You Have to Step Up.

Introduction:

How To Be a Difference-Making Leader (Judges 4:4-9):

1. Identify the real Need . (Judges 4:6).
2. Identify the Person for the job. (Judges 4:6).
3. Motivate that person to action. (Judges 4:6-9).

Biblical Motivation 101:

1. Confront with God's Command . (Judges 4:6).
2. Strengthen with God's Promise . (Judges 4:7).
3. Encourage with your Presence . (Judges 4:9).

4. Develop and execute a clear Plan . (Judges 4:6-7).

Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!

• Audio Transcript

  00:00-00:03

  Open up your Bibles with me please to Judges chapter 4.

  00:04-00:08

  And if you do not have a Bible, there are Bibles in some of the seat backs in front of you.

  00:08-00:12

  And you can keep that. Consider that a gift from your friends at Harvest Bible Chapel.

  00:13-00:25

  While you're turning there, I'm going to ask if you would please to say a prayer for me, to be faithful to bring God's Word, and I will pray for you to be open to receive God's Word.

  00:26-00:26

  Let's pray.

  00:27-00:40

  And all of God's people said, "Amen." Many years ago, when I was heavily involved in prison ministry, we were actually living in downtown Butler, and one day a man showed up at my door.

  00:40-00:41

  And Mark, I know you know this man.

  00:41-00:44

  I'm not going to say his name, but you know exactly who I'm talking about.

  00:44-00:52

  This man showed up at my door that I met in prison, and he seemed a little winded, seemed a little exasperated.

  00:52-00:57

  And he's like, "Hey, hey, hey, Pastor Jeff." I'm like, how do you know I live here?

  00:57-00:59

  That's not important right now.

  00:59-01:01

  He's like, Pastor Jeff, I need your help.

  01:01-01:03

  I need your-- would you help me?

  01:03-01:04

  I just need your help.

  01:04-01:06

  But I'm like, sure, what can I do for you?

  01:07-01:12

  And he goes, look, my girlfriend lives in the apartments across the street.

  01:12-01:14

  And there was this big apartment building across the street from my house.

  01:15-01:16

  I said, oh, OK.

  01:16-01:20

  He goes, my girlfriend, her apartment's in that building across the street.

  01:20-01:22

  And I need to go over there.

  01:23-01:28

  but I think her boyfriend is in there waiting for me with a gun.

  01:29-01:31

  I'm like, where do I come in?

  01:32-01:34

  He goes, look, I don't need you to do anything.

  01:36-01:38

  I just need you to be a witness, OK?

  01:38-01:42

  I just need you to go with me and be a witness in case this guy does anything.

  01:43-01:47

  That way you're there and you can tell the police what happened.

  01:47-01:51

  And I said, Tim, you got the wrong guy.

  01:51-01:56

  I said, if you think there's a legitimate problem, you need to call the police.

  01:57-02:03

  But that's a story of a man who called on the wrong guy.

  02:03-02:05

  I was not the guy for that job.

  02:05-02:11

  And today, we're going to be looking at a leader who called on the right guy.

  02:12-02:16

  And the title of the message is, "You Have to Step Up." You have to step up.

  02:16-02:19

  Look at verses 1 through 3 here in-- where are we at?

  02:19-02:20

  Judges chapter 4.

  02:21-02:28

  It says, "And the people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the LORD after Ehud died." We talked about him last week.

  02:28-02:34

  "And the LORD sold them into the hand of Jabin king of Canaan who reigned in Hazor.

  02:34-02:43

  The commander of his army was Sisera who lived in Herosheth Hagoyim." Anybody here today from Herosheth Hagoyim?

  02:44-02:45

  Couple of you?

  02:45-02:46

  Welcome to Harvest today.

  02:47-02:49

  "Then the people of Israel cried out to the LORD for help.

  02:50-03:03

  For he," this is Sisera, "for he had 900 chariots of iron, and he oppressed the people of Israel cruelly for twenty years." Okay, we talked last week about the cycle that Israel goes through.

  03:03-03:18

  You know, sin, God brings another nation in, and Israel cries out, "Please, please God help us," and God raises up a judge who saves the day, and then Israel falls back into idolatry, and we see that that cycle starts again.

  03:18-03:20

  At this time, we're looking at 20 years.

  03:21-03:31

  For 20 years, these northern Israel tribes, they're oppressed, they're outmanned, and they're outgunned, and we're going to see that God chose not a warrior, He chose a woman.

  03:34-03:42

  Another very unlikely hero in the book of Judges, this woman was a prophetess and a judge.

  03:43-03:45

  Look at verses 4-9 with me, please.

  03:45-03:56

  It says, "Now Deborah, a prophetess," that means she spoke revelation from God, "the wife of Lippidoth was judging Israel at that time.

  03:56-04:06

  She used to sit under the palm of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel, and the hill country of Ephraim and the people of Israel came up to her for judgment.

  04:07-04:42

  She sent and summoned Barak, the son of Abinoam from Kadesh Naphtali, said to him, "Has not the Lord the God of Israel commanded you, 'Go, gather your men at Mount Tabor, taking ten thousand people from Naphtali and the people of Zebulun, and I will draw out Sisera, the general of Jabin's army, to meet you by the river Kishon with his chariots and his troops, and I will give him into your hand?'" Barak said to her, "If you will go with me, I will go.

  04:42-05:01

  But if you will not go with me, I will not go." And she said, "I will surely go with you, nevertheless, the road on which you are going will not lead to your glory, for the Lord will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman." You know, I used to think that she was talking about herself, and we're going to see here in a second she was not talking about herself.

  05:02-05:38

  It says, "Then Deborah arose and went with Barak to Kadesh, and Barak called out Zebulun Neftali to Kadesh, and 10,000 men went up at his heels, and Deborah went up with him." You can read verses 12 through 16. We're going to jump over those. Spoiler alert. God won the battle through Barak and his forces. But I want to jump to verse 17. Okay, so Barak, his forces win just like God predicted, just like God caused to happen. It says, "But Sisera, this was the bad guy general, but Sisera fled away on foot to the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite.

  05:39-05:43

  There was peace between Jabin, the king of Hazor, and the house of Heber the Kenite.

  05:44-05:48

  And Jael came out to meet Sisera and said to him, "Turn aside, my lord, turn aside to me.

  05:48-05:54

  Do not be afraid." So he turned aside to her into the tent and she covered him with a rug.

  05:54-06:07

  Okay, so she saw him fleeing and at this point didn't really know what was going on, so she's like, "Hey, I'll help you out." And he said to her, 'Please give me a little water to drink, for I am thirsty.' So she opened a skin of milk and gave him a drink and covered him.

  06:07-06:18

  And he said to her, 'Stand at the opening of the tent, and if any man comes and asks you, "Is anyone here?" say, "No."'" Well, that tipped her off.

  06:18-06:25

  She's being very hospitable and accommodating, but now all of a sudden she's like, "Wait a second, the battle didn't go so good for you, did it?

  06:25-06:33

  If you're on the run and please hide me kind of thing." So look at verse 21, he's like in the tent under the rug.

  06:33-06:39

  It says, "But Jael, the wife of Heber, took a tent peg and took a hammer in her hand.

  06:39-06:49

  Then she went softly to him and drove the peg into his temple until it went down into the ground while he was lying fast asleep from weariness.

  06:50-07:10

  So he died." Now being a child of the 80s, do you remember those movies in the 80s, like right before the good guy would kill the bad guy. He'd have that really witty, cool line. You know what I'm talking about? How many people know what I'm talking about? And I have to wonder in this passage, did she have a line like that? No, I'm not going to do that again.

  07:12-07:21

  Maybe just one. I imagine she was like, "I guess you didn't realize what was at stake." All right, no more.

  07:22-07:24

  Anyways, so he died.

  07:24-07:43

  Verse 22, "And behold, as Barak was pursuing Sisera, Jail went out to meet him and said to him, 'Come and I will show you the man whom you are seeking.' So he went into her tent, and there lay Sisera dead with a tent peg in his temple." So, Deborah's prophecy was fulfilled.

  07:43-07:47

  She said that Barak would win by the hand of the Lord.

  07:47-07:48

  Check, that happened.

  07:48-07:53

  She said that the Sisera would be killed by a woman. Check, that happened.

  07:53-07:57

  And Israel was free, and that's what happened.

  07:57-08:08

  So, in our days of spiritual anarchy, whether it's the days of the judges or today, we need leaders. That's what we're going to talk about today.

  08:09-08:13

  When everything's unraveling in the country, we need people to step up.

  08:13-08:20

  We need leaders. We don't need people complaining, which there are plenty of those. We don't need people withdrawing.

  08:21-08:29

  We don't need people feeling like their contribution to society is limited solely to social media memes.

  08:30-08:35

  We need godly, influential, taking initiative leaders.

  08:36-08:37

  We need leaders like Deborah.

  08:38-08:43

  You know, the book of Judges, like we talked about before, it is crazy, the stuff that we see happening.

  08:44-08:47

  But you realize with Deborah, there's not one negative thing said about this woman.

  08:48-08:52

  Absolutely remarkable, especially in the day in which she lived, not one negative thing said about her.

  08:53-08:58

  We need more leaders like her in the workplace, in the home, in the church.

  08:59-09:01

  We need leaders stepping up.

  09:02-09:08

  If you're sitting here today like, "Oh, this message is for leaders, and I'm not really a leader." Well, I'd like to correct you on that.

  09:08-09:17

  whether you're an elder in the church, or a follower of Jesus Christ in general, you're like, "I'm just a pew sitter." No, you're not.

  09:17-09:20

  You are called to lead people to Jesus Christ.

  09:20-09:21

  You're called to make disciples.

  09:22-09:24

  That requires some leadership.

  09:24-09:30

  So this message is for everyone, but especially today, in this church, I want to address our elders.

  09:31-09:33

  I want to address our ministry team leaders.

  09:33-09:35

  I want to address our small group leaders.

  09:35-09:43

  I want to address our children's workers, our worship leaders, everyone that has some position of influence or leadership.

  09:43-09:47

  I want you to listen closely because we learn a lot from Deborah here.

  09:47-09:51

  We're going to focus on verses 6-9-ish.

  09:52-09:54

  But how to be a difference-making leader.

  09:54-09:55

  I want you to jot these things down.

  09:55-09:57

  How to be a difference-making leader.

  09:58-10:00

  The first thing is you have to identify the real need.

  10:00-10:02

  You have to identify the real need.

  10:02-10:05

  Deborah was critically realistic about her situation.

  10:05-10:07

  She wasn't promoting fake news.

  10:07-10:08

  He wasn't attacking straw men.

  10:09-10:12

  But leaders can often miss the real problem.

  10:12-10:15

  And I have been so guilty of this in my own life at times.

  10:16-10:18

  But leaders can miss what the real problem is.

  10:19-10:20

  And it's partly the leader's fault.

  10:20-10:24

  And it can be partly the fault of the people that the leaders lead.

  10:24-10:25

  Like, well, how so?

  10:26-10:33

  Because sometimes leaders are leading two different types of people, and neither of which help the leader lead.

  10:34-10:37

  One type of person is the uncritical person.

  10:37-10:38

  The uncritical person.

  10:39-10:41

  The person that's just like, "I love the leader.

  10:41-10:44

  Look, everything you do is amazing.

  10:44-10:51

  You are so handsome and your breath smells like heaven.

  10:51-10:55

  And you are just..." People don't say that to me.

  10:55-10:57

  I'm just telling you things I've heard other people say about other leaders.

  10:58-11:09

  But these are the people that are never willing to have a loving but hard talk to pull that leader aside and say, "Look man, I love you, but I think you're making a wrong decision here.

  11:09-11:12

  I think we really need to think through this.

  11:12-11:12

  I think we need to pray.

  11:13-11:15

  I'm just not sure this is the right decision.

  11:16-11:17

  I want to talk through this with you.

  11:17-11:21

  I want to pray through this with you." But at the other end of the spectrum, we have uncritical people.

  11:22-11:23

  The other end of the spectrum is unloving people.

  11:24-11:25

  The people that just criticize everything.

  11:26-11:27

  "Oh look, another bonehead move.

  11:28-11:32

  Oh look, he doesn't know what he's doing." They criticize every decision.

  11:32-11:34

  They never give the benefit of the doubt.

  11:34-11:41

  They never think that maybe the leader has facts behind the decision that the general population is unaware of.

  11:42-11:45

  And both of those people make leading hard.

  11:45-11:49

  Because if you have nothing but uncritical people, you'll get stagnant, right?

  11:49-11:52

  Because you think everything's great. I don't get to change anything. I'm awesome.

  11:52-11:55

  I'm like, I'm batting a thousand on everything. I just can't miss.

  11:56-11:57

  I can't make a bad decision.

  11:57-12:00

  and you're going to get real stagnant real quick.

  12:01-12:04

  But the unloving people, they'll bring discouragement.

  12:04-12:07

  Makes the leader just walk around like, I can't do anything right, man.

  12:08-12:09

  Doesn't matter how hard I work.

  12:11-12:13

  I just can't seem to make a right decision here.

  12:14-12:16

  And neither one will help the leader lead.

  12:16-12:20

  But Deborah saw the real problem, and she had a goal.

  12:20-12:22

  She knew that she had to ask the question.

  12:22-12:26

  Every leader here needs to ask, what does real change look like?

  12:27-12:30

  What does real change have to look like?

  12:30-12:31

  We're going to talk more about that in a second.

  12:32-12:34

  First of all, you've got to identify the real need.

  12:34-12:35

  Deborah did.

  12:36-12:39

  So therefore, that letter right to number two, you've got to identify the person for the job.

  12:39-12:41

  You've got to identify the person for the job.

  12:42-12:44

  Now, Deb, obviously-- Deb.

  12:45-12:46

  Like I know her.

  12:47-12:47

  We were at the high school together.

  12:48-12:49

  I call her Deb.

  12:49-12:53

  You might know her as Deborah, but she was always just Deb down the street to me.

  12:54-12:59

  Deb knew, or she knew of, Barak, who was obviously this gifted military man, but Deb also knew something else.

  13:00-13:02

  She knew that she had some limitations, right?

  13:02-13:05

  She's like, I'm not the person for this job, but I know who is.

  13:06-13:07

  She knew who to call.

  13:07-13:10

  And she goes, okay, who has got equipped to meet the need?

  13:11-13:14

  And I get to tell you, church, we get a lot of needs right here.

  13:15-13:26

  You know, due to COVID issues and people that have had to move and people that have had to isolate for health reasons and such, Our church has lost nine children's workers.

  13:26-13:29

  And a church our size, that's a huge hit all at once.

  13:29-13:33

  Our hospitality has been working on a skeleton crew a lot of weeks.

  13:34-13:40

  We have elders that have had to step out of action currently just across the board.

  13:40-13:47

  I could keep going on and on, but across the board in our ministries, the pandemic sort of hit us all in different ways.

  13:47-13:49

  And that's one way that it has hit this church.

  13:49-13:54

  And I just wanna encourage the leaders to get praying right now, to say, "Who do I need to call upon?

  13:54-14:04

  Who has God equipped to meet this need?" You know, be like Deborah, to be like, "Okay, I got this need, now who's the person that God has called to meet that need?" Call that person.

  14:05-14:08

  Give that person a personal invite to step up and serve the Lord.

  14:09-14:11

  So identify the need and identify the person.

  14:11-14:23

  But thirdly, and this is what you're gonna see a lot of in the text here, and I wanna spend a couple minutes on this, but not only do you have to identify the need and identify the person, leaders, you know, sometimes you have to motivate that person to action.

  14:23-14:24

  I'm gonna talk about that.

  14:24-14:27

  You know, Barak put a condition on helping.

  14:28-14:29

  Did you see that?

  14:29-14:34

  He was obviously a gifted military man, but he was afraid and he put the condition on.

  14:35-14:41

  She's like, "Hey, hey, God's commanded you, let's step up." And he's like, "If you will go with me, I will go.

  14:41-14:48

  "But if you will not go with me, I will not go." And the people that we try to recruit often have a similar response.

  14:48-14:49

  Like, "Hey, I need you to step up.

  14:49-14:50

  "I need your help.

  14:50-15:17

  you to help me." And we might not say it the way Barak did. Do you know how Christians say no in a context like this? Like, "Hey, I need your help." Do you know how Christians say no? They say, "I'll pray about that. True or false? True or false? Come on. True. I'll pray about that." That's just a really polite, churchy way of saying, "I really don't want to do this, and I'm hoping that if I delay you long enough you'll find somebody else.

  15:17-15:46

  I'll pray about this. I'll pray about this. Well leader, leader like Deborah, it's on you, the leader, to motivate people to help. And I want to share with you just three things that she did for Barak that you need to do with the people that you lead. Okay? This is Biblical Motivation 101. And the first part, letter A, is you've got to confront with God's command. That's Biblical Motivation 101, confront with God's command. That was That's the first thing that Deborah said to him.

  15:46-15:50

  "Has not the Lord commanded you?" It has to start here.

  15:50-15:52

  Like, "Hey, hey, this isn't a pet project.

  15:52-16:01

  This isn't some funky, fresh program that I came up with and I want you to head it up." It's like, "Hey, hey, this is something that God has commanded.

  16:01-16:10

  So there's really no question on if we should do it." In the Harvest Bible Chapel, every ministry that we have at our church has the same goal.

  16:11-16:11

  Did you know that?

  16:12-16:14

  Every single ministry has the same goal, it's to make disciples.

  16:15-16:18

  We believe a disciple of Jesus Christ does three things.

  16:18-16:25

  A disciple worships Christ, a disciple walks with Christ, and a disciple works for Christ.

  16:25-16:33

  So everything we do as a church, we have to ask ourselves, does this have the end game of making disciples?

  16:34-16:37

  And if that's not the clear goal, we're not doing it.

  16:37-16:44

  We have to say, okay, if we're called to make disciples, every ministry we need to say, Here's how this ministry fulfills the command to make disciples.

  16:45-16:48

  And you have to notice the difference in the way you recruit.

  16:49-16:50

  You know, like our AV ministry.

  16:51-16:54

  You say, "Hey, do you want to help with AV?" That's one way to ask.

  16:54-16:55

  Here's another way to ask.

  16:56-17:01

  You know, our services are streamed and our podcasts are downloaded all over the world.

