Inland Empire: Riverside
Intercessory of Prayer - Audio
I like Evan. He's a good guy, isn't he? He definitely married up. I can say that because I did too. But I appreciated the heart and spirit behind what he was sharing because it's easy for us. Sometimes you get caught up and there's always stuff going on. In any given day, I've got stuff that makes me happy and stuff that just makes me want to put on. It makes me want to pull your hair out. There's stuff that just happens all around us. And sometimes we get so distracted and so off-focus because of that, that it's easy for us to forget. How incredibly each one of us has been blessed. One of the greatest blessings we've got in our life, obviously, is our relationship with God. It's the relationship with his people. It's the relationship that we have with each other. And yet, sometimes we forget that. And I'm kind of like Evan too in that I've kind of been conned into entering raffles sometimes by your children for years. I have never once in my 55 years won anything. And so to me, it's a little bit like rolling down your windows, you're going down the freeway and just tossing your money out. But there's that glamour of hope that maybe this death will be different. And the sad thing is that for most of the world, that's how they live. That's the kind of hope they have. They're just hoping against all odds, all reality that somehow they'll win a prize. And yet you and I don't have to live that way because we've already been promised that prize. If we'll just keep our eyes fixed on Jesus. And so often what we do is to try to chase after those goals and those dreams rather than looking at the goals and dreams that we already have been given and responding in gratitude to that. And that's really what worship is all about. It's what we're here today. We're not here so that by coming to enough services, by bringing enough friends out, by reading enough scriptures or saying the first somehow we can earn our place here. We're here because there's nothing we could ever do to earn that. It is literally by God's grace that we're here and what we're doing now, how you and I respond in the pews in the moment is a response to our awareness of God's grace being poured out in our life. This Friday, Carly Lloyd was baptized and I love Carly to death. She's one of the little teens that I just like to squeeze her and I like to be around her. She's just fun. She also owes me five hours of manual labor from two years ago that I am still going to collect. And she keeps shaking her head because she's afraid. But it was so cool to be there in her baptism and to watch her family express themselves as only Lloyd's can do. You know, we all express ourselves differently and to watch her brother Rodney say, let's get this over with. I got to get to work with his way of telling Carly he loves her and he's excited to see Darla basically call little Rodney's boss and tell him he wouldn't let him off so that he could beat his sister's baptism. And if she needed to evoke some law, I mean, that was a mother. This was an important thing and she wanted them to be there to share that together and then to see Rod. This is the expression of joy from Rod's face. This is the expression of fear. The many faces of Rod are one. But what he was expressing in his own Rod way was how excited he was for Carly. It was every parents dream being lived out and it was so fun to be there and to share that. I couldn't help but think of all the things that I have to be grateful for in my life and this week to watch is Scott trying to express his gratitude and appreciation to me and for me worked harder than I've ever seen him work around the house for free. Not that he ever gets paid for working around the house because I don't believe in that. He's eating my food. He ought to work for free anyway. But he did it excited and he did it aggressively and to see him just he was desperate to try to express his gratitude and appreciation. Now that didn't mean that he did everything the way that I would have done it or anything else. It really didn't matter. I didn't care what he did. It was the fact that his desire was to communicate his appreciation. That means the world to me. Because there had been times when he didn't express his love that way. And so to see the transformation is a big deal and that's a big deal for God too. Because each one of us has a different point in our life. We've been hostile towards God. We've been angry at God. We've denied God. We've ignored God. We've treated him as if he were unholy and with contempt. And yet through it all God's response has always been to love us. To desperately watch us. To watch so much for us just to get how wide, how broad, how deep and how vast his love for us is. And so when we come together in worship it's our opportunity to express to him that we get it. To express in our own way. It's good to have Hoel here. Hoel and Rocio leave the Latins in the lighthouse ministry or the flashlight ministry or the east, whatever you know them as. And now that we're working together they're going to be actively working with our Latin ministry here. I'm so incredibly excited. I don't know what that means but I'm excited about it. It's good to have them here. God is doing amazing things in our life and all around us now and we need to be aware of that but there's always struggles too. I look at you and I see