foreign how are you I heard about 4 300 of you I said How's Saints how are you yeah I'm gonna tell you right now just the last time y'all gonna see me turn around okay because I'm not Christine King I can't just walk all around the stage when I'm preaching I got a manuscript that I'ma stick to okay um I'm excited and I'm encouraged I'm encouraged because God still speaks and I'm I'm encouraged that God speaks through women and so this is exciting when I was about 20 or 21 I went to this conference in Atlanta called the impact conference and I hear all four of you and uh and I was a fairly new Christian and so I didn't know any of the speakers I I didn't even I didn't come there for them I came for Jesus and so they had led worship or whatever and uh they had introduced the next speaker and they had introduced this lady named Priscilla Shire and they did that right there they started they started clapping and getting excited and I was like well I guess she's famous so I gotta like listen to her or whatever and she she talked for about 30 to 35 minutes exhorting the Saints and encouraging the Saints and when she was finished I felt some type of way had attitude context this is why when I was 20 21 I was one of those kind of Christians that I had a whole lot of zeal and not a lot of wisdom and so good preaching wasn't good preaching to me if you didn't tell everybody in the room that they was going to hell so I felt like even if it was a so-called Christian Conference I was just being judgmental feeling like how we don't know that these people didn't say some raggedy fake prayer when they were seven and they ain't say for real and here she go encouraging them instead of rebuking so I was angry I felt away that somebody would spend 30 to 35 minutes of God's precious time encouraging people and my mind I didn't understand why she would tell people why they need to walk by faith in my mind I was discouraged and angry that she would tell people to have freedom in Christ and now 14 years later because I've been through some things because I read some scripture and because I meditated on it now when I remember her sermon I recognized it as a mercy because encouragement protects us encouragement Keeps Us exhortation is the means by which God pursues us so following in the footsteps of a woman that I now call friend my entire aim tonight is to exhort you my entire aim tonight is to encourage you turn in your Bibles to Hebrews chapter 3. say Amen when you got it 12 of you I'll wait Bible literacy is on the rise I believe God okay starting at verse 7. therefore as the holy spirit says today if you hear his voice do not Harden your hearts as in the Rebellion on the day of testing in the wilderness where your father's put me to the test and saw my works for 40 years therefore I was provoked with that generation and said they always go astray in their heart they have not known my ways as I swore in my wrath they shall not enter my rest take care brothers and sisters lest there be in any of you an evil unbelieving heart leading you to fall away from the Living God but exhort encourage one another every day as long as it is called today that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin for we have come to share in Christ if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end Lord we thank you we thank you for this moment we thank you for your word we thank you for the spirit and the power he gives we pray that he would feel we pray that he would illuminate we pray that he would deliver and set free we pray that he would build up so that we can persevere in Jesus till the end in Jesus name amen the reason why encouragement an exhortation is a necessity of Mercy is because the writer of Hebrews says that encouragement keeps us from deception when you consider the times in your life when you have been deceived I'm pretty sure you could trace it to some version of discouragement at the bottom of it perhaps you had Seasons of Loneliness and by trying to understand your loneliness your mind tried to make sense of it you started to tell yourself things like you're lonely because nobody loves you you're lonely because nobody sees you you're lonely because you are all you need in this life discouraged by your aloneness you started to deceive yourself in as a means to comfort yourself so the work of exhortation if you had the scriptures if you had elevation if you had a person who knew God's word the work of exhortation would have been to draw you back towards reality by acknowledging the season you're in but speaking God's word into it what it would have sounded like is yeah I get it you're alone but you're not lonely God has said in his word that he will never leave you nor forsake you David said he will he will where shall I go from your presence or where shall I flee from your spirit what exhortation does is that it gives us the confidence to trust God again and isn't that what we need most the very definition of discourage discouragement is to deprive of courage or confidence and when I say confidence I don't mean if you like your hair or your face by confidence I mean having a an assurance of standing on something sturdy inside so if discouragement takes away my confidence then surely that means it has the potential to weaken my faith and if discouragement has the potential to weaken my faith that that means it's going to mess with my relationship with Jesus because without faith nobody can please God so you see why this is a this is a big deal that means that discouragement is not a feeling or a state of being that we need to abide in because discouragement doesn't just affect your faith it has the potential to cause you to fall away from it I'm not being dramatic look at verse 12 take care brothers and sisters lest there be in any of you an evil unbelieving heart