The Blessing

And then you might ask a question – as a good reporter, you might say, “Well, what kind of person is your mama?”
“Oh, Mama is loving. Mama is kind. Mama is good. Mama is smart. She always knows where all the good food is. She knows where the tastiest grubs can be found. She knows how to sneak into parks and eat trash when nobody’s watching. Mama is really cool.” That’s what the bear cubs would tell you.
Now, if you were to ask that male bear, “What kind of person is that mother bear?”
“She’s mean. She’s ferocious. She’s awful. I wouldn’t want to be around her if she was the last female bear on Earth!”
What kind of person Mama is, is directly related to the relationship that those bears have with Mama. Amen. Okay, that’s the first picture.
The second picture is this: I want you to imagine yourself in a shower. Okay, there you are in the shower – a big shower, lots of room, you can picture in your mind how it is – water is coming out. If you want more than one nozzle, that’s okay. You’ve got all this water coming out. Showers are wonderful things, especially if you’ve been working hard and got all sweaty and dirty and now you want to get cleaned up. So here’s this beautiful shower.
Now, you have some options. Now, you’re in the shower. There’s no question about the fact that you are in the shower. Keep that point clear. You are in the shower. But, after that, how wet you get is strictly up to you. I have been at some places where there was a shower, but it was cold. And you didn’t feel like getting underneath that shower and having all that cold water dripping all over your body because it was really cold. So you kind of got a little water on you here, and a little water on you there, scrub up a little bit and get away from that cold stuff and you get back close enough to get a little more on you. Showers can be that way.
Now, you’re in the shower, but how wet you get in the full stream of that shower is entirely your choice. You can get in that stream, and let’s say it’s warm water and it’s just wonderful water, okay, so how wet you get is completely up to you. With those two word pictures, I’d like you to turn now, then, to Joshua, Chapter 7.
Joshua, Chapter 7. You see, our Heavenly Father is a loving, merciful, gracious, infinitely patient God. Is that not true? And He loves you. And I’m not sure of all the people who are here today, and one thing I want to say to you right from the start, is that it’s an impossibility for any human being to tell you how much God loves you. In fact, the Apostle John gave up trying to tell how good God was, and simply said at one point, he exclaimed, “Behold, the love of God.” Because it was impossible for him to frame it in human language how loving God is. So if there is somebody here today who wonders if God loves you, I’d like to say right from the very start, there is no question that God loves you. There’s nothing you can say, there’s nothing you can do, that will ever make God stop loving you. He loves you so much.
Our loving Heavenly Father, though, He’s not a namby-pamby God. He’s a strong God. He’s the creator. He’s just, He’s righteous, He’s holy, He’s true. He’s not a God that’s a marshmallow God. You can’t just push Him into the shape you want Him to be because the Bible says He’s the same yesterday, today, and forever. God has His laws, God has His government, and these things do not change.
But God has great pity and great compassion for people who have failed and who have made mistakes. And by the way, in case you didn’t know, that’s everybody here. Because the Bible says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23.)
So with that, here in Joshua, Chapter 7, we have a really interesting story from the Bible. The children of Israel had been brought out of Egypt by a great hand, God’s mighty hand. The ten plagues fell on Egypt, upon the Egyptians, and upon Pharaoh, who were stubborn and disobedient and rebellious against God. And with that great deliverance, Israel came out, and they were just google-eyed at the power of God. “Whoa, how great and powerful this God is!” And they, in their hearts, just knew that they were following a mighty God.
Then they fell into some disobedience, and for 40 years, they wandered in the wilderness. But finally, Joshua, under the same power of God, brought them into the land of Israel. They came across the Jordan River by a mighty miracle. God made the river dry up so they could walk across, and the Bible says it heaped up on one side and on the other side, it was dry. And they came across, and they defeated Jericho, and then they began the process of defeating the enemies of Israel and settling the land. And there was a little town named Ai. Not a very big town, the Bible says, just a little town. Not too many residents there, and you’re talking about something like a million and a half or two million Israelites, so it was no contest, really.
And so the men said, “Well, let’s just take a few soldiers. We don’t need to send the whole army, Joshua. Just let’s take a few soldiers. Our God is with us, and a few soldiers will be able to surely take care of Ai because the Lord will deliver them into our hand.” And so they went up to fight against the town of Ai. And the Bible says they were defeated in a terrible defeat and were chased away. And the citizens of Ai rejoiced in the strength and the power of their gods; they believed them. They thought that their god was great and mighty and greater than the God, the true God, of Israel.
Well, Joshua was completely crushed. How could this be? And the Bible says he prayed to God, “O God, how could you let this happen to your children? How could this trouble come to our army, to our nation? How could this be?”
And God said, “Someone among the children of Israel has taken what they ought not to have taken. They have committed a sin and they have gone after the idols of Jericho. And therefore my blessing,” He told Joshua, “had to be withdrawn.” Well, He said, “Cause all the tribes to pass before you, and I will tell you which tribe. And then cause the families of the tribe to pass before you, and I will tell you which of the families. And then cause the individuals to pass before you, and I will tell you which individual.”
Now there’s a reason God went through this process. And as the tribes began to pass before Joshua, the Holy Spirit spoke to Joshua and told him which tribe. So that tribe was set apart from the rest of the tribes. If you were in the eleven tribes or twelve tribes that weren’t picked, you went, “Whew, not us!”
And then that last tribe, though, they’re all going, “Oh, no! Who among our families could have done such a thing?” Then all the heads of the families passed, and they chose the heads of the families. And then, as it began to narrow down, then it came to the household of Achan. And then, as the household of Achan came before Joshua, then the Holy Spirit pointed out that Achan was the one who had done this thing.
