Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / December 27, 2020 | Stuck In The Middle

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December 27, 2020 | Stuck In The Middle · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: How you doing folks?
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Glad to hear it.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh our message this morning we're in a sort of a hinge Sunday in the midwinter in the middle of two holidays, and our title is stuck in the middle.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: I want to welcome you this morning, those of you who are here in one of the auditoriums, those of you who are watching online.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: My text this morning comes from Deuteronomy chapter 8.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: I have a simple sermon this morning from two verses and two sets of paintings that I love.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: I get to do what I want to anytime I want, but in between Christmas and New Year's, I regularly preach uh uh something I really enjoy.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm looking forward to this.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Deuteronomy 8, 2 and 3.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this is set, uh Moses is uh giving this sort of his last address, and they have uh they are now on the border of the promised land, so in a sense they are there.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, Remember that the Lord your God led you on the entire journey, these forty years in the wilderness, so that he might humble you and test you to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: He humbled you by letting you go hungry.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Then he gave you manna to eat, which you and your ancestors had not known, so that you might learn that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: So let's pray, and then uh I'll uh throw us into the uh ocean.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we thank you for uh bringing us this far in this year and bringing us to the brink of a new year.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: We ask that uh uh you would give us insight as we look back, and you would give us inspiration as we look ahead in Jesus' name.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: So my title, Stuck in the Middle, it may be familiar to you from uh there's a 70s rock classic, what's uh oftentimes called a one-hit wonder.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: Steelers Wheel's the only song they did that was popular, but it was quite popular in the early 70s, or perhaps more recently, stuck in the middle, a Disney TV show that ran for three seasons here just a few years ago.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'm using it in in uh because it seems to me that both in our country and in our own lives, a number of us are in the middle and perhaps feeling stuck.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to talk to you both about our country and our and about ourselves, all right, this morning?
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: So and uh and to see if we can hear a word from God concerning both of those.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: So our country is, I think you would agree, in the middle between uh the past, uh even the recent past, and the future.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: In a number of ways, of course, because there's been a change of administration, so there's uh we're in the middle right now, for uh one more, for a few more weeks, uh, in leadership.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a starkly different leadership uh past and the future.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: And there are concerns about the economy.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: Been concerns all year long, because of course the economy a year ago looked phenomenal, best ever.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: And but then we've had this year where we've basically our economy has been bleeding, and so we have a lot of questions about the economy for the future.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Some of you may have questions about your IRA accounts.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and then, of course, there are all these questions about laws and regulations.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh sort of new what laws and regulations might happen these last four years.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: Who knows what laws and regulations may come these next four years?
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Some of that has to do with COVID, and we're in the middle with COVID, aren't we?
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: We we have uh um uh gotten through, we hope, the worst of it.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: We're even being told that in Kansas uh the numbers are such that they tell us that uh it is going to end.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: So, but the question is, you know, how long?
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder, will I be able to take uh my group to Israel in late July this year?
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: And uh we all wonder, are we gonna be able to take our vacations next year, unlike this year?
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's issues of free speech and free religion, uh, because it it seems at times whether or not you're just talking about Twitter or Google or other things, there's a whole lot of discussion about whether or not we really have free speech anymore, what kind of speech is limited, not just on college campuses, but everywhere, and how about free religion, even in our country?
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's become a big issue during COVID, of course, and and divides many of us.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: So so we're we're we're sort of in the middle right now when it comes to our country.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: And and uh so the first set of paintings I want to show you is uh Thomas Cole has become a favorite uh painter of mine in the last 10, 20 years.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: I've always been a fan of outstanding landscape painting, John Constable in England, people like Winslow Homer in America.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: But the first landscape painter, the first uh of any merit in America was Thomas Cole.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Thomas Cole had come over to America from Great Britain, where he was a budding artist, but he wasn't famous there.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: He came over here and then he traveled the world and he painted a set of paintings.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, I'm gonna show you two sets of paintings he painted today.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but this was uh one of his two most famous.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: It was called the Course of Empire, and you can find it at the Metropolitan Museum of Art today.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: He he painted these, he was hired to paint them, or to paint a set of paintings in 1836.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's how early he is, okay?
