Steven Furtick — When God Shows Up in the Middle of Nowhere
For the remainder of our time, I want us to go back to Bethel with Jacob today. God said, "I'll bring you back to this land you're lying on. I'll be with you, I'll fight for you, and I'll bless you." Twenty-one years later Jacob goes back to Bethel. Let's go back to Bethel for a moment today.
The word of the Lord for your life today is this: You need to go back to Bethel. Go back to that place in the middle of nowhere where God met you and brought you out of nothing. Touch the person next to you and tell them, "I'm going," come on, "I'm going, going back, back to Bethel, Bethel." Five percent of y'all got it. I said, "I'm going, going back, back to Bethel, Bethel. I'm going, going back, back to Bethel, Bethel."
You can cross-reference this in the book of Second Biggie. I'm going, going. Bless your soul. I'm going, going back, back to Bethel, Bethel. Everybody, "I'm going, going back, back to Bethel, Bethel." University, I wish you would get up on your feet and say it. I'm going, going back, back to Bethel, Bethel. Going back. I'm going back to that place. Because you got to learn how to go back to Bethel in your heart on the way to where God is taking you that haven't arrived yet.
Yeah, you should learn how to go back. That's what Jacob did. That's what God told him to do. He said, "Go back to that place in the middle of nowhere where I met you. Go back to Bethel." Three things Bethel represents, and then I'll be out of your way.
Number one, write these down, Bethel is a place of remembrance. It's a place of remembrance, a place where you remember how God set up shop in the desperate situations in your life and made way through the wilderness. I'm going back to Bethel today because I need to remember some things.
You know, one of the most oft repeated commands in scripture is "remember." We always wanted to learn something new. But sometimes the key to where we're going and who we're becoming is not something that we need to learn but something we need to remember that we've already seen.
That's what God tells Jacob: "I know you're a hundred and you've been through some things, but go back to Bethel. Go back." That's part of what was so cool about our live worship recording for me and for those of you who may be watching this on television or at a later time, listening on a podcast.
As of the preaching of this message, we just recorded our latest worship album at Time Warner Cable Arena, the largest venue in our city, indoor venue in our city, and our church came together and we sang songs of praise and it was amazing, and it was amazing on many levels. One, because it was just cool and it was just great, but secondly, for me, it was a trip back to Bethel in my heart.
Let me explain, if you'll indulge me for a moment. Some of y'all just come to church here and you have no idea what kind of stones we used to have as our pillow when the church started. And I know that to really communicate this message, I would have to share a thing or two autobiographically.
See, when we're in worship as a church together, I'm always doing two things. One, I'm worshipping Jesus like I'm supposed to, but then I'm always looking around at people. And at the arena on Friday night, while we were worshipping, for the first couple of songs, I was watching the stage, but then it didn't take long for me to start doing a little panoramic 360 of the arena.
And I would see people that had been with us on the journey and it would touch me so deeply that it would produce a praise in my heart and faith in my heart, because different people's faces would take me back to different places that I've been and how God was there with me in those places.
So I'm just looking around, you know, and I know it's somewhat like an invasion of your privacy to be watched while you're worshipping, but it's a pastoral privilege, okay? So I'm like totally looking around and watching people. I'm seeing all the people who have meant so much and people who have been there through so much.
So like, for instance, I'm looking around the auditorium and I see, first of all, of course, on the stage, the worship leaders who are up there. And you don't know this about Mack Brock and Chris Brown and Wade Joye. We have so many worship leaders, I hate to call names, but those are the three that I asked to come and meet with me seven years ago and they didn't know why they were coming, because I'd met all of them at little youth events that we had been at together where they were playing music and I was preaching all over the place, and I'd met them through the years.
And I called them together and they all had a different plan for their life. They were like, you know, one of them was going to Nashville to do music, one of them was going to L.A. to do something creative, one of them was going to try to start a church. And I said, "Hey, you know what, you three guys, you can all go do that, or you can be in the will of God and come to Charlotte and start a worship ministry that will bless our city and hopefully touch the world."
And so when I was at the worship recording, you might have been thinking about the song or something like... or how, you know, what somebody was wearing or something, and that's fine, or the lights or the thing, you know, or the stuff or whatever. But what I was thinking about, I went back to Bethel in my mind, and I remember sitting in that little back room in the Italian restaurant where I called them for the meeting. It was kind of Godfather.
And I called them back there and I was like, "You know, you need to come and give your life to building a church, and I believe if you'll do that, God will make all your dreams not only come true, but He will exceed your wildest dream if you'll lay down your life and build His dream, the local church." And when I saw them up there, you know, all just singing and worshipping God and leading our church, it took me back, you know?
