God Stories

Father, it's just a privilege to be in your presence and with

your people, to be in your house.

Better is the moment with you than 10,000 elsewhere.

I'd rather be a doorkeeper in your house.

Such a privilege to be together and in your presence.

Would you speak over us this morning?

I pray in Jesus name. Good morning you very beautiful

people. You are a very beautiful people.

For those of you who don't know who I am, I was part of this

church for just over 20 years before we left 3 1/2 years ago.

We felt that I mean, we started with three CI in Hosentin wish

school in the in in the in the school hall.

And I've called this morning God stories.

The brief that Steve gave me when he asked me if I'd preach

was he he said just tell your story and frame it in the Great

Commission. So I just called it God stories.

And I for the last three months, the church I come from now we've

been going through Hebrews 11. We spent three months camping in

Hebrews 11, and the first verse of Hebrews 11 reads this verse 1

of Chapter 11. Now faith is the assurance of

things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen.

When we started, I turned 55, I said to my wife, we need to pray

about whether this is where we die or could the I know, you

know, I never imagined in a million years that I'd ever go

anywhere else. I was the last person I ever

thought would immigrate. We said goodbye to many people

who are immigrating for all sorts of reasons.

But I was that I'll never do that.

You know, why would I ever want to do that?

I just felt like this was where God had planted me.

This was my roots were deep. My friendships were long and I

thought, why would I ever do that?

And then at age 55, there was the scratching in my heart and I

said to him, I just feel like we need to pray if maybe God has

something else for us before we die.

It was a crazy thought and it was an absolutely crazy prayer,

but I prayed and and then it just grew in my heart and I felt

like the Lord said to me, another flock to pasta, another

vineyard to tend, another field to plough, another flock to

pasta, another vineyard to tend, another field to plough.

And I said to him, maybe we need to do more than pray.

I'd worked at the same place for 30 years.

I'd never had it. That was the only job I'd ever

had my whole life was at the University of Pretoria teaching

Vietnam medicine. And I said, and you know, if I

were, if we were going to move, it would have to be with a job

and the only place to go would be international because there's

no other vet schools in this country.

And I said, maybe we must just be crazy and put our hands in

the air and I must write job applications and see what

happens. And so I started.

I'd never written ACV in my life.

I'd never imagined I'd apply for another job.

I had kept no records at all of what I'd done.

It took me weeks to try and cobble together an academic CV.

And they went in there. I did.

I don't know how accurate it was.

There were no lies, but I'm sure there were many holes.

And I started applying for jobs all over the world and I just

felt like, I just want to see what happens in my heart as we

do this. And we applied all over the

world. And every time we applied, it

was like the excitement just grew.

And then I became so convinced this and you know, I'm, I'm a

conservative, non adrenaline junkie, non adventurer, kind of

I'm just, I'm a straight line, you know, I'm not looking for, I

would never bungee jump, you know, spiritually or naturally,

you know, So for me to think I'm going to take at my age, three

teenagers and a wife and just head off to the ride off into

the sunshine, I was like, that's not me.

You know, I don't need that kind of adventure in my life, not at

that age. But there was this thing in my

heart which I could not get away from.

And the 6th, I said no to a couple of authors, a bunch said

no to me, which was an experience.

You never think anyone would say no to you, you know.

And there was one last one that I applied, took like 18 months

of applications and interviews and one last one.

And I said to, I mean, one last time, never again.

This if God doesn't do this now we've put our hands up, we've

showed our colors. We said, Lord, whatever you

want, we'll do it. And I've never heard of this vet

school. I've never been.

I mean, I've been to America a few times, but I've never been

that far South. All I knew about Alabama was

Forrest Gump. And that's where we landed up is

Alabama in Auburn, which is a college town.

And I sent an application in, it was the 6th application, and I

said last time, and I knew immediately when I did that this

was where God wanted us to be. I didn't know a soul.

I'd never been there. It was COVID.

We couldn't even travel for the interview.

