Sermon Transcript
But to be together for these holidays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and then New Year’s, it’s kind of the start of that year, isn’t it? And as we’ve already had the opportunity today to rejoice together, there’s just so much to give thanks for. Wouldn’t you agree? I mean, number one, we’re inside this building. We’re not outside with the wind and the rain and all the rest of that stuff.
We’re not on the freeway. Aren’t you thankful for that? Looks to me like a few people that are missing this morning might be out there on the freeway somewhere. I hope and pray they get home quickly and don’t have to, you know, spend hours on the freeway. But there’s a lot, a lot that we can give thanks for, don’t you agree?
Not just a little bit, but a lot that we can give thanks for. In fact, this is a time of year where we usually send some thank-you notes or thank-you cards or thank-you emails. We might even sit down and actually write a letter of thanks. That would be unusual now, but usually when we send letters like that, sometimes what we do is we, at the very end, put another word of thanks. Sometimes we’ll actually use 3 words, with much thanks.
You ever done that? Where you just really want to communicate to somebody how grateful you are? And when we do that, when we express thanks to people, this is really good for a lot of reasons. One, it’s just good for us. It’s just helping us consider the things that we have in our lives that we have to give thanks for.
And if nothing else, maybe it’ll move us a little bit from less grumpy to more happy as we reflect on those things that God has given us. It’s also great to be able to express thanks to other people, isn’t it? And to honor them and to show them how much they mean to us. And so hopefully it’s a lift to other people. But also as we give thanks, it’s a time just to say thanks to God and to express our thanks to him.
I think it’s a way for us not to take what he does for granted. It’s another way for us to keep from falling into a spirit of entitlement where, you know, I just deserve whatever it is that I have right now in my life. It just really is an opportunity to just reflect and give thanks. And so every time I think that we take time like we have done this morning already, and we’re gonna continue to do this throughout the remainder of our service, When we take time just to express thanks, I think that everybody benefits, don’t you? Everybody benefits.
So, something for us not to just do, you know, one weekend a year. This is something that hopefully goes with us throughout the year. And I encourage you, if you haven’t yet had time, to just actually sit down and like Nate was saying, he was outside in creation just observing nature. Nature and the beauty of creation. And the Tahoe area, so much to look at and give thanks for there.
But if you haven’t had time yet just to reflect, I encourage you to pause, to give thanks to God, to give thanks for other people. If nothing else, give thanks vertically to God and give thanks horizontally. And that’ll, I think, benefit your relationship, our relationship that we have with God. And then the relationship that we have for others. As I was thinking about just some brief comments this morning, I was thinking really vertically and horizontally, what would I say that could be helpful in terms of maybe where you’re at, but also it could be helpful just even in my own heart as I just reflected and gave thanks.
And there are 2 things that came to mind, one vertical and one horizontal. First, I give thanks this morning for God’s perfect timing. I give thanks to God for His perfect timing, which, by the way, and this is something to be reminded of at this time of year, which oftentimes His timing is different than our timing. Have you noticed that? Have you noticed how God seems to run on a different clock than we tend to run on?
We run on the clock, the clock that says we want it right now. You know, we don’t want to wait. So if we want that new digital meat thermometer, we want it shipped today, we want it delivered tomorrow. Patiently waiting, it’s just really not a part of our vocabulary anymore, is it? Have you heard the American prayer?
Lord, give me patience and I want it right now. Yeah, right now, Lord. I don’t want to have to wait to get patience. I’d like to have patience without waiting. Disneyland got word of that, so now in Disneyland you can go there and get FastPass.
You familiar with FastPass? Anybody here familiar with FastPass? What’s FastPass for? FastPass is a way to not have to wait so long in the long lines. Now you may have to wait some, but it will shorten your wait, and that’s something that we love.
