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The Next Steps
A sermon preached by Dr. James Flamming
First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia
November 7, 2004
Celebration Sunday, the conclusion of "40 Days of Purpose"
Throughout the week some have been saying to me, “Oh, I’m
sorry it’s over.” And I say back to them, “It’s just begun!” And it some ways I
hope it has. The indications from those who brought the testimonies this day
indicate that the 40 Days of Purpose was not the end of the journey; for many it
was a beginning, for others a renewal, and for some, it was just a mountain
peak. What do you do when you come off a mountain peak experience spiritually?
A time of spiritual breakthrough – how do you handle it?
Some years ago I had back surgery and my surgeon loved to
talk about the time that he climbed Mount Everest. Rightly so, Mount Everest in
29,000 feet tall. The next time you’re in an airplane and the captain says we
are leveling off at 30,000 feet, you can say to yourself, if we were over the
Himalayas right now we’d be 1,000 feet above Mount Everest. My surgeon called
it The Everest as if to personalize it. He had conquered it you see. Since
1921, people have been climbing Mount Everest. About 15,000 have made it.
Unfortunately, one out of every eight have lost their lives.
Let me ask you a question because it’s question time.
Would you think it was more dangerous going up or coming down? You’re exactly
right. Down is right. It just happens to be that people, once they’ve reached
a peak, a top, something happens inside and you lose something. And in the
pursuit of going down, tragedy happens. Spiritually speaking, how can we come
down off the peak? How can we take first steps to make sure we’re not a
casualty of a spiritual apex?
Well, if we could look at those climbers from Mount Everest
and turn it into a parable, one of the first things they do wrong is they leave
the group behind. They’ve been to the top, they’ve been part of a group –
nobody climbs a tall mountain by themselves. You’ve got to be part of a team.
One of the geniuses of 40 Days has been it has been a team effort and most of
you who have participated have been part of a group and that group has enabled
you to have incredible blessing and joy. It is the environment as a matter of
fact of fellowship that Christ really gets through to us.
Lynn, earlier, read the scripture from Acts the second
chapter and I’m going to read it again. “Those who accepted His message at
Pentecost on the first breakout of the Holy Spirit were baptized and about 3,000
were added to their number that day and they devoted themselves to the Apostle’s
teaching, the fellowship, the breaking of bread, and to prayer. And people were
filled with awe because of the signs and the wonders that were happening and
they broke bread in their home, ate together with glad and sincere hearts,
praising God, enjoying the favor of the people and the Lord added each day those
that were being saved.” The group is a part and they gave themselves to the
fellowship.
When Jesus began His work, He didn’t begin by passing out a
strategic plan. He began by choosing the 12. Those weren’t the only ones; from
Matthew we know there were 72 sent out and from Luke 70 sent out and in 1
Corinthians 15, we discover that there was a group of 500 that Jesus appeared to
after the resurrection, but it was the 12; the 12 that He depended upon. Let me
tell you something, you need to take seriously the power of your group. Jesus
did not say, go out by yourself and be a hermit. He didn’t say, put on a
special set of clothes and become a monk. What He did say was, where two or
three are gathered in my name, I am there in the midst of them. Plan, please,
to continue to be part of a group, the one you’ve been in, or one you will now
join. It is basic. When you come down off of the mountaintop, don’t leave your
group.
The second thing is, remember please the basics. The basic
for example of understanding the power of low-pressure areas. If I were to ask
you weather wise which is most stable, low pressure times or high pressure
times, and the answer is obviously if you follow it at all, high pressure.
Gorgeous day, high-pressure…low pressure, we’ve had Gaston, we don’t want him
again! You see, it is in the low pressure times spiritually that we get in
trouble as well; low pressure times of doubt, of temptation, of confusion, of
anxiety and what is needed is just a good dose of trust and a daily relationship
with the Lord. We have already talked about the group, but there is also a
private, daily relationship with the Lord as has already been reflected.
Let me switch topography, let me switch scenery. Move from
Mount Everest and the tops of the Himalayas and move to the desert. Moses is
taking the people of Israel to the land of promise. It’s desert territory.
They’re hungry and God gives them food. It’s kind of a flaky stuff that comes
every morning. They are to gather it – it’s called manna. Some people think
that manna means bread, it doesn’t. It’s made of two Hebrew words which ask a
question – what is it? Manna, they found out, what it was…and it says that it
took them 40 years to get across the desert. You’ve heard the quip, I have used
it on occasion that the reason it took them 40 years is that Moses was afraid to
ask direction (Laughter). Manna turned out to be the food for that journey. Do
you realize how long that was? That’s 14,600 days of manna! They ate raw
manna, boiled manna, baked manna, ground manna, bar-be-qued manna, let your
imagination run wild! How about manna almandine? They whole point is they must
have tried every way in the world to get some variety, but whatever they used to
cook it, this was true. They had to gather it every morning. It became the
symbol. God’s mercies are fresh every morning, says the Bible. The manna, if
you tried to gather it for two days would spoil. The exception to that of
course was before the Sabbath so that nobody would have to work on the Sabbath.
Now my friends, this is such a great example of what it
means to stay nourished in the spirit of the Lord and you do that through
reading the scripture.
Somebody said to me this week, “What am I going to read now
that the 40 Days are over?” And I said, “I have a book I’d like to recommend.”
And they said, “Oh good, what is it?” I said, “Your Bible!” Well, yeah, okay.
I said, “Have you read through the gospel of John lately?” And they said, No.” I
said, “Do it!” Why don’t you take John’s gospel and read it through?
How about prayer? Prayer it is that is just talking with
the Lord at any time and in any place. What about worship? You’re here, I
bless you. There’s just something about worship that requires, are you ready
for this…getting reading for it. Now you can shuffle in here and sit on a pew
and be a spectator and say to yourself, I went to worship, but I don’t think you
did. Because worship is when you offer something to the Lord and you let the
Lord really speak to you.
Brad Johnson the Associate Minister to Rick Warren was on
vacation at the beach. Sunday came and he had a little battle with himself,
should I take a vacation, I certainly deserve it. I’ve been working hard; maybe
I need to take a vacation from church today. Guilt got hold of him and he went
to church. He sat on the back seat for a change. Well, the service started, he
sang the songs, he prayed the prayers, and he rejoiced at the scripture. The
preacher got up to preach and it wasn’t more than two or three sentences into it
than he realized that preacher had lifted his sermon off the Internet and was
preaching it verbatim. Now, what was he going to do? He did some mental
gymnastics – after the service is over do I just walk up to him and say, enjoyed
your talk? Or, do I say, hey you did a good job of preaching my sermon? Was he
supposed to be flattered or aggravated? And then all of the sudden, he started
listening to the sermon and it came to him like a thunderbolt. That sermon was
for him. He didn’t know whether anybody else needed it, but he knew he did. It
was right for where he was. It pierced him in his heart and in his soul and he
spent the rest of the day dealing with what the Lord taught him during the
sermon that he heard, not the sermon that he wrote.
On this day, your spiritual ears need to be open to what
the Lord wants to say to you, through the music and through the scripture,
through the sermon, through the testimonies, through the prayers, and through
the bread. It is written on the early Christians, they broke bread gladly.
Jesus said, This is my body which is broken for you and as oft as you eat it
remember me, please remember the Lord Jesus this day and Jesus said, as He took
the cup in hand, this is my blood which is poured out for you for the remission
of your sins. Is it time to ask forgiveness, to confess your sins and to
celebrate the fact He remembers them no more, no more, no more? For the Bible
says, as far as the east is from the west so far has He removed our
transgressions from us.
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