Exodus 34:1–10Scripture
Today we're going to look at verses 1–10, Exodus chapter 34. And it's kind of an interesting portion of Scripture. Before we get there, while you're looking it up, I'll just say sometimes in life sweat is required. It's just required. There's no getting out of it. I mean, there's just sometimes in life you can't get out of doing work. It just happens. Now, I know the Christian life, much of what it is understanding the work that Christ has accomplished for you on Calvary's cross. And there is nothing, ladies and gentlemen, that you can do to save yourself, but only belief in him. There is no amount of works you can do to justify yourself before God. You have sinned and you are unholy and unrighteous and a sinner and you are undone. And the only thing that will save you is belief in Christ. But that belief comes with a gift, which is the Holy Spirit. And that Holy Spirit is put in your life to lead you to do the good works he prepared ahead of time for you to do. And that work, quite honestly, is not always easy. The reality is when he calls you into his work, he often calls you into dark places to be a light. He calls you, and we've talked much here about this, he calls you to the front lines of his ministry, where people get 50 holes in them by the middle of the afternoon. Ministry, or his ministry, or the calling of God oftentimes puts you in the spotlight, and it gets hot, and it makes you sweaty a little bit. Like, sometimes sweat is required. And I'll just say this: at some point in your life as a believer, sweat is required. Not sometimes, not with some
Point 1Salvation is free, but the calling costs something
People, but it costs you something to be a Christian.
Your salvation is free, but this calling costs you something.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 1:57
It comes at a cost. It comes at a great cost. Now, and I'm going to get to the Scriptures, so just give me one more second. Let me lay some groundwork here just for a moment. Now, the israelites had seen God deliver time and time again. He delivered them from slavery. He delivered them out of the Red Sea. When they didn't have food, he delivered food straight from the platter of the clouds. Like, he just delivered. He was a deliverer. He was sovereign. He was in charge. He was in control.
Whenever they thought he had checked out, boom, he was there. God never left them, never forsook them. He was always with them. He was sovereign. He had a plan. God was long-suffering. He was long-suffering with these people. He put up with a lot. He continues to put up with a lot today. Can I get an amen? Not just those crazy people. Y'all crazy, too. He puts up with a lot. He's long-suffering. He's all those things for us. But sometimes, although God is all those things, sweat is still required. He still calls you into his purposes. And that's what we want to look at today. Verse 1 says, "The LORD said to Moses, 'Cut for yourself.'" And we know before he had given them verbally the law. And then God had cut the stones himself and wrote with his finger into the stones the Ten Commandments. Moses went down, saw a bunch of people dancing around naked around a golden calf. He got mad. He broke the stones. And now this is where we're at. We're at the place where, because this law was broken, the tablets were broken, something has to be done to make them again. God did it the first time. This time, sweat required. Are you with me? "Cut for yourself two tablets of stone like the first, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke. Be ready by the morning, and come up in the morning to Mount Sinai, and present yourself there to me on the top of the mountain. No one shall come up with you, and let no one be seen throughout all the mountain. Let no flocks or herds graze opposite that mountain." So Moses cut two tablets of stone. Can you imagine just getting a big old boulder and just starting to whack on that thing till you got a tablet out of there? I mean, we know it took long. And then imagine doing it with no food or water. Sweat required. This calling comes at a cost. Sweat required. I was bummed yesterday because I was working till 10 o'clock doing a project with my sons, and I only had a pizza to eat in the afternoon, and a whole box of tacos, and several burritos, and a lot of donuts, and I think I had a couple Pop-Tarts, and I had a bag of chips. By the way, I saw some chicken biscuits. I had some of those. I had a couple things of coffee. Poor soul. Poor pitiful me. You know what I mean? No one shall come up with you, no one opposite the mountain. "So Moses cut two tablets of stone like the first. And he rose early in the morning and went up on Mount Sinai, as the LORD had commanded him, and took in his hand two tablets of stone. The LORD descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD. The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, 'The LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation.'" We talked about this on Easter. "And Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped. And he said, 'If now I have found favor in your sight, O Lord, please let the Lord go in the midst of us, for it is a stiff-necked people, and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your inheritance.'" Then the final verse, and maybe I should have only read to five, but I'm just reading down to 10 