Pastor Wayne Cordeiro
October 18, 2020 - W2042

"The Gift of The Desert" 

Uncommon Gifts Strangely Wrapped

Pastor Wayne Cordeiro

October 17 & 18, 2020 

Aloha, New Hope--Everywhere and Anywhere!  Today, our message is "The Gift of the Desert," continuing our sermon series, Uncommon Gifts Strangely Wrapped. Last week, we learned that pain is a gift God gave us that uses the same sensory channel as happiness--and, we choose how we react to it. Today, we will see how being in a dry and parched place in our life is The Gift of the Desert!  We think of gifts as being something we want, but these gifts go beyond that and are necessary to help us connect with God in a real and intimate way!  

I believe you would agree with me that we are in a very unusual season, and the relationship we enjoyed with the Lord at the beginning of this year will not be enough for us to complete the journey on the pathway He has laid out for us.  This season has been cruel and, although some have come through it unscathed, there are untold millions affected by unemployment, fires, illness, and some had to relocate. This has been a pivotal moment and they must make some drastic changes.   

These are desperate times and we can’t let these situations come through our lives and not be changed for the better because of them. Commit to learn more about God and to trust Him more! God is on the move.  He is still on the throne, and nothing takes Him by surprise! Trust Jesus Christ who is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. God will never take us to a place where His grace won’t sustain us. He will always be with us, and He already knows the outcome!  We are not alone in the desert!  

Nothing touches our lives until God has first stamped it with His approval; therefore, our goal should not be to simply return to the way it was before March--but to serve, love, and give with our greatest enthusiasm to be new and different because of what we have gone through. 

THE GIFT OF THE DESERT

Unless we've been to Arabia or Eastern Oregon, we won't know much about the hot, dry, sagebrush desert--but each of us will go through our own personal desert!  If while going through a desert all we see are snakes and scorpions (what we're expecting and looking for), we will miss the magnificent Gift of the Desert that await us there!

Although Moses had a sense of a call to lead the children of Israel into the promised land, he didn't have the strength of the calling; therefore, he had to escape into the desert! Never think that desert times are wasted times--desert times are usually just before the promised times. Often, God will give you a sense of a calling on your life, but you have yet to develop the character and strength necessary to fulfill that calling! 

God doesn't want us just to survive the deserts--He wants us to grow in them; so, instead of taking the children of Israel along the Mediterranean Sea, which would have taken about two years, God led them in the opposite direction--which took 40 years!  

Exodus 13:17-18 NIV says: "¹⁷When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country, though that was shorter. For God said, “If they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt.” ¹⁸ So God led the people around by the desert road toward the Red Sea. The Israelites went up out of Egypt ready for battle."

Moses led the Israelites by taking a hard right, and down into the Sinai along the Suez and all the way down to Rephidim, and back up to Kadesh?Barnea, where they sent out 12 spies to check out the land. Then they went back down to the Jordan side to Timnah and across the river and up the Jordan side of Arabia, all the way up to Edom, and up to Moab.  Moses dies at the plains of Moab and is buried there; Joshua takes them across the Jordan into the Promise Land--finally, after 40 years!  

It took God just a moment to get the Israelites out of Egypt; but it took Him a generation to get Egypt out of the Israelites! Never think the desert times are wasted--they are usually just before the promised times!  The Gift of the Desert is found in the wilderness! 

THE POWER OF THE GIFT OF THE DESERT

Luke 4:1-2 NKJV says: "Then Jesus, being filled with the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, ² being tempted for forty days by the devil."

Luke 4:14 NIV says: "Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside."

Jesus was tempted in the desert/wilderness for 40 days and returned in the power of the Holy Spirit! Jesus did not give in to the devil in the wilderness but relied on the word of God to help him through it.  Some of us are trying to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps; but, God is saying, "it's not by your own power; it's by My spirit." We understand this only when we go through the desert!

In 1 Samuel Chapter 16, Samuel the priest secretly anoints David to be king at age 17; he kills the giant Goliath at age 19!  (Actually, a king slayed the enemy, but nobody knew that; they thought David was just a ruddy kid from the back side of the desert.)  But he did not actually take the throne until he was 30 years old. David had an inkling of the call, but not the character, so God sent him into the wilderness to learn to become a king--where God strengthened and taught him integrity.

Psalm 78:70-72 NIV says: "⁷⁰ He chose David his servant and took him from the sheep pens; ⁷¹ from tending the sheep he brought him to be the shepherd of his people Jacob, of Israel his inheritance. ⁷² And David shepherded them with integrity of heart; with skillful hands he led them."

Your gifts will only take you as far as your character can sustain you.  You may have great gifts, but not yet the character to sustain those gifts; and your gifts could be your greatest enemy, if they're unbridled and unrestrained as they may cause you to become prideful, jealous, and insecure. God had to send David into the desert for 20 chapters in order to develop the integrity of heart and skillful hands.  

The church's assignment has not changed.  Jesus is still on the throne.  He's still in charge, and our God is good.  We may be in a desert, but our assignment is unchanged. 

Hebrews 12:11 NASB says: "All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness."

James 4:14 NASB says: "You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away." Here today and gone tomorrow!  This earth is spinning at 66,000 miles an hour and is tilted on its axis at 23 degrees.  We're whipping through space--spinning faster than the spin cycle on our washing machine!  In a few more spins we're in eternity.  Life is very brief; but God put us on this spinning globe for a reason. It's not to get caught up on the horizontal, but to catch our assignment. If we have a calling but not yet the character, or the tensile strength, He will give us The Gift of the Desert!  It's in the midst of the desert we find strength for the call.  God did that with Jesus, Moses, and David, and He will do that with us. Let me give you two things to take home from the desert.

1. The Desert is a Place of Surrender 

In the desert, we learn to call on God! Often, the Lord will take away everything that we can lean on or trust in, and when He removes it, we then come to the end of ourselves and cry out to Him! We don't realize that Jesus is all we need until Jesus is all we have! 

Psalm 107:12-13 NIV says: "¹² So he subjected them to bitter labor; they stumbled, and there was no one to help.¹³ Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress."

The Bible says that God is strong when we are weak, and His strength appears when we choose to be weak.  One of the reasons God sometimes is not strong in our life is because we refuse to be weak! But it's in the desert that we cry out to God and surrender; and we begin to see thet The Gift in the Desert is the power of God!  Remember, Jesus was led into the wilderness by the spirit, and He returned in the power of the spirit.  That's a gift to take home that comes through surrender! 

2. The Desert is a Place to Hear God

Through the cacophony of noise, when everything is going crazy, the solitary nature of the desert draws you near to God. That's what happened with Moses.  It drew him near to God.  

Psalm 63:1 NIV says: " You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water." 

A dry and parched land--this is a desert!  It is where we long for God because, “He's all I got, and then I learn something: It's a place of surrender--a place to hear God!  When we're in the desert, God is there, and He draws us close.  

We're never alone unless we choose to move away from Jesus--that's when loneliness really begins. Instead, look for Him.  He's in the city, our schools, and our homes.  He's even in the desert.  Look for Him.  At first all we might see is sagebrush but keep looking.  Look closely.  Turn aside.  He's waiting.  Find the gifts there because He's there.  Moses, David, Jesus, and many others have gone through the desert--we can too!  Let's be ones who not just go through the desert but come through it better!  Let's see what God does!  

The Gift in the Desert is The Power of God!  

STUDY QUESTIONS: 

1.      Where do you go to hear God’s voice?
2.      How are you connecting with others to share God’s word?
3.      How have you embraced being in the desert?
4.      What lessons have you learned from being in the desert?
5.      What gifts have you found in the desert?