Preparing For A Decade of Destiny II

I want to thank our music folks for coming out early, and Ray Novak with no notice today filled in. Our drummer, Doug Lane, couldn't get here because of the weather, and so it's marvelous to have people available and willing to serve, and I know you're thankful for that, too. Revelation 1, verse 9, I, John, your brother and companion in the suffering and kingdom and patient endurance that are ours in Jesus, stop right there. The companion in suffering part I don't know if I like, how about you? The patient endurance part, I don't know if I like, the kingdom part I like, but they often go together. I, John, was on the island of Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. On the Lord's day, I was in the spirit, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet which said, write on a scroll what you see and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh, Laodicea, I guess is what it really says there. I turned around to see the voice that was speaking to me, and when I turned, I saw seven golden lamp stands. Now, if you have a King James Bible, what does it say? Candlesticks. It's the same word, you can use either translation. Candlesticks is the more poetic term, and the one which we've endeavored to portray today by having our golden candlestick here. How many churches were there? Seven. All right. And among the candlesticks was someone like a son of man, dressed in a robe, reaching down to his feet, and with a golden sash around his chest. His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. His feet were like bronze, glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters. In his right hand, he held seven stars, and out of his mouth came a sharp, double-edged sword. His face was like the sun, shining in all its brilliance. When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he placed his right hand on me and said, do not be afraid, I am the first and the last. I am the living one. I was dead, and behold, I am alive forever and ever. And I hold the keys of death and hell. Write therefore what you have seen, what is now and what will take place. For the mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand, and of the seven golden candlesticks is this. The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven candlesticks are the seven churches. Once again, Scott, let me ask you to hand me the paper under there. When I read this little article yesterday, I was a bit intrigued by a quote which says this, when the interviewer asked, well, what is your building going to be like? Our person whose name is in here, but I won't mention, said, well, there are no specific plans yet, but it will be light and bright, because that's how Jay is. Light and bright. Someone said yesterday, that's better than slim and dim. And I have to say that really it's true that I do like light, and I'm sure if I'm reading you correctly this morning, you do too. You prefer light to darkness. Can you remember the darkest moment of your life? And I don't mean just experientially, circumstantially, I mean experientially. When was there ever a time when you literally couldn't see the nose at the end of your face? I took a group of young people up to the Ray Caverns some years ago, and way down in the cave, the guy said, now, turn out your flashlights. Now, folks, that's dark. I mean, it was almost suffocating. It was really deep, pitch black. I have to say, though, that sometimes there can be darkness even when there's a semblance of light. When I flew into Mexico four and a half years ago, I'll never forget the feeling I had of darkness. Coming out of India just a few weeks ago, that same sense of a presence of darkness is just unavoidable. It prevails over those nations that worship demons and false gods. But you don't have to go to a foreign land to experience this darkness. The same kind of presence can be experienced. I felt it in our local prisons when I visited. I felt it in the local nightclubs when I visited there. I've even felt it in some homes. I'll never forget going into a home of someone that's now part of this church, and I walked into the place, and I felt darkness. I looked around, and there were all these little icons and things, and I knew there was a sense of darkness there. Many leading thinkers of our day, Christian thinkers and sociologists, are prophesying, as it were, that darkness is returning to this country. Charles Coulson, who's one of my favorite authors in his newest book, says this. We are living in a new dark age. Having elevated the individual as the measure of all things, modern men and women are guided solely by their own dark passions. They have nothing above themselves to respect or obey, no principles to live or die for. Personal advancement, personal feeling, and personal autonomy are the only shrines at which they worship. It doesn't take a lot of discernment to realize that this darkness is creeping into our nation. It's not falling on it. It's creeping into it from the inside out, and as Coulson later goes on, he says it's all so subtle because it comes to us in pinstripes and silk. It's the darkness of the new age. Contrast that even to this Christmas season. I don't know what you think, but I so appreciate the beauty of our sanctuary and the labor of the folks that put these things up, and increasingly, you're going to see lights around here. When I was a kid, one of the things we used to do as a family memory for me was packing the kids in the back of the car, that's where I sat, they sat in the front, mom and dad, and we drove around neighborhoods looking at the Christmas lights. Did anyone ever do that? We used to compare, oh, look at that house, and we'd go down around the block, and here's another one, big reindeer and lights up above, and every once in a while, they'd have a contest in the neighborhood, and the guy with the most lights in his house would win. It was bizarre. I mean, people had, every brick was a little light. Well, 1973 came, and the energy crunch, and that kind of has gone