All right, crossing family, it is so good to be with you today.
I want to welcome those of you joining at one of our locations,
those of you watching online and inside.
We are so glad that you are here.
And to those of you who've been kind of going on a prayer
journey alongside of me, I want to encourage you to join me in
praying for our Easter services. Those are two weeks away.
God has placed a heavy burden on my heart for the opportunities
that I believe He's going to give us this year to not just
preach the gospel, but to lead you guys in celebrating the
victory that we have in Jesus Christ.
And what I want to encourage you to do is to there are plenty of
people for you to invite who need to hear about what Jesus
can do in their life. I want to encourage you not just
that weekend, but all the time. Park far away.
That's where leaders park. Choose the non regular service
times. You'll get more information on
that from your campus pastor over the next couple of weeks.
And do all the things that you guys are, you know, kind of
accustomed to doing when we have those moments as we try to make
this the hardest place on planet earth to get to hell from.
Sometimes when Jennifer and I go out to eat, I find myself a
little conflicted. I always want the steak that's a
non negotiable I'm a Christian, but sometimes I want something
else. Like sometimes I want some
shrimp, sometimes I want the lobster.
Sometimes I'm going I need the surf and turf option.
The problem with the surf and turf option though is they
sometimes will reduce the size of the steak.
And again, I'm a Christian, so there's rules.
And So what I will do from time to time is I will vision cast to
the table that we should get an additional entree for the table,
something for Jesus. You guys have been there.
And that's kind of how I feel about the sermon.
It's because I don't just want the steak.
I don't just want the lobster. I kind of, I want to try some of
the pasta. And So what we're going to try
to do today as a church is we're going to try to walk and chew
gum. Because as I went through this
sermon, I kind of went on a journey of my own.
It starts with comfort. It leads to conviction, and
ultimately to celebration. Now, when I talk about
celebration, there's going to be this moment in the sermon where
I think you're going to feel what I felt when I wrote it,
which is you will be overwhelmed by the goodness and the richness
of God's grace and His mercy. However, you will not fully
enjoy or appreciate the richness of His mercy and His grace if
you don't allow through the text, the Holy Spirit to 1st
convict you. I'm not convicting you.
You have to allow the Holy Spirit through the power of His
Word to do that. Let me set it up.
This series has been designed to equip you to answer the question
that is sometimes lobbed at believers by non believers when
they bring about the proposed difference between the God of
the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament.
And what we've noticed and what you will notice again today, no
surprise, is that the God of the Old Testament is the same God.
In the New Testament, it's the same God.
They have the same name because they have the same power and
they are offering the same promise to those who are willing
to receive him. Here's the story.
God has appeared to a man by the name of Abram.
Now Abraham eventually gets his name changed to Abraham and his
wife Sarah eventually gets her name changed to Sarah.
So depending on where you're at in the story, God has not yet
changed their name. But we're talking about the
exact same people. Genesis chapter 12, verse one
through 2. The Lord said to Abram, go from
your country, your people, your father's household to the land.
I will show you. I will make you into a great
nation and I will bless you. I will make your name great and
you will be a blessing. At the time, Abram and his wife
Sarai were old, old and barren. No kids.
If they had to count their kids, it was super easy. 0 Abram was
75, his wife 65. Not a lot of parents of newborns
in that age bracket. Those of you here today, if that
happened to you this weekend, it's going to be interesting.
Abram and Sarai have navigated years, decades of infertility.
They've watched their friends and their family members
celebrate one birth after another.
They are beyond tired of the gender reveal parties.
They are having to navigate what the Scripture says, rejoice with
those who rejoice only to go home and to mourn with each
other as they mourned A few verses and 1000 miles later,
Abram has left her, which is where he lived, and he has moved
to Shechem and the Lord appeared to him again.
Verse seven of the same chapter. The Lord appeared to Abram and
said to your offspring, I will give this land.
So he built an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him.
Couple more verses, a couple more trips, and even more time
passes and again the Lord shows up to Abram and issues this
promise. Chapter 13, verses 14 through 16
the Lord said to Abram after his nephew Lot had parted from him.
