Speaker 1: Hey, this is Stephen Ferdick. I'm the pastor of Elevation
Speaker 1: Church and this is our podcast and I wanted to
Speaker 1: thank you for joining us today. Hope this inspires you.
Speaker 1: Hope it builds your faith. Hope it gives your perspective
Speaker 1: to see God has moving in your life. Enjoy the message. Amen, Well,
Speaker 1: welcome to Elevation Church. On behalf of Pastor Stephen and
Speaker 1: our family. I'm so happy that you're joining us. Type
Speaker 1: it in the chat. Let me know where you're joining
Speaker 1: us from. We have people joining us from all over
Speaker 1: the world all weekend long. Let's see, We've got Melissa
Speaker 1: from Michigan. We've got Eric from Kenya, Joel is joining
Speaker 1: us from Mississippi, Hazel from India, literally all over the world.
Speaker 1: I just love it. I love worshiping with Elevation Church.
Speaker 1: It's an amazing part of what I get to do
Speaker 1: with my life. And I know you're grateful that too. Hey,
Speaker 1: shout out to Faith Verdick. If you don't know her,
Speaker 1: she is the woman who gave our pastor life and
Speaker 1: today is her birthday. So Faith, if you're watching, speak
Speaker 1: for all of us when I say thank you. You
Speaker 1: are one special woman. You deserve an extra crown for
Speaker 1: raising Stephen Ferdick and not killing him, because I now
Speaker 1: know what it's like to raise teenagers. And so thank you.
Speaker 1: We all thank you. Are your kids all set E
Speaker 1: kids online? How many of you are grateful for E
Speaker 1: kids Online? I know it's not the same thing as
Speaker 1: dropping your kids off, but at least they're watching something
Speaker 1: that's wonderful, and that's teaching them about God and giving
Speaker 1: you just a minute to be able to worship together.
Speaker 1: How many of you are grateful for our worship team?
Speaker 1: I just love our church. I love how they lead
Speaker 1: us every weekend. But if you're like me, elevation worship
Speaker 1: is not just something that you watch on the weekends,
Speaker 1: but it's a sound that's coming out of your home.
Speaker 1: The songs and the sermons and the stories of this
Speaker 1: church are getting me through this season, and I know
Speaker 1: they are too. How many of you were with us
Speaker 1: last week when my husband preached about the plot twist?
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you, my husband is not preached on
Speaker 1: Father's Day in like a decade, and I was just
Speaker 1: thinking last night that apparently, in addition to all of
Speaker 1: the special anointings that are on pastor Stephen's life. He
Speaker 1: also has a special Father's Day anointing. Am I wrong?
Speaker 1: If you saw that message, you know how incredible it was.
Speaker 1: And if you missed it, you need to go back
Speaker 1: and watch it. It It was called plot Twist. I think
Speaker 1: it's in my top ten. I have a lot in
Speaker 1: my top ten, but I think that was in my
Speaker 1: top ten. I just love how God speaks to me
Speaker 1: every single time the Word is preached on this stage,
Speaker 1: and today is going to be no exception. My dear
Speaker 1: friend Lisa Harper will be bringing the Word and this woman,
Speaker 1: this woman can preach, and I'm not gonna lie. I
Speaker 1: love a good girl preacher, and Lisa is one of
Speaker 1: my favorites. Lisa and her daughter, Missy, live in Nashville, Tennessee.
Speaker 1: They drove down here to be with us this weekend.
Speaker 1: So get ready because this woman knows the Word of God,
Speaker 1: and every time I'm around her, I want to read
Speaker 1: my Bible more and i want to be a better Christian.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna stop talking. I hope you're having a
Speaker 1: great weekend. It's a great weekend here in Charlotte. Would
Speaker 1: you help me welcome Lisa Harper to the stage. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're trying so hard to hug responsibly. I was thinking
Speaker 1: driving here. We drove here yesterday from Nashville, Tennessee, and
Speaker 1: I was just thinking about the breath. Y'all can sit down.
Speaker 1: You're so darling at home. I know you're already sitting
Speaker 1: down half the hollar, like vegged out and stretching pants
Speaker 1: on the couch. But I was thinking about the breadth
Speaker 1: of elevation, what God has done in a really short
Speaker 1: season to take the gospel all around the world, and
Speaker 1: I thought, that kind of trajectory, I think it's almost unprecedented.
Speaker 1: It's obviously miraculous God has authored the favor that he's
Speaker 1: given elevation. But I thought, you don't get that broad
Speaker 1: without having really really deep roots. And I love that
Speaker 1: woman right there because she's got really really deep roots.
Speaker 1: And you may only see her in a stream. You
Speaker 1: may only see Holly on a screen. But I've been
Speaker 1: through a couple of valleys in the last ten years,
Speaker 1: and Holly Ferdick was one of the first person to
Speaker 1: text prayers to speak life to me. So I am
Speaker 1: delighted to be back in this house. I always come
Speaker 1: here with just a little bit of trepidation is I
Speaker 1: too watch Stephen Ferdick every weekend, and so some of
Speaker 1: you are like, oh, you've got to be kidding me.
Speaker 1: I mean, Holly made me sound good, but I am
Speaker 1: no Stephen Ferdick. This is going to be like a
Speaker 1: mule at the Kentucky Derby. But hang with me, because
Speaker 1: I think God has something for us, if nothing else,
Speaker 1: he has something for me. Because Chris, I have been
Speaker 1: waiting with baited breath. I don't even know what that means,
Speaker 1: but I've been so excited about being led in worship
Speaker 1: live by y'all. I know what Pastor Stephen said last
Speaker 1: week is true that as Christ followers, we carry the
Speaker 1: church in our hearts and minds, and so the church
Speaker 1: is open as long as you and I are open
Speaker 1: to the working person in the Holy Spirit. But I've
Speaker 1: just got to be honest with y'all and tell you
Speaker 1: that my heart has been in a really stinker prodigal
Speaker 1: season lately, and every time it sees the Zoom logo,
Speaker 1: it just kind of crosses its arms and refuses to listen.
Speaker 1: I miss corporate worship. As soon as y'all started, I
Speaker 1: just thought, I just I just feel like I want
Speaker 1: to sink into this one to marinate in this It's
Speaker 1: it's been incredible to be here with y'all. This has
Speaker 1: been a less than lovely season. I don't have to
Speaker 1: remind y'all of the reasons why, but I'll start with homeschool.
Speaker 1: I love my kid. For those of you who don't
Speaker 1: know my story, I became a mom the same year
Speaker 1: I went through menopause at fifty through the miracle of adoption.
Speaker 1: And my kid is the most amazing child in the
Speaker 1: world except for years, of course, that's a tie. But
Speaker 1: but homeschooling full time once COVID caused schools in Tennessee
Speaker 1: to close, that was that was that was a faith opportunity,
Speaker 1: And I do have to confess that once I watched
Speaker 1: Tiger King and countadate as biology for her. But I
Speaker 1: I brought a two minute video that I want to
Speaker 1: show y'all just this proof in case there's any truancy
Speaker 1: officers in Epham all over the world. I bought proof
Speaker 1: that we actually did have classes. This was an al
Speaker 1: fresco class we had on etiquette. Just a little short,
Speaker 1: two minute video. They'll show you what went on during
Speaker 1: school at our house during COVID nineteen am, I, how
Speaker 1: did you make that trashy noise again? Oh? The that noise? Yes, ma'am.
