had honest and deep questions within me about my own gender. 

Instead of feeling thankful and grateful, I felt disqualified to speak about sexuality. I had to follow it up with this:

I understand that for some this confession disqualifies me from speaking about sexuality at all. For some this confession makes me an anomaly that’s hard to relate to. But my hope is that, maybe to some, this confession can be an encouraging reminder that not everyone everywhere has succumbed to or been scarred by conflicting sexual identity and uncontrollable sexual desire. 

My story is a story of a really good mom and dad, and a really safe environment. I had these ideas that were taught to me, that if I go this way, it would save me from a lot of other things. And, by the grace of God and a little baptism, a little reading of the Bible every day, I was able to stay on a course and land in a place where I’ve felt real secure in my sexual identity and real satisfied and fulfilled in my sexual desires my whole life. 

And yet, I also know just what Jesus taught his disciples. He said to them, “You guys have heard it said of old by the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, that if you’ve never committed adultery, you’re doing great.” But he said, “Here’s something that’s real. Something that’s true. Something that’s not made up. Anyone who has ever thought inappropriately about anyone in the area of sexuality is broken, is guilty, and in need of healing and restoration.”

And though this is my story, we’re all different on a spectrum. We’re all broken, and guilty, and in need of restoration in the area of sexuality. No doubt about it. I don’t think anyone in this room would claim to not be in that category, as Jesus defines it. 

So, how do we get to this place where, even though things go good, we’re guilty—even when things are right, we feel embarrassed or ashamed and find ourselves hiding from God? There are a lot of different reasons. I’ll just go through a few of them here.

First of all, there was a sexual revolution in the 1960’s or so. In that sexual revolution, basically, the young people were saying, “Forget this—this whole idea that sex should only be reserved for the confines of the covenant of marriage.” 

So there was this whole destigmatization and demysification of nonmarital sex, because people wanted to be free. And we’re living in the fruit of that revolution. 

In addition, there’s been a cultural war. Listen carefully to me. My email is david@livingstreams.org. I know all of you are going to want to email me with all of your problems afterward. So there. Have fun, okay? It’s not just me. I’ve done some research on this. There is really a cultural war taking place in our time. And I believe that there are people in the LGBT community and some of the people out in the forefront of that who say that they represent the whole community, are politically trying to gain advantage. And I really do believe there is actually demonic influence involved in that. 

Now before you get too crazy right now—over on this other side, which could be labeled the “Religious Right” or whatever they want to call it, there are some people way out on the forefront who are trying to gain political advantage, and are totally demonically influenced.

And they’re having this war that the media is picking up on. And we’re all watching and going, “Wow! This is intense! This is crazy! And we’re all going to die!” 

But it’s not what most people are living with and feeling. 

I talk to my friends in the LGBT community from time to time. They’re not crazy. They’re not angry. They’re a little confused, a little embarrassed. Maybe hiding from God—maybe not. Trying to figure out how to be formed sexually whole. Some of them have their own ideas and some of them are even following Jesus, seeing if he can make them whole. 

And then, over here, there are a lot of people who are not so crazy, trying to answer some of these questions that their dear friends are dealing with. I had a mom come up to me after the first service. And she said with tears, “Thank you so much for that message.” Her son is grown and he has a gay partner. She’s been trying to figure this thing out his whole adult life. Still hanging on to Jesus. Still trying to sort it all out. She doesn’t want to be a part of this cultural war. She just wants to find wholeness and healing and health.

So we have these powerful forces at work. I really believe it. One of my friends says that, “In our world, we have deceptive ideas that play to our disordered desires that are normalized in the sinful society.” Basically: We have the world, the flesh and the devil. They influence with these deceptive ideas that, when they connect with our disordered desires, they sound really right and good; then, when we look, and they’re normalized in the sinful society, we’re like, “Yeah. We got this.”

The one problem is, they contradict what the Scriptures and God is teaching us. We’ve got to figure out what’s true.

But that’s the basic situation that we’re in. It’s confusing. It’s embarrassing. And we have really found ourselves hiding from God—even in the church.

So, if that’s our situation, what are we supposed to do? Well, I want to read a verse to you. Romans 1:22-31

Paul is kind of describing his cultural moment. He’s describing what’s going on in his first-century Christianity in Rome, as a Roman and a Jew at the same time. 

22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.

Pay close attention, even if you’ve read these Scriptures before.

24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

Then watch this.. he says: 

28 Furthermore,

…and even more—like worse than that…

 just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 

What???

31 they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. 32 Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

I think it’s so interesting. This is Paul the Apostle, one of the most intense Christians of all time. He had no time for compromise. He basically taught us that we’re supposed to beat our bodies into subjection and run the race with perseverance. And here he’s saying, “Look. This is what I’ve seen. This is what I’ve noticed. When  people start to remove God, remove the knowledge of God, the teachings of God, the ways of God, it affects their sexuality.”

If you’re not intimate with God, then you’re going to be starving for intimacy with other things. If you choose other things, it’s going to start forming you sexually, which affects you spiritually.  He said, “First they’ll start doing things that seem very selfish. And then, what gets worse than that is they’ll start doing things that are like homosexuality and these other things that are not good.” And then he says, “After that, they’ll start doing horrible, horrible, way worse things, like greed, or jealousy, or disobeying your parents.”

Do you see what’s happening here? For some reason in the church today, we’ve made homosexuality or those type of things to be the most heinous of all sins. And for Paul, he’s saying, “No. That’s just kind of one of the steps that leads to the real bad stuff.” 

You know what Christians need to do? They need to start spending some time with homosexual people. Really. I believe it. All of us got loved into the family of God. And that’s all homosexuals need, too (or whatever their sexual orientation). Every single one of us should be, every year or every couple of times a year, making sure we’ve invested in a relationship like that, in the hopes of loving someone into God’s family. Is that really hard for us to understand and grasp? Is that really such a challenge?

And I get it. It is a challenge sometimes. I’ve been spending some time with some of my friends that are trying to figure it out, or have made decisions in contradiction with what I believe. And we have a great time together. And, every once in a while, probably more for me than for anyone else, “Now, you remember that we disagree on some of this stuff, you know?” And they’re like, “Yeah, I know. I know.” And we have really a fund time, and “Thanks for helping me with this or that.”

We all got loved into the kingdom of God. And that’s what this mom was basically crying and saying, “Thank you so much for telling people to just keep loving me son. And maybe someday he’ll actually see that God loves him and God has room for him.”

So what do we need to do? What if we find ourselves in the place where we feel guilty, broken and sinful? Well, the promise of the gospel, the promise of Jesus is not only that he forgives us, but he cleanses us, he heals us, and he restores us. This is what’s so amazing about Jesus. We sang that song, “Oh, the blood of Jesus. It washes me white as snow.” But it’s even deeper than that. It washer us. It cleanses us. It heals us and restores us to a place where we have this word called justification: “Just as if I’d never sinned at all.” 

And so we have to ask this question: In light of all of this heaviness that we’ve described—the sexual revolution and all its fruits that we’re enduring; the cultural war that’s going on; all the deceptive lies—the world, the flesh and the devil; all of our own sexual formation that’s been so deformed and mistreated; all of the times that we, in our own decisions, have been victimizers or victims; and all the times where people have made decisions that have stolen from us or changed us and we really had no power to do anything about it—what do we do in that situation? Is there something strong enough for that? Is there a remedy at all? 

Well, that’s what Jesus came to give us. He came to do a few things. He came, first of all, to give us a deep and powerful vision of what humanity can be, spiritually and sexually. He came to give us the power of his Holy Spirit to help us resist our carnal desires and live into fullness of life. He came to give us a way of living that actually, as we walk in his ways, forms us into healthy sexual beings who are in control of our sexual desires instead of being controlled by them, and secure in our sexual identity instead of confused, embarrassed, and hiding from God. 

And, not only did he come to give us all of those things, but he died on a cross to pay for all of our sins. The ones we’ve done and the ones that have been done to us. And so, really, we are left at this point: Is Jesus enough? Is his blood enough? Was his sacrifice great enough for me? And can his Spirit really be powerful enough to take me in my deformed state and make me into something that is reformed and whole? And that’s the question that each of us has to ask.

I asked my aunt this question because I know her and I know she’s lived a life of celibacy. It’s been her decision. And so I asked her, as I was preparing for this. I said, “Can I ask you a weird question? Have you been, and are sexually fulfilled?”

And she’s an honest person. She doesn’t make things up. She exaggerates sometimes when she’s telling a story, but… But she wrote this long thing, and I’ll somehow get it in a podcast or an email to get it out, but I found myself crying three times reading it, with tears of wonder and beauty, as she described to me how she has been totally sexually fulfilled.—even though she knows that she’s picked a very different way.

She even said that she kind of made up this term between her and Jesus. And I’m going to say it. It’s going to sound weird, so just track with me. She wrote it down and it’s r-o-t-i-c, so it’s rotic. And I was like, “Whoa. Like erotic? What’s going on? This sounds a little weird.” 

But she wasn’t going that way at all. It’s just romantic, without the man in it. You get that? You take out the “man” you’ve got rotic left. And she said, “There have been so many moments when I’ve been caught up in the Father’s love, the Husband’s love in my life, and it’s carried me through. It’s not that I’ve had to live without that kind of intimacy, that kind of fulfillment. I’ve just had to live without a man bringing that into my life.” 

And she said—this is what’s huge for me—she said, “I’m 67 now and it’s pretty easy for me to say these things to you. But when I was 27, it was hard. It was hard.”

She was telling me that has chosen to follow Jesus and he has led her into absolute fulfillment, and she has no regrets. And so Jesus’ love is strong enough for that.

And then I was able to talk to another friend. He was telling me about how, in his marriage, he really did have intense struggles with pornography, leading up to finding this girl that he wanted to marry. And his wife had been promiscuous. And they had come to Christ separately. They had surrendered to Christ and his ways, and they felt the heaviness of their sin, of what they had done. They felt it very strong. They were concerned because they wanted to come into this marriage, and they knew they had all this baggage as they were coming in. And he was telling me this story, how then they got married and they did what work they could with counseling and some of those things to kind of unpack that baggage. But he knew. He had heard all the stories. He knew the weight of it all. He knew he was coming in with all of these bags. They’ve been married a number of years now and he said, “We just keep waiting, because at some point it seems like these bags should have effect.” But every times these bags come up—their past—they basically open them and they’re empty. They have no weight in their life anymore. It has no power over them. Yes, they still have the bags. Yes, they still have the identity. “I struggle with pornography.” “I was promiscuous.”

But now, I’m this situation, they’ve been reformed. They’re different. They don’t think the same way. And, actually, all of that past is just a testimony. They can say, “See this bag? It used to be full. It used to be heavy. But check it out now. It’s empty because of Jesus.” Cleansed. Healed. Restored. This is the gospel.

One other analogy that I’ll share with you as we close: A sealed envelope. This guy was describing how, when you seal an envelope the first time, it holds pretty well. But then, each time that envelope is opened, the seal isn’t as strong. And, sociologically speaking, not just Scripturally, not just theologically, but sociologically speaking, that analogy proves out. That those who have been with many people, it’s really hard for them to stay with one person in a marriage, or to be faithful in that regard. And that is why Jesus teaches us to flee sexual immorality. Run from it. Stay away from it. You don’t want to have to go through it. But it also is an analogy that works on the other side too, because Jesus can restore. The grace of God is more powerful than any sociological paradigm. 

And I felt like that analogy was something that the Lord was saying, “If anybody will take my hand, if they will walk with me, if they will allow me to be the Lord of their sexuality, I will come and I can even restore what was lost. I can make it be able to be sealed again.

Let’s pray: 

Lord, I thank you that we have some people speaking in some of these Sundays that are going to be able to speak with such a beautiful testimony of how you have done these things. Not just the idea that you can, but they can actually say from their own life and experience, “This is what the Lord has done. He’s emptied the bags. He’s made me be someone who’s able to be sealed once again.” 

And Lord, I do pray that we, as a people, every single one of us who is guilty and broken and in need of restoration, Lord, I pray that you would show us how to take your hand in this way, how to offer you our sexuality, whether old or young, and find your restorative work happening. Lord Jesus, we need you. 

---

©️2019 Living Streams Church
7000 N Central Avenue ∙ Phoenix AZ 85020 ∙ 602-957-7500 ∙ https://www.livingstreams.org

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.

Counterfeit Rest

Ryan Romeo
Series: The Other Hours

Counterfeit Rest
Ryan Romeo
May 19, 2019
Series: The Other Hours

Rest. Real rest. The unforced rhythms of grace. That’s the thing that Jesus is offering us. That is the rest that Jesus is offering us. We made this video for our Dwell Conference, the worship conference we did last year. We knew people are going to be coming in in this sort of frantic pace of life, the first half of the video was just every stressful sound and word the we could think of, all crammed into one place, building with pressure, building with all the noice and cacophony of life. And then (sigh) rest. Slow down. And Jesus offers us the unforced rhythms of grace.

I don’t care if you’ve been following Jesus for fifty years or if you don’t know anything about following Jesus, we are looking for that unforced rhythm of grace in our life. Like we were just displaying with Jay and sabbatical, David is a leader that really, really cares about rest. He cares about real rest. Jesus promises real rest. And that’s what we’re going to be talking about today.

My name is Ryan Romeo. I’m one of the pastors here. I don’t normally stand here. So, if you’re new and you don’t like what I have to say, good news: next week David’s going to be here and he’s going to most likely do a much better job than I’m going to do. But I”m going to do my best to talk ab out rest. This is week three of talking about rest.

If you haven’t noticed, in the middle of the Other Hours, we’re talking about the 167 other hours in life that you’re not in church that God wants to make you good at — rest is one of those things. It’s vital. It’s important. God wants to give us real rest. 

The original title of the message that I was going to give today was Rest in the Digital Age. Which is what we’re going to be talking about. We’re going to be talking about rest in the digital age, but as I was poring over it, as I was praying, as I was studying, what I realized is that I want to talk about real rest. And the world is giving us counterfeit rest. The world is giving us things that say “This is really restful,” but it’s not restful at all. 

We go on vacation believing this is the thing that’s going to give us rest. And when we get back, what do we say? “I need a vacation from my vacation.” We get days off. We get two or three days off and somehow we still don’t feel rested. And sometimes, we feel like we need to just stop moving or we think we need more days off, more vacation time, and God’s saying, “No, you’re pouring into the wrong rest. I want to give you real rest.” 

Rest does not just come with time off. Rest comes with real purposefulness and a real slowing down to get away with Jesus to rest. And that’s what we’re going to be talking about today.

Before we start, I want to do something that might make you guys uncomfortable. I want you to pull out your smart phone if you have one. If you have a flip phone, don’t worry about it. I don’t care about the flip phone. I just want you to pull out the smart phone. If you have a phone that dings at you and it’s got a screen you can touch, I want you to pull it out. I want you to do something — everybody — I’m watching you guys—I see everyone here. I want you to do something that maybe you haven’t even done since you bought the thing. I want you to click and hold the side button for me until this little thing comes up. If you have an Android, I can’t help you. I’m sorry. I live in Apple world. So you slide that thing off. I’m showing you. I’m shutting my phone off. 

Now, this might make you uncomfortable. I want you to put your phone back in your pocket or your purse until the end of the serve ice. Now, I know you’re expecting a very important call, but I just need you to put it away. I’m hearing some good noises like phones getting shut off. Awesome. 

There are four kinds of people in this room. Number one there’s flip phone guy like I just talked about. You’ve got the flip  phone and it’s not that big of a deal for you.

Person number two is a little more like David Stockton. Your screen is cracked and you don’t care and you turned it off and you’re like, “Who cares? I do that every night.” No big deal to you.

Person number three, it hurt a little bit. You were like, “Oh, I don’t know. What if someone tries to call me? What if someone tries to DM me on Instagram? What if I want to Instagram message someone?” Shutting it off is hard. Maybe even now you’re feeling like, “I don’t know if I can really wait until the end of the service, Ryan. I’ll wait until Ryan gets off stage and then turn it back on.”That’s a lot of us in this room. A lot of us are in that place where it’s really hard to disconnect.”

The fourth person in this room, it was so hard for you, you pretended to turn it off and you just put it on silent. And that’s okay. I get it. It’s really hard. We are living in a world of constant connectivity. We’re living in a world that is really hard to get away from all of the people and all the noise, but it’s really, really important. If we can’t quiet down our minds, we’re going to hear voices that are louder than the Holy Spirit in our life and that it is not good. That does not lead to good rest. 

This morning I am not saying that this is evil, either. Let me just start off there. This is not evil. This is a bit of technology. And this is actually the greatest bit of technology that we’ve seen in a very long time. This represents the greatest communication shift in 500 years. Not since the printing press have we had such ubiquitous access to information. You want to know what that song is playing on the radio? Bam. You hold up your phone. Now you know. You want to know what this word means in Hebrew?  Bam. Pull out your phone. You know. You want to know who won the game? You’ve go information at your fingertips like never before. And this beautiful. It really is a beautiful tool for us to use in our lives. It really does change things.

We believe in this. This is not something that we at this church say. “Oh, we don’t use technology.” I hate when people say, “This is not the real world.”  No. Social media is a real thing. It really does matter. It makes people rich. It could cause pressure in your life to make you suicidal. It’s a very real thing. As a church, we believe in it, we engage in it, and we use it as a tool for the glory of God. 

We’re starting a digital campus here at Living Streams. We’ve never done that before. But we know that it’s very, very important. We’re starting livingstreams.online. It’s going to be a place where we can connect with people.There are people watching us on live stream right now. You’re probably watching on a phone, which I’m glad you didn’t turn off your phone in the beginning. But we believe that technology really is a beautiful, beautiful thing. 

Yesterday, my daughter was home. She wasn’t feeling good. And she was laying on the couch, watching Netflix. And I told her, “Sweetie, I didn’t have access tot hat when I was a kid. That would be unbelievable to me.” I grew up in the 80’s and 90’s, and people who grew up in that era know that when you were sick at home you didn’t turn on any show you want whenever you want. You had to get up and change the station. 

When I was a kid and I was sick, at about 10:30 in the morning, there were like four options to watch. You had The Price is Right, obviously. You had Days of Our Lives. (My mom would be embarrassed to say she was into that.) The Andy Griffith Show, of course. And I don’t know. Telemundo or something. You had no options. 

For me this would have been science fiction. If you brought this to me and said, “Ryan give me your Game Boy and I’ll give you this,” I would have been blown away. You can watch anything you want whenever you want. That’s amazing.

When I was eighteen, I decided I wanted to become a missionary. I graduated high school in two thousand. So, when I went to the training school in Maui, I remember I only had access to a pay phone. Because in two thousand we had cell phones, but we paid by the minute, and when you were going across states like that, it was very expensive. So it wasn’t an option for me. I didn’t have a computer. So I would go two doors down to this bar and I would call my parents while I watched parents drinking beer at nine third in the morning. And it was just life for me. Every week I’d go down and call my parents.

And we had these missionaries that came and visited our school. Their whole drive, their entire mission was to bring physical bibles into closed countries. So this couple learned from drug dealers, basically, how to take apart cars and, instead of putting bricks of cocaine in the cars, they would put physical bibles in Chinese or Arabic, and they would drive it across the border into China or Saudi Arabia or whatever, and they would give it to pastors and distribute it from there. Which was amazing and unbelievable. But then a few short years later, we realized that if you just used your phone and you put the Bible on it, you could get it into closed countries. You just need hackers. 

What an amazing bit of technology this is. It is not inconsequential. It is very consequential and it has the power to do amazing things for the kingdom of God and it’s already impacting people. I have the Bible app on here. I can pull it up in any language. I can show up in any country that I want and I will have the Bible in their language. That’s an unbelievable tool that we’ve never, ever had before. 

But —this is a technology that bites back and that’s what we’re going to talk about today. The average person opens their phone 110 times a day. Bing. Open it up. Bing. Open it up. 

Research is telling us today that, when you get a message, a text message, email, whatever, it gives you a little bit of dopamine every time you get that message. If you’re walking down the street or you’re in the mall, and somebody calls your name, you get a little shot of dopamine, because it means that another human being is trying to talk to you. And if you’re introverted like me, you also start to sweat a little. But it’s a good thing. Your body’s saying this is a good thing.

Bing. Your phone tells you someone’s trying to talk to you.  Bing. Someone’s trying to talk to you.  Bing. Someone’s trying to talk to you. You get an email. You get a text message. Somebody likes your post on Instagram. Those things are addictive. They are literally addictive to us. 

The average person spends about 4 hours on their cell phone,. And a lot of research is telling us that, if you’re college age, you spend more time on your phone than you do sleeping. We are spending a lot of time on our phones and it’s very, very addictive. And in this digital age, it is really hard to disconnect.

The CEO of Netflix said his number one competitor, in his mind, is sleep. Because Netflix is so used to people binge watching so long, that the only thing they are spending more time doing is sleeping. And some of you know, Netflix robs your sleep very easily. They know what they’re doing. Next episode. Next episode. 

And I’m not saying any of this is bad. What I’m saying is that this is a distraction. It’s not real rest.

Last year I realized I had a problem when it came to this. My wife is on the leadership team for Veronica for The Well, a women’s event on Wednesday nights. She went there. My kids went to 3-5 Hang. And it was just May (my youngest) and me. And she’s in Kindergarten so she needed to go to bed early. So I read to her and laid her down and then I sat back I was like, “Man. I’ve got like an hour and a half to just rest. I need to rest. I feel tired.” 

I lay down on the couch, turned on Netflix. Some funny, mindless show playing in the background and “bing” I got a text message from someone. I pull out my phone, check the text message, and I thought, “Well, while I’ve got my phone open I’m going to jump to Instagram.” Jumped to Instagram. There’s this guy talking about this other guy on Twitter who’s got a very interesting thing. I swipe over to Twitter and start checking this guy out. I liked some of his tweets. Then I see he’s got a link to this article. I click on the link to the article and then I go to Facebook. I’m on Facebook reading this article, and I think, “This is very, very interesting.” And as I’m scrolling down, there’s another link to his work on Pinterest. Bam. I click that. I can’t not click it. I’m scrolling through Pinterest and then, pretty soon, I come across an article that says How to Build a Survival Bunker in Your Backyard.  And if you know me, I am a sucker for post-apocalyptic preparation. So I was going, “I have to click on this.” Clicked on it. Started sizing up my backyard as I’m reading through it. And I’m lost. I’m lost in digital world. 

And I blink and—Bam. Blake comes home. And she said, “Hey, did you have some time to get some rest?”

And I was like, “Eh… kind of. I mean, I laid down.” But my brain was going and going and I realized, “I don’t feel rested or recharged at all. That was not restful.”

I read a study recently and it was pretty scary, actually. The University of Sussex did a study on multi-tasking. There are a lot of people, probably a lot in this room, who think they are great multi-taskers. I hate to break it to you, you are not a great multi-tasker. Your brain is actually not wired—male or female or anything like that—it doesn’t matter about your Enneagram number—your brain is actually not wired to multi-task. 

What you’re doing is you are hitting tasks very quickly. And you’re dong them very surface-y. You’re not getting deep into a task. You’re just going task-task-task-task. And you’re going, “I’m multi-tasking.” But you’re really taking things in succession. You’re never really allowing your brain deep thought. 

Those of you who are good at multi-tasking—you can probably attest to this—when you’re really multi-tasking and you’re really moving, you’re going off of more gut instinct than anything else. You’re going off of emotion more than you’re going off of deep thought about something. So you’re just tackling things, tackling things, tackling things.  

What the study showed is that the people who live in multi-task world start to actually affect their brain. Especially people who are sitting on Netflix, pulling out their phone, checking everything out. Your brain is multi-tasking. There’s this thing going on in the background that you’re kind of paying attention to, you’re looking at different articles, you’re activating your brain in a bunch of different areas. And what it does, is it actually changes the physical properties of the grey matter of your brain. It makes your brain—the words that they use—more porous. And the density of your brain goes down. 

So you wonder why, as a society, we have very little attention span. You wonder why, as a society, we have a hard time getting into conversations with each other. The other thing that it showed, which was really interesting, was that it activated the emotional side of your brain. Like I was saying, you’re operating off of gut instinct more than you’re thinking. What it did was it activated your emotions in your brain a lot more. 

So things like anxiety spiked. Things like anger spiked. And there are some people in this room who are dealing with anxiety. And I don’t mean to minimize it. I’ve dealt with anxiety. It’s a very real thing. But some of us are spending hours and hours on our phone, multi-tasking. And we’re thinking “Why do I feel so anxious all the time?”  And I’ll tell you it’s because you’re changing your brain and you’re activating that part. This thing is hurting you. 

It’s like people that go, “I’m having a hard time. I’m feeling short of breath.” Well, you should probably stop smoking. This is one of these things that, it’s like, this is hurting your brain and your ability to focus on real life around you. Like I said, this thing is not evil. It’s a great tool.  But at the end of the day, the world is offering us distraction. And Jesus is offering us rest. 

At this point, this feels like a really great Ted Talk because I’ve gone through a lot of stats and things like that. But the conviction I felt from the Lord for this week was that he was offering us real rest. And if we don’t slow down, if we don’t quiet the noise in our minds, we are going to really miss out on life that’s happening around us right now.

The last couple of weeks David’s been talking about Sabbath. Jesus displayed that for us. God displayed it for us in creation. Sabbath is key. The unforced rhythms of grace. That is what we are deep, down hungering for—that unforced rhythm of grace. Real rest. That’s what Jesus offers to us. But the world is offering distraction. And distraction is not bad, but we’ve got to know what it is. When you’re watching a basketball game, or you’re on Instagram, or whatever it is, that is a distraction. It’s only delaying your rest.

Like David said, Sabbath is for resistance. We have to resist. We have to push back. We have to really grasp what God is saying to us and not what our phones are saying to us. So there are three things in our lives that we need to press into to have real rest. What does real rest look like?

Number one: Resist distraction. For me, I am not perfect at this by any means, but I’ve started doing it in the last few months. I’ve been taking digital Sabbath. For twenty-four hours in a week, I do what we just did. I shut off my phone. And after a few hours, I don’t even miss it. I’m engaging with life a lot more. There’s a lot that happens. But you have to resist the temptation to just live in distraction world. It will only delay your rest. It’s not giving you anything. It’s not recharging you at all. It’s only delaying the real rest that God wants to give you. So you have to resist this.

Number two: Get away with God. You have to get away with God. Jesus showed us this. Jesus showed us what really getting away with God meant. For those of us in ministry, it’s hard. It feels like you’re on 24/7. It’s easy to feel like we’re the emergency room for everyone’s problems. But we are not. We are not the saviors. Jesus is the Savior. So when you look  at what Jesus displayed for us, going, “I know there are tons of ministry opportunities out there, but I’m going to shut down just for little bit and I’m going to get away from everybody, including the disciples, and I’m going to be alone.” And Jesus got frustrated. I love the verse when Jesus said, “How long do I have to be with you?” to his disciples. As a leader, if I did that to my team, “How long do I have to work with you guys?” That would be a sign of some stress, you know? But Jesus is saying, “Frustration is not sin. You can get frustrated. That’s okay. But you have to get away.”

God displayed it for us in Genesis. On the seventh day he rested. Do you think he rested because  he was winded from all the creation he was doing? He didn’t need it. God doesn’t need rest. He was displaying it for us because he’s a good leader and a good father. And he’s saying, “This is what I want for you.” That unforced rhythm of grace is found in Genesis, as well as Matthew 11. Unforced rhythms of grace.

So you have to get away with God. And that’s the problem. For me, I can get away from physical people, but the minute I bring my phone, I’m bringing everybody with me, wherever I go. You can’t get away with God when you’re constantly connected. And on that day when I’m taking digital Sabbath, it’s really hard for me, because my Bible reading plan is on my phone. You Version is actually a problem for me sometimes, because I’m doing great, reading the word, and then, bam. I get a notification. Bam. I get a text message. And I’m derailed like that. And you realize you have everybody with you on this device.  

So, for whatever it is for you to get away with God, if it’s an hour a day, awesome. Disconnect. Get away with God. If it’s twenty-four hours in a week, I would really recommend it. There’s something very detoxifying about spending one full day completely disconnected. You find in one day that you get bored—which is amazing. Boredom is awesome. I’ve not felt it in a long time.  I’ll stand in line at the store and I’m looking and everyone’s on their phone. And I’m the only weirdo standing, looking around. 

Research tells us that we get our most creative ideas when we’re bored. Sometimes boredom is a really good thing. So get away with God.

Number three: Thankfully engage with life. Life is happening in front of you. This is where this world gets real dangerous. And this is where I agree, it’s not real in the sense that it is creating a false narrative that we’re all trying to live up to. Instagram is obviously the highlight reel of everyone’s life. You’re scrolling through Instagram and you see a parent doing something with their kids and you’re like, “Oh. I should be a better mom. Why am I not doing that with my kids?” You scroll through and “They’re going to Europe on their vacation? I need to make more money or something. I can’t seem to get away with that!” You scroll through and you see a church and “They look so healthy and awesome. I should be a part of that. I wish my church was more like that.”

And that thankfully engaging with life is not engaging with the fantasy that we see online. That is not real life. You look on my Instagram account and you’re going to see all my highlight reels. And you’ll say, “Oh, awesome I’m excited about this. Love my church. Blah. Blah.” What you’re not going to see is, “Oh, I got in a fight with my wife again this week.” Or “I’m so frustrated with my kids all week.” Those are the things that you’re not going to see on Instagram. But that’s real life. That is the things that we’re going through.

And when we live in this fantasy world, comparing ourselves to other people, it’s exhausting? How can you have rest when you’re constantly comparing your life to other people’s? God is giving you your life to live right now. He’s not given anybody else on earth your life to live.

The last time I preached, that’s what I was preaching on. God has hand-wired this calling for you, this life for you, these kids for you, this job for you, the things you’re in right now. And when you’re not thankful, you’re not engaging in it, and you’re not getting any rest because you’re constantly comparing yourself to something that God is not asking you to compare yourself to. And it’s exhausting. 

Psalm 116:7. I love this. 

Return to your rest, oh my soul, for the Lord has been good to you.

I threw the word oh in there because I think maybe that makes it better. I don’t know. “Return to your rest, my soul, for the Lord has been good to you.” Thankfulness precedes rest. That’s real rest, when you’re saying “God thank you for what you’ve given me. Thank you for all that you’ve done in my life.” Thankfulness precedes real rest.

