Transcript

Take your Bibles and let’s go to 1 Corinthians again, chapter 16, as we look at the Apostle Paul talking about how he discerned or understood the will of God, and like the two chapters on, um, principles of giving this morning, I just love the wisdom of God in the Scriptures whereby so very often we read something and think, “That’s so practical and common sense.” And we see a lot of that in the Apostle Paul’s writings. Sometimes we try to make spiritual matters somehow outside of the realm of common human logic and often it lines up well.

I told you this morning talking about principles of giving, that there are a number of those that I would leave out and I, I thought this afternoon, you know, the principle of generosity just screams out of the text from the, the Macedonians rather and then his encouragement to the Corinthians and how often he talked about your, you promised a bountiful gifts, generosity and the Macedonians gave so greatly. So there’s, the Bible’s endless is what I’m saying. You can’t mine all the things out of it, uh, no matter how much you look at it and study it and preach it because it’s of an infinite wisdom outside of ourselves.

Now first of all, before I read the text, let me review. We talked about one insight on, um, understanding the will of God is you want to be a Spirit-filled believer finding your deepest love and your deepest joy in Christ. That’s God’s will. You don’t have to wonder about that. Spirit-filled believer, it means you are purposing in your life genuinely to walk in a life that does not grieve the Holy Spirit. You’re not going to knowingly and as a pattern embrace sin, disobedience, any kind of wickedness that would violate Scripture and grieve the heart of God. You’re gonna strive to walk in a Spirit-filled life and you’re increasingly learning to love and treasure or joy in Christ above all other things.

Now it goes without saying to this church but I’m gonna go ahead and say it, that that living a Spirit-filled life and, um, loving and joying in Christ includes being obedient to the main things, the A, B, C’s of what you might call Christian disciplines. For example, if someone came into my office and said, “Pastor, I wish you’d pray with me or guide me from the Scriptures on how I can know the will of God about this thing that’s coming before me and that thing,” and I happen to know that they’re quite unfaithful to regularly attend church, I’m gonna say, “I can’t help you with anything in that part of knowing the will of God because God’s will for you is to not forsake the assembling of yourselves together. If you’re not faithful in belonging to a local church, you need to find security in Jesus Christ and know that you’re truly his, you’re born again, you’ve been regenerate of the Spirit evidenced by repentance toward God in faith in Christ, and then join a biblically sound local New Testament church and be faithful in attendance and service there and then the other things fall in place. So if, if you’re not gonna do the main things, then I can’t help you and neither can anybody else.” As I said in one of the earlier sessions on these insights of understanding the will of God, often what a person says is not I really want to know the will of God, I want to know if God will give me my will. Well, can I, can I sort of treat God as just this mystical power source, this mystical all- wise one, and if I, if I sort of, um, uh, say the right mantra or check the right boxes or go through the right ordinances or rituals or something I can sort of please him and get what I want out of life. And you’d be surprised at the professing Baptists and Evangelicals who have a view of God that’s not much more than that.

Uh, I remember this, this guy had a Ph.D., uh, not in theology, he had a Ph.D. and he was, were talking one day and he, he talked about knowing God through Jesus Christ is you have to do the deal. It was just a little formula and if you did the deal, what he meant is you pray the prayer and jump through a couple hoops, then you’re just in as if knowing the true God of Scripture is not much more than some sort of little ritual you might get from a, a, witchcraft practicer in the bush of Africa. And so we want to get away from that. It’s a, when we’re saved, it’s a new joyous love relationship with our God who loved us through his Son Jesus Christ and it increasingly draws us to him, it increasingly builds a gratitude and a love and a joying and a treasuring of him. And that’s, that’s the will of God. That’s foundational. Why would God give you something else to keep you busy if you left that off? Why would God show you something else to do if that’s not there? You see what I’m saying? He wants to slow you down if that’s not there so you can really see what you really need, him.

