October 19, 2025 • 48 mins
Listen to Pastor Chris for his weekly sermons and lessons. Enjoy his down-to-earth and experiential style of communicating the Truths of an Eternal Life with Christ, which starts now and continues throughout all eternity.
It is made complete not only by His Sacrificial Act of the Cross but also by the Love, Grace, and mercy He has demonstrated, and serves as the model of how we should treat each other daily!
https://www.talknetworkradio.com/hosts/TNR
It is made complete not only by His Sacrificial Act of the Cross but also by the Love, Grace, and mercy He has demonstrated, and serves as the model of how we should treat each other daily!
https://www.talknetworkradio.com/hosts/TNR
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I had had today's sermon all prepared. I worked on
it before I left, and worked on it while I
was with Amanda and Glenn, and yesterday I worked on
the outline in Denver Airport and thought I'd get up
early this morning, which God did wake me up early
(00:22):
this morning to work on the PowerPoint. But I've had
a question going through my mind all week and the
boy Lord, what are you saying to me? And in
my quiet time this morning he answered, So today's message
is not going to be on Matthew. Today's message is
(00:42):
going to come out of Psalms fifty five, so you
can turn there. And I thought about that, and I
told John and Bill, I'm not sure where God's going
to go this morning with it. Don't know how long
the message is going to be. We might have to
go back to worship him again. So Bill, I need
you to get back up there and put up Second
(01:07):
to the Last Faith, something I never remembered the titles.
John and I laugh about that quite frequently. Yeah, there
you go. How have you walked this week? Leave it
blank for a moment, Bill, How have you walked this week?
Been walking? Or maybe the past couple of weeks been
walking by faith, been walking by sight, what you could see,
(01:31):
what you could do, what you knew you could accomplish,
the money you had, that you could make it stretch,
the difficulties you're going through. Hey, it's not a problem,
you know, man, I can handle this. You know I
got to. I'm strong and you know I've made it
through difficult times before. How have you walked this week?
(01:53):
I've been asked a number of times, why is it
that God allows things to happen when I'm on I
don't know? And why does God allow bad things to
happen to his people who he says he loves. Ain't fair,
It ain't right. If he loves me, by God, he
(02:14):
should be taking care of me all the time. Isn't
that what God's for, to take care of his people? Boy,
we kind of missed the boat on that sometimes in
our thinking. And you know, what about his promise in
Romans eight twenty eight, And when we know that God
causes all things to work together for the good of
those who love him, to those who are called according
(02:37):
to his purpose? What about that verse? I'm his child?
Why isn't he doing it? And then I come and
I sit down in the back, and there's well I
didn't make to the back. There's flowers up on the podium.
Cathy never puts real flowers up there anymore because I
have such a difficult time with real flowers, especially that close.
(02:57):
I breathe into pollens and then I can't Charlie and
Harley can talk, and it's already affected me. And it's
been a rough week in Indiana with everything in bloom
and boy beautiful, I love the flowers. I just don't
survive well with them. And then you start sharing and
I'm sitting back there and I said, boy, God, now
(03:19):
I know why you gave me Psalms fifty five in
my quiet time today. Now I know a little bit more.
Isn't that the way it is with God? You see,
we don't see everything up front. We don't know upfront
what's going to happen whenever. We just don't. But God does.
And so put open the slide Bill. I thought this
(03:42):
was a and then we seen this song. Thing. Man, God,
you are just your solvereign. Do you realize that today?
Do you believe in the very depth of your being
that God is solvereign? Do you do you have doubts?
Do you have doubts. There's some ways to check our doubts.
(04:06):
Some say check your checkbook, you check your doubts. Oh boy,
don't go there, Pastor it's not about tithing today. But
it's just that's why I asked you. How have you
walked this week? Did you know you could make it
through the week? Did you take time and say, God,
I can't make it. Bah, God, this is beyond me today.
(04:28):
And did you really think he would he would be
there to answer your prayers? Great song? By faith, we
see the hand of God. You will not, and you
might never see the hand of God in plain vision.
God is spirit. And but we know Jesus has a
corporal body, you know. And even though he walked through
(04:48):
walls after his resurrection, they put his their fingers, you know,
he said, come on, Thomas, put your finger in my hand.
We know he ate. So he's got a corporal body.
We know that, and we want to see his hand.
And we say, well, I need people, any of God
with flesh, So let me go rub happy Hodos tummy.
You know, that's one of the Buddhas. And we do
(05:10):
things like that, and we make things our God. Well,
God can't take care of this, so I have to
do it. I don't know if I can trust God.
So I'll just plow on through. I'll make it work.
And we are not walking by faith. We're walking purely
by sight. We're walking by the gods of the worlds
(05:31):
that we have made. And we've seen these great hymns
in the light of Creation's grand designs. I love the flowers,
even though I make some the elogies go crazy, I
do love them. I love God's grand design. We went
to Arbirarium Conservatory. We went to we didn't make it
(05:51):
to the other and boy, it was all about South
American flowers. It was incredible, just incredible to see in Indianapolis.
Amanda wanted to get mom there. It's where Glenn's brother
got married, where Glen did the service in the lives
of those who prove his faithfulness. That should be you
(06:11):
and I proving his faithfulness to the world around us.
You see. But if we're walking by sight and not
by faith, what have we prove into the world around
us that we're capable of doing all things? I realized
a long time ago, I'm not capable of doing much.
And I realized, well, I was gone these questions as
(06:34):
Janis and I talked, she called me right away, called
peg and because she couldn't find my phone number, I said,
janisagy I do is push send and you would have
found it there because I had called her. But she did. Oh.
Now I know how to do that, because if you
push send, it brings up your phones that you called.
So I talked to her for quite a while, a
number of times this week, His pastor, why is it
(06:57):
that things happen when you're gone? I question that too,
in the lives of those who prove His faithfulness, who
walk by faith and not by sight. By faith, our
fathers roamed the earth with the power of His promise
in their hearts. That's a pretty key line, isn't it.
I love the Getty's man that God is really using
(07:18):
them to write modern current hymns about real life with
the power of His promise in our hearts. Of a
holy city built by God's own hand. That's straight out
of scripture. That's what the people of old were looking for.
That's what Abraham looked for, a city built by the
hands of God. Are you looking for that or are
(07:40):
you looking to make your own little world? You say,
as pastor, can I take care of every need, absolutely not.
I don't have the ability. I will go on vacation
from time to time, although I got to tell you
of that. Some difficulty thinking about that. But man, do
I should I be taking vacation? Maybe you know that's
(08:01):
not the best thing in the world. Let me tell
you a few things that happened. Well, I've been gone
two thousand and three. A man the senior trip, a
man that had wasn't a member of our church. He
was frequent, sometimes sometimes not, put Pete through a bit
of great turmoil, killed himself and I was gone. Jason
(08:22):
calls me up and says, WHOA, Now, I got a
couple of issues. I took his shotgun away from him
a year before that because he was suicidal. I gave
it back to him about two months before he killed
himself because he seemed to be doing real well. I'm
trained in that stuff. I've written about suicide. I should
(08:45):
have known. Well, that's where we're get in it. I
should have and I can and why and that's thinking thinking.
But I was gone. And then last year, boy, we're
on our cruise. Kathy Lyons and girl wanted us to
go on that cruise. The last time Glory and I
(09:06):
spent with Kathy, she said, I just want to go home.
She didn't mean she wanted to go home to her house.
We knew that. We sat in the car and we
were choked up and talking about it in the bottom
in the parking lot at Saint Luke's. We knew that
Kathy was going to die, probably where we were gone.
And sure enough, Kathy died while I was gone. Welln't easy.
(09:29):
I questioned God about it. And then, on top of
all the struggles and all the difficulties Janice and Neil
have faced this past few years, I'm gone and her
mom dies. I've talked with the Lord about that many times.
I've asked him. I asked him for a moratorium on
(09:50):
death after Rachel died, because I had dealt with some
thirteen deaths in less than a year of people in
the church who friends died, a relative has died. Harold
and Cathy's fathers both died several months apart, and went
through that with them. Rachel dying about tipped me over
(10:11):
the deep end. Just it was all accumulative, and I said, man, God,
what do you expect? How can I go on? How
do you take this. You ever asked that question? Do
you wonder how a pastor can ask that question? Well,
we'll go back to our song for a moment, because
here's what we forget. And I think this is why
(10:32):
God led me to Psalms fifty five this morning we
will stand as children of the promise. I think we
forget God's promised that he desires for none to perish,
but for all to come to a knowledge of Him.
I think we forget what Paul says that for me
to live as Christ and to die is what it's gain. No,
we say, die is the pits. It's not right. People
(10:55):
shouldn't die. Why do you want to live forever in
the bay. We were talking about this with Amanda, and
I don't want to live another sixty one years. Can
you imagine me with this body at one hundred and
twenty two year? Man, I have a hard time imagine
me with this body at eighty. I'm thinking you talk
about a walker. Man, I'm gonna need that bed that
(11:18):
Kathy's mom God, and you're gonna be pushing me around
to motorize it. By that time, Damn here comes Pastor Chris.