leading you to fall away from the Living God I want to be clear discouragement is not the enemy unbelief is because as you mature in Christ discouragement actually becomes an opportunity for you to deal with the weekend parts of your faith wisdom wise people see discouragement as a tool as a lens by which we can identify where and how we don't trust God like we thought we did but if you aren't diligent if you allow your discouragement to stir up unbelief in God whether you know it or not you are passively cultivating a heart that scripture calls evil what's crazy though is that when people fall away they almost always become those who call good evil and evil good and it most likely started on some level with them being discouraged by a trial being discouraged by suffering being discouraged by scripture being discouraged by observations they've made of the church and seeing injustices in it and them not dealing with the injustices outside of it every Christian that is no longer a Christian has a grief they never had the Divine confidence to endure what's interesting about this passage is that before the writer exhorted them to deal with the uh to deal with exhortation or to stir up Brothers he quoted a Psalm if you look at it he called it a Psalm which lamented God the spirits unbelief or the Holy Spirit uh convicted or lamented the fact that oh I'm that's the the Holy Spirit lamented the unbelief that Israel had in God when you look at the psalm the psalm reads the smidge different than how it's quoted I'll read it for you in Hebrews 3 verse 8 it says today if you hear his voice do not Harden your hearts as in the Rebellion on the day of testing in the wilderness and Psalm 98 95 8 which this is being pulled from he says today if you hear his voice do not Harden your hearts as admirable as on the day at Nasa in the wilderness what's helpful about reading the actual Psalm it is that it provides for us an Old Testament narrative that adds context to the writer of Hebrews exhortation does that make sense and one of the overall thrusts of the book of Hebrews is to lift up the superiority of Christ and to stir up perseverance in the Saints and so what the writer of Hebrews does not want he does not want Christians to become like Israel who let their discouragements deceive them to the point that they did not enter into God's rest so the situation of the psalm that we're about to study a little bit happened in Exodus 17.
turn to it in your Bibles our way praise God Exodus chapter 17. say Amen when you got it starting at verse 1. all the congregation of the people of Israel moved on from the Wilderness of sin by stages according to the Commandment of the Lord encamped at reference but there was no water for the people to drink therefore the people quarreled with Moses and said give us water to drink it's a bit rude and Moses said to them why why are you quarreling with me why do you test the Lord but the people thirsted there for water and the people grumbled against Moses and said why did you bring us up out of Egypt to kill us and our children and our livestock were thirst so Moses cried to the Lord what shall I do with his people they are almost ready to Stone me and the Lord said to Moses pass on before the people taking with you some of the Elders of Israel taking your hand to staff with which you struck denial and go behold I will stand before you there on the Rock at Horeb and you shall strike the Rock and water shall come out of it and the people will drink and Moses did so and the sight of the Elders of Israel and he called the name of the place Massa and Maribel Psalm 95 because of the quarreling of the people of Israel and because they tested the Lord by saying is the Lord among us or not let's deal with this text so Israel is in the wilderness and they get to a place that doesn't have any water so naturally they get thirsty I get thirsty if I walk through the mall for too long let alone a whole desert thirstiness is an uncomfortable feeling I know some of us drink juice every day and so we've gotten used to being perpetually dehydrated but in general in general it doesn't feel good not to have something to drink especially if you're traveling through a whole wilderness your mouth all dry your throat might hurt need a couple cough drops you get a headache everything starts to get some get on your nerves depending on how long you went without water you start to feel fatigued so naturally I could see why Israel has an attitude I can see why the body would begin to influence what they believed about God at this point Israel has a decision to make they can let the temporary experience of discomfort in their bodies influence their confidence in God or they can let the temporary experience of discomfort in their bodies reveal their confidence in God if they chose the latter what would that have look like like if they chose to have confidence in God in the wilderness while thirsty how would this narrative have played out so I want us to reimagine it for a second I want us to reimagine that Exodus 17 as if Faith was present let's say they're walking through the Wilderness all day and they end up camping at refer them right and they noticed how thirsty they were remember that's the problem and looking around they don't see any lakes they don't see any Wells they don't see any rivers they don't see any ponds there are no natural sources of water available which could be discouraging if their survival was dependent on their environment but if their survival is dependent on God then it doesn't matter where they are where they are they will be filled let's say they trusted God lest they they really believe that he was Gyra and they wanted to stir up their faith a little bit more let's say they chose to exhort encourage one another about the faithfulness of the Lord