Crash the Chatterbox
April 27, 2014
Isaiah 55:1-3
The voice you give your attention to will determine your future. If you listen to the world’s way of living life, of doing your own thing, of being your own god, of serving your interests and needs — then add to that the voices you hear in your head and heart . . . the voices which tell you, you can’t, you won’t, you shouldn’t, you’re not good enough, you’re not — then that’s the way you will move throughout life.
You can spend your whole life trying to fix everything around you, and never realize you’re being sabotaged from within yourself. To do the will of God doesn’t mean we can just flick the devil off our shoulder. So, stop blaming the devil, the battlefield is our heart and mind. Don’t blame the devil. Start transforming your mind with the will and word of God.
We need to learn how to defy our inner critic. Those voices always talking to us, telling us how bad we are. The voices I hear when I’m preaching. Oh, we all hear them – “They don’t like your messages, they don’t like the jokes, that one is asleep. You don’t do things the right way, you don’t talk the right way, you don’t dress the right way. Sermons are too long, not long enough, too many videos.”
It’s all around us - - - Chatter – chatter – Chatter – chatter – Chatter – chatter
However, if we can learn to dispel those other voices, and learn to focus on God’s voice. To hear the promises God has for us — the promises which will certainly defeat the lies which are being cast our ways — then, then we will have the opportunity to live the abundant life Christ is calling us to live. But we must choose.
Have you ever forgotten something, it’s not a big deal what you forgot, but the first thoughts are — “I’m an idiot! I’m so stupid! We think about what a disgrace to the world we are!” I thought that on Friday. I was working on this sermon and I forgot my earbuds. I only have about 3 pairs of earbuds and 2 pairs of headphones. You would think that’s enough, but my favorite pair of earbuds is missing. I was using a backup, but I forgot the back up at home, and had to use the back up for my back up! I looked in my car and thought . . . ‘you’re an idiot!’ All worked well with my 3rd back up. But, it’s the negative words . . . the lies which we ultimately believe. Those words bring us down.
With that in mind, listen to this invitation from Isaiah.
1 Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters;
and he who has no money, come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.
2 Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
and your labor for that which does not satisfy?
Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good,
and delight yourselves in rich food.
3 Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live;
and I will make with you an everlasting covenant,
my steadfast, sure love for David.
Do you hear that invitation from Isaiah. It’s to all of us. And all of us, none excluded — we’re all thirsty. We’re all wounded in one way or another. Now, Isaiah is speaking to people who have been disobedient. The Israelites have been led astray by their wrong desires; they’ve turned from God and now God is inviting His people back. God wants to have a relationship with his people and He wants them to have lives which are full of His abundant love, grace and power.
Did you hear how much money you needed to come to God’s store to buy and eat? Look back at verse 1~
1 Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters;
and he who has NO MONEY, come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk WITHOUT MONEY and WITHOUT PRICE.
Now, can you imagine going to the grocery store and getting ready to pay for your groceries and the cashier said, it’s paid for! WOW! What a blessing! And God has done that for us. He took on that sacrifice so we wouldn’t have to pay. This is part of the invitation to come back into relationship. This is not being said because they were on good behavior. They were on bad behavior and this is God’s offer to come back, to be in relationship with Him. Oh, folks, we have a great God, don’t we?!
Now, I want you to hear again, what God is telling the people, because it most definitely applies to us ~
2 LISTEN DILIGENTLY to me, and eat what is good,
and delight yourselves in rich food.
3 Incline your ear, and come to me; HEAR, that your soul may live;
and I will make with you an everlasting covenant,
I want you to understand this! When God says “Listen diligently” it is the Hebrew (shema) being used twice. What God is saying and you know when someone repeats themselves, you really need to listen. God is saying, “listen, listen!” When God repeats Himself, you know it’s especially important. When we repeat ourselves it’s because we think we’ve got something important to share. Well, this is from God and you know it’s really, really important.
So, God tells us we need to really listen to Him and when we do we will find great things. The food is a metaphor for the richness of life we will experience when we are in Christ. And when we are listening to God, we stop listening to the other voices out there. But He goes on to say in verse 3, “Incline your ear!” The word really means “to spread out or stretch.” I’m thinking God really wants me to stretch out my ear, so that I hear everything He is telling me. Listen to His voice of hope and not the voice of defeat.
God says, if I will incline my ear to Him and He says it again, HEAR Him (shema), then my soul will live and He will make an everlasting covenant with me. Folks, it’s God’s promise to give life to our soul! What an offer! He pays for it, and we gain life! That’s a great trade off . . .
Aah, almost! You see, we still have that devil poking at us, trying to defeat us. Telling us God really can’t be trusted.
Go way, way back to the very beginning. Go back to Genesis 3, because there was another voice speaking, it was satan talking to Adam and Eve. There was another dialogue. Adam and Eve were destined to stay in the garden. Look at this -
1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”
2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden,
3 but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’”
4 But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die.
5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
Do you see that? Did you catch what the slimy, slippery serpent did? He told one of those ‘kinda sorta white lies.’ But it wasn’t just a white lie, folks, this changed history! It was the whopper of lies. You see, satan asked one of those questions ~
‘Did God really say you can’t eat from ANY tree?’
