July 26-27 Sermon

July 26-27, 1997

David Olshine

Introduction by Carolyn Slaughter
We come here tonight because we take this new relationship with Christ seriously. And in the third chapter of Colossians, Paul tells us that if we take it seriously, we are to act that way. Here is what he says, so if you’re serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides. Don’t shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up. Stand and see, and be alert to what is going on around Christ. That ‘s where the action is. Seeing things from his perspective and following his lead.
If we are perfectly honest with ourselves, we would confess that we often build our lives on things and feelings instead of God. And as a result, we develop a numbness toward God and our spirit goes to sleep. God as a Father awakens us and teaches us that we are to live our days in Christ. Please pray with me: Father we’re done with that old life. It is like a filthy set of ill-fitting clothes you stripped off and put in the fire. We have awakened and are dressed in a new wardrobe. Every item in our way of life is custom made by you, the Creator, with your label on it. All the old fashions are now obsolete. Words like religious and irreligious, insider and outsider, uncivilized and uncouth, slave and free, heavy and scrawny mean nothing. From now on every one is defined by Christ. We are all included. Father, we are chosen by you for this new life of love, so dress us this evening in the wardrobe you’ve picked out for us. Compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength and discipline. Let us be even tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offense. Let us forgive as quickly and completely as you have forgiven us. Regardless of what else we put on, we will wear love, it is our basic all purpose garment. May the love and peace of Christ keep us in tune with each other. It is in the power of your spirit we pray. Amen.

Testimony by Carolyn Slaughter
When I was, a little girl in third grade, my family moved from our home in Illinois to Omaha, Nebraska. That meant leaving behind our family, aunts and uncles and grandparents were all left in Illinois and Indiana. That meant that we took a lot of trips across the state of Iowa. Now I’m told that Iowa is a pretty state. It has sections of hills, rolling pastures and farm land. Back then we didn’t have interstates we had two lane highways winding through all of this beautiful scenery. To tell you the truth the only thing that I remember about Iowa is the gravel beside those winding roads as I puked my guts out every half hour. I tried to overcome my car sickness, I really worked at this and my parents really encouraged me. I sat in the middle of the front seat, I sat where my mom sat, I sat in the middle of the back seat, I laid in the back seat, I ate before I left, I didn’t eat before I left. Nothing worked until I finally realized that the only time I didn’t feel car sick was when I was asleep. So I taught myself to go to sleep whenever I got into a car. Now most of you would not want to ride with me today. Is this true? What I realized was when I was asleep I didn’t experience that dis-equilibrium where you start getting nauseated. And I found my comfort zone. Every time my equilibrium became unbalanced, every time I started to feel discomfort I would slip into sleep. Looking back over my life, I realize how very well I transferred this lesson to other areas of my life. After a tough day at college where I’d come from class facing exams, papers and demanding professors I’d think, this is going to look a whole lot better after a nap. Anytime, anyplace I would try to zone out. The problem was that zoning out never helped and things weren’t any better in the morning. I would get up and everything would still be there. So not only physically, but I used that emotionally and spiritually as well. And without realizing it, I was living a life of avoidance. I just went on auto pilot and was not feeling or experiencing a whole lot.
In a relationship, that starts taking a toll. My marriage went flat because every time we hit a challenge that we needed to deal with head on I tended to withdraw and avoid. I was afraid of not measuring up, of not being good enough. Basically my perfectionism and my performance orientation ended up having the exact opposite effect than with most people. I just shut down. I experienced years of slumber and loss. Now what does God do with a slumbering child? He does what any good parent would do when they think that their child has slept enough, he gives them a wake-up call, says time to wake up. I experienced two great awakenings, the first was dealing with the whole issue of significance in my life. My life was based on feelings of inadequacy and inferiority. Jesus woke me up to the reality of who I am in him. It didn’t matter what other people thought of me and it didn’t matter how well I did things. The important thing was that I mattered to him. I was the precious person that he sacrificed himself for personally, that I could have life. And that life was not intended to be numb and void. That life was intended to be full and overflowing and fulfilling. And I realized that he had gifted me. In this church we talk a lot about spiritual gifts and those are things that God gives each one of us as believers in order to do ministry for him and help advance his kingdom and to reach other people. I never thought that he could use me, especially not the way he uses Michael. For years I compared myself with my husband and God hit me up side of the head and said why do you think I created you different from him? You don’t want to be a clone of him. You want to be who I created you to be. And what I realized was that for all of those years that I was asleep, I was squandering those gifts that God had given me. He doesn’t want me to be compared with anyone else. Just me.
Now the first awakening, that significance of finding out who I am and becoming healthy was absolutely necessary for the second awakening. That second awakening was my marriage. One day when I was feeling extremely low I turned on the TV to Christian broadcasting and a female broadcaster looked me right in the eye and said word to me that I know God intended just for me. She looked at me and said, so you want to live the rest of your life this way? And I thought, no. She said, then you’re going to have to do something about it. You have to make a choice. At that point I realized that I didn’t have to accept the status quo, that some things will never change. Things do change. I didn’t have to live a parallel existence with Michael, I had a choice. I woke up. I wanted to be part of the solution, not a continuing part of the problem. I have to take responsibility for myself and for my marriage. Looking to Michael to meet all of my needs was ridiculous. He is no more capable of meeting all of my needs than I am of meeting all of his, we are human.

