We want to get right into the word this morning.
And Lord, I thank you for Pastor Gary's kind words
and what he had to say.
But the reality of all of it is it's not about a man.
It's not about a gifting.
It's about your anointing.
It is the anointing, God.
And is the anointing we pray for this morning.
It is the anointing of the Holy Spirit we ask for.
You're the only one that can break through.
You're the only one that could shatter.
And this is what you put on my heart
this morning-- unbelief must be shattered.
And God, I am asking that you would come
and you would shatter unbelief with your anointing
and with your word, God.
You would shatter those who can't believe for their lives
anymore.
You would shatter those things that are keeping people back
from trusting in your promises and seeing victory
in their Christian life.
We are asking by the work of the Holy Spirit this morning
unbelief would shatter and you would give gifts of faith,
we ask, God.
Lord, I lift this word up to you, God.
I don't want to just be hidden behind a cross.
I want to be dead.
Scripture says, crucified with Christ.
That the only thing people would hear this morning
is the voice of God, not the voice of me,
not the voice of a pastor, the voice of God.
Father, we pray for that this morning.
We give it into your hands in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Amen.
The word that God put on my heart
this morning to share-- and we're going to jump into it.
I've entitled the message The God of Jacob.
The God of Jacob.
And you'll understand what that means as we get into it.
In fact, if you have your Bibles,
you can open up the Psalm chapter 46.
Leave it on your lap.
And we're going to get in and begin dissecting that Psalm
and take out from there what it means, the God of Jacob.
Before we get into the word, I have a little bit
of a confession to make.
It's kind of embarrassing.
And I don't like telling people, but it really
helps leading in on the sermon.
So I thought it would be a good thing to use.
I've never learned how to type in my whole life.
I don't know how to type.
I got through middle school and high school
and I just never did it.
Never took a class, never did it in college.
And when I was in high school-- I graduated in 1999-- when
I was in high school, technology, computers,
typing all this stuff, it was just starting to pick up.
There was no internet other than AOL.
Anyone remember AOL, America Online,
that you had to dial up?
It was impossible to be able to even get your emails.
And even when I went to school, when I started high school,
there was no such thing as a cellphone.
I had what they called a beeper.
You ever see a beeper?
A beeper, right?
And you get beeped.
And your mom or your dad beeps.
And it's an emergency, they put 911 in the beep.
You have to come home, 911.
You have to find a phone or you get right--
and I didn't have those things during those years
where you would start typing-- iPads and everything else.
It didn't exist.
So I just never learned.
I never thought we would be at the place that we are today.
No one ever thought computers, technology.
And this is where it's really painful for me.
This is where it's really difficult.
When preparing for a sermon, I have to type out anywhere
from five to eight pages just prepare for a sermon
every single week.
And for me it takes hours.
I mean one A, OK, S. It's like one thing after another.
It takes hours upon hours to be able to do it.
So when I prepare, when I sit down
and I have to get on my computer,
and I work hours of just typing seven pages, going through, do,
do, do, all these things.
And I'll tell you, I will get severely bored.
I mean severe.
I mean to the point where I just can't-- I'm excited about
the word.
I'm excited what God's doing.
But I am bored out of my mind.
So in my confession, with all honesty, as I write sermons,
I am constantly surfing the internet.
I am going off, and if you know anything about the internet,
it's just about useless facts.
It stuff nobody needs to know.
It's Wikipedia.
I'm on there.
I'm reading about space exploration, astrology,
I'm reading about wars that have happened.
And you get so bored when you're just sitting there.
You don't know how to type.
I'm just putting on the internet and I'm
reading all these articles and engulfing all these things.
Well, I was reading one article as I was preparing the sermon.
I want to share it with you.
It was the strangest thing I ever read.
It was about the space race between Russia and the US
to get a man on the moon.
I was reading the article.
And it was amazing.
The article actually said, this is what it said.
And I checked it all out.
I did the Wikipedia, I went everywhere, I
looked at all these places to try to check it all out.
They actually say that when the cosmonauts from Russia
would go up into space, one of the staples for their food
that they would send with the Russian cosmonauts was cognac.
They would drink in space.
As strange as that sounds.
The doctors and the physicians thought
that the zero gravity, the way to stimulate the immune system
would be a little bit of alcohol.
They'd give them a little bit of alcohol.
So if you went up to the Russian space stations today,
there's literally cognac bottles all over the Russian space
station.
They brought it with them.
And if that wasn't crazy.
I know some of you think, well that's not a big--
this is what's even more nuts.
I was actually reading about Buzz Aldrin.
Who knows who Buzz Aldrin is?
Second man who ever walked on the moon, Apollo 11 mission.
He brought a glass of wine with him to the moon when he landed.
Some of you are looking at me, well-- Listen to this.
He brought the wine.
And this is what was so amazing to me
because he was a Presbyterian elder.
Listen to this.
He snuck communion bread and wine on the first mission
to the moon.
When they landed-- no, no, you got to here this.
When they landed-- it's actually reported in NASA's records.
When they landed at the Sea of Tranquility
in the lunar module, he actually called down for radio silence
to mission control.
