Brother Gary Sunday Morning 1/17/16

Brother Gary Sunday Morning 1/17/16

The word complaint in the scripture has an altogether different meaning than whining or murmuring. 

In America we are plagued with the idea, “Everything should be great.  We should have a job, free healthcare, everyone has gas in their car… We are American.”  That is a bunch of lies. 

Everything in life will have its challenges.  This is a race and a battle that we are in.  David was in great peril of his life.  His life was being threatened.  Saul and his army was there.

We supplicate when we pour out before God our need.

Psa 142:1  Maschil of David; A Prayer when he was in the cave. I cried unto the LORD with my voice; with my voice unto the LORD did I make my supplication.

“I poured out my complaint.”  When we start to complain, it usually turns everyone off.  We have a warm bed to sleep in and plenty of blessings.  This complaint was not that.  David was in sore trouble.

You and I will be faced with dilemmas.  As a pastor I am faced with dilemmas.  So it was with David.  David acknowledged to God, “I really need you.”

You children will have dilemmas.  There would not be one family represented that wouldn’t have dilemmas.  We wouldn’t be whining before God when we say, “God what should I do?”

You will find yourself in situations and then God comes to the rescue.  We can run from it or we can face it as we cry out to God.  God will have an answer.  We can be assured of that.

I had a situation that caused my thoughts to remind me of Landa’s brain.  There is a portion where all the veins have come together and in the process of time it becomes life threatening and can be controlling.  It can cause seizures. 

Yesterday we had situations that caused my brain to go into a seizure; all I could think of was the situation.  David was in a situation where the events of life were there to destroy him.  It is vital when in situations like that we say, “I have to get a hold of God.” 

The flesh will say do this or that and you will feel the seizure.  You will at times physically get sick:  “Is my mind going to last through this situation?”  This is where David was.  His contemplation: “I am only a little ways away from going out of this life.” 

The heavy burden:  we are not counting dollars or dimes, we are not thinking, “I want more play and less work.”  The one concern we have is souls.  Work produces a vehicle to provide for our family and by it we as a church can exist.  We are not working to get rich. 

Sin will take you further than you want to go.  I openly tell you, “I was not even a step away from making decisions when I was young that would have caused me to be lost forever.”  There are teenagers only 13 years old that are making decisions that will cause them to have regrets and cause them to be eternally lost. 

There are times that we need a miracle.  If you need a physical, emotional, or spiritual miracle, then get ahold of God. 

David felt his isolation.  His family was distanced from him.  I don’t think there is one person in this audience that doesn’t have family and it is heart breaking when they are distanced.  Both for our good times and our bad times, it is heart breaking.

David was loved; his associates were distanced.  Everyone here has people that you love and care for.  Once in a while or often they call and say, “How are you doing?  I wanted you to know where I was in case you should need me.”

David pondered his situation sitting in a cave. 

Psa 142:2  I poured out my complaint before him; I shewed before him my trouble.

Psa 142:3  When my spirit was overwhelmed within me, then thou knewest my path. In the way wherein I walked have they privily laid a snare for me.

His heart was overwhelmed.  When you feel the seizure and feel that the situation in your heart is causing you to be as David in his situation, you cry out to God, “I am needy.  Help me to not fall into the snare.”

Psa 142:4  I looked on my right hand, and beheld, but there was no man that would know me: refuge failed me; no man cared for my soul.

There were those that cared, but they were not there.  You will feel at times, “I am alone.” 

Jesus left awesome instruction for us, “When you pray, enter your closet and shut the door.”  You can have a secret closet of prayer anywhere that no one knows that you are praying.  Whether it is escaping to the breakroom, your car, or to the cellar downstairs.

David said, “I cried unto God.”  It is ok to have a complaint if you know what to do with it.

There is one you can go to.  If you have a complaint that is not whining or murmuring, you can go to God.

Psa 142:5  I cried unto thee, O LORD: I said, Thou art my refuge and my portion in the land of the living.

You are my portion; you are my refuge.

Psa 142:6  Attend unto my cry; for I am brought very low: deliver me from my persecutors; for they are stronger than I.

God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble.  There is nothing like feeling, “God I need you desperately.  I am needy.  Deliver me from those things that would try to destroy me.”  We wouldn’t battle identical things, but we all face the destroyer, the waster, the devil.  We feel, “God this will carry me away unless you step in.”  Then He steps in.

Psa 142:7  Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise thy name: the righteous shall compass me about; for thou shalt deal bountifully with me.

When you feel your life becoming a prison, get ahold of God.  David knew that God would step in, “It will not be very long and God is going to answer prayer.  For thou shalt deal bountifully with me.”

We are blessed to have the burden.  We are blessed to realize how desperately we need God.  We are blessed to have Him help us.

Isa 28:16  Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste.

Isa 28:17  Judgment also will I lay to the line, and righteousness to the plummet: and the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding place.

