The Long Journey

Well, friends, I'm going to ask the ushers to come and hand you the new outline for today. In case you're wondering if I took time to prepare, in your notes is a complete outline that I will be using most likely next week. There was a lot of work there, but I'm going to explain what happened this morning. In the first service, this befuddled everyone because the outline is not very complete, as you'll quickly see. Last night I came over to complete my preparation, as I always do on a Saturday evening. I got here at 7.30, we had those flurries, the roads were wet, even the sidewalks around the building were wet, and I was blessed because I knew there wouldn't be any impediment for people coming to worship today. Because I felt very strongly, and still do, that the message I have prepared for this morning is a very important message for us, far beyond what it has to do with personal finance, and I'll share about that next week, Lord willing. But about 7.45, as I was working on a couple of other things, I looked up and my eyes, through the windows of my office, I could see the incredible microburst of snow that was coming down, and the parking lot lights, it was just streaming down. Within ten minutes there was a good inch, inch and a half or more of snow, blanketing the parking lot. Pastor Dave called and we prayed and just asked the Lord to make it passable today. And then last night, I don't know about where you live, but where I live, another inch or two fell. And you may think, well that's no big deal, but frankly, it is a big deal. About a third of our congregation, as I anticipated, didn't make it this morning. You can put that under any category you want to. Well, afraid of the snow, can't drive in the snow, whatever it is. I knew that that had impact. Just imagine if you were a business person and your business was open one day a week and this happened. You'd be like, that's significant. And what's really weird about this, having you been hearing about El Nino, how many of you have heard about El Nino? All the weather people say, El Nino is going to have this warming effect. How many have heard that? Mild winter, right? Less moisture, I've heard all these things. Now recently, it started to change. And I'm discovering what you've already known, which is the weather people are taking wild guesses. They walk out and say, well, I don't know. And that's what they tell us. And we believe it. That's what's so weird about us. So, I don't know about El Nino, but I know about El Wino. This is what I know. Number one, and you can write this down, Sunday will be normally the coldest and snowiest day of the week. You laugh, go ahead, laugh, mark it down and test me on this. I've watched this, I've tracked it over the years. You say, well, come on, you're just paranoid. No, it is true. Normally, Saturday night, Sunday, and miraculously by tomorrow morning, when you have to go to work, those roads will be clear, you'll be out of your home, on your way to school, you watch. Trust me, it happens. I mean, I've watched this enough for you. I can't prove it in terms of, there's some like plot going on here. I just know. Number two, God wills that we meet together. Now, how many of you believe that? This is a valuable time. The church really only meets once a week, corporately. Now, do we meet other times? Of course we do. We meet in homes, we meet in different gathering spots and small groups, but friends, this is so important. What happens in this hour and a half together shapes our destiny as a church family. And when it snows and when weather is adverse, it affects a lot of communication that God intends to happen. And so number three, I know this, North Way will be prepared for you at all times during these winter months. And if you're new to us, you may have never heard of the 2020 rule. If you woke up today and you said, I wonder if we're going to meet, I wonder if they're going to have church, should we listen for the cancellations? Let me help you, here's the rules. Number one, don't even bother to think about whether we'll cancel unless it's 20 below zero. I'm not talking windshield here, none of that funny business, okay? I mean, you look at the thermometer, it says 20 below, okay? Then you can call and see if we're meeting. That doesn't mean we're going to cancel. And second, if there's 20 inches of snow. Not just, you know, well, there's a three inches, five, no, we'll meet. Now, one time that I can recall in 16 and a half years that we canceled services, we had like 38 inches of snow. We were in the old building. I had a Jeep and could barely get to the door. I struggled with it, but we canceled that day. I gave the sermon to Carol. Why am I so radical about this? Well, because how many of you have a sense that this is important? Our time together is important. And I just want you to know that I value that very much. But as I was struggling with why all this happened today, the Lord began to do something in my heart this morning. And it was very significant because God changed in me what I felt needed to be communicated this morning. And I want to share this with you because it has to do with what we allow to happen in us when circumstances take us a direction we don't want to go. And maybe you're in a circumstance today that you don't really want to be in. Maybe you feel like you should be someplace better, relationally or in your job or in your own spiritual journey. And I want to share with you what happens when we seem to be taking the long road home. Turn in your Bible to Deuteronomy 8. And if you don't have your Bible, we're going to look at Deuteronomy 8, 1 through 18. I'm going to read the text from up here on the platform. And you can read along with me. This is the setting the Lord is addressing the children of Israel as they've completed this part of their journey. Would you read with me, please? It says this. Read it out loud. Be careful to follow every command I'm giving you today, so that you may live and increase and may enter and possess the land the Lord has promised on oath to your forefathers. Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the desert these 40 years to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger, and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. By the way, Jesus quoted from the book of Deuteronomy more than any other Old Testament book. You may have noticed that's Matthew 4.4. He literally quoted that specific scripture. Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these 40 years. Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you. Observe the commands of the Lord your God, walking in his ways and revering him. For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with streams and pools of water, with springs flowing in the valleys and hills, a land with wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil and honey, a land where bread will not be scarce and you will lack nothing, a land where the rocks are iron and you can dig copper out of the hills. When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land he has given you. Be careful that you do not forget the Lord your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day. Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase, and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God. And friends, I want to pause there and say, that describes most of America today. I agree with Alexander Solzhenitsyn who said, the cause of the malaise, morally speaking, in the western world is that man has largely forgotten God. How many people do you know and work alongside of that have basically forgotten God, even though they've abounded and things have prospered in their lives. He led you through the desert and on it goes, I just won't read the rest of it except to say at the end, you may say to yourself, this is the last page, my power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me. Have you ever intended to say that? I've done a heck of a job. I deserve this. But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant. Friends, if you're here today prospering in your business, if you're here today healthy and successful and relatively content, it's the Lord who's blessed you with that. And so doing, he's confirmed his covenant, which he swore to your forefathers, as it is today. I want to talk for just a few minutes, this will be a shortened message about why the Lord sometimes allows us to go through the desert. Remember that when the children of Israel left Egypt, it was a 10-day walk. Everyone say 10 days. 10 days. It took 10 days to walk from Kadesh Barnea to Canaan. 10 days. About 50 miles. Instead they wandered for how long? 40 years. Why did that happen? What was it that God was allowing to take place? And let me ask you this question. Are you currently in your own spirit? Do you have a sense right now that you're sort of wandering? Things aren't really fitting together. You're not sure you're on God's path for your life. You're wondering why things haven't broken open, why there isn't blessing, why something hasn't been restored. I don't know who you are, I don't need to know, but I'm convinced today that there are some of us here who feel like we're far from God's promised land for our lives. You're wandering in the desert. You're not even sure that God's around. Now that happens for some of us because we just have chosen to disobey the Lord. And let's be real clear, friends. Sometimes we bring down judgment on our lives simply because we disobey God and choose to do the wrong thing. We deserve it. But in some cases, we don't feel that way. And I want to just ask you, how many of you here today have felt like you've been obeying God, you've been doing what you're supposed to do, you've been faithful, you've been hanging in there, and it still isn't happening? Let me see your hand. Quite a few. Are you ever tempted in those moments to wonder where God is? Why am I in this desert? What have I done here? Yesterday, one of our families went to visit their son's final college football game. And he had prayed that week, and he had made a lot of effort to be right with God because he wanted to end his, whatever it's been, like ten years of playing organized football on a positive note. Well, as it turned out, he didn't have a very good game. And afterwards, he went to his mom and dad and he said, why did this happen? I asked the Lord to bless this time. And it bombed. And he was really disappointed. And he couldn't figure out, have you ever done that? Have you ever really prayed for something to go right and it went really wrong? And he said, why did that happen? What's going on here? Friends, sometimes God uses that adversity in our lives to do things that can't be learned any other way. The name Leighton Ford is familiar to many of us. Leighton Ford is an associate evangelist with Billy Graham organization. He might be on his own at this point, as I recall. He's written a number of books, but his most significant book was simply entitled Sandy. It was about his oldest son, who at a fairly early age in his development contracted a disease that the doctors were not able to arrest. And even though he had a number of treatments and surgeries and so on, and many times Leighton and his wife would be before God praying and asking God to help him come through, nothing ever seemed to change. And finally, after several years of agony, Sandy died. A couple of years later, at a pastor's meeting, Leighton Ford was asked, what was the most difficult moment in your ministry? Expecting it to have something to do with when he was maybe in a foreign country or a very antagonistic crowd. And the questioner was somewhat halted and the whole crowd was taken back when Leighton Ford waited nearly two minutes as tears streamed down his face and he couldn't form the words in his mouth. And when he finally got them out, he said, when I lost my son. Because it was inextricably woven with what his ministry was all about. I just want to say this to the younger people. There's a lot of young people here today. Anyone younger than me? If you're looking for wisdom, go