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: He's well before the Civil War.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna show you those, and I'm gonna show you uh uh how he paints the course of a civilization or we could say a country like America, and uh we'll try to decide where we are right now as a country.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: We're somewhere, obviously, in the middle.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: So the first painting that he painted, uh he labeled the savage state.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the initial state of life, uh uh, you know, shall we say long ago.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, in all of these paintings, you'll find some commonalities.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: The main thing you'll find in all of his paintings is this promontory with sort of an independent large boulder at the top that sort of marks the paintings, and you'll find it in every painting.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: But in the savage state, uh, though you can't see it really well, you may see a hunter right here, and he has shot an arrow, and that arrow is sticking in the deer, and the deer is running away down a watercourse.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, you can see the word chase, sort of a savage picture is in all of this.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: There are deers, deer running up here, and there are characters with spears and bows and arrows here.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: And you can see that the uh in this savage state, the sun is just rising, and the sun and the wind are both pushing the clouds, the dark clouds which have covered this savage world, and they're sort of pushing them away.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: We are at the dawn of civilization.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: And you can see all around here that there are teepees, there are there are no real houses, though there is a house being uh sort of uh being built down here.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: You can see canoes if you look carefully, and you can see uh uh, you know, it's it's just it's a savage state, and that's uh that's how he pictured a society as it was, sort of in the beginning.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh his second painting, and by the way, this is his favorite time of life, he called the pastoral or Arcadian state, or we would call it the simple state of life.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: And you can suddenly see that everything is calmed down, all the waters are calm, the sky is calm, and there are some light clouds.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: And in this state, you can see that agriculture has started.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's sort of a it's sort of a country state.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: In the distance, you see a rude temple, and there is a simple religion going on uh with smoke going up, and and when you look here, you see um at the bottom of the painting, you see a stone bridge, and you see a woman about to cross the bridge, and a boy who's drawing on the bridge.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: She's actually drawing a picture of a soldier, which is sort of foreshadowing of the next picture.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: And you can see peasants uh with someone playing uh sort of a flute and people dancing.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: And you can see a large canoe there, you can see a shepherd with his sheep, and you can see uh um a man here who's drawing geometrical designs in the dirt, but it is a pastoral, it's sort of a country setting, it is sort of a happy setting.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: There are the beginnings of civilization, uh, but uh but you then you suddenly see civilization exploded in the third painting, the largest painting in the museum uh of art in that room is called The Consummation of Culture.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: You can still see that promontory, can't you?
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: But it's sort of dwarfed.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: It has that independent rock at the top, but you can see that houses are crowding all the almost all the way up to the top.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: And what you have here sort of reminds you of ancient Rome.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: At the bottom of the picture, you see the uh you see an emperor who's about to ride through a uh through a uh a vic uh uh an arch, a victory arch, a triumphal arch.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: Ahead of him, they're holding the the the the he's just he's just conquered these people back here, they're priests and others, and they're the captives.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: He's riding an elephant and they're holding up the treasures and paintings, and he is about to cross through this arch and he has two Pharaoh-like figures there.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: You have temples, you have people.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: Everywhere you look, there are people.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: Beautiful boats, you have some warships, and you have some beautiful ships here, but everything you see is like the height of culture, right?
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and it's in the noon of the day instead of the beginning of the day, and you can see all kinds of both political and religious activity going on, and people celebrating everything.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: There are people just filling every square inch.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: And unfortunately, in Thomas Cole's mind, you have pretty much lost nature.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: There's not very much, there's not very many trees, and there's not much grass going on.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: And he uh he he dreaded, even in 1830, he said he felt that this was coming, and he was not really happy about it.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, by the way, the Democratic Party of that day uh uh hated this picture.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: They said they were looking forward to that day, and they did not think it would it would be bad.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: So there were big arguments going on in Washington, D.C., even over this picture.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: They were looking for the revival of Rome.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: But then you can see the same promontory in the fourth picture is destruction.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: He felt that that was inevitable.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh people have invaded, and the people, there's even a civil war going on, that bridge has broken down, everything's on fire, both of the huge temple as well as the political buildings.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: You can see a huge statue here, it's headless, even its shield is broken.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and uh uh there are people lying dead at the foot of this statue.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Everything is on fire in this city, and and below the statue, you can see a mother mourning her dead son.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: You can see people just about to get slaughtered here.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: You can see a woman who's desperate, she would rather fling herself over the side and die, but the soldier has grabbed her cloak.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: It is just an absolute, uh, absolute horrible time.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: The water is all stirred up.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: This is a time of destruction.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: And the final uh and fifth stage of civilization, as he saw it, was desolation.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: And you can see that now nature is returning, nature is beginning to take over.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: You can see some of the same uh things that were in the last painting or two, that is uh uh, but but they're all broken down.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: There's a heron standing there with a nest, you know, on top of on top of that old, one of those old pharaohs that was was sitting there.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh instead of in the exact same place that the sun was in the first picture, you now have the moon, you have the sunset of civilization.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: And Thomas Cole, who who not only painted landscape paintings, but he painted paintings with a moral, was trying to say something.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: He was trying to say that civilization, if you're not careful, moves from a savage state all the way through a beautiful situation through through civilization, a consummation, a height of civilization, which is all about money and it is all about greed, and it is all about power, and it's all about noise, and it's going to end up at desolation.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: So as you think of our country, as you think of our world, this is what he would want us to ask.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: Are we in a savage state, country state, culture destruction, desolation?