Now you know God is a merciful God. He was giving Achan a chance. I fully believe, based on the teachings of the Bible, if, when, that process had began and the tribe had been chosen or the family had been chosen, if Achan had stepped forward at that point and had said, “I have sinned against God and have done evil in His sight, and I would like to ask God’s forgiveness and the forgiveness of my brethren.” If Achan had done that, I have no doubt in my mind that God would have shown His great mercy and compassion and would have forgiven Achan and the terrible thing that happened later would not have happened if Achan had been truly repented.
But you see, it is a common thing among people who are cherishing sin, that they will not admit their sin until they are absolutely forced to. People don’t like to admit they’re wrong. I don’t like to admit I’m wrong. You probably don’t like to admit you’re wrong. It goes against our natural inclination. We don’t like to admit that I said something I shouldn’t have said or that I did something I shouldn’t have done. It can be embarrassing to us. We feel ashamed. And because of the world in which we live, we’re afraid sometimes to admit those things because of fear of what people will say or do. What a terrible world we live in sometimes.
But God is not like that. The Bible says, in 1 John 1:9, that if we confess our sin, “He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” You see, the problem with Achan was not that he had sinned. It wasn’t that the sin was so bad in and of itself as compared to others sins. It was that his heart was stubborn. His heart was deceitful. His heart was unbending. He did not want to give in to God and submit himself to God. He was worshipping himself and his god was lust. He lusted after money, he lusted after things, and because of that, as each opportunity was given to Achan, the finger came a little closer to him each time. The finger of God pointed a little more closely to Achan each time. At every step of the way, God gave him opportunity after opportunity to step forward and say, “It’s me, it’s me. We don’t have to go through this anymore. It’s me.”
It reminds me of that spiritual song. Oh, that we would all sing that spiritual song:

“It’s me; it’s me, O Lord
Standing in the need of prayer
It’s me; it’s me, O Lord
Standing in the need of prayer
Not the Preacher, nor the elder,
But it’s me, O Lord
Standing in the need of prayer
Not the Preacher, nor the elder,
But it’s me, O Lord
Standing in the need of prayer
It’s me; it’s me, O Lord
Standing in the need of prayer
It’s me; it’s me, O Lord
Standing in the need of prayer”

And then the song goes on and says it’s not the Deacon or the teacher, it’s me, standing in the need of prayer.
You know, so often when sin is in our lives and our heart, we’re just a kettle boiling, like that pressure cooker just waiting to pop as soon as we’re touched. Isn’t that true? But when we come to the Lord and we say, “It’s me, O Lord, it’s me. I don’t know about the sins of my brother. I don’t know about the sins of my sister. But O Lord, I’m standing in the need of prayer. I come to you, sinful though I be, because you are a God of great love and compassion and mercy.” One of the greatest needs of Christians today, is to get our eyes off of everybody else and put them back where they belong, on our own responsibility before Christ, and to put our eyes on Jesus. That’s one of the greatest needs we all have.
We all make mistakes, isn’t that true? Achan’s mistake was no worse than anybody else’s mistake. His problem was that he refused to admit that he had a need, that he was somehow in trouble. The most wonderful thing that could happen in any church is where there becomes an atmosphere in that church where people all recognize that we all make mistakes, and where people are free to admit that they make mistakes, and to say, “Will you pray for me? Will you help me?” I believe that the time is going to come, and why wait for it to be forced on us? The time is going to come, and will come soon, if not very soon, when we must all bow low before the cross of Christ and admit that we have all sinned and have strayed drastically from what God had called us to do. And come before Him in humbleness and ask Him to return and come into our hearts. And as we do that, there will be such a great blessing that will come upon all of us as we do that.
But Achan didn’t do that. Slowly, but surely, the hand of God singled out each segment until finally, Achan was forced to admit that he had done it. And so when finally the hand of God pointed to him and there was no wiggle out of it, he said, “Okay, okay, yeah I did it. I took this golden wedge, and I took this Babylonian garment, and I hid them under my tent, and there they are.” And they went and searched it out and there they were. As you read the Bible, it doesn’t come out so clearly in English, but if you read it and understand it in the original language, God didn’t have all of his kids and everybody stoned. What happened was Achan died for his sin, and all of the things he had stolen and all of his possessions were stoned and piled underneath that pile of stones, but not all the kids. God didn’t do that.
That’s why the Bible says you’re not going to be responsible for the sins of your mother and father; you’re responsible for your sins. And it’s like Abraham Lincoln said when finally a man was brought in to be considered for a very important position in his administration and Secretary Stanton asked him about the interview after it was over, and he said, “I don’t like his face.”
And Secretary Stanton said, “Why, Mr. President! I have always thought of you to be a man of integrity far above such petty considerations. Why would you say you would not hire this man just based on his looks?”
He said, “Don’t misunderstand me, Mr. Stanton.” He said, “I believe that by the time a man is 40 years old, he’s responsible for his own face. And in his face, he was always in his interview making excuses as to why he wasn’t this or wasn’t that, or couldn’t this or couldn’t that and saying it’s always somebody else’s fault.” And Abraham Lincoln saw through that right away and said, “This man, he has a problem with his own heart.” He couldn’t trust him with the affairs of the country when he wasn’t able to resolve his own affairs in his own heart.