So it goes without saying that there’s some basic things the Bible’s very clear about, uh, concerning the will of God for all of us which includes it centers in faithfully serving him and being in attendance in one of God’s local churches. So the first one is a Spirit-filled believer and finding your deepest love and joy in Jesus Christ. The second thing we talked about was initiate a scripturally-based plan and we looked at 1 Corinthians 16 of how Paul as an apostle, he knows clearly what God’s will is about building the kingdom of God on the earth and that is that he is to preach the Gospel, same thing as preach the word of God and urge men and women, boys and girls, all people, to repent and come to faith in Christ and then wherever he is to take those new believers and establish local New Testament churches. And so that’s scriptural. That’s sound. He knows that’s God’s will for him and so he initiates, he takes off.

Now you’re not called to be an apostle and the majority of you are not called to even be a preacher or a missionary, but in your area of responsibility what you want to do is look at things and say, “Is there anything about this pursuit that violates Scripture? Anything about this that clearly dishonors God?” And one key element there is always get the blessing of other believers and the blessing of whoever might be in authority over you spiritually. That can never be a bad thing to do. And then do it. Take off and go for it.

Look at it again, if you will, in 1 Corinthians 16. We’ll read all of it, verses 5 through 9. Paul says,

5 But I will come to you after I go through Macedonia, for I am going through Macedonia;

He said, “This is my, this is my scripturally-based plan.” Verse 6,

6 and perhaps I will stay with you, or even spend the winter, so that you may send me on my way wherever I may go.

“Now that includes you’re gonna put me up, you’re gonna pay my bills, you’re gonna feed me, you’re gonna take care of me, and then when I go out from you to minister to other places, you’re gonna financially support me and help me on my way.” Well, is that scriptural? Totally scriptural. That’s thoroughly taught in the Bible that if you receive spiritual things, you ought to reward that person with material things. So Paul’s very biblical in his plan and in his expectations. Verse 7,

7 For I do not wish to see you now just in passing; for I hope to remain with you for some time, if the Lord permits.

Let me just stop right there because that’s where we are today. Here’s what he’s saying, “Here’s my plan. I’ve got a scripturally-based plan, I love the Lord, I want to walk the Spirit-filled life, I’m increasingly striving to make Christ the one I love the most and the one I joy in the most, and now as I follow on this plan and there’s nothing that violates Scripture here, I’m gonna do all these things if the Lord permits.” Now that’s what we call following the sovereignly-steered path. We seek the Lord, we love him, we joy in him, we strive to walk Spirit-filled, we make sure that we’re not violating Scripture in any way, and then we take off and we say, “If God wills or allows, then this is what I’ll do.” But then as you take off, how shall I say it? Almost always, I’d almost say always it’s not gonna work out like you thought. There’s gonna be some stop signs along the way. There’s gonna be some yellow lights, slow down. There’s gonna be some turn signals along the way and you just gotta follow that sovereignly-steered path.

Now this thing of taking off, taking the initiative, uh, please don’t be one of these Christians that just sits and does nothing until God tells me what to do. What do you mean? God’s told you plenty to do. You get busy with what the Scripture says is your job. If you can’t think of something, call the church office and we’ll tell you some things to do. Don’t just sit on the sideline because God hadn’t told you. He has. The Bible is full of stuff. But you take off serving the Lord, honoring the Lord in this, this vocation, this pursuit, whatever it may be, and then say, “If the Lord permits.” Isn’t that what he said about or the Bible says about the, the, the young, that, that businessman? He said, “I’m gonna go to such-and-such a city and I’m gonna engage in this business if the Lord permits or if it’s the Lord wills”? And that’s the way we should always approach it. That was a common way Paul approached things.

For example, and these Scriptures should be on the screen. Acts 18:21 the Bible says, ” but taking leave of them and saying, ‘I will return to you again if God wills,’ and set sail from Ephesus.” So he did what seemed wisest and best, he went for it and then said, “God, close the door or open it.” You know, we just started our Pastoral Training Institute and I talked to Brother Tim many times, I said, “Look, this is a learning season for us. I’m not worried about things working out right.” Now I’ve been about this a long time and I know there’s bumps in the roads, there’s closed doors, there’s open doors, and we’re just learning but ask Brother Tim how long he and I have been throwing this around, it’s been years and years. But God worked things at Grace Life Church, God worked things out financially and God did things in his life and his situation out of his control, and just the doors opened just right. And so you head for something and God may give you a red light, may give you a caution light or a yellow light and slow you down, may give you a turn signal and that’s something else Brother Tim and I have talked about a lot, that the Pastoral Training Institute three or four years from now may look a lot different than what we first thought it was gonna look like. Matter of fact, I’ve already got an idea that I think is better for what we’re about. Not that anything we’re doing is bad or wrong, we just want to flow with God.

