Search Results for: fall series

The Recovery Channel: Part 1 – How to Find Restoration

THE RECOVERY CHANNEL SERMON SERIES

HOW TO FIND RESTORATION

ED YOUNG

AUGUST 13, 1995

I tell you, seeing all this baggage up here reminds me of my recent family vacation.  Prior to leaving Lisa and I got into a very interesting discussion about all the baggage we were going to take.  We have four children, an eight year old, a three years old and one-year-old twins.  You can imagine all the humidifiers, high-chairs, cribs, tons and tons of diapers that we need to take for an outing like a vacation.  And I said to Lisa in a very direct way, “Lisa, there is no way we can get all of this in one car.  We are going to have to take two cars as we travel to San Antonio and Houston on our break.”  And she said in a very sweet voice, “Honey, we can make it in one car and I can tell you how we are going to do that in two words.”  I said, “What are those two words?”  And she said, “Luggage carriers.”  I said, “You mean those Clark Griswold-type contraptions that fit on top of the car and you jam all our your suitcases in there?”  And she said, “Yes, in fact Western Auto is having a special on luggage carriers.”

So the next morning yours truly was down at the Western Auto picking up two jumbo, gargantuan luggage carriers.  I climbed on top of our suburban in the boiling heat of the Metroplex and I loaded all of our baggage into them.  Believe it or not, we got everything packed on top and all human beings into our suburban.  We didn’t put any children into the luggage carriers, but we did fit all the luggage up there.  So we leave.  At the first hotel we check into in San Antonio we called a bellman over to help us with the luggage.  He said, “Folks, I want to tell you something.  I have been working here at this hotel for eight years and this is the most luggage I have ever seen in all that time.  We stayed there and then went on to Houston.  It eventually came time to return to the Metroplex.  We were excited to get back home.  We were getting LeeBeth ready to start school.  I had everything packed.  The luggage carriers were secure.  We made the long drive home, turn into our neighborhood and then wheel into the driveway.  I instinctively push the garage door opener.  The garage door opens and for a nanosecond, I know it is hard for you to believe, I forgot about the giant, jumbo luggage carriers on top of the car.  I mash the gas pedal to kind of cruise into the garage safe and sound when suddenly I hear an enormous crash.  I see boards flying.  We had torn off the top portion of our garage due to the Western Auto, jumbo luggage carriers.  I put the car into reverse and assess the damage.  There was some damage to the garage but the car was OK.  I climbed on top of the suburban, unfastened the luggage carriers and took the bags out piece by piece and carried them into the house.  Then I was able to park the suburban safe and sound in the garage.  Wow.

Many of us today are tearing our lives apart, we are tearing our relationships apart because we have never dealt with the baggage in the luggage carriers strapped to the backs of our lives.  We have tried to excuse it, we have tried to explain it away, we tried to forget about it, yet it is still there and it is still tripping us up.  It is still knocking the wood off of different areas of our lives.  In this brand new series called The Recovery Channel I am going to promise you something.  I am going to promise you, inspired by the word of God, we are going to look into the luggage carriers of our lives, take the bags out, piece by piece, open them up, identify the contents and do what should be done with the contents so we can be free to be the kind of Christ-followers that God wants us to become.

On this stage you see various styles of baggage and each has a different name on, representing different issues and problems that we deal with.  Some of us have problems that are not illustrated up here.  But if you see something kind of in your problem zone, focus on that piece of luggage.  If you stay with us here for the next month, we are going to give you a step by step scriptural process on how to deal with the baggage.  This process is going to get a little sticky, it is going to be thought provoking, it is going to be a little bit different.  We have never done a series like this in the history of the Fellowship of Las Colinas.  But, we felt led by the Lord to do this because it is our desire to have mature, fully developed Christ-followers.  And for us to accomplish this, we have got to deal with the baggage.

The foundational text for this series is found in Isaiah 57:18.  I like to personalize this verse and I want you to personalize it also.  “I have seen how Ed has acted, but I will heal Ed, I will lead Ed and help Ed, I will comfort Ed when he mourns, I will offer peace to Ed both near and far.” (Paraphrased)  A lot of us are dealing with a number of issues these days and the exciting news about that is that the steps of recovery are the same.  If you are dealing with the habit of lying, of not eating enough, gambling, drug addiction, whatever the issue, whatever the baggage that you bring to the Lord, that you put on the table today, the steps to recovery are the same.  Today’s message is going to be a unique one.  I am going to do the first part over the next twelve minutes, then I am going to stop and we are going to have a drama.  The drama is going to illustrate the futility of men and women trying to control their lives.  Then after the drama I will come back for Part II and step two of this exciting series.

Well let’s jump right in.  Step one on the recovery channel is, admit that you are powerless to change your problem.  We have to admit that we are powerless to change our problems.  Some of you are saying, this kind of sounds like the twelve step process.  The powerless stuff.  You are exactly right.  The twelve step process was invented by two alcoholics and a couple of Christians in 1935.  The basic twelve steps are from the word of God.  We are going to condense these steps and some of them will sound familiar to you.  This first step is saying, “God, I admit to You that I am powerless to change my problem.”  That is a big step.  Most of us kind of skip over that one and go to the next one.  Have you ever admitted that you are powerless to change your problem?  We all have problems and our problems center around the first Roman numeral on your outline.  The root of all of our problems can be summarized in a brief phrase, our sin nature.  Our sin nature.  Or to put it in modern day terms, we want to be the boss.  I call it the Bruce Springsteen disease.  We want to forge our own future, carve our own path. We want to be autonomous, independent.  We want to kick God out of the capital of our lives and say I know what is best for me.  In other words, we want to play God.  That is pretty radical, isn’t it?  Yet you do it and I do it.  Even Adam and Eve did it.  You can trace the roots of rebellion all the way back to the soils of the Garden of Eden.  God said, “Adam and Eve, all you have got to think about is worshiping Me and doing a bunch of yard work.  That’s it.  Adam and Eve, I am going to plant a tree right here and don’t touch this tree.  Don’t touch the fruit of this tree.”  A faith that has not been tested cannot be trusted.  Adam and Eve heard the voice of the evil one, you’ll see it there in the first scripture verse.  The evil one said, “Pssst, Adam, Eve, the reason God is telling you not to touch the fruit is, if you touch it you will be like God.  You can control paradise.”  And they thought, wow.  And they ate it and from that moment on, we have been struggling with these issues of control, of trying to be boss.  We try to control our image.  Ever done any image control?

Maybe I will be in a restaurant with my wife and as we walk in I will see some church members, “Hi, how are you doing?  Oh yeah, nice to see you all again.  Great?  Really, you have been a member of our church for two years?  Excellent.  OK.  Yeah, we eat here often.  Thank you very much.”  And we sit down.  And over the course of the meal, let’s say Lisa and I get into an intense discussion over an issue.  Now and then, what I have tried to do is, I have tried to act like when we are arguing that everything was cool, that we are not arguing at all, because I don’t want to put myself in a bad light before church member.  Image control.  Sound familiar?              Then we want to control our problems.  People say, “How are you doing?”  And we say, “Oh, I’m doing great, man, just great.”  Down deep, though, we are dying.  We are kind of like the shirt I heard about the other day.  It shows a picture of a dead cow.  And underneath the cow is saying, “Really, I’m fine.”

We also try to control out pain.  God uses pain as an alarm to help us change and oftentimes He will let a crisis or catastrophe occur to get you or I to change.  And the sad thing is, it takes that until we really deal with our baggage.  I have only bought one thing in my life from the Home Shopping Network.  I bought a triathlon watch.  The watch was delivered to my house and I could not get the alarm thing to stop going off at odd times, I couldn’t figure it out.  So after a couple of nights of being alarmed out of our sleep, I would take this watch, put it in one of my Nike tennis shoes, size 12, put three athletic socks in the Nike tennis shoes, put four towels over it.  Still I could hear the beep of the alarm.  Finally I just took it and threw it away.  We try to cover pain, we try to camouflage pain.  We drink to deaden it, smoke to deaden it, snort to deaden it, eat to deaden it.  We get angry, we criticize others.  We are in control, you see.  Could that be you, could that be me?  The root of our problem, we want to control.

See the phrase, the result of my problem, on your outline?  The result of my problem.  This is going to be scary here.  When I try to run the show, I join the 4F club.

The first F is fear.  If I try to run the show, I am going to be a person who faces fear.  The root of my problem is my sin nature.  And as I get into these problems, I will join the 4F club.  Fear.  There is our man Adam.  When Adam discovered he had messed up, when he still had the pulp of the orange dribbling off of his lips, Adam hid.  He was afraid.  We deal with fear.  Are you fearful today?  People might find out who I really am, I have got to put the mask on.