God is waiting to bless us. God wants to bless us in abundance. And God will not bless us if we cherish disobedience in our heart. I want you to think about this for a minute: God could not bless Israel, would not bless Israel, as long as there was cherished sin among them. Now, stop and just review a few things with me. We tend to make things trivial. We trivialize things in our life. We say, “Oh, it doesn’t matter. Oh, it doesn’t matter. It’s a little thing.” We tend to do that; that’s human nature. But let’s go back for a minute. How did we get into this mess in the first place? It was a piece of fruit. Oh, a big deal right? A piece of fruit? Yes and no. The fruit itself, was that such a big thing, eating a piece of fruit? That’s what got us into this mess? It wasn’t the fruit; what was it? It was the turning from God in disobedience to his explicit command that got us into this mess. You see, it wouldn’t have mattered what it was. It was the change in the heart in Adam and Eve that brought about this mess that we’re in. Amen. That’s what the Bible says.
Well, let’s think about somebody like Abraham. The whole household of Pharaoh was cursed because of Sarah. Another man, Abimelac, his household was cursed twice. Abraham lied and said, “Sarah is my sister.” Well, actually, she was a stepsister. Ah, see, we can kind of figure out ways to do things, huh? She was a stepsister. She was a half sister.
He had married his half sister, and she must have to have been some lady because when she was up toward 90 years old, she was still being taken by leaders, saying, “I’m going to take that lady to be one of my wives.” So she must have really been a good-looking lady long into her life.
But Abraham lied about it, and the reason he lied is because he thought, “If I say she’s my wife, they’ll kill me to get her.” We can always find a way, we excuse ourselves all the time. But look what happened. The whole household of Abimelac and the whole household of Pharaoh on two different occasions were made sick because of the sin of this one man.
Think about David. He killed Uriah. That was his sin. He killed Uriah and he committed adultery with Bathsheba, and as a result, a plague came on the whole nation of Israel. And then you stop and think about Samson. Well, what was the big deal with Samson? He just got a haircut. The trouble was, his hairstyle was not acceptable to God, okay? So, God has said, “You’re not going to cut your hair all your life.”
He said, “Well, I’ll just cut it this once.” We always have the idea - and the Bible is full of the examples - we have the idea that even though God has said this, we can just go ahead and do that without any consequences. My friends, never ever forget this: sin always has consequences. Always, always. Sadly, I’ve proven that too often in my own life.
So now, go back to Joshua, Chapter 1, and notice Verses 5-9. In Joshua 1:5-9, notice this: “No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life; as I was with Moses, so I will be with you,” He said to Joshua. “I will not leave you, nor forsake you. Be strong and of good courage, for to this people, you shall divide as an inheritance the land which I swore to their fathers to give them. Only be strong and very courageous, that you may observe to do, according to all the law which Moses, my servant, commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left that you may prosper wherever you go. The book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then, you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and of good courage. Do not be afraid, nor be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”
The whole sermon today, the whole Bible study today, in one sentence is this: If you want to be blessed, obey the Lord. It’s as simple as that. If you want to be blessed, obey the Lord. God has made his blessings contingent upon our obedience.
Now listen closely, let’s go back to the shower. I’m in the shower. I’m not talking to you this morning about salvation. Eternal life comes to us by grace, by faith, in Jesus Christ alone. Amen. Saved by grace, apart from our works. But our works are involved in the blessings that we receive from God. And if you would be blessed, then get in the shower. Let the water flow over you. Receive it. Get into the channel of blessing. The more you get into the channel of blessing, the more you shall be blessed.
As a Pastor, I’ve met a lot of people who’ve wondered why they’re not as blessed as some other people. And they are not ready for me to tell them the truth. They are not ready for me to tell them the truth. Because I know that if I told them the truth, they’d just throw it out and would be all upset, and probably wouldn’t come back to church anymore, all that stuff. So I’m telling all of you because we’re not talking personally. And the fact of the matter is that if you feel that you are not being blessed as other people are blessed, then don’t look out there, look in here. What’s going on in my relationship between me and God that would keep me from being blessed? Because the Bible says that God chose no partiality, and that He wants to give to one as much as He gives to another. Now, God does not always choose to give us the same blessings as He gives to others. But if you feel, if you kind of sense, that maybe your life is not as blessed as it ought to be, then ask the question, “How far have you moved away from God?”
If you’ve moved a long way from God, then why should you expect to be blessed? He’s a mama bear. He’s a loving, He’s a merciful, He’s a protective, He’s a gracious God. But he’s not a pushover. He’s not a marshmallow God. He’s not a namby-pamby. God is a God who has His rules, He has His government, and He will not bend those things because to bend those things would be to deny His very character, His very existence. God is not like people.
I remember, one guy told me that he had a responsibility where he had to be there and give refunds to certain people at a certain place after Christmas or that kind of thing. So this guy comes in, he wants a refund. Well, he wants a refund, and he shouldn’t have a refund because he bought this thing months ago and he used it all this time. Now he wants his money back. So he comes back to this guy, to this friend of mine, and he starts saying, “I demand a refund!”
And the guy says, “I’m sorry, you don’t qualify for a refund. You’ve obviously used these things. You’ve not returned them because of any flaw. You just don’t like them anymore, and you want your money back.
He says, “I demand a refund!” And then he goes into this tirade and just says all these words and gets all upset and everything. And friend says he just sat there and listened. You know, I admire people like that. There are certain jobs I would not want, and that is one of them, okay?
So he’s there listening to all of this stuff, and finally, my friend says to this guy, “Does this work?”
And the guy was dumbfounded. He said, “What do you mean, does this work?”
He says, “Well, have you tried this on other people before and gotten what you wanted? Because,” he said, “if you did, it’s not going to work here with me. Whoa!
