Derek Grier - Seven Barriers to Your Miracle
We're gonna be in Hebrews 6:10. We spent some time on this. And the writer says, "for God is not unjust". Not only is God impartial, He is completely incorruptible. Now, people in life tend to do things, you know, for gain or for fear of consequences. But God who already owns everything, what might He gain by making Himself less at any point in time? Or is our God ever intimidated by a human that He might feel the need to lie? You see, justice is not just something God has, justice is what God is. Psalms 7:11 says this, "God is a just judge". But then it has this scary clause, "and God is angry with the wicked every day".
Now, I know how the daily news irritates me. How about some of you? But I want you to think about the self-control that God must exhibit letting the sun rise and set on the wicked and the just every single day. Every day in God's mind is another opportunity for people to turn to Him. So He waits on us, not because He doesn't have other viable options, and He waits on us frankly for reasons I will never completely understand. But He waits for us according to the Bible because He thinks we're worth it. So every time you see the sunrise on the just and unjust, you say, God, how could you let them live another day knowing what they did?
Just remember His patience and His kindness and how He let the sunrise and set on you despite your running, despite your disobeying and all the rest. Psalms 37 and 28, I just need to lay a theological background here in the word, speaking of God, it says He loves justice. So according to scripture, God is not only just, He loves, loves. Is committed to justice. God has never had a moment in eternity pass or will ever have it in eternity future where He regrets making right right and wrong wrong for He loves justice and will not forsake His saints or called out ones. According to scripture, God will never abandon our cause.
David watched this his whole life and he said, "I was young and now I'm old yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken". Hebrew 6:10. Tie ribbon around your finger, like I said last week, tattoo it across your chest. God is not unjust to forget your work in labor of love, which you have shown toward His name, in that you minister to the saints and do continually minister. Now, this passage of scripture contains a very hard truth. Loving God, loving His name and loving His people are two sides of the same coin. You may not always like some of God's people, you may not always agree with some of God's people, but we must learn to always love. I know it got quiet in here. God's people.
See, I've been pastoring for a number of years now and I've been married for a number of years and I've lived all my life. How many y'all lived all your life too, right? Okay. And what I found is love is not always a warm fuzzy feeling, married people in particular, say amen to that. But loves the decision to act for the other person's highest good despite how we feel. So love kicks in when we don't feel like it. Love really matters when we don't think that person deserves it. Verse 11. I'm going somewhere and we'll get started on these seven points in just a minute. And the writer says, "and we desire that each one of you..."
As I said last week, they were getting discouraged. And these Jewish or Hebrew believers called the Book of Hebrews because it was written to the Jewish folks, you know, spread all over the Roman Empire and they wanted to go back to Judaism because Christianity brought so many challenges. They were being persecuted, kicked out of their families, they were losing their jobs. Lots of stuff was happening. And the writer is encouraging them. He said, "and we desire that each one of you," not just the dea, is not just the pastor, "each and every one of you show the same, same," we're all in the same boat, "diligence to the full assurance".
We talked about this last week. God wants us to have confidence. "Of hope until the end". You see, if we let the Holy Spirit do his job in our lives within us, we can make it to the end of whatever we face in life. My Bible says, there's nothing too hard for God. Including you and including me. That you do not become what? Sluggish. That you don't lose your spiritual temperature in the process. You see when you get hurt one too many times, we begin to lose our enthusiasm. We begin to lose our passion, our zeal. We tend to become cynical. We tend to become indifferent. We tend to become non-committal and indifferent. But what I've learned is commitment is just staying loyal to what you ought to do long after the mood you had when you started is gone.
We're gonna talk about how to overcome seven emotional barriers that will always exist when you try to step into the promises of God. And we're gonna start with number one, procrastination. I saw you up in the end of this. Genesis 12:1 then we move to verse four. "Now, the Lord said to Abraham, 'get out of your country from your family, from your father's house to a land I will show you.'" Watch this. Verse four. "So Abraham departed as the Lord had spoken to him", but that's the only part of the sentence he completed, because the next clause says, "and Lot went with him".
God told him to get away from his family. But Lot was his nephew. God not only told him to get out of town, he told him to get away from his family, his idol worshiping family that would only bring him down. Please love your family. Don't everyone say... Love your family. This was a specific call to Abraham. But because Abraham didn't immediately obey, now later he would have to, he had to find out the hard way that God is always right, because they eventually separated. And then Lot had relations with his two daughters. Say yeah, twice. Yep. Yep. And he became the father of Israel's greatest enemies or two of their greatest enemies, the Ammonites and the Moabites.
So number one, if you're gonna receive God's promises, you got to deal with procrastination. And procrastination will only slow down the promises of God. But then number two, he had to deal with distraction. Watch Genesis 14:14. And this distraction came really because of the procrastination. "Now when Abraham heard that his brother, Lot, was taken captive, he armed his 318 trained servants who were born in his own house, and went in pursuit as far as Dan".
Now, if he had left Lot in Ur, like he was supposed to, he would not have had to use his resources here to fight this battle. Nonetheless, despite though, all of his misdoings and all the rest, Abraham met Melchizedek because of this battle and caused him to tap into the power of the time, long before Moses, long before the law, and all that. But here's the deal. If God did not use my mistakes for his purposes, he will have little less to work with. And Abraham made mistakes. But I want you to see that God still worked with those mistakes.
Now, we don't intentionally go around trying to make mistakes, but when we make mistakes and when we error in our way, God knows how to cover us, knows how to keep us and how to preserve us, and He knows how to use it for His good. God probably had a plan for Abraham to Melchizedek another way, but God used again Abraham's mistakes for his own purposes. And there's some places in your life, God would've preferred that you would've gotten there another way. But despite the path you're taking, God can still get you there. You hear what I'm saying? And there are appointments.