The number two F is frustration.  The Apostle Paul said in Romans 7:21 & 23, “I am at war with my mind…..sometimes sin wins the fight.”  Paul said this.  In Psalm 32:3, “My dishonesty made me miserable and filled my days with frustration.”  Are you frustrated today?  Wow.  I think back on my life when I have tried to run a certain area, I get fearful.  It is tough being a little demigod, trying to sovereignly rule over a universe called you, isn’t it?  Frustrating.

Also, the third F, fatigue.  It will flat wear you out.  It will rule your world.  My strength evaporated like water on a sunny day.  I think we can find illustrations for that here in this Texas heat, can’t we.

Until finally, I admitted all of my sins, all of my baggage of rebellion to You and stopped trying to hid them.  We try to hid our sins and cover our baggage, jumping from fun fix to fun fix to fun fix.  And it doesn’t work.  It wears us out because we are not designed to run the show and you will see this beautifully portrayed in our drama in a couple of minutes.  Anybody frustrated today?

The fourth F is the old failure F.  We have got fear, frustration, fatigue and failure.  Proverbs 28:13, “You will never succeed in life if you try to hide your sins.  Confess them.”  That means to articulate.  “God, I have messed up.”  And to many of us here there is a dangerous four letter word that we are afraid to admit,

H E L P.

Yesterday I did something that I have only done one other time in my life, I attempted to water ski.  My family and I went out with some friends and I was riding in the back of the boat when my friend say he would like to see me water ski.  He had been with me during my first attempt, and encouraged me to try again.  Well you know, I am kind of this macho male and I don’t want to do something that I can’t do well.  I jump in the water, it is cold.  I try to remember what I was supposed to do, I refused to ask him because I believe I can do it with no help.  We start off and I fall and fall again.  Finally the boat comes around after about the fifth fall in a row and I say, “I need some help.  What am I doing wrong here?  Help.”  I think so many of us are in that situation.  And you are saying to yourself, well I’ll put it off until next week or next year.  I can control it.  I can do it.  If you could control it, if you could do it, why haven’t you done it?  Say help.  Confess your sins.  Say God here is the baggage, and give them up.  Then God will show mercy to you.

The root of my problem is my sin nature.  The result, the 4F club.  The remedy, admit that you are powerless, and listen to me, watch this, to change the past.  Admit you are powerless to change the past.  As God looks at the vehicles of our lives, many of us have a huge rearview mirror and a small, little windshield, and we spend all of our time looking into the rearview mirror, back in the past.  “That girl never called me back.”  “My parents really hurt me.”  And a rearview mirror is important.  We need to learn from the past.  It gives us perspective.  But, if you have a giant rearview mirror and a tiny little windshield, you can’t enjoy the present, you can’t get on with your life.  The Apostle Paul said in a classic scripture verse, “I forget what lies behind, I reach forward to what is ahead.”  I enjoy the moment.  In this series, the scripture is going to reduce the size of our rearview mirrors and expand the windshield.  I am powerless to change the past.

I am powerless to control others.  Don’t we love to control other people?  We love to.  I remember the great Jim Henson, and I have watched Sesame Street for years and years and years due to our large family.  Jim was a master with the Count, Big Bird, Ernie and Burt.  And he controlled these puppets with strings and wires and things and they looked real.  Even for me, I would say, hey this Count guy is a nice fellow.  I think the Cookie Monster really likes chocolate chip cookies.  It was believable.  Henson, though, was controlling everything.  I try to control others sometimes.  And you do to.  And it is frustrating.  I am powerless, you are powerless to do that.  We have got to worry about who we are before God.  Some of you, figuratively speaking, need to take a giant pair of sheers and clip the strings.  I am powerless to control other people.

I am powerless to cope with my habit.  I can’t do it alone.  I am powerless.  Have you admitted that really?  James 4:6, “God opposes the proud but gives grace (amazing grace) to the humble.”  Recently I have been traveling a lot and one thing never ceases to amaze me.  The plane is packed and a least one traveler is trying to carry on about four bags.  I watch while he whacks every single person in the head with these bags.  It is like a bunch of dominos.  And I am waiting for just one guy to turn around and nail him.  Isn’t that kind of stupid for people to do that?  It is just dumb.  All they have to do just say, “Hey, would you check these please?”

As God looks at your life and my life, He sees all these bags on us.  “OK God, I am ready to board Your flight.”  And God accepts us but He says, “Hey, stop before you board my flight, and I’ll take care of the bags, you can’t deal with them.”  Why don’t we admit that?  Why don’t we admit that right now.

DRAMA BREAK

When we try to run our lives it is like a bunch of mannequins thinking they can run a department store.  We have got to realize that God is the King of the Jungle, He is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Step one.  I have to admit that I am powerless to change my problem.  Step two.  I have to believe that Jesus Christ has the power to heal me of my condition, of my shortcomings, of my problem, of my habit.  I believe that Jesus Christ has the power to do it.

It is interesting.  In the classic twelve step program, step two talks about a higher power, and a lot of Christians are uncomfortable because it says a higher power and not Jesus Christ.  Let me tell you why the alcoholics who founded this twelve step program used the words higher power.  It is because the church had rejected them because of their problems with alcoholism.  And they said alcoholics will not join a twelve step program if you say Jesus Christ because most of them have been rejected by the church due to their habit.

If you have turned outside of yourself to a higher power, if you are seeking, we say at this church, great.  We say at this church, we want to have the attitude that the Apostle Paul had in Acts 17.  Paul came to Athens, he went to a place called Morris Hill.  A bunch of people, philosophers, armchair theologians, had a view of a higher power and Paul said in Acts 17, it is good that you guys have a concept of a higher power, but you have an underdeveloped picture of who God is.  If you will listen to me, I will clarify the picture, I will spell it out, because the true God is not some humanistic, man-made god, he is the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the God who sent Jesus Christ to die on the cross for all of your sins and to rise again.  And they saw a picture that was developed by the Apostle Paul.  And that is precisely the role of our church.  If you have turned to a high power, great.  But we are going to fill in who the higher power is, it is Jesus Christ.  Because if you trusted anything else, some New Age philosophy or some other religion, it is not going to come through for you.  They are going to let you down.  Believe that Jesus Christ has the power to heal and to change you.

How do I do that?  Number one on the second side of your outline, God knows about my problem.  When I comprehend God’s character, I realize that he knows about my problem.  Nike made millions of dollars with that crazy commercial with Bo Jackson saying, “Bo knows.”  Bo knows baseball.  Bo knows football.  We all laughed and bought more and more Nike products.  I think we ought to print a shirt up that says, “God Knows It All.”  He is omniscient.  God knows about my problem.  You say, well no one really know the pain I felt after I lost my father or when my mate turned and left.  No one knows how I deal with this problem of pornography or dope.  No one knows what I am struggling with.  God knows.  The Bible says in Psalm 56:8, David speaking, “You know how troubled I am, You have kept a record of my tears.”  Is that powerful, or what?  Tears in a bottle.  Ed Young’s name on a bottle containing all the tears I have shed in my life, God has counted them and knows about every one.  I love Psalm 31:7, “You have seen the crisis in my soul.”  You can’t hide anything from God.  There is nothing on the sly.  He sees it all.

About three months ago I was leaving the hugh airport of Tegucigalpa, Honduras.  And before I left Tegucigalpa, Honduras I had to put my bags on the counter and one of the officials unzipped my bags and took out everything and examined my stuff.  And I know I felt violated.  Everything from underwear to deodorant.  We have got to let God do the same.  We have got to realize that God sees everything, it is like when you put your baggage on one of those scanners before you board a flight.  God sees it all, God knows it all.  And we can’t trust Him until we know that He knows about our problem.

Number two.  God is sympathetic about my problem, no only does He know about my problem, He is sympathetic about it.  The Bible says He is like a father to us, tender and sympathetic.  He is perfectly balanced.  Now a lot of times we take our earthly father’s characteristics and move them over to our Heavenly Father.  We mess up when we do that.  God is sympathetic, He is perfect, He is always there, loving us, forgiving us, helping us.  God is sympathetic.  For some of you the scales have come off your eyes.  You mean God knows and He is sympathetic about my problems?  Whoa.

Number three.  God can change my problem.  And the longer we put off change, the longer we miss opportunities to serve Him.  I like what is says in Ephesians 1:19-20.  “I pray that you will begin to understand how incredibly great His power is to help those who believe in Him.”  And that word, believe, is not just an intellectual assent, it is I have faith in, I put my weight on, I trust You.  Because the Bible says, the same power that raised Christ from the dead is available to all of us.  God did not have a power shortage or a power failure.  It is there.  He can do it.  So comprehend God’s character.

