Sermon Transcript:Thank you guys for being here. Thank you guys for being online. I just want to start with just asking a question this morning, which is, have you ever been let down? Have you ever had someone or something or some organization offer you something, some sort of promise they made something to you and it just didn't come around? It didn't come to fruition. So I want to begin by just thinking about some categories. If right here, as far as some broken promises, maybe maybe it was a coworker, how many times have you been there where they said, I'll get that done? I'll turn it in for you. I'll make sure that that we can move this project along. How many times have you had a classmate? Some of y'all the most dreaded word you could ever hear when you were in school was this is a teamwork assignment, because you knew the dynamics were of all these different things that were going to go wrong. What about a friend, so they were going to be there so that they would do something for you? What about a parent, maybe they said that they would always be around that they wouldn't leave your mom or your dad or they, they would promise to give you maybe a portion of inheritance or whatever. Maybe it was a spouse, again, just through little little things, little things that are broken promises, or maybe some major ones. I think about this with a kid, maybe you all have agreed with something or you've said, Hey, you are going to do the dishwasher, you are going to clean your room before you get this and you decide. And they decided that that's not going to happen. What about an organization that you are depending on this? You are depending on this to come through? Or Or you heard that you had a guarantee? And it didn't come out that way? Or what about a car and you think that how can a car be a broken promise? I'll tell you how it is if you've ever been there, and you've gone to get your car worked on, and it still breaks down on you. What are you doing? You're talking to your car? No, don't do this to me right now. Right? You do not want that it has broken down on you. It was supposed to get you from point A to point B and it didn't they broke down. What about a house? Same thing? No, no, don't flood? I don't I can't call anybody or I don't want to spend any more money on the fix whatever that is. What about a pet? Okay, I'm not talking about dogs here. I'm talking about cats. All right. But yes, we understand right now we all even the animals themselves. You had an agreement. You don't poop here, you don't have accidents here. And somehow, you've let me down and it does create real angst in our heart, doesn't it? Think about city? How many times have you had city officials that's come through and said, you know, we're going to clean up this area, we're going to give you guys this, we're going to do this and there's not going to be any sort of, you know, raising of property taxes, and we'll go and fight for you and Austin or whatever. Think about this in terms of government, where you were told that you were gonna get some sort of, you know, windfall, or you were told you, hey, we'll give you all this stimulus money. And that's gonna, everything's gonna be great. And they didn't tell you that three to five years later, it would all be taken away in more by the raising of inflation. We have all kinds of broken promises. But here's the deal, God makes promises to us called covenants. And God keeps His promises. I want to go all the way back to one of the original promises and covenants, and that is the call of Abram and Genesis chapter 12. Genesis chapter one through 11, you can read that there's a lot of stuff in there. But when you get to chapter 12, of the book of Genesis in Genesis is the first book the Bible actually means beginnings or new beginnings. And what you end up seeing there is that men and women begin to call upon the Lord. And we get a clearer understanding of history and where it's adds about 2000 BC with the call of Abraham. And here it is Genesis 12, verses one through three, it says this, The Lord said to Abram, leave your native country, your relatives and your father's family, and go to the land that I will show you, I will make you a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous and you will be a blessing to others. I will bless those who bless you and curse those who treat you with contempt. All the families on the earth will be blessed through you. If you know anything about that story, a lot of things look like they're going to make that go off track, a lot of things go haywire. Abram, who becomes Abraham does some foolish things in the midst of all this, but God keeps His promises and that we ourselves are recipients of some of that promise because we are Christians, we are believers, and we claim the faith that Abraham had. And so what you end up seeing here in Genesis 15, is he repeats this, this covenant promise to Abram. And you'll see this in verse 18 of chapter 15. So only two or three chapters later, and it begins with this right here. So the Lord made a covenant and we already talked about what a covenant is. That's a That's a promise, but