Well, that’s a good phrase, flow with God. Don’t forget that phrase. Flow. You, you start off and then as you go, you just flow with God because, look, you don’t start out to achieve your goal, you start out to see how God’s gonna get you there and sometimes he changes your goal to a great extent or maybe even completely along the way.

Well, let’s use an example from Scripture about some of these different green lights, yellow lights and red lights. First of all, Acts 15:36, again, this should be on your screen, “After some days Paul said to Barnabas, ‘Let us return and visit the brethren in every city in which we proclaimed the word of the Lord, and see how they are.'” Now this is a, a scripturally-based plan. How do we know that? Because God said in Matthew 28:18-20, “Go and make disciples of all nations.” He didn’t say, “Go and just get decisions.” “Baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,” then, “teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I’ve commanded you and, lo, I’m with you always, even to the end of the age.” So that’s God’s basic will for our mission work and planting churches and that’s what Paul’s about. So he’s going back to these churches because there’s a lot of things to teach them and disciple them in and ground them because, here, listen, a mature church and an healthy church is the best thing possible for the advancement of world missions.

I’ve said it many times as I’ve gone to the mission field around the world, one of the greatest problems we have on some mission ports, well, I could say many mission points around the world is American Christianity that’s already gotten there and we have to unpackage and remove a lot of what’s already there to get them to follow the Scriptures and be a more true church because the world’s enamored with America and when they see these fads and gimmicks that Americans, especially the megachurches and all, begin to follow after, then all the churches around the world tend to want to follow that pattern and sometimes you have to do a lot of deprogramming before you can do the teaching.

Well, saying all that to say we know it’s foundational in Scripture in mission work to go back and train and mature and disciple established churches. That’s what they’re doing. So here he goes, he’s taking off with his scripturally-based plan, and for the most part he has a green light on this. God just says, “Keep on going.” For example, in Acts 15:41 as “he was traveling through Syria and Cilicia,” he was, “strengthening the churches.” Then next chapter, chapter 16, verses 1 through 5, “And Paul came also to Derbe and to Lystra.” Then he talks about finding Timothy there but jump down to verse 4, “Now while they were passing through the cities,” he’s still doing this work of following up on the churches in all these cities, “they were delivering the decrees which had been decided upon by the apostles and elders who were in Jerusalem, for them to observe. So the churches were being strengthened in the faith, and were increasing in number daily.” Green light. He’s going to town after town, city after city, and he’s doing the ministry tat he set out to do. “I’m gonna go strengthen these churches.”

Ah, that was a green light so far, now a red light. Now, see, here’s the thing, you come to a red light and you think, “Uh-oh, a problem.” No, it’s not. It’s blessing. You’re in God’s will following Scripture. If God stops you, you’ve gotta say, “Praise the Lord, He’s got a purpose. Praise the Lord, He’s got a purpose.” So Paul runs into a red light that the sovereign God had placed in front of him. That’s in Acts 16:6-7, “They passed through the Phrygian and Galatian region, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia.” I have no idea how that happened or what that means but they just know God said, “Don’t speak it there. You were going there, that was a part of your scripturally-based plan, but I’m sovereignly stopping that aspect of it. I’m giving you a green light on Phyrgian and the Galatian region.” “And after they came to Mysia, they were trying to go into Bithynia, and the Spirit of Jesus did not permit them.”

So here we have, again, a solid red light. Again, I have no idea what that means. Um, uh, we do know sometimes there were, um, uh, oppositions and persecutions physically, I mean, against Paul and he had to be rescued and brought out of a city, sometimes that was the form, but here’s what we know – listen, folks – whatever it is, the sovereign God could have stopped it. So you’ve gotta understand God’s hand is behind this. Somehow he has a purpose in this red light that’s come on.

