CMLC 2025-03-02 Sermon (Contemporary)

Howdy. All right, so have you all heard this phrase?

I'm giving her all she's got, Captain!

All right, all right, maybe not, maybe instead it's

I push it any harder, the whole thing will blow!

I'm an engineer, not a miracle worker!

And of course, I cannot change the laws of physics!

This is the worst Scottish accent you've ever heard.

That is okay, and I am okay with that.

This was James Dewin, the Canadian actor who played the Scottish engineer

on the original Star Trek series where space explorers would boldly go

where no man has gone before.

Now, that's right, we had a character named Montgomery Scott, nicknamed Scotty,

with a Scottish accent who drank Scotch played by a Canadian.

I don't know, this is the 60s, life was simpler back then.

Can you believe they almost cut the character?

You almost had Star Trek without Scotty, it was this close, this close.

They barely made the right choice, but I always loved the character,

and I remembered him specifically from those movies, all right?

Especially the fourth one, you know, the one with the whales and everything,

and I'm like, how in the world are whales saving the world?

I'm still a little confused on that one.

But with it is Scotty's over there, and it turns out that you always wonder

what always happened to those characters.

Well, it turned out that his last episode wasn't in the original Star Trek,

and it wasn't in those movies.

It was actually in the next generation, the next series.

And it turned out in this episode called Relics,

after he had been on 11 different Starships,

serving for 52 years and retiring at the age of 72,

which means he hopefully got Social Security,

with the rank of Captain Scotty ended up getting stuck in a teleporter.

You know, like that little, it used to be like glittery and everything else,

you go from one place to another.

It turned out his spaceship was almost going to be destroyed,

but by putting himself into a teleporter, he could keep himself safe.

But the problem was he was stuck there for 75 years.

So the character comes out being discovered at the age of 147,

and it turned out that not only had he been older before,

but 75 years later, and of course, engineering had advanced without him.

So there he was, feeling that he was out of date

and not sure what place that he had here in the future that he couldn't get used to.

But it turned out that from the past,

his understanding of engineering principles and mechanics,

and all these things that all the new kids took for granted

and just let the computers do it all themselves,

he was able to help them save the new Starship Enterprise

when all the new guys couldn't do it.

And so after proving that even being the old fella

and not feeling like he was hip and with it,

he was able to go off and explore space in his own little space shuttle.

But you may be wondering, why was it such a big deal

to take this character from the old series and put them into the new one?

It's because we realize, is it oftentimes we need the past

in order to point us into the future,

which is what I tell myself whenever I hang out with the youth group.

But in realizing this is that this helps us to also understand

why it is so important to look at Moses and Elijah

when they are with Jesus up on the mountain.

See, what we end up seeing is that Moses and Elijah are there

and they have somehow been brought into the future.

There is no DeLorean in sight and nobody's saying great scots.

But what we see is that while they are teleported into the future,

it ends up showing us a bit more about the past.

See, Moses was with the people of Israel and he was looking toward the promised land.

He knew that God had promised them a future.

But see, here's the difficulty.

Moses was not allowed to go into that land.

See, it turns out that Moses, when he was supposed to go up

and proclaim God's word to a rock

and all the water was supposed to come out,

instead took a staff and just smacked it one in order to break it open.

Because that's what he felt would make the most sense

instead of following God by faith.

So because of that and what that showed to the people,

God was not allowed to let him go into the promised land.

And so he ends up walking up this mountain and going to be with God.

And people are saying, well, how did you know that when he went up there,

he was buried by God?

How do we know those things?

And I just need you to pause and just ask yourself this question.

If you see someone at 120 walking up a mountain by themselves

and they never come back down again,

what are we assuming is going to happen?

I'm just kind of leaving that there.

But that's the thing with this.

That is his last appearance before we see him again up on the mountain with Jesus.

But you see, it's not just Moses.

See, Moses had trouble because that anger just came right back out again.

But Elijah also was struggling too.

You see, Elijah, we know, was in a chariot of fire, went up into heaven.

All right.

This was no temple.

Right. This was no Tesla truck.

Okay.

This was something that was from God and be able to take him up to be in God's presence.

But why?

Why did Elijah need to leave at all?

What we saw is that after he had confronted Ahab and Jezebel, what did he do?

He ran.

He was convinced there was nobody else there.

There were 7000 people in Israel who would have supported him and had his back and he ran.

There are times where he's running and God is saying, why are you here?

Elijah, where are you going?

Until finally after the trip and a nap and some food, because what makes things better in your life

than a nap and some food is finally God says, I am going to have you anoint this king, this king,

and Elisha, your successor, because Elijah was no longer going to be the right person

to be a prophet to the people of God.

See, he had spent so long trying to run into a void is that God then brought somebody in

who was going to be able to do the work that was needed.

You see, that's the thing about this is that we oftentimes end up seeing that a person truly

loves and wants to follow God.

But there are times when push comes to shove and we back down.

We let go.

We dropped the ball.

That's the thing with this, though, is that God still redeems us.

Even when he's redeeming the law, even when he's redeeming the prophets, God is still

redeeming his people.

You see, that's what Moses and Elijah end up showing here is that they are showing us

the law and the prophets.

