Summer Song Vol. 3 // "Miracle Child"

All right.

Happy Father's Day, everybody.

Hey, all right.

I'm so glad you're here.

I hope that I hear the clinking of glass bottles in the room.

There's nothing more epic than being able to walk into church and be able to just like, I can take this in and enjoy this during the sermon.

So if I get really boring, you're going to be just fine anyway, right?

It's going to work out really good.

I love this day because I mean I'm a dad, so I get a few gifts from my wife, which is awesome.

But as my kids now being adults, I've learned just how much I crave time with them.

Like I'm hoping they ask me to come out and play, you know.

I love it.

And I've gotten that time already with my kids this weekend, and that's been amazing.

It just has been such a gift.

And like we always say, Mother's Day and Father's Day, for everybody, it might have different kinds of emotions that go along with it.

It can be a hard day if you really did not have a father in your life.

It just might bring up a little bit of emotion and sadness if your dad has recently passed away, or even not recently, that conjures up as well, and you fill that void a little bit.

But I do hope it's also a time to really celebrate just the impact that someone who's been a father figure to you has made on your life.

Um, I think God does that in powerful ways.

Um, I'm so thankful for my dad.

I've told his story a lot over the years.

Uh, his testimony's pretty powerful.

He's just a simple, quiet man.

And I still find new reasons to be thankful for him.

Uh sometimes I take for granted the moments uh that we had together growing up, and one of them will kind of come to memory either on his birthday or on Father's Day.

And the thing that came to my mind this year was just reminiscing about all the times we went to the lake.

And I'm like, man, just thinking about that.

I had such my dad and me and my sister sitting in his lap there.

Uh, but we did not take a lot of photos growing up.

I do remember my mom having a Polaroid, uh, and we had some, and I was uh able to kind of confiscate some albums from their house and keep it with me.

Not many of the pictures that we took are in that stack, but literally just last night, I'm like, do we even have any lake pictures?

And I found two.

Uh, and one is the one on the bottom right of me and my sister and a distant cousin, I believe, playing in the lake at Norris Lake.

Norris Lake was about an hour and a half from us down in Tennessee and Taswell.

And uh we would go there, I would say about four times for four weekends every summer.

Uh, and we kind of stopped doing it when I got older.

Uh, but I have such vivid, awesome memories of being at that lake and just I remember being excited when I would see us packing for the lake.

Lots of potted meat and Vienna sausages going in trash bags.

Um, and just uh I loved the trip there, riding in my dad's green Silverado, pulling the boat.

We would stop at the same gas station close to the lake and uh get minnows, put them in the buckets, buy styrofoam bowl of night crawlers, and we just knew we got to the point where we also would grab a bucket of KFC chicken.

We knew that was dinner the first night at the lake.

Uh, but then the every morning I would wake up to the smell of bacon and eggs and fried potatoes on a little Coleman stove that my mom would uh create meals for us on.

I just loved everything about it.

But uh the top pictures may be hard to see, but my dad's that itty-bitty person skiing uh behind our runabout boat.

I will forever remember that 70 Evan Rude motor on the back of that boat because one of my chores was to clean the boat.

Um, I think dad probably cleaned it after I cleaned it to make it really clean.

Um, but that boat was my jam.

I just loved being on it.

I just loved the wind hitting me.

I wanted it to go as fast as possible.

I loved it when I could open my mouth and the wind would suck the spit out.

Uh just the best sensation ever.

I love that boat.

And we could just go go all day on that boat and I would be happy.

Uh, but I remember reaching a point to where I longed to drive that boat.

But I was too scared to ask my dad if I could ride a boat.

I don't know how, why I was wired that way.

I don't know why I was too shy and scared to ask, but I just wouldn't not do it, did not do it, wasn't going to do it.

But I remember still to this day my dad turning to me and saying, Would you like to drive it?

And I swear a chest hair popped out of my chest.

He was like, Yes, I am now a man.

I've been told asked by my dad to drive this boat.

Um, and it was awesome.

And he probably was scared while I did it.