And when we’re living in this world where we wish we were living someone else’s life, we can never rest. We can never rest. 

We’re gong to take communion. Rest does not come through unthankfulness. I think right now we need to pause and say, “Okay, God, what can I be thankful for? How can I be thankful for what you’ve given me?” And this might be one moment this week, this might be your first moment this week that you’ve actually been quiet before the Lord. So take a minute. Be expectant in prayer.

Lord, we are so thankful that when we were lost and broken, you came to find us. So thankful that we are pursuing us, because you are a God that pursued us first. God, I pray that, out of the abundance of our hearts, that there would be a thankfulness in our heart and that our rest would come out of that. Our rest would come out of space with you. Our rest would come out of communing with you. 

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©️2019 Living Streams Church
7000 N Central Avenue ∙ Phoenix AZ 85020 ∙ 602-957-7500 ∙ https://www.livingstreams.org

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.

Rest – Part 2

David Stockton
Series: The Other Hours

We’re going to be in a couple of different places. We’re going to be in Psalm 127 to start. This is going to be kind of a hybrid message today. Last week, I did half of a message on Rest. We’re in our series “Other Hours” where we’re focusing on the idea that God doesn’t want to make you good at church. He wants to make you good at life. We’ve broken up life into certain different sections that take up the most of our hours. We spent some weeks on relationships. We did work, like occupation or the work that we do, whether you get paid for it or not. There’s a lot of work that we have to do. Right now we’re on a section on rest because we spend a lot of hours resting. Actually, if you live to be 75 years old, you will have slept for 25 of those years; which is kind of depressing, but if you like sleep, you’re like, “Hey, that’s great.”

We’re trying to figure out what God’s idea for rest is. This word Sabbath obviously comes to mind as something that is from the Old Testament and it continues through the New Testament. It actually predates the law of God. God, himself, in the very beginning, Chapter 2, verse 1 of Genesis says that God worked for six days and then he rested. And he made that seventh day, this day of rest, something that was set apart and holy and blessed, because he wanted us to learn how to rest in that.

In our society today, rest seems like weakness. Rest seems like laziness. Rest seems like Netflix. Rest seems like Red Bull or coffee, caffeine. We have a lot of interesting ideas about rest. So we spent some time talking about it. 

As we are going into Mother’s Day, I know that moms, one of the things that they need is rest because the work that they’re doing, taking care of husbands, children, whatever it might be, can be exhausting.

I’m actually going to finish up the next two points. We had four points on that and we’ll get to those in just a minute. But I wanted to say a couple of words about moms real quick. 

When I think of my mom, the words that come to mind are comfort, conviction, teaching, and guidance. Those are some powerful words, but that’s definitely what I think of when I think of my mom. Though I recognize there are a million different ways people have experienced motherhood, some good and some not good at all, this definitely the way I experienced it. My mom was the wind at my back, she was the spur in my side, she was the one who opened up the world to me and was my tour guide through it all. We were very close and she was home for me. Some people say home is where your heart is. But for me, home was where my mom was. 

That’s definitely my experience. And I think of my wife in the same way as I’ve watched her step into this role of motherhood, it’s so similar. The teaching, the guidance, the comfort and the conviction. Those are the things that my mom brought me and my wife brings to our daughters lives in such a beautiful way. It’s something I’m very thankful for. I did a weekly email this week and I talked about the mother’s blessing. We always hear in society about the role of the father and how important it is for this and that. But I was doing my own research about the role of the mother and the strength that can have or the void it can leave, depending on how it goes. Moms — it’s a big deal what you’re doing. My mom is not with me anymore and I feel the gap all the time. Just because I’m grown up doesn’t mean I don’t need my mom anymore. 

The other thing that was so interesting about my mom was any time I felt stuck, or any time I felt unsure about a decision I had to make or what to do, I remember calling my mom a lot of times when I was driving home from something. I’d call her up and it was always interesting that she always had so many ideas for my life. It was like, “Mom I’m not sure what to do. I don’t know what’s next.”

And she was like, “Well, this is what you should do. And this is what should happen. And this is exactly the way I see it.”

That meant a couple of things. One was she was my mom and she felt like she could boss me around. And the second thing was that it meant she was praying for me. She was hearing from God. She prayed for my life more than I prayed for my life. No doubt about it. So when it came time for me to say, “Mom, I don’t know what to do.” She was saying, “Well, actually, I’ve been praying for you. I actually know what God wants you to do.”

And the other thing, though, was that she wasn’t always right. Sometimes she’d be saying these things and I’d be like “Well, that’s what I needed to hear. But that’s not the way that I need to go.” But just knowing that there was somebody who had so many ideas for my life was so helpful as I was trying to sort out my life.

And what I felt the Lord was saying this morning was that, if you feel stuck, if you feel unsure, he wants you to know that he has a lot of ideas for your life in your moment right now, your situation. Some of you might be here just because your mom wants you to be here. I need you to know that God has a lot of ideas for your life. He’s got ways that you can navigate what you’re going through right now that will bring lots of life. He doesn’t want to come and kill your joy. He wants to give you fullness of joy. But it does take trusting him. It does take some surrender and some humility. But if you’re stuck or you’r feeling like you need some fresh ideas for your life, Jesus has got tons and he’s very excited to share them with you.

One of those ideas that he has for our lives is rest. Let’s read a couple of verses. We’ll start in Psalm 127

1 Unless the Lord builds the house,
    the builders labor in vain.
Unless the Lord watches over the city,
    the guards stand watch in vain.
2 In vain you rise early
    and stay up late,
toiling for food to eat—
    for he grants sleep to those he loves.
3 Children are a heritage from the Lord,
    offspring a reward from him.
4 Like arrows in the hands of a warrior
    are children born in one’s youth.
5 Blessed is the man
    whose quiver is full of them.
They will not be put to shame
    when they contend with their opponents in court.

I think it’s so interesting when it’s talking about if you want to build your house, which moms often want to, you‘ve to remember that those who labor labor in vain without the Lord. If you want to keep making sure everybody’s safe, everybody’s taken care of, it’s in vain if you’re doing it without the Lord. 

It’s so interesting. He says you might work hard, you might do all these things, but what you really need to know is that God wants to give you rest. God wants to give those he loves sleep. Which is so interesting because, again I think, “Lord give me strength to keep working hard.” 

He’s like, “No, you need to just get some rest. You need to recharge.”

And then it goes on right after talking about sleep and rest and how God can help you with that, it talks about children in the next verse. Because we all know children are sleep killers. They are rest stealers. They just suck all the energy out of you. And the writer knew that, so he’s kind of putting the two together.

Let’s go to the next passage. Matthew 11:28

28-30 “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” (MSG)

This is what Jesus taught his disciples. As he was trying to teach them the way of life, how to enter into the fullness of life. And again, it’s such an amazing thing to me that the God of the Universe is really interested in you and me every once in a while taking it easy. He wants you to rest. And we talked about what that rest is.

In the Old Testament, in that rhythm that God set for his people, there were six days of work and we joked last week that some of you need to hear more about six days of work and one day of rest because you’re resting seven and not working at all. But there are six days where we are supposed to work. We are supposed to venture into this world. We are supposed to harness the resources of this world and cultivate good, garden-like stuff. We talked about that in our work series.

We’re supposed to look into our world and find all the things that are undone—find all the things that are wrong—find all the things that are unjust. And we are to work to correct those things, to make all the wrongs right. That’s what righteousness is about. Not me being right and condemning all the wrong things. But me, actually being right before God and going into the world and taking some of those wrongs and making them right. God loves to see injustice become justice. 

And that’s what we’re supposed to be doing six days a week. You can work as much as you want to some extent. But then one day, one day in that cycle, you’re supposed to quit. And it’s so interesting to me that God would say one day a week he wants us to stop fixing things. He wants us to stop making wrongs right, to some extent. He wants us to quit our battle with entropy and just be. Just let all of that mess be okay for one day. 

We talked about why that might be. We said Sabbath, first of all, there were four things we brought up and we talked about two of them. Sabbath is for resisting. Sabbath is for rejoicing. Sabbath is for recharging. And lastly, Sabbath is for reuniting or realigning. 

These are the four things that we’re focusing on to try to understand why God would ask us to do this. We talked bout resisting, how we have to resist that urge to work, to fix, to make things better, for one day a week. And it is hard. Especially in our society, when someone asks you how you’re doing and you don’t say, “I’m busy,” there’s something wrong with you. You’re not important—you’re not valuable. 

And there’s this gravity in Phoenix that is constantly pulling us into superficial and artificial busyness, that, if we don’t actually set a day to kind of resist it and fight it, we’re just going to be swept up in the flood and flow of busyness. Busyness. Constant comparison, incessant accumulation and mind-numbing activities that are at our disposal like they never have been before. 

Just think about those people who, when it got dark, it was dark. And sometimes I think, man, I would have been good at that time of life. I would have been good in those societies, because there was no electricity back then. When it was dark, you were done. What are you going to do? Stumble around? But now we can burn the candle at all ends. We don’t even need candles anymore. 

We have to resist that tendency, that society that’s pulling us, our own deficiencies that we’re trying to compensate by so many different things—and honor God and surrender to God. 

When faced with the reality of depravity, injustice and entropy in our world and in ourselves, we’re supposed to work for six days and rest for one. It’s hard to believe, but more good will get done if we do this rest. Less wrongs will be done because we won’t be so strung out and wound up. And more wrongs will be made right because we will know the difference between what is urgent and is important. One day a week resist the urge to get ahead. 

And this has played out in my life recently because I’m an enneagram 3 person, it’s just like “accomplishment” and once I get something done I feel so much better about myself. Which is kind of sad. But anything that’s undone, I’ve got to fix it. I’ve got to get it done. And my whole life fell apart recently—even my washing machine. 

I had just got my bumper fixed on my car so I could sell it. And two days later, the company that was dropping off our foster kids actually hit that exact bumper. And my brother-in-law’s car as well. I didn’t even know how this was possible. There was bright yellow taxi colors all over the car. And I was like, “I got ahead. And now I’m back.” It was so frustrating.

But this one example is, the Lord was just like, “Chill out.” And I was working so hard to get this fixed so we could sell it. And my mind was like spinning on it. “What am I going to do now? I’ve got to fight with the insurance company.”

So I just kind of said, “Oh, well. We’ll see what happens.” And I just called when I needed to and let it go. Mentally I was freaking out, but I was resisting that all the time. In the end, we’re going to get insurance money and the car, I can probably fix it for cheaper. I’m getting ahead of the whole thing. If I just would chill out, the Lord is working things out. 

And I”m trying to do this side yard project and lay this sod down. I’ve been rushing to get it all done. We’ve got these interns coming over for dinner on Tuesday night. I’ want to look cool. Not have a big old  bunch of dirt everywhere. But guess what? I’t’s not going to work out. I’m fighting all these things, trying to get this done The cost is going up. 

I was actually taking a nap yesterday on my Sabbath. And a guy actually called me and he came over. He can actually do it cheaper and better than anything else. It’s just going to take a little longer. I’m like, “You know what? I’m going to rest in this. I’m going to take it easy.”

Because God is going to work on our behalf. It’s his promise. He says, “You stop working so I can start.” 

And I’ve seen it a thousand times in my life. If I will find those unforced rhythms of his grace, if I will continue to walk in his grace, his grace is more than sufficient. But when I run ahead of the Lord, all of a sudden I’m outside of his grace and all I have is my own strength. And that’s not very impressive.

But, likewise, if I fall behind, and the Lord’s saying “It’s time move,” but I’m like, “I’ll just take it easy. Whatever.” I’m outside the grace and all of a sudden life starts to have trouble.

Mark Buckley, a famous guy, he always says, “Grace is the stuff that makes life work.” It’s like the oil in the engine. Once the grace is gone because we’re outside of the Lord’s plan for our lives, or we’re too far ahead or too far back, all of a sudden those gears can’t work as well. So we have to resist that tendency,

Second, we said the Sabbath is for rejoicing. This is so important to do. Sabbath is about noticing, focusing, acknowledging the good—not just the undone, broken things in our lives. The other days we’re to notice the wrong and what’s undone in our world and work hard to fix it. But Sabbath is about carving out some time to take a look and see what God has been doing in you and through you, what God has been cultivating by the work that you have done. 

It’s so good to take time and just remember. Remember God, on that seventh day, it says that God looked at all that he had done and he said, “It is good.” God himself. God, who made the world and sat back for just one day and he was just like, “This is pretty good. This is awesome. You see that fish over there? That is cool. See that little bird swooping around. Oh, wow, watch. Bird, fish. Ok. That was a little wild but that was kind of fun.”

Like we said last week, he just sat back. He turned on National Geographic Channel and he said, “Check it out.”  And if God is going to do that, that’s the thing he’s called us to. We’re made in his image. We’re supposed to walk in the same rhythm as him. So one day a week we should fight the urge to fix our children. And we’re supposed to find—even if we need a microscope—the good progress that has happened in them, in us, in our spouses, in our household. Whatever it might be. One day we’re supposed to really look for that and rejoice in it. 

What kind of awesome God do we serve that it’s a command of his that we would stop and enjoy. And how sick are we that God has to command us to stop and enjoy, because we get so wound up and worked up and are striving so hard that we forget to even enjoy. Every movie is about those times. All those guys that work their whole life and then they get to the end of their life and their family’s all gone and they’re wishing they had the moments back.

God’s built it into the rhythm of our life. He says, “No. Don’t miss those moments. Every week make sure you’re catching all those moments.”

So now the next one: Sabbath is for recharging. Now, I hate cell phones with a passion. If you could see my screen, it’s all trashed up. Basically, I just get the hand-me-down phones from my brother all the time. Because I hate these things. I hate that people can get me anytime they want to get me. You know? It’s like, “Oh. There. I see it now. I can’t say I didn’t see it. Because it just popped right up there and it dinged at me.” And then there’s the little red bubble on everything. It’s like, “Would you like notifications?” “No! I don’t want notifications.” But some of them I can’t turn off. It’s always yelling at me. Buzzing in my pocket. Dinging in my face. 

But I have to say, it’s one of the best technologies for Sabbath that there is; because a phone is only good as long as it’s charged. It can’t last forever. It doesn’t even last six days. And you can’t just set it down and say, “Okay, just rest, phone.” If you do that, it’s just going to stay dead. In order to get this thing back to full power, you have to plug something in that can actually power it. It’s very specific. You could try and put one of those other Android or Apple, whatever you might have, if you don’t plug the right thing in, it’s not going to do anything. And you can’t just plug something into it and there you go. You have to actually have something that has enough power to recharge it. 

And so, a lot of times, people think that when we Sabbath, or we rest, we just “unplug.” No. I mean, that’s a start. You have to unplug from the things that are draining you. But true Sabbath is where we learn to plug into the infinite, eternal God, whose grace is sufficient. We have to figure out how to do that. We have to figure out how to plug into those things. I know when you’re tired, at the end of the day—I’m the same way—you just want to turn on the tv and be like, “Ah.” But guess what? Your mind is being stimulated all the time.That’s not rest. You can’t plug into Netflix and get better. You’ve go to find out how to plug into the Lord. And, to some extent, each one of us is a little bit different in that way. 

Netflix does not recharge us. Red Bull does not recharge us. Instagram does not recharge you. It stresses you out. Mind-numbing activities do not recharge us. What does recharge us are the times we unplug from all the identities and responsibilities we have accumulated, and position our hearts, minds and bodies in the embrace of our heavenly Father, who says, “Not by might. Not by power. But by my Spirit,” says the Lord. In another place it says, “The battle belongs to the Lord.”

Some of you have heard of Sozo. It’s a Greek word for salvation. And it’s kind of helping to understand that salvation isn’t just getting your name in a book so you’re not going to hell, l you’re going to heaven. It’s much fuller than that. It’s fullness of life. We have a lady here, Colleen, who actually can kind of take you through this thing she calls Sozo, which is a prayer time. It’s a little bit like counseling. It’s a little bit like praying. It’s a little bit like figuring out where the Lord is and where you are and where you are in relation to him. I actually did it one time with this guy, Don. And he was so excited about it. And I was so not excited about it. And we went up in this room and I was like, “Okay, man, you’ve bothered me long enough. Here I am.”

And so, he’s like, “Okay. Well, we’re just going to kind of talk and pray simultaneously.”

And I was like, “That sounds weird. But okay.” 

And so we did. And he just said, “Okay. Close your eyes and picture yourself. What do you see yourself?” 

And it was funny because I was like, “I see a little kid. I see a little boy.”

And he’s like, “Okay. Describe the little boy. Is there anything about the little boy?”

And I was like, “Well, he looks tired.” And I wasn’t going in there tired, just so you know. But I said, “He looks exhausted. He looks tired—maybe a little unsure.”

And he said, “Okay. Just stop with the boy for a second and try to picture God. Where do you see God?”
And I said, “Oh, he’s over there on the throne.”

I’m playing along. I don’t know what’s happening. At this point, I’m just like, “Whatever. There’s God. He’s on the throne. He looks like a grandpa or something. He’s cool.”

And he said, “Okay. Well, what’s the look in his eyes?
I said, “Well, he’s looking at the little boy and he’s just kind of, you know, he’s a little sad for the little boy.”

And he said, “Well, what do you think he wants the little boy to do?”

I said, “He wants the little boy to come sit with him and just rest.”

It was so interesting, because, all of a sudden, in that moment, I just started saying, “And I think the reason…” and I just started crying. I said, “I think the little boy’s crying because he’s taken on a lot of things that God never asked him to take on.”

And I started thinking that, when my dad died, I felt some responsibility to be the man for my mom—me and my brothers. And, in my wife’s family, the dad hasn’t been a lot present, so I felt like I needed to be the man there. And even for her whole family, like I should be the man. All of sudden I started thinking about all these things I had taken on. When I was telling my wife this, she said, “I never asked you to take that on.” 

I said, “I know. It was just me. I was messed up.”

I just started taking on all of these things. And in this moment I realized I had taken on so many responsibilities that God had never asked me to take on. So I was exhausted because I was doing so much that God didn’t even want me to do.

And whatever that was, we talked some more and we prayed a little bit more. But I go back to that all the time now when I go to my own prayer times. When I get my journal out and I say, “Okay, Lord. Let’s spend some time together.” I just start thinking, “Okay. Where’s the little boy? And what has he been overdoing? What responsibilities has he taken on that God hasn’t asked?” 

And I just lay those things down again. To try to find, once again, who I’m supposed to be. It’s the way I’m plugging into the Lord. I’m finding out what he thinks, what he feels, and some Scriptures come to mind. But you can’t just unplug and go limp and go numb. I think that might be part of a day of rest, or part of that, it’s definitely the first step, unplugging. But at some point, you’ve got to plug in to the source that can supply power for your life. Just like your cell phone.

That’s recharging. You’ve go to get plugged in to the right thing.

And then, Sabbath is for reuniting and realigning. This is the fourth point. Sabbath is for resisting. Sabbath is for rejoicing. Sabbath is for recharging. And then Sabbath is for reuniting or realigning. 

This is a very interesting thing. Reuniting is most often linked with Eastern meditation practices. You kind of think of this as centering. You sort of stare at our naval until something happens. Finding yourself. Trying to recognize all the false self you have accumulated and seek to remove it so you can once again be the true you. For Christians, this practice is called prayer. It’s basically prayer just like I described to you. It’s quiet time with God. It’s morning devotions. For me, it is journaling my conversations with God. Telling him what I feel, what I’m confused about, what is hurting me and what I’m thankful for

It is a centering thing. It is reuniting with the true self, like I just described. Sabbath is for the time when you say, “Okay, Lord, what am I really caught up in? What am I working really hard in that you’ve never even asked me to do? Or is not as big a deal to you as it is to me? Because I want to lay those things down.”

And again, I journal, because, for me, my mind, if I just try and pray, it doesn’t go that well. Basketball game. Tacos. Dog. It does not work. I get done and I’m like, “Whoa. I don’t know what that was about.” So I journal. I write things down because it keeps my mind engaged. My mind wanders and I can be like, “Oh, yeah, that’s where I left off.” And I can get back on track. 

Another thing I’ll do is to walk in the desert. And I’ll pick up ten stones. Not because my name is David or anything. But I’ll pick up these stones because usually there are about ten things I need to talk to the Lord about and lay down. Or “Is this what I’m dealing with?” But I’ll be walking walking and all of a sudden I’ll forget what’s going on and then I’ll be like, “Okay. I probably should go to the next one now.” And I keep going.

But it’s that time of trying to find who I am—reuniting with myself. I know that sounds weird to think in prayer, “No, I should reunite with God.” And we’ll get to that. That’s the realigning. But I think before you do that you really have to sort out who you are. Jesus said, “Come to me and cast your cares on me. YOUR cares. Cast them on me.” 

And if you read the Psalms, David is so honest about where he’s at. The writers of the Psalms are always first talking about where they are, what they’re struggling with, what’s going on. That’s a good place to start. To reunite with your true self.

And then take the next step of realigning. Realigning happens as I converse with God, I find his thoughts begin to intermingle with my thoughts. I find my heart and mind becoming aligned with God’s heart and mind. I find clarity on what desires are to be resisted and what are to be embraced. I find ideas and thoughts coming to me that I know are not mine alone. As I write those down, I discover the difference between what is true, what is counterfeit, what is urgent, what is important and even what is good and what is best. Often, this happens best when I read some Scriptures or bring to mind some memorized Scriptures that speak to what I’m dealing with. 

And that’s just a practice of kind of saying, “Okay. Here’s where I am. I now know what’s going on—what I’m feeling, what I’m thinking, what I’m dealing with.” And then I say, “Okay, God, now it’s your turn. Come and sort it out.” 

And so, in that process with Scriptures or with different thoughts that might come, the Lord really does begin to realign. I have bad alignment, no doubt about it. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, like the hymn says. All of us have bad alignment. That’s why it doesn’t matter what political system we’re in. We’re going to mess it up. That’s why, no matter how much understanding, wisdom, knowledge, information the world has had, it still gets it wrong all the time. We have bad alignment. But we have a good mechanic. But you’d better check in often or you’re going to end up in the ditch, the ditch of life.

What we’re going to do now is a little practice of reuniting and realigning. Now, you’re like, “It’s Mother’s Day, man. What’s going on?”

Well, your mom wants you to pray so we’re going to pray. And what we’re going to do is something called a Lectio Divina. It’s kind of an old-fashioned, Latin word; but it’s a type of reorienting Scripture-prayer process that has been going on in the church the world over, in different languages, for a long, long time. Some of you are familiar with this practice. Some of you aren’t. Maybe this will help as you sort out what Sabbath can mean for you. So we’re going to go ahead and do this. If you’re not comfortable with it, you could just sleep or just chill. I was going to say pull out your cell phone, but don’t do that because that will stress me out.

We’re going to bow our heads. It’s not going to take long. It’ll be about a minute and a half each section. I’ll spend thirty seconds describing what we’re going to do. You’ll do it in your heart and mind for a minute-thirty. Then we’ll get to the next one and the next one. There will be four of them. And we’ll have a little music because sometimes a little music helps.

Let’s bow our heads and take a deep breath. This is going to require a little bit of pushing out some of the thoughts that might be trying to come in. Some of the things that you’re supposed to do today. Some of you just found out it’s Mother’s Day and you’re in all kinds of panic. Just push that away for a second. 

I’m going to read a passage. Just a short little passage. One that can kind of be chewed on. It’s bite-sized. 

As I read it, I just want you to think, “What is the text saying? —Not what is it saying to you. We’ll get to that—But this is like, if you had to sum it up in one word, what is the person who’s writing this, or the person who’s speaking, is saying to the people they are talking to?

As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. 

But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her to help me.”

“Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered. “You are worried and upset about many things. But very few things are really needed. And, indeed, only one, and Mary has chosen what is best and it will not be taken away from her.”

Take a minute. What is the text saying?

What’s a phrase that stands out? I know there are a lot of different things. But just try to grab one and start to focus on that. What’s the one thing in here that stands out to you? 

And now we’re going to move on to the next thing. So now, what is God saying to you ion this? See how that applies to you, your life situation. What is the text saying to you as you interact with it? As you take it and you apply it to your life situation?

And now, in this next section, just let your thoughts go a little bit. What is in this section that bothers you? Or what do you like? What question would you ask Jesus? What do you hate about this? What seems wrong, or unfair. Just talk to God about those things and let him begin to intermingle his thoughts with yours. 

Maybe he’ll bring to mind a certain person that you’ve been comparing yourself to. Maybe he’ll bring to mind some things you’ve really been bothered about. Maybe he’ll bring to mind that you are like Mary. You do well with this. 

He comes with a still, small voice. Sometimes it’s hard to know if it’s your thoughts or his, but go ahead and grab onto his and you’re probably right. 

Just for kicks, you guys can finish and look up, if you want to. For me, as I did this same thing you did, “bothered by many things,” I mean, I’ve read it a bunch of times, but that just jumped out to me—that I know exactly how that feels. And then I feel like the message, the text was saying that, when I’m bothered, I should run to sit at the feet of Jesus. I should try to learn to have that reaction instead of getting more bothered.

And then, when I kind of let my mind and the Lord’s mind, hopefully, intermingle a little bit, I felt like the Lord said, “You do bothered really well.” And I thought that was funny, but he said, “You do sit at my feet really well, too.” And that was comforting and kind of fun for me. Because the Lord really knows me. 

And then, the last thing was, I think this week as I call these people to move these projects down the road, I should surprise them with kindness—be extra kind and joyful to them as a reflection of me saying, “Okay, I’m going to just rest and not be so bothered,” instead of yelling at them. 

So, just a simple thing you can do. I’m going to go ahead and pray for us now.

Lord, Jesus, I thank you so much that you love us. I thank you that you speak to us, that you would be willing to let your thoughts intermingle with our thoughts. And, Lord, I pray that we would be awesome at rest, that we’d be great at work, but we’d also be great at rest. I pray for your people that that rest, that sleep, that peace that you want to give them, nothing would remove it from them, nothing would block it from them. I pray it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

©️2019 Living Streams Church

7000 N Central Avenue ∙ Phoenix AZ 85020 ∙ 602-957-7500
 https://www.livingstreams.org

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.

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Rest

David Stockton
Series: The Other Hours

We’ve been spending a couple of months talking about The Other Hours. God doesn’t want to make you good at church. He wants to make you good at life, which, basically, is all the other hours. Sometimes, in church, we get caught up in talking about how to be good at church; but that’s such a small, small section of our lives when we’re showing up at the church. Church is not what Christians are supposed to do. Church is just supposed to help Christians do what they’re supposed to do, which, most of the time, happens outside these walls. 

So that’s a little bit of the premise that we’re going into. We talked about relationships, which is a huge part of our “awake life.” We talked about work for a few weeks, basically the occupation, or the stuff that we’re doing to kind of make life work, whether we get paid to do it or not. The work, the labor that we have. And then we’re going to start a section today on rest.

Rest. It’s an epidemic in our society, no doubt about it: We no longer know how to rest. And one of the challenges is—this is going to be a little depressing for you maybe (it was for me)—but if you’re going to live seventy-five years, you’re going to be asleep for twenty-five of them. And that’s not the Bible. That’s just, like, eight hours a day—only twenty-four of them in a day. And some of you are like, “I haven’t slept eight hours in a hundred years.” Okay, so fine. You’re going to be asleep for twenty of them. It’s a major chunk of our lives. 

Check this verse out. Psalm 127.  

Unless the Lord builds the house,
    the builders labor in vain.
Unless the Lord watches over the city,
    the guards stand watch in vain. 
In vain you rise early [hallelujah!]
    and stay up late,
    toiling for food to eat—
    for he grants sleep to those he loves. 

Rest. One of God’s main desires for your life is that you will have rest. Not energy to maintain the pace that you are experiencing right now. “God, give me strength.” 

He says, “No. You need rest.”  

“God, give me courage.”

“No. You need to relax. You need to learn how to be still.”

God set up the world. He made creation with the cycles. He made humanity to fit in those cycles. And one of the cycles that God has made mandatory, that he wove into the fabric of creation, is rest. Christians should be professionals at rest if they want to follow Jesus.  

You look at the life of Jesus through the gospels. He was good at rest, or at least carving out time for rest. They were always accusing him of breaking the Sabbath; but it wasn’t really him. He was healing someone on the Sabbath, or his disciples were eating grain on the Sabbath. We’ll read about that. It wasn’t Jesus. He practiced Sabbath, but he practiced more than one day a week Sabbath. He practiced it as a lifestyle. 

And so many of those laws in the Old Testament teach us about the frameworks, the realities of life. And in the New Testament perspective, after Jesus, we’re not just trying to do the bare minimum; but we’re trying to apply those in the full aspect of our lives. Those realities, those Ten Commandments, those are things that are more than just God said, “Do this, and if you don’t do this, eh, no big deal.” They are things that, if we don’t do them, if we run up against them, we will pay the price.

And out of all of The Other Hours topics that we came up with, there’s only one that made it in the Ten Commandments. And that is that we’re supposed to remember to rest. Remember the Sabbath. It’s very precious to our God. It’s very important to him. And he exemplified that when he created the world. For six days he worked, he labored, he harnessed all the “without form and void” and made the beauty and wonder of creation. And then he, himself—God, himself, rested. Because he was tired? No. He’s infinite. Because he didn’t really know what else to do? No. Because rest is that important. 

And today we’re going to talk a little bit about rest, what Sabbath is all about. I’m going to read some Scriptures that will hopefully help us begin to kind of focus on what the Bible is saying about rest and Sabbath. 

We’re going have four Scriptures. They’re all pretty short. Exodus 20:8-11. One of the Ten Commandments. 

8 “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. [set apart. different]  9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work,

Some of you need to hear that word. You’re like, “I’m great at rest, man. My parents are always telling me I’m so good at rest. Maybe I’ve got this thing.” Well, you need to work six days.

10 but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. [pretty thorough]. 11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

Isaiah 58:13-14. This is Isaiah the prophet, speaking to the people of Israel who are not doing it right. They’re not resting. They’re not honoring the Sabbath.