John 10:10
10: The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.

I read John 10:10, I came to give you life, real and eternal life, more and better life than you ever dreamed of. To see that life in Christ we have got to wake up and see it. Just like I didn’t see Iowa going by. Many of us are living our lives not seeing it, not experiencing it and we have to wake up. So just as I trained myself to nod off whenever I was uncomfortable, I’m now training myself to be alert to what Jesus has for me. Just like those little patches you wear behind your ear for sea sickness and air sickness, they’re created to take care of nausea no matter what the conditions - they are a constant source that controls that. What I found was that the presence of Christ in my life is a constant source of control over fear and avoidance. So from past experience I say, ‘well, Lord, I need to continually wake up and look what’s yet to come.’

David Olshine
It’s good to be back with you again. And I guess I’ll be here at the end of August so it sounds like they’re getting pretty desperate for speakers. Pray with me would you? May the words of my mouth in the meditations of all of our hearts. Oh God, be acceptable in your sight. Oh, Lord, our rock and our redeemer, give us ears to hear what you would want us to know and what you would want us to do, for we pray all these things in Jesus name. Amen.

Judges 3:1-7
1: Now these are the nations which the Lord left, to test Israel by them, that is, all in Israel who had no experience of any war in Canaan;
2: it was only that the generations of the people of Israel might know war, that he might teach war to such at least as had not known it before.
3: These are the nations: the five lords of the Philistines, and all the Canaanites, and the Sido'nians, and the Hivites who dwelt on Mount Lebanon, from Mount Ba'al-her'mon as far as the entrance of Hamath.
4: They were for the testing of Israel, to know whether Israel would obey the commandments of the LORD, which he commanded their fathers by Moses.
5: So the people of Israel dwelt among the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Per'izzites, the Hivites, and the Jeb'usites;
6: and they took their daughters to themselves for wives, and their own daughters they gave to their sons; and they served their gods.
7: And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, forgetting the LORD their God, and serving the Ba'als and the Ashe'roth.