It is righteous judgment.  God is desirous of us knowing righteous judgment. 

This is dealing with the thought so that we understand that the Word and the Spirit of God and the teachings of the Word of God are the plum-line.  It is designed to come from heaven.  It is a straight line. 

God is in heaven and is not limited to one place.  There are those that feel that there is only one spot on earth that you can talk to God. That is unscriptural.  Wherever there is a soul that needs to talk to God, there is a plum-line that comes down right from God according to the Word of God.

It is not according to a philosopher or any man.  The exact same Word of God reaches every soul and reaches each of our relationships with God that we are building.

Isa 28:9  Whom shall he teach knowledge? and whom shall he make to understand doctrine? them that are weaned from the milk, and drawn from the breasts.

Isa 28:10  For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little:

For everyone in this audience that hungers for more of God, that is an excellent hunger.

Whom shall he make to understand doctrine?  It is a wonderful desire to desire to grasp more of the knowledge of God, the Word, and the doctrine of God.

Them that are weened:  after we get saved, it is a normal experience to hunger and thirst after righteousness.  It is a normal experience to want to grow, to want to measure to the Word of God in cleaning up our lives, our possessions, and anything that cannot be stamped with holiness unto the Lord.

Then there is a hungering to want to go on to be sanctified, not to be carnal, fight, and war.  There is the desire to go on to perfection. 

There is the hunger.  We are blessed to have the Word of God.  We are blessed to have good teachers before us that battled through carnality and have found the rest in sanctification, the truths in the blood of Christ being applied, and the nature to sin removed.

It is vital that this experience is possessed and if an individual doesn’t have it that they hunger and thirst after righteousness.

Precept upon precept:  no one will fight you if you have developed in your Christian race scriptures that you lean hard upon.  It is vital that you have a well-balanced application of the Word of God. 

I had an experience where I was stopped by a lady in the store that wanted to know who our TV provider was.  I told her, ”We don’t have one and I hope that you don’t have one.  Do you?”  I then told her that I hoped she had a bible that would help her to be balanced after she watched all that.  She said that she did. 

I asked her if she had a favorite scripture, and then if she had a favorite hymn.  There was a long pause of silence.  I told her she needed to have a favorite scripture and then told her to look up the song, “Just as I am.”  I told her it was written by Charlotte Eliot and told her some of the hymn story.  She said, “I will do that.”

Our life will go under the precept and the lines of the Word of God.  That is God’s tool.  That is righteous judgment. 

We have friends and associates that testify, “I am saved but I…”  We for sure hope that they are saved because we don’t want any to be lost.

God has given us tools so that we know if we are passing the test.  Last week I preached on the back wall.  It needs to be straight and without any peep holes to look to see anything that we want to go back to.

Some of you got saved young.  The world would tell you that you missed the pleasures.  They would also tell you, “You may have missed the pleasure but you don’t have the scars that I have.”

We need to have an excellent wall built that “I’ll never go back.”  Even people my age backslide and lose out with God.  I want to make it.  I want to run this race and end it.  In the sunset of my life, I would want to have the testimony of the Apostle Paul, “I have fought a good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith.”

There is a line drawn from heaven that comes right down along my back wall.  It comes right down along my side wall.  We are taught to not go to the left or the right.  Not to become languid: drifting and inactive, without energy. 

There is not one in this audience including this pastor, that if we yield to the battle of our day, the pressure of our society…  The children shouldn’t feel pressure.  They have pressure way too young.  I think that they should be allowed to be children for a long time.

Life will cause you to want to be languid, “It takes too much energy to feel like doing that.” Or, “Let’s put all our energy on this and forget about the souls that are perishing, the one whose eyes are failing, forget about outreach.” 

You have to build a wall and then let God come down and put His plum-line and say, “This is the wall that I want you to have.  I am first and you pray and learn how to seek and find and then do the will of God.” 

Then people go to the extreme.  All of us have a personality.  Brother Hines preached that everyone’s personality is to be either compromise or fanatic.  God wants to draw that line right down and for you to see His way and will.

Isa 28:11  For with stammering lips and another tongue will he speak to this people.

Isa 28:12  To whom he said, This is the rest wherewith ye may cause the weary to rest; and this is the refreshing: yet they would not hear.

This is the rest: we are so blessed that there is one that cares for us.  You children are blessed.  We adults are blessed.  The aged are blessed.  For every one of us, we can check our wall by God’s Word coming down right beside it.

If something is built the way God designed it to be then the measurements will be right from corner to corner so that your wall will not be flopping over this way or caving in that way.  These are God’s tools.  They don’t belong to me but to Him.

God designed that you and I experience the most wonderful thing in this world, “Righteous judgment.”  We have all experienced injustice.  God is never that way. 

As you build, work, and labor, in your life God’s word is a hammer.  There are times in your life when you say, “I have to get rid of this thing in my life.”  God has a way of chipping at our carnal man.