Title: I Got You
Place: BLCC
Date: 4/8/18
Text: Hebrews 6.18-19, Genesis 37,39
CT: God loves you and is for you. [Screen 1]
FAS Todd Wilson tells a powerful story of rescue in a life and death situation.
As a country, we are still reeling from many tragic events. But there are a few flashes of hope coming forth from the stories of tragedy. One is from a survivor of the 2015 San Bernardino shootings, 27-year-old Denise Peraza. Her life was spared, not because the shooters saw her and turned the other way, but because a valiant man named Shannon Johnson shielded her body with his own and saved her life. Listen to her recount the situation.
Wednesday morning at 10:55 A.M. we were seated next to each other at a table, joking about how we thought the large clock on the wall might be broken because time seemed to be moving so slowly. I would have never guessed that only five minutes later, we would be huddled next to each other under the same table, using a fallen chair as a shield from over 60 rounds of bullets being fired across the room.
While I cannot recall every single second that played out that morning, I will always remember his left arm wrapped around me, holding me as close as possible next to him behind that chair. And amidst all the chaos, I'll always remember him saying these three words: "I got you."
Always, no matter what, remember these three words: "I got you." These are God's three words to you, not just in time of need, but all the time. He is your everlasting Father through the Lord Jesus Christ, who will never leave you nor forsake you. He says to you, "I got you, I got you, I got you."
Todd Wilson, "The Gift of the Son: Everlasting Father," sermon on PreachingToday.com
God has got you. He loves you and is there for you in all times, good and bad.
Have you ever felt lost? Have you felt like the only hope you had was gone? Most of us have been there. We have lost someone we dearly loved. We have had a girlfriend or boyfriend leave us. We have lost a job we really needed to get our family through. We have been sick and in the hospital and it seems hopeless. We have fallen to an addiction we know is tough to beat. We have all had our moments of despair.
Joseph had his moments of despair but he had something that got him through. That same thing can be there for us.
Joseph was not very well liked by his brothers and they sold him.
Genesis 39.1-5, 1 Now Joseph had been taken down to Egypt. Potiphar, an Egyptian who was one of Pharaoh’s officials, the captain of the guard, bought him from the Ishmaelites who had taken him there. [Screen 2]
2 The Lord was with Joseph so that he prospered, and he lived in the house of his Egyptian master. 3 When his master saw that the Lord was with him and that the Lord gave him success in everything he did, 4 Joseph found favor in his eyes and became his attendant. Potiphar put him in charge of his household, and he entrusted to his care everything he owned. 5 From the time he put him in charge of his household and of all that he owned, the Lord blessed the household of the Egyptian because of Joseph.
Joseph was ripped from his family into a country that didn’t know him yet God was with him. He gained power and prestige with Potiphar and Potiphar depended on Joseph to run his household. It is amazing what can happen when God is with us.
But Potiphar’s wife had plans for Joseph that would have ruined most men. But not Joseph. He withstood her advance but was still put in prison because Potiphar’s wife said he had tried to attack her.
Genesis 39.19-23, 19 When his master heard the story his wife told him, saying, “This is how your slave treated me,” he burned with anger. 20 Joseph’s master took him and put him in prison, the place where the king’s prisoners were confined.
But while Joseph was there in the prison, 21 the Lord was with him; he showed him kindness and granted him favor in the eyes of the prison warden. 22 So the warden put Joseph in charge of all those held in the prison, and he was made responsible for all that was done there. 23 The warden paid no attention to anything under Joseph’s care, because the Lord was with Joseph and gave him success in whatever he did.
Even after Joseph was put in prison, the Lord was with him. The warden trusted Joseph with so much and didn’t worry about what Joseph was watching for him.
Joseph spent time in prison. He was one who could read other’s dreams for them.
Pharaoh had a dream. They told him how Joseph could read dreams. So Pharaoh sent for Joseph.
Genesis 41.15 -16, 15 Pharaoh said to Joseph, “I had a dream, and no one can interpret it. But I have heard it said of you that when you hear a dream you can interpret it.”
16 “I cannot do it,” Joseph replied to Pharaoh, “but God will give Pharaoh the answer he desires.”
Joseph knew he couldn’t read Pharaoh’s dream without God. He turned it over to God and all went well.
Genesis 41.39-40, 39 Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Since God has made all this known to you, there is no one so discerning and wise as you. 40 You shall be in charge of my palace, and all my people are to submit to your orders. Only with respect to the throne will I be greater than you.”
Joseph did well. He became a great leader in Egypt and even saved his father and brothers from the famine that came upon everyone after seven years of good times. Joseph fulfilled God’s will and saved the fathers of Israel.
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Wow. Wouldn’t it be cool to be as loved by God as much as Joseph was?
Well I got one thing to say to you all today, you are loved and cared for just as much as Joseph. God is there all the time for each and every one of us. Doesn’t mean we won’t have tough times but God will see us through.
I know about God being with us because God has been with me in the last few weeks in ways that cannot be denied. About a year ago I began to not feel well. I thought I was just getting old. My legs hurt. My arms hurt all the time. I started to feel weak and not too ambitious at all.
But six weeks ago I became so ill I just couldn’t eat. I would throw up and than not eat again that day. Yet I didn’t lose any weight. It was weird. Finally I went to see Dr. Green. He didn’t really have any idea what was wrong with me. WE tried testosterone but it didn’t work. After a couple more trips to Green I decided to go to the emergency room at St Jo. They worked me over and took a bunch of CTS. They didn’t really find anything. But there was something funny in my head they weren’t sure of. They laughed it off as nothing to worry about.
