Gateway Church's Podcast
The Power of a Holy Shout
A Gateway Sermon
Thank you very much. Thank you, Robert, because he has said those same things are very similar to them for four times, this being the fourth. He says them so sincerely, my only regret is that my mother is not here to hear those words. It's how precious to be received so graciously and welcome so wonderfully, especially at this scene of a sight that I told your pastor exactly why I accepted the invitation. And I don't want to embellish the remarks, but I personally witness in my spirit of an unusual and profound purpose of God in this congregation. I've always been careful with our own congregation as God began to raise it up over 30 years ago in a very remarkable way to not give people a sense of self-importance as a church because none of us are absolutely necessary at all to God, but he's desirous to use those who make themselves available. And when the whole congregation decides to glorify the Lord truly and to become genuine people in God and open his Holy Spirit, there's unusual things that will begin to multiply through them, and that's clearly happening with you, and it is far more than just a growing church. A growing church can be just an accumulation of numbers. A growing people are another thing, and they are a congregation, they are a church, but I have witnessed in my spirit that God is raising up a very significant center for his glory and purpose that will require more of you all the time in your own depth and development and awareness that you have not been created by the Lord for yourself but for his purpose. At the same time, he has that beautiful way of ministering to each one of us personally and giving us what we need so we can do more with us. Any takers on this bargain, amen? That's what the Lord is doing, and so when Robert invited me, I was delighted to come and honored as well. Pastor Griffin, we've never met, but I want to express my own sense of how heartwarming this has to be for you, and I look forward to gaining acquaintance. God bless you. Something I think Robert said. This unnerved me a bit. He said, if there is an apostle Paul in this generation, he said, "I was that," and I was really moved by that. That's only one rung from the Virgin Mary. Possibly when I come next time. I want to ask you to open the Word of God with me this morning, and I want to be sensitive to the time and move rather briskly. We had a speaker at our church, Joe Garlington. Some of you guys have met Joe through promised keepers. Joe was guest speaker at church not long ago. When he opened the Bible, he said, "I will be brief today." As one Hollywood starlet recently said, when she married her first husband, she said, "I won't keep you long," and so I'd like to open, have you open to Zechariah, the fourth chapter. Zechariah chapter four. If you're fairly new to the Bible, go to the beginning of the New Testament, just page back a few pages, and you'll find it. In fact, it won't be more than about 10 or 12 pages back to Zechariah. In the Old Testament, I was raised in a church environment where it was almost a sense of competition when they announced the text to see who found it the fastest. In fact, how many of you ever went to a church where they did a thing called sword drills? Do you remember this? It's sort of a self-righteousness around your ability to just get right there. You can remember situations where there was an obscure text, and they'd announce it, turn to Hezekiah 8, and that makes me nervous that some of you didn't laugh on Hezekiah. That isn't a book in the Bible, folks. Hezekiah is not a book in the Bible, but Zechariah chapter four, and you just take your Bible and say, "God, if you ever help me, help me now." I say happiness. There was a whole list of happinesses for the conventional Christian sometime back that was issued. One of them says, "Happiness is finding the obscure text before the person seated next to you in church." But fuller happiness, the sopala of an "as happiness" is when the person next to you finds the text first, that when you open to it, you have it underlined. Zechariah chapter four, verse six, "So he answered and said to me, 'This is the word of the Lord to Zarebable, not by might nor by power, but by my spirit,' says the Lord of hosts. Who are you great mountain? Before Zarebable, you shall become a plain, and he shall bring forth the capstone or the headstone with shouts of grace, grace to it." Notice those, the repetition of those words. Would you say grace, grace with me? Say it, please. Grace, grace. It says with shouts of grace. Let's try it a little louder. Grace, grace. Moreover, the word of the Lord came to me, saying, "The hands of Zarebable have laid the foundation of this temple. His hands shall also finish it. Then you will know that the Lord of hosts has sent me to you for who has despised the day of small things." This passage is scripture significant in the history of Israel because it is surrounding the time of the beginning of the building of the Second Temple, pursuant upon the people's return from captivity, is loaded with drama. I want you to think with me about a classic historic passage, but I want to be very emphatic on a principle for every one of us to grasp if you never have before, and very likely you have. And it's a mistake that many people make about the historical passages of the Bible. In fact, a lot of people, because they were ruined for history, because they had a history teacher in school, it was probably a piece of history herself or his self. There's something recently found in an archaeological dig. There's a feeling of disinterest in history. So when you come to historical passages, or even if history is mentioned in the scriptures, I just mention it, people will automatically your challenge to retain their attention. Whenever you come to the historical passage of the scripture, it's important to lay