Next, comply with God’s offer.  He is offering His help.  He is offering guidance.  Philippians 2:13, “For it is God who is at work in you giving you the will and the power to achieve His purpose.”  Circle the words will and power.  We can’t do it under our own willpower, God will give us the will and the power to do it.  And finally, the last verse on your outline, Isaiah 43:2.  It talks about how God will be with us no matter what we are going through, even through the deep waters.

Over our vacation, EJ, our three year old, jumped off the diving board with his floaties on.  And he was skeptical about doing this and I told him that I would be in the water with him.  He said, “Daddy, catch me, be right there at the end of the diving board.”  “EJ, I’m going to be with you.  It is over your head but jump.  Do it.”  And I watched him muster up enough courage to walk to the end of the board, curl his toes over the board, close his eyes and cover his face.  When he jumped, I let him sink a little bit but I had him right there in the water.  I was not going to let go, because he is my child.

            No matter what we are going through we are going to have to say, “God, by faith I jump off.”  God is going to catch us, He is going to be with us in this process of recovery.  Don’t skip to step four, five or six.  That is on down the road.  You have got to deal with it Biblically and know who God is and then you will know what the greatest channel in all the world is, no more channel surfing.  It is the Recovery Channel, straight from God’s word.

The Untouchables: Part 2 – Abortion

THE UNTOUCHABLES SERMON SERIES

ABORTION

DECEMBER 20, 1998

ED YOUNG

Every time I deal with controversial issues, untouchables like racism, homosexuality and abortion, I intuitively know that groups have already formulated their opinion.  Some of you can’t wait to cheer me on as I slam-dunk the pro-choicers.  You want to sort of start the wave to start the fires of hell.  For you, it is the white hats versus the black hats.  Others here have come to church with the proverbial chip on your shoulder.  You say to yourself that your mind is made up on this issue.  No one will change it. Even God, Himself, won’t do it for you.  You know where you stand and you can’t wait to call the pro-lifers narrow minded, right wingers, people who are out of touch with reality.

Still others here are apathetic.  You have a whatever attitude.  You say that what a woman does with her own body is her deal.  That sounds so postmodern, so cool, so choice driven, doesn’t it?  But there are numbers of people here today, specifically women, who have been carrying around a dark secret for years.  And this secret, if the truth were known, has been haunting you like an ominous rain cloud.  You have had an abortion.  I want you to know something.  I realize that you understood what was on the docket today, yet you attended  Fellowship Church.  And I know it took boatloads of courage for you to walk through these doors and to sit down.  But you desperately want to know where you stand in God’s eyes.  You want to know what He thinks about what you have done, the choice that you have made.

Throughout this series I have challenged you to do one thing.  I have challenged you to listen with an open heart and an open mind.  I have challenged you to take your prejudices and presuppositions and put them aside and tell God to have His way with you.  God, I want to see your take on these untouchables.  So ladies and gentlemen, don’t listen with crossed arms or closed fists.  Uncross your arms, open up your palms heavenward and say, “God, show me the truth.  Show me the reality about this hotly debated topic.”

I have come to my stance through a lot of research and prayer and study.  I didn’t come to this stance by some pie-in-the-sky thinking, by just grabbing something out of the air to perpetuate the party line.  No.  I have done the research.  I have done the work.  It is kind of funny, isn’t it?  You have one camp of the abortion issue, say the pro-choicers, who are sincere about their position.  And pro-abortionists will sincerely counsel a woman to terminate the pregnancy.  They will do it based on sincerity.  On the other side of the coin, you have the pro-lifers.  They, too, are sincere.  They will sincerely counsel a woman who is seeking an abortion not to go through with it.  They will sincerely tell her to save a life that she can do it and it is worth nine months of her life.  Everybody is being sincere but who is sincerely right.  Somebody is sincerely wrong.

Just for a second I want to give you an exercise to do.  Just look at yourself.  As I am looking at myself, you know what I am saying to myself?  I am glad that I am alive.  I am glad I am here.  And because I am here, someone 37 or 38 years ago saw to it that little Ed was protected.  And I am glad about that.  And if I had had a choice in the deal, if I had had some leverage, I would have said that I choose life over death any day of the week.  So I am alive.  I am fired up about it.  I am jazzed.  I am juiced.  I am here and so are you.

Doesn’t it seem logical, just to use elementary reasoning, to do the same thing?  That is why I firmly and lovingly seek to protect the right of developing children inside their mother’s wombs.  That is where I stand.  I say that in a love-driven and grace-fueled way.  We must stand up and we must do whatever it takes under the principles and precepts and authority of God’s word, to protect the lives of developing babies.

I am going to do something different for the remainder of this message.  I want to share with you how I came to my position.  I want to take you on this spiritual and intellectual and relational journey regarding why I am pro-life.  I will share several particulars.  The first particular that led me to my stance is my Christo-centric orientation.  You see, the moment that someone bows the knee and establishes a relationship with God through Christ something happens.  Suddenly everything is redirected and reoriented.  Suddenly you place the Bible as a priority in your life and you funnel everything, every decision, every thought, and every word through this grid, through this authority.  And things begin to change.  You begin to see that life has a huge and heavy and high price tag on it.  You begin to realize that each one of us is made in the image of God.  We are tailor-made and we have unique agendas and purposes that God has only for us.  That is a cool thing.  That is a great thing.  It causes us to thank God with our talent, with our time, with our resources.  We are made in the image of God.

One of the things about the Bible is that it tells us in painstaking detail that God has always been there.  Theologians call this concept the omnipresence of God, meaning that you can’t shake God.  You can’t shake Him, He is right there with you.  God was present during conception.  God was present as you developed in your mother’s womb.  God was present during birth.  God was present during the preschool years.  Yes, the terrible two years.  Yes, in junior and senior high school, yes in college, yes as an adult.  And for Christ-followers, He is present with us throughout eternity.  And God so loves you and me, ladies and gentlemen, that He commissioned His only Son to live and to die a sacrificial death and to rise again just so we could have life.

The Psalmist knew all about it.  In fact, the writer of this classic book of the Old Testament got so fired up about it that he penned these words in Psalm 139, beginning with verse 13.  “For you created my inmost being, you knit me…”  Notice the word me, not a product of conception, not a tissue mass, you knit me.   “…together in my mother’s womb.  I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.  Your works are wonderful.  I know that full well.  My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together…..”  This Hebrew word woven together suggests our veins and arteries.   “…in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body…”  This means in the original language, a fetus or embryo.  “…all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”  That is the kind of God we serve, a God who has been there, a God who places a high price tag on life.

All you have got to do is thumb through the Bible, just in a casual way.  The Old Testament is jammed with directives protecting life, protecting us from violence, protecting people from becoming victims.  And at the top of the list in the Old Testament is this directive that says, thou shalt not kill.  God is saying for one human being to take another human being’s life is a choice that we do not have.  Let me give you a quick advertisement.  Beginning the weekend of January 2 and 3, we will start the New Year with a series of talks I am fired up about called FIRST & 10.  We are calling it “Values for Victory”.  It is the ten priorities that will transform every life.  I am doing a series on the Ten Commandments.

So let’s say you looked at the Old Testament and realized that God is really serious about life.  Then you go to the New Testament, and Jesus, that revolutionary, that master teacher, says stuff like, love your enemies.  He says things like turn the other cheek.  Jesus said to defend the defenseless.  He said to protect the unprotected.  I ask you, whom did He describe in this camp.  He challenged Christ-followers to protect widows, orphans, the mentally challenged and the physically challenged.  But one question keeps haunting me.  What group has no voice, vetoing power, plank or platform?  What group can’t say a word?  What group has no choice?  Developing babies inside their mother’s wombs.  The powerful words of Christ are so penetrating in Matthew 25:40.  “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these, you did for me.”

Abortion, like racism and like homosexuality, is a sin that breaks the heart of God.  It is stunning when you realize that a woman makes a choice to have sexual intercourse with a man and then through abortion she will take any choice away from a developing baby.  It doesn’t make sense.  Somebody help me.  I don’t quite get it.  Yet in our secularized society, we have watered down all of the words.  I call it the semantics of sin.  We don’t call sin sin anymore.  It is kind of the S word.  It is not adultery; it is having an affair.  It is not homosexuality; it is the gay lifestyle.  It is not abortion, it is pro-choice.  It is not pre-marital sex; it is being sexually active.  I have got to tell you that my Christo-centric orientation is the big particular that has led me to my stance.  It has led me too lovingly and firmly, under the laws and principles of the Bible, to do what God wants me to do and that is to protect developing babies, developing children inside their mother’s wombs.

