Rising In A New Anointing

Chapter 24, today's message, when the kids leave, we always have some folks that suddenly are all by themselves, and I don't want you to think you have to be that way. Matthew 24, beginning in verse 36, no one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the sun, but only the Father, for as it was in the days of Noah, say that with me, for as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be in the field, one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill, one will be taken and the other left. Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. Most of us have had the opportunity to see one list of predictions or another for 1991, from the crazy, wild and weird kinds of things, to the more credible. But from my vantage point, most of these predictions have not been very reassuring, have they? I mean, as I stand here today before you, we are ten days away from the United Nations imposed deadline for Iraq to leave Kuwait. Secretary of State James Baker said just this last Thursday in ABC, I'm frankly not as optimistic about a peaceful solution now as I was before Christmas. Over 500,000 people have their lives on the line from this country in the Middle East. Interestingly, in the last weeks, Israel has been added to the mix as a potential target for Iraq to launch an attack or to at least be a target of negotiated settlements of sorts, involving them in a release of some of their territory. The Middle East is a boiling cauldron. Add to that the fact that the Soviet Union is in a situation unlike any in its history. Experts believe that at any time the Soviet Union could crumble and perhaps anarchy come in, or at least some kind of a dictatorship that could go back to hardline communism. And then we talk about the United States of America, and of course our number one concern, as it always is, is what? Economic, of course. So-called experts have attempted to give a befuddled explanation as to the nature of the recession. They think we are in, maybe, it seems, kind of like, even as one NBC commentator said on Friday, bad news seems to feed on itself. So we keep getting it. While banks and savings and loans continue to be embroiled in scandals and shrouded dealings and closures, everyone is wondering, what if? I mean, what if it all really came down this year? I could go on and on, but you get the drift, don't you? Happy New Year! Things are serious in our world. But in the midst of all this, the Lord began to just bring to my mind many of the scriptures that describe the second coming of Jesus. And this week, I have to say, on Thursday night when we sat in this auditorium and read the book of Revelation from chapter 1 to chapter 22, something just kept leaping out as we read through that. It was Jesus saying the words, Behold, I am coming soon. And I may not be a great Bible scholar, but I can tell you one thing. If he said 2,000 years ago, I'm coming soon, we've got to be closer now than we were then. I mean, he must be coming real soon. Now, I know it can get kind of off the track to talk about end times. It seems to me there are two camps when it comes to talking about the second coming of Christ. The one camp is the forget-it camp. They're the ones who don't ever think about it. In violation of the scripture, they just kind of put it out of their mind, and well, he may or may not, who cares, big deal, I'll be doing the same thing anyhow. And then there's the other camp that seems to always be forcing the issue. Trying to make it happen, trying to make it the focal point of conversation. Did you ever get to see a copy of the book, 88 Reasons Why Jesus is Coming in 88? Well, he didn't come, and then they wrote the book 89, literally wrote the book 89 Reasons Why He's Coming in 89. You know what the new reason was? Yeah, he didn't come in 88, so they had that one in. But there are, people get fixated on this. So there's the two extremes. Folks, listen. Most of us, I have to say, little straw poll here, most of us are on the left side of that continuum. We don't think very much about it. And I want to talk to you this morning, briefly, about the possibility that Jesus Christ might come back in 1991. And I want to talk to you why I think, though we don't know the day or the hour, let's not even speculate, let's not try to make up some kind of a chart or graph, I want to say to you that the Bible makes it clear that we can know something about the kind of times in which the Lord would come, because our Bibles say, if you're still open to it, in Matthew 24, verse 37, look at it with me. As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. And so this is a message about the coming of Jesus Christ. It's also a message about Noah. And it's a message about building an ark. The amount of rain we've had already this winter, I suppose that's probably something to consider. Let me talk about Noah for just a minute. I have to believe that most of us here accept the idea that Noah is a real person, but just for the sake of the young people who are skeptical about such things, or perhaps some of you who maybe come to us out of backgrounds where all this falls into the mythological, let me talk to you about Noah for just a minute. When we had our first baby, we went in and chose a wallpaper for the nursery, which was our only other bedroom in the house. And the wallpaper, as some of you know, was just Noah's ark all over the walls. And it was