The Story - Chapter 21

The Bible begins by talking about the power of God's words. He said, Let there be light, and there was light. And he said, Let there be water, and there's water. The power of God to simply say a word, and what he thought in his mind would occur, is beyond anything that we can do. The Bible describes the power of God's words as a power to be able to change not only physical world around us, but all the world around us. He describes it as a power to change the course of a person's life, the nature of a person's character, the condition of their mind and heart to be changed. God's word has great power, power to do things above and beyond anything that human beings can do for each other or for themselves. You read the story of the scriptures in the Old Testament, you see the power of God's instruction to the people of Israel. He made a promise to them. They had been rebellious against God. He told them exactly what they ought to do, and they did that for a little while, and then they faded away and refused to do it, and over and over again this process took place. Finally, God said to the end of this, No longer am I going to be patient with you. I've decided that the nation I've built I'm going to destroy. The city of Jerusalem I'm going to destroy. The temple I'm going to destroy. Everything that I've made is now coming to an end. And then he gave them a word of hope, a promise that this would not be forever, but only for a period of time, for 70 years. And in Jeremiah, chapter 25, verses 8 through 11, he said, Therefore, the Lord Almighty says this, Because you have not listened to my words, I will summon all the people of the north and my servant Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, declares the Lord, and I will bring them against this land and its inhabitants, against all the surrounding nations. I will completely destroy them and make them an object of horror and scorn and an everlasting ruin. I will banish from them the sounds of joy and gladness, the voice of the bride and the bridegroom, the sound of millstones, and of the light of the lamp. The whole country will be a desolate wasteland, and these nations will serve the king of Babylon for 70 years. The word of God spoken to them, and that's exactly what took place. They resisted as much as they could the king Nebuchadnezzar, but he overran their city, overran their country, and took them all prisoners. But he gave them one word of hope. In 70 years, he said, this exile will be over, and the people who've gone there will be able to return and restore their city and their nation as it was. Why is it that this story doesn't end exactly the way it was promised here? 70 years, the exiles will return. Now when you read that, you think, OK, all of those people carried away in their families, then in 70 years, the whole bunch of them will be carried back, they'll restore the city of Jerusalem, they'll restore the temple. But that wasn't the way it was. In the beginning, the first of the group of people did come back and return in 70 years. In that amount of time, they returned. But when they got back to the city of Jerusalem and they saw the temple and they saw the city and the condition it was in, they were overwhelmed with the circumstances. They started trying to rebuild everything, the temple, the city of Jerusalem, but in the middle of all that, they became more concerned about their own homes and the wreck that Jerusalem and the temple was under overwhelmed them, and they stopped and they started building their homes, finishing their homes, making everything that they wanted fall into place until the prophet had to come again and say to them, you have misunderstood what God wants for you. Haggai came, the prophet, and spoke to the people of Israel telling them that God wanted them to do more than simply build their own houses. His temple was lying in ruins while they were finishing their houses and making them very luxurious. And when he came with this word, you must resume what takes place, the people heard the word, they believed it would take place, and they again resumed the effort. The third group of exiles that returned found that the city of Jerusalem had not been rebuilt. The temple had been, but the city of Jerusalem had not been. And when they came, they saw the walls around in ruins, and they realized this was the responsibility they had, and they began to do the job to finish it. So what took place was the finalization of God's promise, in 70 years you will return. Everything that took place had to take place over a longer period of time, because what happened to each of those groups that came back? The first group, they became overwhelmed with the task, and so they quit. The second group that came, they saw some houses built, but they looked at the temple and said this is in ruins, and they became enthused to do something about the temple, and they rebuilt it. Then they looked around and saw the walls of Jerusalem all in disarray, piles of rubble around, and they were so overwhelmed, they said we can't do this anymore. And then a third wave came. They saw the temple, they saw the houses, but the walls were in disarray, and they said we can do this job. It took three different times for the promise God made to be fulfilled. One of the things you discover about the words of God to us, is that oftentimes the word