Ed Young

When we do that, great things will happen.  I have been reading in the book of Romans during my devotionals, and God showed me this verse Monday morning in Romans 1:  “I long to see you (this is Paul talking) that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong; that is, that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith.”  We are not talking about a baby food Christian here.  We are talking about the Apostle Paul.  Paul is saying, “Man, I want to be mutually encouraged by your faith.”

Proverbs 27:17  “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.”  Don’t doubt in isolation.  Don’t doubt on an island.  Doubt in community. Do you remember Thomas, one of the twelve?  All the disciples are talking about the resurrection.  Jesus is coming back from the grave.  He came back.  Thomas is going, “Man, no he didn’t.”  The quintessential questioner, Mr. Doubter, Thomas, “He didn’t come back.”  In fact, Thomas said, “I’ll have to see him.  I’ll have to touch the nail prints and then I’ll believe.”

Did Thomas press the pause button?  No.  Did he press the eject button?  No.  Thomas pressed the play button.  He sharpened his spiritual sword.   He went to where faith was. He hung out still with a community of Christ-followers, the disciples, and Jesus revealed himself to Thomas in the midst of this bout with doubt.  It is the same for you, and me too, during a very critical response to a bout with doubt.

For the most part, I have been talking to people of faith; people who have bowed the knee to Christ. But I want to talk right now to some people who are outside the family of God.

You jump down to the other person’s level.  And it is human nature when we are struck when someone throws some fire on us, we want to return the fire like that.

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When I grew up, my brothers and I, we bought a gerbil and for some unknown reason, we named him Jim Harkins, a full name, Jim Harkins, and Jim the gerbil grew from a tiny baby gerbil to a giant behemoth. We had a big aquarium, cedar shavings, water and Jim seemed lonesome so we bought Jim a gerbil treadmill and Jim loved that treadmill and we would watch him for hours and hours. Jim would hop on the treadmill and his little gerbil paws would start moving and he was flying, and in that gerbil brain, Jim thought he was making tracks man, going 90 mph.

He had left the aquarium way back there! But then finally, he would get tired and think, “Where am I? I’m nowhere” and he would turn around in the gerbil treadmill and go the opposite way. We would die laughing. It was hilarious. But I’ve lived my life like that before. So have you. So are many of you right now. You have no focus. You have no goals. You have no real priorities.   You’re like Jim the gerbil syndrome.   You think you’re really making tracks, man.   You’re trying to be like Arsenio Hall, “Let’s get busy!” but busy doing what? You’re on the treadmill.

There are two what I call priority predators. Our priority – God, family, the marketplace. But two priority predators nail most of us and these predators are in the shadows and they love to attack and maim and wound and kill our priorities. The first one is the inability, listen to me, to sa$j^wC)The inability to say “no”. That tears away, that destroys most of our priorities.

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But if you wait to feel like, “Okay, I’m ready to release them,” you’re not going to do it.  We do it, then the joy will occur; then we’ll have the freedom. “Well man, what if the person doesn’t receive the forgiveness?”  You know what? That’s between them and God, but we’re called to release.

Joseph did that. And even through betrayal what happened?  An entire nation was saved.  Jesus did that ultimately and perfectly on the cross.  He rose again. And because of that, our salvation is secured.  This is amazing, amazing stuff, betrayal.  The beautiful side of betrayal.  God can use even betrayal to take all of us to a new level of living if we focus on Jesus.

ILLUS: Well, let’s fast forward the clock several thousand years ahead from Joseph and Jesus. Because eleven years ago, at Fellowship Church, one act of betrayal almost destroyed what God was doing.  I have never shared this story publicly.  I have shared it to just a couple of people in a couple of confidential situations. Yet, I really felt a leading when I began to prepare for this series to tell you about this situation.  So, please understand and hear my heart when I share this with you.

Fellowship Church began 17 years ago in a small office complex with about 150 people.  That’s when it officially started.  And we were like this nomadic church; we moved from rented facilities to other rented facilities. We met in a theater, we met in an arts complex, we met in a high school. And our offices and everything was leased and rented.

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No, no, no, we’re not going to do that.  We want to show people and give them answers about how to take the food and receive the food.  So every time we do something we think about the chairs. Earlier I said this, “The twofold purpose at Fellowship Church is what?  To build believers and to serve seekers.” Right?  To build believers and to serve seekers.

And here’s the question, here’s the tension that should always be in the church.  How much do you play something, do you angle something towards believers; and how much do you play something and angle something toward the seeker?  I love that tension.  And that tension has been with us for 14 years at Fellowship Church. And it will always be with us.  And that’s one of the reasons we plan with the team approach.

That’s one of the reasons we talk to so many people.  That’s one of the reasons we get input from so many different areas. Because it helps us to formulate these weekends that build believers and also serve seekers. Here’s the challenge we have, though.  And I’ll talk about this more next week.  As you know, I did not want to come to Dallas/Fort Worth to start a church.  I did not want to come up here.  I love Dallas/Fort Worth, but I did not want to come up here.  I wanted to go somewhere like Las Vegas, NV.  I wanted to go somewhere like Montreal, Canada.  I wanted to go to California or somewhere in South Florida, maybe Miami, Ft. Lauderdale. I did not want to come to Dallas/Fort Worth.  Why?  Because,

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Jesus said in Matthew 9:37, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.” And here’s what fires me up about Fellowship Church.  I want to applaud your work ethic.  You people blow me away.  I’ve seen it for 14 years.  The work ethic that you’re involved in by inviting people, through your work and prayer and diligence through your preparation; with conversations with God and with inviting others with; with stepping up in so many ways.