And he said, I want you to give me a moment of silence.
I'm going to read John chapter 15 about abiding in the vine
and I'm going to take communion right here on the moon.
How amazing.
Could you imagine a communion service on the moon?
Could you imagine looking out into the expanse
and seeing the stars and the heavens
and the earth, just this little ball,
and the sun and the universe and the creation of God,
and sitting there with your little bit of wine
and your bread and just thanking Jesus.
Thank you for who you are!
Thank you for being such a great God!
See, that to me, that is a communion service.
I don't think there's any other place more appropriate
to have communion but in space.
You're all looking at me like I'm nuts.
I think if we ever get to space travel, we get to go up there,
we get colonizing Mars, I think the one
thing we should be doing is having communion services.
Could you imagine it?
Let me show you why I think communion in space
is probably the most appropriate place to have it.
Psalm chapter 46.
Let's read it together.
I'm going to take it out.
We're going to go to verse 7.
When I read all the way down, you get to verse seven,
I want you to circle seven.
I want you to underline verse 7.
I want you to highlight verse 7.
Because that's really where we're going to unpack all this.
And we're going to show you why it's such an amazing thing.
And why we as Christians should long one day to
have communion in space.
Psalm chapter 46-- "God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble.
Therefore, we will not fear, though the earth gives way.
Though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains
tremble at its swelling, there is a river
whose streams make glad the city of God, The holy habitation
of the most high.
God is in the midst of her.
She shall not be moved.
God will help her when morning dawns.
The nations rage.
The kingdoms totter.
He utters his voice, and the earth melts."
Now underline this, circle this.
"The Lord of hosts is with us.
The God of Jacob is our fortress.
Come, behold the works of the Lord,
how he has brought desolations on the earth.
He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth.
He breaks the bow and shatters the spear.
He burns the chariot with fire.
Be still and know that I am God.
I will be exalted among the nations.
I will be exalted in the earth.
Then again, watch this one more time.
The Lord of hosts is with us.
The God of Jacob is our fortress."
We're going to unpack that this morning and I'm going
to show you how amazing that one little verse
and that one little statement is to our Christian life
and our Christian walk, to our faith, how it builds us up.
I'm going to start with "the Lord of hosts is with us."
Such a small verse.
It's just one portion of a verse.
It's a little phrase just stuck there
in the middle of the Psalm.
But listen to me.
It says so much of the vastness and the power
and the might of God.
That one little verse, that one little section speaks volumes
of the sovereignty and the majesty of who we serve.
The Bible uses the name Lord of hosts
in three main places throughout the Old and the New Testament
to describe God.
And in those three places, it describes three main hosts.
Number one, it speaks of the host of the angels
in heaven, the host of God.
How God has created these angelic beings.
And he sends them to and fro on the earth to do his bidding.
He's in control of everything that's happening supernaturally
around us.
The Bible actually says the elder
John, when he was in Revelation, said
it was 10,000 times 10,000.
He couldn't even really count the multitude of the angels
when he came into heaven.
He couldn't even understand the vastness.
And yet the scripture says, he's Lord of the angelic beings.
He is over.
He has created them.
They are his servants.
He's leading these to go there.
He's telling others to do this.
He is God who is intimately involved with everything
that's happening in the heavenly realm with his angelic beings.
The Bible says he's Lord of hosts
when speaking about the companies of men.
Meaning he rules over all the nations.
Meaning that every person that's born in this earth God
is intimately involved with.
Billions upon billions upon billions upon billions
from generation to generation.
The scripture says that God is with them all.
And he raises up kingdoms as he sees fit.
And he tears down nations as he sees fit.
The Assyrian kingdom, the Babylonian kingdom,
the Grecian empire, Alexander the Great,
every single one of them got appointed and allowed
to come to power.
Rome, everything that you see.
The scripture says there's nothing
going on in the wars of this world
that God doesn't know about and that God is not sovereignly
over from beginning to end.
He's Lord of the host, the angelic beings,
the multitudes of men.
And then, in the book of Genesis-- and this
is what I really want to touch on.
The third place you'll see it described in the scriptures
is when God creates the heavens and the earth.
And it says this, and he put the hosts into the heavens.
He created the hosts, meaning the stars which are above us.
He is the Lord of the hosts, all the stars that he has created.
Isaiah chapter 40 says it this way, that he made every star.
Now listen, it say this.
And then he named every single one.
He named-- the Bible says he named every star.
You're sitting there looking at me with that face.
Let me try to describe this a little bit more
put into context.
There was a pastor who spoke here years ago.
And he said something and it so struck me that I wrote it down
in my Bible.
You ever hear a message and you write something down
because you're just like, wow that is such a cool-- I
wrote it down to my Bible.
Let me share what he said.
Because I actually checked it because I
was so bored yesterday I went on the internet
to make sure it was true.
And it turns out it's true.
So let me share what he said.
He said on any given night when the sky is clear,
if you're up in the mountains or out in the desert
and there's no city lights and the moon is not at full power,
it's only half moon, quarter moon,
whatever, when you have the most clearest of nights
and you go look up into the heavens,
he says the human eye can only see
about 2,000 stars at the max.
