Come to Me

“God’s real desire, in addition to displaying His glory, is to claim your heart and the hearts of those you love.”
― Priscilla Shirer
Dear Lord,
Today…….I am asking all my prayer warriors to say a prayer that may help others. So many people are hurting right now. Many are struggling with finances and need jobs. Some are facing foreclosure and don’t even know how they are going to make it from week to week.. Many are lonely. . Many are heartbroken. . Many are facing sickness and health is fading. . Some are dealing with difficult family members. Many have lost HOPE.. Tonight, let us put our prayers and faith together decree and declare breakthrough over our families. Financial miracles WILL take place. Jobs WILL be found. Our Bodies WILL be made whole & sickness WILL flee. Marriages and relationships WILL be restored. Family members WILL find Jesus. Heartbreaks WILL be healed. JOY WILL be restored and HOPE WILL be found. In Jesus Name. Amen!!!!!! Keep God First…….

Oh, good morning, y’all sleep. Well, good.
I’m so glad I’m excited about today because the Lord does have new mercies for us today.
He has a word for us in the scriptures.
And so I’m excited about what he is going to speak over all of us today.
You’ve got your Bible, your iphone, your ipad, just hold it up in the air and let’s just commit this, these moments that we have to Him to fully lean and then hear what God is going to speak to us.
Everyone repeat after me and say, Lord, I am your servant and I am listening, speak Lord speak Lord in Jesus name.
Oh God’s women shouted. Amen. Amen. You may take your seat.
It is a privilege to be with you.
Once again, as always, I honor Pastor Bobby, I honor Pastor Brian and the leadership of this house, the entire team.
So excited to share with you yet again from the scriptures, I was thinking this morning um as my, my Children, I mentioned to you last night that my Children are with me.
And so um it’s, you know, I’m kind of in mother mode as well as ministry mode.
And I was thinking about that a bit this morning.
And these, these boys of mine, and I remember when I was growing up that I would often say to myself, I will not be like my mom when I grow up.
I mean, I said it, didn’t you say that I will not be like my mother?
But I’ve got to tell you that the older I get there are times now as I’m kind of rounding the corner now getting towards 40 years old.
And I look in the mirror every now and then and I just see my mama and then there are things that come out of my mouth.
I mean, I don’t think before I say them, I just say them.
And as soon as I say them, I hear my mother talking, saying these things.
And so even recently, the boys had a beautiful plate of food in front of them.
We were somewhere eating and listen when we’re somewhere else eating and they have food in front of them that they don’t finish.
It bothers me. But if I’ve been in the kitchen cooking that food and I have thought about and prepared a recipe and gone to the store and gotten the food and I have been so proud of myself because there’s a good meal on the table and that I put it in front of them and they have the nerve not to finish everything on their plate.
I looked at them and I said to them, you, you cannot waste this food.
Don’t you know that there are starving Children.
And, and then remember now that I don’t, I don’t have girls.
I’ve got boys and I know that there is very much a difference between little girls and little boys.
And I will tell you what one of them is at our house in Dallas, the boys will go outside.
They’re really into sports right now. They’re playing basketball.
And if there is a toilet in the house that is equal distant to a tree that’s in the yard, I promise you, these boys are gonna choose the tree every single time, every single time.
So in my kitchen, uh there is a window that I look out of and I can see the entire backyard and sometimes I’ll just be in the kitchen, washing dishes or something.
And I will look outside and just see a little boy with his pants down around his ankles.
In fact, one of my neighbors recently, she adores my boys and they adore, adore her.
We’re real good friends. One of my neighbors recently was just joking around and took a picture of one of my boys and emailed it to me because the tree he was at was actually in her yard.
And so inevitably, when I catch one of them doing that, I open the screen door or Jerry opens up the screen door and he yells out to them, boys, you come in here and you use the actual toilet because you were not raised by a pack of wolves.
Anybody ever have a mama say that to them.
And then right now the boys have another thing that they’re doing.
I don’t know if they’re just doing it to taunt me and to mess with me and their dad or what, but they just seem to go through the house and turn on every single light switch that they can find.
It doesn’t even seem like they’re actually going in these rooms and using these rooms, it just seems like they’re running through and just turning on lights for the fun of it.
So Jerry and I are constantly walking through the house trying to turn off lights.
And inevitably I will look at my boys who sound just like my mother.
When I say to them boys, you’ve got to turn off these lights.
This costs money and don’t you know, that money does not grow on.