It is just so inspirational to me.  And there’s been many, many weekends where I’m kind of feeling down and I’m like, “You know, I’m the dude with the food, but I don’t feel like cooking this weekend.”  But I’ll see an act of service, I’ll see someone bring someone else or I’ll know that person is a person without Christ, or I’ll know this person has a marriage problem, or I know that person just experienced a death and is asking these big questions and they’re going through all these issues, and that just energizes me.  So thank you, thank you, thank you from the bottom of my heart.  But see, we can’t stop here.  We have to continue doing the stuff.

THE PRESENTATION

The preparation is a huge piece.  But also, there’s the presentation as well.  When we serve the food, we have to serve the food, as I said earlier, where people can get it and understand it.  You know, we don’t just throw the food on the table and say, “Do with it what you want.  Just throw the food, play in the food, we’re not going to give you utensils.”

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We love to blame, don’t we?  Go back to the garden.  When God confronted Adam and Eve about their sin, what did Adam do?  He blamed the woman.  What did Eve do?  She blamed the serpent.  What did the serpent do?  Well, he didn’t have a leg to stand on! (Some of you might get that later on today.)

But in 1 Samuel 15:22, Samuel says, “Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices  as much as in obeying the voice of the LORD? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams.” Most of us, and this is myself included, most of us are educated above our level of obedience. One more time. Most of us, myself included, are educated above our level of obedience.  If we just obeyed, if we just did the stuff God wants us to do, then we’d be way ahead of the game.

So we need to get under the stuff that God has placed over us so that we can get over the stuff He wants to put under us.  And most people live their lives never understanding that.  Why does God give us authority?  Why does God want us to submit to his authority and the authority structures he’s placed around us?  Why?  It’s for our protection.  Why?  It’s for our purpose.

Why?  It’s for our uniqueness.  Why?  It’s so that we can get the most out of this one and only life. Yet, we play the blame game. We blame all of these things.  And here’s what’s so funny about human beings. Are you like this?  We demand an explanation all the time.  Is that hilarious?

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Let’s turn the page to verse 18 if you have my kind of Bible, a New International version. Here’s the assignment. God basically says, “See what the land is like. See if there are weak people, strong people, how many, is the city walled, is it fortified, how about the trees?”. Then He says in the last part of verse 20, “Do your best to bring back some of the fruit of the land. It was the season for the first ripe grapes”. So the people, they’re gone for 40 days. They’re spying. They’re hiding out. They’re checking out the situation. And finally, they get some fruit and they come back to Moses and they say, “Moses” and the entire children of Israel, when they see the twelve spies coming back, they go crazy. They’re so excited! “Moses! Look at the beautiful fruit” and people are cheering, they’re giving high fives. The Israelite band is going “The twelve tribes are back and they are here”. They’re singing.

And look what they say in verse 27. All the people are saying this..they gave Moses this account, the twelve spies, “We went into the land to which you sent us and it does flow with milk and honey”. And the people began to say, “Amen! Preach it brother. It sounds great. Let’s go now. Here is the fruit”. And the people say, “We’ve never seen fruit like that! Did you go to the Farmers’ Market? Incredible! This is the land for us. Thank you, Lord. We are ready!” and they had the vision.

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They began to look and they thought, “Oh, I can’t wait. This is it, God! Thank you for your blessings!” But something occurs. God tells Moses, their fearless leader something in verse 1, Numbers chapter 13. God says, “Moses, I want you to send out a scouting report. No big deal. Just a scouting report”. “And the Lord said to Moses”, verse 1, “send some men to explore the Land of Canaan”. I’m in verse 2 now. “Send some men to explore the land of Canaan”. I don’t want them to give their opinion on the land or to see if we can take the land; just send them out. He says, “I want you to get these men to explore the land of Canaan “which I am giving to the Israelites”.

God says it’s a slam dunk deal. “The land is yours! But I want you to go out, kind of a secret reconnaissance mission and check and see what all the variables are and look and after you’ve gone for a while, you return and then we’re ready to claim the land. Alright?” “Alright!” and Moses was ready. He had the vision from God. He was in God’s will, and here’s what verse 2 says, “Take a person”, the last part of verse 2, “from each ancestral tribe and send out one of its leaders”. There were twelve tribes in Israel and they each chose one leader. Now, this leader was not a lightweight, a fly-by-night type person. These were impact people. Major players. So Moses picked twelve spies to go out on this mission. Now, what was their mission? Their mission was more or less what Star Trek talks about…to boldly go where no man has ever gone before. I like that… a beautiful definition of vision.

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But when we harbor unforgiveness we’re putting ourselves back in prison, back into the condition that we used to be in before we understood and appropriated the forgiveness and the debt canceling power of Jesus Christ.

And this next verse, verse 35, I’ll just be straight with you.  I wish this verse was not in the Bible.  I wish I could press the delete button.  I wish I take some white out, you know, and take it out.  It’s so convicting.  It just messes me up.  It’ll mess you up, too, when you listen to it.  Here’s how Jesus summarized this story.  And I’m sure at this point, Simon Peter goes, “Man, why did I bring this subject up?”  You know what I’m saying?

Matthew 18:35, “‘This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”

This guy had received forgiveness, but he hadn’t really experienced forgiveness in the depth of his being. And because he hadn’t really experienced it, he couldn’t share it with others.  I think we’ve all been in the same boat haven’t we?  We’ve received it. “Yeah, I’ve received forgiveness from Jesus Christ.” But we’ve not really experienced it in the depth of our being. And because we haven’t really experienced it, we can’t really share it with others.

Here’s what the Bible is saying.  It’s so plain, “If we harbor unforgiveness toward others, if we are leashed up to the resentment and the animosity and the pain, God’s coming after us.”  The Bible says that.  I wish it was not in here.  But that’s what it said.  God’s coming after us.  In other words, we will live a life of torture.  We will live on the treadmill of torture.

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