But um I think about this, and this is a little bit off topic where we're gonna go today with the message, but I thought about that a lot this Father's Day season, and I just want to say this to all of you who are fathers, father figures.

Fathers have a God-given power of life-giving influence.

And we just often don't even know it.

You know, we don't even realize it, we underestimate it.

Um, and sometimes that sounds a little scary to hear that when you hear it, but don't.

Like who you are and who God put you with is exactly what's needed in your family.

And yeah, we can always do better and become better, the better versions of ourselves with God's help.

But just being who you are is exactly who God wants you to be, right where he puts you.

We're gonna see that in just a moment.

But here's what I would say: you have the ability to help your child see themselves as so loved that they don't have to be afraid.

And I think that's what I take away from my dad and how he was with me.

Like, I can drive that boat because he believes I can.

And so let's do this.

I was able to do things I didn't think I could do because I was treated as if I could do them by a man who I felt could do anything and could fix anything.

And that's the power that dads have in our lives.

And when you see this again, if you think, man, that's how do I do this?

I want to be this guy.

Am I really this guy?

I don't think I have been this guy.

I just want you to know this too.

Let the love of your heavenly father empower you to be a good earthly father.

I think we as dads just kind of sort of put ourselves in a category of not enough when we think about God, the Heavenly Father.

And that kind of affects us a little bit.

We don't feel like we we don't feel necessarily empowered by God the Father because, well, why would He empower us?

Because man, we just feel like we're we mess up too much.

You know, we're just doing the best we can, but I don't think it's enough.

And I think so many of the men I've known, that's where we park, that's where we stay, that's what we believe.

But you are so loved by the Heavenly Father.

That the same thing that I think my imperfect earthly father instilled in me on a boat in Norris Lake, that's what God, my heavenly father, wants to do every single moment of every single day to me.

And just I miss it sometimes.

Don't believe that I'm that loved, that empowered by God, but he can do that.

Let your heavenly father guide you and help you to wrestle with the tension of like how to be the man he wants you to be.

He will do that in you and through you.

Um, just know that.

I don't know how many dads might have needed to hear that today, but man, he's got you right where he wants you.

And if you just trust in him and follow him, he will continue to grow you and utilize you to be that blessing, that powerful blessing in people's life.

Um, some people feel that can't be me.

I've done too much wrong.

My life is pretty jacked up right now.

I just don't know how to become that, what you just described.

And that goes for all of us.

It may not be a man thinking about that, about fatherhood.

It might be you, it might be just you thinking about life in general.

Like, I just can't be, I'm just not this.

I I'm messing up, I've done some things wrong.

I'm just not where God wants me to be, and this is what you're feeling right now.

And I I just, if that's you, I hope you heard the gospel truth of that song that we just sang.

It's probably only the fourth or fifth time we've ever done it at Hickory Grove, but there's a powerful gospel message in that.

And I want to share that with you here on Father's Day.

What we're gonna look at together are three miracles that you've experienced, even if you have never embraced the Heavenly Father, even if you've never embraced him as your God, there are three miracles that you've experienced.

We're gonna briefly look at two different passages.

The first one, I'm extracting it from one of the most brilliant sermons ever preached.

It's found in Acts chapter 17.

Acts 17 · chapter mention

And to give you a little context, uh, in the book of Acts, we, the latter chapters, you're really being taken on Paul, the Apostle Paul's missionary journeys.

And almost always, as you're reading the latter part of the book of Acts, you're seeing Paul with one of his ministry partners and what they do and what God does through them and what they say.

But there's this one moment in his missionary journey where he's by himself.

And it happens to be in the city of Athens.

And when he gets into the city of Athens, he's noticing a lot of idols for all the many gods and goddesses that the Greeks worshiped.

And there's a lot of them.

And he's seeing all these statues, idols all over the city.

And the Bible says, if you go back and read Acts 17, the earlier part of the chapter, it says that he was uh distressed, or other English translation says provoked in spirit.

It actually translates to irritated and annoyed.

He's not really happy.

He's seeing all these idols and these statues, like here I am by myself on a missionary journey, and these folks are just worshiping all these made-up gods and goddesses.

He ended up speaking and debating with philosophers in the marketplace.

