DEC 28 2014

Sea Change Church · December 28, 2014
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Lord Jesus, we just want your name, your person, your love, your grace to be glorified in this time of your word. So we ask that your word go forth. In Jesus' name, amen. I call this message, if you look at your outline there, The Way to Escape, referring to 1 Corinthians 10, 13, in which Paul mentions that God will, with the temptation, give a way of escape.

But we have to work up to that to see how it is that we can escape from the temptations that are put before us. And going back to the fast and looking at what we're trying to do in this fast, what we're trying to do is not so much get rid of the sin in our life, but get rid of the sin in our life because we're after getting closer and closer in a dynamic relationship of love with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

And we want to get rid of, there's a scripture there, it's from Hebrews 12, it says, no, we want to be freed of the sin which so easily besets us to run with patience the race that's set before us. That we might attain to the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. And that prize is described in the book of Revelation as the city, the new Jerusalem that comes down from heaven.

And if you read the descriptions of that city, it says that that city is filled with the glory of God. And that there's no need for the sun to be in that city because the Lamb is the light thereof. And that's the place where the curse, there is no more curse. Every tear is wiped away. All wounds and traumas are healed. Where the very presence of the Lord is light and joy and joy unspeakable and full of glory.

That's what we're really after at this time. But it's interesting to note that there are things that exclude from the holy city. There's a couple of verses that say that certain types of characteristics and people are outside of that city. And the one is that says that outside, outside of that city are dogs and sorcerers and murderers and idolaters.

And whatsoever loveth and maketh a lie. And so what we want to do is look at ourselves and say, I don't want to have anything in me that would keep me from that holy city. Amen? I just want everything that has any pollution of flesh or spirit, I want that outside. I want to be able to enter into that city where the glory of God is and where the Lamb is the light thereof.

And so that's really the purpose for the fasting. That's the purpose for our whole walk with the Lord. It's to be so able, so freed of those burdens of sin that so easily beset us that we can run the race. You know, there's a difference between a prize, a gift and a prize. And Paul, he had the gift of eternal life, but he was after also the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

He was willing to run that race. He said, I haven't yet, I don't think I've even attained to it yet, but one thing I do, forgetting the things past, I press on for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Or do we have that spirit that's there as well? So, anyway, as we look at this verse here that outside the city are the dogs and the sorcerers and so forth, I wanted to pay attention just to the word sorcerer.

I printed up an article years ago because it was interesting. I was interested in that word sorcerers. And somehow it got put in the bottom of a pile of papers and never read it until recently. But as I studied that, it's fascinating that you say to yourself probably as you look at that verse, Well, Elliot, you know, there's some problems with me in the inner United States, but sorcery is not one of them.

Okay? Long ago, I got rid of my magic wand and wizard's cloak. I don't have any problem with that. Okay? So I could check that one off the list. The word is very interesting, and it's not exactly that simple. The word for sorcerer is pharmacos. We get the word pharmacy from it because sorcerers in the ancient world would use magic potions and so on as part of their magic arts to try to accomplish their ends.

But also the word sorcerer, that word pharmacos is a word that speaks of a scapegoat because one of the things that a person would go to a sorcerer for was because he was suffering misfortune. And the sorcerer would say, Well, there's a reason that you're suffering this misfortune. Or a city would hire a sorcerer or whatever, and the sorcerer or the pagan priest at that time would say, There's a reason we're suffering this famine or this pestilence, is that we need to attach the misfortune to a victim.

And we have to create a scapegoat here and send that scapegoat out or execute him or whatever it might be. The whole word sorcerer speaks of kind of the spirit of victimization that I'm going to, and in this person, the sorcery is attaching my misfortune or my unfortunate circumstances to what they did to me. Sorcery has to do with bitterness, lack of forgiveness, resentment, and that consuming or remaining of part of the person that is there.

And the Lord says that in this new Jerusalem, there will be no spirit of victimization. Why? Because Jesus was the scapegoat. Amen? If you want to talk about blame, he took our blame. He took your blame. He took the blame of everything, anyone you can think about. And so the whole issue of blame is done with on Calvary. Amen? So he says, outside of this city are people who are consumed by resentment, bitterness, and blame.

