God’s Measure of Success

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Transcript:

My son is to the point where he’s starting to figure out how all the buckles and snaps work on his car seat. And it’s pretty impressive because it took me a while to figure out how all the buckles and snaps work to get him secured in there. He’s to the point where now when we get stopped and get ready to get out of the car, he thinks he can try to.

. . He’s still not real good at it, but he thinks he can try to unsnap himself or try to snap himself in when we get into the car.

Sometimes we’ll get in the car and I’ll open both of their doors, tell them climb up in their seat. That way I can go buckle one in and buckle the other one. I’ll tell them, get in your seat, and he might put the top part in that buckle.

And then he’ll tell me, sissy didn’t buckle herself. I didn’t tell either of you to buckle yourself. I said, get in your seat.

I didn’t tell you to do the whole thing yourself. I didn’t tell you to fix the whole thing yourself. All I said was, all you had to do was get in your seat.

Now, if you go a step further and buckle yourself in, as long as I come check it and it’s fine, that’s not a big deal. But I didn’t tell you to buckle yourself in. I just don’t tattle on her. All I said was get in her seat.

And she did that. Now, the reason I bring that up tonight, that we’re going to talk about what success is by God’s standards. Because the world will look at us and say, you’ve got to accomplish this and that, and you’ve got to do this, and you’ve got to climb that mountain, and you’ve got to conquer this challenge.

And we look at that, and we pull that over into the Christian life with us, and say, well, to be a success as a Christian, I’ve got to do this, and I’ve got to win that. And I remember when it finally dawned on me a few years ago, this principle, I knew this principle had preached this principle, but when I started to apply it, oh, the difference it made. Because I was taking classes on evangelism.

We did, before I ended up at Southgate, I took a class on evangelism, explosion, you know, different ways to witness. And there are different ways than just that, but different ways to share my faith. and we would go out and we would try to witness to people.

And I think I’ve mentioned here before, some of you may remember Richard Parker, if you’ve been around long enough, ex-Marine and retired truck driver who went to Southgate, big tough guy. And some of us would go witnessing with him in Bricktown and he was much bolder than I could ever dream about being. And it just came as second nature to him and I’d think I can never do this.

And it used to bother me. It used to bother me if we’d go out and try to witness to people at their homes or if we’d go pass out tracks or just sit and talk to people, and nobody would get saved. I think, but God told us to go out and evangelize, and nobody’s getting saved.

Why am I a failure as a Christian? And then I realized God didn’t tell me to go get people saved. He told me to go out and share the gospel.

Now, that doesn’t mean I don’t want people to get saved. That means, sort of like with what he told Moses to do this morning, you just open your mouth and I’ll take care of the heavy lifting. We open our mouths and share the gospel.

We open our mouths and share the gospel. We’re being obedient to God. He does the heavy lifting.

It’s the Holy Spirit that convicts and draws men to Christ. So is God’s standard for us that we have to be successful? We have to accomplish everything ourselves, or is God’s standard for us something different? And I’m going to go ahead and give you the key to the message tonight.

I would say if you want to quit listening after this, go ahead. Don’t quit listening. God’s standard for us is not success the way the world looks at it.

We bring in a worldly perspective and say, oh, nobody came to Christ today. Or nobody did this, or I wasn’t able to do this. When God hasn’t told us, drag them kicking and screaming to Christ. God hasn’t told us, do this.

God hasn’t told us, get 500 people in this auditorium. God has told us to do certain things and his standard for us is obedience. Did God tell us to go get everybody saved?

Is that something we can do anyway? Or did God tell us to be obedient and be faithful to go share his word? Well, that we can do.

Did God tell us to pack this place full of 500 people? Or did he tell us to make the invitation available? Did he tell us to go out and love people?

I think it was the latter. and he’ll take care of the heavy lifting. That’s sort of where that first example came in.

Did I tell my kids to get themselves ready to drive off with no help from me, or did I just tell them to get in their seats and I’d take care of the hard part? That’s sort of where we are with God. God does not demand success from us.

God demands obedience. And we turn to the story of Jeremiah, the beginning of his story. And if you’re not familiar with the book of Jeremiah, with the story of Jeremiah, It’s a fascinating story.

I’m not as familiar with it as I would like to be. Because the more I know about Jeremiah, the more I sort of see myself in the story. It’s interesting.

I find myself saying this a lot, that I see myself in the story of these Bible characters. It’s usually with what they’re doing wrong. Jeremiah had a rough experience in his ministry.