It was all congenial.

It's what they did in the marketplace in Athens.

Everybody would come together and just talk about random ideas and philosophies and thoughts.

It was kind of free-spirited, and there was no real judgment necessarily to that.

And so it was kind of a good opportunity for Paul to begin to speak about the gospel.

And it was so intriguing to them that they said, okay, you got to come with us to the Areopagus, this sort of judicial political group in Athens that were very, very influential.

And it's believed that they went to a place called the Areopagus, which you may have heard of, is called Mars Hill.

So there's where they bring Paul.

And as he's standing before the Areopagus in Athens, having kind of been irritated seeing all these statues of these false gods and goddesses, he preaches this brilliant sermon.

And I'm going to read to you verses 24 through 28 of Acts 17.

Here's what Paul says: he says, The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth, and does not live in temples built by human hands.

And there were a lot of temples all over Greece.

He goes on to say, and he is not served by human hands as if he needed anything, which is huge because there was a lot of appeasement in the Greco-Roman religious landscape that if we do this, maybe the goddess of fertility will allow us to have kids, but we got to appease her.

We got to do what she wants us to do.

So maybe, just maybe if we serve that goddess well, we will get something in return.

He's so brilliant.

These words that God gave him are amazing.

He's not served by human hands as if he needed anything.

Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else.

From one man, he made all the nations that they should inhabit the whole earth, and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.

God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.

For in him we live and move and have our being.

As some of your own poets have said, we are his offspring.

Now this is so brilliant.

One of the things that makes it brilliant is those quotes, two separate quotes in verse 28.

One of those quotes is uh attributed to a man by the name of Epimenides of Crete.

It is him that said, For in him we live and move and have our being.

And there's a strong likelihood that uh Epamenides was probably referring to Zeus.

But Paul took that quote and said, This actually is attributed to one true God, the one and only God who made you, who made all the universe.

And then we are his offspring.

Uh, it's from Eratus' poem called Phineum Philomena.

It's a well-known poem written by Eratus.

And people knew that really well.

And he drops that quote right there where everybody's like, oh yeah, we say that all the time.

We read that all the time, we have that memorized.

And he's saying this God that he's speaking of, that we are the offspring of that God.

It was brilliant.

And in this passage we just read, there are two of those three miracles revealed.

The first miracle is that you are here.

You're here.

God made the world, God made everything in it.

As Paul said, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else.

That's you.

That's me.

That's every single one of us.

You're here.

And that's a miracle.

And I love how he said he basically marked out your appointed time in history and placed you exactly where he wanted you to be.

And that is a miracle.

You're here, not just that you're alive, but you're actually here in this period of time, in this location.

All of that was very purposeful for God.

And that makes you in this very moment a miracle.

And we miss it.

We really, really miss it.

Some of my friends who have gone through some serious medical issues get this a little bit better.

And I've learned this from them when they realize like you don't understand how every single day that I'm alive is such a miracle, it's such a gift.

I don't think that way very often.

In fact, most mornings I wake up and I feel like this day is not miraculous at all.

I am so tired, but I just slept.

I need coffee before I can even think of anything holy right now.

Uh, that's often how I wake up.

I wake up feeling back pain, first thing.

I don't always wake up worshiping God and praising God for the day.

And yet I'm reminded that every single moment we are alive is a miracle from God.

It truly is.

And some of you could stand up and expand on that miracle, much like Brandon Lake could when he realized how many miscarriages his mom had had and how he had been told maybe they just need to stop trying, and yet they didn't, and yet he was still born and created, having a rare disease as a kid, and yet completely being healed of that.

He just dropped that like it was no big deal.

But that was a miracle.

And many of you could stand up and share your miracle of you being here right now.

And then also in that brief passage, another miracle was spoken about.

It's so easy to miss, and that is that God is near.

You are here and God is near.

I'm like, I kind of want to reread that, how he said that.

Uh he said that God did this.

In other words, he uh made you alive, sustained your life, and placed you in the point of history and in the place in history and geographically that he wanted you to be.

And it says, God did this so that you and I would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him.

And he says, though he is not far from any one of us, any one of us, he is not far.

