The Plan

Sermon by Pr. Paddick Van Zyl (MTh)

Nov 10,2014

Title: The Plan

Intro:

The famous boxer Mike Tyson said: "Everyone has a plan 'till they get punched in the mouth."

He should know.... We all have plans or a plan for our life. God also has a plan for our lives...the question is: Is our plan in line with God's plan? Have we consulted God about our plans?

Text:

Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV)

11 For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

Acts 17:24-28 NIV

4 “The God who made the world and everything in it is Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’[a] As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’

Sermon:

From the aforementioned scriptures it is clear that God has indeed got a plan, a blue print for each one of us, in fact for each and every human being....however God's plan and our plans for our lives are rarely ever the same.

The plan of God for us, our life, is not a plan of comfort or ease but it is a plan of His provision and blessing for the specific task(s) we need to accomplish.

Imagine if:

•The Egyptians had no blue print to build the pyramids

•Noah did not receive God's plan for the ark

•David did not get God's plan for slaying Goliath

•Jesus did not follow God's plan for His life and the cross

Plan spells:

P- Purpose

L- Limit /Life span

A- Application

N- Name

•A plan always has a purpose that it has to accomplish

•It has a life span or a limit

•It is for a specific application or task

•It has to have a name or description

Proverbs 16:9 NKJV

Our lives:

•has a specific purpose

•has a time span

•has an application it needs to accomplish

•carry our name, unique to us

At times a door is closed by God when we wanted it to open or to stay open. When we look back we can see why it was closed and what would or could have transpired should we have been allowed to proceed through the open door. Disaster, pain, loss, heartache...the list is endless.

Looking at the lives of Joseph, Naomi & Ruth and Paul, to name but a few, we see that they all had different things in mind for their lives. They did not expect the changes they experienced in their lives yet God had a plan for them and not for them only but also for many others that would be touched and changed through their lives and ministries.

Joseph - Genesis 45:1-8

Ruth - 4:13-22

Paul - Acts 9:1-19

2 Cor. 4:7-18

•Joseph saved his family from hunger.

•Ruth provided her mother in law with a grand child which would be the blood line of the Messiah.

•Paul persecuted the church of Jesus yet caused revival and the Word of God to spread to gentiles.

God aways has a plan. To walk and live in God's plan for our lives we need to have His plan and not ours.

•He can and does see the end from the beginning. We can't.

•He knows us better than we or anybody else knows us.

•He created us with special abilities, talents, gifts that we have not even tapped yet, in many cases and He knows how to develop these in us to bring glory to Him.

We see many examples of detailed plans in the Bible:

•The ark and the tabernacle in the desert that traveled with the Israelites Exodus 26

•Solomon that build the temple 1 Kings 5 & 6

•Nehemiah restoring the great wall Nehemiah 2 -6

In Genesis chapter 6 verses 14 to 22, God gave Noah a detailed plan of the ark he had to build as well as the animals he had to take with him into the ark in order to preserve his family and that of the animals, after the pending flood upon the earth. Now, he was free to deviate or alter the plan of the ark if he wanted to however he kept to God's design even if to him, who never saw a boat or ark before, it seemed a bit 'bulky' or not aerodynamic enough. When God gives us specific instructions He has a reason for this and when followed, it leads to success, the success God had originally intended, the opposite is also true: deviate from His instructions and plan and suffer the consequences....!