Sermons About Barley
Where You Go, I Will Go Part 4
At Sovereign King, we have spent the past month discussing the promise that God is at work in this world and in our lives whether or not that work is always visible. A lot of the time, we have no idea where things are going or what God has planned. Because of that, the call of going where God takes us leads to a life of humility, trust, and patience. For example, we've followed Naomi from fleeing Israel during a famine through losing her husband and two sons to her return to Israel with daughter in law, Ruth to her expressed anger at feeling abandoned by God. We've followed Ruth from being a pagan, Moabite to becoming a widow herself to leaving behind her family and culture to professing faith in Jehovah God to working in the welfare fields so she and Naomi can eat to catching the eye of Boaz in whose field she works. Many of us have stories like that where we start in one place in life but wind up in another. Rarely are we able to chart out our life from point A to B and if we do decide where we want to be and wind up there, rarely is the road the one we thought it would be. In our church alone, we have folks who started out as social workers who are now training to be librarians. We have folks who were in the interior design field who now work at hospitals. We have folks who were homeless who are now headed to the military. We have folks who were school teachers who are now...pastors. We have folks who thought they would never get married who have are now happily married, and we have folks who thought they would never have kids but now they do. We may or may not like where we have ended up in life, but the big question all along has been and needs to be, "Can you rise up and call God good and blessed no matter the circumstance?" I mentioned a few weeks ago that God does have a purpose and a plan for everything, but it is important for us to remember that His purpose and a plan is just that…His. And we should think about that at times other than just when things don't go our way. We often hijack our own tribulations with the expectation that God is going to bring about some blessing other than our knowing Jesus better as if knowing Jesus better was not enough. I'm reminded of a conference that I attended a few months ago where one speaker said that failure was God's means of leading us to success. Then the following speaker stood up and said, "Only in America would a Christian say that failure was God's means of bringing you success. When it is all said you and done, you might just fail and all you will have is Jesus. The big question is…is Jesus enough?" Though the book of Ruth seems to be a million miles away from Jesus, I think that is a fair question to ask as we prepare to close this study. So this Sunday at Sovereign King Church, our Big Picture Question is this: Big Picture Question: No matter the consequence, whether good or bad, rich or poor, sickness or health, dreams fulfilled or dreams deferred, is Jesus alone enough for you?
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Where You Go, I Will Go Part 3
***NOTE*** Because of a digital recording glitch, the last ten minutes or so of the sermon were lost in the audio recording. I've spent the last month and half studying prayer, and it has been the most productive and effective study in my entire Christian walk. I can that without any sense of hyperbole. You might ask, "How does one study prayer?" and the answer comes in different forms depending upon whom you ask. - Some would do a concordance study of every instance of the word "pray" or "prayer" in the Bible. - Some would do a study of the Psalms. - Some would read books like "Prayer by E.M. Bounds or "Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home" by Richard Foster All of these are good plans, and I think you could learn a lot by doing them. I however followed the example of a good friend who just….prayed. Now, I've written my prayers out in journals for years because closing my eyes means going to sleep, so with a few helps, I have journaled through the various petitions of the Lord's Prayer now for about a month and a half, and I think I've learned as much about myself as I have about God. I've learned that one of two things happen when you prayer continually about a desire: you either grow comfortable with God's plan and His timing or you grow discontent and bitter with it. This contentment or bitterness of course rises out of whether or not you think God is giving you what you really think is best. I guess a good question to ask would be, "What happens to the heart when you ask God for something for 40 straight days and nothing seems to happen?" Let's be honest. Praying for 40 days in a row may seem like a pretty long time in terms of discipline and passion, but 40 days in a row ain't nothing in light of eternity and how God works His plan. Don't get me wrong. I would love to hear from any of you folks online or the folks at Sovereign King that you are experiencing the joy of a disciplined, prolonged time over prayer over the last 40 days. It is just that none of us have any right to get too proud of ourselves because we got 40 days closer to obeying I Thessalonians 5:17 that says, "Pray without ceasing." We have to remember. God is not impressed with our obedience. It is what He expects from us. Yet still, what happens to the heart if we continue to pray for something and we feel that those prayers are going either unheard or ignored? You know there is a story about how Augustine came to faith. If you read his book "Confessions" you find that Augustine's mother Monica was a godly woman who prayed for her very rebellious son. In fact, at one point, she kicked him out of the house he was so rebellious. Day and night, Monica prayed and cried that Augustine would repent of his sins and profess faith in Jesus Christ. After praying and praying and crying and crying, Monica sought the wisdom of a local bishop. His response was that she should be consoled because the son of so many tears could not be lost to Christ. Of course, years later, Augustine finally professed faith in Christ and became an incredible early church father articulating great doctrines for the church. That story ends well, but it doesn't always. I wish we could say with that Bishop that enough perseverance and enough tears could change God's mind, but the God of the universe doesn't have a beaker full of your tears where He measures your sincerity. He is not waiting for you to hit some unknown amount of sorrow before He relents. No, the promise of answered prayer comes in 1 John 5:14-15 "And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. 15 And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him." Pray the will of God and God answers our requests. But the problem is, outside of the commands of scripture, we don't know the will of God which leaves us petitioning and waiting. As we approach Ruth Chapter 3 this week, we are going to see Ruth and Naomi have high and big hopes for what God might do. They do their part by obeying and keeping to God's word, but along the way, they too have to wait and see what God will do. So as we approach the scriptures this week at Sovereign King, we hope to answer one Big Picture Question. Big Picture Question: Knowing that all of God's decrees and desires come to pass, what is the proper posture of the believer while they wait?