And the audience he was speaking to, man, they were so far from the gospel.

They were so far from ever coming to a point to say, rather than there being this pantheon, this large yellow page directory of gods and goddesses, no, actually, there's only one.

And that one put on human flesh and dwelt among us and died for us so that we could be with him forever.

Like they're so far from the even the notion of that.

And yet, Paul says, actually, God Himself, this God I just told you about, he's right there, near you right now.

No matter how far you may be from trusting in him, no matter how far you may be from living the way he would desire for you to live, no matter how distant he feels from you, he's not far.

He is near, and that is an amazing miracle.

Epimenides, in him we love and move and have our being.

The fact that we are alive and functioning is a miracle.

Eritus saying we are his offspring.

In other words, we you were born because God made you, so he is right there, and you're right alive with him, and he's right there with you, sustaining you, and he's near you right now.

He's created you, he loves you, he desires to have a relationship with you.

That is true whether you believe it or not, whether you're embracing it or not.

But then there's a third miracle, and it I need to shift to a completely different passage to explain this.

Is this where I'm leaning into Brandon Lake's song?

Because I love the miracle of just being alive is a miracle.

You're a miracle child, just because you're alive, just because you're alive in this space and time right now.

But that refrain that he sings in his song, death, where is your sting?

I love that.

And this comes from another letter that Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15.

1 Corinthians 15 is kind of the resurrection chapter of the Bible.

And before I read this aloud, I think it's really important to talk about this here and how it connects to that sermon that Paul was preaching to the Athens.

They were tracking with him.

They were tracking with him, like, cool, new fresh idea, new fresh philosophy, kind of out there that there'd be just one God and that we don't have to actually appease or serve that God, but that he actually serves us and that he actually gives us life.

Uh, that's all weird and rare, but hey, cool, thanks for sharing.

But once he started talking about resurrection, all those people at the Areopagus, all the people in Athens were like, whoa, peace out, man.

Like, that's weird.

Get out of here.

We don't have a stomach for that kind of talk.

They just could not imagine or embrace the concept of actual resurrection, actual physical, bodily resurrection that God put on flesh and actually did that, and that we would ever do that.

Totally foreign to them, totally not possible.

And so here Paul talks about that in 1 Corinthians 15, 55 through 58.

Where, O death, is your victory, where, oh death, is your sting.

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law, but thanks be to God, he gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm.

Let nothing move you.

Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.

So the third miracle is that death is defeated.

You are here, God is near, and death is defeated.

In this verse we read, this passage in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul pulls from Isaiah.

25, 8 and Hosea 13, 14 to potentially to poetically declare the defeat of death.

Paul says the sting of death is actually sin.

That's the sting of death.

It's actually sin.

And so Jesus' death on the cross, burial, and resurrection totally annihilated the power of sin in our lives.

We don't have to be a slave to it anymore.

And then God gives us the indwelling Holy Spirit to be able to choose his way over our way, the best way over sin's way.

And the punishment of sin is also gone.

Thanks to the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus Christ, we are forgiven, we are redeemed, and eternal life is ours.

Paul says that the power of sin is the law.

It's the burden of our ability to perform righteous acts, to appease a holy God.

But Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection fulfilled the law so that we don't have to.

We don't have to.

We don't have to be perfectly obedient, righteous in just the right way, to experience victory over sin, to experience eternal life in Jesus Christ.

It is freely given because it is finished in Jesus Christ.

That's the gospel.

And it's radical.

And it's so free, and it's so life-changing, and it's awesome.

Paul says, therefore, stand firm, let nothing move you.

Give yourself fully to the work of the Lord because it has eternal gains and your work will not be in vain.

That is the life we get to live in Jesus Christ if we just embrace it.

And I think about my dad here because my dad, I told you this before, but I remember really, really wanting to make sure before I went off to college, I grew up in Harlan County.

Me and my sister said all of our lives, like, when we go off to college, we ain't coming back.

This place is beautiful, but I would rather visit it.

I don't want to live here.

We want to go out.

We want to, and my dad really, in a way, instilled that in us.