and steal thirsty as ever they begin to talk among themselves about how it wasn't that long ago when they were thirsty in the wilderness of sharp and they found water and they couldn't drink it because it was bitter but how God made it sweet that's an exhortation or that time when they were fleeing Egypt and got to a body of water that they couldn't swim through so God parted the sea so they could walk on dry land that's an exhortation or if their memory served them right they'd remember how even the first plague that God did in Egypt was that God turned every source of water in Egypt into blood and if they meditated long enough and thought about the truth instead of their thirst they'd have confidence to believe that if God can curse water and if God can sweeten water and if God can split water then he can obviously create water where there is none like he did in Genesis 1.
when he created the water when he hovered over the water when he separated the water when he gathered the water to make and create rivers and oceans and lakes they didn't even know that one day Jesus would make water into wine but that was neither here nor there was only if only they exhortated themselves about the possibility of God's power they would have had the confidence to need it to trust God and even now In This Moment me detailing all of the possible exhortations Israel could have shared gave you a little confidence right he gave you a little confidence that you could trust God to do something as simple as give you water you probably said to yourself if I was in the wilderness and I was thirsty I would have had confidence in God but what if I told you that you don't have to be in the wilderness to be thirsty all of you are thirsty for something even if you have a bottle of water in your hand the real question is though do you believe that God can quench it when you discern your need do you have the confidence in God that he can satisfy it or do you have confidence is just misplaced in money and sex and Gifts in glory and intoxicants in witchcraft in Ministry in missions and intellect what is your water exactly and where do you get it from if it comes from any other source than God your thirst will always remain so I exhort you to drink of the water that Jesus gives and if you do the promise of God is that you will never be thirsty again an additional an additional exhortation we can pull out of this text is that God did provide them water and he provided them water out of a rock God is so creative with his provision that he can satisfy your needs in a million different ways think about it they were in a place with no natural sources of water but they still had something to drink some of you are in seasons of life where your discouragement has actually limited your imagination of God you reckon that because you're in a certain city God can give you friends or because you're in a certain trial God can't give you peace or because you have a certain past God can give you Ministry or because you have a learning disability or mental health issues that God can't give you a right mind and a book and a conversation that lasts and is lingering the thing is even if you are dead God can give you a new heart if God can create the world out of nothing and bring water from a rock that should tell you that nothing is too hard for God even when it comes to your neediness exhortation Israel didn't recall the splitsy they didn't meditate on the bloody River they didn't think about the water made sweet all they thought about is their bodies and so they chose to complain instead they meditated spent time on thinking about what they didn't have instead of who they were with and therefore they had the audacity to test God by saying is the Lord even Among Us which was an accusation that God was offended by most and have you ever considered the thought that the question of if God is with you or not is that the root of a diversity of discouragement think about how every time every time but many times when God commissions somebody he promised presence because faith in God being with you influences and motivates mission to Jacob to Moses to Joshua to Jeremiah God says go do this and I'm gonna be with you because you can't do it without then in Jesus in Matthew then Jesus in Matthew 28 says hey go therefore Make Disciples of all Nations baptizing them in the name of the father and of the son and of the Holy Spirit teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you and guess what I'ma be with you always but we have a generation before us that isn't afraid to go to the Nations they're just afraid to teach all that God commanded once they go I get it nobody wants to be liked or unliked nobody wants to be unfollowed nobody that doesn't want to be cool nobody wants to be hated for their faith and that's the reason why we're not growing in it if your fear of people discourages you from being faithful to the text and God then somewhere in there you don't believe God is with you and if by God we me the creator of the heavens and the Earth the Alpha and the Omega the Supreme one the self-sufficient one the superior one the great high priest the the beginning in the end the Savior the Messiah the king the Lord of hosts if if this is who Jesus says is with you that we should be the most confident people in the world exhortation do you understand the kind of confidence you'd have in your particular Ministries if you believed that God is with you it's the kind of confidence that would actually produce more power the power needed not just for Effective Ministry but also durable Ministry because we tend to meditate on needing the power of the Holy Spirit to uh to help us do but we need the power of the Holy Spirit to help us last it takes as much power to tell the truth as it does to endure suffering because