Prisoner in the Third Cell – When God Doesn’t Meet Your Expectations (DCLC – July ’86, Part 3)

I’m very anxious to get into this, but I know that the mornings that you spend with the Lord are going to take care of themselves, and they will press us along in our experience of the Lord this week. And so tonight, I’m going to kind of interrupt what I planned on doing, and I’m going to speak on something that I feel like I should. It just so happens that it’s right here where I was going to start, except I was going to skip this passage and go to the next one, but I keep on not being able to do that. I just have the feeling that I have to do this, and I’m assuming on the basis of that that there’s a need out there that has to be met.

Alright, I’m going to just tell you a story tonight. That’s all I’m going to do. Then we’re going to have an altar call. If you think I give very many altar calls, I think you ought to ask the brothers and sisters who know me very well how often they’ve seen me give an altar call. Tom, you’ve been about…you hold the record probably…how many altar calls have you seen me give?

If you are in The Life of Christ in Stereo (Johnston M. Cheney), I’m on page 72. If you are in your own book of the Bible, try Matthew 14:1-13. And this is where the conference begins. Now, I want you to take your finger and stick there on page 72, would you? And then I want you to flip back to 65. Lance, come read this for me, would you? I’d like for you to read, starting right here. I’ll tell you what, just read this passage right here, okay? And then we’ll get over here. I’ll handle that if you do this. Save me a little bit.

Audience: (Matthew 11 and Luke 7) And now the disciples of John brought him word in prison of all these works of the Messiah. Then John, summoning a certain two of his disciples, sent them to Jesus, saying, “Are you to have One who is coming or are we to look for another?” So, the men, when they had come to Him, said, “John the Baptist has sent us to You, saying, ‘Are You that one who is coming, or are we to look for another?” When that came out, He healed many from their diseases, afflictions, and evil spirits. And to many who were blind, He granted sight. So, Jesus answered and said to them, “Go and report to John the things you have seen and heard. The blind are receiving sight, the crippled are walking, the lepers are being cleansed, and the deaf are hearing. The dead are being raised, and the lowly are being called the glad news. And blessed is he who does not stumble because of Me.” Then, when John’s messengers had left, he began to address the multitude concerning John.

Let’s turn over now to page 72. Let me look at this. Now, at that time, King Herod heard of all the things being done by Jesus and for His name, for His name was becoming famous. And Herod was perplexed and said, “John, whom I beheaded, is this the one of whom I am hearing such things?” For by some, it was being said that John the Baptizer had been raised from the dead, others saying that Elijah had appeared, and others also that a prophet like the old prophets had arisen. But on hearing it, Herod said to his servants, “This is John the Baptist whom I beheaded, who has risen from the dead. And we’ll take that passage as our passage.

If you take these two together, they tell the story of John in prison, his doubting, and the word that comes to the Lord Jesus: John is, in fact, dead. I’m going to tell you this story, and I’m going to tell it from the viewpoint of an indwelling God inside Jesus Christ. We will hear it from that view. We will listen to the way this happened from the viewpoint of other realms and from the viewpoint of a Father who indwells the Son. We’re going to see it through the eyes of Jesus Christ, who has a long history on earth, who knows all the past human history, and has a very ancient history with God the Father. I want to pray.

Father, you know, at some time or other, every one of us does what John the Baptist did. And every one of us has to face a God we do not understand. Yesterday, some of us needed some reconciliation with You, and tomorrow, others of us will, but tonight, there are those who need that reconciliation right now. I simply ask You to be who You are in all our hearts and speak and reveal and heal. Amen.

I want you to see a God in eternity past. A verse instantly comes to mind, and that verse says, “My ways are not your ways. My thoughts are not your thoughts.” My ways are not your ways. My thoughts are not your thoughts. He is keenly aware that He is God and those who are to come are not. He is aware of a barrier that will be in existence between two realms, and a gap that exists between God, the highest life form, and man, the third-highest life form.

The distance between One who can see and visit the end and at the same moment visit the beginning and at will, can break in anywhere He chooses, hard for me to grasp, but that right now, even though this is the now moment of time where the clock is ticking, if God so chooses, He can step out of this element of time and return to the Dead Sea, the Red Sea, and see again His work in parting the Red Sea. He is free of boundaries, chains, and limitations. He can see years from now, and He can see centuries from now. He can see things in their completion. He can see things that, at this moment, utterly mystify both you and me.

I don’t know why I’m going to tell this story because I don’t think I ever have; if I have, you’ll forgive me. It’s very personal. When I was 3 years old, I got pneumonia from scarlet fever, and I was dying. You know, I never was strong. Even at three, I was puny. The doctor told my mother and daddy I was dying. Now, my folks were not all that Christian. Dad spent the whole day in Houston trying to find a hospital that would take a child with scarlet fever, and he couldn’t. Finally found some Catholic nuns who would. He came home, got just this side of Conroe, and stopped his car. The roads weren’t paved in those days, and got out beside the car in the sand, and told the Lord, “If You let me live, I’d give my life to God.” And He also said, “I’ll quit drinking and smoking. He had already quit bootlegging by that time. At home, my mother, who had also caught scarlet fever but was well now, was still weak, got down beside my bed and told the Lord that if He let me live, they’d give me to the Lord, she would give me to the Lord.

Sometimes I have resented that when I have been in so much pain, and I just thought you should have been a stillborn, and you ought to have died at the latest at three, and now your mom and daddy got in here and got everything messed up, and they are still alive. I don’t understand the sovereign ways of God. I really don’t. And back there in eternity, He knew that you and I would be captured in time, locked into it, with no knowledge of tomorrow, and very little correct interpretation of yesterday, and totally no understanding of today. And He knew that he would be making decisions based on things that might not find their effect for hundreds of years. And that you and I are often caught on a wave of His sovereign dealings, which began hundreds of years ago when He dealt with someone we don’t even know, whose life was marked in ways that we will never hear the story thereof, but which affected our birth and childhood and our adulthood and our salvation.