I can’t tell you as your pastor how many times I’ve laid out what I’m convinced is a scripturally-sound plan and we’ll get going on it as a church and God just shuts it down. Uh, one Christian teacher sometimes called this the death to the vision. You’ve got a vision of what you’re gonna build for God, where you’re gonna go for God, and you get down the road a ways, you get excited, and what happens you get excited a lot of times and you begin to forget God and trust yourself a little bit too much and God brings it to a stop. He brings you to a sea that you can’t get through. You can’t teach all those Jews to swim well enough to get across that Red Sea and avoid the Egyptians. It’s you’re just stuck and God said, “That’s where I want to get you. I want to get you stopped because I’ve got a purpose in it.” We’ll talk about that a little bit more in a moment.

So he comes to this red, he’s following this, this scripturally-based plan, it’s been a green light, it’s all working good, but then, boom, God stops him. But then God not just stops him, God gives him a turn signal. Leaving Mysia he’s to go, Acts 16:9-10, somewhere else. “A vision appeared to Paul in the night: a man of Macedonia was standing and appealing to him, and saying, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us.’ When he had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go into Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them.” We were on this path ministering to these churches, boom, Spirit of Jesus stopped us. We didn’t know what that meant and then God through a vision, now God’s not giving direction through visions like that now but he did during the apostolic era, God says and he sees, Paul sees this vision rather from, from this, this man in Macedonia to come over and help us, so he, he turns from his plan and goes to Macedonia and that’s just very common in our lives.

Um, shall I even say this that young people sometimes are courting and they’ve found that girl, they’ve found that guy that they think is God’s will and they’ve covered the Scriptures, they know the Lord, they seem to love the Lord, they believe sound doctrine, we, we’ve got a sound church together we’re gonna attend, and their parents have given their blessing, and my parents have given their blessing, and we’ve even talked to our pastors and said, “Do you see any problems here?” That’s the path that I took. And then they planned to continue on with this thing and, boom, something happens and it just doesn’t work out and God brings somebody else in their life they weren’t even looking for. I had a couple of a serious relationship with committed Christian, uh, young ladies when I was a college student and then one day I looked down, across the road right where the Baptist Student Union is, I don’t know whether they call it something else now, Baptist Campus Ministries? And across the road was this real pretty girl under an umbrella walking down the road and I literally, well, she yelled and told me to, but I literally…she actually didn’t, ran under there and got under her umbrella with her and we walked toward class together. She said she was shocked because it was a Zeta umbrella and I didn’t like the Greek societies but nevertheless, it was clear to me that God took me on another path. Now I didn’t break up with somebody or nothing like that. I think we were both kind of available at the time. My point is you just don’t know what God’s gonna do. You just don’t know how God’s gonna do it. You just follow – listen – you follow the sovereignly-steered path.

Don’t raise your hand but how many of you right now or in recent days have had something in your life that was just a red light? You’ve had plans, nothing wrong with them pleasing to God, nothing, no violation of Scripture, no evil things, and then, boom. I talked to two dear church members just this evening who have family members facing a serious bout of cancer, red light on a lot of things. But God knows what he’s doing. He’s giving you something else that you can’t yet see.

And I’m using ministerial examples but it applies to all of us but I was just reading recently something of David Livingstone’s missionary journey and David Livingstone was a young man of God in England and he heard the call from American and British churches that we needed qualified medical missionaries in China, that there was a great need and a great request among the Chinese, “If you know modern medicine, we need your help.” And so that was a way a lot of missionaries could get into pagan China and preach the Gospel. And, and David Livingstone surrendered to that call and so he began to study Greek and theology and, and medicine at Glasgow to prepare himself, and after those two years of study, he gets signed up, he’s ready to leave on the missionary journey, and the opium wars break out in China, was this the latter part? No early part of the 18 or th 19 century, I should say, and now the door is completely closed. No European, no American can go near China at this point. Stop sign. Red light. He had a green light, they need medical missionaries, I’m heading that way, I’m getting my studies done, I’m gonna go over there, and right before he leaves the door slams shut.