Look around from where you are, to the north and the South, to
the east and to the West. All the land that you see I will
give to you and your offspring forever.
I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth so that if
anyone could count the dust, then your offspring could be
counted. Couple more verses later and
still no offspring, nothing. Abram and Sarah, I don't feel
any closer to the promise that God has proclaimed over their
life. Chapter 15 verses one through 6.
The word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision.
Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very
great reward. But Abram said, Sovereign Lord,
what can you give me? Since I remain childless and the
one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus, almost
nobody gets named Eliezer. That Bible name didn't make the
cut. And Abram said, you have given
me no children to a servant in my household will be my heir.
Then the word of the Lord came to him, This man will not be
your heir, but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your
heir. He took him outside and he said,
look up at the sky and count the stars.
Indeed, if you can count them, then he said, so shall your
offspring be. Abram believed the Lord, and God
credited it to him, to Abram as righteousness.
You can almost hear the pain in Abram's voice as you're reading
through the text. It almost leaps off the page.
He's going you. You say, you're my reward, but I
still don't have any kids. You have yet to come through on
your promise. And God takes Abraham.
He says, listen, stop counting the dust on the ground.
Lift your eyes up, look up into the night sky and start counting
the stars if you can. And by the time I'm done with
you, you will have more offspring than there are stars
in the night sky. And Abram, in his pain, he
chooses to believe and trust in God's ability to do what God
said he was going to do. And as a result, God accepted
his belief, his trust as righteousness.
What does that mean? Abraham was made right before
God because he believed that God would do what he had promised to
do. And right now in the story,
things are going great. Still no kids, but you have a
husband and a wife who are clinging to the promises of God
while they walk through their darkest, most painful valley.
Abraham has received 4 promises, 4 confirmations that he will
have a child and as a result his offspring will cover the earth.
However, the waiting eventually becomes way too much to bear,
and so Abram and Sarah, they take matters into their own
hands. Chapter 16 verses one through 4.
Now Sarah, Abram's wife, had borne him no children, but she
had an Egyptian slave named Hagar.
So she said to Abram, the Lord has kept me from having
children. Go sleep with my slave.
Perhaps I can build a family through her.
Abram agreed to what Sarah said. Let's just pause for a second.
We've entered Stupidville women. What a horrible idea.
Listen, they're flesh and blood, just like you and I are.
So you got the guy sitting at home watching March Madness.
Wife comes in. Sweetie, I've got an idea.
I think you should sleep with somebody else too.
He's got Doritos, pauses the game.
First time he's ever paused the game when she started talking.
Say that again. Yeah, honey, I think you should
try to have kids with somebody else.
And Abram's like, yeah, I I think this is fantastic.
Let's keep going in the text. So after Abram had been living
in Canaan 10 years, Sarah, his wife, took her Egyptian slave
Hagar, gave her to her husband to be his wife.
He slept with Hagar and she conceived. 10 years have passed
since the first promise. And look what's happened in how
Abram and Sarai view God. He is no longer the solution to
their pain, He's the cause of it.
The waiting has shifted their perspective.
God has gone from being their provider to being their problem.
He's gone from being mighty to being the one who needs their
sinful help. Let's keep reading verses 4 and
5. When she this is Hagar knew that
she Hagar was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress
Sarai. Then Sarai said to Abraham.
Classic women logic. You are responsible for the
wrong. I am suffering, I put my slave
in your arms and now that she knows she is pregnant, she
despises me. May the Lord judge between you
and me. Do you see Satan taking ground
in the text? Do you see this watch?
They have the pain of no children, but they had a promise
from God and now they have a sinful solution to a heavenly
promise. And Sarah, I had an idea and it
was a very, very bad idea. And Abraham goes along with it,
which is very, very bad. And now this couple that were at
one point united in their pain and united in the fact that they
believe God have now started to play the blame game.
And now they have marriage problems.
And when you and I are reading this, we're going, this is all
bad, Sarah bad, Abraham bad, situation bad.