Speaker 1: You put your you put your teeth, your top teeth
Speaker 1: over your bottom lip, and then you like force air
Speaker 1: out of one side, like blow a little more air
Speaker 1: and just out of the side, like honey. I think
Speaker 1: you're too sweet to make trashy noises. Maybe we should
Speaker 1: sing a song, I willship song. Maybe we should sing
Speaker 1: a worship show. Which one do you want to sing?
Speaker 1: Probably Jesus with dension, good grace. Oh I love that one.
Speaker 1: Okay you started peace? Oh dan Ah savags in his blood.
Speaker 1: That's a good one. It is a good one. I
Speaker 1: love it. How does the chorus go of that one?
Speaker 1: I actually think that is the chorus and Jesus our salvation,
Speaker 1: our reathomtion. What comes after is in his blood jeezesus
Speaker 1: blood of it? Right? Friend forfu ish keen do come?
Speaker 1: That's what comes to us to that. I love that, tutor,
Speaker 1: I do too. That's better than making those bad, trashy noises,
Speaker 1: isn't it it is? Do you think you're sweeter than me?
Speaker 1: I think so. Of YouTube, most of y'all are probably
Speaker 1: sweeter than me. And have not been tutoring your children
Speaker 1: and breaking when noises. It's been a long three months,
Speaker 1: and I just my hats are is off to you
Speaker 1: if you have been singing worship tunes like my kid
Speaker 1: instead of making trashy noises like me. But to be
Speaker 1: really honest, I'd like to kick you in the shins
Speaker 1: if you haven't suffered at all over the last three months,
Speaker 1: because it has just been a rough go of it.
Speaker 1: And again, I don't have to remind you of why
Speaker 1: it's been rough. I know we've all been dealing with
Speaker 1: our own kind of rough in our little corner of
Speaker 1: the world. We had an especially intimate difficult thing happened recently.
Speaker 1: Someone in my immediate family committed suicide nine weeks ago,
Speaker 1: and his death just ripped the fabric of our lives.
Speaker 1: And over the last two months, I just feel like
Speaker 1: some of my hope has been leaking out of those holes.
Speaker 1: I just have had a harder time than normal hanging
Speaker 1: on to hope. It's been almost like wet soap. I'm
Speaker 1: just having a hard time hanging on to it. And
Speaker 1: my hope, my prayer is that none of you are
Speaker 1: having to gree the loss of a loved one on
Speaker 1: top of everything else that we're slogging through. For those
Speaker 1: of you who have, I'm so sorry if you're dealing
Speaker 1: with the loss of a loved one. Please please please
Speaker 1: put some of those details in the chat, because we
Speaker 1: would love to pray with you and for you. But
Speaker 1: regardless of what's been shoplifting your hope lately, I think
Speaker 1: all of us can agree that that at least some
Speaker 1: measure of our hope has been threatened in the last
Speaker 1: couple of months. And so I thought it would be
Speaker 1: so appropriate, so prudent, prudent, maybe not for you, but
Speaker 1: certainly for me to do a deep dive in scripture
Speaker 1: and try to recover some of the hope that these
Speaker 1: circumstances have shoplifted. And so I want to talk before
Speaker 1: we dive into scripture. If you're on the couch and
Speaker 1: you've got a Bible at your house, get up off
Speaker 1: the counts and grab that pumpy and come back, because
Speaker 1: we're going to be in the Bible. If you have
Speaker 1: kids in the room, I want to reiterate what Chad
Speaker 1: said about sending them over to kids YouTube, because it's
Speaker 1: going to get a little hot in here pretty soon.
Speaker 1: So I want you to be careful to not have
Speaker 1: anybody under thirteen in your living room. Just send them
Speaker 1: off for YouTube. Don't let them watch Tiger King like
Speaker 1: I did with my child, because now I'm going to
Speaker 1: be paying for therapy later. But anyway, before we dive
Speaker 1: into the text, our first text is going to be
Speaker 1: at the very big beginning of the book, I want
Speaker 1: to remind us all that we get our New Testament
Speaker 1: from Greek and the Greek concept of hope. The Greeks
Speaker 1: pronounced hope. It's transliterated elpis, but it's pronounced l piece,
Speaker 1: which I think that's cool. That peace is kind of
Speaker 1: in the Greek idea of hope. But the Greek concept
Speaker 1: of hope was not an objective assessment. They didn't look
Speaker 1: around at their circumstances and go, oh, here's what justifies
Speaker 1: my hope this season. It was actually a subjective experience.
Speaker 1: They looked back over their lives and if there was
Speaker 1: proof of hope in their backstory, then they said, I
Speaker 1: will be expectant about future hope. If they could look
Speaker 1: back to tangible hope, they said, then I know there
Speaker 1: will be proof of hope. There will definitely hope in
Speaker 1: the future. Let me explain it like this, COVID nineteen
Speaker 1: has effectively swaggered into my house like Dennis the Rock Johnson.
Speaker 1: And evidently the Keto boy in my mind was a
Speaker 1: much weinier crop pants wearing Wayfish guy because the rock
Speaker 1: just killed Keto up in our house. And as a result,
Speaker 1: I have had an extreme uptick in carb consumption. And
Speaker 1: as a result of that, I definitely am am up
Speaker 1: about nineteen due to COVID, And so there is a
Speaker 1: very real probability that I'm going to faint up in
Speaker 1: this elevation house this morning because these banks are cutting
Speaker 1: off my circulation. I shouldn't have done that, because if
Speaker 1: I did that harder, you could lose an eye. But
Speaker 1: here's the deal. Here is the positive thing about my
Speaker 1: expansive tragedy. I saved pictures from last fall and last
Speaker 1: fall I was really doing good on a low carb
Speaker 1: life plan, and so I saved pictures of when I
Speaker 1: was actually wearing pants with zippers. So I have a witness.
Speaker 1: I have a tangible testimony that it is possible for
Speaker 1: me to wear pants that do not have an elastic
Speaker 1: waistban Can I get a witness? Are you with me?
Speaker 1: There is tangible proof in my past that I could
Speaker 1: go there again. Hope is not based on now, not
Speaker 1: for christ followers. I love pastor seement Stephen sermon last
Speaker 1: week on plot Twist. I loved that one. It's probably
Speaker 1: in my top ten two Holly, I will never again
Speaker 1: look at the geographical phrase Samaria and the New Testament
Speaker 1: without thinking of his wordplay, his application some area, there
Speaker 1: will be some areas will be reluctant to go through.
Speaker 1: I love that. But the thing that I resonated with
Speaker 1: most of all was when he talked about generational wells.
Speaker 1: When he talked about generational wells, because what was implied
Speaker 1: was that we will not have to worry about dying
Speaker 1: of thirst in the now because there was ample provision
Speaker 1: in our history. And that's where we're going to go
Speaker 1: this morning. We're going to start at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the book. So if you brought the book, turn to
Speaker 1: Genesis chapter three. Now before we get there, John Michael,
Speaker 1: will you throw me my glasses out of my purse,
Speaker 1: they're in a blue case. Before we go there, we'll
Speaker 1: be in Genesis chapter three beginning when verse twenty one.