hold of a principle. When the Bible is spoken to us as being the eternal Word of God, which the scripture says of itself, and has been verified by its eternal power, its timeless power, eternal is not just enduring and endless, it's timeless. Which means when you deal with history in the scriptures, you're dealing with timeless principles. In other words, God is not just saying, "Here's something that happened, and you can read it in my book, so you're prepared for Bible quizzes or just for general information." But he's saying, "I put this in my word by my Holy Spirit for you to turn to, and if you can see yourself in this text, then what I did there is the very thing I intend to do with you, that it is not only history, it's a prophecy for you." It's the Lord saying, "This is the way I do things in the face of these kind of situations." So as we come to this text, I want to talk a few minutes about what was going on there, and then have you move with me directly into what's going on with you. Because I doubt, frankly, there's much of anybody here this morning that what this text is about and what is a rubable, what a peculiar name, but what a powerful message here, that what was going on was a rubable is very, very likely true at some point or at some issue in your life. As a matter of fact, it's more than likely that you parallels the rubable in your experience. Let me say two or three things about him. Number one, he was a man that really did want to do what God wanted him to do, and I'm going to guess that's you. People don't just bother to come and do what you're doing on this Sunday morning except you care. Second thing, his priorities were pretty straight. He'd let a group of people, about 50,000, they'd come back from an extended period of exile. As a matter of fact, most of the people coming back hadn't gone into exile. They were second generation. Generation of the gone into exile had died in Babylonian exile, but the Lord was bringing the people back. It's a great return of the Old Testament, kind of often parallel, though there's distinctities between coming out of Egypt is coming back from Babylon. And as they returned, the first thing, the proper priority, and it was driven by a passion, a perspective of judicious wisdom, that we want to build the temple first. They, of course, set up places that they could be, but coming back to Jerusalem and the whole area had been completely devastated decades before by the hosts of Nebuchadnezzar's Babylonian soldiers. Jerusalem had been leveled, plundered, and while when they came back, there's not much to come back to, but there is a place. As they come back and there begins to be the recovery, the first thing that they did was build the temple. But the fact is it's being delayed. It's stymied right now, and that's what this passage of Scripture has to do. Listen, a person who really has the right priorities and really wants to do what God wants him to do, but there's a stymying point on something he's pursuing. I don't know if it sounds like home to you, but these things face all of us, and they're things that become obstacles. I told the story in earlier services about my five-year-old grandson. We'd just been to the house, or Doug and Christa, Christa's our youngest daughter, and I have four. Incidentally, I didn't bring greetings from Anna. She and I have been married 50 years, just celebrated it just a few weeks ago, and that celebration. Thank you. And just not in and around the same time, we celebrated my birthday, and we were at Doug and Christa's house, and all the kids were there, and grandkids, we have four kids, they're all married, we have 11 grandkids, and just last Sunday, in fact, dedicated our first great grandchild, which is a pretty exciting thing. But at any rate, the party was over. Everybody had gone home, and I was sitting in Doug and Christa's living room, the front room, just visiting with them, and that was about seven o'clock, party started around three, 34 o'clock, had a barbecue and stuff like that. And so I looked at my watch, and I said, "Well, it's Doug and Christa," I said, "Mom and I need to go. I guess we'll be leaving." And so Christa called down the hall to branch. She said, "Grandma and grandpa, I'm getting ready to go. Come give him a hug." He called back, just like that. He said, "I'll be there in just a minute. I'm making grandpa a birthday cart." About 30 seconds later, he came running down the hallway with him, was another five-year-old little girl named Natalie, Doug and Christa trade babysitting chores with another family in the church, and Natalie had arrived about an hour before and had been there. And both of them came running down the hall, and these are not what they brought me, but it was about this size. It was a tear-off sheet of a phone pad, and I think that what the birthday cards they'd made for me had been, in fact, probably when you saw them made during the 30 seconds between when they said I'm making a birthday card, because it was nothing but just scrolling. It had crayons and pencil that was just like this. It was an absolute, had no redeeming merit whatsoever, except possibly on the refrigerator door of a grandparent. There's priceless art there. I can imagine the way that looked. It would probably be appropriate in the New York Museum of Art as well. It's the kind of thing that you see in the place like that. But at any rate, they came. Well, I sat back down, and I'd stood up, we're ready to leave, and I sat back down on the couch, and aside be I level of the kids, and I received their cards, and I studied them just a minute, and I said, "Oh, thank you. This is so nice," and I hugged them, and just on impulse with no premeditation, handed them right to them, right back to them. I said, "Would you read me my birthday card?" Well, Brent didn't miss a look. He's a pretty quick-witted little kid, and just like that, he took it, and he