There is another particular and it is just the sheer amount of data that I have downloaded over the years on this topic, from a scientific framework and also from a rationalistic framework.  You know it is wild to think about the advances in research and technology.  It is incredible what we know now.  I went to the doctor a couple of months ago for my physical.  My physician was explaining to me about a new machine.  He said it was very expensive and that there were only a few of them in the world but that you could lie down dressed and that within ten minutes the machine could scan your entire body.  This machine can show you pictures, clear pictures, of what you look like.  It can show if you have a little tiny tumor or if you have some slight calcification in the arteries.  My doctor said that it could tell how many vitamins the person had swallowed that morning.  Can’t you imagine the technician saying, “Wow, Fred Flintstone.  There is Barney, I think.”

A couple of weeks ago I went to my high-tech dentist.  I had a filling that needed removal and replacement.  The technician said, “Mr. Young, you have the biggest mouth I have ever worked on!  There is so much room in there.”  Anyway, she put this machine in there and it started clicking.  I didn’t know what it was.  It wasn’t a drill.  After awhile, my dentist raised up my chair and told me to look to the left.  And I saw on a kind of side screen a before and after picture of my molar.  It was kind of like a tooth makeover right before your eyes.  Before, it was ugly, out of style, out of fashion, that silvery mercury-laden filling.  Now it was white.  Technology blows me away.  Well the technology that is available today was not available two decades ago.  What physicians and technicians can see now really takes them back.  They know now that a twelve-week-old fetus has facial expressions, arm and leg movement, thumb sucking.  We are talking about a developing child.  Eighty-five percent of women considering abortion will not go through with it if they are shown pictures of developing babies at the same stage as their developing child.

Would you take the life of a baby who is one hour old?  How about a day old?  How about a couple of weeks old?  Would you take the life of a baby an hour before it was to be born, a day, a couple of weeks before it were to be born.  You won’t hear this stuff from the political pundits and media spin-doctors out there trying to perpetuate their mentality.  Oh, no.  You will hear the language of confusion and illusion and oftentimes the language of intrusion.  I want to talk to you about this confusing language because it sounds so cool, so scientific, so with it, so right.  But when you dissect the terms, when you put them up against the backdrop of abortion, it is scary.

Have you heard this before?  Every woman has the right to choose what she wants to do with her own body.  That sounds all right.  Every woman, every woman?  There were 1.5 million abortions last year in the United States of America.  About one half of those aborted babies were female.  They were little girl babies, little women babies.  Seven hundred and fifty thousand dead female babies didn’t have a choice.  Don’t even go there.  It is illogical.  It doesn’t hold water.  Again we have got to go back to the language of illusion and confusion.  Her own body?  We are talking about pregnant women, correct?  We are talking about women who have developing babies housed in their uteruses.  We are not talking about one person; we are talking about two persons.  When you are pregnant, ladies, it is your body and another body.  You have got one set of brain waves.  The baby has another set of brain waves.  You have got one heart beat, the baby has another heart beat.  You have one skeletal structure; the baby has another skeletal structure.  So, if every woman has the right to choose what to do with her own body, it is not your body, it is the baby’s body.

Yet we just sit there, Americans, just totally numbed out.  “I believe it, Ted Koppel.  I believe it, Dan Rather.  I believe it, Wolf Blitzer.  CNN said it, I believe it.  Have you ever studied what those people believe?  Have you ever studied what most of them feel?  Have you ever studied their ideology, their educational background, their view of scripture, their view of God?  Have you ever done that?  It will shock you.  Now I am not saying that everybody in the media is that way, but a lot of them are.  They use the language of confusion and illusion.

Another term states that no one really knows when life begins.  We just don’t know, they say.   Well, biology students know.  I have a good friend who is an obstetrician.  He knows.  Definitely, pregnant women know.  In fact, the entire medical community will say that when the sperm meets the egg we are talking about life.  People know when life begins.

Where did we go wrong?  Where did the wheels fall off, when did we start to talk about human beings only as people who are seen?  I guess what we are saying is that when you can’t see someone, when you can’t see the baby, it is not a human being.  But when the child is born and you can see them, that means that they are a human being.  What is the difference between a little developing baby in a mother’s uterus compared to a little baby who has made an eight-inch journey down the birth canal?  What is the difference?  Eight inches?  Again, I wonder what has happened to us.

And then again, this week, I ran into a writer in USA Today, David Masceo.  He was talking about the 36 million abortions that have taken place in our country since 1973.  And here was his thesis for the entire full-page article.  If we hadn’t had abortion, if all of these babies had lived, talk about financial problems.  Our country would be in a tailspin.  Talk about crime, it would be horrible.  We won’t know what to do.  Talk about racial problems and tensions.  It would make today seem like nothing.  And this was an educated person.  Don’t you see how it devalues life, it cheapens our existence?  Don’t you see now how a lot of people today put the spotted owl and the anaconda and the brook trout on the same level as a human being?

Let’s have another one.  Every child should be a wanted child.  Now that sounds good.  If you are poor, if you have seven children and are living in a horrible part of town, you should not have another baby.  Every child should be a wanted child.  You don’t want that child to suffer.  OK.  You don’t want that child to suffer sounds OK.  So then we are going to kill the child to keep him or her from suffering.  Is that right?  Every child is a wanted child.  Those children who are unwanted are really up there for abuse.  But, read the data.  Since Rowe vs. Wade, child abuse has skyrocketed and we are talking about wanted children.

I will never forget what happened to me when I was on vacation two years ago.  I was in the Gulf area of Florida with my family.  I walked outside of the condo with a cup of coffee in my hand one morning.  I love the beach; I am a beach person.  I saw the sugar white beach and the turquoise water.  I was thinking about the trout leaping and the red fish running.  I saw the seagulls kind of hanging in the air.  But something stood out.  Something kind of rocked me in this picturesque scene, a bunch of ugly signs.  I walked up and read the signs.  One said, “Warning – breeding ground for the sea turtle.  Violators will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”  I am all for protecting the environment.  I am a big time fisherman and I always practice catch and release.  I pick up paper all the time.  And I believe that if you litter, you are committing cosmic treason before God, trashing God’s planet.  I love animals.  You know, I have dogs and cats and all that.  But let me get this right now.  We are throwing people in jail for disturbing the eggs of the green sea turtle, yet it is legal to take the life of a developing little boy or little girl?  It doesn’t make sense.

So, yes.  My Christo-centric orientation is a particular.  Yes, the sheer data that I have downloaded over the years is definitely a particular.  But there is one last particular.  The eyewitness account from women who have had abortions.  I have kind of a unique position in life because I have been exposed to thousands and thousands of people over the last ten years.  I have talked to a bunch of women who have had abortions.  If you have had an abortion, listen to me.  It is not the unpardonable, the unforgivable sin.  It is not.  There is a second chance.  There is a better way.  However, if you try to deal with it yourself, if you try to work it out with your own set of plans, you are going to live in a rut of regret for the rest of your life.  You will feel like life is caving in on you.  Come clean.  Call abortion what it is, a sin before God.  Confess it.  Take it to the cross.  Come clean with it and you can be cleansed and forgiven today, right now.

A couple of days ago this letter was in my mailbox.  I have permission to read it.  “My husband and I were a young self-centered married couple when we made the wrong decision to terminate a pregnancy because the time was not right.  After we became Christians, we asked and received God’s forgiveness and amazing grace.  I don’t think that we ever really forgave ourselves.  I heard a couple at the Fellowship Church give their testimony about a similar decision and it blew me away.  I thought that the secret was too dark and horrible to ever share out loud.  After the message that day I sobbed in the car.  It was not pleasant to look at an action so horrible in God’s eyes without being deeply affected.  Since that time I have selectively been able to share with others God’s healing in my life.  I recently shared with a group of women that were struggling with the guilt of their sin.  We read scripture and prayed together.  In another instance an unmarried woman was brought to me and I was able to tell her the real story of abortion.  It seemed like a quick fix for her but I told her that the repercussions would last for a lifetime.  I know there will be many, many women and men sitting in the auditorium who will be facing this sin in their life for the first time.  For many, it will be like unlocking the door to something they thought was tucked inside forever.  I will be praying for you as you bring the upcoming message.”

What a lesson.  If you want to talk to the lady who penned this letter, she wants to be available to discuss forgiveness, to discuss this sin with you.  There is another side.  If you call our church office on Monday morning we will get you together with her.  So, those ladies here who have had an abortion, it is not the unforgivable sin.