Speaker 1: I want to give you just a quick review you
Speaker 1: probably know this, But at this point, at the very
Speaker 1: beginning of redemptive history, the Creator, Redeemer, Father God has
Speaker 1: already breathed the universe into existence out of nothing. And
Speaker 1: after he looked at the sea and the sky and
Speaker 1: the stars, all the creepy crawleys and eaters and elephants,
Speaker 1: he said, something's missing, And so they got together. And
Speaker 1: that's not a misspeak. Genesis one twenty six and twenty
Speaker 1: seven explains to us that our God is in us.
Speaker 1: He's a trinitarian god, God the Father, God the Sign,
Speaker 1: and God the Holy Spirit. It says, God has an us, Augustine,
Speaker 1: Saint Augustine, I'll have huge crushes and all the dead guys,
Speaker 1: I have to be platonic about them because they're dead
Speaker 1: and gone. I only have platonic crushes about living theologians.
Speaker 1: But anyway, Saint Augustine says that only the Christian God
Speaker 1: is a perfect community unto himself Genesis one, twenty six
Speaker 1: and twenty seven. Then let us make man in our image.
Speaker 1: We were hard wired for a relationship. That's why when
Speaker 1: some of y'all miss get together with your epham, you go.
Speaker 1: I just didn't have a great week we were hard
Speaker 1: wired for relationship. That's a whole nother story, but we'll
Speaker 1: go there soon. Sorry, I'm tinkling, and not just because
Speaker 1: this thinks. So God then breathes man into existence, and
Speaker 1: then God takes a nap. I think it is so
Speaker 1: stink and cool that our father God created Rest modeled
Speaker 1: Rest in Genesis chapter two, y'all, that's before the fall.
Speaker 1: The fall happens in Genesis chapter three. That means Rest
Speaker 1: was not some divine accommodation for human weakness. Rest was
Speaker 1: part of his perfect gift. Us. Isn't that good as
Speaker 1: a whole other sermon? So anyway, He's created the heavens
Speaker 1: and the earth. He's created man, he's taken a nap,
Speaker 1: wakes up really refreshed from his nap, looks around and goes,
Speaker 1: something is missing, something beautiful is missing, and he creates woman.
Speaker 1: And that's where the story starts getting sticky because a
Speaker 1: lot of people then put hierarchy in the story. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna lay it here too long because I
Speaker 1: don't want to take the heat. I want Stephen to
Speaker 1: take the heat. But the Hebrew word used for woman
Speaker 1: is easier. It's translated helper in our Bibles. You know
Speaker 1: who else describes himself as an easer fourteen times in
Speaker 1: Genesis God, Man and Woman. And that was never intended
Speaker 1: to be a hierarchical relationship with suppression and with oppression.
Speaker 1: I was always intended to be a mutual, helpful relationship.
Speaker 1: Not going to go there because Eve does drop the ball,
Speaker 1: because soon after she's created, she gets deceived by this
Speaker 1: really rotten, slithery fruits salesman named Satan, and she takes
Speaker 1: a bite out of some of his rotten fruit, and
Speaker 1: the trajectory of mankind has been downhill ever since. We're
Speaker 1: joining the story right after she has rebelled against God
Speaker 1: and hooked up with the fruit salesman Genesis three, chapter
Speaker 1: twenty one. And the Lord God made for Adam and
Speaker 1: for his wife garments of skin and clothe them. Then
Speaker 1: the Lord God said, behold, the man has become like
Speaker 1: one of us, and knowing good and evil. Now lest
Speaker 1: he reach out his hand and take also over the
Speaker 1: tree of life and eat and live forever. Therefore, the
Speaker 1: Lord God send him out from the garden of Eden
Speaker 1: to work the ground from which he was taken. He
Speaker 1: drove out the man, and at the east of the
Speaker 1: Garden of Eden. He placed the Cherubim in a flaming
Speaker 1: sword that turned every which way to guard the way
Speaker 1: to the Tree of life. Now, I don't know if
Speaker 1: y'all get mental pictures when you read the Bible. Mom
Speaker 1: was Baptist, Dad was Pentecostal. So I'm Babtcostal, which means
Speaker 1: I love to wiggle in worship, but I have no rhythm.
Speaker 1: And so I've heard all these stories since I was
Speaker 1: teeny You've seen most of them flannel graft. And when
Speaker 1: I used to hear that story as a kid, I
Speaker 1: immediately got a mental picture of Adam and Eve. I
Speaker 1: pictured Adam as being very lean, and this is way
Speaker 1: before Peyloa, when it was cool for guys to be lean.
Speaker 1: He was just kind of a lean, weak looking man,
Speaker 1: stringy hair extensions, and kind of threw his own wife
Speaker 1: under the bus. You know, I didn't need the fruit
Speaker 1: she did. And oh, cover my junk. I mean, he
Speaker 1: just he just he. Adam does nothing for me. He
Speaker 1: doesn't blow my skirt up. And then Eve, I think
Speaker 1: of her as the woman I don't want to be
Speaker 1: because she's I mean, let's just face it, she's trashy,
Speaker 1: you know, she does exactly what God tells her not
Speaker 1: to do, and that's after she's paraded around nude. I
Speaker 1: mean she is trashy. So I picture her like the
Speaker 1: trashy girls that hung out of the skating rink and
Speaker 1: town I grew up in in central Florida. So I
Speaker 1: picture her with kind of an ac DC tube top
Speaker 1: and Daisy Dukes and like, you know, really bad hair,
Speaker 1: and she's got tat since she's only, oh, I don't know, fifteen,
Speaker 1: I mean, she's just you know, this girl is rough,
Speaker 1: bad news. So when it says God drove them out
Speaker 1: of the garden of Eden, my first response used to
Speaker 1: be good riddance. You know, he's a sissy and she's trashy.
Speaker 1: Good riddance, And I kind of pictured him just booting
Speaker 1: them out of glory. Y'all. That's not at all the
Speaker 1: contexts of Genesis three. That word drove out comes from
Speaker 1: the Hebrew word garosh. I can't pronounce it well because
Speaker 1: I don't get enough gutturle in my throat, but it's garash,
Speaker 1: and it's used redemptively in Exodus twice. For the moment
Speaker 1: this season when God drove his people the theocracy of
Speaker 1: Israel out of captivity toward the promise. Like us, they
Speaker 1: were about as smart as sheep, so they had gotten
Speaker 1: really comfortable in captivity. God had to rock them out
Speaker 1: of a rut to get them from captivity to the promise.
Speaker 1: The word is he's in nexus twice, totally redemptive context.
Speaker 1: They're not being hurt, they're not being ushered toward their
Speaker 1: own death. They're actually being ushered toward their own freedom
Speaker 1: and life. But it says they were driven out toward
Speaker 1: freedom away from Egypt, redemptive context. And then in First
Speaker 1: Samuel chapter twenty one, that's after David he's running away
Speaker 1: from Saul. Remember Saul was the first king of Israel.
Speaker 1: He was a narcissistic nut job, was really jealous of
Speaker 1: David because David had more followers than him, and so
Speaker 1: he's trying to kill him, and so David flees for
Speaker 1: his life and he ends up fleeing into enemy territory.