because I want to. "And he said, 'Behold, I am making a covenant.'" Everybody say covenant. That's important. "Before all your people I will do marvels, such as have not been created in all the earth or in any nation. And all the people among whom you are shall see the work of the LORD, for it is an awesome thing that I will do with you." But know this: sweat required. They are going to see miracles that the earth has not seen God do for himself or for any nation. But let me tell you, if you know even a glimpse of what comes for them and what they do when they take the land and what they do as they wander the desert, you know sweat is required. He does it in partnership with them. Sweat required. I don't know what you think about when you think of your Christian life, when you think about what it is now that you know Christ. Sometimes, no, all the time, sweat is required. I heard recently that one of the most beautiful things about Habitat for Humanity is that they help restore houses, or they build houses, for people that are in need. I love that. Right. But they don't come into a place, let's just say, where a catastrophe has happened and somebody needs a house restored or a house built. Let's just say a tornado just took a house and just demolished it. And Habitat for Humanity comes in and rebuilds that house. They don't just come in and put the person that lives there up in a hotel until the house is built. One of the things that Habitat for Humanity does is they'll take that person, and that person works with them as they build the house, to help assist in constructing what is being built for them. They found that there is a greater appreciation for what's done for them if they are invested, if they sweat a little bit. Right? Those that go to college, kids, well, kids and adults, I guess, but they are adults actually when they go to college. But when you go to college, there is a statistic that if your college is paid for 100%, your GPA is lower than someone who has half their college paid for by their parents, and that is lower than a college student who pays for all their college. GPA. Why? Because when you sweat a little bit, you value it more. Okay, now I know you look. I asked the teens on Wednesday night, "How many pairs of shoes do you have?" One young lady said she had 40. I almost passed out. Another boy goes, "Well, that's not fair. I have one pair of shoes." Another one said, "I have two." And then I asked her, "Out of the 40 pairs of shoes that you have, how many of those have you bought?" She said, "Two." I said, "Do you treat those two pairs of shoes that you have better than the others that you didn't buy?" She said, "These are babied." No one touches these. You know why? Because it cost her something. See, God understands that sometimes sweat is required. And the reason why he wants sweat to be required for you is because he wants you to value and glory in what he's doing. And glory is often attached to, we glorify that which we have paid for a little bit. That's the facts. Now, pause. You don't earn your salvation. That's not the message of this story, that if you pay a high enough price and you sweat enough, you'll get to heaven. That's not what I'm saying. But I am saying that God understands that sometimes when we invest in something, we value it and we care for it more. When parents buy you a car, you tend to treat it different than when you buy a car. Even if you spent the money and what you bought is a jalopy with rust holes, and you can see the ground while you're driving, you treat that better than if your parent bought you a $45,000 vehicle, because you paid something for it. I remember saving up money. I built puppets and sold puppets one summer. It was two summers. So I would build puppets, construct them, go to a puppet fair, and sell them. And for two years I did that, and I bought a car for $3,500. It was a Honda Accord, and only one of the lights on the front opened up. It was constantly winking at people. Such a flirt. Such a flirt. But I loved that car. And I remember I got that car and I went to the store and I found this perfect Turtle Wax, and I waxed, and I didn't realize that it turned the car white and you had to buff that stuff off. And I just didn't know what I was getting myself into. Wax on, wax off. I had gained a new appreciation for that, right? And I waxed this car until it was perfect. And that night, a cat must have got up and walked all over my car and put dusty paw prints. That was the first time that I started to hate cats. Just could not stand cats. Sorry, Ebony. Sorry, the Schaffers. I know you love cats, but ever since that day, I hate cats. I had gained a hatred for cats because they destroyed my jalopy of a vehicle that I had paid money for. Mainly because I had sweat and bled for it, sewing and poking myself over and over again, and bleeding, and cutting myself with razors. It cost me something to get that car. It costs you something. I think it's okay that sometimes when God calls you, it comes at a cost. I think it's okay, because the first time Moses didn't value the tablets enough to not break them when he was angry. But the second time, well, we don't really see a story of a second time, but I wonder if he might have
Point 2Little investment means lesser appreciation
Treated them differently when he had to chisel them out of a solid piece of stone himself.
