Sermon Tone Analysis

Welcome

I want to welcome you tonight.

Why don’t start our night by asking the Lord to be with us.

Pray

Tonight I want to take a few moments to reflect on our message from Sunday.

If you weren’t with us Sunday, we talked about Christmas being a season of Trust.

A season where we are reminded if we want to walk in the promises of God, then we have to be willing to trust that God will be true to His Word.

The question then is, "How do we trust Him?”

Well, first, we have to remember that He is the God of the crazy impossible.

That there is nothing impossible for God.

The virgin birth reminds us of that.

And the truth is, if God can cause a virgin to be with child, then he can do anything:

He can heal a broken marriage.

He deliver somebody from substance abuse.

He can heal a broken body.

He can provide financially.

He can save your prodigal son or daughter.

He can heal the rift in a friendship.

The fact of the matter is, there is nothing that is impossible for God.

So, in order to trust God, it begins by believing He can handle the crazy impossible.

Second, we have to be willing to abandon our fear and embrace our faith.

Like Mary and Joseph, we have to abandon the fear of what others might say or think, and we have to walk into our faith, believing that God will accomplish the crazy impossible.

Because the truth is, when you begin to believe in the crazy impossible, there are going to be people in your life that think you’re crazy.

People who think your being foolish.

And the temptation will be to listen to them.

The temptation will be to shy away from your faith.

The temptation will be to stop believing that God is the God of the crazy impossible.

But in that moment, like Mary and Joseph, we have to hold onto our assurances and continue to trust that God will be true to His Word.

But if I’m being honest with you, even if you can overcome that temptation, the temptation won’t stop there.

Because while God is the God of the crazy impossible, and even if we can set our fear aside and embrace our faith, there are going to be moments when we doubt God’s promises.

Moments when we question if we can trust God to be true to His promises.

Now, you might be thinking, “Well that doesn’t sound very encouraging pastor.

What do you mean there will be moments when I doubt God’s promises?

I mean if I really believe God is the God of the crazy impossible, and if I can overcome the fear of what others might think or say, then why would I doubt God?”

You’ll doubt Him because while God is the God of the crazy impossible, God doesn’t always do the impossible in the way or in the timeframe we’d like Him to.

And herein lies the challenge for many Christians, who unfortunately want God to work like a microwave, when God typically works like a crock pot.

The truth is, God has His way and His timing for accomplishing His promises.

I mean think about it.

When God made the promise to redeem mankind in , that promise didn’t come to fruition the next day, the next week, or even the next year.

That promise didn’t come to fruition for thousands of years.

And the reality is, the OT saints from Abraham, to Moses, to David, to the prophets, all died never seeing the promise fulfilled.

The writer of Hebrews reminds us of that fact.

Listen to how he puts it:

The writer says all those saints died having never seen the promise of fulfilled.

All they could do was look at it from afar, believing that one day God would make good on the promise.

The writer says all those saints died having never seen the promise of fulfilled.

All they could do was look at from afar, believing that one day God would make good on the promise.

But not only that, they understood that even if it didn’t happen in their life time, that was ok.

Because they weren’t living for this life, they were living for the next.

They were looking forward to the end of the promise.

They were looking forward to the city that God had prepared for them in heaven.

But not only that, they understood that even if it didn’t happen in their life time, that was ok.

Because they weren’t living for this life, they were living for the next.

They were looking forward to the end of the promise.

They were looking forward to the city that God had prepared for them in heaven.

You see, that’s the challenge you and I face.

In our microwave culture we want and expect God to make good on His promises in our time and in our way.

In fact, I don’t think it’s probably too far from the truth to say, that in all of Biblical history, believers today are more demanding and impatient than believers of any other time period when it comes to the promises of God.

We want what we want now, and if we don’t get it, then we get frustrated, we get angry, and we lose faith in God’s promises.

We lose faith when our spouse is unfaithful, and the promise of a healthy Christian marriage goes out the window.

We want God to heal our marriage in the way we want.

We lose faith when instead of healing our loved one, they die.

We want God to heal our body now.

We lose faith when what we know God can do doesn’t happen in the way or in the timing we think it should.

And in that moment we question God.

We question His promises.

And we question our faith.

You see, what we’ve forgotten, is that God is the God of the impossible.

We forget that God can still fulfill His promises through a troubled or broken marriage.

Denise and I are living proof of that.

Because don’t think for one minute Denise or I wanted to go through the challenges or struggles we faced as a young married couple.

But God used that trouble, and he used those circumstances to accomplish His promise that one day I would be in the ministry.

It just didn’t happen in the timing or way I though it would.

We want God to

What we've forgotten, is while God can heal, He may not heal your loved one on this side of heaven, but instead He fully restores them on the other side.

What we’ve forgotten is even in the middle of a nasty divorce, God can accomplish His promise,

You see, what we’ve forgotten is that God’s promises don’t come in microwave packages that we get to set the timer on.

God’s promises stretch throughout time and history.

God’s promises aren’t always fulfilled in a lifetime.

And the reality is, there may be promises you feel God has made to you or that you’re holding on to, that you’ll never see fulfilled on this side of heaven or in the way you thought they’d be.

The truth is, there may be promises he fulfills in your kids that you’ll never see.

There may be promises that could only be fulfilled if your love done died.

There may be promises that couldn’t have happened had your spouse not left you.

And I know when I say that, that bothers some of you.

That concerns some of you.

But here’s the reality, God doesn’t work on our time schedule or according to our ideal desires.

God fulfills His promises in His timing and in His way.

And like it or not, like the OT saints, we have to put our trust in that and not lose faith.

But here’s the reality, God doesn’t work on our time schedule or according to our ideal desire.

So, a great question would be, “How do we do that?”

To be honest, it’s not easy, because to a large degree it requires not only faith and trust, but patience.

Patience to believe that God will make good on His promise in His time.

But to help us, what I’d like to do tonight is at least give us some pitfalls to avoid.

Pitfalls when it comes to God’s promises that sometimes cause us to lose our faith footing.

And to do that, we are going to look at a promise that was made to a man named David.

A promise that didn’t happen immediately.

A promise that took years to fulfill.

A promise that had David not avoided certain pitfalls, may have not come to fruition at all.

The promise is found in .

And it’s in this passage that a young teenage boy named David is selected and anointed to be the next king of Israel.