My interviews were all done on Zoom starting at 5:00 in the

afternoon, ending at 3:00 in the morning because of the time

difference. I sat in my office at night

doing these interviews, 3 days of interviews, 20 people you

interview and in the end I was offered the position and I just

knew. I sat with the elders.

We went through it, they felt excited about it, we all felt it

was right and we moved. I want to show you the church

that we ended up going to put some pictures together.

This church was planted 11 years ago by a crazy Italian American

who grew up in metropolitan Atlanta.

So he's like Steve. He likes, he likes, he's big

city, kind of a guy, you know, would never dream of camping.

The first meeting was a few people in a Lutheran Church

hall. It's been going 11 years now.

You can go to the next one, Ricky.

When we arrived there, the church had been meeting in a

converted shopping center. It had grown massively.

And as we arrived, this building was being built just as we left

this one, which had just been finished.

We moved there. And you know, we, we coughed

blood to pay for this place and we landed there and we'd never

given a cent. And we moved straight into a

brand new building. The church has grown

phenomenally. That building.

The first day was too small. The the guy who leads, his name

is Miles. You can go to the next one,

Ricky. That's the inside of the

building. It looks not too different to

this in term time. They have 5 services on the

Sunday to try and fit people in. We meet in two different places

across the city. People started watching online

in cities around the US, the Southeast, families just in

living rooms in Birmingham, 2 hours down the road, that's now

2000 people in the City Hall in in Nashville, just up the road,

it started just six months ago with a family in a lounge.

There's now nearly 600 people sitting in a school gymnasium.

The guy's really Apostolic and the Spirit just started moving.

This last Easter. We took a sports arena at the

university, which is almost unheard of, that a church would

take a university sports arena for the Easter service and they

were 10,000 people and you couldn't get a seat.

God is just and within a year of being there I just knew that the

the reason God moved us was his local church.

I always said I would never move without a local church story and

this was our local church story. When we arrived at Atlanta, I

had three teenagers, my wife, my precious beautiful wife who was

so brave, who's right with me? She said to me before we left,

she said, you know Andy, if you don't get this job, I'm going to

be more, more disappointed than you.

My first day at we left at the airport on the 4th of April 22,

my first day at work at the Auburn University vetting

school. I was felt like a grade one on

my first day at school. You know, I've only had two jobs

and this is only the second job I've had in my life.

It was the most awful experience.

It was, it's a discombobulating experience to suddenly land up.

Have you heard that word before? Discombobulating.

I teach my American friends new words too.

It's a, it's a, it's a dislocating experience to land

up in a new place like that. 10 suitcases, three teenagers and

my wife. Atlanta airport.

We went to an Airbnb in Atlanta. We knew no one.

We'd never been there. And we started from scratch with

nothing. It was crazy.

We slept on the floor for three months.

We bought five forks and five spoons and five plates just so

we had something to eat off and eat with.

And I started a brand new job, and I honestly think they

thought I was the janitor on my first day.

This crazy guy with an accent. You know, I've always felt like

I want a story. And I want God to tell this

story. I want my life to be lived in

fulfillment of promise. I want my life to be the product

of a relationship with Jesus where something of my faith

finds expression in the way I live out the life that God has

given me. And when I I felt when I

arrived, I wanted a story. I've always, since the age of

16, I felt like God put something in my I want a story

and I want God to be the teller of this story.

I don't want the story to be about me.

I want the story to be about him, but I want him to write a

story and I want him to write me into that story.

And so I felt like I need to. When I got there, I immediately

felt like I need to start reading stories.

And so I read Ruth and I read about Naomi, and I read about

Boaz, and I read about Nehemiah and I read about Hosea, and I

started burying myself in the stories of these men and women

of the Old Testament looking for God.

Would you fill my heart for the next phase of our lives?

I said to the kids, when we left, we were a family on

mission. I have no idea where we're going

to go and where we're going to, what we're going to do.

But that church, we're going to serve coffee.

We're going to just do what we've always done and I've cried

out to God, give us a story. Write us into your story load.