You all had my mother, you had my mother didn’t you?
And so because these boys keep turning on on these lights all over, Jerry decided recently that he was going to put a motion sensitive light in the garage because the garage light was one that was constantly on.
And so he put this system in the garage to where when someone walks into the garage, the lights will automatically come on when there is no motion detected in the garage.
Those lights will automatically go off.
Well, this system got put in and Jerry, just at the boys thought that this was just the coolest thing that they had ever they had ever seen in their entire lives.
The lights just came on with no flipping of a switch. They loved it.
And so they just would kind of jump into the garage and watch the light comes on and then come out and watch the lights go off.
And they just were experimenting with this light.
And one of the things I remember them doing was that they would stand in the doorway of our house.
So here’s the garage. And I remember seeing them as I walk by just kind of kind of putting their arm in to see if the arm would do it.
And then another would put a leg in to see if the leg would do it.
Two arms to see if the two arms would do it.
And maybe half a body to see if half the body would do it.
And inevitably, none of this movement from just portions of their body would cause the lights to come on.
They literally had to, before the lights would respond. They had to invest them their full selves into that space.
They had to completely come into the garage before the lights would respond.
And it would detect enough motion to, to make it light up and be bright.
In that space they had to come in.
And I wonder if sometimes in my relationship with the Lord, if the reason why sometimes the lights just aren’t coming on is because I’m just investing just a little bit.
And I wonder if, what I want the brightness of God’s grace, his glory, his peace, his joy, the lights of his greatness overshadowing me.
If, if I want the heavens to open over my life, if I’ve got to stop just giving him a peace here and a peace there.
But if I’ve got to come in fully and completely invest the whole of myself, I wonder if this was on the mind of Jesus.
When he said in Matthew chapter 11, come in, come to me.
All of you who are laboring in heavy laden, you’re burdened down, you’re carrying way more than I ever thought.
You ever would come to me all of you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.
I love that word. There’s a keyword, many of them in this little simple verse.
But, but that word, all, I love the word all come to me, all of you.
I love the word all. And in fact, I did a little digging and a little research on it.
I wanted to look into the original language. I’m not Greek like Chris Kane is.
So I don’t just automatically know some of these things.
I really got to open up some books and try to figure out some of the nuances of the original language and how the way the word is used, the context in which it’s used the tense in which it’s used some of those dynamics to try to figure out the details of this word all.
And I did all that research only to discover that all means all. It just means everybody.
This is good news for us because it means that if for some reason you have ever felt excluded from the rest that God seems to be offering other people.
If you’ve ever felt like it’s not for you because of your background or your past or choices that you’ve made.
If you’ve ever felt excluded from a life of abundance in Christ, there’s good news for you today.
He says all of us are welcome every single one of us.
It’s not only good news for those of us who have ever felt excluded and I’ve certainly been in that group, but it is also a wake up call for any of us who have ever felt like we don’t need the rest that God offers because either we’ve just been doing so well by ourselves that maybe we just don’t need to invest anymore because things have been ok up until now.
So we don’t need to give anymore. So we haven’t come in fully and completely.
He says, listen, come to me every single one of you so that you can have the rest that I am offering you the peace, the refreshing, the rejuvenation, the relief.
And so I was thinking about this, even even with my boys and them just kind of putting in different limbs on their body into the garage in order for them to come into the garage.
So the lights would come on in order for them to come in, they had to step over a threshold and come out of the house.
There had to be a leaving of one place in order to enter a new place in order for a full investment of them to begin to come into the garage, they had to leave the house.
And so when Jesus said, come to me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, come fully and completely in all of you come in, it means that he had on his mind, something that he wanted these folks to come away from because to get to one destination, you’ve got to leave another.
And so I wanted to try to figure out what could have possibly maybe bit on the mind of Jesus when he offered this golden sealed invitation to these folks on that day, when he said to them, come in, all of you come in.
What was he calling them away from?
I figured if you and I could look back at Matthew chapter 11 at some of the people, the places, the occurrences, the interactions that Jesus had before he got to verse 28.
Then maybe we can discover what he was calling those people away from then 2000 years ago.
And what by the Holy Spirit he’s calling us away from today.
The story begins in Matthew chapter 11 verse two, the very first person that Jesus encounters in this chapter is in verse two.
It says there now when John in prison heard of the works of Christ, he sent word that is John sent word by his disciples and said to Jesus, are you the expected one?