by the boards. Now you have to look for them. But light at Christmas time were almost synonymous. The Bethlehem star and everything. Why was that? Because God said in his word that he was going to send the light of the world. John's gospel says, this light was the life of man. This light that came into the world. Jesus didn't say that he was going to come to tell about the light. He said that he was the light. And it's as though in this Christmas season, we have all the more reason to shine brightly as the darkness begins to encroach increasingly all around us. I want to tell you with some fresh authority today, based on my recent travels and experiences, that any place where God is pushed out, where God is legislated away, where God is decreed no longer relevant, anywhere that happens, light doesn't invade, darkness does. Whether it's the classroom, the congressional hall, the neighborhood or the home. That's why I believe God, my dear church, is at the present time moving powerfully to raise up this body of believers as a light in our community. I believe, and I'm going to share with you in the next few moments, specifically why God is doing that and how I see him doing it. Because if there's ever been a time when there needs to be a light, a standard raised, it's now. 1990s are being prophesied as a time when darkness will increase rapidly. Pat Robertson has been quoted as saying that it's going to come down just to a matter of choice between the darkness of the new age mentality, which I just highlighted, every man a God, and the Christian fundamental belief that there is only one God and that his son Jesus is the one who came to redeem man. As man goes on, I believe the lights that we shine are going to have to either shine brighter or be snuffed by the darkness around us. As I thought about our church, I thought of the light that we are in three terms, the prophetic light, the people light, and the personal light. I want to share each of those with you for just a moment. First of all, the prophetic light. At no time of year does prophecy become more important than right now at Christmas time. How many of you know that Jesus was prophesied to be the Messiah, to be the coming king, to be the deliverer, to be the redeemer, a thousand years before he came? I want you to think for a moment, go through your memory banks, I know it's not easy at 9.30 or 10 o'clock in the morning. How many other world religious leaders were prophesied to be coming to be what they were? Can anyone think of one? You won't be able to because in all of their self-acknowledged claims to deity, no one, Muhammad, Buddha, Reverend Moon, or any of the rest of them, none of them had ever been prophesied as being the one that God was sending. Isn't that a wonderful thing about Jesus? You can lose sight of that kind of thing. A mathematician said that the odds of the 27 prophecies that happened prior to Jesus' birth, 27 of them, the odds of them accidentally being true about one person was 1 times 10 to the 217th power, which is a lot of zeros. I mean, basically incalculable, could have happened, and they were all fulfilled in this man called Christ. Now, I'm not trying to convince you of that, you know that, but I want you to understand that this Jesus that we raise up at Christmas time was no accident. He is the Son of God, and he was prophesied as being that. Now, the way this relates to us is that I believe that God has prophesied before the fact that this property was to be our property. Years ago, the Lord said to us that North Way would be as a light on the hill. I dug through my files this weekend, and it was quite an interesting experience, and I have a prophecy that was given in 1983, and I'm going to read a portion of it. This person writes, I understood God to say that North Way would become a lighthouse to the city of Pittsburgh, and even Pennsylvania in time. God specifically said this would come about through your works, the works of your faith and the works of your hands. God brought two scriptures to my mind, and I didn't realize they were consecutive until I looked them up in my Bible. Matthew 5, 14 through 16 was the first word God spoke to me concerning North Way in the last days. He says, you will be a light, a place where people find rest and comfort, a place where there is hope. People will be healed, and the miraculous will happen. And by word of mouth, people will hear of this and seek you out. Because of this, because you will let your light shine, you will be like a city on a hill. Now, I remember when we went to buy this building. Some of you weren't here then, 1985. Lots of people were nervous about this building, because how many of you know it doesn't sit on a hill? Amen? I mean, you go down a hill to get here. People say, that can't be what God wants for us. But now I'm here to tell you that this particular property goes back up as far as this one goes down so that when you put a 50 or 60 foot structure over here, how many of you are going to see that light? And then this word that came March 17, 1989, a prophetic word from, I think, a person with a proven prophetic gift in our body. The time of property searching is done. The leadership will have favor with the township, and the property on Route 19 is yours. I have placed this property before you all, and now the ear is here and the eyes see that it is of me. The door will open and you will get the property. Now, this was right when we were starting the process. This wasn't last week when I could have said it. The present building will house the school and ministries and meetings and the other property. Quote, build a sanctuary unto me, a place of meeting where my people may come together to worship me and learn of me, so as to be equipped for the revival that is coming, says the Lord. We've always contended that if we were to build bigger, it was because God wanted to bring more into the kingdom. I will raise up ministers from every corner to bring in the lost, to feed the hungry, to heal the sick, and deliver those in bondage. And many