“If you watch your step on the Sabbath
    and don’t use my holy day for personal advantage,
If you treat the Sabbath as a day of joy,
    God’s holy day as a celebration,
If you honor it by refusing ‘business as usual,’
    making money, running here and there—
Then you’ll be free to enjoy God!
    Oh, I’ll make you ride high and soar above it all.
I’ll make you feast on the inheritance of your ancestor Jacob.”
    Yes! God says so! (MSG) 

Mark 2:23-28. This is out of the life of Jesus.

 23 One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain. 24 The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?”

Notice Jesus was not doing this, but he stuck up for them.

25 He answered, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? 26 In the days of Abiathar the high priest, he entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread, which is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions.”

27 Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. 28 So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”

So, Mark here kind of tags that little thing, “So the Son of Man is even Lord of the Sabbath.” And interestingly enough, in his gospel also he writes, “The Son of Man is Lord of the temple.” And, in Jewish society at this point, there were the two, like, “This is who we are. This is what we’re all about. We serve the temple. The temple is the big deal. And the other thing is we serve the Sabbath. The Sabbath is the big deal.” 

And basically, what they had done, is that they had said, “We need to make sure and serve these things,” instead of what God intended, that they are holy, they are important, but they are supposed to serve humanity. The temple was to be a place, not where people would come and give money and they’re time and attention to lift it up. They were supposed to come there and the temple was supposed to serve them, and lift them up, and restore them.

And, likewise, the Sabbath was supposed to be something not that you had so many rules and regulations that you and your family and your kids were like this on the Sabbath: “I can’t move my arm, I can only move my left arm.” They had so many rules about it. And Jesus was saying, “You’ve got it all wrong. The Sabbath was made for mankind, to be something that serves mankind.” 

And then we have one more Scripture coming from 2 Chronicles 36:21. Now, this is a deep, elaborate study if you want to dive into this more, but I want to touch on it for a specific reason.  

To fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed its Sabbaths all the days of its desolation, it kept Sabbath until seventy years were completed. (NASB) 

So, basically, as you follow the timeline of Scripture, there was a time in Israel’s history where God sent them into exile. He took them from the land of Israel, the Promised Land, and he basically had a king, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, come, and they took all the people of Israel away and into exile as slaves in Babylon. And they were there for seventy years.

And Jeremiah, Isaiah and Daniel, they all write about this. They picked up on this reality: that the reason that this was happening was because for four hundred and ninety years, the people of Israel neglected the Sabbath rules for the land. And God is saying, “Well, they are my years. This is very important to me. You’re not getting it. So I’m going to give my land seventy years of rest by getting you off of it, making you go into exile.” 

The chronicler is writing this recap of what everyone would have understood. And then it says of Nebuchadnezzar that  

he plundered The Temple of everything valuable, cleaned it out completely; he emptied the treasuries of The Temple of God, the treasuries of the king and his officials, and hauled it all, people and possessions, off to Babylon. He burned The Temple of God to the ground, knocked down the wall of Jerusalem, and set fire to all the buildings—

Listen to this. Listen to this word: 

everything valuable was burned up. 

And if you don’t get Sabbath right, I promise you, at some point in your life, you will be able to look and see everything of value burned up. And this message and this series, I’m hoping will be stopping that from happening to somebody.

Any survivor was taken prisoner into exile in Babylon and made a slave to Nebuchadnezzar and his family. The exile and slavery lasted until the kingdom of Persia took over.

21 This is exactly the message of God that Jeremiah had preached: the desolate land put to an extended sabbath rest, a seventy-year Sabbath rest making up for all the unkept Sabbaths.  (MSG) 

By neglecting the Sabbath instead of remembering it, we think we’re getting ahead. But it’s not true.

Frank Seekins, who’s the dad of our youth pastor, he’s a bit of a luminary in our time. He was sharing on the Ten Commandments one time. I think it’s just so profound. He was saying to think of them as realities. So picture yourself in this big, 18-wheeler, semi truck. [A bucket list item for me, and I know for most of you, too. Right? Like (gear noises).]

It’s so fun. And you’re driving this thing, you’re driving out to California. And you’re heading past the turnoff for Gila Bend and, all of sudden, you get to where there’s this sign for a bridge and it says “Height Limit 16 Feet” and you know that your sweet semi truck that you’re driving is 18 feet. And you’re like, “Eh. Why does God put these rules on me? You know? 16 feet limit. How do they know what’s going on? They don’t really know. They haven’t been here in a while. They don’t know me. They don’t know how good of a driver I am. They don’t know how fast I’m going. Maybe I’ll go real slow. They don’t know. They can’t just put that blanket statement out there. You know? That’s a political statement. That’s like, you know, not thinking of the tall guys. You know? That’s rough. They can’t really do that.”

And you could fight it. You could wrestle with the sign. You could have all the arguments you want. But the sign’s just kind of telling you a reality. And if you try and go against the reality, you’re going to lose. At least two feet, you know? You can come up with all the justifications, all the arguments, you can try and get rid of that law and make it impotent and not apply it to your life. You can do all of that. But if you continue down that road, you will pay the price. And remembering the Sabbath is one of those realities that God not only says, that he not only does, but we have proof in the Scriptures, very clearly, that you’re going to have to pay the price. 

And for these Israelites who didn’t remember the Sabbath, they went through seventy years where everything of value was burned up. And we’ve seen it time and time again in our lives. 

I remember Mark Buckley took me to a pastor’s conference when I first starting working here in 2001. And there were probably like 25 pastors in a circle and they were all a lot older than me. And they were going one by one and sharing about what was going on. They were catching up with each other. And every single one of them was sharing what had happened since their breakdown. I’m not joking. Every single one of them.

But for me, as a twenty-three year old, I was like, “Whoa. I’ve got to get out of this job. This is no good.” And then it came around to me, and the only thing I could say was, “I’m just trying to figure out how to avoid a breakdown. I wasn’t before I came to this meeting, but now I’m pretty sure that is the new goal of my life. To figure out how I can avoid or soften the blow of my breakdown.”  And they all laughed. 

But it’s serious. You know these pastors who know this stuff, they’re as guilty (if not more guilty) as anybody else, at being bad at rest, at neglecting something that is so important to the heart of God. 

So we’re going to talk about Sabbath for a few weeks. I broke it into four different things that I think are important that I’ve learned in my life, that I want to share with you guys, that hopefully, one of them you can grab onto—maybe all four of them. Maybe one of them will connect with you right now and you can start to build practice— a little bit of routine for it in your life.

There are four of them. The first one is Sabbath is for resisting. The second one is Sabbath is four rejoicing. The third is Sabbath is for recharging. The fourth is Sabbath is for reuniting or realigning. We’re going to go through each one of these briefly. 

This whole topic of Sabbath is deep waters. It’s been around since the beginning of creation, recorded history. The whole concept of a six-day work week, forty hours a week, all of these things, it’s very interesting where they come from. I just want to talk to us about Sabbath because it is a biblical word for rest. Rest is the broader concept, for sure.

When I talk about Sabbath, I’m talking about it definitely in the context of the Old Testament as a one in seven day, 24-hour period. But I think in the New Testament, obviously, the Spirit of God is using those principles to teach us life skills and life principles. So, it doesn’t necessarily have to be one in seven. It could be one in seven hours a day. It could be whatever it is in your life, where you’re putting these practices in place to make sure that you are honoring God in that way, honoring rest so that you can live your fullest life. And you don’t have to go through times where everything of value is burned up.

So, first of all, Sabbath is resisting. I connected a little bit with that, Exodus 20, the Ten Commandments where he said, “Don’t do work, you, your male servants, your female servants, sons, daughters, even your donkeys. Nobody’s allowed to work.” Stop working, striving, trying to impose your will on the world, at least once in a while.  

I’ve said it many times before. There’s a gravity in Phoenix—and I’m sure in other cities, but this is the one I live in—that is constantly pulling on us, pulling its into superficial and artificial busyness. Where we wake up one, five, ten years down the road and we realize that we’ve only been existing or maintaining a semblance of a life that we don’t really like, instead of really being fully alive at all. 

And this never became so apparent to me as when I moved my family from Phoenix, Arizona down to a village called Gales Point, where there are about 400 people and 250 of them are kids. And there’s no running water. There’s power, we had pretty good power most of the time.

But I realized something very profound after I was there for a month ,and then two months, and then three months. Something began to seep into my soul—and then four months, and five months, and six months and on and on. After we were there, I realized that I had lived all of my life in fifth gear. And then I would go on vacation for fourth gear. And then I was right back up into fifth gear, and down to fourth gear. And maybe, if I was sick enough, or broke enough bones or something, I might have gone down to third gear. But I don’t even know, not mentally, but maybe physically.

And there in Gales Point—some of you, a lot of you, there’s probably been a hundred people in our church that have been there now—all of a sudden, I found out what first gear was. And it wasn’t a wrong thing. It wasn’t a bad thing. It was actually a very important thing. 

Remembering the Sabbath is resisting the flood and the fury of our society. It’s resisting the war inside of us to try and somehow become something that we could be proud of. And settling down all the way to a gear called neutral. For those of you who have grown up in America, and in particular, a city, you’re going to have a lot of trouble finding it. Like the truck when I’m driving, trying to find that gear. I don’t know where it is, I just keep grinding until I find it.

But Sabbath, you have to have a very strong dose of resistance in order to find neutral. In order to find that place where you’re okay with what is undone in society, you’re okay with what is undone in you; and maybe for the first time in your life, you’re going to allow Jesus to really be enough. For him to cover everything. Because all of our lives, we’ve been taught, like Rocky, you’ve got to prove that you’re not a bum. 

“Why do you fight, Rocky?” 

“Because I’ve got to prove to myself that I’m not a bum."

And we have been spinning and striving, working so hard to prove to ourselves and others that we’re not bums. And God says, “One day a week, I want you to just be a bum.”

Even saying that right now, you’re like, “(gasp) No!”

Yeah. That’s what God wants. One day, just realize that you are a bum in a lot of ways. “But my grace is sufficient. My love does not change at all in that place.”

And you put down all the walls, all the shields, all the armor that you’ve taken on, because the world has been so overwhelming. And you just, for a moment, you sit in that place of being totally overwhelmed by all of the pain in the world, but also all of the love of Jesus. Sabbath is all about resisting.

And I wrote this down:

Sabbath is a punk rock, hard core, stick to it, stick-it-to-the-man type of resistance. It’s saying, “No. I will not be caught up in the flood and fury of mind-numbing activity, incessant accumulation and constant comparison. Instead, when I look at Instagram and see all of the wonderful, awesome people out there doing such wonderful, awesome things; and while my life seems so lousy and lame, in that moment, I will stop and I will choose to rest. I will Sabbath. I will surrender. I will seek first God’s kingdom, God’s face and God’s perspective; and I will let that be enough, at least one day per week. At least one day a week.”

And if you’ve got the disease real bad, you might need to do it more often than that. Our society is caught up in this thing where, if someone says, “How are you doing?”—and if you don’t say, “Well, I’m just really busy,” then you’re not important. And that is such a lie.

Corrie ten Boom said, “if the devil can’t make you bad, then he’ll make you busy.” That’s his go-to. 

So Sabbath really takes resistance. That’s why the command is so strong there. Remember the Sabbath. That should be easy. We love weekends. Weekends are not Sabbath. It’s resisting this constant urge for mind-numbing activities for incessant accumulation and constant comparison.

“We are running out of time. Let’s do one more and we can postpone the rest for later.”

Number two: Sabbath is for rejoicing. Sabbath is for resisting and Sabbath is for rejoicing. In Isaiah 58, remember, it’s supposed to be a delight. It’s not supposed to be for you to get an advantage. It’s supposed to be something you celebrate. 

On the seventh day, God rested. And what did he do on that day? He looked and he saw that everything was good. God basically just sat back after all the work and said, “Hey, man. That’s pretty good. I like this. I’m going to sit now and enjoy the labor.”

It is so awesome that the God we serve, that that’s what he wants us to do. To, every once in a while, stop and just notice all of the good. Six days you’re supposed to notice all the injustice and wrong in the world, and you’re supposed to work to make it right. And then one day, even in this world that’s fallen in our depraved state, with entropy all around, you’re supposed to stop and just look at the progress. Sometimes that will be easier to celebrate and rejoice in. Sometimes it will be really hard. 

My mother-in-law, in her Instagram—just because I was making fun of Instagram, now I’ve got to say something nice about it so Instagram doesn’t have hurt feelings—she does this thing called Beauty for the Day. And what she does is, she’s trying to cultivate in her heart and mind, “I’m going to notice something every day and I’m going to post about it for myself.” And it helps other people too, I know. Sometimes it’s easy to see these momentous, beautiful things each day; and sometimes it’s so minuscule that, if she wasn’t trying really hard, she’d miss it. But that’s the heart of our Lord. Every once in a while we should just stop and enjoy the progress. 

And I’m bad at this. This is what the Lord convicted me of as we’re sitting here. Because we’ve started to really kind of carve out from Friday night sundown to Saturday night sundown; because Saturday night sundown I start to turn into a monster thinking about Sunday morning. But for that time, I just carve this out and we’re trying to have Sabbath and all these things in our family. One of the things I know Im supposed to do is I’m not supposed to work on my children that day. Like, I’m good at not working here. I’m good at turning off the cell phone. I don’t even like cell phones.

But for some reason, when I wake up on Saturday morning and I walk out, I’m like, “Why did they make this mess? Why are doing that? That door is open. Why is this…” And I try to suck it all back in and say, “Hi, everybody! It’s the Sabbath.”

When I walk into my house now, my kids are all like, “Oh! Is the door open?” Like cockroaches ready to squirm into the darkness. And this is me. Not them. This is me. I have a problem. And I really need to cultivate celebrating and rejoicing. Because they are making progress. You know? But it’s doing that. 

I lived one year with my brother Jon when we went to college. We were three boys growing up and we just fought. They were both state wrestlers and I played basketball, so I lost every fight. And it was so interesting, because we were separated for a while, probably about three or four years. Then I was eighteen and done with high school and he was twenty-three or twenty-four, twenty-two, I don’t know. We ended up moving in together in this apartment and going to school together. It was so fun for me because now we got to know each other as adults and we really liked and appreciated each other in some neat ways.

One of the things I remember is that my brother is the best rejoicer. He’s the best celebrator. He’s very deep. He carries a lot of weight and heaviness and pain. He always has. But he has cultivated rejoicing. He would come home and be like, “This is the last Tuesday that I will ever be in that class for the rest of my life. Let’s go celebrate!” You know? “This is the last Friday that I will ever have to talk to that professor. Let’s go celebrate!” 

He could find anything to celebrate. And I got caught up and I was like, “This is good.” And my wife’s awesome at that too. She’ll turn anything into a celebration. I just love that attitude. And that is our Lord’s heart. That is God’s heart for you. And you’re going to have to resist trying to fix everything. You’re going to have to sit back and know that Sabbath rest is for rejoicing—and cultivate that in your life. It’s a very important practice.

I’ve got some more and we can get to that in the next couple of weeks. But I want to close with a little time of prayer and quieting ourselves before the Lord. I want to take us through a short, little practice of maybe how we can connect with the Lord and start to quiet our souls and meet him where he is. The Lord is very clear in the Scriptures on how we’re supposed to approach him. It’s not a flippant thing. He’ll take us no matter how we come, but there are right ways to come. 

So if you will bow your heads with us, we’ll have the ushers come and pass out communion, the bread and the cup. You can hold on to it and we’ll all take it together. But just take this time now in the quiet of this place, with the Spirit among us in this place. God is here with us. He’s with you. This is a chance for us to resist. But to do this, to resist thinking about the challenges. Try to picture a way God feels and what he might be saying to you. We’re told to enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. 

So right now, just go ahead and find something to be thankful for, to thank God for. Come into his presence with rejoicing and celebrating. If it’s easy to think of, think of some more. You could praise him for an attribute or characteristic that he has been in your life. Or you can thank him for something that has shown up, or something that’s happened. 

After we come with thanksgiving and praise, we are supposed to confess—confess our sins, to cast our cares on him. So now, just take a moment and do that. Be honest about your brokenness. Be honest about your failings. Lay those at his feet. Tell him you’re sorry. 

And in that same place of confession, we also have to confess our forgiveness. He died on a cross because he’s not put off by you or your sin or your wickedness. He died on a cross so that he could apply it to you and your sin and your wickedness. So confess that you are forgiven. Say it in a whisper to yourself, to your own heart, to your mind, to the accusers, to God. Confess that you are clean, you are whole, you are new, you are washed. 

Thank you, Lord.

Just like Jesus in his word teaches us to remember the Sabbath, he also said he wants us to remember what he did for us on the cross—to remember his broken body. He was broken so we could made whole. He can connect with our brokenness. He understands it because he was broken. 

And so Jesus, as we hold this bread in remembrance of you, we take and we eat, asking and praying that you would continue to do your work in us. That, Lord, you would fill the gaps and you would make us whole. Let’s take the bread.

And, Jesus, you told us to remember your blood that flowed—to remember that there was a price to be paid—to remember that your innocent, perfect, sinless blood flowed so that we could be washed clean. And, Lord, I pray that there would be a profound sense of righteousness, of cleansing, of holiness that permeates deeper into our souls than ever before, as today we remember your blood that was shed. Let’s take the cup.  Thank you, Lord.

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©️2019 Living Streams Church
7000 N Central Avenue ∙ Phoenix AZ 85020 ∙ 602-957-7500 
https://www.livingstreams.org

Unless otherwise indicated, all 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.

Scripture marked MSG is taken from The Message. © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group

Scripture marked NASB is taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®,
Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975 1977, 1995
By the Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

Should You Quit Your Job?

David Stockton
April 14, 2019
Series: The Other Hours

We’re in our sermon series “Other Hours.” You can turn to Ephesians 2, if you would. We’ll jump into our Other Hours teaching, God doesn’t want to make you good at church, he wants to make you good at life. There are a lot of other hours besides church that make up our life. We’ve broken up the other hours into five sections. 

Relationships are a huge part of life. Work, the section we’re in right now. We’re going to be talking about rest. We’re going to be talking about finances. And we’re going to be talking bout sexuality. That’s the five sections that make up our life.

We talked about work last week. Last week we talked about work as an important, sacred and blessed thing from Genesis garden all the way to Revelations garden city. The entire Bible is talking about work as a blessed, sacred, important thing. God is someone who worked and sanctified it. 

We also talked about how, from the time mankind sinned to the time Jesus returns to make all things new, work is still important, sacred and blessed. But it has been tainted by entropy. The call of God, the work of God that he did, making the garden and then he commissioned mankind to continue to make garden and expand the garden, all of it was great. You planted flowers and only flowers came up. You planted something good and only good came up. And then mankind sinned, and when they sinned, if you remember, the curse that was placed on the sin, God said, “Because you’ve sinned, this is now the realty that you’re going to experience.”

And there was a curse on labor, the labor of women in childbearing, and the labor of work in the fields. So now, when you plant flowers, you get flowers, maybe, if you did it right, but even if you did everything right, you also gets weeds. 

And so, the work is more difficult than it was, but it has not changed in its importance, in its sacredness, in its godliness. And if we are not doing that, if we are not making gardens, so to speak, in the areas that God has given us dominion over. We’re not being human. You can only survive for so long in that reality, studies have shown.

And so work is tainted by entropy. Today we will look at how work has been twisted by idolatry, and if you should quit your job is one of the questions we’re going to be asking today. Or if quitting your job isn’t the right thing to do, maybe you need to do something just as drastic to free yourself from idolatry, which always robs us of life.

Last week, we said that the work has been tainted by entropy and today we’re going to talk about how work can be twisted by idolatry. And we’re going to ask that question: Should you quit your job?

If not, maybe you should do something just as drastic as quitting your job to make sure you’re not caught up in idolatry. Idolatry is something that will always rob us of life. Always steal, kill and destroy from us.

I have a few things I want to share with you in quote form. I want everyone to harness your punk rock self a little bit. If you like Green Day or whatever, MSPX type things. Get in that frame of mind. Here we go. We’re going to stick it to the man a little bit here.

The mantra of our culture is that we work to live. The American dream—which started out as this brilliant idea that everybody should have a shot at a happy life has devolved over the years into a narcissistic desire to make as much money as possible in as little time as possible with as little effort as possible so that we can get off work and go do something else.  Garden City by Mark Comer

This American dream that started off as, no matter where you come from, no matter what has happened in your life, you deserve a fair chance to make something of your life. But it’s evolved in time into this idea where all we want to do is get as much stuff in our lives as possible. We want to work as little as possible, as little effort as possible, get as much money as possible because money feels like security, money feels like all the things that God is supposed to supply in our lives, but God is too unreliable. So we begin to foster a culture of idolatry. Correct?

Next thing. This is from Jon Foreman, a Switchfoot song:

“When success is equated with excess,
the ambition for excess wrecks us.
The top of the mind becomes the bottom line
when success is equated with excess.
Success is equated with excess
when you’re fighting for the Beamer, the Lexus.
The heart and the soul
breathe in the company goals
when success is equated with excess. 
Baby’s always talking about her ring.
And talk has always been the cheapest thing.
Is it true?
Would you do what I want you to
if I show you the right amount of bling,
like a puppet on a monetary string.
Maybe we’ve been caught singing
the red, white, blue and green.”

And then he says,

“That ain’t my American dream.
I want to live and die for bigger things.” 

It’s true what these people are speaking about. Our culture, it’s not far off. It’s not, “Hmm. Let me think about that for a while to see if it’s true.” I mean, it is pervasive in our culture. Every commercial. And sometimes, it’s coined or phrased in a way that seems like it’s very wise to store up, to go for these things. And we begin to equate success with excess. And the economy of heaven is very different than the economy of earth. Very, very different.

This is another quote by a guy. Some of you have heard me say this. It’s something that came after I lived in Belize for a while and then I came back. I was out of the bubble of Phoenix culture and then when I came back, I was just getting back into the culture. I just watched everybody kind of flying by and this is what really began to stir in my heart:

There is a gravity in Phoenix that is constantly pulling us into superficial and artificial busy-ness. Then, we find ourselves waking up one year, five years, or ten years down the road, realizing we have only been existing. We haven’t been doing any living at all. —David Stockton

I’m sure this is true of other cities, other situations. But it’s so true in Phoenix. Phoenix is probably the second most artificial place in the world. Maybe third. I mean, Vegas has got to be up there, right? And maybe Dubai. These places that are desert, and yet, when you go there, there is so much greenery and life and oasis. The Phoenix culture, every tree you see here, every cool breeze you feel here, it’s artificial and it seems like somehow it’s seeped into our own souls, where we become very superficial, artificial people. Even our business here is not really a kind of industry built on some kind of resource. It’s an industry built  on this idea of money and real estate value, property values, financial investments. There’s no real basis for it. There’s no real resource attached to it. It’s just this idea of fluctuating, “Now it’s worth more, now it’s worth less.” And nothing really changes hands, so to speak. 

It’s kind of the way our culture is built. None of that is wrong in and of itself. But we so easily can get caught up into this thing, where we are now producing artificial, superficial lives, marriages, families, children, places of business. And if we’re not resisting this gravity, it is happening to us, no matter how “Christian” you are.

One of the reasons this is so important to me is that my mom and dad raised me here in Phoenix. And my mom and dad were awesome, wonderful people. They were so great. They loved the Lord with all their hearts. And at one point, I was young and not paying attention to know much about it, but looking back, they got to a place where they had to leave Phoenix. My dad was so caught up in his practice doing medicine, and the work, and all the good he was trying to do, that his health was completely failing. And my mom was caught up in the political scene here. She was doing some work for some politicians and just kind of all caught up in it. 

We had a big house, we had these Mercedes. And one day, by the grace of God, my parent woke up to this reality that we are building a completely artificial and superficial life. We are maintaining something that doesn’t feel like life at all. It just feels like existing.

So my dad wanted to move to Colorado. My mom wanted to move to California. So—bam!—we moved to Oregon. And there we were, starting over. My brothers had both graduated college—my parents had the decency to take care of them. I had just finished my freshman year in high school. Oh, that’s a great time to move a kid! And we left. We resisted. We broke out and went to Grants Pass, Oregon. Twenty thousand people. But a huge river going through town. New school for me. And I never once thought it was a bad idea. I thought, “It sounds cool. I’ve never seen rain before.” Fishing They’ve got big fish. Not just tiny fish. They’ve got big fish there. And the lunch bell rang on my first day of school and I was like, “Huh? I don’t know anybody. Who am going to sit with?” And all of that started. 

But it was a great move for me and my family in a lot of ways. And the reality is, this isn’t a message about everybody should move to Oregon. This is a message to where that stuff can seep in and we can find ourselves spinning, just living this American dream, and missing out on the dream God has for you so easily. So easily. I want to read to us Ephesians 2. I’ll read the whole thing, 1 through 10. 

The end of it is what’s really pertinent to our study today. But I want to read the whole thing so we can get the full picture of God and what he’s doing in our lives. And it culminates in the last couple of verses. 

1 As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2 in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, 

In other words, the economy of this world is all you knew and all you lived for.

the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. 3 All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh[a] and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.

Or, undeserving of anything good.

4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

So, basically, he’s talking about how we used to just live according to the culture of this world. We used to be so seeped in it. We didn’t know anything else. It’s how we were born, what we breathed in—it’s just who we were. But then at some point we came into connection, came into a collision with the kingdom of heaven. Somehow we tasted, somehow we saw, somehow we awoke to what Jesus was saying or teaching. This other culture. This other economy. And in that moment we were made alive in Christ. And now we’re trying to learn how to flesh out this new kingdom order, these new kingdom principles, live according to this new economy.

And then, at the very end he says, “For you are God’s work, created in Christ Jesus to do God’s work, which he had prepared in advance for you to do.” 

And so, two things are kind of colliding inside you—just you—not in the church as a whole, necessarily, but you specifically individually. God has taken the initiative to tell you you are his garden. You are his work. You are his work that he is doing in the world. And if he can turn you into the Garden of Eden, if he can turn you into a kingdom person, if he can let his Spirit alive in you bring the righteousness, joy and peace, then anybody who interacts with you has a chance of also waking up to the kingdom of heaven.

You’re an ambassador, like we talked about last week. You are his garden project now. You are the work that he is doing for six days and then resting one day. You are his garden.

In Isaiah it says “And their souls will be like well-watered gardens.” God has taken the work to make you into that garden, and then he also, the Bible is very clear, has prepared good works for you to walk in in advance. One, he kind of fashions you and makes you able to do work, and then he actually creates opportunities for work for you and asks you to walk in them. 

When I was young, living according to my own ideas and may own imaginations, I thought it would be great to play professional basketball for the Phoenix Suns. I thought that was awesome. And then I didn’t grow that much, and everyone started beating me all the time. So then I thought, My dad’s a doctor. I should be an athletic trainer for the Phoenix Suns. And then maybe they’ll let me play every once in a while. No. 

That was my dream. That was all I had. I mean, it wasn’t a passion. I wasn’t super excited about it. It was just that it didn’t wound dumb. And I did my senior project on it. And then I had this interaction with the Lord after high school. It was like, “Do you want to do things your way or do you want to see what I have in store for you? Do you want to see the work that I have for you?”

And I didn’t really have a lot of ideas and I thought that God was probably smarter than me. And so I said, “Ok, God, let’s do this thing.” And started to try and learn his ways at eighteen years old. And God began to teach me about the work that he had for me. And I have resisted it at every corner, every transition. I was like, “Oh that’s cool. I’ll go be like a little youth pastor for some children and do little worship leading at this church, or whatever.” And then I quit and went to school because I was like, “Now I’ll go get a real job.” 

And so I went to school and then I got done with school and I went to work at a Christian Summer camp and I was working with people, kind of pastoring and leading them and working in that way. And then I went to Ireland and I worked at the Guiness Brewery for a little while because I thought that sounded cooler. And then that didn’t work out that great. So I came back and lived in Southern Oregon. I wanted to stay and work in Southern Oregon. I applied for all these jobs in Southern Oregon. Nobody in Southern Oregon wanted me, liked me, everybody hated me, it seemed like.

And there was this one guy down in Phoenix named Mark Buckley who said, “Hey, why don’t you come work with our youth down here.” 

And I was like, “Blah. I don’t want to go to Phoenix. I don’t want to work with youth. I remember youth pastors.” I didn’t like them very much. I thought they were cheesy and I didn’t want to be that, real bad. But he was offering me a plane ticket to come check it out. And I checked it out and thought, “See? It’s just like I thought. It’s dumb. It’s lame. It’s weird.”

And I went back to Oregon and tried to find more jobs and it finally felt like the Lord was maybe pointing me this way. And I said, “Ok, fine!” And I came down here because this is the work that God prepared in advance for me to do. And it’s been amazing. 

And I’ve quit my job here twice. Gone to Belize. That’s cooler. It’s cool when you’re in Belize. You say, “I was in Belize.” And everybody’s like, “Oh, wow. You were in Belize.” 

And I come back here and like, “I’m a pastor.” And they’re bored to tears or they go, “Oh, ok. That’s cool. Yeah. Uh-huh.”

And so, here I am. You know? 

God has prepared work in advance for us. And when you begin to walk in it, it’s amazing what comes to life inside of you. It’s amazing the passions that are stirred, the joy that you receive. And the scary thing is, some of you guys might be working really, really hard in the wrong direction. 

Last week, we talked about how one of the most traumatic things psychologists have studied, even more traumatic than abuse in some ways, and divorce in some ways is long-term unemployment, the affects of that on a human soul are devastating. 

I’m here to say in this message that I think, just as devastating is “wrong-term” employment, when we’re working for the wrong reasons, for the wrong motivations, for the wrong things. When God has fashioned you for one work and yet you’re doing a different work—eventually you’re going to break. When you live outside the grace of God for long enough, you break. ‘and my fear is that there are some people in here who might be working outside the grace of God. God has fashioned you for one thing…

I met with Mark this last week and he was telling me about his life and how he was going in one direction and one day he thought, “Man, I think I’m supposed to go this way.” And he just switched. He quit everything and went in a new direction, and now he’s got all this life. 

And I was like, “Man! How did you make that switch?”

He was like, “I don’t know. It didn’t seem that hard,”

I was like, “You’re a crazy person!”

But he just trusted the Lord and, maybe he’s a special breed. 

Then I spent some time with another guy a little later and it was the same thing. He said, “I don’t know. I just did it. It just seemed like a better thing to do to go for what God was saying.”

And I thought Who are these people? I mean, I’ve fought forever.