Where there is no human investment, there is no human appreciation.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 13:39
So God calls us into it. Notice here, he didn't say, "Hey, sit there in a lawn chair, have yourself a little Hawaiian drink, a little pineapple Hawaiian drink with an umbrella in it, and watch me handle this yoke myself. One guy, two spots for a yoke. I got this."
That's not what he says in the New Testament. He says, "Take my yoke upon you." He doesn't say, "Sit in a lawn chair, drink your Hawaiian drink." He says, "Take my yoke upon you." This is going to cost you something. Guess what? You're going to sweat a little bit. But this load carried with me is way easier than you dragging around a yoke with no one on the other side. I'll get in there with you. That's what he's saying. You'll watch me do miracle after miracle. You'll watch me transform your family and your life. But we will do this together. Sweat required. That's what he's saying. Now, we can rest in the fact that this work is way easier with him than without him, but we cannot rest in the idea that sweat will not be required.
I wonder if in the life of the church today, we've unintentionally weakened people by speaking so often about what God has done for us.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 14:58
And in doing that, we've left the impression that nothing is required of you. This particular text centers around the people of Israel, who've just left Egypt. They are discovering themselves, not just individually, but collectively. Listen, they've been slaves for 400 years. They don't have a problem sweating. They just have a problem sweating when they move from being a slave to becoming a son. They have this idea that if you're not a slave and you're a son, you don't have to work no more. Sound familiar? Sound like people in the church? Sound like you? Do we ever feel like, "I ain't no slave to sin no more. I'm a son of the Most High God. I don't have to do nothing"? I don't know why I did that. But, "I don't have to do nothing in here." Just because you're a son doesn't mean you won't work. I can testify to that. My sons could testify to that. Can I get an amen? My son, amen. My son's like, "Amen." You know, I'm a son. I work. They take out the dogs, take out the trash, help with the dishes. They have a job. How many of the men can attest to the fact that you got to work? Got to work. It's part of it. It's part of it. One day we get to heaven, and we're not living under the curse that we are living under on this earth. In case you didn't know, women get saved and they still have pain in childbirth. Wonder what that's all about. And men get saved and they still work by the sweat of their brow. Come on now. Are you with me? Sweat required. How many of you have ever heard of a woman who gave childbirth and didn't sweat a little bit? Sweat is required. But one day he will wipe every tear. He will restore us. We will be out from under that, and our life will be different. Now, part of the transformation is that they had gone from being slaves to sons, from being workers to becoming a nation. And I'll say this: you can't be a nation without constitutional law. So God is trying to establish them as somebody. The way he's going to do that is through constitutional law. So he gives them the law. God is giving them constitutional law that makes them a people. Why is this important? He's trying to define who they are. And there are some things that totally change from being a slave to being a son. And there's some things that remain the same. And even if you have to work a little bit or sweat a little bit, it doesn't mean you're a slave like you were. Even sons work. Even sons work. Oftentimes people will say, "Well, people are defined by what they do." I think that's accurate. But more importantly, I think people are most often defined by what they don't do. People do a lot of things when you go to school. And i'm talking to young people in here today. Just give me a minute. I'm talking to young people. When you go to school, you will be most often defined not by what you do. Because see, you think that people know you because you're a football player, or you're into band, or you make good grades, or you have a bunch of friends, or whatever. But that's not what defines you, because all of those things, they fade away. Give it 15 years.
