Fighting Fire With Fire Is A Bad Plan

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Welcome to Christ Community Church.

I greet you in the name of my precious Savior.

I think that's the best I've ever heard that song ever.

I've heard better, but it's not.

No, I don't know about that.

I don't know about that.

Christopher, it was great.

Every bit of it.

It was great.

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Thank y'all for your hard work.

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Come in, come in, come in.

There's some expensive seats on the front.

So when you give, remember that.

You can put that on the floor, J.

Yeah, you can put that purse on the floor.

Y'all can put that purse on the floor if you'd like.

Happy to see you.

Happy to have you here.

I guess there's nothing really I need to announce or say anything about it, do I?

Can't think of anything.

No, okay.

All right.

Those of you that have not uh been with us before or haven't been with us for a while, you might not know that for I think six or seven weeks we went through a study in the Little Old Testament prophetic book of Jonah.

And we finished that up a couple of weeks ago, I guess.

Two weeks.

And uh just uh uh Derek, I guess it was a little while ago he was saying, you know, I'm still thinking about the book of Jonah, and God's still speaking to me through that book.

And uh I've got to be honest with you, Derek, I'm still thinking about it on a daily basis, and God is still speaking to me through that little book.

Uh it's a very challenging study, it was for me.

It was a very convicting study, and it was a very uh humbling study for me, because uh the whole point of the book of Jonah, as we discussed for a number of weeks, is that I'm Jonah.

The book isn't about a per I I believe he was a real life historical man, person.

I'm not uh in any way negating or denying that, but it's not about him, it's about me and how much like Jonah I am, and what God wants to do in my life to change that.

That's that's the point of Jonah, and um just in my ponderings about the overall story of Jonah, what's the the big picture, the big story of Jonah, I came to this conclusion, and that's what we're going to talk about today.

The story of Jonah is really the story of God calling one of his own to go to another people group and to speak a blessing on that people group.

That's the story of Jonah, in my opinion.

God called one of his own to go to another people and to declare a blessing upon them, to at least speak words that created blessing.

Jonah didn't know that's what was going to happen, and the Ninevehes didn't know that was gonna happen.

But God sent Jonah, and I don't need to hear me, God sent Jonah to go to other people and to verbally speak words of blessing upon them.

Words that at that moment Jonah found ridiculous, wasteful, and offensive.

Clearly, the story is I don't want to go.

I don't want them to experience blessings.

I hate them.

They're not worthy of God's blessings.

And yet that's exactly what God told Jonah to do.

Jonah had no idea.

He probably died, he probably went to his grave, never realizing the power and the long-term impact of him speaking those words of blessing upon those people.

We know, because of archaeologists and historians, that he, Jonah, delayed the invasion of the of the Assyrians, the Ninevites, the Assyrians, from coming and conquering Israel by at least a hundred years because of what God did in that revival or whatever, the whatever the word you like to use for what happened in Nineveh, that so impacted the Ninevehites, the Assyrians, that they did not come and conquer Israel for at least a hundred years.

So he had no idea the impact of his words upon the Ninevehes, but also on his own life and family and people.

So sometimes a story like that is true, and we've read it and we know it, and it's it's big, it's so far removed from us.

You know, I mean it's happened thousands of years ago and all of that.

Um so recently at school, I teach school, recently at school, actually just this last week, it became it went real narrow, and sometimes that helps, right?

You get a huge thought, and then if you can kind of put it in some sort of uh uh modern perspective or contemporary perspective.

The girls at school are worked up because um they want to know what to do when someone in the public eye, a big person in the public eye, comes forward, and it could be a small person too, I mean, like a you know, regular person, local person, a local person, but but this particular situation where a person uh in the public eye comes up, what comes out of this person's mouth is racist or anti-Semitic statements.

Oh dear, what to do about that?

And so we've been having discussions all week about this person is saying terrible things, spewing terrible things.

And everybody knows this person, and that's all I'm gonna give you.

Um and what should we do?

This is you know, either this is either cancel culture we're in, or hopefully we're tiptoeing a little away from that.

