Four Small Creatures

I was really excited to be able to share with you this morning.

I was actually on schedule originally to preach next week, and when I realized this was Graduation Recognition Sunday, I saw Ooh, ooh, and I traded so that I could get this because we do that around here.

And uh I was I was really excited.

I thought I wanted to share something specifically.

Being a student pastor, I obviously have a heart for those who are graduating high school and moving into the world in different capacities, and I wanted to share something that would encourage those of you who are graduating this Sunday, but I also thought I don't want everybody else here to just turn off and go, oh, well, this is for the graduates, and it's not me.

And I thought, what could have application both ways?

And I realized as I thought about it that many of you graduates are shaping your ideas of success as you work towards the future.

And I asked what might be helpful to hear from God's word as you pursue the path ahead.

And thankfully, the book of Proverbs is full of wisdom meant to guide us in the world.

And for every one of us, no matter what stage we're at, Proverbs has an infinite amount of wisdom.

That if we take a look and reflect on the things it's saying, we can find ourselves better equipped to deal with whatever is ahead, whether we're just graduating high school or just beginning our third career or just becoming grandparents or whatever it is that might be in front of us.

The reality is that the verses I'm going to speak on are some of my favorite verses when it comes to the subject of dealing with charting a course forward.

And the truth is that each of us, no matter how far along the path we are, we need to ask ourselves daily if we're charting the right path forward.

It was for this reason that a little over two years ago I shared a small snippet of my thoughts on these verses when I was candidating.

And I was asked to give just a little preview of what would drive me in ministry because these verses set some guidelines that I use personally to drive my ideas of success in ministry.

It's also why I talked about these verses when I was asked to speak at crew earlier this year.

So it'll be a little bit of a repeat for some of you.

But we're going to dive a little bit deeper.

We're going to dive a little bit deeper into these verses.

And each time I teach these verses, I talk to people who say they've never looked at these verses before.

They've never really noticed them, and they've never looked at the depth of them.

And I say that doesn't surprise me.

Because they're easy to overlook.

As a matter of fact, I graduated from seminary having never paid attention to these verses.

I don't know how.

They're so significant in my eyes now.

I'm like, this should be like on the All-Star list, right?

Like right if there were John 3.16, you know, the top tens.

But as I started my first student ministry full-time position, I was handed a curriculum book by youth specialties, and they said, hey, this is just a book we use when like you're in between curriculums and you need a one-off.

It's got a bunch of individual freestanding lessons.

And so since we don't know what we're doing right now because we just hired a youth pastor, you might find something to start off with here until we get the ball rolling.

And I looked and I found a lesson on these four verses.

And so I launched my ministry career on these verses.

And what I found was really, really interesting is that God used them to speak to me as I sat there, a new youth pastor fresh out of seminary, asking myself, what does success in ministry look like?

God used these very verses to provide a framework, and they became so embedded in my thinking that I've taught them ever since and just expanded how I appreciate and cherish these verses.

And when I look at it, I think all of us.

I'm confident that these verses can teach us, not only our graduates, but every one of us something about what God considers solid principles for chasing success.

But I have to issue a warning here.

As we want to chase what God considers success, you might want to prepare yourself for the fact that we might just find that God measures success in different ways than we do.

So, my question is, how would you define success?

What makes someone successful?

You know, if you Google this, you'll come up with an infinite number of answers.

The world has all sorts of ideas.

The world would love to tell you what success looks like.

And they have different models and rubrics and training courses that you can take.

You can pay for conferences, online classes, buy books by the dozens on what success is.

And it gets pretty ridiculous.

Like, how many of you heard that when somebody becomes successful, that it gives them a big head?

Anybody ever heard that?

Okay, well, I actually saw a study one time that said that it's not success that gives somebody a big head, but their big head that gives them success.

And I'm not joking, I actually saw it was ridiculous a study that said that most of the leaders in our world, most of the politicians and great thinkers and adventors, have a larger size skull than most other people.

And that it was actually the size of their head that impacted whether or not they would be successful.