And you know, there's all these Old Testament stories and the

Hebrews 11 is this concentrated fire of stories of great men and

women who lived by faith that God used very, very, very

imperfect men and women who God used to write his story.

It starts in the beginning, God, and it's never ended.

And I think the biggest danger, the thing I fear most, is that

the older we become, the more distracted we become, the more

fascinated we are by the trivial and the banal and the

superficial and the stuff that doesn't matter and the weighty

and the heavy things that matter to God.

The eternal things, the deep things that those things no

longer hold our attention, but we become distracted by all the

stuff that really doesn't matter.

And I felt like the last thing I want my soul to do is shrink

into smallness. And as I read Hebrews 11, I see

old men and women and young men and women whose souls never

shrunk back into smallness. They stepped forward into what

God had for them. Their posture was one of faith.

They leaned into expecting God to tell stories.

And you write their lines for them.

Because this story's never about you.

It's always about God and His glory.

But he chose that. He couldn't tell his story

without you and me and each one of us.

You know, not a single person in this Hebrews 11 has a story

anything like the guy next to him.

We live in a culture that's so competitive and so comparative

and so always looking to the side to see what someone else is

doing. And so comparing that we just in

our attempt to be different, we all just end up being the same.

And not a single one of these men and women told a story

anything alike the guy next to him.

And none of them could boast of the story that was being told

through their lives because they had nothing to do with the

story. Besides, they trusted God.

They put their faith in the word that God spoke over their lives.

And the story just got told. The things that were certain

were suffering, pain, difficulty.

And the other thing that was certain was God's Kingdom came

and his will was done on earth as it was in heaven.

And my heart as I read these stories grew and I said, God,

tell your story through this family of mine.

Let us all together be a family on mission.

There's a passage in Corinthians, which I just love

compares Moses getting the law, where God writes with his finger

on the tablets of stone, backside and front side.

He writes original in stone and then he says that was the law.

Now God has written with his finger on the tablets of your

heart. God does not make photocopies of

anybody's life. He writes originally in each one

of us with his own finger. And I said, God, would you write

on the tablet of my heart? Would you write something

original? I don't want to be anybody's

photocopy. I want to, I want you to tell a

story through this family of mine that's original and not

like anyone else's. And that's the product of a, a

promise. You know, you can, you can do a

lot just by working really hard. But I don't want my life to be

the product of just hard work. Of course it involves hard work,

but I want to live in fulfillment of promise.

You know, Isaac was the product of a promise.

Ishmael was the work of the flesh.

And I don't want to be an Ishmael.

I don't want my life to tell an Ishmael type story.

I want my life to tell an Isaac like story.

The product of promise. God spoke a word and you know

it's not. When God speaks a word, who

cares what the end looks like? Who cares how much it might

cost? You just know it's going to cost

you everything. That's the only thing you can be

certain of. It will cost you everything and

you have no control and you're fine with that.

The finger of God writing something genuine, authentic and

original in your heart and in your life.

A unique story. I it's been a massive adventure

for us as a family. It's, you know, the Instagram

pictures. I don't believe in those things

because they just always only show you the good times.

It's they've been some very dark days.

There's just no doubt about it. We've had some difficult times.

But I can tell you, I stood in that church and you know, we

were, no one knew who we were, who we were, which was

wonderful. I, I'd always said, you know,

we've been leading here at 3 CR for all those years.

I always said that the new members leave your CV at the

door. I'm not interested in how

qualified you are or what you did in your last church.

Just leave your CV at the door. Just be a son in the house.

And I said to Irene, we're going to just leave our CVS at the

door. All our church experience,

everything we've, we just leave it at the door.

We're going to just make coffee. And that's what we did.

We made coffee. We swept floors.

Irene helped decorate the new church building and we opened

our home and we had people to dinner.

You know, if you invite Americans into your home, that's

quite a thing. They won't invite you into their

homes. They'll take you to a restaurant

and now let somebody else cook for you.

And Irene bake cakes. No one could comprehend that

someone would bake a cake from scratch in their own kitchen.