But in the moment, Satan is so shifty and he clouds our
judgement. You would not have done the sins
that you have done if you were thinking clearly in the moment.
Look what it says in Second Corinthians Chapter 11, verse
14. No wonder, for Satan himself
masquerades as an Angel of light and it just keeps getting worse.
Verse 16 or chapter 16. Verse 6.
Your slave is in your hands, Abram.
Do with her whatever you think best.
Then Sarai mistreated Hagar, so Hagar fled from Sarai.
Let's just zoom in for just a second on Hagar.
She's a slave girl. No rights, no advocate, no
protection. She's passed from Sarai to
Abraham, then back to Sarai. She's seen his property from
Sarai, taken advantage of by Abraham, then passed back to
Sarai where she's punished for the decisions and the outcomes
that they wanted. Here's Hagar.
No promise, just pain left in the wreckage.
Let me pause for just a second. You guys know this to be true,
but I just want to confirm it. Sin is never the solution.
Jerry said it last week. God's paths of righteousness
never lead you through fields of sin.
Today you might be joining us and you are experiencing
incredible pain. You may be frustrated, you may
be hurt. You might be at your wit's end
in the waiting. But the solution to what you are
going through is never sin. It is always a Savior.
And Satan will attack your pain and He will offer you fake
solutions that will only bring about more pain.
The second thing to notice is it is a lie from Satan that your
sin only effects you. Your sin always hurts deeper and
wider than you could ever imagine.
To the alcoholic, it is not just your body and your liver, but an
entire family walking on egg shells around you.
To the person struggling with marital intimacy, pain, or I
mean porn is the easy option, but it is not just you that is
being destroyed. It is rewiring your brain and
then it clouds every interaction you have with members of the
opposite sex and it makes the hill even harder and higher to
climb in your own marriage. Hagar is now pregnant, alone,
abandoned, deserted, unprotected, devastated, living
in the sinful realities of other people's sinful decisions.
And in that moment, who meets her?
Chapter 16, verse 7, the Angel of the Lord found Hagar near a
spring in the desert. It was the spring that is beside
the road to Shur. It is this God of the Old
Testament. It's that God who went looking
for the girl that nobody cared about.
It was the God of the Old Testament that went looking for
the girl that nobody had ever cared about.
You can say what you want to say about the God of the Old
Testament, but I see a God who comes looking for the ones that
have been cast aside and hurt. Verse 13 she gave this name to
the Lord who spoke to her, you are the God who sees me.
For she said, I have now seen the one who sees me, and she
gives God a name, L row E hear me, if today you feel forgotten
and all alone, if you feel overlooked, misplaced,
misunderstood, can I introduce you to El Ro E?
He is the Maker of heaven and earth, supreme and mighty,
majestic and all powerful, and he still sees you.
No wonder David cries out in Psalm chapter 8 verses 3 through
4 when I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the
moon and the stars which you have set in place.
What is mankind that you are mindful of them?
Human beings that you care for them?
And this is not a one off concept in the Old Testament.
The Old Testament is filled with these promises.
Job chapter 28 verse 24 has this to say.
For he views the ends of the earth and sees everything under
the heavens. Psalm 33, verses 13 through 15
backs this up. From heaven the Lord looks down
and sees all mankind. From His dwelling place He
watches all who live on earth, He who forms the hearts of all,
who considers everything they do.
And then you and I, we Fast forward and turn page after page
until we arrive in the New Testament and the words of Jesus
wash over us. In Luke chapter 12, verse six
and seven. Are not 5 sparrows sold for 2
pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten
by God. Indeed, the very hairs on your
head are all numbered. Don't be afraid.
You are worth more than many sparrows.
If God notices the status of the lowest birds, how much more will
he notice you? How much more will he notice
what you're going through? It sounds to me like Jesus is
Elroy. Why?
Because it's the same God with the same power, offering the
same promise if you will receive it and walk in it.
And right now, my hope is that those of you who are needing
some comfort today, who just need to know that God sees you
in your pain and your struggle, you've experienced that comfort.