  17:01-17:09

  This ministry makes disciples by broadcasting God's Word, not just to our church, but all over the world.

  17:09-17:14

  Would you like to help make disciples by being part of a ministry that affects so many people?

  17:15-17:15

  That's a command.

  17:16-17:17

  Make disciples.

  17:17-17:20

  Or, want to volunteer to work with kids?

  17:21-17:21

  No.

  17:22-17:23

  Every church struggles with that.

  17:23-17:25

  You want to volunteer to work with kids?

  17:26-17:29

  And I think the fear is, well, if I get back in kids ministry, I'm never getting out.

  17:30-17:32

  And that's true for a couple people.

  17:33-17:33

  No.

  17:34-17:38

  At our church, we have rotating teams so that nobody's back there every week.

  17:39-17:41

  Again, we lost a lot of people. It's getting tough.

  17:42-17:44

  We don't want anybody back there every week.

  17:44-17:48

  But instead of saying, "Hey, would you like to volunteer to work with kids?" How about this?

  17:49-18:05

  How about, "Our church has been blessed with so many children, and we get the privilege of helping parents disciple their children so parents can have a distraction-free environment so they can be discipled themselves." See, it's about the mission, right?

  18:05-18:08

  When you put it that way, it's about the mission.

  18:09-18:10

  It's not like who wants to babysit.

  18:10-18:12

  Nobody wants to babysit.

  18:12-18:13

  Who wants to make disciples?

  18:14-18:19

  The answer is everybody who follows Jesus Christ better be on that agenda, right?

  18:20-18:25

  This month we have a Johnny and Friends luncheon on August 28th.

  18:25-18:27

  We could say, hey, come and have lunch with us.

  18:27-18:28

  Like, well, what are you having?

  18:29-18:29

  How about this?

  18:29-18:33

  We have an opportunity as a church and to help other churches.

  18:33-18:51

  we have an opportunity to learn how to love and make disciples of people with special needs and their families. I don't know about you, but that really fires me up to think, how can we best love this group of people in our culture that feel like they're detached?

  18:52-18:55

  So you've got to, like Deborah first of all, you've got to confront with God's command.

  18:55-19:05

  You see, it's not a matter of should we make disciples. Like, what do you think, guys, We make disciples, you're like, "Well, let me pray about that." We're commanded to do it.

  19:05-19:06

  So confront with God's command.

  19:06-19:07

  That's the first thing Deborah did.

  19:08-19:11

  Second thing she did for Barak was she strengthened with God's promise.

  19:12-19:13

  Strengthened with God's promise.

  19:14-19:17

  Deborah reminded Barak that the Lord promised to win the victory.

  19:18-19:18

  And I love that.

  19:19-19:24

  That Deb didn't go to him like, "Hey, we have this big military campaign.

  19:24-19:25

  We need you to...

  19:26-19:27

  Good luck, man.

  19:28-20:05

  everything works out and you know keep in touch and I guess we'll just give it a try we'll just see how it goes that wasn't it at all she goes hey victory has already been promised so go and you know church that's the message that we need reminded and I would suggest to you it's way more than victory has been promised for us church victory has been accomplished you realize that it's not Let's engage in ministry and battle the enemy and put on the armor of God and hope we don't have casualties.

  20:05-20:08

  Victory has already been accomplished through Jesus Christ.

  20:08-20:12

  When He died on the cross, victory has been accomplished for eternity.

  20:14-20:36

  Last month, as many of you know, the pastor who trained me in everything in ministry, Pastor Bob Huber, he went to be with the Lord on July 4th, I was able to visit with him a couple of days before, and we were talking, and you know, just about at that time not knowing time frame or how much longer or what they're going to do for treatment.

  20:36-20:47

  We were sort of having that conversation, you know, and he just took a deep breath and he said, "Jeff, no matter what happens, I win." And he certainly did.

  20:48-20:55

  But I've got to tell you, that's one of my favorite things about serving Jesus Christ, you're winning the second you start serving.

  20:55-20:58

  Because sin and Satan were defeated at the cross.

  20:58-21:02

  The gospel is victorious whether it's accepted or rejected.

  21:03-21:07

  He who is within you is greater than he who is in the world.

  21:08-21:13

  And the worst thing that anyone can do to you is kill you and send you straight to heaven.

  21:13-21:15

  So strengthen with God's promise.

  21:16-21:19

  Like hey, hey, hey, look, victory's already been won.

  21:20-21:24

  What God's calling you to do is just show up and watch Him win.

  21:24-21:28

  And that's what we're calling you to do in ministry at the church.

  21:28-21:29

  Like look, show up.

  21:30-21:35

  Show up and watch God do what God does and you will be blown away.

  21:36-21:38

  How to be a difference making leader.

  21:38-21:42

  We're talking about Biblical Motivation 101, letter C. Encourage with your presence.

  21:43-21:44

  Remember Barak put his condition on.

  21:44-21:54

  She's like, "Well, you know, if you'll go with me, I will go, but if you'll not go with me, I will not go." And verse 9, "And she said, 'I will surely go with you.

  21:55-21:56

  Encourage with your presence.

  21:56-22:02

  And like Deborah, tell the people that you recruit and motivate, like, 'Hey, I'll be with you.

  22:02-22:03

  We'll do this together.

  22:04-22:07

  We'll do this together.'" Now, let's just be honest here.

  22:07-22:09

  Barak should not have needed this.

  22:09-22:10

  He shouldn't have.

  22:11-22:14

  And he absolutely should not have put conditions on helping, right?

  22:15-22:17

  Putting conditions on serving the Lord is a bad idea.

  22:18-22:21

  So yes, he was clearly in the wrong, but you have to see, what did Deb do?

  22:23-22:27

  She knew he was afraid, so she threw him a bone. She's like, "Okay, alright.

  22:27-22:39

  I will go with you." The question was, back up a second, if he was such a gifted military man, why was he afraid, right? Why did he need Deb to be with him?

  22:40-22:41

  I don't know, maybe he lacked faith.

  22:42-22:45

  Maybe he was just scared of the Canaanites.

  22:45-22:52

  Maybe, maybe he knew that Israel would rally around him if they knew Deborah was with him.

  22:52-22:53

  I don't know.

  22:54-23:00

  But one thing I do know for sure from this passage, it's a huge problem for Barak, can't be for us too.

  23:01-23:03

  Barak trusted Deborah more than he trusted God.

  23:04-23:04

  That's a problem.

  23:06-23:08

  He trusted Deborah more than he trusted God.

  23:09-23:09

  Did you catch that?

  23:10-23:28

  She's like, "Hey, God Almighty, the ruler of heaven and earth, the sovereign, transcended, majestic King of Kings has promised you the victory." And he's like, "Will you go with me?" Like, "What do you need me for?" He trusted Deborah more than he trusted God.

  23:28-23:30

  And we can fall into the same trap, church.

  23:30-23:40

  Honestly, God calls us to step out and do something, and we can look to people, and We can look to bank accounts, and we can look to our resources first.

  23:41-23:50

  "Well, if this is going to happen, who do I need to call to fund this?" Or, "Who do I know that's going to be able to..." And we start to, instead of seeking the Lord, we seek other people.

  23:51-23:54

  And yes, God uses people, not discounting that at all.

  23:54-24:07

  But it becomes a question of, "Where's your trust, really?" "Where's your trust, really, Christian?" "Is your trust in Jesus Christ totally, fully, completely?" Because you don't take Deborah to the cross with you. You know that.

  24:08-24:17

  When you come to Jesus Christ, Deborah's not with you, your grandma's not with you, your mom's not with you. You come to the cross yourself.

  24:18-24:25

  And the call for you to trust God, His provision through Jesus Christ, that's a decision that you have to make.

  24:26-24:29

  But that trust, that has to come from you. You have to trust.

  24:30-24:32

  Trust in Jesus Christ more than you trust in Deborah.

  24:34-24:38

  But leaders, nevertheless, sometimes people don't step up, right?

  24:38-24:39

  We know that.

  24:39-24:40

  Sometimes people don't.

  24:40-24:42

  Sometimes people are afraid.

  24:43-24:50

  "Well, they asked me to help out in this ministry and I don't really know what I'm doing." For some people it's just disobedience, like, "Nah, you know what?

  24:50-24:53

  I like to sleep in on Sunday." And it's just disobedience.

  24:53-24:55

  And for some people it's just apathy.

  24:55-24:57

  Like, "Yeah, yeah, I see that they...

  24:57-25:01

  Yeah, they have that big need there, but that's not really my problem." It's just apathy. I don't really care.

  25:04-25:08

  Sometimes we have to walk with people to encourage them to become stronger in their faith.

  25:09-25:10

  I think that's what Deborah did.

  25:11-25:17

  She could have just sent him out the door and said, "You don't need me, pal. You have the Lord." But she's like, "You know what? He's not there yet.

  25:18-25:21

  I'll help him get there." Leaders, sometimes you have to do that.

  25:22-25:24

  Sometimes you have to do that.

  25:24-25:28

  We are all a work in progress and some of us are further down the road than others.

  25:31-25:35

  And then finally, number four, develop and execute a clear plan.

  25:36-25:40

  That's what Deb did. She had a specific plan that was from the Lord.

  25:41-25:55

  We're going to get 10,000 people from Neftali and Zebulun, and God says, "I'm going to draw Sisera out to the river." And you can read in chapter 5 the song of praise that resulted from the victory, and it gives us some more details about what the Lord did, which is incredible.

  25:56-25:57

  Incredible. Incredible.

  25:58-26:03

  You know, we talked about Ehud had this handicap that turned into his advantage.

  26:04-26:14

  Well, what happened in this story is the Canaanites had the chariots, but when they got to the river, God sent a storm, because the riverbed was dry and the mud got all their chariots stuck.

  26:15-26:22

  So we go from Ehud having the handicap that turned into an advantage, to the Canaanites that had the advantage of the chariots that turned into a handicap.

  26:23-26:26

  That's how God works. He's sovereign.

  26:26-26:29

  That was the plan. Anyone can see a need.

  26:30-26:34

  But it's quite another thing to seek the Lord's plan to meet the need.

  26:35-26:39

  And leaders, I just want to encourage you here, people do not get behind ambiguity.

  26:40-26:41

  They just don't.

  26:43-26:44

  People don't get behind ambiguity.

  26:45-26:47

  Like, "Hey, I have this plan. We're going to do this ministry.

  26:47-26:53

  We're going to reach families with special needs." Like, "Well, how are we going to do that?" I don't know. But do you want to help me?

  26:55-27:01

  Um, no. You don't even know what you're doing. How are you going to tell me how to help?

  27:01-27:06

  People don't get behind ambiguity, but people will get behind a clear plan, right?

  27:06-27:08

  Okay, Barak, here's the plan. You're going to go to these tribes.

  27:09-27:11

  You're going to get these many people. You're going to go to this place.

  27:11-27:14

  And that's where God is going to win your battle.

  27:14-27:17

  So the mission that Jesus gave us, it hasn't changed.

  27:18-27:26

  But in our day of wickedness, our day of pandemic, it's just become more obvious how badly it's needed.

  27:27-27:37

  And as I've said, as we've lost people due to moving or isolating, the laborers in the field have become fewer while our needs have become greater.

  27:38-27:41

  I just want to challenge you today, hey, you know, you have to step up.

  27:42-27:44

  Leaders, step up.

  27:44-27:54

  Those of you who are born again, but haven't been actively serving Christ, step up! It's time to make a difference.

  27:55-27:56

  It's time to lead like Deborah.

  27:57-27:58

  I'd like you to bow your heads with me, please.

  28:01-28:12

  And while the worship team comes up, you know, this is something specifically that Jesus told us to pray, that the Lord of the harvest would raise up workers for the field, as we close our time in the Word.

  28:12-28:13

  I just want to do that.

  28:14-28:24

  Can we unite in that prayer to say, "God, please fulfill Your mission by raising up Your people." Would you pray that with me, please?

  28:25-28:32

  Father in heaven, as we come together today, we see another amazing story in Your Word about the way You showed up.

  28:32-28:33

  God, You use people.

  28:34-28:37

  God, I thank You we have a lot of people in this church that are like Deborah.

  28:38-28:39

  They take initiative and they have a plan.

  28:40-28:45

  But God, we have a lot of people that are like Barak, that are called, but are afraid.

  28:47-28:49

  Father, we just want to ask you now, please.

  28:50-28:54

  We're asking, Father, because this is what Jesus told us to pray.

  28:55-28:59

  We're asking that you, the Lord of the harvest, would raise up workers for the field.

  29:01-29:07

  That God, you would find us faithful to help encourage and equip and strengthen.

  29:08-29:11

  But God, ultimately, that has to come from You.

  29:12-29:20

  That heart change, that heart to serve, that drive to step out in faith, Father, that has to come from You.

  29:21-29:35

  So we're asking, Father, that You would invigorate us with a fresh enthusiasm, with a fresh urgency for the gospel of Jesus Christ and the mission of making disciples.

  29:36-29:43

  God, I thank you ahead of time because you have never failed to provide for this church anything that we've needed to serve you.

  29:44-29:46

  I thank you for the way you're going to provide this.

  29:46-29:47

  Thank you, God.

  29:48-29:51

  Thank you, Father. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

Small Group Discussion
Read Judges 4:4-9, 17-22 (or all of chapter 4)

1. What was your big “takeaway” from this passage / message?
   

2. Why do you think Deborah was called to be a judge? Many people cite this story to validate women as pastors. Do you believe that is valid? Why or why not?
   

3. Why are people often afraid to step up and serve God? How can we motivate them to, in the way that Deborah motivated Barak?
   

Breakout
Pray for one another.

God Uses Limitations.

Introduction:

How to Conquer Dominating Sins (Judges 3:12-30):

1. Go after the Biggest sin first. (Judges 3:15-23).

   Romans 8:13 - ...if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

2. Recruit Others to help you. (Judges 3:27).
3. Believe Victory has already been won. (Judges 3:28)
4. Don't stop Fighting . (Judges 3:29)

   Matthew 3:8 - Bear fruit in keeping with repentance.

5. Make no Excuses . (Judges 3:15-23)

Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!

• Audio Transcript

  00:43-00:49

  Open up your Bibles with me, please, to the book of Judges in your Old Testaments and in chapter 3.

  00:50-00:53

  We'll be picking up in about verse 12.

  00:56-01:05

  We started this series last week looking at a chapter of Israel's life when she was only partially obedient.

  01:07-01:11

  And that led to a cycle that you see throughout the book of Judges.

  01:12-01:14

  Over and over and over.

  01:16-01:17

  Israel turns to idols.

  01:19-01:23

  So God sends an enemy nation to conquer Israel.

  01:24-01:26

  Well, Israel cries out, "God, we're sorry!

  01:28-01:33

  Please do something about this!" So God raises up a judge.

  01:34-01:36

  The judge saves Israel.

  01:37-01:38

  Peace in the land.

  01:40-01:42

  And Israel turns to idols.

  01:43-01:44

  Rinse and repeat.

  01:45-02:00

  Now, when we think "judges," when we hear that word, I think a lot of us might immediately think of like the person in the black robe administering justice in a court, right?

  02:00-02:02

  Some of you are thinking of Judge Judy.

  02:03-02:07

  A judge was not that type of judge.

  02:07-02:10

  In the book of Judges, a judge was a military hero.

  02:11-02:16

  It's somebody that became a leader because of a crisis.

  02:17-02:30

  And judges did heroic feats, often with much violence and improvised weapons to swoop in and save the day.

  02:30-02:35

  Judges were actually kind of like superheroes.

  02:37-02:43

  Today we're looking at the second judge in Israel.

  02:43-02:45

  Let's pick up in v. 12.

  02:47-02:53

  It says, "And the people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.

  02:53-03:03

  And the Lord strengthened Eglon I'm thinking of Moab against Israel, because they had done what was evil in the sight of the Lord.

  03:05-03:07

  Stop right there and notice something.

  03:07-03:08

  You can't miss this.

  03:09-03:18

  The Lord was the one who brought hardship to Israel to turn Israel back to Him.

  03:18-03:20

  And did you see how God chose to do it?

  03:20-03:23

  He strengthened a wicked leader.

  03:25-03:33

  He appointed a horrible person to be leader over Israel.

  03:34-03:38

  And I would just ask you, do you think God still does that today?

  03:40-03:48

  When we refuse to turn from our sin, that God says, "Ok." And He strengthens a godless person.

  03:51-03:52

  Picking up v. 13.

  03:55-04:04

  "He," this is talking about Eglon, king of Moab, "he gathered to himself the Ammonites and the Amalekites and went and defeated Israel.

  04:04-04:06

  And they took possession of the city of Palms.

  04:07-04:24

  And the people of Israel served Eglon, the king of Moab, eighteen years." So this king Eglon of Moab, he linked up with two other enemy nations, the Ammonites, the Amalekites, and he took the city of Palms, which is probably Jericho.

  04:27-04:30

  Verse 15, "Then the people of Israel cried out to the Lord.

  04:32-04:41

  And the Lord raised up for them a deliverer, Ehud, the son of Gerah, a Benjaminite, a left-handed man.

  04:43-04:59

  "The people of Israel sent tribute by him," by Ehud, "to Eglon, the king of Moab." Okay, so the people cried out to God, and God raised up this man, this Ehud, and he was sent to pay tribute.

  04:59-05:02

  That was basically the tax to the enemy king.

  05:04-05:14

  Look at verse 16, it says, "Ehud made for himself a sword with two edges, a cubit in length, and he bound it on his right thigh under his clothes." Okay, here's where the story gets really interesting.

  05:16-05:25

  So Ehud had this 18-inch long - that was a cubit - an 18-inch long sword that it says he concealed it on his right side.

  05:25-05:27

  Like, well, what's the significance of that?

  05:27-05:31

  Well, he concealed it where they wouldn't have checked.

  05:33-05:35

  Keep in mind, they didn't have metal detectors.

  05:38-05:46

  But because Ehud was left-handed, he was able to conceal it where they weren't expecting.

  05:48-05:50

  Look at v. 17.

  05:50-05:59

  It says, "And Ehud presented the tribute to Eglon, king of Moab." Now, Eglon was a very fat man.

  06:02-06:05

  I don't think the Bible's just fat-shaming here.

  06:05-06:10

  I think it's just telling us this is how it is, alright?

