— Brother Phil Enlow: This is…this could be you. If you know Him, this is you. You’re not alone. Stuff is not out of control. You have Somebody who knows how to…who’s not only gonna lead us through all of this stuff, but He does it with His arms around us, folks!
This is an amazing God. He gathers the lambs in His arms. The lambs are the small, weak ones. Are you small and weak? This is how He feels about you! Put your name in there! Let’s stop making this general theology and start making it personal, because that’s what it has to become!
( congregational response ).
We’re not just given truth so we can memorize it in our heads and practice a religion! God wants a people that He knows intimately. He wants us to come to know Him. He wants us to know about…not just about Him, but as Ricky said the other night, but to know Him. Praise God!
“He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart.” (NIV). What imagery. I know He’s a Spirit who fills all eternity, but He speaks in a language we can understand. He’s not just…come on, you stupid lamb. I’ve got to take you and do something with you. This is, I love you. I know where you’re at. I know the things that are weighing down on your heart and your mind and your life. I care. Oh, if you could just lift up your eyes and see beyond all of this and understand how much I love you.
Look at the Cross every time you think about that. Does that mean anything…that God would send His Son to open the only possible way you and I could have a relationship with this great God? What He’s done for us is beyond reckoning, beyond imagining. But now, we’re in the journey.
“He tends his flock like a shepherd: he gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young.” What a picture that is of the amazing character of our God.
But now, you start getting the other dimension. “Who has measured the waters….” Because it’s wonderful to have somebody who’s right there with us in the middle of the storm, but what about the storm? Is He a victim too? Is He trying to weather the storm Himself? Or is He greater than all of that?
See, this is the picture. We have a God who’s great enough to be over everything so that nothing gets out of His control and beyond His purpose. He uses things. He uses difficult things, but nothing gets out of His purpose. And yet, He’s so intimate and tender. “Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand….” What imagery. I mean, you know, He’s a lot greater than that, but you go to the ocean. Let’s see how much we got here.
( laughing ).
Wow. “…Or with the breadth of his hand marked off the heavens?” Let’s see how much space we’ve got up here. “Who has held the dust of the earth in a basket…” Okay…this earth here, let’s see what we’re gonna do about it. “…Or weighed the mountains on the scales and the hills in a balance?” So, right there you’ve got a greatness with respect to earth anyway. I mean, this is Somebody who’s bigger than all of it, has everything under His control.
But now, “Who has understood the mind of the Lord….” We know He’s powerful enough. Is He smart enough? That’s what he’s getting into. “Who has understood the mind of the Lord….” That’s the problem. People have ideas about how things ought to be and how He ought to behave Himself if He’s really God.
I’ll tell you, who are we to sit there and try to explain God or try to imagine that we are able to sit in judgement of God? We just got here, and we got here with minds that are corrupted by a rebellious spirit against Him. Oh…I’ll tell you, God has made foolish the wisdom of this world. He just goes right by that. People can think all they want to, they’ll never discover truth, and yet, He can reveal it to a child who just opens their heart, and it can become real. They can possess knowledge that the smartest person in this world doesn’t know anything about, if they’ll just say, Lord, I believe. Open my heart. What a God we have!
But, “Who has understood the mind of the Lord, or instructed him as his counselor?” Did God have to go to somebody and say, hey, help Me out here. I’ve got a problem on My hands. I need you to explain it to Me and give Me some counsel so I can do this job better. No! He doesn’t need any of that. He has all wisdom, all knowledge, everything!
If He…think of what David said. We’ve quoted this many times. And it isn’t just the fact that He knows everything. It’s that His thoughts to me, His thoughts about me, with all that’s wrong with me, are more than the grains of sand on all the seashores. You think maybe we ought to me thinking about Him a little bit more and live with a greater consciousness and a greater rest?
This is not a God who wants to just run things and anybody who wants to come along, okay, but I’m just sort of half…I’m upset about it, about how bad you are. This is a God who so longs to have a relationship with us. He’s dealing with us. He is seeking to influence our lives. He’s seeking to work with us constantly, 24/7. He is thinking about you, and planning for you, and watching over you, and allowing you to make mistakes and allowing you and me to make choices. But I’ll tell you, there’s a God who’s constantly working.