Shockingly enough, you won't be tooting that French horn all of your life. Okay? You won't be throwing that football all of your life. You might be, but you won't be competitive. And people won't know you as that. What they know you as often will be what you don't do in school. That's what defines you. That's what defines you, and that doesn't change: your principles, your morals, those things define you. The first time it is communicated orally, the law, the people responded this way, and this is important. Whenever God gave Moses the law and Moses gave the people the law, and we talked about this in our small group, they said this: "We will do all of this law." That's arrogant, right? It lets us understand, just, oh, man, they don't get it. Then Moses goes up the mountain to the top. And when he gets up there, the finger of God had carved out two stones and wrote the Ten Commandments on them. Moses comes down the mountain and sees the people acting crazy, and Moses breaks the tablets. Now this breaking is important. They were broken, honestly, not when Moses broke them.
Those laws and those tablets were broken before Moses got down the mountain. The act was simply a sign of what had already happened.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 20:46
What happened to those tablets of stone had already happened in the character of the people. God wants us to know that although we think we got this, we don't have it like we think we have it. Now, some of you are like, and I'm not talking about deborah, for example, here, but some of us are like this. Some of us are like, "You know what? I know I don't have it, Shawn,"
And you would agree with that. But when you talk to your friend or to somebody in your family, or when you're looking at your husband or wife, it's amazing how you can admit in one area that you don't have it, but with them, you act like you have everything together. It just depends on who you're talking to. Are you with me? And I came here today to tell you don't have it. You don't have it. And don't think that you got this all by yourself. You don't. You don't. Have you ever messed up? Like, I'm talking about bad. That's why I don't understand why people can be so judgmental of other people, because everyone in here has blown it at least once. It is amazing to me how little grace we give those that we're closest to, when you've blown it probably worse than they've blown it. It is amazing. And it's the arrogance there that we see in the hearts and the lives of the people, that they think that God gives this law and they got this. I mean, "I got it. I got it." It's great that they think they want to put some sweat into it, but let me tell you, doing it by yourself, or doing it with arrogance, or doing it with pride, that don't help nobody. You need to do it with humility. And there are people, the more they serve God, the more they think they got it. And the more they think they got it, the less appreciation they have for other people who are struggling.
You're on a struggle bus, too. You're both on the same bus.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 23:00
It don't matter where you're sitting on it. It's the same bus. It's the same bus. He goes back to go before God because of their arrogance. Their arrogance has turned to brokenness. And that's the way it is today. So many people are broken because of arrogance. That's really what it boils down to. That's why the Bible says if you don't humble yourself, God will break you. God will do it. Their arrogance has turned to brokenness. We have broken people, broken tablets, and broken law. And God comes at your arrogance and he breaks your pride. That's what he does. Some of you wonder why you're in a season of brokenness. And I would propose to you it's self-induced. You think you got it on your own. You think you can handle this, and God comes at that, and
God often uses brokenness to fix your pride.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 24:06
He'll break your popularity. He'll break your relationships if you trust more in the people around you than you do God. He'll break your job. He'll break your finances. He'll break it all. He don't care, because ultimately he's trying to break arrogance in you. The reality is, number one, little
Point 3Sometimes you fix it with a chisel, not a wand
Investment, lesser appreciation. Number two, sometimes we have to fix it with a chisel. Sometimes you don't fix it with a wand. Sometimes you fix it with a chisel. Now, in the church, I'm going to say a bunch of stuff that you could take the opposite of, and you could totally deconstruct my sermon and make me sound like an idiot, especially if you cut sections out of this thing. Please don't do that. I'm for prayer.