Let me talk to another group.  I know right now that we have some people who are thinking about abortion.  I have talked to you over the last couple of weeks and I know you are here.  Based on the particulars that I have shared with you, based on my relationship with God, I ask you not to do it.  It is not worth it.  First of all, it is not worth it because it is a sin before God.  The pain and guilt and alienation and separation aren’t worth it.  Don’t go through with it because it is a sin.

Number two; don’t go through with it because you are taking a life.  And on top of that, if you decide to have the baby, you are going to save a little boy or a little girl.  You are going to save someone who was tailor-made in the image of God.  You see, the adoption option is open and there are literally millions of men and women, husbands and wives, who have aching arms and aching hearts for a child.  They are infertile.  And if you do this for them, you can change the course of their existence and you can also save a life.  And who knows what that little boy or that little girl will become.

A close friend of Lisa and mine got pregnant before she was married.  This young lady faced abortion and adoption as alternative decisions.  She made a courageous move.  And a Christian couple took her in and when she had the baby she put him up for adoption and he is in a wonderful Christian home.  She, too, told me that she wanted to make herself available to anyone considering abortion.  So, if you are considering abortion, call the church office and we will put you in contact with her.  We want to help you.  We want to show you there is a whole other side out there.

The third group that I want to talk to about is made up of those of us here who loving and firmly seek to protect developing babies in their mother’s wombs.  I challenge you to get involved.  Write letters.  Become pro-active.  Maybe God will lead you to take in a woman who has decided to keep her baby, to save a life.  Maybe God will lead you in that realm.  And need I say anything about violence.  Don’t even go there.  Don’t become over zealous.

Fourth group has to be those here who are still pro-choice.  If you are pro-choice, we love you.  I love you.  Why?  Because you matter to God and because you matter to God, you matter to us.  But I think that you are off base biblically, intellectually and relationally.  I challenge you to study this issue with an open heart and an open mind.  I challenge you to really do the research.  Go to our bookstore after this service and we have a list of five or six books that you can study.  Study the Bible.  Talk to other people who have dealt with this issue.  Speak to women who have had an abortion.  Do those things and see what God does.

In a couple of days we are going to celebrate the defining moment in history, aren’t we?  We are going to celebrate the ultimate birth, that moment in time when God sent His only Son to be born of a virgin.  We will have this birthday party for Jesus.  I ask you, what if Mary, years ago because of the social stigma, because of peer pressure, had said that she would have an abortion.  What if Mary had made that choice?  I ask you, where would you be?  Where would you be?

What About God: Part 3 – What Can He Do?

WHAT ABOUT GOD SERMON SERIES

WHAT CAN HE DO?

ED YOUNG

JANUARY 22, 1995

You know, all of us are concerned at one level or another about the issue of power.  This past November we saw political power.  This generation has come in contact with the power of atomic energy.  We have also viewed the power of nature in fire, flood, and most recently, earthquakes.  Last Sunday afternoon at 3:00pm we saw the power of the San Francisco 49ers, didn’t we?

I am in my last week of a series called “What About God?”  We have learned in this series that there is no place in which God does not exist.  That is His omnipresence.  We have also learned that there is nothing that God does not know.  That is His omniscience.  Today we are going to find out there is nothing that God cannot do.  That is His omnipotence.  Omnipotence.  “Omni” means all; “potence” has to do with power.  God is all powerful.  Our God, the Bible claims, is all powerful.

Recently I was standing in my driveway at night and I was noticing how the spotlights were hitting the driveway and the kid’s basketball goal.  Suddenly out of the corner of my eye I see something dark emerge from the grass and begin to crawl across my driveway.  I look and there in my eyesight is a big, bad, gargantuan emperor beetle.  And this beetle, talk about tough, you could see his triceps and biceps flex as his little feet hit the pavement.  And this beetle was walking with an attitude.  “This is my driveway and this is my yard and I am going to walk where I please.”  So I stand in the beetle’s path and get down face-to-face with him and he kept on coming.  He didn’t bear to the left, to the right.  He just kept right after me.  I though, “You know what, this little beetle doesn’t know who he is messing with.”  He doesn’t know how powerful I am.  You see I am a human being; he is just a little beetle.  But in his little beetle-like brain he thought, “I am going to forge my own path, I am going to do my own thing.”  The beetle didn’t realize who he was messing with.     Oftentimes I have come face-to-face with God.  So have you.  And we have looked into the eyes of God and because we have a couple of letters after our name, because we have this degree or that degree, we think we know what true power is.  Yet we underestimate the omnipotence of God.  I have done it before.  And if you are honest with yourself, so have you.  “Is God really that powerful?” we say to ourselves.  Two Old Testament icons forgot the same thing.  Jeremiah, one afternoon, was singing the blues.  I am talking about he had a bad time happening in his life.  He found himself imprisoned, people were joking about him, making fun of him, he was feeling way, way, way low.  And he began to doubt the omnipotence of God.  Suddenly God interjects these words in Jeremiah 32:17, “Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh.  Is anything too difficult for Me?”  God was saying, “Hey J-man, you think just because I haven’t rescued you from prison that I have lost my punch, that My omnipotence isn’t quite as powerful as it used to be?  Come on J-man.  Remember nothing is too difficult for Me.”

Job.  Had a bad day, a bad week, a bad month, a bad year, a bad section of his life.  And he began to doubt the omnipotence of God.  And God does something else to communicate His omnipotence to him.  He kind of plays the game of Not So Trivial Pursuit with Job.  God says, “Job, category, history.  Where were you, Job, when I laid the foundations of the earth?  Next category, Job.  Sports and Leisure.  Job, have you ever on a Sunday afternoon kind of just played with lightening bolts?”  This game God is playing is covered in three whole chapters of the book of Job.  Finally, Job says, “I know, God, that You can do all things,” Job 42:2.  Job probably thought that God gets a little bit sensitive when a person doubts His omnipotence.  We forget, though, about the omnipotence of God.

I want to share with you four power-packed principles concerning the omnipotence of God that you should never forget, that I should never forget.  We go through large blocks of time in our lives when we feel weak, when we feel powerless, when we feel downtrodden and we need the energizing power of God in situations, in attitudes and in relationships.  Four power-packed principles regarding the omnipotence of God you need to never, ever forget.

Power-packed principle number one: God’s power is unlimited.  I’ll say it again.  God’s power is unlimited.  David said it best in Psalm 62:11,  “Power belongs to God.”  David was talking about unrestrained, indescribable, infinite power.  He is not just talking about raw power.  He is talking about true power.  It takes no more energy for God to create a universe than it does for him to create a mosquito.  God’s power is unlimited.  How much power does it take to speak a creation into being, to scatter stars in the sky, to stack mountains 20,000 feet in the air, to fill oceans, to separate the light from the dark?  How much power does that take?  Again, though, autonomous man, beetle-brained man has a tough time getting a handle on the omnipotence of God.  We have a tough time even understanding that God’s power is unlimited because we measure everything by our little humanistic, finite standards.

For example, I’m going to tell you something right now I have never told an audience in my life.  This is a true confession.  I want to have all of your attention.  I, that’s right, Pastor Ed Young, 33 years of age, 6’2”, 180 pounds, I can bench press 3,500 pounds.  I’m not laughing.  Secondly, I have a vertical jump of 70 inches.  Thirdly, I can hit a sandwedge 800 yards.  How many of you believe those claims.  No one?  Guess what.  All of you are wrong.  I am right and you are wrong.  You are too limited.  You are thinking about earth.  All I have to do for you to see those feats is to jump aboard a space ship and get dropped off on the moon.  You turn the television on, CNN, and there is Pastor Ed Young.  Wow.  Thirty-five hundred pounds he is bench pressing.  He is making a 70-inch vertical jump.  Look at him, in a space suit to boot.  Look at him.  And is that a sandwedge?  Swish.  One handed.

You see.  You forgot something.  The laws of gravity are different on the moon than they are on the earth.  Things change.  Why?  Because I am in a different realm, a different zone, another level.  That kind of gives us just an inkling of the power, the unlimited, the omnipotent power of God.  He is infinite.  He is on another level.  So when we go into these things and we study the attributes of God, we have got to think about Him in terms that we cannot describe.  We really can’t.  It is important to realize God’s power is unlimited.

But there is a second power-packed principle: God’s power is purposeful.  God’s power is purposeful.  I have some good friends who are bodybuilders.  And I admire anyone who is a bodybuilder because it takes discipline to diet, to exercise.  They spend hours and hours and hours training.  It is a true lifestyle.  If you ever engage a bodybuilder in conversation, though, here is what they will answer if you ask them what they do with their muscles.  “Well, I am a bodybuilder, Ed, and I train and I lift large amounts of weight and I watch my diet meticulously and I do all these things to win body building contests.”  “How do you win a contest?”  “Well, what you do is put oil on your body, shave your arms and legs and pose to music and you have got to have smooth transitions to the music and in the end, Ed, if you win in your weight class, you have a pose down.  You compare your muscles to others.”  But I ask, “What do you use your muscles for?”  The answer.  “For posing.”

