Intro: What is the greatest promise in the entire Bible? The greatest promise in all the Bible is the one that we take the most for granted. It is the promise God’s presence. Many read the Bible but not to hear God’s voice. Many pray but not to bathe in God’s presence. Many come to Church but not to serve for God’s glory.
What is at the heart of being a Christ follower? It is given to us in this passage. It is utterly and completely abandoning ourselves to Gods overwhelming and satisfying presence. You probably know people that have become road kill on the information superhighway known as the internet. It is sad that families can surf the internet but not sustain a healthy family communication.
We are all too often abandoning ourselves to things that end instead of things that endure. Here in this passage is not only a proverb but a promise. How can I say that this is not merely a proverb but a promise? The truth of this passage is seen again and again in the Bible. For Example in Genesis and Hebrews Abraham is called of God to leave His family and inheritance and God would show him the place to go. Noah was called to build and ark when it had never rained. Naaman was called to bathe in a dirty, muddy river to be cleansed, we are called to die to live, to serve to be great, bless instead of curse. From the pages of God’s love story we see that abandoning ourselves to God begins with taking Him at His word.
I. Take God at His word
A) Complete confidence
Trust in the Lord. The word batach carries the idea to wholly place yourself at another persons mercy. The passage is not asking you to trust a proposition or a preacher it is asking you to trust a person. This passage is asking us to place our complete confidence in the person of Jesus Christ.
Why don’t you trust, why can’t you take God at His word? Because the kind of confidence that allows us to place our lives in God’s hands completely comes from intimacy with Him. Did you know you can be in someone’s presence but not be intimate with them? Husbands and wives get divorces at an alarming rate today because there is no intimacy. The divorce rate among Baptists is 29%, from the same data the divorce rate between atheists and agnostics is 21%.
Do you know why? Intimacy is not merely physical it must be whole abandonment of the self to another. The percentages show that we have a tendency not to take God at His word because a lack of abandonment.
The question you have to ask yourself is do you know God enough to completely abandon yourself to Him? Do you have complete confidence in God’s word to you? You ask how can I know? Complete confidence in God will cause you life to be patterned by compliant obedience.
B) Compliant obedience
Dr Adrian Rogers God’s plan is not a road map it is a relationship. We do what God says in His word, and through His Holy Spirit, because he wants what is best for us and because we love Him. Our obedience happens because we are in a relationship with Him. What you need to know is you are not called to surrender to a pitiful, pale religion but to a powerful, personal, ever present Lord!
Adrian Rogers also said, “God’s will is what you would want for yourself if you had sense enough to want it.”
Psalm 84.11“For the LORD God is our sun and our shield. He gives us grace and glory. The LORD will withhold no good thing from those who do what is right.” (NLT) Another translation says to those who walk uprightly. (Pattern of their lives is confidence followed by obedience to God’s revealed will.)
Why don’t you abandon that relationship that God says is unhealthy and he doesn’t approve of? Because you don’t have confidence in God’s word. Why do you not give to support the ministries that God has led this church to? Because you don’t have confidence in God’s word. Why is prayer not a part of your life? Because you don’t have confidence in God’s word. Why don’t you respect your husband unconditionally? Because you don’t have confidence in God’s word. Why don’t you love you wife unconditionally? Because you don’t have confidence in God’s word.
No good thing will God withhold! What is holding you back in your relationship with Jesus?
Do you trust the Lord with all your heart? What does that mean? It means that there is no plan B. I abandon myself in complete confidence and obedience to God and where He guides me and what He tells me in His word and through His Spirit.
“Lord what do you want met to do here?”
Oswald chambers was walking up a hill with a shepherd, a farmer was coming down the other way. Oswald broke away from the shepherd and began to talk to the farmer about Jesus. When the shepherd joined chambers he did not commend him but asked this question, “Did you get the permission of the Holy Spirit to do that?”
If you take God at His word you have the opportunity to take advantage of God’s promises
II. Take advantage of His promises (3.5)
Remember what is the greatest promise in scripture? God’s presence in your life.