Sometimes we use prayer as a magic wand to get what only a chisel can get for us.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 25:14
Let me explain that to you. Somebody has a problem with their air conditioner, and it's 120 outside. You know them. They're in your church fellowship, right? They expressed their problem. You met with them at coffee when you were in the church. You saw them, and you were getting coffee, and you said, "How's your week?" And they had the audacity to tell you what their problem was. And now you're stuck, because you got to do something with that. Do you want to use a chisel, or do you want to use a magic wand?
Prayer isn't bad, but if prayer never moves you to movement, what is prayer?
Pastor Shawn Gray · 26:18
So we say, "Well, let me pray for you. God, would you miraculously fix his air conditioner?" I'm not saying that's a bad prayer. I mean, every time my car breaks, I try to lay hands on it. You know what I mean? Like, and God has, my car's turned on before. I don't know. I do that, though. When my kids get sick, we go to the Lord first. We do that. But sometimes, you know, if you lay hands on your air conditioner, or a person lays hands on you at church with the coffee, and it don't work, you don't live without an air conditioner your whole life. That'd make you a Christian Scientist. Are you with me? So what does it mean?
Maybe this requires a chisel. "But that costs me something." Yeah, sweat's required when God calls you. "Well, it might be a financial investment. I just got 500 extra bucks in my wallet so I could go on an overnight trip with my wife. I finally had a breakthrough, and now I'm going to get a date, a couple days. I ain't going to take that money and give it to this person so they can have 1/120th of what they need to get an air conditioner." Yeah. Well, Jesus gave his life for you. Pretty sure $500 you can share with them. But we would rather sometimes use prayer as a magic wand. "Let me pray for you. Pray for you." No chisel required. Are you with me today? Have you been guilty? And I'm not saying we shouldn't pray. Just track with me. Don't cut this sermon. Like I said, I'm not saying we shouldn't pray. We should pray and we should chisel. We should pray and we should chisel. Notice he was communing with God and chiseling by himself. He was praying with God and he was chiseling. He was praying and communing and chiseling. He was talking and chiseling.
Some of us just want to talk, but we don't want to chisel.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 28:45
But it don't work that way. Take my yoke upon you and plow the field. Did you know this is a field ripe for harvest, and there are needs in this field? Do you just wait for me as a pastor to handle those needs, or are you helping with the needs you see in this field? Sometimes the best way for a field to be cultivated is through love and through generosity with one another. Why is that important? Because seeds are being sown everywhere you go, and sometimes it takes root and sometimes it doesn't. How are we cultivating this field, and the field of those that we're in connection with outside of this church? Are you with me today? Do you see a need and meet a need, or do you just pray and hope you can abracadabra or bewitch it? Boom. No chisel required. I wish I could do the no-chisel-required. So now Moses is on the mountain, waiting like you must wait when you mess up. You're always waiting. You're always waiting when you mess up. Because God will put you in time-out when you break what he did not intend for you to break, when you don't carry the Spirit with caution. "So if we're going to do this again, you're going to put a little sweat in it this time, because you didn't value it last time enough to not break it." And God says, "I'll do the writing, but you're going to do the cutting yourself. You're going to fix it with a chisel." And go up the mountain, cut two tablets from solid rock. And he was up there a long time trying to get it back like God had it. Anybody that told you that this life wouldn't cost you anything literally is crazy. And let me tell you, if they told you that once you become a Christian, it really won't cost you anything, they're really crazy.
Because you don't even start to feel resistance till you put your faith in Christ.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 31:02
That's when your mettle really gets tested. God is teaching through this collaboration between Moses and God, between, listen, humanity. Now this is beautiful. Don't check out on me. Humanity and divinity. There is an awesome collaboration that we see in Moses in the Old Testament that we should also see in our lives today. We have the sovereign God of the universe wanting to collaborate with humanity. Divinity and humanity in a dance. This is beautiful. And honestly, this is a shadow: the first covenant would all be done by God, but the second covenant would be a collaboration between that which is celestial and that which is terrestrial. Let me explain it. Let me break it down for you this way.