the good, the bad and the ugly all personified in one person. That's the way we are as people and yet what God wants more than anything is for us to come into his glory, come into his light and to experience that relationship. And sometimes when we're together it's easy to be around each other and we just were so thankful and we're so excited but there's other times just being together you don't even feel like it. Maybe it's what we do at those times that reveal the most about who we are and our characters. Maybe it's when we don't feel like doing what's right and instead we choose to do what's right that that really is the expression of our appreciation to God. And I don't know about you but I need help to be that way because it is not in my nature. John Tobias on the way to church today cut across three lanes of traffic to get to the exit. There was a string of mayhem behind him and I witnessed it all appalled that anyone could be so dangerous. And I told Libby I said, "Man, I hope that's not somebody from church." And I pulled him behind him. It was Jalopy Johnny. So I'm flashing my lights. I want him to know. He needs to settle down a little bit and it's good to have that coming from someone like me. I've always wondered what those lights flashing them back in my car. I know now. We cannot be what God wants us to be alone. You just can't do it. Your simple nature, my simple nature is so strong and we're drawn to it like it was gravity. That alone we're going to get burned. And so God puts us in a spiritual family to help us rise above our human sinful nature and become something that in reflection reminds people of his presence. And we've got a lot going on. We've got a lot of great opportunities as a church coming up over the next six weeks to have an impact in ways that me may never have a chance to have the same impact again. I want it to be something that we make the most of that opportunity. We're not going to do that on our own. We're not going to do that by our own power. We need God's help and we need each other's help. In Job 16, verse 20, Job is at a very difficult time in his life when, quite frankly, not only is he struggling with being unspiritual, he's got friends that are giving him really bad direction and bad advice. And yet in verse 20, he says, "My intercessor is my friend as my eyes pour out tears to God." On behalf of a man, he pleads with God as a man pleads for his friend. I'm absolutely 100% certain I would not be a Christian today had my sister not been praying for me. I look at the blessings I have in my life. I'm not naive or arrogant enough to believe. I somehow deserve these things that I've earned the gifts that have been given to me. It is all because someone interceded for me. Someone cried out to God and our focus right now is on praying. I'm not sure even with all the things we talked about how much we're really praying still. There are circumstances and situations that you and I deal with in our own lives and in the lives of our friends that we want so desperately to make someone become a Christian or make someone behave. And yet we can't even make ourselves behave. And maybe the most important thing we can do is let go of trying to control everything and instead cry out to God. I really want this to be something that we're known for as being a people of prayer who it is obvious and Evan said this, "Does your life reflect what you're grateful for?" But there's another way that we reflect what we believe and that's by where do we turn? We need to turn to God. We're going to be looking next to chapters 32 and 33 because there's such a great example in here of a relationship with God between Moses and between God. And it's interesting because of all the people on the planet at that time that should have been able to see that God had done amazing things from it was this group of people. They had gone through the plague. They had been enslaved and mistreated for so long, none of them alive had ever experienced anything else but the Egyptian rule. And it was so awful and so oppressive that they long to be set free. And when they were fully set free, it wasn't without miracles. It was obvious. This was not their doing. It wasn't anyone's doing but God. And that was the purpose of the place to even pass through the Red Sea with the water being backed up for miles over a million people crossing and driving. And then to watch as literally God took the Egyptian army out, that would get your attention you would think. And yet very quickly they began to drift away from that. They forgot. And it's like us. We could have a circumstance come up where we need God. We cry out to God. God answers our prayers and very quickly. We're back to where we were before. Verse 1 of chapter 32. When the people saw that Moses was so long and coming down from the mountain, I wonder how long he really was. Scripture indicates that it's probably 40 days. So for one month and one week, they couldn't stay focused spiritually. When the people saw that Moses was so long, I'm sure it felt like a long time. Sometimes a day can feel like a long, long time. They gathered around Aaron and said, come make us God who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt. We don't know what's happening. As for this fellow Moses, make us God. They're already turning to someone other than God. And they're already dissing on the guy that led him to