of God cannot be fulfilled in our lives because we do the very same things the people of Israel did. We get started with what God has, he gives us confidence that he's going to help us out of a circumstance, or through a circumstance, or to solve a problem, and we begin to work at it, and we work at it, and we work at it, and then we look around and we see the process is so overwhelming to us, we just stop before God has an opportunity to complete the task through us. What do we do? We listen not to the words of the promise of God, but we listen to our own words. God's word is powerful. Whenever God started to create the world and he said, I want to make the sea light, and he thought of light, and all the natural order did whatever it needed to do to make light. He said, I want to make the stars and the earth and all these things, and when he thought of that, all the natural order began to form into the units that he wanted to be made. The natural order does not have the capacity to be discouraged. It just responds. Jesus and I are different. God says, I'm going to give you some help. You go to him with a problem, you say, this is what I need, and he says, here is the promise of my word. If you do what I tell you to do, this issue will be resolved. We start, we work at it, we expect something to happen just like that, it doesn't always, and then we hear in our own mind, I don't think this is going to happen. Maybe I misunderstood God, and suddenly our words cancel the words of God. The natural order has no capacity to do that. Only people with our reasoning mind made in the image of God have the capacity to doubt and fear that the very words of God will not be true for me. I know what the Bible says. I understand what the Bible says, but I'm not sure that God wants to do this for me. After all, look at the sin in my life. After all, look how difficult this problem is. After all, in my own mind, I may have misunderstood what the Bible says. So in our own doubt, we cancel the divine effort and authority of God. Now what you learn in the scriptures is that God never really gives up on his people. He brings again another word, and you can be in any kind of circumstance, and someone else can come along and say, you know what I think? I think we should do this, and suddenly you say, well that's what I thought too, and now you're ready to get at it again because the word of God has come to you, and you now accept it and believe it. Three times this happened to Israel before God was finally able to accomplish everything he wanted in their lives. He wanted them to understand what he was trying to do. In the second of these events where God brought the people of Israel back to work and try to finish the city of Jerusalem, the temple and the walls, the second and third of these, they faced another difficulty. In the middle of all this, the people around them began to say, if these people are successful in building the temple and building the city walls around them, they're going to be able to withstand anything that we do. So they began to be afraid of what the people of Israel would do if the temple was completed and the walls around the city were completed. And then they began to do things that would discourage them. They would say one time when they were building the walls, well, if a fox jumps on that wall they're building around the city, it's going to fall over. That's how sturdy it is. Others said things like, well, you know, if you try this, we're going to make sure that you'll never live to see it finished, threatened their lives. They tried to lure them away from the project with other things and tricks to be able to destroy and kill their leaders. What you'll discover sometimes is in the middle of all this, you will get afraid of the consequences of what God has asked you to do. Sometimes the voice of other people causes us to put aside the very promise of God. I know that a lot of times people begin to work in the church at a different job that God has given them. They start working. They see that things aren't necessarily working the way they thought they were. And they talk to other people and they say, yeah, I know it. This is not going to work. I don't believe this is going to take place. It seems like it's too big for us. I'm not sure we can do. All these words of doubt from other people cause folks to sit down and doubt the very words of God Himself. And sometimes you'll find your family and friends, whenever you start living your life in obedience to God, will find ways to bring doubt and fear to your own mind. If you go to church and you read all these things in the Bible, you're going to turn into some kind of weirdo. I remember a lady one time, it came Sunday morning, she came at the end of the service to say, I want to present my life to Christ and live in obedience to Him. And after the service was over, she said, I'm not sure what my husband is going to think about this. And she said, would you go home with me and talk to him? And so I did. And we sat down in the living room and I explained to him that she had said to God, I want to give my life to God and I want to live in obedience to Him and do the things the Bible says I should do. And when I finished, he said, well, do we need to get a divorce? Whenever you go home and your mate says that your new commitment to Christ might lead to the dissolution of