  06:11-06:17

  Some of us have some more pounds on us than we need, myself included, but Eglon was a very fat man.

  06:19-06:20

  How fat was he?

  06:22-06:26

  When Eglon was in school, he sat beside everybody.

  06:30-06:33

  Now the story gets really strange.

  06:33-06:34

  Look at v. 18.

  06:35-06:41

  and when Ehud had finished presenting the tribute, he sent away the people who carried the tribute.

  06:42-06:57

  But he himself turned back at the idols near Gilgal and said, "I have a secret message for you, O king." And he commanded, "Silence!" And all his attendants went out from his presence.

  07:00-07:02

  Dumb, okay?

  07:03-07:13

  You have a guy from the nation that you conquered, say, "Hey, I want to tell you something private." And you're like, "Okay, everybody leave.

  07:13-07:18

  I'm sure it's going to be something nice." It's just dumb. Right?

  07:19-07:20

  Look at v. 20.

  07:21-07:27

  It says, "And Ehud came to Him as He was sitting alone in His cool roof chamber.

  07:28-07:32

  And Ehud said, I have a message from God for you.

  07:33-07:34

  "And he arose from his seat.

  07:35-07:41

  And he had reached with his left hand, took the sword from his right thigh, and thrust it into his belly.

  07:41-07:47

  And the hilt also went in after the blade, and the fat closed over the blade.

  07:48-08:02

  For he did not pull the sword out of his belly, and the dung came out." I'm just going to stop here for a second, because I'm a product of the 80s.

  08:04-08:07

  And do you remember those action movies in the 80s?

  08:07-08:12

  Right before the bad guy was killed by the hero.

  08:13-08:14

  You know what I'm talking about?

  08:14-08:15

  The hero gave that line.

  08:15-08:16

  You know what I'm talking about?

  08:16-08:17

  Are you with me?

  08:17-08:22

  He gave that really cool line right before you finish off the bad guy.

  08:22-08:23

  You know what I'm talking about?

  08:25-08:26

  Come on, don't leave me up here.

  08:27-08:29

  "I don't watch movies, Pastor Jeff.

  08:29-08:32

  I read Scripture and fast all day." Come on.

  08:33-08:34

  Do you know what I'm talking about?

  08:35-08:36

  Thank you.

  08:37-08:50

  But I had to wonder as I read this if Ehud would have given one of those lines, this would have been the perfect chance because he's like, "Hey, I've got a message for you from God."

  08:51-08:51

  (blows raspberry)

  08:53-08:54

  Do you get the point?

  08:58-09:02

  Or maybe it was this one, it was, hey, I got a message for you from God.

  09:02-09:03

  Pulls the sword out.

  09:04-09:04

  (blows raspberry)

  09:06-09:10

  Egon, did you ever get that feeling in your gut?

  09:11-09:13

  Okay, that one didn't work either.

  09:13-09:14

  All right, so let's try this one.

  09:15-09:18

  So, hey, I got a secret message for you from God.

  09:18-09:23

  And he pulls the sword out and Because I'm sure that's how it sounded going through all that fat.

  09:26-09:29

  And he said, "What's the matter, your highness?

  09:31-09:37

  Don't have the stomach for this?" It was a lot funnier in my head.

  09:40-09:43

  At this point in the message I was going to say, "What about you?

  09:43-09:47

  Can you think of a great line to insert here?" and then I thought, no, I know these people.

  09:47-09:49

  Don't offer that up.

  09:50-09:52

  In fact, don't email it to me either.

  09:53-09:55

  Because I'm sure you have some doozies.

  09:58-09:59

  But yeah, that happened.

  09:59-10:00

  Let's look at verse 23.

  10:01-10:08

  It says, "Then Ehud went out into the porch and closed the doors of the roof chamber behind him and locked them.

  10:10-10:22

  And when he had gone, the servants came, and when they saw the doors of the roof chamber were locked, they thought, surely, he is relieving himself in the closet of the cool chamber.

  10:24-10:28

  And they waited until they were embarrassed.

  10:29-10:43

  But when he still did not open the doors of the roof chamber, they took the key and opened them, and there lay their Lord dead on the floor." If this is your first time here, I certainly hope it's not your last.

  10:45-10:47

  I was thinking about that this week.

  10:47-10:53

  If we have visitors or guests this week, this is a strange sermon to be walking into.

  10:54-10:55

  What did you guys talk about?

  10:56-11:00

  Some king got the crap stabbed out of him and locked in a bathroom stall.

  11:01-11:02

  That's in the Bible?

  11:02-11:04

  Yeah, it's in the Bible.

  11:04-11:08

  And you see what happened here was the servants come.

  11:08-11:17

  So Ehad locks dead Eglon in the cool chamber, essentially it's like the bathroom stall, and he locks and he leaves.

  11:17-11:34

  So the servants come back and they caught the smell of the dung, using the biblical word, and they saw that the doors were locked, so they put two and two together, and they're like, well obviously he's in there going to the bathroom.

  11:35-11:38

  And it says they waited until they were embarrassed.

  11:38-11:40

  I mean, how do you think that conversation went?

  11:40-11:47

  The servants are all just kind of standing around, like, it's been like 45 minutes, why don't you knock and see if he's okay?

  11:47-11:51

  Like, no, you don't disturb the king while he's about his royal business.

  11:51-11:54

  You knock, I'm not knocking, let's just wait.

  11:54-11:56

  And they waited so long, they were kind of embarrassed.

  11:56-12:02

  Like, this is, we've been standing here forever, and the king is still in there, and we still, get the scene?

  12:02-12:03

  You're like, well, okay.

  12:05-12:08

  Why is that detail in there? Right?

  12:09-12:13

  Why did God feel it necessary that we have this detail?

  12:14-12:15

  Here's why.

  12:17-12:21

  It gave Ehud time to escape. You see?

  12:22-12:25

  That's the reason this detail's in here.

  12:25-12:34

  It's showing God's providence that the servants came and they smelled, and they assumed, and they waited until...

  12:34-12:40

  And during all that time of them just kind of waiting around, it gave Ehud all the time in the world to get out of there.

  12:41-12:51

  It's just God showing us sometimes He works in very strange ways to us.

  12:53-12:54

  Look at v. 26.

  12:56-13:02

  "Ehud escaped." Well, they delayed and he passed beyond the idols and escaped to Sierra.

  13:04-13:07

  "When he arrived, he sounded the trumpet in the hill country of Ephraim.

  13:07-13:12

  Then the people of Israel went down with him from the hill country, and he was their leader.

  13:12-13:24

  And he said to them, 'Follow after me, for the Lord has given your enemies, the Moabites, into your hand.' So they went down after him and seized the fords of the Jordan against the Moabites and did not allow anyone to pass over.

  13:25-13:30

  And they killed at that time about 10,000 of the Moabites, all strong, able-bodied men.

  13:30-13:48

  Not a man escaped." "The Moab was subdued that day under the hand of Israel, and the land had rest for 80 years." That is a wild story.

  13:50-13:59

  And as we read and study and preach God's Word, we have to acknowledge it's in there for a reason, right?

  14:01-14:09

  I mean, when God gives us these things in His Word, there's some edification point for us, right?

  14:09-14:19

  God's not just like, "Hey, I want to tell you a really hilarious story one time about this really fat guy that got stabbed." There's a reason that it's in there.

  14:22-14:26

  And I guess it's my job to help you see what it's teaching.

  14:30-14:32

  Well, here's the thing.

  14:35-14:45

  We saw clear back at the beginning of this passage that this whole account was the result of sin.

  14:46-14:49

  It was all the result of sin.

  14:49-14:52

  Israel did evil what was in the eyes of the Lord.

  14:55-14:59

  And because it was sin, it had to be dealt with on that level.

  14:59-15:03

  You have to understand, this story isn't about nation versus nation.

  15:03-15:04

  That's not what this story is about.

  15:05-15:13

  This story is about Almighty God delivering His people from sin and the consequences of their sin.

  15:13-15:15

  That's what this story is about.

  15:15-15:26

  Therefore, when sin conquers us, which we have to fight to conquer it.

  15:29-15:33

  The way Ehud was raised up to fight and conquer.

  15:34-15:48

  So on your outline, "How to Conquer Dominating Sins." I'm not going to ask for a show of hands, but how many of you in here would say right now I'm in a season in my life where it seems like sins are dominating me.

  15:49-15:51

  My life isn't really right now.

  15:51-15:53

  It's not a pattern of righteousness.

  15:54-15:58

  And it's not a pattern of really seeking the Lord as I should.

  15:58-16:04

  Really right now my life is dominated by sin, and God does not want you living there.

  16:05-16:06

  So how do I get out of there?

  16:07-16:17

  Well, there's five principles we see right here from Ehud that I want to give to you if you're in that place right now.

  16:17-16:19

  Number one, go after the biggest sin first.

  16:21-16:23

  Go after the biggest sin first.

  16:23-16:25

  Notice, Ehud went straight to the top.

  16:25-16:27

  He went right to the source of the problem.

  16:27-16:31

  He wasn't like, okay, Moabites, I'm gonna pick them off one at a time, work my way to the top.

  16:32-16:33

  Ehud's like, here's my plan.

  16:33-16:35

  I'm going after the fat guy first.

  16:35-16:36

  I'm going straight to the top.

  16:36-16:40

  I'm gonna take him out, and he's the source of the problem.

  16:42-16:48

  You know, it's true, spiritually, if you feel like your life is a mess, You have a lot of areas spinning out of control.

  16:49-16:52

  I would encourage you to identify the biggest problem and go after that one first.

  16:55-17:07

  The sin that seems to be causing you the most problem, you need to go after that sin and you need to pull out your sword and you need to stab that one right in the gut and you need to let the...

  17:10-17:12

  Like, okay, okay, okay, Pastor Jeff.

  17:12-17:20

  Why all the really gross details about the bodily stuff?

  17:23-17:29

  And I know we kind of laughed and had some fun with it, but this is where it gets serious.

  17:30-17:33

  Why all these really disgusting, gross details?

  17:35-17:41

  And I think it's the Lord telling us and showing us Sin is never pretty.

  17:42-17:49

  And dealing with sin often requires a measure of ruthlessness.

  17:51-17:52

  And sometimes it just gets ugly.

  17:57-18:00

  Is that a teaching in the New Testament?

  18:00-18:01

  You better believe it is.

  18:01-18:09

  Romans 8.13 says, "If by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live." Notice the wording here.

  18:09-18:14

  What are you supposed to do with the deeds of the body or the sinful deeds of your flesh?

  18:14-18:15

  What are you supposed to do?

  18:15-18:17

  Not coddle them.

  18:17-18:19

  Not ask them nicely to leave.

  18:20-18:21

  Not tolerate them.

  18:23-18:25

  The Bible says you need to kill that stuff.

  18:27-18:28

  Put it to death.

  18:28-18:42

  And you're going to find that if you seek the Lord's help for repentance in regards to the biggest sin struggle in your life, It gets so much easier to take on the others.

  18:44-18:46

  It's like Ehud going right after Eglon.

  18:47-18:48

  Start at the top.

  18:49-18:49

  Start there.

  18:52-18:55

  You take that one out, you're gonna find taking the other ones out a lot easier.

  18:56-18:59

  Number two, recruit others to help you.

  19:02-19:06

  Ehud knew he wasn't going to be able to destroy all of the Moabites himself, right?

  19:08-19:08

  Right?

  19:09-19:13

  This is a large group of people and they have this alliance and there's all this...

  19:13-19:18

  He knew he wasn't going to do it all himself, so we saw in the story, he sounded the trumpet.

  19:20-19:26

  And you too, born-again believer in Jesus Christ, I'm speaking to you, you are called to be a part of a body.

  19:28-19:34

  Being a Christian, apart from being part of a church, is completely foreign to the New Testament.

  19:34-19:35

  It just is.

  19:36-19:36

  I don't see that.

  19:39-19:41

  You are called to be a part of the body.

  19:41-19:47

  And when I say be part of the body, I don't just mean attending church, not your once a week check-in.

  19:48-19:52

  What I mean is your primary relationships should be found in the church.

  19:55-19:56

  Small group ministry.

  19:57-20:00

  Accountability with other believers in the church.

  20:00-20:03

  The church carrying each other's burdens.

  20:03-20:05

  None of us are meant to do this on our own.

  20:05-20:05

  None of us.

  20:06-20:08

  Because none of us can do it on our own.

  20:10-20:12

  There's no shame in asking for help.

  20:12-20:14

  There's only defeat in refusing to ask for help.

  20:16-20:17

  So recruit others to help you.

  20:18-20:21

  How to conquer dominating sins thirdly, believe victory has already been won.

  20:23-20:29

  Now yeah, this is a story about Ehud using his cleverness with the whole hidden sword thing.

  20:31-20:32

  But he knew.

  20:34-20:36

  Maybe the battle was the Lord's from the very beginning.

  20:37-20:39

  He knew that He was raised up for this.

  20:42-20:48

  And by all accounts, we see in the story, Ehud went forth in the confidence that the Lord had already given him the victory.

  20:49-20:50

  You see that?

  20:50-20:52

  There was no wavering or hesitation.

  20:52-20:57

  He's like, hey, God's got a job for me to do and I am doing it.

  20:57-20:59

  The victory had already been won.

  20:59-21:04

  And church, when Jesus Christ died on the cross, Sin was defeated.

  21:05-21:06

  Once and for all.

  21:09-21:14

  And I've got to tell you, when you're battling sin, you're fighting an enemy that's already lost.

  21:15-21:16

  He just didn't get the memo yet.

  21:18-21:24

  The Bible tells us that Jesus Christ lives within you, and He continues to give you the victory.

  21:26-21:29

  You're a new creation in Jesus Christ.

  21:30-21:33

  And you have every resource you need Because you have Him.

  21:34-21:35

  And church, do you believe that?

  21:38-21:45

  And I have to ask if we truly believe it because many Christians resolve themselves to defeat.

  21:45-22:00

  They have this besetting sin in their life and they just kind of throw their arms up and say, "Well, I guess I'm never going to have victory over this." And if that's your attitude, I've got to ask you, are you saying that you don't think Jesus supplies the power to conquer that?

  22:00-22:03

  Or are you unwilling to allow Him to reign?

  22:04-22:05

  Because it's one or the other.

  22:07-22:11

  But it has to start with believing that victory has already been won.

  22:12-22:14

  You have to believe that.

  22:15-22:20

  Sin and Satan and death were destroyed at the cross of Jesus Christ.

  22:20-22:22

  They have no power or dominion over you.

  22:24-22:27

  And you've got to believe that if you're going to have victory over sin.

  22:30-22:33

  "I've conquered dominating sins." Number four, don't stop fighting.

  22:35-22:40

  You notice in this story today, Ehud didn't throw himself a parade after stabbing Eglon.

  22:41-22:48

  Like, "Woohoo! Kill the gang! Let's party!" No, he's like, "No, no, no." That was step one.

  22:51-22:53

  And church, one battle doesn't win the war.

  22:55-23:02

  Christians, repentance is not a one-time thing.

  23:02-23:02

  Did you know that?

  23:04-23:07

  Some people think, "I repented when I came to Jesus." Awesome.

  23:08-23:10

  But it's not just a one-time thing.

  23:10-23:13

  Biblically, repentance is an everyday thing.

  23:14-23:21

  Matthew 3:8 says, "Bear fruit in keeping with repentance." It's a daily thing.

  23:22-23:23

  It's a lifestyle.

  23:23-23:28

  continually turning from sin as long as I live in this sinful flesh.

  23:28-23:30

  I've got to keep turning from sin.

  23:31-23:35

  Because coming to Jesus Christ is not the end of my battle with sin.

  23:35-23:37

  It's the beginning of spiritual warfare.

  23:38-23:41

  A war, as we've discussed, it's already been won.

  23:44-23:47

  So I want to tell you, if you're struggling with sin, do not stop fighting.

  23:49-23:53

  Like, "Oh, Pastor Jeff, I had a really bad day yesterday." Oh, did you?

  23:53-23:56

  Well, yesterday's over, and the fight continues today.

  23:56-24:03

  So get back in there, in the victory of Jesus Christ, and in the power of His Holy Spirit, and fight!

  24:04-24:04

  It's not over!

  24:05-24:06

  It's not over!

  24:08-24:12

  Don't let a setback get you out of the game.

  24:14-24:15

  Keep fighting.

  24:15-24:18

  How to conquer dominating sins, number five.

  24:20-24:21

  Make no excuses.

  24:25-24:32

  Do you know probably the most important detail about this story, aside from the Lord being sovereign over the whole thing?

  24:32-24:34

  Yes, we get that. We understand that.

  24:34-24:38

  Besides that, the most important detail of the story, do you see what it was?

  24:39-24:40

  It was that Ehud was left-handed.

  24:42-24:46

  How many of you here are left-handed weirdos?

  24:48-24:50

  I'm just kidding about weirdos, kind of.

  24:51-24:53

  Keep them up, keep them up, because we want to make sure.

  24:54-24:55

  Brooke, write these people down.

  24:57-24:59

  Sarah, really? Really?

  25:00-25:01

  All your life?

  25:03-25:05

  Gosh, you think you know somebody.

  25:06-25:08

  I'm teasing, obviously.

  25:10-25:20

  You know, I'm sure our left-handed friends would tell you, but sometimes being left-handed can be a nuisance or inconvenient, right?

  25:20-25:25

  Because much of the world is crafted for right-handed people, because we're great.

  25:25-25:32

  But in Ehud's day, in Ehud's day, being left-handed was considered a defect.

  25:33-25:52

  You're like, "Really?" "Yeah." "Really?" Well, actually, even a generation ago, being left-handed was often considered a defect.

  25:53-26:02

  When I was at my old church, there was this lady, she was an atheist, a proud atheist, who would come to my office just to fight with me.

  26:03-26:03

  We had good times.

  26:04-26:18

  But she, one of her big hangups was she told me she went to Catholic school growing up and she was left handed.

  26:18-26:20

  And she told me this story so many times.

  26:21-26:29

  She said she was left handed and when she'd go to write, the nuns would come along with their ruler or piece of wood or whatever and crack her on the wrist really hard.

  26:29-26:37

  And say, "No, you have to write right handed, not left handed." She said they always made me feel like I was a freak for writing left-handed.

  26:38-26:41

  I know it might sound silly to us, but that was such a thing to her.