Sometimes you need to go back and just remember those key moments where God did the unexpected and He blessed you in the middle of nowhere. And then, of course, I turn around and right behind me is Chunks Corbett, our CFO, that big bald head, his burly biceps lifted high in praise with an outstretched arm, trying to sing, trying to sing. His pitch is decent. His tone is terrible. Terrible. And it took me back to Golden Corral in Shelby, North Carolina.
You don't know nothing about Golden Corral in Shelby, North Carolina, with your city self. But at the Golden Corral in Shelby, North Carolina, is where we used to go, and we would go after breakfast, just as breakfast was closing, because if you go right when they're closing the breakfast buffet, you can get the lunch buffet, too, and you can get two... y'all don't know.
And I remember when I sat across the table from Chunks, and his name is Chunks, at Golden Corral, and he actually had his name changed. His name was James, and it used to be called Luz, but now it's called Bethel. It used to be James and now it's called Chunks. He got his name changed. And I looked at Chunks back there worshipping and I would think...
I remember when I said, "Hey, I know you're a successful physical therapist, but why don't you move your wife, you know, your wife who is soon to be great with child, and why don't you move with me to start a church?" And he said, "Okay, where are you going to start the church?" And I said, "I don't know, so there's nowhere that I can like point to, but God put this vision in my heart, and why don't you just like give up on this whole thing. You're going to be a partner at the physical therapy thing, partner in a couple of years, but don't do that. Instead, come start a church with me. For free. No salary; can't pay you. Come on." And when I saw him worshipping and I saw him singing the songs that are now going out around the world to places on the globe that we'll never even visit, I'm telling you, it just took me back.
And then I looked over at my wife, and that really did me in, because I went back to the little cabin we were in... calling it "a cabin." That's a polite way to say where we were staying at this camp we were speaking at. And she said to me, "It's time for us to go start this church that God put in your heart." I said, "Well, if we do that, then we're not going to have all the security that we have with what we're doing right now." She said, "Yeah, but if we don't do it, we might miss the opportunity." And then I look at her, and then I looked at all of you, and I just did a 360, and I thought: Surely, the Lord is in this place, the same God.
I wonder, can you do a 360 in your heart today? See, you don't have to be in an arena full of people to do it. In fact, it works best if you do it in those moments where you don't know where you're going and you just take a moment and turn around and say, "Look, what God has done." It's a place of remembrance, see. It's a place where He set up a stone. He set up a stone.
One time Samuel set up a stone in scripture and he said, "Thus far, the Lord has helped us." The stone is the marker and Bethel is a place of remembrance. Go back to Bethel, my brother. Go back to Bethel, my sister. Just for a moment in your heart today, go back to Bethel.
Remember how He met you in the middle of nowhere? Remember, Jacob is out in a place he's never been on the way to a place where he's never been. He's in the middle of nowhere and God blesses him, and he wakes up and he sees, watch this, he sees, verse 16, Genesis 28, on his first visit to Bethel, he sees: "Surely the Lord is in this place."
I'm not sure about where I'm going, I'm not sure about where I've been, but surely the Lord is, present tense, in this place. And I was, past tense, not aware of it. He is here. He is here. I guess you could say, "He's still here." After all you've been through, He's still with you. After all the times He should have walked away and you would have given up on you, He's still here.
And what I love about Jacob is, in chapter 28, he's talking about the Lord is in this place. That's cool, that's great. But by the time he goes back to Bethel, you're going to love this, in chapter 35, it's been 21 years, he's been through some things.
See, Bethel is a place of what? Remembrance, but it's also a place of revelation. Because it was there in the middle of nowhere, here's the revelation, Jacob went back to Bethel, a place where he had been 21 years earlier running for his life, he goes back to Bethel, and listen to what he says in Genesis 35:3: "Come, let us go up to Bethel where I will build an altar to God who answered me in the day of my distress and who has been with me wherever I have gone."
In Genesis 28, Jacob said, "The Lord is in this place." But now Jacob has journeyed full circle and he realizes God wasn't just in that place. He was with me in that place and that place and that place and that place and that He's been with me.
The presence of God is not a place. It's a person. It's portable. He's with you wherever you go. That's why Jesus was called Emmanuel, "God with us." Jacob says, "I see it now, I see it now. My eyes are open. I've been through some things. I've had some blessings, I've fought some battles, but God was with me. In the middle of my misery, God was with me. In the middle of my sin".