Won't get me up the elevator, just dump him in.
I cannot imagine that. I just can't. I can't imagine
going on, and I forget sometimes I promise, but look
at that next line. We will fix our eyes on him,
(11:38):
our soul's reward, till the race is finished, the work
is done. We will walk by faith and not by sight.
And I ask you again, how if you walk this
week walking by faith? I've been walking the last little
while by faith or by sight. I felt bad about
(12:02):
being gone. I've questioned the idea of taking vacations. Amanda's
and Glenn's pastor and I were talking about it Wednesday
night after prayer meeting. And as pastors, we know that
God's in charge. We know God has a sovereign plan,
but still we question why, God? Why why do we
(12:27):
see these loved ones of ours, these these people that
you have called us to be an under shepherd with,
Why do you allow them to suffer? Why has Pegg
had all these fears and these doubts? What if Chuck dies?
And those who why you got them? I had them?
And on my dad's death, Betty accepted Christ and Chuck before.
(12:50):
Why does he want to wait till he gets worse?
Because you want to know if God's God. Yeah, really,
the bottom line is God, God. Do I really have
a need for God? That's what's would say is a
fox hole salvation. I don't buy it now. I don't
care if it's in the fox hole. I don't care
if it's in the closet. I don't care if it's
with me in the steam room, I don't care if
it's on your deathbed. Salvation is salvation. And until they're gone,
(13:14):
don't ever give up praying. Fix your eyes on the Promise,
fix your eyes on Him who is the Savior and Lord,
throw your doubts away. I can't, Yeah you can, because
greater is he that's in me than he that's in
the world. Greater is Him that is in me than
that one that's in those lost people? Oh yeah, because
(13:39):
who has blinded their eyes? God of this world? Say
he's blinded them so that they can't see the Gospel.
And so what do we do? You know, sometimes he's
stuffed up their ears so they don't hear. So walk it,
live it, talk it, do whatever it's gonna take. Don't
give up, fix your eyes on the Promise, stand and
(14:01):
let's read Psalms fifty five. And the question that comes
is why does God allow Christians to go through these trials?
And pastors are not excluded. It's not up on the wall.
None of this is on the wall, because this is
all where God has taking me this morning. Give her
to my prayer, Oh God, and do not hide thyself
(14:22):
from my speculation or from my supplication. Give heed to
me and answer me. I am restless in my complaint,
and I am surely distracted. Does sound like us? Yeah,
it does. And maybe you stop there and say, Oh God,
hear my prayer, and help me to stop being so
(14:42):
distracted from you. Help me God, because of the voice
of the enemy. That enemy could be any number of
things in your life. It could be a lost loved one.
It could be your struggles, your trials, your tribulation, two
much month at the end of the money, health issues.
It could be all those things. Because of the pressure
of the wicked. Surely they give us pressure, for they
(15:05):
bring down trouble upon me, and in anger they bear
the grudge against me. My heart is in anguish. Have
you been there? Are you there? My heart is in
anguish within me, and the terrors of death have fallen
upon me. Fear and trembling come upon me, and the
horror has overwhelmed me. And I said, oh, that I
(15:26):
had wings like a dove, that I could fly away
and be at rest. Lord, let me escape this for
a moment, for a time. Lord, let me just boy
forget about it, Lord, so I can get on with
living for a while. Psalms thirty nine, the very end
of it, David says those things verse seven. Behold, I
(15:48):
would wander far away. I would lodge in the wilderness.
I would hasten to my place of refuge from the
stormy wind and the tempest. The storm he wins, the tempest,
the struggles that I go through. Jump down to verse sixteen.
(16:14):
As for me, I shall call upon the Lord, and
the Lord will save me evening and morning, and at
noon I will complain and murmur what what? Wait a minute,
certainly he didn't write that. I think that's the transcriber
screwed up, don't you. I don't think so. I think
David has such an incredible relationship with God that he
(16:36):
knew God could handle his murmuring and his complaining. Now,
I want to ask you for a show of hands,
because I know a lot of you pretty well. And
I've heard you murmuring complain. And then somebody played my
tape and lo and behold, I was murmuring and complaining. Yeah,
(16:59):
isn't that crazy? And yet God accepts that from us.
And in the end of verse seventeen, and he will
hear my voice. He will redeem my soul in peace
from the battle which is against me. For they are
many who strive with me. God will hear and answer them,
even the one who sits and throne from old. Stop
(17:24):
Selah means stop, means meditate, contemplate. Put this before God
is your prayer. Let's pray, Almighty God. We do come
with you this morning and ask God, oh Lord, for
you to speak to us. Lord, for you to open
our eyes that we might see our ears, that we
might hear our hearts, that we might experience the wonder
(17:50):
of your promises, the wonder of your presence, Lord, that
even in the face of our enemies, we can know
that you are God. Lord. Take us into that inner sanctuary,
take us into that place of refuge, and Lord, engulf
us in your presence. We come to hear from you
(18:12):
in Jesus' name. Amen, please be seated like I said,
I read this in my quiet time this morning, and
I've read this the number of times, and I agree
with many of the commentators that have written about this
psalm that it was probably written during the time of
Absalom's rebellion. And if you don't know who Absolom was,
(18:34):
it was David's son. It was a son that David
really had promised for. And you know, David did not
do a good job of taking care of his home.
As much as he had a heart for God, he
didn't do a good job of taking care of some
of the things that were close to him. Some of
us are that way. You have a heart for God,
I have no doubt about it, no doubt, But you fear,
(18:59):
and fear overrides sometimes your emotions fear overrides your belief system,
and you cower away, and you say, the enemy is
upon me, the enemy is upon me, and you don't
know what to do. I don't think David was so
unlike us. I think David struggled with these things. We
(19:20):
certainly see he murmured and complained, and yet God doesn't
throw him out. God doesn't say you ain't gonna be
my child anymore. Because I cannot put up with you. Oh,
how many times we've said that about fellow believers. How
many times we have not acted like God? How many
(19:42):
times we have had fears and doubts to sail us?
How many times have we murmured and complained and acted
so unholy versus holy? Some say verses twelve to fourteen.
We didn't read those. Let's read them. For it is
not an enemy who reproaches me. We know that it's
(20:04):
David speaking as well. But listen to the messianic flow
of this. Then I could bear it. Nor is it
the one who hates me, who has exalted himself against me,
Then I could hide myself from him. But it is you,
a man, my equal, my companion, and my familiar friend.
(20:25):
We who had sweet fellowship together walked in the House
of God in the throng boy, And we say, yes,
I can see Jesus and Judas, and that, yes, I
can see Judas walked with him. He was a fellow
disciple of Jesus with the others. And I can imagine
there was times Jesus laughed with Judas, and how he
(20:49):
felt betrayed. And often when I've read that, I've wondered
if he has felt betrayed by me, if he has
felt betrayed by my fears and my doubts, if he
felt somewhat betrayed because or maybe just said, old Chris,
you have little faith. Man. Here I am gone again.
In another situation, a tragedy has befallen the body of
(21:09):
Christ at University Baptist, and we think that way, and
we cower, we hide, and we want to disengage. Is
I don't know if I can go to church today
and a pastor might boy be talking about witnessing, might
be talking about finances, he might talk about low your enemy. Boy,
(21:30):
I just want to kill him, that sucker. And so
we don't come to church. We find something better to do.
I just need a break from church. I'll tell you
I didn't take a break. It was great to go
and sit under another's preaching. It was great to go
to a Sunday school last Sunday and have another man
teach me. It was great to go to Wednesday night
(21:52):
service and me not being the leader and just having
a short devotion and then just praying. It was really
pretty nice. I found it lifted me up in spite
of the fact that I was gone. When Janis and
Neil once again went through the trials and tribulations Verse
(22:15):
one and two, give her to my prayer, Oh God,
and do not hide thyself from my supplication. Why did
David write that way? Did he feel God had hid himself?
Did he feel God had become you know, like so
often presented in the world, God took a hike after
he created and ain't come back. Since God is too busy,
(22:37):
like Bruce Almighty, he needed a vacation, and so he
gives this fool the powers to be God. Does God
do that? Man? I'm glad he had never given him
a me. I don't want them. I couldn't imagine hearing
all the prayers, the worries, the concerns. But David says,
give Ira, oh God, to my prayer, hide thyself from me.
(23:01):
He was going through a difficult time and he felt lonely,
He felt somewhat isolated, He felt betrayed, and he felt
betrayed by the body. Well, okay, he felt betrayed by
his son. But isn't that family and that what we are.
Do you ever feel betrayed by one another? Let down
by one another? Give here to these supplications, give heed
(23:25):
to me and answer me. I am restless in my complaint,
and I am surely distracted, and I think, boy, that happens.
We get restless, we get distracted. In fact, most times
we want to be distracted because can handle it anymore,
want to hide out, take a break, gone fishing. I
thought about buying a boat, naming it visitation, and then
(23:47):
Glory could say, when you say, wor's pastor he's on visitation.