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: I suspect that we would all agree that where we are is maybe in western Kansas, they're still up here in the country state, but uh, but uh, or maybe in our national parks.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: But we perhaps are in the culture state, and maybe in some ways we are in danger of moving toward desolation.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: So it's good to think about that.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's good to think about what if you were in heaven and you look down at America and you look down at uh at the world in 2021, how how do you think that you would see the world as it is right now?
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: And and and in light of that, you and I, being praying Christians, uh, should pray for our world and should pray for our country, and should pray for um for a return to as best as possible to a state where we could live in peace and live in live in quietness and so forth.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: So um I I come, however, to the to the more important thing for for me, and that is not the country, but you and me.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: We ourselves, aren't we, are real in many ways are in the middle today.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: We're in the middle in a lot of ways.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: We're in the middle, let's say, in our health, in our adventure, you know, with COVID.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, because many of our friends have had it.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: And and not just COVID, but but other diseases.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh many of you have friends who, uh all of us have friends, who've had heart trouble and had cancer trouble and so forth.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: So we're always in the middle, aren't we, in health, between a past and a future here in the present.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then our families, many of us, we are in a state, whether it's our spouses, our children, uh, for some of us or grandchildren, our families are in transition between a past and a future that is unknown.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: And we have friends.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: I uh Melody and I've talked a lot about that last 48 hours, just as we read our Christmas cards and so forth.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: Just thinking about how God has so blessed us with friends, about how some friends have moved out of our lives, right?
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: Haven't you all talked about that at times?
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: How some of your best friends 20 years ago have moved out of your lives, but then you have these new friends that are so precious to you.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's work.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, some of us are in transition in work, and and and some of us with finances would say we're not sure about the future.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: We know what the past was, we sort of know what our present is, but we're unsure in this present economy about our finances.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's worship.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: There, there is our life with God, with our own spiritual life, with where we are in our own spiritual life.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: We think back at where we were just uh after we trusted Christ as our Savior, when we were full of the inspiration and joy of Jesus Christ.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then we've gone on sort of a pilgrimage, haven't we?
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: We've learned a whole lot, and then and then we've come to the place in our lives now where we look at 2021 and we say, will this be a good year for me spiritually?
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: Or will it not be a good year?
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: So let's talk about that.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now, let's talk about that in terms of another set, and actually a more famous set of paintings by the same painter, and these are at the National Gallery of Art, and there are four of these paintings, and these paint uh an individual person.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh in his childhood, uh, the picture is in spring, and then comes his youth, and that's a summer picture, his manhood, that's a fall picture, old age, winter.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: These are just remarkable, remarkable pictures.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: In each of them, you'll find um, you'll find uh you know something in common.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: You'll find um um you'll find this uh again, this you'll find a rock, you'll find a passenger in a boat, you'll find a guardian angel, and you'll find this river.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: And in the childhood picture, you can see the sun is just rising, this is the beginning of a day, and this beautiful boat uh comes, you know, just comes out of the cave.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: Little baby, you're born, and the boat is full of flowers, and you have a guardian angel right behind you, and and and and there is uh, you know, uh the angel here on the on the prow is holding uh a time.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, yeah, whatever you said.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: So um and and the water is calm and everything is peaceful, and you can see that everything is lush and all the flowers are new, and it's absolutely beautiful.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: And this is for him a picture of childhood where you just see that the world is about to open up before you, but it hasn't opened up before you.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: It opens up before you when you become a youth.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: And now you can see the boat is going the opposite direction.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: He keeps switching it back and forth.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the guardian angel, and the young person, the youth, has pulled away uh from the guardian angel in a way and says, I can do it, I can do it.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: And he's full of excitement, and the breeze is blowing, and you can still see this boat, and he's looking up in the future because he's seeing this castle in the sky, and these are his dreams, these are your hopes and dreams for the future.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: As you look forward to the future when you're a youth, you can hardly wait to get out and experience the future, and you're the whole vista has opened up.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, you still have that rock that just shows you, but the rock has moved from the left to the right side of the painting.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: And you can see that this is the waters are calm, but what you don't see, and what this young fellow doesn't see, is that there is a rough stream that is with a lot of bubbly water that is coming here, and so his life will not be as nice as he thinks it's going to be.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: But he's headed out and he's headed for this castle in the sky.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: He's he's looking forward to accomplishing all of his dreams, right?