We would rather have our wait time shortened. Kids at this time of year, especially on Christmas Eve, they can hardly wait to see what their gifts are going to be. So kids have been known on Christmas Eve— maybe you did this— to sneak into the Christmas tree area where the gifts are and to pick up boxes and shake them, especially the big boxes. Why would they do that? Why did you do that?
Why did I do that? Why would we do that? Because we don’t want to wait. This is the time of year when families are traveling and kids are saying what? Are we— what?
Are we there yet? Why are they saying, are we there yet? Because it’s just like taking too long and they’re saying, I’m tired of waiting. Have you used the Starbucks mobile app? You familiar with the Starbucks mobile app?
It’s the mobile order app so that you could pay before you get there so that when you get there you don’t have to wait for your favorite soy decaf vanilla bean latte or whatever it is. You just want to get it immediately when you get there. So this idea of waiting on God who has perfect timing is something that may become foreign to us. In fact, it may be foreign to us right now, and yet there are a ton of passages in the Scripture that speak about the need to wait. If you have your message note sheet, you could look there at a couple of them that I listed for you to just for reflection purposes consider this morning.
Psalm 27:14, wait for the Lord, be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord. That suggests to us that it’s possible that we could lose heart as we’re waiting on God. And then David’s reminding us, you know, waiting’s a part of the walk with God. And so we ought to, as we wait for him, realize he’s working, he’s putting together his plan. We don’t want to wait impatiently on God, we want to wait patiently on him.
You familiar with Isaiah 40:31? Yet those who wait for the Lord will gain new strength. They will mount up with wings like eagles. They will run and not get tired. They will walk and not become weary.
Doesn’t that sound good? Anybody here weary? And some of us may be weary because we’ve put ourselves in that situation. Perhaps we’ve rushed ahead of God, and this is suggesting that there is a perfect time for what it is that God has for us. And some of this involves waiting, and as we wait, we gain benefits in waiting.
In fact, the Lord works even through are waiting to give us a whole new sense of emotional, physical, spiritual energy, strength. You familiar with Galatians 4:4-5? This is a helpful passage, especially as we enter into the Christmas season. It says, when the fullness of time came, when the fullness of time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order that He might redeem those who were under the law, that He might received that we might receive the adoption as sons. This is a fascinating passage.
Paul is speaking about the birth of Jesus Christ. Now, the birth of Jesus Christ came at just the right time, in the fullness of time, not when we thought it should happen or the people living at that time, but in God’s fullness of time. And if you take that back and you put it, let’s say, into the conversation that the Lord had with Abraham, which was 2,000 years before Jesus came. Well, let me tell you, when that promise was made to Abraham that through him, through his seed, all peoples would be blessed, I’m sure he never in his wildest thoughts would have thought that it would be 2,000 years before the Messiah would come. Or when you finish the Old Testament Scriptures, that there would be another 400 years before the Messiah would come.
That’s a lot of waiting. And yet it was all done perfectly in God’s timing. He had prepared the world to the degree that it was time, it was ready for the coming of Jesus Christ into the world, the one who would offer to all people life eternal, who would through his Son adopt people into his family. What wonderful, wonderful promise that was kept. Think about the number of examples in the Bible that speak about God’s people waiting, and yet it was always worth the wait.
At age 75, Abraham was promised that son, but, you know, it wasn’t until 100 that ultimately the son was finally born. So that’s a lot of waiting and waiting and and waiting. That’s almost 3 decades of waiting. And even a year before, or 9 months before that child came, the Lord sent a couple messengers, a few messengers, and said to Abraham, is anything too hard for the Lord? Because at that point they were questioning whether or not this thing was ever going to happen.
You can understand that after 25 years of waiting. Is anything too hard for the Lord? I will return to you at the appointed time next year, and Sarah will have a son. This waiting that you’ve been doing, it doesn’t mean that God hasn’t been working. God has been working.
He’s got a plan, and it’s going to work out perfectly in his timing. And what he wants us to do is by faith trust him with his plan. You know, one of the things that we could be thankful for at this time of year is we can be thankful for God’s perfect, perfect timing. Bernice and I took a recent flight to New York out of San Francisco. Everything was on time.