And we just did what we what our hands found to do.

And a year later, they asked me to join the eldership team.

And you know, I stood in that church.

And although I, I was, I was nothing in the church.

I I just could not not think like an elder.

I could not, not see things as a shepherd and I just, and it was

a complete shock. Irene said to me, they've asked

you to do what she said. They don't even know us.

I said, I know, honey, I have no idea where this comes from, but

I do know that it's right. And I do also know that that's

the reason why God brought us here, whether down the road or

in another hemisphere. It's nothing to God.

And that was the story that God was telling through our lives.

And as I read through Hebrews 11, I just want to touch on a

couple of stories that just really grabbed me in in Chapter

11, verse 7, it speaks of Noah. It says by faith, Noah, being

warned by God concerning events as yet unseen in reverent fear,

constructed an ark for the saving of his household.

And by this he condemned the world and became an heir of the

righteousness that comes through faith.

And you look at Noah and you think, what can I learn out of

Noah's story? And sometimes the best way to

understand Scripture is to let Scripture interpret Scripture.

So Jesus comments on Noah's life.

In chapter 24, Jesus speaks about Noah and it says for as it

was in the days of Noah, so it will be the coming of the Son of

Man. For in those days before the

flood, they were eating and they were drinking, they were

marrying and they were giving in marriage until the day when the

flood came. You know, I worked out it took

probably about 75 years to build the ark apparently.

You know how many Monday mornings?

That is 3900 Monday mornings. Noah lived through 3900 normal

blue Monday mornings. He he married three sons of I'm

sure he was a granddad and babysat, changed nappies,

cleaned up vomit and built an ark and preached righteousness.

Everyone thought he was crazy and went on for 75 years.

And you think, you know the monotony of normal life, all

those normal Tuesday mornings, nameless, faceless, just

apparently meaningless. But you know, the lens through

which Noah saw his life was so completely different to the lens

that others saw life through those 3900 Monday mornings.

For Noah, he saw them through a promise.

He started telling them it was going to rain.

It had never rained a day in the life of the earth up until that

point. They thought he was absolutely

crazy. The lens he saw life through was

the promise that God had given him.

And those 3900, three, 1900 Monday mornings were shot

through with meaning for that man and his family.

They were on mission every Monday morning, counted every

Monday morning mattered. And I think to myself, you know,

how many Monday mornings are we still going to live through?

And what's the lens through which you see your Monday

mornings? You look at Abraham and Isaac in

Hebrews in just a bit further down verse 17 for Abraham for by

faith Abraham when he was tested offered up Isaac and he had

received the and he had received the promise was in the act of

offering up his only son of whom it was said through Isaac shall

your offspring be named. He considered that God was able

to even raise him from the dead from which fig.

For which from which figuratively he did receive him

back by faith. Isaac invoked future blessing

upon Jacob and Esau. I think to myself, you know, I

read the story of, of Abraham and Isaac and I think you know,

Abraham, he, he was old and Sarah was old.

Sarah was barren. She'd never had children.

And God gave them a promise that they would have a child in their

old age. I mean, Abraham tried to

manipulate things a little bit and he had Ishmael along the

way. But in the end, the child of

promise was born Isaac in their old age.

And now God asks Abraham to sacrifice him and he says to his

son, one day, son, we're going to go up on the mountain.

We're going to sacrifice to the Lord.

And he bundles up some wood and puts wood on Isaac's back.

And he carries flame in one hand and a knife in the other.

And his son says to him, Dad, where's the sacrifice?

And Abraham says to him, son, the Lord will provide.

The Lord will provide. And they walk up the mountain,

and he lays Isaac down on the wood and ties him down.

And he's raises the knife to sacrifice.

And you think this is crazy and you know, how can I emulate that

kind of faith? It doesn't say that by faith

Abraham sacrificed his son. It doesn't say that.

It says Abraham knew that if necessary, God would raise him

from the dead, a son of promise through which the rest of the

Israel's history was to come. And now I'm going to kill him.