But the truth is, God has a different idea of what makes success, and thankfully, it doesn't have anything to do with the size of our head.

Although I actually might be better off if it did.

But God loves to take not the big and fancy things of this world, but the small things of this world to teach us lessons about the way he thinks.

And so I want to look at Proverbs 30, verses 24 through 28, and then I want to chew on what God's trying to teach us through four small creatures.

Proverbs 30:24–28

Because I think it's really kind of amazing.

So let's read.

Proverbs 30, starting in 24.

Four things on earth are small, yet they are extremely wise.

Ants are creatures of little strength, yet they store up their food in the summer.

Conies are creatures of little power, yet they make their home in the crags.

Locusts have no king, yet they advance together in ranks.

A lizard can be caught with the hand, yet it is found in kings' palaces.

Let's pray.

Lord, we come before you today thankful for your creation and your creativity.

We thank you that you have used your creation time and time again in Scripture to teach us lessons, and we ask that these four creatures would teach us something today that would send us with a greater ability to chart a path towards you.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

We start with the ants.

Ants are creatures of little strength, yet they store up their food in the summer.

And if you look in the Middle East, what one of the ants that would have been very common would have been the harvester ant.

It's the most common ant in the Middle of the East.

They actually harvest grain off the stalk, as you can see this ant doing.

That's why they call them a harvester ant.

It doesn't take a lot, you know, harvester ant harvest.

It works.

But they divide the work four ways.

One group chews the grain off the stalk, the other carries the grain to the nest, and the next husk the grain.

And you can see here's they're peeling the husk off the grain.

Fascinating little creatures.

Fascinating little creatures, these things are.

And then the last group stacks the kernels neatly underground.

And if it rains, they take their grain out of the nest and lay it out to dry before bringing it back in.

They travel over 200 yards to get ready for winter.

That's over six miles in people's terms.

They do all of this work in advance to ensure that they will have the food they need to survive for the season without food ahead.

And you go, so answer creatures of little strength, that they store up food in the summer.

What are we supposed to learn?

Well, answer wise because they prepare and make decisions with the future in mind.

And so the first thing I want to challenge you is to think through what preparation looks like in your life.

This goes for you seniors, you're graduating, and it goes for every single one of us.

The Bible puts high value on preparation.

Luke 12, 35 says, be dressed, ready for service, and keep your lamps burning, like men waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet.

2 Timothy 2.21 tells us to be prepared to do any good work.

1 Peter 1.13 challenges us to prepare our minds for action.

And 1 Peter 3.15 tells us to always be prepared to share our faith.

Look at the Bible.

The people in the Bible who prepared where Moses prepared for 80 years to lead the people out of Israel.

Joshua prepared for 40 years to take the place of Moses as a leader.

And even Jesus prepared for 30 years before he began his ministry.

Graduates, your time in school has been a time of preparation.

Many of you have more preparation ahead.

What are you doing now that will positively impact you over the next 5, 10, 20 years?

Decide now where you're heading and prepare to ensure you end up there.

I've heard it said that if you aim at nothing, you'll hit it every time.

And it's true.

But this is not just true for our graduates today, is it?

It's not.

How many of us find that in our jobs we deal daily with either the fruit or the turmoil that results from either our diligent preparation or lack thereof?

We can look back on our lives and clearly see the consequences of the times that we have taken preparation and thrown it out the window.

This is true.

We often understand these things in regards to our career, but the truth is it goes into so many areas of our lives, doesn't it?

With our parenting, our marriage, our walk with Christ.

And that's the one I really want to focus on today.

Because I'll tell you, you can have a great career.

You can be considered the best parent in the business.

You can have a marriage that people say, oh, we've got a model marriage.

And it doesn't mean anything.

If we still find ourselves void of a solid relationship with our Savior.

Ultimately, today's sermon isn't another chapter in a self-help book.

God's view of success isn't tilted towards giving us fabulous careers, well-behaved kids, and happy marriages.

God is more interested in what we're doing to prepare ourselves for a life with Him.