Let me tell you a story. The Israelites had messed up again. And so the Lord let Eglon command the Ammonites and the Amalikites to defeat Israel. And they took over Jericho and Eglon and imposed heavy taxes on all the people of Israel. Israel prayed: Lord please send us a savior! And the Lord looked down and sent Ehud. Ehud was sent to take the taxes to the king. But before he did, he fashioned an 18 inch, two-sided dagger that he placed on his right thigh - because he was left handed - under his clothing. And with his group he trudged to see the king. There they gave the taxes to the king and quickly left. But Ehud didn’t go very far because he wanted to go back and talk to the king. Once back in that cool room where the king sat on his throne, Ehud said, "King, I have a secret message for you." The king sent out the servants and Ehud said, ‘The Lord has a message for you’ and he took the dagger and thrust it into the king’s big fat belly sinking so deep that you could no longer see it. He quickly locked the door and escaped out of the window.
After some time the servants went to the King’s chamber to check on him, but it was locked. They forced open the door and found the King lying dead on the floor. Ehud was long gone. He had gone to the hills of Israel and there he took a horn and blew a signal. The Israelites rushed forward and heard Ehud say, ‘Follow me because today the Lord will help us defeat the Moabites.’ So they rushed into the Jordan valley and there they saw 10,000 Moabite warriors, and not one escaped alive. Because the strength of the Moabites had been wasted, it was many years before they could attack again. And Israel lived in peace for 80 years.

Judges 3:12,14-15, 20-22
12: And the people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord; and the Lord strengthened Eglon the king of Moab against Israel, because they had done what was evil in the sight of the Lord.
14: And the people of Israel served Eglon the king of Moab eighteen years.
15: But when the people of Israel cried to the Lord, the Lord raised up for them a deliverer, Ehud, the son of Gera, the Benjaminite, a left-handed man. The people of Israel sent tribute by him to Eglon the king of Moab.
20: And Ehud came to him, as he was sitting alone in his cool roof chamber. And Ehud said, "I have a message from God for you." And he arose from his seat.
21: And Ehud reached with his left hand, took the sword from his right thigh, and thrust it into his belly;
22: and the hilt also went in after the blade, and the fat closed over the blade, for he did not draw the sword out of his belly; and the dirt came out.

I. Losing Their Perspective
Perspective is imperative. All of us need it. The problem is that sometimes it’s confusing to know what is right and what is not right. In fact, there was a girl a number of years ago that did something pretty interesting. Her name was Julie, she was a freshman in college. She wrote her parents a letter and it went like this: Dear Mom and Dad, just thought I’d drop you a note to let you know what’s going on with my life. I’ve fallen in love with a guy named Blaze. He’s a really neat guy, but he quit high school a few years ago to get married. That didn’t work out so he got a divorce last year. We’ve been going out for several weeks and we’re thinking about getting married in the fall. Until then I’ve decided to move into his apartment because I think I might be pregnant. Oh yeah, I dropped out of school last week so that I could help support Blaze, but I’m hoping I’ll be able to finish college after we get married. Love, Julie. P.S. Mom and Dad, I just want you to know that everything I’ve written up to now is a lie. It’s all false. But, Mom and Dad, it is true that I got a C in French and a D in math. It’s also true that I need some money. Could you send me $100 next week? Love, Julie. Julie received $200 within three days. I like that story because she paints the potential negative perspective with the reality. And the reality with the Israelites was that they were losing perspective. And when you lose perspective, many things begin to do a downward slide.
Judges 3:7 says that the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord. They forgot the Lord their God and served other Gods. When you lose perspective of who you are and who you are in God, everything is a slide and you begin to rationalize and make up your own value system that is in your own opinions.

Judges 3:7
7: And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, forgetting the LORD their God, and serving the Ba'als and the Ashe'roth.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve tried dieting before and I found an incredible diet that if followed, you’re guaranteed to lose weight. It goes like this, for breakfast: a half grapefruit, one slice of whole wheat toast, 8 oz. of skim milk. For lunch: 8 oz. of lean chicken breast, one cup of steamed zucchini, one Oreo cookie and one cup of herb tea. Mid-afternoon snack: the rest of the package of Oreo’s, one quart of rocky road ice cream, and one jar of hot fudge. The dinner goes like this: two loaves of garlic bread, a large pepperoni and mushroom pizza, a large pitcher of root beer, two Snicker bars and then an entire frozen cheese cake eaten directly from the freezer. Now the diet tips go like this and you’ll probably like these. 1) If no one sees you eat it, it has no calories. 2) If you drink a diet soda with a candy bar, they cancel each other out. 3) When eating with someone else, calories don’t count if you both eat. 4) Food used for medical purposes such as hot chocolate, toast and Sara Lee cheese cake, don’t count. 5) If you fatten up everyone else around you, then you look thinner. And, finally, 6) Cookie pieces contain no calories, the process of breakage causes calorie leakage. Now that diet sounds a lot like the Israelites. They started off great and they knew what they were supposed to do. They were a people of war. They fought the Hittite, the Canaanites, the Jebusites, the Mosquito bites, the Bud Lights and they were on target. But all of a sudden they went through this spiral slide-downward, downward, downward. And when you go downward, you lose perspective.