That's what you and I can see.
That's what we can observe.
I remember one of the scariest and most exciting times
of my life was when I decided as a youth pastor
we should take about 30 students and go
camping up in these mountains.
We decided to go camping with the Anthem youth group.
Now listen to me.
I'm from Jersey.
We don't camp.
I don't camp.
I don't want to camp.
I don't want to sit in a tent.
I'll be honest with you, I love you.
I appreciate you.
We don't drive four by fours with big tires.
We drive Lincoln town cars.
That's what we drive.
Black, that's what we do.
We don't drive that type of stuff.
We don't go into mountains.
We don't want to be in the wilderness.
I don't want to be near animals.
That's not my heart.
I didn't grow up that way.
Camping-- listen.
And if you know, if you lived in Jersey, camping for us
is when you got off on the turnpike
and you went to Motel 6.
That's a camp trip when you live in Jersey.
You come home and your parents are like,
what did you do last night?
Oh, I was at seaside.
I got tired.
I pulled off on the side of the road.
I camped.
Oh, you went to Motel 6.
Yes, exactly.
That's the extent of it when you're in New Jersey.
So me in my foolishness think, well, I'm
going to get into the Colorado culture.
I'm going to take 30 students.
We're going to go up in the mountains.
We're going to camp.
We're going to catch our food.
We're going to bring grills.
We're going to do all these things.
And we get up there.
And we start setting up.
We're in the middle of nowhere, absolutely nowhere.
We're setting up the tents.
And suddenly it strikes me as I'm
watching the kids put the tents, I'm thinking,
there's one pole and one piece of canvas between you
and whatever is outside.
And I'm thinking, what are you, nuts?
I told the kids honestly, I'll be in the van.
That's where I sleep.
Doors locked.
If you need me, pound on the window.
I'm going to sleep in the 15-passenger van.
You're crazy for sleeping in a tent.
We get all the tents together.
We get everybody in.
We have dinner.
It gets dark.
And the students come up to me and say,
Pastor Michael, Pastor Michael.
I say, yeah, yeah.
Could we play a game?
I said, oh sure, sure.
What game?
We want to play this game called fugitive.
Let me explain fugitive for some who don't understand this.
This all leads into a point.
So just bear with me.
Fugitive is when you take a truckload of students
and you go down a deserted road in the mountains
and you drop them off at a starting point
and you give them a time limit.
You give them a flashlight to get into groups.
You give them a time limit and they
have so much time to get to the end point on the road.
And you set the end point about a mile, two miles away.
They have about an hour.
But the catch is as a leader, you get into the car
and you go up and down the road with your headlights
and a flashlight.
And if you catch them, they have to get in the car
and you drive them to the starting point.
They don't get extra time.
And they have to try it again.
They keep trying.
They keep doing it.
And they see if they can get around you.
So me, I'm sitting in this 15-passenger van
with my assistant Patrick.
He's from New York.
I'm from New Jersey.
This is ridiculous.
We're sitting there.
I shut off the van thinking, I got a great idea.
I'll turn off the engine, shut off the lights,
put out all the flashlights.
And we'll wait for the students to come out
with their flashlights.
And we'll catch them all like that.
He's like, yeah that's great.
So I shut the van off.
I turn off the exterior lights.
I'm about to turn off the interior light.
I hit the interior light.
And I'm telling you I've never experienced darkness
like that in my whole life.
You're laughing.
I'm being so sincere.
I'm telling you.
I'm in the car with Patrick freaking out.
Patrick, where are you?
Patrick I can't find you.
Patrick!
I'm at the end.
And I'm looking for my hand.
I couldn't see my hand in front of my face.
I've never been in the mountains like that.
I've never been out by the Wilkerson Divide.
And I'm scared.
And then it hits me.
Oh my gosh.
I let 30 kids out in the middle of this dark road.
I don't know if I'll ever get them back.
You're all laughing.
Yeah!
I'm freaking out.
I'm clanging on pans and pots.
I am on top of the van.
I am screaming.
Come back!
And all you could see is eyes.
You see eyes.
And you don't know if it's a kid or an animal or a bear.
You don't know what's going on.
It was the scariest.
We got them all back, thank God.
I locked them in their tents.
I told them, you're not coming out for the rest of the trip.
Don't you dare ask for another thing for the rest of the trip.
And we just sat there in our tents
and that was the end of the camping trip.
But I remember that night after everything calmed down,
and Patrick had to give me CPR and we're freaking out,
I remember that night just looking up in the skies.
You ever been out in the mountains and just looked up?
Oh my gosh, I've never seen anything like that.
So many stars.
And then the scientists and astrologers tell me,
that's only 2,000 of them.
That's all you can see.
You want to know how many stars are in our galaxy?
100 billion in the Milky Way galaxy.
Want to hear something crazier?
In the observable universe, I don't even
know what that means, I just read it on the internet.
Observable universe.
There are 10 billion galaxies in our observable universe
with about 100 billion stars in each one of those 10
billion universes.
They said it's like one trillion billion stars,
or billion trillion.
I didn't know that was a number.