So, with the ants in mind, I ask, what are you doing now that will put you in a better place to serve and love God well in the future?

God wants us to know we can learn from the ants.

And I think that it's worth a thought.

It's worth a thought.

The next creature, it says it's a coney.

It's also known as a rock hyrax or a rock badger.

You look it up, different parts of the world refer to it different ways.

But the coney is a very interesting creature.

These rock badgers, they spend their entire life within 20 yards of the rock pile they call home.

If they leave the rock at all, they have others stand guard and warn them with squeaks if someone's coming.

It's pretty cool.

They live inside the rocks because predators cannot get them there.

These creatures are wise, according to Proverbs, because they make their home in the rock.

Conies are creatures of little power, yet they make their home in the crags.

Just as the conies run to the rock for their protection, so should we.

So should we.

Scripture often tells us that God is our rock.

It says that the devil is a predator waiting to devour.

1 Peter 5:8, be self-controlled and alert.

1 Peter 5:8

Your enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.

And though Koni was a weak creature, there was nothing stronger than the rock in which they found their home.

And it served as great protection for them.

Conies are wise because they know that their safety is in the rock, and so my question to you today is to you Do you find your safety in the rock?

We should find safety in God.

When we take refuge in the rock, we find protection.

How are you sticking close to the rock?

And this goes for all of us, but I want to speak again to our graduates.

Often we're tempted to see just how far we can get from the rock in our quest for fulfillment.

The world is calling us further and further from the rock in a thousand ways.

Do you find yourself tempted to venture further and further from your heavenly Father?

Are you looking forward to your time of freedom as a chance to explore things further and further from the rock?

Because as adults, this temptation grows stronger and stronger the more we venture into the world.

And we can attest to that, can't we?

Do you have people watching your back that can call you back to safety when they see you in dangerous territory?

This is where the body of Christ comes in handy.

See the rock badgers?

You see them all lined up, gather together, conies stick together.

And I love that that rock pile is their constant home.

And as soon as someone goes out to look for food or anything, if there's danger, if they're getting too far, I was gonna show you a video of what their squeak sounded like, but I thought it'd be more entertaining if I tried to do the calls myself.

But I was warned off of that.

So they make squeaks, let's just put it like that.

And they call.

And see, as we as a body of Christ, as we build our lives together in the same rock, when we find our foundation in the same rock that is Jesus, our Lord and Savior, our Father in heaven, the Holy Spirit, the Trinity, the Godhead who has loved us, who has died for us, resurrected to prove his power, in him we find forgiveness and strength.

And as we do so, as we find our home in that same Savior, when we see one of our own venture a little too far, we have the ability to go, hey, come on back.

Come on back.

I ask not just our graduates, but I ask every one of you in here.

Are you making your home in the rock?

Do you have others who can call you back?

Scripture places great importance on this.

Which is why we get to our next creature.

The locust.

The fun one.

It's a neat-looking creature, is it not?

And we learned some lessons here because this creature it says, Locusts have no king, yet they advance together in ranks.

And then what is this talking about?

See, the reality is that sometimes we don't know, like, I think the reason these verses get overlooked, why the people go, I never looked at that before, is because without a little understanding of the animal, we miss the point trying to be made.

These animals would have been common to the people to whom this was originally written.

And so by looking at these animals that might not find their home in the same way near us as they do other places in the world, and understanding their habitat, we get to learn a few things.

And here's a few things about the locust.

There are two types of insects primarily: loners and colonists.

Those insects that like they just, I'm good, that's a spider.

They got their web, it's all they need.

They catch their own food, they hang out by themselves.

They don't really hang out in groups, and aren't we thankful for that?

And then you have your colonists, bees, ants.

We already talked about the ants, didn't we?

And it's very clear.

But the bees and the ants, they have something.

They have they have queens, they have leaders.

Locusts don't fit into either category.

Well, actually, they fit into both to some degree.

Because they work as loners when things are good, and when things are bad, they come together as colonists, and yet they have no king.

Locusts have no king, yet they advance together in ranks.

If you've ever seen a locust alone, you may realize that they're relatively harmless.