You know, boy, man, just have me do a little
my kind of logic. That ain't God. But we sometimes
feel that way. The phone one more time. I got
to be bothered, and yet we call out to God
(24:08):
and we bother on God, and David says, yeah, I've
been distracted. And why because of the voice of the enemy,
Because of these things I'm facing, Lord, They're just weighing
in on me. I can't hardly take it anymore. I'm struggling. God,
Why don't you answer? Why do I have to go
through this? And here we see his escapism. This is
(24:31):
us sometimes verse six through eight. Look at it and
I said, oh that I had wings like a dove. Man,
why would he want wings like a dove? He wanted
to fly away. Man, I want to be in flight.
I want to get away. I don't want to have
to be around here no more. I don't want to
have to listen no more. I would fly away and
(24:52):
be at rest. Are we really going to find rest
away from God? What do you think? Why do we
try it? You see? That's something that I think, Man,
why do we try that? Why do they try it? Then?
God says, why do you try it? And do we
try to find different ways of distraction getting away from
(25:14):
not thinking about Behold? I would wander far away. I
would lodge in the wilderness, and I like it did,
David writes Cela. At that point, he says, and it's
kind of like saying stop and ask yourself? Is this me?
Do I get this way? Sometimes? Would I like to
be that bird and fly away? Would I like to
(25:35):
go out in the wilderness and hide out from all
this stuff that's besetting me? And I think if we
were honest, we would say yes, I do. Even those
who are especially close to God. David a man after
God's own heart? Sometimes I think, Man, God, I am
really confused here. How can you be a man after
(25:58):
your own heart when he's full of murmuring, come, how
can it be a man after your own heart? When
he has an adulterous relationship with Bathsheba, bad enough that
he does that, then he kills her husband. And then Lord,
you told him not to take a census, and he does.
How can you be a man after your own heart?
Do you ever wonder that? And the answer became quite
(26:21):
clear because they knew enough to confess. They knew enough
to come to me and realize he wasn't God that
I am. He's the anointed King. But in many ways,
David is just like us, and we see that here.
When the pressure's on, he wants to run away, wants
(26:44):
to get out of town. And all of us have
those similar urges when life gets intense and trouble seemed
to not give us a break, and they just seem
to be continually besetting us. We want to hide. Every
Christian has been prepared. You and I have been prepared
(27:04):
by God for such times as this. He has prepared
us because He has given us who pastor Christ. No,
it's giving you the Holy Spirit. You see, if you're
a born again believer, if you've asked Jesus Christ to
be a personal Lord and Savior. The Holy Spirit lives
in you. He is in you, and he doesn't leave.
(27:29):
Now we might think, man, I would leave if that
person was behaving that way, and that person in the
mirror is me, and I would think that sometimes, But
he doesn't. And then we think, God, there are times
that if you had just removed this trial, I'd be okay. God,
(27:50):
If you know we drove two thousand miles in that
nineteen eighty four Chevy citation. When I talk to the
guys about it, some said I wouldn't date that car
that far. It's got some issues. It throws oil up
into the air cleaner. You know, it's got a few issues. Thought, Man,
should I put the new struts and shocks on that?
Should I spend the money? Should I put new tires
(28:11):
on the front. Man, I just take it to the
kids and not worry about them, and then they crash,
and then I'd be sick. And so we put new
tires on, put struts and shocks on it, and we prayed.
We've been praying for two weeks before you left with
that thing, and we prayed, God, make the way before us. God,
You've given this car out of Garyel and Kathy's love
for Amanda, and Lord, we're just going to trust that
(28:34):
you're going to take it there. And you know what,
at one point we got thirty eight point five miles
to a gallon or thirty eight miles to a gallon. Now, okay,
so we had a sixty mile an hour tailwind, which
I've never had going across Wyoming. But we did hit
a squaw and we were behind a snowplow for some
thirty miles or better, and Gloria was grateful. I was driving,
(28:58):
and you know what, over the whole trip, we got
thirty one point five miles to a gallon with that car.
And every time we stop, so I'm whoa what year
is that nineteen eighty four Chevy citation? I thought it
was a Nova because it looks like a Chevy Nova.
(29:19):
I've had more people and we go to the church
and people are asking, is that your car? Man? I
like that. Glenn thinks it's really cool because it's the
same age he is, twenty six. Go figure. We had questions,
we had concerns, and yet God made the way. And
you might say, well, that's a car. What has that
(29:39):
got to do with anything got to do with God's
promise that he would prepare a way we believed in prayer.
We were walking by faith and or driving by faith,
And maybe I need to do more of that, just
trusting God. With the war and broken down things of life,
(30:00):
we pray for ways of escape. But will we pray
for God to show us the lessons he wants for us?
Will we pray and ask God to use us in
spite of or God even in this tragedy? Will you
use me and Lord help me to be faithful? Will
we ask that that's for you to figure out right now?
(30:21):
Will you ask him? Will you believe him? Or will
you continue to doubt him? And it's incredible. God has
no scorn for these things. God doesn't lay in the
David say man, And we've been looking at faith on
(30:42):
Sunday nights. And Jesus asked them when they're in the
boat and they wake him up and they're in the storm,
and he says, where's your faith? And we think he's
really laying into them and getting down on them. I
don't think that's the case anymore. I think he has
taught me and I've learned. I think he's saying, guys,
think about it. For a moment. What are you fixing
(31:04):
your eyes upon? What's your faith in? Is it in
what you can perceive as it is? What you can do,
what you can provide, How you can make this work?
You know? Maybe it said I'm getting out of here
because I can't take it anymore. And he says, well,
where's your faith? Will you trust? Will you hold on?
But he doesn't lay into them how we sometimes read
(31:27):
that passage and we find it here. He doesn't scorn
David's frailties, He doesn't belittle him. He understands our impulse
to flee. We need to recognize that God understands. He
knows we're but dust, he knows we're frail. Man, look
at Peter. He denied Jesus three times and Jesus still
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loved him. Man, we'd have taken a hike. And why
is there so many problems in relationships? I can't take
it anymore? You're right, you can't. But through him can
take and do all things, and through him all things
are possible. But we have to walk by faith and
not by sight. You're being tested and you're going to
(32:12):
continue being tested. And I found in my life that
why am I back to the same place again, and
God says, because you haven't learned it yet, you fool.
And he not call me a stupid idiot. He's the same, Chris,
you are so foolish man. You know. You crack me up,
you know, and I understand that kind of language. I do.
(32:33):
I cracked myself up sometimes. I can't think, man, you
are dumb. Man. If there is a board dumber than you, man,
it wouldn't float. And God doesn't say that. God just
puts out his arm, gives me a helping hand, calms
the sea, calms the storm. You might not do it
(32:55):
right away, David continues to complain for a while. And
I don't know. If God did it right away then,
I don't know. Maybe he'd been through this thing for
a couple of years. I'm not sure. God doesn't scorn us,
but he insists on our endurance. He insists on your endurance.
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He insists on you putting your faith in him. That's
why Jesus says, where's your faith. He's insisting on them.
Put your faith in me. Put your faith in the Creator,
not in the created. I had no faith in the
car and the guys on Thursday night had no faith
in the car. Only one person said, Oh, where's your
(33:43):
sense of adventure? Anybody know who that was? Quincy? I
don't have any I'm old. Old people don't have any
sense of adventure, right, No, no, And so you know what,
I accepted the gauntlet. He threw it, and I accepted
it in God's strength and not in my own, not
in my own wisdom. Man, I didn't take, you know,
(34:05):
a creeper along In all my toolbox. I knew I
was coming back on the plane. Otherwise I probably would
have been foolish enough to do that. I didn't do that.
I said, God, You've given this car to the kids,
you love them, and I'm just gonna trust you. God.
I realized that Dan killed himself and I'm not there. God.
(34:28):
I realized that I loved Rachel Man when I went
into that house and seeing her laying next to that
bed dead, it broke my heart because normally we were
if she didn't answer, we'd be over there. All those
that were really close and involved at that time with
Rachel and by meaning close and involved, we would go
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over there. We would check on her. All of us
thought she was with one of the other people, and
so we didn't go, and Rachel had been dead more
than a day. God says Chris. Will you just realize that, man,
Rachel's with me. Do you think she's complaining? You think
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she's mad that her tent is crumpled. We don't see
it as a tent doing. You see, we put everything
into that body, and that's where we put everything there,
and we don't see it's but the tent. And when
i'm if, I'm in Christ, when I'm absent from the tent,
(35:32):
I am with him. I have to have an eternal perspective.
You need an eternal perspective. We need to get our
eyes off of ourself. We need to quit worrying about
so much of what is happening to me. Say God,
teach me, teach me. There is no way to learn
endurance other than simply to endure. There's no way to
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learn endurance except continuing to go on. When I started running, man,
you know, I made it a mile and thought I
was gonna puck up a lung. And the next day
I went out and I ran a mile and guess what,
I thought, I'd puck up a lung. And I did
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that for a week, and I thought God I'm gonna
die these old lungs of mine. I went that old.
I was thirty. But I thought, Man, it's all over.