( congregational amens ).
I’ll tell you, He’s got a job on His hands, doesn’t He? We are something else for the Lord to conquer and change. But you know, what a God we have. You think about what it said in the days of Noah. Here was the whole world except for Noah and his family. Some of them weren’t so good. And nobody cared about God anymore. Everybody just wanted to do their own thing and rebel against God and follow their own lusts. And the word was that God said, “My spirit shall not always strive with man.” (KJV).
But think what He’s saying there. In spite of the condition, God was still striving. God was still making an effort to reach people’s hearts in spite of the way they were going. There came a day where He said, all right, I’m gonna take my hands off. That’s what’s ahead for this world. Right now, God is still striving.
But I’ll tell you, He has to do a lot of striving with me! What in the world is it like for somebody who’s is just constantly going like this? No, I’ve got a better idea. No, it’s not this way. They are always gainsaying God. They’ve got their own ideas, and that’s what they go by. They’re listening to the voices of the world.
Folks, I want to humble myself and say, God, I don’t [know] anything as I ought to know it. Lord, open my understanding. Open my heart to just humble myself when You talk to me, and to have a heart that’s ready to listen. It’s not like, I’ll listen as long as You don’t talk about that. I’ll listen if You don’t touch this area of my life. Well, let’s bargain here a little bit. Let’s get together and have a negotiation, negotiated truce. There’s no truce. It’s surrender.
( congregational amens ).
But it’s surrender to the greatest love that ever could possibly exist. Oh, my God, what an amazing God we have. But here he is, “Whom did the Lord consult to enlighten him…” (NIV). Did the Lord have to say, I just don’t understand, somebody, help me out here?
“…And who taught him the right way? Who was it that taught him knowledge or showed him the path of understanding?” That question is ridiculous, isn’t it? But doesn’t it make us think and remind us that this is a God who knows every detail?
Go on and see what he says. “Surely the nations are like a drop in the bucket.” They don’t seem that way to us, do they? “They are regarded as dust on the scales.” Okay, before we weigh something, we better clean the scale off.
( blowing ).
Blow a little dust so it doesn’t affect the outcome of whatever you’re trying to weigh. Dust on a scale, wow! “He weighs the islands as though they were fine dust. Lebanon is not sufficient for altar fires.” Now, Lebanon is known for its cedars and great forests of beautiful trees. So, it was something they could understand. That’s not sufficient. “…Nor its animals enough for burnt offerings. Before Him all the nations are as nothing. They are regarded by him as worthless and less than nothing.”
Let’s go into all the parliaments of the world and the palaces and the presidential homes and just explain this to them. You’re worthless. Your nation is worth nothing. Folks, we better humble ourselves and realize how it is. I mean, men rise up, and they do all these things, and they imagine themselves to be somebody great. And then, they pass off the scene, and we build memorials to them. And then a few generations later, the memorials get torn down because it’s not politically correct anymore.
( laughter ).
I mean, what vanity!
( congregational response ).
What emptiness this world is! Why should we live for its values and its aims? Oh, God! They’re nothing, worthless, less than nothing! To whom then? You know, light of all this, who are you gonna compare Him to. “To whom, then, will you compare God? What image will you compare him to? As for an idol, a craftsman casts it.”
I mean, this was the culture of their particular day! We need a god! Okay, let’s go to the craftsman and have him create this image. Oh, great god, save me. I need better crops. I need to be healed. But really, is human society any smarter today just because we don’t do it exactly that way? We still worship the works of our hands. We still glory in the achievements of man and all the things that he’s able to come up with.
“What image will you compare him to? As for an idol, a craftsman casts it, and a goldsmith overlays it with gold and fashions silver chains for it. A man too poor to present such an offering selects wood that will not rot.” Okay, I can’t afford one of these nice idols so, here’s a chunk of wood. Make me an idol. Oh, God, what vanity. “He looks for a skilled craftsman to set up an idol that will not topple.”
