 |
|
|
|
Home |
Wingspread |
Archives |
Us |
|
|
|
|
Home |
Wingspread |
Archives |
Us |
May, 2021 (Vol.55-No.5) |
 |
 |
|
|
Preached by Dr. Gene Scott on February 22, 1987 The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms… Deuteronomy 33:27 THERE ARE CERTAIN SUBJECTS IN THE BIBLE that we need to revisit often. I grew up in the church and know that people will sometimes tune out when they hear a sermon that they think they have heard before. Unfortunately, they might miss half of the sermon before they wake up to the fact that the preacher might be saying something different from what they expected. We are returning to Deuteronomy 33 and Moses’ “Song of Asher.” We have a New Testament basis for claiming these Old Testament promises. Paul said in 2nd Corinthians 1:20, “All the promises of God in him are yea,” meaning “yes,” “and in him Amen,” or “so be it unto thee.” All of God’s promises are ours when we are in Christ. Thank God, He places us in Christ not for out being perfect but because of our faith. If you are a faither, then you are in Christ. So the promises in Deuteronomy 33 are not just for the tribe of Asher; these promises are ours to claim. And they apply today, as they apply every day. Asher was merely the vehicle by whom God gave these promises to you and me today. What is faith? Faith is not merely “belief.” In both the Old and New Testaments, the original words for faith and trust are action words. Faith is an Action, based upon Belief, and sustained by Confidence. Those are the ABCs of faith. When you find a promise of God in the Bible that fits your circumstance, grab hold of it. Keep holding on to it and don’t let go, because all the promises of God are “yes” and “so be it.” You are willing to face death, if necessary, still claiming God’s promises. That is what makes you a faither. Contrary to the preaching of those who clobber you with their legalism, God gives you salvation in response to your faith. God likes men and women of faith. Faith is 90 percent courage, 9 percent tenacity, and only 1 percent all that other stuff you might have heard about faith if you grew up in the church. Our first promise from this passage is in Deuteronomy 33:25: “Thy shoes shall be iron and brass…” Those are tough shoes, and God promises to provide us with tough shoes for a tough trip. Iron and brass shoes are designed to last. You don’t wear iron and brass shoes in the bedroom, at least intelligent people don’t. Why would you need tough shoes to wear around the house? The implication is that it must be a tough trip for these children of promise. The church is not a spiritual clinic. It is not a place to go to cry about your problems. I want to tell some people, “Straighten up, wimp! Find a promise of God and start acting in faith!” I have had enough of the milquetoast Christianity being peddled on television by hair-sprayed fools prancing around in their three-piece penguin suits. Most of those preachers have no comprehension of the realities of life. The Bible is full of examples of real men and women who stared death in the face, confronted impossible circumstances, yet courageously trusted in God to see them through. God has never promised us that Christianity would be an easy trip. Look at the life of the apostle Paul: five times beaten with stripes, thrice shipwrecked, stoned, in peril in the wilderness, in peril after peril. Look at the record of God’s people throughout the Old Testament. God didn’t remove the giants from the Promised Land. Moses sent spies into the land, and they came back with their report: “Yes, the land is everything God said it was, but there are giants there!” The children of Israel listened to the spies and refused to enter into the land. They even wanted to stone Moses! What is the New Testament application? When you become a wimpy Christian, you go a little insane. God’s people said in Numbers 14, “You brought us out here to the wilderness to die. Would to God we had died in the land of Egypt!” Do you see how crazy this is? Death is death. What difference does it make where you die? But these people told God that they would rather have died as slaves in Egypt. Before we judge them too harshly, the truth is that we do the same thing. We complain, “Would to God we had died before we had ever started on this faith walk!” it is true that there were giants in the land; but Joshua and Caleb said, “Our God is able!” Most of the spies only saw the giants and saw themselves as grasshoppers in comparison. Joshua and Caleb saw God. If you want to be a Christian and start counting for something, get ready for all hell to break loose on you. Satan is smart; he doesn’t waste time attacking his prisoners. He launches his greatest attacks on those who are breaking free. For far too long, preachers have heralded the nonsensical idea that you can walk down a church aisle, bow your knee at an altar, and then have nothing but ease from here to glory. Christianity requires that men and women involve themselves in the stuff of life. When you have a job to do, you must dedicate yourself to doing it the right way, and that makes it a tough trip, friend. It is about time that pastors tell people, “If you want to do something for God, it will cost you something.” Cheer up, saints. It’s going to get worse! God has never deceived us or misled us. He is not looking for wimps, and He is not so hard up for friends that He has to find some miserable human wreck to sympathize with. God takes you as you are, and if you can take even the feeblest grip on His promises, He will make a man or a woman out of you. Christianity is a tough trip. I receive letters and calls from people in my congregation who are going through all kinds of personal crises, but they still find a way to put God first in their lives. Someone recently called me right before going into a hospital for surgery and said, “The last thing I did was send an offering. We’re going to make it, Pastor!” That is the kind of company you are in. I don’t have to tell you because you have experienced it yourself: Christianity is a tough trip, but the shoes God provides are tough enough to make the trip. You can say with confidence, “Bring on the rough road. Show me the tough trip. I am wearing