Sermon 6-22-08

Some background on this reading: The Israelites had been delivered from slavery in Egypt and were in the desert. To keep the people relying on Him, God has withheld some of the necessities of life. The Israelites desperately needed water and God was going to provide, but read carefully because Moses made a big mistake!

Old Testament – Numbers 20:7-12 The LORD said to Moses, “Take the staff, and you and your brother Aaron gather the assembly together. Speak to that rock before their eyes and it will pour out its water. You will bring water out of the rock for the community so they and their livestock can drink.” So Moses took the staff from the Lord’s presence, just as he commanded him. He and Aaron gather the assembly together in front of the rock and Moses said to them, “Listen, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?” Then Moses raised his arm and struck the rock twice with his staff. Water gushed out, and the community and their livestock drank. But the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not rust in me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them.”

Our second reading is very interesting. When we pray, we really should look for God’s answers because He does answer. Peter had been arrested and thrown into prison for spreading the Good News of Jesus Christ. The people were all gathered together praying for Peter’s release. Peter knocked on the door but his friends didn’t believe that it was him. What could they have been thinking? We’ll find out when we get to the sermon…

Epistle –Acts 12:11-17 Then Peter came to himself and said, “Now I know without a doubt that the Lord sent his angel and rescued me from Herod’s clutches and from everything the Jewish people were anticipating.” When this had dawned on him, he went to the house of Mary the mother of John, also called Mark, where many people had gathered and were praying. Peter knocked at the outer entrance, and a servant girl named Rhoda came to answer the door. When she recognized Peter’s voice, she was so overjoyed she ran back without opening it and exclaimed, “Peter is at the door!” “You’re out of your mind,” they told her. When she kept insisting that it was so, they said, “It must be his angel.” But Peter kept on knocking, and when they opened the door and saw him, they were astonished. Peter motioned with his hand for them to be quiet and described how the Lord had brought him out of prison. “Tell James and the brothers about this”, he said, and then he left for another place.

Just before this reading in Matthew, Jesus asked his disciples who they thought He was. Peter replied “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” Peter got it! He recognized Jesus as the One anointed by God, the Promised Messiah from the Old Testament who would suffer, die, pay for our sins, and reconcile us to God. He recognized Jesus as the One who would be raised to life again as the Old Testament Scriptures had told. Peter made that confession and then something remarkable happened. Right after Jesus talked about going to Jerusalem to suffer, Peter said “No, that must never happen!” What could Peter have been thinking? We’ll get to that in our sermon also…

Gospel – Matthew 16:21-23 From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life. Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said, “This shall never happen to you!” Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.”

Sermon –

When you look at these three readings, you have to ask yourself, “What could these people have been thinking?” In the first reading, the people are in the wilderness, they need water and God tells Moses that if he speaks to the rock, water will come out. But Moses got in a snit and struck the rock. Water came out, but Moses had disobeyed God. Consequently Moses didn’t get into the earthly Promised Land – a reminder for us that because of sin, none of us will make it to the Promised Land except by faith in the Savior, Jesus Christ, who paid for our sins. You have to wonder why Moses did what he did. He must have reflected on the event later and wondered, “What could I have been thinking?” Have you ever done that? You act in some way or the other and later on wonder why you acted as you did. Last fall we talked about the pro football player who, during a game last fall, kicked a player from the opposing team in the head after his helmet came off. On Monday morning, he stated, “I can’t believe I did that! I don’t know what I was thinking!” Today we’re going to find out just what goes on in those situations.

In the second reading people were praying for Peter’s release from prison. When Peter was released they didn’t see the answer. They said, “I know we’re praying for Peter’s release, but that can’t be him at the door.” What could they have been thinking? And in our Gospel Lesson, Peter had confessed Jesus as the promised Messiah, but when Jesus talked about how He would save the world from sin, Peter said, “No! Don’t do it! This must never happen!” Why would Peter change all of a sudden? What could he have been thinking?