And we sometimes have that kind of attitude, and we think we can do that with God. You know, that we’re going to make God do it our way. No, God is God. And He is the one who has established His kingdom and the principles that govern his kingdom. And in Joshua, it says that if we want to be blessed, we need to obey God. But our obedience, in Deuteronomy – turn to Deuteronomy 6:4-9 – remember, we’re not talking about eternal life, here. We’re not talking about being saved, how to be saved. In fact, what we’ve been talking about is how to be successful in sharing our faith with people in our community. That’s what all these sermons in the month of March are all about. And believe it or not, that’s what this is about, too; I just haven’t quite gotten there yet. In Deuteronomy 6:4-9, he says, “Here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. And these words, which I command you today, shall be in your heart.”
You see, God wants us to obey Him, not out of the context of a relationship, not because we have to, but because we want to. Because the love in our hearts, the gratitude that we have for him, flows out in obedience, back to God.
So in Exodus 20:1 - I’m just going to mention some of these verses to you – in Exodus 20:1, He says, before he gives them the Ten Commandments, he says, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of slavery.” His commands are based in the relationship that He has with us, that He’s the one who loves us, and He’s the one who has set us free and delivered us from slavery; therefore, it calls upon our gratitude. And like Jesus in John 4:15, He said, “If you love me, keep my commandments.” God never wants us to obey Him because we have to; God wants us to obey Him because we want to. And that’s one reason why He didn’t make works be the means of a salvation. God doesn’t want us to go to Heaven based on trying to please Him, trying to get him to do something he doesn’t want to do, that terrible picture that so many people have tried to make God out to be. No, God loves you, and He wants you to be in Heaven, and He’s made eternal life free to you in Jesus Christ.
But after we’ve accepted Jesus and we’ve turned from our sins – you know, the first thing that I can remember that happened in my heart after I knelt down and prayed that prayer, here I go again: I want to be what you want me to be. I want to do what you want me to do, and I want to go where you want me to go – that prayer of surrender. The first thing that happened to me was that I felt this incredible peace that I never felt before in my whole life because I had confessed my sins and given my life completely to God. And then what happened after that, because of all the blessings that God brought into my life, was that I had this incredible gratitude and I had this smile pasted on my face, and that smile is still in my heart and still shows up in my face because I still love Jesus. And He still has blessed me and cares for me, and I want to obey Him. I want to serve Him because He is such a good friend.
And so, as you stop and think about these texts today, He wants to give us all these blessings. Not as some kind of vending machine, where you go up and put the quarter in and pull the lever and get the, you know... but out of the relationship that we have with Him. In Deuteronomy 7:12-15, let’s just quickly notice these blessings: “Then it shall come to pass because you listened to these judgments and keep, and do them, God will keep with you the covenant and mercy which He swore to your fathers. And He will love you, and bless you, and multiply you. He will also bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your land, your grain, and your wine, and your oil, the increase of your cattle, and the offspring of your flock, and the land of which he swore to your fathers to give you. You shall be blessed above all peoples.” That’s what God wants to do for us if we will obey His commands. If we will obey the Lord, we shall be blessed. It says here, we just read, He wants to bless our children, and He wants to bless our possessions and give us prosperity.
In Deuteronomy 8:18, He says, “And you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He who gives you power to get wealth, that He may establish His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is to this day.” God says He will give you material prosperity if you will obey His commandments. In Isaiah 58:13, He says, “If you will keep the Sabbath, He will bless you materially.” In Malachi 3:10-12, He says He will bless you financially if you will obey His commandments. Over and over again through the Bible, God says that if you will obey Him, do what He asks you to do, that you shall be blessed. He will bless your children. He will bless your families. He will bless your crops. He will bless your material things. He will give you more prosperity if you will obey the voice of the Lord. That’s what God promises to do.
In Deuteronomy 28:1-14, are listed blessing after blessing, after blessing, after blessing, that God said He would give if we would obey. And then beginning in Verse 15, He mentions the curses that will come if we do not obey. In other words, it’s like this: Everything that operates in this world and in all the universe has been established on law. Everything. There are laws of relationships. I mean, really. There are laws about social relationships. There are laws having to do with money. The Bible lists financial laws. In fact, you would never have to know a C.P.A. or find a financial advisor if you would study God’s word and find out what He says about how to make money. The Bible tells you how to make money. It gives the laws that govern making money.
The Bible has laws about health. In Exodus 15:26 it says if we will obey the laws of health that God has established, we will have better health. There are laws that govern every aspect of our being, and the more we come into contact and understand those laws, the more blessed we will be. Remember, it’s not about making God love us, and it’s not about getting into Heaven, it’s about receiving the blessings that God has given. And His blessings are contingent upon obedience to His laws.
In Genesis 39:3, it mentions that Joseph was blessed, and why? Because he served and obeyed God. In Daniel 1:11-21, Daniel would not fudge – that’s an interesting use of the word, in this case – Daniel would not fudge on eating. And so God blessed him and made him ten times wiser than all the other wise men in Nebuchadnezzar’s realm.
Now, I have a friend in Portland, a good friend of mine. And he just called me this week. He and his brother, who are devout Christians, had to make a very difficult decision recently. Their business that they had established several years ago was just not going as well as it should, by all indicators. They could not figure out why. I mean, they were returning their tithe, they had been faithful to God, they love the Lord, they’re trying to raise their families to obey the Lord and do what is right, but they could not figure out why their business was not being blessed when there was no financial reason or no business reason why their business should not be blessed, and they just could not figure this out. But they knew the principles that I’m talking about here today, and they’ve studied and said, “Lord, what are we doing that’s keeping your blessing from flowing to us as it could and should?”
