Going Back to Better Than Normal (Week 3)
Going Back to Better Than Normal • Sermon • Submitted
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Welcome
Welcome
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Welcome again…
Worship
Worship
Transitional Prayer
Offering
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So good to be back...
A few things coming up…Pre-Quest, Kid’s Quest, Hi-Quest
ANNOUNCEMENT REGARDING RICK MILLS:
Over these past couple of months, we have had some changes in our leadership. In January, Rick took a sabbatical from church attendance and responsibilities to spend more time in focused prayer. During the COVID-19 crisis, Rick and Susan made the decision to move in a new direction and will no longer be serving at Emmanuel. They believe it will be a better fit to serve at another church. We support them in this decision and ask that you continue to pray for them and their family.
If you have any further questions you can come and speak with me afterwards.
TRANSITION:
I don’t know about you, but it is so good to be back worshipping with my brothers and sisters. Last week, when the worship team, staff, and board came for our service trial-run as we continued to stream live…we hit that first note, and it just felt so good to be back together worshipping in-person our Lord.
COVID-19: let me just say this about the pandemic season we just went through, are still in, and hopefully will continue to move through and out of…I AM SURE I DIDN’T GET EVERYTHING RIGHT. I am sure you didn’t get everything right. I had feelings, emotions, multiple sources giving us guidelines including our denominational leadership, to Gov. Lee, as well as our local mayors and health department. I know this has been a difficult season for so many. There is a such a wide spectrum of experiences over the past few months. Job security and finances. Health and family members. The stresses of uncertainty and navigating trusting the Lord and being His light through it all. Like you, I listened and responded. I listened to all these officials I mentioned, but I also listened to the Lord. I don’t say that to play the God-card with any of my decisions. I say that to let you know as I was listening for God’s voice, I made the best decisions I felt we could make at that moment with what I knew and had in front of me. I apologize if we didn’t see your hurt or pain. I apologize if we missed an opportunity to minister to you and your neighbors.
This was by far the most complicated season I have ever faced in leadership. Would you join me in continuing to pray for our leaders, show them support and empathy, and love our church family and community well? I am grateful for those that are here right now that give me the benefit of the doubt, trust me, and are willing to stand with me. I appreciate each and every one of you.
RACISM: Last week, I shared from Scripture as well as my heart in response to some things happening right now in our country. A few things I want to clarify:
I, by no means, want to create or cause any division.
I, by no means, want unity around the wrong things.
I, by no means, want us as individuals to return to normal, but allow the Lord to use this season to continue His redeeming process of transformation in our hearts, minds, and lives.
Our hearts should not be to offend, nor to appease. Let’s continue to show God’s love, value, and worth to all His creation.
This isn’t about a political party. This isn’t about my interpretation vs yours. The only thing that is going to change things is true repentance and a heart of stone being replaced with a heart of flesh—regeneration, new birth. This is my prayer for all of us. May God’s Kingdom come to earth as it is in Heaven. Amen!?!?!
TRANSITION:
Let’s get into God’s Word together this morning.
PRAY
I plan to wrap up our series, Going Back to Better Than Normal today, and I want us to visit the passage of Scripture that actually planted this idea and thought in my mind to begin with. So, here we are, week 3, and I am finally getting to my thesis Scripture.
Our first week (and if you missed it visit our Podcast page on our website, you can find a link to the service video on YouTube from 2 weeks ago), we looked at the Church in Laodicea. We looked at not being lukewarm, where we apathetically serve no purpose or usefulness. Instead, the Lord wants us to serve our created purpose, provide use, which both hot and cold water from the surrounding areas did. They were blind to their true condition, and the Lord, through His love, brought correction through this letter.
The response of the Laodicean church was what defined the difference between being spit out or receiving God’s correction to serve His purposes.
Week 2 in our series was last week (and I encourage you to go to our Facebook page and listen to our sermon from last week if you missed it). I talked about God’s image in all of humanity, how we love the other (those that are different than us), God’s call to act justly, love mercy, and walk with Him humbly.
Again, I tried to be cautious in my words why sharing thoughts that would cause us to wrestle with another’s perspective or experience. All of these things need to be bathed in prayer and repentance.
This week, let’s land this as we look at God’s work in setting His people free.
Numbers chapter 14.