Speaker 1: Remember who their arch enemy was. Gonna talk back, you're
Speaker 1: still social distance and spit. Let's go Philistines. So he
Speaker 1: finds himself in Philistine territory, finds himself standing before the
Speaker 1: King of the Philistines, the King of goth this first
Speaker 1: Samuel nineteen, if you want to check me. And when
Speaker 1: he stands before the King of goth he realizes, oh goodness,
Speaker 1: it's gracious, I'm wearing Goliath's sword. Do you remember who
Speaker 1: Goliath was. I mean, he was like the big dog
Speaker 1: daddy of the Philistines. You remember, He's this probably eight
Speaker 1: foot man. When David before he'd even started using you know,
Speaker 1: claton or anything for his skin. Is that for girls?
Speaker 1: Or is that for acne? Is it for acney? Oh? Allergies?
Speaker 1: That's right. I was trying to do an acne medication.
Speaker 1: I couldn't pull one fast enough. So anyway, before David's
Speaker 1: even gone through puberty, he ends up killing Goliath, you
Speaker 1: remember the story, with a slingstone and slingshot stone, whatever,
Speaker 1: and so he kills the giant. Well, from that day forward,
Speaker 1: David is enemy number one to the Philistines. He utterly
Speaker 1: humiliated them. Now Here it is years later, and he's
Speaker 1: up in the middle of Philistine standing in front of
Speaker 1: the King of the Philistines, wearing Goliath's sword. I mean,
Speaker 1: you talk about waving a red flag in front of
Speaker 1: a bull. I mean, surely he is about to get
Speaker 1: his own head cut off. And that's why David starts
Speaker 1: to feign madness. And he did what no other Israelite
Speaker 1: man would do. He drooled in his beard. And by
Speaker 1: feigning madness and dribbling in his beard, which was a
Speaker 1: huge no no for Orthodox Jewish Men in that era
Speaker 1: of history. Gath, the men of Gath, the soldiers of
Speaker 1: the king of Goths, say we need to let this
Speaker 1: guy go. Otherwise, an innocent, crazy man's blood is going
Speaker 1: to be on your hands, and it says, and thus
Speaker 1: David was drove out. You see God's merciful sovereignty there.
Speaker 1: He's about to get killed and God drives him out
Speaker 1: for his own good for survival. It's immediately after God
Speaker 1: rescues him from the King of Gath the David writes
Speaker 1: Psalm thirty four, one of my favorite psalms, where he says,
Speaker 1: those who look to the Lord, their faces are radiance.
Speaker 1: They'll never be covered with shame. He's just totally shamed
Speaker 1: himself by drilling in his beard, pretending to be a madman.
Speaker 1: God uses that drives him out from certain death, and
Speaker 1: immediately after that he says, my face will never be
Speaker 1: covered with shame. Because of how you drove me out
Speaker 1: to victory God. It's in that same psalm that we
Speaker 1: get God is close to the broken arty. He's near
Speaker 1: to us when our lives feel crushed, which is just
Speaker 1: a theme verse for this season in our world and
Speaker 1: the world at large. So now when I think of
Speaker 1: Genesis three, I don't think of a girl on a
Speaker 1: tube top. I think of our gracious God taken his
Speaker 1: kids by the arms and redemptively ushering them out of Eden.
Speaker 1: Not because he's a unibrowed librarian and is about to
Speaker 1: smack him over the head with the Bible, but because
Speaker 1: he knows what they don't, and he knows that they
Speaker 1: come back and they eat from the tree of Life,
Speaker 1: they will be forever frozen in Eden, forever separated from
Speaker 1: the intimacy with Him that they were created for. So
Speaker 1: he begins to drive them out, heard them toward recreating
Speaker 1: the intimacy that he had fashioned them for. It's such
Speaker 1: a redemptive passage, y'all. There is so much hope in scripture.
Speaker 1: When people tell me the Bible is boring, I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: you may have sat under a boring Bible, teacher. The
Speaker 1: Bible itself is not boring, nor is it punitive. This
Speaker 1: is a divine love story. It's filled with hope. Okay,
Speaker 1: head to the right, and if you can prove to
Speaker 1: me that you've actually been spending your quiet time in numbers,
Speaker 1: specifically numbers chapter twenty seven, I will send you twenty bucks.
Speaker 1: Not that we advocate betting here at Elevation, but I
Speaker 1: want to take you to another passage. And this one
Speaker 1: is just stunny. It's just one that we usually skip
Speaker 1: over because it sounds like it's one of those boring
Speaker 1: Old Testament passages. Isn't it funny how so many of
Speaker 1: us think of the God of the Old Testament as
Speaker 1: like this angry autocrat and the God of the New
Speaker 1: Testament as Jesus with brettgirl hair extensions, like all warm
Speaker 1: and fuzzy. You know, if that is true, then Genesis one,
Speaker 1: twenty six and twenty seven isn't. If that's true, then
Speaker 1: God is bipolar. It's not true. Drives me nuts when
Speaker 1: people say, well, Jesus said in the red letters, I'm like,
Speaker 1: he didn't say the black letters, because last I know,
Speaker 1: it's Godfather. God's said and got the Holy Spirit. But
Speaker 1: when we stop stepping onion, based toes Okay numbers twenty seven.
Speaker 1: Then drew near the daughters of Zilofah had the son
Speaker 1: of Heafer, the son of Gilead, son of Maker, and
Speaker 1: a lot of other words. The names of his daughters
Speaker 1: were Mila, Noah, Hogla. Now I need to stop there
Speaker 1: for just a minute, because I know a lot of you,
Speaker 1: especially you younger mamas, really want to name your kid's
Speaker 1: biblical names to impress your small group. Don't be working
Speaker 1: with Hogla, Hogla. That's just hard. That's not a good name.
Speaker 1: It's in the Bible, but it's not a good name.
Speaker 1: Don't replicate that name. Hogla, Milka and Tirza. And they
Speaker 1: stood before Moses and before Elizer, the priests, and before
Speaker 1: chiefs and all the congregation, at the entrance of the
Speaker 1: tent of meetings, saying, our father died in the wilderness.
Speaker 1: He was not among the company of those who gathered
Speaker 1: themselves together against the Lord and the company of Karab,
Speaker 1: but died for his own sin. And he had no sons.
Speaker 1: Why should the name of our father be taken away
Speaker 1: from his clan because he had no son? Give to
Speaker 1: us a possession among our fathers. Brothers. Now you better bet.
Speaker 1: At this point in ancient history, everybody who's watching this
Speaker 1: take place start equipping out their cell phones. They're like,
Speaker 1: I Am going to instant story this because they are
Speaker 1: just about to be fright into a great spot of oblivion.
Speaker 1: Because at this point in ancient history, women had basically
Speaker 1: the same value as a good milk cow. Women were
Speaker 1: regarded as chattel, something a man could own, and the
Speaker 1: law of the land was primogeniture. Primogeniture, if you remember
Speaker 1: from high school or college, history, meant that the firstborn
Speaker 1: son inherited all of his father's estate upon his father's death.