The first man, Adam, God made him all by himself. Zero collaboration. He took dirt from the ground, breathed into it. Boom. Adam's like, "What's up?" Adam, made by God all by himself. He didn't use a woman. God made him alone. But when he broke God's law, track with me. See it. See the shadow. When he broke God's law, God said, "In order to establish the second covenant, it will be a collaboration between humanity and divinity. Hail Mary, you've been highly favored amongst women."
And he enters into a collaboration, that which is celestial engaging with that which is terrestrial. And the second covenant looked like a collaboration. That's what we see with Moses, isn't it? The first one, no collaboration. The first covenant, he builds, he constructs, he makes the tablets, he writes on the tablets. The second one, he asks Moses to put a little sweat into it. He collaborates with him. He's invested with him. They are yoked together in the journey. This covenant comes at a cost to man. Man's involved. How many of you, let's just pause here for a second, how many of you have been in this Christian thing for a little while?
The more you walk with the Lord, you will begin to feel, to contemplate, to think, to resist these thoughts, and to begin to verbalize things like this: "How much do you really need from me, brother?" Okay, track with me. Just calm down. Hey, everybody, the reason you're laughing is because everybody's had these thoughts. "I just can't take any more improvement. Thank you. Please. You just ask and you ask and you ask, and you just need more, and you need more, and you need more. I'm trying to keep up, man. Calm down. How much are you going to need from me?"
Everything. You were bought at a price.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 34:16
You are his completely. Everything. You see, the idea is we think that signing up with the Lord, no sweat required. So when he comes to us, and he's yoked with us, we think it's an ungracious thing for him to ask us to sweat a little bit. Well, what you don't know is, if he let you hang there with that yoke with him not on the other side, that'd be way worse than him asking to join you in the field of work. There is a cost. There is a cost. You can't save yourself, but there is a cost. To whom much is given, much is required. Mary was pregnant. She was riding on a donkey, fully pregnant. She's birthing in a barn. She's raising the Son of God. She watches the Son of God be crucified. She loses him. Do you understand the cost of the calling? There is a cost to the calling. And all whom God has called, he saves. And sweat is required. Sweat is required, people. And I'm going to say this. I'm closing. I don't even, my phone's dead. What time is it? No, it's not dead. I'm done. Okay. So I'm not done, but I need to be done. Okay. But I'm almost done. People have this idea that you can pray through and fix privately what requires public sacrifice. So, have you ever had anybody talk about you at all? Raise your hand. Just, so pretty much everybody. And if you didn't raise your hand, you're the person talking about somebody else, and they're still talking about you. They're just too scared to say it, because you talk more. Okay, you understand what I'm saying? So that's the way it works. So everybody has been involved with this at some point, right? It happens. And how many of you know it's hurtful? I had two friends. One friend came to me and said, "Hey, the other friend, you know how he's been talking really negatively about you and doing that? He feels really bad about it." It's kind of like when you send your friend to somebody and they say, "Hey, she really likes you." You know what I mean? Like, so instead of him coming to me, he sent a, you know, an ambassador to come talk, and he said, "He would really like to meet you and talk to you about what he's been saying about you." Like, i'm weird. Okay, that'd be okay. I said I'd meet with him, but I didn't feel like it would do any good. And my friend said, "Why?" I said, "Well, because when he was talking about me, it wasn't in private. It was in public." And I believe this: you can't fix something the way, the reality is some of us want to live sinful lives publicly, but we want to pray through privately, and it just doesn't work that way. I said, "Go back and tell him, you
Point 4Fix it where you broke it
Got to fix it where you broke it. You went public talking bad about me. You should go public correcting it. Don't come try to apologize to me. You need to make it right with the people you spoke negatively about me to." Does that sound fair? That sound fair? Right. That sounds fair, right? Because there's a cost to this thing. I know all of you want to just sin and think there's no cost. And I understand Jesus pays the ultimate price, and he pays a price you could not pay. But it doesn't mean your sins come at zero cost to you. They come at a cost. We broke it. Adam broke it. Sin was imputed to all men. And guess what? When Jesus paid the price, he didn't do it privately in some private cell. He did it publicly. He paid a price publicly. It's important. Guess where sin lives the best? In darkness.
