Jan. 14, 2001 Deuteronomy 30:1-10
“Finding new hope!”
INTRODUCTION
The prize for the most useless weapon of all times goes to the Russians. They invented the “dog mine.” The plan was to train the dogs to associate food with the undersides of tanks, in the hope that they would run hungrily beneath advancing Panzer divisions. Bombs were then strapped to the dog’s backs . . . Unfortunately, the dogs associated food solely with the Russian tanks. The plan was begun with the first day of the Russian involvement in World War II . . . and abandoned on day two. The dogs with bombs on their backs forced an entire Soviet division to retreat. – Charles Swindoll, Growing strong in the Seasons of Life.
Stephen Pile has written a book titled The Book of Failures. It’s got unbelievable stuff in it. Like that time back in 1978 during the fireman’s strike in England. It made possible one of the greatest animal rescue attempts of all time. Valiantly, the British Army had taken over emergency firefighting. On Jan 14, they were called out by an elderly lady in South London to rescue her cat. They arrived with impressive haste, very cleverly and carefully rescued the cat, and started to drive away. But the lady was so grateful she invited the squad of heroes in for tea. Driving off later with fond farewells and warm waving of arms, they ran over her cat and killed it. – Charles Swindoll, Growing Strong in the Seasons of Life
Last week, I asked how many of you had made new year’s resolutions for 2001. Only one person raised their hand. When I asked why none of the others had, you responded that there was no point in making them. You’ve made them before and failed to keep them, so what was the point in going through that whole process of trying and failing all over again? Probably all of us can look back over the past year and remember failures that we have experienced. Maybe you set out at the beginning of the year to lose a few pounds – take a few inches off your waist. From the looks of things, most of you failed. Some people have tried to salvage a marriage and failed. Other people have tried to get a better job, learn a new skill, get rid of a bad habit, establish some new patterns, make a killing on the stock market . . . and failed. I watched an interview with Bill Gates this week. In 2000, he lost 50 billion dollars on the stoke market. Oh, to have 50 billion dollars to lose! Some of the people that I have tried to lead to the Lord have refused to follow. I failed! There are times that no matter how hard you try and no matter how much you pray, things just don’t turn out the way that you would have liked them to.
What do you do when you fail? No one likes to fail. We avoid it as much as possible. How do you respond to failure? Do you get mad, blame other people, get depressed, quit trying? A more important question than how do you respond to your failure is how does God respond to your failure?
That’s the question that Moses answers in Deut. 30. Let’s read verses 1-10.
1. God knows that you are going to fail. (vs. 1-2)
God knew the history of Israel – failure!
Most all of you have had a job at some time or another. When you applied for that job, you had to list references and former employers on your application or resume. What your new employer was trying to do was to establish a history for you. They want to know what kind of a worker you are. They want to know if you fulfill your obligations, if you show up on time, if you get along with other employees, and if you stick it out for the long haul. They want to know if you listen to and respond well to authority. Imagine if you were God and you were checking out the references – the history of Israel – trying to decide if this was going to be a worthy people or not. As you checked out their references, you discovered that they were complainers. You discovered that when things weren’t going according to their plan, they took matters into their own hands. You found out that when life got rough, and the pay check didn’t come as quickly as they thought or too much fed. tax and something called F.I.C.A. was withheld from their paycheck, they had been known to take up rocks to kill former employers. Would you want them to represent you on earth as your chosen people? I don’t think so!
In chapter 29, God invited Israel to enter into a covenant – a contract – with Him. He wanted them as His people. He promised to be their God. Did God know what He was getting Himself into? Was He like many an employer fooled during the interview process only to be badly burned later on? No, God knew exactly what He was getting Himself into.
God knows the character of man – sinner! When God told Adam and Eve not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, He knew that they were going to do it anyway. But it is sinners, failures, that God seeks after. Jesus said that He didn’t come for the righteous but for sinners. He said, “I came to seek and to save that which was lost.” A lost person is a person who failed to follow directions. God knows the character of man – sinner, failure, weak – and yet He desires us for Himself.