What I want to do for just a little bit, if you're willing, I
want you to push past the comfort and open yourself up to
a conviction from the Holy Spirit.
You see God does not just see the pain of your situation, He
also sees your sin that causes your separation, that causes
other people pain. Just like Adam and Eve who hid
themselves from God when they had sinned.
You and I, when we sin, we try to hide our sin and ourselves
from God and from everyone else. And what this does is this
causes separation and no one loves to see you separated and
alone from God and others like Satan does.
You see it as Satan is the one who leads you and I into sin,
and this sin causes separation between US and God, and our sin
creates hagars who have to deal with the ramifications of our
sin. This causes separation from them
and from others. Because the last thing that you
and I want is for people around us to know what we have become
and what struggles we are facing.
However, El row E he doesn't just sit in our situation.
He sees our sin. Look at the Old Testament Job
chapter 34 verses 21 through 22. His eyes are on the ways of
mortals. That's you and me.
He sees their every step. There is no deep shadow, no
utter darkness where evil doers can hide.
Jeremiah 16, verse 17 My eyes are on all their ways.
They are not hidden from me, nor is their sin concealed from my
eyes. Proverbs 15, verse 3 The eyes of
the Lord are everywhere, keeping watch on the wicked and the
good. And if you were to move all the
way to the New Testament, Hebrews chapter one, verse 3
tells us that the Son Jesus is the exact radiance of God's
glory, the exact representation of his being.
That means that Jesus is the same God with the same power,
which means he sees what God sees.
And if you keep reading in Hebrews, you will come to the
4th chapter which contains some of the most terrifying words in
all of Scripture, Verse 13. Nothing in all of creation is
hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid
bare before the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.
Your wife may not know about your porn addiction, but God
does. Your husband might not know
about your emotional affair, but God does.
The government might not know that you have successfully
cheated on your taxes light hearted, but God does.
Your boss may not know that you've stolen from the company,
but God does. Your manager might not know that
you were cheating on your time card, but God does.
Your counselor may not know about your anger issues, but God
does. Your extended family may not
know about the abuse you are committing in your home, but God
does. This is where being a God
fearing person matters because a God fearing person understands
that they will stand before the judgement seat of God and will
have to give an account for what they did regardless on whether
or not anybody else ever saw it. And when you become a God
fearing person, it changes how you live and it changes how you
work. It makes you honest in your
business dealings. It calls you to a higher
standard in your character. You see Satan in these moments
once you to get you to think that God doesn't notice and that
God does not care. And then Satan tries to get you
to hide it and he entices you away from God.
And then he will entice you away from the solution, which is
repentance and confession. And then once Satan has
completely isolated you spiritually from God physically,
he will isolate you from people because if the people around you
knew you, they wouldn't want to be around you.
But L row E, he sees and he knows, and there is no place to
hide. Before we move on, just for a
second, stay in this moment. Possibly we could have a moment
of communal conviction. The weight that you could be and
hopefully should be feeling right now is a weight that we
should feel and hold. There are two ways out of this.
God gives us a solution. It is repentance and confession.
When we repent and acknowledge what we've done and choose not
to walk in those ways anymore. And when we confess it and start
being honest with the people around us about it.
And on the other side of repentance and on the other side
of confession. Got issues?
A promise, healing victory. Now can I invite you to
celebrate with me? And you're going.
Celebrate what? Yeah.
That's why I told you it's an interesting journey.
This is the this is the third meal right here.
If you keep reading in Hebrews chapter 4, the one that has the
most terrifying verse in verse 13, can I read you the next
couple of verses? Therefore, since we have a great
high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of
God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess.
For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with
our weakness, but we have one who has been tempted in every
way, just as we were, yet he did not sin.
Let us approach God's throne of mercy or of grace with
confidence so that we may find mercy and find grace to help us
in our time of need. Hear me.
The God who sees you and your sin, the sin we are trying to
hide from him and everyone else, the God who sees is the very
same God who forgives, the very same God who heals, The very
same God who claims victory over the very sins that separated me
from him, the very sins that I tried to keep hidden from him.