You know, what happens when your GPS, you make a wrong turn, it says recalculating. And God knows how to recalculate your situation to get it back on the right road to where your need to go. But this, I'm only in point 3, I'm gonna get to seven, stay with me, stay with me. That led to frustration. And if you have a promise from God and you never get frustrated, I kinda have my doubts, 'cause part of the process is always frustration, because God is spiritual, we're are material. Immediately, we wanna touch it, see it, feel it, taste it. But God establishes things in the spirit before they manifest in the physical.
So there's this tension very often between us and God's ways. So Abraham, the father of the faith, from whom the Jewish people emerged who the Christ would come, we discovered frustration was part of his course. Genesis 15:1. After these things, he had just gotten a lot of trouble. And by the way, he'd have to do this over and over and over again. "The word of the Lord came to Abraham in the vision saying, 'do not be afraid. Abraham. I'm your shield, your exceedingly great reward.'"
See, what just had happened was Abraham had covered Lots, but watch this, God still covered Abraham. See, none of us would be in this room today if God didn't cover us. And give us space to grow and learn from our mistakes. "But Abraham said, 'Lord God, what will you give me, seeing I go childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?'" Now, clearly Abraham was frustrated with God's timetable, and you can hear a little tone in his voice here. He's a little bit angry because he says to God, look. No, God sees everything. He said, look, God, you're giving me no offspring. He's talking to God like he doesn't know what's going on. You give me no offspring, indeed, one born in my house is my heir. God, are you paying attention? He said, you know, is anyone out there? He was dealing with personal frustration.
So number one, there's procrastination. Number two, distraction. Number three, frustration. But now, number four, desperation. Genesis 16:1. "Now, Sarai, Abram's wife, had born him no children". So she is too like Abraham, they had pillow talk. They both were going through the same thing. She was like, come on, you know, Lord, I'm not getting any younger. Where are you, God? And she had an Egyptian slave whose name was Hagar. So Sarai said to Abram, "see now the Lord has restrained me from bearing children".
She started blaming God for the problem. Don't we do that in the middle of when it starts taking too long? But here's the deal. If she didn't have a problem, we would've never heard of her. Without her barrenness, there'd be no need for a miracle. And without a miracle, what's the point of her being in the text? And all of us will have different challenges and different problems in life. And we wanna be born perfect. We wanna be born like Adam. But he was the only guy without a belly button. All of us come from somewhere. All of us have a background. All of us are born with issues and problems. You hear what I'm saying? My set of problems may look different than yours but they're still problems.
And God wants to use those issues and problems in shortages for him to show himself strong. What Bob say, in our weakness, he's made what? Strong. Not that God gloats in our weakness. It's just an opportunity for God to make up the difference. God plus anything is always more than enough. But watch what she said. She say, "Abraham, please go into my maid, perhaps I shall obtain children by her". Desperate people do desperate things. How many of y'all ever tried to help God? Yeah. Both hands for me. "And Abram heeded the voice of Sarai". And one of the few things that Abe probably smiled about in his whole story. But it's about to result in exhaustion and fatigue.
Point number five in this journey is exhaustion. Genesis 16:5. So what I'm telling you, by the way, if you not dealt with distraction, frustration, desperation, you're probably not on the right path. But if you have dealt with them, you are on the path, because it's through faith and patience that we inherit. I'm trying to encourage you today. 16:5 through 6. "Then Sarah said to Abraham, 'my wrong be upon you. I gave my made into your embrace. And when she saw that she had conceived, I became despised in her eyes. The Lord judge between you and me.'"
I keep telling some of the jokers in this room. Two women and only one man, it never works out well. Never. Watch this. "So Abraham said to Sarai, 'indeed your maid is in your hand, do to her as you please.'" You see what had happened is Abraham got tired. He was so exhausted. These two women bickering all the time under the same roof and trying to share all. Soft it. Tired.
So, watch his response. "Your maid is in your hand, do to her as you please". Because he got so tired, he gave up being a man. He was there physically but no longer there emotionally and spiritually. He became absent. And exhaustion can lead you to become absent. I'm gonna be honest with you. This grand opening was terrific. It was great. But I know this may surprise you. I haven't been able to feel anything for weeks. I've been so exhausted, so tired. Matter of fact, after every service, you know, I try to watch the game but the game watches me. And exhaustion can make you absent. I go home and I have a far away look in my eye 'cause I'm so spent. Not from two wives though.
Let me make that clear, okay? But from what it sometimes feels like, two, three, four, five jobs to get this thing done. So when Sarai had dealt harshly with her, it seems as she beat her, she fled from her presence. Abe abandoning his family. Becoming absent had consequences on the family. You see, more of us would learn from our mistakes. I'm not talking to you, I'm talking to the person next to you right now. So look straight ahead. If we didn't spend all our time trying to deny them and ignore them, but learn from them. In these next verses, we're gonna get to the sixth and seventh barriers to receiving the promises of God.
Genesis 18:9. God had just appeared to Abraham in human form. In fact, it was the pre-incarnate Christ Jesus. And, you know, actually in Judaism at this time, they believed in the two powers of God, if you will. They believed that this person would come and people would bow down and worship him and he'd accept it. And we see this in the Old Testament. And He spoke as God. And that's why Jesus said a New Testament before Abraham was I am, because Jesus existed from eternity past. And this was among where Jesus actually came with two other angels with Him. And He has this conversation with Abraham.