will move in the spiritual gifts in a powerful way. Many will seek and move into me, and the prophecy goes on. This, you see, folks, when the Lord speaks this directly, I want you to know that it puts a certain sense of excitement into your heart, doesn't it? To know that it's not just a fluke. What am I saying? I'm saying that this is God's choice for us. I'm saying that God specifically stirred over us, closed every other door until we finally got it through our heads that this is where he wanted us to be. It's not a perfect piece of ground. I'm saying, Lord, why don't you get a flatter piece? Because hills aren't flat, son. I'm slow, but I do get through on these things. And so I want you to know that I personally feel the secret to a successful, fulfilled Christian life is finding the will of God and getting in it. Paul Young did show that the pastor of the world's largest church said his whole ministry has been built on that principle. Finding what God's doing, don't get out of it, don't fight with it, don't stand in the stream and get knocked over by it, but flow with it. And I don't know what else to say to you other than God is doing this and you must make the choice to be part of what the Lord's doing. A prophetic life. Let me also say, though, there's another dimension of being a prophetic life. One of them is that we're receiving a prophetic life. The other is we are to be one. We are to be a prophetic life for the world. We're still on to number one now, all right? We're to be a prophetic life. And that means that we are to stand in the midst of all of this relativism that's around us and say, thus saith the Lord. Increasingly as the world goes on, how many of you know that standards are being compromised? You're made to be a fool if you believe something is absolutely right. You ever find that? You get into a conversation and if you say something is right or wrong, then you're called a narrow-minded peahead and those kinds of things. People begin to demean you for that. This is just part of the whole encroachment of darkness in our culture. Everyone has the right, once again, quoting Charles Colson, to express their own views as long as the views don't contain any suggestion of absolutes that would compete with the prevailing standard of relativism. Now, what's paradoxical about all this is, and I quote, Without root in some transcendent standard, ethical judgments become merely expressions of feeling or preference. Murder's wrong must be translated, I hate murder, or I prefer that you're not murdering. Isn't that really what's happening in abortion? Instead of saying it's right or wrong, we say, well, that's how you feel about it. And it's going to be that way in lots of other things. Without absolutes, you see, we can say whatever we feel like. But in the end, by the way, the people who hold to that win because there are absolutes. And the Lord is calling our church to raise up a standard of righteousness. That's why I can say with confidence today that in years past, we've sought to do that not perfectly by any means, and God has honored it. That's why six years ago when there was no crisis pregnancy center in the Pittsburgh area, God moved in our church to be at the forefront of establishing the CPC, and now others have helped numerous CPCs to be stopped. That's why now, folks, we don't just talk about the drug problem. We have a more than conquerors group that meets every week to help young men and women break out of the bondage, not just talking about it. That's why if you saw our prelude video, you saw a young woman say, you know, I looked all over the city for help for an abusive husband and three small kids, and I found it here. Why? Because we're trying to raise up a light, a standard, and that's what God is calling us to be into the 90s that are ahead of us. Number two, then, on your outline, we're to be called a people light. I want to talk for just a moment about community because if there's something that's beginning to be absent around us, it's community. You know, the push for individualism is so oppressive. If I read another book titled, you know, Playing to Win, or I Did It My Way, or whatever it is, you know, there's such an exaltation of the individual autonomy in our culture that it's beginning to just erode away the base of community. Now, what I find in people more and more these days is that truly sensitive people are looking for community. I was with a man just recently, a good friend I've known for a while, who was here in Pittsburgh years ago and now has moved to another part of the country, and we sat down over dinner and we were talking. He said, you know, I have lived in different parts of the country, and everywhere I've gone, I've searched for community like we knew it when I was back in Pittsburgh. I searched for it. He said, now I want you to know that not even in Christian circles am I finding where people genuinely care. Where people genuinely love. He's saying more and more, he said, my friends, my business associates who aren't Christians are asking the question, where is it? Where is community? And when Radar stands up and says, consider a home group, it can sound like a pitch for a program or it can sound like an appeal to get out of your individual isolated little schedule and say, hey, I'm going to be part of something. You say, well, there's a lot of obstacles. Sure there are. Every good thing has obstacles. But you can press through and you can be part of giving your life to someone else. You see, people who know the Lord are community related people. They are light to those who are dying of isolation and separation. That's why so many people, I marvel at this, but how many people give all of their free time to serve the kingdom of God, right here in our church? Because they love the community. They love to be with people. They love to serve people. There's some folks here today who retired and could have afforded to move anywhere in the country to retire in the sun. And they're going to plow through snow because they want to be here