However, when they swarm, they're very powerful.

This picture gives you an idea of what can happen.

This little thing, when combined with a lot more of its friends, can engulf an elephant.

I want to tell you.

In the early 1900s in Africa, the largest recorded swarm was seen in action.

It was one mile wide, 100 feet thick, and 50 miles long.

It was estimated to have 50 billion insects in the swarm.

If you could kill a million per minute, it would take a week to get them all.

They ate everything they could find, they broke tree limbs because of their combined weight, and it finally took a storm that blew them off to sea to stop them.

But even then, they flew for 60 hours until they dropped off into the water.

It was quite an amazing thing to see.

So I'm told I wasn't there.

And the point is, locusts are wise because they know they accomplish more as a team.

But when drought hits, when famine hits, the locusts start gathering together.

And they say, food may be scarce, but if we put our efforts together, we can find what we need.

God refers to us as his body.

With the locusts, we learn that small people do big things when they work together, and we should see ourselves as a team.

As he refers to us, our bodies in 1 Corinthians makes it clear that the body is meant to accomplish things together when it says the eye cannot say to the hand, I don't need you, and the head cannot say to the feet, I don't need you.

As you go to the various places God is sending each of you, don't make the mistake of forgetting that you need the body of Christ.

We need each other.

We will accomplish more when we stop trying to do it on our own.

It's just Jesus and me.

Let me tell you, you were not created to live alone.

You were created to be in community.

We bear the image of our creator.

And much to my dismay of 10-year-old Greg, I thought that meant God looked like me.

But as I got older, I realized that bearing his image was much more complicated than just him having a nose and eyes like me.

Admit that I bear the characteristics of my creator, that God is relational and therefore I am relational.

We see perfect harmony of relationship in the Trinity between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, because he desires, even amongst himself, community.

And he designed us to desire and need the same thing.

And we might not have a king on this earth because our king sits in a throne in heaven, but we don't need it.

That's why Israel wasn't given a king for years.

God said, Let me be your king.

You do my work.

And today, he wants every single one of us to look at the locust and realize that we're going to accomplish more together.

Look at just look at the first three creatures.

This message has been strewn throughout the first three creatures.

The ants divided the work to accomplish various tasks according to their gifting.

The conies, they watched each other's back, and now the locust combined strength can overcome big problems.

Let me tell you, I look at our world and you know what I see?

Big problems.

Big problems.

And yet we scatter when we should be coming together.

You need to do more than simply sit in the same room with other believers once a week to experience this.

You need to have your daily life intricately woven together with like-minded people.

How are you relationally intertwined with other believers?

Oh, we're great at finding reasons to avoid this, aren't we?

Busy schedules, fear of letting people see behind the veil we've so carefully constructed, or we tell ourselves, uh, we're doing this already simply because we have a scheduled time that we gather in someone's home once a week.

We go, oh, that's okay.

I meet with people once a week.

It's good.

I'm doing this.

I got it.

Got it.

Community.

There's community.

And I'm not saying those are bad things, they're great things.

But we need to remember that the locusts gathered not for entertainment.

They did not gather once weekly because it was an enjoyable extra measure of fulfillment.

The locusts pulled together because they recognize that it is necessary for their very survival.

Christian, I'm here today to tell you that you need other believers to travel the road of life with, not simply because it's more fun, but because it's necessary to your very survival.

That goes for every one of us that bears the name of Christ.

You were designed to thrive in community.

Those of you who are graduating, you're going to move into new sectors of the world and new areas of community, and I would beg you to remember this.

Let me and the locust assure you you will accomplish more together.

And then we come to our final creature: the lizard.

I wanted to put the little geiko gecko up here, but there were copyright issues.

But the gecko actually is the most common lizard in the Middle East.

And it says a lizard can be caught with the hand, yet it is found in kings' palaces.

What do we learn from that?

Lizards are wise because they are bold and persistent.

Let me tell you what it means.

It says a lizard can be caught with the hand.

This is not a ferocious animal.