This happens to us all the time. We wonder what we were thinking or what somebody else was thinking; we wonder how certain events could have happened. Today we’re going to explain this concept; this is where science and the Bible meet. Science tells us what’s going on and the Bible presents the solution to the problem. And that’s why as science gets better and better, it comes into agreement with the Bible. A couple of months ago, news commentator Glen Beck said something very interesting. He said there was a widening gap between science and the Bible. What could he have been thinking? There is no “widening gap”. Science can tell us what is happening and the Bible gives us the solution; that’s why they go hand-in-hand. What we need to do is look at the thinking process of the human brain. This sermon started about two months ago when I was talking with our Principal, Gary Dresser. He is working on his PhD and told me something he learned in his studies about the human thinking process. There are three different levels in our thinking process. Level 1 consists of basic functions that keep you alive; your heart beating and your lungs breathing. Level 2 is the Fear and Emotion Level. The next level, Level 3, is the problem solving level, the deep thinking level that helps us solve problems and analyze situations.

The thinking process can get stalled at any one of these levels. If you have too much fear or too much emotion in your life, the thinking process stops and you never get to the problem solving level. We see an example of this with Moses in the Old Testament reading. Moses was angry and frustrated. God had always provided food and water for the people in the desert; there was a shortage of water again and the people were complaining and whining. Moses was angry and afraid they were going to stone him to death. Fears and emotions took over in Moses’ life, his thinking process stalled at Level 2. He never got to the next level of thinking saying, “OK, God can handle the problem. Since God said ‘Speak to the rock and water will come out’, everything will be OK”. He never got to the analyzing level so he could see the problem solved; he got stalled with his fears and emotions. Consequently he took his staff, hit the rock, disobeyed God and you know the rest of the story.

Peter was in prison and his friends were praying that he would be released. They were praying behind locked doors because they were afraid that what happened to Peter could happen to them. Their fears and emotions had taken over and they never got to the next level. God answered their prayer, but they didn’t see it because their thinking was stalled at Level 2.

And in the Gospel Lesson, Jesus asked Peter, “Who do you think I am?” Peter answered “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” But when Jesus started talking about how He would save all of us from our sins by being the sacrifice, going to the cross, drying and rising three days later, Peter didn’t hear it because he was stuck at Level 2, stuck in Fear and Emotion. There was talk of betrayal, talk of crucifixion, and Peter’s fears and emotions took over. He never made it to the next level, never saw the problem solved, never saw God’s solution, never saw the biggest problem we have in the world, the sin problem, taken care of by God. He didn’t get there because his thinking stopped at Level 2.

So when we ask what these people could have been thinking, the answer is – they’re NOT thinking, they’re stuck at Level 2!

This says a lot to us for the problems we face as God’s people today. Maybe you’ve experienced it; I’ve experienced it with myself. We see some sin that we’ve committed and the devil goes to work; we begin to doubt that God will forgive us. When people ask if we’re going to heaven, we reply “I hope so! I hope God forgives me.” There’s some doubt in our mind. This happens because we get stuck at Level 2, in Fear and Emotion. We’ve sinned against God and our fears and emotions take over. We never get to the problem solving stage, Level 3, where we can analyze and say, “Wait a second…Christ paid for ALL sin, His death reconciled us to God, we know that God is not against us, He’s for us. If my sin was so bad that it was still there, Jesus wouldn’t have been raised from the dead.” When we analyze, when we get to Level 3, we know that sin is paid for. The trouble is that we get stuck in Fear and Emotion. We need a solution and the Bible provides that solution.

Conflict, for Christians, is an effective tool for spreading the Good News that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior. Suppose there’s a congregational meeting after the service and all of us are in conflict with Ken and Barbie. The main thing we want to do in conflict is glorify God. So if we can tell Ken and Barbie that we’re sorry we’ve hurt them, and ask for their forgiveness and they reply, “Christ has forgiven us, so we forgive you” what just happened…an effective illustration of the Gospel! That means the Gospel works. That means forgiveness of sins works. That means that the Holy Spirit is at work. All of a sudden we see that conflict is an effective tool to show that the Gospel works and to glorify God. When the rest of the world sees that, they will say, “Wow, those Christians have something that we don’t have! They can forgive each other and be at peace.” That’s why conflict is a real tool for spreading the Gospel; God bringing good from bad circumstances, that’s the theory. But so often when Christians are in conflict, they don’t remember that it is an opportunity to illustrate the Gospel. They don’t remember that Christ has forgiven them therefore they can forgive the other person. Why don’t we remember that? Because our thinking gets stalled at Level 2, Fear and Emotion. We are in a fear and emotional mode, we are losing the argument, we’ve been hurt, our emotions are all riled up and we’re not thinking. We’re not getting to the next level, the problem solving level. We’re not remembering that we can use this conflict to illustrate the Gospel. We miss it. That’s why it’s so important to control the fears and emotions in Level 2.