I can't do this. And then I kept on and
after two weeks run I found out I could run
a mile and a quarter eight was pretty good. And
after six months I was running seven and a half miles,
(36:38):
and I thought, Man, I'm on top of the world. Man,
I'm practicing kung fu every day, I'm lifting weights. And
then my hip got stiff. In the meantime, before that happened,
I had said, God, Man, I know you have things
for me to do, but man, I just cannot seem
to quit devoting my self to working out all the
(37:01):
time into being in the top kind of health that
I could be in. I said, man, God, if this
isn't what you want, you're gonna have to do something
about it. Joh, watch how you pray. Watch how you pray.
Because it wasn't long after that I was stiff in
my hip and I couldn't hardly run. My hip hurt,
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and then I couldn't do any kicks anymore. I couldn't
get my hips to rotate and to come over. It
was getting worse and worse. And you know, in the end,
I've had two back surgeries. But what God said to
me is, Chris, what's more important doing what I want
or doing what you want? I had to learn to endure,
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and it's been sometimes not a lot of fun to
endure the aches and the pains. And you know, Glory
reminded me. I turned sixty one several times after I tried,
I just turned another day. But we got this idea.
You turned sixty one. Man, all of a sudden, you were, oh, yesterday,
I was only nineteen. Today I'm sixty one. I'm on
the way down. And then I said, yeah, praise God,
(38:10):
I'm on the way down. Man, I'm on my way
to him. You see, we can't learn it in principle.
We can't learn endurance in theory and questions. You know,
they will teach us if we'll ask God. That's how
he talks to me in these questions. We must put
it into a position of having to lean on God.
(38:32):
And what I heard as you were sharing this morning
was leaning on God. I heard trials, I heard tribulations.
Some of you haven't shared, but you can see it
on your faces. I'm not a heart reader. I'm not
a mind reader, but God has taught me how to
(38:54):
read faces. He's taught me how to read pain. And
I see it, see it in your eyes, see it
in your demeanor. I look in the mirror and I
see it in my own sometimes, and it makes me
run to God. It makes me run to Him and
like the song, to fix my eyes once again on him.
(39:16):
You see, we must be put into a position of
leaning on Him Proverbs three, five and six, and not
on my own ways. And every time I get to
leaning in my own ways, my rationalizations, you know what,
I find things don't get much better. In fact, usually
for me, they get a little bit more difficult, a
few more doubts, a few more questions. You see, your
(39:39):
experience is the only way we'll get to know God. Experience,
you know, I've talked to I don't know how many
people that have read the Bible, or reading the Bible.
They're not reading it to learn and to know God.
They just read it because somebody challenged them. And there
of course that person challenging them is praying hard that
they'll get the big picture. It's experience. It's passing out,
(40:08):
falling on your wife and getting any paramedics out and
getting a pacemaker. You want to see your mortality and
be in Chuck's position and you begin to see. Go
to the VA. If you haven't been there, Chuck and
love anybody, come visit. He won't maybe remember after you're gone.
You might wonder why you're there. When you're there. He
(40:29):
looked at me kind of weirdly. But I brought food.
See peg set him up. Man. I brought food, and
food makes any of us smile, you know. But go
and look around the VA. If you want to see destitution,
if you want to see pain, go to the VA
(40:51):
because you will see it and then offer hope to
somebody you see. Because there's the difference. The good news
for those who go through trials and tense tribulations and
suffering that once we are in it and are going
through it, we see God. You know. I have to
keep looking otherwise I just trust me and I don't
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feel delivered. And when I read this, God delivers David.
He delivers him, and God's gonna deliver you. I don't
know how He's gonna do that, because maybe it's to
take you home. I'm not a prophet. I can't foresee
the future. I don't know, and maybe it's gonna be
like me. And you know what, I couldn't run anymore.
(41:36):
And then I had the massive knee reconstruction. But you know,
we got the about one hundred and fifty miles out
of Indianapolis. Guess what. I couldn't drive anymore, couldn't take
the pain in my knee, man, because my right knee,
that's the one they did the experimental surgery on. You
sit and you don't put your foot straight on a
gas pedal. You kind of have a cock right, and
(41:58):
so the knee is leaning. Here's the knee, it's leaning
this way. Oh. Man. The pain was horrible and I
had pulled over and Glory had to drive. And Gloria
doesn't like to drive, not that she's not a good driver,
shoes don't like to And man, my leg has bothered
me since all the time down there, but I can't
say all the time. The past three days, my knee
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has begun to feel good. And then I knew I
had this long airplane ride. Oh this could be real miserable.
Met with long legs. You can't stretch him out, you
know what? Here I am this morning. God has sustained me.
God has shown himself to be sovereign. He's delivered me.
Will I hurt tomorrow? But who knows? But that's tomorrow.
I can't worry about that today. And how many of
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you are worrying about tomorrow? How many of you are
worrying about tomorrow? What does that mean? You're walking by
means you're walking by sight, not by faith. When endurance
is complete, God removes that tribul and we endure. Look
at verses four through eight again. My heart is in
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anguish within me. The terrors of death have fallen upon me.
Fear and trembling come upon me. The horror has overwhelmed me.
And I said, oh, that I had wings like a dove,
that I would fly away and be at rest. Behold,
I would wander far away, and I would lodge into wilderness,
and I would hasten to my place of refuge. See.
(43:26):
I think that's where we need to go. Hasten to
that place of refuge from that stormy tempest. But it's
not fleeing away, it's fleeing to God. And then look
at what he says once again in verse sixteen. And
this is my challenge to you today Where will you go?
What will you look for? How will you endure? Well?
(43:50):
David tells us. And the question is will you As
for me, I shall call upon the Lord of call
upon God. The Lord will save me even in morning
and at noon. I will complain and murmur, and He
will hear my voice. He will redeem my soul in
peace from the battle which is against me. For there
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are many who strive with me. God will hear Verse nineteen.
God believes will be the answer. He won't hear them.
He will hear the child of God. So verse twenty two.
Cast your burdens upon the Lord, and he will sustain you.
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Will you cast your burdens upon him today? See it's
up to you. He won't take them from you if
you won't cast them on him. Peter says, cast all
your cares and all your anxieties upon him. Jesus stands
and says, you know, come to me, all ye that
are weary and heavy lady, and all you that our burden,
(44:52):
come to me and take my yoke upon you. My
yoke is easy and my burden is like. And I
will give you rest you. Notice he won't take your
burden unless you give it to him. If you want it,
He'll let you keep it. Why in the hopes that
you will understand the big picture eventually, and that you'll
fix your eyes upon him and upon the promise. But thou,
(45:16):
o God verse twenty three, will bring them down to
the pit of destruction, men of bloodshed and deceit, will
not live out half their days. But I, well, I
will trust in THEE. So let me ask you, where's
your trust? How are you walking? It's tough to be
(45:42):
gone when things happen to you, and it's really tough.
It's tough to see the trials and tribulations and to
know the struggles that some of us are going through.
And some of you tell me about them, and some
I see in you, and it seems like will it
ever end? Will it ever get better? And what am
(46:03):
I going to do? I don't have a magic Wand boy,
wouldn't it be nice say I have a magic wand
here you sprinkle spars stardust. But I have what's better
than the magic Wand I have the King of Kings,
the Lord of Glory, the God of Creation, the God
of Might. And greater is he that is in me,
Greater is he that is in you than he that's
(46:26):
in the world. But you got to hold on to
the promise of it. Will you. His invitation to each
of us today is to come. You can come down
and symbolically kneel before the altar and lay your burden
on the altar. That's what Peter says, do come cast
your cares. Jesus says, come, lay down your burden. And
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I want to give you that opportunity symbolically to do that.
Why symbolically, because sometimes you need to get off your
caboose and yet to move in and make that statement
of faith. You know, when we ask people to walk
the eye, when we say boy, you must confess Jesus,
we're asking them to make a statement of faith. And maybe,
just maybe you need to make a public statement of faith.
(47:11):
Now you can do that by walking. You can stand
up and say, pastor congregation, pray for me, because I
want to make a statement of faith today. I want
to put my trust in the Lord. And I will
say to you that I have had to do that
for the two weeks that we've been gone. Janis and
I talked to Sunday before I left, and I said, Janis,
your mine's probably not going to live much longer. She
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is going down real fast. We talked about it for
a while. I knew that that way, but I also knew.
My daughter and my son in law are both graduating,
and I, boy, you know, I needed to be there.
I needed to support them as well. And here I
am torn in two? And where do you go when
you're torn in two? I don't know anywhere else to
(47:52):
go except the Lord. Laurie is pretty strong. She prays
for me, but she takes me to the Lord. Will
you go to him? Now? Let's pray? Oh maybe, God,
Mighty God, we come in the name that's above every name,
the name that every knee, every circumstance, every problem, every trial,
every tribulation, every force of darkness, every person, believer unbeliever,
(48:17):
will come and kneel before you, declaring you our Lord
and Lord. The shame of that it is those that
don't believe do that to their eternal demise, and those
that do to their eternal joy. Oh Lord, touch us
right now, touch us, Lord, that we wouldn't be proud,
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that we wouldn't worry about what others think, that we
would come and lay down, symbolically lay down them burdens
that we might say it, whatever it takes. Lord, speak
in Jesus' name.