to someone who's been hurt and yet who's maintained their faith and you'll find wisdom. Go to someone who's been through a trial and come through with their faith unshaken and you'll be given wise counsel. Here's three simple lessons that you can only learn in the desert. Number one, and if you're going to take a note or two, jot this down. Number one, this is all the outline you're going to get. And they don't all have the same letter. That's a giveaway. Number one is humility. Humility. The place of being dependent upon God and not simply yourself. There's two ways that I think we learn humility. The best way to learn it, Philippians 2.5, it says, have this mind in yourself that was also in Christ Jesus. In other words, fix your eyes, the mind of your understanding upon who Christ was. And if you are a student of God's word, if you are a person devoted to the Lord, you can grow in humility by fixing your eyes on Christ and getting to know Him. But most of us aren't able to do that for very long. Most of us need the second way, and that's the way of discipline. We read in the text this morning that the Lord sent them through the desert to discipline them. And unfortunately, discipline, friends, is very painful. Thomas Aquinas was a very well-known church father, theologian. He wrote this. Think about these words. You may want to just contemplate them. God sometimes allows sins of the flesh in our lives to discipline us because though outwardly they are more shameful, they are less grievous than the inward sin of pride that they destroy. It's pretty heavy. God sometimes allows the sins of our flesh, or sins of flesh in our lives, rather, that though outwardly more shameful, in other words, more obvious to everyone else, they are less grievous than the pride that they destroy. A name that comes to mind, a name of a very well-known, highly respected pastor, the name of Gordon MacDonald comes to mind. A very well-known author. Gordon MacDonald wrote one book that comes to mind that's very well-known, was Ordering Your Private World. And he has told this story on James Dobson a number of times. I'll just share it with you. But in the height of his pastoral career, Gordon MacDonald had a moral fall. And he was on the board of a number of organizations. He was well-known, very successful in his ministry. And he shared that even though many people came around him, many people tried to help him realize that, you know, you were under a lot of stress. We understand. I mean, there was a lot of things in your life. You had a lot of reasons that, I mean, we have a lot of grace here. He went on and said, You know what? I came to the lowest point in my life when I realized that I had to face the truth about me, he said. The truth about me was that I was a deceptive human being and that I had fooled everyone around me, except God. And I slipped into despair when I realized just how deceptive I'd become. But the outward sin, you see, of being caught in the moral fall exposed the deeper sin of the deception that he was living in. Now, the good news is that Gordon McDonald went through a process of restoration and is this day, even as we speak, restored to the same church that he pastored. Isn't that great? Hello? I think it's great. The grace works. And love restores. Friends, humility is something we can only learn. On a lighter note, I think God also teaches us humility through kids. How many parents have learned something about yourself from your kids? Huh? Something you didn't like? How many would say your kids showed you an awful lot about what was really going on inside of you? I mean, how many times have you gone home and, oh man, there's a nuclear attack in the living room. Things just blow up. And then the phone rings. You're like, oh hey, bless God, it's you, Pastor Scott. Yeah, things are great here. How are things down there? You know. Anyhow. All right. Humility is something we learn as we wander through. Second, we learn spirituality. We learn dependence upon God for what really matters. Look at verse 3 if you have your Bible still open. It says there that the Lord does not just simply want to provide you with what you need physically, but he knows the deeper needs of your soul. God puts material things in perspective. Listen, friends. God knows what you need. Say God knows what I need. God knows what I need. He does know this. As I've been reading the Gospels in preparation for this series, I am renewed in my thankfulness that God knows what I need. He knows that you need provision. He knows what you need to eat and to sleep and to take care of things. He knows what you need to pay college bills and all the rest. He knows. In Luke chapter 5, there's the story of the calling of the disciples. They were fishermen, many of them, by their former trade. And the Lord calls them to ministry. But they're not sure how it's all going to be taken care of. And so they're out there fishing one day. And if you recall the story, they fished all night. What did they catch? Nothing at all. And the Lord says, Now listen, I'm calling you to leave all this and to follow me. How are we going to be taken care of? And the Lord says, Look, if you're worried about that, throw your nets on the other side of the boat. And what happened? So many fish were directed into the nets, however, that they couldn't even lift it. They had to get the rest of the stuff to help them lift the net in the boat. And the boat began to sink. God so cares about your needs, friends, that He'll make your boat sink with abundance if that's what it's going to take. A little later on in that same chapter, there's the paralytic laying there in front of Jesus. His obvious physical need was for healing. Jesus looked at him and said, Sir, your sins are forgiven. The Pharisee said, Well, why is he saying that? Jesus knew their thoughts, turned to them and said, Look, do you think his greatest need is healing? His greatest need is forgiveness. But just so that you know I have authority to forgive, rise, pick up your mat and walk. And Jesus healed his physical