it's even bigger than that. You understand what contracts are because we have a contract for our house or our car, but a covenantis sealed by something greater than ourselves, namely God Himself. God made a covenant with Abram that day and said, I have given this land to your descendants all the way from the border of Egypt to the great Euphrates River, the land now occupied by the Canaanites and the kids sites and kind of my CAD mo nights, Hittites, parasites, Rafi lights, Amorites, Canaanites,gear guy shots and Jebusites. And so all he's saying here, and the reason I wanted to read all that is to see that not only did he give you a covenant promise, but I want you to see that with their eyes, they would have said, no, no, someone else lives here. All those people, all those nations live there. And he's saying, no, no, that's going to be given to you. So this is Abraham, who becomes Abraham, Abraham and Sarah eventually have a child in their old age. And that is the promise child, Isaac, and Isaac has his own dealings with the Lord. And this is what God tells Isaac in Genesis 28 says, this right hereare Genesis 26. I am the God of your father, Abraham. So he's saying, This is who I am. I've created a lineage of creative family. That's who I am. Do not be afraid. We've talked a lot about fear, worry and anxiety, for I am with you, and will bless you, I will multiply your descendants and they will become a great nation. I will do this because of what what kind of thing? Is there a promise. In all the Old Testament you're gonna see promises made to Abraham, my servant. So it doesn't just go from father to son, it goes to grand son. So look at Genesis 28, verse 15, says this, what's more, I am with you and who we talking to. So remember, Abraham and Sarah had Isaac, and eventually we have Jacob and Jacob stamens is going to be called Israel, because he's gonna be the father of many nations, what's more, I am with you, and I will protect you wherever you go. He's talking to Jacob, one day, I will bring you back to this land, and I will not leave you until I have finished giving you everything I have promised you. So now not only do we have a covenant, or do we have a promise, now we have the guarantee the assurance that the God of heaven will be with us. This is huge. And this is going to continue on in Exodus 33, the second book of the Bible with Moses, and he's told this, The Lord replied to Moses, in Exodus 33, I will personally go with you, Moses,and I will give you rest, everything will be fine for you. Then Moses said, If you don't personally go with us, he's talking to the Lord, don't make us leave this place. How will anyone know that you look favorably on me and on me and your people, if you don't go with us, for your presence among us, set your people and me apart from all the other people on the earth. Moses knew what was so special about the nation of Israel. And it wasn't that we would eventually conquer many people or any of that kind of thing, that it was the fact that know that the Lord God is with us. And then we get to the New Testament, I think about Jesus, when he's praying and talking on our behalf. He says this in John 14, verses 16 through 18. And I will ask the Father, this is Jesus now and he will give you another advocate, we understand what an advocate is, we all want one of those in our lives, who will never leave you Who is this, He is the Holy Spirit, who leads into all truth The world cannot receive Him, because He is looking for him and doesn't recognize him. But you will know Him because He lives with you now and later will be in youknow, I will not abandon you. This is huge as orphans, I will come to you. This is the book of John, chapter 14, verses 16 through 18. I think whether it's again, at the end of Jesus's time here on earth with His followers, His disciples, He said, What lo or Behold, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age. Paul in the New Testament, He is very clear on how we can really get practical with our fear, worry and anxiety and how we can work through this. Not only knowing God's presence, but this and Philippians, four, five through seven. Let everyone see that you are considerate and all you do. Remember the Lord is coming soon. Don't worry about anything. Don't worry. Don't worry about anything. Instead, pray about everything. Anytime. That our thoughts and we're going to talk about this that we all have different levels of anxiety, none of us none of us get to get out of it completely on this side of heaven. And When thoughts come in that create anxiousness in our hearts, we are told quite clearly, here's what we do and we have something that is going to help us to know what to do with it and that is pray about it. Pray about everything. Don't worry about it. Tell God what you need and thankhim for all he has done, then you will experience God's peace, which exceeds anything we can understand his peace will guard your hearts and your minds as you live in Christ Jesus, then you say, Pastor, this is easier said than done. I've heard some of those verses before, I've tried that I've, you know, tried to do a