( laughing ).
Aren’t you glad your God doesn’t fall over?
( laughter ).
“Do you not know? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood since the earth was founded? He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in. He brings princes to naught…” or to nothing, “and reduces the rulers of this world to nothing. No sooner are they planted, no sooner are they sown, no sooner do they take root in the ground, than he blows on them…”
( blowing ).
“…And they wither, and a whirlwind sweeps them away like chaff. To whom will you compare me? Or who is my equal? says the Holy One.” Now is when he gets to greatness and the immensity. It goes way beyond just okay, I got…earth is nothing to me. It’s like dust in my scales. “Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one, and calls them each by name. Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.” Wow!
“Why do you say, O Jacob, and complain, O…” Bible Tabernacle, I mean, “…O Israel, My way is hidden from the Lord; my cause is disregarded by my God?” See, that’s the problem. We live in a world where it doesn’t look like this is the case. We’re gonna have to have eyes that are able to see beyond what’s going on in the world, what’s going on in our lives! We’re gonna have to see that there is a God who is working all things out after the counsel of His own will, and it’s gonna be right in the end.
( congregational amens ).
Praise God! How many times have we seen people go out? I guess, Ricky’s a pretty good example. But I mean, we’ve seen people start out in the church here and go out and seemingly be gone. But somewhere along the line, there was a seed that was planted…and that seed didn’t die! At the right time, God worked it out when everybody else had just walked away and said, there’s no hope. I’ll tell you, God knows what He’s doing, and God is able to do exceeding abundantly more than we could ask or think or imagine.
( congregational amens ).
Praise God! That’s what He’s looking for from us, is that…but we don’t want to be like this, do we? Complain…imagine that we’re just being overlooked? Oh, if…see, we’re wanting our nest to be feathered. We’re wanting that comfort. We’re wanting that security. There’s no security in this world. Our security is in the Lord, and He is not going to let you and me sit there and vegetate in a nest waiting to go to Heaven one day. He’s going to be working in us, but He will be carrying us like lambs in His arms every bit of the way if we could see it.
( congregational amens ).
Praise God! So why do you say these things? “Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary….” So now, you’re bringing another aspect of this into play. This is what we often emphasize in this passage. Now, you know, that’s great that He can do all this stuff, but we imagine that He’s a little bit like us in that…He gets tired.
But this God doesn’t get tired. There’s no lack of energy. He doesn’t have…He’s not bound by the laws of physics. He created those for this, for this place and this creation. He is outside of that. He never loses energy. He’s always fresh. He doesn’t have a bad day as Chip used to say. Praise God!
“He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom.” No one can understand the depth of His understanding. “He gives strength to the weary…” Oh, aren’t you glad? Anybody here need that this morning, besides me? “…And increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord….”
Those who wait on the Lord…the different translations that are essentially saying God, You’re the One I’m looking to. I’m in the middle of a world I don’t understand. I see stuff I don’t understand. It feels like it’s out of control. There’s a part of me that wants to complain and question. But oh, God, I want to see beyond that. Give me eyes. Help me to hear Your voice. Help me to hunger to hear Your voice, because how lovely is the voice of Lord? Yeah.
God wants to have a relationship with you and with me in the middle of all that. But it’s a relationship where we see Him not as that Rule-Maker in the sky trying to make our lives miserable…take away our freedom, but a God who wants to set us free from the tyranny of self-will that drives us to become slaves to earthly appetites and earthly aims. He wants to lift us out of that. He wants us to realize the incredible sense of concern and care. I appreciate, so much, His mercy toward us.
“But those who hope in the Lord….” There’s this sense…I mean, you think about it. What are you hoping in? Practically, from a functional standpoint, what are we hoping in? A lot of times, it’s me and what I can do. I’ve got situations…got to fix it…got to do. Got to make it right so God will love me.
I mean, we’ve got so many messed up ways of looking at ourselves and at life. Oh God, help us. I don’t want my hope to be in me. Here’s one thing I was thinking of as my mind went to this this morning. Why do we get tired? I mean, the kind of tiredness that He’s talking about here where we get spiritually tired. Why do we get tired?