I didn't even know that was close.
And could you imagine?
Listen to this.
God created every single one of them.
And get this, he named them all.
He goes around, you'll be Julie, you're going to be Beth,
hey, you'll be Ashley, you'll be Adam, you're going to be Paul.
And he knows them all by name.
He calls them into their orbits.
Listen to this.
The scripture says by name.
Do you know how hard it is name something?
I'm about to have a child, I'm naming one kid
and it's like torture.
I'm putting lists together.
My mom's calling me.
She's Italian.
She wants to name the Jerome.
I'm like, Jerome?
That's not even Italian.
And you're trying to name one child.
And it's like the hardest thing in the world.
And God says, I have One billion trillion stars.
And I'll just name them all and I know where everyone is.
I know the orbits that they're tracking.
I know how big, small.
I know if they're deflating or getting bigger.
I know all of it.
I've named.
I am the Lord of the hosts.
[APPLAUSE]
We wonder sometimes does God see I don't have money for rent
this week?
What are you, nuts?
He named all the stars.
Of course he knows you don't have enough money.
He knows the exact amount down to the cent.
He knows exactly.
He knows if you were going to change the currency to the yen,
he knows what it would be then.
He knows all of it.
You say, I have a prodigal son, I have prodigal daughter.
I don't even know where they're at.
And sometimes you get the doubt in your heart,
does God even know?
And God's coming back, I'm Lord of the hosts.
Are you kidding me?
I know right where they're at.
I know just what they're doing.
I know just how to intervene.
I know just the perfect time.
I know just how it's going to happen.
I've got it all together.
I got every star in the universe named.
I know where your son and I know where your daughter's at.
I know.
He knows every tear.
He knows when you walk away from your community groups
and you go home and you didn't tell them
what was really on your heart and you cry yourself to sleep.
He knows it.
He knows it.
He knows the sigh.
He knows the groan.
He knows the prayer.
He knows when you can't pray and all you do is go [SIGH].
He knows every breath you take.
He counts every single one.
He is Lord of the hosts.
Psalm 46:7, listen to this.
The Lord of the hosts is with us.
The God of Jacob is our fortress.
Listen to me, the God that created and named every star
is with us.
But watch this, it's the God of Jacob that is our fortress.
In other words, it's great to know how vast
and how big God is.
That's good.
But it's when you have the revelation of what
it means, the God of Jacob, where your faith and your heart
find a solid rock to be able to rest.
The Psalmist is ultimately saying,
it's great to know how big God is.
It's great to know how vast he is.
It's great that he never forgets.
But that's not the revelation that will be your fortress.
That's not the revelation that will bring peace to your heart.
No, no, no, he says it is the God of Jacob
that is our fortress.
You say, well, what do you mean by that, Pastor Michael?
Let me explain this.
Let's talk about Jacob just for a few moments.
Jacob made a lot of mistakes in his life.
If you read the Old Testament, he was a deceiver.
He lied to his father.
He lied to his brother.
He failed with his family over and over to the point
that they wanted to kill him, to the point
that they said, listen, we can't have anything to do with you.
You are such a screw up and you constantly
make so many mistakes, we just got to let you go.
We got to let you go.
It's like your boss coming to you out of work saying,
you just fail too much.
You got to go.
You've got to get out of here.
And he was released from his support system.
He had no support.
He was a man who was lonely.
He was a man in complete isolation.
He was a man that all families and friends gave up
on because he kept on making the same mistakes over and over
and over and over again.
He was sent to his uncle Laban.
But on his way, he was in the middle
of a desert with nobody-- no family, no church, no support.
Has anybody ever been at a place where they have felt like that?
You made the same mistake so many times
that everybody has said, we just can't handle it anymore.
We can't deal.
We've done everything we have been able to do.
And you're still doing the same stuff.
Your family locks your door on you.
The church sometimes says, listen
I just can't even pray anymore.
You got me praying 24 hours a day.
And you're still messing up.
I can't even get through.
And before you know it, every door begins to shut
and you end up in a place of complete isolation.
You end up in a place of complete loneliness.
No support around you.
You ever just try to get support and it seems like God just
keeps shutting doors?
It's not even just your mistakes, but God shuts them.
Who's ever felt that one?
You go to counseling, doesn't work.
Right?
You go to the court, I've got to get child support.
I've got to get-- and you go to the judge and the judge rules
in the wrong favor.
And suddenly boom, another door.
That was my hope, God.
I prayed for that.
Shut door after another shut door after another shut door.
You come to family, they can't help you.
Shut door.
And you feel like even altar calls, you come up.
You've been up at this altar when
[? Nicky's ?] been preaching.
That hasn't even helped.
It's like one door after another.
Shut, shut, shut, shut.
And every line of hope that's in your heart
begins to be dismissed.
And suddenly you're in a place where you feel like I'm alone,
I'm isolated, and I've got to figure this all out by myself.
I've got to figure it all out.
I've got to fix it.
And this is what's amazing, the Psalmist--
and I want you to see this-- he starts the verse by giving us
this incredible revelation.
