Pride | Series: Delivered | Rick Atchley

each of us carries a divine longing [Music] we want to live free [Music] fully liberated like we were created to live [Music] but we're bound [Music] and stuck try as we might we can't free ourselves we need to be [Music] [Applause] delivered well welcome to the hills i know i'm talking to a lot of people online across the city the state the nation and even the world i get to hear from you and thank you for that and i'm talking to an increasing number of people who are returning to in-person worship at west fort worth and south lake and north richeville's campus i'm so glad that we're all together again now i had a delightful experience last week i got to play golf well that's always delightful but i got to play golf with three friends i made when i was in college what was particularly delightful was that i had not seen these guys in a long time one for over eight years one for over 25 years and one for over 40 years and we reconnected and we spent four hours playing bad golf and reminiscing with stories that made us sound more handsome and uh smart and athletic than we actually were and in the course of that conversation i realized i had a blessing in my life that perhaps i'd taken for granted and that is god has given me a lot of stability i really haven't had to move a lot or have a lot of career changes ever since i left college over 40 years ago this june i will celebrate my 32nd year of being the senior teaching minister here at the hills and thank you and the only other job i've ever had since college was for 11 years i was the preacher at a church in abilene texas called the southern hills church of christ they hired me when i was 21 years old and i'd only had seven sermons in my file i have no clue what they were thinking but it was a sweet 11 years that god blessed the church quadrupled in size in those 11 years we built a new building we greatly expanded our mission work i have a ton of sweet memories well i finished my ministry there in may of 1989 we moved to fort worth and in august of 89 the southern hills church had hired a new preacher and also a new receptionist well this will be four cell phones so i thought i would call and welcome him to texas and encourage the new preacher i called the new receptionist answered i asked to speak to the new preacher and she said well i'm sorry but he's not here right now can i take a message and i said yes just ask him to call rick actually and she said okay can you please spell that last name for me are you kidding me a-t-c-h and i wasn't insulted actually i was enlightened that after 11 years so quickly i could be forgotten that life is full of experiences that ought to humble us and in fact those experiences shouldn't be insulting they shouldn't be humiliating they shouldn't be infuriating they are actually liberating because pride is a prison and it's a prison where the person is both the inmate and the warden it is a self-imposed captivity so we're in this series called deliverance using the book of exodus as a platform as we understand a god who delights in delivering his people and the main character in this redemption drama is a man named moses and we're going to meet him today now actually you remember the story ended last week with pharaoh saying to all the baby hebrew boys in the nile river and what we're going to learn later is how little baby moses was saved it's a beautiful powerful story that i want to tell on mother's day because i think it's going to inspire all the parents but right now you need to know that moses has been rescued and he has been chosen by god to be a deliverer and we read about moses in numbers 12. now moses was a very humble man more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth but here's the thing moses wasn't always a humble man before he could deliver his people he had to be delivered now understand why moses wasn't always a humble man he got to understand his upbringing you see he got rescued from the nile river and adopted by pharaoh's daughter pharaoh was his adoptive grandfather moses grew up in the most powerful family of the most powerful nation on the earth he was raised by egyptian royalty and the jewish historian josephus says he was being nurtured for the throne now we're going to look at a couple of new testament books to get more background on moses and one in the book of acts luke records stephen given this sermon and in that sermon stephen says moses was educated in all the wisdom of the egyptians and was powerful in speech and action that meant he would have been educated by the finest schools in the world at that time he would have learned physics and mathematics and agronomy and astronomy powerful in speech meant he was taught and trained to be a diplomat and a statesman powerful in action meant he was a commander a leader of men in fact again josephus says at the age of 30 the ethiopians invaded egypt and moses led the egyptian army to a great defeat over the ethiopians moses was a somebody in the egyptian world he was on the cover of whose who he was egyptian royalty but he never forgot his hebraic identity and so again another book in the new testament the author of hebrews writes about him in chapter 11 it was by faith that moses when he grew up refused to be called the son of pharaoh's daughter he chose to share the oppression of god's people now this is important to remember moses believed in the god of israel long before he met him at a burning bush and we'll talk about that next time but what you need to know right now is that moses knew the god of israel while he was still in pharaoh's house and moses chose to be the deliverer of israel long before he was chosen by god for that assignment and i'll show you that i want you to