10-10-10

I am going to continue on in Zechariah 8 today. I know the concept of the believing church and believing Israel being the same thing in scripture is new to a lot of us. I want to read a passage out of the New Testament to remind us that that is true. It is from the book of Revelation chapter 21: Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea. 2And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. 3And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, "Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, 4and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away." 5And He who sits on the throne said, "Behold, I am making all things new " And He said, "Write, for these words are faithful and true." 6Then He said to me, "It is done I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of the water of life without cost. 7"He who overcomes will inherit these things, and I will be his God and he will be My son. 8"But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death." 9Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and spoke with me, saying, "Come here, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb." 10And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me the holy city, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, 11having the glory of God Her brilliance was like a very costly stone, as a stone of crystal-clear jasper.

What a glorious passage. We see there that the bride of Christ is the New Jerusalem. There is one people of God and they are all those who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ from every tribe nation and tongue. Your nationality is of no importance in being a part of the chosen people. If you are an Israelite and an unbeliever you will end up in hell just like all the other unbelievers only with a stricter judgment because you were brought near to the things of God and you still rejected God. A heart of unbelief will cause you to lose the salvation that you thought you had. The same is true for people who call themselves Christians. If you say you’re a Christian but you live like an unbeliever your actions reveal the condition of your heart and you will receive a stricter judgment on the last day than someone who didn’t have access to the word of God the way you did.

This is what the passage in Hebrew 6 means when it says: in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, 5and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, 6and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance, since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God and put Him to open shame. 7For ground that drinks the rain which often falls on it and brings forth vegetation useful to those for whose sake it is also tilled, receives a blessing from God; 8but if it yields thorns and thistles, it is worthless and close to being cursed, and it ends up being burned.

If you are raised in the church or even if you are raised a Jew you are being rained on everyday by the word of God. Life is near to you, so near you can taste it but if you refuse to humble yourself before God then no matter how close you are to it you are still dead. Grace is there right next to you but you fall away from it instead of towards it. That is a sad thing.
My point is that there is one people of God –those who humble themselves before their Lord regardless of race, nationality or color. If you are humbling your heart before God then you are a part of the chosen nation. You are the beloved of the Lord and he loves no one else more than he loves you.

I say all of that because in these Old Testament passages it is easy to forget that the scripture is talking about those who believe and not just a nation of people.
So when we read in chapter 8 starting with verse 7: "Thus says the LORD of hosts, 'Behold, I am going to save My people from the land of the east and from the land of the west.’ We must remember that he is talking about the church throughout all of history. God is saving a people for himself from every nation, tribe and tongue. We must remember to think like that as we read the rest of the passage. Verse 8 says: and I will bring them back and they will live in the midst of Jerusalem; and they shall be My people, and I will be their God in truth and righteousness.'

Now given the way we have been taught, from a New Testament only perspective, it is easy to lose a biblical perspective here. We see the word Jerusalem and we immediately think of the Middle East. But that is not what this passage is talking about. God says he will gather his people back to himself and they will live in Jerusalem, the new Jerusalem, the body of Christ. God is gathering one people to himself from all the peoples of the land to be his Son’s bride. He only has one people and that people includes everyone that he gathers from every corner of the earth. All who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and his redemptive work are Israel regardless of where they are from. All those who do not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ are not Israel regardless of their heritage.

That is important because it affects the way we see God working in the world. God is not on the side of unbelievers even if they are from the physical heritage of Israel. The new covenant has changed everything.

Zechariah continues on in verse 9:"Thus says the LORD of hosts, 'Let your hands be strong, you who are listening in these days to these words from the mouth of the prophets, those who spoke in the day that the foundation of the house of the LORD of hosts was laid, to the end that the temple might be built.

I too want to encourage you to be strong. God is laying a foundation for his people right here in our midst. He has begun to grow something that is going to impact our communities and more importantly our families. I know way too often I have very little faith when it comes to God actually doing something in my family. I know those people all too well. I changed their diapers; I know their weaknesses to a fault. I tend to think that they are too messed up for God to do anything about.

Maybe you don’t think that way, I don’t know. But sometimes to me it feels like we have been working all these years raising kids and we haven’t gotten paid for it. We did all that work and this is what we get? What’s up with that? I thought children were supposed to be a blessing right?