of it do you understand I have a hunch I'm giving y'all cheat codes I have a conch that some of you are so discouraged by folks opposition to the truth that you share that you're beginning to stop believing it yourself but I think there's another group that actually goes unnoticed in this conversation about fear and not trusting God's presence I think there's another group who isn't necessarily discouraged by opposition to truths as much as they are discouraged by what seems to be the ineffectiveness of it these are the ones teaching discipling evangelizing lifting up scripture and because you don't see results or conversion or sanctification as quick as you think you're really starting to question if the power of God is located in the gospel you know what happens let me help you discern it you know what happens when you stop believing that the location of God's power is in the gospel you start to develop methods for your ministry instead of praying you start to trust your strategies more than the spirit and this is the thing conversion is a work of the Holy Spirit sanctification is a work of the Holy Spirit ual understanding and the opening of the mind to understand scripture scripture like Lydia is a work of the Holy Spirit it does not matter how clever you are how Winsome you are how interesting you are or even how intellectual you are all those all of those are useful and so far as the holy spirit moves if God doesn't move people will not respond but I think I think we are tempted to draw power from some other source than God as a means of creating what looks like Ministry impact when in fact it was just manipulation bordering on witchcraft I said it a good A good sermon isn't powerful if the spirit doesn't move good worship isn't powerful if the spirit doesn't move yeah they cried yeah they lifted their hands but were they delivered were they changed were they set free is their mind new or was it emotion we need the spirit's power and we have him if only we trust that we do if we need the spirit if we need the Lord what this means is that the effectiveness of your ministry is wholly dependent on God and if it's wholly dependent on God that means you need to be more dependent on God so we have folks who are phds and Seminary and second graders in prayer and we wonder why revival tears God is with you the good news is that you don't have to go too far to find him this is a random tangent not in my notes but on my heart the the enemy is trying to destroy an entire generation of Christians with witchcraft he he wants us to consider alternative sources of power for joy for peace for right mind and I think some of the blame for that is the church because we have been raised in churches that are more afraid of the Holy Spirit than they were of Harry Potter so I see why you're confused because you've seen people exegete with the spirit but not exercised with the spirit you you've seen things in your room at night you've seen things manifest in people but everyone explains it away as if we are not in a world with demons in churches with demons in conversation with people full of demons including pastors and so when you get on tick tock and you see a psychic tell you that she could tell you your future it's because they've muted the prophets in the church so you're going to the devil's Sears instead of the Lords if God is the one who was and who is to come that means he is already in the future now so so you don't need psychics full of a limited understanding of the future you need the Lord right okay I'll get off of it don't play with the Devil the lord gave the church authority to trample over serpents not submit to them do you understand what I'm saying I want to pray Lord Even In This Moment I want to interrupt this time to expose the evil one to expose the deception to expose the deceit let God Be True in every man a liar we pray for every Spirit every enemy that wants to take our minds we pray for every devil that wants to oppress us even the ones that have medical explanations we pray for deliverance we pray God that you would move in power we pray that you will release your spirit that you would release the prophets that you would release the leaders that you would release the healers that you would raise up people in your church that are not afraid of those who say that gifts have ceased that you would raise up people in your church who walk in power and fearlessness even now feel even now deliver even now set free even now make Minds right even now heal bodies even now there are particular traumas that are keeping us from trusting in you I pray even God if we don't have a therapist we got you I pray God that you would counsel us towards Freedom by your spirit in Jesus name every amen okay we can get back to it um so the whole point I was trying to say was if if God is with you so is his power there is power in God's presence I originally talked about those who are discouraged by opposition in Ministry and those who are discouraged by slow fruit and Ministry but I want to exhort you again and again because you're going to need this to endure God is with you say it with me God is with me say it again God is with me and God gives courage and conviction and God gives patience and answered prayer amen now at this point I want to move on through the text I want to speak to an Insidious and subtle expression of unbelief that Israel demonstrated which is they not only had accusations around God's presence is the Lord among us or not but also they had accusations around his personality look at verse three it says but the people thirst it there for water and the people grumbled against Moses and said why did you bring us up out of Egypt to kill us and our children in our livestock with thirst Moses we know he didn't technically bring them out of Egypt God did