Speaker 1: That's what reigns during this period of Israel's history. And
Speaker 1: so these daughters of Zilofah had they have the hut
Speaker 1: spot to go against the law of culture, come before
Speaker 1: Moses and the high Priest and go, we think we
Speaker 1: should get daddy's land. You just imagine all of Israel's
Speaker 1: like they just assume the lightning bolt is just about
Speaker 1: to come out and fry these cheeky jacks. But that's
Speaker 1: not what happens. All this is stunning. I so want
Speaker 1: to read this to my militant friends who are burning
Speaker 1: their bras and tell them that floppiness is not necessar.
Speaker 1: Moses brought their case before the Lord verse five, and
Speaker 1: the Lord said to Moses, the daughters of Zilofah had
Speaker 1: are right. You shall give them possession of an inheritance
Speaker 1: among their father's brothers, and transfer the inheritance of their
Speaker 1: father to them. And you shall speak to the people
Speaker 1: of Israel, saying, if a man dies and has no son,
Speaker 1: then you shall transfer his inheritance to his daughter. Y'all.
Speaker 1: What that passage that we tend to skip over says
Speaker 1: is that our creator, Redeemer is not some autocrat or
Speaker 1: a massagynist to enjoy is punishing his people, But instead
Speaker 1: he has always been actively redeeming culture. He's always been
Speaker 1: actively restoring the dignity that others have stolen from his
Speaker 1: image bears. This book is filled with generational walls of hope, y'all.
Speaker 1: Just over and over and over again, guys, if you'll
Speaker 1: stay with me for just one mo more second, I've
Speaker 1: got one more estrogen passage, but I'll be fast. Deuteronomy,
Speaker 1: chapter twenty two, Verse twenty eight. If a man meets
Speaker 1: a virgin who's not betrothed and seizes her in lies
Speaker 1: with her and they are found, than the man who
Speaker 1: lay with her shall give to the father of the
Speaker 1: woman fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife.
Speaker 1: Because he has not violated her, he may not divorce
Speaker 1: her all his days. Now, I don't know if you
Speaker 1: really heard what I was saying in the ESV there,
Speaker 1: but that is nasty town. I mean, that is just
Speaker 1: awful if you read it at first glance without the
Speaker 1: sociohistorical context. Because what that is saying is a young
Speaker 1: woman who has been violated by a man. That sounds
Speaker 1: like that young young man bribes her daddy and then
Speaker 1: she has to marry her violator. So it sure sounds
Speaker 1: like God is advocating the insult be added to injury.
Speaker 1: You have to understand the context, y'all. Any text in
Speaker 1: this love story can be used as a proof text
Speaker 1: that is not true if you take it out of context.
Speaker 1: In the context, God's people have just come out of
Speaker 1: Egyptian captivity, where they have been under what we could
Speaker 1: call the first iteration of Sharia law and the culture
Speaker 1: that they had been in for four hundred years, said
Speaker 1: that any young woman twelve and over who was not
Speaker 1: married or betruthed was vulnerable to be violated by any
Speaker 1: man who so chose. And the consequence of the man
Speaker 1: who violated her is, guess what, a nothing, not a
Speaker 1: slap on the wrist, not a traffic violation. And so
Speaker 1: one of my professors at Denver Seminary, I love this.
Speaker 1: He puts it like this. He said, So God steps
Speaker 1: over the fence of ancient culture, and he says, you're
Speaker 1: not going to violate my baby girls anymore. Have you
Speaker 1: ever wondered why girls in this era of history got
Speaker 1: married at twelve? This is why you ever wonder why
Speaker 1: women don't go alone to the well. This is why
Speaker 1: he says, from now on, any of you idiots who
Speaker 1: are even thinking about violating one of my daughters, here's
Speaker 1: the deal. If you do so, you will set up
Speaker 1: a four oh one k for her through her daddy. God.
Speaker 1: This is unheard of. Women were now even allowed to
Speaker 1: hold property at this time in history. He says, you'll
Speaker 1: set up an account soci'll be financially independent. Then you
Speaker 1: will give her your name, not to reviolate her, but
Speaker 1: to begin to restore some of the dignity you stole.
Speaker 1: And then if you do not take care of her
Speaker 1: and provide for her for the rest of her life.
Speaker 1: You're liable to get stoned by the rest of the community,
Speaker 1: big boy. I heard this passage quoted about a year
Speaker 1: ago in a blog by a woman who is trying
Speaker 1: to prove that God is a massagist, and I thought,
Speaker 1: you've missed the whole thing. The whole point of this
Speaker 1: is that God has always been in the process of
Speaker 1: redeeming clue, of restoring the value that other people have
Speaker 1: stolen from us. This is a book of hope, y'all.
Speaker 1: There is hope on every page. We don't always mine
Speaker 1: it correctly because we read the Bible lazy. We want
Speaker 1: something we can tweet instead of something that we can
Speaker 1: chew on. But the Bible is filled with hope. I'm
Speaker 1: close to landing. Just two more passages. Head to the
Speaker 1: right to Matthew's Gospel to Matthew Chapter eighteen. And some
Speaker 1: of you, how many of y'all are eights on the enneagram?
Speaker 1: Eight's on the inneagram. My guess would be some of
Speaker 1: you eights are very familiar with this passage. If you're
Speaker 1: a female eight, you've probably cross stitched it. It might
Speaker 1: be hanging on your wall Matthew eighteen, beginning in verse fifteen.
Speaker 1: If your brother sends against you, go and tell him
Speaker 1: his fault between you and him alone. If he listens
Speaker 1: to you, you have gained your brother. But if he
Speaker 1: does not listen, take one or two others along with you.
Speaker 1: That every change may be, that every charge, excuse me,
Speaker 1: may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses.
Speaker 1: If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to
Speaker 1: the church, Tell it to everybody. Go ahead and get
Speaker 1: on EPAM and just just blow the news everywhere in church.
Speaker 1: And if he refuses to listen even to the church,
Speaker 1: let him be to you as a gentile and a
Speaker 1: tax collector. When I was in high school, we had
Speaker 1: a youth pastor for a season who was really, really passionate,
Speaker 1: and he used to wave his Bible around like this.
Speaker 1: When I was in my twenties, I tried to imitate
Speaker 1: it and I hit a woman upside the head with Genesis.
Speaker 1: I just went out of my Bible and hit this
Speaker 1: woman in the head. I was like, I'm sorry, I'm
Speaker 1: so sorry. They never invited me back. But he would
Speaker 1: swing his Bible around quote from Matthew eighteen, and you
Speaker 1: would tell all of us in the youth ministry that
Speaker 1: we were supposed to go and verbally confront, better yet
Speaker 1: assault our friends who were partying after football games or
Speaker 1: smoking pot, or were still engaged in heavy petting. So
Speaker 1: I'm older than the median of elevation, But can I
Speaker 1: get a witness? Did any of y'all have a pastor
Speaker 1: who used the phraseology heavy petting? Do you remember, Holly?
Speaker 1: And it confused me, I mean confused me a lot.
Speaker 1: I remember being at this kind of fire and Brimstone revival.
Speaker 1: This was the late seventies. I was in middle school
Speaker 1: in central Florida and a pastor got up and started
Speaker 1: swinging his Bible around. Veins were popping out, and he said,
Speaker 1: any of you who've been involved in heavy petting wants
Speaker 1: you to come to the altar and repent, you know.