The Lord of hosts, the God who's over every angelic being,
the God who controls all of humankind, sovereignly
above, the God who's put every star in the heavens
and named it, he says he is with you.
And then this is what got me.
Without skipping a breath, without another verse,
without anything in between, he shifts
from this incredible revelation of this God
who is so sovereign and mighty to this one lonely man, Jacob,
just like that.
He goes from sovereignty, greatness,
majesty, to Jacob isolated and alone.
The God of Jacob.
He doesn't even work you into it.
He doesn't even say, hey, he's a God
of great compassion and mercy.
He doesn't even go there.
He's not even quoting other scriptures.
From here to there without even skipping a verse.
The God of Jacob.
In other words, he saying this-- all the power and the attention
you see in the skies of God hanging every star,
naming them, watching them, being over every angelic being,
all of the attention that he gives
to the supernatural around us, all of the attention
that he's given to everything going on in humankind
and how he created a nation for Israel
and brought the Jews back to fulfill prophecies,
all this stuff he's doing.
The scripture says all that attention, all of that
detail in the way he's working, the Bible says,
he is sovereign.
He's Lord of the host.
But all of that is with that one man sitting in a desert
in the wilderness, Jacob, who is absolutely isolated
from everybody.
He goes from here and then he goes to there just like that.
And then this is what really got me as I'm reading it.
Notice it doesn't say the God of Israel.
But he says the God of Jacob.
It's really important.
For some of you who know your Bibles,
you understand what I'm saying.
For some of you who don't, let me just explain.
Jacob was given two names in the Bible.
When he was born, God said you're going to call him Jacob.
And his name actually means deceiver.
That's what it means.
He says, you're going to call him a deceiver because that's
exactly what he is.
He's going to deceive his brother.
He's going to deceive his father.
He's going to make one mistake after another.
He's going to do everything that's wrong.
You're going to call him a deceiver.
But the Bible says that Jacob later on in his life,
he literally, physically wrestles with God.
I don't even understand that.
He has a wrestling match with God.
And this is what Jacob says, he says,
I'm not letting you go until you bless me.
I want a blessing in my life.
And God says, you want a blessing?
He says, yeah, I want a blessing.
He says, I'll give you a blessing.
Your name is no longer Jacob, but you will be called Israel.
Your name will mean one who prevails with God.
In some translations it actually says
one who allows God to rule their life, God-ruled.
And you have to understand with the name,
something came into Jacob.
Something of the Holy Spirit changed his very nature.
He went from a deceiver that was so self-consumed.
He couldn't get out of always worried about himself
to a man who always found people and gave of his life.
Something shifted inside of his heart.
God didn't just change the name, he changed his nature.
He changed who he was.
He changed his heart to love God and want to obey him.
He changed his heart to be a man who
felt like he was isolated to a man who
know that God stood with him.
He changed him.
But this is what gets me.
Psalm 46 does not say the God of Israel.
He says the God of Jacob is our fortress.
Ever have a Jacob week?
You ever so desperately want to be blessed by God?
And you tried so hard to bring his blessing
into your family, blessing into your life, blessing
into the ministry you're working?
You ever try with everything in you to say,
I just want to have what [? Nicky ?]
and Pastor Gary and Kelly?
I want to have what they have.
I want the peace that they've got.
I want the authority that they have.
I want the confidence.
I want to come in their church when things are going wrong
and be able to stand and say uh-uh, devil.
Ain't going to happen.
I don't want to cower anymore.
I want to be victorious.
I want to be an Israel.
You want the blessings.
Bring the blessings into my marriage.
Bring the blessings into my family.
Bring the blessings into my life.
Bring the blessings.
Let me be blessed.
And you're trying and trying to get the blessings of God.
And all you'll keep doing is failing and making
more mistakes.
You keep sinning.
You know you shouldn't do certain things at your job,
but you do them and you get caught.
You know you shouldn't be-- you fail upon
fail upon you lost a temper.
You lose your anger.
You leave this church.
And you're trying to get the blessing.
And someone cuts you off in the car
and it's like World War III.
Are you kidding?
Beep, beep, beep!
Kicking!
It's like you want the blessing.
But no matter how hard you try, you come up short
and you feel like Jacob.
Right?
And yet the Bible says this, the Lord of hosts,
the God who created every star and names them,
the God who cares for all the supernatural
with angelic beings, the God who ordered
heaven, the God who's moving amongst men,
the multitudes and billions that he knows and sees every hair,
that God-- listen to me-- that God-- and you must hear
this-- he is the God of Jacob.
You're sitting here and thinking you're
the last person God ever wants to touch or move or have
anything.
God's looking at you and saying, you're
the one I got my eyes on.
You're the one I'm looking at.
I'm not just the God of Israel, I am the God of Jacob.
I'm the one who keeps coming back to the one that messes it
up and screws it up.
And this is what he says, all this power
that I've employed to create heaven,
to create all these stars, to name them all,
all that power, everything, he's saying, I am there
and I am with you and I want to pour it out in your life.
And you know what he's saying this morning?
And you have to hear this.
This is what he's saying.
Do not walk away from me in unbelief.