little things and say a few prayers. And yet I still am riddled with anxiety about some of the things that you talked about whether it's parental issues, or work issues, or family issues, or whatever. And I just want to say that fear and anxiety, they seem bigger and more confident in our mind than they should be. I get it, it feels so real. It's literally in your bones. And we talked about this in terms of our bodies, we're holistic beings. So things that are coming in our head and our hearts that affects us holistically. And we understand that that's where some of our depression and concern and anxiety come from, certain bad things will happen, for sure they will. And what we think is, I will not have sufficient grace to get through that. And that's the exact opposite of what the Lord is telling us. He's actually saying, yes, you will, yes, you will have grace to get through that I will supply and give that to you. How do we how do we know that? How can we trust them? What has he told us, that gives us any hope that that can actually be true. He says, I will never leave you. Or another thing that God is repeating to us over and over again. That's why I went through all those verses and wanted to go through Old Testament and New Testament and Jesus and letters and all that leads to the first point I wants to see this morning, I will be with you. The God of heaven says this to you and me this morning. That is huge. That is He is just that he would not remove his presence from us. On this side of heaven.He pulls back the curtain to see the realities that we can't see that, that depression or what seems so real to us, my fear, my concern, what we all talked about fear of man or people are our fear of others, and what they think and what they'll do my lack of funds, those are what seems so real and so tangible. And the Bible is calling us always to a greater reality to a greater truth.He's saying God is saying there is manna from heaven, that will come there is grace for tomorrow because the Lord promises to be with you and me. I mean, that's where we go back to these passages that you and I have heard before, we thought before we've maybe heard someone else tell to us or not, I'll tell you, to you right now. And that just whole idea is that Today has enough trouble of its own. Do you not worry about tomorrow, the Lord will take care of us. But the truth is, we still get so fearful. I want to share with you another story that you may not have read before and this is about Elijah servant. And if you remember in the Old Testament that there is Elijah, and then after Elijah, because he's caught up in a chariots of fire up into heaven. We see Elijah becomes the prophet of God here in Second Kings. And so what ends up happening is that this king of Aram, in chapter six of Second Kings, he is really concerned because every time he goes to war with Israel, it seems like they're already prepared for him. And so he gets all his henchmen together, and he says, Hey, what's going on here, that every time that I try to sneak attack Israel, they seem like they're ready for me. And they said, listen, they've got a prophet of the Most High God, Elijah. And he's able to tell them, even if you don't tell anyone, even if you're just talking about it in your own secret chambers, because he talks to the Lord Almighty, the Lord Almighty warns him, and therefore he knows whenever we're coming, so he does whatever any vengeful wrathful the my way, or the highway king would do, which he says, well, I'll just cut his head off then. So he says, Why don't y'all get a whole army together and you go kill Elijah, because if he's the one causing me all this trouble, let me go get him. And so that's exactly what this king of a room does in Second Kings chapter six. And he's he goes to kill Elijah. And, and of course, Elijah has an entourage and one person in his entourage is a servant. And he says, Hey, I looked outside this morning, and there's troops and horses and chariots everywhere. We'll see that here and go ahead and put that slide up here in verse 15.The servant of the man of God got up early the next morning, went outside and there were troops, horses and chariots everywhere. Oh, sir. What will we do now? The young man cried out to Elijah. Don't be afraid. Elijah told him for there are more on our side. ThenOn Thursday, you got to understand the reality if you were the servant and put yourself in the position of the servant, because that's what you and I will be doing, we'd be peeking out the window. And we'd be saying, No, it's just you and me, maybe another couple of servants around but but there's just you and me, and there's a lot of them.And Elijah prayed, oh, Lord, open his eyes. He's so confident. This is how the people of God act. Once you and I start walking with God and moving in the Spirit, we begin to see that nothing can stand in our way in terms of the purposes of God, and we are more than conquerors in Christ. Jesus allows you to do that. And he prayed that his servants eyes could see the Lord open the young man's eyes. And when he looked up, he saw that the hillside around Elijah was filled