SPIRITUAL LESSONS FROM THE EAGLE’S NEST
TEXT: Deuteronomy 32:11-12
Deuteronomy 32:11 12 -- As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings: So the LORD alone did lead him, and there was no strange god with him.
l. THE STIRRING OF THE NEST
From The Message -- Eugene Peterson -- Job 39:27-28 -- Did you command the eagle’s flight, and teach her to build her nest in the heights, Perfectly at home on the high cliff face, invulnerable on pinnacle and crag?
A. The Construction of the Nest
-The nest of the eagle is built high upon the mountain ranges of Israel. They will at times decide on a location that can reach altitudes of 10,000 feet. The nesting eagles with build a nest that can reach a weight of up to two tons and stretch to as much as eight feet across.
-The wearisome task of carrying limbs up to four inches in diameter are brought to the nesting area. The nest can be as deep as two feet. The core of the nest is supported by the huge limbs and the outer edges of the nest are then lined with soft leaves and vines that are actually woven together by the eagles before the laying of the eggs.
-The leaves cover the rough sticks that would puncture the soft fur of the eaglets. In addition to the soft bed of leaves, shortly before the eggs hatch the mother eagle begans to pull the soft downey fur from her own body to shelter and warm her young.
-As the small birds are attempting to free themselves from the trappings of the egg shells, the mother never assists them in this struggle for to do so would hamper their own survival (more about this later on in the message).
B. The Stirring of the Nest
-After about six to seven months, the mother eagle swoops in one day and begans to stir or basically wreck the brooding area of the nest. She pulls out the soft leaves, tosses the rabbit fur to the winds, and removes the long vines that once provided comfort to them.
-It then becomes a task for the eaglets to stand and balance themselves in the nest that has been stirred. But the alternative is not an option, for to lie down would cause lacerations to arise from the limbs in the nest.
-He must learn to balance himself and also become acclimated to the use of the small stubby talons that are beginning to grow. The balance will help him later with flight and the talons will assist him in the catching of prey for hunting at a later time.
-God does similiar things to us. He disturbs our nest and causes us to reach toward him. Thank God for the stirrings that He sends our way.
Every Apostle had his nest stirred.
Every great reformer and revivalist had his nest stirred.
Every man who has ever longed to accomplish the purpose of the Kingdom had his nest stirred.
-He had to emigrate toward a new calling. He had to leave the familiar for the unfamiliar. He had to leave the profane and move toward the sacred. He had to leave the shallows and reach for the depths. No man can ever move without breaking some present relationship or thought process.
-Too often the sad part is that most men fail to recognize the hand of God as the One who is stirring the familiar surroundings to stimulate their own growth.
-God built a nest in Genesis 47 for the seventy souls of Israel. Their herds increased, they had prosperous times, and they had favor of the monarch. But then Joseph died and his services were forgotten. The favoured became the despised. They were hemmed in by forts and they were set to hard labor. Their nest became so uncomfortable that there was something that wanted to soar to a Promised Land.
-One may ask, How does God create the stirring of the nest?
He places us under the directive of some tormentor.
He allows us to languish under the effects of a heavy burden.
He allows the emotions to be assaulted with overwhelming feelings of displacement.
He monitors our progress in response to the call of substitute idols.
He causes us to catch a glimpse of some distant place of revival and renewal.
He grooms us with a restlessness that cannot be quenched with nothing but Him.
-It is that stirring that occurs in the tents of Kedar that sends the stirred in pursuit of one who can change the entire course of her life and destiny. When the nest is stirred:
Carnality is displaced with spiritual hunger.
Self-righteousness begans to wane and dies out to godly desire.
Complacency falls to a sudden death and gives way to fiery passion.
Compassion begans to rage within the soul. This compassion leads toward a giving of ourselves.
-Through that stirring often brokenness takes place. This truth of how that God’s greatest saints must be broken to pieces is expressed all throughout Scripture. Everything of self must go to pieces and everything that is of Christ must shine forth in greater power.
-God stirs us toward character and tempers us with experience. Character is often manifested in great moments but is is made in the small ones.
ll. THE STRUGGLE OF FLIGHT
A. The Shock of Flight
-There comes a day in the life of the eaglet that the mother returns again to the nest and begans to flutter her wings over the nest with a vehemence. The small eaglets began to scream in terror as she pushes them closer and closer to the edge of the nest.
-The nest being lodged in the heights of the cliffs of the moutain ranges can be 5,000 to 8,000 feet above the ground becomes yet another training ground for the young eaglet. He finally is pushed from the nest and begans to fall. As he begans to fall, something takes over, the will to live, the struggle to survive.
-The power of flight is within the eaglet but it is as of yet unknown because it has never been challenged.