your marriage, it causes you to stop and say, maybe this is the wrong choice. Sometimes your friends will see things that you're doing as a follower of Christ and they will see that it's drawing you away from them. Many people who come to present their lives to Christ and live in obedience to Him find that their friends that they used to have and be so close to are no longer interested in being close to them because your lifestyle and your language and your nature and your character just begins to change until suddenly they don't feel comfortable with you because they know that the things they are doing and you used to do with them, you don't do anymore and that they feel you're going to be judgmental on them. And so the words of our enemies ring in our minds and causes us to doubt whether or not this is really a good thing for us. I don't want to lose my friends. And a lady talked to me one time about a commitment of her life to Christ and I explained what it meant to give yourself to Him and say, God, I'm going to live in obedience to You and I'm going to, from this moment on in my life, do the things the Bible says I should do and that God wants me to do. And she said, when I finished, and this is how you get to heaven? And I said, well, yes, whenever you live in obedience to God, you do. She said, I don't want to do that. I said, why do you not want to do it? She said, well, I don't think my grandmother ever did that and I don't want to go where my grandmother's not going to be. The fear that comes to us because we're afraid that obedience to God will somehow or other make life worse for us, causes us to doubt and reject the power of God's Word in our lives. I will give you life in all of its fullness. That's what Jesus came to see. That's what He came to give to us. Life in all of its fullness. And the Word of God to give us life requires that we live in obedience to Him regardless of what happens around us. The people of Israel, as they came to settle in Jerusalem and rebuild the temple and the walls, they found that the enemies around them caused them to stop and doubt really whether or not God was going to do what He said He was going to do. And if He did, whether or not they really wanted it. And so they stopped. Because they listened to the words of their enemies more than they listened to the words of God. You see, that's what it means to have an idol. When you listen to the words and instructions either of your own mind or your enemies or your friends and they override the instructions of God, then you've allowed those people to take God's place in your life and you have made an idol or another God, a human being controlling your life as opposed to God controlling your life. The people of Israel found themselves listening to other people even over themselves. The other thing that happened to them was when they started doing the work that they were trying to accomplish, they found themselves listening not only to their own fears and the ideas of other people, but they just found themselves compromising. The very last book in the Old Testament, the book of Malachi, the temple is completed, the walls are around the city of Jerusalem, life is resumed as normal for the people who have returned and they're living the ordinary life. But Malachi comes to them and says, you have cheated God. You're not treating God correctly and properly. They were astonished at his message because they were going to the temple, they were doing the things that they were said to do, except they had begun to compromise. The core requirements of the Old Testament for sacrifice was that sacrifice had to be perfectly healthy, the best of the animals, like you're giving to God the very best that you have. What had happened to them was they thought, well, you know, I'm going to have to make a sacrifice at the temple. I've got a perfectly good animal over here that can make me a lot of money with its animal, with its making, having babies, and then I've got this animal over here that's bad that I may have to kill anyway. What if I go ahead and take this animal I'm going to have to kill and offer it as a sacrifice and then I won't be out two animals, I'll only be out one animal. I'm going to give God the sacrifice, I'm just going to make sure that I don't lose too much in the process. This is a compromise that they were making in their own mind. They were saying, I want to serve God, but I don't want to do anything that would be too costly to me. And so they compromised. The great problem for all of us when we start living for God and we understand what He wants from us is we begin to hear the things He requires and sometimes they're too costly. They take too much of our time. I mean, you get a job and you start working and they want you to work hard and be there on time and have all the hours set out for you and God asks you to do some things that require time and you have to decide, okay, what am I going to do? You have obligations of family, you have obligations for your work, you have obligations for the church and you try to put all that in there together. The same happens with your money. God gives you what you need to live on. You start looking at your expenses, you start looking at the things you enjoy doing, you start looking at all the things that are around you and you start trying to say, where can I cut? If I cut the payments I'm