That’s not what God said, is it? But satan was distorting the truth. John tells us satan is the father of all liars. He is the biggest and worst. Yes, it’s true God said you can’t eat from A tree in the garden. But it was just one tree. All the other trees were open season! satan wants you to eat and die . . . God’s offer . . . eat and live. It’s a choice we make.
Eve’s big mistake came when she thought she needed to respond to the enemy and engaged him in a conversation. You can’t have a conversation with the greatest con-artist of all time. You won’t win! You get to choose who you listen to. You’re not a helpless victim of your thoughts. Just because something is suggested doesn’t mean you have to go along with it.
I don’t know how many of you use Twitter or Facebook. But you see, you can regulate what you put out there and what you take in. I only follow certain people on twitter. I only look at and read certain things on Instagram and Facebook. If I don’t like something, I delete it and move on. This is really important -
I only listen to the people I believe are worth listening to. That may sound rude, but my goal is to protect myself, my heart, my spirit, my mind and my body. Because someone wants to talk to me, doesn’t mean I have to listen.
So, I go on twitter and I only read the people I want to read, and those are the ones I choose to follow, and choose to listen to.
What satan did in Genesis 3 to Adam and Eve, he’s still doing to us today. He distorts the truth. And if he can distort it, he can deceive you. Did God really say, you can’t eat from any tree in the garden? NO! He didn’t say that. God gave us the whole garden to eat from. There was only one tree we couldn’t eat from. But satan distorted the truth.
satan distorts the truth in this way . . . we do something wrong or we don’t do something we should have, and satan leads us to think we are the worst people in the world.
We think about praying or reading the Bible - which is great.
satan tells us, we’re no good and we’re going to fail, so why start.
Remember when Jesus was tempted in Matthew 4. After Jesus was baptized He went into the desert for 40 days, and satan found Jesus, and Matthew tells us ~
1 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.
2 And after fasting forty days and forty nights, Jesus was hungry.
3 And the tempter came and said to Him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.”
4 But he answered, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”
After Jesus was tempted two more times, each time, Jesus responded with the same words. . .
7 Jesus said to him, “Again it is written,
10 Then Jesus said to him, “Be gone, Satan! For it is written,
The great liar said, ‘If you are the son of God, tell these stones to turn into bread.’
In other words, prove you’re the Messiah — that’s what satan’s saying. He wants us to doubt. Jesus answered - it is written. There’s no dialogue. No discussion.
Satan’s premise is totally wrong, there is no “IF”
Jesus IS the Son of God, there was no doubt in Jesus’ mind.
Jesus’ response to the biggest liar was to fight lie with truth. It’s like playing rock paper scissors. And you know the other person is always going to pick paper. So you always pick what? Scissors. You know you’re going to win. You can always defeat the liar with the truth. Always. Of course, we need to know the truth.
We will be tempted where we are most vulnerable. And we will be tempted when we are most vulnerable. Nobody is exempt from temptation. Nobody!
There’s a great commercial on the Internet about drowning out the noise in our lives. Take a look.
KEVIN GARNETT VIDEO - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yUj0Ta44DI (There is another video which does not use cursing, but I could not find it. I had to edit this video)
While that’s a commercial for Beats headphones, I like what they’re showing.
You see, the world is shouting lots of negatives to us. On a daily basis. We generally receive 5 negative comments for every positive comment. That’s a striking thought. But we don’t have to take it all in. We can put on our headphones.
I do this when I’m going over my sermon on Saturday nights. The Deutsch’s are in the family room. Everyone is playing or watching a movie and I sit at the computer with my headphones on, music on a little loud. Now, if someone wants to tell me something, they literally have to lean over get in my peripheral vision and wave to me. Because I can’t hear anything. It’s really great!!
You see as you walk through life there’s going to be chatter all around you. Hitting you from all sides, especially from within. But the promises of God will help you to reject the enemies words to your heart, spirit and mind.
We need to learn that we can’t just stop all of the chatter around us. We can’t determine what will be said to us. But we can certainly block what’s coming in. We don’t just have to listen to music to drown out the negative thoughts. We can and should use God and His word.
We can plug into a different source. Isaiah said — come and listen and live. So, I can plug into His word and find life. I can make it through the crowded noise which surrounds me, I can move through the busyness of life, and nothing will defeat me, because I am plugged into the word of God.
The apostle Paul was the first to discover the word “whatever.” So, know that when someone says ‘whatever’ they are quoting Paul. Listen to what he said in Philippians 4 ~
8 Finally, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, THINK ABOUT THESE THINGS.
9 What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me — PRACTICE THESE THINGS, and the God of peace will be with you.
We can get to the point where we can hear whatever God is telling us. To do that, we have to block out whatever the enemy suggests to us. The next time the lies start in your heart or head . . .
You know what those comments are ~ ~ ~ you’re such a screw up, you’re no good, you can’t do anything, you’re always going to be a nothing, you’re worthless, you’re a nobody, nobody wants to be around you, look at how they look and laugh at you. . .
Remember . . . you can defeat those words of defeat with words of victory, but you need to be plugged into the source of pure truth . . . God. So that you think about WHATEVER is good and your practice them and God’s peace will be upon you.