Or should we look for somebody else? Let’s just start right there. This is John the Baptist.
We’re talking about John who was the forerunner for Jesus Christ.
He was the cousin to Jesus, the messenger of the Messiah.
This was one whose primary passion and purpose up until now had been to Herald the arrival of the Messiah.
If anybody had thought for a moment that he was the Messiah John, the Baptist, he had been careful to deflect all glory away from himself and say no behold the lamb of God God who takes away the sins of the world.
There is one John would say who is coming after me, who sandals.
I’m not even worthy to untie he is indeed the Messiah.
This is a man who had been faithful and passionate about heralding the coming of Jesus Christ.
But when we see John in this passage, he is not preaching, he’s not teaching, he’s not baptizing.
He is sitting in prison, persecuting for his boldness in his exclamation of who Jesus was.
He is sitting in prison. And so there he is hypothetically on the cold concrete floors of his circumstances peering out from between the bars.
And he can’t believe that after as faithful as he’s been to this Jesus, that he’s finding himself with a circumstance that looks like this one.
He can’t believe that something that has started out so good has turned out so badly.
And so we see John sitting there in his jail cell in his prison circumstances, if you will.
And he’s got a question, Jesus, are you the expected one?
Or should I look for somebody else? Translation? Have I been wasting my time?
If the truth be told, there are probably many of us, if not right now in this season of your life, you’ve been in a season of your life probably where you’re sitting in a prison circumstance of your own.
It’s just a circumstance that this is not what you signed up for.
You did not think after this many years of being faithful after this many years of tithing the way the Lord has asked you to of contributing to the sisterhood in whatever ways you can in being faithful in your Bible study and serving the Lord in every capacity, not perfectly but definitely purposefully.
You have done your best to be the wife God has called you to be, to be the mom that God has called you to be to live holy as a single woman, the way the Lord has called you to be and yet you are looking at your circumstances that you’re sitting in right now and it just doesn’t add up.
And John asked a question that many of us maybe might not utter out of our mouths, but we may have thought it before Jesus.
Are you who you say that you are? Because this is just not what I had in mind.
So John sends a couple of guys over to Jesus to ask him, are you the expected one?
And Jesus sends back a response.
Look at Jesus’s response in verse four, Jesus answers and says to them, you go and report to John what you hear and see.
This is what you tell him.
Tell him the blind receives sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the death.
Here, the dead are raised and the poor have the gospel being preached to them.
Now this sounds, this sounds real good, doesn’t it? Yeah, it sounds good.
But let’s be honest, if this were the message that Jesus had sent back to me while I was sitting in prison, I would have said thank you Jesus for the sermon.
But what does that have to do with the fact that my circumstance right now, my my my situation, the issues of my life are, are just not what what I thought they would be.
Lord. What does, what you are saying have to do.
How does it connect with the reality that I’m facing right now?
And isn’t it sometimes true that you and I were in our reality? We’re in our situation.
We’re having difficulty in whatever area of life we may be.
And then we’re having Bible study and we’re reading about maybe our Bible study that day is how we’re reading about how the Hittites fought with the Amor rights.
And then those s were fed with the bu sites.
And you’re just trying to figure out well, what in the world can, can I get one witness in the house that has ever felt that way?
So Jesus says to him, listen, the blind, see the lame, walk, the deaf here, the debtor raise the poor have the gospel being preached.
Why would Jesus say this? This is not a new um message that Jesus has just come up with on the spot.
What Jesus has done is reached back into the book of Isaiah where it was prophesized that there would be a time when a Messiah would show up.
And the proof that the Kingdom of God was at hand would be in the fact that the Bible, I would see the lame would walk, the death would hear the poor, even the poor would have the gospel preached to them.
You know what Jesus was saying to John.
John, don’t get so caught up in your temporary circumstances that you lose sight of the fact that eternal purposes are being served right here.
And right now and so when Jesus gets to John or gets to Matthew chapter 11 28 when he says come to me, I just wonder if John was on his mind and if he was thinking John, if I can get you to come to me and come away from being tangled up in the temporary things of this world, he didn’t negate the temporary.
He wasn’t minimizing the fact that this was difficult for John.
What he was saying was John don’t be so consumed with what is happening in your current circumstances that you miss out on the fact that the Kingdom of God is rolling out on humanity right now and my friend, we’re not negating the difficulty you may be facing or trying to minimize the fact that you may be feeling the way you do.
But this is what I want to make sure that you understand the kingdom purposes of God right now are not only being served despite your circumstance.