supposed to make, they'll repossess my stuff, I'll get bad credit. If I don't buy the things I need for my family, we can't eat and we can't live and we can't have a car. But if I cut the things that God tells me to give to Him, there won't be any repercussions. So we begin to compromise, thinking that we really don't have to do everything God tells us to do. That's what happened to the people in the story in Malachi. If you had asked them if they believed in God, they would have said yes. If you asked them if they thought that the Bible was true, they would have said yes. If you asked them whether or not they went to church regularly, they would say yes. They went every week. They just made God's requirements sort of tailored to fit what they wanted to do instead of what God said they should do. You can live like that. They were living like that. But the prophet came with a word from God. He said, I will not tolerate this. Would you do this for any other person in your life? Would you say to the king, if you were bringing him a gift, I brought you this lame animal to give to you as a sign of my great love for you? He wouldn't do that. You think about it this way. If you had a job and they required you to be there from 8 to 5 and God says, I want you to worship me once a week with your people of God, would you take off from your job as much as you take off from the church responsibilities God's assigned to you? If you were working at a job, would you say, well, I have things come up with my family and friends I just need to take care of so I'm not going to come in for a few days. Would you do that? What God is simply saying to his people is, I want you to treat me as if I'm the most important person in your life. Give me the first, the best, not what's left over in your life. I think a lot of us, you know, when we come to follow Christ, we sort of make this plan. We plan our schedule based on what we have to do. And then the hours we have left over, we say, this is how much I can give to God. What does God want from us? He wants you to sit down with your calendar and say, what is it that God has asked me to do? He wants me to pray, so I'm going to set aside some time each day to pray and read the Bible. He's assigned me this responsibility in the life of my church, and so I'm going to set aside this time. That's God's. It's given and nothing encroaches on it. Then you can move to your job. Then you can move to your family. Then you can move to your hobbies. But you see what happens to us is we begin to be so overwhelmed with our own desires for these things that we begin to shave away at the things that we really don't love most. And that's what happened in the story of Malachi. And the prophet came saying, God is not going to overlook this. He sees by what you're doing that your love for him is not real. You may say you love me with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, but the reality is you don't. And when the prophet would come and talk to the people of Israel, there was two reactions they always gave. One of the reactions they gave was the reaction to say, well, we hear you, but that doesn't mean anything to us. Instead, we're going to do exactly what we want to do. But in the Bible, there were times in which the prophet came and spoke to the people of Israel, and they listened carefully, and they heard the word from God and believed it was actually God's word. In the book of Nehemiah, in what you were reading this week, the prophet came in chapter eight verses four, beginning with verse four. Ezra the scribe stood on a high wooden platform built for the occasion. Behind him on the right stood Mataniah, Shema, Ananiah, Uriah, Hilkiah, and Masiah. On the left were Petiah, Mishael, Malkijah, Hasem, Hashebad, Zechariah, and Meshallam. Ezra opened the book. All the people could see him because he was standing above them. As he opened it, the people stood up, not for the singing, but to read the word of God. Ezra praised the Lord, the great God, and all the people lifted their hands and responded, Amen, Amen. Then they bowed down and worshipped him with their faces on the ground. When Ezra came to read the law of God, the people had not been following it. They had not been following it because some of them in their own minds said it's not necessary to do this, it's too hard. Some of them were afraid to do it for the cost it would bring. Some of them had compromised, but when they stood and listened to the word of God, received it, and obeyed it, miraculous, powerful things took place. As you look at your own life, you have to ask whether or not you build your behavior on what you think is the right thing to do, on what you think is the logical thing to do, on what you think is comfortable for you, or do you build it on the word of God? God's word has the power to make everything out of nothing. He has the power to change your life, your mind, your habits, your direction. He has the power to change the people around you. He has the power if they refuse to change to lead you to people who will be with you, family, friends, the rest of your life. God's word has power, but it only has power if you listen to it and you obey it. It doesn't help if you sort of believe it. It doesn't help if you do some of it. It only helps if you say, God, I receive your word as the truth, and whatever you ask of me, I will