said, "Happy birthday, Grandpa. I hope you like your birthday party. I hope you like your cake. I hope you like your presents. I love you, Brent." And he handed it back to me. So I said, "Natalie, would you read me your card?" And Natalie looked at her card and handed it to Brent. And Brent looked really, he was impatient. He reached over, and he took it from her because not much else he could do, but you could tell that he wasn't real happy with or not making up her own card. No kidding, as his eyes passed mine, he's bringing it over in front of him, and he rolled his eyes. Look at me, as low as say, "You don't give me a break." And he looked at it a minute, he could tell his mind's trying to conjure up something else, and then he just stopped, and he said, "Scribble, scribble, scribble, scribble, scribble." You and I, like Zerubbable, have situations that are worthy, worthy goals, desires, things in fact, as with Zerubbable, God had said, "I'm going to do this." And he set his heart to see what God wants to do with him and through him, but it says, "Though it had been scribbled on," as though a plan, a blueprint, a word from God has been scribbled on. And you can't just stand and look at the scribble and just say, "Scribble." You want to see what God has brought into being brought about. And it's at that moment in that situation where the energies of the workers had come to lag, it was all volunteer effort, people were showing up to help, the temple was going nowhere. And the stones that had been, some of them, gathered from the rubble of history back from the time of Solomon's temple, decades before that had been destroyed by the Babylonians. And as you they'd been quarried some fresh stones. And the stones that were for the reconstruction or the building of the temple were stacked up there. And the mountain that's being referenced there, "Who are you, O Great Mountain?" was actually the building parts, the pieces for what it was God wanted to do. That had been stymied, had been stymied first and foremost by resistance from the area. When these people returned by Edict from the Persian government now, when they returned, there was a command that they had to let these people back, but there were no cooperating people in the area. And the regional governor was regularly make resistance to them. And incidentally, Mr. Mayor, thank you for your support and your gracious participation, very unlike the case there. As you come then to this situation, you find the deterioration of momentum, the discouragement of the people, and the building process of the temple had come virtually to a halt. Haggai, the prophet, addresses the same thing. When you study that prophet, they both were prophesying, virtually side by side, two witnesses speaking to the word of the word of the Lord to encourage Zerubbabel. As that word came to him by Zechariah, and in this case, Zerubbabel is told exactly these things. Zerubbabel, "The Lord told me to come and say to you, 'This will not take place by might,' but that is by human strength or calculation. It will not take place by power, that is human energy or capability, but it will take place by a move of the Spirit of God, something God will do by his Spirit. And it will be brought to its completion, says you'll set forth the capstone. The word capstone refers to what would be the equivalent for us and our culture of a cornerstone. When a building is finished, the last thing usually that's done, there's a ceremonial event, and they come and they set the cornerstone. It was the equivalent. You'll bring forth the capstone. In other words, that mountain of stones, there's one that has been reserved, prepared for the final, and that final touch, the completion of what it is that is on your heart with an appropriate priority, but it seems stymied, that will be brought to its completion not by might or power, but by the Spirit of God and the way you will welcome the workings of the Spirit of God. He says you will bring it forth with shouts of grace, grace to it. Now, the issue of the shouting of grace is not just shouting a formula word. The issue is understanding what the grace is about. It's interesting to follow through the word of God, the use of the word grace, and it's also an interesting fact that the average believer, New Testament believer, tends to isolate the use of the word grace, and to essentially that which relates to the favor of God's kindness to us without our deserving salvation, that we're saved by grace. And if you're here today and you've never received the Lord, that's the best news there is, that Christ has died for us, and it's by grace that we receive salvation, which means that God just says it's yours is a free gift. You just need to come and receive it. So our achievements are not essential at all. As a matter of fact, not only not essential, they couldn't achieve anything of that merit. And that grace concept that has to do with our salvation is so commonly the kind of the stopping place where people think of grace applying. Where through the scripture, you study the New Testament, it just keeps going on to begin with, grace is the essence of the very nature of what Jesus has come to overflow in everything of our lives. The Bible says describing His incarnation, the word became flesh and dwelt among us. We behold His glory, the glories of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. And it says, "And of His fullness, we have received grace for grace, grace upon grace." The word full in the Greek language, "Plerado" is a verb that describes what we call full. There's a glass of water right here, not quite full, but if it was right to the brim, the verb "Plerado" would not apply to that until it began to overflow. It would require some kind of a patch system that is overflowing all the time, so that full has to do with a constant stream. In Christ, there is a constant stream of grace. The grace that has