Through the Wilderness into Wonder

Have you ever taken a hike in the wilderness? Let me see your hand. I'm not saying you had to go to Yellowstone or some big national park, but even if you just go to one of our state parks here, maybe with flat ground, you have two concerns on your mind when you take a hike. Number one, am I going to somehow take the wrong path? And is this hike going to take a lot longer? Is it going to be a lot harder than I thought? And then the second concern that we have is, am I going to meet a crazy predator who does something to me when I'm walking on my hike? You know, Tamara and I always wanted to go to Yellowstone Park. So when I had a chance to minister close by, we took a couple days and we hiked that park. And it was amazing. Not just the beauty of creation, but the large herds of elk and the roaming bison and the elusive gray wolves that were all around But there was one creature that Tamara did not want to come close to when we were in Yellowstone Park. And that is she didn't want to come up on a mama bear and her cubs. So she told me, Jim, you buy some bear spray. And you promise me that if that bear gets within 20 feet or 30 feet of us, you're going to spray him right in the eyeball. So I bought the hairspray, the bear spray. And then when I got in my car, I was kind of looking at how it worked. And I shot the bear spray all through the car. had to clean up the car for about 30 minutes. And listen, we've all done things in our life, right? And we end up in the wilderness. And here's what the psalmist is going to teach us to do today. He's going to teach us to get through our wilderness into the place where we're in wonder of how much difference God loving us made in this situation, how much different God's capacity to lead us made in this situation. Tamara did a great job last week of talking to us. about the first part of this chapter we're going to study. And she said in verse 3, she talked about how the sparrow found a home in the swallow, a nest for herself, where she might have her young in a place that's near your altar. Now what is an altar? It is a special place. It's a sacred place that we meet with God. And here is what the psalmist is saying, that because I've learned how to experience special love that comes from God's leadership that comes from God, a sacred leadership that Jesus died on the cross to provide for me. Because of that, my family has now found a home. And the psalmist references the young. Why? Well, I had a professor who didn't believe in original sin. Then he had kids and he believed in original sin, right? And when you have young kids, it's hard to raise them so that they make good decisions and things work out great in their life. And the psalmist is saying, I found a way to get through the difficulties of life. And the secret is I've learned to experience the love of God and the leadership of God better than I ever dreamed I could in my life. And in verse 4 it says, blessed are those who dwell in your house because they're ever praising you. In other words, if you go to a church for a long time and you don't love God more because of your time in that church, or you don't pray more because of your time in that church, one of two things is true. Either the Word of God isn't being taught in that church and nothing is changing in your heart as you go to church, or you're resisting God's love and because you're resisting God's love, He's not rewarding your life the way that He could. And that's what the psalmist goes to in the next verse. He says in verse 5, Blessed are those whose strength is in you, whose hearts are set on pilgrimage. Now we'll understand at a later point in this message what pilgrimage is, but for now I want you to notice that what we're supposed to receive from God whenever we honor the sacredness and the specialness of our relationship with Him is we're supposed to receive strength that gets us through what we're going through in life. So you may be here today and you're deeply wounded by the betrayal of somebody in your Or what, your life has been messed up in a major way because of somebody else's sin. Or maybe like me, when I was in my 20s, dealing with my immaturity was hard because I was a big dreamer. I kept messing up. And I had to believe I could find something that would make my dreams come true if I was going to get to do some of the things that I'm doing today. Well, do you remember what the Apostle Paul said about God in Philippians chapter 4? He said, listen, I've learned how to be in need. He said, and I've been in abundance at times in my life. But he said, that's not the important thing to me. He said, here's the important thing to me. can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. I've got the power to find healing. I've got the power to find victory. I've got the power to find blessing. And guess what? He's so big that whatever's going around me is going to have to bow to Him because our God is just that good. Can you say amen? See, that's what the psalmist is talking about. There's a strength that changes everything about the circumstances that we're going through. And today, we're going to learn how to appreciate that strength, how to access it It begins to change our life more. But first I want to talk to you about something that really blessed me years ago. And that is if you have a modern version of the Bible, you'll notice that the book of Psalms is in five different sections in the Bible. So they call Psalm chapter 1 through Psalm chapter 41, book 1. He calls Psalm 42 to 72, book 2. They call Psalm 73 to 89, book 3. They call Psalm 90 to 106, book 4. And they call Psalm 107 to 150, book 5. And these books are not arranged in chronological order, but they're actually arranged in thematic order. And here's why they did it. Whenever they came back from Babylon, when the Persians allowed the Jews to begin to rebuild