God knows you – You can never catch God by surprise.
NOTE #1 – He’s not happy about your failure. Some people are happy when you fall. They’re watching you every minute to catch you in a slip-up. When you fail, it gives them a chance to say things like, “I told you so.” “I knew you would never amount to much.” Our failure makes them feel better about themselves. It makes them look better in front of the boss with the result that they might get the promotion instead of us. God is not like that. He’s not standing up there saying, “I told you so.” We’re His children! What father would be glad when his children fail?
NOTE #2 – He doesn’t excuse our failure. Making excuses for failure makes it easier to deal with. It’s because of my genes, or my upbringing. It’s because of my age or my inexperience or because somebody didn’t like me. God doesn’t make excuses for us, and He doesn’t listen to any of the excuses that we make. Instead of excuses, He provided a solution in the blood of Jesus Christ.
God cannot just wipe our failure under the rug. There is a price that has to be paid. There are consequences. When I fail to turn on the heat at the church on Saturday afternoon, it means that I have to get up at 5:00 on Sunday morning to come to the church and turn it on so that everyone will be nice and toasty. That’s a consequence that I can take care of by getting a nap this afternoon. Other things aren’t quite so easy to erase. If a teenager or adult has sex before marriage or outside of marriage, it might result in the conception of a child. How are you going to wipe that under the rug? It is the consequences of our failure that help to prevent us from failing in that area again. I will remember next Saturday to turn on the heat. Believe me!
NOTE #3 – He’s not willing to leave you there. There comes a point at which our society decides that a person is a perpetual failure. No matter what anyone does for that person or how many breaks they are given, they always seem to fail. So they get pushed aside, forgotten and left to their failure. The reasoning is that we’ve only got limited resources, and we have to use them on persons who have greater potential. God is not limited in His resources. And God is not limited in His mercy. When God sees someone wallowing in the mud because of failure, He reaches out to them in love, cleans them from the inside out and gives them the motivation and the power to start again.
How are you going to respond to the knowledge that others are going to fail you?
Men and women respond to the failure of marriage by choosing to not even try and make marriage work but choose instead to either live together or live a wild life of short term relationships
Parents could respond to the failure of their children by locking their daughters in their rooms until they’re 35 and refusing to give their sons the car keys until they have children of their own.
Leaders can respond to the failure of their followers by just choosing to do everything themselves.
Church-goers respond to the failure of their pastors and fellow church-goers by hopping from church to church and eventually hopping out of church all together.
People respond to the failure of other people by curling up in a little ball, closing in on themselves, and shutting the world out.
“Better not to try than to try and fail.”, or so the thinking goes. Shakespeare would disagree. “Better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.”
Have you ever seen a flea circus? Little fleas can be trained to do things similar to large circus animals and, when reduced to small sizes, provide the viewer with many laughs. However, there’s something interesting about how these fleas are trained. If you place a few fleas inside a jar and screw a lid on top, the fleas will instantly try to escape. They will jump up a dozen times or so and hit themselves against the lid. In a moment, however, they are able to gauge the lid’s range. In all subsequent jumps they will leap almost to the lid, but not actually ram themselves against it. Thereafter, an amazing thing can be done. The lid from the jar can be removed completely, yet the fleas will continue to jump only as high as the lid used to be. They are convinced, after having hit themselves against the former lid, that they are limited in the height they may ever reach. This is analogous to people who have experienced a few failures in life, and, thereafter, have decided they are incapable of even reaching the success heights they once attained to. Like the fleas, they reduced their goals to low "safe" levels; but, also like the fleas, they remain trapped and bottled. It is better for us to be like a mechanical mouse: when the mouse bumps into an obstacle, it turns and immediately heads in a new direction. Eventually, it reaches its ultimate goal. You can to if you keep your vision on your target.
Someone has said that “Failure is not stumbling and falling. It’s staying on the floor.” - Tom Sirotnak and Ken Walker, Warriors (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1995) 162 Another person said, “Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker.” - Unknown
2. God can bring you back from wherever you have fallen. (vs. 3-4)
Only God can; not something that can be achieved through our own effort.