I Corinthians 15:33
33: Do not be deceived: "Bad company ruins good morals."

It’s interesting to me that when we lose perspective, it immediately affects our relationships and we begin to associate and hang out with people that aren’t so good for us. That’s why 1st Corinthians 15 says bad company corrupts good morals, because it is so easy to lose perspective and it is easy to be influenced by the system of our culture. And that’s where scripture comes into play in Judges 3. The Israelites had forgotten God, they had forgotten about his ways and what he wanted for them. When that happened they came under bondage. Not for eighteen weeks, not for eighteen months, but for eighteen years they were under the power of the Moabites. Now the bible describes the leader of the Moabites as a man called Eglon, and it’s a very interesting description of this person and I’m just glad it wasn’t about me. It describes this man as, not a fat man, but a very fat man. I work with teenagers and most of the teenagers that I work with, even the 100 pound girls, think they’re fat. This isn’t funny because I’ve worked with kids that are anorexic and bulimic who are starving themselves to death because they think they’re fat. But Eglon was fat. This guy weighed 400 plus pounds. He was a very fat man. He was in charge of the Israelites for eighteen years. I have a feeling that somewhere in those eighteen years an Israelite must have thought to himself, enough is enough. When are we going to take over, when are we going to stop playing games and get tough and take action. When are we going to go back to what God wants us to do? You would think that someone would say enough is enough, we’re tired of this king.

