Do You Have God?s Best
Jeremiah 29:11-14
Introduction: Our God is a good, kind, and loving God. The Psalmist declared "O taste and see that the LORD is good" (Psalm 34:8). God wants to give us His best. In fact, in many cases God is more anxious to bestow His blessings on us than we are to receive them. I don’t know about you but I want God’s best in my life. But the question is "Are we receiving God’s best?" Are we experiencing the full blessings of God in our lives? I am not talking about a "prosperity gospel" here. I am not talking about getting materially rich, being free of all illness, or achieving some measure of greatness. What I am talking about is receiving everything that God wants to give us, accomplish in us, and do through us, realizing that He wants more for us than we ask or think. In order for God to give us His best, we must be in a position where He can bestow His blessings on us.
I. Keep Yourself Pure
A. Jeremiah 5:25 "Your iniquities have turned away these things, and your sins have withholden good things from you."
B. Thomas A Kempis (C. 1380-1471) - "The Lord gives his blessing when he finds the vessel empty."
C. God cannot bless us unless He has us. When we try to keep within us an area that is our own, we try to keep an area of death. Therefore, in love, He claims all. There’s no bargaining with Him.
D. Several years ago, an advertising banner proclaimed the virtues of a certain grade of motor oil: "A Clean Engine Always Delivers Power."
E. Jeremiah 18:9-10 "And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it; [10] If it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then I will repent of the good, wherewith I said I would benefit them."
F. We are living in a day when adult entertainment, sexual perversion of every kind, guttural language, pornography, nudity or near nudity, gross lasciviousness, alcohol and drug abuse, and divorce are accepted as normal. We are living in a day of moral decadence. Much of this acceptance has been brought on by mass media, primarily television, sexualizing our culture. By the time a child completes high school he will have watched twenty thousand hours of TV; and, ninety seven percent of our homes have television sets. Through this medium, our children are fed a daily diet of sexual suggestiveness in music, drama and talk shows. Our society has glamorized influential personalities for twisted life styles while mocking biblical virtues and marriage. The church, through taking a softer line, capitulating silence, passivity, neglect and tolerance, has contributed to this surrender to debauchery. Through compromise many have embraced the heresy of theologians like Joseph Fletcher and his Situation Ethics who teaches "whether any form of sex (heterosexual, homosexual, auto-sexual) is good or evil, depends on whether love is fully served." If we desire the blessings of God as a church or as individual believers, we must not be influenced by the decadent world in which we live. Paul in Romans 12:2 tells us that we are not to be conformed to the world. James states that we are not to be a friend of the world (James 4:4) and are to keep ourselves unspotted from the world (James 1:27). In Corinthians we learn that we are to come out from the decadence of the world and to be totally separate (2 Corinthians 6:17,18). John says that we are not to love the world - to be enthralled by its culture (1 John 2:15-17). We are to be pure in heart
(Matthew 5:8), in speech (Ephesians 4:29), in dress (1 Timothy 2:9) and in conduct and morals (Galatians 5:19-21). The Lord gave himself to purify unto Himself a peculiar people (Titus 2:14) that He could bestow His blessings upon and use to be world changers not world conformers. [adapted]
G. Proverbs 28:10 "Whoso causeth the righteous to go astray in an evil way, he shall fall himself into his own pit: but the upright shall have good things in possession."
H. Keep out of your life all that will keep Christ out of your mind.
II. Seek God
A. 2 Chronicles 26:5 "And he sought God in the days of Zechariah, who had understanding in the visions of God: and as long as he sought the LORD, God made him to prosper."
B. Ezra 8:22 "For I was ashamed to require of the king a band of soldiers and horsemen to help us against the enemy in the way: because we had spoken unto the king, saying, The hand of our God is upon all them for good that seek him; but his power and his wrath is against all them that forsake him"
C. Seeking God is to seek to enter into a covenantal relationship with God through an about face in living and a cognitive pursuit of a favorable or acceptable walk with Him.
D. Isaiah 55:6-8 "Seek ye the LORD while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near: [7] Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the LORD, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. [8] For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD."
E. What is your ambition in life today? What is your paramount desire? Is it wealth? Or health? Fame? Comfort? Prosperity? Is it even to do some great thing for God? Listen! The highest aspiration that can occupy any human heart is a desire to know and see God.
