Don't Go There - Dr. Rich Hartmann

Sin rarely starts with action—it starts with entertaining the wrong thought. When we let our reasoning override God’s word or resist authority, we follow Eve’s path. The BETTER way is Christ’s: humble, obedient, and quick to take every thought captive before it takes hold.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Thank you for listening to this message from the Altar Fellowship.

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Feels like the first day of the semester, and uh I wasn't nervous till like three seconds ago. Those of you who know me know that uh Doctor, why Dr. Rich? Because I have a PhD in chemistry, that's why. So uh I taught chemistry for a long time, and um I was driving in this morning, and um so there's a verse that says, be ready in season and out of season to give an account of the hope that is in you. And if you look at my phone from yesterday at 148, I got a text from Pastor Matty. Like, any of y'all got a word? And I think I think that he's given us the admonition as his staff. So not only am I an elder in the church along with Paul Collins and Anthony, um Anthony Cook and Clint Ledford and Kashef Khan, but I'm also on staff. I am the facilities guy. So when you see me on my phone, it's because I'm checking the temperature or changing the temperature. So right now it's 66 and cooling inside the building, and no, I'm not gonna turn it off. But to be ready in season and out of season, and I think I think we as a staff over the years have taken that admonition to heart because um I don't just maintain the building, I serve Pastor Maddie and his vision for this house. And um I think it's crucial for all of you to know the relationship that we have with Pastor Maddie and why he is able to trust us with you, uh his flock, right? Because yes, you belong to God, but you are Pastor Maddie's sheep, and I am someone who wants to care for you as his sheep. And so just to give you a little bit of a background about my relationship to Pastor Maddie, if you would turn to 2nd Samuel, excuse me, 1 Samuel chapter 14, um, the guys up in the booth don't apparently have a new American Standard, which is just mind-boggling. So they're gonna put up whatever version they like, probably New King James, but I'm going to read out of the New American Standard, um, which is the version of the first Bible I ever got. And it may look like this is the first Bible I ever got, but I've got this in college, so I've had it for a few years. Um, but in 1987, I think I got it in 1980. I'm 60, all right. I got it in 1987. It's been around. There's a couple guys in the church like, dude, I want your Bible. I'm like, I still use it. You can't have it. And I don't want a new one. All right, so it's it's um it is what it is. All right. 1 Samuel chapter 14. That's why I'm in 15. That doesn't make sense. 1 Samuel chapter 14, verse 6 and 7. This is not the message, this is just to give you an idea of my relationship, and I believe Pastor Maddie's relationship with all of the elders specifically. Um, so the Saul is the king, Jonathan is his son, and they are fighting against the Philistines. And um, verse 6, Jonathan said to the young man who was carrying his armor, Come and let us cross over to the garrison of these uncircumcised. Perhaps the Lord will work for us. For the Lord is not restrained to save by many or by few. And his armor bearer said to him, Do all that is in your heart, turn yourself, and here I am with you according to your desire. Pastor Matty has my yes. All the time. Pastor David, Pastor Zach, all the pastors here know that as a man, as an elder, as a person on his staff, my job, my desire is to facilitate the work that God has called you to do, whatever that is, whatever that looks like. So you need to know that I will fight tooth and nail for Pastor Maddie's honor. I will stand between you and him when you come against him. I will encourage you to honor Pastor Maddie with every fiber of your being. And you might say, Rich, you're an old guy and Pastor Maddie's young. I got saved at 13 in 1979. So, yes, my salvation is much older than Pastor Maddie, but it doesn't matter because over the years, and that's partly what I'm going to talk about today, is I've learned to understand how God works and how he establishes authority and how he delegates his authority and his desire for us to not only recognize that authority, but to honor and obey it. And so for me, it's an easy thing to submit and give my yes to Pastor Matty. Um, I didn't come here because of the altar. I came here because of Tennessee, and God blessed us with this position at the altar. But I also want, as we're speaking today, as we're having a conversation, I want you to think about what it is that brought you here. Why are you here at the altar? And we've talked about this a little bit in my class on Wednesdays on spiritual authority, and we spent a little bit of time talking about um ambition. What is it that motivates you? What is it that drives you? Why do you get up in the morning? Um, what is what is it that gives you purpose in your life? And I think the conclusion that I came to, and the conclusion that I hope all of us will come to is um when Paul said uh it's the love of Christ that controls us or constraineth us. Christ loves me, and that puts a box around me, a good box, and it influences the way I live, it influences the thing I say, it influences the things that I do, it influences my motivations for what I say and do. And I'll be honest with you, I haven't always been that way. And so let me share a little bit about my history before we get into actually what's gonna happen today. So I say got saved at 1979 at 13 years old, and um man, wholehearted for Jesus, got filled with the Holy Spirit shortly thereafter. Um, speaking of which, just as an aside, um you know that I usually stand there and worship, and often I will just worship in tongues. And one of the young girls said, Are you speaking a foreign language? I think it's crucial for y'all to know that this is a full gospel church, and we are charismatic, and your kids should know what speaking in tongues sounds like. So I'm gonna encourage you to speak in tongues more around your kids and help them understand what that heavenly language is and how you can pray in the spirit, sing in the spirit, and you maybe don't know what you're saying, but Yahweh does. And so encourage your kids. That's an aside, that's a freebie. But so I got saved, fell in love with Jesus, loved the word. Um, I was a pretty good kid. I loved science, didn't really get into any kind of trouble, had two amazing Christian friends who I'm still close with to this day, and just an amazing life. I had a good home life. My parents were they were fine, they provided for me. We went to an assemblies of God church, um, all kinds of things. Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, youth group was, I think, Friday or Saturday, I don't remember. But the doors were open, we were there, or I was there at least, because my mom made us go for a lot of that stuff. But, anyways, eventually I grew up, went away to college, and then came back home, met my lovely wife at that same church, got married, and um, yeah, thank you, God, for Sheila. And and and settled into life. I mean, I I taught for a while, then I got restless and went to graduate school. But all the while we were still going to the same church, the whole, the same church. And and that church was the church I grew up in. It had lots of friends and relatives. It wasn't very big, um, but everybody kind of knew each other. It was substantially smaller than this. Maybe like these two middle rolls might have been a big packed Sunday morning. But at some point, um, I guess I taught Sunday school, and at some point it came, it came time to be uh to be an elder. And if you know anything about the assemblies of God and many churches, elders are voted on by the congregation. And and for me, that was kind of an ego stroke to be nominated to be an elder. I mean, I was only 25, maybe, I don't know. Um, but I realized quickly that my understanding of what an eldership is and what the biblical meaning of an eldership is were completely wrong. And and and that's not because I didn't love Jesus, it's not because I didn't read the word, it's just because I don't know if I can put my finger on what it was. Maybe, maybe it was that I I didn't read the word intently with the idea of understanding or obeying it, which I mean many of us do. But at some point I realized that um that all I was doing just rubber stamping the stuff that the pastor, we'd come to a board meeting and he'd present a bunch of stuff, and he just basically wanted a yes man. And I'm like, I got frustrated. I was really annoyed, and not just me, a couple of the other elders who one was my uncle and one was another guy, and it's like, yeah, nepotism is a bad thing, by the way. But, anyways, um I was frustrated. Frustrated to the point where um I said some things, I thought some things, and and we actually even met and had coffee once and thought, you know, we're gonna do something about this because this is just not the direction we feel the church should be going. And and I didn't realize at the time how rebellious I was being. I you know, I thought, and I care about the church. I want these things to happen, I want this to move smoothly and go forward. And I felt like we weren't growing because we weren't addressing these needs. And all this stuff was in my mind, right? Not necessarily in my heart. And and I think Pastor Gertes blessed his heart. He recognized that there was some problems, and he said, guys, can we just like meet once a week and pray? And so we started meeting weekly as the board. Um, I remember on my way to to probably to the lab. I was in grad school at the time, remember driving on my way to the lab and just stopping at church on Wednesday praying for an hour, and it was great. Um, but I also noticed at that time in my life that I stood a lot and I had some terrible back pain that started. I couldn't stand for more than like 10 minutes, maybe 15 minutes before I had to sit down. And of course, it has a diagnosis. I mean, I had an MRI, and they're like, well, Rich, your spine is narrow, you've got stenosis, and you've got some irritation between L4 and L5. So there was a diagnosis for what it was, and I'd get a cortisone shot, and it would sometimes help, and it wouldn't. But as we continued to pray, the Holy Spirit made it clear to me, and I wish I could remember exactly the day it happened. I don't. I remember the result. But it became obvious to me that I was in complete and utter rebellion. At some point, the Holy Spirit opened my eyes and said, Rich, the role of an elder is to support the pastor, to lift up his arms, to follow alongside. It's not to tell him what to do. And as soon as I realized that, I'm like, oh my God, I'm in rebellion. And so I said, Hey, Pastor Goethe, can I say something from the pulpit one Sunday? And he's like, sure, absolutely. And I I flat out apologized in front of the whole congregation. I'm like, guys, I am so sorry for what I've been doing and uh and the wrong thinking and feeling that I've initiated in terms of Pastor Goethe. I apologize, asked for his forgiveness right there. And immediately my back pain disappeared. It was like, all right, God is good, and I understand now that my opinion of myself was really a problem. And I think that I think that that struck me and it stuck with me for a long time to help me understand that um as we go through our class on honor and spiritual authority, we spent a whole time talking about humility and the reason for humility and the example of humility that we have in Christ. And so what I want to share with you guys today is something that kind of comes from that class, but it also comes from some conversations that some of us as elders have had with Pastor Maddie. Um it's pertaining to 2 Corinthians. Well, we're gonna do with 2 Corinthians, and we're also gonna do some Old Testament stuff, but if you want to turn to 2 Corinthians chapter 11, what time is it? 1017. I honestly don't have any idea what service time normally ends at. Second service starts at 11:30. You need a little bit of time to park. Ah, we'll go for it. Second, if you know me, you know that I don't have a problem. I mean, believe it or not, I'm an introvert. I really don't like being around people or in front of people. I like to be by myself in the lab, or I like to be by myself in the shop or the garage, or yesterday, Jaddius and I were taking apart microwave ovens. It was amazing. You know that there's, yeah, never mind. Here's another thing that I thought about on the road this morning. This is actually a good aside. I was driving in in my my nice old Dodge truck this morning, and I was just thinking about the sermon and what I was gonna say, and about teaching in general, and I I guess it flashed through my mind that point. I'm like, you know, if Pastor Maddie had asked me to teach a class on chemistry, bam, that would have been the best thing in the world because after 30 years of teaching chemistry, you pick a topic and I can give you an