just kind of the cutest stuff you've ever seen. There it was for nine years. We had our three kids in that room for five years. Noah's ark, that was the wallpaper. It's a kid's story, isn't it? Or it's a myth, isn't it? I walked into a Sheetz convenience store on New Year's Eve, coming back from the elders' retreat, looked down at the tabloid section, where I always look, you know, just get some stuff. And they're in big, bold print. Noah's ark found in Pennsylvania. And I wasn't even thinking about this message. Honestly, I wasn't. I should have bought it, but I have some kind of a... There's a conviction against those things for me. But I want to say, you see, that's the kind of thing that we get into about Noah. You know, he's either a nice kid's story or he's a myth. But folks, I don't have time this morning. I can't take the time, but I could, if I was given the time, give you a fairly scholarly, learned validation of what I believe to be the strong evidence that there was a global deluge or flood that covered the entire earth. I think geology substantiates that. And then secondly, I believe that there is ample evidence for the existence of Noah's ark on the earth today. And if you've not studied this or really done any investigation, this can sound like a fairy tale, you know. Well, he's just, he's thinking stories and they're cute. But see, there's a danger when we start putting the stories of God's word in the fairy tale, maybe it didn't happen kind of category. Because once we start doing that, then we can take the rest of this and kind of put it in the same category. And many of your friends do that. The Bible's just a big mythological book. You know, U.S. News comes out. And well, there's all these news theories about the Bible. Noah's ark has been cited scores of times in this century. Did you know that? Pilots flying over in World War II used to look down and see it. But at that point, there was no way to get there. More recently, there have been expeditions up there. You say, well, with all of our technology today, I mean, we can put men in the moon. We certainly could find a 450-foot boat on the top of a mountain. I know, I think. But in fact, you see, Mount Ararat is one of the largest mountains in the world. It's one of the tallest, 17,000 feet. Mount Ararat is snow-covered at its peak, the top 3,000 or 4,000 feet year-round. Only on rare occasions does the snowpack melt. And when it does, Colonel James Irwin, who was one of the expeditionary leaders up there several years ago, said that the terrain was incredibly difficult, far more difficult and treacherous than the moon. He couldn't get up over the terrain to get there. And you add to the fact that the Soviet Union and Turkey, who kind of, it's on the border of those two nations, I mean, neither one of them are really real excited about us snooping around in their turf. They don't care at all to have, so they don't even allow people to go. So for all those reasons, no one has ever really touched Noah's Ark. I just wonder, wouldn't it be like God? You know, in 1991, with all of our cool, for God to take his sort of final calling card and throw it down on the table and say, look, by the discovery of Noah's Ark, I want you to know there was a flood all over the earth. I mean, how else could a boat get to the top of a 17,000 foot mountain? And my word is true. And just as it was in those days, so it is today. Don't be surprised if that very thing happens this year. But even if it doesn't, I just want to take us out of the realm of sweet by-and-by stories and put us in the realm where the Bible says, like it was in those days, so it shall be in the days when I come again. Let's talk about the times of Noah. The culture in the times of Noah. There's a couple of words that describe it. It comes out as we read these verses here. One of them that I couldn't help but see is part of this. It's the word wandering. Look what it says. It says, for in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage up to the day that Noah entered the Ark. They were working in the fields and working in the mills. Dear ones, if there's a word that describes most people's life philosophy, this is it. They're wandering through life, kind of letting life happen to them, just doing what people do, eating, drinking, marrying, giving in marriage, just kind of letting life go by them and experiencing little things along the way. Who knows what it all means? It's like the person I heard of on this television interview recently at one of those little romance kind of shows where they pick your mate kind of stuff. The interviewer said to this couple, well, you're getting married. And they said, yeah, we're really, this is going to be great. And he said, well, you know, with all the divorces, do you think your marriage is going to stick? Is it going to be durable? They said, well, we don't know how durable it's going to be, but it's going to be one heck of a party at our wedding. They changed one of the words. So life isn't really about marriage and covenant and sacrifice and durability. It's about one big party. Let's have the best party we can have. People wander through life. Young people wander through the mall. Something to happen to them. Adults wander through careers hoping they'll find something that they like. Single people wander through relationships hoping that somebody will come along. And all of us wander through the web of materialism