And I get that this can be complex and complicated. Because, if you were to quit your job, or do what God is asking you to do, you might lose a lot of funds. You might have to downsize. You might not get looked at or talked to the same way. You might not have titles after your name. You might have to sell something. 

But would you rather be alive? 

Here’s some motivations that will make sur your work is going to be miserable:

If your motivation for your occupation is one of these, you should quit your job:

If you’re motivated for money or greed, please just admit it and quit it.

America is not going to last that much longer, if you look at history at all. No nation is a world power for more than a few hundred years. It’s never happened, there’s a rise and there’s a fall. And we’re right in the middle of a great rise, no doubt about it. And I’m not saying, “It’s going to happen tomorrow. Or the next election cycle.” But we’re not any better than anybody else. Well, we’re probably better than some nations that have risen and fallen, but … 

But Jesus is the only one that endures forever. His kingdom has no end. Every other kingdom has an end. And, if we’re living for money, it’s just going to burn everybody. 

The second thing is, if your motivation for your occupation is fear or insecurity because you’re like, “I don’t know what would happen if I were to quit. I’m too scared of the3 unknown. Everything in me is screaming in me to quit, and yet, I’m just gripped by fear of what could happen.”

I’m not trying to take that away from you, but I”m saying that’s a horrible motivation for your occupation.

And this last one takes a bit more honesty and reflection, but if your motivation is image or idolatry, it’s time to make a change. You like being called doctor, or you like being called lawyer, even though it’s not life for you, but you like the way your mom and dad talk about you when they say you’re this or that and you’re living off that. I’ll tell you, it’s not going to lead to life for you or anybody you love.

I’m about to throw some more quotes at you that are going to stir it up. 

But first, in regard to work as an idol, I mean, we sell our souls for our jobs sometimes. That one line when the top of the line becomes the company goals, when we start breathing in the comp[any goals, some of us are there. And it’s not bad but it really quickly becomes something that is more important to us. Or we’re looking to it to give us what God wants to give us, that’s when it’s really dangerous. That’s when we’re full-fledged idolotrous. 

In Genesis, God commissioned the work and Revelation is the culmination of that work, and you have this garden and this garden city, but then just after the creation of the garden, we have this thing called Babel rise up, where man is working in a way that is in the wrong direction from what the Lord wants him to do. And right before we have the garden city coming down, we have Babylon being done away with in Revelation—as these bookends once again.

And Babylon represents some sort of culture that is opposite of God, or this commercial reality this gross materialism that the world is constantly hungry for—all these things we bring in to our lives that are supposed to supply us what our hearts are  longing for, that God can only truly supply us with. It’s an interesting study there. 

I’m going to read a few more quotes from a guy named Howard Thurman, who, if you want to read more that he writes, it’s rich stuff.

Again, trying to answer this question before God, ourselves and our families. Are we going in the wright direction? Are we in the right work? Or are we in the wrong work?

“There’s something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself. It is the only true guide you will have. And if you cannot hear it, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls.”

I’m here as a pastor, your pastor, to say, “Come on. Let’s no go that way. Let’s not be puppets on a monetary string.”

Next one:

“There are two questions that we have to ask ourselves. The first is, ‘Where I am going?’ and the second is ‘Who will go with me?’ And if you ever get these questions in the wrong order, you are in trouble.” Peer pressure.

And last, “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and then go do it. Because what the world really needs is people who have come alive.”

And here’s what Jesus said, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy, but I have come that they might have life and that they may it to the full.” 

Jesus knows how you are made. He knows what you are made for. And he’s already prepared that work in advance for you to walk in. It’s already set. He’s fashioned you for a specific work that the world needs you to do. And idolatry will keep us from it. And idolatry will steal, kill and destroy. Not only from you having life, but you having enough life to make all the others around you have life. That’s what we’re longing for in this work.

And again it’s not necessarily about your actual job. Hear me on that. Your job can be a fund raiser for the work that God’s wanting you to do. And maybe that will work. But whatever you’re doing, please don’t stay in a job if it’s just for money, if it has become idolatry in some way, shape or form. Talk to someone. Your wife or husband first. Talk to a pastor. Talk to somebody else. Maybe read a book. Counterfeit Gods by Time Keller or Garden City by Mark Comer — two I would recommend. And then make a move. 

Let’s pray:

Jesus, those are some deep, deep words—the fact that we are your work, your handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for works that you have prepared in advance for us. And Lord, my prayer is that we wouldn’t miss it. We wouldn’t miss any of the work you want to do in our lives and we wouldn’t miss any of the work you want to do through our lives. Please, Jesus, by your Spirit just move in this room. Whisper in our ears. Prick our hearts. Convict our souls. Whatever it takes, Lord, to get us awake and free. Root out idolatry from our hearts and minds. Teach us about the economy of heaven. Help us become punk rock where we need to be. We’re so thankful for the jobs that we do have, Lord so thankful that we’re able to work. I pray for those without jobs and who may be unable to work. Lord, I pray that you would comfort them and you would show them the work you have for them; and they would be able to fulfill it and feel your pleasure upon them. 

©️2019 Living Streams Church
7000 N Central Avenue ∙ Phoenix AZ 85020 ∙ 602-957-7500 ∙ https://www.livingstreams.org

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.

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©️2019 Living Streams Church
7000 N Central Avenue ∙ Phoenix AZ 85020 ∙ 602-957-7500 ∙ https://www.livingstreams.org

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.

Scripture marked NLT is taken from Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

God and Your Job

David Stockton
April 7, 2019
Series: The Other Hours

Genesis 1:1. We’re going through The Other Hours sermon series. God doesn’t want to make you good at church. He wants to make you good at life. The Other Hours. All the other hours of life that you’re not in church. Because, if all Christians do is get good at church, it stinks. We’re horrible. We’re worthless. We’re no good. We need to be good at life. The Lord needs us to be good at all the other aspects of life. The other hours of life.

And we’ve broken those other hours as best we can into five different segments that we’re going to be doing the sermon series on, but we are also having classes and online curriculum on these things. The first one is relationships. We did a bunch of teachings on relationships. It’s a big part of life. And we have a book that we recommend and we have a study guide and all that stuff on livingstreams.online if you want to go check that out.

Today we’re going to be starting our second segment, called “Work.” Work. Work. Work. It’s the weekend, we’re not supposed to talk about work, because it’s coming tomorrow like a big monster to consume me. Some of you, put your phones down. I’m just kidding. I don’t know. I’m just saying it.

But we’re talking about work because that’s a big part of our lives. Whether it’s work you get paid for or it’s just that you’ve got to work to keep the house in order. You have kids. You have a dog, you have a cat. I don’t know what you do. If you ever have any of those. But there’s a lot of work in life and it makes up a huge part of our life. 

I didn’t say this first service, but there was a lady that came and spoke at our Financial Forum last Wednesday and she was talking about the future of work. There’s all this interesting stuff happening. One of the things she said was that there’s research that’s been done that’s basically studying the recovery process for people who have come through different traumas, whether it be sexual abuse, divorce, or… it just kind of went into these things that happen in society—the time frame and the intensity of the recovery to get people back to a place where they’re whole and healthy from these things. 

And they said they’ve done all these things, but there’s one trauma that they have not yet been able to do any research and find any conclusion as to how a person can recover from that, because the intensity is so intense and the duration seems to be so long, they’ve never had a research for that. And its long term unemployment. Which is wild, huh? Long term unemployment is so traumatic on the soul of the human being, that they’re trying to figure out how to find someone who’s been able to get right after it.

Now, that doesn’t mean there aren’t any out there. And you might be like, “I’m one of them.” And people are like, “I don’t know how ‘right’ you are!” But that’s a whole ‘nuther discussion. You guys can deal with that on your own.

But it just goes to the core of work is very important. We need to feel like we are contributing to something. Just like we need water. Just like we need food for our bodies. Our souls. We need to feel like we are a contribution in some way. And if we don’t, and if the enemy starts to play on that and we start to believe lies, real damage can happen.

So we’re going to talk about work. We’re going to talk about it for a few weeks. I’m going to try to set some things up today to get us to start the discussion. And what I want to do is share some visions. 

The other day, we were praying, as our Direction Team. We were talking about our society. We were talking about some of the challenges we have. Right now, you know, there are a lot of weeds happening, because, for some reason, Arizona thought it was supposed to rain all winter long. I go in my back yard and then I go back inside. Because there are weeds as big as me. And it’s funny because they just started flowering. So I’m kind of like, “Well, it’s kind of pretty. It’s not too bad, right? Not too bad.” And she’s like, “It’s horrible!” So, I don’t know. There’s a lot of weeds.

But we all see in our society, you know, those of us who are paying any attention, there are a lot of weeds growing up. There are a lot of challenges. There are people who have said the cities of America have become post-Christian. And I can see it, you know. I think some cities may be a little further along than other cities, but you know, it makes sense that we’re on a trajectory to be post-Christian. 

One of the people on our Executive Team, she was praying that we wouldn’t become post-Christian in Phoenix. And it was funny, because the ship had already sailed as far as I was concerned. I was like, “Wait a second.” And it just kind of struck me as, “This is OUR city. This is our city and the church is strong. There are so many awesome churches around here.” Don’t tell them I told you, because you should come to this church. But there are! If you go to another church, that’s cool, too.

But there are so many great churches, and great believers in all different aspects. And I thought, “You know what? We shouldn’t be giving this thing up.” It doesn’t matter where we are, there can be revival. The same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead dwells in each one of us who have made him the Lord of our life. 

We obviously need to adapt and kind of change, depending on what in the world’s going on. We have to figure out how the gospel can take root. There is all of those things, but we can also just pray that the Lord says, “That’s enough,” and just makes a total a revival, and puts a passion in our hearts for this city; and we stand in the gap; and we see the decline start to change and turn around and go into a different direction; and this place actually becomes a city known for its Christian influence and community.  

So that was little challenge to me. There’s this thing I came across. It’s this Anglican priest in 1925 who was remarking on his culture and his society. He came up with these seven social evils. We don’t have time to go into this. This could be a whole sermon series in itself. What I want to share with you is something to kind of prick your hearts and help you see society a little differently.

1. Wealth without work creates all kinds of evil.

2. Pleasure without conscience. 

These first things in themselves are not bad, but when they’re not coupled correctly, they become evil. 

3. Knowledge without character.

4. Commerce without morality.

5. Science without humanity.

6. Religion without sacrifice.

7. Politics without principle. 

That’s basically stuff that we can see. He was getting to the root of some of these things. And that’s what we’re seeing. We’re seeing our society—I mean, none of us are proud of what’s going on and we’re a little confused. It seems like things are just so bad. But this is our chance to stand in the gap, to war against these things. And the work that God has called us to do is to do that. We’ll get into that more and more.

Tim Keller. He’s a Protestant pastor in New York. He’s spent his life trying to build God’s kingdom there in New York City, which has got all kinds of issues. I just listened to a podcast. He has a desire, a vision, a passion from the Lord for. He says he wants to see churches working together to see the gospel transform lives, producing radical philanthropy, profound racial reconciliation, and real social justice. 

I love this because we want to see God move in our church services, right? We want to feel his presence and we want to hear his word, but if you had a choice, and God said, “I’ll either show up for you at church this Sunday and really minister to you and all the people there, or I’m going to show up for you at your workplace and minister to all the people there,” which would you choose? You’d choose the work every single time, right? Yes! 

God wants to move in the lives of people who don’t know him, who don’t experience him, who haven’t tasted and seen of his goodness. And so the cry of my heart, the cry of Tim Keller’s heart, is that God would move in the church. Yes, we want that. But, more importantly, the movement wouldn’t get stuck here and bounce off the walls. But the movement would flow right out of this place, and that God would start to move, and God would start to cause change—that God’s power and love would be known outside of the churches. That’s what transformation is. That’s what we’re hoping for.

I would add to radical philanthropy, profound racial reconciliation, and real social justice—this just kind of simple prayer that everyone in our city, our society, would just know the love and power of our risen Savior. That’s a passion. That’s a vision. That’s a hope. That somehow we would carry the love and power of God into every pocket of this city. 

Whether or not people respond and we get to see anything grand or awesome—I mean, I pray for that and hope for that—but I would love it if just everyone got a taste of who our Jesus is; and the true love and the true power that is in him and in his Spirit.

I had a vision this weekend as we were doing a worship time at this conference. This is what I saw: I saw the sky getting cleared over Phoenix (and over Belize, but never mind that. That’s my own business). And what was causing this sky to be cleared was the praises of God’s people. As we met and gathered—not just our church, but all the churches in Phoenix—it was like the sky was being cleared. And as the sky was being cleared, it kind of opened up this portal of some sort, and I saw this city coming down. I immediately went to Revelation 21 where it says that John was looking and an angel showed him and there was this city, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven. And it was beautiful. And it looked just like a bride dressed for her wedding day. And we know in the Scriptures that that’s a picture of the Church. 

And somehow, as we, the Church, cleared the air, it’s like the true picture of God’s kingdom and his beauty can come down and everyone can see it and feel it and know it. And I just started praying for our city, and I was praying for Belize the churches there that I’ve worked with; that we would take up our position. That we would see that what we’re doing is not just kind of a routine. It’s not just something we’re just checking off boxes. 

When we gather and we call on the name of the Lord and the churches all over Phoenix, as they cry out to the Lord  and they sing these praises, the praises arise and they clear the air over this city for the blessing and beauty of God to come. 

You have a very important role. God didn’t save you so that you could just hang out. He saved you  so that you could become a mighty warrior and do the work he’s called you to do. 

So with all that said, we’re going to go to the book of Genesis and we’re going to get the vision of the writers of the Bible, inspired but he Holy Spirit and see what kind of vision they had for work—the biblical perspective on work. 

Genesis 1:26

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals…”

I love ruling over the fish. Every once in a while I get to rule over one as it bit my line and I’m reeling it in. It’s one of my favorite moments of all time, especially if it’s a big one. But anyway. You know, rule. God made mankind to rule. Please catch that word. That word in Hebrew is a powerful rule. It’s kingly. God made you and me to rule. And we’ll get more language like that as we keep going. 

27  So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

Just in case anyone was thinking that God made man to rule and Eve was part of what he was supposed to rule, the writers clear that up real quickly and say, no. God made man and woman both as mankind to rule over the rest of creation. 

28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

So there God says to them, “Not only have I made you to rule over the creation,” but the command goes further: “I want you to be fruitful, increase, and fill the whole earth and subdue the earth.” 

Now, again, this language is intense. Rule over the earth. Subdue the earth. Another place God gave him dominion over the earth. Those are very particular words—with a particular message. 

And part of what they’re supposed to do is to have this authority to rule, to have dominion, to subdue the earth. And they were supposed to be fruitful, multiply, and fill the whole earth. That’s what we’re being taught here. That was God’s plan. The work that man and woman, mankind, was supposed to do, they were supposed to rule over the entire earth, filling the entire earth, subduing the entire earth, having dominion over the entire earth. That’s what God created them for—created you and me for.

And the word there in Hebrew can kind of go both ways. It can be rule and subdue and have dominion in order to create flourishing for everyone involved—common good. Or it can be ruling, subduing, having dominion over so you can make sure you flourish and you have good at the expense of everybody else. But that’s what we’re called to do. We’re called to work in a way that we subdue, we conquer, we have dominion. But God’s wanting us to do it so that it feels like a garden for everybody instead of feeling like a slave camp for everybody. You get the point there? Then you see how we’ve gone astray in that situation, as a people.

The next thing, turn to Genesis Chapter 2, verse 2. 

2 By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. 3 Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.

Just in case you didn’t know where work came from, God is where it came from. Your job came from God. I don’t know about that. You could say that. The idea of work came from God. It’s a holy, sacred thing. God himself worked for six days—rested. God is a worker.  He’s a worker. When you and I work, we’re connecting with the Imago Dei—the image of God. We’re falling in line with what he made us to be. 

Skip down to verse 15: 

15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 

So the Lord God put man in the garden. This is kind of a retelling of Genesis 1. Genesis 1 is real poetic. And this is kind of a fuller commentary of the creation process. It’s saying that God made the man and put him in the garden to what? To work it and take care of it, maintain it. And then, if you skip down to verse 18,

18 The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”

19 Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals.

But for Adam no suitable helper was found. 

So, again, non-poetic details. God put man in the garden and said, “I want you to work it and take care of it.” 

And then man wasn’t that good at it. Maybe. I don’t know. He had dominion over the animals. They actually came to him and he named them and all this stuff. He was supposed to have dominion over all these things and it was easy. It was easy because of the way the world was set up at that point. It wasn’t laborious or hard for him to take care of and maintain this garden. But something was missing and God said, “We’re going to make a helper suitable for him.”  

We obviously know this is more than just somebody to work with him. It was to become bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, and someone that becomes one; and the idea of marriage was instituted. But we’re talking about work right now. Relationships was last week.

But work is something that God made Adam and Eve, male and female, to work this garden, to take care of it. If we add the other language, to then make the rest of the world a garden. Because remember that God took the world, which was without form, and void, and he made a garden. He put Adam and Eve in it and said, “Now you work for six days on this garden, to care for it and further it, and then rest. Work for six days on this garden to care for this garden and further it and then rest.” I mean, basically the whole situation. 

And that’s what they were doing. We don’t know how long. But then Genesis 3 happens and what happens? Sin. Adam and Eve decided they knew better, or believed the lie the devil was telling them, and didn’t take God at his word, and ate of this tree. Maybe they felt like, “Hey, we grew that tree. We’re in charge of the garden. We have dominion over everything.” Even though God put a limitation on them, they did it anyway.

And then sin came. And do you remember what sin brought into the garden? It brought a curse, right? And what was the curse brought onto? Labor. You see how holy and sacred work is? That when the first mention of sin comes in, the curse, the damage that sin does was on the work, the labor. Women and childbearing. I’ve heard it’s labor. I don’t know if it’s true. Ha. That’s a joke. Whoa! Man. 

The second thing was, and the fields, it would be labor, challenge for the fields. And basically, entropy began. Second law of thermodynamics. There it is. Weeds. Whereas, before, taking care of the garden and making it further was easy because there wasn’t a curse. But now, because of sin, there is a curse. 

So, check this out. Work is not cursed. Work is holy and sacred. But there is a reality of sin that has brought a curse that affects the work. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t work anymore. It doesn’t mean work is worthless. Work is still what God did and wants us who are in his image to continue to do. But now it’s harder and challenging and difficult because of the reality of sin.

Here’s me trying to sum it up:

God’s work was to make a garden out of the formless void of our world. He worked for six days on that garden and then rested. He put mankind in the garden to enjoy it and fill it and expand it. When man sinned, the curse that came was on labor—labor in childbearing, labor in the gardening work. Because of sin there is entropy and the second law of thermodynamics. Mankind’s job in the beginning was to maintain and further the garden, the goodness of God’s garden. Mankind’s job is still the same today. Therefore, your work at home, in an office, in a shop, in a studio, in emails, in spreadsheets, in classrooms, in your vehicle, in research, in your children, in your relationships, it is sacred and holy work. You may think your job is lame, but God sees you as his special agent, sent and planted in your work situation. 

Even if your work is lame. There’s so much more to it. 

Ephesians 1, in the Message (MSG), it says, 

1 I, Paul, am under God’s plan as an apostle, a special agent of Christ Jesus, writing to you faithful believers in Ephesus…

And then he goes on into one of Paul’s awesome run-on sentences about the wonder and beauty of God, and the amazing work of salvation, and how much God has meant to him. And then he sums it all up with this. He says: 

11-12 It’s in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living, part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone.

The call is the same. Nothing has changed. Jesus has work that he wants you to do. And if you will give your life to him, and you will trust him, he will not only point you in that direction, but he will fill you with passion—his passion—to accomplish it. And this is really my prayer for us over these next few weeks, that we would be gripped by the passion of God in the direction that he wants us to work.

Next week we’re going to celebrate Palm Sunday. Palm Sunday marks this day when he rode this donkey into Jerusalem, and the next week, leading up to the death and resurrection, they call it Passion Week. Jesus was passionate. He was gripped by the Father’s heart for the work that God wanted him to do. So gripped by it, that at one point they described of him that his face was set like flint toward Jerusalem, toward the cross.

He was so compelled and constrained by what the Father wanted that he was willing to do anything and everything, including being crucified on a cross to accomplish the work that God wanted him to do. And I want us to be gripped by that passion. Do not come next week if you’re scared of the passion of Christ. Because my prayer is that we will be gripped by his passion for this city, for your job, for your family, for your kids, even if they drive you crazy. Whatever work he has called you to do, it will be coupled with his passion. His passion is dangerous stuff.

One time Jeremiah the prophet said, “God, you told me I’m supposed to keep telling people what you say, but every time I do it, I get beat up or thrown in the dungeon or laughed at. I’m not going to do it anymore.” And then this beautiful passage in Scripture he says, “But your word was like a fire in my bones and I could not hold it in. Your passion burned hotter and brighter than any pain I ever experienced.” 

And Paul also said in a different place—they were asking him, “Why are you so crazy, Paul? Why are you so radical, Paul? Why did you leave everything and go to all of these people who don’t know Jesus and you’re building tents, and why are you so crazy about everything?”

He said, “Well, I’m not crazy. It’s the love of Christ that constrains me. The love of Christ has gripped me. I have a passion for the gentile people. I don’t know where it came from. I don’t know if I necessarily wanted it. But I know it’s the most life-giving thing I’ve ever experienced. And I’m not going anywhere else.”

Maybe the Lord’s going to give you a passion for whatever weird job you have, or cool job, or lame job or whatever; and all of a sudden you just start loving your job. And you have such a passion about it. People are so confused and you get to tell them about Jesus. 

That’s what we’re praying for. Passion for the work that God has given us to do. 

Turn to the last page of your Bible, Revelation 22. We’re going to see that God’s garden idea is God’s garden idea. He never gave up on it. He’s still into it. So Revelation is kind of showing us a picture of what God wants things to be. 

1 Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life… 

Which, by the way, was in the garden of Eden. 

…bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of [all] the nations. No longer will there be any curse. 

It’ll be a garden without weeds. It’ll be relationships without weeds. It’ll be dominion. Subduing. Reigning. Ruling. Without selfishness. 

The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. 4 They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. 5 There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever.  

What does that mean? It means we’re not going to be sitting on a cloud, playing a harp. I guess—unless that was your job. We’re going to reign. What does that mean? We will continue to be gardeners, maintaining the good of the garden and furthering it.

Ask me the next question. I don’t know. I have a thousand questions too. But that’s the picture we’re given. This gardener thing, God’s pretty serious about it. And that’s why every once in a while, when you make something beautiful, there’s this pleasure in your heart. That’s why when you’re unable to contribute in some way, or feel like you’re contributing in some way, there’s such anguish in your heart. You’re killing your own nature. This work thing is a very serious thing. 

I’ll close with this quote from a book. It’s a book called Garden City. It’s actually up on our livingstreams.online for everybody who goes to church here or listens online or whatever. It’s a book that’s very helpful in understanding work and this whole idea of garden coming out of the Scriptures. And we’ve got a little study guide to go along with it. It’s that same concept that God has made you, has fashioned you for a work. It very well could be the work you’re in is the work he wants you to do or is preparing you for something. But there’s something bigger and broader than just the job you have.

Again, your work might be raising your kids, taking the formless void of your kids, the wild, untamed, what-is-going-on-there, and fashioning it into something beautiful. That is a holy, sacred work. Maybe one of the most holy, sacred works. Your marriage. Your household, whatever it might be, whether there are kids or a spouse or not. 

This quote from the book is helpful.

You are a modern day Adam and Eve. This world is what’s left of the garden and your job is to take all the raw materials that are spread out in front of you to work it, to take care of it, to run, to subdue, to wrestle, to fight, to explore, and to take the creation project forward as an act of service and worship to the God who made you. —Garden City by John Comer

Real simple. And some of you are doing this well. Our Finance Director, Anthony DeArcos. This guy, he comes to our finance meetings and he’s made these spread sheets that are beautiful. I can’t understand them or what they’re saying, but they’re beautiful. And the time. And he does these Power Points and I’m just like, “Wow this is beautiful.” He’s pouring his heart and his soul into this thing. And it’s beautiful.

And it’s work and it’s causing this place, this corner of Phoenix to be a place where it feels like a garden. Not just for you and me, but for asylum seekers who are crossing the border having no idea what’s going to happen. And next thing you know they’re living in a house and having people caring for them. It’s definitely not what they had in mind. Or kids who are aging out of the foster care system. They come and they live in this giant house. And they’re telling me, “This place is nice!” And there’s room for them. And people are taking care of them. 

And it goes on and on. You guys are doing so many things. And we’re working on this corner, but we’ve got to take this to all of the corners. Whatever corner of this city you’re on. Maybe all you’ve got is a cubicle or a desk, or maybe they put you in the corner at work. You just have to sit there. Whatever it is, that’s your corner. Make it beautiful. Make it a place that everyone, when they walk by they’re like, “Well, I just want to hang out here for a little bit.” Do that. Don’t wear a crown like you’re a king and you’re going to do things. That’s weird.

Next week we’ll talk a little bit more about how to find the passion and how to make sure we have the authority to subdue and the way we do. The message next week is, “Should You Quit Your Job?” So we’ll see what happens there.

Let’s pray:

Jesus, we do thank you so much for your word that enlightens us and your Spirit that impassions us in the direction that is good for us and the whole world. And I pray that this city would have revival. That this city would be struck by your passion because it is so prevalent in your people. Help us to do our part, Lord. Help us to work your work in this city.

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©️2019 Living Streams Church
7000 N Central Avenue ∙ Phoenix AZ 85020 ∙ 602-957-7500 ∙ https://www.livingstreams.org

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.

Garden City: Work, Rest, and the Art of Being Human.

By Comer, John Mark

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Living With Ourselves (And Other Imperfect People)

Dr Don Worcester
Series: The Other Hours

What a treat to get to be here, This church has blessed us, and grown us, and carried us, and covered us, and encouraged us forever. When I was first beginning my relationship with Renee, she was a member of this church. It was a really small church then, almost 30 years ago. She was a single woman, doing ministry in Young Life and I came with her to church. It was one of the first things we had done. Afterwards, one of the pastors came up—Hylan—and he goes, “So you’re, uh, you’re here with Renee.” 

And I go, “Yeah.”

And he goes, “What are your intentions?”

Which—I just go, “Well, we came to church together.”

And he goes, “Well, I just want you to know, we really love Renee.”

I go, “Good to know.”

And he goes, “I don’t know you.”

“Fair enough. I’m new here.” 

He just got right up in my grill and he thumped me and he said, “I’m checking you out.”

I go, “Awesome. That would be great. Thank you.”

And Renee goes, “Hey—did you meet Hylan?”

I go, “Yeah, Yeah, I met Hylan.”

“What did he say?”

“He was welcoming me to the church.” I guess that’s how they do it here. “I’m checking you out.”

I’ve gotta tell you. I’m friends with Hylan today. I love that. I love that. I loved it that very first morning. I go, “I think these are my people (once they check me out).” You know what—because they’re for each other and they’re with each other. And that is so critical. That’s so real. And that’s been our experience all the way through. When our lives and our relationships, highs and lows and crises and storms, and our kids … this has just been a place that people have shown up in real ways and kind of loved us and cared for us. So we feel really blessed.

We’re doing this Relationship Series, which is really great. I think Living Streams is always doing a relationship series, because we just do life. But this series is really good. And in addition to these resources—which I’m super excited about—I’m going to fly over some stuff today.

Relationship. There are so many specifics and details, that we’re not going to try to drill into those. We put a few things on our website, which is donandreneee.com—some relationship stuff. They are just some free downloads. But if you want to go on our website, there’s a little bar on the front, and under Resources and Documents we have a little download called “How to Stay Stuck in Your Relationships.” So there are twenty things here, and if you’re doing more than five or six, you’re probably staying stuck. So this is a little list you can look up. “The Art of Asking Questions in Marriage.” These are just some great questions—twenty-five questions on how to talk to each other. And “What Healthy People Do.” There are things that we do when we’re healthy. If it would be of any encouragement, you can get those. We would love to stir, or add to, what you’re already doing. 

This morning, while I was praying, the Lord kept reminding me of a verse in Lamentations that says, “The Lord’s lovingkindnesses are new every day. His compassions never fail.” So I’m going to pray for us. And I would say that, if you haven’t sensed the lovingkindness of God in a while, that he would love for you to experience that today. His compassions never fail. They’re new today. So if you need some new kindness, or some new sense of compassion, God has that for us today, 

So let me pray for us: Jesus thanks that you keep showing up. You keep reminding us, inviting us, indwelling us. Lord, you keep bringing and you come with a kindness, God, a tender mercy, a compassion, a hope that is bigger than the hurts. So flood us, God. Flood us with your truth and your grace and your mercy and your goodness. We need to be filled up to where we can just run over. So do your good work. Visit with us. Remind us and stir us, Jesus, we pray in your name. Amen. 

We were looking through some pictures recently. My youngest daughter is now sixteen. She’s driving. I don’t know how that happens, I’m grieving that. But apparently that’s a good thing. So we were looking through some old pictures. Her first athletic endeavor was that she joined a softball team with a group of other girls. They were like in second or third grade. She was about eight years old. None of these girls had ever played athletics before. As far as we could tell, they had no discernible athletic ability. But they were excited to be on the softball team. A friend of ours was the coach. And they got to name their team, so they named their team the Hot Tamales. 

We went to the first game. They were learning the basics. Whenever anyone would actually hit the ball and it would go out into the field, they had this tendency of running from the ball. The coach was great. He gradually just kind of goes, “Actually, the goal is not to just not get hit. That’s not the goal. We actually want you to move toward the ball. This is the goal.”

It was a hard concept for these girls. Something about the ball coming at them, they just wanted to not get hit. But they gradually did that and, to their credit, they did very good cheers. They had a lot of good cheers. And they had matching socks. 

The thing is, that it was early on to go, “What is the point of the game? What are we trying to do?” Here’s the thing. You probably don’t want to get hit in softball, but if that’s all we want—to not get hit by the ball—that’s a smaller game. Right?

“Hey—I didn’t get hit by the ball!”

“How’d it go?”

“We lost 23 to 0.” 

Which happened regularly, by the way. One day I came back and I said, “How’s it going?” It was like 21 to 1 or something like that. She goes, “Oh! Second place!” I guess that’s true. They finished top two all season long.