hour or two lecture on it, can go through some problems. I love science and I love chemistry. And I I felt convicted because I got saved at 13. I didn't really become a chemist officially, a PhD chemist, until 2000. And so I've known Jesus and the Word of God much longer than I've known chemistry. And I kind of felt convicted that do I love the Word of God as much as I love science? I mean, you guys who know me well, you know that I always want to talk about science. But do I love the Word of God as much as I love science and his creation? And I felt convicted about that. And I felt like really, I mean, I do want to love the Word more, and I do want to spend time in the Word more, and I'm thankful that I have time because I'm retired, but man, it's just the things that go through our minds, and yet God is good as we sang this morning. God is good. And those songs we sing, amazing, bring back lots of memories. Um 2 Corinthians 11, chapter, 2 Corinthians chapter 11, verse 3. Um just verse 3. Um, but I'm afraid lest as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds should be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ. Um I looked at a bunch of translations of this verse, and if you look in the Greek, and I won't make you look in the Greek because I don't have the ability to put my phone up there right now, but the actual if you read it in the Greek, it says essentially that your minds be corrupted from simplicity, and my translation says simplicity and purity, the New King James leaves it out, but in the Greek, those words are both there. Simplicity and purity. And it doesn't say that is in that is in devotion to Christ, which my translation says, and most of them do. That's not all there. It just says in Christ, the simplicity and purity that is in Christ, or the simplicity and purity of Christ. And I I think about that, and I'm I'm compelled. Now, let me explain to you why this verse has come up, and it's because no surprise, Pastor Maddie has to deal with y'all. And well, um, we all have problems, right? And we do and say things that cause problems, and then as elders, I mean Pastor Maddie doesn't rat on you guys, but sometimes he's like, you know what, I don't know what to do about this particular thing. And so we share thoughts, we comment, we pray together about stuff, but I feel like this verse is heavy on Pastor Maddie's heart because if you've been around for a while, more than let's say a week, you've heard him preach very, very excellent sermons out of the Word of God, straight from the Word of God, giving us instruction on how to live, how to handle problems, how to grow up, how to be a man, how to be a woman. I mean, I can look through my notes, or Anthony Cook's notes, who takes the best. I mentioned this on Wednesday. Anthony Cook takes the best notes. If you ever miss a sermon in your life, you miss a point, ask Anthony Cook. He has I've got notes, but sometimes I struggle to read my notes. So I mean, it yeah, it's one of those things. But but my heart for Pastor Maddie is that that this body will come to understand the gravity of his role as the leader in this house. That I understand that Jesus is the head of the church, but he appoints people to lead particular churches. In this case, um, it's Pastor Maddie and his wife, Mama Candace, they are the spiritual heads of this household. And I I feel like as we grow and as things change, that it causes waves of unsettlement in the congregation. Because people don't like change. I don't like change. I've learned to deal with it, but if you go out to eat with me, you know that I pretty much always get whatever I get at a particular restaurant. Taco Bell,$7 Lux box. Always the same. Always never change. They got this, no, I don't want to change. I like the things that I like. But things change. And I'll I'll share one of the things that that concerned me. So when we were at the old building, it was small, was intimate, worship was really exciting, and you had to work your way up to the front to get to the pit, to the mosh pit. Remember the old building and the excitement that was in that place? And I'll be honest with you, when Pastor Maddie said we're gonna buy this new building, and I saw it, I'm like, oh, that building's big. We're never gonna fill that building. It's gonna be, I didn't say this, but it I thought it in my heart. I thought, ugh, we're gonna lose something by being in that space, right? And I feel like that that is something that happens regularly in our lives. We're faced with change or we're faced with things that rock our boat a little bit, and how we respond is um really crucial to the health of our own spiritual well-being, the health of our family's spiritual well-being, and importantly, the health of this body as a being. Okay? So when Pastor Maddie threw this verse out to us as elders, and he said, you know, I feel like this has been going on, where I have been, and you can read more on it, talks about before that. I I betrothed you to one bride, right? Paul is talking to the Corinthians, and he's frustrated because there's some um complexities going on, and they're making bad decisions, and they're doing things that he wouldn't expect them to do. And then I'm reminded of um Galatians in Galatians chapter 3, Sheila knows I love this verse. It's you foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you before whose eyes Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. He's dealing with issues in the body that he shouldn't have to deal with because of all the examples he's laid out, all the words he's preached, and yet there is still stuff happening. All right? And and I'll be honest with you, we as elders we see stuff and and and we carry the weight with him. But I want to I want to go through this verse a little bit in terms of helping you understand what's in you, all right, what's inside you as a person. And and I I'm preaching to myself as well as hopefully preaching to y'all. You can take it as preaching or teaching or whatever you want. But if you think about this verse, I'm afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ. What strikes me first is uh this verse here that says, your minds. The serpent actually I should back up a minute even before that. The serpent deceived Eve. He didn't deceive Adam, he deceived Eve. All right? That's an interesting point. The second thing is he's he's concerned that their minds would be led astray. Their minds, what happens in your mind? Reasoning happens in your mind, you think in your mind, you plan in your mind, you look at stuff and you analyze it in your thinking. All