Dr. Bill Bright of Campus Crusade for Christ tells this story of a famous oil field called Yates Pool. During the depression this field was a sheep ranch owned by a man named Yates. Mr. Yates wasn’t able to make enough on his ranching operation to pay the principal and interest on the mortgage, so he was in danger of losing his ranch. With little money for clothes or food, his family (like many others) had to live on government subsidy. Day after day, as he grazed his sheep over those rolling West Texas hills, he was no doubt greatly troubled about how he would pay his bills. Then a seismographic crew from an oil company came into the area and told him there might be oil on his land. They asked permission to drill a wildcat well, and he signed a lease contract. At 1,115 feet they struck a huge oil reserve. The first well came in at 80,000 barrels a day. Many subsequent wells were more than twice as large. In fact, 30 years after the discovery, a government test of one of the wells showed it still had the potential flow of 125,000 barrels of oil a day. And Mr. Yates owned it all. The day he purchased the land, he had received the oil and mineral rights. Yet, he’d been living on relief. A multimillionaire living in poverty. The problem? He didn’t know the oil was there, even though he owned it.
Are you living in spiritual poverty? You are entitled to the gifts of the Holy Spirit and his energizing power. Are you aware as a child of God that your birthright is the gift, guiding, and empowering of the Holy Spirit?
How do we appropriate or take hold of the promises, gifts, guiding, and empowering of God?
Prayer!
Prayer has been called many things. Pursuing God, practicing the presence of God, etc.
Prayer is simply investing in your relationship with God. Why don’t we pray? Because we don’t really take God at His word! “Lean not on your own understanding.”
The Hebrew word used here means don’t support yourself with you own understanding.
The things and ministries God is calling us to cannot be done with our understanding.
Why is it so important for us in the weeks till Easter to pray and fast for God’s understanding of what we need to do with the Land etc? Because we cannot trust our insights or imaginations. We can’t trust what we come up with unless we come together in the mind of Christ united in purpose.
Isaiah 58.11 The LORD will guide you continually, giving you water when you are dry
and restoring your strength. You will be like a well-watered garden, like an ever-flowing spring.
God wants to strengthen us and guide us but will we take Him at His word?
What do the preceding verses say about His guidance and getting hold of His promises?
Isaiah 58.5-10 You humble yourselves by going through the motions of penance, bowing your heads like reeds bending in the wind. You dress in burlap and cover yourselves with ashes.
Is this what you call fasting? Do you really think this will please the LORD? “No, this is the kind of fasting I want: Free those who are wrongly imprisoned; lighten the burden of those who work for you. Let the oppressed go free, and remove the chains that bind people. 7 Share your food with the hungry, and give shelter to the homeless. Give clothes to those who need them,
and do not hide from relatives who need your help. 8 “Then your salvation will come like the dawn, and your wounds will quickly heal. Your godliness will lead you forward, and the glory of the LORD will protect you from behind. 9 Then when you call, the LORD will answer. ‘Yes, I am here,’ he will quickly reply. “Remove the heavy yoke of oppression. Stop pointing your finger and spreading vicious rumors! 10 Feed the hungry, and help those in trouble. Then your light will shine out from the darkness, and the darkness around you will be as bright as noon.
Do you know why a lot of preachers don’t read these? Because if we take God at His word then we are bound by our relationship to Him to obey!!!!
Acknowledge Him in all your ways. To acknowledge Him means to consult His will, seek His direction, and recognize His authority.
III. Take seriously His direction
When we take God at His word and take advantage of His promises what happens? We receive the promise of God’s guidance.
The Hebrew word for direct is very interesting. It is found once in the Book of Isaiah 40:3-4. You might have heard it quoted “Clear the way for the LORD in the wilderness; Make smooth in the desert a highway for our God.”
Listen to the message “Thunder in the desert! "Prepare for God's arrival! Make the road straight and smooth, a highway fit for our God.”
This word carries the idea of clearing obstacles. Of clearing and making smooth the way that God wants you as an individual and us as a church to go.
Revelation 3.8 8I know your deeds. See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut. I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name.
Adrian Rogers “God will straighten the road, remove the mountains, fill in the low places, and smooth the rocky places.”
Why so that we can do His will and follow His way.
God is sending us in a specific direction. God is calling us to serve people and meet their needs in order to proclaim His praises, to tell what He has done in grace for us.
The food pantry, clothes closet, helping the homeless feeding the hungry, assisting the addicted, loving the fatherless, God is calling us to do it for His glory.
Conclusion: Trust confidently accepting His word, courageously taking advantage of His promises and taking seriously His direction. God is directing us, He is opening doors for us that no one can shut and we haven’t even seen yet.