Do not walk away and think for a second
that because you're a Jacob somehow I have left
or I have abandoned you.
He's saying don't you dare begin operating in unbelief.
If I say, I'm the God of Jacob, that's exactly who I am.
And that's exactly who I stand by.
He's saying with everything in him, don't operate in unbelief.
Get out of the pity party.
Get out of this place where you keep saying I just can't do it.
That victim mentality that says, I just can't get up.
God is saying, of course you can't get up.
I came and found you.
I stood next to you.
I have all of the heaven.
I named every star.
I could do anything.
I can fix any circumstance.
I could touch any marriage.
I can bring any son home.
Do not sit there with unbelief, but get up and receive me,
your refuge, the God of Jacob.
Let me do this because I don't think you understand it.
Let me give you one more illustration.
I've timed this.
This takes me 10 minutes on the spot.
So you don't have to worry.
Let's go to the New Testament.
I want to show you something out of the life of Paul.
And with this we're going to close it.
With this we'll shut it down.
Turn with me to Acts chapter 22.
You can leave Bibles open.
But I'm not going to start there.
I'm going to read a few verses before.
We're going to open up something from the life of Paul.
We're going to wrap this all up.
And we'll close.
And we'll have some prayer together.
I'm going to start with Romans chapter nine, verse three.
Just go to Acts chapter 22.
I'm just going to read it to you.
I think it'll be up here on the screens.
This is Paul speaking.
He says, For I could wish that I myself were accursed
and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers.
He says, my kinsmen according to the flesh.
Listen to what Paul is writing.
He's saying, my deepest desire which
drives me, my greatest passion, my deepest longing that I have
in my heart, he says, to see my countrymen, my nation,
the Jews come to the saving knowledge of Christ.
He says, I so desire this with everything in me
that I literally, if I can exchange my salvation
and go to hell and give them the gift,
if somehow that was OK in the economy of God,
he says I would leave an eternity of hell
for their salvation.
He says this is what drives me.
This is why I get up every morning.
This is the desire.
He's giving you a peek into his heart.
He says this is the deepest desire of every thing
inside of me, that everything, that my countrymen would
come to know Jesus.
Watch what he says in Romans chapter 11, verse 13.
This is where it gets crazy.
He says, now I am speaking to you Gentiles.
Those are non-Jewish people.
Inasmuch then as I am an apostle to the Gentiles,
I magnify my ministry.
Why Paul?
Why do you magnify it?
Watch this.
I magnify my ministry in order, somehow,
to make my fellow Jews jealous and thus save some of them.
Listen to what Paul's saying.
He's saying I go through shipwreck.
I go with beatings on my back.
I go to prison.
I go through sleepless nights.
I get stoned.
And I get back up again.
He says, I go without food.
I pray every evening.
I fast like crazy.
He says, you want to know why I do it?
You want to know why I give so much to the Gentile
churches all over Asia, all of the Corinthians,
all over where I go?
You want to know why I do it?
So that you would get so filled with the life of Christ
that my fellow Jews would get jealous and want what you got.
He says, deep down at the very core,
I ain't even doing it for you.
I'm doing it for them.
He says this is the greatest blessing on my life.
This is the deepest desire.
This is what I pray every single day before God
before I even start my day.
God, give me another one of my countrymen.
God, move on my country.
God, send revival.
God, do something amongst the Jews.
Use my life.
Build up the Gentile church.
Build them up that their Jews may come in.
And listen to this.
I'm going to set this all up.
Watch this.
Paul goes back to Jerusalem.
He goes into the temple.
The Bible says there's some Jews from Asia in the temple.
And they see him and they begin accusing him.
They're jealous of what he's doing across the country.
They're jealous of what's happening.
And they don't want him to keep--
so they accuse him and say he brought a non-Jew
into the temple, a Gentile.
And that was ceremonially unclean.
You couldn't do that.
So the Jews flip out.
They flip out.
They grab Paul.
They're about to tear him to pieces.
They're about the literally crush his skull.
They're about to destroy him.
And the Roman guard, the Roman occupancy, the Roman guard
comes down, grabs Paul from the mob, puts him in prison,
puts him in a prison, keeps him there for the night.
And this is what he does.
He says, Paul, I so desperately want
to understand what just happened.
I'm going to get the whole Sanhedrin together.
I'm going to get all of the Jewish leaders, all
of the elders of your people, the chief priests,
the Pharisees, the Sadducees, all the religious sects.
I'm going to get them all together.
And with my Roman rule, I'm going to have them shut up
and I'm going to have them sit there.
And I want you to talk with them tomorrow.
And I want to know what's going on.
Could you imagine?
This is everything Paul's been praying for for years.
He's got his shot.
God's saying, here's your silver platter.
This is every Jewish leader that rules the Jewish nation.
You get them saved, you got everybody saved.
He's saying, this is it.
Could you imagine?
Now watch this.
Acts chapter 22, we're going to read.
Acts chapter 22, verse 30.
I'm going to read it to you, and then we're
going to jump down into chapter 23
and we're going to read 11 verses there.
And then we're going to end.
It says, "But on the next day, desiring
to know the real reason why he was being accused by the Jews,
he unbound him and commanded the chief priests
and all the council to meet.