Well, he ministered some around his hometown and then he met a famed missionary to Africa called Robert Moffat, you’ve probably heard about Moffat, and he began to disciple David Livingstone and urged him that he needed to go to Africa also and minister in Africa. And he arrived in Cape Town, South Africa on March 14, 1841, so here he had a turn signal, see? Headed out toward China, boom, God stopped it, ends up in Africa. And David Livingstone was the great European missionary explorer that charted much of the giant unreached regions of Central and Southern Africa. Matter of fact, as he journeyed north from Cape Town preaching the Gospel and planting churches, he discovered this beautiful waterfall. It was some call it the largest in the world. I’ve been to Iguazu Waterfalls also in South America and some say it’s the largest in the world but both of them are overwhelming. But it’s the Zambezi River that pours into this massive fissure in the earth, there’s just, it’s amazing beyond compare, and there’s a few little islands that exist right on the edge of the waterfalls and Livingstone took a canoe and paddled out to one of those islands and he got on one of those islands and that massive waterfall all around him and you can see forever vast regions of the African jungle and countryside, and history records that he said, “I saw the smoke of a thousand villages.” And he spent the rest of his life journeying through those regions of Africa preaching the Gospel and planting churches in all of those villages, areas that no white man had ever been to. The rest is history. Literally the great work of God in Africa today is significantly founded upon the early work of David Livingstone, but he would never have gone to Africa if God hadn’t given him a stop sign going to China and a turn signal and said, “No. Africa is open.”

Brother Steve could tell you all the time that we start out to do one thing and we think this is gonna work and we put a lot of funds there and we’re going this way, and that closes off but something turns and we’re over here working now. I, I would’ve never dreamed that is it 500 million people today can hear our broadcast in Spanish. Did you know that? We have a potential office, audience ration of 500 million people. I’m not saying 500 million people tune in but it’s there. And so all of a sudden we’re thinking about the Portuguese speaking people and the door is still open there. And we’re thinking about the Southeast Asia and God’s blessed Tim Mateo, and by the way, that just came to us out of nowhere. That was a turn signal. And so we put a lot of our resources and energy and effort there through Tim Mateo and our church plants around Southeast Asia, and lo and behold, now there’s the Spanish region, it just seems like it may just explode with possibilities. And so I guess in one way our problem is so many green lights are on, I don’t know which way to go but that’s a good problem to have.

I was thinking about, now that’s a, that’s an example from church history, I was thinking about a personal example from my own life and ministry as a, as a college student and a, and a, and a young man in seminary and just graduating, I just developed a deepening passion for churches to be biblically healthy and true churches, and reforming churches so that we might be a church or I might pastor a church, I should say, at that point I wasn’t a pastor here, but that I might pastor a church that God might use to be a model and an encouragement to others. And so what did I do? I just let people know that I, I believe God’s called me in the ministry and, uh, an older pastor friend that I knew put my name in for a perspective church in Mayfield, Kentucky. I mean, country folks. That fit me pretty good. I’m a country folk. And I went up there and I stayed in the home of the lead deacon, the chairman of the pulpit committee, and while in his home, I, I looked through some of the Christian literature he had and he had a lot of literature in most every room from Herbert W. Armstrong’s Worldwide Church of God which is a cult. I thought, “Oh, my goodness. This man’s chairman of the pulpit committee and he’s embracing a cult movement.” Now look, to this dear man’s defense, that’s how poorly taught a lot of our churches were, that good guys could be led astray on some very bad and false doctrine, even heresy, and really not know what they’re getting into. But I realized right away if the most esteemed spiritual man in this church doesn’t have enough discernment to know this is a cult, this might not be a good place to be. I’m not sure.