Jeremiah was called to, the reason I say I see myself in Jeremiah is because later on we see in the story in this book, we see where he’s gone and done what God has told him to do and he’s proclaimed God’s word, but he sits there and he weeps over the people and says, why do they not get it? And I have those times, whether it’s in church, I don’t think y’all have done it to me, but I have had those experiences in church or at school or wherever or I’m just banging my head against the table. Why are they not getting this?

And weeping and praying, God, won’t you do something to open people’s eyes? And Jeremiah got discouraged. I think we all get discouraged.

I think we probably all, if we’re familiar with the story, would see a little bit of ourselves in Jeremiah. He didn’t have an easy time of ministry. But God called him to go and do ministry.

God didn’t call him to be successful. God called him to be obedient. That’s what he did.

And so it says in chapter 1 verse 1, The words of Jeremiah, the son of Hilkiah, of the priests that were in Anathoth, in the land of Benjamin, to whom the word of the Lord came in the days of Josiah, the son of Ammon, king of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign. It came also in the days of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, unto the end of the eleventh year of Zedekiah, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, unto the carrying away of Jerusalem captive in the fifth month. Okay, what all of that is telling you, with all the names and the dates that are interspersed in those three verses, is that God called Jeremiah to do his ministry during the reign of King Josiah, who was a good king.

But God also led him to continue his ministry through the reigns of some others who were not such good kings. He wasn’t allowed to let up just because the winds had shifted. And on top of that, he was called to continue his ministry up to the point of the captivity and beyond.

Jeremiah is one of the few prophets in the Old Testament who had the longevity that we see his ministry before the captivity and during the captivity. So God spoke to him at the beginning of his ministry back when Josiah was king. If there was an easy time in Jeremiah’s ministry, it should have been in the beginning.

Because Josiah is the one, if you’ll remember, who came in as a young man. He inherited the throne and his father and grandfather were not the best kings and they had allowed idol worship to go on to infect the whole kingdom. And Josiah came in as a young man and said, we can do better than this.

God expects us to do better than this. And Josiah shut down the pagan altars that his father had put up. Josiah shut down the idol worship.

Josiah cleaned house of the country. Josiah said we as a nation are going to return to God. Now did Josiah go at a sword point to every home in the country and say you’re going to change your ways?

I don’t see that in here. But what I see is that Josiah as the leader said we as a nation need to get back to God. We as a nation need to return to our principles and what we know to be true.

And he didn’t just talk about it, He did it himself. We have lots of leaders that talk about family values and doing the right thing and yet never do anything about it in their own homes, in their own lives. Much harder to do than to just talk about it.

And nobody responds. Josiah didn’t start with cleaning up the country. He cleaned house first. He got his house in order and he got the country in order and people followed suit because the people saw his example and sort of woke up and realized, He’s right.

He’s right. And so Josiah led what we would call a revival in the nation of Israel. And it was during his reign that God called Jeremiah to speak.

Jeremiah also spoke when it was unpopular to speak. Jeremiah was called on by God to speak when the other kings of Judah who came after Josiah didn’t share his narrow-minded religious views and said, what’s wrong with a little idol worship? What’s wrong with a little bit of treaties and agreements and close good old boy relationships with Egypt and Babylon?

What’s wrong with a little bit of that? And it wasn’t popular for Jeremiah to speak out in those days. Jeremiah was called on later to speak when it was even harder to speak.

When they were under siege by foreign countries, they were under siege by Babylon. And we know how we respond as a nation when we’re attacked. After Pearl Harbor, was it Admiral Yamamoto who said, I’m afraid we’ve awakened a sleeping giant.

After 9-11, I remember we were ready, oh my goodness, that day watching it on television. We didn’t know yet who had done it. We just saw, I was in the 10th grade when that happened and school stopped.

And we stood there and watched the TVs. And I remember seeing video of Palestinians dancing in the streets and doing the little, I can’t even make the sound. but so happy about what had been done.

We thought it was the Palestinians. And as high school students, we were talking about how we need to go over there and turn the Middle East into a sheet of glass. Now, that’s not my position today.

But, you know, we as Americans, they can’t treat us like this. We’re going to get them. They can’t push us around.

That’s the same attitude that was held by the people of Judah. When the Babylonians were laying siege to them later on in Jeremiah’s ministry, They’re like, we’re the Israelites, you can’t do this to us. And Jeremiah had to preach the very unpopular message from God that this was God’s judgment on Babylon.

Jeremiah encouraged the people, said, don’t resist. You’re going to make it worse for yourself. This is God’s judgment. Don’t put up a fight.

Just lay down and let it happen because God’s ordained it to happen. That wasn’t a popular message to hear. And Jeremiah was locked up essentially for treason.