Don’t let yourself get caught up in that unbelief. Maybe you’re Isaac and you have a lying, cheating, deceiving son named Jacob. No offense Jake. Don’t take it personally. Do you just give up hope on him when he leaves home and goes onto live his own life or do you trust God is big enough to change that idiot into a man of God named Israel? Don’t let the now take your focus off the bigness of God. God can change anyone at anytime. All you have to do is look around this room to see that. God specializes in saving messes. If there’s hope for me there’s hope for us all. That is the glorious thing about God being sovereign; there is nobody too messed up for God to save.

Our call is to pray, and pray and then pray some more because things are not going to change until we refuse to stop knocking on the door. Until we get persistent in crying out for mercy so persistent that God will act just to shut us up. How many of you want to see your kids changed that badly? It’s one thing to moan and complain about the way God is treating you. It is another thing altogether to pray the effectual prayer of a righteous person until the clouds bring rain. I’m talking to myself as much as anyone. How long until I begin to pester God with my petitions?
We have been and we may still be in the days when there is no wage for man or animal, there is no peace but I believe that time may be coming to an end amongst us. God doesn’t necessarily move on a people all at once. For instance, the economic crash of 2008 affected a lot of people but it didn’t affect everyone. My economic crash took place from 2004 to 2005. I have been in recovery since august of 2005. I’m just now getting back on my feet from that down turn in my economy. David and Anna are still trying to recover from the twenty minutes that severely changed there economic outlook. Jimmy and Rosie, Jim and Carla, Jeff and Tammy, have all been experiencing economic turmoil or at least loss of income. So we are familiar with it. In this passage, however, I don’t think that God is talking about monetary gain.
I mean we are coming to the end of one of the most financially prosperous times in the history of the world but what we are beginning to see is that it is and was an age that has paid us in covenant curses and not blessings. Our prosperity tested our hearts and revealed their true condition. We have been given great monetary gain and as a result have shown ourselves to be poor because we ended up saying: Look at the wealth that our hands have made. We failed the test. Just like God said would happen in Deuteronomy.

The result is a lack of wages or if we have been paid it is the wages of sin - death, there is no peace and all men are set against one another. Sure people cry for peace but there is none. There will be no peace until we soften our hearts and bow before the one and only king of all.
I find it amazing that here in our midst hearts are softening, people are changing that can only mean one thing – God is moving in our midst. God is beginning to treat us differently just as he says starting in verse 11: 'But now I will not treat the remnant of this people as in the former days,' declares the LORD of hosts. 12'For there will be peace for the seed: the vine will yield its fruit, the land will yield its produce and the heavens will give their dew; and I will cause the remnant of this people to inherit all these things. 13'It will come about that just as you were a curse among the nations, O house of Judah and house of Israel, so I will save you that you may become a blessing Do not fear; let your hands be strong.' 14"For thus says the LORD of hosts, 'Just as I purposed to do harm to you when your fathers provoked Me to wrath,' says the LORD of hosts, 'and I have not relented, 15so I have again purposed in these days to do good to Jerusalem and to the house of Judah Do not fear!
I believe with all my heart that God has purposed to do good to us here at Immanuel Baptist and wherever else he is moving on people’s hearts to open them up to his whole word. God put a calling on my life a long, long time ago. It is a picture of the church impacting the world in a mighty way. It is the picture of a strong and powerful people of God who have great discernment in how to live godly lives in the midst of the world. It is a picture of the people of God leading the communities they live in toward godliness. It is a picture of God turning the church from being a laughing stock to a place where peace flows from; and out of that peace a prosperity begins to grow that is founded upon walking in righteousness. I see that day in our future. I don’t know if it will be in our life times but I know in my heart that we are laying the foundation for that right now. We are preparing the ground for the next generation. Yes, I realize that the next generation doesn’t really give a flip about what we are doing here. Jacob isn’t Israel yet; but he will be.

I’m not talking about changing the world; I’m talking about changing our community. If you look at the great commission, in conjunction with Acts chapter one, we are told that: All authority has been given to Jesus over heaven and earth. Because of that authority we are then told to go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to do all that Jesus and therefore God has commanded us to do.

In Acts 1 Jesus give us some clarification on the going into all the world part of the great commission. He says: but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.

I want you to think about these things in a new way. Our call in the great commission is not to get people to make a profession of faith. Look at what it says: Our call is to disciple the nations so that they do the commandments of God.

When you look at the great commission from that perspective and you look at the world and even the church you can begin to get a better understanding of just how badly we have ignored these commands of Jesus. The church itself wants nothing to do with the commands of God we don’t even need to look at the world.