These things are two completely incompatible truths.

It's and it wasn't for Abraham to trans reason those things

out. He just accepted that God was

going to work this and then the Lord provided there was a ram

behind them and that was the sacrifice and you think stuff

now I'm never going to live life like that.

How do I emulate Abraham's faith or for me.

The Lord will provide became you know what God calls you to do.

He will always provide for and you know, when we arrived in the

US, we we had one car and three teenagers.

And at the age in the US, all teenagers have cars by the age

of 16. So my kids were stuck with mom

and dad in one car. And I started saying, God, you

know, if this is what you've called us to do and I need you

to help. And a guy who doesn't know me,

who's not a believer, who's the father of one of the girls in

the church where we were fellowshipping, said to his

daughter one day, I'm giving my car away.

Don't you know someone who wants a car?

He didn't know who I was. And his daughter just said this

as a certain crazy South African family.

They probably could do with a car.

And he drove from Atlanta with his wife one day to work where I

was. He gave me the he didn't know he

I'd never met him, gave me the keys, the paperwork and said,

how's your car? I didn't pay a cent for it when

I took it to register the lady at the desk, you have to fill in

this form and how much you pay because you have to pay sales

tax on it. And I wrote zero as to how much

I paid. And she looked at me and she

said, Sir, you can't put zero. She said I'm going to just put

$1.00. So I paid sales tax on $1.00.

But the Lord will provide. He provides for what He calls

you to. Why would He give you more than

what you need to do what you're called to do?

Why would he give you more? If you live with plenty, it's

because He's called you to be generous with your plenty.

Provision will follow your faith.

So I can emulate. There was a stance about

Abraham. Everything about Abraham was

when he heard God, it was just yes, no question, no

negotiation. He leaned forward with a posture

of yes, God speak, yes, I will, no questions asked.

When I read Abraham's story, I think is the posture of my life

a yes, or is it a question and a grumble and a moan?

Or is it a negotiation between God?

There's no negotiation. When God speaks, my posture must

be yes. I need to just go forward

knowing that the Lord will provide at the last minute.

God will provide and if he doesn't, I'm not called to do

it. He's been faithful to this

family of mine right through. That was what I learned from the

king at Abraham. Then you go a bit further down

in Hebrews 11 verse 23, it starts talking about Moses, but

Hebrews 11:23

before it talks about Moses, it talks about Moses parents.

And there's this interesting verse says by faith, Moses when

he was born was hidden for three months by his parents because

they saw that the child was beautiful and they were not

afraid that the King's edict. It was a time in history where

they were trying to the Pharaoh was The Wanted to decimate the

Israelites. There were too many of them.

He was getting scared of them. Kill all the male children,

throw them in the Nile, drown them all.

And Moses parents, they didn't disobey the king, the Pharaoh.

They just put Moses in an ark. I put him in a basket and pushed

him into the Nile. And you have to ask yourself, I

mean, I it's one thing for you to risk with your own life when

you're alone, but when your kids are involved, it's like a

different story, You know, And when I looked at my three

teenagers, you know, they, they came from a private Christian

School here and they went straight into this massive

American public school. They came home the first night

of school and we sat down at the dinner table and Rachel said to

me, Dad, you can't look at the walls or the back of the door in

the bathrooms at school. I said, why not?

Sweet said, no, Dad, you don't want to know what's on the walls

and the bathrooms and the people.

I mean, the things they faced in those schools.

And I thought to them, what have I done to my kids?

You know, what have I? But you know, my kids will all

tell you that they have grown spiritually and then they walk

with God like they would never have if we'd stayed.

The idea that being a helicopter parent and you can somehow

shield your kids from the world and protect them from somehow

keep them from the altar and from difficulty, it's not

helpful. Isaac, where did he learn his

faith? He watched his father.

His father said such a followable example.

Moses. When you think of Moses, you

only you. Do you even know what Moses

parents's names were? We don't.

I mean, you do. It's in the Bible.

But do you know what their names are?