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God at Work
GK Chesterton once said that there are two types of people in this world: those that think the wind causes the trees to move and those that think the trees cause the wind to blow. Chesterton was criticizing people who are oblivious to forces other than themselves in this world. He was criticizing the myopic, tiny world that most people live in which reduces each person to their own god and the world to their own little playground. You know these folks and at times you may be that person yourself: - This is when you take full credit for your accomplishments. - You describe yourself as a self-made man or women - You never get around to thanking God for the way He blesses you. - You never ask God for help. - You always assume you are the smartest person in the room and try to prove it - In some ways, being a Christian makes you feel morally and intellectually superior and that gives you a thrill. Chesterton's observation is akin to the person who never makes mention or thought of God until things in this world do not go there way. Unfortunately, so much of Christianity reduces God to a self-help guru who promises take our lives free of care. Has God done that in the past? Yes, He has kept His people free of sickness at times and He has blessed His people immeasurably with wealth at times. But there are not promises in Scripture that God intends a life free of pain and sorrow for His children. You may not believe in the health and wealth theology but ask yourself what your affection for God is like in difficult times. If your affection for God rises when life is good and dims when life is bad, you have more in common with the health and wealth folks than you think. Reducing scripture to such thinking as "God always intends richness and health for His people" makes God our handmaid, and the God of the Universe is no one's Handmaid. Chesterton's observation is insightful in many ways especially if we consider what we talked about last week at Sovereign King. After examining Ruth 1, we walked away with a picture of God not merely as the reporter of stories in the Bible. Instead, we see that God presents Himself as the author of all circumstances. He guides and directs our steps, and He is the one who ordains the good and the calamity of life. He does all things for one reason: His glory. This is a hard truth to consider. But folks are either one or the other from the Chesterton's quote. People will either live their lives with such entitlement, such manifest destiny, such arrogant pride really, they think they move the trees. They feel that God has no say or play in their world so they live and die, rise and fall by their own efforts and talents. Or people can live with the reality that God has called us to live and work faithfully according to His commandments while we know that as Job 23 says, it is His decrees and desires that are accomplished and not ours. The question is, which one practically are you living as? I'm sure everyone here that professes Jesus Christ as their Savior would say, "God moves the trees. God moves my life. I'm not arrogant enough to think I'm the god of my life." But when you make life decisions without seeking God's wisdom, when you neglect Scriptural wisdom day in and day out, when you outwardly disobey commandments that you know God has given to guide and protect His children, how functionally different are you than those that think they move the trees? This week at Sovereign King, we will return to the book of Ruth, and we will ask our big picture question: Big Picture Question: God is no less active in our lives when He works behind the scenes, so what steps are necessary for you to be aware of His activity and how would that awareness change your life?
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Where You Go I Will Go Part 1
Typically, if you have faith in God, when things go well, you want to thank Him. You say, "Thank you God for giving me this raise," or "Thank you God for letting that officer not give me a ticket." But when things go poorly, well that's a different story. We might yell at God, "Why did you cause this to happen?" We might yell, "Why didn't you stop this?" Maybe we blame ourselves for making a mistake. Maybe we blame someone else or some impersonal force in the universe. The million dollar question though is, "Can you rise up and call God blessed and thank Him for each and every circumstance in your life whether good or bad?" If you feel like God is good and just and not only in control but actually decreed that your circumstances will happen, it is possible. If you feel like God is not in control and does not decree all the circumstances that will happen you either get mad that He didn't do something or you are left to mumble catch phrases like, "Well God has a purpose and plan in everything." Now, I believe scripture speaks to God having a purpose and plan in everything, however, I'll tell you this though. If God did not ordain and decree all things to happen, saying He has a purpose and a plan reduces Him to a cosmic janitor that runs around and cleans up our messes. The book of Job offers a lot of insight into the way that God interacts with us and sums it up well in Job 23:13 "But God is unchangeable, and who can turn him back? What He desires and decrees, that he does." God is not frustrated or restrained by anything much less weak creatures like us. God does have a purpose and plan for everything: His and only His. So amid the most difficult or even the most joyous of circumstances, we need to ask ourselves this Big Picture Question: No matter the circumstance or condition of life, can you rise up and call God "blessed" and "good"?
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