God. Does that sound like us? How quickly we forget the people that fight for us. The people that have laid down their lives for us and turned to something else. Aaron answered them. Yeah, who is Aaron? Moses' own brother. Moses' own brother. Look at what his response is. Take out the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing. It's kind of like our culture. Everybody's wearing earrings now. And bring them to me. So all the people took out their earrings and brought them to Aaron. He took what they handed him, made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Where would that idea of fashioning an idol of gold to look like an animal come from? The Egyptians. How quickly he's taken his eyes off of God and wants to go back to the very thing that was sucking the life out of him. Sounds like us. Then they said, "These are your God's, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt. These guys of Egypt were the ones who brought you out of Egypt." When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and an elf. Tomorrow, there will be a festival of the Lord. He's not referring to God Almighty. So the next day, the people rose early and sacrificed burn offerings, presented fellowship offerings. Afterward, they sat down to eat and drink, God up to indulge in revelry. Then the Lord said to Moses, "Go down, because your people whom you brought out of Egypt have become corrupt." I pray that God doesn't look at you and me and feel like we've become corrupt. How quickly we can become like the world. The very things that we were crying to escape from, there's a pull to become like them again. In this world, it's vile and it's evil and it's selfish and it's lifeless and it's delusional. There was a time in each of our lives, when we felt that so much, we just felt like there was no hope. And we began to cry out and God hurt our cries. And He set the lonely, you and me, in families. And yet sometimes we feel like God is slow in keeping His promises. And it can feel like a very, very long time. And what we tend to do is go back to what's familiar and what's familiar to us is the world. They've been quick to turn away from what I commanded them and have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. They've backed down to it and sacrificed to it and have said, "These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt." Do you hear how that makes God feel? He said, "Do you not see what I've done for you? Have you forgotten how much I poured myself out for you?" And this is how you treat me. It's the same thing that you read about in the story of Noah when God looked and saw how corrupt and how evil the world had become and it grieved him. It breaks his heart. It's what Jesus had to feel walking across the courtyard, about to lay down his life after washing Peter's feet when he hears his closest friend deny he even knows him. It's what God feels when you and I choose to be godless and like the world instead of coming to worship and gratitude. I've seen these people, the Lord said to Moses, "There are stiff neck people. Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them." Then I will make you into a great nation. God could do it and he would be justified. God could punish you and I in any awful way and it would be justice. And I think he feels like that sometimes when he sees the way that we behave towards each other. When he sees the way that spouses treat each other and children treat parents and parents treat children. When he sees that we come to a house of worship and we're thinking about something other than God. I love this. But Moses sought the favor of the Lord is God. He didn't say, "Yeah God, you're right. They're a mess. Make the nation out of me." He said, "Why should your anger burn against your people whom you brought up out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand?" Why should the Egyptians say it was with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the mouths to wipe them off the face of the earth? Turn from your fear saying, "Rulin, do not bring disaster on your people." He's begging and he's pleading to God for a people who have just turned your backs on him and treated him with contempt. Remember your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Israel to whom you swore by your own self. I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky. And I will give your descendants all of this land. I promise him and it will be their inheritance forever. It's the same thing that Paul says in Romans chapter 9 and 10 when he says about the Israelites that he can see that there's else but there's zeal is not based on those. And he says, "I'd be willing to give up my own salvation for my brothers, the Israelites who had turned their back on Paul." Why? Because he knew how sinful he was. Moses knew that as bad as this baby was, he had done worse. And so he's wanting to remind God that God, I remember the grace that you poured out to me. It has not been invented. Please don't pull the grace away from your friends, your brothers, your sisters. We need to be praying for each other. The word related did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened you and I have no idea. The web of prayer that protects us from getting just what we not only deserve, sometimes what we want. Those are the very things we ask for, the very things that would destroy our lives. And yet there's