And so he says, that's just not part of the holy city of New Jerusalem. And I think that that's part of what we wanted to look at here. There's this quote by C.S. Lewis. Did you get that up there, Whitney? I thought this was really interesting in this book, The Great Divorce. He says, Milton, this is from C.S. Lewis' book, The Great Divorce. He says, Milton was right, said my teacher, the choice of every lost soul can be expressed in the words, better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.

There is always something they insist on keeping even at the price of misery. There is always something they prefer to joy, and that is to reality. Joy is reality in the new Jerusalem, you see. Sometimes we want to hold on to our misery, the case for our identity. This is why this has happened to me. But Jesus is the great healer, isn't he? And so his grace is sufficient, as he said to Paul there.

Psalm 45 is an interesting psalm. It's a story of a royal wedding. But it says that the bridegroom beholds the bride coming, and she is all glorious within. That's the way the King James renders it. Literally, that's what it says there. This is what the Lord says of his bride. He said, when this bride comes into the bridegroom, that she is really all glorious within.

That everything within her is all pure and holy and desires only him. The King's daughter is all glorious within. I performed a wedding a few months ago up in North County. And the bride came, and she had a lovely wedding dress on. But I made the point to the people, as far as my message was concerned, that really the beautiful bride, the bride's wedding dress, really is a symbol of what's really within the bride.

Amen. And she is coming down the aisle, and she has eyes only for her beloved. He is the lovely one. But all the eyes of the congregation are upon her, of course, and they're seeing this purity of desire to be wedded to the bridegroom that stands in front. Now, he was dressed nicely. He was handsome and so forth, except for the sandals and so on.

But nobody's paying too much attention. She's paying attention to him, but everybody's paying attention to the bride. She's all glorious within. That's really what the spirit that God wants us to have. You know, the holy city is called. Well, the angel comes to John, and he says, I'll show you the bride, the lamb's wife. And he takes, so he takes John to, and he shows him what?

He shows him the holy city, right? So the city and the bride are one there. And so he's showing, this is what this holy city is like. It's like a bride, all filled with nothing but a desire for her beloved. And if that desire for the beloved isn't what fills us, we need to ask that through this fast or just daily, Lord Jesus, anything that's not worthy of being in that holy city, just take out of me, please.

Do whatever you have to do, because I want to be like that bride approaching her bridegroom. So, you know, no matter what we go through, I said here on letter D on your outline, Moses is stuttered. Really, he wasn't stuttering. That's the way the movie is presented. But he said, Moses said to the Lord, don't send me, Lord. I'm slow of speech. I'm heavy of lip, literally.

You know, I don't know what, you don't want me. But God called him. And what was God's reply to Moses? What did he say? Hey, Moses, who made man's lips? I know what I was doing when I made you, and I know what I'm doing when I'm calling you. And we have this tendency, going back to that word sorcery, we're talking about victimization. We always want to blame.

I'm this way, or this is the misfortune that's happened to me because of what they did to me or whatever it might be. I don't know what the roots of stuttering is or what Moses' problem was, the pain and suffering he has because he was, you know, his background or whatever it might have been. But God knew what he was doing when he called him. And so we have to look at ourselves and say, no matter what it is, I'm not going to enter, I'm not going to give excuses for who I am or what my failures are or what my faults are.

I'm going to say, Lord, if you call me, I'm going to say, here I am, send me. Amen. You know, Johanna and I and Catherine were at the nursing home recently, just last Christmas Day, I guess, singing some Christmas songs and so on. And Johanna asked me to share a little bit, a little story or something for the people there. These are people mostly with Alzheimer's and dementia and so forth, but I try my best to get through.

But I found a little story I thought was interesting, a little hesitant to present it because of the conclusion, but you'll bear with that, I hope. But there was a man who was only five foot tall, and he was always, when he grew up, he was only five foot tall, and he was really small growing up, and his friends, people at school always made fun of him and so forth, and he really had a miserable childhood because he was always so short.

But eventually he grew up and became a copy editor at Montgomery Ward, writing in their catalogs and so forth. And he married, and he had a little daughter. And this daughter, well, had a little daughter, but his wife became sick and became bedridden for many years. Eventually that's the daughter. Some Christmas, during Christmas season, the daughter climbed up into her father's lap and said, Father, or Daddy, why can't my mother, why can't Mommy be like other Mommies?