And they found that it had to do with a business agreement that they had made with someone. And the business agreement that they had made with this person was outside of the principles of the Lord God’s word. So they prayed, and they were not eligible to be released from that agreement. But they prayed, and they said, “God, we believe that this agreement that we’ve made is outside of the principles of your Word, and that this is why we cannot be blessed. And so God, we’re asking you to help us to break off this relationship in this business area so that we may be blessed.” And so they went and talked with this person, they prayed and said, “Help us, Lord.” And the man agreed to break off the relationship. As a result of that, he said, within weeks, the business has completely turned around. They changed nothing else. They changed nothing else; they only dissolved a relationship that was outside of the principles of God’s Word. And as a result of that, the blessings began to flow.
All right, now this is a principle. Did you catch this? Are you catching on? If you want to be blessed, then what do we need to do? If you want to be blessed, obey. Obey the Lord.
Now turn to Acts, Chapter 2. We’ve been talking about how to share the Gospel with people. Listen friends, there is no preacher, no matter who he is, past, present, or future, who has enough charisma to win the lost to Christ. There is no human being. There is no human being who has enough talent to win people to Christ, to convert your children and your grandchildren. I bet you out here in this congregation this morning, there are people here who are thinking, “I sure wish my son or my daughter would give their life to Jesus. I sure wish my grandchildren would give their life to Jesus. I sure wish I could get my friend to give his life to Jesus; his life would be so much better. I wish I could help my family to know Jesus.”
And there is no power in you or me or anyone in this room to make that happen. The only way that is going to happen is when the Holy Spirit moves powerfully upon that heart, and that person has a personal experience with Jesus Christ. And you and I cannot make that happen. You have kids in your home. You want them to know Jesus, but you as a parent have the closest relationship to them on earth, and you cannot make that happen. I know the anguish of wanting that child to love the Lord, but you cannot make it happen. I don’t care how strict you are in your environment or how much you isolate them from the world. You can take them up into the mountains and keep them from every living human being all their life, but that will not make them choose Jesus Christ. The only way that is ever going to happen is when they respond to the moving of the Holy Spirit personally in their own heart.
But what you can do is you can live a life of integrity and obedience, so that the channel of the Holy Spirit is unobstructed. Now one of these days, not soon, but one of these days, we’re going to talk about the priesthood that the Bible speaks of, and how the priest of the home is the gate of blessing or curse to that home. And men, this is for you, right now. I learned this years ago, and it shook me. Every single man that’s listening, if you have a family, you are the priest of your home. And there is nobody who can replace your presence and your influence in that home. I am asking and begging each of the men of this congregation here this morning, to take that responsibility seriously. Your children, your marriage, will be better if you take that responsibility of Priest of your home seriously. That’s all I’ve got to say about it right now. Later on, when we study it from the Bible, you’ll see just how powerful that really is.
But in Acts 2:47, it says that is was the Lord who added to the church daily, those who were being saved. And in another place in the Bible, He says, “One man sews, another man waters and reaps, but it’s the Lord who gives the increase.” We can’t make thousands of people come to Jesus, and we can’t make these pews in this church or any other church fill up to overflowing. We cannot make that happen, but what we can do, is we can live a live of devotion and prayer and integrity before God. And as we do that, we place ourselves in the midst of the shower, in the channel of the water, where we can be fully blessed if we will do that.
Now I’m going to bare my soul to you right now. I have no idea how you’re going to take this, but I’m going to tell you the truth. Sometimes in my past, I have been criticized by people as being too conservative. And you know how we label people liberal or conservative, and generally, we do it by what they do or don’t do. Well, I had a lady in church one time, and I was fairly new in that church, and she didn’t know me very well. And some of you may feel that way, too, and I understand it takes time. And I may have even already here done or said some things that confused some people. That’s why you shouldn’t look at me. That’s why you should look at Jesus. But I remember, she called me up and said, “Pastor, you’re confusing to me.”
And I said, “Okay, I’m glad you called me.” Because some people won’t. At least she was talking. And I said, “Okay, what’s the matter?”
And she says, “Well, I can’t figure you out.” She says, “On the one hand, you believe that we should not wear adornment, and you teach that,” and she says, “that’s conservative.” And she said, “But on the other hand, you don’t have a problem with women being elders in the Church.” She said, “That’s liberal.” She said, “I can’t figure you out.”
And I said (and by the way, I don’t ever push that on anybody), “Well I wasn’t raised in the Church. I don’t have a history of all this stuff that you’re talking about. I have come to this church with nothing but a desire to know what God’s Word says. And when I read the Bible, I can see a clear case for Christians being careful about their appearance.” I said, “The Bible is full of statements about not being involved in adornment and that kind of lifestyle.” I said, “On the other hand, I see nothing in the Bible that forbids a lady from being and elder in the Church or having an influential place in the church. I see nothing in the Bible that forbids that.” So I said, “I can’t go along with that.” And so, I bring that up to you. I’m just being honest with you folks. I’m just telling you that these are my personal convictions and understanding.
But I’ve tried to live my life to the best of my ignorant ability, to try to do what God wants me to do. Why? I’ll tell you why. And sometimes in the process of being zealous about it, I probably have been too conservative at times, and probably sometimes, because of my ignorance, I’ve been too liberal. I’ll admit that. I mean, I’m a person that makes mistakes. But in my heart, I want you to hear that in my heart is this: I love you. And the longer I’m with you, the more I love you. And I can’t stand the thought of losing any of you in the second death. I can’t stand that. I would just feel terrible if I was on the wall of the city after the millennium is over and I looked out in the multitude of people and I saw one of you out there. I would feel terrible. That’s why the Bible says God’s going to wipe away the tears from their eyes because there is going to be some of that.