Whenever we fail, it produces a wonderful thing called “guilt”. Guilt can be an extremely heavy burden to bear. So we will try all kinds of ways to get rid of that guilt. We’ll try being good, giving money, doing acts of service – anything that will get rid of the guilt that is about to drive us to a nervous breakdown. “A new product called "Disposable Guilt Bags" appeared in the marketplace [in 1987]. It consisted of a set of ten ordinary brown bags on which were printed the following instructions: "Place the bag securely over your mouth, take a deep breath and blow all your guilt out, then dispose of the bag immediately." The wonder of this is that the Associated Press reported that 2500 kits had been quickly sold at $2.50 per kit. Would that we could dispose of our guilt so easily. There is nothing on this earth powerful enough in itself to dispose of our guilt. We cannot fix ourselves, which is what many of us are trying to do. That which makes it possible to be forgiven, to be cleansed, to be healed, that which makes it possible for us to receive our life back again, fresh and clean and new, is the power of God’s Grace in the Cross of Jesus Christ. See: Isa 53:5-6; Jer 31:34; Acts 13:38; Eph 1:7 Bible Illustator
He brings us back with the love of a parent.
Longing to leave her poor Brazilian neighborhood, Christina wanted to see the world. Discontent with a home having only a pallet on the floor, a washbasin, and a wood-burning stove, she dreamed of a better life in the city. One morning she slipped away, breaking her mother’s heart. Knowing what life on the streets would be like for her young, attractive daughter, Maria hurriedly packed to go find her. On her way to the bus stop she entered a drugstore to get one last thing. Pictures. She sat in the photograph booth, closed the curtain, and spent all she could on pictures of herself. With her purse full of small black-and-white photos, she boarded the next bus to Rio de Janiero. Maria knew Christina had no way of earning money. She also knew that her daughter was too stubborn to give up.
When pride meets hunger, a human will do things that were before unthinkable. Knowing this, Maria began her search. Bars, hotels, nightclubs, any place with the reputation for street walkers or prostitutes. She went to them all. And at each place she left her picture--taped on a bathroom mnirror, tacked to a hotel bulletin board, fastened to a corner phone booth. And on the back of each photo she wrote a note. It wasn’t too long before both the money and the pictures ran out, and Maria had to go home. The weary mother wept as the bus began its long journey back to her small village.
It was a few weeks later that young Christina descended the hotel stairs. Her young face was tired. Her brown eyes no longer danced with youth but spoke of pain and fear. Her laughter was broken. Her dream had become a nightmare. A thousand times over she had longed to trade these countless beds for her secure pallet. Yet the little village was, in too many ways, too far away. As she reached the bottom of the stairs, her eyes noticed a familiar face. She looked again, and there on the lobby mirror was a small picture of her mother. Christina’s eyes burned and her throat tightened as she walked across the room and removed the small photo. Written on the back was this compelling invitation.
"Whatever you have done, whatever you have become, it doesn’t matter. Please come home. I still love you." She did. - Max Lucado, No Wonder They Call Him the Savior, Multnomah Press, 1986, pp. 158-159
3. God can restore all that you have lost. (vs. 5)
That doesn’t mean that if Bill Gates comes to God and asks Him to restore the 50 billion dollars that he lost, that God will. He could, but He may not. But God will restore some things that are of much greater value and that will last forever.
A place of belonging
Joy [that’s what he did for David – “restore to me the joy of my salvation”]
A clear conscience
Peace
Fulfilling relationship with Him
Trust
If you come to God and ask His forgiveness, He may or may not restore your marriage. He may or may not restore your job. He may or may not restore your relationship with your kids. But He will restore you and your place with Him. God could restore all those things. The God who can bring a dead person back to life can certainly bring a dead relationship back to life. And by restoring you, He can make it so that you will not fail in the same way that you failed in the past that made the relationship go bad to begin with.
4. God offers to bless you. (vs. 6-9)
5. You must choose to obey. (vs. 10)
CLOSING
[failure and restoration of Peter]