  26:42-26:44

  That was seriously traumatizing.

  26:45-26:47

  This is how they treated me.

  26:47-26:53

  This is who I am, and they treated me like I was defected.

  26:55-26:56

  That's how it was in Ehud's day.

  26:57-26:58

  Oh, you're left-handed, huh? I'm sorry.

  26:59-27:00

  Sorry to hear that.

  27:01-27:04

  And you can study the history of that.

  27:04-27:12

  This is so many examples of left-handedness being such a bad thing, right?

  27:13-27:15

  I want to give you one more example, though.

  27:15-27:17

  You know the word "sinister"?

  27:17-27:19

  Sinister, that means wicked or evil.

  27:20-27:20

  Sinister.

  27:20-27:22

  You know where that word comes from?

  27:22-27:26

  It's a Latin word that means left-handed.

  27:28-27:29

  I kid you not.

  27:30-27:36

  So all you people that raised your hand a couple minutes ago, sinister.

  27:39-27:43

  Well, Ehud could have tried to bow out.

  27:44-27:49

  Like, you know what, yes, yes, yes, we got Moab, and we got Eglon.

  27:49-27:52

  And I wish I could do something, but I got this defect.

  27:53-27:59

  And really not much-- I can't really face the enemy, because I have this handicap.

  27:59-28:09

  And really what you see is he had used his defect as a weapon instead of an excuse.

  28:11-28:11

  Right?

  28:13-28:17

  And I would say for us too, when it's time to go to battle, let's bag the excuses.

  28:18-28:20

  I can't defeat this sin.

  28:21-28:25

  I'm just unable and you don't know the stuff that I've had to endure.

  28:25-28:26

  But you know what, let's bag the excuses.

  28:27-28:30

  It's time to go to battle with sin.

  28:33-28:34

  Make no excuses.

  28:36-28:39

  Right now I would ask if the worship team would come forward.

  28:40-28:42

  I'd ask if our elders would come forward.

  28:42-28:44

  We're going to gather around the Lord's table.

  28:46-28:48

  And I'm going to give you instructions for that in a minute.

  28:51-28:55

  But you know, this whole story that we looked at today, you know what it really boils down to.

  28:55-29:01

  If you were going to sum up the story in a sentence, Ehad's story boils down to this.

  29:02-29:09

  Once upon a time, a left-handed man used his left-handedness to kill the enemy.

  29:12-29:19

  And you know, so many of us are defeated by things in our lives that are no more significant than being left-handed.

  29:22-29:24

  And it's a great source of encouragement to me.

  29:25-29:39

  When you turn to God's Word, you know, there are so many examples in Scripture of defective people that God used to change the world.

  29:40-29:40

  Right?

  29:41-29:42

  Do you remember Moses?

  29:44-29:56

  He's like, "I've got this speech thing going on, God, you're going to have to call somebody else." I was like, "No, I'm calling you." Defective. Changed the world.

  29:57-29:58

  People like David.

  29:59-30:01

  We talked about him last week in Bible school.

  30:02-30:05

  Here's the little kid bringing the lunch.

  30:08-30:10

  And youngest of the brothers, the shepherd kid.

  30:12-30:13

  Rocked the giant to sleep.

  30:16-30:28

  And then you turn in your New Testament, so many other examples, I turn in the New Testament to Paul, who in 2 Corinthians 12 talked about this thorn in the flesh that constantly made him feel weak.

  30:31-30:36

  As we come to the Lord's table, I want to remind you of a couple of things.

  30:36-30:38

  One is that God uses limitations.

  30:41-30:46

  So often in Scripture, God chooses people He chooses methods that I probably wouldn't.

  30:50-30:53

  And He does it so that no flesh can glory in His presence.

  30:55-30:59

  So if you're sitting here today and you're like, "You know what, Pastor Jeff, sometimes I feel a little handicapped.

  30:59-31:01

  Sometimes I feel a little limited.

  31:01-31:09

  Sometimes I feel like I don't have what it takes." I've got great news for you.

  31:12-31:13

  Your limitations don't disqualify you.

  31:15-31:20

  Actually, it's your limitations that qualify you.

  31:22-31:30

  And we come to the Lord's table again so that we might take our eyes off of ourselves.

  31:31-31:39

  Because this brings us back to the reality that it doesn't matter what we think we have gone through for us.

  31:40-31:59

  It doesn't matter what we think is going against us, because coming to the Lord's table is our reminder that nothing in us is sufficient, but everything in Jesus Christ is.

  32:01-32:13

  2 Corinthians 3:4-5 as such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God.

  32:15-32:21

  Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us.

  32:22-32:27

  He says, but our sufficiency is from God.

  32:28-32:30

  I want you to bow your heads with me please.

  32:30-32:32

  The worship team is going to play quietly.

  32:33-32:35

  And I want to lead us in a prayer.

  32:37-32:38

  and then we're going to the Lord's table together.

  32:40-32:44

  Father in heaven, we thank You for Your Word.

  32:47-32:59

  And Father, to our minds and to our experiences, this account that we read today on the surface just seems like a very strange story to read in the Bible, but there it is.

  33:01-33:02

  Because God, Your Word is real.

  33:03-33:22

  And Your Word certainly isn't painting a portrait these people as being these squeaky clean, living on easy street, detached from earth kind of people.

  33:22-33:31

  These are people who had to learn to trust you, had to learn to do battle with the enemy, and yes, sometimes it got ugly.

  33:34-33:43

  Father, as we gather around Your table today, let this be our reminder that sin is already defeated once and for all.

  33:45-33:51

  Death has lost its sting, and Satan is on borrowed time.

  33:53-33:59

  Let us gather around Your table, Father, because it takes our eyes off of ourselves and puts them on Jesus Christ.

  33:59-34:00

  He won the victory.

  34:02-34:03

  He supplies the power.

  34:03-34:05

  He is coming again.

  34:05-34:07

  And He is making all things new.

  34:09-34:11

  Father, we thank You and we praise You.

  34:12-34:15

  In Jesus' name, Amen.

Small Group Discussion
Read Judges 3:12-30

1. What was your big take-away from this passage / message?
   

2. Read Judges 3:16-25. Why do you think the Lord provided so many graphic details in this account?
   

3. Explain how going after the most dominant sin in your life can help you attack other sins, too. (Judges 3:15-25)

Breakout
Have you ever felt that you had some limitation that would keep the Lord from using you? What was / is it? How does the story of Ehud speak to that?

Pray for one another.

"Good Enough" Isn't Enough.

Introduction:

See: Judges 17:6, 21:25 | Judges 1:1 | Joshua 24:16 | Judges 3:7 | Judges 2:1-2

Three Consequences of Partial Obedience (Judges 1-3):

1. Your life gets Harder (Judges 2:3).

   Exodus 23:33 - They shall not dwell in your land, lest they make you sin against me; for if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you.

2. Your spirit gets Miserable (Judges 2:4-5).

   Psalm 51:12 - Restore to me the joy of your salvation...

   Ephesians 4:30 - do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God

3. Your children get Apathetic . (Judges 2:7-10)

Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!

• Audio Transcript

  00:43-00:44

  The book of Judges.

  00:47-00:59

  We're starting a new series today called, "Do What's Right." And today's message is really an introduction to the whole series.

  01:00-01:01

  Sort of laying the foundation.

  01:02-01:09

  And it's called, "Good Enough Isn't Enough." So I'd like you to bow your heads with me please.

  01:10-01:19

  Pray for me to be faithful to God's Word, and I will pray for you to open up to receive God's Word.

  01:24-01:32

  When all of God's people said, "Amen." For those of you who were here in July, how about those guest speakers, huh?

  01:38-01:42

  surprised to see me back. Yeah, yeah, they weren't bad.

  01:44-02:08

  They're like, "Well, what did you do all month?" Well, I followed the news, and if you're like me, maybe you have been following the headlines, and I want to ask you this morning if you happen to see these headlines. "Morbidly obese Peace world leader fatally stabbed and left in bathroom stall.

  02:08-02:09

  Did you see that one?

  02:11-02:12

  How about this one?

  02:13-02:16

  Military cutbacks reduce national army to 300.

  02:18-02:19

  Did you see that one?

  02:20-02:21

  How about this headline?

  02:22-02:25

  Soldier returns home, kills daughter.

  02:28-02:29

  This one really caught my attention.

  02:31-02:33

  and destroys worship center.

  02:34-02:36

  More than 3,000 dead.

  02:36-02:37

  Did you see those headlines?

  02:38-02:44

  Maybe you didn't see them, because they would have been published in Israel around 1200 B.C.

  02:45-02:49

  Because these are all things that happen in the book of Judges.

  02:52-02:57

  Judges is violent and shocking.

  02:58-03:10

  I was just talking to Mark Ord this morning. I remember the first time as a young Christian reading the book of Judges thinking, "I can't believe this stuff is in the Bible." Like, really? Yeah.

  03:11-03:14

  It's a period of Israel's history, a dark period.

  03:16-03:23

  It's characterized by a statement that's made twice in Judges, that a Christian read at the end of that video.

  03:25-03:27

  It says, "In those days there was no king in Israel.

  03:28-03:32

  Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

  03:34-03:36

  Notice that statement, it doesn't say everyone did what was right.

  03:39-03:43

  It says everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

  03:44-03:47

  Meaning, listen, I do what I think is best.

  03:48-03:52

  No one tells me what to do, not even God tells me what to do.

  03:53-03:55

  I do what I think is right.

  03:56-03:59

  And they were days of spiritual anarchy.

  04:01-04:02

  Just like today.

  04:05-04:14

  The book of Judges gives us examples of people, yes, very flawed people, but people who served God in such a time.

  04:14-04:24

  And it teaches us, very flawed people, how we can serve Jesus Christ in a day of complete spiritual anarchy.

  04:26-04:35

  So to get us all caught up to speed on where the book of Judges falls in Jewish history, this is about the shortest summary I can give you.

  04:35-04:38

  Remember, Moses led Israel out of Egypt.

  04:40-04:46

  But it was Joshua that led the Israelites into the Promised Land to begin the conquest.

  04:47-04:50

  And that takes us to Judges 1.1.

  04:50-04:52

  If you'll look at that with me, please.

  04:52-05:11

  It says, "After the death of Joshua, the people of Israel inquired of the Lord, 'Who shall go up first for us against the Canaanites to fight against them?'" You see, God promised Abraham and Abraham's offspring this piece of land.

  05:11-05:13

  It was already occupied.

  05:14-05:19

  So Joshua began the conquest of driving the people out.

  05:19-05:24

  And here we have a major shift between the book of Joshua and the book of Judges.

  05:24-05:25

  And here's the shift.

  05:25-05:32

  In Joshua, you have trust in God, you have obedience to God, you have victory in the Lord, and then you go to Judges.

  05:34-05:36

  And you have the opposite of all of that.

  05:36-05:39

  You have unbelief, you have disobedience, you have defeat.

  05:40-05:44

  And really, two verses sort of encapsulate this whole thing.

  05:46-06:15

  As we approach the book of Judges, Actually, you go back to Joshua 24.16, in Joshua's day, the people answered, "Far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods." And then you fast forward a couple of years and turn a couple of pages in your Bible, and you get to Judges 3.7 that says, "And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord." They forgot the Lord their God and served the Baals and the Asherah - those were idols.

  06:19-06:22

  And we have to ask ourselves, how did they get to that point?

  06:25-06:29

  How could they so quickly forget the Lord?

  06:30-06:41

  And it's real easy to look at the pages of this book and say, "How did they do that?" But really, what we need to ask ourselves How do we get to that point?

  06:44-06:47

  Because the truth is, we're all guilty of this from time to time.

  06:48-07:01

  "Oh, you know, we come to Christ and we're baptized, and we are ready to die for Jesus Christ!" And then the next thing you know, we're allowing other things to take priority in our lives.

  07:03-07:04

  And that's called idolatry.

  07:06-07:07

  Jump over to Judges 2.

  07:10-07:11

  Look at verse 1.

  07:12-07:21

  It says, "Now the angel of the Lord went up from Gilgal to Boshem." I just want to pause here.

  07:22-07:30

  When you see the angel of the Lord in the Old Testament in passages like this, this is a pre-incarnate appearance of Jesus Christ.

  07:32-07:41

  There are different times in the Old Testament Jesus actually showed up before the incarnation, and I believe this is one of those times.

  07:42-07:54

  So Jesus shows up, says He went up from Gilgal to Boshem, and He said, "I brought you up from Egypt." See, that's why I think this is God speaking.

  07:54-08:02

  He says, "I brought you up from Egypt, and brought you into the land that I swore to give to your fathers.

  08:03-08:07

  I said, "I will never break my covenant with you.

  08:09-08:13

  And you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land.

  08:15-08:17

  You shall break down their altars.

  08:21-08:22

  But you have not obeyed my voice.

  08:24-08:29

  What is this you have done?" What's the problem?

  08:30-08:42

  What happened in chapter 1 that caused God to personally show up in chapter 2 saying, "What are you guys doing?" Well, here's the thing.

  08:42-08:47

  And I encourage you to read this, but we're not going to actually read all three chapters here together this morning.

  08:48-08:57

  I encourage you to go back and read this, but when you read Judges 1, it might seem on the surface like it's just a bunch of boring lists.

  09:00-09:08

  But really, Judges 1 shows us the problem that plagued Israel throughout her Old Testament history.

  09:10-09:15

  And it shows us a problem that plagues our own lives.

  09:17-09:18

  We're going to play a game here.

  09:19-09:21

  See if you can spot the pattern. Are you ready?

  09:22-09:24

  We're going back to chapter 1, look at verse 27.

  09:24-09:26

  I'm just going to fly through some of these verses.

  09:27-09:29

  And I want you to see if you notice a pattern. Are you ready?

  09:29-09:41

  Judges 1.27, talking about tribes of Israel and some of the actions that they were not involved in.

  09:41-09:41

  You ready?

  09:42-10:21

  Verse 27, "Manasseh did not drive out the inhabitants of Beth-she-an." Verse 28, "Did not drive them out completely." Verse 29, "Ephraim did not drive out the Canaanites." 1 Thirty, Zebulun, "did not drive out the inhabitants of Kitron." 1 Thirty-one, Asher, "did not drive out the inhabitants of Akko." 1 Thirty-two, "they did not drive them out." 1 Thirty-three, Naphtali, "did not drive out the inhabitants of Beth-shemesh." See a pattern? Did you catch it?

  10:22-10:23

  Pretty obvious, wasn't it?

  10:23-10:35

  It's almost like the Lord was trying to really drive home a point by saying they did not drive them out.

  10:38-10:40

  Over and over and over.

  10:40-10:43

  They didn't drive them out. They didn't drive them out. They didn't drive them out.

  10:43-10:44

  And this is the point.

  10:46-10:50

  Israel was to go in and drive them all out completely.

  10:51-10:56

  100% get rid of them, give them their eviction papers, they are gone.

  10:59-11:01

  The problem is they compromised.

  11:03-11:07

  The problem is Israel was partially obedient.

  11:09-11:11

  I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt here.

  11:13-11:17

  I don't think Israel set out to deliberately disobey.

  11:18-11:28

  I don't think that they were folding their arms and saying, "You know what? I know what God said, but we're not going to do it." I don't think that was the attitude that was behind this.

  11:28-11:51

  I think what happened, Joshua led the conquest and so much ground was gained, I think that Israel got to a point that they sort of looked around and went, "That's good enough. I mean, it's not perfect, but it's good enough, right?" And that's the danger that you and I face in our walks with Jesus Christ.

  11:54-11:55

  It's compromise.

  11:58-12:03

  Just like Israel, I don't think there's anybody sitting in this room or watching this at home.

  12:05-12:18

  I don't think there's anybody that's tuned into this ministry that would say, "I know what God says, but I'm not going to do it." But I do think there are a lot of us that settle for good enough.

  12:21-12:26

  Now listen, before we go on, I want to remind you, you are not saved by your performance, okay?

  12:26-12:31

  We're not talking, for those of you that are true, born-again believers in Jesus Christ.

  12:31-12:33

  Your salvation is not on the line.

  12:34-12:40

  You see, your salvation is based on the performance of Jesus Christ, not your performance.

  12:41-12:47

  And there is nothing, if you're a born-again believer of Jesus Christ, there is nothing that can take that from you.

  12:47-12:54

  You are saved by grace, believing that Jesus Christ died for your sins, that He rose to give you eternal life.

  12:54-12:55

  Are we clear on that?

  12:57-13:08

  But at the same time, Christ calls those who would follow Him to radical obedience.

  13:09-13:10

  True or false?

  13:12-13:30

  The Bible says things like, "Take up your cross daily." "Bear fruit in keeping with repentance." "Use your spiritual gifts for the edification of the church." "Deny yourself." "Bless people, even your enemies." The Bible calls us to radical, full-heart obedience.

  13:30-13:35

  And I have to ask myself, and you need to ask yourself, "Is this what marks my life?

  13:36-13:41

  Or have I settled for..." It's good enough. It's good enough.

  13:45-13:46

  This is the sermon this morning.

  13:47-13:48

  Partial obedience is not good enough.

  13:52-13:54

  Think about it in other realms.

  13:54-13:56

  I would suggest you lesser realms.

  13:56-13:57

  What about school?

  13:58-14:15

  If your teacher says you have a report due, and it's the due date, "Hey, do you have that report due?" "Well, I did some of it." teacher going to say? Well that's good enough. That's good enough. You did some of it. Is your teacher gonna say that?

  14:18-14:36

  Or what if, parents, what if you told your kids, hey I want you to mow the grass, okay? I want you to mow the grass so we don't get snakes. And you come home and you're like, hey, hey son, did you mow the grass? And your son's like, I mowed some of it. Parents, are you happy with that?

  14:38-14:40

  No, good enough isn't enough.

  14:40-14:41

  Right?

  14:41-14:42

  Or what about at work?

  14:42-14:44

  I know we have some nurses here.

  14:45-15:03

  How would that work at your work, at your hospital, if your supervisor says, "Hey, how are your patients?" And you said, "I checked on most of them." Carrie, would that fly?

  15:03-15:05

  Like, "Most of them, that's good.

  15:05-15:06

  That's good.

  15:07-15:09

  No, that wouldn't fly.

  15:11-15:18

  Or what if, what if you went to Eaton Park and you got one of them breakfast smiles.