There's just Moses parents. But where would Moses have been

without his parents? I look at the mum here who was

baptized this morning, you know, parents are like pillars,

unseen, unknown, and all we want is platforms and that's not how

God has called us to live. Can we just be a pillar and

forget about the platform? Church has become about

platforms. It's more about pillars in God's

mind. God wants us to make investments

in the next year. I live in a college town where,

you know, the university did a survey the other day where they

asked the questions. The secular university asked the

question, what are the 10 most important reasons students

choose Auburn University? And you know, in the top 10

reasons kids choose Auburn University of all the millions

of choices they have, there was, there's this church in Auburn.

It's amazing when you think a guy my age gets to invest in

college students the next generation.

When you get to my age, please don't retire, start to pour back

like Moses parents did and invest in the next generation.

We have students in our room. Last week we had 20 students to

dinner. We put tables together, we

cooked like crazy and that's a regular occurrence.

And we have these kids around our table and it's the most

unbelievable privilege to to pull into that generation.

Do you know what Moses appearances names were?

If you go to Exodus 6, you'll find their names, Amram and

Jacob. Ed, did you know that?

Do you know what those names mean?

Chosen people and God's glory. Isn't that what Moses did?

1000 people and God's glory. Moses would never have been

anywhere without his parents. One verse about his parents and

then it flows and I think it worked.

If you read the next verse by faith Moses when he was grown

up, what did he do? He changed the course of

history. So you read the next verse by

faith Moses. When he was grown up, he refused

to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing

rather to be mistreated with the people of God and enjoy the then

enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin.

He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the

treasures of Egypt, for he was looking for his reward.

By faith he left Egypt not of being afraid of the anger of the

king, for he endured seeing him who is invisible.

By faith, he kept the Passover and sprinkled blood, the

sprinkling of the blood so that the destroyer of the first born

might not touch them. I love that first phrase by

faith, Moses, when he's grown up, refused.

I learned a piece of history the other day.

There was this explorer in the 16th century who landed on the

beaches of Mexico and he wanted to start a set up a beachhead

and explore into Mexico and possess it.

And as they landed on the beaches with their ships, he

realized this was going to be significantly more difficult

than he imagined it was going to be.

And he started to really worry that his fellow sailors with

mutiny and that he'd be left with no one.

So do you know what he did to make sure that no one left?

He just burned the ships. There was no way back.

And that's where we get the English saying burn the ships.

If you look up the meaning of that phrase, burn the ships is a

metaphorical expression signifying a complete and

irreversible commitment to a course of action, leaving no

option for retreat or return to the previous state.

Moses burnt his ships 80 years before his ministry began.

Son of Pharaoh in Pharaoh's courts.

Wealth and comfort, privilege and power.

And he watches the Israel, the Israeli slaves, and he kills an

Egyptian one day and he realizes this is going to get me into

trouble. And then they discover it's him.

And it says when he was growing up, he he could have gone back

to Pharaoh's household and made an excuse and I'm sure it would

have been covered over and he'd be fine.

But he realized that's not how he could live his life.

His identity was with the Israelite people.

That's what God had put in his heart when he's grown up.

He refused to be called the son of Pharaoh.

He refused to go back to the palace he choose.

He chose rather to be mistreated with the people of God.

Then enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin.

I sometimes think we haven't burnt our ships.

We still have too easy a way back to where we came from.

If we're going to live the way God wants us to do we have to

burn our ships. There's no way back.

What are what are your ships? You know, Peter, was this

fishing Nets? And you know when, when you

realize you still have ships that can take you back to where

you came from, as when it starts getting hard, when it starts

getting painful, when it starts getting costly.

And you begin to think, what are my ships that take me back to

where I came from? What are the, how are the, what

are the ways I medicate my pain? How am I trying to numb the

difficulties that I'm living with?

And if you still have a ship that you can get on with, get on

to and go back to Egypt, you will.

But if you've burnt the ship, there's no way back.

If we're going to live the way God has called us to, we have to

live like that Early explorer. You just burn the ships.