II. Getting Our Attention
But you see that’s the way addiction is, that’s the way it was with me. That was my enemy in high school. It started small with cigarettes and then drinking. But somehow that wasn’t enough for me. I grew long hair, had baggy eyes and my favorite word was wow. By the time I was a junior, I was the number one drug pusher in my high school. When I was a senior in college I was arrested for marijuana, not once, but twice. And then I was in a very serious car wreck in which God allowed crisis to enter my life. It took about an hour and a half to get us out of the car, but we had not one scratch on us. As they opened the door, a policeman looked at me and he said, son God saved you. I’d never heard about God my whole life and I just looked at him and said, no it was just luck. He said no, there is no such thing as luck son, he said, God saved you. And for the next year those words followed me. I went off to a college in Ohio and quickly became disinterested with school and would go to the bars and stuff. One day I went up to Kent State to buy some drugs because I needed to pay off my school tuition, and was bringing back about $3,000 worth of drugs. The hound of heaven was after me and I didn’t even know it. It was a cold November evening and I had on a jacket, a back pack and I was hitch hiking. I needed to get on a road called highway 50, but ended up on highway 58 where very few people went by. I stood in the cold hitch hiking and finally a man stopped to pick me up. I got into the car and as was my policy, I’m not proud of this, but this is my story. I would offer drugs to the person who picked me up. But this guy was older with gray hair and didn’t look cool. He asked me what I did and I told him I was a student. Now I’ve got $3,000 worth of drugs on me, I’ve got them in my pants, I’ve got them in my underwear, I’ve got them in my shirt, I’ve got them on my back, I’ve got them everywhere. I asked him what he did. He said he really shouldn’t tell me because it was pretty top secret, but figured he’d never see me again and said, I’m an FBI agent and I work in narcotics. Now all of a sudden I began to sweat profusely and I felt the hand of God and the pressure of God on me. I could almost feel the pressure of the FBI guy on me as well. Crisis tends to make or break us. It was within the next two months that I made the decision to follow God whole heartedly. It was the first of January when I got what was left of my $3,000 worth of drugs and I flushed them all down the toilet. Thank God! That was 22 years ago and I’ve never been back. That was my enemy.
God uses stuff like that to reveal our hearts and who we are in our relationship with him. The Israelites had gotten so accustomed to being apathetic in doing nothing. And here is this imposing, very fat king in control. Well, Israel goes for the jugular. And God raises up a man named Ehud. He is not a very significant man, he’s not someone that people know about. This is probably the strangest, craziest, weirdest story in the whole bible. A man named Ehud, his name is not Joshua, it’s not Moses - his name is Ehud. Even the name sounds like something you do after you burp. It’s just not a very popular name. Now the bible describes Ehud as left-handed. The implication in the old testament is that a left-handed person was a little on the weak side. And I love the reason that scripture uses this because God uses weak people. He uses weak people like us. That’s what 1st Corinthians 1 is about, he’s going to take the majestic of the world and the cool of the world and the flashy, he takes simple people, common people. So God led Ehud to take on this king. I’ve thought about this story long enough to think I’d be scared to death. I wrote down a few things: the bible says that he had a sword and because he was left-handed, he had it on his right thigh. And so I wrote down a couple of things that could have happened to Ehud. The first thing I wrote down is as he is ready to go in and attack this big fat king, and pulls out his sword, he could have cut himself... it could’ve happened. The second thing I wrote down is as he is ready to stab this very fat king, all of a sudden three ninjas jump out and get him... could’ve happened. The third thing I wrote down is as he is ready to stab this very fat king, the king says, just one minute and takes off his robe and all of a sudden he is a big sumo wrestler. Although I think probably the best possibility is he stabs this very fat king and it’s like the Pillsbury dough boy and the fat king giggles. I think the worst possibility is he gets ready to stab this king and the king says just a minute and lays on him and Ehud can’t get up. But the bible says he went in and attacked the king and he took him. The servants aren’t sure what happened. They think their king is upstairs using the bathroom, but he’s dead.
There is a morale to this story. You and I have enemies. Spiritual enemies. I imagine that in a crowd as smart as you someone is probably thinking, ‘Good there’s someone at my job I’ve been thinking about killing lately.’ No, I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the enemy that keeps your soul from intimate contact with the person of Jesus Christ. What’s that enemy that’s robbing you of your spiritual intimacy with God?

III. Living Out Your Faith
I want to suggest three steps to help you defeat the enemy.

Identify The Enemy

Colossians 3:5
5: Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.

Step #1 - identify the enemy. Not just the enemy, but your enemy. Take a piece of paper and write down what you think your enemy is. For me it was drugs, but that may not be your issue. Maybe it’s pride, maybe it’s anger, maybe it’s bitterness. Be an identifier of your enemy. It’s really simple, Colossians 3 says put to death these things; sexual immorality, impurity, lust, selfishness and greed. Don’t lie to each other. Put away filthy language, rage, malice, and slander. These are some of the enemies that rob us and literally cut us off from God. That’s the first step, identify the enemy keeping you from being all that God wants you to be.

Be A Person Of Courage
Step #2 - be a person of courage. A number of years ago a man by the name of Jay Rathman was hunting in the woods. A reporter records it this way, as he climbed the ledge on the slope of a rocky gorge, Jay Rathman raised his head to look over the ledge above and he could sense something to the right of his face. A coiled rattle snake struck with lightning speed just missing Rathman’s ear. The four foot snakes fangs got snagged in the neck of Rathman’s wool turtleneck sweater and the force of the strike caused it to land on his left shoulder. It then coiled around his neck. He grabbed it behind the head with his left hand and could feel the warm venom running down the skin of his neck, the rattles making a furious racket. He fell backward and slide head first down the steep slope, through brush and lava rocks, his rifle and his binoculars bouncing beside him. As luck would have it, he said in describing this, "I ended up wedged between some rocks with my feet caught uphill from my head. I could barely move." He got his right hand on the rifle and used it to disengage the fangs from his sweater, but the snake had enough leverage to strike again. "He made about eight attempts and managed to hit me with his nose just below my eye about four times. I kept my face turned so that he couldn’t get a good angle with his fangs, but it was very close. This chap and I were eyeball to eyeball and I found out that snakes don’t blink. He had fangs like darning needles. I had to choke him to death. It was the only way out. I was afraid that with all the blood rushing to my head that I would pass out." He tried to toss the dead snake aside, but couldn’t let it go. He had to pry his fingers from its neck. Rathman, 45 years old who works for the Department of Defense in San Jose, estimated his encounter with the snake took about 20 minutes. The warden, after meeting Rathman, said, "Rathman walked toward me holding this string of rattles and said, with sort of a grin on his face, I’d like to register a complaint about your wildlife program."

