Beth Moore - Marvelously Helped - Part 2
This is our theme, this, what I'm just calling this, majestic irony. All the already having in the entire world, can't compare to being marvelously helped. I would imagine that some of you that have also known the Lord decades of your life and known his forgiveness and his grace and his mercy and his power to pull you out of the deepest, darkest places, and when you thought you were dead, that it was over for you, he breathes on you again and brings you back to life. I can barely even sing about it because he has been so faithful and kind to me, marvelously helped. I want you to write down number one already, and then I want us to sit on it for a couple of minutes.
Number one, we've been invited into a life marvelously helped by God. This invitation that God holds out to humankind is, come into a relationship and live a life that is marvelously helped. Not always fun, not always like, woo-hoo, not always successful, marvelously helped. And what our theme is, is this, there's nothing like being marvelously helped. That one of these days when we lay down our lives and I mean they're done, they're done, we close our eyes for the last time and we awaken them and look straight into the face of our Savior, we wouldn't have traded living a life marvelously helped for all the success in the world. It will be what mattered. I keep thinking, I just keep having this thought over and over again, one of my thoughts is, oh Lord, I'm tired. Because I look back on my journey and I'm telling you, the Lord and I, I feel like I have lived every birthday, I think. I don't know why I'm not 117.
Does anybody know what I'm talking about? Because you've packed so much life in that, and we've been through so much, it's just like, whoa! But I have known the marvelous help of the Lord. And here's the thing, even after all the trauma and after all the tears and all the unending drama, still if I had 30 seconds with a clear mind before I died this day, I'd still look straight up at heaven and go, I've had the biggest blast with you. And I'm thinking, what part of this has been a blast? Being marvelously helped. I have a lot of doubts about a lot of things. Whether or not God is there is not one of them. Whether or not Jesus is Savior and Lord is not one of them, because I'm going to tell you something, I should be dead, or I should be somewhere passed out in a ditch. I did not have what it took to make it for very long. I've been marvelously helped. We've been invited into a life marvelously helped by God.
Okay, I started thinking today, I'm not sure I'm right, so these are not things to take down in pen. These are things just, but I thought, okay, I figure that there are four basic adult relationships to needs. I'm saying adults because of course children, infants are reliant on us to, you know, make it through the night. But I'm talking about adults, I'm talking about four basic adult relationship to needs, and this is generally speaking. There is the self-reliant. And so generally speaking, the self-reliant, I mean, they want to do it themselves. They do not want to be helped by anybody, they want to do it, they want to be the only one doing it. You know some people that you would say, she or he is completely, just completely self-reliant. They don't want anybody else involved in it. Anybody know some people like that?
So there's the self-reliant. Then I figure that, we're talking about four basic adult relationships, then I figure there's the others-reliant. And by that I mean they don't want to do anything for themselves. Now we're talking, all of us know someone like that. If all of your children are others-reliant, you need to get a clue, mother. Because you may be raising children that cannot do anything for themselves because we have done everything for them. But there are people in our lives, we know them, that they never do anything for themselves. They never take any responsibility for themselves. Never, never, never. Every mess they make, it's somebody else's to clean up. If you do not know a person like that, you are not getting out enough. Because I mean they're there and they're the most exhausting people in your life.
So there's self-reliant, there are the others-reliant, but then the third category would be most people on the planet and that would be the self and others reliant, right? Like, these are people that rely on their self and then they rely on others, but they're not relying on God. These are people that are, in our terms, in our theological terms, without the Lord, are lost. There are masses of people in the world that are both of those things. They're self-reliant and they're also others-reliant. That's just kind of, that would be the normal way to live without the Lord. But then there's this fourth of these basic adult relationships to need that the Bible is focusing on. The Bible is about a Savior in search of a people who are God-reliant, who are God-reliant.
Here's the beauty of it, that God can use anything and anyone. So he can use others to come through for our need for divine help, to be marvelously helped. He could use a donkey, he can use a bird, I'm thinking of the raven that fed the prophet. He can use signs and wonders and words and names written on a wall. He can use dreams and he can also just give us just straight to us, just an unction in our inner man to help us meet our need. I think all of us, when we think about this category, this category, the God-reliant, that God is looking for people who are God-reliant for their salvation, for our salvation, first and foremost, our redemption, our completion, our strength. But I think we would all agree that there's a continuum here. I mean, like there are needs and then there are needs.
Like, oh, I really need a burger. But then there are, I don't know how I'mma pay my house payment. I do not know how I'm gonna get groceries. I stood behind a man at the airport yesterday that worked for the airport. We were just at a little dumb pretzel place. He was trying to get him a pretzel. And he asked 'em how much it was, they told him. And he said, but how much would it be with my employee discount? Do not ask me why I have a lump in my throat right now. I have, it's the silliest thing, but it moved me. Because he said, how much would it be with my employee discount? No, it made 70 cents of difference. And he said okay, never mind. He just shot straight through me just shot straight through me. When was the last time I didn't have a couple of dollars to get me a pretzel? There's needs and then there's needs. So for the God-reliant, there's a continuum in which we live the life of the marvelously helped.