But here’s the deal. What’s the goal? I talk to people all the time and go, “What do you want for your kids?” “What do you want in your career?” “What are you looking for in your relationships?”

And a lot of times what I hear is, “I just want to be happy.” “I just want my marriage to be happy.” “I just want a career that makes me happy.” “I just want my kids to grow up and be happy.” “That’s what I want.”

And that is great. But if that’s our only goal, that’s a smaller game. Right? 

There’s been kind of an explosion of happiness research in the last ten years. And it kind of makes sense in our culture.

We were in Washington D.C. at the National Prayer Breakfast last month. We went into the national archives and there’s the Declaration of Independence—the original one; which is kind of cool because it’s written and they’re marking it out. But Thomas Jefferson wrote it and then it got sort of certified by the group of five. But he introduced the line, prior to that it was always, “We have these inalienable rights, life, liberty and property.” And he changed it. And he said, “…life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” 

And he introduced that line. That kind of became our war cry. We are pursuing “happy.” We are chasing it. We’re birthed in that idea. And we’ve kind of followed it. Our culture has really cranked that up. That’s what we’re doing. We’re looking for happy. We’re looking for it in relationships and every place else. 

Emily Smith is in social science research and she has looked at the research over the last ten years in this. Her conclusion from her book called The Meaningful Life is that people who end up happy did not chase after happy lives. The people who ended up happy chose a meaningful life. People who chase happy don’t end up being happy. People who chase happy end up pretty discouraged and tired and exhausted. But people that choose a meaningful life actually get happy as a byproduct. Does that make sense? 

You chase happy and you chase it your whole life. You’re a greyhound chasing one of those fake rabbits around the track. Right? But if you choose a meaningful life, those folks end up with a satisfaction that’s really rich and deep. And the question becomes “What Makes Life Meaningful?” 

In Genesis 1:26, there’s this pretty radical statement where all the things that God creates, they’re all good and they’re all good, and then in Genesis 1:26 God says this, “Let us make man in our image and our likeness.” And he uses the plural, “Let us.” God is a triune God. God exists in community: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Out of that community, God says, “Let us make man like us—to exist in community.” 

We were birthed to exist in community. We were shaped. We were called into life out of community and for community. If we’re not connected that way, we’re missing something really vital. And the research kind of shows that—just the sense of priority of relationship. When they do look at what makes a meaningful life, what makes satisfaction, the single greatest predictor for what makes satisfaction, in the quote from the book: “Consistent, committed and caring relationships are the essential markers and requirements for a rich and satisfying life.” Consistent, committed and caring relationships…right? … are the number one predictor to what people call a meaningful life; which actually ends up being a happy life. The quality of our relationships, to a large degree, flows into the quality of our whole life. So how do we do that? How do we participate in that? 

Jesus said something pretty similar. In John 13:35, he said, “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, that you love one another.” 

Of all the things that Jesus might have said…” By your really cool buildings, people will know you’re my disciples.”  

“By your great potlucks, people will know.” 

“By your matching socks and good slogans, people will know.” 

“By your stunning good looks and amazing music, people will know.” 

There are a lot of things that Jesus might have pointed to to say, “By this people will know.” But it’s actually none of those things. “By this all men will know that you’re my followers, by the love that you show to one another. “

The thing that God created us for, to be alive in our relationships is also the thing that makes him most visible to everyone else. The thing that makes us most alive is also the thing that makes everyone else know. “What is going on there? Why are those people loving each other? How do we explain that?” So there’s a real foundational invitation there, I think, that God invites us into.

Real relationships are messy relationships. Can I get an amen? Right? Like, if you go into a model home—model homes are beautiful. There’s hardly any trash in the trash can. There’s no stains on the carpet. Everything is pristine. It smells good. You know why? Because no people live there. Right? They go, “This is a model home! All this is going to be great.” Are you going to have real people live in the model home? Oh, yeah. That would be bad. There will be all kinds of messes if you put real people into a model home. It’s going to be a different kind of model after that.

The prettiest wedding I ever went to was outside of Palo Alto, California. Some friends of ours got married. Huge, beautiful house up in the hills. I don’t know how many dollar signs were associated with this house—a lot! Right off the main house there were these beautiful stables that were there and then this beautiful riding grass area that the wedding was on. I went over to the stables, and they were stunning. I would happily have lived in the stables, personally. Beautiful. Stunning woodwork and everything else. 

We had a little pre-reception area. We went out on a lawn and everything else. And I said something to the friend who was getting married here. I go, “Man, those stables are beautiful, and this whole riding area.” 

And he goes, “Yeah. You know the woman who lived here, and her husband, it was her lifelong dream to have horses.”

I go, “Where are the horses?”

He said, “Well, she had them for about six months, and then she goes, ‘You know it turns out, like, horses poop all the time. And then there’s flies and then there’s smells and then there’s all the rest of that.’ And, really, I think she liked the idea of horses, but the actual horses, they’re kind of messy and smelly, and flies…and so she got rid of them.”

And here’s what I’d say. Most of us like the idea of really good relationships. What a beautiful idea. Love one another. Come on. “Love you, Jay.” “Love you, Don.” Right? Until the (can I say ‘crap’?) starts showing up. Until the poop, until the flies, until the “Who is that?” “What is this?”  

The concept of marriage is romantic. The reality is more than that. Right? “What is this?” “Oh, my gosh!” It’s so much more, because real things are real. And real is so much better, but kind of the idea of moving in to what it means to really love and really care. They’re messy and they’re hard, and all this stuff comes out because we’re around each other all the time. And that’s part of the goodness. That’s part of the depth. We don’t need to be afraid of that. We don’t need to sanitize that or spiritualize that or romanticize that. 

Real things are the best things. Yeah, but they’re messy and they smell and you’ve got to bring a shovel  and you’ve got to bring some air freshener and you’ve got to, kind of, do some cleaning. Yeah, that’s right. Because it’s real. 

My daughter started driving last month. Here’s a little interesting statistic about driving. It’s been true for a long time. When they interview drivers and ask them to evaluate themselves as drivers, they always get this statistic. 80% of the people, when they’re surveyed nationally, consider themselves above average drivers. 80%. Now, if I asked you right now to think about your driving ability, 80% of you would go, “Yeah, I’m a good driver.”

Now, if I ask you to think about someone who’s not a good driver, I’m betting you can think of someone. I’m betting it’s not you. But guess what? Someone else is thinking of you. Maybe your spouse or your child or your friend. And you’re both going, “Oh, I know one of those think they’re a good driver.” “Yeah, I know one, too,” right? I mean, it’s this kind of thing, it’s a default in us to go—we can’t all be better than average drivers. But we think of ourselves that way, right? 

Here’s the deal. When we get into relationships, I think there’s a kind of parallel thing. Hey, how are you in relationships? “Well, thankfully, I’m very good. My spouse—they really struggle.”

“God blessed us. We’re amazing parents. Our children, though. What does the Bible say about unruly children? 

“At work, praise God! He gives me endurance for all the obnoxious people. Every day he gives me grace for all of them. I’m just happy he made me this way.” 

Wow. I’ll bet everyone at work just loves you. Or not! Right? There’s just this default setting that we have, and we sort of go there and we picture that. Part of it, in the process, is the sense of  being able to, when we find ourselves hurt or offended or bothered by something going on, invevitably, to kind of go, “Wow. Well, I’m going to do whatever I do to kind of push that back because that really hurt me. That really offended me. That really bothered me. And so I’m going to push it out.”

And the other possibility of pushing things out, is the ability of going, “I wonder what that means.” Because, most of the time, when you’re hurt or offended, or bothered, irritated or rejected, there’s a sign coming out of your heart going, “It goes right there.” Here would be a radical thing, is if you could take the sign that is pointing at the obnoxious person, the insensitive person, the clueless person, if you could take that sign and grab it and turn it right back around to go, “Wow. I wonder what’s going on in me.  I wonder what’s going on in me in the process.” That would be a really kind of challenging perspective to look back on ourselves.

Tim Keller, when he started his church in New York—New York City’s an interesting place to start a church—and Tim Keller, when he would bring people into Redeemer Press, he would say, “Hey, we’re glad you’re here. And just so you’ll know, you are more wicked than you know. And you are more loved than you can imagine. Welcome. Come on in. Oh, you’re more screwed up than you realize. We’re checking you out.” No! We do not do background checks on visitors.

Right? “You’re more broken than you know. And you’re more loved than you can imagine. Come on in. Join the rest of us broken and loved people. Have a seat. Stick around for some coffee. Meet some other people.”

If we miss that part of our brokenness, we miss something way, way important. James 4:1 says this: “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?”

What causes quarrels and fights among you?" “Well, my husband who won’t get the yard mowed and my kids who won’t…”

And he goes, “Don’t they come from the battles within you?”

If we miss that part of the process, we miss something really critical. James kind of says, “Conflict and quarrels, which we point and look out—don’t they come from battles inside of you?”

If we miss that there are battles inside of us, if we miss there’s a part of us we have to account for, we’re going to have a lot of unproductive battles. We’re going to have a lot of unproductive conversations. If we miss that part of the truth, which God kind of tells us to go, “Hey, this may be uncomfortable, but it’s also true; and we don’t want to miss or avoid things that are uncomfortable and true.”

Three things that I would like to pitch out there that you might consider. Social scientists have a thing they call the Primary Attribution Error. It’s kind of our default setting. Here’s what it kind of boils down to. When someone that I don’t like, or I’m not getting along with, or I’m in a hard place with, when they do some bad behavior, and I see someone doing bad behavior, when I attribute to that person I’m not connected to—you know what your bad behavior means to me? Bad character. That thing you did proves to me bad character. 

Now if someone points out to me, or I realize that I did some bad behavior, I go, “Well, I was having a bad moment. I’m sorry I’m not perfect. And I’m glad I confess that, because I’m humble. Praise God. I give him all the glory.” Right?

You make a mistake and it’s because you’ve got bad character. I make a mistake and it’s because I had a bad moment. And you know what? That’s our default setting. 

Now, if you do something good, and I don’t like you, or we don’t get along, or we have distance, and you do a good thing, you have good behavior.

Now, here’s the deal  and I go, “No, that’s fine. That was a very good moment for you. On that particular day, right after breakfast they did a very good job. I’ll give them full credit for that moment.”

If you or I do something good, we go, “I’m just thankful for my good character. There it is again, spilling out. There’s more evidence of how amazing, pure and godly I am. It just keeps spilling out.”

Now, here’s the deal. That’s our default setting. That’s our human setting. And you know what that human setting does? It doesn’t lead us to divine relationships. It limits us. And unless you and I are aware of it, that’s what we do. That’s our autopilot. 

I am constantly, when I see people who disappoint me or hurt me or frustrate me, I go, “Well, what do you expect? There they are.” And of course, I had a bad moment, or a bad day or whatever.

And I’ve got to tell you, we’ve got to look at ourselves before the Lord on this. There is plenty of brokenness and plenty of grace for all of us. But it goes across the spectrum. Be mindful, be aware of how you’re talking to yourself about the people that you’re in relationship with; because if you’re doing that, you’re setting up the relationship to be absolutely disconnected and unproductive. Does that make sense?

Ok. We’ve got to check ourselves. We’ve got to be a little bit self aware of our own stuff.

Number two I’d say is we have a tendency to miss the biggest battle. There’s a verse in Joshua 5:13, and here’s what I’d say. The battle before the battle is the biggest battle. By the time you’re in conflict, by the time you’re fighting—there was a battle before that battle, and depending on how you did in that battle (the pre-battle) would determine a lot of what’s going on. 

In Joshua 5, Joshua, if you remember, had come into the land. He was one of the original spies and was ready to go in, he and Caleb, but the other guys voted it down, so they do a forty-year camping trip. Now they’re coming back. But he’s been waiting forty years. Moses died. He’s appointed. “Joshua, go in there and take the land.”  They cross the Jordan River. They go in. And the night before Jericho, the battle that we’re all going to sing about later in Sunday school, on his way to the road, he runs into an angel man. 

In verse 13 it says, “Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, ‘Are you for us or for our enemies?’”

When we go into a conflict, when you’re having an argument, or a fight, or a disagreement with somebody, here’s the natural position: to go in and say, “Whose side are you on? Whose side?” And it’s a battle ready. It’s hot ground. It’s contested. Swords out. Shields up. 

“Here’s my perspective. Here’s my point. Here’s my need.” 

There’s somebody over there. They have their need, their perspective and their argument. And we are face-to-face, squared off, ready to go. 

This is Joshua going in to take possession of this promised, amazing land; and he’s appointed by God. He’s doing God’s work and so, to ask this man angel, “Whose side are you on—us or the enemy’s?” 

The response in verse 14 is, “‘Neither,’ he replied. ‘But as commander of the army of the Lord, I have now come.’

“Then Joshua fell face down to the ground in reverence and asked him, ‘What message does my Lord have for his servant?’”

I think one of the most shocking lines in the whole Bible is the angel of the Lord, when he goes, “Whose side are you on—us or the Canaanites and the Jerichos?” And the angel goes, “Neither.”

I think it rattled Joshua’s world. I think it should rattle ours, too. Because, really, what God was saying to Joshua was, “If you think you have a side and I’m going to get on it—time out. I’m not going to get on your side.”

Matter of fact, if you think you have a side going into the conflict—time out. The only one who has a side worth getting on is God. The only side worth getting on is God’s—not yours. And if you think you have it, and you’re protecting it and you’re advocating and you’re praying, “God, come on in here anytime,” —you’re not going to enter the Promised Land. You’re not going to take possession of the best. You’re going to be fighting and taking territory—hot and bloody. That is not the fullness of the promise.

So the very first thing Joshua has to do is go, “Man, if I’m going to take possession, I need to surrender. I need to surrender to God’s side.”

What happens when we surrender, we see in verse 15 the response from surrendering: “The commander of the Lord’s army replied, ‘Neither,’ he replied. ‘But as commander of the Lord’s army I have now come.’ 

“Joshua fell face down to the ground in reverence and asked him, ‘What message does my Lord have for his servant?’”

And in verse 15 it says, “The Commander of the Lord’s army replied, ‘Take off your sandals, for the place where you’re standing is holy.’”

That posture changed to kind of going, “I’m going to quit fighting for my side. I’m going to drop and say, ‘God, what’s your message to me?’”

And the angel goes, “You’ve just made this ground holy. Because you dropped your sword. You dropped your side. You dropped your argument. You dropped your hurt. You dropped it all and said, “Wait a minute. God, I’m your servant. You’re my Lord. What’s your message to me?”

And the angel goes, “Take those sandals off. This is holy ground.”

Nothing heals on hot ground. If you’re in an argument and you’re pressing ahead and you win the argument by power or influence or domination, you did not win anything worth having. You didn’t. I promise you. Somebody on the other side of that relationship—if you care about them—is wounded and shut out and shut down and you’re in a relationship with them. 

Things heal and resolve on holy ground, not hot ground. Holy ground is humility. Holy ground is dropping your sword and going, “Ok, Lord, what do you have? What do you have?” That’s holy ground. That’s a posture of humility. That’s a posture of listening. That’s a posture of de-arming ourselves. 

It’s the same posture that we see in Jesus. In Matthew, as Jesus is going into the garden, in Matthew 7:26-39, Jesus is also going to wrestle. Joshua is the Hebrew name for Jesus. And as Joshua had to wrestle and get aligned with the Father, Jesus now in Matthew is having the same wrestling match. 

Here’s what it says in Matthew 7: 

“Going a little further, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, ‘My Father, if it’s possible may you take this cup from me. But not as I will, but as YOU will.”

This is a posture change that Jesus takes. If we are going to be aligned with the Father, we have to have this same wrestling match. He went a little further. You know what? He left the multitudes behind, but he took friends to the garden. Then he took his best friends further into the garden. Then he went a little further.

When we do this work with God, it’s past our general friends and our good friends and our close friends, When we do this work with God, it’s always a little further. It’s with us and him. It’s alone. It’s personal. It’s deep. It’s holy and horrible and hard and beautiful and confusing. It’s all of those things to go, “God, I want to want what you have for me, but it also terrifies me.” 

And Jesus confesses honestly to go, “I don’t think I want what you have for me. I have a way. I have a will.” Because he was a man, like us. But in the wrestling out, he goes, “I want your will more than mine.” And here’s the biggest shift in all of our lives. When we show up, we have a way and we have a will. We are willful. And the biggest shift and the biggest struggle in all of our lives is to go from willful to willing. That shift changes everything. 

And that’s just not some intellectual, theological, abstract shift.

Twenty-five years ago, my life had melted down. I was in a crisis, and everything about my past and my future were uncertain, and I was spending a lot of time in the prayer garden on 40th Street and Shea. Several times a week, over six or seven months, I was in that prayer garden, asking God to sort out what he was doing in my life. It was a really horrible, hard, holy time. I remember, at one juncture, I got to the place where the Lord said, “I want you to do this.” 

And I was going, “I don’t want to do that.” 

The Lord goes, “I want you to do this.”

After a few weeks, I kind of go, “Ok. Well, is there anything else?”

And he said, “No. I want you to do this.”

Then I go, “You know, Lord, I think doing that is going to kill me.”

And here’s what the Lord said. “It will. It will kill you.”

I go, “Ok, this is not the answer I was looking for. This is not the reassurance.”

The Lord goes, “All right. You want to be honest, right? We’re honest, right? What I’m asking you to do will kill you in this part of your life. It will kill you. That’s correct.”

That’s what he said to Jesus, too. “If you drink this cup of judgment, it will kill you.”

Right. And then Jesus goes, “Ok. Give me the cup. Give me the cup.” Right.

But here’s what God said to me in that prayer garden twenty-five years ago. He goes, “It will kill you; but you won’t stay dead.” 

Right. Which is what he said to Jesus. “You’re going to go to the cross and descend into hell.”

And it says, “For the joy set before him, Christ endured the cross.” Because you know what Jesus knew in his heart—he knew who his Father was. He drank all the judgment. But it says, “He scorned all the shame,” and he gave himself up and experienced a horrible death and judgment, and descended into hell. But Jesus goes, “I know who my Father is. He’ll come and get me.”

He had a hope that was bigger than hell. Right? You can go to hell if you have a hope that’s bigger—you can through hell if you have a hope that’s bigger. You can go into the pit and lose everything, if you’ve got a Father that goes, “I’ll come get you.” 

That’s the gospel. That’s the foundation of our life. It’s got to be the foundation of our relationships, too. Nothing else will make our relationships alive, if we can’t do that. It just won’t. It’s a crazy invitation. And I would tell you, twenty-five years later, what God said in that prayer garden was true. He said, “It will kill you,” and it did. And I will tell you that, in some undeserved way, I didn’t stay dead. Because that’s how good he is. That’s how faithful he is. It’s not us. 

Somebody said, “Don’t be afraid of dying. You’re going to enjoy your life so much more after you die.” And I would say, “You’re right.”

I’m going to invite the worship team to come back up and we’re going to transition into communion; so I’m going to have our servers come up. We’re celebrating, at communion, the truth—the truth of that last supper. The truth of that Passover meal, where Jesus was celebrating it with his closest friends and disciples. The truth was that the last, fourth cup of the Passover was the cup of judgment. It’s the cup that Jesus drank so we would not have to. 

In 1 Corinthians 11, we read a passage where it says “For I received from the Lord  what I also passed on to you. The Lord Jesus Christ, on the night he was betrayed took bread. And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body, which is for you. You’re going to do this in remembrance of me.’”

This bread had to be broken because that was the cost—that was the reality. In Psalm 22, the very first line, it says, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And it’s the verse that Jesus utters on the cross, of the sense of being totally alone, by himself; and he says the first verse of Psalm 22. And if you read the rest of Psalm 22, it’s the description of a man in agony as he’s crucified. David wrote that Psalm a thousand years before the Romans began crucifying people. He wrote it with a picture of what was coming and what the cost would be. 

As Jesus quoted that verse, and everyone in the audience would know the rest of Psalm 22 to say, “What’s happening here is not a political accident. What’s happening here is not merely a human transaction. I’m not just caught in the crosshairs of injustice.” 

He quotes Psalm 22 to kind of say, “This is something God was planning long ago—that somebody would have to drink the cup of judgment. Somebody would have to stand in the place.”

And as Jesus is quoting that. As Jesus is yelling and praying Psalm 22, he’s letting everyone around him know that he knows what is happening. Right after Psalm 22 in the Scripture is Psalm 23, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.”

You may be in the middle of Psalm 22 right now, where you’re getting crucified in some way. And what I would say to you is, you know what? If God is taking you through something, if God is allowing you to go through something, then he will give you the provision to walk through it.

I heard a minister who does a lot of ministry in the inner city, and they asked him, “What has God protected you from?” 

And he goes, “Nothing. But he has sustained me through everything.”

Right? But he’s the God who buys us back. He’s the God who comes to us with life. 

And so, if you have the elements, “This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” 

Let’s take the bread. 

“And the same way, after supper, he took the cup, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood, do this whenever you drink it in remembrance of me.'  For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes in glory.” 

Let’s remember.

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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.

Scripture marked NASB is taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®,
Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975 1977, 1995
By the Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

Satisfying Relationships

David Stockton
March 17, 2019
Series: The Other Hours

We're in our series The Other Hours.  You can grab a Bible and turn to Matthew 22. I was going to read an article from the Irish Times, fittingly, and it just basically is talking about how important relationships are in our lives. Basically, all of our joy, all of our pain is all based on how we're doing relationally. 

Jesus sort of teaches the same thing here in Matthew chapter 22 verse 34 says:

Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees…

Which is basically the pastors. it's like the “me” of that time—the people who think they know what the Bible says, what the Bible teaches. Jesus had silenced them.

 …the Pharisees…

Who are the other group of people who think they know about God and are teaching other people about God.

 …one of the Pharisees, an expert in the law, tested Jesus with a question: “Rabbi (or teacher)…”

Probably in a sarcastic tone. 

”…which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

“What’s the most important thing to God?” is what he said, which is actually a very common question that would be asked to rabbis. Rabbis would answer this question and then create their whole kind of school of ministry, school of discipleship. And the people that would follow them as rabbis were the ones that their answer to this question just resonated in their soul and they said, “We want to learn more.” So this is the question they asked, “Which is the greatest commandment in the law?”

And Jesus replied, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment; however there is a second commandment that is just as great: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself all of the law and all of the prophets hang on these two Commandments.’”

So this is basically Jesus saying to these people, who are testing him (they don't really care what he says, they're just trying to find something wrong with him), but what Jesus is teaching to the disciples that are around him, the people who are listening, he's saying all that really matters in life 100% is loving God and loving people. Loving God and loving people. 

You could spend all of your time trying to figure out all of the law and all of the intricacies of all of the commandments—and some people say there are up to ten thousand commandments— some people say there are 300 commandments in the law—they kind of depend on, you know, what your enneagram type is, probably—but they're just studying everything. “If I can get it all just right, if I could just, you know, position myself quite right, I'll be able to experience the life that God has for me.” 

And they get so caught up in all the details, and all that they can do, and all the commandments—which, the commandments aren't bad things, but they get so caught up in those that they forget that the most important thing is just to love God. That if you just will love God with your heart, with your mind, with your soul, that kind of speaks to the different aspects. 

We talked last week about body, soul and spirit. It's the same kind of thing. Learning to love God, not just in word, but also in deed. Not just physically, but also mentally and emotionally, also spiritually connecting with God. Those who worship God will worship in spirit and in truth.

So there are these multi layers that we need to grow in our relationship with God. That's the first and the greatest. 

If you are loving God, basically, Jesus said that everything else will kind of fall into place in time. Yet Jesus doesn't stop there, which we would think that Jesus would stop there. If you knew Jesus at the time, or if you read it right about Jesus, it seems like, yeah, that’s the end-all. That's the be-all. That's all that matters. And a lot of us Christians would say that's all we care about, that's all that matters. I wish Jesus would have stopped there, because these people, they're crazy. But Jesus doesn’t. He says loving God is the greatest, but then he says—and you have to be a little careful with the wording here—but he says the second is like it. Like it in greatness. Like it in importance. “Must love your neighbor as yourself.” Now he's talking to Pharisees who were good at loving God (supposedly). Right? They are good at church. Right? But our whole message in the Other Hours is that God doesn't want to make you good at church. He wants to make you good at the other hours. 

Some of you go to church once, one hour a week, or something. It's like, “Wow. Good for you.” Some of you go, like, two hours a week. “Oh, check you out. You’re amazing.” 

But even if you go to church ten hours a week, it's still nothing compared to the rest of your life. 

So God doesn't want to make you like the Sadducees and the Pharisees, who are good at church. He wants to make you good at life. And we've kind of broken that up for our study into relationships. That's a huge part of your life. And we’ve got work. It's a huge part of your life. For some of you, it should be a little more part of your life. Maybe for some of you, it needs to be less part of your life. That's what we got. Rest is the other thing. Rest is a big part of our life. And we’ve got finances, a huge part of our life. Number one cause of divorce. And sexuality. It's a huge part of our life and it's being challenged and confused more than it ever has before.

So we're going to talk about these subjects. We’re going to dive into these subjects. This is our Other Hours thing, and we’re starting with relationships. That's our first one. And, by the way, we launched an online curriculum to follow along with this whole series, and basically this whole year. Proverbs 24 verse 3 says that wisdom builds the house, understanding establishes it and knowledge fills its rooms with rare and beautiful treasures. 

So we've created livingstreams.online, which basically has in these five areas of life a curriculum or a book that we're trying to get into your home, get into your heart, get into your mind, so that you can have the wisdom, the knowledge and the understanding that God's Word brings, so that your house can be filled with rare and precious things— the rare and precious things that only God could bring; so that, not only when people come over to your house and they walk in and they go, “What is that thing?” and you can say, “Well, let me tell you the story of what God did in my life,” but you're at work and you keep saying these words. They say, “What you keep saying—that word—what do you mean by that?” 

Ready for an Irish story? St. Patrick's Day. Well, I lived in Ireland for three months with my Irish citizenship. Got my teeth cleaned for free one time—that was kind of cool—socialism, you know. That's the only thing I've ever gotten from Irish citizenship. But I was working in the Guinness brewery (another long story) and I was just talking with these guys all the time and one of the guys eventually says to me, “You keep saying that word.” 

I said, “What word?” 

He goes, “Saved. You keep saying the word ‘saved.’ What do you mean by that?”

And so, you know, it was noisy, so we kind of went to the side, and I just started explaining to him what I meant by the word ‘saved.’ I got to share the gospel with him, and I got to have this guy who's kind of rough around the edges, but he his heart was just so longing to be saved. I would never have guessed it, but just in my own language, it was like, “What’s that rare and precious thing you keep mentioning?” 

It's like,”Well, let me tell you the wisdom of God, the knowledge of God, the understanding of God has brought about this rare and precious thing in my life.” 

And he was like,”Man, I want that. I want that. How do I get that?”

I was like, “I don't know, man.” 

No. I didn't say that. I talked to him about it. I let him know and I told him it wasn’t Guinness, you know. Or Guinness wasn't the secret to all of that. And it was hard for him.

Anyway, we want we want to see this thing, so we've put out this curriculum. Check it out online. We want everyone to go through all of the different modules by the end of the year.

I know that sounds crazy, because you have other stuff to do in life, but we’re really hoping this thing will help. It's kind of like legal, healthy steroids for life. It's not supposed to be more work. It’s supposed to make the rest of those areas of work easier, smoother and better. So check that out.

Anyway, it's back to this. Relationships is the first topic we're talking about. We'll talk about it for the next few weeks. Jesus, on relationships, is basically saying that just as important as our relationship with God is our relationship with others. The reason that he said that is, basically, because the only way you can really know if you're in right relationship with God, the only way that you can really know that the love of God is is actually coming into your life is that you will begin to love other people. 

That was a huge deal for me when I first started following Christ. God saved me from being extremely self-centered. I didn't know how self-centered I was, because nobody else existed. There were no other worlds—there was just mine. So I wasn’t self-centered in my own world. I mean, sad to say, that's really how it was. When I came to Christ, one of the things God saved me from was being a total self-centered person. All of a sudden, I began to see that the world was his world. I began to see and notice people that I'd never noticed or even cared for before. 

I'm sure Bobby could say a similar thing, where, as he got closer to God, all of a sudden these refugees or these people who are from another country started to come on his radar. If he never would have been in a relationship with God, he probably never would have noticed these people. 

That's the way it works. The love of God comes into our life and, all of a sudden, he starts highlighting people who need his love, who need us to share his love. And so the two work hand in hand. 

In Galatians chapter five, Paul is working this out in a church context. In the church that's in Galatia, believe it or not, there was a church that was like fighting within themselves over some issues. You believe it? Church people? Arguing and fighting over churchy issues? It's crazy, but it's true. They were having a struggle in the relationship. There was division. 

There was one group of the people, now what they were divided on is kind of weird, but one of the groups of people really thought circumcision was very important. If you want to be right with God, if you want to love God, you get circumcised. And the other group was saying, “Whoa! Whoa!” There were probably two groups in this camp—one they were just saying “Whoa,” because they weren't circumcised—the other group was probably saying, “No, man. That's not what matters to God. What matters to God is that we're loving each other. That's more important than whether you're circumcised or not.” And that’s what Paul was trying to teach them. 

So I'm going to give you a little bit of Paul's NIV, New International Version translation. Then I'm going to give you a little bit of the DAV translation, the D-A-V-I-D translation. Okay, so hopefully you'll see the connection. What would be fun is, I would love it if you guys would actually in turn to Galatians chapter 5, and as we read through the NIV, it's going to be easy; because it'll be the same. But then, when we read the the DAV translation, I want your mind to compare it a little bit. Just see if it resonates at all. If it doesn’t, then you're wrong, you know. But no, just kidding, you’re not wrong.

Galatians chapter 5. Paul says to these people who are struggling with their interpersonal relationships, he's saying:

You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ. You have fallen away from grace. For through the Spirit we eagerly await by faith the righteousness [or the satisfaction] for which we hope. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.

Do you hear what he's saying? He’s basically echoing what Jesus said. “You people are trying to make the different aspects of the law more important than just loving people, but the only thing that matters,” Paul says, “is when our faith expresses itself through love—first to God, but then also to others.” That is what's more important. That is what God's trying to do in your life.