their culture, the rabbis took these Psalms that were inspired writings and they said, here's what we want to do. We want to arrange the Psalms within the spirit of the Torah. So the first book of Psalms is about how to handle personal conflict and distress. The second book of Psalms is about how to reverse national crisis. In other words, if you're in distress, most of the time all you can think about is yourself. And that's when the first 40 Psalms are powerful. Let God's Word begin to rearrange you. And if you'll let God rearrange you, God will reward you because of the work that He does in your life. But then if you're blessed but your family's a mess around you or your nation's a mess around you, then we've got to go to the second book and we've got to learn how to reverse crisis in the lives of people around us. And then the third part's about how to experience God's sovereign power through true And, you know, that's when you get to the book of Leviticus, and a lot of people don't like Leviticus a lot, right? But listen, Leviticus teaches us what true worship is. It has sacrifice to it. It has giving to it. But when you make the sacrifices and you do what God asks you to do and you give, you end up grateful and you willingly want to give God your life because of true worship. It's just kind of like a marriage. You don't really have a relationship if there's no sacrifice giving in that marriage. And our relationship with God is the same, that selfishness will kill what the Spirit of God wants to do in our life. And then we come to the 4th book, and it's about how to overcome our spiritual grumbling. That people are grumbling and they're complaining instead of being grateful for God's leadership. And then they start exercising faith, but it's an emotional faith. It's not a faith that has spiritual maturity attached to it. And what happens? They wander in the wilderness. They miss God's best in their life because again, something had to be rearranged on the inside if God was going to reward them on the outside. And then you come to the last book and it's about how to live a life of redemption and how to rejoice, how to have a legacy in your family, a blessing, that causes you to love going to church and love celebrating the feast that God calls us to celebrate in the Bible. So this is what this meant to me when I was a new Christian back in 1977. The person who discipled me told me, Jim, you need to read a Psalm every single day and let it encourage you and let the Psalm start changing your heart. So I did. And let me read you the first two verses. It says, blessed is the one who doesn't walk in step with the wicked way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and on that law he meditates day and night. And I thought, Dear Lord, I've already got to change just reading the first two verses of the book of Psalms because people who know me know I grew up in a locker room. And let me tell you, there's a lot of cussing, there's a lot of sin, there's a lot of stuff that's going on. And there were a lot of values that if I embraced them, they were going to mess up life. And so I want to say to you, please be kind to my friends. Don't be bad to my friends because it doesn't mean that we're hard on people who are living wrong. The truth is they need to find the best friends they ever found whenever they meet somebody in the church. Come on, somebody. Our job isn't to put anybody down. It's to lift people up because of the values that we live. Amen? And I started seeing that and I thought, you know what? I'm going to form some good friendships. And six out of the eight top players on our basketball team got saved that year. And we started Bible study and we started reading the Bible more. We started meditating on scripture together and making life better. And pretty soon, my first church was called the Saturday Night Alternative. And it was in my high school. And people would come sometimes. They'd come with beer sometimes. They'd come with attitudes. But listen, a revival broke out of my school because of Psalm chapter 1 and Psalm chapter 2. And that's what God wants the Psalms to do to us. He wants them to rearrange us so that God can reward us more in our life. And this verse, this particular Psalm, tells us how to get out of the wilderness of bad choices that we we make and to come to the point that we are in wonder of what God does. You see, true worship causes us to live in the wonder of God's tender love. I can't believe God loved me even though I did this. I can't believe God loves me even though I did this. I can't believe God loves me even though I've messed up so many times. Listen, God will never quit loving you because God's love isn't based on you. God's love is placed on you because of who God is. And then true worship brings us into an awareness of how incredible God's leadership is, that the way He loves me and the way He leads me takes me places I could never go if God wasn't so good. And what true worship does is it brings us in touch with Romans 8, verse 28. And it's one of the most misunderstood and misapplied scriptures in Christendom. I'm going to read verse 26 and we're going to see why it's misunderstood, why it's misapplied. It says the Spirit helps us in our weakness. In other words, whenever I've been betrayed so bad and I'm wounded inside, the Holy Spirit does what nobody else could ever do. Whenever I don't know how to fix this deal in my marriage, I believe in God's strength. And as I learn to receive from God's strength, He helps me step into something I could have never stepped into. See, this verse is not to be a verse that in some kind of a shallow positive way. This is to be a truth we embrace whenever the deepest, toughest things are happening down on the inside of our soul. And he said, the Spirit helps me in my weakness. I don't know how to pray for what I need, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. In other words, he's trying to tell us how to get out of groaning into something good when he says, and we know in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who live called according to his purpose. So here's my question today. Are you groaning about something? And if so, do you really know that in all things God's going to work for your good in the midst of this. Because here's where Christians end up missing out on what their hearts long for the most. And that is most Christians think that if the circumstances around them are good, then God's being good to them. But if circumstances around me suddenly become bad, then why isn't God being good to me? Well, it's because God never said you wouldn't have bad circumstances. What God said is if you let me work right on the inside of you, you watch what I do. In all things, I'll work for good because I love you so much and I can lead you so well. Can you say amen? we can't be like the guy I met years ago. I was preaching in a little country church in Utah. And he came early to the service. And I said, how's it going, brother? He said, well, he said, I told the Lord. I'd serve him whether it rains or whether it shines, and sure enough it rained. How many of you know what he's talking about? Listen, life's not easy all the time, but this verse is gonna tell us three things that cause us to get through the wilderness to the place where we just look at God and we're in wonder of how awesome he is. And here's the first thing, and that is God's strength provides us with inspiration. This starts by saying this, that blessed are the people whose strength is in you, whose hearts are set on a pilgrimage. Now the Hebrew word for pilgrimage means a thoroughfare or a viaduct. So when you come up on a thoroughfare, what's it like? It's busy, stuff's going on everywhere. And have you ever felt in a season of life like, man, so much is going on and I'm not sure what to do. But God wants you to know he has the wisdom to deal with those things that you don't know how to deal with. And if you study his word, you have the wisdom in you to make those decisions whenever life looks like it's going so fast you don't know what to do. The second thing is it's a viaduct, and a viaduct is a bridge that enables me to go somewhere that I could never go if it wasn't for this bridge. And in the same way, God says I'll be your bridge over troubled waters. When you don't know what to do, if you'll learn to find your strength in me, I'll help you step into things you could have never stepped into. And then it says that as they pass through the Valley of Baca, now there really is no literal valley of Baca. There's no physical place called that. But I brought a picture with her. me this morning. This is the Baca tree. And whenever sap goes through this tree, what happens is it forms what looks like tears on it. And what it's talking about is those times when we're going through tough times in life. And man, we just want to cry. We just want to give up because we don't have the strength to deal with the stuff that we're going through right now. And this tree is very common around Jerusalem. You can find it in very dry places. where there's very little water and you'll find it on rocky hillsides. And you'll wonder, how in the world is that tree growing right there? And here's God's point. He's saying, well, you feel like you can't even keep your feet under you and you feel like you don't have the strength to go on. I want you to know I'm your father and I love you. And that's the time that I want to make the biggest difference in your life. Now who lived this truth amazingly? Joseph, right? Betrayed by his own brothers, and then he helps a guy named Potiphar, who is his boss, prosper in a way that Potiphar could have never prospered. And what does Joseph get for all of his goodwill of wanting to serve God and serve people? He gets thrown into prison. But Then you come to Genesis 39 and it tells us why Joseph couldn't be kept down by betraying brothers and why his life couldn't be messed up by somebody like Potiphar. And it tells us in Genesis 39 four times, because the Lord was with Joseph, because the Lord was with Joseph, because the Lord was with Joseph, because the Lord was with Joseph. How many of you know who you're coming to when you pray is bigger than what whenever you're going through a difficult time, right? And that's the first thing we find. We find inspiration in God. When I feel like I can't go on, I have a spring on the inside that encourages me, that nourishes me, that keeps me going. Here's the second thing the psalmist talks about, and that is we don't just have inspiration, but in God we receive guidance and discernment because God's not just given us inspiration, but God's given us direction. Next it says they go from strength to strength till each appears before God in Zion. Now let me tell you what Zion is. Zion is the place where the presence of God is. As a matter of fact, one day there's going to be something called the rapture and you and I are going to go to heaven. And after we celebrate what Jesus did through his church for a lot of years, we're going to come back. And in Jerusalem, it's going to be really cool, y'all, because God never loses. And you're going to see the whole earth transformed. And it's going to be beautiful, like sin never had an effect on it. And you know where God's going to be reigning? God's going to be reigning in Zion. Now this is what's cool. Whatever you're going through in this difficult season of your life, Let me tell you as somebody who's followed Jesus for 49 years with all of my heart, God will give you direction in every season, and if you'll follow Him, He'll move you forward in every season. And one day you'll look up and you will hardly be able to believe how far God brought you. Listen, y'all, I'm not kidding when I