Excellence In Action-Discovering God’s Blessings
January 3 2010, I Kings 17:1-11 Luke 6:37-38
How many of you know we serve a God who does everything with excellence. There is a song that says “God does all things well, He does all things well.” Look at how God created you. Not even the best computer created can do everything that you do and not even have to be plugged into a socket or have a battery inserted inside. When Jesus walked the face of this earth some 2000 years ago he came with a mission to put excellence into action.
He didn’t serve just a enough to get by, he served with excellence. Jesus did not die just enough for just some of us to be saved. He died it with excellence so that all of us could be changed. When Jesus fed the 5000 with just two fish and fish and five loaves of bread, the word does not say, everybody got a little taste. Jesus fed with excellence so that after everybody was full, there was still some food left over. Jesus loved with excellence. He didn’t love just the good folk, but he loved a woman who had been living in sin, a man who was a thief and a guy filled with demons. It’s because loving with excellence was Jesus’ goal. Jesus’ life was a life of excellence in action. No matter we he did, his goal was to glorify his Heavenly Father. You glorify God best when you do it with excellence.
Our overall theme for the year 2010 is Excellence In Action. How many of you have areas in your life that need to be pointed in the direction of excellence? Is there anybody that could be better and should be better this year than they were last year. God desires for all of us to step up to a higher plane of living in 2010. There is something he wants to give us that he cannot give if we do not step up.
The desire for Excellence in Action comes from wanting more than you have had in the past. As good as things were in Glenville in the decade that just past, as your pastors, we want more for you and for us as a church in this new decade. We want to see more people getting saved. We want to see more youth going to college and more of you getting better jobs.. We want to see more homes being restored and more relationships strengthened. We want to see more of you finding saved men and women to marry. We want to see more of you stand firm in your faith, becoming teachers and leaders in the kingdom of God. We want everyone in this place to become more loving, more forgiving, and more blessed in the power of God. We want you to Discover God’s blessings for your life.
Our God is a great giver and a great provider. If you want to know excellence in action in your life, you have to know what it is to be a great giver and a great provider. God knows what 2010 is going to bring into your life. God is already working things out for each of us, but God is going to test us to see if we truly want the things God has for us. Nothing tests our faith more in God, than our possessions and our money. When you talk about being blessed financially, it does not begin with open hands to receive, but with saying here God take and use this.
When you give your money to the bank they promise to give you $2 for every 100 you give them, but then they require so much money up front just to get that rate, and you have to wait a year to get it and they call it an investment with good customer service. But God does things with excellence. You can give him a tithe of 10% of what you earn this week, and there are times before the week is over that God blesses you with a $100 for the ten that you gave. God is so excited in opening blessings for you, that the only time God says to put Him to the test is when it comes to being faithful in your giving to the Lord. You see when you give, you help the Lord to bring others into God’s family. Nothing pleases God more than having his children finally make it home. That’s the real reason Jesus died for us in the first place, so that we could come home.
Giving is the way to discovering God’s blessing because it will present you with the opportunity to rely on God in a new way. It will take you to new places of being a partner with God. It will further your walk of excellence in action. Go back with me for a moment in time.
There was a king over God’s people whose name was Ahab. He pretty much did whatever he wanted to do whether it was right or not. He did not care much for God’s word. He took as his queen a woman who wanted nothing to do with the true God. As a matter of fact, she came in with her own god by the name of Baal. Her name was Jezebel. Ahab and Jezebel are famous in the bible because of the evil that they did together. She decided to get rid of the God of Israel and make the whole nation worship her god BAAL.
Baal was supposedly the god of the rain. In a farming society, controlling the rain, meant controlling who lived and who died, who prospered and who went into poverty. Baal would be the provider of his worshippers. Ahab did everything he could to please his wife in following this new religion. They were cut throat leaders who did not mind cutting your throat if you spoke out against them. Many of the Lord’s prophets were afraid of them, and converted to this new religion out of fear for their lives.
But there was a prophet by the name of Elijah who wanted to walk in excellence before his God. God was looking for someone to walk in and to challenge King Ahab and Queen Jezebel on their behavior as leaders. In order to demonstrate excellence in action to the other prophets, Elijah was going to have to take a risk. Say the wrong thing, and off comes his head.
