1207. Letting God Write the Story

Welcome to The Daily Platform or program preacher sermons from travel services Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. Every day students are blessed by the preaching and teaching of the Bible from the University Chapel platform today on The Daily Platform will be hearing a message preached by Pastor Carrie Schmidt, senior pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Newington, Connecticut so lightly and for the few minutes we have that I will be an encouragement to the God's word will be an encouragement to you. Psalm 90 is a song written by Moses. It's to our knowledge, the only psalm written by Moses, which most likely, then we all solved so I love this all men coming into coven. I just dove into the salt of the songs are God's medicine chest for our emotions and for our hearts is where you go to process what you're going through and I pray that wherever you are today you hear what I just said that wherever your emotions are wherever your energy level is semester and and and to use Dr. Pratt's terms want to go. You guys are sucking when you're running hard your press target a lot a lot on you your growing and being stretched. In a lot of ways the songs are a great place to go to differentiate your reality and the truth of your life. What is most objective from what you're feeling and what you're emotions and what your psyche is telling you so often our emotions can lie was, but if you go to Saul to find out that God receives all of our cries all of our emotions and it's almost like a laboratory distorts to differentiate and entangle them and untangle them and tell us what is true and what is not truly helps us see our way through very complex times when we come to him when we run to him and I feel like that's what Moses is doing in this all probably in perhaps his conjecture, but perhaps at the end of his life. But before reading I want to set up this way you would say up to this point, your life, your life has turned out exactly like you imagined it to go. Like everything is right on schedule.

The Scripture writing is happening perfectly. I mean none of us would feel that way. Think about the last 18 months. Coven and social unrest and civil unrest and political confusion, natural disasters, and perilous times. If there ever have been there all around us and if we let them too deeply about us will start to despair and discouragement start to wonder what where is this all going what's really going on and where am I who am I and we can find even the last 18 months, and this will continue to unfold the rest of your life which you find a conflict developing conflict between two narratives.

Okay, what is the narrative I want to write the story I want to unfold my life.

The script that I would love to have happen: dreams: desires good in one sense God given to me in one sense, but what happens is I want to write and I want to grab the pen. I want to open the pages of my life and I want to script it out and plan it out and we doesn't take long, and that narrative before we begin to feel the tension between the way things are actually going and that narrative the gods writing that's the story of God's writing Moses with a face that just like you face it, just like I face every day of our lives.

Moses think about the narrative of Moses life before the song Hebrew to show by the will of man and killed before he ever had a chance to live slowly thrown into a river and trash is thrown away but by Providence. By God's design was preserved and he floated downriver and was picked up by Pharaoh's daughter grows up as a Hebrew kind of Egyptian kind of in a slave, kind of, but a prince kind of an you talk about identity confusion.

You talk about a script of circumstances that you never really had control over any grows up because it deal with that conflict is a Hebrew and as an Egyptian and as a powerful person. But identifying with his with his kindred with his Hebrew brothers and pretty soon he pulled the trigger too soon and overreaches God's plan and it becomes a murder, and he runs in hiding, and is a fugitive of justice and any moves from being a prince, a Hebrew prince to being a nobody in the desert raising sheep being a shepherd gets married as a family four years ago by what you know. Surprise, surprise, the script takes another attorney sent by God against his will. Arguing with God debating with God.

God you got the wrong guy not mean no not me.

The script takes another turn away the Moses doesn't anticipate me sent to deliver so he goes to Pharaoh.

Stuttering and stammering his way in the leadership and in all that resistance in all that faith experience of God's supernatural intervention through him, and in spite of him. Frankly, and before he does it. Moses who died as a baby and should never grown up as an Egyptian Prince and who ended up as a fugitive of justice. Now he's marching out of Egypt with nearly a million or so Hebrew slaves following him. He is the unlikely leader of an unlikely group of people who are now going to become a nation that never been a nation. This generation is never known anything but slavery and so his commission to bring in the promising you know the story gets the borders of the promised land. Supernatural providential leadership is going well for some spies and people decide to rebel against God and Moses script takes another turn that he never imagined and that is now is get to spend another 40 years wandering this wilderness watching all of his friends die, watching another generation grow up who will take leadership and who will enter the promised land. And then he blows it again God says you're not even going to go to the promised land. Now your dog to this mountain, look over the promised land. Either your die in the mountain you can see it but you're not going to it. I have a sense and again this is my guess that Moses wrote this song right there at the very way this is blessed me and I hope it what I'll do today will just give you something to meditate, think on over your whole break.