And then I met with the remainder of the pulpit committee the next day and you know what the great big, most important issue that they brought up several times in interviewing me for the ministry? It wasn’t expository preaching. It wasn’t the doctrine of the atonement or vicarious atonement, or what is the Gospel. Nothing like that. The issue that was so important to them is, “Will you use real wine when we take the Lord’s Supper?” That was it. I’d never thought about that. I’d never used, taken real wine in the Lord’s Supper except when we go to Romania. Miss Pam drank it too. She said, “Alcohol’s never touched my lips,” but it has now. Matter of fact, after that second church that morning, she was saying, “You think we can go to church this afternoon?” I’m, I’m being silly. Um, but what I’m saying is all the things that church needed, all the things that were terribly deficient in that church and they were just fighting and struggling over, I think they’d actually dismissed a pastor over it. They thought it had to be real fermented wine and I just thought, “I think God’s giving me a red light here. Just closed this door.”

So I came back home. I don’t remember the timing on that and me coming on staff here, but it was around the same time. I may have already just started on staff here, as a matter of fact, I’m just not really sure. Well, several years passed and God blessed our ministry here and I became the Senior Associate Pastor here and, um, our, our former pastor let me pretty much manage and run things and, and I was learning a lot and you were very gracious to try to follow my leadership in a lot of those things, and I got a contact from the First Baptist Church of Hendersonville, Tennessee, and the First Baptist Church of Hendersonville is right out, it’s a suburb of Nashville, and it’s a, a very esteemed area, a very wealthy area. I don’t know if it is anymore but it was years ago. And matter of fact, Johnny Cash was a member of that church and a lot of music, um, industry executives belonged there and country music stars went to church there. So I thought, “Wow, this is a cool place.” Lots of money and the pastor said, “Look, I’ve got a large staff and a very large church, I want you to come in, I want to preach and I want you to organize and run this thing. I’ve got some staff issues. I want you to help get my staff in, in order. They’ll all answer to you.” And I thought, “Hey, I like this, kinda what I’m, uh, feel like I’m cut out to do. This looks like a good thing.”

So I met with his staff the next day and, uh, I laid out for them scripturally what we were gonna be about, that we were gonna be thoroughly biblical, we’d have accountability one to another, we’d challenge each other about Scripture memory and sharing the Gospel and on and on and on I went and thought they would just love it, and we dismissed that meeting and I didn’t know it but they went to the personnel committee and said, “This guy’s crazy and we will never serve under him. He’s just don’t fit here. He’s a problem.” And I don’t know what-all they said but it wasn’t good. And so I met with the personnel committee the next day and Pam was in there with me, and I mean, it wasn’t as bad as Judge Kavanaugh at the Senate but it was bad. They grilled me. They accused me of everything under the sun and just worked me over good. But Pam and I had been praying, “God, if this isn’t Your will, close the door.” And they wouldn’t have called me to that church if I’d of been the Apostle Paul. And so God just closed that door and literally we drove home, red light, we drove home singing hymns praising the Lord that God had closed that door. I mean, we knew we were not supposed to be there.

Several years passed and I got a shocking announcement from our Senior Pastor that he was leaving and going to Memphis. I never expected it. I wasn’t looking for that to happen. And what happened next was we had a pulpit committee and they contacted me and some other men, and interviewed me for the Senior Pastor’s job here, and it looked like a green light and things were encouraging and then great opposition arose in the membership here against me becoming the Senior Pastor. I know that’s hard for you to believe but it happened. And so that was at least a yellow light. It looked kinda like a red light to me but it was at least a yellow light and I thought, “What is God doing?” Well, I can tell you one of the things God was doing, God was growing Jeff Noblit. You’ve gotta understand something: if God’s gonna use you, he brings you down a path where he can keep growing you, humbling you, and maturing you.

Well, finally I’m presented to the church. There was a particular staff member who was by far the most aggressive person opposing me becoming the pastor. Now that’s a problem when you have a senior staff member who don’t want you to be the pastor. And so they brought me before the church and y’all voted, a lot of you didn’t because you weren’t here, and I got a 73% vote. Well, that was enough to become the pastor and I thought, “That’s pretty good,” based on the amount of opposition that was working against me and, but I knew things were gonna be a problem and five days later a leader in the church that was very strongly opposed to me becoming the pastor was exposed as having a series of immoralities in his life and he was removed from the scene, and all of a sudden the green light is on again. You just don’t know how God’s gonna do it. I had no idea that was happening and no idea that was gonna unfold that way and now I’ve been your Senior Pastor for 33 years.