See, whenever we see Moses, he is using the law and he is going to smack that rock and

he's going to make sure everybody understand that they are supposed to listen and hear and fear.

But you see, the problem was that that wasn't the way you're supposed to use the law.

See, it's funny how oftentimes a person may want everybody else to hear the law of God.

And then we discover when they themselves don't listen to it or follow it either.

But the same thing true for Elijah, he was a prophet.

A prophet is supposed to speak the truth of God, but what does he do?

He doesn't want to hear it.

He doesn't want to see it.

He doesn't want to know it.

He doesn't want to trust that there are people who will help him at his time of need.

See, that's the thing with this is that how often is it that a person keeps saying,

you need to hear and see the truth and then they don't actually believe in it themselves.

The law and the prophets, they are so important, but we ourselves oftentimes are the ones to

betray them both.

But here's the thing about what we see is that neither of them were abandoned by God.

We oftentimes betray what God wants or betray what God reveals, but God doesn't betray us.

That's the thing about grace is that that's what we end up seeing when they finally come

to see Jesus.

See, here's the thing.

Moses, when he goes up that mountain, who is going to be a successor?

Joshua.

What does the name Joshua mean?

Joshua Yahweh is salvation.

Yahweh saves when Elijah went up into the sky and he leaves it to Elisha.

Elisha means God.

El saves.

See, Elijah wasn't even willing to stick around long enough to anoint the people he was supposed

to do that for.

And he left it in someone else's hands.

But when they come back, who do they see?

They see the one who's actually meant to bring salvation because Jesus, Jesus is the Greek

term for Yeshua.

That's the thing about this is that while they had stumbled in their walk, God brought

them back to see that everything that they were intended to do had finally brought the

true Messiah.

That's the thing about this is that oftentimes we think that the disappointment in our life

is the same thing as failure.

We think that the way in which we have disappointed God or the way in which we've disappointed

ourselves, we think that somehow now we have failed at whatever God is meant to do.

Could you imagine what that is?

Scotty, up in the teleporter, trying to save himself and another friend.

He's the only one who survives, who comes out and feels that no one needs him.

And yet what we discover is that there is still a purpose and a meaning for why he is

there.

His legacy was still relevant.

It was still something needed.

See, the thing is, is that our ability to live up to God's expectations, just because

we are the ones who end up stumbling doesn't mean that God's ways are now destroyed.

And it doesn't mean that God's plans have no future or hope.

Sometimes we feel like we are stuck.

That there may be something in which we feel that we're in a holding pattern.

We can't seem to get to where we're supposed to be going.

And we feel like we're just stuck in between.

We may feel that way because we know that there was something where we feel that we dropped

the ball and we wish we could have gone back and fixed it.

There may be the times whenever we know someone was depending on us and we wished so much

that we hadn't let them down.

There are the times whenever we know that maybe one of our children saw us do the exact opposite

of what we told them to do.

Do what I say, not what I do.

Or the times whenever we feel that we're supposed to be living out the gospel that we preach

every week and then we see ourselves yelling at somebody because they are really getting

on our nerves.

Facebook is a terrible drug.

But that's the thing about it is that the disappointment is not meaning that now there is no future.

The thing with this is that oftentimes we've given up on what we think God was going to do.

Do you remember what you thought God had placed on your heart as a child and you feel like your life derailed somehow?

Or that somehow what you were expecting to live out or to do with your family, with your friends,

wherever you may be and yet somehow something got off track and you're not sure where to go from here?

Or even the ways in which maybe we feel that we've only disappointed our own expectations

and we think that there's no place for the future that we felt God had in store for us.

And that's the hard part with this is that faith is supposed to be bigger than our failing.

See, God is bigger because of his grace.

Grace is not something that only comes out because you've managed to do everything perfectly right the whole time.

You've managed to put everything in place exactly the way it was supposed to be and now God's kingdom can come

because you have managed to fix it all.

Instead realizing that God knew from before the world began that you were going to snap at your loved one,

that you were going to drop the ball for the one who needed you, that you were not going to live up to your own potential

and still sent his son to that mountain to show us who he is and to tell us that we are still a part of his kingdom

because don't forget Peter on that mountain would still go forth and deny him three times.

That's what we end up seeing with the future is that the past does not end up preventing the future

but God can still use that to point us to where we're meant to go.

Is that to flawed, failed people became the law and the prophets to show us the Messiah.

And that's the same piece for you to.

Because grace is not just a moment in time.

It's not just this one point that now you dwell on it and see I failed at this and now it's all over.

Grace is from a God who sees all of it at every place and time.

And so with this God, we are still the ones who have a future and still have a part to play.

This is not a life that ends with death.

We don't see the ending for Moses or the ending for Elijah because we're not supposed to.

Just like none of us are meant to look at any point in our life and say this is the end.

But rather is our life is into eternity and that every piece and every place and every point is still where God is meeting you.

And saying my love and forgiveness is yours. It's time to keep going up that mountain.

Wherever you may be at this moment and whatever you may have given up on.

If you believe that is still where God has placed on your heart.

My hope and prayer is that you remember he has not given up on you.

You don't need to give up on the person that God gave his son for.

Because you're still a part of a plan that not even you know the final destination.

May the grace be to God.