Now here's what I wanna tell you. When it comes to being a God-reliant people, in this continuum, our starting point is never needlessness. Never, never. It's never needlessness and I'm gonna tell you why. We start already at a point of need because you and I, stay with me here, we have a divine calling on our lives. What you have been called to do and what I have been called to do is not within our natural ability. It is not within our natural talents or skills or even in our, in the whole of our education. He will use all of those things. They're all part and parcel of what he pulls together into the unique person that he has made you, and readied you to be in order to minister to people and to carry the witness of the gospel, and to be a person who loves fiercely and believes fiercely. He'll use all of those things, but what you've been called to do and what I've been called to do, we cannot do in our natural self.
So we're already, immediately upon our salvation, we're already at a point of need, because we already have something on us. Called to walk in imitation of Christ. Called to lay down our lives for the sake of others. Called to jump in front of a bus for somebody else. We are called to love people who despise us. From the get go, we are already over our heads with need. Can anybody in the house say amen? So we don't start with needlessness, we start right there with God. If, I mean, we don't do anything to work our way into salvation, it is completely grace. But when we start living out our calling, Lord, I'mma tell you, if I don't have your Spirit working through me, I'm gonna hate my enemies. I'm gonna put myself first every single time. I'm gonna take my bitterness to the death, and I will live under oppression and I will oppress people, that's the way it will be.
Do you remember in John chapter 15, verse 5, when Jesus said to his disciples, "Without me you can do nothing". You know, it's such an interesting statement, because people have been doing big things without Jesus for all of time. There are people that have invented things that we use constantly, that would have perhaps died without Jesus. People making scientific advances, medical research. People that are helping those who are poverty stricken and oppressed, that may have no faith in Christ whatsoever. So what in the world does it mean, without me you can do nothing? I think it's this, without me you can do nothing that you couldn't already do. Without me you can do nothing that only I can do. I can cause you to love who you cannot stand. I can fill you with power in your inner man, to stand up to something that would have crushed you a hundred times out of a hundred before. Anybody got that with me?
Yesterday, with all the drama that we, that my coworkers and I went through in order to make the plane, we, listen, we found out 31 minutes before another plane took off, that it was going to go straight from Houston, out of nowhere, we'd never even seen this flight. And it pops up, my coworker texts us and says, I have found a flight going straight to Kalispell. I said, how is that possible? Why all this time have we been going through Denver? Why in the world have we been doing this? And she said, I can't answer that. All I can tell you is I found a flight, but it leaves at 4:31. It was five minutes till 4, and it was in a totally different terminal. And I mean, my coworker and I ran up to the desk, there where we'd been waiting for our plane. Mind you, that plane was put, it kept being, the one we were waiting on, kept being delayed until 9:30 last night, when we got our last text and then it said it was canceled.
We'd have never made it to Denver. We'd have gone right back home and tried to find a way here today. So instead, she said, okay, you got, I mean, this was five minutes till 4 at 4:31. So we get in line to talk to the clerk that's at the desk. We're going just like this... 'cause there's three people in front of us. We're going just like this, just like this. We get up to the desk and she says to us, she starts shaking her head immediately. We're like, we're like, no, no, we're just asking you, is it possible? She says, well, you won't have your luggage. We can go without our luggage. What can we do? And she looks on it and she looks at us like, okay, I think there's room for the four of you. But she looks at us and she says, you're gonna need to run. She doesn't even have time to finish giving us our boarding passes for, we go hauling all the way from Terminal C to Terminal E.
I'm thinking to myself, girl, you still got it. I mean, I am flying through that airport. I mean, I am flying through it as fast as my legs will go. I mean, we are just, and our blood, wasn't it? It was just like flowing. I was so alive in the Lord, I was like, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. I was howling like a wolf, Jesus. It was just like, I tell you, we got there, I just kept telling him, we're gonna make it, we're gonna make it, we're gonna make it, we're gonna make it. And sure enough, I mean, we get there, they're just about to close the door. She throws us boarding passes. We get on. We're the only people on the plane that want us on the plane. The only people. I said at the end of the day, I mean it was just nuts, it was just nuts. I said, you know what, we'd have never talked about that plain old Denver flight that left at 10:45. We wouldn't have brought it up again for the rest of our lives.
We will remember running through this airport today. Because we were marvelously helped by the Lord. We were marvelously, I mean, I mean, he had his finger on that plane just like that going, you ain't going nowhere until I get my four girls on that plane. You ain't going nowhere till my girls are on that plane. And then in that same category, our needs still in the beyond our ability to accomplish, that are much more serious.