Here's the DAV translation:

You who are trying to find satisfaction by religious efforts are completely missing the point of Jesus’ message. You are missing out on the satisfaction that God's grace brings into a person's life. A meaningful relationship with Christ’s Spirit is what brings the satisfaction our souls long for. In our relationship with Christ’s Spirit, our religious effort, or lack of religious effort, doesn't really matter. The only thing that matters is when our faith causes us to love God, others and ourselves well. 

Basically that's a summation. That’s what I feel like is unpacking it for our day and age, in our time. What God is trying to do in your life is teach you about him and help you receive his love and be in relationship with him; but also in relationship with others. Your relationships matter greatly to God. If you're someone that says, “Hey man, I have such a great relationship with God but not everybody who doesn't like me.” 

There are Christians like that, no doubt about it. God really does care how you relate to the people around you. Sometimes Christians get caught in this thing where they're drawing lines and they’re saying, “I need everyone to know what I stand against. That's how I'm gonna be a good Christian.” 

Well, what Jesus is saying, what Paul is saying, is Christians stop being known for what you stand against and start being known for who you stand with, who you're willing to stand with. That's what God's trying to do in our lives. It’s hard and it's confusing when people are trying to blur all the lines between what the Bible says is good and what the world says is good. I know it's difficult right now, but you can trust God to be bigger than that. You can trust God that, if you begin to link arms with someone who is a sinner, God's not gonna label you a sinner. If you link arms with someone who's a sinner in order to help them out of their sin, their sin’s stink is not going to get on you. 

Now, if you’re an alcoholic, don't go help alcoholics. That's a dumb idea. But there's a whole world out there that’s stuck. They’re actually caught in sin, and we who have the strength of Christ, the Spirit living in us, we can link arms with them and lead them to solid ground. But if we’re so busy trying to make sure they know they're wrong and we're right, we’ll never get the chance. The only thing that matters is when our faith begins to stir up love within us and we begin to run to people who need God's love. 

So then you go on to the end of Galations 5. So this is the beginning, it’s kind of an intro the idea. We'll skip down to the end, the conclusion on this matter. NIV 

So I say walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh won't be selfish for the the flesh desires what is contrary to the spirit and the spirit what is contrary to the flesh they're in conflict with each other so that you are not to do whatever you want to do but if you're led by the spirit you're not under the law… 

Again, the law is not the big deal. 

The acts of the flesh are obvious…

And watch how every single one of these things basically refers to relationship.

… sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness… 

Happy st. Patrick's Day!

…orgies and the like. I warn you as I did before that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. 

That’s a heavy phrase 

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

Or, in other words, these are the stuff that makes relationships work.

Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit…

and all of that confusing talk basically says, 

let's not become conceited provoking and envying each other.

In our relationships, Paul is saying, “I know you Galatians. I care about you Galatians. I pray for you Galatians. What I'm asking you to do in light of this conflict, this relational conflict you're having, is don't be conceited and stop provoking one another. Don't be conceited. Stop provoking one another. 

And some of you need to hear that in your marriage, with your children, with your parents, at work. Don't be conceited, Christian. And stop provoking one another. Even if they provoke you, don't provoke them back. this isn't junior high anymore. It could be that simple. Just that could be so powerful.

Let's read the DAV version:

Remember to be led by God’s Spirit and not by your selfish desires. 

Whew—still working on that. It's taken me 20 years now.

Our selfish desires produce the opposite of what God's Spirit produces. Our selfish desires produce sexual pain and confusion, wickedness, deceit, idolatry and witchcraft, hatred, strife, jealousy, fights, selfishness, dissensions, division and envy, drunkenness, out-of-control sexuality and things like that. If you do this, you will miss out on the satisfying relationship you are meant to have with God, now and forever. 

Please don't miss it.

God's Spirit, however, produces the opposite, God's Spirit produces in us love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. No one can say that these are not good things. So when you're in a relationship with Christ you fight against the selfish desires inside you and listen carefully for the leading of God’s Spirit inside you. This will keep you from thinking you're better than anyone else and will   the satisfaction in your relationships.

Because, ultimately, we want to win at relationships. We are so relational, as humanity. All the joys in our life we can always usually look around and say it's because of this relationship, or because relationships are good right now. All the pain in our lives usually comes back to because there's a bad relationship, or the relationships are all strained in my life. 

When when I was a young man and I had friends—this is really horrible intro to the story—we used to joke about our friends that would come hang out with us and they just got done talking to their girlfriend or or being with their girlfriend. They would come in and they'd be like, “Hey, everybody!” and we’d be like, “Ah, he's got the girl glow!”—because he was feeling so good  about life because he just spent time with the girl that he liked. And he’s all, “What are you talking about?” He’d be talking fast and bouncing a little. We're just like, “Whatever, man. You’re all messed up!” 

And even if the guy's life was in shambles or things weren't good, he could go spend time with this girl that he liked and he would come back just feeling like, “Yeah, everything’s great, man.” And it was so funny. Then the opposite, you know, everything could be great in the guy's life and then if the girl broke up with him or whatever, he’d just be like, “Ahhhhh….” 

I mean we’re just so wired relationally. And the world would tell us lots of different reasons that is, but the Bible says that it's because we're made in the image of a relational God. As we’ve tried to unpack over history who this God is of the Bible we’ve, got this word called Trinity. It’s kind of a confusing concept but basically it’s that our God, the God of the Bible, is actually three in one. He is not just in relationship—he is relationship. We have come from him. He is the one that has created us in His image, and so we are so relational. 

So you can't ever get to a point where you're like, “Oh, relationships don't matter to me." You know the whole, “I am an island.” No man is an island. It's just foolish to fight against it. Your whole life and existence is basically the sum of all your relationships—good ones and bad ones. 

It's so important that we take stock, that we look into these relationships, that we figure out how we can be good at relationships because that’s what makes up most of the hours of our lives. 

Here, what Paul is saying, what Jesus is saying, is that there's kind of this connection between loving God and loving people. In some ways you will never find satisfaction in any of your relationships with people until you find your satisfaction in a relationship with God. You can make it work, and lots of people do. But you'll always be missing out on the fullness of what God has for you if you don't start with a relationship with him because he's the supply. 

What do you need for successful relationships? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, meekness, gentleness, self-control. You need these things. 

And we always are like, “Love, joy, peace…what are those other ones?” The other ones are the big ones: love, joy, peace is usually a little bit easy, but patience, kindness, gentleness, meekness, self-control—that’s how relationships work. Because you're messed up, and the person you're in relationship with is messed up, no doubt about it. They're beautiful, made in the image of God, but they're also broken and battered by sin. So we need the flow of the Spirit. We need the Spirit of God to come and bring that into our lives so that we can then impart that in our relationships. 

Many of us have had that moment where God knocked on the door of our hearts, so to speak. And we have opened the door and invited God in. We've been trying to figure out what it means to to deny those desires that we have that are we know are us and not of God. Then we figure out, “Okay, well now I feel like the Spirit’s kind of prompting me this way and I'm going to go.” It's a interesting dialogue that happens inside us. Even today—and I’ve been doing this for a long time, but I still sometimes wonder, Is that me or is that you, Lord?” Sometimes it's a little hard to figure out. But I always try at this point, to say, “Okay, Lord, I want to lean into what you're saying, what's your leading.” And sometimes it’s just a matter of, I'll go this way and then, “Ah, that doesn't feel right!” Or I'll go this way and then, “Oh, that's nice," you know. And sometimes I'll get clear pictures from the Lord, or words from the Lord, or someone that I'll ask for advice they'll give me something and BAM. Or I’ll read the scripture and, “That’s what I needed to hear!” It confirms the direction. It's a whole process we're working out. 

What I want to talk about to kind of close this is, as we get into a relationship with God, that's real simple and easy. Any of you who are not in a satisfying relationship with God, you can come forward at the end of this service. Someone will pray for you and BAM it's done. It's that easy because of what Jesus did on the cross. 

But then walking in the Spirit, continuing to walk in the Spirit, led by the Spirit, continuing to know the difference between my selfish desires and the desires that God is writing on my heart—that’s what we're talking about now. How do we get to a place where we're doing that in our relationships? 

There's a picture in second Samuel Chapter six that I want to just leave in our minds as we go. King David, what he was doing is, he was trying to bring the Ark of God (which represented to the people the presence of God) from this border town between Israel and a Philistine country. He was trying to bring it into the heart of Israeli life in Jerusalem, where he had built his palace. He was wanting to take the presence of God from the outskirts and bring it into the middle, so that he could experience what the the presence of God would bring. 

So, if you follow in 2nd Samuel chapter 6, first of all he goes there and he just shows off. He gets a super fancy cart, he's got these big old horses, and he gets all of the beautiful people, you know, this guy named Uzzah, whose name means strong. He’s up there kind of riding in the cart and they basically do this big parade through town. There’s lots of pomp and circumstance and they’re on their way to town. They're just kind of showing everybody, “Look how awesome we are carrying the presence of God.” 

All of a sudden, the cart kind of hits a bump and the Ark of God starts to slide. Uzzah puts his hand out to save the ark and as soon as he touches the ark he dies. David falls on the ground, heartbroken. This is a disaster. How could this happen? And he's mad at God. For three months, the ark stays right there in the little town of Obed-Edom. David was wrestling with God. “Why does this happen? What’s going on? I just wanted to do what was right. How come this is happening?” 

Somehow, in that time, whether it was the priests that came and taught him the way that God’s presence is supposed to be carried, or whether David had a realization—I don't know what happened. They went back to that place and they did it very differently. They still got a cart, but it wasn't fancy. They still had a horse, but it wasn't fancy. The priests were there, leading the way and taking care of the presence of God. It says that what they did was, every six steps they would stop. They would fall on their knees. They would make sacrifices. They would praise and worship God. Then they would get up and they would take another six steps, and do the same thing. 

What I see in that is gentleness, kindness, meekness, self-control. If you want to walk in the Spirit, if you want the Spirit of God to increase in your life—the satisfying relationship you have with God—so that you can then impart that into all of your relationships, you’ve got to learn to walk with that humility. 

We're going to talk about it. We have a couple more weeks on this relationship topic. We're going to get some more practical understanding. But there's a picture I want us to have in our minds. As we're going into all of these relationships, you're gonna leave this and you're going to go relate. You're gonna relate to people. You'll wake up tomorrow morning, drive your car and relate to people, drive home and relate to people. For me, there are going to be people staring at me, hungry. I’ve got to relate to them.

As you go, I just want you to have that picture in your mind. If you want to succeed at relationships, it’s not a matter of more strength, more fight, more self-help, more strategy. The way of the kingdom of heaven, the way of God is, maybe every six steps you need to just stop and go slow, and say, “Sorry.” 

For me, the way that this works out in my life, is I just seem to be going about my business and, every once in a while, someone comes to me and says, “You’re being condescending. You're being arrogant. You're being conceited." They don't really say those words. They say something, but that's what I hear it as now, and I go, “You're probably right.” I used to just say “Pssh. Yeah, right. You're probably that.” You know? And we would provoke each other. And again, don’t think of me as, like, good at this, but I really have now, when people are saying that, I go, "You’re probably right.” Because it's been about six steps since the last time I had God check my heart, and I'm so prone to wander. And you’ve just got to walk that way if you want to succeed it relationships. All the counselors in this room could probably say, “Yeah. People need to just slow down, settle in, and learn the absolute beauty and value of patience, kindness, meekness and self-control. Against such there is no law. 

I just want to finish with what we all know is a very famous, very powerful scripture on love. First Corinthians 13. See if this doesn't resound with the very same things that we've been talking about.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it’s not self-seeking, it is not easily angered and it keeps no record of wrongs.

 It doesn't keep score. 

Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres. 

This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray:

Jesus, we want to love you; and it's easy sometimes, because you're so lovable. You’ve got no problems. You're not a mess like we are. I pray that we would love you first and foremost, we would never forget our first love, we would never forget that you are the source and supply of all love; that what we just read about love being patient—that is you. And Lord, we would always come to you first because we need you to fill our gaps. But Lord, I pray that we would not stop there but that we really would love others well, and we’d do it as unto you. Lord, I know you need to grow in our church family—in me—and probably in all the churches in Phoenix, our brothers and sisters. Lord, you need to grow patience and kindness and meekness and self-control. We thank you that we get the love, joy and peace, but Lord, we know that we really want to start longing for and hungering for and fighting for the others, as well. Let patience and kindness and gentleness and meekness and self-control grow in our fellowship, grow in our households, in our relationships. Holy Spirit, please do that miraculous work. Let that be a sign and wonder that we get to see.

Thank you, Lord.

---

©️2019 Living Streams Church
7000 N Central Avenue ∙ Phoenix AZ 85020 ∙ 602-957-7500 ∙ https://www.livingstreams.org

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.

Scripture marked NLT is taken from Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

The Other Hours

 The Other Hours (Intro to the Series)

David Stockton
March 10, 2019
Series: The Other Hours

And so it begins—a new sermon series. Some of you are, like, “Not if it’s like the other sermon series we’ve been doing. Those were brutal.”

This one is not supposed to be heart surgery for you and me. This one is basically a sermon series where we’re going to really to bring in some practical, biblical wisdom for everyday life. That’s where we’re going. We’re not even going to touch your heart. All of our hearts are, like, “Forget it, man. This church is no good on the heart.” I’ve felt it. Our staff has felt it. Some of you have felt it. But that’s not why we’re doing this. We really do feel like this is where we’re supposed to go now.

Proverbs 24:3 and 4 says that wisdom builds the house, understanding establishes it, and knowledge fills its rooms with rare and precious things. Wisdom builds the house. Understanding establishes it, and knowledge fills its rooms with rare and precious things. 

So this our verse, our theme, our call, our charge, our banner that we’re trying to put over us; especially for this next sermon series. We want your households to be built in wisdom—God’s wisdom, established with God’s understanding, and filled with rare and precious things that only God can bring—those memorial stones. 

I heard a sermon one time by a guy who talked about how, in King David’s house there were bear rugs and lion skins. For those of you who don’t know the story, King David went and fought a giant at one point. And when he was asked, “How do you think you’re going to take on this giant?” He said, “Well, I’ve already taken on the lion and the Lord was with me. I’ve already taken on the bear and He was with me. And God’s going to be with me if I take on this uncircumcised Philistine.” 

We want so badly for your homes to be filled with things that your kids go, “What’s that, Daddy?” “What’s that, Mommy?” And you say, “Oh, I was just waiting for you to ask this question about that rare and precious thing that only came about because of God in our lives.”

Yeah? You with me? What kind of household do you have? Is it filled with those rare and precious things that only God can bring? I hope so. If not, this is what we’re doing. We’re going to really work on that this entire year but particularly in this series. Wisdom builds the house. Understanding establishes it. Knowledge fills it with rare and precious things. 

So, along with our Sunday morning series, we are also launching an on-line curriculum, so there are no excuses! Ok? They aren’t necessarily going to track exactly with our sermons on Sunday mornings. We’ve broken up the other hours of life into five different categories. Now there’s obviously more than that. But, basically, we have relationships, work, rest—and rest is funny because in the Bible, you know, you’re supposed to work for six days and rest for one day. And some people in the room are, like, “Yeah, I really need to work on the ‘rest’ part because I work too much.” And some people in the room need to work on the work part—you’re just resting too much. And rest is an interesting thing, because you’re sleeping eight hours a night, hopefully—or four—or whatever is true. Rest is a huge part of our lives outside of this place.

And then we have finances and sexuality. And these are all things we’re dealing with. And the whole premise for “The Other Hours” is that God doesn’t want to make you good at “church.” He wants to make you good at the other hours. And the other hours are, basically, your life. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t want you to be good at church. I mean, church is an important thing. But it’s a little easier to be good at church. 

Like I was telling the worship team downstairs, they have been planning all week, fighting battles in prayer, and they come out here and they just clear the air for us. And then, we’re all, like, “Man, it’s so peaceful in this place.” Well, somebody’s putting in the work. Somebody’s fighting for you and me, so that the space between heaven and earth, for some reason, becomes very, very thin in this place. 

That’s why a bunch of you keep coming to me and saying, “We’re coming to the church, and we just feel something. We really get what’s going on.” And it’s the work that’s being done in the Spirit that makes all of this more possible. 

So that’s the idea for The Other Hours. We’re going to launch into this and we’re probably going to take about three sermons on each one. But our on-line curriculum is there for you to navigate at your own leisure. We have about four different modules and we really want you to go through each one of them by the end of the year. That might be a lot to ask. I get it. But you’ve got a whole year. And you can go with it on your own. You can get a little group and do a small group on it. We’re going to offer some classes to kick start the thing. We’ll tell you about those next week.

We’re wanting to see these homes filled with rare and precious things. It takes knowledge, understanding and wisdom. So we’ve searched the entire world for the best books. We’ve tried to narrow it down and build study guides for you so it’s as easy as possible for you to navigate stuff and get it into your system. It’s like legal, healthy steroids for your spiritual life. We need all the help we can get. 

We’ll bring out the information, but we’re launching a separate website. If you go to livingstreams.org you can link to living streams.online and it’s part of our whole reach to the online community that’s forming around Living Streams in the “cyber world”—which I don’t know anything about. But some people do, and they’re working on it. 

That’s the whole idea. You with me on that? I was like “Yeah, let’s do this thing!” But I felt like the Lord said, “Stop! There’s something that you need to remind everyone as we’re about to do  this spiritual, practical wisdom in everyday life. It’s that everything in life is spiritual.”

I’m going to teach us a song right now. I’m going to sing it. It’s short. I learned it from kids, so it’s not complicated. You guys are going to have to sing it. Otherwise, it’s going to be embarrassing.

Let’s stand up one more time. And I want this song to haunt your dreams in a good way. We’re talking about steroids, We’re talking about haunting. We’re just using it in a good way. This is a song I learned in South Africa in a little village called Willowdale, at a Christian school. And they would sing this song and it would sound awesome. It has haunted my dreams and it has given me strength in times when I needed some strength.

In the name of Jesus,
In the name of Jesus 
We have the victory. 
In the name of Jesus
In the name of Jesus 
Demons will have to flee.
When we stand in the name of Jesus
Tell me, who can stand before us?
When we stand in the name of Jesus
We have the victory.

Before we jump into Other Hours, the practical aspects of our everyday life, we have to remember that everything really is spiritual. We are in a spiritual battle. Some of you might be like “Oh, man. This is a bummer. Now I’m going to have to worry about more things.”

Let me tell you. That is not the intention of this. It’s not to add things to your life. Instead, think of it like when you’re running your chainsaw, okay? I have a chainsaw and I love it. I have so many trees. I don’t love that. But I love that I have a chainsaw. And when it works, it’s awesome. 

What you need with a chainsaw is gas and you need bar oil. I just thought it needed gas. I remember going over to someone’s house with my chainsaw and gas, thinking, “This is going to be so cool. They’re going to see me with my chainsaw and I’m going to be ripping through everything they need help with. And they’re going to be like, ‘Wow. You’re so cool!’” 

And I got there and I didn’t have any bar oil. And I was ripping through nothing. It was brutal. My chainsaw was burning hot. And it was taking me forever to get through one log. It was brutal. And then I added a little bar oil, finally, and it was like butter, just cutting it through.

So what we’re doing is not adding to your life, to your work. You have your work. You have your rest. You have your family. You have your relationships (your easy ones, your bad ones) you have your finances. You have your sexuality issues. Whatever it might be. You have your society that might be somewhat crazy.

So what we’re doing is not adding one more category. We’re basically going to be inserting the bar oil into all the other categories of your life. You see, you are more than just a body. The Bible is shouting it, but people never hear this. You are more than just a body. The body is easy. Yes, I have a body, obviously. But you know you’re more than that. You also have a mind and you have emotions, which is your soul. 

You have thoughts. You can’t see them, but you know they’re there. You have feelings. You can’t see them, but they’re real. And, actually, the thoughts and emotions are even more real, or more powerful than your body. Those of you who have been to the doctor because you’re stressed out, you know what I’m talking about. There is more to us than just this body. We have the soul. And the Bible makes it clear that there is even a more true you than your body and your soul, and that is your spirit. It’s the part of you that God breathed into, making us human—different from all of the other aspects of creation. 

You have a spirit. The best way I can describe it is just, there are those times in your life where everything physically, mentally, emotionally, everything seems to be going great, yet something inside of you is just off—something you can’t shake. Something is heavy, That’s your spirit. You’re becoming aware of something—the true you. Or, on the other hand, maybe you’ve been to someone’s bedside, or someone whose body is wracked with illness and they have every reason to be freaking out in their mental and emotional situation, and yet they have such a joy and a peace about them. That’s the spirit part of them. That is more real, more powerful than the other aspects of who they are.

God, who is spirit, is calling out to us who are spiritual, to connect with him in the spirit so that he can strengthen our spirit, so that he can give us the bar oil that we need for life—which is spiritual. 

Another picture you can think of is rocks in a river. They’re surrounded by this water. They have no awareness of the water, and yet the river moves them sometimes. The river is hotter or colder. And we’re like that. We are physical beings in a spiritual existence. And the temperature rises and falls, and sometimes we’re completely oblivious to it or why it’s happening. Sometimes we’re being moved spiritual things and we’re completely oblivious to it. 

All of that would be good if we had other religions and we didn’t have the Bible, and basically everything spiritual is good and everything spiritual is not dangerous. But the Bible says that, in that spiritual realm, there is good—angels and God—and in that spiritual realm there is also demonic, deceivers, adversaries, which is what the name “devil” means. 

And as we go through the scriptures, we keep running into it time and time again, where all of a sudden the curtain is open for a moment and we go, “What?” And we close the curtain as fast as we can. That doesn’t make sense. And in churches we don’t know exactly what to talk about or what to deal with, so we just kind of like, “Hey, let’s just go to chapter six now, because chapter five is crazy!”

Daniel praying for the people of Israel. And he’s fasting for twenty-one days, and there’s just this heaviness, this burden, this struggle, this challenge and then, all of a sudden, an angel shows up on day twenty-one and he says, “Hey, I came the first day you started praying; but I was on my way, and the Prince of Persia, this demon—he and I got into a fight, and I was actually losing the fight, but then another angel came and he actually was stronger, so then I won and I was able to finish and come here. So thanks for keeping praying. Glad you didn’t stop on day twenty, because who knows what would have happened.” — Oh! Let’s go to the next chapter. Quickl!

 It’s crazy stuff. It says that Jesus, for forty days, was in the wilderness and he didn’t eat or drink and the devil came to test him. I don’t know if the devil came on day one or if the devil waited until day forty, but he comes and he tests Jesus. And after forty days, finally, it says the devil left him until a more opportune time. It’s like my least favorite verse in the Bible. But in another gospel, it says, “and then the devil left him and the angels came to minister to him.” I like that verse. 

So you and I, we are following Jesus. And in this following of Jesus, we can expect the same things that happened to Jesus will happen to us. Jesus taught us that. In this world you will have testing or tribulation. We know that there are physical challenges in this world, no doubt about it. We know there are emotional and mental challenges. We have doctors, counselors, teachers to help us with all of those things. 

But what I have to make you guys understand, what I have to teach today, what I have to bring to light is there are also spiritual battles that you will be in and many of you are right now. Some of you are aware of it, some of you have never heard this before and you think I’m crazy. I’m okay with that. And my guess is the reason that everyone I’m talking to around me right now is going through some sort of spiritual battle that’s expressing itself in emotional, mental or physical aspects of their life; and within our own staff, we’ve just noticed, man! It just feels like, “What is happening here?” And so we’ve kind of deduced it down to this: I think there’s a spiritual battle going on. 

And me, in my own home, it’s funny because I don’t go to this place quick. Some people are like, “I stubbed my toe. Oh, there’s a demon behind that.” I don’t know. It takes me a while to get there. I’m a little dense, maybe. But even in my own household, and especially because we brought some foster kids into our household, and we were ready for it in all the other areas of life, but I never realized that, basically, we were taking on a whole battle that maybe is in their family history. But we were like, “Hey, yeah, let’s take that battle on, too! Because we’re doing so great on our own.” No! I don’t know! It took me a while to catch that and be like, “Oh. Okay, I need to be walking around in the middle of the night praying for my family in this house. Because somebody else is doing something. I may as well do my thing.”

I feel that some of you are in it right now and some of you are not aware of it. And those of you who don’t know Jesus, maybe someone brought you here and you’re just like, “Whoa, this is crazy.”

Well, I can tell you in the name of Jesus we have the victory. And if you can’t honestly say you have the name of Jesus as a part of your life, I can’t promise you anything. There are stories in the Bible where a guy who claimed to have the name of Jesus, he says, “In the name of Jesus and in the name of Paul, who I’ve seen use the name of Jesus…” and he didn’t really know Jesus, and they tried to do that to some demons and the demons came and ripped all their clothes off and beat them up and sent them out of the house. Now I’m really crazy, right? Yeah.

Well, get this: One time my wife thought it would be cool if we went and lived in a little village in Belize where they don’t have running water, and there’s only like 400 people and there’s, like, a billion mosquitos for every square inch of air; so we lived there. We lived there for about a year. And one morning I was sleeping in my very uncomfortable, very small bed, and I heard this, “Mr. David, Mr. David!” Should from the one little dirt road by our house. And there was a guy with two bikes. He was on one and he another bike. So I went outside and said, “What’s going on.” They said, “We need you at the other end.” So I went down there and got on the other bike. We rode down there.

The next two hours were very intense, as there was a guy there who was reading Bible verses that talk about demons to this one mom and her daughter, and there was another guy underneath this house on stilts, with two friend sitting next to him and he was (writhing and groaning). I mean, I just woke up. I already don’t belong. I still had not figured out why I was there. I was just there because my wife was there and I like her.

The guy prays for the girl and then we walk down the stairs and he goes, “Do you have any experience with this type of thing?” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I didn’t say that. But I said, “I don’t know.” 

He walked me over to the guy and I walked up right next to the guy and I grabbed his hand and I squeezed; because I thought any minute he’s going to squeeze back and rip my hand off or something. He squeezed strong, but not anything that was hurting me. I got right up next to him and whispered into his ear, “You’ve got to call on the name of Jesus. You’ve got to call on the name of Jesus. You’ve got to call on the name of Jesus. There is no other name that can save but Jesus.”

I was kind of following him up and down and was saying this into his ear over and over again. After just a few minutes, he started to try and speak, and every time he would try and speak, he would gag. It was as if something was holding his throat. He just kept fighting. After a few minutes, he finally got out the name, “Jesus.” 

And I said, “Say Jesus help me.” And he started saying it over and over again as he was writhing up and down. After about ten minutes of saying, “You’ve got to mean it. You’ve got to cry out to Jesus. You’ve got to believe that he’s the only one that can save you. He will be here when you call on him with a pure heart.” 

And after about ten minutes, he went limp. And again, I don’t have a lot of experience in this thing. But for some reason I just this very strong impression to ask him what he sees. So I asked him, “What do you see?” Because his eyes were closed.

And he said, “One left.”

And I thought, “What? Oh man! Well, how many are there?”

And he said, “There’s another one.”

And I said, “Well, you know, you’ve got to call on the name of Jesus if you want to be free.”

So he called on the name of Jesus and started writhing again. We went through about another ten minutes of the same thing, until finally that broke. And I said, “What do you see?”

And he said, “He’s coming back for the baby.”

I didn’t know what that was about, and then they filled me in that the demon that he saw was actually the uncle of the girlfriend, who was the other girl, and she was pregnant, 

What? And then I said, “Do you see anything else?”

He said, “I see a man in white and he’s telling me to go to the church.”

I said, “Okay. We’re going with the man in white.”

So I took his hand and we walked him down to the church. We got to the church, and I’m not joking you, I didn’t see this coming—but my friend and I were walking with him, and we walked up the steps, there were about three steps into this little church, and as soon as we got to the top step, he threw himself back or something, and my friend and I—we don’t know if it’s Christian or not—but we lowered our shoulders and hit him so hard he flew into the church. I don’t know if you’re allowed to do that or not, but I just thought, “Man in white! We’re doing it!”

And we got into the church and he was just calm. And we started playing some worship music, because we know that is where a lot of the battle takes place, no doubt. He stayed there for a while and there’s more to the story. Actually, he stayed there and then, after a while he thought he was fine and he went back. And we went into town. We came back from town and then I found him again, they came and got me, and he had like garlic and crosses all over him. I went in there and kind of went through the same process again. And then he said, “The man in white said I need to stay at the church until midnight and then read this verse.”

And I said, “Do you know that verse?”

He said, “I don’t know anything about it.”

So we found the verse and he did read it at midnight and he was fine ever since then. Then every time I saw him after that, I’d be like, “Hey, man.”

And he’d be like, “Hey.”

Okay. Good enough for me.

Again, am I making this up? I mean, you guys have to decide, obviously. I had never experienced anything like that before. I had those times when I was asleep in my bed and I would wake up and feel a kind of heaviness in the room, or some sort of darkness. 

I did have one friend, a roommate of mine, and he was telling me that one night he was in his bed and he felt like he was being held to the bed. He didn’t know what it was. He tried to start crying out in the name of Jesus. He was a Christian. As he would try, he said it was like something was holding his throat. Finally he got the name of Jesus out and he felt released. He started walking around the house praying. And I was like, “You gotta move out of my house, man. You’re crazy!”

That wasn’t a demonic possession, that was more of an oppression. For whatever reason, the devil was using that tactic to try to get him to freak out and move away from what God was calling him to. 

The reason I’m telling you this is because I want you to be aware that there is a spiritual realm and there is a spiritual reality to your life. You’re either winning or losing the battle. For you that have loved ones that are in your home or in your care, God has called you to be a covering for them. If you have a household, there is a war for your household. Jesus is able. I believe it, because the Scriptures teach it, but then, I believe it because I got to see it happen. And even in a strange, crazy, cultural context that I didn’t know much about—that name of Jesus, oh, yeah! It did the trick.

I’m going to read some verses here to give us a little more insight into how we can operate when we become aware that there might be a battle around us. You guys know the story of Elijah, when the whole army was there to come and kill him. And his servant was saying, “We’re going to die!”

And Elijah said, “Lord, open his eyes.” And he goes out again and he says that, behind the army that was about to kill him, was an angel army, full of fire, that was all around them.

Yet, we have verses in the Bible, lots of them, and I’ve picked a few of them to help us know what we’re supposed to do when we become aware that this could be where we’re at. 