( congregational response ).
That’s exactly it. We’re operating in our own energy. And God is trying to lift us out of that feeling that I’ve got to do it. I’ve got to fix it. Oh, God’s not acting, so I’ve got to act. No, we’ve got to hope in the Lord. We’ve got to see beyond. We’ve got to see a God who knows how to weave the tangled threads of this whole world together.
He got you and me here, didn’t He, after centuries and thousands of years of incredibly complex events? He got you and me here. He manages the universe. He still sees when the sparrow falls, and He counts the hairs of my head. I guess He can handle it.
( congregational amens ).
Praise God! What an awesome God we have. So, the Lord here is encouraging His people, realizing they’re sitting there under a, essentially, a heathen emperor who is calling himself the king of Israel. And there’s a handful of people feeling beleaguered and wondering, is there any hope? Is God’s plan just gone begging? Will it happen? Have we just so messed up that He’s gonna throw us in the trash can, and it’s gonna be all over?
He said, no. I’m preserving a very small remnant. I’ve preserved them now, and I’m gonna preserve them all the way. Remember what He told Elijah when he thought he was all alone? The Lord said, I have reserved for Myself 7,000 men who have not bowed the knee to Baal. That was in Israel long before they were dispersed among the nations. Even back then in that wicked country, God preserved a remnant! God has got a remnant today in the earth. Praise God!
“…Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not faint.” That’s where this passage usually winds up, and I need that, don’t you?
But I wanted us to see it in a larger context and a larger sense. I’m like you. I find myself buried in the moment, buried in the problems of life, buried in the issues, looking inward, finding needs in me, wondering why won’t they ever change, why doesn’t, why this, why that?
I’ll tell you, God wants us to lift up our eyes and see that He is doing something that is eternal. Even in the middle of such moments, God is in control! He is not unaware! He is not someone to whom we cannot look in such an hour. He’s not someone whose love we have to earn.
We can come to Him when we are in need! Is that not what the scripture says in Hebrews 4? We’ve got a throne. You know, if we have disputes on earth, you go to court. Maybe it gets to the Supreme Court. We can go to the Supreme Court of the universe in a moment. And we can know that we’re received if we come based upon what Jesus did and not come presenting our righteousness as though we’ve earned the right to be there!
I haven’t earned any such right. Jesus earned it for me. I can go there, and I don’t have to go there and work myself up to a certain spiritual level so now I get to go there. I go when I’m in need.
And what I’m going for, I’m not going for justice. The justice of the situation already fell on Jesus. That’s been satisfied. I’m going for mercy. See, right there, it’s not about deserving it. Do you feel like you don’t deserve anything from God? The truth is, you’re in a good place, because you don’t.
But God delights in mercy. There’s nothing that gives His heart a greater thrill than to be able to show mercy to someone who doesn’t deserve it! Oh, look what I get to do. Here’s somebody who’s in this low place. I can lift them up, and they’re gonna be something great later, not because they’re anything, but because I have the power to change them.
He’s got the power to change anybody in here. There’s nobody that’s beyond His reach, beyond His power. If He can manage the universe, He can manage you!
( congregational amens ).
And if He cares about the sparrow, He cares about you and He cares about me. Oh, praise God! Don’t you want to just trust Him today? Let’s not lose sight of the greatness of His understanding and this incredible picture of a God who manages the universe. But at the same time, let’s not lose the picture of a shepherd who holds lambs in His arms, the small ones, the weak ones, the unworthy ones, who just calls on…calls on us to make choices every day to put our hope in Him and our trust in Him. My God! I want to serve somebody like this, don’t you?
( congregational response ).
I want to serve Him because I love Him, because He loves me. This is a love relationship that He longs to have with every single one of you.
( congregational amens ).
Come out of the shadows! You don’t have to live in those prisons anymore! He invites His people to come, and to come to Him and to see Him for who He is. Don’t let the Devil paint a picture of God that’s not real. This is the picture that God wants you and me to have today. He is one awesome God and His love is beyond imagining. To Him be the glory. Praise God!
