Transcription
Life is deep. Life is deep, and as we advance as Disciples of Christ, we should increase in wisdom, in knowledge. We should increase in understanding. And that's one of the reasons why we must respect our elders, because through the journey of life, they have seen and observed many things. Many things. Things are not always the way it appears. But in the process of time, in the process of time, the reality plays out. And so, when an elder that loves you gives you counsel, gives you advice from a heart filled with love for you, listen. Listen to them. Listen to them.
Today's message will reveal something about the character of God that most Christians may not be so familiar with. So we need to have this understanding. So today, we share on "Understanding God's Unusual Ways of Doing Things." "Understanding God's Unusual Ways of Doing Things." Our text is from Proverbs 20, verse 24. Proverbs 20, verse 24, Easy to Read Version. It says, "The Lord guides our steps, and we never know where he will lead us." In the journey of your life, you will not know everything ahead of time. You will know in part, but only God knows the full picture. In circumstances where you have waited on the Lord, and whatever has been done was supposed to have been done under God's direction, possibly with confirmation, don't always expect that things will just happen the way you will expect things to happen. Sometimes there will be contrary manifestations, even when God is the one leading you.
So it says, "Since the Lord is the one directing your steps, why try to understand everything?" And this is very necessary because you may be tempted to stop moving forward in the direction that God has led you. You may be led, you may be persuaded to stop doing certain things that is actually what God wants you to be doing, because there are things you seem not to understand. Things are happening that are contrary to what you expect should be happening. So he says, "Why try to understand everything that happens along the way?" There are times where all you just need to do is to be sure that this is what God wants. So if anything strange begins to play out, you don't run out of it. You don't challenge it. Let God do what he wants. I know the thoughts he has towards me, they are thoughts of good and not of evil. Ultimately, I believe this thing is going to be for my good, and that is how it's going to be for someone listening right now.
In Isaiah 55, verse 8-9. Isaiah 55, 8-9, The Message. "I don't think the way you think." I don't know how much you know God as a today, but the Lord is telling you something from this scripture. It says, "I don't think the way you think." And you must have this in mind in your journey. "The way you walk isn't the way I walk." Towards the sky, so as high above Earth, so the way I walk surpasses the way you walk. And the way I think is beyond the way you think. So what God wants to do will not always agree. It will not always agree with the way you feel such things should be achieved. It says, "And I do not go about things as you do." "I do not go about things as you do." So the way we would normally go about setting objectives, sometimes will be completely different from the way God wants to do it. It will be different from the way God wants to do it.
I want you to stand up on your feet for one minute. Give three people a high five and tell them, "God is at work in your life right now." Tell that man, tell that woman, "God is at work in your life right now. He's at work in your life right now." You may be wondering, "What is going on?" You may be wondering whether God is still with you. But God is at work. Please be seated.
He said, "This plan of mine..." Okay, that, that is uh, The Living Bible. It says, uh, in the voice, "And I do not go about things as you do." Then in The Living Bible, in The Living Bible, it says, "This plan of mine is not what you would work out." There are certain moves of God nobody will be able to see through that move until God has achieved the goal. And so, those who think they are very smart, very smart, God will outsmart them. God will outsmart them. Those who are trying to read and monitor how things are going for their own interest, the times when God will step in and be at work, and nobody will be able to know that God is, is up to something until he has achieved it already. And at that time, it will be too late. It will be too late. That good thing that God has concluded must happen for you. God will do it in a way that it will be too late for anyone to stop it. So in The Living Bible, it says, "This plan of mine is not what you would work out." "Neither are my thoughts." "Neither are my thoughts the same as yours." "Neither are my thoughts the same as yours."
Now, let's look at three cases quickly. The first case was Samson, how God started Samson's divine mission against the Philistines. Judges chapter 13, verse 2-5. Judges chapter 13, verse 2-5, Easy to Read Version. It said, "There was a man named Manoah from the city of Zorah. He was from the tribe of Dan. Manoah had a wife, but she was not able to have children." "The angel of the Lord appeared to Manoah's wife and said, 'You have not been able to have children, but you will become pregnant and have a son. Don't drink any wine or any other strong drink. Don't eat any food that is unclean, because you are pregnant and you will have a son. He will be dedicated to God in a special way.'" Now, listen to this very well. God is revealing something about how he is going to raise Samson. Says, "He will be dedicated to God in a special way. He will be a Nazirite, so you must never cut his hair. He will be God's special person from before he's born. He will save the Israelites from the power of the Philistines." Now, this is the mission. This is the destiny. This is the mandate. This is the divine assignment of God upon the life of Samson, and it's been revealed even before he's born. And one other thing you will note about God's plan with this Samson is that God wanted to do it in a different way. He was going to fight physical battle, but in an unusual way. God was going to, he wanted to carry it out without using many people, without using an army of people. And so God wanted to use just one man to fight, one man to fight and bring forth the deliverance of the entire nation of Israel from the Philistines. God decided to use one man. And for Samson to fulfill this, God also was going to endow him, empower him with an uncommon measure of strength.