God never uses His omnipotence just to pose.  He is not the cosmic bodybuilder trying to show you this and show you that just for grins.  God’s power always has a purpose.  And you can never detach—listen to me—you can never detach God’s omnipotence from His sovereignty.  With God it is never a question of His power, it is a question of matching His power with His will.  That is why the Lord said the night before He was crucified, “Not what I will but what You will.”  God’s will.  And we have to keep that in the forefront of our mind when we contemplate God’s omnipotence.

Parents, we can identify with this.  Oftentimes, your children want something.  Almost all the time, right?  Oftentimes, you decide in your power not to do a certain thing.  You will not to do a certain thing because you know what is best for them.  Yet they still cry, they whine, they complain, they frown and they speak a language (I just made this up) called “whineese.”  But you choose not to do something because you have that kind of power.  You know what is best for them.

God does the same thing in our lives.  He is omnipotent.  It is never a question, never, of His power.  But it is a question of matching His power with His will.  Power with His sovereignty.  And He chooses to do certain things and not to do certain things for His children because, remember, He knows what’s best.  Don’t forget it.  God’s power is purposeful.  I think that the fact that God’s power is unlimited and God’s power is purposeful deserves a kind of ovation.  Just for a couple of seconds.  All right, God, thank you.  That deserves a hand.  God is omnipotent, unlimited, purposeful power.

But I want to tell you something else for the remainder of this message that should cause all of us to give God a quick standing ovation. Let’s quickly just stand up, and for two seconds, let’s give God a standing ovation.  Ready?  Thank you.  Thank you very much.  Some of you are saying, “Why in the world did Ed do that in church?”  I’ll tell you why.  Not only is God all powerful but God has made the sovereign choice to share His power with weak individuals like you and like me.  And He doesn’t just want to share it, He is anxious to give it to us.  He can’t wait to see us use it.  He can’t wait to watch and see it change and revolutionize our lives.  God’s power is unlimited.  He wants to give it to you and to me.  And that brings us to the third power packed principle, deserving of the standing ovation principle.

God’s power is available.  Principle number three: God’s power is available.  The Bible tells us that it is available.  Isaiah 40:28-31, one of the best texts in the Bible.  Isaiah says, “Did you not know, have you not heard, the Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth.  He will not grow tired or weary and His understanding no one can fathom.  He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.  But those who hope upon the Lord will renew their strength (and check this out) they will soar on wings like eagles, they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”

God offers His power to you and to me.  And I have heard pastors and I have heard teachers say this: “God is omnipotent.  He wants to share His power with you.  His power will change your life.”  And I have thought, that’s true.  I have seen it in the Bible and I have taken notes on it.  I have gone to seminary and done some doctrinal work and things like that but I am saying to myself, “God, You are omnipotent, I believe that but I don’t know how much that omnipotence finds it’s way to earth in my life.”  How about you?  Have you ever thought that?  “Where is Your power, God.  I need it in this situation, God.”

What is the problem?  Many of us feel like we are victims of circumstances.  Maybe someone has passed over you and promoted another person instead of you and you deserved it.  Maybe you have lost that client.  Or maybe you have lost a job.  Maybe you are having severe marital problems at this moment.  You feel like you are a victim.  “I’m a victim, God.  I’m a victim.  I kind of feel like Jeremiah.  I kind of feel like Job.  You have kind of forgotten about me.”  We also can feel like we are victims of character flaws, behavioral patterns that we want to change, maybe something that never quite worked.  And we get so made at ourselves.

During the holidays you watch those Solaflex commercials and you think to yourself, I am going to look like that man or that woman.  I am going to get serious about it.  And so you go out and you join that health club, you subscribe to those fitness magazines, you even buy a juicer.  And you have all the work-out paraphernalia and now, the 22nd of January, you have forgotten where the health club is.  You have cancelled your subscriptions to the fitness magazines.  You use the juicer now as a trolling motor behind your bass boat and you don’t know where your work-out clothes are anymore.  You kick yourself and you hate yourself because it never seems to work.  It never seems to work.

Again we are back to this equation.  God is omnipotent.  The Bible says, Isaiah 40, He wants to share His omnipotence with you and with me.  What is the breakdown, what is the missing link, what is the problem?  Here it is.  Are you ready?  Faith.  Faith.  Faith.  Faith is the missing link that keeps God’s omnipotence from being released in our lives.  Faith.

What is faith?  Faith is acting like it is, even though it isn’t, so in order that it can be so.  Acting like it is so, even though it isn’t so, in order that it can be so.  As I read the Bible I am blown away time after time after time by the fact that the power of God is not released until someone takes that spiritual risk, until someone takes that step of faith, then they are energized with the power.

Moses—Exodus Chapter 14—he led the children of Israel out of bondage.  Hundreds of thousands of people following him.  There was a visible manifestation of God, a cloud that they followed.  They were walking along, Moses leading the pack, and suddenly this cloud was pointing them toward The Red Sea.  And I am sure that Moses is thinking, “What, God?  The Red Sea?”  What if you were about tenth in line?  You would be wondering, “What is he going to do next?”  And Moses was probably looking around, and not finding any jet skis, wondered how they were going to cross that sea.  The Egyptians are following closely behind and they are mad and tough and mean and bad.  The Bible says in Exodus 14 that God told them to move out, to wade in the water.  And Moses puts his size thirteen (I’m guessing now) sandal in the water and The Red Sea kind of laps up on his toes and suddenly as he takes that step of faith, as he acts like he is empowered, what happened?  The waters are separated and the children of Israel cross.

Joshua, Chapter 3.  In a similar scenario, he was leading some people and he sees the swollen Jordan River.  I know the Jordan River well because I baptized in the Jordan and the waters are frigid, let me tell you…COLD.  Joshua walked to the banks and God said, “Joshua, you and the people wade in the water, put your feet in the water.”  And they did.  They acted empowered.  They acted courageous.  Then God performed a miracle and they went after it and they crossed, miraculously, the Jordan River.  You see a step of faith is taken before the power of God is unleashed.  The power of God is available.

The fourth principle is this: The power of God is transformational.  The power of God is transformational.  Yes, great that I need faith and I understand faith and the definition of faith, but how does this work in my life.  How can this help a weak man or weak woman like me?  Remember God’s power is transformational.  The Bible says in Ephesians 6:10, “Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might.”  The Bible also says in Hebrews 11:1, “Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.”  Hebrews 11:6, “Without faith it is impossible to please God.”  2 Peter 1:3, “His divine power has given us everything we need for life.”  God’s power, though, is often withheld until we take a step of faith.

Let me explain.  This is an example that men can relate to.  You are coming home from work, in the car.  Driving along you feel low because it was a terrible, no good, horrible, bad day.  Everything has gone wrong and you know once your tires touch the driveway that your wife will want to talk to you.  Women do a much better job communicating their feelings than men.  But you don’t want to talk; you don’t want to hear it.  You know the kids will be asking you to play games with them, but you don’t feel like it.  You want to collapse and fall into that La-Z-boy, to watch Real Cops, to watch David Letterman and just relax and veg.  Have you ever felt that way before?  I have.

The Bible says we have a choice to make here.  The Bible says that we—Isaiah 40:28-13—should soar on wings like eagles.  “But, God, I feel like a wounded duck.  God, I feel like an injured quail.  I don’t feel like some eagle.”  We have a choice to make.  We can either act the way we are feeling or we decide to obey Isaiah 40, to never ever to forget that God’s power is unlimited, that God’s power is purposeful, that God’s power is available, that God’s power is transformational.  We decide to be like Moses and Joshua and we make a choice to take a step of faith and to act happy, to act positive, to act like we want to communicate with our wives, to act like we want to play Nintendo even when we don’t.  That is a step of faith.  Acting like it is so even though it isn’t so in order that it can be so.  And I am going to tell you something.  You take that step of faith, man, you take that step of faith, woman, and watch the power of God energize you.  Then you will begin to love what you are doing.

This past week I had a conversation with Pastor Owen Goff.  And Owen Goff, of all the people I have ever known in my life, is the best servant as defined in the Bible.  Talk about a selfless person, you get to know Pastor Owen Goff.  And I said “Owen, I want you to be straight with me, I want to ask you something.  When you see an opportunity to serve someone or when someone asks you to do something, do you ever way down deep say, ‘I just don’t feel like serving.’”