  15:18-15:20

  You ever have one of them breakfast smiles at Eaton Park?

  15:21-15:22

  You know what I'm talking about?

  15:22-15:31

  And what if that breakfast smile came out and it was, it was just a, it's just a nasty, gooey puddle in the middle of the plate.

  15:31-15:32

  And you're like, what is this?

  15:32-15:34

  And they're like, those are your eggs.

  15:35-15:44

  And you're like, "Why didn't you cook them?" And they said, "Well, we partially cooked them." Would you say, "Oh, my mistake.

  15:44-15:45

  That's good enough." Would you say that?

  15:46-15:47

  No.

  15:47-15:48

  So do you see my point?

  15:48-15:50

  In all these other realms, good enough isn't enough.

  15:51-16:07

  But somehow when we talk about our walk with Christ, it's like, "Well, it's good enough, so it's going to be good enough for God." Like Israel, we allow these little strongholds to remain in our lives.

  16:07-16:12

  These areas where we know we're not obedient, but we've learned to excuse them.

  16:12-16:13

  "Hey, we're Christians.

  16:14-16:14

  I'm saved.

  16:15-16:21

  I'm going to heaven." So this little area where I've compromised, it's not a big deal.

  16:23-16:27

  I mean, it's not like it's going to cost me my salvation.

  16:27-16:30

  So it's okay if I sin.

  16:33-16:37

  And when you say that, yes, it's true, it's not going to cost you your salvation if you're saved.

  16:38-16:39

  That is absolutely true.

  16:39-16:41

  But when you say that, do you know who you're like?

  16:42-16:43

  You're like Israel right here.

  16:44-16:47

  They're in the promised land and they're like, "We have arrived.

  16:48-16:48

  We've arrived.

  16:49-16:49

  You know what that means?

  16:50-16:53

  That means the battle is over, son." And guess what?

  16:55-16:56

  It's not over.

  16:59-17:04

  I just want to show you from the text today, I want you to jot some things down.

  17:04-17:05

  Three consequences of partial obedience.

  17:07-17:11

  If you're only partly obeying the Lord, you have some area that you're not submitting to the Lord.

  17:12-17:19

  You're not allowing Jesus Christ to be Lord of your life in this little pocket of unconquered land in your life.

  17:19-17:26

  Well, again, yeah, it might not cost you your salvation, but there are consequences for that.

  17:26-17:27

  You'll see them right from the text.

  17:27-17:28

  Number one, jot this down.

  17:29-17:29

  Your life gets harder.

  17:31-17:32

  Your life gets harder.

  17:33-17:35

  Look at verse 3, picking up.

  17:36-17:38

  Remember the angel of the Lord, Jesus Christ shows up.

  17:38-17:40

  He goes, "You've not obeyed My voice.

  17:40-17:41

  What is this you have done?

  17:42-17:45

  Why didn't you do what I told you to do?" We're going to talk more about that in a second.

  17:46-17:46

  Look at verse 3.

  17:47-17:53

  He says, "So now I say, I will not drive them out before you.

  17:55-18:04

  But they shall become thorns in your sides, and their gods shall be a snare to you." Do you see that?

  18:04-18:16

  He goes, "Because you only partially obeyed, I'm here to tell you that your life is about to get a lot harder." Yes, you're still going to live in the land, but things are going to get hard.

  18:19-18:22

  Basically, you see the Lord was saying, "You know what? Have it your way.

  18:24-18:25

  You wouldn't drive them out.

  18:25-18:30

  I told you to drive them out, and you wouldn't drive them out, so I'm not going to drive them out either.

  18:32-18:34

  And there are going to be thorns in your sides.

  18:34-18:49

  There are going to be snares." And this sounds very familiar, because even way back in Moses' day, go way back to Exodus 23, this was the warning given to Israel before they even stepped foot in the Promised Land.

  18:49-18:59

  This was the charge to drive out these wicked pagan people that were squatting in God's land here.

  19:02-19:06

  Israel was told, "They shall not dwell in your land." Why not?

  19:08-19:10

  "Lest they make you sin against Me.

  19:12-19:25

  For if you serve their gods, will surely be a snare to you." You see, what God told Israel, "I'm going to give you this land, you're going to move in, and here's what you need to do, medically speaking.

  19:25-19:41

  You need to remove the cancer." So Israel gets in the land, and their response is, "You know what? We're actually okay with a little cancer." And the Lord shows up and reminds them that good enough isn't enough.

  19:44-19:52

  "Yeah, Pastor Jeff, it's probably a tall order for this wandering band of Jewish people to just walk in and conquer these people that are established.

  19:52-19:56

  Did you really expect Israel to do that?" No, absolutely, I did not expect Israel to do that.

  19:58-20:02

  I expected God to do it, though, because He promised to give them the victory.

  20:03-20:04

  Right?

  20:04-20:11

  God never gives you a command that's impossible to fulfill.

  20:11-20:12

  He doesn't do that.

  20:14-20:21

  Every time God gives a command, understand church, behind that command is His power to fulfill the command.

  20:22-20:24

  He supplies the power.

  20:25-20:28

  Where God guides, He provides.

  20:28-20:31

  And God had promised Israel, "I'm going to win the battle.

  20:31-20:40

  I'm going to go with you, and I'm going to conquer these enemies." But they compromised.

  20:41-20:42

  Good enough. Partial obedience.

  20:44-20:52

  And God shows up and He says, "Okay, if that's the way you want it, things are about to get harder.

  20:58-21:09

  Sin makes life hard." I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this, because for those of you that are really going to be honest, I mean really going to be honest, I don't have to sell anybody on this.

  21:09-21:11

  Sin makes your life hard.

  21:12-21:17

  Ask the addict if his life was easier or harder before the addiction.

  21:19-21:26

  Ask the man who was caught in an affair, if his life was easier or harder when he was faithful to his marriage.

  21:28-21:50

  Ask the woman who refuses to forgive someone who wronged her, If her life was easier or harder when she wasn't harboring bitterness, how many of your hardships can be directly tied into the sin that you've allowed to remain in your life?

  21:54-21:56

  For some of you, you know, you don't have any money.

  21:58-21:59

  Maybe it's because you waste it.

  22:01-22:04

  Maybe it's because you don't honor God with it first.

  22:04-22:12

  And you're wondering, "Why don't I have any money?" Because it's an area of your life that you haven't allowed Jesus Christ to be Lord of.

  22:14-22:16

  And it's making your life hard.

  22:21-22:24

  Or men, maybe there's no intimacy in your marriage because of pornography.

  22:25-22:31

  Like, "Why am I just... My wife and I, we had this thing back when we got married, And it just sort of fizzled out.

  22:31-22:34

  Well, maybe that's directly tied to your sin.

  22:37-22:45

  Maybe your work performance has tanked because every time you show up for work, you're strung out or you're hung over.

  22:47-22:49

  Sin makes life hard.

  22:51-22:55

  And yes, we are promised spiritual victory in Christ.

  22:57-23:00

  We're promised victory over all of our sin.

  23:00-23:24

  And I have to ask myself, and you need to ask yourself, "Hey, am I living in victory?" Would I look at my life right now and say, "This is the victorious life, the abundant life that Christ promised through His Spirit." Or am I living in defeat because I've allowed this thing to remain that's been a snare to me?

  23:26-23:28

  Three consequences of partial obedience.

  23:28-23:30

  Number one, your life gets harder.

  23:31-23:33

  Again, not much I have to sell us on that.

  23:35-23:39

  Number two, jot this down, your spirit gets miserable.

  23:40-23:42

  Your spirit gets miserable.

  23:42-23:44

  Look at verses 4 and 5.

  23:46-23:51

  So the Lord shows up, makes His announcement, like, "Hey, you know what? You want to drive me out? I'm not going to either.

  23:51-23:56

  Things are about to get really tough for you." Verses 4 and 5 give the response. Look at this.

  23:57-24:10

  "And as soon as the angel of the Lord spoke these words to all the people of Israel, the people lifted up their voices and wept." They got it. They understood.

  24:12-24:14

  We messed up.

  24:16-24:29

  Verse 5, "And they called the name of that place Boshem." That name means "weeper." "Crying." And they sacrifice there to the Lord.

  24:31-24:34

  So not only does your life get harder, your spirit gets miserable.

  24:37-24:40

  And this just flows right from the first point.

  24:43-24:46

  There's just no joy in partial obedience. There's just not.

  24:47-24:51

  And the road of partial obedience leads to bosom.

  24:54-25:00

  There's just no joy in a half-hearted commitment to Jesus Christ.

  25:01-25:12

  And I've already told you a couple of times, "Yes, it's true that you cannot lose your salvation, but understand, with sin, there is something that you can lose.

  25:12-25:15

  Not your salvation, but you can lose the joy of your salvation.

  25:15-25:16

  Did you know that?

  25:17-25:30

  That's why David said in Psalm 51, verse 12, he says, "Restore to me the joy of your salvation." That yeah, you might be saved, you might be heading to heaven, but you feel miserable the entire way. Why?

  25:30-25:32

  Because you lost the joy of your salvation.

  25:33-25:41

  And David wrote that psalm in response to consequences of sin in his own life.

  25:42-25:43

  He goes, "I get it.

  25:43-25:45

  There was an area of my life where I compromised.

  25:47-25:48

  And I am miserable!

  25:49-25:52

  I know I'm going to heaven, but I feel miserable!

  25:54-25:56

  Is there anybody here that can relate to that?

  25:58-26:04

  Because you see, you might think the most miserable person in the world is someone who doesn't know Jesus Christ.

  26:05-26:08

  Some pagan friend out there, you're like, "Well, he doesn't know the Lord.

  26:09-26:11

  He must be miserable." Guess what? He's not.

  26:11-26:13

  I'll tell you who the most miserable person in the world is.

  26:14-26:19

  The most miserable person in the world is a believer who's compromised along the way.

  26:20-26:27

  A true follower of Jesus Christ who somehow has not fully committed to Jesus Christ in some area.

  26:27-26:30

  That is the most miserable person you're going to meet. Why?

  26:34-26:38

  Because the Bible says sin grieves the Spirit of God. Did you know that?

  26:39-26:54

  Ephesians 4:30 says, "Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God." That sick feeling you experience when you sin, Christian, that's way more than just some sort of guilt or shame.

  26:54-26:56

  It's way more than that.

  26:56-27:15

  That restlessness, that discontent, that discouragement, that "in the pit of my soul" feeling that I have when I sin, I'm just like, "You know what I'm talking about?" Like, spiritually sick. "You know what I'm talking about?" Any other Christian in here besides me ever sin?

  27:15-27:24

  "You know what I'm talking about?" "Okay, thank you. You don't leave me up here." Going home today like, "Oh man, I'm the only one that's ever sinned in that church.

  27:24-27:31

  And they made me the pastor." That sick feeling in your soul.

  27:35-27:39

  That's the Holy Spirit grieving at your choices.

  27:40-27:46

  Because your actions aren't lining up with the person that He's called and empowered you to be.

  27:48-27:51

  And your life turns into Judges 2.5.

  27:53-27:59

  You may be worshipping, but you're also weeping.

  28:00-28:01

  You're miserable.

  28:04-28:06

  Three consequences of partial obedience.

  28:06-28:07

  Your life gets harder, your spirit gets miserable.

  28:07-28:12

  Number three, your children get apathetic.

  28:13-28:14

  Your children get apathetic.

  28:15-28:16

  Let's jump down to verse 7.

  28:17-28:27

  It says, "And the people served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great work that the Lord had done for Israel.

  28:28-28:55

  And Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of 110 years." Verse 9, "And they buried him within the boundaries of his inheritance in Timnath-hariz, in the hill country of Ephraim, north of the mountain of Gash." I think that's how you pronounce that.

  28:55-28:58

  In verse 10, look at this.

  28:58-29:02

  "And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers.

  29:05-29:20

  And there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord, or the work that He had done for Israel." This is a huge consequence of partial obedience is your children get apathetic.

  29:20-29:24

  See, in this verse here in verse 10, to meet the next generation.

  29:28-29:29

  And suddenly everything's different.

  29:31-29:31

  Everything changes.

  29:33-29:34

  Like how bad did it get?

  29:34-29:36

  Look at verse 11, the very next verse.

  29:36-29:43

  Look at it. It says, "And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals." What?

  29:49-29:50

  What in the world just happened?

  29:52-30:00

  Did he went from Joshua, be strong and courageous and conquer to...

  30:01-30:02

  Let's worship the veils.

  30:08-30:09

  What happened?

  30:12-30:29

  The next generation up often has this tendency to accept the status quo, and to lose the vision of the first generation.

  30:32-30:35

  I heard a preacher one time call that the second generation syndrome.

  30:39-30:46

  And it's where the parents' urgency becomes the children's apathy.

  30:46-30:47

  Do you know what I'm talking about?

  30:47-31:06

  This Joshua's generation was on fire, "We're going to conquer, grab your weapons boys, we're going to take this land." And the next generation up was just like, "Hmm." and dad were awfully fired up about that, but that was kind of their thing, I guess.

  31:09-31:30

  And they were apathetic. And I have to wonder, what happened? Where was the leadership gap here? Did they not disciple people to be leaders in the next generation? I just think it's so many questions about how this happened in one generation. But it happens. I'm going I'm going to be honest with you, church.

  31:30-31:34

  Do you know who I think is the biggest danger to this church right here?

  31:35-31:41

  The biggest danger to keep this church from thriving and staying on mission and leading people to Jesus Christ?

  31:41-31:43

  Do you know who I think the biggest danger is?

  31:44-31:47

  Like the worldly people, right? No.

  31:48-31:50

  The church can withstand them.

  31:52-31:54

  Gates of hell, that's nothing for the church.

  31:54-31:59

  Do you know who concerns me most about keeping this church on mission?

  32:00-32:01

  They're up in the nursery right now.

  32:02-32:04

  They're up in our Harvest Kids ministry right now.

  32:04-32:06

  Those are the people that concern me.

  32:09-32:10

  The Cade Millers.

  32:11-32:12

  The Evan Millers.

  32:13-32:15

  The children in this church.

  32:18-32:20

  Those are the ones that concern me the most.

  32:21-32:23

  Because I know the parents, right?

  32:23-32:37

  And I think of some of you parents who have been with us for so long, like the Thompsons, and worked so hard storming the gates of hell, delivering the life-saving message of Jesus Christ, and have children.

  32:40-32:45

  Just being honest, guys, we have children that are prime candidates to catch the second generation syndrome.

  32:46-32:48

  How? Well, verse 10 tells us.

  32:49-32:56

  It says, "They did not know the Lord or the work that He had done for Israel." Now, that doesn't mean they were ignorant.

  32:57-33:00

  That they're like, "I've never heard of the Red Sea.

  33:00-33:01

  I've never heard of manna.

  33:02-33:03

  I've never heard of water from a rock.

  33:03-33:07

  I've never heard of any of these things." That's not what that means at all.

  33:09-33:14

  It means they knew about God, but they didn't know God.

  33:18-33:19

  And because of that, they became complacent.

  33:20-33:20

  We've heard it all before.

  33:21-33:22

  We've heard it all before.

  33:23-33:28

  Oh gosh, dad's telling us the story of the Red Sea again.

  33:30-33:31

  We've heard this before.

  33:32-33:34

  You know what the Bible calls that?

  33:35-33:35

  Lukewarmness.

  33:36-33:41

  It's apathy about biblical truths that we've heard from our Sunday school teachers our whole lives.

  33:43-33:44

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, we know, we've heard.

  33:44-33:46

  Yeah, Jesus died on the cross, rose from the dead.

  33:47-33:59

  And we treat this, eternal, awesome work of God like it's some common thing.

  34:01-34:15

  And that's why, church, please hear me, that's why the second generation can be easily tempted to sit back and enjoy all of the blessings of the church that Jesus built through you.

  34:16-34:17

  Through you!

  34:20-34:24

  And the next generation up can become blessing-centered instead of Christ-centered.

  34:28-34:32

  You're like, "Well, where's the hope?" We're going to close with that.

  34:34-34:36

  Because God has a strategy against apathy.

  34:37-34:38

  God wasn't taken unawares.

  34:39-34:42

  You realize God's never in heaven pacing, like, "Oh no, now what am I going to do?

  34:42-34:47

  They didn't listen. Plan B." God never is taken unawares.

  34:47-34:49

  Like, here's His plan. Look at chapter 3.

  34:49-35:03

  It says, in the first four verses, "Now these are the nations that the Lord left..." Look at this, "...to test Israel by them." That is, all in Israel who had not experienced all the wars in Canaan.

  35:05-35:10

  It was only in order that the generations of the people of Israel might know war.

  35:10-35:13

  To teach war to those who had not known it before.

  35:14-35:15

  These are the nations.

  35:16-35:26

  The five lords of the Philistines and all the Canaanites and the Sidonians and the Hivites who lived on Mount Lebanon from Mount Bel-Herman as far as Lebo-Hamath.

  35:27-35:39

  Verse 4, "They were for the testing of Israel to know whether Israel would obey the commandments of the Lord, which he commanded their fathers by the hand of Moses." So here's God's strategy.

  35:41-35:44

  He says, "Okay, you're not going to remove the enemy completely.

  35:44-35:46

  I'm not going to either.

  35:46-35:49

  What I'm going to do is I'm going to use them.

  35:49-35:52

  I mean, why not? They're right there. I'll use them.

  35:54-35:59

  You're like, "Wait, wait, wait. Hang on. Back up a second. Back up a second." That's God's strategy?

  36:01-36:07

  How in the world is that any kind of strategy to prevent the second generation syndrome?

  36:11-36:23

  When you got saved, those of you that are true believers, when you got saved, why didn't God just remove the sin nature from your flesh?

  36:23-36:24

  Have you ever wondered that?

  36:27-36:33

  My Christian walk would be a whole lot easier if I didn't live in this sinful flesh and have these temptations.

  36:33-36:35

  You know what I'm talking about? It would be a whole lot easier.

  36:35-36:41

  So, could God remove my sin nature? Is that possible?

  36:42-36:44

  Absolutely! God can do anything.

  36:44-36:49

  So the question is, why didn't He eliminate my sin nature?

  36:49-36:51

  Why didn't He eliminate my weaknesses?