say that if Tamara met me when I got saved, I don't know if she would've ever dated me, y'all. And when the mayor of my town comes and sits on the front row and he says to y'all, or he says to Tam at lunch afterwards, my goodness, I was looking at a miracle today. Well, he was a football player. He lived a mile down the street from me. But you know what? Don't think about the mistakes you made. Just think about the fact Jesus loves you. Jesus died on the cross. Jesus is ready to move you forward. And if he moves you forward, your future's gonna be better one day than you ever dreamed. Your future could be because it's God Himself who's moving you forward. Amen? He's your inspiration, but not only that, He's your direction. He helps you start discerning so you don't make all those bad choices you used to make. He helps you start discerning and he talks to you about the things that he can do through your life. And then it says, but hear my prayer, Lord God, listen to me, God of Jacob. Anytime he calls himself the God of Jacob, you remember what Jacob had to do, right? He had to have God rearrange him on the inside so God could reward his life. And the psalmist is saying, oh God, you're so good, like the sparrow, I found a home in you and I love this, but the sparrow is the most populous wild bird on earth. In fact, there are 2.1 billion sparrows on planet earth. Can you believe that? You know what the psalmist is saying? I learned God loves common people. Aren't you glad you're just a common person? God can do great things through. Can you say amen? And he said the sparrow's found your home. He's found the value of the sacred, the value of the special. that it can take me places I could never go if I didn't honor God in my heart. But oh God, I have these problems in my heart. And listen to me, parents, if you're content with your child being a good child while they're not a godly child, you're going to go through a lot of hell in your life. And if you keep calling them good children when they need to be godly children, you're going to go through a lot of hell in your life. But if we say, God, you know what? You're so good. And because you're so good, I don't want to be bad on the inside anymore because God, I know life's going to be a whole lot more good if I end up trying to be good like you are. Can somebody give me a good amen this morning? And then the psalmist says this next, he says, and listen to me, God. And in the early church, they had a practice they called contemplative prayer. And here's how it worked. They said there are via positive prayers and there are via negative prayers. And via, of course, means way, right? Via dela Rosa is the way of Christ's suffering when he went to the cross. And they said via positive prayers are prayers that people pray who are seeking the counsel of scripture, the Holy Spirit, and proven mentorship in their life. They said via negative prayers are prayers that seek to silence the wrong sources of input in my life. So let me give you an example scripturally of what via positive prayer can do. John 15, 5, Jesus said, I'm the vine, you're the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you'll bear much fruit, but apart from me, you can do nothing. How many of you believe if you get a lot of word of God in your life, a lot of Holy Spirit in your life, God can bless you a lot, right? That's via positive praying, but how many of y'all ever had fear overcome faith? Or you had lust, overcome love. Or you had bitterness, overcome belief in what God was trying to do in your life. You don't just need via positive prayer, you need via negative prayer. You need God to help you with what's going on on the inside of your heart. And listen to this scripture, it addresses via negative prayer. In Hebrews chapter 12, it says, Make every effort to live at peace with everyone and to be holy. Everybody say be holy. Because without holiness, no one will see the Lord. That word see means without holiness, nobody will look up with wide-eyed wonder at the remarkable things that God does. In other words, if I can't keep my heart right, I'm never going to see what the Holy Spirit would have done in my life if I don't keep my heart right. And then in verse 15, it says, and see to it, no one falls short of the grace of God. And no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many. And see no one sexually immortal like godless Esau who sold his birthright for a single meal. Do you see that we can see both via positive and via negative prayer that if I don't control my heart, if I don't keep bitterness from growing, then even though God has something beautiful planned, I'm going to sell my calling for something that gratified my flesh while I forfeited the will of God in my life. And that's why this Psalm is so important because in the wilderness, listen, when you're in the wilderness, inspiration's important. When you're going through the hard times of life, how you handle your heart and how you handle direction's important. And if you blow your life and if the direction of your life gets messed up, listen to me, it's nobody's fault but yours because God was there to love you, God was there to lead you, but we all have to keep our own hearts. Can you give me an amen? Here's the final thing the Psalmist talks about is not only does God provide inspiration and direction, but he said when you take him serious, he brings you provision and protection. He says, look on our shield, O God, look with favor on your anointed one. And then he says, better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere. I'd rather be a doorkeeper in the house of God than dwell in the tents of the wicked. In other words, he said, man, I love being in God's presence. I love opening my Bible. I love coming to church when the doors are open. I love being here because I've learned that God's doing stuff in my heart. And man, when