I don't know.

So let's just assume cancel culture is like zip, you're done.

Zoop.

That's it.

Maybe that's maybe that's the thing to do, but it doesn't seem like I'll say this.

Do you ever have a time when the spirit moves you and you feel like you say perhaps it doesn't happen much?

You say the right thing at the right time.

Do you ever have that?

Doesn't happen a lot.

But the I heard the words coming out of my mouth.

Okay, I don't have an answer.

I don't know what to do about a person who spews vitriol everywhere.

I don't know what to do about that.

Spews hate.

But if I spew hate back, then what we got is a bigger pile of hate.

So but that's I think the message addresses natural, and I emphasize the word natural, that's our natural response.

We see what has been spoken to us.

And if that's hate, I think I hate back.

If I love you, you speak back.

Well, Larry, I love you too.

But if I speak hate or or fear or whatever, the what normally happens is it's so that's what it looks like today.

Yes, yes.

Returning the same thing that I get back.

It can be beautiful, it can be terrible.

So what about that?

Yes, this idea of speaking, not hate for hate, but blessing, speaking blessing.

You know, this goes back to it runs through the Bible, number one.

If you if if this is uh an idea that literally runs through the Bible from the beginning to the end, people speaking blessing, and that those spoken words creating blessing, that that theme runs through the Bible.

Very first story in the Bible.

God in Genesis 1 and 2, He He created the world, and He created His image bearers, and then six times in a row, he spoke blessing upon His creation and His image bearers, and each time He spoke blessings upon a different segment of creation and ultimately his image bears.

It was blessed.

God's and it wasn't that he just blessed it, he spoke.

He spoke the blessing.

Hey, Geneva.

Can you catch that?

Oh, give that to her.

Oh, is that a mint?

Um, there you go.

You get it?

There you go.

Um I'm glad you didn't want a hamburger.

Yeah.

I'm fresh out of those right this second.

Um, but God spoke, and it was blessed.

That's the thing that I want us to think about today.

God called Abraham.

Jump from Genesis 1 and 2 to Genesis 12, 15, and 17.

And what you see here is that God selects a family, Abraham and his children, to be the primary means through which God is going to bless all peoples.

That's the whole point of Genesis 12, 15, and 17.

Jump all the way to Numbers 19, and through Moses, God clarifies what that looks like and what that means.

How is Abraham and his descendants supposed to bless all peoples?

Well, Moses, or God says through Moses, I want you to be a kingdom of priest unto me to all peoples.

I want you to be my representatives, I want you to be my priest, I want you to be the means through which I, Yahweh, bless all peoples.

The tragedy of that whole idea is that according to the story of Israel through the scriptures, Israel never got it.

They never, what you see is a people group who were very concerned about Yahweh blessing them.

But they never seemed to be concerned, i.e., Jonah.

He wasn't concerned about God blessing Assyria or anybody else.

He wanted God's blessings, he wanted Yahweh's blessings on Israel and on him.

So Israel never got it.

They did not get that God wanted them, he called them to be a source of blessing upon all people.

They never got it, they never embraced it.

So, God chose in the back half of Exodus, the book of Leviticus, and the book of Numbers, the next two and a half books.

God chose one family, one tribe, the tribe of Levi, and one family in that tribe, the family of Aaron, and God made them his.

He chose them to be an example, a model, a living illustration to the rest of Israel of what he wanted the entire nation of Israel to do and to be to the rest of the peoples.

God chose the Levites and the family of Aaron to be his specific representatives, his priest, his source of blessing upon the rest of the people.

And if you read the books of Leviticus and Numbers, what you see is that God created this holy place called the Holy of Holies.

That's where the Ark of the Covenant was, and then that was inside the tabernacle, and the tabernacle was the place that people would go to experience God.

Right?

Who surrounded the tabernacle?

The Levites.

The Levites.

They were the doorkeeper, they were the entryway, they were those that surrounded the presence of God.

And to get to, it's very important you see this.

To get to God, you had to go through the Levites, through the family of Aaron.