Because Mommy was always bedridden and so on. And that immediately brought back the memory to the man, to the husband about his childhood, how he was always made fun of. Why can't I be like other children? Why can't I be big and tall and strong? And so, but he, to comfort his daughter, he's like, how do I do this? He started to make up a story, about a story about someone else who was made fun of, but who came through, all right?

And eventually he wrote this story down as a poem. And he read the poem at the Montgomery Ward Christmas party for a couple of years, and it really became very popular. Eventually the president heard about it, and they started to attach this poem to all, put this poem with all the customers' goods when they bought Christmas presents or something like that.

And ultimately the poem became very, very famous. In fact, Gene Autry put it to music back in the 1950s, and you know it today as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Now, I have a lot of problems with the theology behind Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. It's not something we usually sing in church or anything like that, but nevertheless the background was that he was not, by the way, he became very, very wealthy because of that one little poem, okay?

Something as a consequence you can look forward to, all right? But the point is we don't want to have that spirit of sorcery, that spirit of blame, that spirit of being a victim. Those who are constantly saying I was a victim are not brought into the holy city. Section Roman numeral 2 on that, it brings us to the place of what is brought into that city, those who are pure like the bride in their love.

And I brought out that verse that we all know. It says, Be ye therefore perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. And I ask a question for letter B there. Many know that verse. Most of us can quote that verse, but few of us know the context. Maybe some of you read ahead and say, Okay, I'm going to show him. But really, and now there's a lot of controversy on this verse.

What does perfect mean? And is it imperative or is it declarative? And so on there. But I'm not going to get into any of that. Let's just call perfection perfection for the sake of the argument here. What is he talking about there when Jesus says the last verse of chapter 5, there's three chapters make up the Sermon on the Mount. This is the last verse of the first chapter there.

Be ye therefore perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. And we say, Well, nobody's perfect and so forth. But what is the context of that verse? The context of that verse is hopefully shown on the screen there. If you can get back there to the whole context there, verse 44 or whatever it is. Jesus says, You have heard it said that love your neighbors and hate your enemies.

But I say, And you love your enemies and bless those that persecute you and despitefully use you. And pray for those that use you and persecute you. Dex, if you could. That you may be children of your Father which is in heaven. For he makes his sun to shine upon the good and the bad. And he sends his rain upon the just and the unjust. Right? For if you love them which love you, what reward of you?

Do not even the publicans do the same? And if you salute your brethren only, What do ye more than others? Do not even the publicans do that? And then the penultimate or the last verse. Be ye therefore perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. Your Father, your heavenly Father, sends the sunshine of his love upon the good and the bad. And he sends the rain of blessings upon the just and the unjust.

He wants you to be just like that. You know, I gave a seminar up here recently about bitterness, which goes along with that idea of sorcery. And learning to forgive and learning to just rid ourselves of the stronghold of unforgiveness and resentment and blame in us. Now, try to be... Now, use this passage at the very end. Usually, you have a little lapel mic here, you see.

But I need to gesticulate. So if I gesticulate... Anyway, but really, I want you to understand that when I... I said to the seminar, the people that were attending the seminar, I said, look, we can get to the place where we forgive our enemies. Those who have hurt us, we actually forgive us. The danger there is to say at that point, oh, I'm back to normal.

I don't have this burden anymore. And this is where I want to make... This is where I need to make the gesticulation. Are you ready? What I want you to do... What God's purpose is not to go back to normal. He wants you to go be super normal, okay? He wants you to get to the place... Where not only do you forgive the people that have hurt you, but according to the Sermon on the Mount, what Jesus is saying here is if they've hurt you, if you have an enemy, what?

Love your enemy. Bless them. Pray for them. If they come into your life. You see, what that is saying is be like your heavenly Father. He's in heaven and he's sending blessings upon the earth. Send blessing upon those who are hurting you, who are your enemies, who hate you. If you just say, oh, I forgive you. Go away. That's not what he wants. He wants us to come to the place where we say, bless you.

I hope that the Lord will bless you and prosper you and make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you, that you might know his love and come to him. But I hold nothing against you because I just... Why? Because I want to be like that bride that gets into the holy city. Or that is that holy city. I don't want to hold and harbor resentment, bitterness.