  36:55-37:10

  I'll be honest with you, for years, as a very young Christian and a young pastor, I went to the prayer room on my face, asking God to remove temptation.

  37:11-37:16

  Asking God to remove sin nature from me.

  37:16-37:18

  For years I prayed that.

  37:19-37:51

  You know, one day, same prayer room, I'm on my face praying, "God, just take this sin nature from me." And in his still small voice, he reminded me, he said, "That's not how I work." He says, "I don't remove the sin nature. What I do is, I give you my Holy Spirit." You see, the Lord uses difficulty to teach us and to teach our kids how to wage spiritual war.

  37:54-38:02

  You see, God doesn't say, "Now that you're saved, expect peace for the rest of your life." He says, "Now that you're saved, what does Ephesians 6 say?

  38:02-38:05

  Put on the armor of God." Why would I need armor?

  38:06-38:07

  Because you're going to war!

  38:07-38:08

  There's a battle!

  38:10-38:12

  And that's what God did with Israel here.

  38:12-38:15

  Said, "Hey, we're going to teach some kids how to fight.

  38:15-38:16

  That's why we're going to keep them.

  38:16-38:17

  I'm going to use them.

  38:17-38:18

  You wouldn't get rid of them, I'm not.

  38:18-38:19

  We're going to use them.

  38:19-38:21

  They're going to learn how to fight." And God says the same thing to us.

  38:21-38:28

  That sin nature is going to stay, and you're going to learn how to walk by the Spirit and not fulfill the lust of the flesh.

  38:29-38:37

  You're going to learn what it means to trust Me every step of the way.

  38:39-38:43

  Otherwise, you know what my Christian walk would be?

  38:44-38:55

  It would be like, "Hey, you know what? Back in 1995, I trusted Jesus Christ." Like, "Well, how's that gone today?" It doesn't matter, because I don't need Him today like I did in 1995.

  38:55-38:56

  No, you know what?

  38:57-39:05

  I am more aware of my need for Jesus Christ's power in my life today than I was however many years ago that was when I came to Him.

  39:08-39:11

  We learn to trust Him with every step.

  39:12-39:23

  Because church, when the enemy looks unstoppable, when the mountain looks too high and that path looks too long and our resources are completely gone.

  39:24-39:26

  All of a sudden, do you know what we have?

  39:27-39:28

  A teachable spirit.

  39:30-39:38

  We have a hand that reaches up and says, "God, you know what? I need you." And church, we can't stand still.

  39:40-39:42

  Like Israel, there's still enemies to be faced.

  39:43-39:53

  There's still ground to be gained, and if the battle is going to continue until the Lord returns, you had better recruit and train your kids.

  39:56-39:57

  Do what's right.

  39:59-40:03

  And it starts by doing it 100%.

  40:04-40:06

  Not partially.

  40:06-40:12

  Not, "I did it mostly!" This is war.

  40:14-40:18

  And in war, good enough isn't enough.

  40:19-40:20

  Let's pray.

  40:21-40:35

  Father in heaven, Your Word tells us that You've given us these accounts in Your Word to serve as examples for us, to teach us some things.

  40:38-40:41

  Father, if we're honest, this hits pretty close to home today.

  40:43-40:46

  Because Father, we are so much like Israel.

  40:48-40:56

  God, we confess to You that we allow areas of unconquered land in our own hearts.

  40:59-41:02

  We face the same consequences that Israel faced.

  41:05-41:08

  Father, right now we want to thank You for the victory of Jesus Christ.

  41:09-41:14

  We do thank You, Father, that our salvation is based on what He did, not on what we do.

  41:15-41:26

  But at the same time, Father, we cry out that we would experience His power in a renewed and fresh way.

  41:27-41:32

  And Father, that has to start with You making us aware of our need for His power.

  41:34-41:50

  And I pray, Father, if nothing else happened today, I pray that that's something Your Word accomplished was it awakens the need for each of Your true people here and watching and listening.

  41:50-41:59

  I pray, Father, that this awakens us again and afresh to the need that we have for daily reliance on Your Spirit.

  42:02-42:11

  That yes, you have promised to conquer the enemies, but somehow you use us as part of that whole process.

  42:13-42:19

  On a way that we can choose to obey and go with you, or a way that we can choose to sit back and say that's good enough.

  42:23-42:24

  Grab us today, Father.

  42:25-42:26

  Grant us repentance.

  42:27-42:28

  Glorify Your name.

  42:29-42:33

  Father, just now we're going to stand and lift our voices up in worship.

  42:34-42:42

  Let us celebrate the victory of Christ, the victory He won in the past, and the victory that He is going to give us today.

  42:43-42:44

  We praise You in Jesus' name.

  42:45-42:45

  Amen.

Small Group Discussion
Read Judges 2:1-5

1. What was your big take-away from this passage / message?
   

2. Describe in your own words how Israel sinned. Why was this such a big deal to the Lord (Judges 2:1-3)?
   

3. Read Ephesians 4:30. How do you grieve the Holy Spirit? How do you know you have? How can you stop grieving the Spirit? How do you know you have?
   

4. What is the “second generation syndrome”? How does that happen? How can we prevent that with our kids (and the kids at HBC)?

Breakout
Pray for one another. In what area(s) have you been “partially obedient”?

Who Will You Choose?

Introduction:

We Choose Barabbas Because (Matthew 27:15-23):

1. We are too Self-centered (Matt 27:17-18).
2. We are too willing to Listen to others (Matt 27:19-20).
3. We are too eager to Worship idols .

   John 19:15 - "They cried out, Away with him, away with him, crucify him! Pilate said to them, Shall I crucify your King? The chief priests answered, We have no king but Caesar."

How Do We Stop Choosing Barabbas?

Jeremiah 29:13 - "You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart."

Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!

• Audio Transcript

  00:00-00:01

  All right.

  00:02-00:03

  Thanks for that introduction, Andrew.

  00:03-00:04

  Appreciate that, bud.

  00:05-00:14

  Before we get started, I just want to pull the curtain back a little bit as to what goes in to the four of us getting up here during July.

  00:14-00:24

  So we start back in January, and once a month we get together and we meet, and we try to -- Jeff shows us how to break down a passage, how to figure out what it's talking about.

  00:24-00:25

  We do outlines.

  00:25-01:03

  We go through different things every week, and then we rehearse, and then finally in we get up and do this. So I've been working on this passage for six months since January, okay? And I feel like God's really been taking me through different paths through this message, really trying to narrow it down to present it to you and give God's Word to you accurately. For six months that's been going on. And then Darren, big Darren, that sings up here, sitting in his living room one day, God reveals the same thing that took six months to reveal to me, revealed to him in five minutes.

  01:04-01:05

  And he put it on Facebook.

  01:08-01:12

  So I just took Darren's post and printed it out, and that's what we're going to talk about today.

  01:15-01:17

  All right, are you guys ready to hear what God revealed to me?

  01:18-01:19

  All right, let's pray before we do that.

  01:20-01:22

  Father, I thank you for this day.

  01:22-01:24

  I thank you for this opportunity to be here.

  01:25-01:26

  God, I'm humbled.

  01:29-01:31

  Father, give me the words to say.

  01:32-01:34

  Let them not be my words, but your words.

  01:36-01:39

  God, please help this to touch each and every person here as it has touched me.

  01:41-01:43

  In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

  01:46-01:53

  So early on in Sarah and I's marriage, we had decided that we got to a point where we wanted to buy a new car.

  01:54-01:56

  It knew to us it was going to be used.

  01:56-01:57

  We couldn't afford a new car.

  01:59-02:01

  But we had our checklist of things we wanted.

  02:02-02:10

  You know, the main three things we wanted was low miles, fully loaded, and in the right price.

  02:11-02:12

  And we had a couple other things.

  02:12-02:16

  But to be honest, what we wanted was a car that everybody would turn their heads and look at.

  02:17-02:21

  When we pulled into church on Sundays, we wanted everybody to go, wow, look at that.

  02:21-02:22

  Because that's why you go to church.

  02:23-02:24

  (audience laughing)

  02:26-02:27

  Amen, right?

  02:30-02:30

  So we were all excited.

  02:30-02:33

  I think we'd been married maybe a year or two at the time.

  02:34-02:36

  So we're looking online, we would go to dealerships, whatnot.

  02:38-02:47

  So this one time we came upon an ad and it was if God had taken our prayers to him 'cause we'd asked him to give us that perfect flashy car.

  02:48-02:51

  And it was as if he had dropped it in our laps.

  02:52-02:57

  And we're looking one night on a very reputable website where no scams ever happen, Craigslist.

  03:01-03:11

  So this car comes up, two years old, very low miles, fully loaded for $3,000.

  03:13-03:14

  Boom, deal of a lifetime.

  03:14-03:16

  And they were willing to ship for free.

  03:18-03:18

  It's perfect.

  03:19-03:26

  It was if God perfectly made that ad for us or some 12-year-old with Photoshop in his mom's basement.

  03:29-03:30

  But that was our car.

  03:30-03:31

  We wanted it.

  03:31-03:37

  And everybody around us is going, "Guys, you do know this is completely fake, right?" "No, no, no.

  03:37-03:38

  This is the car for us.

  03:39-03:40

  This is the car we want.

  03:41-03:41

  This is ours.

  03:42-03:47

  God made it for us." And everybody's going, "Guys, pay attention.

  03:47-03:53

  This is not real." We had convinced ourselves that everybody just didn't want us to have a deal of a lifetime.

  03:54-03:56

  They were jealous of this awesome car we were going to get.

  03:59-04:03

  I'm not going to lie, we came embarrassingly close to pulling the trigger on that.

  04:05-04:06

  Luckily for us, we didn't.

  04:08-04:14

  But deep down inside, Sarah and I knew that choice was wrong, but we wanted to do it anyway.

  04:14-04:16

  We intentionally were making the wrong choice.

  04:17-04:17

  Why?

  04:17-04:44

  remember what we wanted to do, probably because we were stubborn and we wanted to prove that at 22 years old we knew what we were doing. But we'll do that, right? We'll do that in a lot of areas in our life. We'll intentionally make the wrong choice, even when we know it's wrong. We'll do it anyway. Why? It's for always a myriad of reasons. But we'll do it. If you're honest with me, there's been a time in your life that you've done that.

  04:47-04:52

  The passage we're going to go over today is about a choice that was made almost 2,000 years ago.

  04:53-04:58

  And the people that made that choice intentionally made the wrong choice.

  05:00-05:07

  And even though that was made all those years ago, we're still making that same choice today.

  05:10-05:11

  So let's look at this.

  05:12-05:15

  We're in Matthew 27, verses 15 through 23.

  05:16-05:23

  And just to set the scene for a little bit, we're kind of stepping right into the middle of the road where Jesus is going to the cross.

  05:24-05:32

  He's been arrested, people have questioned Him, and we're picking it up right where Pilate is talking to the crowd.

  05:33-05:38

  And at this time, this is the Roman Empire that we all learned about in the history books.

  05:38-05:43

  They had conquered a lot of the world, and in that, Israel was under that.

  05:43-05:55

  And so the Israel leaders, the Jewish leaders, the elders, the spiritual leaders of the Jews, they had a very corrupt relationship with the government, or with the Roman government.

  05:56-06:02

  So there was all kinds of behind locked doors deals going on and things like that.

  06:03-06:06

  But it's important that you understand that as we go through this.

  06:06-06:08

  So let's pick it up in verse 15.

  06:09-06:29

  "Now at the feast, the governor was custom to release for the crowd any one prisoner whom they wanted. And they had this notorious prisoner called Barabbas. Let's just pause right there for one second. So this guy Barabbas, the best way I can describe this guy is a terrorist.

  06:29-06:48

  He's an anarchist. We all know what that's like right now. We see that going on in our own country. But he's a terrorist. That's not something I really have to explain to a lot of people. He's a bad guy and both sides needed this guy removed. Both the Jewish people and the Roman people. He caused problems across the board.

  06:51-07:07

  So that's who Barabbas is. Let's pick it up in 17. So when they gathered Pilate said to them, "Whom do you want me to release for you? Barabbas or Jesus who is called Christ, for he knew it was out of envy that they had delivered him up.

  07:08-07:25

  Besides, while Pilate was sitting on his judgment seat, his wife sent word to him, "Have nothing to do with this righteous man, for I have suffered much because of him today in a dream." Now the chief priests and elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas and destroy Jesus.

  07:26-07:31

  The governor again said to them, "Which of these two do you want me to release to you?

  07:31-07:45

  And they said, "Barabbas." Pilate said to them, "Then what shall I do with Jesus, who is Christ?" And they all said, "Let him be crucified." And he said, "Why?

  07:45-07:50

  What evil has he done?" But they shouted all the more, almost a riot type.

  07:51-08:01

  "Let him be crucified." Church, there's a lot of heavy content in this passage.

  08:02-08:08

  But I want to focus on the choice that was made by the crowd and the Jewish leaders.

  08:11-08:17

  And as I was studying this, I tried to put myself in the shoes of different characters in this passage.

  08:17-08:20

  And one that I kept kind of focusing on was Pilate.

  08:21-08:23

  Pilate's this arrogant guy.

  08:24-08:25

  He thought he was big stuff.

  08:25-08:28

  And if you asked him, he would have told you he was big stuff.

  08:31-08:33

  And he needed a win.

  08:33-08:38

  Because if we read earlier, he had done some pretty bad stuff to the Jewish people, and he needed this win.

  08:39-08:40

  So this kind of fell into his lap.

  08:41-08:43

  Here's this guy Barabbas that was already arrested.

  08:43-08:46

  He was going to destroy Barabbas one way or the other.

  08:47-08:51

  But then he had this guy Jesus that the Jewish leadership didn't really like.

  08:53-08:55

  but he was going to give them a prisoner.

  08:56-09:06

  And I kind of picture him almost coming out, you know, thinking the crowd's cheering for him, and really not, you know, and kind of throwing up like, "Hey, you guys want me to release a prisoner?

  09:06-09:14

  Here's this guy that none of us like." Or you can have Jesus that you guys just don't like as a person.

  09:14-09:15

  He hasn't done anything, you just don't like him.

  09:16-09:18

  And I kind of picture him almost turning his back and walking away.

  09:19-09:26

  And when they said Barabbas, him almost stopping in his tracks and being like, "What'd you just say to me? Barabbas?

  09:28-10:03

  Do you...terrorist Barabbas? You want him?" But Jesus hasn't done anything. He even says that. He says, "Why? What evil has he done?" And they ignored it and just said, "Crucify him. Give us Jesus." And we see later, not to be a spoiler alert, but he gave them Jesus and washed his hands and said, "Whatever, I don't want to be a part of this." But I want to focus on the choice that they made.

  10:04-10:06

  They chose Barabbas over Jesus.

  10:08-10:24

  And when I've read this before, I've always kind of sat there and go, "How in the world did they pick Barabbas?" this terrorist, this evil person that had murdered people, that was so disruptive in everything.

  10:25-10:28

  How did they choose for rabbits?

  10:32-10:38

  And they were supposed to, they just didn't like Jesus, and they should have known who he was as the spiritual leaders.

  10:38-10:43

  They should have known that prophecy was being fulfilled, and they didn't care.

  10:43-10:47

  They wanted him out of their life because they didn't like what he was saying.

  10:47-10:49

  He was calling them out for their hypocrisy.

  10:49-10:51

  He didn't, they did not like that.

  10:56-11:00

  And the scripture tells us three reasons that they chose Barabbas.

  11:01-11:07

  And those church are the same three reasons that we continue to choose Barabbas.

  11:08-11:10

  You might say, Ryan, we don't, we're not choosing Barabbas.

  11:11-11:12

  That happened 2000 years ago.

  11:12-11:19

  Now here's the thing, and this is what God revealed to me, and when he revealed this to me, this entire passage changed.

  11:20-11:23

  'Cause Barabbas represents sin.

  11:25-11:36

  And when you see Barabbas that way, if you would look into your own life, you see that we choose sin every day over Jesus.

  11:38-11:40

  So yes, we choose Barabbas.

  11:40-11:49

  We continually choose Barabbas for the exact same reasons the Jews did.

  11:51-11:53

  So let's look at those three reasons.

  11:54-11:59

  We're going to look at those, and at the end, I'm going to offer a solution how to stop choosing Barabbas.

  12:01-12:02

  Let's go to verse 18.

  12:05-12:10

  We choose Barabbas because we are too self-centered.

  12:12-12:15

  In verse 18, actually, let's back up to 17.

  12:16-12:29

  "So when they gathered, Pilate said to them, 'Whom do you want me to release to you, Barabbas or Jesus who is called Christ?' For he knew it was out of envy that they had delivered him up." Be honest with me again.

  12:30-12:35

  Have you ever made a choice because of jealousy, because of envy, because of self-centeredness.

  12:37-12:42

  We live in this world that focuses on me, me, me, me.

  12:43-12:45

  Social media is all about me.

  12:46-12:51

  We put our family photos up on Facebook, you know, white shirt, khaki shorts, look at us on the beach.

  12:54-12:57

  I know my family and I went to the beach twice, but we didn't dress like that.

  13:00-13:02

  And there's nothing wrong with putting pictures on Facebook.

  13:02-13:03

  That's not what I'm saying.

  13:03-13:06

  But you get my point, everything's focused on me.

  13:08-13:15

  And when it's not focused on me, I get jealous and I'll do everything to get myself back at the center of focus.

  13:16-13:17

  We do that at work.

  13:17-13:19

  Why is that guy getting a promotion and I'm not?

  13:20-13:22

  I work so much harder than that person.

  13:22-13:26

  I'm so much better at my job and they got a promotion and I didn't.

  13:26-13:32

  Or I don't get treated fair enough, so I'm gonna leave and go to another job where the grass is greener.

  13:33-13:36

  and I never take time to focus on what Jesus wants me to do.

  13:37-13:38

  We'll do that in our own marriages.

  13:39-13:43

  Husbands, we'll look at other wives and go, why doesn't my wife treat me like that?

  13:46-13:47

  Wives will do the same thing.

  13:49-13:52

  That wife's husband treats her like a princess.

  13:52-13:54

  Why doesn't my husband treat me that way?

  13:55-13:56

  So you know what?

  13:56-13:59

  I'm gonna get out of this marriage and I'm gonna go find a new one.

  14:02-14:07

  Why am I going through this hard time and my fellow Christian is not going through this hard time?