And he brought Paul down and set him before them.
And looking intently at the council, Paul said,
'Brothers, I've lived my life before God in all good
conscience up to this day.' And the high priest Ananias
commanded those who stood by him to strike him on the mouth.
Then Paul said to them, 'God is going to strike you,
you whitewashed wall.
You are sitting to judge me according to the law.
And yet you contrary to the law order me to be struck?' Those
who stood by said, 'Would you revile God's high priest?'
And Paul said, 'I did not know, brothers,
that he was the high priest.
For it is written, you shall not speak evil of your ruler
of your people.' Now when Paul perceived that one part were
Sadducees and the other Pharisees,
he cried out in the council, 'Brothers, I am a Pharisee,
a son of a Pharisee, it is with respect to the hope
and the resurrection of the dead that I am on trial.'
And when he said this, a dissension
arose between the Pharisees and the Sadducees
and the assembly was divided.
For the Sadducees say that there is no Resurrection
nor angel nor spirit.
But the Pharisees acknowledge them all.
Then a great clamor arose and some
of the scribes of the Pharisees' party
stood up and contended sharply, 'We
find nothing wrong in this man.
What if a spirit or an angel spoke to him?' And when
the dissension became violent, the tribune,
afraid that Paul would be torn to pieces by them,
commanded the soldiers to go down and take him away from
among them by force and bring him into the barracks.
The following night--" watch this--
"the Lord stood by him and said, 'Take courage,
for as you have testified to me of the facts about me
in Jerusalem, so you must testify also in Rome.'" Watch
this.
Paul blew it.
Paul blew it.
He's got every one of his countrymen
right there, people he grew up with that he knew.
He opens his mouth and he begins to speak.
And the high priest orders someone to strike him.
And it is the straw that breaks the camel's back.
After all the persecutions, after all the floggings,
after being shipwrecked, reviled, stoned,
losing his sight, that was it.
He just snaps and he loses his temper and he flips out.
Instead of speaking back with the peace of Christ,
the serenity of Christ, he allows just things
to fly out of his mouth.
And the scripture says he realizes it
and he doesn't know what to do.
So this is his big plan.
Since I don't know what to do, I'll just say I'm a Pharisee
and I'll start a dissension amongst them
so I can get out of here.
He doesn't share about the gospel.
He doesn't share about Jesus.
He doesn't say anything about the forgiveness of sins.
He says, no, no, no.
I'm a Pharisee and I believe in the resurrection.
That's why all this is happening.
He knew what was going to happen.
And he starts a brawl, literally,
a brawl between the Jews.
And could you imagine how it felt
after all the years of praying, after all the years
of chasing the blessing, after all the years of asking?
You're sitting there and you know that what you have said
has not brought the peace of the gospel, the peace of Christ,
but has brought dissension and violence and division.
Could you imagine how Paul felt?
And then the Roman guard grabs him and throws him into prison
and there he is alone.
Think about it.
And then this is what gets me as I close.
This is what got me in the scriptures as I read it.
That night, after blowing it, sitting in the cell thinking,
man, I'm just a Jacob.
I do it all wrong.
Just thinking in his heart-- have you ever noticed,
when you make one mistake, suddenly you
think about all your mistakes?
All the things you've done wrong?
The division with John Mark he was probably thinking about.
The things going on in his head.
And could you imagine?
He's sitting in the cell.
And this is what got me.
That night-- this is what struck me.
The Bible says it wasn't an angel that came to him
and stood with him.
Paul knew what it was to have angels come to him in prison.
Paul and Silas had an angel.
It wasn't an angel this time.
It wasn't Timothy, it wasn't Silas, it wasn't Barnabas,
it wasn't a friend.
He knew what that was.
This is what got me.
That night, when he blew it the worst in his Jacob moment--
this is what it says-- God came into that cell
and stood next to him.
God comes down and says, you really blew it.
Let me stand by you now.
The God of Jacob is our refuge.
The God who takes everything of the host of the heavens,
everything he's named, and comes down when we blow it the worst
and says, nothing has been taken from you.
Just continue believing in me.
I'm here with you.
Do you get that?
And this is what's amazing.
This is what the Lord put on my heart.
The one thing you have to understand is you cannot stay
in a pity party.
You cannot sit in unbelief.
He says the one thing-- he says I can fix-- listen, some of you
are saying I looked at pornography, my wife caught me.
And now I can't get the marriage back.
He says, I can fix that.
I can fix that.
It's going to take some time.
But I'm right here.
I'm not leaving you.
I'm going to fix that.
I'm going to work that out, but you
can't sit there in unbelief.
You've got to lay hold of the promise.
You've got to keep walking with me.
He told Paul, listen, you've got to go to Rome now
and you've got to testify.
You've got to keep going.
You can't stop here.
You can't throw in the towel.
You can't do that.
You've got to keep going.
You cannot sit in unbelief.
You might be saying, man, I made an investment in a house.
Now I'm stuck.
I can't get out of it.
God says, yeah, you blew it.
You shouldn't have taken that money.
You shouldn't have put it there.