If worry or anxiety or temptation or any season like that is going on for you right now, listen to these verses:

2 Corinthians 10:3-5

3 For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. 4 The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 5 We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

A lot of times the spiritual battle or turmoil will show up in the thought life. We have to stand firm against those things. We have to fight those things. We have to remember that the weapons of our warfare are not that we fight people. We fight whatever is showing up in our minds. We fight it in a spiritual way. We use Scriptures, like Jesus did, to fight off those things and take every thought and make it captive. Does this fall in line with Christ or does this not? If it does not, we get rid of it. We resist it. 

Ephesians 6:11-17

11 Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. 12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, 

Your spouse is not the problem. They might a problem, but they’re not the problem. You’re a problem too, probably.

but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. 13 Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. 14 Stand firm then…

And it goes on to talk about truth and righteousness, the gospel, faith and the word of God. I just think that’s so interesting. It says “stand firm when the day of opposition comes. And after you’ve done everything you can to stand firm—stand firm. Just keep on standing. Just keep on standing. Stand firm and you will see when the day comes, the devil will depart from you until a more opportune time. I can’t guarantee it’s only seventy-six hours. We don’t know how long. We have different examples in the Scriptures of how long you have to fight in the Spirit before there comes a breakthrough.

1 Peter 5:8-9

…Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. 9 Resist him, standing firm in the faith…

You starting to catch the theme here?

James 4:7

Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

Now, there’s a catch there. Your position, what you’re supposed to do is submit yourself to God, stand firm in faith, righteousness, truth and the gospel, stand firm in the Word of God, and stand and stand; and when you start to feel your weakness rising and your strength depleting, continue to stand, continue to stand, continue to stand against whatever is coming—and resist the devil, and he will flee.

Now, how long do you have to resist? That’s what we don’t know. But if you can’t think back to a time where you did have to stand firm and resist the devil, you probably have been getting overtaken. Or you probably have been blaming other people or other situations for the struggle you’re having in your own heart. And you’re going to keep losing that battle until you figure out how to stand firm long enough to see the victory come. When you stand in the name of Jesus, you have the victory. So keep standing for you, your own heart and mind. Keep standing for the people you love and care for. Keep standing for your work environment, your school environment. Because, in the name of Jesus, demons have to flee. In the name of Jesus, you have the victory.

We need some strong people. We need people who are willing to fight this battle or we’ve completely lost. For me, in my life, I’ve been doing a lot of this. I’ve been going back to a lot of Scriptures that, I know those Scriptures, but I needed them. I started leading myself in worship again. I used to worship all the time in college. And then I came here, and they were like, “Eh, we’re good. Could you preach?” 

So I pulled out my guitar because I could just feel it. And I started just singing my songs. Because there’s power in the name of Jesus. I started praying a lot more, intentionally. I felt something change in the Spirit and I’ve been able to rest a lot better. The weariness has subsided. 

I went to our elders meeting a couple of Tuesdays ago, and they prayed for me. I just felt a whole new strength. Then, the very next night I came to Freedom Immersion and this team from Washington prayed for me and my wife. I felt some strength and I showed up that Sunday morning, whenever that was, and that’s the strongest I’ve ever felt on a Sunday morning. Because I battle too, you know? It’s not always easy coming here and speaking out and caring for the people that the Lord has given me to care for, that I really do love and want to see the best for.

We’re all weak. We’ve got to find strength in the Lord, Amen?

Let’s pray:

Jesus, I pray that people right now would not feel a heavier burden. I remember that you always had problems with the Pharisees and the religious teachers because they were adding to the weight for the people, instead of lightening their load and making it easier for them. And I pray that this message would be something that really is like that bar oil that helps with everything else in life become easier, that helps them with their weariness problem. That they would realize that there is a Spiritual drain happening on the side. That they would become aware of it and they would be able to take that on and, in your name, and by your strength, not by might or power, but by your Spirit, Lord, that they would find that drain removed so that they can be full strength for the other aspects of life. I thank you for these precious people that you love so much, that you died for, that you’re so close to. I pray you’d make them strong, Lord, that you’d make us strong together. That we would be a covering for this city in some ways. That we’d be able to beat back the schemes and the evil that the enemy wants to bring into our city. All the churches around here, we thank you so much for them, and we pray you’d bless them, Lord, and make them strong in the Spirit.

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©️2019 Living Streams Church
7000 N Central Avenue ∙ Phoenix AZ 85020 ∙ 602-957-7500 ∙ https://www.livingstreams.org

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.

Scripture marked NLT is taken from Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

God Loves the Foreigner

David Stockton
Series: Ruth

Ruth Chapter 2 is where we’re going to be. And like we’ve been doing, we’re going to do through this whole book. We’re going to borrow a tradition from our Presbyterian brothers and sisters. We’re going to really elevate God’s word and make sure it stands alone and stands in front of us as valuable as it is. So we’re going to have a reading from the book of Ruth, and and at the end of it, Rose is going to say, “This is the Word of the Lord.” And we’re all going to respond with “Thanks be to God.”  Yes! We had, like, eight people say it this time. Last week we didn’t have anybody say it. But we’ll all respond with a resounding, “Thanks be to God,” thanking him for his word that he has preserved for us to help us know who he is and his ways in the world. So go ahead, Rose.

Now Naomi had a relative on her husband’s side, a man of standing from the clan of Elimelek, whose name was Boaz.

2 And Ruth the Moabite said to Naomi, “Let me go to the fields and pick up the leftover grain behind anyone in whose eyes I find favor.”

Naomi said to her, “Go ahead, my daughter.” 3 So she went out, entered a field and began to glean behind the harvesters. As it turned out, she was working in a field belonging to Boaz, who was from the clan of Elimelek.

4 Just then Boaz arrived from Bethlehem and greeted the harvesters, “The Lord be with you!”

“The Lord bless you!” they answered.

5 Boaz asked the overseer of his harvesters, “Who does that young woman belong to?”

6 The overseer replied, “She is the Moabite who came back from Moab with Naomi. 7 She said, ‘Please let me glean and gather among the sheaves behind the harvesters.’ She came into the field and has remained here from morning till now, except for a short rest in the shelter.”

8 So Boaz said to Ruth, “My daughter, listen to me. Don’t go and glean in another field and don’t go away from here. Stay here with the women who work for me. 9 Watch the field where the men are harvesting, and follow along after the women. I have told the men not to lay a hand on you. And whenever you are thirsty, go and get a drink from the water jars the men have filled.”

10 At this, she bowed down with her face to the ground. She asked him, “Why have I found such favor in your eyes that you notice me—a foreigner?”

11 Boaz replied, “I’ve been told all about what you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband—how you left your father and mother and your homeland and came to live with a people you did not know before. 12 May the Lord repay you for what you have done. May you be richly rewarded by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge.”

13 “May I continue to find favor in your eyes, my lord,” she said. “You have put me at ease by speaking kindly to your servant—though I do not have the standing of one of your servants.”

14 At mealtime Boaz said to her, “Come over here. Have some bread and dip it in the wine vinegar.”

When she sat down with the harvesters, he offered her some roasted grain. She ate all she wanted and had some left over. 15 As she got up to glean, Boaz gave orders to his men, “Let her gather among the sheaves and don’t reprimand her. 16 Even pull out some stalks for her from the bundles and leave them for her to pick up, and don’t rebuke her.”

17 So Ruth gleaned in the field until evening. Then she threshed the barley she had gathered, and it amounted to about an ephah. 18 She carried it back to town, and her mother-in-law saw how much she had gathered. Ruth also brought out and gave her what she had left over after she had eaten enough.

19 Her mother-in-law asked her, “Where did you glean today? Where did you work? Blessed be the man who took notice of you!”

Then Ruth told her mother-in-law about the one at whose place she had been working. “The nam e of the man I worked with today is Boaz,” she said.

20 “The Lord bless him!” Naomi said to her daughter-in-law. “He has not stopped showing his kindness to the living and the dead.” She added, “That man is our close relative; he is one of our guardian-redeemers.[b]”

21 Then Ruth the Moabite said, “He even said to me, ‘Stay with my workers until they finish harvesting all my grain.’”

22 Naomi said to Ruth her daughter-in-law, “It will be good for you, my daughter, to go with the women who work for him, because in someone else’s field you might be harmed.”

23 So Ruth stayed close to the women of Boaz to glean until the barley and wheat harvests were finished. And she lived with her mother-in-law.

This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

So Ruth Chapter 2. In Ruth Chapter 1, we talked a little about the background of Ruth and some of the redemption roots that God was beginning to plan for. We looked at Bethlehem and its beginning. We looked at the Aphrothites, what that meant, and Judges and famine, the Lion of Judah. It was all a pretty sorrowful, sordid beginning for a lot of things. And as we get to the end of Ruth, we’re going to see the reason the writer is even taking the time to write about this one particular foreign woman that found her way into Israel, is because in her life she brought about redemption for all of those things in the past, Some of those things she know of, some of those things she had no idea about. The truth is, she didn’t get to see the fullness of redemption because it came after she had finished her life her.

But the depths of redemption, the depths and the riches of God’s love and plan, it is so true that he has in store for each one of us a future and a hope. That he can direct our paths in a way that it will not just be kindness and goodness in the land of the living, but even long after we’re gone those seeds that he’s planted through us will continue to grow up and come to fruition.

I loved what Alec was saying about the oak of righteousness, the planting of the Lord that’s restoring ancient places and rebuilding broken places. You love to see the picture of that little girl and all that she has potential for in Christ Jesus. And that’s us. That was the hope we had—we looked at how God loves to rewrite history. That was kind of the theme, I feel like, of chapter one.

And today we’re going to look at how God loves the foreigner. Ruth was definitely a Moabitess. We talked a little about the roots of the Moabite people and the enmity that was between Israel and the Moabites for generations and generations. And now there’s this Moabite woman who comes with a lot of Moabite baggage. Basically, they know she’s a Moabite. That’s what they say every time. She’s Ruth the Moabite. And what they’re saying is, “Ruth the ‘eh.’” “Ruth the ‘uh.’” “Ruth the ‘nnnh.’” That’s basically what they’re saying at this time.

And yet, in this chapter, as you read over and over and over again there are these little phrases that speak of the kindness that Boaz and Naomi were showing to Ruth the Moabitess. To where, a couple of times in this chapter she says, “Why is the happening? Why are you being so nice to me? Why have I found favor in your eyes? I don’t understand what’s happening. I’m so confused.”

And it’s because it’s the first time she is starting to interact with grace—unmerited, unearned, undeserved favor—which is the trademark of this God of the Bible, the God of the Israelites. So once again we’re going to dive further into the riches of God’s love. 

Now, God loves the foreigner. And I’m not truing to make a political stance here. I will not use the word ‘wall’ at all in my message. And if I do, it’s a total accident. We need to pray for our government, that we can figure out some good solutions, that people can come together. I hope you’re praying for our government and our leaders because the truth is there. The Spirit of God can work through any nation, any leader, at any time. They just need to listen. They just need to find what God is saying in our nation and all the nations around the world. So we need to continue to pray that. 

But what I’m really wanting us to do is to just get God’s heart. God’s not a Republican. He’s not a Democrat. He’s just God. He’s before all that. He’s beyond all that. He will be forever. And the Democrat and Republican parties won’t be forever. You know. Actually, who knows? They might not even last til the next election. Please don’t start filing things in the political category. You can talk to me about that, if you want. But you have your own freedom, your own right. 

But what we’re trying to do is to fill in who is this God that has laid claim on our life and what does he want for us and how then can we act. And, yes, it might actually help you begin to act in society in a way that brings about justice or deals with certain situations in our society. There are all kinds of cool things happening where ICE, who’s picking up asylum refugees who are forcing their way in and they’re not sure what to do so they’re dropping them off at churches because they know the churches will take care of them. 

And it’s not a political thing. You don’t hear churches saying, “And this is what we want to say. We’re taking care of…”  You don’t even hear about it much, except for on some local news here and there. They’re just caring for people because the know that God loves the foreigner. And God loves all the people who are down and out and broken. 

And they also know that God respects governments and sets governments up, and there are policies and procedures. We should try to help people follow them. Last year we were able to give a donation to people who were kind of stuck in that limbo situation. They needed to fill out some applications. The application was about $250 and they didn’t have that. So we went through an organization and were able to give some money to say, “Hey, if people are willing to go through the right process and they just can’t afford an application fee, we can help with that.” So we’re trying to get involved. There’s lots of different things we do to try to help the foreigner. 

But I really want to make sure we try to get God’s heart. Here’s a few verses just to reiterate that same thing. 

 34 The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt; I am the Lord your God. — Leviticus 19:34 (NASB)

This is what God wrote into the law of the Hebrews.

Nor shall you glean your vineyard, nor shall you gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the needy and for the stranger. I am the Lord your God. — Leviticus 19:10 (NASB)

God wants us to provide for them.

9 ‘When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very corners of your field, nor shall you gather the gleanings of your harvest. 10 Nor shall you glean your vineyard, nor shall you gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the needy and for the stranger. I am the Lord your God. —Leviticus 19:9-10 (NASB)

Deuteronomy 24:

19 “When you reap your harvest in your field and have forgotten a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it; it shall be for the alien, for the orphan, and for the widow, in order that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. 20 When you beat your olive tree, you shall not go over the boughs again; it shall be for the alien, for the orphan, and for the widow. (NASB) 

God’s going to treat you in the way he sees you treating other people, in particular the stranger, the orphan, the widow. 

28 “At the end of every third year you shall bring out all the tithe of your produce in that year, and shall deposit it in your town. 29 The Levite, because he has no portion or inheritance among you, and the alien, the orphan and the widow who are in your town, shall come and eat and be satisfied, in order that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hand which you do. —Deuteronomy 14:28-29 (NASB)

And then, in the New Testament it says:

Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by this some have entertained angels without knowing it.  —Hebrews 13:2 (NASB)

That verse, whatever, that is just out there; but the Lord is saying it and it’s possible that, sometimes the person you’re caring for could be an angel unaware.

And Jesus brought it  home a little more in Matthew 25 when the people were saying, “When did I help you? When did I care for you? When did I show up in time of need? When did I visit you?” And he said, “When you did it to he least of these you actually did it straight to me.” And that’s the heart of our God that he’s wanting to kindle and produce inside of each of us. He loves the foreigner and you can see that on display here in Ruth Chapter 2.

So let’s get our characters real quick just to make sure we know what we’re talking about. Naomi is one of the main characters.  Her name means “pleasant and delightful.”  Remember in Chapter 1, at the end because of all the afflictions she said the Lord Almighty brought, she said, “Don’t call me Naomi anymore, call me Mara,” which basically means “bitterness.” But her name is Naomi. She’s pleasant and delightful. Her daughters-in-law loved her so much that even though she lost her husband and they lost their husbands (which were her sons), so it seemed like God was against her. She was even saying, “It feels like God is against me. I’m going back home. I’ve got nothing and I’m going back to nothing.” Her daughters-in-law still wanted to be around her because she was probably very pleasant and delightful and loved those daughters-in-law very well. One of them went back, Orpah. But Ruth stayed with her.

She’s probably an Enneagram 9. Yes. Laughter for that one. My wife is so Enneagram-ish right now. She’s got everybody figured out, totally. So she helped me with this. 

Enneagram 9. She’s receptive, reassuring, agreeable and she has to fight against complacency.  Key motivator—she liked to keep the peace and merge with others. Her key message in the Scripture is “the Almighty has.” Now this is interesting because she had a lot of good, good theology and there weren’t a lot of theology books going around at this time. She didn’t have the Apostles’ Creed. She didn’t have a lot of the things that we’ve figured out and we hold on to to help us solve some of these problems. 

She just really submitted her life to the Almighty and she says things like, “the Almighty has made my life bitter. Some of you might be very uncomfortable with that phrase, but it’s Biblical. God is sovereign and he allows bitterness to come into our lives. There’s no other way to say it. There’s no other way to deal with it. 

In some cases, it seems like he even causes bitterness to come into our lives. Now, it is never to ultimately bring about bitterness and pain. It’s always so that, ultimately, he can bring about goodness and life, no doubt about it. But sometimes in our lives we’re in a season where it just hurts. And God is saying, “I’m okay with this.” And she’s saying that.

But she also goes on right after that, “The Lord never stops showing kindness to the living and to the dead.” So think of Job when he says, “The Lord gives, the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord.” She understands that, “I just belong to the Almighty. I belong to this sovereign God. And there are times when he pours in the blessing and there are times when he pours in the pain. Either way, he is God and I’m going to assume my position in the relationship   because I know ultimately his kindness will show through.” 

She holds on. She’s really an amazing character in the BIble. 

Next one: Ruth. Ruth’s name means “companion” or “friend.” Her enneagram is probably a 2. We have no idea. Demonstrative, generous, people-pleasing, sometimes she could get a little possessive. Her key motivator was to find out what people need. She did a good job. That’s probably what drove her to be with Naomi. Key message: “Where you go I will go. Where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God will be my God.” That was a massive declaration for a Moabite woman to basically submit herself to Naomi and her God and her people. 

It was huge what she did in that moment, not knowing what the outcome would be; except for knowing that, as she goes into Israel, she knew she would experience persecution, discrimination, poverty, struggle and all those things. But she knew what was stirring in her heart and she went that way. 

She also had some pretty awesome phrases in Ruth Chapter 2, which we read. “What is this favor I’m experiencing? Why are you doing this?” I love it. She’s just so confused by it. We’ll talk more about that in a moment, 

And our last character, Boaz. Boaz means “swiftness” or “strength within.” That’s kind of cool. You could name your dog that or something, you know, if they’re fast. 

Enneagram 3. Excelling, driven, image-conscious (which could be good or bad). Key motivator: being or appearing productive. Key message; “May you be richly rewarded by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have taken refuge.” 

That’s really the phrase I want you guys to take away today. This was what Boaz said to Ruth at one point. This is what it seems like Boaz believes and has experienced in his life—the favor of God. When he shows up in Ruth 2, he comes in and the first thing he says, “Blessed are all of you.” And they respond, “Blessed are you.” And he’s talking to his workers and his servants, all the people. He just has a kindness about him. He’s experienced kindness and he gives kindness and he receives kindness all because of it. He’s really an amazing character. 

I want us to notice here, as we go through, there are some key phrases. I just want to work through some of these key phrases what it looks like, what it felt for Ruth to experience being under the wings of the Almighty. The reason I want us to do that is so we can begin to see where we’re at. Are we under the wings of the Almighty? Have we placed ourselves in that place? Have we removed ourselves from that place because God didn’t come through for us as quickly or in the way that we wanted him to? 

What you can experience under the wings of the Almighty, in the grace of God, in Christ Jesus is basically the New Testament phrase that Boaz didn’t know because he’s Old Testament. 

So we’re going to go through some of these phrases. The first one is going to be Attention. In verse 5, Boaz comes and asks all the people there, as he’s surveying his land, his work situation—he notices Ruth and he says, “Who does this young woman belong to?” That might sound like a funny phrase to you, like, “I don’t belong to anybody. It’s a free country.”  You know, that’s America. You can stop. 

It’s basically just saying, “Here’s this young woman. I know she doesn’t belong to me. I know she’s never been here before. What’s going on here?” Now, some people try to romanticize this, and he’s like, “Whoa! Who’s this young woman?” You know? But that doesn’t come until Chapter 3. So don’t go there yet. Chapter 3, yes, you can start reading in some romance. In fact, next week the sermon title is going to be “God Loves Romance.” But you should already figure it out on your own because it’s Valentine’s Day on Thursday. So don’t wait until Sunday to figure it out because you’ve already lost. Did I mention my wife’s birthday is Valentine’s Day? 

So, it’s not romantic yet, I don’t think. I know we just got through the Hallmark movie season with Christmas, and you’re going to see it, but just wait until the next chapter. But in this chapter, Boaz says “Who does this young woman belong to?” Basically, he notices her. This is what I want you to hear—and some of you know this, you’ve experienced this because you’ve lived under the wings of the Almighty—but some of you don’t know about this. 

God—the Bible is very clear—takes notice of you. He sees you. Phrases like he knows the number of hairs on your head. He actually has them numbered, is a different translation. And when one falls out he goes, “Oh, there goes number 470.” And for some of you he’s like , “Oh, there goes all of the 400’s.” Whatever it might be.

Psalm 139, if you read the whole thing, David is just kind of prophetically giving utterance to a song. He says, “You know me. You knew me in the womb. You know my going up, my going down, my lying down, my getting up. You just know so much about me.” 

And then there’s this phrase that says, “How precious are your thoughts about me, oh God. They cannot be numbered. I can’t even count them. They outnumber the grains of sand. And when I wake up, you are still with me.”

And I love that, because, not only is he saying, “God, you know me. You’re actually thinking about me. You’re thinking about every part of my life, and when I wake up, you’re still there with me.” Because if I knew everything about you, I don’t know I’d still be with you, right? If you knew everything about me, you’d be, “I don’t know. It’s a little iffy in there somewhere.”

But I have a picture of, when I put my girls to bed or the foster boys that are living with us, and I just go in there at night and they’re not whining, they’re not fighting, they’re not hungry, they’re just sleeping. And I just look at them and I think, “Wow.” In that moment I just love them. I could just stare at them for hours. 

And I think that’s the way the Lord feels toward us, toward you. And you might have grown up in a household where you didn’t get much attention. Or you might be in the loneliest season of your life. But the Bible makes it utterly clear from the beginning to the end that God is paying attention to you. The details of your life. The details of you. And he’s not paying attention looking for how he can bust you or catch you. He’s studying you so he can figure out how to show kindness to you in the way that fills your heart the most. 

And if you are going to do a good job of Valentines Day or “Birth-entines” Day, whatever you might call it—it’s that same way. You study your spouse in order to be able to give them a gift that’s just going to make them go, “Wow. You really know me.” (And I’m really hoping I got the right one.)

So, moving on. That’s the first phrase that I just love in here: Who does that young woman belong to?

Number two on that list: Bam. Acceptance. 

Why have I found favor as a foreigner? Is the next thing that she says as she’s interacting with Boaz. And he’s pouring out his kindness. He’s saying to her, “Hey, stay in my field. We’ll take care of you. Go ahead and get as much as you want. When you get thirsty, go ahead and drink at the same place as everybody else.” The people over there might be going, “What? We don’t want no Moabite in here?” And he’s just like, “Get over yourself.” And he’s setting this up.That phrase is “Why have I found favor as a foreigner?” And this, unpacked, is very easy. 

Galatians 3:28 is Paul going off and trying to help people understand in a society that is so racist, that is so divided, that is built on a kind of hierarchical class system of Jews and Gentiles and Greeks. Everyone’s kind of looking down on each other. They all think they’re better than everyone. And Paul’s saying to them in such a massive declaration that no other religion, no other document could say in honesty, Paul is saying that in Christ Jesus there is no Jew, there is no Greek, there is no slave, there is no free, there is no male, there is no female. That is such an unbelievable statement to make, that with God there is no discrimination.

Now you might say, “Aha! What a second. God loves the Jew!” Yeah, he does. Totally. They’re his chosen people, no doubt about it. The BIble is very clear on that. But this is the way that you can understand that if you take in the full counsel of the Scriptures. God has chosen the Jew to be able to interact with them. And the way he interacts with the Jews helps us all learn how God will interact with us. They’re his chosen instrument.

I could teach everybody in here. Let’s say I really hated cell phones going off in church. I don’t. It’s just an example. Okay?  I don’t care. You could call me right now. whatever. I won’t answer, unless it’s important. No, I won’t even know if it’s important. But, anyway, I could teach all of you. All I would need is for one person—let’s say Alec’s cell phone goes off. (Alec was the guy up here doing the baby dedication, but none of you noticed that because his hair touched the floor.) 

So let’s say Alec’s phone goes off. I could make Alec my chosen person to teach all of you about myself. All I would have to do is — his cell phone goes off. I could jump down, punch him in the face, and then cut off his dreds, and throw his dreds, and then burn them in front of him and just laugh and mock him and say, “Don’t ever do that again!”

You guys would learn a lot about me through my one chosen vessel. You would learn that I have real problems. I need help immediately and that the smell of burning hair is disgusting. You’d learn a lot of things just from that one interaction.

God has chosen the Jew. Not because he loves the Jew better than anybody else. This is Paul teaching this, and he was like “super Jew.” But he was understanding, “Look, none of that matters in Christ Jesus.”

None what we learned from the Old Testament—there’s so much to learn from—and God’s not through with the Jew, either. If God all of a sudden was just going to be done with the Jew, guess what? All of us would have to fear that one day God would just be done with us. But God’s going to be faithful to the Jew throughout and we’re going to get to see it on display as the prophetic calendar continues to go forward. But God has been faithful to the Jew and we can understand that God’s going to be faithful to us. 

And here, extended to this Moabite is the fullness of being under the wing of the Almighty. So attention, acceptance. 

I love this phrase. The next phrase down says, “as it turns out.” So she goes to work in the field and it says, “As it turned out, she was working in the field of Boaz.” There’s no “as it turned out.” God orchestrated this thing. And under the wing of the Almighty, you’ll experience time and chance. You’ll experience luck. What? I thought this was church! It’s in Ecclesiastes. That’s what he says. Solomon, the wisest man that ever lived. He said, “I’ve seen something else under the sun. The race is not to the swift, or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned. But time and chance happen to them all.” 

So, if you’re going to say, “Good luck” to somebody, you don’t have to be, like, “Uh! Oh no. I don’t believe in God because I said that.” Because God is orchestrating things that feel a lot like coincidence—luck and favor and all these things. It’s not a blind kind of thing. It’s not something that Bible teaches, “If you do this thing, ultimately these things will happen.” It’s just basically the favor of God.

Ruth didn’t do anything to deserve any of this, that God paid attention to her, and God accepted her, and God began to orchestrate her life as she chose to place herself under the shelter, under the wing of the Almighty. She said, “Your God will be my God.” God said, “Okay. We’re going to do something now.” 

And for each one of you in this room or listening in the Philippines—(seriously—people listen in the Philippines)—if you put yourself in the shelter of the Almighty, which is putting yourself in Christ Jesus, God will orchestrate things. You will look back at some point and you will be like, “My life is a Hallmark movie!” It’s unbelieveable. And this year, we’re going to be trying to be family strong and highlight the strength of family, and we’re going to have some testimonies from our older folks. We’re going to get to hear some of their stories. Probably later on this summer. We’re just going to say, “Tell us the ‘coincidences’ that God has brought about in your life.” And we’re going to put them on display. It’s going to be awesome. 

Attention. Acceptance. Coincidence. And then Favor. That same phrase, “Why have I found such favor?” “I don’t understand this thing. You’re showing me such kindness.” 

For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord bestows favor and honor; no good thing does he withhold from those whose walk is blameless. —Psalm 84:11

Those who put themselves in Christ Jesus, you can experience favor. You can expect favor from God. Now the favor of God, again, you don’t control it, where you’re saying, “God, I gave myself to you, now you have to give me that girl (or that boy).” It doesn’t work that way. He decides what the favor is. But, I’ll tell you what, the favor that God brings into your life is way better than any of the small things you’re asking for right now. 

I had a much different plan for my life. And God said to me, “Which one do you want? Your lan? Or my plan?” And I didn’t know, so I just said, “You’ve probably got a good plan.” And I started going the Lord’s way, and with his plan, and started taking the opportunities he said, and resist some of the times when I was, like, “But that’s a good plan over here.” And he sais, “No, go this way.” And so I went that way. And my life has been so much richer and fuller because of it. 

The favor of God is what you want in your life, even more than what you think you want in your life. And Ruth got to experience that.

The next thing is Provision for the needs of you and yours. This is awesome. 

And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus. —Philippians 4:19

And the phrase there that I love out of Ruth 2 is that she brought home an ephah of barley. So she’s out there, and Boaz is hanging out, he’s watching her. She’s working hard. She asks for permission to work in the field. They said, “Yes.” He gets that cleared. And he asks, “Who is this?” And they said, “That’s Ruth, the Moabitess.” And everybody knows the story because everybody knows everybody’s business in the little town of Bethlehem. And he’s like, “Oh, she’s the one that stuck with Naomi and came here. That’s pretty cool.” And the go on.

She’s working all day long, and then at lunch time he’s like, “Why don’t you call her over here and let’s get her some food.” He is just showing kindness. His heart is just drawn to her. And again, I don’t think it’s all romantic at this point. It’s going to get there.  But don’t go there yet. He’s showing kindness because he’s heard of what she’s done. 

She comes and they have this roasted barley, mmm, you know? He’s going all out for her. That’s what I’m doing for Valentine’s Day this year. “Brittany, I got all this roasted barley for us. Yeah.” 

And then he gives her some of the roasted barley to take home because there are leftovers. And she’s got that. But then also, by the end of the day, he says, “Make sure she gets a whole bunch of unroasted barley” (which is still a good thing). And she takes home an ephah of barley, which is about 30 pounds. 

So here’s Ruth. She goes to the field. And they don’t have any food. She’s trying to get a little something. Now not only does she have a doggie bag in one pocket, but then she’s carrying 30 pounds of barley. She comes home and she’s like, “What’s up, Naomi?” Bam! And Naomi’s like, “Huh! That’s an ephah!” You know? Or whatever she said. I don’t know. Sorry about that.

God loves to provide for the needs of you and yours. And if you’ll hang on to the Lord’s hand, you might go through times that are lean, but in the end, you will say just like the Psalmist said, “I have never seen the righteous forsaken or his children begging bread.” 

God knows how to provide for what you need. No just for you, but for those you love, as well. He’s so faithful. His riches are unbelievable in that regard. 

I wrote Redemption as number 6, but we’re going to get that. The last chapter we’re going to call “God Loves Redemption.” We’re going to get a lot of those stories, so we can skip that for now. This last one is what I want to finish up with: Unending kindness to the living and the dead. That’s what Naomi says. When she sees the ephah of barley, she hears all this stuff, she catches that Boaz is a kinsman redeemer. We don’t know what that means. Ruth doesn’t know what that means at this point. But Naomi’s like, “Hmmm.” And nothing happens at this point, but Naomi, you know, “Matchmaker, Matchmaker, make me a match…” So she’s like, “Wait a second. There could be something here.” 