What happens when God shows up in the middle, in the middle of nowhere? In the middle of my trouble. It says He's a very present help in a time of trouble. When God shows up in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of hopelessness, in the middle of hurt, in the middle of doctor reports, in the middle of failed marriages, in the middle of relational corruption and dysfunction, when God shows up in the middle of nowhere, you open your eyes to see He is now here.
He is the ever-present, ever-faithful God, and He's here now. He's here now. He's here now. Surely the Lord is in this place. He was here all along, and now I see it. He's here now. He's now here. Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. He is now here. He is now here. Now, now, now, now. Here now.
So, see, you're not alone. You're not by yourself. You're not lost. He shows up in the middle of nowhere so you can see that He is now. Here, I should have made this a Christmas message, because in the Christmas story they were in the same country, shepherds abiding in the fields keeping watch over their flock by night, and suddenly the glory of the Lord shone round about them, and they were so afraid.
And the angel said unto them, "Fear not, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people, for unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior which is Christ the Lord." And the shepherds in the middle of nowhere heard the announcement from heaven that God in the flesh, Emmanuel, the Messiah for whom you have waited, He is now here. He is now here. He is now here.
I wish I could get a church to confess it. He is now here. Here now. Here to meet needs now. Here to heal hearts now. Here now, here now. It's a place. Go back to Bethel. It's a place of remembrance. It's a place of remembrance. It's a place of revelation. But, church, it's also a place of response. Stand if you're not standing. It's a place of response. Up on your feet, no one moving. It's a place of response.
The first time Jacob went to Bethel he was running real good. By the time he came back, he was limping. The first time Jacob went to Bethel he was making deals with God. See, I told you about the vision that Jacob had, but I didn't tell you about the vow that he made. See, after God appeared to Jacob the first time he went to Bethel, it says in Genesis 28:20 that after Jacob had seen God, he made a vow saying, look at this, "If God will be with me and will watch over me on this journey I'm taking and will give me food to eat and clothes to wear," look, he's making a contract with God. He's a negotiator.
This is what Jacob does, making deals. If God will, if God will, if God will so that I return safely to my father's household, then the Lord will be my God, and this stone that I have set up as a pillar will be God's house, and of all that you give me, I will give you a tenth. Now, I'll show you this and I'm done.
When he went back to Bethel limping, blessed but also broken, it's a little different this time, because the second time he went to Bethel, when he went back to Bethel, it says in verse 14, Genesis 35, that Jacob set up a stone pillar at the place where God had talked with him and he poured out a drink offering on it and he also poured oil on it, symbolizing the presence of God, and Jacob called the place, watch this, church, where God had talked with him Bethel. The first time Jacob was doing all the talking.
Now he's been through some things. You know, we start our life, we're negotiating all the destinations and places we want to go and things we want to do, and sometimes we get to do them and sometimes we don't. And sometimes what we have to go through to get to the place where we went makes the journey a whole lot different than we imagined it.
And when Jacob came back to Bethel, it's no longer the place where he's talking with God. It's the place where God talked with him. And so Jacob doesn't say a word this time. Not one word. He simply builds an altar in a place called Bethel.
And when you and I think of altars, we think of beautiful furniture at the front of the church with a pad so that our knees aren't uncomfortable, where we can pray if we'd like. In the Old Testament, an altar was a place of sacrifice, where they would put that bull and that goat or those pigeons or those doves or that drink offering, where they would pour out the life blood of the sacrifice for their sin or a thanks offering to acknowledge the God who had given it all to them. And when it says Jacob built an altar, it represents a sacrifice. You know, the New Testament talks about, in Romans 12:1, how you and I, in view of God's mercy, look at this, are to offer our bodies, ourselves as living sacrifices.
It's a response. It says, "This is your true and proper worship." One version says, "It's your reasonable response." It's time for you to build an altar in Bethel, in your heart today, my brother, my sister, to take a good look at how far God has brought you, even with all the questions that you have about what is ahead of you, to open your eyes and wake up.
See, God didn't show up in Bethel when Jacob got there. He was there all along waiting for Jacob to open his eyes and see what was there all along. He's now here. Will you open your eyes to him today and respond, build an altar in your heart?
Say, "God, I didn't come to church today to negotiate with you for a better life. I came to give you my life as it is. You gave it to me to begin with. Now here's this life back. God, what do you want from me? I'm yours. Here I am, God. Here I am. I'm here in your presence. You were with me all along and I just didn't see it, but now I do. And so here I am. Here I am. Take all of me, Lord. It's all on the altar. Here's my dreams, Lord. Here's my life, here's my hopes, here's my plans, here's my will."