To get to God, to experience God, you had to go through those that God had specifically and specially chosen to represent him to be his priest.

And what you, if you do a little study of that, what you find is that God's saying, but he told the Levites and the family of Aaron, I've set you apart.

My name is on you, I've chosen you, I've called you, you belong to me, and you are now my representatives before the rest of my people, and it is your job to declare my ways, my wisdom, my love, and my blessing upon the rest of the people.

Now I said all of that to get us to where I want us to be today.

And that is in Numbers chapter 6.

Numbers 6 · chapter mention

Brenda read it.

Chris sang it.

We're going to read it one more time, but I've read Numbers chapter 6.

Numbers 6 · chapter mention

It's Numbers chapter 6, the last six verses.

Numbers 6 · chapter mention

And this is the point of the lesson today.

Numbers chapter 6, the last six verses.

Numbers 6 · chapter mention

God, well, let me just read it to you.

Yahweh said to Moses, tell Aaron and his sons, you are to bless my people by saying to them.

So what he's saying there is, Moses, you tell Aaron and my priest, the representatives, those that represent me before the rest of the people, on a regular basis, when you and the people gather together forever.

I want you to speak certain words to the people, before the people, and over the people.

And here's the words.

Yahweh, oh, I'm sorry, may Yahweh bless you.

May He protect you.

May He smile upon you.

May He be gracious to you, and may He turn his face toward you and give you peace.

Now let's break that down real quickly.

God told Moses to tell the tribe of Levi and the people, the descendants of Aaron, I want you, when you gather together with the people, I want you to say to them, may Yahweh bless you.

And that goes back to, I've heard all these different things people say and teach about the word bless.

The word bless always, running through the Bible from the beginning, beginning to the end, it always means the same thing that it was in Genesis 1 and 2.

God says, I want to bless you.

And that idea of blessing means I want to multiply you and I want to give you abundance.

I want you to have power and impact.

I want your life to be able to make where you are better.

I want you to live your life in such a way that when you leave that place, it is different and it is better.

I want you to be fruitful and it, yes, it, yes, it includes having babies, and it could imply or include lots of babies.

But it's more than that.

I want you to have a life of abundance, but not just so you can bury it in the backyard and cram it in the in the uh the security box at the bank or invest it with your uh retirement people.

That's all good and fine and well, but I want, I'm gonna fill you with abundance, with impact, so that you can be a source of blessing.

And then he goes on to say, I want to protect you.

Now, if you King Jimmy, I think says keep you, okay?

And that's fine, but really the word is protect you.

I want to, and the Bible says it many different ways.

I want to surround you like a wall.

I want to surround you like a ring of fire.

I want to hold you in my hand.

I want to be a shield for you.

I want to be a horn, not a doo-doo-doo-doo horn, like you know, the the uh God, Yahweh is my horn of my salvation.

That doesn't mean that he's gonna hit people over the head with a trumpet.

What that means, a bull horn.

That was the baddest animal in all of Israel when the Bible was written.

And God says, I want to be between you and your enemies like the face of a bull and a bull's horns sticking out.

That's who I want to be in your life: a ring of fire, a shield, a defender, and all those things.

And then he says, Um, I want to smile upon you.

I love it, probably my favorite phrase.

God wants Aaron to declare to the people, remind them on a regular basis, that God smiles upon them.

He's not angry.

He's the dad, not the older brother.

When he sees the people, when he sees his people, he smiles, like when my grandson, who lives next door to me, when he comes, when I hear that screen door opening, Shirley knows whatever I'm doing, I shut it down.

The TV goes off, the laptop shuts, the book goes down, the oven goes off.

Whatever's I'm I'm so happy that he's running through that screen porch to come see me.

Or and her too, a little bit, but mostly me.

And uh he comes running in there with something to tell me, or something he wants to show me, or something that he wants.

I'm happy.

I'm happy that he's coming.

He smiles and then he says, be gracious, remind them that our relationship is based upon grace.

It's not tit for tat, it's not one of these things where nobody gets a free.

Lunch.

It's not you scratch my back and I'll scratch your back.