2 Corinthians 1:8-11, "We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the trouble we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us again. And on him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us, as you help us by your prayers. Then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gracious favor God granted us in answer to the prayers of many". There is a need so severe that we know we cannot bear it if God does not do something. This is when we get other saints around us to pray what we may not have the faith to pray in that state. May not have the strength to pray in that state. And we pray, God, deliver us. And if you don't deliver me here, you will raise me from the dead. See, there's no killing us for keeps. God has this thing about life. He's so committed to it that nothing stays dead. Deliverance.
To be marvelously helped is to be supplied, according to Philippians 4:19, "according to the riches in glory in Christ Jesus". I think the Beatitudes, the blessed are they, if you look at that, you're thinking like, boy, that doesn't sound blessed to me. Blessed are they who mourn, who are persecuted. I think the bottom line of the Beatitudes is Jesus saying, blessed are you if you need me, for you shall have me. You shall have me. I chose the song, I got a hold of Travis. Travis comes from my same tradition and our same way. We were raised up in the days when you went multiple times to church, where church was just your whole, I mean, it was just your whole life. And so we were raised on the old hymns. In fact, today was the very first time I'd ever raised my hands to, "I Need Thee Every Hour". It was so much fun because, you know we Baptists, we held hymnals to keep from raising our hands. You know? So it just felt so good today. It was on the screen and I just like, whoa, you know?
So, but I asked him, I said, I want this to be the theme song for this weekend. And I knew that, I said, you'll have to bring the words because most of them won't know it. Because this is an old, old hymn. But do you know how blessed you are if you need him every hour? Because you shall have him. I need somebody to hear me say that. Oh, you shall have him. Would you pick back up with me in verse 15 of 2 Chronicles 26. "He made skillfully designed devices in Jerusalem to shoot arrows and catapult large stones for use on towers and on the corners. So his fame spread even to distant places, for he was wondrously helped," the CSV says. Or the ESV says, "Marvelously helped... until he became strong. But when he became strong, he grew arrogant, and it led to his own destruction. And he acted unfaithfully against the LORD his God by going into the LORD's sanctuary to burn incense on the incense altar. The priest Azariah, along with 80 brave priests," I love it because that word in the ESV is men of valor.
Priests of the Lord went in after him. It took 80 of them to go into the sanctuary. It says, "They took their stand against King Uzziah and said, 'Uzziah, you have no right to offer incense to the LORD, only the consecrated priests, the descendants of Aaron, have the right to offer incense. Leave the sanctuary, for you've acted unfaithfully! You will not receive honor from the LORD God.'" So they don't go in there going, "oh, King Uzziah," they go in there and go, "Uzz! You're out of your place". He was not consecrated to do that job, but you know what he was doing? He was doing everything else. It was the only thing withheld from him. You see, in this kingdom of priests, that God set apart early on when he brought them the Mosaic Law, and he said, "I will make you a kingdom of priests".
There was always this separation between, here is the king, this is the royal line, this is the priestly line. And the priestly line is consecrated in very, very particular ways to go in the sanctuary and to offer incense or to offer the burnt offerings, whatever. They are consecrated to do so and they were of one line. This is the royal line. This is the priestly line. Well, all that was withheld from him was the priestly duties. And he just marched himself in there, and he took those coals off that altar and went to put them on the incense, and 80, it took 80 men of valor. I mean, they were all looking at one another going, "Uzziah just walked in the sanctuary".
So pick up with me when they go, "'Leave the sanctuary, for you've acted unfaithfully! You will not receive honor from the LORD.' Uzziah, with a firepan in his hand to offer incense, was enraged. But when he became enraged with the priests, in the presence of the priests in the LORD's temple beside the altar of incense, a skin disease broke out on his forehead. Then Azariah the chief priest and all the priests turned to him and saw that he was diseased on his forehead. And then rushed him out of there. He himself also hurried to get out because the LORD had afflicted him".
Listen, there are times in the scriptures that I just absolutely love the way that there is just this marvelous, marvelous understatement. And this is one of them. This is the way it says it in the NIV. "When Azariah the chief priest and all the other priests looked at him, they saw that he had leprosy on his forehead, so they hurried him out". This is my favorite part. "Indeed, he himself was eager to leave". Yes, I suppose he was. Woe to those who mistake God's marvelous help for their marvelous selves. You want to know one of the biggest ironies? Do you know that when they called him by the name Uzziah, you want to know what the name Uzziah means? Yahweh is my strength. Every time, God made absolutely sure every time somebody said his name, King Uzziah, King God is Your Strength. Hey, King God is Your Strength, could you sign this edict, please, King God is Your Strength? Only he forgot God was his strength.