My challenge to you is take Psalm 90 and let God reorient your heart over the next week week from today you will be starting classes tomorrow again after your good break and hope you get a lot of rest but my challenge is to you. I want to hand this to you on a silver platter want to give you a couple of navigational parameters to the Psalm that I want to ask you to meditate and spend time with God and walk with God and talk to God and pour out your heart aches in your burdens and your stress is to him in light of the Psalm. So I would summarize the Psalm. This way it's about letting God write the story. It's about the propensity that always have, to want to write our own script which is just as a recipe for disappointment with God because we really can't control the narrative to control the outcomes of the result. Controller choices we control whether we cooperate with God or not. Whether we obey him or not, but the outcomes and results really up to God where this story goes in your life and life is really up to God.

So the Psalm is about letting God write the story and I would summarize in three statements given to you right now.

First of all verses one into summarize the big story. The only story worth living.

Look at it with me by way of morning everybody loves verses one into the Psalm and everybody loves verses 12 to 17 of the Psalm.

Very few people love versus three through 11 okay so buckle up and read along with me following Lord Moses writing now, Lord thy dwelling place in all generations before the mountains were brought forth, or ever zealous for the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art.would you read those two verses with me, let's look the other voices ready read about loud ready go more thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou X formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God. This is the big story and Moses realized as he traveled through life like a leaf on the river, never being able to control the twists and turns and bends of the river only being able to basically cooperate with the ride that God was taking him on Moses learned God, I don't have a home. Egypt is in my home Hebrew origin Egyptian I don't know Muslim slave royalty. I don't know if the promised land of Egypt or the wilderness is my home God on, wanderer, pilgrim, and I've learned on this journey of 120 years. I do have a home and if you Lord you are our dwelling place, and in that word dwelling place is the word home and its home in the sense that you feel when you go home on how many of you are going home in a couple of days with the something about all never forget the first time I went home during my freshman year of college hardest year of my life. Still to this day hardest year of my life including my battle with cancer and including taking the leadership of a dying church. My first year college and I remember Thanksgiving getting home. Getting off the plane, getting in the car kicking back in the back to that minivan and single wallet in the back pocket of my father and thinking it's all good and safe. Everything's okay so Moses says God your my home when nothing else is okay your home. I run to you on at home with you safe with you.

I'm accepted by you, I'm safe in your care and I'm home and I don't care if it's covert or cancer or loss of a loved one, or just a really hard season. College or break up or whatever's coming on done in your life that was in your script you have a home, you can run to him.

His arms are open. He will be your home and for all generations. Generations proceeding. You generations following you. There's a big story before you and I ever were theirs everlasting to everlasting and God is writing a story in time and space in the road you into it.

He wrote me into it and one of the great ways to navigate life, and to navigate hardship and unpredictable turns on this trip is to remember what God is the author of the story not me and he's my home no matter what happens is you hold me securely and and get me through this. There is a way to release the story you were trying to write and to floors in the story that God is writing but it really takes this release that Moses is kind of describing your God, you're the author you're the everlasting to everlasting you the one that spoke all this into existence. I'm not going to continue striving against you write my small story. I'm going to release the pen to relinquish my my rights and any rights I have to write my own story and God under the cooperate like a leaf on the river to fall into your story and follow your story as you write it in my life and I'm going to trust you in it and floors and guys. That's the bigger story okay the story I wanted to write with my life was so much smaller than the story, God has ended up writing in my life. Okay and and the journey he took me on so much more surprising so much more intricate so much more delightful than I imagine.

So the only story worth living is the story God writes well the next thing that Moses says is that the story is harder than we imagine.