need. Friends, God knows the deep needs of your heart. Spirituality only comes as we allow God to deal with the deeper things. And that won't happen. When your physical needs are always being met on command, you want to know what happens to us? We get like the person described in Deuteronomy 8. We just kind of get a little bit comfy. We kind of think, hey, things are going pretty good here. How many of you know when you prosper, you're most vulnerable to being tempted away from God? See? So he allows you sometimes to go through the desert of difficulty. There are four basic hungers in every person. The hunger for physical needs to be met, the hunger for aesthetic needs, the valuable, beautiful, artistic things, the hunger for spiritual things being related to God, and the hunger for divine things, to know your purpose in God. And we often will get fixated on the lesser things, on just getting the base needs met, instead of God allowing us to be shaped in the deeper needs. You know, I had lunch with a man this week. I so appreciate this experience. I won't mention any names or anything, but it was an older gentleman. And it's rare for me to find a soft-hearted, open person in their 70s who's not a Christian. Normally, as you know, as a person ages, what do they tend to do? They just tend to get more and more narrow. Well, I've already tried it all and I've never discovered it. But this man had a hunger and an openness. Boy, I enjoyed this meeting with him a great deal. But one of his questions was, well, what about evolution? What about Darwin's theory? And we talked about that. And you know, the interesting thing about things like that, I mean, even Darwin, who, by the way, was studying for the ministry when he stumbled across this whole theory that he developed, the theory of evolution that we have now adopted as sort of our credo in this nation. But the essence of it is that man is the measure of all things. And it's interesting, when you read about Darwin, he became very depressed when he realized what this discovery would mean if taken at face value. Because he realized if man was the measure of all things, then whatever man determined was the ultimate measure would be. Well, who's the right measure? And that theory of evolution, by the way, is what motivated two of the greatest mass murderers of all time to rise to power. Their names were Stalin and Hitler. Both of them took that theory of evolution, extrapolated it out and said, one human race, one human kind, one human being is above another, and therefore I can take your life. Stalin, I'm sorry, Darwin understood this. And you know that during the course of his life, he became so depressed about this that he eventually repudiated his entire theory. He was never an atheist. He had struggles with knowing who God was in his life. And on his deathbed, he repudiated the theory. And yet, to this day, it's still held up as sort of a diversion from what God really wants to do with our lives. And I had an interesting discussion on that point. Even look at the heroes of today. Talk about the material things. Anyone here ever wonder why Elvis is still a hero? What is the fascination with a man who, at the end of his life, was so drug-infested? One, the doctor that performed his autopsy at his death said he had never seen a person with more different illegal substances in his body. And I won't go into the graphic details, but literally, Elvis Presley took his own life through huge, prolonged overdoses of drugs. The mystery was, why is a man whose life that was so bizarre and so out of control, why is that life still an idol to so many? Our heroes tell us more about society than the heroes, don't they? It tells us what we really are attracted to. And it all seems to go back to that baseline thing of those most basic needs, the need for this physical provision and so, rather than for the deeper spiritual things. Friends, we are people searching for something more. We're like this 70-plus-year-old man who's searching for something, knowing that life has to have more meaning, more answers than we've found. And I want to just empower you as a congregation when you leave here today. You're going to encounter people who need to know the God that you love and serve. They may not come out and say it, but deep in their soul, they're looking for the thread that ties us all together. And it's spiritual in nature. The word universe is the word that means looking for unity. The thread of that unity is spiritual. The word university is the word that means diversity woven together into one. People are looking for that thread. And God teaches us spirituality only in the desert. It's the only place we can learn it because we're free from all the distractions of stuff and materialism and the pursuit of it all. And so if you're not where you want to be, it could be because God wanted to teach you those things. And finally, the third thing is faith. I'm sorry they don't match, but don't have the same first letter, but Hebrews 11.6 says that without faith, it's impossible to please God. You know, every person hearing my voice this morning has sort of a penchant to want to keep things under control. Faith is a very hard thing for us to learn, isn't it? But I want to take you all the way back to one of the earliest accounts of history, Noah's Ark. I don't know, how many of you are fascinated? How many of you are detail people? If you did a profile, you're a detail person. Read the story of Noah's Ark and look for details, and what you'll find is all kinds of details about how long it should be and how high, all these cubits. How long is a cubit, by the way? About 18 inches. About this long right here, that's a cubit. There's all these cubits and a certain kind of wood and all these different animals to be brought in. I want to ask somebody, why did you put two flies in there? I mean, think how life would be simplified. But at any rate, little detail. You know what's never spoken of as a detail in the building of the Ark? There's never any mention of a rudder. Noah had no