I had had today's sermon all prepared. I worked on
it before I left, and worked on it while I
was with Amanda and Glenn, and yesterday I worked on
the outline in Denver Airport and thought I'd get up
early this morning, which God did wake me up early
(00:22):
this morning to work on the PowerPoint. But I've had
a question going through my mind all week and the
boy Lord, what are you saying to me? And in
my quiet time this morning he answered, So today's message
is not going to be on Matthew. Today's message is
(00:42):
going to come out of Psalms fifty five, so you
can turn there. And I thought about that, and I
told John and Bill, I'm not sure where God's going
to go this morning with it. Don't know how long
the message is going to be. We might have to
go back to worship him again. So Bill, I need
you to get back up there and put up Second
(01:07):
to the Last Faith, something I never remembered the titles.
John and I laugh about that quite frequently. Yeah, there
you go. How have you walked this week? Leave it
blank for a moment, Bill, How have you walked this week?
Been walking? Or maybe the past couple of weeks been
walking by faith, been walking by sight, what you could see,
(01:31):
what you could do, what you knew you could accomplish,
the money you had, that you could make it stretch,
the difficulties you're going through. Hey, it's not a problem,
you know, man, I can handle this. You know I
got to. I'm strong and you know I've made it
through difficult times before. How have you walked this week?
(01:53):
I've been asked a number of times, why is it
that God allows things to happen when I'm on I
don't know? And why does God allow bad things to
happen to his people who he says he loves. Ain't fair,
It ain't right. If he loves me, by God, he
(02:14):
should be taking care of me all the time. Isn't
that what God's for, to take care of his people? Boy,
we kind of missed the boat on that sometimes in
our thinking. And you know, what about his promise in
Romans eight twenty eight, And when we know that God
causes all things to work together for the good of
those who love him, to those who are called according
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to his purpose? What about that verse? I'm his child?
Why isn't he doing it? And then I come and
I sit down in the back, and there's well I
didn't make to the back. There's flowers up on the podium.
Cathy never puts real flowers up there anymore because I
have such a difficult time with real flowers, especially that close.
(02:57):
I breathe into pollens and then I can't Charlie and
Harley can talk, and it's already affected me. And it's
been a rough week in Indiana with everything in bloom
and boy beautiful, I love the flowers. I just don't
survive well with them. And then you start sharing and
I'm sitting back there and I said, boy, God, now
(03:19):
I know why you gave me Psalms fifty five in
my quiet time today. Now I know a little bit more.
Isn't that the way it is with God? You see,
we don't see everything up front. We don't know upfront
what's going to happen whenever. We just don't. But God does.
And so put open the slide Bill. I thought this
(03:42):
was a and then we seen this song. Thing. Man, God,
you are just your solvereign. Do you realize that today?
Do you believe in the very depth of your being
that God is solvereign? Do you do you have doubts?
Do you have doubts. There's some ways to check our doubts.
(04:06):
Some say check your checkbook, you check your doubts. Oh boy,
don't go there, Pastor it's not about tithing today. But
it's just that's why I asked you. How have you
walked this week? Did you know you could make it
through the week? Did you take time and say, God,
I can't make it. Bah, God, this is beyond me today.
(04:28):
And did you really think he would he would be
there to answer your prayers? Great song? By faith, we
see the hand of God. You will not, and you
might never see the hand of God in plain vision.
God is spirit. And but we know Jesus has a
corporal body, you know. And even though he walked through
(04:48):
walls after his resurrection, they put his their fingers, you know,
he said, come on, Thomas, put your finger in my hand.
We know he ate. So he's got a corporal body.
We know that, and we want to see his hand.
And we say, well, I need people, any of God
with flesh, So let me go rub happy Hodos tummy.
You know, that's one of the Buddhas. And we do
(05:10):
things like that, and we make things our God. Well,
God can't take care of this, so I have to
do it. I don't know if I can trust God.
So I'll just plow on through. I'll make it work.
And we are not walking by faith. We're walking purely
by sight. We're walking by the gods of the worlds
(05:31):
that we have made. And we've seen these great hymns
in the light of Creation's grand designs. I love the flowers,
even though I make some the elogies go crazy, I
do love them. I love God's grand design. We went
to Arbirarium Conservatory. We went to we didn't make it
(05:51):
to the other and boy, it was all about South
American flowers. It was incredible, just incredible to see in Indianapolis.
Amanda wanted to get mom there. It's where Glenn's brother
got married, where Glen did the service in the lives
of those who prove his faithfulness. That should be you
(06:11):
and I proving his faithfulness to the world around us.
You see. But if we're walking by sight and not
by faith, what have we prove into the world around
us that we're capable of doing all things? I realized
a long time ago, I'm not capable of doing much.
And I realized, well, I was gone these questions as
(06:34):
Janis and I talked, she called me right away, called
peg and because she couldn't find my phone number, I said,
janisagy I do is push send and you would have
found it there because I had called her. But she did. Oh.
Now I know how to do that, because if you
push send, it brings up your phones that you called.
So I talked to her for quite a while, a
number of times this week, His pastor, why is it
(06:57):
that things happen when you're gone? I question that too,
in the lives of those who prove His faithfulness, who
walk by faith and not by sight. By faith, our
fathers roamed the earth with the power of His promise
in their hearts. That's a pretty key line, isn't it.
I love the Getty's man that God is really using
(07:18):
them to write modern current hymns about real life with
the power of His promise in our hearts. Of a
holy city built by God's own hand. That's straight out
of scripture. That's what the people of old were looking for.
That's what Abraham looked for, a city built by the
hands of God. Are you looking for that or are
(07:40):
you looking to make your own little world? You say,
as pastor, can I take care of every need, absolutely not.
I don't have the ability. I will go on vacation
from time to time, although I got to tell you
of that. Some difficulty thinking about that. But man, do
I should I be taking vacation? Maybe you know that's
(08:01):
not the best thing in the world. Let me tell
you a few things that happened. Well, I've been gone
two thousand and three. A man the senior trip, a
man that had wasn't a member of our church. He
was frequent, sometimes sometimes not, put Pete through a bit
of great turmoil, killed himself and I was gone. Jason
(08:22):
calls me up and says, WHOA, Now, I got a
couple of issues. I took his shotgun away from him
a year before that because he was suicidal. I gave
it back to him about two months before he killed
himself because he seemed to be doing real well. I'm
trained in that stuff. I've written about suicide. I should
(08:45):
have known. Well, that's where we're get in it. I
should have and I can and why and that's thinking thinking.
But I was gone. And then last year, boy, we're
on our cruise. Kathy Lyons and girl wanted us to
go on that cruise. The last time Glory and I
(09:06):
spent with Kathy, she said, I just want to go home.
She didn't mean she wanted to go home to her house.
We knew that. We sat in the car and we
were choked up and talking about it in the bottom
in the parking lot at Saint Luke's. We knew that
Kathy was going to die, probably where we were gone.
And sure enough, Kathy died while I was gone. Welln't easy.
(09:29):
I questioned God about it. And then, on top of
all the struggles and all the difficulties Janice and Neil
have faced this past few years, I'm gone and her
mom dies. I've talked with the Lord about that many times.
I've asked him. I asked him for a moratorium on
(09:50):
death after Rachel died, because I had dealt with some
thirteen deaths in less than a year of people in
the church who friends died, a relative has died. Harold
and Cathy's fathers both died several months apart, and went
through that with them. Rachel dying about tipped me over
(10:11):
the deep end. Just it was all accumulative, and I said, man, God,
what do you expect? How can I go on? How
do you take this. You ever asked that question? Do
you wonder how a pastor can ask that question? Well,
we'll go back to our song for a moment, because
here's what we forget. And I think this is why
(10:32):
God led me to Psalms fifty five this morning we
will stand as children of the promise. I think we
forget God's promised that he desires for none to perish,
but for all to come to a knowledge of Him.
I think we forget what Paul says that for me
to live as Christ and to die is what it's gain. No,
we say, die is the pits. It's not right. People
(10:55):
shouldn't die. Why do you want to live forever in
the bay. We were talking about this with Amanda, and
I don't want to live another sixty one years. Can
you imagine me with this body at one hundred and
twenty two year? Man, I have a hard time imagine
me with this body at eighty. I'm thinking you talk
about a walker. Man, I'm gonna need that bed that
(11:18):
Kathy's mom God, and you're gonna be pushing me around
to motorize it. By that time, Damn here comes Pastor Chris.
Won't get me up the elevator, just dump him in.
I cannot imagine that. I just can't. I can't imagine
going on, and I forget sometimes I promise, but look
at that next line. We will fix our eyes on him,
(11:38):
our soul's reward, till the race is finished, the work
is done. We will walk by faith and not by sight.