Speaker 1: And I'd come there on the van with our little
Speaker 1: First Baptist church. And I was nervous because I was
Speaker 1: afraid the van would leave me because I didn't really
Speaker 1: always believe Billy Graham when he said they'd stay. But
Speaker 1: I sat there and I thought, half I half I.
Speaker 1: I mean, I love our beagle. We had the sweetest
Speaker 1: beagle named smoky, and I thought, have I just inadvertently
Speaker 1: like rubbed her fur the wrong way or maybe pet
Speaker 1: her with a little bit too much? Wait? Have I
Speaker 1: caused my dog canine injury? I don't know. This verse
Speaker 1: has been used, y'all to shame teenagers who struggled with,
Speaker 1: you know, frisky feelings. I think since the beginning of
Speaker 1: Baptist time anyway. It's also been used to justify ecclesiastical expulsion.
Speaker 1: In other words, this passage Matthew eighteen has been used
Speaker 1: as the sole passage to justify kicking people out of church.
Speaker 1: Do you hear me? Now? I want to take just
Speaker 1: a second here, because I'm not advocating for anarchy in church.
Speaker 1: I'm really not for church to be a healthy, thriving community.
Speaker 1: There have to be parameters. This is not just crazy town,
Speaker 1: and so we need spiritual leaders, we need people holding
Speaker 1: us accountable. But I really think that when we take
Speaker 1: this verse as the proof text to kick people out
Speaker 1: of fellowship, I think we're missing the main point Jesus
Speaker 1: was making. It's right there in front of us, and
Speaker 1: I've missed it my whole life. I am fifty six
Speaker 1: years old. I have a master's in theology. I'm two
Speaker 1: years away, god willing from having a doctorate and redemptive hermaeutics.
Speaker 1: I have studied my behind off because I'm single and
Speaker 1: it's the only way I get any kind of endorphins.
Speaker 1: And so I've got scads of books on exit Jesus
Speaker 1: and catology and redemptive hermonutics and socio historical contexts. But
Speaker 1: it wasn't until this last summer I was sitting in
Speaker 1: a class listening to a professor unpacked the redemptive thread
Speaker 1: in Matthew eighteen that I went Jesus. It's Jesus speaking,
Speaker 1: and Jesus says, treat them as taxs and gentiles. How
Speaker 1: did Jesus always treat tax collectors and gentiles? I mean
Speaker 1: Matthew's writing it. Matthew was a tax collector before he
Speaker 1: encountered Jesus, and Jesus said, come be a fisher of
Speaker 1: men with me. Might change your Facebook status. You're going
Speaker 1: to be an evangelist, but you were a tax collector.
Speaker 1: Do you remember Luke nineteen? If you don't remember it,
Speaker 1: right off, Hannah about you? You sang Luke nineteen, There
Speaker 1: was wee little man, and a wee little man was
Speaker 1: he member, Zachias climbed up in a sycamore tree to
Speaker 1: meet Jesus. Y'all, he was the CEO of the IRS
Speaker 1: division in Jericho. It was implied by Doctor Luke that
Speaker 1: Zachias got filthy rich by padding to what he was
Speaker 1: assessing his Jewish countrymen and then skimming off the top
Speaker 1: before wiring those funds to erme. I mean, this was
Speaker 1: not just a tax collector. This was a tax cotor
Speaker 1: without scruples. And yet when Jesus meets zach do you
Speaker 1: think he calls them out for his duplicity. Now he
Speaker 1: invites himself over for dinner. And after Zach and Jesus
Speaker 1: hang out, do you remember Zach's response, I'll give half
Speaker 1: of what I own to the poor, half of what
Speaker 1: I own to prison ministry, and to orphans and Uganda,
Speaker 1: and to feed the homeless here in Charlotte. I'll give
Speaker 1: half of what I own. I'm so happy to trade
Speaker 1: in my billey for a smart car. And anyone whom
Speaker 1: I'm defrauded, I'll repay them four times what I initially stole.
Speaker 1: Treat them as tax collectors and gentiles. Remember Genesis, well,
Speaker 1: when God says to our great great Granddaddy Abraham. Through you,
Speaker 1: all of the nations of the earth will be blessed.
Speaker 1: They'll all meet Jesus. The promise goes all the way
Speaker 1: back to the beginning. It's fulfilled in the working person
Speaker 1: of Jesus Christ. Paul said, my whole ministry is so
Speaker 1: that gentiles will come to know Jesus. Two thirds of
Speaker 1: the New Testament is about outsiders being drawn into the
Speaker 1: unconditional love of our creator redeemer. Treat them as gentiles
Speaker 1: and tax collectors. Do you really think he intended that
Speaker 1: to be punitive, y'a. We used the Bible as a club,
Speaker 1: and it was never meant to be used as a club.
Speaker 1: It's true, it's authoritative. There are parameters for abundant life
Speaker 1: in here. This isn't a joke, but it's not punitive.
Speaker 1: We're going to land in Hebrews. Hebrews, chapter four, verse twelve.
Speaker 1: Any of you who grew up in church, hoighly, I
Speaker 1: know that you could quote this one backwards, because it's
Speaker 1: one of the first verses that we learned when we
Speaker 1: are growing up. If you've listened to pastor Steven for
Speaker 1: any length of time, you've heard this verse, you've heard
Speaker 1: this whole book preach Hebrews, Chapter four, verse twelve. For
Speaker 1: the Word of God is living an active sharper than
Speaker 1: any two edged sword, piercing to the division of the
Speaker 1: soul and the spirit of joints and of marrow, and
Speaker 1: discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Again, this
Speaker 1: is one of those passages I used to swing my
Speaker 1: Bible around in the twenties, in my twenties, not the twenties,
Speaker 1: I'm not that old, but I would use that passage
Speaker 1: basically to guilt people into being in a Bible study.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't until recently that I started really looking
Speaker 1: at that verse and I thought, oh my goodness, now, y'all,
Speaker 1: let me qualify this because I'm probably going to step
Speaker 1: on some toes. I am a Bible banger through and through.
Speaker 1: I believe in the veracity and the authority of that
Speaker 1: text from cover to cover, God willing, I will spend
Speaker 1: the rest of my life talking about what's between those
Speaker 1: leather bound pages. I love this book. It's not just
Speaker 1: a book to me, it's life. To me. Everything I've
Speaker 1: ever needed for life in Godliness I find on these pages.
Speaker 1: It's not a textbook. It's not a rule book. It's
Speaker 1: not a collection of benign morality tales. This is life, Gus.
Speaker 1: But I took that verse out of context in Hebrews.
Speaker 1: I thought it was all about the Bible. Do you
Speaker 1: remember when Hebrews was written, Colleen, You'll know between sixty
Speaker 1: and seventy a D between sixty and seventy eight D
Speaker 1: is She's not uh huh uh huh. Do y'all also
Speaker 1: remember a D. A lot of people think that's after death.