hoping that, you know, we'll hit the lottery and make it. Wandering, wandering, wandering around. What does it mean? That's what it was in the days of Noah. Life without a sense of purpose and destiny. A craving for things, a lusting for gratification, a debasing of morality. And dear ones, it's just like that today. Did you know that there is, in the United States of America today, as you sit here in this sanctuary, with this congregation, that there's one million people in jail in the United States? You know, we have the highest per capita jail population of any nation in the world. Did you know that our abortion rate is the third highest of any country in the world, second only to the Soviet Union and China, where in China it's forced upon them? Did you know that the murder rate continues to escalate? I talked about this in my message on the Ten Commandments. I just read in the Pittsburgh Press today that you have a 1 in 10,000 chance of being murdered in Washington, D.C. The lottery is 1 in 2 million. Really? Where is it going, folks? You say, well, it's not in Demler Drive or Poplar Avenue where I live. But folks, the culture, the culture is dying. And eventually it's going to wash over you. And me. And there won't be anything left because people are wandering through it. And it's born out of the second word that I see in Noah's life, in Noah's times. It's the word wickedness. Don't take time to turn there. But in fact, let's use the overhead, shall we? Here's in Genesis 6. Maybe you read it this week. Here's what the Lord said about Noah's times. Let's read it. The Lord saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every evil creation of his thoughts, of his heart, was only evil all the time. The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. Wickedness. Now, when I think of wicked, I mean, automatically, wicked is associated to me with a word that has to do with the wicked witch of the West. But Walt, can I ask you to get me one of those baskets back there, please, and bring it up? The wicked witch of the West, and that conjures up the whole symbol again of things like wallpaper and myth. But I want to use a cognate word. Thank you. A cognate word of wicked, and I want to just kind of illustrate it with this basket. The cognate word that you might be familiar with is the word wicker. All right? Wicker. This is a wicker basket. Now, how is wicker made? Does anyone know? Yeah, they take these reeds, these fine little shoots, and they soak them in water until they are very flexible. Then you can do anything you want. Some of you have furniture that is all twisted and made in these incredible shapes. Wicker is very moldable, you see, because it's been soaked in a fluid that takes the stiffness out of it. And the point about wickedness is not some kind of a little, you know, witch riding on a broom. The idea of wickedness, being so soaked in a value system that you bend yourself any way you want to in order to adjust and adapt for your own satisfaction. To be wicked means that you just let things go in accordance with what you want them to be rather than having any absolutes. We live in a day when people want rights and not responsibility. And so they are soaked in a value system that's eroding. Church. We can't talk about God anymore in school. We can't talk about Him in our public places. Morality is becoming so relative that people can justify any kind of behavior they want. They're wicked to the place where they just, if it feels good and it's right for me, I'm going to do it. Theologically, wickedness is simply agnosticism. Make God whatever you want Him to be. Design God to fit your need when you need Him. And then cast Him off. And the Bible says, in the days of Noah, people were wicked. They just did what they wanted to do. And I have to say to you, and I know this hurts me to say it. I'm not trying to pound on people today. But let's be smart enough and awake enough and wise enough to see that our culture is slipping. I mean, the value system of our culture is ebbing away. I heard in the news the day before yesterday, forgive me, I'm not trying to pull out on one little subgroup of people. I know it can sound that way. But the report on the news said that of teenage girls, age 15 to 19, the participation in sexual intercourse has gone up five times since 1970. Five-fold. It's five times more likely that a young lady will give up her body at that age than it was 20 years ago. My God, where are we going? And a lot of it's just what we allow in terms of media and just the soaking of people into these kinds of things that compromise every value that we stand for. Now in the midst of those times, Matthew 24 says that there's another kind of posture we can take. There's the culture, but then here's what the church should be in these times. And I see it specifically in verse 42. Therefore, keep watch. The church should be watching. The word to watch in the Greek is... I've got a Greek scholar here and I better get this right. Rigoro. How many Gregories do we have here? Your name means to be vigilant or constantly alert. On the watch. And that word is used by Jesus frequently. When He talks about being alert to what might be happening to pull you under. Be alert to it all the time. A number of years ago, I was swimming in the Pacific Ocean off one of the beaches in Southern California with some friends from seminary. We were having a good old frolicking time, just