Here’s the good thing about our God.
They’re being served through your circumstance that some kind of way he is able to take the good, the bad and the ugly and work it all together in a package that benefits and blesses not only us in the end, but it is also for his glory the way he does that I will absolutely never know.
But I’ve got proof that he can do it in something I’m remembering right now about my mother because this is what my mother used to do on Sunday.
She made this huge Sunday dinner, this enormous, wonderful Sunday dinner.
And we would sit and eat all this food and then inevitably there would be leftovers.
And on the next day, what my mother would do is not to pull out new things.
She would pull out all the old things out of the refrigerator and she would chop them and dice them and pour them all together in a big bowl and pour some cheese on them and some cream of mushroom soup and put them all together.
And then she’d put it in the oven at 350 degrees for a little while and pull it out and give it a French sounding name and put it on the table and we would eat it and think that she was an absolute master chef.
But all she had really done was taken in the leftovers and put them together in such a way that they just tasted fresh and new.
This is what God does with your life.
He takes the disappointing, the frustrating, the difficult, the exciting, the joyful, the unexpected, the things weren’t in your plan.
He takes all of those things and chops them and dices them and reconfigures them, puts them all together, pours the cream of the Holy Spirit on top of them, he puts them inside the oven of fire and trial for just a little while.
But like any master chef, he stands there so that at just the right time he can make sure that it is not overdone.
And then he pulls your life and my life out to serve to a lost and dying world that needs to know that he is.
Mm mm. Good. Yeah.
So I wonder if, if, if Jesus had John on his mind when he said come to me, all you that labor in our heavy leg and come to me and step in fully and completely.
So the light of rest can come on and when you step in, I need you to step out of being tangled up in the temporary things of this world, there’s a second group of people in this passage.
They were also found in verse two. Remember John is in prison.
He hears the works of Christ and he sends word by his disciples.
Now remember these are not the disciples of Jesus, these are not the 12, these are the guys that would have been hanging out with John during the two years of his earthly ministries ministry.
So they were there to hear every word that came out of John’s mouth about who Jesus was.
They were there when John had seen Jesus and had pointed him out in John chapter one and had said behold, the lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world.
There he is. They were there when John had baptized Jesus and the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove had descended on Jesus just signifying that he was indeed the anointed one.
They had been there when John’s ears had been open to hear the voice of God or the voice of God, the father from the heavens saying this is my son in whom I am.
Well, please, these guys had seen all of that with their own eyes.
These guys had heard all of that with their own ears.
In fact, the scriptures tell us that after hearing and seeing so much and seeing John point out Jesus that these guys had been so convinced that the disciples, many of them, they left John and follow Jesus.
They wanted the real deal after they saw and heard so much from John about who Jesus was.
So it’s interesting to me that these guys after seeing so much and hearing so much that when John began to doubt the deity of Jesus, it’s amazing to me that these guys actually took Jesus that question.
I mean, it would seem to me after seeing so much and hearing so much that they would just turn on a dime and say John, we don’t even need to take that question to Jesus because we can tell you who he is.
I mean, we’ve seen it. We, we’ve heard about it.
We’ve seen the lame walk, we’ve seen him cause the blind to see.
We’ve heard the messages out of his mouth. John, we don’t need to ask that.
We can tell you who he is. But these guys didn’t do that. They took the question.
Are you the expected one to Jesus?
There’s only one reason why they would have done that apart from just obedience to John.
And that is if they were beginning to doubt it themselves.
And so I wonder if, when Jesus said in verse 28 come to me, if John wasn’t only on his mind, come away from being tangled up in the temporary.
I wonder if these disciples were on the mind of Jesus.
And he was saying, come away not only from being tangled up in the temporary, but come away from dabbling in doubt, come away from having seen so much and heard so much, but not really believing that what you’ve seen can be true in your life.
Not really believing that the same God who caused the Red Sea to divide is the same sea that has the power is the same God that has the power to take care of your financial situation.
Your marital situation is the same God that has the power to cause that rebellious wayward child of yours that’s breaking your heart to come back home.
He’s the same one that has the power to lift the spiritual veil from the eyes of your loved one that has not accepted him yet yet, as savior don’t doubt him.
My friend just come to him, the energy and the effort that we spend doubting and debating and negotiating as to whether or not God can actually do what we want him to do.
If we would just invest that energy in coming to him, man.
We’d be a lot further in our relationships with God, wouldn’t we?