to serve in the community. And that's what God is calling us to be. I think as community grows in the years ahead, by the way, I think it's going to be the thrust of evangelism. A senior hire was once asked in a little interview, if you were to commit suicide, who would know? And she looked around and she said, room full of people, classmates, she said, well, Mary here and my mother would miss me. And the interviewer thought, you know, how sorry when all we have is just our own little tiny world. God is moving in our church to continue to raise up a standard of community and an opportunity for people to be related together. And I believe in the end, it's going to be people who know that though there are obstacles, though it may be difficult to be accountable and a little bit transparent, that it's better in the end to sing before God, we're the people of God, than it is all by myself or I did it my way. That's what the Lord wants. And then moving on, number three, the Lord said that we are to be a place where others can find a personal light. It's sort of the other side of the community. On the one hand, you see, we move together in God. But on the other hand, we're individually accountable and responsible, a personal life. Many people today are wondering, you know, you read New Age material, it talks about light. Your crystal is sort of the little magical thing that they hold and emanates lights of sorts. You know, 40 million people read the horoscopes every day for light. A hundred million people sit in dead churches looking for some kind of light. What we have to share in our church with people is the light of life. And I'm happy to say that some are finding that light. And I rejoice in how God is touching people and leading them on in their walk with Christ, no matter where they are. I got this letter just a little while ago, in the last few weeks. Here's a person sharing how they found the light here. They said, I know that the Lord is faithful. He took our all but ended marriage and brokenheartedness and infidelity and cleansed both of us, giving us a greater and better relationship than we've ever had. There were so many problems, old hurts, all forgiven, all washed away. There've been personal healings, drug addiction, suicide attempts, even overcoming the death of a child, bulimia, and on and on, fears, aggression. And now I'm in a place where I'm almost healed of serious depression. It's true that many of these things took much therapy and doctors have helped, but God's healed me. He's faithful. He's drawn out of me the old baggie for such a long time. Here's a person that's finding light, walking on the path of God. I'm not saying where we want to be, church. I'm just saying that the Lord is continuing to give us the opportunity to let our light shine. Light for healing, light for family relationships being healed, for marriages to be restored, light for people who are making decisions about their careers and about their futures, financial issues, addiction problems. But as much as anything, I guess I want to ask you today, are you desirous of letting your individual light being joined with the lights of those around you? Because when it comes to our property and our future, that's what it's really all about. No one of us will be able to accomplish it. But God is issuing a summons to us now to bring our individual lights and unite them together and say, I want to lift up a standard. A prophetic light, a people light, a personal light. You say, well, I don't know what difference we can make. Let me just end with this little illustration from Scripture. In the book of Judges, Gideon is called by God to defeat an army of 300,000. I thought it would be better if it was 600,000. It would have fit perfectly. But 300,000. And Gideon said, okay, well, he mustered his troops. How many did he have? 30,000. That's pretty bad odds. And God came up to him and said, you've got too many. Gideon said, come on, Lord, let's get serious here. God had him weed it all out, make a long story kind of short. How many were left? 300. 300. Needless to say, Gideon got just a little bit anxious. He said, well, what's going to happen? A prophet came along and told him, here's what you're to do. Take your 300 and encircle the camp of the Midianites down in this valley. And when I give the signal, raise up a torch in your left hand and sound the trumpet in your right. So in the darkness, in the nighttime, Gideon went out and he camped around this valley. And at the proper signal, he raised up his torch and so did 300 others. And they raised the trumpet to their mouth and sounded the trumpets. And at that moment, the light of the torches and the sound of the trumpet frightened the enemy, confused them. They began to kill each other and scatter. And that one moment's time, Gideon defeated an army 10,000 times as great as he was. Isn't that something? I want to say to you that if we'll lift up our lights together and sound the trumpet of our praise, God will provide for us what's necessary to move ahead in victory. That's simply my appeal to you this morning. What can you do with your light? You can join it with ours. Whatever it is, whatever you can bring, you can do it. And we'll let God melt our corporate lights. Do you know when we pull our light together, it's stronger and greater than even just being added? It's as though God lets His glory come out. And that's what I'm believing the Lord to do in this month of December and in the decade ahead. Would you stand with me for prayer? Lord, I praise you right now for the assurance that we have in our spirit. That you've placed the light on our candlestick. That your presence is here with us. And I ask you now, Lord, to confirm in the heart of each individual that their light is so valuable, so important in these dark ages. In Jesus' name. I'm going to invite you to sing a chorus of promise with me. It's sort of a new one, even though it's an old chorus. Here's how it goes. All through the day and all through the night, dwell in His promises, walk in His light.