Now, this is where you need to look at life and the workings of God from a deeper perspective. In Judges chapter 14, something happened that many of you would have challenged what God was out to do. Judges 14:1-4, God's Word Translation. It says, "When Samson went to Timnah, he saw a young Philistine woman." Please follow this carefully. "He went home and told his father and mother, 'I have seen a Philistine woman at Timnah. Now get her for me so that I can marry her.'" Who was he speaking to? The same mother that heard an angel tell her that this your son is the one that will challenge the Philistines. He's the one that God will use to fight the Philistines and deliver Israel from the hand of the Philistines. And now you are the same Samson telling his mother that he has found a lady from this same tribe of people that God has revealed ahead of his birth, he's going to fight with, he's going to confront, he's going to battle with on behalf of Israel, and he says he wants to marry her. So, what the reaction you see in verse three is a reaction that you will see from more than 90% of parents, including godly parents. And this is why we have to, in addition to our our fear of God and righteousness, we need to also go deeper in discernment and in wisdom. We need to know the workings of God. So, because there will be times where what God is doing is not going to be in the way we will expect the move of God, the choice of God, the approach of God to be, even the location sometimes. And that will bring us to one, two of the lessons we close this message with. So, in verse three, "His father and mother asked him, 'Aren't there any women among our relatives? Aren't there any women among all our people? Do you have to marry a woman from those godless Philistines?'" But Samson told his father, "Get her for me. She's the one that I want." That means she's my specs. She's my specs. Yes. His father and mother didn't know. Look at verse four, please. Look at verse four before you condemn certain things, even in church. Look at verse four. "His father and mother didn't know that the Lord was behind this. The Lord was looking for an opportunity to do something to the Philistines." It says, "At that time, the Philistines were ruling Israel." Divine relocation.
The second instance was a divine relocation of Joseph to Egypt. Psalm 105, verse 17. Psalm 105, verse 17, The Voice. It said, "But long before, he had sent a man ahead of them, Joseph, who had been sold into slavery." Easy to Read Version, Psalm 105:17. "He said, 'But he sent a man named Joseph to go ahead of them.'" Now, thank God for insight. So we are privileged to know how Joseph got to Egypt. If we were to read just this account here, "He sent a man named Joseph to go ahead of them," you will assume that God appeared to Joseph or prophesied to Joseph through someone and told Joseph to relocate to Egypt. This, that is what you will assume, just reading this. But the process was different. He said, "Joseph was sold like a slave." Now look at Genesis 45:7. Genesis 45:7, The Voice. This is Joseph now speaking. He said, "God sent me here ahead of you." Now, Joseph himself had come to realize that it was God that was behind the whole thing. That God had a hand in him is arriving in Egypt, irrespective of the circumstances. God is speaking to some of you this morning. Irrespective of the circumstances, God is in it, and God is going to make it work together for your good. Can that man or woman say a powerful amen? He said, "God sent me." Now, he's convinced himself. This, the same Joseph that wept when he was being taken by the traders that his brothers sold him to. He wept. He wept. "Where are they taking me?" Oh, he wept. But in the process of time, so much has happened, and here he is speaking to these same brothers. Now he said, "God sent me ahead of you to make sure you and your family survive this terrible ordeal and have a remnant left on earth."
Now, how did Joseph get to Egypt? How did he get to Egypt? It's, it's very, very important we read how he got to Egypt. Genesis 37, from verse 12. Now, please listen to this. Every verse of this scripture is loaded with deep insight. There are some people today like Joseph's father. At that time, from that day, this man went into depression. He went into depression. It was not until Joseph, now Prime Minister in Egypt, sent his brothers down to bring their father to Egypt and then sent wagons. So when his sons came with the wagons, the Bible says, "When the father Jacob saw the wagons, his spirit was revived." After so many years of depression. Why? One of the things that made him so sad was that he was the one that sent Joseph to go and check on his brothers. So he would have continued to regret that decision. "I am the one. I am the one that sent him. I am the one that if I had not sent him, whatever has happened to him would not have happened to him." I just want you to please understand that you will find yourself in situations like these in the journey of life that will make you want to regret something you know that you did in the right order. Should you have done it? Yes, you should have done so. Things can go really bad, even when you have done the right thing. It's a lesson for everyone of us in the journey of life.