We spend so much energy and effort, debating and doubting God’s ability in our life.
And so I wonder if in this story, you’re John, you’re in a situation right now.
That is just not what you planned. It’s not what you signed up for.
You cannot believe this prison circumstance or I wonder if you’re not John, you’re the disciples looking in at a John, someone who has been faithful, someone who you’ve seen serve the Lord, someone who you’ve seen really just be a model for you, maybe a mentor for you.
Of what living a life of fruitfulness and abundance looks like.
And you’re seeing the tragedy the Lord has allowed them to face the difficulty that they’ve come in contact with.
You know, I’m thinking of a friend of mine at home.
Her name is Sharon and Sharon is about 54 years old.
And after 25 years of marriage, her husband has decided he wants somebody younger.
He’s decided he doesn’t want to be in this marital relationship anymore.
He has not only left her but their 14 year old daughter as a 54 year old woman for Sharon, who after years of working in corporate America, about six years ago, she was finally able to come home and be a stay at home mom, which was the desire of her heart.
She was able finally to leave her job.
She came home and here she was in the past six or seven years, loving her fifties and entering into a new season of life where she was able to stay home.
But now her husband is gone, the breadwinner of the house, he’s gone, he’s not there.
He is not wanting to take care of them by any stretch of the imagination.
And so my sweet friend Sharon has had to find and forge out a whole new life where she’s got to go find a job.
She’s got to figure out how to take care of her daughter who will be going to college very soon.
How does she send her to school?
How does she have the money to make sure they don’t lose her home? Here.
She is thrust because of someone else’s choice here. She is thrust into this situation.
That to me seems very unfair for a woman I’ve known since I was about 10 years old and who has been so godly and faithful serving in the church and who has given her life, not only for the sake of Christ Jesus and being faithful to him.
But in mentoring so many younger women, and I look at her situation and I’m the disciple standing outside of this situation.
And I’m wondering, Lord, why would you allow that? Are you who you say you are?
Lord, do you accomplish? Are the promises in your word? True.
And sometimes we see what’s happening to other people.
And we do ask ourselves, why would a God who is so good allow such bad things to happen to people like that?
Anybody do you know? Really? It’s the wrong question to ask.
Why would a good God allow a bad thing? That’s really not the right question. The right question.
If we really think about it should be why would a God who is so good and holy only allow this few bad things to happen to such bad people in all of our unholiness and him in all of his loftiness and holiness.
Do you know that the reason why you and I ever have any sane days?
The reason why we have any laughter in our lives, any joy and fulfillment in by any stretch of the word.
The only reason is because our God, right this moment has his hands stayed against the evil that wants to break forth in our lives and in our world.
And if he were to release his hand against the evil, gosh, you and I would just know violence and chaos and crime and destruction.
And calamity every single moment of our lives.
The very fact that you and I are sitting in this room right now together worshiping God.
We’ve flown in from all over the place to be here or you’ve driven in in a car that God has allowed you to have.
It might not be the car of your dreams, but you got a car.
You might not live in the home of your dreams, but you’ve got a roof over your head man.
You might be here. The registration fee may have been paid for on borrowed money or the person that’s sitting next to you.
In fact, you may be here and you don’t even really know how you got here.
The person sitting next to you drug you here kicking and screaming.
You’re still trying to figure out how you got here.
The very fact that we even have a friend that would want to loan us the money so that we can register and get here.
The very fact that we’re in that kind of world you and I is a testament to the goodness and the greatness of God.
So Jesus says those disciples on his mind.
Oh oh guys, if you just come to me and come away from dabbling in doubt, come away from being consumed by your insecurity of whether or not I am who I say I am just because temporary things aren’t always what you would prefer.
Would you remember that I am, who I say I am and I will do and accomplish what it is.
I say I will do and that I will accomplish.
You know, they say seeing is believing, but sometimes seeing doesn’t always end up at believing because you and I have seen so much, we have heard so much.
We have experienced so much. But oftentimes, we still doubt that he is who he says he is today is a good day to come to me, Jesus and to come away from dabbling in your doubt.
There is a third group of people that we find in the story starting in verse seven.
It says as these were going away, that’s those disciples, they’re going back to John to give them the message.
As these were going away, John began to speak to the multitudes.
Jesus rather begin to speak to the multitudes about John. Now he’s gonna ask the crowd two questions about John.
Here are the two questions verse seven. What did you go into the wilderness to look at? Verse eight?