Take The Offensive Approach
Maybe you’ve never faced a rattle snake, but I have a feeling that when you go to bed, when you sleep at night, ringing within your ears and maybe eyeball to eyeball you are facing some kind of spiritual enemy. Something that just keeps you stuck. You need to be a person of courage. Step #3 - take an offensive approach. I played high school basketball and I’ll never forget the game that we were ahead by 20 points at half time and ended up losing. We lost because we became defensive and not offensive. I believe that Ehud was offensive. It seemed that no other Israelite was going to get up and do anything about this king so finally he got up and said enough is enough.
This is a true story. Two years ago in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a 15-year-old boy found out that he had cancer and had to have chemotherapy. He was not as concerned that he had cancer as he was that he would lose his hair. He had a big dilemma, do I go to school bald, do I go to school with a bandanna, do I go to school with a hat, or do I wear a toupee or a wig? He made the decision to go bald. There were a number of guys from his youth group who had been praying for his healing. One day one of the kids from that youth group said, what would Jesus do if he was in our situation? They began to strategize and pray and they decided that they needed to go on the offensive. The last day of his chemotherapy the boy came home. When he walked in twelve young guys screamed, "surprise!" ....they had all shaved their heads. Can you imagine the next day at school, thirteen guys walking in bald? Do you know what happened? Almost 250 students became followers of Jesus because of those twelve guys. When they interviewed those twelve students, they only had one answer, ‘Jesus told us to go bald, and because we didn’t want our friend to go to school alone and be made fun of and laughed at.’ The name of the group is the Bald Eagles. They understood something that sometimes we don’t. We need to be offensive in nature if we are going to knock out the enemy. Sometimes it is too easy to just sit and do nothing. That’s what the Israelites found out.
Charles Barkley who played basketball for the Philadelphia 76’ers said, "I’d wake up in Philadelphia, snow on the ground and I’d be ticked off all day long. I’d go into the game angry enough to win." Champions sometimes get angry enough to win and I have a feeling that some of you have been sleeping with some problems, some addictions, some sin. You’ve been sleeping with it for too long and now it’s time to get a little angry about it, because sometimes anger positively motivates us to action. What’s that enemy? Identify it. Then be courageous and do something about it. And take the offensive.
Please pray with me: Just in the quiet moment of this time together, would you in your mind identify the enemy that you are fighting? And would you just in your own heart before God, say Lord will you take it? I release it to you. I like to imagine palms open before God and almost like a bird in your hands let your enemy go. Just say God, I’m giving you this enemy, I’m letting you take it. I’m going to be free and forgiven and delivered. In the quietness of your heart would you do that? Would you let it go? Would you let God take it? He loves you so much. ‘Father in the name of Jesus, we release the enemy, those things that hurt us and keep us from you, and thank you that you love us like we are, but you love us too much to leave us as we are. So today we thank you ahead of time, that you are moving in our lives, that you are creating something brand new inside of us. We love you and we praise you for what you’re doing and what you’re going to do. We pray these things in Jesus name. Amen’.
Now may the grace of God lead you to be champions, to be empowered, to be free and forgiven. We pray all these things in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Go now in his peace. Amen.