And so she starts to have this new hope burst into her Mara soul. Do you understand what’s happening in here? So Ruth, Boaz, blah, blah, blah. They’re just kind of nice people doing their thing. But Naomi catches, all of a sudden, it’s almost as if the Spirit whispers to her bitter soul as she hears that Boaz is the field she was in. She says, “Oh. interesting.” And it’s like, boom, the light begins to shine. The sun comes out. The clouds part in her weary, weary soul. And she says this phrase…

Verse 20 “The Lord bless him!” Naomi said to her daughter-in-law. “He has not stopped showing his kindness to the living and the dead.”

And so Naomi catches something here, that is only a declaration at this point. She doesn’t know the rest of the story of her life and Ruth’s life. She doesn’t know the rest of Ruth. She didn’t get to listen to my message last week about all the seeds of sorrow that the Lord was bringing redemption to—wild redemption to through this little life, this little story in the book of Ruth. But she, all of a sudden, sees a window of opportunity open and she says, “Wow. The Lord who has afflicted me, the Lord who brought me out full and brought me back empty, the Lord who has brought great sorrow to me, that same Lord has unending kindness for the living and the dead.”

She’s saying, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second. Not only did I get an ephah of barley today and you got to see the kindness of a man of God, a man of the God of Israel; not only did you get protected as a foreigner, as a Moabite woman who probably would have been brutally raped or abused in any other situation, if not just rejected or kicked out; but you experienced favor. You experienced kindness. You experienced provision. Now you’re bringing hope. I’m getting to experience it too. And not only that, but you just so happened, as it turned out, you were in the field of Boaz, who is a kinsman redeemer.”

She starts to think, “Maybe just maybe, when my husband died and our sons died, and all hope of our future died, maybe just maybe God is orchestrating a future for us. Not only for you and I to be taken care of with some with some food, but for our family line to continue on. For Ruth, maybe you even have a future and a hope. Maybe as I die, you’re going to be taken care of. 

She doesn’t know the full story. She might have this glimmer of “Maybe you’re going to marry Boaz and you’re going to have a baby and he’s going to become the grandfather of the king of Israel, the great king of Israel and he’s going to be the father, the father, the father, the father…of actually Jess, the Messiah!” Maybe she thought that. I don’t think so. But she had the beginning of that hope land in her soul.

And today, no matter what you’ve been through, no matter what you’re in right now, if you will place yourself under the wing of the Almighty, you will begin to experience the favor of the Lord and a window of hope will open in your soul and you will begin to see the kindness of God—not only to the living but to the dead. Not only will you go to heaven, but even after you.

I love what Mark Buckley says. He says, “The prayers of the saints who have passed before us, their prayers are still going.” And that was big for me, because my mom died too early. But I know all the prayers she prayed for me are still alive because God is alive. 

And Naomi is saying, “Not only is the Lord going to take care of us, but he’s even going to show kindness to my husband that passed away, my sons that passed away. He’s orchestrating something.” And she’s putting her hope in him. And all of this pain, all of this sorrow can be redeemed, can come untrue. It might take a lifetime. It might take a hundred lifetimes, but she has this glimmer of hope that, “One day I’m going to stand before God and I’m going to say, ‘RIghteous and true are your judgements. Every single thing that you did or allowed, I can see how you were orchestrating beauty.’”

Some of those things are really hard to see, but if you stay under the wing of the Almighty, you will get to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living, and you will get to see the full expression of his unending kindness to both the living and the dead. 

This is our God. We sang about it in the beginning. He’s with us in the wilderness, faithful to provide. This is our God. Let’s pray:

Jesus, we do thank you so, so, so, so much, for your unending, limitless kindness toward us who are foreigners. We’re foreigners because of being born in the genealogy that we are. We’re foreigners because we’ve sinned against you and fallen short of your glory. We’re foreigners because we’re weak, we’re broken. We’re poor in spirit. We’re so selfish. So small-minded. But we know that you love the foreigner, the widow, the orphan, the sinner.

And so we come and we want to place our lives, our futures, our pasts, our presents under the shadow, under the wing of your love. We thank you that all of it is possible because of Jesus. He made a way where there was no way. He abolished all the walls of enmity that separate us from you when he died on that cross. And so we can come running to you, knowing that we will be received and forgiven, because the price has already been paid. I pray that there would be some people in this room today who have never been under the wing of the Almighty, or have veered off, strayed away from it, I pray that they would come back.

And if that is you, all you have to do is say a prayer. Just speak to God. He’s paying attention to you. He’s listening for your voice Speak to him and say, “God, I need you. I’m lost without you.I pray you would receive me and teach me how to walk in your ways, and you would allow me to feel what it’s like to live under the wing of the Almighty. In Christ’s name.”  

_________________________

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Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. 
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God Loves to Rewrite History

God Loves to Rewrite History

David Stockton
February 3, 2019
Series: Ruth

The Presbyterians have a practice they do when they approach the word of God, which I think is really neat, giving reverence to the Scriptures. So we’re going to have a reader for the entire chapter, Ruth 1. Pauly will read the entire chapter to us, just to let us have the word of God wash over us. Then at the end, she will say, “This is the Word of the Lord,” and we’re all going to respond….. “Thanks be to God.” (Just checking. So there really aren’t any Presbyterians here.) So “This is the Word of the Lord,” and then we all respond, “Thanks be to God.” 

And again, we’re just giving special reverence and place to the Scriptures. So, Pauly, go ahead and read Ruth chapter 1 to us: 

1 In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land. So a man from Bethlehem in Judah, together with his wife and two sons, went to live for a while in the country of Moab. 2 The man’s name was Elimelek, his wife’s name was Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Kilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem, Judah. And they went to Moab and lived there.

3 Now Elimelek, Naomi’s husband, died, and she was left with her two sons. 4 They married Moabite women, one named Orpah and the other Ruth. After they had lived there about ten years, 5 both Mahlon and Kilion also died, and Naomi was left without her two sons and her husband.

Naomi and Ruth Return to Bethlehem

6 When Naomi heard in Moab that the Lord had come to the aid of his people by providing food for them, she and her daughters-in-law prepared to return home from there. 7 With her two daughters-in-law she left the place where she had been living and set out on the road that would take them back to the land of Judah.

8 Then Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go back, each of you, to your mother’s home. May the Lord show you kindness, as you have shown kindness to your dead husbands and to me. 9 May the Lord grant that each of you will find rest in the home of another husband.”

Then she kissed them goodbye and they wept aloud 10 and said to her, “We will go back with you to your people.”

11 But Naomi said, “Return home, my daughters. Why would you come with me? Am I going to have any more sons, who could become your husbands? 12 Return home, my daughters; I am too old to have another husband. Even if I thought there was still hope for me—even if I had a husband tonight and then gave birth to sons— 13 would you wait until they grew up? Would you remain unmarried for them? No, my daughters. It is more bitter for me than for you, because the Lord’s hand has turned against me!”

14 At this they wept aloud again. Then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law goodbye, but Ruth clung to her.

15 “Look,” said Naomi, “your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her.”

16 But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. 17 Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.” 18 When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her.

19 So the two women went on until they came to Bethlehem. When they arrived in Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them, and the women exclaimed, “Can this be Naomi?”

20 “Don’t call me Naomi,” she told them. “Call me Mara, because the Almighty[d] has made my life very bitter. 21 I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? The Lord has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me.”

22 So Naomi returned from Moab accompanied by Ruth the Moabite, her daughter-in-law, arriving in Bethlehem as the barley harvest was beginning. 

This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Thank you, Pauly. Thank you very much. 

Ruth chapter 1, as she read, you can see that there is a lot of sorrow in this book. There is a lot of grieving and challenge. And what I want to do today is to unpack some of these things that are going on—some of the background that’s happening. Because the story of Ruth is a great redemption story. Most of you know what happens in the end. You know that God does a really, amazing, wonderful, thorough, deep, profound work in and through Naomi and Ruth and their lineage; including being in the last part of Ruth—I’m telling you now because it’s so sad today in chapter 1—the genealogy of David ends the book of Ruth. David was the great king of Israel. He was a great-grandson of Ruth, which is a totally miraculous thing when we know the context. So that’s what we’re going to work on today. We’re going to do some real Bible study. You guys ready for this? You hungry for some Bible? 

A lot of times in the Scripture, when you see a revival break out, it’s usually predicated by a time where people came back to God’s word, or discovered God’s word anew. So, in a lot of ways, a revival really begins with a “reBible.” And so we’re going to really work on doing some “reBible” today, if you’ll join me.

So, Ruth chapter 1, “In the days when the Judges ruled.” So the writer of Ruth, which I like to think is probably the prophet Samuel, he’s telling us that it was in the days when the Judges ruled. There was a famine in the land. There was a man from Bethlehem in Judah, together with his wife and two sons, and they went to live in the country of Moab. So there’s some really, really important, key words going on there, and we’re going to unpack those so we can see the full riches of God’s redemption in the book of Ruth,

First of all, let’s look at the timeline of Scripture. This is the way that Scripture unfolds. This is God wanting to make himself known to his creation. At first, the message of who God is and what he is like came through the patriarchs. Obviously Adam would be one of the patriarchs, Adam and then on and on: you have Abraham, you have Noah, you have all these different patriarchs. And that’s the way that the message of God, the relationship with God was communicated to the world at that point.

And then, at some point, things changed. Now it’s not just a familial type situation the people of God are in. But now they are  beginning to form into a nation. The book of Exodus is where the family of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that are there was slaves in Egypt are being set free and they’re coming in. And God is saying, “Now I’m going to form you into an actual nation so that the whole world, all the other nations will know who I am through the way I relate to this one nation.

So we have the shift where you have these Judges or Deliverers. Moses was the first of the Judges or Deliverers. He brought about a great deliverance for God’s people and because of that he was set up as a Judge. And there he would try and help people understand what God wanted. They would bring their challenges to him and he would say, “This is what the Lord wants.”  And he would teach them the Ten Commandments and he would teach them the tabernacle, how to worship. And he would teach them the ways and the laws of God. And he was setting up a nation.

Then, after that, we have the time of the Kings and the Prophets. There were Prophets throughout, but this is when the Prophets and the Kings became the forefront of the leadership. Saul was the first King of Israel, then David, then Solomon. Then the monarchy was split between the north and south. So this takes us through the rest of the Old Testament. 

And then we have this new revelation that comes through Jesus Christ, God’s Son. And we have the New Testament that now is the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ dwelling within us, revealing to us in the Church context who God is and what he wants. So that’s the timeline of Scripture. 

So Ruth is falling in the time of the Judges. Joshua, Judges, Ruth. Judges is basically the overarching context and Ruth is just a little pericope, a little story taking place during that season. And the writer, who obviously is writing in the time of the Kings because he’s making note of the genealogy of David. He knew about David, he knew about the greatness of David, so he’s writing back, telling us the story of something that happened prior because it was so remarkable to him, and to Israel’s history.

The second thing we need to know is that, not only was it in the time of the Judges, but there was a famine in the land. Here’s the time of Judges. Judges was a rough time in Israel’s history. A rough patch. A rough season. Israel would have this great deliverance like with Moses, like with Samson, and these guys, and they would turn to the Lord and everything would be good. But over time, their hearts would start to turn toward the gods of the nations surrounding them. They kind of got bored with God and they started to add other things to God.  And what would happen is, God would say, “Hey! If you’r going to want me and those other things, I’m not going to play that game.” The Bible says God is a jealous God. Just like a wife would not want to be one of many wives. It’s like, “If you want me to be your wife, that’s cool. But as soon as you want to add someone else, I’m out!” 

That was kind of the story of what was taking place in Israel. God said, “Ok, if that’s what you really want, I’m going to step back and you’re going to get what you want.” And that would lead the people into oppression and slavery and the cycle would continue. They would be following God. They would turn from God. They would fall into oppression. Then they would cry out to God because of the horrible oppression. God would once again come close, raise up a deliverer or a judge. It would go good for a while and then the cycle would continue. 

The last verse of Judges says “Everyone did what was right in their own eyes.” Freedom was defined as doing whatever you wanted. That was the situation. Everyone was just doing whatever they wanted—doing what was right in their own eyes. It was a horrible situation. But during that season, there was a famine in the land. Most likely the famine was part of the cycle. Israel had gone after other gods. God had basically kind of pulled his hand back for a season to let the people get what they really wanted. And they were experiencing what it was like to live without the presence of God. And what it ended up producing was hard times, challenging times. So there was famine in the land. It was probably another hard, grievous time. 

Naomi named her sons Mahlon and Killion. The name Mahlon means”sickly.”  What kind of mom names their kid sickly? Except potentially a mom who is extremely grieving about the desperate situation into which she’s giving birth to her children. There’s not enough food for her and her husband and now they have two sons. That’s how desperate and dark and challenging this family was—that a mom, a good mom, a good mom who knows God and believes in God—and we’ll see that throughout the story—decides that the names of her children should be “sickly” and “wasting away.”  Because her heart was that broken. That’s how severe this famine was. And it was probably due to the Israelite’s turning from God and being oppressed. 

So that’s another context. Judges. Famine. And now it says that the man was from Bethlehem. Bethlehem actually means “house of bread.” So you’ve got famine and the house of bread. At this point, Bethlehem is not known as the place where Jesus was born. There weren’t any Christmas songs yet at the time of Ruth. Bethlehem was first mentioned in Genesis 35. Let’s get a little perspective on the connotation of Bethlehem at this point. 

Genesis 35:16. This is talking about Isaac and his wife Rachel. 

16 Then they moved on from Bethel. While they were still some distance from Ephrath, Rachel began to give birth and had great difficulty. 17 And as she was having great difficulty in childbirth, the midwife said to her, “Don’t despair, for you have another son.” 18 As she breathed her last—for she was dying—she named her son Ben-Oni. [which means “Son of My Trouble”].  But his father named him Benjamin.

 19 So Rachel died and was buried on the way to Ephrath (that is, Bethlehem).   
 20 Over her tomb Jacob set up a pillar, and to this day that pillar marks Rachel’s
     tomb.

So Bethlehem (which was originally Called Ephrath, but now was known as Bethlehem as their putting Scriptures together)  this place was basically known as a place of sorrow, a place of sadness, a place where Jacob’s beloved wife, Rachel, giving birth to his twelfth son, Benjamin, dies in childbirth. And his heart is broken and grieved. 

That’s the connotation. Again, there’s this sorrowful, sad situation that hangs over this town called Bethlehem, and there’s more to that that we’ll discuss in a little bit. 

Next up in the book of Ruth, that they’re from Bethlehem and they’re of the tribe of Judah. The lineage of Judah actually helps us with the Ephrathites, as well. Here’s Judah. They were born in Bethlehem in Judah, and later on it tells us that he was of the lineage of Judah. 

Ok. I don’t see any children in here. It’s about to get PG13 in here. So whatever you’ve got to do, do it. Okay?

Judah was one of the twelve sons of Jacob, one of the twelve tribes of Israel—a very significant person. Judah actually goes to live up in the Canaanite country and he ends up getting together with a woman named Bethshua, who was a Canaanite. And he had three sons with her. The first one was killed by God. The second was killed by God. The third one, we don’t really know that much of what happened. 

Turn with me to Genesis 38. We’re going to get a little context and a PG13 situation (this is more than PG13 probably):

38 At that time, Judah left his brothers and went down to stay with a man of Adullam named Hirah. 2 There Judah met the daughter of a Canaanite man named Shua. He married her and made love to her; 3 she became pregnant and gave birth to a son, who was named Er. 4 She conceived again and gave birth to a son and named him Onan. 5 She gave birth to still another son and named him Shelah. It was at Kezib that she gave birth to him.

6 Judah got a wife for Er, his firstborn, and her name was Tamar. 7 But Er, Judah’s firstborn, was wicked in the Lord’s sight; so the Lord put him to death.

8 Then Judah said to Onan, “Sleep with your brother’s wife and fulfill your duty to her as a brother-in-law to raise up offspring for your brother.” 

[Very bizarre practice there, but that’s what was going on.] 

9 But Onan knew that the child would not be his; so whenever he slept with his brother’s wife, he spilled his semen on the ground to keep from providing offspring for his brother. 10 What he did was wicked in the Lord’s sight; so the Lord put him to death also.

11 Judah then said to his daughter-in-law Tamar, “Live as a widow in your father’s household until my son Shelah grows up.” For he thought, “He may die too, just like his brothers.” So Tamar went to live in her father’s household.

Now, I’m not going to read the rest. I’ll just paraphrase. Now we have Judah, and he’s got this Canaanite connection, with three sons. It’s not working out so well with that situation. But then Tamar was his daughter-in-law that he put together with Er and then tried to put together with Onan but that got a little weird. And then he was waiting for Shelah to grow up so he could put her together with Shelah. So that’s Tamar. 

Now, as time goes on, Shelah grows up and Judah doesn’t want Tamar to be with Shelah because it seems like everybody Tamar is with the Lord kills. So he’s like, “We’re not going to do this.” 

Tamar eventually realizes this is not going to happen, so she takes matters into her own hands. And Tamar says, “All right. Fine. You’re not going to give me Shelah.” Then what she decides to  do is to dress as a prostitute and go into a town where she knows Judah, her father-in-law will be staying, and she seduces him They lay together and she gets pregnant. And she’s smart enough to actually say, “For payment, I don’t want this or that. I want your seal and your staff.” And so she has his seal and staff until he can send the goats or whatever he’s sending to her. 

And when in Judah’s camp it’s found out that Tamar is pregnant, he decides she needs to be put to death because of impropriety. And so when he goes to execute her, what does she do? “What’s up sucka?” She pops out, “Seal and staff! Da da da da da da!” This lady knows what she’s doing. He’s like, “Oh, hello!? Could everybody just give me a minute here.” And they have a little chat. She ends up not being killed. And he actually, interestingly enough, says, “She was more righteous than I.” It’s like, yeah. Not quite sure if there’s anyone winning, but she’s probably beating you.

My point in all of this is the lineage here is not something great. It’s sordid and sorrowful at best—this line of Judah.

Then let’s go on to the next thing: Moab. It says they go, they leave because of the famine. They leave God’s country because of the famine and they go to the Moabite country. So let’s check out who the Moabites are.

Actually no. I want to finish one thing. This is for you that are super nerdy about this stuff. It’s awesome. 

If you follow along a little more, Tamar gives birth to Perez, Perez gives birth to Hezron. Hezron gives birth to these jokers: Ram (See? It’s a sign. Let’s go L.A.!) Ram with an asterisk (which is not about the Super Bowl). Jerahmeel and Caleb. So on Caleb’s side, he gives birth to all these people. And then his second wife is Ephrathon. So connotation, back to the sorrowful beginnings of Bethlehem, but also the sorrowful, sordid line of Judah, they’re Ephrathites. They are born of the second wife of this person with this sordid history. 

But then, on the other side you have Ram. Ram, who we don’t know yet, in Chapter 2 we’ll get introduced to Boaz. He comes from that other side over there. He comes from that other side over there. Spoiler alert: Boaz and Ruth like each other. All right. So that’s Judah. 

So we’ve got the days the Judges ruled. We’ve got famine in the land. We’ve got Bethlehem’s sad history. We’ve got the sordid lineage of Judah. And now we come to Moab. At least this one’s going to be good, right? No!

So Moab. Let’s turn to Genesis 19. I hope you’re having fun with this, because this is so interesting to me, and so awesome in the end. Genesis 19:30. Now we’re getting introduced to the first mention of Moab, where the Moabites come from. This is like PG99. Okay?

So Lot and his wife and his two daughters are in Sodom and Gomorrah. Right? They’re living there. And Sodom and Gomorrah is a very bad news place. Very ungodly. And God actually sends down fire and consumes it; but sends angels to pull Lot, his wife and his two daughters out right before the destruction happens. Then Lot’s wife looks back like she isn’t quite sure she wants to leave, and she turns to a pillar of salt (which is weird, but it’s in the Bible and we’ll watch the DVD in heaven or whatever). 

So that’s the situation. So Lot and everything he’s known, everything he’s had, including his wife, is gone. He’s there with his two daughters and it says: 

Genesis 19:30

30 Lot and his two daughters left Zoar and settled in the mountains, for he was afraid to stay in Zoar. He and his two daughters lived in a cave. 31 One day the older daughter said to the younger, “Our father is old, and there is no man around here to give us children—as is the custom all over the earth. 32 Let’s get our father to drink wine and then sleep with him and preserve our family line through our father.”

33 That night they got their father to drink wine, and the older daughter went in and slept with him. He was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up.

34 The next day the older daughter said to the younger, “Last night I slept with my father. Let’s get him to drink wine again tonight, and you go in and sleep with him so we can preserve our family line through our father.” 35 So they got their father to drink wine that night also, and the younger daughter went in and slept with him. Again he was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up.

36 So both of Lot’s daughters became pregnant by their father. 37 The older daughter had a son, and she named him Moab; he is the father of the Moabites of today. 38 The younger daughter also had a son, and she named him Ben-Ammi; he is the father of the Ammonites of today.

A sad, sordid, sorrowful beginning to the Moabite people. And then I just want to read one more thing. This is super Old Testament, I know. And this is like other-worldly and confusing and I get all of that. And I would love to talk through all the details here, but I’m just trying to give you a picture of the reality of the challenges that are being expressed by the writer of Ruth: the dark, bleak beginnings of the book of Ruth.

So Numbers 25, if you want to turn there. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers. It’s just a couple of books over. Numbers 25 has another allusion to who the Moabites were and what their interaction with the people of Israel were leading up to this time of Ruth. 

Are you with me? I know this is a lot, but it’s going to be worth it.

 25 While Israel was staying in Shittim, the men began to indulge in sexual immorality with Moabite women, 2 who invited them to the sacrifices to their gods. The people ate the sacrificial meal and bowed down before these gods. 3 So Israel yoked themselves to the Baal of Peor [the Moabite god]

And the Lord’s anger burned against them.

4 The Lord said to Moses, “Take all the leaders of these people, kill them and expose them in broad daylight before the Lord, so that the Lord’s fierce anger may turn away from Israel.”

So the Lord’s anger was breaking out and we’ll see that. It was some sort of a thing that was afflicting people and causing death to the people. 

5 So Moses said to Israel’s judges, “Each of you must put to death those of your people who have yoked themselves to the Baal of Peor.”

6 Then an Israelite man brought into the camp a Midianite woman right before the eyes of Moses and the whole assembly of Israel while they were weeping at the entrance to the tent of meeting. 7 When Phinehas son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, the priest, saw this, he left the assembly, took a spear in his hand 8 and followed the Israelite into the tent. He drove the spear into both of them, right through the Israelite man and into the woman’s stomach. Then the plague against the Israelites was stopped; 9 but those who died in the plague numbered 24,000.

Again, so many details here that we need to unpack in lots of deep and profound ways. Some of it we don’t have full explanations for. It was a different time. We don’t know the full story. We’re just getting these pictures and this accounting. And the perspective of the people as they tried to figure out where God was in all of this and why stuff was happening. But basically, the relationship between the Israelites and the Moabites was a very negative, hurtful, hateful relationship. In the people of Israel’s eyes, the Moabites were actually a plague, that if they connected themselves at all, it would invoke the fury and wrath of God. 

And yet, here in this moment, we have this family in the time of the Judges where people were turning from the Lord. A time of famine, which probably represented a little bit of the way people were outside of the presence and favor of God. We’ve got this connection to Bethlehem, which at this point was a very sorrowful beginning and connotation. They’re from the lineage of Judah, which is just sordid and confusing and sorrowful all by itself. And then they go to live in the land of Moab, which was basically one of the greatest sell-outs you could do as an Israelite. And we don’t know why they did it. We don’t know what the reasoning was exactly. We don’t know if it was the right or wrong decision. All we know is that the situation was bleak beyond imagination. 

Elimelek’s name means “God is King,” and Naomi’s name means “pleasant, delightful.” And here they are in this completely horrific, broken situation. 

And when we read those, I know all of us giggled a little bit—probably because we all have a little junior high in us—as well as it’s just so bizarre and so crazy. But the truth is that all of us have at times felt like we were in a bleak situation. Some of us have even been through some of the stuff we read about, no doubt. It’s real. Some of us have very sordid and sorrowful beginnings and pasts.

And then you get to verse 3 and it says that Naomi was living in Moab and her husband dies, it sounds like pretty quick. And then after ten more years of living there, her two sons—her hope, her future—die. And she’s left with two Moabite daughters-in-law. So not only is her past so sordid and sorrowful, but now her present is just as sorrowful. It’s almost as if the line is continuing to go down.

And yet she hears that the favor of the Lord has come again to the people of Israel. It’s what it says there in verse 6:

6 When Naomi heard in Moab that the Lord had come to the aid of his people by providing food for them…

She decides to go back—to return. She hears about the favor of the Lord back in Israel and she decides that, no matter what, she needs to be in the favor of the Lord. Even though she says things like, “It’s the Lord that has done this to me…The Lord has given me bitterness…The Lord has afflicted me;” she still says, “My hope is in the Lord.” She had some pretty deep theology.

We know what was going on in the beginning here. And I’ve told you, alluded to, we know what’s going to happen in the end,  What happens in the end is that God redeems the time of the Judges by giving us a picture as to what he was doing in the midst of this horrible time in Israel’s history—this great redemption that was taking place in the Judges time. He erases the famine somehow. We don’t know the details or the specifics, but we know that in Moab, in the land that is outside of where God is, even there, people were hearing about the wondrous aid that the Lord has brought to the people of Israel. It must have been pretty unique and miraculous. He erases the famine. 

And then he plants the seeds of Bethlehem’s glory. All of us who know the Bible, we know that when you say the word Bethlehem at this point you say it with so much delight and joy. Because Bethlehem is not only the place where the first two kings of Israel were born, including the greatest king, David was born in Bethlehem, the great-grandson of Ruth and Boaz that we get to meet their story here. Not only that, but you continue down that line and Jesus Christ, the Savior of the World, God himself in the form of human flesh was born in Bethlehem. There will be no more sorrow in Bethlehem Ephrathah when the Lord is done with her. Even the town of Bethlehem has a great redemption story.

And then you go on. God plants a seed for the exaltation of Judah’s lineage. Judah’s lineage—so sordid and sad, so bizarre and bleak—and yet, if you continue down that line, all of a sudden you have Jesus. The Lion of the tribe of Judah is what he’s called in the Book of Revelation. 

God loves to rewrite history. The riches of our God are so much deeper than we could ever know. And not only that, but God also plants the seeds of Moab’s redemption. Moab? Illegitimate! Incestuous! Enemies of the people of God to the point where they couldn’t beat Israel miliatarily, so they decided to get all their women dressed up and send them into Israel to seduce them away from their God—and it worked. Moab? Moab, not only having a nice story, a nice part of the Scripture. Ruth is the only book of the Bible in the Old Testament that’s named someone that’s not an Israelite. It’s bizarre. It’s crazy.

Not only that, not only, “Oh, look. God does love the stranger. God does love people who are outside of here. We’ve got a nice little Hallmark, Chicken Soup for the Soul story about it.” No, but Ruth, who is a Moabitess, gets to know and experience the wonders and riches of the God of Israel in her own life, but she also becomes part of the most important family line to the people of Israel, and ultimately to the people of God. Because her great-grandson is the greatest king of Israel, King David. And her great- great- great- great- great- great- great- (I don’t even know how any greats) grandson is Jesus. She is in the Messianic line of Christ himself. 

Who is this God that would look back and see all the sordid, sad history, all the wrong that has been done, and take this one woman who decides on this one day—“Naomi, I want your people to be my people and your God to be my God. I’ve heard you talk about the favor of this God. I’ve heard you talk about this God of Israel. I’ve seen your life, and the way that you’ve loved me and my sister-in-law, the way that you grieved during the loss of your husband and your children. And whoever this God is that is your rock, that is the one in whom you put your trust—it’s so beautiful, it’s so powerful—I want that. I want that.”

And in just a moment’s decision, and then a life following in the footsteps of that decision, she gets to know the riches of God, the riches of his love. And what’s crazy is Ruth had no idea, by the time she died, the fullness of God’s love and riches that he was doing in her life. It’s like all those famous painters, once they die their stuff sells for millions of dollars. But for Ruth, she got to know and enjoy and experience the wonder and the beauty of God in her life, no doubt. And we’re going to read that story. But she had no idea, there’s no way she could have imagined the depths and the riches of redemption that was going to be done in her and through her for thousands and thousands of generations to come.

This is our God. And this is what God wants to do with you. He wants to lavish you with his unbelievable redeeming love. He can take everything sad and make it come untrue. That is the gospel. That is the power that Jesus Christ received as he died for us on a cross.

This is what I wrote in conclusion and I think it just kind of wraps it up for us:

This is our God, the Author and Perfecter of our faith. Do you have hard times or heart breaks? God can re-write that. God can resurrect that. God can and is willing—he’s proven it over and over again—to redeem that. Make him your God. Make his people your people. Make your stuff his stuff, your time his time, your plan his plan, your burden his burden—and you will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. And you will be rewarded beyond what you could ever imagine in this life and in the life to come.

Once again we have before us a decision. Are you going to put everything you haven his hands? Are you going to trust in the Lord with all your heart, lean not on your own understanding, but in all your ways—good times and bad times—acknowledge him? Because the promise is that if you do, he will make your path straight. 

The Lord says, “I know the plans I have for you—Israel, Ruth, Living Streams people—they are plans to prosper you, to bring you a future, a hope beyond all that you could ask or imagine.” It may not be what you want, but there will be a time when you look back and you say, “That’s what I needed. I’m so glad that’s what I got.”

Ruth is in heaven rejoicing, enjoying the wonders and the riches of God. She got to see the full story, not in her life, she just got to see a chapter. We all have that choice today. Who are you going to make your God? You? Are you doing a good job of being God of your life? Your husband or wife? Your friends? Today would be a great day, if you haven’t made Jesus the Lord of your life and committed your life to him, today would be a great day to take that step. 

Or if you’ve been in Moab for a while and you’re hearing once again of the favors of the Lord in Israel. Today would be a good day to come back. It’s easy to remember because it’s Super Bowl Sunday. You could always be like, “Oh yeah, Super Bowl Sunday, that’s when I did it.” 

And because the day you say “yes” to Jesus is the day Jesus comes and begins to author and rewrite the history of your life.  

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©️2019 Living Streams Church
7000 N Central Avenue ∙ Phoenix AZ 85020 ∙ 602-957-7500 ∙ https://www.livingstreams.org

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.