What did you go to see? Ok.
So Jesus is now talking to a multitude of people that are gathering and he right off the bat challenges them to consider their responses to two questions.
He says, what did you go into the wilderness to look at? What did you go out there to see?
Now? He was referring to John, the Baptist. You need to know that John was a strange character. Ok.
Now, now, I don’t know if you have ever run across maybe a street preacher.
He’s, he’s, uh, you know, just there.
You know, there are some that do us proud, but there are others that are there.
And you just kind of not John was, was the craziest, weirdest looking street street preacher you had ever seen.
He wore strange clothes. He ate strange food. He was positioned in the strange plate.
Not to mention the fact that he was preaching a strange gospel and mounds and mounds and hordes of people would pile into the desert and into the wilderness because they wanted to get a look at this strange street preacher.
They were not necessarily intrigued by the message. They didn’t necessarily believe that Jesus was the Messiah.
They didn’t really care some of them what it was he was talking about.
They just wanted to be a part of the crowds, the fanfare, the people that were all going.
It became like a trend to go see John.
He would have been trending worldwide on Twitter if Twitter had been, I mean, they just wanted to be a part of the crowd.
So Jesus challenges them and their relationship to John who was heralding the coming of the Messiah Jesus says, why did you go to the wilderness?
He asked the crowd when you went out there to see John, you remember that? Why did you go?
He wants to know what were you really going to see and look at?
He implies that they went to feed their eyes rather than to feed their souls that they went for curiosity, rather than for conscience that they went to see and be seen rather than to find out the truth of John’s message.
He implies that they had gotten caught up in the crowd and the rumors and the fanfare and that they had missed out on the on the Messiah.
They had gotten caught up in the customs, the routine, the habit, the trend of going to see John, but they’d actually missed out on the centrality of the message that John was delivering.
And so we asked him, what did you really go to see when you went out there to the conference?
Oh, that’s too convicting.
Let’s move on from that one shoot.
So I guess I want to ask you and me and ask the same question Jesus wanted to ask them.
What did you come to see? I mean, why did you come?
Was it because there had been a rumor um about this great event and you just wanted to come kind of be a part of the event and the fanfare and the crowds, the trend of going to color that there was a person maybe whose name you saw on a program and you thought oh yeah, I wanna go see them.
What did you come to see?
Jesus says, listen, there’s been this custom, this trend, this fanfare, everybody getting wrapped up in just participating in certain because everybody else is doing it.
And I just wonder by the time he got to verse 28 was saying, come to me if this crowd was on his mind so that not only was he asking them to come away from being tangled up in the temporary and come away from dabbling in doubt.
I wonder if he was asking this crowd to come away from being caught up in customs, from just doing something because everybody else is doing it from just participating, not because your heart is compelling you or the conviction of the Holy Spirit is upon you, but you’re just doing it because, well, this is just what you do once a year.
Jesus says, don’t, don’t get caught up in the customs.
In fact, he would say in Isaiah chapter 29 of the Children of Israel, this people follow me with their lip service, but their hearts are far from me.
You do know as Robert Ferguson said so eloquently yesterday, you do know he, he can see your heart right?
That the facade that we often times put up that impresses other people, man.
He, he’s got your number, my friend, he knows what it is that you came for.
And I’m asking you as you even consider all the different options that you’re being given here in the sisterhood to, to infiltrate the darkness out there with the light of who Jesus Christ is that as you carefully and prayerfully consider what God is calling you to that you’re not just do something because everybody else is doing it that you wait for the beckoning of the Holy Spirit inside of you calling you and encouraging you to get engaged.
Not so that you’ll impress other people, but so that you will impress him for the applause of heaven, not for the applause of people.
Max Lucado has a book called The Applause of Heaven. Do you all know Max Lucado? Let’s see.
You just need to go to your bookstore, Christian bookstore and pick up anything with the name Max Lucado on it, it will bless your soul.
There’s a whole department of Max Lucado stuff in the Christian bookstore, at least in the States for sure.
And one of the books is The Applause of Heaven and I’ll never forget someone in that book.
It was just amazing. This illustration. He talks about how he loves to travel.
But his favorite part of traveling is when he comes back home to his family.
And these were in the days when your family could come to the gate and actually meet you right there.
Um when you’re getting off the plane and he said he’d walk down the jet bridge and there would be his wife and his kids and they would be jumping up and down and applauding.
So excited that daddy’s home he said, there was no greater feeling in the world.