right? From the simplicity that is in Christ. The simplicity and purity. And I'm thinking, what is what is the simplicity and purity that is in Christ? And you can come with all kinds of things, but I think probably for me, what strikes me is what we think about Christ and what we think about his life. If you turn with me to Philippians chapter 2, I'll give you a little bit of an insight in terms of what I think about when I think about that. Philippians chapter 2. Philippians chapter 2, verse 5. Have this attitude in yourself, which was also in Jesus, in Christ Jesus. Okay, so there it is. In Christ. Have this attitude in yourself, which was also in Christ, who, although he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped. But he emptied himself, taking on the form of a bondservant. And being made in the likeness of men, and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross. The rest of the verse just talks about him being exalted. But I think when I think about the previous verse in Corinthians, where it says, Your minds be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ, or the simplicity and purity that is in Christ. And then I read this second passage in Philippians, I begin to get an idea, maybe, of what Paul was trying to communicate. Jesus was God. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit got together to formulate a plan for salvation. The word tells us that Jesus is the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world. So that plan was formulated a long time ago. The three of them were in agreement about what was going to happen. And Jesus willingly subjected himself to becoming human like us. He humbled himself. Pastor Matthews talked about the condescension of God recently, in recent weeks, about during communion, we remember how God humbled himself and became like us, the condescension of God. So he became like one of us. And then the part about being obedient. And this is the part I think that sticks with me the most. Because as I'm teaching a class on spiritual authority, we took some time to find to find what authority means. And last week we talked a little bit about the fact that because God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit were all active in creation, that everything we see, whether thrones or dominions, visible or invisible in Colossians 1, all of that stuff was created by him and for him. That means he's the final authority because he made everything. And so we don't have any problem with that. I don't think most of us have an issue accepting the authority that God has. I think the problem comes in when God gives that authority to somebody. And then we have to obey that authority or not obey that authority. And this is, I think, the sticky point that we often encounter because we feel like, yes, I'm going to obey God, but I don't like the person that you're using to bring that authority to place in my life. And so there's a diet, there's a problem. And it comes about in your thinking and also in your reasoning and in your heart. But I want to caution you that even though that might come up, it doesn't have to stay there. So let's let's go to the part in Genesis where this story actually takes place. And we're going to get to this in my class very soon here because part of authority is certainly authority in the home. And Genesis chapter, Genesis chapter 3 talks about the authority that eventually happens in the home. But before we do Genesis chapter 3, let's look at Genesis chapter 2, where God creates Adam. My Bible, these first couple pages are a little bit hard to pull apart. Genesis chapter 1, I believe, is where it said. There it is. Genesis chapter 2, verse 16. Alright. And the Lord commanded the man, saying, From any tree of the garden you may eat freely, but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it, you shall surely die. So here's something interesting. If you want to go there, you don't necessarily have to, but Ive wasn't around yet. God created man. Everybody's, all the animals, he's naming the animals, and that's how he finds out he doesn't find a suitable helpmate. But he tells Adam, don't touch this tree, don't eat it. Actually, he just says, Don't eat it. He doesn't say don't touch it. He just says, don't eat from it. And he gave that command to Adam. There's no record of God giving that command to Eve. There's only a record of God giving that command to Adam. So here we have an establishment, the earliest establishment of the hierarchy of the order of God. God creates everything and he gives a command. And again, when we were talking about authority in the class, I wanted to say authority in its brutal, simplest form, is the authority of someone in your life to give you a command and expect you to obey it. That's what authority is. Authority has the ability to give you a command and expect your obedience. And you can expand that and make it more subtle. You can talk about moral authority, you can talk about governmental authority. And be honest, I had the class title spiritual authority, but to be honest with you, all authority is spiritual authority. Then we go to chapter 3, and we find that the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord had made. And he said to the woman, stop there for a second. He said to the woman, why did he, why do you suppose he didn't go to Adam? Why did he go to the woman instead of Adam? I mean, you could speculate on a whole bunch of reasons. He didn't. And again, I'm not trying to cast shade on men or women. I think what's important for you to understand here is that God gave a command to Adam. And by giving that command to Adam, he established some authority in Adam. And Eve came from Adam. And I believe as his wife, there was a degree of subjection in a good way, in a good, loving, kind way. There was some subjection between the husband and the wife. And Satan knew that Adam wasn't gonna do it because he had that verse directly from God. He was in communion with his authority. He figured I'll play an angle. He said to the woman, Indeed, has God said, You shall not eat from any tree of the garden? And the woman said, All right, again, look at the way he says that. The phrasing he uses, the surreptitiousness of his speaking, instead of saying, Did God really say you couldn't eat from this one tree? He's like, You can you he said you can't eat from any of these trees. He's twisting the words. That's why it's important to know the word of God so that you aren't deceived when someone comes at you, Satan or otherwise. And the woman said to the serpent, From the fruit of the tree of the