read with me in exodus chapter 2. one day after moses had grown up he went out to where his own people were and watched him at their hard labor he saw an egyptian beating a hebrew one of his own people and looking this way and that and seeing no one he killed the egyptian and hid him in the sand the next day he went out and saw two hebrews fighting he asked the one in the wrong why are you hitting your fellow hebrew the man said who made you ruler and judge over us are you thinking of killing me as you killed the egyptian then moses was afraid and thought what i did must have become known when pharaoh heard of this he tried to kill moses but moses fled from pharaoh and went to live in midian where he sat down by a well now you've heard of rags to riches stories this is one of the greatest riches to rags stories in history i mean over night moses went from who's who to who's he and you might think well see that just shows the results of impetuousness one impulsive act of anger just ruined his life no this was not an impulsive act of anger this was the utter failure of a premeditated plan again stephen helps us out here back in acts 7 when he says moses thought that his own people would realize that god was using him to rescue them but they did not moses didn't murder that egyptian impetuously he did so intentionally he was trying to incite a hebrew rebellion pharaoh knew it that's why pharaoh wanted to kill him royalty can kill an egyptian commoner that's not the problem pharaoh recognized that what moses did was an act of treason but the hebrews didn't recognize moses as their deliverer his attempt came up empty and i'm going to argue is because moses was too full of himself the hebrews didn't respond to his attempt to do god's will because they did not see god in it because pride delivers epic fails so a priest a politician and a young boy are on a plane you already know this is a joke they hear a loud noise and the pilot comes back worried and says we've lost our engine this plane is going down and we only have three parachutes i got a wife and three kids i must survive he grabbed a parachute and jumped out of the plane the politician spoke and said i'm the wisest diplomat and statesman on the earth the world needs my wisdom i must save myself he grabbed a pack and jumped out of the plane the priest said to the young boy i've lived a long life you've got your whole life ahead of you i'm not afraid to meet my maker you take the last shoot and the boy said chill father smartest politician in the world just jumped out with my backpack over and over the bible says pride comes before destruction moses problem wasn't his opinion of the hebrew's need for deliverance his problem was his opinion of himself and he wound up in desperate shape because he did not grow up desperate for god you see i want you to understand it's quite possible to believe in god to even believe in the mission of god and still be a self-centered instead of a god-centered person moses grew up in a world where all his life his orders were followed and his plans were executed and when he said i want this to happen it happened and nobody asked questions so he came up with a plan to deliver the people and he murdered that egyptian and noticed it says they looked both ways he looked horizontally he did not look vertically he never asked god and pride delivers epic fails because pride leaves god out of his will it was moses idea to murder that egyptian it wasn't god's where did god ever say i want you to kill somebody you see god's will must be done god's way consistent with god's character and god does not endorse the pursuit of godly ends through ungodly means oh my i just said a mouthful that's a whole sermon right there one of the things destroying the witness of the christian faith today among many is that too many christians will ignore they will wink at they will even endorse ungodliness if they think it will achieve ultimately a godly end how about abraham well god's will is that i begin a dad sarah can get pregnant i'll fix that i'll get my handmaid pregnant and he did but ishmael never had the anointing of god he tried to do god's will and not follow god's way how about david in the cave saul is chasing him saul comes into that cave unaware david is back there he's going to relieve himself and the men say to david here's your chance go murder saul and you can be king david's supposed to be king he'd been anointed by god to be king but david was wise enough to say this is not how god wants me to become a king by murdering saul you don't do god's will in a way inconsistent with god's character how about john 6 the people come to jesus and say we're ready to make you king he was a king he came to be recognized as a king but not the way they wanted he would didn't come to be a king that would destroy his enemies he came to be a king that would die for his enemies i can't emphasize this enough god is not obligated to bless what he has not ordained and the problem with moses plan is that it would have led the israelites to trust in moses instead of in god and so before moses could be a deliverer moses had to be delivered and so do we there's a lot of moses in us many of our pursuits are failing because we are leaving god out of his will you want a thriving marriage god does too but you're not active in church together you're not praying together you're not seeking christian community together as a couple you're wanting what god wants for your marriage but you're not including god in the pursuit of it your finances are a mess and you ignore all of the scriptural wisdom about how to manage your finances how to save how to spend how to give you're not generous to the church you're not generous to kingdom causes you're battling your