And my children, my three children, and now I have a grandchild, and I want them to be in Heaven. And I know, from what I’m studying, from what I’m telling you is true, that part of the way that this church can be blessed is if I, as Pastor, live a life of integrity. And if we, as church members and leaders, if we live lives of integrity, God will bless us. He will bless us. Our prayers will be answered. It says in Psalms 66:18 that if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.
Today my wife, Dolly, is with Pastors’ wives at a Pastors’ wives retreat. And when she left this morning, I prayed that God would protect her, keep her safe as she drove and got to her destination and bring her safely back. I need to be able to get on my knees every morning and pray for you, and pray for my wife, and pray for my children, and know that there’s no conscious barrier between me and God. Do you understand that?
And in the process of trying to live my life that way, maybe I have been too conservative here or too liberal there. I’m still trying to learn how to follow Jesus, too. But it’s the heart that matters, and where is your heart? Are you playing around with God on little stuff and saying, “It doesn’t matter.” Don’t do that. Their eternity and the blessing of people in your life is at stake. God’s blessing in your home, God’s blessing in this church is at stake. God forbid that I would say or do anything that would keep God’s blessing from coming on this church, or from coming into your home, or into my home. I want to live my life in integrity before God. And if I make a mistake in the process, then tell me about it, help me study it through, help me pray for me, show me the way. But that’s where my heart is.
And it makes me tremble when I think how light-hearted sometimes people can be about their own personal behavior as leaders in the Church. And sometimes, as a church, how we view things. Listen friends, I don’t have all the answers, but I know this: that in my own life – this is just my own conviction – that if I have a doubt about whether a certain behavior in my life is right or not, I want to get it away until I know better, study it until I know. I don’t want to hold stuff in my life. And sometimes people look at that, and they say, “He’s just really conservative.” No, it’s not a matter of trying to be conservative. I take the responsibility of this church seriously. And I take the responsibility of being a father and being a husband seriously. And I see in the Bible, very clearly, that if God’s leaders fudge on integrity, God will not and cannot bless.
That would be like saying, “See, I told you not to eat any cookies out of the cookie jar, but since you’ve started, go ahead.” What? God is not like that. God doesn’t play around like that. God’s laws are God’s laws, and they do not change. And as we obey His laws, we are blessed.
Now, there are some other verses there for you to look up. It talks about how the Holy Spirit came and answered to prayer and obedience there in Acts, Chapter 1 and Chapter 2. It talks about, in Acts 5:32, how the Holy Spirit and His power is given to those who obey, and what that’s talking about there, the word peitharcheo is a different word there, than other words for obedience in the New Testament. And peitharcheo does not mean perfection, it does not mean flawless obedience; it means having a heart to obey God. ??? means being willing to obey. You get it? It’s not about your behavior in that verse; it’s about a heart willing to obey God.
So the Holy Spirit is given to those who have a surrendered heart, who are willing to obey whatever God asks them to do. You’re just simply saying, “Show me, Lord, teach me Lord. Show me your way, Lord, and I will obey your Word.” So, as we have that kind of experience in our life, it says the Holy Spirit will come upon us.
And then it says in Ephesians 4:29-31 – you’ve got to look at this verse, please – “Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice, and...”

“Be kind, one to another
Tender hearted, forgiving one another
Be kind, one to another
Ephesians 4:32”

It’s possible to grieve the Holy Spirit because He’s a person. He’s not an energy, He’s not electricity, He’s not an it. He is He. He is a person. He’s God. The third person of the Godhead. And He has feelings. And we can offend the Holy Spirit, we can grieve the Holy Spirit by the stubbornness of our heart, by the things that we cherish, by the things we refuse to do for him.
Oswald Chambers is a man who is well known for writing many books. He was a good preacher, he was a student, he was a teacher, and he wrote a well known devotional book called, “My Utmost for His Highest,” a book that many Christians have read in recent years because it came back into popularity. But very few people realize that once, in Oswald Chambers’ life, he was already an ordained preacher and didn’t feel that he really knew Jesus. He wrote these words. He said that he came to a point in his life where if all the Christianity there was, was what he has, then it was a fraud. He was a preacher when he said that. He said the Bible was the dullest, most uninteresting book in existence, and he said the sense of depravity, which means godlessness, in his own soul was horrific, he said. But he said that he refused to give up, and he said, “I will seek a deeper walk with God,” and to make a long story short, he began to go through a process where he began to surrender issues in his life to God.
You know, it’s hard to surrender issues sometimes. Sometimes, you want those issues to be resolved the way you think you need them to be resolved. It’s a trap of the Devil. Do not wait for things to happen the way you think they have to happen; give them to God. Let Him take care of it. Oswald Chambers began to do this, and as he did this, the Lord was leading him deeper and deeper. One day, before he was to preach that Sunday evening, he was laying on the floor of his office, gripping the carpet with his hands, pleading with God for the baptism of the Holy Spirit, which we will also study sometime in the future. And as he was gripping the carpet there, pleading for the baptism of the Holy Spirit, which he had been doing for weeks, he said, “I felt nothing, but I got up from my prayer. I was determined I would claim it my faith, as the Bible said to do.” He walked out on the platform and he preached his sermon, and at the end of the sermon, he gave the appeal for people to receive Christ. And over 40 people who had never received Christ before in their life stood up and came forward to receive Christ.