garden, the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat, but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, You shall not eat from it or touch it, lest you die. Interesting. I find it intriguing how she replied to him. She didn't say, Well, my husband told me not to eat of it. She said, God told me not to eat of it. That's one thing that troubles me just a little bit. And the other thing is that she she changed the wording a little bit, right? Because God said, Don't eat from it. She said, Well, don't eat from it and don't touch it. Um I find that this little thing, this little how do I say this? Chain of command. You understand what I'm saying? God spoke to Adam. Adam spoke to Eve. But when the serpent spoke to Eve, she didn't think about her husband. She kind of did an end run around her husband and went right to God. And you might say in your mind, of course, that's great. We all have access to God. We all have the ability to interpret the scriptures and think what we want and say what we want, because, well, that's our prerogative, right? Maybe. Let's look at what she did. So part of what we're going to talk about in my class is the areas where we have to understand obedience. And I think obedience has kind of three phases. I guess obedience or disobedience has three phases. So where you can start is generally in your mind. You think about something. And then you can speak about something, and then you can take an action. Let's look at what Eve did. She thought about it, right? She started to think about it in verse 4. And the woman said, and the serpent said to the woman, You shall surely not die, for God knows in the day you eat from it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. When the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate, and she gave to her husband with her, and he ate. And their eyes were opened, and they both knew they were naked, and you know the rest of the story. Um she looked at it. She listened and she looked at the thing, and she thought about, hmm, this is this is good. And and this is where my problem comes about, and that is if the word of God says something, and you think differently about what the word of God says, what are you gonna do? And and you all face this every day. I face this every day. The word of God says something, and I maybe it's my upbringing, maybe it's um my lack of upbringing, but I think in my mind differently than what the word of God says, and so I have a choice to make. I can I can look at the word of God and say, I know this is what the word of God says, because it's in plain English. I've got 10 different translations, I can read it in the Greek, I can read it in the Hebrew, this is what it says. But if I begin to think about it and I begin to reason about it in my mind, I can find a way almost always to not do what the Word of God says. And this is kind of what Eve did. She thought about it, and she looked at it, and you're like, Yeah, you actually, you're right. It's a pretty tree. And I mean, yeah, I'd like to be wise. And and um, man, I'm hungry. Let's give it a shot. And and she did. She ate it and she gave her husband, and that's a whole nother story. I don't want to spend too much time talking about what happened there, but I want to focus on is the fact that there was a command and there was disobedience, right? What leads you into taking the command and not obeying that command? And unfortunately, we're all the same stuff as Eve, right? We are all entirely the same stuff as Eve. What did I write here? Because I'm a human, I have, I am the same stuff. Ah, Sheila will like this. My favorite words. This gives me, or this same propensity, this same proclivity. She knew it was coming. I like that word. This same propensity, the same proclivity lives in me. I will stand here before you and tell you that as a human, I want to do my own thing. Every single minute of every single day, I want to do what I want to do. Sometimes, sometimes in my rational thinking, what the word of God tells me to do and what I want to do overlap. And then it's easy to obey the word of God. But more often than not, the word of God says something, and my inner man begins to rise up and say, Well, I don't I don't like that. I don't want to do that. For whatever reason. I could come up with a million reasons. The reasoning is up here in my brain, it's thinking in my brain, and I I have to choose what to do with that thing when it comes at me. All right? Why is this important? All right, why why do I feel like this message is important? I touched on it a little bit. As a church, you probably have noticed that things have changed if you've been here more than two or three years. If you've been here for like a couple weeks, you might not notice it. But if you've been here for a couple of years, at least since we've been in this building, you've seen some changes, have you not? Changes in office staff, changes in the way the services run. Remember when we had two services? We had an evening service and a morning service, all right? Changes in eldership. We didn't always have a board uh a council of elders. There was not always a council of elders. And so things change, and and at and sometimes you used to be able to find a parking spot, then it got hard to find a parking spot. And we went to two services on Sunday morning, and a lot of different things have changing. And I feel like, and I'll be the first to say this, when things change, they kind of ruffle me. I mean, I like to be settled, I like things to be consistent. I'm not a big fan of change. I'm thankful that Pastor Maddie, if he tries something and it doesn't work, he cuts it off. That makes me happy. Because why would we keep doing something if it doesn't work? That's what happened with Sunday nights. If you're familiar, we started Sunday nights several years ago, and um, they were great for a while, and then the attendance just started going down and down and down and down, and eventually one Sunday night, Pastor Matty said, that's the last one we're doing. We're not doing anymore. We never had, we never got an heads up and staff, and it was just great. I was like, bam, it's done, let's go. And so I appreciate that about him that he doesn't continue to do things that don't work, but it can also be unsettling to you and ruffling to you as a person, someone who calls this place home, you might be like, Well, man, I really like that. And now they got rid of it, and I'm not happy about that. Or, I mean, I could touch on some other things like why do we only have men's prayer and not ladies' prayer? Because