He had his speech he would give me all the time, like, I'm breaking my back in a coal mines.

I want you and your sister to get an education and get to do something you love doing and get paid to do it and not have to go through what I've gone through.

And he really dedicated his life to making sure we could do that.

And my sister and I we say all the time, we're getting to do our dream jobs.

She's a family court judge down in uh central Kentucky.

I'm getting to preach and do ministry, and we're just praise God for what we get to do.

But we know and realize that it's because of the sacrifice of my dad.

But knowing that I was going to go away to school, wasn't planning on coming back, I had this weird, morbid thought that my dad hasn't professed faith in Jesus yet.

And he's got a believer sleeping in a bed feet away from him every night, and that's about to change.

I really want to tell my dad about Jesus.

And so I took a lot of courage, just like I didn't even want to ask him if I could drive the boat.

I was like, man, I'm gonna work up the and I actually my mom was there too, and I wasn't sure if she was a believer or not.

So she, my dad was sleeping on the couch, my mom was reading a book in the living room, I was mustering up the courage, and I finally just started talking.

I cannot even tell you what all I said.

I said a lot of things about Jesus, a lot of things about forgiveness of sin.

And my mom just got pretty emotional, didn't really say much.

And uh I thought, man, I think she's so close to having a decision for Christ.

Now, what I didn't know at the time was she was going through some stuff and she was experiencing some moral failure in her life.

She felt so much guilt that every time we talked about that, she would tear up.

But she told me, and I I put my faith in Christ as a preteen and I believe in him.

It was so great to hear that eventually.

So my dad's been sleeping on the couch, and I'm like, all right, do you wake up a sleepy coal miner and tell him about Jesus?

Or is he gonna shut that down?

Because how dare you wake me from a nap?

But he started rustling around a little bit, kind of waking up, and I'm like, all right, here's my chance.

Dad, can I talk to you?

And I never will forget it.

He said, son, I heard everything you said to your mom.

I'm like, so you're I'm not the only one that fake sleeps uh when I don't want to deal with what's going on in the room, you know.

He heard the whole thing.

And he said, I hear what you're saying, but I don't want my life to change right now.

I like my life the way it is.

So for me, it's a no.

He said no to it.

I had these weird emotions about it, like, oh he just said no to the gospel, to Jesus.

But also in a weird way, and it probably took me a while to understand the good thing about what he said.

He spoke some pretty good truth there.

Like he got that.

This isn't just I don't just say a prayer, check a box, make my son happy, and call myself a Christian.

No, what I would be signing up for is life transformation.

And I don't want to change.

So he was, he knew the gospel well enough to know it would change him.

But he didn't want that change.

Then years later, he ended up telling me that he walked down the aisle at a church, the church that his mom went to, and asked that preacher if he believed God could forgive him too.

And he gave his life to the Lord.

But he went through a lot between that time.

Back injury, made him 100% disabled, couldn't work anymore.

You men know what it's like when you suddenly can't do work that you had always done in your life.

You you wonder, who am I?

Where's my identity?

I can't do what I used to do for so many years.

My mom and dad went through a divorce.

My dad hit rock bottom.

And while he was at rock bottom, he looked up to the God he heard his mom talk so much about.

And he started going to church, and God changed his life.

And I've seen this man become, he's still the same personality, but he's filled with faith and more love than he's ever had before.

I'm just telling you right now, there's a miracle near every single person on planet earth.

Even those who might be very, very far from God, it's right there.

And maybe that's you.

And you need to know today that you are here, and that's a miracle.

That is not by accident.

How you were created, he wanted you to exist.

And he's near you because he loves you and he's pursuing you in love.

He wants you to know that he is your God, that he is your heavenly father, and he has so much planned for you, even if you don't believe it, even if you're not turned to it yet.

And death has been defeated.

There's been this crazy thing that's happened that goes against everything that we by nature believe about God.

We just struggle thinking that he could just forgive us and love us no matter what, and that's the end of the story.

That we just become his child and that nothing we could do could actually take that away.

No, man, don't we have to jump through some kind of hoops?