Moses burnt his ships. There was no way back.

He left and it says that. It says that he, he would rather

read it, he would rather experience.

He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the

treasures of Egypt. This is thousands of years

before Christ. How can Moses consider the

reproach of Christ greater than the treasures of Egypt?

How does that work? Well, I'll tell you how it

works. Moses stuck with the people of

God and that was the reproach of Christ.

When you choose God's people and you choose to suffer with them

rather than go back to Egypt, that's a God honouring thing to

do. Moses chose the people of God,

and if we're going to live the way God's called us to live, we

must choose their approach. Of we choose each other, we

choose the people of God. There's no way back.

I'm not going. I'm not going back to you.

I choose this people. That's how he burnt his ships.

If you're going to burn a ship, I don't know, I've sometimes

thought you'd drop a match on a ship.

It's probably not going to burn. You're probably going to need

some kind of fuel or accelerant to start the fire.

What was the the fuel or the accelerant when Moses burnt his

ships? I think it was this by faith.

He kept the Passover and the sprinkling of the blood.

If you're going to burn your ships, the ways you medicate

your pain, the ways you can go back to your old life, If you're

going to burn that and make it impossible to go back, you burn

it by sprinkling it with the blood of the Passover lamb.

That's how you don't go back. Moses did that and 80 years

later, you know, you think when he talks about Moses, I would

have thought Moses by faith wrote the Torah.

Moses by faith split the Red Sea, Moses by faith quailed from

heaven and manna from heaven. Moses by faith struck the rock

and water came out Moses, all these great deeds.

But when it talks about Moses by faith, it talks about how he

refused to go back to Egypt and 80 years later he became the

deliverer. But he was the deliverer because

80 years before he decided there's no going back to Egypt.

I'm committed to this people and with these people I will go.

Poverty, difficulty suffering. With this people I will go.

He burnt his way back. He was, no, there was no way he

was going to be be able to go back.

He made a choice. Like Daniel, he resolved, he saw

the invisible, the reward which outweighed any wealth in Egypt.

There was no way back for Moses. And I realized that if we're

going to follow God the way He's called us to follow Him, we

can't have the option of going back.

There are many stories, but there's one little one here.

The last one I want to just quickly talk about Jephthah.

It says in Hebrews 11 verse 32, and what more shall I say for

Hebrews 11:32

time, which found me to tell of Gideon, Barack, Samson, Jeff,

the David, Samuel, and the prophets.

I've heard of Gideon, I've heard of Samson, I've heard of David,

I've heard of Samuel, but Barack and Sam, Barack and Jephthah.

I've never heard of those guys, but they're in Hebrews 11.

You didn't have time to talk about them.

Who's Jephthah? Have you ever heard of Jephthah?

Do you know Jephthah's story? It's the most unbelievably

difficult story for us as Christians.

He was in the time of the judges, it says, of Jetha and

Judges 11 Now Jetha the Gileadite was a mighty warrior,

but he was the son of a prostitute.

Gilead was the father of Jephthah, and Gilead's wife also

bore him sons. And when his wife's sons grew

up, they drove Jephthah out and said to him, You shall not have

an inheritance in our father's house for you, the son of

another woman. And then Jephthah fled from his

brothers and lived in the land of Tobe with worthless fellows.

And that collected around Jephthah and went out with him.

A crazy kind of a history, you think, You know, his dad was

sleeping around. And then this illegitimate child

is born and this is Jephthah. And he's the guy in Hebrews 11.

The sons of his sons were there. They're not mentioned.

But Jephthah, the son of the prostitute is mentioned.

And then the story goes, he's, I mean, you know, I mean, Can you

imagine how broken that guy is? He grows up in this family.

They kick him out, rejected. You're a bastard child, don't

want you the hurt. But he was a warrior.

A broken warrior is a dangerous man.

And he hangs around with gangs. You can just imagine the kind of

guy he was. And then the Israelites get into

trouble. The Ammonites want to come and

make war with them. And they suddenly think we don't

have anyone to lead us. And I think we're the only guy

who we can think of to lead us as Jeff, though.