Guess where sin lives the best? In isolation. You want to kill sin? Go public with it.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 39:08
Just track with me here. We don't preach this today. We don't preach this today, because some of y'all are like, "I what?" That's why we have people continuing in sin. Let me tell you, when a pastor gets called out for having four women living in four different apartments, and his wife never knew, and he has all kinds of inappropriate stuff going on, let me tell you when he's at the most success of breaking free from this habitual sin. When he's outed. That's when he has his best chance of victory, when he's outed. Track with me here. You may not like this. Some of you need to out yourself. Some of you need to go to a confidant or somebody that you're living with, and you need to share the problem you're struggling with, because it is taking you down. And let me tell you, let me tell you want to fix this thing? You ain't going to do it.
You got to fix it where you broke it.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 40:24
Some of you have a problem. He's saying there has to be such a change in your life that moves you beyond a private profession to a public one. Yeah. What does Jesus say?
You deny me before men, I'll deny you before God. That's strong. What is he saying? You broke something publicly with your life. You got to fix it publicly with your mouth and your life. When God told Jesus to fix it, he did. He had to fix it in front of everyone. When you come to life in
Point 5Stop expecting miracles without movement
Christ, you will fix it. Last thing, and I'm done. Stop expecting miracles without movement. Sometimes God calls you to move. Move. Just move. Just move. I have a friend who once said, "I hate God." He was actually in this church. He left church. He went into the foyer, and he did some hand signals to me and to God, and he said, "I hate God. I hate you." A few expletives, yada, mumbling, raged out the door. I called him later, once he calmed down and I didn't think I was going to get stabbed. I called him and asked if I could come over. I went over to his house. He began to say, "I'm broke. I lost my house. I've lost all my friends. I'm an alcoholic. No one can trust me. I don't trust myself. My family doesn't even want to be around me. I hate God. It's all his fault." I was thinking to myself, didn't say it out loud because I like my life, I can think of a lot of reasons why you lost your house. You don't have a consistent job. You only work 25 hours a week. You don't pay your bills on time. I can think of a lot of reasons why your friends probably don't want to hang out with you, and your family don't want to hang out with you. After my experience yesterday, you ain't so friendly. I can think of a lot of reasons why you're an alcoholic. But some kind of way he'd gotten into his mind that we can do everything wrong and God will just make everything right. Have you some kind of way gotten that in your mind too? That this Christian thing is a big magic wand? You just act a fool. You just do everything you want, and then, you know, God's going to swoop down. He's going to save your house. You never have to make a payment. He'll just keep saving you, and, you know, he's just going to show up with your mortgage. You know what I mean?
"I'm saved. God's going to do mighty miracles, 'cause I'm his son. I don't have to do nothing." And we wouldn't say that about extreme things maybe, but there are things, all of us are guilty of thinking this in some avenue of our life. Listen, if I overeat, I'm going to get bigger.
That's a fact. I've proven that fact. Can I get an amen? I'm re-proving it, by the way. So, arm wrestling, just arm wrestling, which we have practice for today at sometime, 12 or something. People come here and they try to rip my arm off and stuff like that. But when I started, I was 247, and then I realized that I was arm wrestling people who were 247, but they weren't 247 with 80 pounds of that fat. They were 247 and all of that was muscle. And so I was going to get my arm ripped off and then smacked around with the arm they ripped off. You know what I mean? So I decided I got to cut weight. And for a year and a half I began cutting weight, until I got down to 175. And you know what? I didn't eat a ton. And it stunk for a year and a half. It was awful. And then I started winning. Started winning, because actually my muscle had caught up with my actual body weight. Now just track with me on this. Listen to this. Then I took a break at christmas. How many of you have ever taken a break? It's been an extended sabbatical. And I said at Christmas, "I'm going to destroy myself, and I'm going to love every minute of it." And I've been doing it ever since. Shockingly enough, I've gained 20 pounds. You know why? 'Cause I'm going to destroy myself. Now, I don't pray when I put an Oreo in my mouth that it will turn into a carrot as it works its way down to my belly. I don't pray that, because that's nonsense. You put an Oreo in, it affects you like an Oreo affects you. Can I get an amen? And sometimes I like the way an Oreo affects me.