Speaker 1: It's actually Latin and o domini the year of Our
Speaker 1: Lord b C is before Christ. Do you know they've
Speaker 1: changed the history books now and b C is now
Speaker 1: BCEE before the Common era, And instead of it being
Speaker 1: a d Ano Domini the year of our Lord, it's
Speaker 1: ce Common Era. Just a little side note. Interesting how
Speaker 1: everybody's starting to throw Jesus out of history, and yet
Speaker 1: Jesus is the foundation of the history of hope anyway,
Speaker 1: wit and written between sixty and seventy AD. Between sixty
Speaker 1: and seventy eight, there were very few other epistles, New
Speaker 1: Testament epistles we've now called books being circulated. The very
Speaker 1: first collection, loose collection of most of the New Testament
Speaker 1: books was in two hundred. The very first formal collection
Speaker 1: of all twenty seven New Testament books is in three
Speaker 1: sixty seven I think AD. That was by and I
Speaker 1: think something anathemas or anaphasia or something some mix of
Speaker 1: those terms. And then it was formally canonized into the
Speaker 1: very first New Testament of the Council of Hippo in
Speaker 1: three ninety three AD. What do all those boring historical
Speaker 1: facts me means that right here, when this pastor is
Speaker 1: encouraging his sheep, because his sheep, like us, were really tired,
Speaker 1: and his sheep, like us, were running out of hope,
Speaker 1: and he said, I want you to remember that Jesus
Speaker 1: logos Greek Jesus. That word is used in John one
Speaker 1: in the beginning was the word, and the word was God.
Speaker 1: The word was with God. This is before we had
Speaker 1: inscripturted text. He's saying, Jesus is sharper than a two
Speaker 1: edged short soord, Jesus knows the motive of your heart,
Speaker 1: and Jesus knows you're running out of hope. Jesus. It's
Speaker 1: all about Jesus, y'all. When we segregate the God who
Speaker 1: loves us from inscripturated text, it becomes punitive when we
Speaker 1: realize this is all about Jesus. This is the generational
Speaker 1: well from which we can draw hope. In the driest season,
Speaker 1: you look back and go our creative redeemer has always
Speaker 1: been in the process of restoring the dignity that has
Speaker 1: been stolen from us, of redeeming the mistakes that you
Speaker 1: and I have made, oftentimes against each other. I can't
Speaker 1: even mention Hebrews without thinking of something that happened recently.
Speaker 1: I was speaking at a conference for people who were
Speaker 1: in addiction Recovery from Addiction conference, and I have never
Speaker 1: struggled with alcohol or drugs or opioids, but I identify
Speaker 1: as a recovering addict because one of my favorite theologians,
Speaker 1: a guy named doctor ed T. Welch, wrote a book
Speaker 1: called A Banquet in the Grave, and in that book
Speaker 1: he said that all addictions are ultimately a disorder of worship.
Speaker 1: In other words, if you don't put Jesus in the
Speaker 1: biggest hole in your soul, you'll run to the wrong
Speaker 1: things of the wrong people. So I thought, I'm at
Speaker 1: home with these recovering addicts. And it was on a
Speaker 1: Friday night. Then it went through Saturday Friday night, there's
Speaker 1: this woman during worship who came up front. And this
Speaker 1: church wasn't quite as wiggly as we are here at Elevation.
Speaker 1: It was a little more, a little less demonstrative, and
Speaker 1: so she was the only woman upfront, only person upfront,
Speaker 1: and she was completely oblivious to any body else about
Speaker 1: six seven hundred of us at this conference. She was
Speaker 1: just dancing and dipping and twirling, and I found myself
Speaker 1: distracted by her as we were singing. I thought, I'd
Speaker 1: love to hear her story, because in my experience, people
Speaker 1: who were able to kind of step outside from that
Speaker 1: world most of us live in where we're afraid of
Speaker 1: what anybody else thinks. People who out operate independent of
Speaker 1: other people's approval usually have these incredible backstories. And I thought, man,
Speaker 1: I'd love to know her story, and so I was excited.
Speaker 1: The next morning, I went to the sanctuary early because
Speaker 1: I was teaching that morning, and I went in early
Speaker 1: just to pray and prepare her. And she was in
Speaker 1: there with the only two people in the sanctuary. She
Speaker 1: was up front. So I walked up and I introduced
Speaker 1: myself to her, and she said her name was Joyce,
Speaker 1: and I said, Joyce, I just want to thank you
Speaker 1: because I was trying to focus on Jesus, but I
Speaker 1: got distracted a few times by you last night. I
Speaker 1: was just really undone by how un restricted you were
Speaker 1: dear in worship. I mean, it was just you and Jesus,
Speaker 1: and I'm not quite that free yet. So I really
Speaker 1: loved the model that you set before me. And I said,
Speaker 1: it also made me wonder what your backstory is, because
Speaker 1: that kind of praise usually comes from someone who's been
Speaker 1: delivered from a lot. And she said, oh, yes, ma'am,
Speaker 1: I've been delivered, and she launched into this story that
Speaker 1: could have come from cable. I mean, just horrible backstory
Speaker 1: of abuse. And she was a hardcore addict and alcoholic
Speaker 1: for about thirteen years, and then she met Jesus, and
Speaker 1: Jesus just invaded every dark corner of her life and
Speaker 1: she became just a passionate follower of Jesus Christ was
Speaker 1: involved in addiction ministries and celebrate recovery had really impacted
Speaker 1: her community, and I thought, you know, I mean, that's
Speaker 1: why she dances like that. Well later on, just maybe
Speaker 1: twenty minutes later, I'm standing up on stage sharking my message,
Speaker 1: and I look down and Joyce is just sitting right there,
Speaker 1: and I thought, oh, my goodness, she's got such a
Speaker 1: great voice, because as soon as she introduced herself, I thought,
Speaker 1: she is like a three pack a day smoker. Shut it,
Speaker 1: U gravelly awesome voice. And I thought, I'm going to
Speaker 1: get Joyce to read from the passage I'm reading. I
Speaker 1: happened to be in Hebrews, and so normally I will
Speaker 1: warn people if I'm going to ask them to read
Speaker 1: something that i'm doing, you know, I'll tell them ahead
Speaker 1: of time. Even in our Bible study. I'm like, is
Speaker 1: it cool if I ask you to pray today? I
Speaker 1: don't like to, you know, shock people, And so normally
Speaker 1: I would have asked Joyce, but at this point I hadn't.
Speaker 1: Just I was so overwhelmed by how much I loved
Speaker 1: her story and she's sitting right there, and I thought,
Speaker 1: we've got to use that voice. So I jump off
Speaker 1: stage and I go, y'all, this is my new friend, Joyce,
Speaker 1: and I just love her heart and I love her voice.
Speaker 1: So she's going to read the text for us today.
Speaker 1: And Joyce kind of looked a little flustered, and then
Speaker 1: she took the mic, and she read the passage, tripped
Speaker 1: over a few of the words in the beginning, but
Speaker 1: then you know, got a great even read the passage
Speaker 1: and everybody clapped politely, and I was like, dange Joyce,
Speaker 1: I go up and I finish well. Maybe four hours
Speaker 1: later the conference is over. I'm in the back of
Speaker 1: the room and Joyce comes up and just kind of
Speaker 1: sheepishly says, miss Lisa, I need to tell you how
Speaker 1: you having me read that passage impacted me. And I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, man, you know, I'm sure sure I've
Speaker 1: somehow stepped on a bruise where she's afraid of reading
Speaker 1: in public or something. I so should have asked her.