No, no, no.

God says, I want you to remind them in this blessing that my response to them, my relationship with them, my way of dealing with them, it is based upon mercy.

Mercy, not what they bring to the table, but what they're going to find waiting on the table.

You're going to find this table of abundance, and I don't need a few good men.

I'm not looking for waiters.

I'm looking for children that are hungry and want to run to the table, and they'll find a feast.

And it doesn't matter what's in their wallet.

Remind them of that, that it's based upon grace.

Be gracious to them.

And then turn your face.

Remind them, may God turn his face.

And that whole idea is that of a king like Esther.

She's standing outside looking into the throne room.

And the question, now in the language of Esther, it's is he going to raise that scepter?

Thank you, that scepter, or is he not?

But really, you see this image running through the Bible.

Is the king gonna stand up and greet you when you stand, when you walk into the palace, or is he gonna turn his back against you?

That's the picture.

That's the story.

That's the image.

When God sees you standing back in the back, is he gonna turn his face and his attention upon you?

Or is he gonna turn and show you his back?

And then the last thing is he's gonna give you peace.

May the Lord bless you with peace.

Peace that is not influenced or determined by your circumstances.

If the kids are good or bad, if work's going well or it's horrible, if you don't feel good or you feel great, if you've got a bank full of money, or you're flat broke.

God wants to bless us with a peace that is beyond our understanding.

Not a peace that denies that the world is going to hell in a handbasket.

Not a peace that denies that right now my family is falling apart or I feel terrible or I'm terrified by what's going on.

Not a peace that is based upon denial, but a peace that flows out of a confidence that the God that has called me and loves me and has chosen me, He is in control and He's going to take care of me.

Why does that matter?

Why is that important that you and I know that that's the calling that God placed upon the tribe of Aaron and the tribe of Levi and the family of Aaron?

Why does that matter?

That God gave them the job of regularly declaring a blessing upon the rest of the people.

May the Lord bless you and protect you and smile upon you and be gracious to you and show you his favor and fill you with his peace.

The reason that's important, the reason that matters to me, is that Peter declares in 1 Peter this.

You now are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession that you may declare the praises of him who has called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.

God has made you and me his priest.

We're the tribe of Aaron now, or the tribe of Levi.

We're the family of Aaron.

We have been given that role, that responsibility, that calling of what God called them to do and chose them to do, God now has called and chosen you and I to do.

Paul said it this way in Colossians 1: God has chosen his people to reveal his glorious mystery and hope to those who are not his people.

And he says in 2 Corinthians 5, we are Christ's ambassadors, as if God were making his appeal of reconciliation through us.

God has given us the call and the role of being intercessors, being declarers of light and love and truth, of revealing God and of blessing all people.

My question is, do we see that and do we embrace that?

Because here's the thing that hit me like a ton of bricks.

I read to you, Brenda read to you those last six verses of Numbers.

And I read them to you as well.

But you know, normally what we do is we stop before we get to the end.

And that's always a bad plan, isn't it?

To stop a story or a letter or directions before you get to the end is not a good plan.

Let me read it to you one more time.

I want you to see if you can get this.

Number six, Yahweh said to Moses, Tell Aaron and his sons, you are to bless my people by saying to them, May Yahweh bless you and protect you and smile on you and be gracious to you, turn his face towards you and give you peace.

And when you do this, this will put my name and my blessing on my people.

When I declare a blessing upon Austin, when I declare a blessing upon the lady that's checking me out at the grocery store, when I declare a blessing on the man that cut me off on the interstate, when I declare a blessing upon the teachers, when I drop my grandson off at school every morning, when and they're all standing out there and I'm driving around and trying to get Teddy out of the out of the car because he's not finished telling me the last set of instructions that he's got for me.

And I'm saying, dude, this is wartime conditions.

You got to get out, you got to get out, go, go, go.

But when I drive by those teachers, when I speak of blessing, whether it's ver uh audibly or whether it's just in my heart, what God tells Moses to tell his priest is this when you do that, you are putting my name on those that you are blessing.