And I ask you again, how if you walk this
week walking by faith? I've been walking the last little
while by faith or by sight. I felt bad about
(12:02):
being gone. I've questioned the idea of taking vacations. Amanda's
and Glenn's pastor and I were talking about it Wednesday
night after prayer meeting. And as pastors, we know that
God's in charge. We know God has a sovereign plan,
but still we question why, God? Why why do we
(12:27):
see these loved ones of ours, these these people that
you have called us to be an under shepherd with,
Why do you allow them to suffer? Why has Pegg
had all these fears and these doubts? What if Chuck dies?
And those who why you got them? I had them?
And on my dad's death, Betty accepted Christ and Chuck before.
(12:50):
Why does he want to wait till he gets worse?
Because you want to know if God's God. Yeah, really,
the bottom line is God, God. Do I really have
a need for God? That's what's would say is a
fox hole salvation. I don't buy it now. I don't
care if it's in the fox hole. I don't care
if it's in the closet. I don't care if it's
with me in the steam room, I don't care if
it's on your deathbed. Salvation is salvation. And until they're gone,
(13:14):
don't ever give up praying. Fix your eyes on the Promise,
fix your eyes on Him who is the Savior and Lord,
throw your doubts away. I can't, Yeah you can, because
greater is he that's in me than he that's in
the world. Greater is Him that is in me than
that one that's in those lost people? Oh yeah, because
(13:39):
who has blinded their eyes? God of this world? Say
he's blinded them so that they can't see the Gospel.
And so what do we do? You know, sometimes he's
stuffed up their ears so they don't hear. So walk it,
live it, talk it, do whatever it's gonna take. Don't
give up, fix your eyes on the Promise, stand and
(14:01):
let's read Psalms fifty five. And the question that comes
is why does God allow Christians to go through these trials?
And pastors are not excluded. It's not up on the wall.
None of this is on the wall, because this is
all where God has taking me this morning. Give her
to my prayer, Oh God, and do not hide thyself
(14:22):
from my speculation or from my supplication. Give heed to
me and answer me. I am restless in my complaint,
and I am surely distracted. Does sound like us? Yeah,
it does. And maybe you stop there and say, Oh God,
hear my prayer, and help me to stop being so
(14:42):
distracted from you. Help me God, because of the voice
of the enemy. That enemy could be any number of
things in your life. It could be a lost loved one.
It could be your struggles, your trials, your tribulation, two
much month at the end of the money, health issues.
It could be all those things. Because of the pressure
of the wicked. Surely they give us pressure, for they
(15:05):
bring down trouble upon me, and in anger they bear
the grudge against me. My heart is in anguish. Have
you been there? Are you there? My heart is in
anguish within me, and the terrors of death have fallen
upon me. Fear and trembling come upon me, and the
horror has overwhelmed me. And I said, oh, that I
(15:26):
had wings like a dove, that I could fly away
and be at rest. Lord, let me escape this for
a moment, for a time. Lord, let me just boy
forget about it, Lord, so I can get on with
living for a while. Psalms thirty nine, the very end
of it, David says those things verse seven. Behold, I
(15:48):
would wander far away. I would lodge in the wilderness.
I would hasten to my place of refuge from the
stormy wind and the tempest. The storm he wins, the tempest,
the struggles that I go through. Jump down to verse sixteen.
(16:14):
As for me, I shall call upon the Lord, and
the Lord will save me evening and morning, and at
noon I will complain and murmur what what? Wait a minute,
certainly he didn't write that. I think that's the transcriber
screwed up, don't you. I don't think so. I think
David has such an incredible relationship with God that he
(16:36):
knew God could handle his murmuring and his complaining. Now,
I want to ask you for a show of hands,
because I know a lot of you pretty well. And
I've heard you murmuring complain. And then somebody played my
tape and lo and behold, I was murmuring and complaining. Yeah,
(16:59):
isn't that crazy? And yet God accepts that from us.
And in the end of verse seventeen, and he will
hear my voice. He will redeem my soul in peace
from the battle which is against me. For they are
many who strive with me. God will hear and answer them,
even the one who sits and throne from old. Stop
(17:24):
Selah means stop, means meditate, contemplate. Put this before God
is your prayer. Let's pray, Almighty God. We do come
with you this morning and ask God, oh Lord, for
you to speak to us. Lord, for you to open
our eyes that we might see our ears, that we
might hear our hearts, that we might experience the wonder
(17:50):
of your promises, the wonder of your presence, Lord, that
even in the face of our enemies, we can know
that you are God. Lord. Take us into that inner sanctuary,
take us into that place of refuge, and Lord, engulf
us in your presence. We come to hear from you
(18:12):
in Jesus' name. Amen, please be seated like I said,
I read this in my quiet time this morning, and
I've read this the number of times, and I agree
with many of the commentators that have written about this
psalm that it was probably written during the time of
Absalom's rebellion. And if you don't know who Absolom was,
(18:34):
it was David's son. It was a son that David
really had promised for. And you know, David did not
do a good job of taking care of his home.
As much as he had a heart for God, he
didn't do a good job of taking care of some
of the things that were close to him. Some of
us are that way. You have a heart for God,
I have no doubt about it, no doubt, But you fear,
(18:59):
and fear overrides sometimes your emotions fear overrides your belief system,
and you cower away, and you say, the enemy is
upon me, the enemy is upon me, and you don't
know what to do. I don't think David was so
unlike us. I think David struggled with these things. We
(19:20):
certainly see he murmured and complained, and yet God doesn't
throw him out. God doesn't say you ain't gonna be
my child anymore. Because I cannot put up with you. Oh,
how many times we've said that about fellow believers. How
many times we have not acted like God? How many
(19:42):
times we have had fears and doubts to sail us?
How many times have we murmured and complained and acted
so unholy versus holy? Some say verses twelve to fourteen.
We didn't read those. Let's read them. For it is
not an enemy who reproaches me. We know that it's
(20:04):
David speaking as well. But listen to the messianic flow
of this. Then I could bear it. Nor is it
the one who hates me, who has exalted himself against me,
Then I could hide myself from him. But it is you,
a man, my equal, my companion, and my familiar friend.
(20:25):
We who had sweet fellowship together walked in the House
of God in the throng boy, And we say, yes,
I can see Jesus and Judas, and that, yes, I
can see Judas walked with him. He was a fellow
disciple of Jesus with the others. And I can imagine
there was times Jesus laughed with Judas, and how he
(20:49):
felt betrayed. And often when I've read that, I've wondered
if he has felt betrayed by me, if he has
felt betrayed by my fears and my doubts, if he
felt somewhat betrayed because or maybe just said, old Chris,
you have little faith. Man. Here I am gone again.
In another situation, a tragedy has befallen the body of
(21:09):
Christ at University Baptist, and we think that way, and
we cower, we hide, and we want to disengage. Is
I don't know if I can go to church today
and a pastor might boy be talking about witnessing, might
be talking about finances, he might talk about low your enemy. Boy,
(21:30):
I just want to kill him, that sucker. And so
we don't come to church. We find something better to do.
I just need a break from church. I'll tell you
I didn't take a break. It was great to go
and sit under another's preaching. It was great to go
to a Sunday school last Sunday and have another man
teach me. It was great to go to Wednesday night
(21:52):
service and me not being the leader and just having
a short devotion and then just praying. It was really
pretty nice. I found it lifted me up in spite
of the fact that I was gone. When Janis and
Neil once again went through the trials and tribulations Verse
(22:15):
one and two, give her to my prayer, Oh God,
and do not hide thyself from my supplication. Why did
David write that way? Did he feel God had hid himself?
Did he feel God had become you know, like so
often presented in the world, God took a hike after
he created and ain't come back. Since God is too busy,
(22:37):
like Bruce Almighty, he needed a vacation, and so he
gives this fool the powers to be God. Does God
do that? Man? I'm glad he had never given him
a me. I don't want them. I couldn't imagine hearing
all the prayers, the worries, the concerns. But David says,
give Ira, oh God, to my prayer, hide thyself from me.
(23:01):
He was going through a difficult time and he felt lonely,
He felt somewhat isolated, He felt betrayed, and he felt
betrayed by the body. Well, okay, he felt betrayed by
his son. But isn't that family and that what we are.
Do you ever feel betrayed by one another? Let down
by one another? Give here to these supplications, give heed
(23:25):
to me and answer me. I am restless in my complaint,
and I am surely distracted, and I think, boy, that happens.
We get restless, we get distracted. In fact, most times
we want to be distracted because can handle it anymore,
want to hide out, take a break, gone fishing. I
thought about buying a boat, naming it visitation, and then
(23:47):
Glory could say, when you say, wor's pastor he's on visitation.
You know, boy, man, just have me do a little
my kind of logic. That ain't God. But we sometimes
feel that way. The phone one more time. I got
to be bothered, and yet we call out to God
(24:08):
and we bother on God, and David says, yeah, I've
been distracted. And why because of the voice of the enemy,
Because of these things I'm facing, Lord, They're just weighing
in on me. I can't hardly take it anymore. I'm struggling. God,
Why don't you answer? Why do I have to go
through this? And here we see his escapism. This is
(24:31):
us sometimes verse six through eight. Look at it and
I said, oh that I had wings like a dove. Man,
why would he want wings like a dove? He wanted
to fly away. Man, I want to be in flight.