addiction in your own strength you want to be free of your addiction god wants you to be free of your addiction but you're not asking god and you're leaving him out of his will god will not support what robs him of glory and so there's this phrase that appears uh all over the bible twice in the new testament in the old testament and here's the phrase first peter 5 5 god opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble that word opposed is a strong word it literally was the word that used of a general lining up his armies for battle and the metaphor is this that when you're doing life in a way that brings glory to yourself you are taking on god and you're taking a path that leads to prison so andrew del banco is a humanities professor at columbia university not a religious man but he wanted to do research on the effectiveness of aa groups to help people battling addiction so he went across the country visiting different groups he said he was in this one group and this sharply dressed young man stood up and he just began to vent about how wrong life and people have done him how he's been mistreated how he's been betrayed and del blanco said every word and gesture spoke of wounded pride he had one goal and that was to justify himself he said i was sitting next to a african-american man middle-aged dreadlocks and shades and about halfway through this young man's rant this older black man leaned over to me and said i used to feel that way too before i achieved low self-esteem and he went on to write it was an epiphany as this speaker bombarded us with phrases like got to take control of my life and i've got to believe in myself the man beside me took refuge in the old christian doctrine that pride is the enemy of hope i got good news for people that are stuck and want to be free god has a way of helping us achieve low self-esteem it's called the wilderness just keep reading in exodus 2. now a priest of midian had seven daughters and they came to draw water and fill the troughs to water their father's flock some shepherds came along and drove them away but moses got up and came to their rescue and watered their flock and when the girls returned to rule their father he asked them why have you returned so early today they answered an egyptian rescued us from the shepherds he even drew water for us and watered the flock and where is he rule asked his daughters why did you leave him invite him to have something to eat moses agreed to stay with the man who gave his daughters a poorer to moses in marriage zepora gave birth to a son and moses named him gershom saying i have become a foreigner in a foreign land now my guess is that moses thought to himself i had big dreams i had big goals and those days are gone my future as a deliverer is over in fact his training as a deliverer was just beginning the bible is full of examples that god of people that god used mightily after they had spent a season in the wilderness like moses like david like many of the prophets like john the baptist like the apostle paul why does god send so many people to the wilderness before he does a great thing through them and here's why the wilderness delivers an opportunity to develop humility and when moses fled to the wilderness he didn't know it but he was entering god's classroom and the first thing god did was give moses a career doing what he had been told all his life he was too good to do he became a shepherd now you might remember in genesis the reason the people of israel lived in a different part of egypt they were shepherds and shepherds were detestable to egyptians all his life he heard you are too good to hang out with sheep what's the first job he got when he left egypt hanging out with sheep i remember i graduated college i went to work at a church for a summer first day there what would you like me to do remember back in the days when churches had little cards and pencils about this long they'd keep in the pews and you would sign your name if you attended or if you were a guest they put a little pencil sharpener in my hand and said go sharpen the pencils there's a big auditorium there were hundreds and hundreds of pencils i thought this is why i took two years of greek but then i thought you know what these are going to be the sharpest pencils this church has ever had and i spent hours and i'm so thankful god did that because god taught me a lesson that day if you're too big to do something small for god then you are too small to ever do something big for god god was humbling his anointed deliverer the next thing god did to humble moses is he let him become a dad and every parent here knows nothing will humble you like having kids can i get an amen years ago there was a very very popular speaker named charlie shed and before he had children he used to do a talk called the ten commandments for raising perfect children then he had a kid and he changed the title to ten hints for parents then he had two kids and he changed it to a few tentative suggestions for fellow strugglers then he had a third kid and he just stopped doing the talk because sheep and babies treat nobody like a prince but maybe the most important thing god did was he used the wilderness to help moses understand what it feels like to be on the margins remember what the daughter said an egyptian rescued us an egyptian not a hebrew everything about moses his manner his dress his dialect everything said i'm a person of privilege all he had known his life was intense privilege he had no clue what it felt like to be oppressed to be an outsider to need deliverance isn't it interesting he has a baby and what does he name him gershom because i am a foreigner in a foreign land moses had to leave egypt to learn how his own people felt living there and in