As you are turning there, I want to set the stage for what has just happened. Do you remember the 12 spies that were sent into the Promised Land to bring a report of the land they were to enter. These 12 men were leaders among their tribes, and Moses has them selected with these instructions:
17 When Moses sent them to explore Canaan, he said, “Go up through the Negev and on into the hill country.
18 See what the land is like and whether the people who live there are strong or weak, few or many.
19 What kind of land do they live in? Is it good or bad? What kind of towns do they live in? Are they unwalled or fortified?
20 How is the soil? Is it fertile or poor? Are there trees in it or not? Do your best to bring back some of the fruit of the land.” (It was the season for the first ripe grapes.)
Listen to this commentary on this passage:
The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Volume 2: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers c. The Twelve Spies and the Mixed Report (13:1–33)
We seem to be at a new beginning when we enter this chapter. The vindication of Moses as the servant of the Lord has been stunning and unforgettable. The presence of the people in the vastness of their numbers here on the plateau of Paran is undeniable. The desire of the people to enter the Land of Promise is unquestionable. The faithfulness of the Lord to his promise and his commitment to his people are sure and unalterable. Given all the experiences that the people have gone through in the previous months of preparation and journey, at last—at long last—it was time to claim God’s word, to believe in his power, to march in his name, and to enter his land.
Now the 12 leaders are getting ready for their reconnaissance mission. (Mission Impossible Music) The had a practical plan to inform them on what they were headed towards. Let’s see what happens.
The record of their journey doesn’t clue you in to what they are about to report to Moses and the Israelite leadership. They went the route they planned. Did their spying. Cut their grapes, and are now back to report what they have seen and heard.
26 They came back to Moses and Aaron and the whole Israelite community at Kadesh in the Desert of Paran. There they reported to them and to the whole assembly and showed them the fruit of the land.
27 They gave Moses this account: “We went into the land to which you sent us, and it does flow with milk and honey! Here is its fruit.
28 But the people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large. We even saw descendants of Anak there.
29 The Amalekites live in the Negev; the Hittites, Jebusites and Amorites live in the hill country; and the Canaanites live near the sea and along the Jordan.”
Their report of what they actually saw was limited to seeing with natural sight. They couldn’t see with eyes of faith where God was leading them. They weren’t in denial (that’s for sure), but they weren’t in their destiny either. Just because you are quoting facts doesn’t mean you are walking in faith. God’s truth always trumps tactic reports.
Listen to these next verses:
30 Then Caleb silenced the people before Moses and said, “We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it.”
31 But the men who had gone up with him said, “We can’t attack those people; they are stronger than we are.”
32 And they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored. They said, “The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size.
33 We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.”
Caleb had to quiet the people down. They were upset about what they just heard. Caleb’s vision of God’s faithfulness and promises couldn’t be seen by the rest of the Israelites because they had on a lens of defeat. The poison the people drank from limited them from being able to recount God’s faithfulness and believe for their future.
Numbers chapter 14 starts with the Israelite community raising their voices and weeping loudly.
1 That night all the members of the community raised their voices and wept aloud.
2 All the Israelites grumbled against Moses and Aaron, and the whole assembly said to them, “If only we had died in Egypt! Or in this wilderness!
3 Why is the Lord bringing us to this land only to let us fall by the sword? Our wives and children will be taken as plunder. Wouldn’t it be better for us to go back to Egypt?”
4 And they said to each other, “We should choose a leader and go back to Egypt.”
The vision of defeat causes you to believe you are better off in slavery than fighting and moving towards your freedom.
The vision of defeat causes you to default to grumbling and complaining, shifting blame to others, and deflecting to consider leadership too poor because you don’t want to move towards your wholeness and where God has destined you.
The idea of the Promise Land become a pit, a trap. Why is the Lord doing this to us? We blame leadership. We blame God.
The vision of defeat defaults to worse case scenarios that are beyond current realities. Defeat mentality feeds fear and suppresses faith and hope. It refused to move forward because what we had was more comfortable because it was more familiar. I knew what I was getting in my bondage and slavery. I knew what to expect from my Egypt masters. These are the lies the enemy feeds us with a bound past. We know that things got worse for the Israelites. Their quotas changed. They had to work longer and harder. They were not treated like anyone else around them, and we give in to spiritual apathy, shortsighted, and with a venere over our bondage can’t see the forest for the trees (OR IN THIS CASE OUR FREEDOM FOR THE CHANGE). When we give in to going back to our old life because we can’t imagine a better one actually happening for us…then we have to repent, change our thinking, and trust God and His good promises.