Pastor Maddie only wants men's prayer. That's why. Is there a reason for it? If there is, he hasn't shared it with me specifically, but I understand that. All right, I understand the gravity of the men of a house getting together to pray, and I understand what it does for the entire body and all the ladies who are not invited to men's prayer. I know what it does for you and your homes and your families. There's another one. Why don't we have a ladies' ministry? Because we don't. There's your answer. I don't know, but but I joke about these things, but I feel like in our hearts we carry stuff because I mean, I grew up in some God. There was a ladies' ministry, there was a men's ministry, there's kids, all these ministries. And everybody had something they could do and be busy, and you come here and you're like, oh, we don't have that. Well, I want that. Those things, they rise up in you, right? And so change, and it can cause you, it can cause you to feel things or think things, and it can cause you to say things or do things. And and I want I want to bring an admonition because I know what's in me. I know what's in me. When things don't always go the way I think they should, and I've learned, I learned a long time ago that I'm not in charge. Even when I'm in charge, I'm not in charge. And it's so much better to be in that place, um, to be in that place, to trust the leadership that's over you, that their intention is for your good, even if they are imperfect humans. And I think that that is the place that I want all of you to come to. If you call this place your home, if you call Pastor Maddie and Mama Candace the heads of this house, which they are, I mean, you can call them anything you want, that's not gonna change the fact that they are that. But if you come to that realization in your in your mind, it becomes easier to know that they love you and the decisions they make are based on what they feel the Lord has in the best mind for this place. Where we're gonna go eventually in the class on spiritual authority, and this is kind of a kind of I guess a uh a sneak peek, I don't know, is uh Numbers chapter 12. This is an interesting, this is an interesting um story, and this is actually where I really wanted to get to today. I told Miss Kim I wasn't gonna drink the water, but I am. She asked me if I wanted Mountain Dew. And the only reason I said no is because uh the caffeine and being in front of you will make me have to pee. And I can't leave in the middle of a sermon and go to the bathroom. In Numbers chapter 12, excuse me, uh yeah, Numbers chapter 12. Numbers chapter 12, we read a story. And it's a story that many people gloss over because it's just a blip in the in the radar of the history of the children of Israel. But this story speaks volumes to me, and I hope that it I hope that it speaks to you because there's a whole bunch of stuff going on at this exact point. There's there's three characters in this story, Moses, his older sister Miriam, and his older brother Aaron. You remember Moses was born at a time when Pharaoh said, if you are an Egyptian, if you are a like a Hebrew and you have a baby boy, you are to cast that kid into the Nile. You can have a girl, great, you can keep him, but if it's a boy into the Nile, they must go. And I find it interesting that his parents hit him because he was beautiful. You can read the story in um Exodus. And then eventually they threw him in the Nile, but they threw him in the Nile in a reed boat covered with pitch, right? So I guess that's kind of intriguing to me. I never really thought about the fact they were obedient. They didn't say you couldn't put him in a boat. But they followed the law. And this is interesting because at times Romans tells us that all authority is established by God and that we must be obedient to authority. And yet there is a degree of disobedience that sometimes we just got to take the consequences because, like Paul said to the to the high priest, you decide, should we should we honor God or should we honor men? There are times, very few, but there are times. But anyways, um Miriam, his sister, was there when the boat was pushed in. Pharaoh's daughter comes down to bathe with her maids, and she she hears the crying, she opens it up, she's like, Oh, it's one of the Hebrew kids. Oh, he's so cute. And uh and I guess Moses was a beautiful child. That's what the scriptures say. And then Miriam comes up to Pharaoh's daughter and says, Hey, if you want to keep him, I know a lay you can nurse this kid. Right? Think about this. Miriam and Aaron are their slaves. And it turns out it looks like Miriam was somehow related to Pharaoh's daughter. Maybe she was one of her maids in waiting. I don't know. But she came alongside and she convinced her to keep this kid, and then she took him home and nursed him and brought him back, and eventually Pharaoh's daughter adopted Moses as her son, and he became the son of Pharaoh's daughter. He was a Hebrew, but he was adopted into the ruling family. All right, so now you can immediately begin to think about some stuff that could happen if you were in that dynamic. Dude, I got you this job, and now you're the prince of Egypt, if you will, and I'm still a slave. All right, so stuff is going on. We don't really hear much about Aaron in the earlier days, other than later on in the scriptures, it tells us that when Moses went before Pharaoh, he was 80, and his brother Aaron was 88, I think. So we understand from that passage that um Aaron was a little bit older than Moses. We don't know how old Miriam was, but in any case, they leave, they cross the Red Sea, Miriam sings her amazing song, The Horse and Rider thrown into the sea. That song is credited to Miriam, who sang that. But here we are, we've been wandering in the wilderness for a while. People are unhappy, right? In um Numbers 11, they were like, We want meat, and God said, Ah, you want meat? I'll give you meat. And they had like two feet of quail. And as soon as they started eating it, the plague struck them. And so I'm like, be careful what you asked for. But what happens in Numbers 12 is really telling. And this is the thing that I absolutely, positively, daily need to guard my heart about it. And I implore you all to guard your hearts in the same fashion. Look at what happened. Then Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married, for he had married a Cushite woman. We could delve into the depths of what it means that he married a Cushite woman. It doesn't matter. What matters is that they were annoyed that Moses, the leader, who was called by God, who was their