You know what resentment means? You know the word resent, right? Yeah. Re again. Sontere. To feel. Resentment is to feel again and again and again what they did to me. See? So we don't want to hold on to that. So when I go and say, how do we overcome these things? When these thoughts come to us, what do I do? And so there you go to the third section, overcoming.

And here's the key scripture. No temptation has taken you but is common to man, but the Lord will with the temptation make a way of escape that you may be able to endure it. I was thinking about that verse. Really wrestled with that for a while. Just personal testimony. Say, Lord, when the temptation comes, I really need... I need an exit door with a bright, shiny light upon it.

Maybe some neon. John says, exit! I want to escape from this temptation. And the whole idea is that it's a test and I don't have any of those feelings. What is Paul saying here? Do you sort of get that? How many have wanted... Lord, you read this verse and I say, what... Where is this way of escape that you're talking about? You know, Bob Mumford is a prominent charismatic teacher in the charismatic renewal many years ago.

And he gave us a famous series of teachings called the temptation series. And he said, this is how God works with temptation. And he said, first, there's three stages to it. First, God gives you a promise. And he says, look, when God gives you a promise of his presence, his help, his strength, get it down. Get it down really well. Make sure it's sure in you because next comes the problem.

All right? And he says, God's strategy is this. When the problem comes, he withdraws the feeling of his presence. All those happy, excited, faith feelings you had, they're all gone. He wants you just to rely on the naked word of God. All right? And he says, then if you'll just confess, no, this is what God said, this is the word of God, then you come into the provision or the promised land, he says, using the Exodus pattern there.

Okay? So, first the promise, then the problem, and then the provision. Okay? Well, I'd like to expand on that a little bit here, if I could. I was looking at that verse again and again and again, and I saw that there's an interesting preposition that's used in that verse. First of all, what Paul says is he is not going to provide an escape from the temptation, but he's going to, but he provides, he will with the temptation make the way of escape.

What was interesting as I read that is that the usual word for with, meta, is not the word used here. What he uses is the preposition sun. S-U-N, we'd call it in the Greek. And really, if you look in Strong's Concordance, I just want to make sure that this is validated. If you look in Strong's Concordance, sun is described as a with that is united with, cleaves to, is married to the thing itself.

And I thought that was interesting. Because when God provides, when the temptation comes to us, God says to us, you know what the escape from temptation is? The paradox is the escape from temptation is through the temptation itself. Okay? He says, so what God's plan is this, is that when the temptation comes, he wants you to march up to the temptation and the permanency and the eternality of the promise of the word of God and approach it, the flimsiness and the transitoriness and the ephemeriness of that temptation and say, this is the word of God.

And bring that temptation down and go through that temptation. You see? And so, when David was confronted with Goliath, Goliath said, well, who are you to come to me with staves and so forth? And what did David say? David said what? You come to me with your sword and all, but I come to you what? In the name of the Lord of hosts. Right? And so he swung his sling.

Say that ten times. He swung his sling, brought down Goliath. Right? Landed up to him, cut his head off, held up his head and said, next! No, he didn't say that. But he had four other stones because Goliath had four other brothers. Okay? Okay? And really what God wants us to do is to understand that with the temptation, together with that temptation, he wants us to overcome.

Right? You know, we hear, we see bumper stickers that say, freedom is not free. Right? But you know that peace is not always won peaceably. Sometimes you have to overcome. You have to do battle. God sends this thing in order that you overcome the thing that is overcoming, that usually has overcome you. There's a, I got the time. The same, the same, there's that wedding that I performed up in North County.

I was, I knew I needed to give a wedding message. And I was, but before that I was just reading through Ephesians. And I wasn't thinking about the wedding message. But of course I came to the fifth chapter where it talks about submission, you know, wives, you know. And it starts out with this, submit yourselves one to another. And then it goes on, next verse, wives, submit yourselves to the husband, so forth.

And the wives, look at that. And the wives don't like that verse by itself usually, okay. But really what it says, it says that Kai gave a really good message up at the marriage retreat that we had up in Iowild recently. And he talks about that. He said, really, he looked at that and he says, well, the wife is supposed to submit to me, but I'm supposed to die for her.

