The Last Shall Be First

Matthew 19: 28 "Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

29 And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life. 30 But many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first.

 

 

I shared in church on Sunday that serving Jesus requires sacrifice. This thing called Christianity is no walk in the part. Don't kid yourself into thinking that it is easy, for it is not. To be a true disciple means that you have to give up a lot of things. We aren't like everyone else and cannot have the same attitude and mentality as everyone else. Jesus said we must "deny ourselves daily, take up our cross and follow Him."

 

Daily denial! I don't know about you, but that doesn't sound like any fun at all! And, if we life a life of daily denial, cross bearing and following of Jesus, we have to forgo many of the worlds pleasures that everyone else enjoys. Make no mistake about it, sin is pleasurable. The Bible makes that clear for it says that "sin in pleasureable...for a season." But that season will come to an end and we will "reap what we sow."

 

We have choices to make. We can either walk in the Light or we can walk in the darkness but each choice has consequences. " If we walk in the Light as Jesus is in the Light, we have fellowship with Him." If we walk in the darkness, then the opposite is true...there is no fellowship for what fellowship does light have with darkness. So that brings me to my point.

 

If we choose to walk in the light, Jesus makes it clear that we really don't give up anything. He says that all that we have given up in this life will be returned to us a hundred fold. That is 10,000 times as much as we let go of and the beauty is that which we receive in eternal rewards remains ours forever and ever. What we gain in this life is fleeting and temporary yet I find it ironic that we hold on to it so tightly.

 

Today, you have a choice. You can gain it all or lose it all. Which do you choose?

Can We Be Astounded?

Proverbs 24: 30 I went past the field of a sluggard,

past the vineyard of someone who has no sense;

31 thorns had come up everywhere,
the ground was covered with weeds,
and the stone wall was in ruins.
32 I applied my heart to what I observed
and learned a lesson from what I saw:
33 A little sleep, a little slumber,
a little folding of the hands to rest—
34 and poverty will come on you like a thief
and scarcity like an armed man.

Thomas Edison made the following quote…

Very few people work at full capacity. Very few give it all they got!  And, because of that, we get out of life what we put in.  We are the tenders of our own garden and how much fruit we produce is in proportion to the effort we put in.  It is not bad luck or the economy or the signs of the times or someone else’s fault that we are where we are in life.  It is our fault.  We are reaping what we have sown or have not sown whichever be the case.

But it can all change!  If I change it will change, if you change it will change.  Which decision will you choose? A little sleep, a little slumber or doing more that you that you were capable of doing?

A Threat to the Enemy

As the Israelites became more and more blessed while they were in Egypt, more and more sons and daughters were born to them and the word says they filled the whole land. This increase threatened the new Pharoah and he put the Israelites into slavery and determined to kill all the new sons born to Israelite women.

That is just the way it is, when we begin to experience God's favor and blessing, as the church begins to grow and more and more families are added to our ranks, the enemy rises us and tries to stop what God is doing. Trials and troubles come our way and try to steal the blessings of God. Some people leave the church and we become discouraged because of it, but Jesus talked about this in Matthew 13 when he talked about seed being sown and how it fell on different types of soil.

Matthew 13: "He hs the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in their heart. This is the seed sown along the path.20 The seed falling on rocky ground refers to someone who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. 21 But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. 22 The seed falling among the thorns refers to someone who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, making it unfruitful. 23 But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown."


Jesus makes it clear that there are different types of people in the Kingdom of God. Some people are have no real grounding in the Word and are spiritually immature and they don't last long. Because they have no strong roots in the Kingdom, when trials and troubles come, they get discouraged and quidkly fall away.

 

Others are way too concerned about the things of this world and the worries of life and the allurement of this worlds wealth keeps them from getting a strong footing and the Word of God does not take hold in their life because they are too attatched to this world and they are unfruitful.

But others, the hear the Word and they understand it and they apply it to theif life and they gain a strong footing in Jesus and they are blessed and they are fruitful and they multiply.

So what do we do, we keep throwing seed. We keep planting the Word into peoples lives and they choose how they want to accept it. The people choose if they want to grow in Christ or not. They choose if they want one foot in the world and the other in the Word. But eventually, the Word will continue to fall on good soil and the church will continue to grow and mnultiply and we'll keep trowing seeds.

Build Bigger Nets

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Genesis 48: 15Then he blessed Joseph and said,

“May the God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked faithfully,

the God who has been my shepherd all my life to this day, 16 the Angel who has delivered me from all harm

—may he bless these boys.

May they be called by my name and the names of my fathers Abraham and Isaac,

and may they increase greatly on the earth.”

Consistently throughout the Old Testament you will see the leader of the household conveying a blessing on his sons. In the case of Israel, the blessing contained and promise of increase. Over and over you would hear the head of the household say "I am going multiply you as numerous as the stars in the heavens" or "as numerous as the sands of the sea." In this verse of scripture he says, "...and may they increase greatly on the earth.”