Crossing family. The God who sees is the priest
who mediates the broken relationship that we have caused
between himself and us, and He mediates it through Jesus
Christ, the One who did what we could not do and made a way
where we could not make a way. And it is that very same God who
is offering mercy and grace to us in our time of need.
Did you notice the shift that you and I are able to enter into
His throne room with confidence? Where does this confidence come
from? Because everything inside of us
says isolate and hide and control.
And the last thing we think we could do is walk into the throne
room of God in confidence. But our confidence, hear me, is
not in who we are. We walk in confidence because of
who Jesus was in our place. Now hear me.
Your relationship with God will be made right through what Jesus
Christ has done on the cross. And we receive it.
We receive it through faith just like Abraham.
It credited to him as righteousness that he trusts
that God would do what He said He was going to do.
You and I operate in faith when we believe that Jesus is who He
says He is and that God did what He said He would do on the cross
on our behalf. That is how we enter in.
But you do not get to walk in faith if you are not going to
live that same faith out in repentance and confession.
We're moving to a time of decision.
To those of you who are here today or watching online who are
not yet in an intimate, personal relationship with Jesus Christ,
I need you to hear me very clearly.
Jesus is not your high priest yet, but the good news of the
Gospel is He can be, and he can be today.
The Bible offers you a choice. You can pay for your sins, which
is eternity in hell, or through faith you can accept what Jesus
made right on the cross, on the finished work of Jesus on the
cross. And so in just a few moments,
when the people around you stand and sing and some of them come
to the steps and pray, I want to encourage you if you are outside
of Christ for you to start making a move in that direction
today. To those of you who do know
Jesus, to those of you who are Jesus followers, kind of hang
with me because I want to kind of have a I'm going to paint
with a wide brush for just a second.
To those of you that are in here today or watching online, who
you're the Abrams and Sarahs, you're struggling in the
waiting. You're starting to doubt the
promises of God. Don't be lured into taking the
path of sin. I know it might take longer than
you wanted it to take, but God's timing has never been our
timing. It's always been His timing.
But can I show you how good He is to you?
When you are waiting, you need the ability to endure, the
ability to be patient. Waiting on God's timing requires
that. But when you stepped into an
intimate, personal relationship with Jesus Christ, you received
the Holy Spirit into your heart and into your life.
And the Holy Spirit produces fruit.
And do you know what one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit is?
It's patience. Hear me.
God has given you through the Holy Spirit what you need to
stay faithful in the waiting, a strength that is outside of you,
a strength that is beyond you. He has actually given you what
you need to remain faithful to Him in the waiting.
So He doesn't just call you to wait, He provides you with the
necessary resources to stay faithful in the waiting.
That's how good He is. He gives you what you could not
have on your own, to endure longer than you could have on
your own. So you can stay faithful to Him
longer than you could on your own.
Hear me? He gave you the power to wait
and endure longer than you would have ever been able to wait or
endure on your own. Don't walk away from that to the
Haggars, to those of you who are feeling alone and isolated and
discarded, to those of you who have been used and abused.
God sees you and He is not distant, nor is He uncaring.
The prayers that you are offering in quiet groans, the
tear filled whispers that you have, do not escape his ear or
hide from His gaze. He sees you, He sees you and He
cares for you. And to those of you right now,
that there is a sin that is causing separation between you
and God and you and the people that you love.
God's promises are true and He is faithful.
And God guarantees healing on the other side of confession and
repentance. And so through faith today, some
of you may need to take a step to start walking in the healing
that God has already provided. Would you stand with me?
Heavenly Father, we're thankful for this moment that you've
given us right here and right now.
And yeah, there are many people within the sound of my voice who
there is a sin that is shackling them, that is holding them back.
There is a sin in their life that is getting them to doubt
how good and how faithful and how trustworthy you are.
There is a sin in their life that is creating.
Hagars and God, I pray that you would lead us into victory, that
we would trust you, that we would walk in your promises and
in your goodness. Am I praying?
Amen.