Okay? Because husbands love your wives as Christ loves the church. But I was also looking at it and it said that submit yourselves one to another. And I asked myself, I can see the wife, it says there, wife, submit yourself to your husband. It doesn't say anything about the husband submitting themselves to the wife. But it does. Before that it says, submit yourselves one to another.

And so I said, well, what's the explanation of that? Because I don't see the latter. And so I thought of a sort of an analogy that hopefully will explain it and will explain how when you get the temptation, how the temptation becomes the very means of overcoming. Let's imagine if we could a lieutenant with a band of soldiers. Everybody see that?

A bunch of private sergeants under him. And he's been commanded to take a certain hill that the enemy is holding very strongly. Got that? Clear? Down? Okay. Now, in the military, of course, those under the authority are to submit themselves or obey the lieutenant. And so, and that's right and good. That's what they, these men were going to take this hill.

This is what I want to take place. They need to implicit, they need to explicitly obey and follow his orders. So they have to submit to his authority. But let me ask another question. Does the lieutenant have to submit to the men that are under him? Absolutely. Absolutely. Their submission is explicit. But his submission is implicit. You know what the men are saying to him?

Lieutenant, we want to do exactly what you tell us to do. But we're asking something of you. We want you to submit to us all that you are. All the learning you had on warfare and war college. All the experience you've had in strategy. We want you to give us some ammunition, some weapons also, if you don't mind. But the point is, really what we want, what we need is that you submit to us everything, all the learning, all the wisdom, all the desire to attain to this goal as much as we want to attain to it as well.

Everything that you are, we need you to submit to us because we're going to follow you wherever you tell us to go. All right? That, by the way, is how it works in marriage too. All right? If the lieutenant just is trying to pull rank, he's just got out of West Point or something, he's just sort of exercising, he may have the power, but does he have the authority?

Does he have the calling power? No. But really, that's the way the submission works. And so that's the way it goes with the Lord also. In John 16, Jesus said, you know, in the world you're going to have tribulation, but be of good cheer because what? I've overcome the world. So what do we say? Oh, Lord, that's good for you, but what about me? No, what he's saying is, look, when I tell you to take that hill, I've already conquered that hill.

What if the lieutenant that I talked about said, man, we've been commanded to take this hill. This is the same as a thousand other hills I've taken. I've always been successful. I've never lost a man as long as they follow me. All right? Now, we've got to take that hill. Do you think that the men would have a certain degree of trust in him? And that's exactly what we see also with the Lord here.

When he says, when the temptation comes, like that lieutenant, you know you have the Lord right there with you. He's taken the hill. He's already conquered Goliath. No matter what it is, he's there. He's submitting himself to you. He's submitting all that he has, all the resources of heaven, all that he's already accomplished. He's submitting himself.

He's with you in that temptation. So that's why it says in 1 Corinthians 10, 13 again, that the Lord will soon, with that temptation, provide the way of escape. You can go knowing that this lieutenant who's commanding you, that this Lord who's commanding you, is with you in that temptation. And so when I read that, I was thinking again, you know, I'm really, I have problems with fear.

There's certain problems I don't want to face. There's certain things I want to run away from. But I have to recognize that when I face those temptations, when I face those fears, the Lord is with me. He's been there. He's conquered already. And so I can lift up the phone and call this person. I can write that letter. I can visit. I can come to that situation knowing that this, that there is submission.

I'm going to submit myself to him because he has submitted everything, all of himself, all of his resources, and all the resources of heaven to help me in this thing. If I could have the musicians come up now, I'm about ready to conclude. You'll see it at the last part of your outline there. There's a verse that Moses was commanded, or the Lord commanded Moses here in Exodus 14.

It says, The rod is the word of God. As Bob Mumford said, get your initial leading straight. Get that word of God. Breathe and hunger and thirst for the word of God and the truth of God. And what was commanded there is God told Moses, lift high the rod. Remember the promise that I gave you. And stretch forth thine hand. In other words, act. Go forth.

And command the waters to divide. And then go forth upon the dry ground. And faith that your Lord and your Savior is there to help you in all of this. Again, we go back to the goal we have in these days and this fast and the times to come. Can I be as pure as a bride before her bridegroom is?