And you are filling their lives with my favor.

Now stop just a second.

What do what in a Sam Hill that means?

That when I bless you, I intentionally speak God's blessing upon you.

And I don't think these words, these would you say, three sets of two.

Now, I I I say this blessing every morning on you and your family by name.

I say this blessing a, no kidding, probably a several hundred times a day.

But I don't think it has to be, I don't think that's, I don't, I don't think God wants us to limit it to this.

That's the way I want to say it.

I don't think it's magical.

I think for me to say, when when Annie texts me and says, I'm facing some important decisions, I think I can bless you with that.

But I can also say, God bless her with wisdom to know the right thing to do.

I don't think that's excluded.

Do you see what I'm saying there?

But we live in this world which is so reactionary.

Whatever you send my way, I'm gonna send it right back.

And if it's good, good.

And if it's bad, so be it.

You started it.

But what God is saying here, guys, is no, that's not right.

That is but that is B-team living.

That's low-road living, that's living that is fine for the heathen.

But it's not fine for those that have been called to be the representatives of the most holy God.

I don't have that luxury.

I don't have that right, I don't have that privilege, and if you belong to the Lord Jesus, you don't have that right or luxury or privilege either.

You you you want to jump in here, Sister B?

Well, it's just, yeah, last week, you know, Chris and Jenny were here, the missionaries, and they were we were talking at lunch, and they were talking about the fact that in their missionary training for, you know, to go into They were with YWAM when they first went into the ministry.

And so they're from South Africa, but they go into these tribal areas.

And a huge part of their training as Christian missionaries was to learn to give it when something hard comes, when something bad, when something easy comes, that's no problem.

But when something hard comes or a slap or you know, whatever, to return it with the opposite thing.

Always give the opposite.

That's what they were taught.

That that as human beings, we want to, like Larry's been saying, give the same for the same.

Because that feels I I understand it logically, it feels just.

And we want justice, right?

But but as Christians, I think we know we don't really do we really want justice?

I mean, do I is that what we're is that how we got in on the family?

Do we get included in the family by respon by God responding to us the way we have spent our lives responding to Him?

No.

And so that conversation reminded me of a prayer that you we probably know and we've said, you might have learned somewhere along the way.

I'm not gonna read the whole thing, but remember that prayer of St.

Francis, where he says, Um uh Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love.

And sow, of course, is like sowing of seeds.

And on and on it goes.

Where there is injury, I'm supposed to give pardon.

Where there is doubt, I'm supposed to give faith.

Despair, hope, darkness, light, sadness, joy.

People like my students who are wrestling with what to you know, think and do with someone that's saying horrible, cruel, dangerous things.

Actually is a very hard thing for me to say.

Well, we should we should say a prayer of blessing.

Give the opposite of what we want to give.

But that's exactly what Jonah was asked to do.

Yes.

He did it too, he did it.

He did it, he didn't want to, and he got mad and ran off.

But he did it, and look what God did.

I I don't mean to sound trite, but how is spewing hate against hate, how's it going for us as a culture?

How's that plan going for everybody?

In your marriage, in your with your children, with your coworkers.

How's that going for us?

In our neighborhoods, in our city?

How's it going for us as a city?

Res fighting fire with fire, hate with hate, prejudice with prejudice, judgment with judgment.

How's that going for us?

We ought to bottle this thing.

We ought to write another book and uh ship it out.

The success of Memphis.

Where there's hatred, let me ship uh sow more hatred.

That's that's gone so well.

That's why God asks us to do it differently.

And we don't want to because it doesn't make sense, and it's it we want to see the justice, and we and I guess we just don't believe he can do anything.

I don't know.

God's called us to fight fire with living water and curses with blessing and life or death with life.

I'm gonna end with these verses.

I just want you to listen to these verses.

Wonder what they mean.

I struggle with these verses, they ought not be in the Bible.

I don't like them because I don't understand them very well.

So maybe you, I'm gonna put this on you and let you struggle with them too.

Proverbs 18 says that life and death are in the power of the tongue.