younger brother, right? They were set up by God, by the way. God calls the youngster to lead the olders. And they they had no choice in the matter. But they saw something that he did and they were displeased by it. Okay? Now you might say they had every right to be displeased because she was a Kushite, whatever that means. Ethiopian is one of the translations. And you could speculate that Moses was a Hebrew and Ethiopian, maybe she was black and it was interracial. Whatever. They were upset and they talked about it between themselves. Gets worse. Gets very much worse. Verse 2. This is the part, I think this is the progression where we proceed from being on the edge to jumping into the abyss. This is where I want you to think about your lives and the things you say and the things you do before you say undo them, because the abyss is really dangerous. Look at how it progresses in the next verse in verse 2. And they said, Has the Lord indeed spoken only through Moses? Has he not spoken through us as well? And the Lord heard it. This is a really dangerous place to be. And I want you, even as I examine my own heart, do I have I crossed this threshold where I've I've gone from looking at something that's annoying and bothersome to then crossing over the threshold and entering the place where I question the authority that God has placed on them by saying, Well, are they the only ones that can hear from God? No, certainly you can hear from God. But look at the intention of their heart. What were they doing? They were undermining the authority that God had placed in their brother Moses. It started because they didn't like who he married. Whatever. Probably, I went through that with Sheila. My family did not like the fact that I married Sheila. And they didn't, they didn't mince words about it. I was their baby brother. She was the only girl I ever dated. She dated other guys, she's a hussy, Rich, you can't marry this. I think they probably said that, did they not? They might have. Yeah, whatever. Yeah. Exactly. Every one of us does stupid stuff like this. We do. It's within us, right? Proverbs tells us that the foolishness of man ruins his way, and then his heart rages against the Lord. You and I are this, right? Jeremiah, I think it is. It says, the heart is desperately sick and wicked above all else, who can know it? You have to know that you have this tendency within you. Even though you are redeemed, right, you still have a tendency within you to say and do evil things. You do. You need to be regenerated. You need to take that thought captive. But I warn you to not think you don't have that chance. Yeah, it's not me. I would never do that. Well, I went there and it happened. But what's important is they thought they were just talking to each other, like, yeah, man, this punk brother of ours, he's just like, oh, can't stand it. I'm the one that got him that gig in uh Pharaoh's office there. He would have been nothing without me. And and here he is telling us what to do. And why does God talk with him all the time? And we hear from God too, and they're just going to each other, going to each other. And if they had social media, it'd be all over the social media on their on their Facebook page or on their InstaChat or Instagram, Snapchat, Instagram. You could tell that I I use marketplace and that's it. Now the man Moses was very humble more than any man who was on the face of the earth. I said this in class. I mean, Moses wrote numbers. So he had to have written that. I think it's pretty, whatever. I mean, it's there. And suddenly the Lord said to Moses and Aaron and to Miriam, You three come out of the tent of meetings. So they came out. So God calls each of them by name. Then the Lord came down in a pillar of cloud and stood at the doorway of the tent, and he called Aaron and Miriam. So Aaron and Miriam come out, and they're like, dude, yeah, we got an audience with Yahweh. This is gonna be great. He's gonna spake Moses for the Kushite woman. He's gonna let him know. And then God calls those two forward, and they're like, Yeah, this is it. God's gonna dictate, God's gonna vindicate us because you know, we called it. Look. And God says, Hear now my words. If there is a prophet among you, I the Lord shall make myself known to him in a vision, I shall speak with him in a dream. Like Michael Turley, visions and dreams. Not so with my servant Moses, he is faithful in all my household. When I speak with him mouth to mouth, even openly and not in dark sayings, and he beholds the words, he beholds the form of the Lord. Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses? Why weren't you afraid to speak again? What does he say about the Kushite woman? Nothing. God doesn't care about the Kushite woman. It's none of your business, basically, is what God's saying to them. He's like, weren't you why why weren't you afraid? He doesn't, he doesn't he doesn't say, why weren't you afraid to speak against your brother? He says, Why were you not afraid to speak against the servant, my servant Moses? And I think it's crucial for all of us as we as we grow in grace and truth and membership of this body, of this family, that we pay attention, pay attention to what we're saying and doing. So the anger of the Lord burned against them, and he departed. But when the cloud departed, when the cloud had withdrawn from over the tent, behold, Miriam was leprous, as white as snow. And Aaron turned to Miriam, behold, she was leprous. So, first off, he's probably like, whoa, dodged a bullet there. And he begs Moses, Oh Lord, oh my Lord, I beg you, do not account this sin to us in which we have acted foolishly and we have sinned. So they he repents immediately. He realizes, oh my God, what have I done? Of course, he didn't realize the gravity of what he'd done until his sister was covered with leprosy, which was a death sentence in that day. Do not let her be like one of the dead whose flesh is half eaten when she comes from the womb. And Moses cried out to the Lord, saying, Oh God, heal her, I pray. That's amazing. Moses didn't, he wasn't offended at all. He was immediately able to intercede and say, Lord, please forgive her and heal her. And God's reply is if her dad had but spit in her face, she would be unclean for seven days. Let her sit outside the camp for seven days. And she did. But what's interesting, and we're closing in on being done. So what's interesting is that while she was outside the camp for seven days, they could not move. The camp could not move, it was stationary. And you read shortly after that, the spies went out to spy out the land. So we