So we see that he had a rough time in ministry, And yet it was God who called him to do his work. It was God who equipped him to do his work. It was God who led him every step of the way.

It says in verse 4, well, I’ve given you the ending of the story before it even started. Verse 4 says, Then the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Before I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee. And before thou camest forth out of the womb, I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.

Now, he is speaking here to Jeremiah specifically. but there are principles that apply to all of us. There are principles that apply to every human life in this passage.

God revealed to Jeremiah, I knew you before I formed you in the belly. I don’t think that’s peculiar to Jeremiah because we see where David said the same thing, that God had known him before he was even born. When his substance was yet unformed, when he had no shape or form, Before the fingers were there and the eyelashes, God knew who David was.

And what I see in the Bible is, you know what? God knew you before you were even born. God knew who you were going to be.

God knew how your story was going to turn out. God knew how your story would end. And think about it this way.

God knew all the things that you were going to do and chose to love you anyway. Isn’t that incredible? Before I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee.

And before thou camest forth out of the womb, I sanctified thee. He said, before you were born, you were set apart. Before you were conceived, I knew you.

And before you were born, I set you apart to a purpose. Now he says to Jeremiah, I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations. I wouldn’t say necessarily that God has called every one of us to be a prophet to the nations.

But the other part of that, I think is universal as well. Before we’re born, he has set us apart to a purpose. God has a plan for us.

I know some people don’t like to hear that because it sounds like there’s no free will. What do you mean I don’t have a choice? God has determined everything that’s ever going to happen.

I don’t believe that. God was always giving people choices to serve him or not serve him throughout scripture. What I see here is that God has a plan for us, a path that would be the very best for us if we’ll just submit and follow that path.

I also know God’s not taken by surprise. And there’s another plan in there, should we choose not to follow the first one. And at any point, God knows the paths we can take.

God knows, I’m getting into difficult to understand even for me territory here. Theologians debate, how much does God know? Does God know not only all the things that will happen, but all possibilities?

I say God knows what he wants to know. It’s not that hard. You know what?

God knows at every juncture and every choice in our lives how he can best work it for our good and our glory. I’m sorry, our good and his glory. But before you were ever born, God had a plan to set you apart and to use you if you would just make yourself usable.

And for Jeremiah, that plan was to be a prophet to the nations. Not just to the people of Israel. Yes, he would, or Judah, he would prophesy to Israel.

But he’d prophesy, when the Babylonians were there, He’d prophesy when the Persians were there. The Egyptians were also going to be attacking Jerusalem at the time during his ministry. Basically, God said, I’m setting you apart to speak my word to whoever is there within hearing distance when I tell you to speak.

It would have been a scary assignment. It would have been a terrifying assignment. There was so much upheaval in the world even before the captivity.

Not too long before this, the Assyrians had come over and taken over 10 of the 12 tribes and carried them off into oblivion. They were interspersed and moved around with all the other nations in the Assyrian Empire. That’s why we call them the 10 lost tribes.

It’s not that they were lost. Nobody knows what happened to them. It’s not the lost colony at Roanoke. Where did they go?

We know where they went. They intermarried and were moved around and just sort of blended in with everybody else. And now there were these two tribes left.

Two of the original 12 tribes left there on their land. And there had to be the knowledge that, you know what, they were punished for ignoring God and we are going down the same road. I heard a speaker last night who said, you know, if your buddy, he was talking about getting an education, learn, learn from your experiences, learn from other people’s experiences.

And he said, if your buddy jumps off of a tall building and goes splat, and you watch it happen, do you then have to jump off the building to see what happens? Or can you learn from somebody else’s experience without going down the same road? Guys, they had watched the northern kingdom jump off the building and go splat.

They had watched Israel ignore God and get taken over by the Assyrians, and they were going down the same road. The prophets could not convince the people to stop and turn back. And so Jeremiah looks at this and says, you want me to try to slam the brakes on this thing?

And he says in verse 6, Then said I, Ah, Lord God, behold, I cannot speak, for I am a child. I don’t know how young Jeremiah was at this point, but obviously in his mind, he’s not somebody who’s going to be listened to by the people. Look back at prophets like Amos.

He couldn’t slam the brakes on the downward spiral of Israel. God, you called him out of the fig farms to go speak to the king and you gave him powerful words and he couldn’t change the hearts of the people. Lord, I’m just a child and you want me to go speak to the people of Judah?

I can’t. But the Lord said unto me, Say not, I am a child. For thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee.

And whatsoever I command thee, thou shalt speak. Be not afraid of their faces, for I am with thee to deliver thee, saith the Lord. He says, don’t tell me you’re just a child.