begin as best I can to do what you tell me is right. The story of the Old Testament is a story of people over and over again who did the same thing. They came to God and said, God, how much we need you. Look at all the disasters around us. Look at all the hopelessness around us. If you will come and help us, we will do exactly what you want us to do. And then for one generation, it happened. And then the second generation began to either change their mind because they didn't like what God asked, join their neighbors and friends to act like them, or to compromise. And then disaster came again. I don't know how many times that happened in the Old Testament, but if you've read it, you know over and over and over again. And oftentimes when people start reading the Old Testament and they see this, they say, I don't understand why that happened. Why did they keep making the same mistakes? I don't know. You tell me. I promise you that everyone here at some time or other has said to God, okay, God, it's yours from now on out. And have felt the power of God in their life to change them, their attitude, their direction and their life. Only to discover down the road that they end up saying, what's wrong with my life? And maybe you've done that more than once. The secret that God has to your life is for you to say to him, my life is yours, no compromise, regardless of what people say. Even if I feel like it's not working, I will not quit. And when you see people like that in the Bible, and there's only one, Jesus, you can see that nothing in the world could stop him. That's why he said, I want you to come and follow me. I want you to be the person that nothing can stop you from being faithful to me. I don't want you to do it a little while and then quit, I don't want you to half do it and start, I don't want you to do it completely and then half do it, I want you to do it now and forever. And I will show you power that you've never, ever experienced before. Life in all of its fullness. You've seen in the Old Testament as you've read it, over and over again, people start, then one thing or another turns them aside. What you're going to see in Jesus' life in the New Testament is what happens when no one turns him aside. Now, I want to ask you, what do you want your life story to be? Start out great, loving God, doing great things, and falling by the wayside. Or do you want to see that finished life? The Word of God has the power to give it to you, but you have to listen to the Word of God and not to your own mind or your friends or your enemies or the culture around you. For your words will blot out the words of God to you, and then His power is blotted out too. Would you bow your heads, please, for a moment? Let me ask you if you've ever heard God's Word to you. Did He ever say to you, I want you to come and follow me, be my disciple? Would you think about that in your life, what it was like? How did it change you? Do you still have that passion for God? Can you still point in your life to the things that you're doing that make a difference in the Kingdom of God? If not, you're just reliving the story of Israel. Wait for the disaster to come. Listen to His Word. You never know what it's like to turn your life over to God and say, from now on, God, it's yours. Today is the day to do that. You do what He wants you to do. Maybe you know that He wants you to change some things in your life. That's His Word talking to you. That's His idea put in your mind. Let His Word control your life. I'm going to ask the pianist to play it. I want you simply to reflect, God, what do you want to say to me? Then I want you to decide what you're going to do about that. If you want someone to pray for you, I'll do that. There'll be others here at the front who will help us. If you want to share a promise that you're making with God, we'll be glad to listen as you make that promise to Him that this is the time that God talks to you. His Word is in your mind. Listen to it. Would you stand, please, for a moment to pray? This evening at 6 o'clock in the book of Romans, chapter 12, Paul talks about the consequences or results of a person who's committed themselves to live the way God's directed them. We just finished a section where he talks about the relationships we have with people. In chapter 13, then he talks about how Christians operate within the political world. So if you want to see your politics guided by God, this is the passage of Scripture that will help you with that. Father, we're thankful for all that you give us. We're thankful especially for your Word that is always reliable. Never has anyone taken your Word, followed it, and says it's wrong. We're thankful for the power your Word has to change us and the world around us. I want to pray for each person here today who's made a promise to you in the past or today, that they would see the importance of keeping that promise. I ask, Father, that you would guide us so that we've never compromised what we promised you, that no matter what happens in the future, we'd never be afraid to do what you tell us to do. And Father, help us never to get weary of doing what you've said is right, but believing that it's always the way of life. Dismiss us in a world of people who live differently than you, that we might be light to them, and that we might be love to them. In the name of Christ we pray, amen. ♪♪♪