with horses and chariots of fire. As the Aramean army advanced toward him, Elijah prayed, oh, Lord,please make them blind. So the Lord struck them with blindness, as Elijah had asked, now, if you Amir there, what are we going to do next? We're gonna be like, Okay, it's our turn, right? And I got God on my son. Look out. That's not what he does. Elijah takes pity on them. He feels sorry for them because of their stupid king, and he leads them to another city. He's like, Oh, you're blind. Let me take you down the road to Samaria. And this is the city where, you know, you're gonna do whatever find Israel find Elijah. And so when they get there, Israel's army is there. And so they're like, hey, they're blind. Do you want us to just go ahead and kill them? And Elijah is like, no, no, no, don't do that. It's not their fault that they're blind and stupid. It just literally says in the scriptures, they he says, Don't do that. We don't kill prisoners of war, let's give them some food and drink and send them home again, to their master. You can imagine just the almost just the heightened sense of like, Oh, we're gonna show them kindness, we're gonna feed them well, and send them back to the master. And so not only they feed them, well, that says they made them a feast, and sent them back to their master. And then I love this last line. And it says after that the Aramean Raiders stayed away from the land of Israel. I mean, you want to write I mean, like, I don't know what does happen there. I don't know why I got to live. I don't know why it was turned blind and lead to another city. And I don't know why. The people I was supposed to kill through a feast and a party for me. I'll tell you why. Because they served a greater power. And they were not afraid because who because the Lord was with them. Second point I want you to see this morning is things are not always as they seem, that servant had to realize that there are armies that are backing you and me for spiritual purposes. Remember what Jesus says, He's saying, Oh, this is just Old Testament prophetic stuff. This isn't for you and me. Remember what Jesus said that I've already read the book of John, that we ourselves that the Holy Spirit lives in us, because we're believers, we're Christians, that we ourselves have an advocate, we have the very spirit of God living in us. But the problem is, is that you and I have whispering lies in our ears all the time. My mind is, well, it's just telling us what kind of things you can't trust them or anyone.You're gonna die today, you're gonna fail. Good things don't happen to me. So why do I even try? Everybody hates me, right? Nobody likes me, I guess go home and eat worms. best days are behind me, right? We believe all kinds of things that are whispered. If anyone knew the real me, they would reject me. I say that, that we often talk about looking behind the curtain and we we understand spiritual warfare. And we often see yes, there are dark things being done behind the scenes, but there are greater things being done by our Father who is in heaven. I want to give you an image of how deceptive ideas work. And this is not original with me. I've showed this before during our spiritual warfare series. I got this from a guy named John Mark comer, who's in Portland, Oregon. And he talks about and this is how all of us sort of live that, that we are born. We are born with our backs towards God or what the Bible says that we're born into sin because of Adam and Eve's choice. And, and so that means we're born with a propensity towards self, not with a natural inclination to hit our knees and seek the God in heaven. And so because we're born that way, then these deceptive ideas, where we don't see so readily what's going on behind the scene that God's got your back. We're believing that everything is very defeatist, we're not going to be able to do this. It's not good for me. And so it takes our disordered desires because we're thinking of the flesh. Satan can come in with those deset deceptive sort of ideas.thrown in our ears, and then it's normalized in a sinful society, because how many of us are gonna get encouraged to turn our gaze towards heaven, in times of trouble from any sort of social media accounts or any television or even in the workplaces that we frequent or school places that we frequent, we're gonna get very little to nothing. So all these things come together, Satan in his lies, our own fleshly desires, and then the lies of the world and it creates for us such such crippling effect on our spiritual lives. And I would just say, we need to understand how Satan works in his schemes. It's not hopeless. That's why I wanted to share a good story that maybe you didn't even know about before, from Elijah and Second Kings. So then we're able to what give our cares to him. But before we get there, I want us to think about a psalm, Psalm 4610. And we shared it, we shared a couple of songs, I think they're really helpful if you are ever struggling with find, find something in the book of Psalms because the psalmist is often struggling and suffering and seeing things surrounding him or her and