God says to him, “I want you to go and speak a word of rebuke to the king and queen. All you have to do is go tell them off and leave.” How many of you would want that assignment of walking in excellence? Excellence in action is always going to involve risks. Are you willing to risk doing something in 2010 you’ve never done before because you want more out of life or more out of God. Elijah is willing to risk his life to discover God’s blessings. We are in a new decade we have never seen before thanks to God’s blessings on our lives. Are we willing to risk our giving to God in a way we never have before so that we can do all God has called us to do?
Elijah walks into the palace, not quite sure what’s going to come out of his mouth when he stands before the king and queen. They had done so much evil, he could start naming sins left and right and would be right on target. But when he opens his mouth there in the court, out comes the words. “As the Lord, the God of Israel lives, whom I serve, there will be neither dew nor rain in the next few years except at my word.” This statement was the biggest insult he could have made to the king and queen. What they heard was, “you god Baal ain’t worth two cents. You can call him the rain god if you want to, but I can tell you right now, I got him whipped and there will not be a drop of rain fall in the next few years, until I say it can fall.”
How many of you know this was not the right thing or politically correct thing to say to Ahab and Jezebel in the middle of their national campaign proclaiming BAAL is our great provider. Now when you take a risk for God, listen carefully to the next thing God tells you because it might save your life. Before they could figure out just what was the best way to kill Elijah, the word of the Lord came to Elijah a second time. It went like this, “brother get out of this place immediately, go east and hide in the Kerith ravine east of the Jordan.” Get in a place so far back, that no one will be able to find you. I’ll have the ravens supply you with food there.
When you take a risk for God, it’s going to look shaky for a moment or two, but don’t give up on becoming excellence in action. Elijah made his exit quickly and headed east. He ran until he was sure nobody was going to find him. God led him to the right spot to meet his needs. Elijah had plenty of water to drink but no food. Then he saw the ravens coming about breakfast time and low and behold they served him more than enough to eat.
When he got hungry around supper time, they brought in more food for him to eat. He had bread and meat to eat twice a day and did not have to pay for any of it. The Hebrew word for bread actually means food in general and could include berries, fruits, nuts and eggs as well as bread. By striving for excellence in action, he had discovered God’s blessings for his life. When you move into the place that God has for you, God can set up a continual line of blessings to just keep showing up in your life right when you need it. But don’t get too comfortable in one spot.
You see the rest of the country is going through the drought of no rain that Elijah had spoken to the king and queen about. That stream that had been bringing fresh water every day started to dry up. Then came that day, when the last little water came flowing down the path. Sometimes our place of blessing is going to dry up. That’s why our hope and our confidence has to be in the Lord. Just because we have less today, does not mean that God has abandoned us. God is going to make a way for us, but it might not be in the manner we are accustomed to having. We may have to change how we did things in the past.
Elijah’s brook dried up as a natural event. Sometimes our sources are going to dry up through no fault of our own. Jobs will end, family members will die, benefits will cease, layoffs will occur, sickness and illnesses will happen, but remember God is still in control and your quickest way to getting back on your feet is to strive for excellence in action in order to discover God’s blessings.
We don’t know how long Elijah sat thinking about that brook. We do know he kept his ears open for a Word from God. When you are in the midst of being down and out, that’s the time you need to be around the saints the most. You don’t know who God might use to get you to the next point you need in life. The word of the Lord came to Elijah saying “go Zarephath in the region of Sidon and stay there. I have directed a widow there to supply you with food.”
This is really weird. Elijah is doing all he can to hide from Jezebel. Yet God tells him to go to Jezebel’s homeland to have his needs met. He’s going into the heart of Baal worship to find a widow to take care of his needs. Now obviously she must be a rich widow, because most widows were very poor. In a famine or a drought, they would usually be the first to die off from starvation. But God was going to send Elijah to one who had so much, she could bless him with what he needed.
Elijah has got to take another risk to get to God’s next point of blessing. He has to make an 80 to 90 mile journey by foot to get there. Many of us never discover God’s blessings, because we think it is too far or too hard for us to get there. Sometimes we do not like the place that we might have to go to get there because it means swallowing our pride.