He said in his writing, won’t it be great when we get to the Pearly gates and we walk down the jet bridge into the heavens and there’s a crowd of people all around, but we will only be looking for one man with nail scarred hands, applauding our entrance into heaven.
And so when you and I do whatever it is that we do whatever it is that you’re going to do, whether through the sisterhood in your local church, whatever it is that you claim to do for the glory of God, would you search your heart and ask yourself, why am I doing this?
Matthew 61, beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be applauded by them.
And then this is my paraphrase because if you like that applause, you better milk it for all it’s worth because that’s all you’re gonna get.
That’s a challenge, a conviction to me.
I want the applause of heaven, don’t you? The applause of heaven.
So he says, come to me and come away from being tangled up in the temporary, come away from dabbling in doubt and come away from being caught up in customs.
There’s one other group of people in this story, verse 20 he begins to reproach the cities in which most of his miracles were done.
That’s a key phrase in which most of his miracles were done. He says, verse 21 woe to you. Horizon.
That’s one of the cities woe to you, Beth Sada.
For if the miracles had occurred in entire and sight on which occurred in you, they would have repented long ago in Saloth and ashes verse 23.
And you can burn them. You won’t be exalted to heaven. Will you?
You’re gonna descend to Hades for if the miracles had occurred in sodom, which occurred in you, they would have remained to this day.
So now Jesus is still talking to the multitudes, but he starts calling some people out, Lord have mercy.
It’s, it’s an interesting thing when Jesus starts calling you out like that.
And in front of this crowd, he names Krizan and Beth Sada and particularly Karna because these places were where most of his miracles were done.
These were the places, in fact, Kaar was jesus’ most usual residence while he was here on planet Earth.
He did more miracles and spoke more messages in or around Kana than any other place on planet Earth.
During his earthly ministry, these people got an eye full of Jesus Christ in his flesh.
They got to be up close and personal with him and Jesus rebukes them. He says woe to you.
Because if some of these other places where wickedness was abounding, think Sodom and Gomorrah remember he mentions Sodom man.
If I had given them half of what I have given you, they would have repented a long time ago.
In sat cloth and ashes. They would have already come to me.
They would have been on their knees in repentance. They would have responded to my message.
But you, you have become so desensitized to my blessing.
So desensitized to the grace and mercy that I poured out upon you so that you’re not responding in these other places, they would have responded a long time ago.
And I just wonder when he got to verse 28 said, come to me all ye that labor and are heavy laden.
If he was not only thinking, John ought to come away from being tangled in the temporary.
And he was not only thinking that these disciples needed to come away from dabbling in doubt.
And not only that these folks that were going into the wilderness need to come away from being caught up in customs.
But I wonder if he was saying to these cities, would you come away from gambling with my grace, taking advantage of the grace and the mercy and the blessing that I have poured out upon you?
And if the truth be told, and if you think just to the last 24 hours of your life, you will see that the grace, the mercy, the abundance, the favor of God has been all over us, hasn’t it?
God forbid we gamble and play games with the grace of God that God might beckon any of us by his spirit to come to Him in salvation or to come to him and respond to him in some tangible way through the sisterhood that God would beckon us.
And we, this blast gathering of women would have the nerve not to respond to him.
Not after he’s been this good to us.
Not after he’s given us this much favor, not after he’s poured out his blessings on us in such a lavish fashion because my friend, you might not be where you want to be in your life.
But you’re sure not where you could be.
And that is only a testament to the fact that he has been good.
He has poured out his grace in a way that none of us including me ever deserves.
His grace is seen not only in the practical everyday rhythms of your life, but you need to know that all of history has been a story and a testament of the lavish grace and mercy of God.
Do you know how many generations and people and situations and circumstances has had to be divinely maneuvered to make sure you were in this seat today.
I’m talking millennia ago. He already was thinking about color 2012. He was already thinking about it.
And so he began to put in place a series of activities so that the right people would meet each other have a baby.
And then these two people meet each other. Have a baby.
Need to get because I need her to be in 2012 in that seat so that she can hear and be a part of what it is.
It’s the redemption story. It’s the story of his grace unfolded.
It’s the Bible. Do you understand?
It’s like a big old rescue plan, a big old rescue plan for humanity that is dying in their sin and they don’t even know it and he’s trying to figure out how to rescue them.
It started with Adam and Eve and then they rebel against God and they refuse to be in relationship with him as he designed it.