I want to get away. I don't want to have
to be around here no more. I don't want to
have to listen no more. I would fly away and
(24:52):
be at rest. Are we really going to find rest
away from God? What do you think? Why do we
try it? You see? That's something that I think, Man,
why do we try that? Why do they try it? Then?
God says, why do you try it? And do we
try to find different ways of distraction getting away from
(25:14):
not thinking about Behold? I would wander far away. I
would lodge in the wilderness, and I like it did,
David writes Cela. At that point, he says, and it's
kind of like saying stop and ask yourself? Is this me?
Do I get this way? Sometimes? Would I like to
be that bird and fly away? Would I like to
(25:35):
go out in the wilderness and hide out from all
this stuff that's besetting me? And I think if we
were honest, we would say yes, I do. Even those
who are especially close to God. David a man after
God's own heart? Sometimes I think, Man, God, I am
really confused here. How can you be a man after
(25:58):
your own heart when he's full of murmuring, come, how
can it be a man after your own heart? When
he has an adulterous relationship with Bathsheba, bad enough that
he does that, then he kills her husband. And then Lord,
you told him not to take a census, and he does.
How can you be a man after your own heart?
Do you ever wonder that? And the answer became quite
(26:21):
clear because they knew enough to confess. They knew enough
to come to me and realize he wasn't God that
I am. He's the anointed King. But in many ways,
David is just like us, and we see that here.
When the pressure's on, he wants to run away, wants
(26:44):
to get out of town. And all of us have
those similar urges when life gets intense and trouble seemed
to not give us a break, and they just seem
to be continually besetting us. We want to hide. Every
Christian has been prepared. You and I have been prepared
(27:04):
by God for such times as this. He has prepared
us because He has given us who pastor Christ. No,
it's giving you the Holy Spirit. You see, if you're
a born again believer, if you've asked Jesus Christ to
be a personal Lord and Savior. The Holy Spirit lives
in you. He is in you, and he doesn't leave.
(27:29):
Now we might think, man, I would leave if that
person was behaving that way, and that person in the
mirror is me, and I would think that sometimes, But
he doesn't. And then we think, God, there are times
that if you had just removed this trial, I'd be okay. God,
(27:50):
If you know we drove two thousand miles in that
nineteen eighty four Chevy citation. When I talk to the
guys about it, some said I wouldn't date that car
that far. It's got some issues. It throws oil up
into the air cleaner. You know, it's got a few issues. Thought, Man,
should I put the new struts and shocks on that?
Should I spend the money? Should I put new tires
(28:11):
on the front. Man, I just take it to the
kids and not worry about them, and then they crash,
and then I'd be sick. And so we put new
tires on, put struts and shocks on it, and we prayed.
We've been praying for two weeks before you left with
that thing, and we prayed, God, make the way before us. God,
You've given this car out of Garyel and Kathy's love
for Amanda, and Lord, we're just going to trust that
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you're going to take it there. And you know what,
at one point we got thirty eight point five miles
to a gallon or thirty eight miles to a gallon. Now, okay,
so we had a sixty mile an hour tailwind, which
I've never had going across Wyoming. But we did hit
a squaw and we were behind a snowplow for some
thirty miles or better, and Gloria was grateful. I was driving,
(28:58):
and you know what, over the whole trip, we got
thirty one point five miles to a gallon with that car.
And every time we stop, so I'm whoa what year
is that nineteen eighty four Chevy citation? I thought it
was a Nova because it looks like a Chevy Nova.
(29:19):
I've had more people and we go to the church
and people are asking, is that your car? Man? I
like that. Glenn thinks it's really cool because it's the
same age he is, twenty six. Go figure. We had questions,
we had concerns, and yet God made the way. And
you might say, well, that's a car. What has that
(29:39):
got to do with anything got to do with God's
promise that he would prepare a way we believed in prayer.
We were walking by faith and or driving by faith,
And maybe I need to do more of that, just
trusting God. With the war and broken down things of life,
(30:00):
we pray for ways of escape. But will we pray
for God to show us the lessons he wants for us?
Will we pray and ask God to use us in
spite of or God even in this tragedy? Will you
use me and Lord help me to be faithful? Will
we ask that that's for you to figure out right now?
(30:21):
Will you ask him? Will you believe him? Or will
you continue to doubt him? And it's incredible. God has
no scorn for these things. God doesn't lay in the
David say man, And we've been looking at faith on
(30:42):
Sunday nights. And Jesus asked them when they're in the
boat and they wake him up and they're in the storm,
and he says, where's your faith? And we think he's
really laying into them and getting down on them. I
don't think that's the case anymore. I think he has
taught me and I've learned. I think he's saying, guys,
think about it. For a moment. What are you fixing
(31:04):
your eyes upon? What's your faith in? Is it in
what you can perceive as it is? What you can do,
what you can provide, How you can make this work?
You know? Maybe it said I'm getting out of here
because I can't take it anymore. And he says, well,
where's your faith? Will you trust? Will you hold on?
But he doesn't lay into them how we sometimes read
(31:27):
that passage and we find it here. He doesn't scorn
David's frailties, He doesn't belittle him. He understands our impulse
to flee. We need to recognize that God understands. He
knows we're but dust, he knows we're frail. Man, look
at Peter. He denied Jesus three times and Jesus still
(31:49):
loved him. Man, we'd have taken a hike. And why
is there so many problems in relationships? I can't take
it anymore? You're right, you can't. But through him can
take and do all things, and through him all things
are possible. But we have to walk by faith and
not by sight. You're being tested and you're going to
(32:12):
continue being tested. And I found in my life that
why am I back to the same place again, and
God says, because you haven't learned it yet, you fool.
And he not call me a stupid idiot. He's the same, Chris,
you are so foolish man. You know. You crack me up,
you know, and I understand that kind of language. I do.
(32:33):
I cracked myself up sometimes. I can't think, man, you
are dumb. Man. If there is a board dumber than you, man,
it wouldn't float. And God doesn't say that. God just
puts out his arm, gives me a helping hand, calms
the sea, calms the storm. You might not do it
(32:55):
right away, David continues to complain for a while. And
I don't know. If God did it right away then,
I don't know. Maybe he'd been through this thing for
a couple of years. I'm not sure. God doesn't scorn us,
but he insists on our endurance. He insists on your endurance.
(33:22):
He insists on you putting your faith in him. That's
why Jesus says, where's your faith. He's insisting on them.
Put your faith in me. Put your faith in the Creator,
not in the created. I had no faith in the
car and the guys on Thursday night had no faith
in the car. Only one person said, Oh, where's your
(33:43):
sense of adventure? Anybody know who that was? Quincy? I
don't have any I'm old. Old people don't have any
sense of adventure, right, No, no, And so you know what,
I accepted the gauntlet. He threw it, and I accepted
it in God's strength and not in my own, not
in my own wisdom. Man, I didn't take, you know,
(34:05):
a creeper along In all my toolbox. I knew I
was coming back on the plane. Otherwise I probably would
have been foolish enough to do that. I didn't do that.
I said, God, You've given this car to the kids,
you love them, and I'm just gonna trust you. God.
I realized that Dan killed himself and I'm not there. God.
(34:28):
I realized that I loved Rachel Man when I went
into that house and seeing her laying next to that
bed dead, it broke my heart because normally we were
if she didn't answer, we'd be over there. All those
that were really close and involved at that time with
Rachel and by meaning close and involved, we would go
(34:49):
over there. We would check on her. All of us
thought she was with one of the other people, and
so we didn't go, and Rachel had been dead more
than a day. God says Chris. Will you just realize that, man,
Rachel's with me. Do you think she's complaining? You think
(35:11):
she's mad that her tent is crumpled. We don't see
it as a tent doing. You see, we put everything
into that body, and that's where we put everything there,
and we don't see it's but the tent. And when
i'm if, I'm in Christ, when I'm absent from the tent,
(35:32):
I am with him. I have to have an eternal perspective.
You need an eternal perspective. We need to get our
eyes off of ourself. We need to quit worrying about
so much of what is happening to me. Say God,
teach me, teach me. There is no way to learn
endurance other than simply to endure. There's no way to
(35:57):
learn endurance except continuing to go on. When I started running, man,
you know, I made it a mile and thought I
was gonna puck up a lung. And the next day
I went out and I ran a mile and guess what,
I thought, I'd puck up a lung. And I did
(36:17):
that for a week, and I thought God I'm gonna
die these old lungs of mine. I went that old.
I was thirty. But I thought, Man, it's all over.
I can't do this. And then I kept on and
after two weeks run I found out I could run
a mile and a quarter eight was pretty good. And
after six months I was running seven and a half miles,
(36:38):
and I thought, Man, I'm on top of the world. Man,
I'm practicing kung fu every day, I'm lifting weights. And
then my hip got stiff. In the meantime, before that happened,
I had said, God, Man, I know you have things
for me to do, but man, I just cannot seem
to quit devoting my self to working out all the
(37:01):
time into being in the top kind of health that
I could be in. I said, man, God, if this
isn't what you want, you're gonna have to do something
about it. Joh, watch how you pray. Watch how you pray.