It was good. We pushed back from the gate. We taxied over the runway. We got to the, you know, San Francisco, you got into the long line of airplanes waiting to take off. And finally we were about ready to take off, but then the pilot taxied the plane over to what appeared to be some kind of waiting area.
And so we sat there for a few minutes, and then the pilot taxied the plane back to the gate, to the gate that we had left from. And as we were pulling into the gate, the pilot then came on the PA system. He said, you know, folks, we’re sorry for the delay, but we need to bring somebody onto the plane. They’re going to briefly attend to a matter, and this won’t take long, and then we’ll be on our way again. We said, okay.
Everybody’s wondering what’s going on. So the door opened and a person got on. And this person— we’re sitting toward the back— this person walked all the way down the aisle, all the way to the very back. We didn’t know what was going on. We waited a few minutes, and then the front door was closed.
The gate moved back, and we taxied back over to the runway. And we took off. Now, as we were taking off, Bernice and I were thinking, what was the cause of the delay? And we started to just kind of try to figure out what happened there. I mean, why did the person come on the plane?
What was going on there? And we thought, well, maybe it was connected to that lady who boarded fairly late in the boarding process. And she came down the aisle and she stood right next to to the row we were in, and she started talking about death. In fact, she was talking to a person who was standing in the aisle, and so she couldn’t get to her seat. And she said something about how she needed to bury her mother and some other things, and we had no idea what she was talking about.
I mean, it was kind of odd that she was— we’ve never really had anybody, you know, on an airplane come next to our row and talk about death before. Never done. I mean, maybe she knew I was a pastor or something, you know, we talk about death or stuff like that. But anyway, so we didn’t know if that could have been possibly connected, the delay could have been connected to her or whatever. So we were about an hour into the flight, I decided to get up and, you know, go to the back.
And as I was back there, the flight attendant, one of them was back there in the galley and And I said, you know, I’m just interested to know, was the delay that happened back there at the airport, was it in any way connected to the lady that was talking about death? She said, well, actually it was. She said, as we taxied from the terminal over to the runway, she continued to show signs of mental instability, and therefore, for the safety of everyone on board, we made the decision that we were going to take her off airplane. So we did that in the most discreet way that we possibly could, out the back door. And she said, we really felt that we needed to do it.
And I said to her, well, thank you. Thank you for having the courage, and thank you for having the willingness to delay our flight if necessary for the safety of everybody on board. She said, well, we knew that that would be the best thing to do.
Now, I’ve thought about that since that incident happened a couple weeks ago, and I’ve thought how sometimes when there’s a delay in our life and we can’t make the connection of why the delay is there, we need to remember that God is working. He is working, and we may not know what it is that he is doing, but he is working out his perfect plan, and sometimes that That may mean things that he’s working on we’re not going to know about, but ultimately it’s just a part of how he works, and we can give him thanks. David, as was already read, Psalm 9:1, said, I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart. I will recount all of your wonderful deeds. All of your wonderful deeds.
There just are so many deeds that we can recount that we could be grateful for. But one of those wonderful deeds that I’m thankful for right now is the fact that the Lord works in his timing, which oftentimes doesn’t mean he works instantaneously, but he works in his timing. Is that something we can be thankful for? Oh, you better believe it. So, I thought about that, and then I thought horizontally about my ministering wife and other ministering women.
As an area where I thank God. I thank God for my wife and for all that she does, all the ways that she’s involved, all the things that she does in my life and helping me become the person that I am, the pastor, the father, the grandpa, all the rest of that stuff. But I also thank God for all the ways that he’s used Bernice in the churches over the years and privilege of how she’s being used in this church right now, but I extend that to other ministering women everywhere that are faithfully serving the Lord. I think one of the reasons that I was prompted to think about ministering women is because recently there were some tragic things said about a willing servant. Her name is Beth Moore, and I just think it was very hurtful what was said.