Right. But I just want you to know what you put in, you get out. Now, this is not a health thing. It's not that. But I just want you to know when it comes to things like that, we have an expectation that what we put in, we get out. But with God, we don't have that expectation. We have an expectation: "I can put all kinds of stupidity in and get all kinds of good back." But it don't work that way. It don't work that way.
There's human responsibility required for your next miracle.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 46:38
God is saying, "If you will, I will. If you will cut the tablets, I will write on them." Jesus comes up to the blind man. He puts mud on his eyes and tells him to wash in the pool. When he does, his sight returns to him. When he goes to the pool, he dips his head in the pool. He washes the mud out of his eyes. His sight returns to him. Jesus could have just healed him without going to the pool, without putting mud on his eyes. But this was a collaborative effort. Notice when he feeds the 5,000, notice he has them sit down in sections. This might be the 4,000. Sit down in groups of 50. He commands them what to do. And when they get them in groups of 50, then he feeds the 5,000. Notice that he grabs the lunch of a little boy, a few fish and a few loaves, and he uses that in a collaborative effort to feed the masses. Notice that God didn't have to do that, because the first time when he fed the masses, he did it with quail and manna from the sky. No collaboration required. The first covenant he did by himself. The second covenant, he asked us to join him in the work. Sweat required. It comes at a cost. It is hard to preach grace and grace alone and preach this without undermining the grace message. So pastors just stay away from it. But I came here today to tell you can be saved completely by God, but understand that a calling comes at a cost.
And you cannot pay the cost for your salvation, but you will pay a cost for walking and being yoked to him today.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 48:10
That's what we're learning here. Could it be that what's holding you up is not God, but it's you? Don't you know that, listen, there are just some things you can't pray yourself out of. Sweat required. "I just need all my bills to be paid, and I need to be debt-free." Sometimes there's just stuff you can't pray. I'm not saying stop praying. I pray every day all my student loans will be forgiven, that somebody will just find out my student loan stuff and just pay it off. I pray for that. Sweat's probably going to be required. But I pray for it. I'm still praying for it. I'm still praying. If you want my loan number, let me know. But I'm still praying for it. Just kidding. You understand what I'm saying? Pray, hope, dream, wish, work. Don't wait until God delivers and pays for your student loans and just refuse to pay for your student loans. Start paying for your student loans. Don't do what I did. Now, I'm glad I did this, and I think God was involved in this, but don't do this unless God is doing it. But I wanted to defer my student loans, so I just went back to school, got more loans. Sweat required. You're going to have to pay for them sometime. Can I get an amen? You're going to have to pay for it sometime.
Prayer isn't a magic wand.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 49:50
And a relationship with God doesn't get you out of all of your choices. That's not the way this works. We want a dog, I'm closing, I'm closing, I'm really closing, we want a dog, but we don't want to feed it or walk it.
We want a house, but we don't want to clean it or pay for it. We
Pastor Shawn Gray · 50:09
want a blessing, but we don't want a burden.
You're in love with the results. That's the problem. And if you signed up with God because you want a result, you should test your faith and see if it's real. That's what First John says. I'll recap. Sweat required. Listen: little investment, lesser appreciation. Sometimes you have to fix it with the chisel. And what was the last one? Stop expecting miracles without movement. It's going to cost you something.
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