Moses was just a vessel but either way the the intensity of the trial has so infected their mind that they believed that God has delivered them just to kill them and ain't that crazy to to even fathom that God has rescued them just to torture them that God has set them free just to kill them but I don't want us to be judgmental because we've done the same have you ever had a circumstance that God has allowed you to endure that discouraged you to the point that it became natural for you to think the worst about God that is not good that he doesn't care that that's not a that's not an unfamiliar experience when the serpent confronted Eve in the garden he didn't just cast doubt on God's word but also God's nature follow me he deceived her by saying that she could eat from the Tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil because God knows that when you eat of it you will be like him as if as if God was holding Eve back from something good when in fact his restrictions were always protection when Jesus was in the wilderness fasting for 40 days and 40 nights the devil came to him and said hey if you are the Son of God command these stones to become bread if you are the Son of God why are you hungry take advantage of your divine power to feed yourself since your father hasn't the devil tried with Jesus what he succeeded at with Eve which was to tempt him to distrust God's care of him when the disciples were on a boat that was being bullied by waves they woke Jesus up not with petition but with accusation they said teacher why are you not doing anything don't you care that we are dying care care the whole reason he came to the Earth was because he cared for God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish shall not die but have eternal life but he doesn't just care about your soul he also cares about your cares the things that keep you up at night he told you to cast your cares on him because he cares for you not just love but a particular expression of it which is care and that my friends is what the Flesh and the devil through discouragement will tempt you to doubt it will tempt you to believe that the god that died for you doesn't actually care about you and so I exhort you in this way the devil is a liar if there is any spiritual being that doesn't care about you it's Satan but when it comes to God he loves you with an everlasting love when he when he revealed his glory to Moses when he turned his back or put him in the clef with a rock he explained himself by calling himself the Lord the Lord a compassionate God which could translate as Mercy Israel didn't believe God could quench their thirst but I say to you be encouraged in Christ your God can satisfy every need Israel didn't believe that God was with him but I say to you be encouraged in Christ your Lord will never leave you nor forsake you Israel didn't believe or trust that God has compassion but I say to you be encouraged in Christ your God cares for you I'm closing now or give me two more minutes Paul said Paul said in Corinthians that what happened to Israel was written down for their instruction our instruction so so because they doubted God's provision we need to learn from it so that we don't do it too and since they got doubted God's presence we need to learn from it so that we don't do it too so now when you have all of that context from Exodus 17 as explained in Psalm 95 when you come back to Hebrews you see now why exhortation is a mercy right because it strengthens the weary it gives power to the weak and it stirs up your faith so that you aren't deceived and led to Fall Away the writer of Hebrews eventually said this he said exhort one another every day as long as it is called today which means this sermon isn't enough neither is passion the reason conferences such as these have the residual impact that they do is because the mercy of exhortation is concentrated into three days you are being exhorted from beginning to end and that's why you leave feeling like you can move mountains and you can but what happened what would happen in your life if you leaned into the necessity of exhortation even in the valley even at home even in the car even in your dorm even in the closet it kind of speaks to why we need to be around Christians and why we need to be in the Bible and why we need to be fasting and praying daily because we are so easily discouraged so easily discouraged by life and everything else and so we need to be encouraged every single day you don't need me you don't need Chris you don't need elevation to be encouraged all you need is people full of the spirit of God people who are Discerning and wise but humble yourself you also got to be willing you got to be willing to be vulnerable so people know how to encourage you if you are constantly projecting strength and self-sufficiency then don't be surprised when discouragement is a daily friend for you but if you have the courage to be seen then you will find the grace in being known after being exhorted and perhaps after being exhorted about people I need to remind you and reaffirm that the most important means by which you will find encouragement in The Lord of scripture every single book every single narrative every single song every single Parable every single Prophet every epistle builds you up in the faith all scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching and for reproof and training and righteousness and Romans Paul refers to God as the god of exhortation it is through the scriptures that the Lord uses it that's why self-esteem messages won't encourage you in the faith that's why just being told how good you are won't encourage you in the faith what you need is what God himself has said after exhorting the Saints to exhort one another the right of Hebrews said this I'm closing for real verse 14.