Same thing with building our house out in the country. Pam and I had house plans and we put just a little money back and we were working towards it and then we went through one of our many building campaigns. Y’all remember all those building campaigns we had, raising money, making those pledges and over and over and over we did it? And so I thought, “I can’t build this nice new house and we’re trying to build this, uh, new building at the church.” So I, we put it on hold and we took that money and we gave it to the church and pledged it to the building campaign over that and put everything on hold. And then a few years after that, one man in my church who was in forestry contacted me and said, “I heard you might like to invest in some, some, some woodland.” And I said, “I, I love wood stuff. I love outdoor stuff.” And he said, “I found something, these people live in Georgia, they want to sell their family’s land. It’s really reasonable. You outta look at it.” And I talked to another man in our church who’s a timber expert and he said, “Pastor, that is a great deal.” And literally in about 40 days I bought the land, sold the timber and sold the land and had a huge profit that we could build the house with. A green light.

You just never know what God’s gonna do. I didn’t plan any of that. Just like the land I own in Tennessee now. Pam and I decided years ago that instead of putting money in the stock market we wanted to put some money in land. At least I can hunt on it and piddle on it and get away a little bit. And money and land don’t go anywhere, God’s not making anymore of it. And, uh, literally a man from Idaho called me and said, “I want to sell you my daddy’s farm.” And I thought, “Well, I don’t have any money,” and I didn’t. And I got to looking at my equity in the house and God worked that out. You just never know what God, you follow the sovereignly-steered path. But now here’s a key, are you listening to me? I’m not saying I bat 1,000 here, okay? I’m not saying I’m perfect here but I do purpose to make sure before the Lord my joy is Christ, not stuff. My joy is Christ, not a house. My joy is Christ, not a farm. And it’s been the pattern in my life when I can really walk like that and God usually gives me the thing I used to want. It’s just a balance in there. But anyway, as you’re going toward these things to just expect green lights, yellow lights, red lights and turn signals.

Last point. God builds character at the red lights. Might as well throw the yellow ones in there too. Sometimes he just says, “Slow down. You gonna move forward but it’s not gonna look very good for a while. It’s not gonna be very encouraging for a while. Slow down.” Sometimes he just says, “Stop.” So what he’s doing, he’s building character. You can learn a lot at God’s red lights. Now here’s what’s gonna happen, if God stops your plan and you get resistant, you grow agitated, you get anxiety or worry, and you don’t trust the Lord and you don’t seek, “God, what are You showing me? What are You teaching me?” Then he just might have to leave that red light longer.

Ask Moses. Moses is a good example. Exodus 2:11-15, “Now it came about in those days, when Moses had grown up, that he went out to his brethren,” that’s the Israelites, “and looked on their hard labors; and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his brethren. So he looked this way and that, and when he saw there was no one around, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. He went out the next day, and behold, two Hebrews were fighting with each other; and he said to the offender, ‘Why are you striking your companion?’ But he said, ‘Who made you a prince or a judge over us? Are you intending to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?’ Then Moses was afraid and said, ‘Surely the matter has become known.’ When Pharaoh heard of this matter, he tried to kill Moses. But Moses fled from the presence of Pharaoh and settled in the land of Midian, and he sat down by a well.” Here Moses is, he strikes down this Egyptian and I think it’s because Moses sensed in his heart, “I want to deliver my people. I want to free my people from the oppression of Egyptian bondage and slavery.” But Moses didn’t know any way other than to use his own strength and his own wisdom to get it done and that’s not the way God does it. He may use Moses but he does it with his strength. He may use Moses but he does it in his own wisdom. Moses wanted to deliver his people but he wanted to do it through human might which would bring Moses glory and not through God’s strength which would bring God glory.