Next I needed to get a scope of my upper digestive tract. The nearest one I could find was at first sometime in April. Too long for how I was feeling. Then I called my old friend Hammed Coury and he said come on in Tuesday and he would get it done.
God was with me. Didn’t find anything wrong but it was a step in the right direction.
Next I needed to see a Neurologist and an endocrinologist. WE couldn’t find one before way off but my sister in law Beth worked for one and they got us in to see them. They said I needed an MRI. Beth helped us get it arranged and we went to get it done on Friday March 23. God was with me and they saw the lesion on my brain. I got the MRI at Harrison Memorial and felt so bad that Kathy took me to their ER after the test. Then they agreed I needed to go to Lexington.
We had to find a doctor that would accept me. But God was with me and my friend Tom Wise knew someone who could get me in. I praised God.
Next I went to Lexington to St Jo. They were great. I had more tests and they kept me there until Sunday morning, the 25th. But the surgeon that was working with the team there came to us on Sunday morning and told us what I had was beyond what they could deal with. They were going to send me to UK. God was with me. These guys didn’t let their egos get in the way of my health. I owe them a lot.
Now came UK. Wow. I was in the ICU till Monday. A full week. I was put through it. I was so messed up I couldn’t talk or remember people names. I was scared I wouldn’t be able to preach again. I so missed my church. I know they loved me and I wanted to be there to serve them.
I had the surgery Thursday. I spent the weekend really sick. But I remember praying to God to let me get through this. Sunday was a good day and Monday I got to go home. God was with me in so many ways. I prayed for him to take away the things I was seeing in my mind that was keeping me awake. He did take them away and I got to sleep.
I have missed so much and didn’t tell everything, but believe me God was with me all the way and I am going to serve him with all my life.
I’m sorry if my telling my story is out of line but I believe God was with me through it all. I believe he is still with me as we finish with the procedures yet to do.
We live in a world that has a great need for hope. The resources may be economic, emotional, relational and spiritual, but the lack of any of these things brings a hopelessness that leads to despair.
There is a rampart increase in depression in contemporary American Society. Some eleven million patients currently need treatment and over 250000 are attempting to take their own live each year. This is awful to hear.
Historians and social scientists tell us that we have fewer spiritual resources to draw from that at any other time in our history. Some say that our culture has forsaken its spiritual roots that we live in an overly secular society without even the pretense of spiritual values.
Many young people today feel their cultures fail to provide answers to questions of purpose and meaning and destiny. We fail to; they feel, to provide some reason for hope.
I as your preacher want to bring you hope into your world. Its there, just waiting for you to take it.
Yet to this age of despair the Bible brings another perspective.
God says that life is more than what can be seen immediately and He offers us a wealth of spiritual resources to be found in a relationship with Jesus Christ.
These spiritual resources are accessed as we trust God’s Word and build our lives on it.
His oaths help us see beyond our limitations to his limitless power and provisions for us.
Encouragement comes from knowing we play a part in a life full of meaning and lasting.
These qualities of hope breeds hope for us all. [Screen 4]
Romans 15.13, May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
In our longing for security and safety we build remarkable semblances of security into our lives.
A home that provides shelter and protection from all the destructive forces that comes at us.
WE buy insurance that safeguards our loved ones should something happen and we are no longer here. I know I have this for my wife.
Big bank accounts can bring us a lot of assurance for tomorrow. Till a big bill sneaks up on us.
Relationships with people we love and hold so near can bring security and hope. They bring us comfort in this complicated world.
Yet in a moment we realize these things can all be taken away?
An illness.
A business failure.
A car wreck
Life is a fragile thing that we all experience. WE long to reach for security that stretches beyond the dark possibilities that are just around every corner in our life.
Money, homes, positions, and even people are transitory. They move on. These things can provide no lasting stability in life.
Thus Hebrews invites us to a new place. An inner sanctuary. A place, where Jesus is and where he rules. I want to be where Jesus rules. Sounds like a good kind of place to be. [Screen 5]
Hebrews 6.19-20, 19 We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, 20 where our forerunner, Jesus, has entered on our behalf. He has become a high priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.
God’s promise here offers the only true surety for our future. All other sources of stability give but promissory notes that may or may not be fulfilled depending on the character and resources available.
Our God however, is a God of integrity, of endless resources, and of never ending future and offers us a superior basis for stability in life.
Are you ready for such a hope and security in your life? Should be easy… but it isn’t. WE have to work and struggle to put God first. That is when we earn the joy, peace and understanding that come with following Jesus.
What we have to overcome is patience. Let me illustrate.
WE live in an instant credit, get everything now economy. WE eat add water and mix foods or drive by fast food joints ranging from burgers to burritos to fried chicken to fish n chips.
All this trains us to want what we want now on the basis of something that requires little or nothing from us.
WE don’t grow trees in our yard. We buy them potted and several years in advance growth on them. Or just move to another house that has the trees already there.
Waiting is not in style. WE don’t like to wait on anything. And patience has never been a forte or strength of the flesh.
You and I must often wait for God’s help in matters related to family, finances health and the direction of the future.
We only experience such encouragement; we only grow in this dimension of Christian faith, as we sit in God’s waiting room. It can be a place of tension, frustration, and anxiety, but it is also the place where our spirit is strengthened in ways only God can cause.
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Conclusion: Today I firmly say that our God loves us all. He is always there with us even in the toughest times God is there. I know God was with me and I plan to work for Him the rest of my life.
I pray that you can find God in your life. Go to Him. Wait in his waiting room. He will receive and bring you love, peace and understanding.
Bibliography
Guthrie, George; The NIV Application Commentary: Hebrews; Zondervan, Grand Rapids MI; 1998