the wilderness moses had to learn to wait all his life growing up he got what he wanted as soon as he said he wanted it but not in the wilderness and learning to wait would be very valuable the last 40 years of his life d.l moody the great evangelist used to say moses spent the first 40 years of his life thinking he was a somebody the next 40 years thinking he was a nobody in the last 40 years learning what god could do with a nobody you see the less he thought of himself the more god was able to use him and does anyone model this more than jesus the greatest deliverer of all and what does the scripture say about jesus he was equal to god but he didn't consider equality with god something to be grasped so he emptied himself he humbled himself he made himself nothing being found in appearance as a man and taking on the form of a servant and so over and over and over in the bible you find these two words together humble yourself and that's hard it's hard because we live in a culture where social media and every other platform says exalt yourself what have you posted lately to tell us how important you are now you know i love sports illustrations look at this picture some of you old-timers recognize rick berry hall of fame basketball player nba champion one of the greatest shooters and scorers of all time especially at the free-throw line and that's what he's doing right there he's shooting a free throw he said that looks weird that's right he shot them underhanded he called it the granny shot and he was stunningly effective and yet other players wouldn't try the shot in 2008 discover magazine hired a physics professor to study the shot and what he concluded was the angle of launch the amount of backspin the softness with which it rim it's a better way to shoot free throws in fact wilt chamberlain was a horrific free throw shooter he tried the granny shot one season 1962 scored a hundred points in one game was 28 of 32 in free throws shooting them underhanded and he stopped doing it you know why he was too proud he thought he looked silly and you can give all the nba players today all the data you want and they're not going to shoot their free throws underhanded because we're all so incredibly stunningly obsessed with how do we look to others i don't want to look weak i want to look strong but if we will not humble ourselves we will never know the strength of the lord and so good news if you will not humble yourself god in his grace will humble you he'll take you to the wilderness not to punish you but to prepare you i've spent time in the wilderness without question my longest season some of you know how to do with one of my children and i cannot tell you how many hours i spent on my knees begging god for my child and i remember specifically one night middle of the night when the lord said to me you can't fix him and this is why that was such an important word the lord was humbling me and i realized in that moment part of my pain in that whole wilderness time was my pride see i'm the minister people make appointments with me so i can help them and my own child wouldn't listen and that night in the middle of the night i realized i could only love people only god can heal people some of you right now are in a wilderness maybe you got there because of your own bad choices maybe somebody else's choices doesn't matter how you got there what matters is how are you going to use it are you going to allow the wilderness to grow you in humility maybe god is using circumstances you would have never chosen to prepare you for opportunities you could have never imagined and so right after the scripture says that god opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble here's what the holy spirit told peter to write so humble yourselves under the mighty power of god and at the right time he will lift you up in honor when i was a child after school i'd watch tv only had four channels had to walk across the room to turn the knobs watch them and one of my favorite shows was bozo the clown and every episode bozo would take a child out of the audience up to a blank sheet of paper give him a marker that child would scribble something and then bozo would come up and it didn't matter what that child scribbled he could turn it into a picture that's what god does we're better at remembering our worst than we are at remembering god's best but the one who came back from the dead is inviting all of us to have a comeback pride delivers epic fails but the scripture also says that god delivers epic grace and pride will put you in a prison but grace will call you out don't do like moses and try to cover up your fail uncover it and give it to the lord and let his grace cover it with the blood of jesus as we sang a moment ago by your spirit i will rise from the ashes of defeat and god brought someone here today to hear this word that you don't have to stay where you are i can deliver you but you need grace and i give grace to the humble are you needing some grace right now humble yourself and trust god to deliver by your head please i want you to spend a moment with the lord be real and authentic and just confess to the lord if there's a place in your life where you've been leaving god out you've been too proud ask for grace so god we're not just asking for grace we're expecting grace because you keep your promises i know some ignored some probably posed but a lot of people just honestly authentically humbled themselves before you and so this next week we expect a powerful encounter of your grace and we thank you in advance in jesus name amen

Channel: The Hills Church

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Id: 0HtLeeoOLlc

Length: 32min 59sec (1979 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 19 2021