F. Isaiah 26:9 "With my soul have I desired thee in the night; yea, with my spirit within me will I seek thee early: for when thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness."
G. A. W. Tozer - "If we yearned after God even as much as a cow yearns for her calf, we would be the worshiping and effective believers God wants us to be. If we longed for God as a bride looks forward to the return of her husband, we would be a far greater force for God than we are now." [A. W. Tozer in Men Who Met God. Christianity Today, Vol. 30, no. 15.]
H. Jim Smith went to church on Sunday morning. He heard the organist miss a note during the prelude, and he winced. He saw a teenager talking when everybody was supposed to be bowed in silent prayer. He felt like the usher was watching to see what he put in the offering plate and it made him boil. He caught the preacher making a slip of the tongue five times in the sermon by actual count. As he slipped out through the side door during the closing hymn, he muttered to himself, "Never again, what a bunch of clods and hypocrites! Ron Jones went to church one Sunday morning. He heard the organist play an arrangement of "A Mighty Fortress" and he thrilled at the majesty of it. He heard a young girl take a moment in the service to speak her simple moving message of the difference her faith makes in her life. He was glad to see that this church was sharing in a special offering for the hungry children of Nigeria. He especially appreciated the sermon that Sunday--it answered a question that had bothered him for a long time. He thought as he walked out the doors of the church, "How can a man come here and not feel the presence of God?" Both men went to the same church, on the same Sunday morning. Each found what he was looking for. What do we look for on Sunday morning? [James S. Hewett, Illustrations Unlimited(Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, 1988), p. 409.]
III. Persevere
A. Too often, we give up all too soon.
B. Psalms 55:22 "Cast thy burden upon the LORD, and he shall sustain thee: he shall never suffer the righteous to be moved."
C. Psalms 27:14 "Wait on the LORD: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the LORD."
D. Genesis 32:24-26 "And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day. [25] And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob’s thigh was out of joint, as he wrestled with him. [26] And he said, Let me go, for the day breaketh. And he said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me." Genesis 32:28 "And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed."
E. Luke 11:5-13 "And he said unto them, Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go unto him at midnight, and say unto him, Friend, lend me three loaves; [6] For a friend of mine in his journey is come to me, and I have nothing to set before him? [7] And he from within shall answer and say, Trouble me not: the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give thee. [8] I say unto you, Though he will not rise and give him, because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needeth. [9] And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you. [10] For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. [11] If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent? [12] Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? [13] If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?"
F. Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) - "When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you till it seems as though you could not hold on a minute longer; never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn."
G. Watchman Nee said, "Our prayers lay the track down on which God’s power can come. Like a mighty locomotive, his power is irresistible, but it cannot reach us without rails." Our problem is we often derail the locomotive of His power by not laying the tracks all the way.
H. Galatians 6:9 "And let us not get tired of doing what is right, for after a while we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t get discouraged and give up."
I. Isaiah 64:4 "For since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside thee, what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him"
Conclusion:
To the unsaved: The Word of God tells me that God is a good God and that He wants to the best for all of His creation. But God has also revealed Himself as a Holy and Just God that cannot acquit iniquity. His justice and holiness demands that man be condemned to a Christless eternity in Hell. But Peter tells us in 2 Peter 3:9 "The Lord is ... not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance." He provided a way for man to establish the right relationship with Him through the Person of His Son, Jesus Christ. God made Him to be sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in Christ and be able to receive the best God has for us. Come to Christ today.
To the saved: A.B. Earle, a Baptist Evangelist wrote this prayer of consecration: "This day I make a new consecration of my all to Christ. Jesus, I now and forever give myself to thee; my soul to be washed in Thy blood and saved in heaven at last; my whole body to be used for Thy glory; my mouth to speak for thee at all times; my eyes to weep over lost sinners, or to be used for any purpose for thy glory; my feet to carry me where thou shalt wish me to go; my heart to be burdened for souls or used for thee anywhere; my intellect to be employed at all times for thy cause and glory; I give to thee my wife, my children, my property, all I have, and all that ever shall be mine. I will obey thee in every known duty." I then asked for grace to enable me to carry out that vow and that I might take nothing from the altar. ("The Meaning of Sanctification" by Charles Ewing Brown pp. 182-183) If you truly want God’s best, give Him your all.