So they go back and they fetch Jeff.

They said, Jeff, you must come and help us.

And you can imagine, Jeff, that, you know, I wasn't good enough

then. Why am I good enough now?

But it says the Spirit of God came upon Jeff, this broken man

who had this terrible past. And his brokenness and the point

I, the thing I take away from Jeff's life is if you don't pay

attention to the brokenness in your life, it will end up

hurting people terribly. Jeff has does amazing things.

He writes the Ammonite armies, he completely annihilates them.

But in his fear, as he stands on the threshold of this war,

chosen to be their leader as a mighty warrior, that's where it

says the Spirit came upon him. He starts to tremble and fear

and wonder if this is going to work.

And he makes a vow to God. He did.

Why would he make a vow? The Spirit of God's come upon

him, but he's afraid. He makes a vow to God.

He says, God, if you give me victory in this battle, when I

get home, the first thing that comes out of the door of my

house, I'll sacrifice to you A rash, stupid, silly, unnecessary

promise that emanates from a broken man who tried to control

rather than trust the Spirit of God coming upon him in some way

wasn't enough. He tried to manipulate God by

making a vow to him. And you know who the you know

what walked out of the door when he got home?

The first thing that walked out of the door when he got home

after that backdrop was his only daughter, his only child, and

he's his. I mean, you can just the

devastation. And she says to her dad, just

give me two months. You have to do what you promised

God. And she goes into the mountains

with her friends and she mourns the fact that she'll never

marry. And she comes home and he

sacrifices her. And you think, why the story in

the Bible have such trouble with that?

And I tell you, the thing I take away from that is if you try to

control an outcome rather than trust God or manipulate an

outcome by making all sorts of wild and stupid promises, God

didn't say how I want your sacrifices.

He said I want your obedience and the brokenness where you can

just imagine the woundedness that this warrior man lived

with. You live with that level of

brokenness in your life. It's going to hurt people.

It's and it'll hurt the people closest to you.

And that's what happened in Jephthah's life.

If we're going to live the way God's called us to live, we have

to ask God for real and deep transformation in our lives.

That's what a radical disciple is, someone who's truly

transformed from within and feels no need to make rash

promises to try and manipulate an outcome we can't live trying

to make. You know, God, if you do this

thing, I'll do this for you. No, it's just the Spirit came

upon him and that should have been enough, but it wasn't.

And Jeff, they got into all sorts of trouble and caused all

sorts of his issues manifested later, His brokenness manifested

later in life and caused major pain to him and his family,

despite the fact that this guy's in Hebrews 11.

And if I look at Jeff, his life and I ask myself, you know, I

look at my own family of origin, my own history, and I asked

myself, where is there brokenness that needs to be

transformed so that I don't revert?

Do what Jephthah did and try and take control of an outcome and a

manipulate God with my you'll never manipulate God with your

obedience. All these with your your

promises of it. All he's looking for is for your

obedience. Fix what's broken.

Let God come and fix what's broken.

Otherwise, it's going to hurt those around you.

Jeff, there's a strange story, but there's lots of meaning in

that for me. If we look at the last verse of

chapter 10 of of Hebrews, which is just before Hebrews 11, it

needs to be, I think, the stance of our lives.

But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed,

but of those who have faith and preserve the soul.

We are not of those who shrink back.

Father, thank you that you've not called us to shrink back,

but to lean forward into a promise.

We've called us to walk forward into what you've called us to do

in fulfillment of a promise that you've given each one of us.

I pray that no one here, no one in this body, Father would

shrink back into smallness, but would step forward in obedience

and say, I don't care what the outcome may be.

It doesn't matter. I that I have no control of what

it's like on the other side. I'm just going to have the

posture of yes, I'm going to lean forward into what you've

called me to be and I'm going to live by faith in the words that

you scribe on my heart. I pray that for each one of us

thought in Jesus name, Amen.