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's youth.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: Then comes manhood, and manhood is far tougher than he ever expected it would be.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: It is a time of turmoil, it is a time of rough water, and and and he's a man of prayer.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: He's clasping his hands together, but he no longer sees his guardian angel, though his guardian angel is up there.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: He no longer sees his guardian angel.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, he's more likely to see demons that are hovering over his head there.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it's as though he's in a cave and it's dark.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: And he knows that he's coming to the edge of something what he can't see as he's standing there in a broken in a boat that's now broken down to some extent.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: He can't see that ahead of him it is a terrible cataract.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and that's that for Thomas Cole was a picture of manhood.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't really positive, but it was going to be full of difficulties and temptations and struggles and near-death experiences.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: And and that's a marvelous painting expressing manhood, with the, especially with the guardian angel and with the demons up there.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: Now we come to old age, and somehow, somehow he's gotten through all of his difficulties.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: And somehow over here he is on the shore, and he's in a boat which is broken down and almost nothing anymore, which is maybe a picture of his human body.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: And there's the guardian angel, and he is finally at peace.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: He has come to his death and he knows it.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: And now the water calmly uh uh, you know, moves out into sort of an eternal sea, and and and here he has an angel, and there are other angels in the sky.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: This angel is beckoning to them to come and take the old man home.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: And the old man is a man of faith, and he is very happy to go home.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the sky, of course, which Thomas Co Thomas Cole felt that the sky was the most important part of all of his paintings and the way he painted the clouds, but uh but uh the the sky shows that there is a bright hope through the dark clouds of death.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: So wonderful stuff.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: And and yet, and yet it seems to me that that what Thomas Cole is trying to picture in paintings is given us uh in uh in an exhortation by Moses.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: When he says, Remember that the Lord your God led you on the entire journey these 40 years.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: I can't think of any time in the Bible where God's people were stuck in the middle more than during those 40 years, right?
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: Because they had been in Egypt and God had brought them out and he had saved them across the Red Sea, as He did with you so many years ago, uh perhaps for some of you, some of you more recently, but God came into Egypt and He brought you out of slavery and he redeemed you and He brought you out, and it was so wonderful.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: But but even though He's promised you the promised land in the future, it's it's turned out turned out that there is a long middle state.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: There's a time that you're gonna have to travel for 40 years or 20 years or 60 years in the middle, and in a sense, you feel sort of stuck in the middle.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine how the Israelites must have felt after they'd been told they were going to travel for 40 years?
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: Not just the old ones, not just the ones who were, let's say, 40 or 50 years old who knew then that they were going to die in the wilderness.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine being 15 years old and hearing that for the next 40 years you were gonna be stuck in the wilderness?
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Knowing that you were uh just gonna travel around in circles in the hot weather eating the same food and have scorpions and all kinds of problems for 40 years, just stuck there until you were 55 years old.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how you feel about uh about being in the middle, but I find it significant that many of the great writers that we love so much, Oswald Chambers and Amy Carmichael and St.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: John of the Cross, and on and on and on, they're famous for writing about the wilderness, about being stuck in the middle, about the difficulties of life.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: They understand, as Augustine did, that the Christian life is not so much about victory as it is about surviving in the wilderness.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: Survive, thank you, about surviving difficulties.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so Moses says, but but when you are going through that, when you're going through that, know that God is leading you on that entire journey these 40 years in the wilderness.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then he says, God's doing it for one, two, three reasons.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: And he gives us this wonderful charge, I think, for the year 2021.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, he says God sticks us in the middle to humble us so that he might humble us.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: God sticks us in the middle to teach us humility in life.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: I ask myself at this time of year, where's God wanting me to practice humility in my life?
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: Where is he wanting me to learn humility in my life in the year 2021?
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: One answer, to be honest, that immediately comes back is uh Jim, you're a high control person.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I I I I want to be in control of life, and I want to be in control of the church, and I want to be in control of the things I do.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: And COVID has, of course, ripped that uh out of out of our grasp.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: And and and in a sense, and we all know that COVID is uh reveals our theology.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just teaching us theology, it's revealing our theology in many ways, about how much we trust God about, and especially though, about how much we have to have control.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: We're angry about COVID to the extent that we feel like we should be able to control life.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, and of course, uh the powers that be um, you know, in countries, you know, are sometimes way too quick to predict the end of something which they can't control, or to predict that it'll go on forever because they can't control, you know, it it's it's overcoming either.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: And for me personally, uh it it I suspect will be a year of continued humility.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: When I'll wake up every week and I'll say, well, uh, I had hoped that I was going to be able uh to take that vacation, but I won't be.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: I was hoping that we would be able to take that tour to Israel, but I still don't know in the month of March whether or not I'm going to.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a great question for you to ask yourself this morning.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: Where's God wanting me to practice humility in my life?