brought us to salvation doesn't stop gracing then. There's a constant ongoingness of His presence in our lives to deal with other things. We couldn't save ourselves, we can't really manage. No, that's not God commenting on our lives saying, "You don't know what you're doing. You're stupid." It's God saying that everything you can do isn't going to get everything done that I want to do through you. You're going to need more than whatever you can bring to the table, and I'm going to stream it toward you. Somebody say, "How will you?" It's the flow of grace that desires through Jesus Christ. It's the same word that he used that describes when miracles began to happen through Stephen's life. Chapter 6 of Acts, and Stephen, full of grace, there was something he didn't just decide to conjure miracles or say, "Oh God, work a miracle." God just began to flow miracles in and around him. The 11th chapter of the book of Acts, when there's an outbreak of revival up in Antioch, it said they sent Barnabas up to see what was happening, and when he arrives and sees the move of the Spirit of God, it says it in these words, "And when he saw the grace of God," he was watching God do something that man could not produce and was changing the sociological setting of an environment, was breaking through in a culture that had never happened before. God does things that transcend what we can do by grace. Grace is the core of the word, the Greek word chorice is the word from which we derive karismata, or the word charismatic, karismata, the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The gifts of the Holy Spirit are God doing things that are beyond us, just through natural people, he does supernatural things, through plain people, he does extraordinary, and that's something that is the flow of grace. So grace is a word that streams constantly of things that transcend us. I'd like to give you a definition of grace, and just have you say it with me. Would you say this phrase by phrase, "Grace is the freely granted favor of God." Grace is the freely granted favor of God, that disposes him to enable for us, that disposes him to enable for us, that which we could never do for ourselves, that which he could never do for ourselves. There are so many things that that describes precisely, and that is precisely where Zerubbabel was. He had brought, you have a brilliant leader, you don't lead 50,000 people across a 700-mile journey in ancient times across the desert without having some smarts. He was a guy that was heading up, the whole rebuilding objective, according to the purpose of God for that people. He had the respect, he had the ability, he had the stuff that it took in so many dimensions, but he couldn't get it done, because there was resistance. The resistance was explained first, on the one hand, by what would be counterpart to the adversary in our world today, that resists us all. The other part had to do with the weariness of people that wondered why things aren't making the headway that you'd hoped, since you were hoping and seeking a good thing. It wasn't like you were beating the air for something unworthy, and when you face that thing, you draw those parallels, it's done any stream. Find out that that's precisely the kind of thing that happens so often in our own lives. There's got to be here this morning at least one married couple, and you dearly love each other, but you also have very, very difficult times in some aspects of your relationship. And then that you sometimes feel like you've just made a good start, and then something throws a monkey wrench in the whole thing. The tendency is to blame one another. Say, why does this keep happening to us? There's got to be people here that you're hoping for something better than what's happening with one of your kids right now. It wasn't that you didn't try to do everything right or raise them decent, but things have come to a place where you just can't figure out how can we get through this. There is bitter resistance in the world of darkness around us, and sometimes the kids just getting their own initiative, some problems too, and you get worried by having tried and giving it your best. There's business people here that you can't want to figure out why can't this thing finally, the corner turn on this? Why can't we get clearance on that? Why won't this deal break through? Why can't we solve this management problem? We can go on an in-foot item with things that have to do with all our life. There's some student here, high school, college level, your situation say, you know, if I'm going to crank it through on this course, I'm going to have to get a clearer picture of what's going on in this class that I get, and it's not that I'm not trying to study. I just don't get this subject. Somebody would tell you, well, you just don't happen to have that particular propensity or capacity that I'll tell you something. The living God who has put any one of us in whatever situation we're in, he'll give you a grace to enable you. And that grace will enable us to do what transcends what we can do in our own. And that promise is demonstrated here so profoundly in this passage, I will do it not by might, not by power. God isn't mocking what we can bring to the table. He's simply saying, it will never be enough in many situations. We'll face some things we can do pretty well. We still say, Lord, help us and bless us and give us strength. But the strength is so can get it done. Here he says, your strength isn't going to get it done. It's going to take something that comes from an overflow of what only I can do. And that's what was the message from Zechariah as a rubble that day. And he said, you'll bring that forth. That mountain will be leveled before you, that unfinished project that is depicted by that mountain of stones. It'll be leveled, it'll be brought to completion, and the way will be with shouts of grace, which is an invocation