Now, the last one is a relocation of Israel out of Egypt. The relocation of Israel out of Egypt. You will also see the way God moves, just as he did with Samson. In Genesis chapter 15, verse 13-16, Contemporary English Version. He said, "Then the Lord said..." He was speaking to Abraham. "Abraham, you will live to an old age and die in peace. But I solemnly promise that your descendants will leave as foreigners in a land that doesn't belong to them. They will be forced into slavery and abused for 400 years." Now, watch this. God already saw that this will happen to them ultimately in Egypt, and God saw the experience they will have there, that they will be abused, they'll be treated badly for as long as 400 years. It will interest you now to see that despite knowing this ahead of time, it was God that still influenced these people to go to that Egypt. It was God that... Let me not, uh, take mention everything. I will just read one or two scriptures and it will become clear. He said, "They'll be forced into slavery and abused for 400 years, but I will terribly punish the nation that enslaves them, and they will live with many possessions. Four generations later, your descendants will return here and take this land, because only then will the people who live here be so sinful that they deserve to be punished." How was this prophecy fulfilled? Because of time, we can't read it, but write down Psalm 105:7-38. Psalm 105:7 to 38. You see a summary of the the whole account.
Now, just two verses that will take out of that long passage. The first one is Psalm 105:16 in Amplified Bible. It says, "And he, referring to God, called for a famine upon the land of Egypt; he cut off every source of bread." Why? God was carrying this out. You will also see that this is the reason why the brothers of uh Joseph eventually migrated to Egypt, and their father joined them, and the entire family moved there. So God had a hand in creating the circumstances and situation that compelled them to move to that same Egypt. Now look at verse 105, verse 25. Psalm 105, verse 25, Good News Translation. It says, "What he made..." "He made..." Who is he? That's God. "He made the Egyptians hate his people and treat his servants with deceit." These are very, very interesting scriptures. Very, very interesting. And one of the lessons from all of these things is that we should pray that God will never use us to fulfill an evil prophecy. God will never use us in a treacherous role against his kingdom or against his people, like Judas was used.
So, in closing, what are the lessons? One, God secretly influences the decisions, choices, actions, and circumstances of people in order to fulfill his plan and purpose. Lesson number two. Lesson number two. Walking in the path of the perfect will of God would sometimes lead you into trials or adversities. This is very important. So, some of the trials that have happened in the past did happen because of lack of sufficient prayers. It didn't happen because of carelessness or mistake on the part of those that appeared to be victims. The betrayals were not always due to the personal mistakes of the victim. However, we should realize that there is always a purpose for which trials are allowed to happen to the righteous. There is always something to be tested. There's something to be examined. There could be something to be proven that God wants to prove about you. There's sometimes there's something to be achieved through that trial. Sometimes there's a prophecy to be fulfilled. So God does not just allow trials to come, permit them to happen to the righteous for nothing. They are allowed for a purpose, which may not be clear for a long time, until the very end. Lesson number three. It says, to avoid going against God's move whenever it is not obvious to you, there is need to be sensitive to the voice of your intuition at all times. Your intuition is that inward witness, and this is the most common way that God will speak to you, not by dreams, by uh, uh, vision, and prophecies, and those ways are channels, but the most consistent way on the spot is that your inward witness, your intuition. Your intuition talks about the ability to know something. It will give you the ability to know something by using your feelings rather than considering the facts. It will enable you to have a strong feeling that something is true, although you cannot explain why or back it up with evidence. And the last one, the very last lesson. Most of the time, when God leads the righteous into trials, the experience will usually end, most time, most of the time, when God leads the righteous into trial, the experience will usually end with divine restoration. Somebody say amen. Divine compensation. Somebody say amen. Or divine promotion. Most of the time, when God leads the righteous into trials, the experience will usually end with divine restoration. So enough of, "Why me? Why me? Why me?" Some of you asking that question based on certain circumstances. In the process of time, what you thought at the beginning, you'll be vindicated. In the process of time, for now, it may look like you have made a mistake. For now, you may have regrets. For now, you may feel that God did not lead you. But in the process of time, you will be vindicated. You'll be victorious.