rolling around in the waves, riding them in, going back out and so. I guess I was out 10 or 15 minutes. And after one little time of playing around, I looked in and the shore was pretty far out there. I better start going back in. Did some swimming. Looked up again and the shore was farther out there. My God, this is serious. So I waved my hand. My friends had already gotten in, so I waved my hand. They waved back. This is not good. You learn how to be very spiritual. I said, oh, most high potentate God. No, I didn't. I said, oh, dear God, help me. That's the closest I can ever remember, to drown. And somehow, I just kind of relaxed a bit and composed myself and started deliberately to go with the flow a bit and ended up getting back in the shore. What had happened? Well, in my sort of playful ignorance, I'd gotten locked up in the undertow and I was getting swept out to sea. And in our playful ignorance, by not being alert, too many of us and too many of our friends and our loved ones are getting swept away. The whole purpose of this week is to give us some other tool. Maybe they won't listen to a 178-pound preacher. Maybe they'll listen to 278 pounds. I don't know. But we need to be alert. We need to have our eyes open. And Jesus often linked the word alert, or be watchful, when he said to watch and pray. Watch and pray. Luke chapter 12 talks about it. Watch and pray. I shared with you last week. Many of you prayed for the elders as we went away. And I want to tell you with great delight that the number one priority that our elders came back and said, we've got to recapture our church, is the focus to watch and pray, to pray together. I grieve over the fact that I don't know of any church in our city that has a consistent, regular, well-attended prayer meeting. I wonder what that means. And we're no exception. I'm not here tonight to pass guilt out. We've had enough of that. But I am here today to say, I don't want to go into 1991 without watching and praying. And I'm going to ask you to consider your life how you might just adjust something to be part of a group of people who are going to take prayer seriously. We have a few applications today. You can pray with us Tuesday morning at 6 a.m. We meet right here in this sanctuary. You say, well, I can't do it. You'd be surprised what you can do when you're the only one who can do it. 6 a.m. It's going to be 6 a.m. I'm sorry. 6 a.m. We're going to have the marching orders that we hand out every week. I'm going to make 500 of them next week, hoping that every one of you will take them and pray with us about those things that are happening in our church. A little gray sheet we hand out every week. Number three, every Wednesday night in January, every night except this coming Wednesday when Keith will be here, the strike force, we're going to make them nights of prayer in seeking God. And I want this place to come alive with a spirit of prayer. Beginning January 15 with a prayer hotline where you can call in and get in touch with the request that we're praying for and leave yours. Imagine the capacity to get a thousand people praying about your need right at that moment. And other things are going to happen, but that's the thing that we've got to do. We've got to watch and pray. There are going to be times when we're going to spend nights in prayer because we believe the only way to change this culture is to pray, pray, and pray. And then number two, the second word, the church in the times of Noah, not only to watch, but must also work. The church must work. Look down with me. I didn't read it, but look at verse 45. Who then is the faithful and wise servant whom the master has put in charge of the servants in his household? It will be good for that servant whose master finds him doing so when he returns. You see, the Lord directed Noah in his day that because the wickedness of men was so gross, the judgment was coming, the Lord said to Noah, Genesis 6, 14, build yourself an ark. Get ready for what's coming, Noah, so that I might deliver you through it. Not escape it, but deliver you through it. And Noah listened to God and resisted the bending of the culture and built the ark. Dear ones, our summons is not just to sit here and sing our songs of praise and go through the motions of listening to somebody sing or smile and look pretty and put on our nice clothes for Sunday. We have a summons before God to do something to touch this culture that we live in. Now, I'm overwhelmed with the magnitude of our challenge because people mainly are indifferent towards us right now. But I'm not fatalistic about it. You know, I don't feel like we're on a sinking ship and just like a bunch of drowning rats we've got to go down and gurgle our way to the bottom. I think we can do something. I think we can make a difference. But hear my heart right now. You see, when I come to the point of saying we need to work together, immediately, either A, some of you will drift off and think, well, he's going to make a pitch now for getting a ministry somewhere. Some of you will think he's going to talk about home groups again and I had a lousy experience and I don't want to be in one. Or he's going to say that we need teachers in the back to help with our kids and I've already tried that and they ran me out of the classroom. Or he's going to ask for money so we can have a bigger building so he can feel better about himself or something like that. Please hear