  14:09-14:12

  I'll remove myself from that and I'll get mine.

  14:13-14:14

  So my life is better.

  14:16-14:21

  And we do that so many times because it's all about me.

  14:23-14:32

  And I would rather listen and try to dictate the score and dictate what I'm gonna do rather than listen to Jesus and follow his path.

  14:35-14:44

  Church, if we would follow Jesus' path that he has laid out for us, the blessing on the other side of that is gonna be so much greater than anything we can imagine.

  14:48-14:50

  But no, we wanna dictate what happens.

  14:53-14:58

  And maybe Jesus has you in that difficult position because he's trying to show you something.

  15:00-15:08

  He has you going through that difficult relationship because of the blessing he has on the other side that you won't get if you don't follow his path.

  15:09-15:10

  His blessings are always better.

  15:12-15:20

  But envy, jealousy, and self-centeredness stop those blessings from happening and they destroy our relationship with Jesus.

  15:23-15:24

  Let's go back to the text.

  15:27-15:34

  Point number two, we choose Barabbas because we are too willing to listen to others.

  15:37-15:40

  Verse 19 and 20 are going to show us two examples of this.

  15:42-16:08

  Verse 19, "Besides, while he was sitting on his judgment seat, his wife sent word to him, 'Have nothing to do with this righteous man, for I have suffered much because of him today in a dream.'" Then in verse 20, "Now the chief priests and elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas and destroy Jesus." Husbands, wives, we look at verse 19.

  16:08-16:11

  We see Pilate's wife putting peer pressure on him.

  16:13-16:15

  Have you ever done that? Husbands?

  16:16-16:18

  Ever made a decision because your wife wanted it?

  16:20-16:22

  Don't send me emails about that.

  16:25-16:26

  Why? Our husbands, have we ever done that?

  16:27-16:29

  Or wives, have you ever done that?

  16:29-16:34

  Made a decision just because your husband wanted it and never took time to listen to what God had you to say.

  16:35-16:40

  Peer pressure is not something I have to explain in great lengths.

  16:41-16:45

  We see peer pressure from the first day of grade school to the day we go in the grave.

  16:46-16:48

  There is peer pressure all of us.

  16:49-16:52

  And we see that in 19 and 20.

  16:52-16:56

  We see it happening in the home, and then we see it happening in public settings.

  17:00-17:03

  Peer pressure right now is happening so much in our country.

  17:04-17:11

  Every day, the media is telling, "Believe this or you're this." No, no, no, believe this or you're this.

  17:11-17:14

  If you don't believe this, that automatically makes you this.

  17:16-17:19

  And if you don't, well, then I just hate you.

  17:19-17:21

  I want nothing to do with you.

  17:23-17:25

  You can't have this unless you admit to this.

  17:26-17:28

  Peer pressure is everywhere.

  17:31-17:33

  And oftentimes we'll go along with it.

  17:33-17:33

  Why?

  17:34-17:43

  Because we're more afraid of our fellow human beings than we are of being out of perfect harmony with Jesus Christ.

  17:45-17:50

  Our relationship with Jesus should be so strong and so good, it doesn't matter what people are telling us.

  17:54-18:05

  That we should just go, "Listen, whatever you do to me, I don't care because it's far less than me being out of perfect harmony with my Lord and Savior." You might say, "You don't understand.

  18:06-18:11

  I get it at home, I get it at work, I get it everywhere you go." I may not understand, but Jesus does.

  18:12-18:24

  And he proved it as he was standing there in this crowd, is going, "Change what you say or we're going to murder you." We see that in the previous chapter.

  18:25-18:32

  And God just stood there and said, "I will not, because my father is telling me I must do this.

  18:33-18:38

  And what you're telling me to do is a direct violation to what my father wants me to do.

  18:38-18:39

  And I cannot do that.

  18:41-18:42

  I cannot go against my father.

  18:45-18:46

  And he did.

  18:47-18:51

  He stood there and eventually was murdered for us.

  18:55-19:03

  But oftentimes, oftentimes we're so afraid of our human race, we're more afraid of our human race than disappointing God.

  19:04-19:07

  And we'll choose to go with peer pressure because it's easy.

  19:09-19:10

  And that's so shameful.

  19:13-19:14

  So shameful for us.

  19:18-19:19

  Let's go to the third point.

  19:21-19:25

  And for this, I'm actually going to jump over to John 19.15.

  19:27-19:31

  And John's telling the exact same story that Matthew's telling us.

  19:32-19:40

  But the way that John worded it is so applicable for this third point that I wanted to use it.

  19:41-19:44

  So John 19, 15, it's gonna be on the screen.

  19:46-19:53

  They cried out, the crowd, they cried out, away with him, away with him, crucify him.

  19:55-19:58

  Pilate said to them, shall I crucify your king?

  20:00-20:05

  And the chief priest answered, we have no king but Caesar.

  20:07-20:16

  Wow. Church, understand what they're saying. The Jewish people hated Caesar.

  20:16-20:30

  They hated him. And they said, "I'd rather put Caesar in front of Jesus." My sworn enemy, the person I hate, I will put in front of Jesus.

  20:31-20:34

  In church, that is idolatry.

  20:37-20:45

  Anything that you put in front of Jesus that is more of a priority in your life than Jesus, that's an idol.

  20:46-20:53

  So my third point, we follow or we choose Barabbas because we are too eager to worship idols.

  20:54-21:08

  And oftentimes when we think of idols, we think of these little golden statues or a Buddha type, or we think addiction or greed, substance abuse, pornography.

  21:11-21:17

  But let me tell you a story about an idol that I had in my life and to be honest I didn't really even know I had it.

  21:20-21:33

  So we have, Sarah and I have three children. We have our oldest child is a girl, our youngest child is a girl and right in the middle is my poor son. He's five, he's six years old now.

  21:36-22:13

  Full of life, full of energy. But when, his name's Milo. When Milo was three years old, I'm sorry, three months old, he went into the hospital with a respiratory virus. No, it wasn't coronavirus. It was RSV. And we had actually gone through this a year before with my oldest daughter. She had it. She was in the hospital for a few days and she was released. Everything was fine. But with Milo, he went in and we expected to be in there for a few days. Three weeks later, we still weren't out of the hospital.

  22:16-22:20

  And it was a roller coaster of emotions going through that.

  22:20-22:22

  Some of you experienced that with us when it went through.

  22:23-22:24

  I know Jeff was there, Murph, you were there.

  22:27-22:30

  And there was times where it was, "Hey, you might go home tomorrow.

  22:31-22:32

  Hey, Milo might never leave the hospital.

  22:33-22:34

  Hey, we got it figured out.

  22:34-22:42

  We have no idea what's going on." And just this roller coaster of never knowing what was going to happen to my son, my boy.

  22:44-23:06

  And I remember one day, in one of the just lowest points that we were, going to work the one day, working on a job site, and I had, I remember having my sunglasses on and just tears flowing down my face, just crying out to God, going, "God, don't take my son from me.

  23:07-23:41

  I don't care what else you do, don't take my son from me." And in this moment of just deep, deep prayer, and just blocking all the noise out, I remember hearing a voice going, "Ryan, that's not your son, that's mine." And having to break down and say, "Father, if you take my boy, I'm okay with it, and I'll praise you." I had turned Milo into an idol.

  23:42-23:53

  You may say, "Ryan, that's just you being a dad, loving your kid." No, because what I told God was, "God, I'll follow you anywhere, but not to my son's grave.

  23:55-23:57

  You can do anything to me.

  23:58-23:59

  I will do anything for you.

  24:00-24:08

  Don't you take my family." My family became more important to me than anything else.

  24:10-24:18

  And here's the truth, my wife of 13 years, my beautiful kids, they haven't done for me, but my Lord and Savior did.

  24:19-24:20

  Not even close.

  24:24-24:25

  My family was my idol.

  24:26-24:31

  And until I got them behind Jesus Christ, my relationship wasn't going to go any further.

  24:33-24:42

  We were always going to be limited because Sarah, Zoe, Milo, and Avery were more important to me than Jesus Christ.

  24:44-24:52

  An idol is anything that is your number one priority over Jesus Christ.

  24:53-25:06

  And you have to get to the point where either A, you have to remove that idol completely from your life, or in my case, I can't remove my family, but I have to reprioritize where they are in my life.

  25:10-25:15

  Because Jesus will not thrive in my life if he's not the most important person to me.

  25:19-25:28

  But oftentimes, we as Christians are more willing to put anything in front of Jesus, including Barabbas.

  25:30-25:35

  And I know these three points have been a lot of bam, bam, bam.

  25:35-25:36

  We're bad people.

  25:38-25:40

  You know, we're too self-centered.

  25:41-25:42

  We fall to peer pressure.

  25:42-25:44

  We have idols in our lives.

  25:45-25:48

  But before we close, I want to offer you a solution.

  25:49-25:53

  How do we stop choosing Barabbas?

  25:55-25:58

  Or that answer is found in Jeremiah 29, 13.

  26:01-26:14

  Jesus is talking and he says, "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.

  26:16-26:19

  Come at me with everything you have.

  26:20-26:24

  Make me the number one priority in your life.

  26:25-26:27

  Get in the gospel.

  26:27-26:28

  Search for me.

  26:28-26:29

  Find me.

  26:29-26:30

  He's not hiding.

  26:31-26:34

  All he's doing is come after me with everything you have.

  26:34-26:37

  If you don't go to church here, that's okay.

  26:37-26:49

  Understand that for the past year, we have been going through a study in the gospel of John that is entitled "Knowing Jesus." Not with your head, with your heart.

  26:52-26:58

  the heart for Jesus, that He is everything to us.

  26:58-27:01

  And my relationship with Jesus is the most important thing.

  27:04-27:08

  But what we want to do oftentimes as Christians is we want to do two things with Jesus.

  27:08-27:15

  Either we make Him this unattainable, mythical, magical creature that's unapproachable, and we can never go to it, so why even try?

  27:16-27:17

  Why even try?

  27:19-27:24

  Or we make him this grandfatherly type thing, sitting in a rocking chair.

  27:24-27:26

  He's, you know, "Oh, shucks," kind of person.

  27:27-27:34

  By the way, if I hear one more person say, "The big man upstairs," I'm going to open hand slap him.

  27:36-27:38

  There needs to be respect for Jesus, for God.

  27:39-27:41

  He's not this grandfatherly person.

  27:41-27:43

  He's not this mythical, magical creature.

  27:44-27:59

  He's our Father that sent His Son and put Him in the hands people he created to be tortured and mutilated for us so that we could spend eternity with God.

  27:59-28:10

  Because if that doesn't happen, the second we step into holiness, if Jesus' death hadn't made us holy, when we step into heaven, we're destroyed because God can't be around holiness.

  28:11-28:15

  And the only way that happens is Jesus Christ coming to this earth and dying.

  28:17-28:20

  And God was willing to do what I wasn't willing to do.

  28:21-28:23

  And he went to his son's grave.

  28:24-28:29

  He watched his son get mutilated by the very clay that he made.

  28:32-28:56

  And he said, "Here, do what you will with him, because it's the only way you're going to get to me." If we truly, truly know who God is and have a real relationship with God, it becomes increasingly more difficult to choose anything but Jesus.

  28:56-29:01

  So when the two choices are put in front of us, we have Jesus or Barabbas, it's just, "Bam, get out of here.

  29:01-29:07

  I don't need Barabbas because I'm automatically going to choose Jesus because I've put my self-centeredness aside.

  29:08-29:12

  I'm done listening to peer pressure and Jesus is number one in my life.

  29:16-29:21

  But until we get to that point, we will continue to choose Barabbas.

  29:22-29:24

  We will continue to choose sin.

  29:28-29:37

  When we became children of God, we were given the ability, through Jesus Christ, to say no to sin.

  29:40-29:43

  We just have to not choose Barabbas and choose Jesus.

  29:46-29:54

  So church, leaving here today, who will you choose from now on?

  29:56-29:57

  Jesus or Barabbas?

  29:59-29:59

  Let's pray.

  30:02-30:04

  Father, I thank You for this day.

  30:05-30:08

  Thank you for this opportunity to stand up here today.

  30:11-30:13

  And Father, I wanna pray for two people.

  30:15-30:31

  Number one, I wanna pray for the people that may not even know you as their Lord and Savior, who have no idea what it's like to choose Jesus for the first time, who have been choosing Barabbas every time.

  30:33-30:40

  Father, I beg you, please do not let them leave here today without getting that taken care of.

  30:43-30:54

  Secondly, Father, I wanna pray for my fellow Christians and God, I am the number one culprit of this, of choosing Barabbas over you.

  30:55-31:01

  Father, I pray that from this day going forward, we choose Jesus.

  31:02-31:04

  both as individuals and as a church.

  31:06-31:09

  I thank you, Father, for your grace.

  31:13-31:18

  Father, please bless this church, and bless our weeks going forward.

  31:19-31:21

  In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.

Small Group Discussion
Read Matthew 27:15-23

1. What was your big takeaway from this week’s sermon?
   

2. As Christians we know that God's plan is better for us and we will be fully blessed if we follow his path. Why do we continue to follow our own self ambitions and try to solve “bad” situations ourselves?
   

3. Read Matthew 26:59-66. We see that Jesus did not crumble under the most severe form of peer pressure, why is it so important that we know God's Word and stand for what is right in our current culture? How can we use God's Word to resist peer pressure?
   

4. Typically we think of idols as addictions or greed, but an idol is anything in your life that takes Jesus from being your first priority? How can you recognize an idol in your life? What is something you have allowed to take priority over your walk with Christ? How can you remove or realign those priorities?

Breakout
Pray for each other to work on their relationship with Jesus. Be honest about your walk. Share the areas you’re good and share your areas of weakness.

Submitting to the Seasons

Introduction:

How Should I Handle the Changing Seasons of My Life? (Eccl 3:1-15)

1. I should Wisely adapt to Change and Not resist it . (Eccl 3:1-8)
2. I should Trust in God's timing and Not force my own . (Eccl 3:9-15)

   A.W. Tozer - "It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until He has hurt him deeply."

David Gibson - "Living well in God’s world means recognizing that when it comes to our lives, we are not mini-gods, and this is His creation, not ours. We have all the pieces of our life given to us, and things come and go and seasons change, and it is only God who knows exactly where everything is meant to go, in which order, at what time, and why.”

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Taylor Brown is a CONTROL FREAK!

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Taylor Brown is still a CONTROL FREAK!

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Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
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• Audio Transcript

  00:00-00:31

  My name is Taylor Brown, I'm the youth pastor of a North Park church, but before I worked at North Park, I was actually an intern here for around a year or so. I was able to preach and get some of my first ministry experience here, so Harvest has a big part of my heart. I'm really glad to be here with you this morning. I've preached at Harvest at two middle schools and at the place down the road with the Camelot. This is my first time ever preaching here, so I'm really excited to be with you this morning in this space. So for the next minute or so, I want you to step into the mindset of a seven to 10 year old.

  00:31-00:37

  If you have a child that age, try to think and process how they see the world around them.

  00:37-00:39

  Are we ready for this mental exercise?

  00:40-00:51

  Now imagine that your parents are leaving you at home by yourself for an entire week because they're going on a trip and they don't want to bring you with them because they actually want it to be a vacation.

  00:51-00:53

  I think all the parents can kind of relate to that, right?

  00:53-00:58

  I know this is a really ridiculous, made up scenario, but please just play along with me.

  00:58-01:04

  So for 168 hours, you get to decide what you do and what you eat.

  01:04-01:08

  Let me ask you, what would you eat over the course of this week?

  01:08-01:15

  Would you carefully meal plan to make sure you hit all the major food groups and eat the right combination of fruits and vegetables?

  01:15-01:16

  Not at all.

  01:16-01:19

  You would eat all the junk food in your house.

  01:19-01:21

  You would eat Oreos by the sleeve.

  01:21-01:23

  You'd be eating whipped cream out of the can.

  01:23-01:26

  You'd be shoving candy down your throats, right?

  01:26-01:34

  Okay, someone's like, "I really want that to be the true scenario this week." Now imagine what you would actually do over the course of this week.

  01:34-01:40

  Would you try to get ahead of your studies during the summer, do all your chores on time, and make your bed every morning?

  01:40-01:48

  No, you'd be watching TV all day, playing video games, staying up until all hours of the night until you finally crashed after a massive sugar high.

  01:48-01:52

  Last question, how would you feel at the end of this week?

  01:52-01:54

  Would you feel well-rested and healthy?

  01:55-02:04

  No, you would have a massive stomach aches, you'd be so tired, because kids don't understand that moderation is important.

  02:04-02:08

  Left on their own, kids will only choose what's fun.

  02:09-02:13

  They won't choose to eat that which tastes the best to them.

  02:13-02:19

  They wouldn't understand these activities in mass quantities are very, very destructive.

  02:20-03:19

  Children who live this kind of lifestyle would be very unhealthy, very sleep deprived, and be very self-centered. In a much greater way, if we weren't in complete control of our lives, we would only pick relaxation, comfort, we would only choose fun. We would completely steer clear of hard work, pain, and trials. And by doing so, we would become spiritual lightweights who missed out on all the joys, all the blessings that come with depending upon the Lord. We become very self-centered people who only care about our wants, our needs, our desires. Thankfully, we are not in charge and we serve a sovereign and all-wise God who is in control of every single aspect of our lives. This morning we're going to focus our attention on Ecclesiastes chapter 3 verses 1 through 15 and learn that there is beauty, purpose, and meaning behind every single season of life that we must walk through.

  03:19-03:30

  This is a very timely passage of scripture to read because we find ourselves in a very difficult season right now in this world and in this country specifically.

  03:31-03:39

  It seems like new issues, new difficulties keep popping up every single week and we don't know what's going to happen next.

  03:40-04:08

  you've lost a job, maybe you're facing an illness, maybe you're really stressed out about the direction that our country is taking, it's really easy to give ourselves over to discouragement and hopelessness during this season that we find ourselves in, this coronavirus season. But God wants each and every one of us to trust in Him and believe that He always does what is right, that He He knows exactly what he is doing.

  04:08-04:17

  So I hope and pray that all of us, myself included, will walk away from this sermon with a greater sense of trust and dependence in our God.

  04:17-04:22

  So if you have your Bibles, please turn to Ecclesiastes chapter 3, verses 1 through 15.