Now it took Owen a while to come up with this because I don’t think he thinks about it very much but he said, “Ah, yes, once or twice.”  So I asked him what he did when that happened.  He answered that when he feels like he doesn’t want to do something for someone, he just says, “Well I know I have this gift; I know God wants me to be selfless,” and I begin to act like a selfless person and then I begin to enjoy the activity.

Maybe you are a self-centered person.  Surely we don’t have any self-centered persons here do we?  And a situation happens and you want to be self-centered.  You want to position yourself.  You want to say the good things, to drop those names, to kind of flash this or do that.  When you have those feelings coming on, remember, God’s power is unlimited.  God’s power is purposeful.  God’s power is available.  God’s power is transformational.  “I am going to take a step of faith and I am going to act selfless, I am going to act humble.”  And watch the humility happen.

Maybe you say, well I am just not a peaceful person.  I like conflict.  You know you have conflict with a certain individual.  You hate to make eye contact with this person in the grocery store.  You kind of speed by their house.  You use liquid paper to white out their name from your Rolodex or whatever you use.  You know you have something to deal with, but you believe that you don’t have the courage or strength or the peace to do it.  Take a step of faith.  Act like you want to and watch the power of God take over.

People want to be generous.  Act generous.  Take a step of faith and give a generous gift to the church and then watch the generosity happen.  Or maybe self-discipline.  The most self-disciplined people I know are not people who have more discipline that I do or you do, it is just that they act disciplined and then God, by His grace, gives them the discipline.

The omnipotence of God.  God is all powerful.  He is all powerful.  I will conclude this message like I have concluded the other two.  When are we going to live like it?  When are we going to live like it?

What About God: Part 2 – What Does He Know?

WHAT ABOUT GOD SERMON SERIES

WHAT DOES HE KNOW?

ED YOUNG

JANUARY 15, 1995

Bryan Brooks was his name.  He sat in the first row of my second grade class in Taylor Elementary school in Greenville, South Carolina.  Bryan was the first know-it-all I ever met.  In fact, every time a teacher would ask a question, Bryan’s hand would be the first hand in the air.  He always seemed to know everything.  Even if he didn’t have a clue about a subject, he would kind of go on and on.  We all thought that Bryan Brooks knew everything.

The Bible says there is only one know-it-all in the universe and that is the great God whose attributes we have been studying in this brand new series “What About God.”  Today we are going to talk about the omniscience of God, the fact that God knows everything.  A couple of years ago a renowned theologian was asked this question: What in your opinion is the greatest need among church-going people?  The theologian responded by saying that the greatest need among church-going people was for them to understand the character of God.  He went on to say that if they really understood Who it was they were serving, it would change the very course of their lives.

This observer went on to ask the theologian yet another question.  What in your opinion is the greatest need of non-churched, irreligious people?  He responded by saying that the greatest need among the irreligious is for them to discover the true identity of God, for them to know Who it is they have been rebelling against, Who it is they have been warring against.  Because if they knew Who it was, that omniscient God out there, they would call a truce and get to know Him in a personal way.

Omniscience.  The omniscience of God.  The word “omni” means all; the word “science” refers to knowledge.  A definition is this: God’s perfect knowledge of all things both actual and potential.  So when you hear the word “omniscience,” think about God’s perfect knowledge of all things both actual and potential.  You can’t throw a surprise party for God.  God does not have to remember because He never forgets.  He doesn’t have to project into the future because He holds the future.  He has a categorical understanding of all the mysteries of geology, kinesiology, sociology, psychology, biology.  He knows it all.  He depends on no one outside of Himself for knowledge.  His knowledge is intrinsic.  It is built into the very fabric and framework of who God is.

Think about your life.  You spend a lot of time, a lot of energy, a lot of effort, a lot of faith banking on the fact that people outside you know information.  And you trust your life on that information.  You go to the doctor.  The doctor writes you a prescription.  You run to the pharmacist, the pharmacist fill the prescription.  And then you just swallow the pills.  I doubt that you look and read the credentials of the pharmacist.  You don’t take the medication and examine all the elements that make up the medicine.  You just take it.  You put your life in the hands of the pharmacist who knows more than you know.  God never, ever does that.  God knows because He is God.

I am so happy that God made Himself knowable.  I am so happy that God did not play cosmic hide and seek and leave clues about His character behind distant planets.  God tells us in His word that if we study His book, if we read it, we will receive a clear picture of who He is.  And over the last couple of weeks we have taken a little aspect of God’s character—last week the omnipresence, this week the omniscience—and we are painting a picture.  At the end of this series we will own a masterpiece that money cannot buy.  We will have developed a clear, pristine picture of God.  Sit back just for a couple of moments and listen to some fascinating scripture verses about the omniscience of God.

Hebrews 4:13 says, “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight.  Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of Him to Whom we must give an account.”

Matthew 10:29, “Not one sparrow will fall to the ground apart from the will of the Father.”  R. J. Lee said this: “God is the only one who attends the funeral of a sparrow.”

Matthew 10:30, “The very hairs on your head are numbered.”  For some of us that is an easy count.  This verse is not saying or implying that God sat back and said “Okay, there is one hair, Ed.  Oh, oh, there is a grey hair, Ed.  Four, five…one hundred thousand, one hundred thousand and one.”  God does not have to do that.  He knows because He is God.

Psalm 147:5, “His understanding has no limit.”  That is why in eternity when we will be with God, we will never run out of knowledge because we never run out of God.  Never.  Our God is omniscient.  He knows everything.

Psalm 139:1 says this, “Oh, Lord You have searched me and You know me.  You know when I sit and when I rise.”  You’re talking about mundane activities.  Don’t ever say, “Well God is not concerned about my little business transaction or this math exam coming up tomorrow.”  God knows when I sit and when I rise.

The Bible says, “You perceive, God, my thoughts from afar.  You discern my going out and my lying down.”  And a lot of you are saying, “This is amazing.  We serve a great God.  He is omniscient.  I might congratulate God.  I might applaud God.  This is phenomenal.  Let’s give God a trophy.”

Before you get into that let me do a quick time out.  I want you to turn to your neighbor before I read Psalm 139:3 and say this: “Buckle your seat belts, baby.”  Say it to your neighbor.  Okay, Psalm 139:3.  Are you ready?  “You are familiar with all of my ways.”  God is familiar with all of my ways.  This sinner’s ways.  My motivations, my inconsistencies.  God is familiar with all of my ways.  I love to talk about God being familiar with geology and anthropology and psychology and all the other –ologies. But when it gets personal, when His omniscience invades my being, my spirit, I kind of get hot under the collar.  I begin to kind of shift back and forth.  I want to change the subject.  God knows everything about me.

It is kind of like the story I heard this week about a wealthy grandfather.  The wealthy grandfather was going deaf and he decided to go to a doctor.  The doctor fit him with a hearing aid and assured him that the hearing aid would not only improve his hearing, but that he would actually be able to hear perfectly.  The wealthy grandfather was very pleased.  A month later he goes back to the doctor for another checkup and the doctor asked if his family was pleased with his new hearing aid.  The old man looked at the doctor and said, “Doc, I have not told them about the hearing aid.  I have just been sitting around listening to conversations.  In fact, Doc, I have changed my will twice now.”

When we think no one knows, our behavior is not affected.  And today the goal of this message from the word of God is to get you to understand and grasp the fact that God knows everything.  And because God knows everything, it should affect the way we act, walk, talk, and think.  Just think, you can walk out of the doors of this Arts Center a liberated and free person knowing about God’s omniscience.  And this can motivate you to be a better person.

I want to talk to you in the brief moments that remain about three aspects of God’s omniscience that you need to know.  First, God knows about all of my ways.  The first aspect of God’s omniscience, God knows about all of my ways.  He is intimately aware of all of my ways.  There is some good news about that and then there is some bad news about that.  Let’s first talk about the bad news.  Here is the bad news: God is familiar with all of my sin, sins I have committed in the past, sins I will commit today, and sins I will commit 15, 20, 40 years from now, if I eat properly.

In the fifth grade I fell in love with the sport of fishing.  My father was kind enough to take Ben and I down to K-Mart and buy us brand new rods and reels.  He bought one for Ben, he bought one for me, he bought one for himself.  He took us home and he showed us how to use the rod and reel in the little lake across the street from our house.  Then he tells me this: “Son, this is your Dad’s rod and reel.  You can use it any time you want to if you first ask me.  And I am going to put it here in the top of my closet so you will know where it is.”  For some reason he looked at me and not my brother.