Then we have in Exodus 3:7-10. Moses literally stayed in the Midian desert at a red light keeping sheep for 40 years. You think your red light was long? But here’s the thing, I think God got Moses to where, you know what? He said, “I’m content keeping these sheep in the desert if that’s what I’m supposed to do. Hallelujah.” Then all of a sudden the bush catches afire. God speaks to Moses from the bush. Verse 7, Exodus 3, “The LORD said, ‘I have surely seen the affliction of My people who are in Egypt, and have given heed to their cry because of their taskmasters, for I am aware of their sufferings. So I have come down to deliver them,” I, God says, I have come down to deliver them “from the power of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanite and the Hittite and the Amorite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite. Now, behold, the cry of the sons of Israel has come to Me; furthermore, I have seen the oppression with which the Egyptians are oppressing them. Therefore, come now, and I will send you,” he’s talking to Moses, “I will send you, Moses, to Pharaoh, so that you may bring My people, the sons of Israel, out of Egypt.'”

Now I know what Moses thought at that, he’s thought, thought, “Forty years ago I tried that. Forty years ago I tried the delivery of my people thing and it didn’t work out very good.” Moses is still learning that, no, now God’s in charge of it. Now God, his power is behind it. Now God’s leading it. But what we have to understand, to a great degree Moses is a changed man now. He’s not cocky and confident anymore. He’s spent these 40 years growing in humility and in character at God’s red light. Moses has no confidence in himself and that’s where God wanted to get him. For example in Exodus 3:11 Moses argues with God and says, “Who am I,” in other words, “I’m just a Midian shepherd.” In Exodus 3:13 Moses says, “What shall I say is Your name?” In Exodus 4:1 Moses explains to God, “They will not believe that You’ve sent me.” In Exodus 4:10 Moses says to God, “I’m not a good speaker. I, I, I stutter.” Exodus 4:13 Moses says to God, “O my Lord, send someone else.” And I think God was thinking, “No, you’re just exactly what I’m looking for, somebody who no longer believers you can do it, then I can do it through you.”

Moses spent 40 years at God’s red light, God’s training camp before God sent him the green light. Moses wanted to deliver his people, he struck down that Egyptian who was beating the Israelite slave and he wanted to deliver him and God said, “There’s a time for that but not until I’ve got you where I need you.” So Moses had death to the vision. Moses ran into a red light. Now God after 40 years gives him the green light. Moses has no self-sufficiency, he will now have to trust God’s sufficiency.

So Moses is God’s human agent instrument to deliver Israel through God’s power and God gets all the glory. Maybe that’s where you are tonight. You’ve taken off, “I want to be this kind of wife and I’ve got this kind of plan,” and some things have happened and, boom, I’ve got a big red light. I, I’m just stopped. “I’m gonna be this kind of husband and we’re gonna have this kind of life,” and boom, God brought a red light. Here’s what you need to do: you need to become the most faithful Midian desert shepherd you can be right where you are. Be happy in Jesus right where you are and say, “God, if you’ve got anything else, I’m open but I want to be, I want to praise You for this place right here where I am.” And then if it’s God’s will, he’ll pull the curtain back and say, “This is what I’ve been planning all along.”

I’ve said this many times. God is more concerned, not a real good word, maybe I should say involved, God is more involved in building Christ’s character in you than giving you any service to do for Christ. Twenty years ago, no, 30+ years ago, we laid out everything we were gonna be as a church, thoroughly biblical, nobody to this day, I mean nobody to this day, I mean nobody to this day has looked at our purpose and strategies and said, “Well, that’s unscriptural.” Everybody says, “Now that’s a very thorough biblical pattern for a local church.” They commend it and, boy, I began, we began to implement this stuff and it was going like blazes and God was blessing it, and then God gave us several startling red lights because God wanted to do something in me and God wanted to do something in a lot of you. And then after those seasons of humbling and difficulty and trials, God said, “Alright, I’ve got you were I got Moses years ago. Now I’m gonna give you all that back because now you’ll trust in Me, not your system, though there’s nothing wrong with your system, it’s just your heart’s gotta have the right perspective about it.” And God’s given us green lights today where we cannot get to the number of people and pastors and ministries and places that would like for us to help them with developing their churches and their ministries.

Follow the sovereignly-steered path. Trust the Lord at his green lights, his yellow lights, his red lights, and very often his turn signals.