It does not have huge defense mechanisms built in.

Look at it.

Actually, you ever try to grab one by the tail and the tail comes off?

And you're left there with it?

And the tail just grows back?

That's as ferocious as they get.

They might leave a tail in your hand.

They don't have a strong bite.

They don't have a lot of defense mechanism.

And yet they keep popping up in places they don't belong.

In king's palaces.

I mean, if anybody wanted to keep pests free, it would be the king, right?

Gecko is a harmless four to five inch lizard that's pretty easy to catch, but somehow they get into buildings where they're not wanted.

And as many times as you catch them and throw them out, they'll keep coming right back in.

They just keep working at whatever they're trying to get to.

And they don't let anybody stand in their way.

We need to be persistent like lizards.

What are your spiritual goals?

Where do you want to be spiritually in the next five to ten years?

Are you being persistent in your pursuit of God?

And now we look back onto all the creatures and all of it can fit in.

Are you preparing for your time with God?

Because that would be part of being persistent, wouldn't it?

If you're persistently chasing God, you're going to be preparing.

You're going to be setting a time.

Not, oh, if I have a free moment, you're going to be intentional and set aside time to be with him.

You're going to gather in community to chase him.

To discuss him, to contemplate his goodness and his grace in your life.

Is what you're doing a persistent chasing of the Lord and your own relationship with him.

But are there other ways you can be persistent as a Christian?

What about in telling others the message?

Because ultimately what God wants us to do, what he says are the greatest two commands.

He says to love him, which we're talking about, but then to love others as himself.

So as we grow to love him, it should be preparing us to love others, right?

That's where we have the great commission telling us to go and make disciples of all nations.

And so we have to give testimony and we have to bear witness to the goodness in his life.

If we are experiencing his goodness, if he has taught us of his love through our preparation, through our community, that protected us in the rock and done everything he can to feed our nature and our souls.

Wouldn't we tell others?

And yet we sometimes lose that persistence and that boldness when it comes to speaking the message of God, don't we?

When it comes to telling others how fabulous it is, what he's done for you, how it's changed your life, how you've tasted his goodness, and you cannot find satisfaction in anything else.

We all of a sudden become really, really meek.

And there's places we won't go.

The lizard doesn't say, Oh, I don't belong there.

It just keeps going into the palace.

It doesn't let anybody tell them, you don't belong here.

It just keeps going.

But what I find interesting is that when it comes to telling others about how awesome God is, note that the gecko doesn't fight and argue when he's told no.

He does not bare his teeth, he does not threaten lawsuit.

He does not wage internet campaigns.

He simply walks right back in.

He allows himself to be caught with the hand, tossed out, and he stands up, dust himself off, and heads right back to the palace.

I can't help but hear that and think of Paul.

In Acts 14, in Lystra, where the people stone him, drag him out of the city, toss him out, presuming he's dead, and he stands up and walks right back into the city.

He doesn't fight.

He doesn't demand his rights.

I think we can learn a lot from the get go.

He just says, I'm going back.

It's beautiful, really.

It's beautiful.

God can do amazing things with people who are simply willing to keep popping up.

He really can.

So today we've seen these four creatures.

We've just learned a little bit.

It's simple, really.

But if we take these principles and march forward, I'm telling you, there is no stopping what God can do with you.

With us.

Ants are wise because they prepare and make decisions with the future in mind.

Conies are wise because they know that their safety is in the rock.

Locusts are wise because they know that they accomplish more as a team.

You can forgive me if I didn't get the why on the end of the day on my slide.

Lizards are wise because they are bold and persistent.

And so my question to you today is are you going to prepare to know God better?

Are you going to hide yourself in the safety of his rock?

Are you going to join with his team to accomplish God's purposes?

And are you going to simply keep going into all the places that God tells you to go?

Let's pray.

Lord, we come before you today.

We are thankful.

Thankful for the unique perspective that your word gives us.

Thankful for all that you have unfolded before us.

The salvation that we find in your Son, the safety we find in the rock of your salvation.

Teach us to learn from these small creatures.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.