But let me tell you something, I stand with you.
I stand right there in the midst of your mistake,
in your Jacob moment.
I am the God of Jacob.
And all of my resources and all of my power
will walk you through it.
But you got to get up and you got to walk it out.
I shouldn't have raised my son like that.
I shouldn't have given so much liberty to my daughter.
I shouldn't have done this.
I should have done that.
I shouldn't have done-- I made the mistake here.
I lost my temper.
I said something that slipped out of my mouth to my wife
and I can never take it back.
I can never eat my words.
God's saying, yeah, you blew it.
But right here in your isolation, the God of the hosts
stands with you, the God of Jacob.
And he says, all my resources, all my power,
he says there's nothing I can't.
I can restore the years the canker-worm ate.
But you've got to get up in faith.
Stand with me.
I want to pray for those who this week say,
they literally were coming in maybe not saying
the words verbatim, but knowing the thought, I'm just a Jacob.
I'm just a Jacob.
I can't get the blessing.
I can't win in this area.
I can't fix what I've done wrong.
I blew it.
I don't even know.
You actually came in here and wondered
if God will still be with you or God will still fight for you.
And this is what I'm going to ask with every eye bowed--
not eye, head bowed-- you could bow your eyes too I guess.
It goes with your head.
Close your eyes.
I want to pray honestly.
If you came in here and said, I blew it and I feel so distant.
I don't feel-- and you need a touch.
That unbelief, that's exactly what that is.
That's unbelief that has to be shattered.
You say I need something done to my heart where this unbelief
comes down, this stronghold.
I'm going to ask you right now would you just raise
your hand wherever you're at.
Raise your hand, I want to pray for you this morning.
I want to pray.
I want to lift you up.
OK.
I want to pray.
I'm going to take it even further.
Would you come down to the altar.
We want to pray for you as a faith family.
Don't be afraid of anybody.
Don't worry about what anybody thinks.
Come here to me.
I want to pray with you.
I want to lift you up.
We're going to lay hands on you this morning
and ask God to break that stronghold of unbelief,
to break that stronghold inside of your heart
that's resisting God.
You come down, we want to pray.
We're going to take the next five minutes,
we're going to pray for you, and we're going to close.
We're going to ask God to break unbelief this morning,
those feelings like God just can't walk with you anymore.
God is not with you.
That you're not in Israel.
That you're some Jacob.
I want you to feel his presence standing by you this morning.
I want you to feel his presence right there
in the place of your isolation.
Come down.
We're not going to rush anything.
I know it's Super Bowl Sunday.
Don't worry about that.
I'm going to ask community group leaders,
if you would come down.
Lay hands.
Community group leaders, we're going
to have altar ministry starting next week.
I'm going to ask pastors just to lay hands on individuals.
These are families fighting for marriages.
These are families fighting for finances.
They don't know where their next paycheck is coming.
We're going to pray for them right now.
We're going to show them and believe in them that God says,
I am with you.
I've never left you.
I've never forsaken you.
You made the mistakes.
But I stand with you.
Father, I pray for everybody at this altar.
Lord, I know those days when you feel like you're just a Jacob.
I know them, I've experienced them, God.
I know those days when you said I
went one too many times past the line
and God's just no longer with me.
God's no longer with me.
I've done it too many times.
My family doesn't want me.
My support systems have left me.
And God, I just feel like a burden to everybody.
That's how Jacob felt. God, I pray this morning
that by your Holy Spirit you would show these individuals
that you stand with them right now, that you are with them,
that the God of the host of the heavens, that
named every star, the God of this magnitude
stands with every promise with arms open saying yeah,
you blew it.
You made the mistakes.
But I stand with you now, not an angel, not a friend, but God.
God stands.
Father, I can't bring this revelation to the heart.
The psalmist understood.
He wrote it.
It said, listen, it's not knowing
how big God is that's going to be your refuge.
It's not knowing the magnitude of who
he is that's going to be your fortress.
It's understanding that he is they God
of Jacob that is our strength.
He's the God of the failure, the one that goes to the one that's
isolated, God.
And I just pray by the work of the Holy Spirit
you'd break through in young people's lives.
You'd break through in, Lord God, middle aged
and elderly people.
Every person at this altar you would break through.
And you would begin writing into their hearts, I am not far.
I'm not distant.
I am right here with you.
I'm working in the marriage.
I'm working with the kids.
I'm working in the place where you've lost your job.
I'm working.
I'm working.
I'm working.
God, write it in their hearts.
This has a supernatural work.
The preaching alone is not enough.
The teaching alone is not enough.
Our fellowship alone is not enough.
It's got to be the Holy Spirit now.
And that's what I ask.
Holy Spirit, minister.
Holy Spirit, break through.
Holy Spirit, write it on the heart.
Let people leave here today with that confidence, God.
God is with me.
I don't know how to fix all this,
but God will figure it out.
I'm just going to keep praying.
I'm going to keep believing.
I'm going to keep walking.
God has it under control.
Holy Spirit, break into these hearts, I ask.
And Father, we thank you that you are
this morning the God of Jacob.
The God of Jacob.
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