 

I believe it is God's will to bless us. I think the promise of blessing is scattered throught the Old and New Testaments and I am convinced that we can claim these promises.

I recently shared with my leadership team the story of Jesus telling the disciples to throw their nets back into the water after they had fished all night and caught nothing. When they did, they caught so many fish that the nets could not hold them. In our own lives we see the same thing. At first it may seem like we are spinning our wheels and nothing positive seems to happen, but then Jesus says, "throw your net back in." From a human perspective it may not make any sense to do so, but as Peter said, "Nevetheless, at your word, we will thrown them back in."

Today you may be waiting on a promise of increase...maybe you desperately need it. Just keep throwing in your net. Just keep doing what you are doing and Jesus will come through for you and when he does it is usually when you least expect it.

I am so convinced that God is going to bless me that I am making plans today by building the biggest net I can to receive it all.

Circumventing God's Promise, Part III

It would be another 13 years after the birth of Ishmael before God's promise would be fulfilled through Abram and Sarai. Abram was 100 years old when God reaffirmed His promise to Him and Abram laughed.

Genesis 17: 17 Abraham fell facedown; he laughed and said to himself, “Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?” 18 And Abraham said to God, “If only Ishmael might live under your blessing!”

19Then God said, “Yes, but your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will call him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him."

In this situation it might seem like God was slow in giving His promise, but when we are dealing with an eternal God who has the times and seasons in His hands nothing can be considered slow, but only His perfect timing. That is what I need and want to learn. I want to patiently wait on Him and know everything is being fulfilled in His perfect time therefore I do not want to get ahead of Him nor behind Him, but keep in perfect step with His plans.

How about you? What promise has yet to be fulfilled that you are becoming impatient with? Let me encourage you to just hang in there. 
God hasn't forgotten about you.  You aren't even 100 years old yet. Plenty of time to go. :-)

 

Where are the Workers?

Matthew 9: 37 "Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. 38 Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”

I was raised on a ranch owned by Zananovich Farms. This ranch had thousands of acres that spread across the San Joaquin Valley, almost as far as the eye could see. On this ranch you could find grapes of every size, color and flavor, oranges, cherries, lemons, Kiwi's and other assorted fruits and vegetables.

During the winter months, the labor force was small and the ranch seemed quiet, but then when spring arrived, more and more people would show up to prepare the vines, water the fields, and do a host of other chores, preparing for the evental harvest which was only months away. When harvest arrived, the entire valley was a buzz saw of activity. Trucks of all shapes and sizes, tractors of all shapes and sizes, and men and women too numerous to count were hard at work from sun up to sun down, feverishly working to bring the harvest in on time.

Having seen that firsthand, I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it would have been virtually impossible for the fruits and vegetables to have been harvested and brought to market without the may hands of the laborers. That is why the saying, "Many hands make light work" is so valuable during the time of harvest.

Jesus is saying the same thing here to his disciples. He is showing us a vivid picture of fields, fields of souls, that are ready to be harvested, men and women of every size, shape and color, but there is not enough laborers to bring the harvest in. As a result, some of the harvest will be lost. So he, the owner of the harvest, asks us to pray for more laborers. Pray that more people will get into the fields and get their hands dirty in order to finish the task of bring in the harvest.

The question today is: Are you a worker who is not in the field? If you are not in the field, what could you possibly be doing that is more important? People are more ready now than ever before to come to Jesus. The world is ripe for the picking, but Jesus needs you. Will you respond to the call?

Circumventing God's Promise, Part II

Genesis 16:6 "...Then Sarai mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her.

7The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur.

8 And he said, “Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?”

“I’m running away from my mistress Sarai,” she answered.

9 Then the angel of the Lord told her, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her.” 10The angel added, “I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.”

In this story we see the repercussions of our impatience with God. When we get ahead of God, we will always create more problems for ourselves. In this case, the reprecussions are huge. Abram's new son Ishmael would be the father of a new nation.

10The angel added, “I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.”

 

He is the father of the Arab nations, most of whom are Muslim and this annomisity that was created between Sarai and Hagar through their sons, Isaac and Ishmael, has continued throughout centuries and is the source of all wars in the Middle East. We are even seeing this annomisity brought to the shores of America through Islamic terrorist activities. Hal Lindsay wrote:

"This conflict that has raged between these two half brothers for 4,000 years is destined to ignite the last war of the world, according to the Bible prophets."

 

11The angel of the Lord also said to her:

“You are now pregnant

and you will give birth to a son.

You shall name him Ishmael,

for the Lord has heard of your misery.

12He will be a wild donkey of a man;

his hand will be against everyone

and everyone’s hand against him,

and he will live in hostility

toward all his brothers.”

Of course, our impatience with God may not bring about such devestating effects, but none the less, it will circumvent God's timing in bringing about our promise. Here is a tip: JUST LET GO AND LET GOD! God knows exactly what he is doing and he has the timeline already set. And unless He asks for your help, just wait!