It’s so astounding; he’d never had that happen before. It so astounded him, that he got scared and befuddled, and he didn’t know what to do. And he left the platform and left those 40 people for the elders to take care of. And one of the elders came back and found him, again in prayer before God. He said, “Pastor Chambers, what’s the matter?”
He said, “I don’t know what to do! I don’t know what’s going on!”
He said, “Well, Pastor Chambers, you’ve been pleading and praying for God to baptize you and this Church with the Holy Spirit.” And he said, “He just did it!” And it changed his life, and he went on to become one of the most powerful Christian influences in the 19th century and early 20th century.
Dwight Moody, another contemporary of Oswald Chambers, was once offended because two women walked out, and he had seen them praying on the front pew. And they walked out, and he said, “I was so glad you ladies were here tonight to pray for the sinners in our congregation.”
“Oh, Pastor Moody, we were not praying for the sinners in the congregation.”
“You weren’t?”
“No. We were praying for you.”
“You were praying for me? Why were you praying for me?”
“Oh, Pastor Moody, you are a wonderful preacher, but you need the baptism of the Holy Spirit and when God baptized you with the Holy Spirit, then He will do great things with you, Pastor Moody.” And he was offended. He was offended because he already had the biggest church in Chicago. He already had more people coming to his church than any other church in town.
“I need the Holy Spirit?” he thought. He was offended by that. But afterward, he began to think about it and pray about it because he was a truehearted man. Wouldn’t you know it, God sent him a second witness.
There was another man, an elderly man, who came and listened to him preach. And one night, after the Sunday evening service, he came out in the Chicago wind, and he said he will never forget the face of that man as long as he lived. He saw this elderly man standing there, and the wind from Lake Michigan was blowing off there and blowing his white hair in the wind. And he pointed his finger at Dwight Moody, and he said, “Young man, whatever you preach, honor the Holy Ghost,” and he left. He never forgot that, and he said every time he would stand up before these huge congregations, he would see the face of that elderly man, pointing his finger at him and saying, “Young man, honor the Holy Ghost.”
And so he began to study. You can read his book. I’ve read his book; it’s a good book, called “Secret Power,” by Dwight Moody. You can still buy it in Christian supply places. It’s very Biblical, unlike a lot of books on the Holy Spirit. It’s very Biblical. And in this book, he came to understand that if you would pray and seek to be baptized with the Holy Spirit and surrender your heart to God on every issue, even if you don’t fully understand them, even if you can’t fully explain them, and yet if God’s Word says you should do this, do it. He took that position, and he said that after this experience came into his life, he said instead of dozens of converts, there began to be hundreds of thousands of converts. Dwight Moody is looked upon as one of the greatest preachers, if not the greatest preacher, that ever lived in America.
Now I’d like you to turn to Revelation, Chapter 18. There’s coming a day, brothers and sisters, and I just wrote a little note to a young lady down south, way south, trying to find her way back to God. And she wrote me an email question a while back and I wrote her back this morning, and I said, “Jesus is coming.” I said, “Jesus is coming very soon.” And I said, “All this stuff that’s going on in the world right now tells me that Jesus is coming soon.” All these issues and all these things are happening almost too fast for me to even begin to explain them, and we are told that the final movements will be rapid ones, and we ain’t seen nothing yet.
Things are going to happen that are just going to cause you to stand back in awe, and you’re going to say, “What is this world coming to?” Well, I’ll tell you, it’s coming to an end. Jesus is coming, and before he comes, there is a great work to be done. And the great work to be done is reaching every man, woman, boy, and girl for Jesus that we can possibly find. That is the great work. It is time for us, as Seventh Day Adventists, to get our eyes and our mouths and our brains off of our petty differences and petty issues and focus on Jesus and the cross and preaching Jesus to the multitudes who are perishing without him! We have differences among us that we will never resolve ‘til the cows come home. Some of those things are just beyond our human ability to resolve. All we do is make enemies with each other by arguing and fussing over those things. We need to get our eyes on Christ and understand that our mission is not about trying to reform each other, but about going out into the world and sharing Jesus with people who need Him so desperately.
People in the world look at churches and say, “Look at the petty things that we, as churches, argue and fuss and groan and moan about and kick each other out over,” and they go, “I don’t get it! Here I am, suffering and dying, practically, and they’re all consumed with their own issues.”
So we’re told in Revelation 18 that “After these things, I saw another angel coming down from Heaven, having great authority, and the Earth was illuminated with his glory. And he cried mightily, with a loud voice, saying, ‘Babylon!’” And that means all of the erroneous teachings that you find everywhere, around every corner, Babylon means confusion. “Babylon the Great is fallen, is fallen! It has become a dwelling place of demons, a prison of every fowl spirit and a cage for every unclean and hated bird.” And by the way, you don’t have to be in Babylon to be a Babylonian. You can be a Babylonian and be in any church. Babylonians are found everywhere. And who are Babylonians? They are people who cherish their own way and who cherish the errors of man above the truth and decency and goodness and laws of God. And you don’t have to be in Babylon to be a Babylonian.
So then it goes on to say that it’s become the dwelling place of all these terrible things, and then it says in Verse 3, “For all the nations have drunk the wine of the wrath of her fornication. The kings of the Earth committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the Earth have become rich through the abundance of her luxury.”
“And I heard another voice from Heaven saying, ‘Come out of her, my people.’” And that’s the message, right there. “Come out of her, my people, lest you share in her sins and lest you receive of her plagues.”