Don’t tell me you’re just a child. He says, your job here is to speak when told to. Wherever I send you, whoever I send you to, you’ll speak to them.

Don’t be afraid of their faces. Don’t be afraid of the mocking and the jeering and the looks that could kill. Don’t be afraid.

You know what? Let’s pull this out a little farther. That could mean to.

Don’t be afraid of the words that come out of their faces. You’ve got nothing to fear from these people because I’m with you to deliver you. Verse 9 says, Then the Lord put forth his hand and touched my mouth.

And the Lord said unto me, Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth. So not only wherever, I’ll tell you where to go. I’ll tell you who to talk to.

But he also says, I’ll give you the words you need to speak. I’ll give you the words that can make a difference. See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms to root out and to pull down and to destroy and to throw down, to build and to plant.

He says, I put you over these nations to build up and tear down, to weed out the trouble spots. We can look at Jeremiah’s ministry and say very easily that he wasn’t successful. He wasn’t able to stop the downward spiral of Judah.

The people continued to ignore God and the Babylonians came in and took him over just like God threatened, Just like God warned. He didn’t stop that. He didn’t stop the way the people behaved.

He didn’t. And the world would look at that and say, Jeremiah was not successful. But what was Jeremiah called to do?

He was called to speak and to weed out. Weed out in this instance doesn’t necessarily mean either get rid of the evil influences in the country. I tell you what, you start preaching God’s word.

Not even preaching God’s word from the pulpit, but preaching God’s word in your own life. living by it, talking about it, upholding godly principles, standing for godly principles, and you do it with boldness and with compassion and with conviction, you’re going to find out who people really are pretty quickly. Recently, and I can’t remember how long ago it’s been, it may have been in the last few weeks, but we’ve talked some about the book of Acts and when the gospel was preached and when the message of the resurrection was preached.

And in a couple places, it talks about people being pricked in their hearts. they were very obviously under conviction because the message was preached that, you know, you thought this was just some guy who was blaspheming. Even though deep down in your hearts, you knew he was from God.

And you took Jesus and you murdered him, but God raised him up from the dead. And the Bible talks about some being driven to their knees in repentance. I mean, it doesn’t say those exact words, but you get the sense of it when it says they’re pricked in their hearts and saying, men and brethren, what can we do?

Some men being driven to repentance. Excuse me. Some men being driven to repentance by hearing God’s word proclaimed boldly.

Driven to their knees. Hearts broken in two. What must we do?

Other men being driven mad and wanting to kill the apostles. And it became very clear very quickly what was in their hearts. See, that’s part of the weeding out.

It’s not necessarily it’s your job to change everybody. It’s your job to fix everybody. Sometimes our job is just to preach God’s word and let it illuminate whatever’s going on already.

Jeremiah preached in very difficult circumstances. He preached in hard times where it cost him a lot to do the ministry he’d been called to do. He didn’t change the nation.

He didn’t change the direction of the nation. He didn’t save them from being overrun by the Babylonians. He didn’t turn the nation back to God, but some people heard the message.

Some people took the message to heart. He took the environment of the country from gray to black and white. And it became very clear in that time when the preaching is accomplished, when God’s word is proclaimed, when we’re faithful to illuminate those contrasts, you could see very easily who was on the Lord’s side and who was not.

he was very successful in being obedient and drawing a line in the sand and saying do we stand with God or do we stand with those who would lead us away from God. Folks our job is not to be successful the way the world looks at it and says we should be successful. Our job is not to accomplish all the things that we think we’re supposed to accomplish.

Our job is to be obedient. We’ve got enough to grapple with just by being obedient. It’s hard enough to be obedient.

Let’s not add to it extra things that God never called us to accomplish. Let’s not take on ourselves the jobs that are his to do. And how many times do we talk ourselves out of being obedient because we confuse the two?

We confuse obedience and success. Say, well, God, I’m not going to do that because there’s no way I could accomplish this. To use the example from my kids again, God, I’m not going to climb up in my car seat because I know I can’t buckle myself in.

That’s not what he called us to do. God, I’m not going to talk to people about Jesus Christ because I know I can’t convince them to get saved. This is not my job.

My job is to lay out the message with compassion and clarity. It’s the Holy Spirit’s job to convict them. Don’t confuse success and obedience or we’ll talk ourselves out of obedience.

Obedience. Obedience is exactly what God expects from us. It’s exactly what we owe Him in every circumstance.

It is to trust Him enough, believe His promises, and trust that He will take care of the heavy lifting. We’ll just be obedient and make ourselves available to Him.