So he takes us verses wanted to. He puts us in a rocket and shoots us up into the atmosphere, and we get a satellite view of all time and space in all of our life and it does us does our heart so much good because we get stuck in the minutia of midterms and short-term relationships and short-term trials versus wanted to take us way off and say hey here's the big you. You belong to a God who loves you and is always home for your heart like picture what life does to the rest of but Moses begins unfolding verses three through 11 basically an Old Testament ancient view of the gospel in its it sounds really dark but let me summarize it and will read it to basically verse 3 to 11 helps us cope or helps us reckon that's a better word, not coat. Reckon helps us settle into the realities of life in a fallen world realities of life in a broken planet on a messy place called earth, that is to say in these verses. Life is shorter than we imagine. It is harder than we imagine that it will be and it's also more desperate than we know because we are under God's wrath. Now we know the rest of the story, we know the resurrected Christ, we know how God provided salvation and Moses did to some degree will see that in verse 13. But in this first section of the Psalm is unpack some feeling heavy or dark realities. But they're not really dark there just true. And the more we can reckon and build our lives on truth more solid and stable.

Our lives will solicit leases quickly for thousand years are in my site. I'm sorry for thousand years and eyesight are but as yesterday when is past and is a watch in the night that carries them away. As with the flood. There is asleep in the morning there like grassroots growth up Moses as I think referring to the generation that's passed now the entire generation has been swept off of the wilderness and and has died and another generations replaced, and it doesn't Moses essay.

Think about life for a minute because every 80 to 90 or 100 years. Not a single person is alive on planet Earth that was alive hundred years ago.

It's an entirely new group of people.

So one generation at a time is basically swept away by God, and he continues to talk about life as being so brief. Verse six in the morning. It's like grassroots warships grows up in the evening is cut down and with we and it gets worse. Her subleases were consumed by thine anger by the wrath trouble now by right now the reader is going wait a minute, is God my whole or is he angry at me, which is in continues to unfold basically. Romans three understanding of life with. We are fallen under God's glory from God's glory in sin and were condemned and we all can't go through life with a sense of trust or save a sense of God's anger and sense of justice, a sense of wrath that is due to us. Verse eight he says you set our iniquities before they are sequences in the light of thy countenance you know everything about us.

God, how can you be home to us.

You will accept this knowing us as we are knowing us for who we really are. He says in verse nine, paraphrasing, it seems like our whole life or days. Every day is past in under your anger or is a tale that is told that this all goes by so quickly. Is there any meaning to any of it.

It's almost like he's asking for days first 10 days of our years are threescore and tenant by reason of strength. In other words, the best life the strongest and healthiest person they before score 80 years, yet is there strength labor and sorrow. Again, don't let this be a dark reality but want to be a true reality God says just like Jesus in the world. You shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer.

I've overcome the world. You see, you're fooling yourself and pulling myself. We think that our God is merely an escape mechanism from life's hard stuff is not is a great source of strength and comfort and hope works all things together for good. You're really sorely disappointed in life and God. If you don't reckon with these realities that even the best life is hard, even the best life is full of hard work and it's eventually going to have some sorrow that's just built in to life on a broken planet, this guy is not encouraging me. I got a few minutes left in and turn the corner to encouragement because most likely says verse 11, God, your anger is masses, but verse 12 was the first word of verse 12 shouted out so see how we set us up shots in a rocket and a satellite view, God is also home for our hearts.

He wants to be home. He wants to be a father in a safe place of refuge is writing a story that stretches from everlasting to everlasting is written us into it. Every generation to generation is the same.

He is writing the story and he is carrying us forward through this life and reality says life is short flyby. Life is hard to be a lot of hard work and a lot of sorrow and we come in the life kind of condemned and ostracized, alienated from God and we need our relationship with him to be restored so Moses now turns a corner and everything he says in verses 12 for or how to respond how to find joy in forcing and wholeness and happiness, purpose, and significant in a life that is otherwise so brief and without God.

It would be so dark and so hopelessly silly says so teach us so teach us to pause there, because we always fly into that person teach us to number our days, we start thinking about making plans and calendar rising.

The but could you just pause and stop and think about the power of the words so teach us and I could tell you, and in my journey with God. The script that God is writing has continually brought me to challenges that were far beyond me far outside the way out of my way over my head and over and over life. I've been going wait a minute how to get here and God you chose the wrong guy and this was nowhere in my script and these prayers encourage me because silly times in my life I better throw up my arms and look up missing God teach me how to lead a church through COBIT how to keep a church family encourage during such a divisive political and social time in our country. God I need you to teach me and if I stop there.