And that’s my appeal to you today. I’m asking every man, woman, boy, and girl in this congregation to join me in consecrating yourself to God. Let the past be the past; you can’t change it. Don’t let it make you bitter, and don’t let it spoil your future. Don’t let the past determine your future. You can’t change the past, but we can embrace the present, and we can have a different future. Submit all your issues to God; only He can solve it, anyway. You can’t resolve all the stuff. Give it all to God. But don’t be lost in the end, and don’t neglect to use your talents in helping some other poor soul find Jesus simply because of things that have happened in your life. Let Jesus come fully into your life. His message to us today is, “Come out of her.” So if you’re cherishing stuff in your life, give it to Jesus. Give it to Jesus, so that we may be blessed, so that you may be blessed, so that this Church can be blessed.
Now, lest you think that this is all interesting stuff, but doesn’t really happen, let me tell you something that really happened. We had a group of pastors meeting together in a prayer retreat. I mentioned one of those to you once before; this is a different one. And as we were meeting there, it became known to us that one of our pastor’s wives who had come to this retreat – there were about 40 of us altogether, a few more guys than girls, some of the pastors had brought their wives – and Bill Smith (he won’t mind me using his name) was a missionary overseas. While he was overseas, his wife, Sue, contracted two serious illnesses. One was Dengue Fever, and the other was Encephalitis. And both of those together were threatening her life. They took her away from the mission field, flew her to Toronto to the Tropical Illness Center, and by the time she got there, the diseases were so far advanced that they said, “All we can do is make you comfortable. The diseases are going to have to run their course. We don’t know if you’re going to live or die; you’re just going to have to go home and find out. But we will try to make you comfortable and help you get through this, and the result, we don’t know.”
So they went home with much prayer, asked lots of the people to pray, and for months and months she suffered. And as the illnesses progressed, I don’t know if you even know anything about this. I didn’t until she explained it. But anytime that anything would touch her skin, it would send excruciating pain up her spinal cord, into her brain and just explode with agonizing pain. And she couldn’t hold a pen or a pencil because it caused pain. Her husband couldn’t squeeze her hand, even gently, or give her a hug because it caused her pain. She couldn’t lift her head up because of the pain. She couldn’t get up and do just typical household duties and fix a little bit of food or make a bed. She was just bedridden. Here she was, still a very young woman, bedridden, and she had all these questions in her heart and mind. But in spite of all that pain, she got up and went to this meeting, and she would go to church and sit there in pain.
So she came to this retreat, and as we were in this meeting – and this meeting that we were having was all about pastors confessing their sins, was all about pastors making things right with each other, with God, with other people. Remember, I told you about the previous meeting, where pastors were going out and getting on the public phones and calling church members back home in their churches and saying, “I said this,” or “I did this, and I’m not sure it was right or the best, and I’m sorry. Forgive me.” They called church members from years past, making things right. And as you do that, and seek to bring yourself into harmony with God, He will bless.
And as the meeting progressed over the period of a few days, we just sensed more unity and sensed more of the blessing of God, and our praise became fuller and our singing became louder and more joyful. We felt the freeing presence of the Spirit of God as we were cutting off all of these things that so easily bind us. And then, the request from Sue, to our Ministerial Director: She said, “Would you please pray for me and anoint me with oil, that I might be made well.”
And as we gathered around her, she sat on a chair. She couldn’t kneel; it was too painful. She sat on a chair, and we all gathered around her. Those of us who were closest to her, we just gently placed our hands on her. That probably hurt, too, but we were too ignorant to know. We placed our hands on her, and then other people placed their hands on other people, and we all began to pray. And then our Ministerial Director, he prayed for her. She prayed the most beautiful prayer, asking God to bless her and heal her, but if not, His will be done. She just wanted to glorify His name. Sweet person. And, as the oil was placed on her head, we felt no electricity, we heard no wind, there was no earthquake, there was nothing like that. But we felt the presence of God.
That was late in the evening. About an hour later, some of us were sitting up just talking and praying and sharing together, and our President’s wife came running, Ruthie Jacobs, and she came running into our midst, those of us who were still there. And she said, “Sue has been healed! Sue has been healed!”
And I jumped up out of my chair, I went running down the hallway, I knocked on their door, Bill opened the door, and I said, “We’ve just been told that Sue has been healed.”
He said, “Apparently, it is so.”
And Sue was right there. She says, “I feel the pain leaving my body.” She says, “It’s just spiraling right out of the top of my head.” She says, “I have no pain in the rest of my body; I just have a tender spot on the top of my head right now, and that’s it.” And the next morning, she got up and walked five miles with her husband. And he hugged her for the first time in months and months. What a joyful, happy couple they were, and that was completely taken away from her.
Friends, Jesus is real. He lives, He reigns, He wants to bless us. The blessings of God are waiting be fully bestowed upon us, if only we will come into the channel of blessing. God is not a namby-pamby God. He’s not going to play games with us. But if we are willing to come into harmony with His Word, He will bless us. I urge you, as your Pastor, in view of the times in which we live, and of the blessings we need, and of the prayer goals that we have for this Church to reach this community for Christ, I urge you to join me in consecration to God, laying aside the things that are questionable in your life; not letting other people be your guide, letting the Word of God be your guide and saying, “I will come into harmony with your Will, Lord, as you reveal it to me.”
And as you make those decisions, God’s going to bless. He will bless. Our prayers will be answered. This Church will fill up more and more, not for numbers’ sake and so that we can say, “Look how big our Church is.” No, let’s always remember that these are boys and girls out here, who are God’s children. They are lost without Him, and He wants them to come home and be ready when Jesus comes.
Let’s stand for prayer.