-His screams are not that of power but of terror. But out of this situation comes the will to live. So he begans to clumsily flap his wings. During the free-fall, he flails and beats at the air without success until fatigue renders him almost totally limp. Then just before falling to a certain death, the father eagle swoops down and catches the young eaglet and returns the eaglet to the nest for the next lesson which will come on the next day. This stage is repeated over and over again until the young eaglet can fly for himself.
-The lesson of flight comes without warning. Suddenly the mother eagle appears at the nest and starts the training of flight. Spiritual growth and maturity occurs in much the same way. Without warning we find our lives wrapped up in a situation perhaps where everything is at stake, our home, our family, our job, or our health. Falling, falling, falling. . . . . . .
B. The Value of Adversity
-Questions race through the mind. . . . . God, Why?. . . . . The reply comes back from God, You cannot learn to fly in a church pew nor on the back of a pastor. The next question comes, Why so long to fall?. . . . The reply, You needed all the time you could to learn to fly.
-Take the struggle away and you take the strength away. Remove the thorn and you remove the grace.
-God’s greatest men had to struggle with the frailties of their own flesh:
Abraham had to struggle with deception.
Jacob would war against worldiness.
Moses would be terrorized by a horrible temper that would lead to murder and to striking the rock.
Elijah was faulted by his faithless despair.
David would be involved with the subterfuge of his lust and murder.
Solomon would battle with luxury and sensuality.
-Few people pray for:
A lion’s den.
A fiery furnace.
An almost impossible task such as building an ark.
For a Judas’ kiss.
For a Cross.
To be misunderstood.
To be hurt to the core of the soul.
To have to endure the irritation of slander.
To have to overcome the onslaught of continual temptation.
Few pray for the spirit of submission to come to them.
-We don’t pray for those things because those things hurt. But in the hurt, there is healing that occurs and creates within us a vision, a desire, a passion for God that ordinarily would never exist.
-We pray that God gives us relief, that ways of escape comes to the trials and difficulties of life, that the life we live will not be filled with hardship and difficulty. But the continents of the heart and the satisfaction of the soul will never, ever be accomplished unless there is an intense struggle that makes men stretch the wings of the soul to a higher elevation and hunger for God.
-God can take a struggle and work with it in such a manner that no one else would even consider. God works under different laws than what men work with. When such men rise from their struggle we often find a stronger impression, a brighter portrait of Christ, than of the man. The brilliance of the light surpasses the wonder of the lamp.
Psalm 103:1 5 -- Bless the LORD, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits: Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases; Who redeemeth thy life from destruction; who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies; Who satisfieth thy mouth with good things; so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s.
-It finally occurs. The day that the young eaglet will finding the screaming to be silenced and he rises on the wings of the morning and scales the heights of the clouds.
lll. THE UPWARD CALL
A. Those Who Do Not Know The Upward Call
-Some men never understand the power of the upward call. Their lives become marked with a lack of purpose.
Years bring age but little maturity.
The lack of resistance creates atrophied muscles.
The mind becomes weak because nothing ever stretches it.
The heart gives way to becoming dull, lacking vision and passion.
They become derelicts to society. When we think of derelict, we often think of the misfits of society, we think of the man whom alcohol has ruined his life and his home, we think of the man who has been unable to stem the tide of his desire for drugs. But this word was not originally suited to this meaning.
The word derelict is an old Latin word that gives the connotation of abandonment, to be utterly forsaken. It had special reference to a ship that had for whatever reason, perhaps by loss of the moorings in the harbor had slipped out into the channel and found the open seas. It was abandoned and floated recklessly about and soon found the path of a merchant ship and in the violent wreck both ships would be lost. A derelict ship was one that had an innate danger of destroying itself and any other that came near it.
-There are some who never respond to the upward call of God and because of this they become derelict in spirit and attitude and bring wreckage to their lives and those around them.
Lot -- Wanted a pasture more than the things of God.
Gehazi -- Wanted the seeming security of material things and prestige of this world.
Ananias and Sapphira -- Wanted to carve out a nitch of notoriety in the early church by wicked means.
Amnon -- A man who hungered for the illicit things while he sat at the king’s table and starved his soul.
B. The Hot-Hearted and Brave Minded Find the Lonely, Upward Call
-But there are men whose hearts cannot be tethered by this material world. Their spirits soar beyond the baser desires of their fellows. They hunger for the things of God. Their pursuits are Godward. . . . . The spirit of the eagle stirs within them. . . . . It keeps them restless and out of touch with this world. . . . . . Those are the great men. . . . . .
Isaiah 40:31 -- But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.
-No other bird has the ability to fly at the heights as does the eagle. He not a bird that will fly with a flock. He is solitary in his conquests. His purpose is single-minded
-Other birds may call to him but there is something about the focus of the eagle that refuses to be swept up in the path of lesser birds. He must pursue instinctively that which is in his heart.