  04:23-04:32

  And the question I want each of us to answer this morning is, "How should I handle the changing seasons of my life?" How should I handle the changing seasons of my life?

  04:32-04:37

  Number one, I should wisely adapt to change and not resist it.

  04:37-04:40

  I should wisely adapt to change and not resist it.

  04:41-04:47

  The first eight verses of the third chapter of Ecclesiastes are popular with Christians and non-Christians alike.

  04:48-04:53

  Even unbelievers will have this section of scripture read at their funerals.

  04:53-05:00

  King Solomon, the author of Ecclesiastes, taps into something very close to everyone's heart.

  05:01-05:34

  really important realities of life that I want us to read about together in verses 1 through 8. Solomon writes, "For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven, a time to be born, a time to die, a time to plant, a time to pluck up what is planted, a time to kill, and a time to heal, a time to break down, the time to build up, a time to weep and a time to gather stones together.

  05:34-05:38

  A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing.

  05:38-05:39

  A time to seek and a time to lose.

  05:40-05:42

  A time to keep and a time to cast away.

  05:42-05:45

  A time to tear and a time to sew.

  05:45-05:48

  A time to keep silence and a time to speak.

  05:49-05:51

  A time to love and a time to hate.

  05:52-05:55

  A time fo war and a time for peace.

  05:56-06:02

  Throughout all of Ecclesiastes, these verses stand out as uniquely poetic and beautiful.

  06:03-06:12

  As I was studying for this message, I realized that these eight verses are made up of 28 different phrases, which can be broken down to 14 different pairs.

  06:12-06:16

  This list includes multiples of seven.

  06:17-06:19

  Now you'd be thinking, "Taylor, why does that matter?

  06:19-06:24

  "Why are you giving us a math lesson right now?" Well, the number seven is very important throughout all of scripture.

  06:25-06:29

  The number seven symbolizes completion or perfection.

  06:30-06:38

  So by using multiples of seven, Solomon is trying to show us this list includes all the things that we can go through in this life.

  06:38-06:44

  One writer puts it this way, this list includes the totality of all things that are contained within any human life.

  06:44-06:48

  This is a complete summary of the seasons of life.

  06:49-07:00

  It touches upon birth and death, planting, sowing, tearing down, building up, crying, laughing, war, peace, love, hate.

  07:00-07:05

  Everything that you can possibly go through in this life is accounted for on this list.

  07:06-07:13

  By reading this, Solomon wants to take a big step back and see our lives from the big picture perspective.

  07:13-07:20

  He wants us to expect massive changes, massive surprises, and even difficulties and suffering.

  07:21-07:23

  Raise your hand if you hate change.

  07:23-07:25

  You love it when things stay the same.

  07:26-07:26

  Not that many of you.

  07:27-07:28

  Who likes when things change?

  07:29-07:31

  I'll never understand you people, but I'm glad that you exist.

  07:32-07:37

  I absolutely hate change and I resist it whenever it comes into my life.

  07:37-07:39

  Case in point, I absolutely hate surprises.

  07:40-07:42

  If you want to ruin my birthday, throw me a surprise party.

  07:43-07:44

  I hate that.

  07:44-07:48

  If I walk into a surprise party, I'm just going to walk right out because I don't want to be there.

  07:48-07:50

  I want to know if the party is going to happen.

  07:51-07:58

  Unfortunately for me, and those of you who don't like change as well, change is inevitable and we have to deal with it.

  07:58-08:00

  We cannot fight against it.

  08:01-08:10

  In these eight verses, Psalm is calling us to submit to the seasons of life and adapt to the changes, adapt to the situations that come into our lives.

  08:11-08:11

  And this isn't easy.

  08:12-08:15

  This takes great wisdom, discernment, and patience.

  08:16-08:22

  When you enter into a season of suffering, into a season of pain, how are you going to handle that?

  08:23-08:24

  Are you going to grumble?

  08:25-08:26

  Are you going to be negative?

  08:26-08:27

  Are you going to complain?

  08:28-08:30

  Or are you going to choose the trust in the Lord?

  08:31-08:36

  We have to recognize that God brings these trials into our lives for a very particular reason.

  08:36-08:44

  Even the season we find ourselves in right now, God didn't just allow it, He brought it into our lives because He is sovereignly in control of everything.

  08:45-08:50

  we go through these situations God wants us to get better and not grow bitter.

  08:51-10:47

  Instead of asking God why is this happening, let's start to ask God what do you want me to learn through this trial? Let me tell you from experience the why question will just drive you insane and stir up doubts and fears in your heart and your mind while the what question will help you to make progress in your relationship with the Lord and become more like Christ. On the other hand, when you experience a season of tremendous blessing and abundance, don't just congratulate yourself. Pat yourself on the back and forget to thank God for his blessings. Don't forget to thank God for his goodness. When something you work really hard for falls apart, don't just refuse to ever try again. Learn from your mistake, learn from your failure and move on. When a loved one passes away or a close friend betrays you, don't just shut down completely and hold everyone else at an arm's length. Mourn this loss and ask God for his help so you can move forward and learn to live with this pain. You can't always control what happens to you, but you can always control how you respond to what happens to you. Did we catch that? You can't always control what happens to you, but you can always control how you respond to what happens to you. Will you respond with hope and wisdom or you respond with foolishness and despair? All right, secondly, how should I handle the changing seasons of my life? I should trust in God's timing and not force my own. I should trust in God's timing and not force my own. Let's move forward and read verses 9 through 15. "What gain has the worker from his toil? I a man to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in its time. I want that verse to really stick with you. Let's read it again. He has made everything beautiful in its time.

  10:47-11:31

  Also he has put eternity in a man's heart, yet so he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I perceive that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live. Also that everyone should eat and drink can take pleasure in all of his toil, that is God's gift to man. I perceive that whatever God does endures forever. Nothing can be added to it nor anything taken from it. God has done it so that people fear before him. That which is already has been, that which is to be already has been, and God seeks what has been driven away. So in addition to hating change and surprises, I will admit that I am definitely a control freak.

  11:32-11:34

  Raise your hand if you're a control freak like me.

  11:35-11:39

  You're not very go with the flow type of person, you have to be in control of everything that's going on in your life.

  11:39-11:41

  Who's more of like a relaxed, easygoing person?

  11:41-11:43

  You don't really worry that much about the future.

  11:44-11:48

  Now I really wish that I was more like you and less like myself in that way.

  11:49-11:51

  You know, the control freak has this mentality.

  11:51-11:53

  If you want to get something done right, you have to.

  11:54-11:57

  And that's how I always feel in different ways in my life.

  11:58-12:04

  And case in point, I absolutely hated group projects in high school and college.

  12:04-12:06

  Who else hated group projects?

  12:06-12:07

  'Cause you know why?

  12:07-12:12

  I was the one in the group who cared the most about the projects, so I did most of the work.

  12:12-12:20

  Now some of you were like me, the neurotic people who did everything, and some of you were the slackers who took advantage of people like me.

  12:20-12:30

  In the spring of 2013, I was a senior at Geneva College and I was on the cusp of graduating and I made the unwise decision of saving one of the hardest classes for last.

  12:31-12:32

  Now there's a class called political science.

  12:33-12:40

  This is a class at Geneva that's known for its senseless busy work, its difficulty, and a lot of people push it off until the last moment.

  12:41-12:44

  And our final assignment was a group project.

  12:44-12:49

  I heard those words come out of my professor's mouth and I just like died a little bit inside.

  12:50-12:53

  And he assigned the groups at random, which is even worse.

  12:54-12:59

  Now let me ask you, do you think I was given the hardest working members of this class.

  12:59-12:59

  What do you think?

  13:00-13:04

  I was given the biggest slackers, didn't seem to care if they passed or failed.

  13:05-13:08

  And so I was the one who elected myself to be the leader of this project.

  13:08-13:10

  I was texting people, emailing them.

  13:10-13:12

  After a week, no responses.

  13:13-13:14

  No one responded to me.

  13:14-13:16

  I was getting so angry.

  13:16-13:19

  I was like, there's no way these people are gonna drag me down with them.

  13:19-13:23

  I'm not gonna fail this assignment and mess up my final semester at college.

  13:23-13:24

  So you know what I did?

  13:24-14:04

  Geneva is small enough that I was able to find out where they lived. I tracked them down. I went to their apartments and their dorms. I made them carry out their end of the deal. In one case, I actually looked over a guy's shoulder as he was typing out the assignment to make sure that he was actually doing it. And then you're wondering why is there a picture of this? My friends and I have a Facebook page, a private Facebook page called Four Years at Geneva where we post pictures and videos from our time there. My one friend followed me to document this. He took pictures of me leaning over this guy's shoulder and trying to show him how he was doing the assignment wrong. That was the next picture. There's me lecturing.

  14:04-14:32

  Apparently I was lecturing him for a long time. I don't really know. But my stalking paid off and we got an A minus on the assignment. So it kind of worked out in the end. Who thinks I went too far in stalking these people? Some of you are like, wow, I really judge this guy a lot. I don't know about this. Who thinks I was perfectly justified in what I did? All Regardless of what you think about my stocking story, we can all admit that I am a control freak who has a hard time letting things go.

  14:32-14:34

  We all can struggle with this at times, can't we?

  14:35-14:39

  We can all struggle with letting go of the control that we think we have.

  14:40-14:45

  But the older I get, the more I realize how much of my life is completely out of my control.

  14:46-14:48

  And this realization shouldn't terrify me.

  14:48-14:49

  It shouldn't terrify you.

  14:51-14:59

  it should fill us with peace, comfort, and hope because we know the track record and the character of the God that we serve.

  15:00-15:03

  All of us have certain plans for our futures.

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  We all have certain timetables for when we want our dreams to become a reality.

  15:08-15:17

  But Solomon bursts our bubble in verse 11 when he tells us that God has put eternity in a man's heart yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.

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  In other words, we have a deep-rooted desire as human beings to intimately know the future and completely understand God's plans.

  15:27-15:31

  But unfortunately, God is far beyond our limited minds.

  15:31-15:39

  He is beyond our full comprehension and there are going to be things about His ways that will never make sense to you in this life.

  15:39-15:43

  As Solomon tells in this passage, we were made to live forever.

  15:43-15:47

  And one day, we will see the Lord face to face in heaven.

  15:47-15:49

  His plans will make sense.

  15:50-15:52

  What he did in our lives will begin to come into focus.

  15:53-16:00

  Until that day, we have to be content to have some of our biggest questions about God and this life go unanswered.

  16:01-16:02

  Are we willing to accept that?

  16:03-16:05

  Are you willing to accept that?

  16:05-17:38

  Even though you can't look into a crystal ball and see your future, you can know that your God's planned out exactly what your future looks like. Your future is a firm and fixed plan that God has and nothing and no one can stand in his way, not even you. You know, sadly, we often think that we know better than God does. Sometimes I try to give God advice when I'm praying. You ever do that? I try to tell him what to do, how to do it, and when it needs done. To be clear, it's a good thing to pray for specific things and pray for specific outcomes, but it becomes a huge massive problem when you hold God to these plans and get angry at him. When he doesn't follow your exact timetables. God isn't your employee who you can boss around and tell him what to do. He is your employer. He is your boss. He is the one who is in charge. He is the one who knows what is best for you. What's that song? Some of God's greatest gifts are unanswered prayers. I can definitely look that and say that is very, very true. Now this is a illustration that's not going to hit Pastor Jeff very well, but hopefully you all like it. Who is a fan of the Lord of the Rings movies or the books? Now Jeff passed out during the first movie several times, so he's not going to really get what I'm talking about. Now who's never read a single one of those books or watched any of those movies? All right, so some of you haven't. For those of you who haven't read these books or watched some movies, it's basically a fantasy setting and there's these little creatures called hobbits. They're like little dwarfs in this area of this country called Middle Earth.

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  And the beginning of the first movie, a wizard named Gandalf comes to town, and Frodo, a hobbit, he sees him, he runs to the wagon, and he says to Gandalf, "You are late." And Gandalf looks at Frodo in the face and he says, "A wizard is never late, Frodo Baggins, nor is he early.

  17:56-18:02

  He arrives precisely when he means to." You know, a lot of times we say the same thing to God.

  18:03-18:03

  God, where are you?

  18:04-18:09

  God, don't you care about what I'm going through? I need you to show up right now.

  18:09-18:13

  And God's trying to give us the same exact message that Gandalf gave to Frodo.

  18:13-18:19

  I am never late, nor am I early. I arrive precisely when I mean to.

  18:20-18:23

  Regardless of how you feel, God never forgets about you.

  18:23-18:28

  God never delays. He knows exactly what He is doing. He knows what is best for you.

  18:28-18:31

  And that's why He doesn't always give you what you want.

  18:32-18:35

  That's why he brings trials and hard times into your life.

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  These hard times are evidence that God loves you, not that he hates you.

  18:41-18:49

  God brings these times into your life to smooth out your sinful and rough edges and mold you into the image of Jesus Christ.

  18:49-18:59

  As you read the Bible, it becomes very clear that every single godly man and woman used by God to do great things had to go through immense pain.

  18:59-19:10

  The famous theologian A.W. Tozer once wrote this, "It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until he has hurt him deeply." That really changes our perspective, doesn't it?

  19:10-19:13

  I in no way want to trivialize your pain this morning.

  19:14-19:18

  I in no way want to minimize the grief that you may be feeling right now.

  19:19-19:25

  Walking through the valleys of life is never an easy journey and there are gonna be days where you feel like giving up.

  19:26-20:00

  There are gonna be days where you feel like life is random and chaotic, but I want you to know this morning that God never, ever wastes your pain. Ever. The road to sanctification, becoming more like Christ, is paved with suffering, but its destination is eternal life. The road of worldliness is paved with comfort and relaxation, but its destination is everlasting destruction. So I want you to answer these questions honestly morning. Do I believe that my God's perfect plans are better than my own?

  20:01-20:54

  And secondly, do I trust in the Lord or do I trust in myself? Do I trust in the Lord or do I trust in myself? Trusting in the Lord isn't a one-time decision you make at your conversion when you bow the knee to Jesus as your Lord and Savior. It is a difficult decision that needs to be made multiple times a day. There is no harder decision than choosing to trust rather than doubt. Choosing to have hope rather than giving in to hopelessness. Our view of God is often blocked by our insecurities, our fears, and our doubts, but true faith is keeping your eyes fixed on Jesus when you suffer and go through pain. True faith is believing that God is good, that God is in control when you're walking through the valley of the shadow of death and you cannot see what lies ahead.

  20:54-21:00

  True faith is trusting in God even when it seems like he doesn't know what he's doing.

  21:00-21:03

  Even when it seems like he's not in control of your situation.

  21:04-21:10

  True faith is believing that God will make something truly beautiful out of everything in this life.

  21:10-21:17

  You know this life is really similar to standing really close to a massive painting at the Carnegie Museum of Art.

  21:18-21:23

  If you've ever been there, just try to imagine yourself standing in front of this massive, massive painting.

  21:24-21:30

  And you're at one end, and you see these beautiful combinations of yellow, blue, red, and green.

  21:31-21:34

  And this part of the painting fills you with a lot of enjoyment and excitement.

  21:34-21:39

  As you move down, you come across these seemingly random splotches of brown and grey.

  21:39-21:42

  And this section just seems kind of random and pointless to you.

  21:42-21:48

  And you continue to move on and there's one part of the paint that's just pure darkness.

  21:48-21:53

  It looks like the painter just threw a bucket of black paint against the canvas for no reason.

  21:54-22:00

  As you back up, you are blown away by the scope and the beauty of this masterpiece.

  22:00-22:05

  Those sections that seem just random and pointless add depth and nuance to the painting.

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  Those sections of black make the other colorful parts just pop that much more.

  22:11-22:14

  You know, one day we're going to see our lives like that.

  22:14-22:19

  One day we're going to see our lives from an eternal perspective and everything will change.

  22:20-22:23

  We'll see that trial we went through that seemed to have no meaning.

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  We'll finally understand that's why God did that.

  22:26-22:28

  That's why he led me through that.

  22:28-22:34

  You'll see all the people that you were able to bless by being Christ-like through that experience.

  22:34-22:38

  All the threads of your life will come together and finally make sense.

  22:39-23:28

  realize that God was in control all along. Our lives were not chaotic. Our lives are the work of a divine painter. I'm gonna close our time this morning with a quote that really comforts my soul. "Living well in God's world means recognizing that when it comes to our lives we are not many gods and this is his creation not ours. We have all the pieces of our life given to us and things come and go and seasons change and it's only God knows exactly where everything is meant to go, in which order, at what time, and why. So instead of doubting the Lord's goodness and stressing out about what might happen in the future, let us trust this masterful artist and believe that he will make something truly beautiful out of whatever we're going through right now, no matter how ugly and dark it may seem. Let's pray.

  23:30-24:07

  Sovereign God, we thank you for who you are. We ask for forgiveness for the ways we fail you. We thank you that even though we fail you, you love us and the grace of Christ upholds us. We thank you that when you see us, you see the perfection of your Son, you see the holiness of Jesus. Lord, fill in where we have weaknesses. Help us where we are inadequate, Lord. Help us to keep our eyes fixed on your Son and believe that you know exactly what you're doing. Lord, Lord, there are those in this room who are really struggling right now and feel like they have no idea what to do next.

  24:07-24:11

  Lord, come alongside them this morning and comfort them and speak to their hearts.

  24:12-24:19

  And for those of us who are about to go into a trial and don't even know it, please prepare us and get us ready to trust in you.

  24:20-24:21

  In Jesus' name, amen.

Small Group Discussion
Read Ecclesiastes 3:1-15

1. Why should it encourage us to know that the Lord is sovereign and in complete control of every single aspect of our lives?
   

2. Why does the Lord bring trials and difficult seasons into our lives? How is the presence of suffering in our lives the proof of God's love for us?
   

3. Discuss examples from the Bible where God used pain and suffering to prepare His servants for ministry. Share a time when the Lord used a painful trial to help you become more like Christ and bless others.
   

4. What does it look like to trust in the Lord and not yourself? How can you strengthen your dependence upon God over the upcoming week?
   

5. How can we as believers make the most of this current quarantine? How is the Lord calling you to grow and bless others?

Breakout
Pray for the strengthening of those suffering during this uncertain “lock-down/quarantine” season.