shoes that are tough enough for the trip!” God has promised that whom He calls, He enables. This may sound like whistling in the dark unless you know of God’s ability to keep His word. King David learned from many experiences that God is faithful. David’s faith matured to the point that when he was surrounded by enemies, he prayed to God, “Thou hast delivered my soul from death,” describing his future deliverance in the past tense. When David faced a mountain, he spoke as though he had already climbed it. His faith had reached a stage where the mountain in front of him was already behind! Therefore, we can say together, “We made it through this coming year!” Not “We will make it,” but “We made it through the year!” It’s not over until it’s over! So stop saying, “The journey is going to kill me!” The journey will not kill you. Your shoes are tough enough. What else does God promise us on this trip? “As thy days, so shall thy strength be.” This is God’s promise, and He will back His word. The psalmist said, “For ever, O LORD, thy word is settled in heaven,” and that is what this church stands for. Faith starts with an attitude. I am not one of those fools who say, “You don’t really have a problem; you only think you do.” Man, I have problems! I might try to think that I don’t. I preach a message of rugged, realistic faith. Sure, I have problems, but the shoes God provides are tough enough to make the trip. And God has promised, “As thy days, so shall thy strength be.” Notice the words “As thy days.” That means this promise is personalized. Whatever your day demands, God specifically measures out the strength you need. That means if you wake up one morning feeling so weak that you need help getting your legs out of bed, just go back to bed. You will not have much to deal with that day. But if you get up in the morning feeling like you can fight a tank, you might have to fight tanks. God, who knows what you need, measures out the strength you need for the day.” God said to Jeremiah, “I will hasten my word to perform it.” Figuratively, it is as though God uses a magnifying glass to capture all the powers at His disposal and focus them on His word to make it happen. God is more concerned about His word than we are. He is just waiting for a faither to grab hold of it. He knows what He has promised and He will not let us down. Who do you think called you and sent you? You might think, “Oh, I was just curious, so I wandered into a church to listen to a Bible teacher.” Your desire to learn God’s word is not an accident. My Bible says, “The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD.” These promises apply to the church and to you individually. Maybe you are facing something so terrible that you are sure the world will cave in on you tomorrow. Have you ever thought at some point during your lifetime that you would not make it? Did you make it? I am teaching you an attitudinal focus of practical faith. We are to learn from the past and start getting into gear a little more quickly. No one ever cracked up over today’s problems. It is always tomorrow that causes us the most anxiety. Well, tomorrow never comes. When it arrives, it is today. And God’s word forever settled in heaven says, “As thy days, so shall thy strength be.” I am saying the same simple message: you will make it! I am not a foolish man; I use my brain. I will not walk in front of a streetcar and say, “Hit me, because I have enough strength to stand up to you!” But no matter how tough my circumstances get, I will say with my last breath, “Damn you, circumstances! I can still breathe, and as my days, so shall my strength be! And you just wait until tomorrow and watch me come alive again!” Don’t ever quit at the end of the day. I have an agreement with my congregation: if I ever resign at the end of the day, it doesn’t count. It only means I had a temporary spell of insanity and forgot God’s promise. Tomorrow morning will be a new day with new strength. Many times I have thought that I would not make it; but every time, God has “surprised” me by providing the strength that I needed. You can count on Him to keep His word. How does God make sure I will make it, and my shoes will last, and my strength will be sufficient? In the New Testament, 1st Corinthians 10:13 says that God will not tempt us beyond what we are able, but will with the temptation provide a way of escape. The sense of the original Greek is that for every specific temptation, God has provided an equally specific way of escape. Regardless of what is pressuring you today, God has already put the key in the door of escape, and the only thing that could cause you to miss it is to lose faith and stop pressing on. How does God accomplish this? Read the next promise in Deuteronomy 33:27: “The eternal God is thy refuge.” This passage in the original Hebrew is difficult to translate, but we can come close by saying “the God of the forefront is our refuge.” You could also say, “The God of the forefront is ahead, around, and behind.” It is a pictorial expression and to communicate it, we have to do a mental exercise. We know that time is relative. Time is important to us, but the eternal God knows no time. We look at time and say that the future is ahead of us. We say things like, “I’m looking forward to tomorrow” or we say, “I’m worried about tomorrow.” We view things that have already happened as being behind us. According to the way we normally view time, what is yet to come is up front, and what has already happened is behind. But now let’s try to look at time from God’s perspective. God looks at time the way we would view a parade. When we view a parade, the front of the parade has already passed by, and what is yet to come is behind. That is just the opposite of the way we normally look at time. From the viewpoint of someone watching a parade, what has already happened is up front, and what is yet to come is behind! This verse in Deuteronomy is saying that “the God of the forefront” is already on the corner before we get there. The things that we think of as being in the future are already behind God, who is also the Leader of the parade. With God, there is no time. Jesus said, “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending.” We