-He remains alone. There becomes a majestic power about being alone with God. We find that was the greatest lesson of Gethsemane.
-It is in the hours of loneliness that God does some of His greatest works.
It was in the lonely dejection of Elijah that he heard God’s voice.
It was in the wearying lonely path of faith that God came again to Abraham.
It was in the lonely hours following failure that Peter found God.
It was in the lonely midnight hours that Jacob had his wrestling match with God.
It was in the loneliness of the mountain that Moses would get the Law from God.
It was in the loneliness of her barrenness that Hannah prevailed.
It was in the loneliness of her burden that forced Esther to approach Ahaserus.
It was in loneliness that Daniel received his great vision from God.
It was in the loneliness of the pit that Jeremiah found a renewed burden for the people.
It was in the loneliness of the pit and prison that Joseph felt God continuing to forecast his dreams.
It was in the loneliness of prayer at Gethsemane that the Lord labored, just a stone’s cast away from the disciples but it may as well have been a million miles that separated them.
Loneliness marked Mary in Bethlehem’s stable. Loneliness marked her again as she stood at Golgotha.
-God uses schoolhouses of loneliness to teach His servants.
C. The Grappling with the Storm
-Most animals have been equipped by nature to sense the coming of the storm, some by smell, some by sight and will scurry for shelter. The rabbit will find it’s burrow, the bee will flee to his hive, and the deer with seek the comfort of his place of rest.
-But the eagle because of his great ability of sight can see the storm approaching from a great distance. Because the eagle is a territorial bird, he will remain in his habitat until the first few drops of rain began to fall.
-He then will launch into flight and began to ascend in a spiral manner upward, upward, upward until his has broken the back of the storm and found his way to the sunlight above the storm.
-Notice what happens to those who are not eagles. When the storm starts to approach, there is a tendency to run and to hide. For the eagle the storm can represent hardship or even a battle for survival or a difficult time but he has no fear.
-The winds are hard and fast and often destructive but the eagle is challenged by the storm. There is that upward call. The call of desire, the gnawing of hunger, the restlessness of the spirit, all of these things bring us to the heights that God desires for us to go to.
lV. CONCLUSION -- THE MATTER OF PERCEPTION
Philippians 3:13-14 -- Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
-The greatest men of medicine, business, and merchandise were those men who struggled with opposition until they posted the colours.
John Milton on his way to becoming one of the world=s most recognized poets had to sell his copyright of AParadise Lost@ for $72.00.
Robert Louis Stevenson would battle with tuberculosis but would write some of the classics of literature.
William Shakespeare on his way to being acknowledged as the greatest dramatist of all ages, held horses at the door for a London theatre for sixpence a day.
Homer struggled with blindness writing the Odyssey before almost reaching immortality among the philosophers and literary giants.
John Bunyan cheered himself in a prison cell by making a flute out of his prison stool, while writing Pilgrims Progress and The Holy War.
Helen Keller struggled with her own obstacles of being deaf and blind and turned negative circumstances into positive assets.
Handel, paralyzed on his right side, all his money was gone, his creditors were going to imprison him but he rebounded and composed the greatest of his inspirations, Messiah.
One renowned sculptor, had to toil in an orphanage, modeling a lion in soft butter before his chisel ever tasted the marble.
The great Adlai Stephenson had to watch cows in the field for a few pennies before graduating to being a stoker, then a clock repairer, before he put the locomotive on the track and received medals from kings.
-Hallelejah choruses are not born in a vacation condominium but in a jail cell in Acts 16. Soar on the winds. Reach for the heavens. The hand of the Lord is upon you.
-Its all a matter of perception. Stand up to the tough old world.
Stand, as the anvil when the stroke of stalwart men falls fierce and fast.
Storms but more deeply root the oak whose brawny arms embrace the burst.
Stand, like the anvil, noise and heat are born of earth and die with time:
The soul, like God, it’s source and seat, is solemn, still, serene, sublime.
-Thirty years from now (should the Lord tarry) the foremost men in all occupations and professions will be those who are this hour locked in an awful struggle with the raging tempest on the mountains of time.
-In spiritual life it takes a course of struggles:
2 Corinthians 4:17 18 -- For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.
2 Timothy 4:7 8 -- I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.
-The eagle who is built for the heights is not content to stay on this earth.
-I’M GOING THROUGH!!!!! I will soar above the storm. I will hope for the greatest. I will do the will of God. I will defeat the enemy. I will proclaim the Gospel as long as there is breath in me. I will . . . . I will . . . . . I will do what God wants me to do.
Philip Harrelson
barnabas14@yahoo.com