my heart right now because I am dismissive. You see, we are here to call this church to be all that God would have it to be. And it's going to require that every one of us examine our own lives and see how we might work to see that fulfilled in the year ahead. And it isn't just going to take a few. When I give these kinds of appeals it seems like a couple hundred throw in and multiple hundreds, a thousand or more of you don't even hear what I'm saying because your life is already too full with your own agenda or, worst of all, you don't care. So I've become a person up here who's just hyping programs or pitching someone's thing and if all I am is a program pitcher and a hype artist, I quit this thing. That's not why I'm here. Dear ones, we're here not to pitch programs. We're here to build an ark. We're here to build an ark for this culture. We're ark builders. Arks of relationship. You know, arks where a single parent can come and find some support and encouragement in the midst of loneliness and exhaustion. Arks where an addicted person or a person with an addicted personality just keeps stumbling and they can find a support group. A place where a person whose life is confusing and overwhelming them can find counsel. A place where a young family can find strength and a vision and teaching to raise up their kids. A place where singles can relate in a positive environment. We're building arks. I don't see us as 1,500 people hanging on until the rapture comes. I see us as 1,500 ark builders but some of us have to recognize that the water is rising and this has to be the year that we get in gear and do what God's called us to do. Part of it may well be that we build a bigger building. I think it is. I think God's saying that. But far more important to me is that every one of you find where you can come alongside in a particular ministry, where you can get involved in a group of people, whether here or out in the marketplace or wherever you might be, but you're doing something beyond your own little world to make a difference, to extend a lifeline to a world that's going to die. When we read Revelation, you know what the overwhelming word, the picture that comes through, really, I mean, heaven's going to be wonderful but folks, I want to tell you something. Revelation is awesome and fearsome. Some of you are going to get hit with a hundred-pound hailstone. It's going to happen. That would mess up your hair, wouldn't it? That would mess up your whole day. And we have the good news. We have the capacity. I think there was more room in Noah's Ark for people. And I believe there's more room in this Ark. There is an Ark in Pennsylvania. There's probably lots of them. But I want this one to be all that God wants it to be. And I want it to be so with you, watching and working for what God has for us in the year to come. Let's stand together. Lord, it's a fearsome thing to take your word and to hear it, Lord, because now these several hundred people must sort through what you're saying to them. They must come to terms with what it is that you have called them to be and to do. And I pray, Jesus, that they'd have the courage and the grace to do that. Oh, Lord. Help them to know, Lord, every single time they walk into that nursery and hold a little baby, every single time they stand in that parking lot and help someone find a place to park, every single time, God, they serve communion or lead a home group, or open their lives to another person. They're helping in the ark building. They're helping to make a difference, to be part of the solution and not the problem. And I pray in Jesus' name, that you'd multiply that grace over us in 1991. Oh, Lord. I'm excited about it. I believe it's going to happen. In Jesus' name. We have an earthly father, perhaps, who wasn't what he all desired to be or could have been. But we have an earthly or heavenly father, that is, who's more than we could ever want. One who knows our weaknesses, our needs, our hurts, our pains, our dreams, our deepest desires. And he loves us so much that he gave his only son. And I want to say to us all today, whatever your parenting background or your parenting struggles, I probably ought to speak for a moment to those whose kids are not honoring them and you feel broken about it. Let me just say that our heavenly father understands. Come to him. Let him pour his love upon you. Let him strengthen you with his presence. Let who he is make up for what's been lacking in your life. And I've discovered this. Even when I've failed in honoring my parents, the love of God more than compensates in me and in them. And I'm able to go back and try again. He's a wonderful God. He's a wonderful heavenly father. And it's through his strength that we can honor our parents, whether as children, adolescents, or adults. Let's do that together. Let's honor our parents so that it may go well with us and we can live long in the land. Let's do that. Could I ask you for just a moment to quietly bow your head, please, and think where you may need to bring a point of application to this message. Maybe as a parent you need to sit down with your kids and talk about honoring. Maybe as an adult you need to know how to honor your parents. To treasure them and bless them. To send them notes of affirmation and appreciation. To take them out. To care for them. Let's bow in prayer. Go ahead, right now. And you just ask the Lord to bring application to your life.