of what God will do beyond what you can do. Saying, God, I stand before this mountain and I say, grace, grace to it and invoke the flow of your life and your workings. And that shouting brings me to the point that draws me to the conclusion of our message this morning. Because the directive that was given to Zorubble, I muse over it. In fact, I become amused knowing the human tendencies. I can imagine Zechariah having delivered this word to him. You'll bring it forth with shouts, grace, grace to you. It says, the hands of Zorubble have laid the foundation. It's going to finish. The promise is you and don't despise the day of small things, the place that is now I'm going to do it. Zorubble says, Zechariah, thanks a lot. That is such an encouraging word from the Lord. I really appreciate it. Zechariah says, well, what are you going to do about it? Well, I just believe it. I believe it. He says, well, you're not just supposed to believe it. I told you, the Lord said shout, grace, grace. Well, I'll do it. Well, let's do it. I feel dumb doing it with you here. I want to do it sometime. Nobody is around. You just look stupid saying, grace, grace. Zechariah says, the word of the Lord is shot, grace. Now, I'll get over here by this mountain with me right now. It's the summons to come to terms with the application of how we appropriate the promise. It's the spirit of praise really is what it is. But the declaration of grace is saying something that is so precious, so powerful. I want to invite you before we conclude today as God would witness of anything that I'm saying to some issue in your life, to shout grace. To stand before the presence of the Lord this morning and say, Lord, you have saved me by grace. You have showered grace toward me. I want to address that thing. I gave some examples. Let me give you a very, very touching example. Sometime back, I got a letter from a woman and I brought this message at a place. She wrote me and she said, she said, Pastor Jack, when you were and she cited the location, it happened to be up in Oregon. She said, it's awkward and almost embarrassing to me, but God has been so gracious and done so much. I wanted to tell you about it. She said, I was having a severe problem losing weight. She said, I was carrying between 50 and 60 pounds more than was going to do me any good. And the doctor was very concerned about my heart. My children were getting uneasy because their mom was not losing the weight. And she said, I tried everything. She said, it was not a matter of not being earnest and attempting diets. She said, as a matter of fact, I could diet for two or three weeks. And because of metabolic irregularities in my body, I would gain a pound or two, having put the most severe diet to test for two or three weeks. And she said, I would become so discouraged, I would just revert to eating. It wasn't even that I was gaining more weight. It's just that I wasn't losing what I needed to lose. And she said, I was becoming hopeless because this had gone on this way for cycle after cycle after cycle of attempted weight loss. And she said, I heard that message. She said, in my virtual despair that I would never be able to make the headway against this mountain of weight. I took that word home with me after we'd been in that service and had shouted grace. And she said, each day I'd stand in front of the mirror. And she said, I would shout grace at my over what she said, I did diet. But for the first time, it started to take hold started. She says, I'm glad as I write you that I have lost between 40 and 50 pounds. And she was doing a marvelous realization of what she could not realize in herself. It wasn't a slothful and different person. This is not an argument, shout grace and just do whatever you want. This is an argument of saying, what you can't do and can't get done and is stymied. What's been scribbled on and seems like iron bars of blockade. What's been resisted? What has begun to weary you? The Lord says, just put it right up there. And let's just shout grace. I'm on a level that mountain before you. I'd like to ask the person who's going to help us on the keyboard and this service. If you would come right now, they're going to come, they're going to begin to play Amazing Grace, one of the most beloved songs for all of us. I'm going to ask you to sing it through with me once. I'm going to ask when we come to the second time. Now I know people and I'm going to be asking them on the second time to shout grace, play really loud, really loud at that point. Because people need something to smother their sense of self-consciousness. So I'd like to ask you to stand with me right now and we're going to sing Amazing Grace. And thank God for the grace that has brought salvation and open up to the grace that is going to bring a flaw in the face of whatever it is that you face. And while we sing, when we come to the second time through, you can just sing. And I'm not going to say one, two, three shout grace. You're going to have to make a decision on your own to shout it. This can be a real quiet room at that point. But you can shout grace and shout. I'm not talking about grace. Grace, Grace, Grace, Grace. Anybody home? Shout grace. Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I am found. Was blind, but now I see. But I shout grace. I declare grace. But I come up to you. Let your grace flow in upon these manifold matters that face us now. With the convention, Lord, Lord, with the building. Oh, and grace, Lord, by your spirit and for your glory. Move and be glorified. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Go ahead and applaud these glory together. Bless the glory. We magnify you. I once was lost. Oh, but now I am found. I was blind, but now I see. I once had been weakened, resistance and obstructed, but Lord, as I call on that grace, I look to see. You begin to unfold. Don't just shout today. Keep shouting. God bless you.