Why didn’t God send Elijah to a widow among his own people? Why send him among the very people that he despised because of their worship of idols? God is not limited by what we think he ought to do. One of the reasons Pastor Toby and I had the opportunity to come to this wonderful church, is that when we first came, nobody else really want to come to it because they did not know what great plans God had in store for it. We didn’t know it either, but we did know that God said for us to go to Glenville.
Some of your greatest blessings in 2010 are going to come from places you do not expect and in ways you can’t imagine. When Elijah got to Zarephath, he may have been looking for a widow living in a huge white house, where he would have his own bed, room, and private service. Instead God shows him a woman out there picking up sticks alongside of the road. How many of you know rich widows do not go out picking up sticks. God says to Elijah, she’s the one who will be serving you lunch today. He’s probably thinking, ‘she’s the one. Lord are you sure.”
He goes over to her and says, “ Would you bring me a little water in a jar so I may have a drink.” Now what would you say if some stranger or foreigner with an accent asked you to go get him a cup of water. Most of you would have told him where the water fountain was. This lady on the hand had heard about our theme and she was trying to be excellence in action. So she turned to go and get him some water. But then he yells back, “and please bring me back of a piece of bread.” This guy is asking for food from a poor woman in the middle of a famine when there is very little food to eat.
I want you to notice, God is not afraid to ask you to give even when you don’t have much. We all have more than we want to admit having. We all could give more if we wanted to give more. It’s a matter of excellence in action in our attitudes and a real desire to discover God’s blessings. Every time we come to worship on Sunday, we ought to put something in the offering plate even if it’s just a dime to say God I thank you for blessing me. God gives us a whole week to let us know that Sunday is coming. When you need money the most, that’s the best time to give to the kingdom of God.
That widow told him, “brother, you have no idea of just how broke I am. I don’t have any bread, only a handful of flour in a jar and little olive oil in a jug. Do you see these sticks? I am gathering them to take home and make a meal for myself and my son. We are going to eat that last meal together, and then we will sit and starve to death. Now do you really want to ask me for my bread.” What have you told God all these years for why you have not yet been willing to give him a tithe.
You said if you got a job then you would tithe. You got a job and gave him credit for, but still don’t tithe. You said if you got a raise or a better job then you would. You did, but you still won’t. You said, once you paid off your car or your house then you could afford it. But instead they came out with a new car and a better house and you went after it. Now it’s when the kids get out of college. They will and you won’t. Why, because you just don’t want to trust God to take care of you.
God’s love for us truly incredible. Even when we don’t give out of love for Him, he still loves us. We miss out on God’s blessings, and the church’s ministry suffer but God is still calling us to Himself. I kind of feel sorry for the person who has been blessed by God with all kinds of material goods and great health who stand before God and says why they never would obey Jesus and tithe.
Elijah looked at this poor widow and said don’t be afraid. I say to you, don’t be afraid in 2010 to become an example of excellence in action. Elijah, this may not make sense to you, but go home with those sticks and first make a small loaf of bread from what you have and then bring it to me, and then make something for yourself and your son.” You mean God would ask a person with so little to give to him first. Yes He will. How much more would he ask of a person who had an abundance to give. You see, when we ask the question, why God would ask somebody poor to give, we are only looking at the point of exchange. We’re not looking at the whole picture.
Elijah went on to tell the lady, “For this is what the Lord, the God of Israel says. “ The jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the Lord sends rain.” She had a choice to make. Do I trust God or do I protect what I already have. Too many of us to try to protect what we already have, and we lose it anyways. This widow decides to trust God. The Scripture says she went away and did as Elijah had told her. So there was food every day for Elijah and the woman and for her family. For the jar of flour was not used up and the jug of oil did not run dry in keeping with the word of the Lord spoken by Elijah. There was never more than one jar and one jug, and this widow is able to feed Elijah, herself, her son, and other members of the family who were probably going to let her die. When you walk with excellence before God in giving, you never know how much God intends to pour back into your life.
It’s time for you to decide how much you want to be blessed in 2010. Jesus gave us a little advice. He said, give and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. Paul tells us if you want to really be blessed, try being a blessing to the kingdom of God. God loves a cheerful giver. You don’t know how generous you need to be to discover God’s blessings in 2010. Go ahead and make God happy today because God loves a cheerful giver.