Don't we have to uphold some kind of pillars or go through some kind of pilgrimage or go through some kind of gauntlet to prove something to this heavenly father?

It's not okay news, guys.

It's good news, it's the best news ever.

And when we finally just let go of thinking that God can't love us, that God can't fully forgive us, and that he is to be feared, and that our judgment awaits us no matter if we're trying our best to do the best we can, that if we have our eyes open to the fact that Jesus paid it all on the cross for us, and that he is a loving father, the best loving father ever, and we just rest in his forgiveness and grace, and the burden of our sin and the burden of what we think we have to do to please him is just completely lifted.

And when that happens in a person's life, it changes you.

And I think my dad, if he were standing here, would say, I kind of wish I'd have done it earlier, but I'm glad I finally did it.

And that's what I want to offer you today.

These three miracles are great, but there's a potential for a fourth miracle.

God is near you, but you just have to turn completely to him, and then a fourth miracle happens, you are his forever.

You're his kid forever.

Nothing, Jesus said, and nothing can snatch you out of my hand.

He's got you forever and ever his.

And I think deep down in our hearts, more than we realize, it's what each and every one of us long for, is that peace that comes from knowing that God's got you.

Well, the good news is if you let him, he will let that truth transform your life forever.

The problem is, is we want to have ourselves.

We want to have what we want to have.

And we struggle believing that God can be that kind of God, that he would really forgive us fully like that.

But if you stop and you wave the white flag and turn around and say, Okay, God, here I am, like take my life.

Man, that is the beginning of that amazing miracle of what it's like to live in the arms of the Father for all your days.

For all your days in the arms of the Father.

That's the miracle he offers you.

And I ask you to take hold of it today.

The question is, what are you gonna do with this these miracles?

They're there, they're real, they're possible, they're there for the taking.

Will you embrace them today?

I hope that today, that even if you're not quite in faith with Christ yet, that you would begin to wrestle with this idea, but man, I'm alive because he wants me alive.

I'm here in Independence, Kentucky, I'm here in North Kentucky, I'm here where I'm here at the time that I'm here because he wanted it to happen.

And that's kind of crazy.

And that's a God thing.

But what if you begin to understand that he slaughtered death, hell, in the grave, so that if you would let him, he would scoop you up to be his child forever and ever and ever.

If you've not turned to him yet, turn to the Father today.

He's been right near you all along, waiting for you to finally turn.

Turn to him now as I pray.

Will you bow with me?

While her heads are bowed and her eyes are closed, I'm just reminded that great promise in Romans 10, 13, where it says, For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

And before I pray, like I remember hearing my nieces and my nephew, they were funny how they would holler for their dad, which is my brother-in-law, Sherry's brother.

They didn't say dad, they said dad.

And that was like, come on, I need you right now.

They would scream it in three syllables, and and then Rob would show up and figure out what refereeing he would have to do, what fight he would have to break up, or what kind of pain or wound he would have to fix.

And I'm reminded that as earthly fathers, when our kids cry out to us, when we get that text and we know we're needed, we'd love nothing more than showing up.

But I'm here to tell you right now, if we imperfect, forgiven, sinful earthly fathers are so quick to show up, no matter what the need is for our kids, I'm telling you right now, our Heavenly Father is like that a million times a million times a million times a million.

I hope that in this moment you can feel the love of the Father for you.

And if you've never turned to him, call upon his name, call out, Dad, I'm finally turning to you.

I believe that you are real, that you created me, that you are near me, and that you did conquer death, hell, and the grave, and that you want to have a relationship with me.

So today I turn to you, I turn away from my sin, I turn away from living life my way, and I just ask that you forgive me and make me your child right here, right now.

Man, best Father's Day ever for anyone who would turn to the Father today.

Lord, thank you for being so loving.

Thank you for the miracles that you have done in our lives.

The fact that we are living and breathing and here is a miracle.

But Father, we know that you have made it possible for us to be alive with you today and for eternity.

So we praise you and thank you for that miracle today, God.

And Lord, if anyone here has turned to you, may they walk out of here in peace, knowing that they are yours forever.

Father, we love you and we praise you, and we thank you for being the best daddy.

And we ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.