a web that keeps us out of the pits of hell and that web is God's grace and it's held together by our prayers. Moses turned and went down the mountain with the two tablets of the testimony in his hands. They were inscribed on both sides front and back. The tablets were the work of God. The writing was the writing of God engraved on both sides front and back. The tablets were the work of God. The writing was the writing of God engraved on the tablets. When Joshua heard the noise of the people shouting, he said, "There's a sound of war in the camp." Moses replied, "It's not the sound of victory. It's not the sound of the thing. It is the sound of singing that I hear." Moses approached the cap and saw the cap and the dancing. His anger burned and he threw the tablets out of his hand breaking into the pieces at the foot of the mountain. He took the cap they had made, burned it in the fire. Then he ground it to powder, scattered it on the water and made the Israelites drink it. He made them see what they were doing. He didn't just pray for grace. He called them to see what they were doing. He said to Aaron, "This is a deep time I would have liked to have seen." What do these people do to you? Brother, what does it take to get you? To do what you do, that you leave them into such great sin. It's amazing to me how many times we lead each other into sin. We see things going on that we know are wrong and instead of standing up and stepping out and saying, "This isn't the way to treat people. This isn't the way to act." We do nothing. Listen to this. Don't do not be angry, my Lord Aaron answered. How many times he called his brother, Lord? Do not be angry, my Lord Aaron answered. You know how prone these people are in evil. This is masterful buck passing. You want to learn how to pass a buck? Read this. They said to me, "Make us gods who will go before us as for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt." We don't know what's happening. So I told them, "Whoever has any gold jewelry, take it off, then they gave me the gold." And I threw it into the fire. I don't know how that happened. Wow, I didn't realize. We are so good at this at not taking responsibility for our own godless behavior. But there is not a day in my life that I see a police car behind me that I don't get nervous. You may not be surprised at that. There's a part of me that feels like something's always going to catch up to me. And it makes me feel a little bit better about me when I see other desparados because we like the company of guilty people. It just came out this calf. Moses saw that the people were running wild that Aaron had led them, had let them get out of control and so becoming a laughing stock to their enemies. Our enemies watch us all the time. As parents, our children are always watching us. One of the things that Scott said to me on Monday when we were talking was that he sees my sin clearly. And I'm one of those people who you don't have to be around me very long and you're going to see my sinful nature. And he said that's not what really had an impact on me as much as watching that and seeing you fight to not be like that. And the reason that gives people hope is because they're going to struggle with their sinful natures. It's just going to happen. They're going to blow it sometimes. But the real issue is what do you do when you blow it? Do we fix our eyes back on Jesus, the author imperfect of our faith, who for the joy set the form endured the cross, scorning its shame? Or do we give up? Give in. So he stood at the entrance to the camp, said whoever's for the Lord, come to me. As for me and my household will serve the Lord. He's saying whoever's going to be on God's side. Come with me. Why? Because he wants to be on God's side. He's not without sin. He's not without problems. But he wants to fight to be righteous. And all the Levites rallied to him. Then he said to them, this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says, each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other. Each killing his brother and friend and neighbor. The Levites did as Moses commanded. And that day about 3,000 of the people died. Now this isn't indiscriminate killing. They're literally going and cleansing the fellowship of the sinners. Moses said, you've been set apart to the Lord today. For you were against your own sons and brothers and he has blessed you this day. The atonement for your sins. So Moses went back to the Lord and said, oh what a great sin these people have committed. They've made themselves gods of gold. But now please forgive their sin. But if not, then blot me out of the book you've written. The Lord replied to Moses, whoever is sinned against me, I will blot out of my book. Now go and leave the people to the place I spoke of. And my angel will go before you. However, when the time comes for me to punish, I will punish them for their sin. And the Lord struck the people with a plague because of what they did with the calf Aaron had made. Our sins are going to carry consequences. There's no way around that. God told us that. But that doesn't mean that there's not a way out in chapter 33. As you go down through and you read, again God tells Moses to leave where they're at, put behind you what they've been doing. Go on, move on. And sometimes you can't undo the past. You can't change the past. Maybe what we need to do is just pick up and move