Disrespectful? Have you heard of Beth Moore? Many at Bridges have benefited from her life and from her teaching and from the Bible studies. For the past 25 years, Beth has been faithfully serving the Lord. She’s a willing servant.
Now, I say a willing servant because at the age of 18, God tapped Beth on the shoulder and said, I want to use you. And so shortly after that, he began to use her in ways that she was not being used, but she began to teach Bible studies. And as she began to teach these Bible studies, they rapidly grew. They rapidly grew from a few women to a couple hundred women to a couple thousand women to 3,000 women in these Bible studies. And as her ministry continued to grow, she just wanted to continue to be faithful to the Lord, and she continues to this day to be faithful to the Lord.
Through all of the ways that God has opened doors for her to be used. I think also of Kay Arthur. You heard that name before? She’s another willing servant who at the age of 29 began a teen Bible study. Little did she know that this teenage group that she was meeting with, this small group of girls, would quickly grow to include some college students, and then it would include some adults.
And from there, it ultimately flourished to become Precept Ministries. Maybe you’ve heard of Precept Ministries, an amazing worldwide ministry that’s focused on helping people understand the Scriptures and study the Scriptures and apply the Scriptures to their lives. Why did that happen? Well, because Kay was a willing servant. Kay said yes to God’s call on her life, and She is doing more than she ever dreamed or thought would ever happen.
The same kind of thing happened to Audrey Johnson. You familiar with Audrey Johnson, who back in 1952 at the age of 45 agreed to lead a Bible study for a group of 5 women? She said, however, I’m only going to lead this Bible study under one condition, and here’s the condition: I will not spoon-feed you. So we’re going to do this together. We’re going to do an inductive study.
We’re going to learn how to study the scriptures. We’re going to put together some questions and some homework and all the rest of it. Well, that inductive study of 5 women soon became 2 homes filled and then a church filled, and now there are some 370,000 attendees. In 60-plus years, it’s gone to 370,000 attendees. Over 75,000 children in 120 countries in a ministry called Bible Study Fellowship, BSF.
You ever heard of that?
And so because of what’s happening in our culture and in churches, I sat down and I gave some thought the last month or so to how God has used women in willing servants like Beth Moore and Kay Arthur and Audrey Johnson and others who throughout biblical history or history have said yes to the Lord saying, I want to use you. And I’m thankful for women that are being used by God in the body of Christ who could have said, no, I don’t think You’ve got this right, Lord, who’ve opened up their hands and said, Lord, if you want to use me, great. Now, you know that in Genesis 2:18 that women from the very beginning have had a prominent place in God’s plan. And Psalm 139:4 tells us that women and men alike are wonderfully created by God. We are fearfully and we are wonderfully made.
And we are God’s workmanship, Ephesians 2:10, created to do wonderful works for God’s glory. And so I just wanted to say to us this morning, just as a reminder, women have a vital ministering role in the body of Christ. It comes right to the top of the list this year for me. I am thankful to God for his perfect timing And I am thankful to God for my ministering wife. And I’m thankful to God for ministering women everywhere who are willing servants, who say to the Lord, Lord, however you want to use me, I want to be faithful to you.
And my hope and prayer to you, especially the women here this morning, is that you will, in that affirmation of the Lord’s work in your heart. Continue to be faithful in the wonderful work that God calls you to. Our— especially teenagers, they need to hear that today in our culture. So many things are so hurtful that are being said. Our kids these days are beginning to wonder, is there a place for me the church.
Let’s tell them there is. Let’s tell them there is.
Let’s pray together. Father, as we just continue to share this morning the much thanks that we have in our hearts for what you’re doing, may we, may we give you praise and glory. And we thank you, God. We want to honor you. We want to give thanks as David did with his whole heart and recount all of your wonderful deeds, all of them in so many ways.
We give you praise today in Jesus’ name. Amen.