Philippians chapter 2 builds on what we talked about last week in how we live as Christ to prefer, love and serve others before ourselves, placing their interest ahead of our own. This is in marriage, friendship, family, work…you name it. This principle has ramifications in all our dealings with OTHERS.
But Paul goes on in chapter 2 that this is working out your salvation, and to do so without grumbling or arguing, so that ...
14 Do everything without grumbling or arguing,
15 so that you may become blameless and pure, “children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.” Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky
16 as you hold firmly to the word of life. And then I will be able to boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labor in vain.
17 But even if I am being poured out like a drink offering on the sacrifice and service coming from your faith, I am glad and rejoice with all of you.
18 So you too should be glad and rejoice with me.
Paul continues this same line of thoughts, bringing up the history of Israel that we are reading about this morning in Numbers 13 and 14 by saying:
1 For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea.
2 They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.
3 They all ate the same spiritual food
4 and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ.
5 Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them; their bodies were scattered in the wilderness.
Verse 6 is what tells us why these stories in the Old Testament were recorded for us, and Paul expounds briefly.
6 Now these things occurred as examples to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did.
vs. 7 Do not be idolaters...
vs. 8 Do not have inappropriate relations…(Kid’s Quest is in the house)...
vs. 9 Do not test Christ...
vs. 10 Do not grumble...
11 These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the culmination of the ages has come.
The annuals of history are being recorded for us so that we do not repeat them. Unfortunately for Israel and ourselves, we tend to fall into the same cycles. Cycles that hold us back form entering into what God has for us. Entering into something new, into change that creates a sense of uncertainty, into fully dependent upon God to provide and return good on His promises.
George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Winston Churchill rephrased Santayana quote this way, “Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.”
Paul says I don’t want you to be ignorant. These things happens as examples to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things, written down as warnings to us.
The Israelites were discouraged, dismayed, felt hopeless. They felt that if they could just find a different leader that would take them back to the way things used to be, even if it was in slavery, even if it was in Egypt.
PERSONAL: Friends, we have to be cautious of who we follow. And these past few months, I have never had to walk through such stressful, uncertain, constantly changing weeks, days, hours, minutes. Just like you, there were some good moments and changes happening that I wanted to embrace, but I do not want that to be overshadowed by the questioning, criticism, political, ________ (you fill in the blank) of the agendas of our day. The enemy wants to rob us of something glorious, of something good. If we wait till we have all the facts about the virus or an unjust situation...
If we wait till we have the right words so we can post or email or dialogue…
Then we will either be too late or not do anything at all.
GRACE & HUMILITY
But we have to not only do everything in love, which looks different at times. I don’t believe Jesus flipped the tables out of hate or sinful anger. I don’t think He agitated the religious because of His non-politically correct stance on God’s Truth.
But with our fellow believers, brothers and sisters, the Lord is challenging me on how do we challenge, be challenged, dialogue, communicate, pray with and for, IN A WAY THAT EXEMPLIFIES CHRIST. How doe we walk in grace and humility towards others, while standing in solidarity, not being duped by political agendas, the spirit of this age, but stand with and for the Kingdom of God and His agenda ONLY?
These past few weeks have been the most challenging for A LOT of leaders. This past week has been one of my most challenging. From death threats to misunderstanding...
The people of Israel responded to their situation in this way...
4 And they said to each other, “We should choose a leader and go back to Egypt.”
We gotta get a new leader. We need one who will do what we want. Not rock the boat by taking us somewhere none of us have ever been. What is this guy thinking? He has been around the Egyptians too much? You know He grew up on Pharaoh’s house. He probably got some of that liberal Pharaoh thinking still inside him. He thinks we can do something that just ain’t going to happen. He gonna kill our wives and our kids. He’s crazy!
“WE GOT TO GET A NEW LEADER”. This is what they cried out for in the face of adversity. Oh, I didn’t plan to preach this, but I am just preaching the Scripture God gave me. You better read it.
RESPONSE: And here is the response of those leaders, Moses and Aaron fell facedown in front of the whole Israelite assembly.
5 Then Moses and Aaron fell facedown in front of the whole Israelite assembly gathered there.
This is going to be my response. Will you respond with me? We need the Lord. We need the Lord to unite us. We need the Lord to change our hearts. We need the Lord to hear our cries of repentance. We need the Lord to heal our land.
I am going to respond in prayer. Will you join me? I am placing a microphone up here that if you want to pray a corporate prayer you can come up front and do so. If you don’t fell comfortable grabbing the mic, just come up and pray out loud.
LET’S PRAY.