on forward. And he said, I'll go with you. I'll go before you. God is with us. And we need to trust that. There's too much going on for us to be able to handle by ourselves. Only with God's help can we be what God needs us to be and what I believe we want to be. In verse 13, Moses says, if you're pleased with me, teach me your ways. So I may know you and continue to find favor with you. Remember that this nation is your people. The Lord replied, my presence will go with you and I will give you rest in verse 17. The Lord said to Moses, I will do the very thing he's asked because I'm pleased with you and I know you by name. Does God know our heart? Would our heart and our desire to be connected with God and to please God be enough to move him even from vengeance on people that deserved it? I believe that my sister and the people she has to pray for me are the reason I'm here today. It's not what I deserve. I deserve whatever bad things happen to me. I've sinned so much. I'm not up here because I've overcome it or risen above it. I'm here because of God's grace and God's mercy. And so are you. And the amazing thing is God has called us together the same way Moses called those people out who wanted to serve him. Why? Because he's trying to lead us into a promised land. Over the next several weeks, we've got the World Discipleship Conference coming up. We've got the Middle East Conference. There's team camps, youth camps. We're in the middle of this incredible transition. There's stuff going on in my family and in your family. There's stuff going on in our family group. I can tell you right now, the people that lead us need our prayers. So here's what I want to close out with. I want to ask each and every one of us in here to commit to praying about these seven things every day, every single day. You say, "Well, I'm not going to be able to go to the World Discipleship Conference." Then pray that it is so impacting and moves somebody so much. And when they come back, like Moses coming down from the mountain of the Lord, their face will be glorified so much that you can see the reflection of God in them. If you're going, pray that your heart will be in a different place. Pray that this may be the thing that moves you the most that you've ever been moved in your life. That you will see things that you would have never seen without it. Pray for the Middle East Conference. We have been supporting the Middle East missions for years and years and years. And so many of you have never had the chance and may never have the chance to go into this one week. You've got the chance to be right in the middle of it all, to embrace it all. You get the feel of it all, to connect with it all. Don't waste that opportunity. Those of you that are hosting the families, don't look at as a burden or as an obligation or what do we got to do. Look at it as an opportunity. This is your chance to take your offering and make it mean something to you that can change your children's lives. The youth camps and the team camps, I can tell you as a parent whether my kids were doing good or bad, the youth camps always helped them. They made relationships with other kids that were trying to be spiritual and at times when my kids didn't feel like being spiritual, those relationships have held them up and lifted them up and pulled them out. This restructuring is going, you may feel like, "Well, I don't think it's going to affect me. It's going to affect us all because it's going to change how we focus our ministries." Our teens are going to have a bigger group of teens to work with. There are so many potentials. We can't even think of them all. So please be praying for them because we want this to be an even more glorious decade than the decades that have been behind us. Amen? Pray for your family. My wife struggles every day. I don't know why I got one that struggles so much. It's because she's fighting to be spiritual. And that fight is a struggle. And it wears her out and I thank God every day because she fights harder than almost anybody I know in my life. To be a righteous woman. And I am so lucky to have her. I believe she has saved my soul over and over and over again. And I need her so I'd better be praying to keep her. If that doesn't work, I take some lessons from the show Fear Factor. Pray for your family group. They're the people that are the most actively involved in your life. You ought to be praying for every single one of them by name every single day. That's not too hard. It would probably lengthen the time of your prayers about 100%. So that's being judgmental now. It's probably just being honest. Pray for us. Pray for us. I don't know how sometimes to leave. And what I have in front of me, what's on my plate is bigger than me. I'm not up to it by myself. But with you and with God, all things are possible. If we just trust in the Lord. Our theme right now is prayer. Our focus that I'm asking you to commit to right now is intercessory prayer. Because this is bigger than all of us. But it's not bigger than all of us together trusting the Lord. I want this to be six weeks in time that transform my life, my family, and our ministry. More than any transformation that I've seen in 35 years. I believe that God is leading us into the Promised Land. But we won't get there alone and we won't get there without Him. Amen? (Applause) [BLANK_AUDIO]
The power of praying for others.