Notice there's no middle ground.

Everything that comes out of my mouth is either life or death.

Nothing in the middle.

Psalm 84 says, as my people pass through the valley of weeping, they will make it a place of springs.

Matthew 5, Jesus says, speak in faith to that mountain, and it will be hurled into the sea.

Matthew 18, what you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and what you loosen on earth, or what you loosen on earth, will be loosed in heaven.

Romans 12.

Bless those who persecute you.

Don't curse them.

Pray that God will bless them.

And I threw this one in for good measure.

The disciples said to Jesus, It is late.

Send the people away.

They're hungry, they need to go get food.

But Jesus told the disciples, you feed them.

Not God, would you bless Karoon?

I think God's saying, Larry, you speak the blessing.

Don't wait on me to do it.

You, I've I've called you, I've chosen you.

You have been chosen by me to be my voice, my words, my source of blessing.

You speak a blessing onto these people.

And my name will be placed on them, and their lives will experience my favor.

Family, co-workers, friends, foes, people far near, people far away, people I know, people I don't know, people I like, people I don't like.

There's no conditions here.

I can literally change the destiny of people when I choose to speak blessings upon them.

Especially, I believe, when I find when I'm like Jonah, this is ridiculous, this is wasteful, and this is offensive.

I don't want them blessed.

Does that say more about them?

Or does that say more about me?

Thank you.

Any I'm sorry, you want to add anything, Brian?

Who was it that was I'm off the cuff now.

Who was it that was in prison and they sang and the doors open?

It was Paul Paul.

Okay.

And uh Barnabas or Silas?

Silas?

Yeah, Silas.

Okay.

So they were um and they sang the song and the and the jailer was okay They were all listening.

The prisoners in the jailer were listening.

So these guys were thrown into prison.

I want you to think of prison as a physical prison, and then of course a metaphorical prison.

Right?

These guys are in prison unjustly, they're doing the work of God, they're giving love in a place of hate, and what what do they get?

They get thrown right into the prison.

What would we do?

I mean what I'd do.

I'd be called Corey B.

Trotz immediately.

I'm suing somebody's rear end dog for false arrest.

Go ahead.

Sorry.

And they sang, they gave praise to God and prayers to their jailer for their jailer.

And the door flew open.

I teach so many people who have so many parents who are locked up and hate and bitterness and anger and scorn and all of it.

And you do too.

And scorn for scorn just makes scorn squared.

But love for scorn, love and the place of scorn, and I'll tell you what else scorn for scorn makes.

It makes for upset, bitter, anxious children.

But love in the place of hate, love in the place of scorn makes no sense, and it is, it can be offensive, but it's also a prison.

And if we want those doors to open for ourselves, maybe it's a selfish thing, even, but for ourselves, to practice the opposite of what's being given when it's negative.

It seems to be the promise of freedom.

And that's what Jesus came to do, is set captives free.

Set people free from the shackles and bonds of your lives.

Thank you, friend.

Um you're gonna, if you want to come up and eat and drink, just to declare to your family, to your friends, to those that you go to church with, I trust the Son of God, Jesus Christ, and his death on the cross as the means through which I am now united with the family of God and have a home in heaven waiting for me.

If that's your hope, that's your prayer, that's your belief, then I invite you to come and to eat and to drink.

Um I'm gonna have bread here if you'd like to pull off a piece, and I've got wine, open little things of wine, if you'd like to drink those, or if you want.

We still have the ones that you tear the top off of.

So if you'd like that, you can sure take either one of them.

There'll be one that's like, Fatty, you and Rita want to come help me.

One of you take this side and one of you take the other, please.

And uh, you just come and sit.

You don't you don't have to be the first one up here.

Um if you want to sit just a moment and think about what God has said to you today and what he wants you to do with it, then you you take take a moment.

We're not in any hurry.

Golden Gral will be waiting, you know, for us when when we get there.

And so uh you uh uh you come and you eat and drink and give thanks that God has literally declared over you are blessed above all peoples.

You are blessed above all peoples because you are my child.

When you're ready, you come.