I let God do a lot of stuff in my heart, God ends up doing a lot of stuff in my life. It puts me on a pilgrimage. It causes me as a person, when life's going so fast for everybody else, I've got wisdom because I spent time with Father God. and I make great choices that I rejoice in instead of choices I regret. Whenever it looks like something can't be done, I spend time with God. And like Paul, you know what I've learned? Whether my circumstances are good, whether my circumstances are bad, man, that's not what I'm paying attention to. What I'm paying attention to is that somebody loved me enough to die upon the cross so that God who created this universe can create something beautiful in my life. That's what I'm paying attention to. Right? And he says next in this psalm, you can clap if you want to or you don't have to, but he says next in the psalm, he says, For the Lord God is a sun and a shield. What's a shield? It protects me from all the yuck that's going on in this culture. What is a sun? Well, if you're not a believer, I want you to think of something this morning. Do you realize that the God of this universe, if he had put the sun just a little bit closer to us, we'd all fry to death. If he put the sun a little bit further away from us, we would all freeze to death. So what he's saying is, you know what, whatever's going on around me, That's an NBD. That's a no big deal. Because the one who hung the star, the sun up in the sky, he's the one who's causing my life to flourish. And if he can make all the plants flourish, if he can keep all the stars in place, if he can do everything that he's doing, how many of you think that God's big enough to take care of our life, right? He says, Our God's a sun, our God's a shield. And then I love this, he says, No good thing. Everybody say, No good thing. No good thing does he withhold from people whose walk is blameless. And then he says, Lord Almighty, blessed is the one who trusts in you. In other words, he said, where are you gonna go looking for good? Where are you gonna go looking for a good life? Because I'll tell you this, there's only one person who can make your life, only one being who can make your life the best it could possibly be, and that being is God, and you experience that through honoring God. I'm gonna tell you a story about my life as I closed. When I was 37, we were building this building. And the contractor and the builder, or the architect, the contractor and architect started getting in a big fight. And the contractor got so mad, he said, I'm walking off the job. And I thought, what am I gonna do? I'm 37, I gotta stand up in front of the church and we're in three services at the time, I gotta tell them, they quit on me. And I got under so much stress, and it's really sad. I mean, I should have been smarter, but I wasn't. I was still 37. And I got under so much stress that literally I got Bell's palsy in my office. My face started distorting. And I thought, oh no, I didn't think this could happen to somebody who's 37 years old. And then I realized I can't let fear and I can't let that stuff destroy me. And thankfully, my face came back to normal after I had that Bell's palsy incident. But afterwards, I thought about what Jesus said. He said, in this world, you'll have trouble. In this world, you'll go through wildernesses. People will betray you and wound your heart. Your own immaturity will make you feel like you're gonna be a failure. There'll be all kind of reasons you find yourself in the wilderness. But Jesus didn't leave it there. He said, You'll be in the wilderness. But he said, Be of good cheer because I've overcome the world. And I got in my office and I just started praising God and I heard the Lord say this to me. And if you're a new Christian, God doesn't talk to people all the time. In fact, I know some weird people who say God talks to them all the time, okay? But if you read your Bible, there will be times God talks to you inside of your heart. And it was one of those times for me. And God said, go back and read the contract. And I picked up the contract. Those things are like this thick. I didn't want to read it. I knew I'd have to look up words as I was reading it, but I started on page one. And I got into somewhere in the middle of the contract and I read something. I thought, oh my goodness, if I held the contractor to this, it would cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars. So I called Doc Harden and I said, you pull out the contract and will you tell me if this means to you what I think it means to me? Doc's our building committee guy. And he said, pastor, that's what it means. I said, I think I'm just gonna go pay the contractor a visit. He said, you want me to come with you? I said, nah. I said, it might be better if it's more confidential. And Doc said, man, I wish I could have been a little bird on the wall watching that meeting. I walked into the contractor's office, I pulled out the contract, I put it on his desk, and I said, Hey, what's that mean to you? And he said, I think that means I should have read the contract a whole lot closer. And I said, Well, I'm a good dude, so I'm going to tell you what I do. I don't want to make any more money from you than what the contract says I should. The Bible says the Lord established this fairness in every business deal. I just want you to get back to work and get that church up. And he said, yes, sir. And when he's 65 and you're 37, how many of you know yes, sir sounds really good, right? And the building got built and God solved the problem. Here's what I want to tell you. I don't know what problem you're in, but I know something good. And that is there's a God who knows how to build a viaduct. There's a God who knows how to get you through the wilderness. And thank God that God says to you, I will make a way when people say there is no way. Just trust in me. Can you say amen?