Sometimes we get mad at God because we’ve been praying for something and we really need deliverance. We’ve been praying long and hard, praying on our knees, and we start to get a little bit irritated because the answer isn’t coming. We think that perhaps God won’t say yes or maybe God won’t help and our fears start taking over. Because it’s an emotionally charged situation our emotions start taking over. We never get to the next level of thinking. Nine times out of ten God has solved the problem but we’re just not seeing it, just like Peter’s friends. We’re not getting to the next level where we can say, “Hey, that’s God’s solution. Maybe it’s not the solution I prayed about, but it’s a solution. Thank you God.” Our fears and emotions keep us stuck at Level 2.

And people get mad at God over events in life. They ask, “Why would God do this?” You hear it all the time. The high fuel prices, the elections coming up, all the stuff that’s wrong in this world, people are discouraged because their fears and emotions have taken over. We’re not getting to the next level of thinking. God uses all this stuff. If He can use conflict between Christians to illustrate the Gospel can He use a hurricane or an earthquake to save souls? You bet. Can he use bad politicians to lead people to Himself? Of course! He can do all those things. But we get stuck at Level 2, in our fears and emotions. We get all emotionally charged, we get afraid and we don’t see God working. We forget all about 2 Samuel 14:14 that tells us God creates schemes so that people who are separated or estranged from Him don’t remain that way.

It’s very important that we handle our fears and emotions so that we can get to the next level. How many times does the Bible say “Do Not Fear”? Three hundred and sixty-six times! One for each day of the year and an extra one for Leap Year! When our fears and emotions take over we may forget that God’s Word is living and alive. We may forget that God’s Word creates what it says. God creates through His word - and we have God’s Word in the Bible. Right now we are at Level 3 – because we’re analyzing all this, we’re seeing solutions,. The Bible is effective, it’s the means by which God works, it’s the power of the Holy Spirit, and it creates what it says. When God says, “Do not fear”, His word has the ability to create no fear. If you want to think effectively and get to the next stage, look in your concordance for your favorite Do Not Fear passage. Write it down on a piece of paper and keep it with you. And when fear starts to take over, pull the verse out and read it, a passage where God says “Fear Not”. My favorite is John 16:33, “In this world you will have trouble but fear not, I have overcome the world”. God’s word creates what it says, it pushes fear out of your life.

How do we handle our emotions? We have to remember that through God’s Word the Holy Spirit flows to us; He works through God’s word. You’re here this morning because the Holy Spirit worked through God’s word and created faith. The Holy Spirit created a desire in you to worship God.The fruit of the Holy Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control– all dealing with emotions, dealing with keeping our emotions in check and giving us self-control (Galatians 5:22). God’s Spirit can flow to you to eliminate the fear, to give you love, joy and peace, gentleness and self control – not outbursts of anger like Moses had. God’s Holy Spirit can get you to Level 3 so you can see God’s solution, so you can see God solving the problem, so you can use the ability God has given you to work on the problem. At Level 3 you begin to see God’s solution, His help, and know you’re taken care of, We won’t get ourselves in trouble as Peter, Moses and the others did.

Does the Bible explain science and provide the solution? You bet it does!

Prayer –

Great God Heavenly Father, Thank You for Your Word which is living, alive, active, drives out our fears, gives us peace, and gets us to Level 3 Thinking so we can see your solutions and solve problems. Thank You Lord for that. During these times, help us to remember to use your Word, Heavenly Father, so that we would see Your answers and see Your solutions. Thank You Lord for all You do through Your Word, our Bible. We pray this in the Name of Jesus. Amen.

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