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: I love this uh famous quote uh from a McDonald's guy named McDonald, pride cannot face the possibility.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: Here's a these are the smaller lessons of humility.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: Pride cannot face the possibility that my partner is right and I am wrong.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: The proud wife cannot stand for her husband to make the slightest negative comment about the way she cooks or keeps house.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: The proud husband cannot stand for his wife to make the slightest negative comment about the way he relates to their children.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: I I really don't honestly don't mean that to be convicting to anybody.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: Honestly, I don't.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's just I thought, wow, now that's getting right down to where, you know, the shoes touch the pavement right there.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: So pride, ask yourself, where would God perhaps like to teach me humility in 2021?
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: But the text continues, so that he might humble you and test you to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: In Deuteronomy 8, if you look at, if you read the chapter, the verse right before this and the verse right after, mention his commands and mention obedience.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: God's clearly sticking us in the middle to teach us obedience to his will.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: Which leads to, oh, I'm sorry, I couldn't stop.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: Two dogs coming out of obedience school, and one says, Don't worry, we'll never have to use this stuff in real life.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and so, but middle, I uh what I'm saying here, or what Deuteronomy 8 seems to be saying, is that the wilderness is that the middle time is God's obedience school, and we will have to use it in real life, which means we should ask ourselves, what's where's God wanting me to practice obedience to his will in 2021?
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if if you're at all normal, there's an area you can think of in life that where it's more difficult to practice obedience to his will that you've been working on, God's been working on with you for a long time.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's easy for us to answer.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: I hope it's easy for you to answer this question.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: If there's nothing that you can think of where you can improve, then ask your best friend or your spouse, and and they'll probably come up with three or four things.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then and then uh verse uh three, he humbled you, God humbled you by letting you, again, he's describing the wilderness, the middle time.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: He humbled you by letting you go hungry.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: Then he gave you manna to eat, which you and your ancestors had not known, so that you might learn what?
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: So that you might learn that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: So during this difficult time, this wilderness time, this 40 years, this middle time, what's he saying?
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: He's saying God sticks us in the middle to teach us dependence on his word.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: Not independence, but he's wanting to bust us down and break us until we're actually totally dependent on his word.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I ask, where is God wanting me to practice dependence on his word this year?
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now, just in case you don't have an answer to that question, I I have one for you.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that is that next week we're starting our fourth annual uh TBC book study of fourth straight year where I pick a long uh longer book of the Old Testament and where um I'll preach on it uh from January, first Sunday in January until Easter.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'll put devotionals online, and I uh we'll study it together as a church, and I hope you'll you'll do this, even if you're doing something else like reading through the Bible.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: Exodus just 40 chapters, we'll do four chapters a week, 10 weeks, and um and we'll have a great time in Exodus.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: This is an amazing, an amazing book.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I would urge you to learn just to say, well, if I don't know how I can depend on his word, I'll I'll join the TBC book study where we'll get into the word deeply in the book of Exodus and and see what the Lord teaches me about dependence on his word.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: Will you do that?
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: So uh I love Alan Alan Redpath, one of my favorite, now passed away uh British uh preachers.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: The best place any Christian can ever be is to be totally destitute and totally dependent upon God and to know it.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so as we uh go into 2021, let's pray for our country and pray for each other ourselves, and then ask ourselves in the presence of God these questions.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: Where might God want me to be learning humility this next year?
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: Where might God might be wanting me to learn obedience to his will in 2021?
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: And third, where might God want me to be learning dependence upon his word this next year?
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: Let's ask ourselves these questions, okay?
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe jot something down by the New Year's.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: Join me in a word of prayer.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: Father, thank you so much for uh giving us this middle time.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: We we don't enjoy it.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we don't enjoy the mid-winter, we don't enjoy the mid-COVID, we don't enjoy the you know mid-mid-leadership transfer.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of stuff that that we wouldn't choose.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: We're looking forward to a day when you come when we we won't have to choose.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: These things won't be happening.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: We'll have the best leadership, uh, you know, past, present, and future forever.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: But uh but now, Lord, we thank you for using these this time, this this wilderness time in our lives to teach us.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: May we be at the end of 2021 more humble, more obedient, more dependent people, children, servants of you in Jesus' name.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for coming.