Anyway.  About a month later a friend of mine comes over and my friend asks to go fishing.  I wanted to impress my friend and I said, “Hey, you’ve got one rod and reel, I’ve got two.  I’m like those professional fishermen you watch.  You wait here.”  So I run and climb up in my father’s closet and take the rod and reel out.  I come out of the house with two rod and reels.  I said, “Let’s go after the trophy bass.”  We go down to the lake.  We get in our Little John boat.  We were fishing with minnows, and I though I would be the master angler.  I put a minnow on my rod and reel and a minnow on my father’s rod and reel.  I put them in the boat and engaged in conversation with my friend.

All of a sudden I see the cork begin to bob, bob.  There isn’t a better sight is there, than that cork kind of going down.  Boom.  And I pick up my rod and reel.  Whoa!  A nice bass.  He is jumping.  And suddenly out of my peripheral vision I look and I see my father’s rod, with the speed of light hit the water.  We are at the deepest point of the lake—about 30 feet.  I watch it sink.  Gone.  I begin to freak out.  Oh, no.  This is bad.  And we kind of dragged the pond with hooks and lures.  We could not get it.  So I thought I would just neglect to tell him.  I just won’t tell him.  He doesn’t like to fish that much anyway and I don’t know, he will probably think that my brother messed around with it or something.  He will forget about it.

That night he comes home for dinner.  Every time he kind of looked toward the lake I though, “Oh no, here it goes.”  Weeks go by and I began to kind of perpetuate the sham by doing the Watergate thing and covering everything up.  I felt guilty.  But then I thought, no one knows.  My friend, he won’t say a word.  My brother doesn’t know.  I’m fine.

One day, though, I couldn’t take it any more, living with this guilt, and I walked in and said, “Dad, I want to tell you something.  I took your rod and reel and it is in the bottom of the lake.  I am sorry.  Will you forgive me?”  Dad started to kind of laugh at me.  He said, “Son, I knew that the rod and reel was gone and you took it.  I just wanted to see how long it would take for you to come clean.  I forgive you.”  And he hugged me.  He said, “Don’t worry about it.  Just ask me the next time.”

How many of you right now are in that same predicament, that same situation, but dealing with another sin.  You think that no one knows, no one saw.  You are trying to cover it up.  You are trying to cover your tracks.  You are trying to explain it away, but you know the guilt is there.  It could be a big thing or a little thing.  You know the sin is there.  You can leave this place free, liberated, the way I felt when I walked out of the den having talked to my father.  He was off my back.  The Lord wants you to confess that sin, that rebellion to Him, to come clean.  Won’t you do it?

The bad news is, God knows about your sins.  The good news is, He is ready to forgive you.  He even knows you are going to sin.  He knows about your sin better than you do, yet He wants to forgive you.  The plot thickens, though.  Luke 22:31, here is what Jesus said one day to Peter.  You know Simon Peter.  You’re talking about a big time fisherman.  That was Simon Peter.  This man was something else.  He said to Simon Peter during the last supper, “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith might not fail.  And when you have turned back, strengthen your brother.”  In the next verse Peter replies something like this,  “You’ve got the wrong men.  I am your man.  I am The man.  I will die with you.  I will go to prison with you.”  And Jesus looks at him and predicts that in the next several hours Peter will deny that he ever knew Him.  And Peter did.  He denied Jesus.

Have you ever wondered what Jesus is doing right now for you and for me?  What is Jesus doing?  You know what He is doing?  He is doing exactly what He told Peter He was doing in Luke 22:31.  Praying.  Jesus is praying for Ed in heaven right now.  Jesus is praying for Lisa in heaven right now.  Jesus is praying for Bill in heaven right now.  Jesus is.  Hebrews 7:25, “Therefore He is able to save completely those who come to God through Him because he always lives to intercede for them.”  I don’t know about you but that fires me up.  Jesus in His omniscience is praying for me in heaven, even though He knows Ed Young will mess up, fumble the ball, rebel against God.  He is still praying for me because he wants to keep me from doing as much wrong as possible.  And he wants to forgive me and to love me and to extend His grace to me.  John 21, Jesus forgave and restored Peter.  Even in His omniscience in Luke 22, He knew he would fall, but He still restored him.  And look what happened to the life of Peter.  God knows about all of my ways.

Secondly, God also knows about all of my wounds.  If you think about your life physically, if you live on the planet for very long, you are going to get physical wounds, little nicks and scrapes and cuts.  You live relationally and you are going to get wounded—maybe by your parents, maybe by your spouse, maybe by a wayward child, maybe by some friends.  I don’t know.  God, though, in His omniscience, He knows your wounds.  He is familiar with your ways, but He also knows your wounds.  Here is what the Bible says in Psalm 56:8: “The Lord has taken account of my life.”  God knows my life.  He has searched me.  He knows every wound that I deal with.

Have you ever gotten into a situation where you are trying to communicate with someone and you just are not communicating?  You feel misunderstood.  That is a frustrating feeling, isn’t it?  I hate doing that.  God says, “Don’t worry about that.  I understand in My omniscience.”  Have you ever had a dashed dream or maybe a business failure?  Or maybe you have gone through a divorce.  Or maybe you have gone through a relationship that was so intimate and suddenly it was ripped apart.  And you have shed tears alone.  Have you ever done that before?  I have experienced that.  I have cried by myself.  And I say, “No body knows, my tears will fall aimlessly here to the ground.”  Let me continue reading Psalm 56:8, “The Lord has taken account of my life.  (Put your name in there, Ed’s life, or Lisa’s life or Jill’s life or Bill’s life) and has put my tears in a bottle.”

God has put my tears in a bottle.  I have never shed a tear that has dropped aimlessly to the ground.  And there is a little bottle somewhere that says “Ed’s Tears” and God has caught every one.  He knows.  God knows in His omniscience.

Isaiah 65:24, “Before they will call I will answer, while they are still speaking, I will hear.”  I have done this before.  I have prayed to God but just didn’t know what to say to Him.  “I cannot articulate the phrases, God.  I can’t express myself.  I cannot really connect with you.”  We have all felt that way before.  I have also wondered how God could concern Himself with my needs when He is trying to concern Himself with the needs of billions around the world.  In God’s omniscience, it is like He is hearing just my prayer or just your prayer.  And even when we don’t know what to say, the Bible assures us that before we ask, God will answer.  God knows about your wounds.

The third aspect of God’s omniscience, God also knows about your secret works.  I am talking about good works you do in private, behind the scenes, incognito.  Do you ever get tired of doing things that are kind of good and righteous but no one really sees them?  Am I the only one who gets weary in well doing?  That patient spouse.  That nice parent.  That person who extends his hand to the poor.  I like to do that, but between you and me, I like it better when people can see it, you know.  Don’t you?  And sometimes we say, “What’s the use.  No one sees, I can just do nothing.”  The Bible says, God sees.  And men, it seems that we fall into this trap more than women.  We need to be congratulated.  The heavy hand on the back or the little kiss.  “Yea, I’m a man.  I did that act of service.”

This past week as I was preparing this message my wife was kind enough to bring lunch to my office Thursday.  Thursday is usually the day when I study from sun-up to sundown.  I broke for lunch and we were eating in my office.  And I said, “Lisa, did you look at the bed this morning?”  The second day in a row I made the bed up.  Here I was studying about this stuff and I couldn’t stand it.  I had to have her approval.  Men, especially men, I want to give you a verse that you need to take home.  Matthew 6:4, “Our Father Who sees in secret will repay.”  God is a cosmic observer.  Think about your life as a theater and the theater is empty except for God.  When God looks at the secret acts of service, when God sees my good works behind the scenes, when He sees me bite my tongue instead of perpetuating the rumor, when He sees me give that sacrificial gift to the church, He is saying, “Ed, I see it.  Hey, my child, I see it.  Bravo.  That is the way a person who knows Me should act.  I am watching and I am going to repay you one day.  Great.  You are doing well.  You are doing wonderfully.”  The omniscience of God.  His all-knowingness.

I will conclude today’s message the way I concluded last week’s message.  Last week I said that God is everywhere.  I talked about the omnipresence of God.  This week I’ve talked about the omniscience of God.  God knows everything.  God knows everything.  God knows everything.  When are you going to live like it?

Elijah: A Man For All Seasons

Elijah is indeed a man for all seasons. We will see him in high places speaking authoritatively for God, and sometimes you will identify with Elijah in dark depression when the bottom falls out of his life as he gives in to despair, hopelessness, and helplessness.

We’ll see Elijah when he demonstrates great courage and we’ll see Elijah running for his life. He is a man for all seasons. In this series, Dr. Ed Young takes an in-depth look at the life of Elijah. By studying his character, we will be inspired to walk in this world in a God-driven perspective.