control of where that Ark was going to go. It's going to float. I guess you're going to just decide where this baby is going. God, I'm just going to fill it up and go for the ride. I know, some of you are saying, what's the big deal about that? Well, I don't know. It struck me as being typical of how God seems to engineer our lives. How many of you want to be in control? But God says, no, just get in the boat. I'll take it where it's going. That's why some of us don't like to fly, because we're all of a sudden out of control. We've got to entrust our lives to somebody else. We're most aware of our need at 37,000 feet and turbulent winds, aren't we? I've heard more conversions take place up there than any place else on the earth. There are just some things about flying that are always a little strange. Like the pilot comes on and says, this is your final approach. Then you're heading into the terminal. But God wants to teach us active trust, and he cannot do that when we have everything under control. The laws of God, as powerful as they are, cannot change what's going on in our hearts. Neither can religious practices that some of us have done since we were children. All these things tend to do is to show us our inability to change. The Bible says the law is like a mirror. We can see our face in it. We can see our flaws. But the mirror can never make us clean. It takes the grace of God. It takes faith, releasing God's power. If you could get right with God by keeping the laws, if you could get right with God by doing and producing the works that were necessary, you know what you'd quickly become? You'd become prideful. Humility would be replaced by pride, spirituality by external things, and faith would just simply be replaced by works. That's why we need the long journey, friends, so that we can grow in our faith. Hebrews 9 says, as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, that it's only by the blood that our consciences are made clean, from dead works to the living and true God. It was several years ago that we held an outdoor picnic over on the property on 910, where Salem Heights Christian Life Center is. Never forget this. It was another weather-related story. We had prepared and planned an outreach picnic. We had 5,000 people who were coming to that picnic. Some of you remember that time. We had First Call, one of the great bands of that era, coming to sing. We had fireworks. We had money then. We didn't have much of a building to pay for and sell. And I remember all the plans and preparations that were going on. And we turned up, and that day was ugly. I mean, it was raining. It was gray, and it was so bad. I remember getting over there and saying, Oh, Lord, this can't be. It can't be. Well, by 2 o'clock, it was pouring down so hard that we realized that not much was going to happen. And by five of the 700 or 800 people that had showed up, half of them left. And in the end, he cleared up some, and we went up, and we had to shoot the fireworks because we already paid for them. And I remember leaving that day, and I'm saying, Lord, why did you allow all this investment, all this effort, all this work, all this planning, to have just a few hundred people when we were expecting 5,000 people? And the Lord spoke very clearly. He said, Jay, you're going to have to learn that joy is in the journey, not the destination. Oh, man, no, no, no. I want to be there. I want to be there where the blessing is. No, the joy is in the journey, not the destination. So can I say to you, friends, if you're going through the desert right now, if you're wondering, why is it 75 degrees out? If you're wondering, why is my marriage seemingly taking so long to fix? Why is my job so unfulfilling? Why is my body not responding to treatment? Why are my dreams not coming to pass? Listen, along the journey, if you'll put those three back up, you can learn humility, spirituality, and faith. And, friends, listen, when you stand before God, those are the qualities that you'll find in heaven. Not the material, not the base things that we all just kind of crave. It's those things that will give you status in heaven. The joy is in the journey. Let's stand together and pray. Father, I'm sensing today that there are more people here that would like to really admit who are struggling with the journey that they're in right now. And I want to ask you, Father, just to minister to us in these moments. Let's bow our heads, please, and everyone just hold your place for just another moment. I really trust right now that you'll open to the Spirit of God, church. You've made the effort to be here. Don't cut short what the Spirit wants to do in these closing moments. But I wonder this morning how many of you are thankful that I changed the message because you needed to hear what God said today to you. You needed to know that God was aware of the journey that you're on and that it's been a struggle for you, but that today you're saying, Lord, then bring on that humility. Lord, fill me with a hunger for you, a spirituality that only comes by depending upon you. Fill me with a faith that comes by learning to trust you rather than myself and all these things. And you're saying, God, I want that in my life. With heads bowed, please, nobody looking around because I just want this to be a moment of agreement. How many people would say, if the truth were known about me, I'm going through a dark time. I'm in the long, dry desert, and I need the Lord to touch my life. Just lift your hand up right now. All right, Father, hold it up now. Father, in the name of Jesus, I would pray that this word would become life, Lord, that every person hearing me today would recognize that you changed the message for them to hear, that this day, God, it would become a moment of laying hold of the promises of God and your faithfulness, Lord, that you're not going to fail nor forsake anyone, Lord, whose hand is lifted as they trust you through these difficult times. And, Lord, you will bring us through to the other side because of your faithfulness in Jesus' name.