then they come to a conclusion of who God is and what he's done. Here's what this psalm says in Psalm 46. God is our refuge and strength. Do we believe that this morning Life Church, always ready to help in times of trouble? It looks bad, it looks bleak. So we will not fear when the earthquakes come, and the mountains crumble into the sea. Let the oceans roar and foam, let the mountains tremble as the waters surge. And then there's maybe in your version, or in this version up here, it says, interlude, or it says pause or say, law. That's an important statement, because it's just a time that was like, do we realize what we just read? If this was put to music, what's the Psalter would have been in 1000 BC and even after that, do we understand that even in times of natural things around this looking like it's going to take us over? It is not true, let it go because I am protected by God. beginning of verse four, it says this, a river brings joy to the city of our God, the sacred home of the most time. God dwells in the city, it cannot be destroyed. From the very break of day God will protect it. The nations are in chaos in their kingdoms crumble. God's voice thunders and the earth melts. The Lord of Heaven's Armies is here among us. Where have we just seen that or heard that? The God of Israel is our fortress, and it says, interlude, pause, c'est la vie.And again, just let's take that in church. Let's just take that in that this is written for us, for us to draw comfort and strength, because we're looking around and we're saying, it doesn't look good for me, in my family, or my city, or my job, or my lot in life or whatever.Keep going, verse eight, come see the glorious work of the Lord. See how he brings destruction upon the world, he causes wars in throughout the earth, He breaks the bow and snaps the spear, he turns the shields or he burns the shields with fire. Verse 10, I think it's gonna become important for what God wants to do for us this morning. Be still and know that I am God. And I will be honored or exalted in every nation, and I will be honored or exalted throughout the entire earth or world. The Lords of Heavens armies is here among us, the God of Israel is our fortress. This is huge as we think about what God wants to do in us that we would just take a moment and say, God, because you're God, I'm gonna be alright. I mean, whatever is going on in our heads and our hearts. They're huge. I get that they seem bigger than our God because we can teach, we can touch and it feels tangible. And it feels so real. I said, that I know for many of us in this room are anxious hearts. That's what we have this right here. It's symbolic of our anxious hearts, that that are anxious hearts are riddled with all kinds of anxiety that we feel so acutely. But here we have God saying something else, another message to us and he says this right here in the book of First Peter, give all your worries and cares to God. For He cares about you. We've talked about this before, and I think it's where we want to end in a series like this and what's going on here? Well, think about putting it all together. The first week of this series, we gave some general general introductions about fear, worry and anxiety. Second week, we really got into what many of us have which is people pleasing fear of fear of man or woman just fear of others fear of what God's going to use. Others toharm us or hurt us. And then we, then we got into just fear of lack lack of of things for resources, money, things from my hands, my family. And we talked about some scriptures there. And here, we're saying, wherever you're at in that spectrum, whatever your concerns and worries are, and we've all got them, we all have little anxious hearts or big anxious hearts. And wherever they are, they are not meant to stay in here. Part of the discipline that we have seen from the scriptures is that we pray and ask God to take them, that where we can take our fear, worry, and anxiety, it seems very clear from the scriptures is to the foot of the cross, because he takes care of them there. Um, you understand that, right? However, these things came about. And we're all products of a little bit of, of human nature, a little bit of how we were nurtured, and a little bit of the experiences and what you've all had, I get that we're complex. But at the end of the day, however, we got there with this anxious heart, I can assure you, you and I are not meant to leave the room with all that anxiety in our hearts. And the only way that it's gonna be taken care of is that the foot of the cross, I mean, there's really only two choices when you have anxious anxiety in your heart, right? It's you can either trust God or someone or something that is going to be taken care of, or you can continue to carry it. And for many of us in this room, we have carried in a way entirely too long, and maybe a week, it may be a month, it may be your entire life. So I'm going to give you an opportunity to give your anxiety to him and in the band is going to play and I'm going to give you some some instruction, you may have noticed that we have kneelers, up in the up in the