How awesome would it be to know all the way through life whatever you face for the next hundred years. Jesus doesn't come back, you have a home in God you have a coach or teacher will walk with you in every circumstance and prepare you and teach you in every one of them. Jesus teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. God more than anything else in the challenges of my life.

I needed to teach me so that I can apply my hearts to my heart to your wisdom got on the wisdom to step through these challenges your way will it gets better. He asked God in verse 13 and 14 for compassion asked him to turn back in favor it's a foreshadowing of the gospel return all Lord, how long and let it repent the Lord pity us.turn your heart back towards his letter apparently concerning thy servants and members. 14 is a picture of the gospel will satisfy us early with thy mercy. Is Moses knows in verse one God is his home but he knows in verses three through 11. He has no access to God because of the sin only is only the object of God's wrath and so by verse 14 Moses says God if I'm ever got really know you as home if I can ever approach you like you never relationship with you. It's going to be on the basis of your mercy of God. Every day I will wake up and even though life is hard and filled with sorrow and the world is a broken place I can wake up knowing you are my home and knowing I am the object of your mercy and knowing that you can satisfy all of my dreams. All of my desires. All my hopes and wishes you can satisfy all needs of my heart with nothing more than your mercy and we know this from a New Testament lens to be Jesus we know him to be the fullest expression of God's mercy and what he did on the cross and his presence in our life. I love Adrian's prayer a moment ago all the way she prayed out the gospel of Jesus in the spirit of God are working on our behalf and in our lives. We are the objects of God's mercy and Moses says satisfy me with that God let me wake up every day and be satisfied with your mercy. Look at the rest of verse 14 that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. There is the source of joy. There is a source of gladness and he continues to make us glad according to the days where you've afflicted us, God swing the pendulum overwhelm us with the goodness and gladness and joy of your mercy and let that outsize all of our sorrow and outsize all the hard days of life. In verse 16. Let my work appear under thy servants and I glory on their children. God, I will have joy in you, and I would love to see you at work around me.

I would love to see a pinhole light where you at work one way you're using me.

What's one way others are seeing your glory through my life and I love her 17 let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us. Think about in the darkness of this world. God let me wake up knowing your beauty is on me and reflecting that beauty to those around me and then he says establish now the work of our hands this time. This is got all the answers for life for the story that is in third point is better than we dreamed this the only store worth living is harder than we imagined. But it is better than we dreamed. Because of mercy. Life can be explosively joyful. It can be deeply purposefully purposeful it can be fruitful that can be more durable than we ever dreamed the ultimate and only answer to life, to a forcing life is surrender God quit trying to write my own story and I'm to go with you in the story your writing. Lose your story in his let go of the life you wanted to live and embrace the one you now have embrace the one that by God's grace. He's writing through you enter into the story that God is writing instead of struggling life trying to get God to make the story. Your writing come true. When you enter in the story.

Everything changes.

He becomes home. His mercy becomes incredibly satisfying, joyful abundance, glad his work. You engage in, day by day and you handoff that kind of meaning to the next generation and it is simply the best way to live and that's what he says establish that the work of our hands establish God make it durable, make it meaningful, fruitful, use us in the short life to do something that matters from everlasting to everlasting guys like outright story. It takes a lot of pressure off of whatever is about God, thank you for this time. Thank you for your mercy, your grace thank you that Moses went before us and showed us how to follow you and let you write the story will try try and try will just keep getting frustrated and more frustrated that life is cooperating. But when we release the pressure put on the pen following you. You write a more beautiful story. We can ever I pray that the students will take this all in meditate on his next five, six, seven days Jesus name we pray you been listening to a message preached by Dr. Carrie Schmidt, senior pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Newington, Connecticut. I'm Steve Pettit, president of Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. Thank you for listening to The Daily Platform. If you're looking for a regionally accredited Christian liberal arts university. I invite you to consider. BJ you, which is purposely designed to inspire a lifelong pursuit of learning loving and leading. For more information about Bob Jones University visit BJ you.edu or call 800-252-6363.

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