And Kane kills Abel and then here they are now humanity is in a state of murder and rebellion.
And so he and his grace and his mercy causes Adam and Eve to come back together so that they can have Seth and Seth has enoch.
And it says that when Enos was born, men begin to praise God again.
But then of course, culture begins to deteriorate so much so and rebellion is abounding so much so that he’s got to find somebody by the name of Noah because he’s sending a flood and he’s going to wipe out everything and start all over again.
So he finds a guy with a willing heart and he says, build an ark because it’s going to rain and Noah says, build a what?
Because it’s going to what? But he responds in obedience and he builds a arc and he gets his family on board there.
And so humanity starts all over again because of the grace and the mercy of God that’s so desired that you be in this seat today.
And then humanity begins to proliferate and grow and develop and, and, and everybody becomes so wicked and he’s got to find somebody so that the story of grace can continue to be find in our a man by the name of Abram.
And he says, I want you to leave earth because I’m taking you to a place.
I can’t really tell you where we’re going and listen, I’m going to start a great nation out of you.
I can’t really explain all the details of how that’s going to happen.
But Abram, he goes, and the Children of Israel are birthed because this man responded to the call of God and the nation of Israel grew and developed.
But through a series of circumstances, they went to Egypt and in Egypt, pharaoh decided to enslave them.
So for 400 years, they’re in slavery.
What’s going to happen to the redemption plan, the rescue plan of God, he finds another God named Moses and he causes Moses to be raised of the prince of Egypt.
And then he sends him at the right time to Pharaoh to say, let my people go so that they can worship me.
And so the Children of Israel leave Egypt and they abound in their relationship with God except that they’re humans so they rebel and they keep going in and out of rebellion until you get to the end of the Book of Judges.
And you find this is the line at the end of the book of judges, everyone was doing what was right in their own eyes.
Does that sound like the country that anybody else comes from other than mine?
And so then he finds a woman, somebody say a woman, he finds a woman by the name of Ruth and he manipulates the circumstances of her life so that she meets this kinsman redeemer named Boaz.
And they get together and they have a baby and the baby’s name is Obed and then obed has Jessie and then Jessie gives birth to date and he has put in place and settled in place a program so that the rescue plan can continue.
But the Old Testament closes and we still don’t see how there is going to be a solution for the madness that is settled on planet earth.
And 400 years goes by and then the book of Matthew opens up by saying so and so be get so and so who be, get so and so who be get so and so the part of your Bible that you always skip over and that he finds a teenager named Mary and he says, you know what?
We’ve been going through this for a lot of years now, I think I’m just going to come down here and take care of this baby myself.
And so Jesus comes on the scene and he came on the scene for you and he came on the seating for me.
God forbid he extend that much grace and mercy, that lavish strategic, deliberate, intentional plan so that humanity could be arranged in such a way that you and I got to be here planted in this generation in this room at that moment and we gamble with his grace.
It’s too good to play games with.
And so today, I believe the Holy Spirit is whispering over us.
Come, come away from being tangled up in your temporary situation, not negating it, not minimizing it, but don’t be so consumed by it that you miss out on eternity.
Come away from dabbling in doubt. Don’t doubt me anymore.
Just believe me come away from being caught up in customs. This isn’t a religion, this is a relationship.
Don’t just do stuff because everybody else is doing it.
You come to me and come away from playing games and gambling with the grace that that cost me my own son.
Come and when you do, I will unload off of you the baggage that you have been carrying around in your own strength and it doesn’t mean you won’t ever have to carry anything again.
What it means is you’re shifting the weight, you’re shifting the balance so that the brunt of it falls on my shoulder.
There’ll be ease in your step. There’ll be a lightness in your heart.
There’ll be a peace that passes all understanding.
Not because the world is all good and rosy all of a sudden, but because I’m joining you in the struggle.
So come all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I’ll give you rest.
Lord Jesus. Thank you for your word. Thank you for the clarity.
Thank you Lord, that we have an opportunity to come to a God who loves us so desperately, so passionately.
Thank you that you worked out a plan for humanity that that got us here in these seats.
Lord with an opportunity to respond to your word.
I pray Lord that as you beckon un knock on the doors of the hearts of women in whatever capacity you are doing that right now that Lord they respond quick and in a hurry.
Lord, forgive us God for the years that we may have gambled with your grace.
Today, we stop playing games and we come to you, Lord quickly, we come so that we can have the rest that only you can give in jesus’ name.
Amen.