Speaker 1: And I said, oh, Joyce, I'm so sorry if I
Speaker 1: wounded you, and she says, no, no, I need to
Speaker 1: tell you a little more of my story. She said,
Speaker 1: I told you that God had healed me of alcoholism,
Speaker 1: and then I've been clean for a long long time,
Speaker 1: been sober for a long long time. She goes, what
Speaker 1: I didn't tell you was that nine months ago I
Speaker 1: fell off the wagon. And she said, nine months ago
Speaker 1: I was engaged to be married only guy I ever trusted,
Speaker 1: And she said two weeks for the wedding. I found
Speaker 1: out he'd been stepping out with my best friend, and
Speaker 1: she said, I was just devastated, and so she said,
Speaker 1: I turned back to Jack Daniels to drown my sorrows.
Speaker 1: And she said I spent the weekend after I found
Speaker 1: out he stepped out on me. She said, I was
Speaker 1: just drunk as a skun all weekend. And she said
Speaker 1: when I sobered up on Monday, I came into church
Speaker 1: where she had been on staff, and she said, I
Speaker 1: told the leaders. I said, yeah, I fell off the wagon.
Speaker 1: I told them why, and she said they were really
Speaker 1: really gracious, but then they were also very very sober
Speaker 1: in how they followed through, and they said, we can
Speaker 1: no longer have you on staff because of you having
Speaker 1: that mistake, especially since you work with addicts, and so
Speaker 1: they asked for her letter of resignation. She left staff,
Speaker 1: and she ended up leaving that particular church because she said,
Speaker 1: even though I wanted to stay there, I wanted to
Speaker 1: walk it out. She said, Lisa, every time I walked
Speaker 1: in the sainctuary, I felt I had a scarlet leather
Speaker 1: a for alcoholic on my chest. And she said, I
Speaker 1: just couldn't do it. So After a couple of months,
Speaker 1: I moved my membership to another church across town. She said,
Speaker 1: I didn't tell you this morning, and that this is
Speaker 1: the church that I was asked to resign from. And
Speaker 1: she said, and last night was the very first time
Speaker 1: I stepped foot in the sanctuary again. And I said, oh, Joyce,
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry because I thought, here I've ruined what
Speaker 1: God had shaped to be this precious homecoming. And she said,
Speaker 1: oh no, no no, no, you didn't ruin anything. She said, Lisa,
Speaker 1: you couldn't possibly have known that. When I was a
Speaker 1: little girl, I was illiterate. My mom didn't send me
Speaker 1: to kindergarten. And on the first day of the first grade,
Speaker 1: I walked into a little school in Appalachia and the
Speaker 1: teacher was a new teacher, didn't know my story, and
Speaker 1: she called on me to read and she said I
Speaker 1: stood up, and she said, I can still remember how
Speaker 1: bad my legs were shaking because I didn't know any
Speaker 1: of my A, B, and c's, much less how to
Speaker 1: string them together. So she said, I just looked at
Speaker 1: those letters on the page. They were like hieroglyphics, and
Speaker 1: I just recited something I had heard from one of
Speaker 1: mom's soap operas, hoping that somehow the line I spoke
Speaker 1: was close to what was in this book Little Jack
Speaker 1: and Jane Primer. And she said, all the kids started dying, laughing,
Speaker 1: and they all started calling me stupid. And she said
Speaker 1: that name stuck all the way through high school graduation.
Speaker 1: So she said, I learned if I was ever going
Speaker 1: to speak out loud, say anything in public, in school
Speaker 1: or at work, she said, I would obsessively go over
Speaker 1: every single word that I was going to read or
Speaker 1: I was going to speak, because I was so nervous
Speaker 1: about ever speaking publicly. She said, But when you called
Speaker 1: me out of seven hundred people, you called me by name,
Speaker 1: and you said, I want Joyce to read, she said,
Speaker 1: it's like the heavens rolled back and God himself said,
Speaker 1: that's my girl. Listen to her. And she said, today
Speaker 1: this place of same has become a place of honor
Speaker 1: to me. Don't y'all want to be a little more
Speaker 1: like Joyce? Don't you want to be so undone by
Speaker 1: the redemption and our story, by the redemption and the
Speaker 1: stories behind us, that we can't help but express some
Speaker 1: of that hope to the world around us, a hope
Speaker 1: that's world that's desperate for hope, y'all. Can you imagine
Speaker 1: not knowing Jesus in the season. Can you imagine how
Speaker 1: hopeless some of the precious image bearers that you rub
Speaker 1: shoulders with, not really now, but you rub shoulders six
Speaker 1: feet away from now are. People are dying for real hope,
Speaker 1: and we have it. If you walk with Jesus, we
Speaker 1: have it. You may have forgotten it, you may have
Speaker 1: misplaced it. But the reservoir of hope for Christ followers,
Speaker 1: it's bottomless. We can alway reach into generational wells. There
Speaker 1: are millions in here and draw living hope, Peter says,
Speaker 1: living hope, not stagnant hope, living hope. Shall just close
Speaker 1: your eyes and bow your heads, and when you sit
Speaker 1: for just a second, wherever you are, and if so
Speaker 1: many of you are in your cars, you're maybe at
Speaker 1: work watching a laptop, you're at home on the couch,
Speaker 1: still a little bit grumpy that it was me and
Speaker 1: not Stephen, would you just sit for a minute and
Speaker 1: ask God to open your eyes to the hope that
Speaker 1: is already yours. Ask Him to give you the grace
Speaker 1: to lean back into the generations of hope that we've
Speaker 1: been forged from the eternal hope we're walking toward. Jesus,
Speaker 1: we can fester you this morning, as your sons and daughters,
Speaker 1: that all too often we look like that passage and
Speaker 1: proverbs that says, hope deferred, hope delayed makes a heart sick.
Speaker 1: And Jesus, some of us feel just flat heart sick
Speaker 1: this season because it's been harder than usual to hang
Speaker 1: on to hope. And so we need you, keen, Jesus,
Speaker 1: we need your Holy Spirit to quicken our minds and
Speaker 1: our hearts. To remind us of our history, redemptive history,
Speaker 1: the history that you have woven us into, the history
Speaker 1: that you've always been actively a part of, redeeming, restoring,
Speaker 1: setting captives free. Oh Lord Jesus, remind us that there's
Speaker 1: no room for dry bones in our hearts, no room
Speaker 1: for dry bones. Thank you, thank you, thank you for
Speaker 1: this reminder that you see us. You've always seen us,
Speaker 1: you've always loved us, you've always been actively in the
Speaker 1: process of calling us home. Teach us what it is
Speaker 1: to rest in your hope. We will be so careful, Jesus,
Speaker 1: to give you and you alone the honor and the
Speaker 1: glory and the praise for what you do this day
Speaker 1: in June twenty twenty, Thank you for joining us. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to those of you who give generously to this ministry.
Speaker 1: Is because of you that this ministry is possible. You
Speaker 1: can click the link in the description to give now
Speaker 1: or visit Elevationchurch dot org slash podcast for more information
Speaker 1: and if you enjoyed the podcast, you can subscribe. You
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Speaker 1: for listening. God bless you