Because it wasn't long after that I was stiff in
my hip and I couldn't hardly run. My hip hurt,
(37:22):
and then I couldn't do any kicks anymore. I couldn't
get my hips to rotate and to come over. It
was getting worse and worse. And you know, in the end,
I've had two back surgeries. But what God said to
me is, Chris, what's more important doing what I want
or doing what you want? I had to learn to endure,
(37:47):
and it's been sometimes not a lot of fun to
endure the aches and the pains. And you know, Glory
reminded me. I turned sixty one several times after I tried,
I just turned another day. But we got this idea.
You turned sixty one. Man, all of a sudden, you were, oh, yesterday,
I was only nineteen. Today I'm sixty one. I'm on
the way down. And then I said, yeah, praise God,
(38:10):
I'm on the way down. Man, I'm on my way
to him. You see, we can't learn it in principle.
We can't learn endurance in theory and questions. You know,
they will teach us if we'll ask God. That's how
he talks to me in these questions. We must put
it into a position of having to lean on God.
(38:32):
And what I heard as you were sharing this morning
was leaning on God. I heard trials, I heard tribulations.
Some of you haven't shared, but you can see it
on your faces. I'm not a heart reader. I'm not
a mind reader, but God has taught me how to
(38:54):
read faces. He's taught me how to read pain. And
I see it, see it in your eyes, see it
in your demeanor. I look in the mirror and I
see it in my own sometimes, and it makes me
run to God. It makes me run to Him and
like the song, to fix my eyes once again on him.
(39:16):
You see, we must be put into a position of
leaning on Him Proverbs three, five and six, and not
on my own ways. And every time I get to
leaning in my own ways, my rationalizations, you know what,
I find things don't get much better. In fact, usually
for me, they get a little bit more difficult, a
few more doubts, a few more questions. You see, your
(39:39):
experience is the only way we'll get to know God. Experience,
you know, I've talked to I don't know how many
people that have read the Bible, or reading the Bible.
They're not reading it to learn and to know God.
They just read it because somebody challenged them. And there
of course that person challenging them is praying hard that
they'll get the big picture. It's experience. It's passing out,
(40:08):
falling on your wife and getting any paramedics out and
getting a pacemaker. You want to see your mortality and
be in Chuck's position and you begin to see. Go
to the VA. If you haven't been there, Chuck and
love anybody, come visit. He won't maybe remember after you're gone.
You might wonder why you're there. When you're there. He
(40:29):
looked at me kind of weirdly. But I brought food.
See peg set him up. Man. I brought food, and
food makes any of us smile, you know. But go
and look around the VA. If you want to see destitution,
if you want to see pain, go to the VA
(40:51):
because you will see it and then offer hope to
somebody you see. Because there's the difference. The good news
for those who go through trials and tense tribulations and
suffering that once we are in it and are going
through it, we see God. You know. I have to
keep looking otherwise I just trust me and I don't
(41:13):
feel delivered. And when I read this, God delivers David.
He delivers him, and God's gonna deliver you. I don't
know how He's gonna do that, because maybe it's to
take you home. I'm not a prophet. I can't foresee
the future. I don't know, and maybe it's gonna be
like me. And you know what, I couldn't run anymore.
(41:36):
And then I had the massive knee reconstruction. But you know,
we got the about one hundred and fifty miles out
of Indianapolis. Guess what. I couldn't drive anymore, couldn't take
the pain in my knee, man, because my right knee,
that's the one they did the experimental surgery on. You
sit and you don't put your foot straight on a
gas pedal. You kind of have a cock right, and
(41:58):
so the knee is leaning. Here's the knee, it's leaning
this way. Oh. Man. The pain was horrible and I
had pulled over and Glory had to drive. And Gloria
doesn't like to drive, not that she's not a good driver,
shoes don't like to And man, my leg has bothered
me since all the time down there, but I can't
say all the time. The past three days, my knee
(42:20):
has begun to feel good. And then I knew I
had this long airplane ride. Oh this could be real miserable.
Met with long legs. You can't stretch him out, you
know what? Here I am this morning. God has sustained me.
God has shown himself to be sovereign. He's delivered me.
Will I hurt tomorrow? But who knows? But that's tomorrow.
I can't worry about that today. And how many of
(42:42):
you are worrying about tomorrow? How many of you are
worrying about tomorrow? What does that mean? You're walking by
means you're walking by sight, not by faith. When endurance
is complete, God removes that tribul and we endure. Look
at verses four through eight again. My heart is in
(43:05):
anguish within me. The terrors of death have fallen upon me.
Fear and trembling come upon me. The horror has overwhelmed me.
And I said, oh, that I had wings like a dove,
that I would fly away and be at rest. Behold,
I would wander far away, and I would lodge into wilderness,
and I would hasten to my place of refuge. See.
(43:26):
I think that's where we need to go. Hasten to
that place of refuge from that stormy tempest. But it's
not fleeing away, it's fleeing to God. And then look
at what he says once again in verse sixteen. And
this is my challenge to you today Where will you go?
What will you look for? How will you endure? Well?
(43:50):
David tells us. And the question is will you As
for me, I shall call upon the Lord of call
upon God. The Lord will save me even in morning
and at noon. I will complain and murmur, and He
will hear my voice. He will redeem my soul in
peace from the battle which is against me. For there
(44:12):
are many who strive with me. God will hear Verse nineteen.
God believes will be the answer. He won't hear them.
He will hear the child of God. So verse twenty two.
Cast your burdens upon the Lord, and he will sustain you.
(44:32):
Will you cast your burdens upon him today? See it's
up to you. He won't take them from you if
you won't cast them on him. Peter says, cast all
your cares and all your anxieties upon him. Jesus stands
and says, you know, come to me, all ye that
are weary and heavy lady, and all you that our burden,
(44:52):
come to me and take my yoke upon you. My
yoke is easy and my burden is like. And I
will give you rest you. Notice he won't take your
burden unless you give it to him. If you want it,
He'll let you keep it. Why in the hopes that
you will understand the big picture eventually, and that you'll
fix your eyes upon him and upon the promise. But thou,
(45:16):
o God verse twenty three, will bring them down to
the pit of destruction, men of bloodshed and deceit, will
not live out half their days. But I, well, I
will trust in THEE. So let me ask you, where's
your trust? How are you walking? It's tough to be
(45:42):
gone when things happen to you, and it's really tough.
It's tough to see the trials and tribulations and to
know the struggles that some of us are going through.
And some of you tell me about them, and some
I see in you, and it seems like will it
ever end? Will it ever get better? And what am
(46:03):
I going to do? I don't have a magic Wand boy,
wouldn't it be nice say I have a magic wand
here you sprinkle spars stardust. But I have what's better
than the magic Wand I have the King of Kings,
the Lord of Glory, the God of Creation, the God
of Might. And greater is he that is in me,
Greater is he that is in you than he that's
(46:26):
in the world. But you got to hold on to
the promise of it. Will you. His invitation to each
of us today is to come. You can come down
and symbolically kneel before the altar and lay your burden
on the altar. That's what Peter says, do come cast
your cares. Jesus says, come, lay down your burden. And
(46:46):
I want to give you that opportunity symbolically to do that.
Why symbolically, because sometimes you need to get off your
caboose and yet to move in and make that statement
of faith. You know, when we ask people to walk
the eye, when we say boy, you must confess Jesus,
we're asking them to make a statement of faith. And maybe,
just maybe you need to make a public statement of faith.
(47:11):
Now you can do that by walking. You can stand
up and say, pastor congregation, pray for me, because I
want to make a statement of faith today. I want
to put my trust in the Lord. And I will
say to you that I have had to do that
for the two weeks that we've been gone. Janis and
I talked to Sunday before I left, and I said, Janis,
your mine's probably not going to live much longer. She
(47:31):
is going down real fast. We talked about it for
a while. I knew that that way, but I also knew.
My daughter and my son in law are both graduating,
and I, boy, you know, I needed to be there.
I needed to support them as well. And here I
am torn in two? And where do you go when
you're torn in two? I don't know anywhere else to
(47:52):
go except the Lord. Laurie is pretty strong. She prays
for me, but she takes me to the Lord. Will
you go to him? Now? Let's pray? Oh maybe, God,
Mighty God, we come in the name that's above every name,
the name that every knee, every circumstance, every problem, every trial,
every tribulation, every force of darkness, every person, believer unbeliever,
(48:17):
will come and kneel before you, declaring you our Lord
and Lord. The shame of that it is those that
don't believe do that to their eternal demise, and those
that do to their eternal joy. Oh Lord, touch us
right now, touch us, Lord, that we wouldn't be proud,
(48:41):
that we wouldn't worry about what others think, that we
would come and lay down, symbolically lay down them burdens
that we might say it, whatever it takes. Lord, speak
in Jesus' name.
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