I believe with all my heart that God has called us to begin to disciple the nations right here in our own communities. I mentioned this last Sunday night in a different context and somebody said half jokingly, not Portland, maybe Whitehouse or, Franklin but not Portland.
Maybe Portland is the end of the earth in some people’s minds but it is our end of the earth. It is where God has placed us for such a time as this. I know the giants are big in the land here. I know that just like in our families we know the junk that goes on here too well. We are very familiar with the giants in the land and we don’t think that they can ever be overcome.
Brothers and sisters God has called us to this community to teach it to do the commands of God. Zechariah tells us in verse 16 that we are to do this by doing the following: speak the truth to one another; judge with truth and righteousness for peace in your gates. 17'Also let none of you devise evil in your heart against another, and do not love perjury; for all these are what I hate,' declares the LORD."

Do we believe that God is strong enough to allow us to begin to judge with truth and righteousness within the city limits of Portland? Do we think that God is big enough and strong enough to take power away from the ungodly and give it to us? Do we think that God is strong enough to bring peace between the races and the classes?

From another perspective, how long will it take for God to make us worthy to lead the community? How long until God stirs up our hearts to begin to take the economic, racial, educational, political, agricultural situations of Portland into our own hands and begin to let God develop it for his glory? I want you to understand that the economy of our communities is not dependent upon our state government or our federal government, or even on people with money and power – or economy is determined by the living God. The things that we can think of to build in order to supply needs are not limited by science or what we currently have. God made everything that is out of nothing but his words. Surely he can once again speak and in doing so lead us to develop new ways of doing things that have never been thought of by puny human brains before.

We have listened to lies for too long. We have been beat down to the point where we think that abuse is the way life is supposed to be. We have been in bondage for so long that we think we are supposed to wear these chains like jewelry. We have been ruled by unbelief both in the church and in the world for so long that we don’t think God is strong enough to really do anything in this world.

I’m here to tell you today that it is time to stop listening to lies and start believing the word of God. God has started moving in our midst. He is changing us. It may seem to be small and insignificant. But was God delivering you from death into life a little thing? Did God soften your hard heart so that you would fall in love with him? If so then he can do anything he wants and he wants to use us, me and you to disciple the nation of Portland and Franklin, and Whitehouse.
I believe that God is going to use us here at Immanuel to disciple the land for sixty miles in every direction. I believe that if we continue to press on into the things of God; if we stay humble before God and walk in his ways then he will give us peace in our seed. Things will start to grow. Godliness will begin to increase. The wicked will flee because of the fear of the Lord. I believe the times of fasting are going to be turned into times of feasting, not eating just to eat but eating together in the joy of the Lord. The communion meal will be a glorious time of celebration; of joy, gladness, and a cheerful feast for the body of Christ; because we will see God moving in new and mighty ways and we will be learning to love truth and peace. I believe that the time is coming when just as it says in verse 20 people will come to us from many other cities saying let us go seek the favor of the Lord; and they will come here to find it. They will come here from all over and beg to go with us because they have heard that God is with us.
I know some of you are probably thinking what has he been drinking this morning? He’s out of his mind. Maybe I am, I don’t know. I don’t have any physical evidence to prove any of this. I just know that this picture of the church has been growing and developing in my head for a long, long time and this is the first time I’ve ever let it out. I decided to take a risk and give you a bit of the vision that I have for Immanuel. It is not a little vision. It is not an easy vision. But it is a vision that I believe encompasses the whole word of God. I believe this is the true context of the great commission.

The question is: are we willing to pester God in prayer enough that he begins to do this in our midst, in our communities? I will go so far as to say this is our only hope. Change has to begin with us. It can’t begin out there somewhere. We can’t expect the gospel to change others if we won’t let it change us. We can’t expect our nation to change if we won’t let God change our communities.

Like Joshua said before they went into the promised land: We need to choose this day, today, who we will serve: a tiny God that doesn’t do anything in this life except give us a ticket to heaven or a big God who rules economies and governments and every area of life. The God of scripture is a big God, bigger than you can even begin to imagine. May he give us the grace to serve him with our whole lives.

Let’s pray. Father, give us the grace to believe in you, the real you, the powerful you and not only to believe but to live out that belief in every area of life. In Jesus name I ask this amen.

Hear the word of the Lord: If my people who are called by my name will HUMBLE themselves and PRAY and SEEK and TURN from their wicked ways THEN I will HEAR from heaven Forgive their sin and HEAL their land.

Go in peace