are always worrying about what is yet to come; but from God’s perspective, what is yet to come has already passed by. God is waiting for us on the corner before we get there. He leads the parade and He ends the parade. The thing that we are worrying about may be three days away, but God is already on that corner and is there as our refuge when we are acting in faith on His promises. Proverbs 3:6 says, “In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.” Moffatt’s translation says, “He will clear the road for you.” God gets there before we do. Tomorrow may be a surprise to us, but it is not a surprise to God because he has already made the trip. Many times in my life I have said in a moment of panic, “God, there’s no way You could have known this would happen!” Yes, He knew. Men and women of faith are promised shoes tough enough for the trip, strength sufficient for the day, and the assurance that God is on the corner before we get there. There are no surprises in God’s tomorrow. He has already seen it and He is our refuge. He has already worked out an escape plan for whatever threat is coming around the bend. Our lot is to keep walking in our shoes and to keep using the strength we have been given. And when we arrive at that corner and the event that surprises us, God has a surprise in store for the enemy! The message is: “We made it through!” Why come to church? The church is not a building; the church is a people who belong to the Lord. But if a city loses its places of worship, that city’s destiny will be forever warped. All the tall buildings throughout this city are merely towers built to honor mammon. The world needs to be reminded that there is no place where God is not. Room must be made for men and women to think about ultimate things. And the world needs to be reminded that there is an all-seeing Eye over their activities in this grubby world we live in down here. Therefore, the church must take its stand. Someone has to care about God’s house in this race toward “progress” in a nation where people tear down everything of cultural and historical value. We must be the ones who care about God’s people and His church. That is what the battle for the church is about. And when opposition comes, the God who give us shoes and strength, the Leader of the parade, will be on the corner before we get there. What if we make mistakes en route? That is why God provides the next promise: “Underneath are the everlasting arms.” The word “underneath” suggests something that is “underneath bottomless.” Can you fathom what bottomless is? This requires a paradoxical stretching of the mind to the breaking point: wherever the bottom of bottomless is, underneath that are God’s never-moving, everlasting arms! Think about it. If we fall and it is a very long drop, God has plenty of time to get His hands into position to catch us. But God’s word declares to those who fall that His everlasting arms are already waiting there to catch us. I often want to give up. I say, “To hell with this! I am tired of the life of faith!” I can easily backslide in just one sentence, and I have done it at least 30 times in the past month. Every day, sometime during that day, I try to get God on the defensive. I say “I’ve done so much for You. I have carried this church as far as I am going to carry it. It’s Your turn now!” Whether we admit it or not, we all talk back to God like that. We often want to give up. When my faith grows weak, I foolishly begin to think that God is not doing anything. But the longer I follow God, the more I come to understand that He is in control. I might try to jump ship; but when I fall into a hole figuratively speaking, God doesn’t wait for some angel to tell Him, “Hey, look! Dr. Scott fell into a hole! Let’s get over there and catch him!” God’s hands are already there. However deep bottomless may be, underneath us, all the time, are His everlasting arms. I don’t police the morals of my congregation. I don’t tell them, “Do do this and don’t do that.” I just teach that “faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God,” and that Christ is formed in our hearts by faith. Whatever Christianity may be, when God finds a faither, he pours His life into him. We don’t know about tomorrow, but we do know this: we are tough enough to last it out. We have been given enough strength for today, and tomorrow we will receive a new dose of strength. There are no surprises to the One we are following. Someone else might be surprised, but not God. And the more we follow God, the less surprised we will be with each new problem because we expect Him to have the solution. But if we fall, underneath are the everlasting arms. That means if you want to jump ship, you will find that you cannot so easily escape from God’s care. God has you, and He intends to keep you. I love the way Deuteronomy 33 concludes: verse 29 says, “Happy art thou, O Israel: who is like unto thee, O people saved by the LORD the shield of thy help, and who is the sword of thy excellency! And thine enemies shall be found liars unto thee; and thou shalt tread upon their high places.” These are God’s promises to us! Hallelujah, we made it through! Reprinted with permission from Pastor Melissa Scott *** | December, 2021 Wingspread | November, 2021 Wingspread | October, 2021 Wingspread | September, 2021 Wingspread | August, 2021 Wingspread | July, 2021 Wingspread | June, 2021 Wingspread | May, 2021 Wingspread | April, 2021 Wingspread | March, 2021 Wingspread | February, 2021 Wingspread | January, 2021 Wingspread | | Year 2019 Wingspreads | August, 2016 Wingspread | 2016 Wingspreads | 2014 Wingspreads | 2013 Wingspreads | 2012 Wingspreads | 2011 Wingspreads | 2010 Wingspreads | 2009 Wingspreads | 2008 Wingspreads | 2007 Wingspreads | 2006 Wingspreads | 2005 Wingspreads | 2004 Wingspreads | 2003 Wingspreads | 2002 Wingspreads | 2001 Wingspreads | August, 2001 Wingspread | November, 2001 Wingspread | December, 2001 Wingspread | 2000 Wingspreads | 1999 Wingspreads | 2015 Wingspreads | Year 2017 Wingspreads | 2018 Wingspreads | Year 2020 Wingspreads | Year 2021 Wingspreads | Year 2022 Wingspreads | Year 2023 Wingspreads | | Return Home | Current Wingspread | Wingspread Archives | Contact Us | |
||
 |
 |