think, well, what I think, what I say, what I do doesn't really matter. It does. God hears it. We also think that it doesn't impact the people around us. That is also wrong. The whole congregation, the million people were stuck in that spot while she sat outside the camp for seven days because she spoke against her brother. And she didn't think it was a big deal. She's just kind of like, hmm, no, no, a little little nitpicky kind of stuff. And I I think I think the term that's used in the Old Testament is murmuring. And we don't use that term a lot much anymore because we don't, I don't know, Old Testamenty. We don't we don't murmur. We we post our comments on Facebook, on social media, we like to give our opinion. There it is. Give our opinions. I would encourage you, as I encourage myself, that if you feel the need to be right, if you feel the need to be heard and seen, and it's causing you to say and do things that are distracting and destructive to others, you need to stop. I just can't say it any other way. If if if something wells up in you when things happen that are out of your control that you have no control over, and and specifically I'm referring to the body of Christ, because in your family, I mean it it parallels every aspect of your life. But if if things happen that you don't have control over, but you feel like you should have control over, and you use your thoughts and your words and your actions to make your voice known, you are like Miriam stepping into the abyss. And I promise the same thing will happen in your life. It may not happen immediately, but God's word is true, as true as it was for Miriam, as it is for me, as it is for you, that you can't take lightly what happens when you speak a word. You can't take lightly what happens when you um write something on social media. You can't take lightly what happens when you talk, maybe just with a friend or with your spouse, but that talking that you're doing is not encouraging or uplifting. How do you how do you fight that? The scriptures give us a clue. In uh Philippians 2.8, I believe it is. Paul tells the Philippians, or is it Ephesians 2.8? Give me a second here. It is I didn't write it down. Take every thought captive, I think it's Philippians. Take every thought captive to the knowledge of Christ. You need to spend time in the Word, you need to spend time in prayer, and you need to think about what it means to take your thoughts captive. When things come into your mind, you don't have to think those things. You can replace those with the word of God, you can replace those. And if you if you find something coming within you, you got to deal with it. And the way to deal with it is not, is not to talk to someone else or post about it on social media. And again, I don't look at social media, so I don't really care. But I'm I I want you to prosper, I want you to thrive, and I want you to be able to come into this place and enter into worship. I want you to be able to look at Pastor Maddie and say, that is a man that I can serve. That is a man whose vision I can serve. That is someone whose leadership I can come under. And when he delegates that leadership to someone else, I can I can deal with that, right? Like, for instance, those of you who are in the media, right? You may have a new boss coming up pretty soon here, right? Whoever Pastor Maddie hires for that position will be someone he hires for that position. And those of you who work on media, you have no choice. If you're on Mita, you will have to do what that person tells you to do because Pastor Maddie has given his authority to that person. It may be they're like Luke, it may be they're not like Luke, right? But you on that team have a choice to make, like all of us do on a daily basis. So I personally just want to encourage you to um take your walk with Jesus to the next level in terms of the way you relate to the people around you, the things you say, the words that you use. Try to be more encouraging rather than discouraging. Try to be building up rather than tearing down. The word tells us to treat each other's, to treat others better than we treat ourselves, right? To think more highly of them than you think of yourself, right? There's all sorts of admonitions in the scripture about how to carry these things out. And I I want the best for you. I really do. I want you guys to thrive. I want your families to be whole and healthy and happy. Um, but more than I want you to be happy, I want to honor Pastor Maddie. And I want to see his vision for the altar fellowship thrive. Whatever that is, whatever he comes in next week and says, this is what we're doing, I want to be happy about it and I want to see it thrive. Amen? All right, it's 11.02. I think that's probably time to stop. Yahweh, thank you. Thank you for this amazing body, Lord. I am, I mean, every time I come into this house, I'm thankful. I'm thankful for the little kids, Lord God, who are happy and joyful and running and shouting, Lord. I'm thank you for everyone who serves from hospitality to parking to coffee, Lord God, for those who pick up after um the kids, Lord God, those who um empty the trash, Lord, everyone who looks at something and does it, Lord. And I pray that as as we think about what you're saying to us today, Lord God, I pray that the um the message of Miriam and Aaron wouldn't escape us, Lord God, that we would we wouldn't even be close to that, Lord God. When when we look at others and we think, oh, they married a Cushite woman. No, no, no, no, no, Lord. I pray that you would you just stifle that. Just stop us in our tracks when we even begin to think and say stuff like that. We wouldn't be, uh we wouldn't be like Eve. We wouldn't be able to be deceived by the serpent's craftiness because our hearts would be grounded, our minds would be stayed on you, Yahweh. So thank you for this day. I pray that you would be exalted. Bless Pastor Maddie and Mama Cannis. I pray that they would experience the fullness and the goodness of your Holy Spirit today in Jesus' name. Amen. Um yeah, Wednesday night at 6:30 is class and youth. And next Sunday at 7 is men's prayer. If you see the Madeiroses, put some honos in their pocket because they're gonna need them. Hallelujah. All right, love you guys. See you next week.

SPEAKER_00 59:58

Thank you for tuning in to this service from the altar fellowship. We pray that you were impacted powerfully by this message. If you have been personally affected by our ministry and you would like to partner with the altar as we work to establish the kingdom of heaven, please visit our website at www.thealtar.org.