front here with these were these were built by some men in our church, thank you so much for doing I want to give them a round of applause.In the coming weeks, we'll have enough kneelers throughout the entire stage. But we wanted to kind of bring these out today to say, You know what, we're a praying church. And we're not ashamed of that world worshipping church. We're not ashamed of that. We're a church that believes the Bible, we believe God, we believe His Word, we're not ashamed of that. But one of the things that we have to do is we have to get there. For many of us in the room. Part of what is happening is we haven't we had God. God wants to do so many amazing things in your life and in mind, but that requires us to bow the heart and bend the knee and actually humble ourselves enough to be like, God, I need help. I can't do this on my own anymore, I don't want to do it on my own anymore. So we're gonna give you an opportunity, you can come and come to the kneelers, you can be in your seat and do business with God. But we're going to ask that either way, you come from this side or this side. And we have a little pool that we've covered here that we're asking you to drop this heart, this anxious heart that you and I have right here we are asking you to symbolically put it literally put it at the foot of the cross, I'll move out of the way and I'll move my podium out of the way so that you and I can have an opportunity to pray and to look to the cross. And to say God, I don't want this anymore. I want to leave this at your feet. Now as I say this, I know that there's a couple of different people in the room. There's some of y'all in the room, you do not want to do this, you intentionally pass the heart table, you passed on Jesse's announcement to go back to get the heart. And I'm just here to tell you that you and I always have a choice. And that is that we can continue to carry the junk that we've been carrying around with whether it's been a week or years or all our life, or we can choose to give it over to Christ. And so what I'm asking as your pastor, but really because I think I have the full weight of the Bible behind me is to say, you don't need to carry this anymore. He said, Well, I think I can just do this home privately, I get that you can do that. But some things take the community of faith to say, even when I'm so weak, I might need some help. And so yes, I know that some of y'all this isn't your thing. This creates you uncomfortable, I'm asking you to do it anyways. Now what if you say, Pastor, I'm for real, I'm not giving my anxiety, I'm not coming up for it. I'm not dropping in anything, I'm not hitting my knees, well, then you carry it home with you. However you want to do that you carry it in your pocket with you. But realize you're taking it with you realize whatever burns, you came in here with your bag in your heart, that you're continuing to say, I'm gonna still carry that. And if you need to do business with God and come back and drop it off next week, I get that there's a little little category I want to say. So if you're all like, I want to keep this because this is my Ebenezer that God did something in my life today, we'll have an opportunity to give it to you next week. So don't worry about that. But I'm asking everyone in the room to come give whatever you've got at the feet of Jesus.And if you're in the other category, if you take it with you just know you're gonna take it with you. And that's going to beStill anxiety in your heart.I will say one last thing. And I get this to some of y'all are sitting in your seat right now. And you're like, Pastor, I don't even know if I have the strength to move to get up. You understand what I'm saying that you're sitting there saying, I know I need to give it up. And there's a big part of me that wants to give it up. But I don't have it. I don't have it in me right now. And I understand where you're at. I've been there too. And I'm reminded, if you remember, at the end of Return of the King, with Frodo and Sam are going up that mountain to destroy that, that that ring of power for the last time, he said, I can't carry this burden anymore. And he says, Mr. Frodo, if you can't do it, I'll pick you up and I'll carry you. And I want to tell you, if there's anyone here, you look around and you see someone who you know, is struggling and needs to come forward, but they can't for whatever reason, you say if you need someone to go with you, I'll go with you. I'll go with you. Because I am telling you, I am fully confident that God does not want you to carry this any more. Let's give it a to put across where our hope is found and where real life can spring forth. Because the root of anxiety is gotta be gotta be ripped out so that God can place in what he wants to do in your life and in mind, and namely, trust him more. I'm going to give you all plenty of time he's going to play you can process and you see they come and drop you can come in kneel, then come and drop a please don't leave. I'll give you guys plenty of time and then I'll come and close us in prayer.

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