Hey, this is Stephen Ferdick.
I'm the pastor of Elevation Church and this is our podcast. I wanted to thank you for joining us today.
Hope this inspires you. Hope it builds your faith. Hope it gives your.
Perspective to see God is moving in your life.
Enjoy the message.
I thought I would take a moment and just illustrate how sometimes where something shows up is not where it started.
At.
This sermon that you're here today came from a note that I made last year, and sometimes where something shows up is and where it starts. By the time you hear the sermon, it's already been hopefully in the process of me thinking about it for a long time, because I don't want to just think of something Saturday and say it on Sunday.
I even realized that about about your life.
You showed up today and I'll see you, but I don't really see what it took for you to get here, or you know, what is affecting your mind.
As I preach, sometimes people will say that's the best sermon you ever preached.
I'll say, that's just the best you ever listened. When they're good, but the sermon starts before it starts. I always tell the parking team, like, hey, help me out when people are coming in. Smile at them, wave at them, put them in a good mood. It'll make my job easier. Because the sermon starts before it starts. It starts before it starts, it starts checking in your kids, or starts. So make sure make sure that you get as good of a start as possible. And this time of year,
we're so focused on new beginnings. But the longer you live, the less you really believe in new beginnings, and the cliches don't really comfort you in the same way or inspire you at the same level anymore. Knew you No, no, I didn't grow three inches. Yeah, you see me. You can't really get a new start to your story. What you can do is change the ending. And the only real way for you to affect the ending is to
understand the starting place. Is very important that we understand the scripture that I read in the context of the times, because there would have been an outside gate, the outer wall of the city, with a gate for entrance and inner gate as a line of defense, and then this space between the gate where justice was supposed to be served negotiations happened, and people would buy and sell, And that was the space between the gates where the negotiations
of life and the deliberations took place. But between the gates the realm of your decisions, the realm of your thought process, the space between what you see with your eyes and what you do in your life, what you hear with your ears, and how you act when you go home.
That's space. That's where the battle is won and lost.
Now, by the time the battle is won, there has already been significant work done. Nobody wins the Olympics at the race. They won the Olympics in the dark at four thirty. Where their success showed up is not where their success started. And usually if you see an issue in somebody's life, where it showed up is not where it started. It's the same with victories that it is
with defeat. I told a story last week about my dad, and the reason I like to tell so many stories about my dad is because he's not here to correct them.
I can tell him how I want to tell him.
The one I told HI about him last week made him sound kind of bad, but I thought I would tell a good one about him. Now my dad was a good dad, especially if you compare him to the standard that he didn't have a dad to show him how to do it, and he was making.
It up when he was doing it. He was just kind of he was winging it.
And I have mad respect for that, because it's hard enough to be a dad when you've seen a dad.
But he had to make it.
Up, and so some of his tactics were not FDA approved. Some of his tactics were kind of street tactics. One time I told my mom I wanted to kill him. Yeah, my finest moment, I'll kill him. I want to kill him. And when he picked me up from school that day early dismissal picked me up from school and said he had two guns.
In the back of the truck.
I was going to get one and he was going to get one because he heard I wanted to kill him and if I didn't shoot, he was going to. I mean, that is not necessarily the type of parenting you hear about. I'm focused on the family. But he's doing him best he could and he didn't actually do it. He let me cry for ten minutes and think that he was going to do it. But I never said it again. One of his finest moments, though I don't know where he got the idea to do this, was when he began to talk to.
Me about addiction. He begin to talk to me about addiction.
Because his father committed suicide and had been a very mean drunk. His father's father had been an alcoholic, and somewhere along the line, he made the decision that I can't go back and rewrite how this story started in our bloodline, but I'm going to impart a vision to my son so that he might be the one to write a different ending. You can't create a new beginning, but you can write a new ending. That's what I'm trying to say. You can't change who wasn't there for you,
but you can write a new ending. And maybe we should start this year not as an expectation of new beginnings, but new endings that from this point forward, I said, From this point forward, Paul said, I pressed toward the mark. This one thing I do forgetting what is behind me. There is no strength in what's behind me. I stretch
toward what's ahead. I saw my dad, he would pull me a so even from like a really young age, like I was eight years old, and he would pull me aside and start talking to me about the dangers of alcoholism. Eight years old, and he would tell me my dad was a drunk, and his dad was a drunk, and his dad was drunk.
He said, you could be the first verdict. It wasn't an alcoholic.
He put it out there like a challenge to me, like you could go to the moon.
You could be the first verdict. And I kind of liked that. I was only eight.
I was eight. I don't know what he thought the kids would bringing to school in their juice boxes, Like what temptation he thought I was under.
He could be the first verdict.
And it got through to me even when I got a little older, I could be the first vertice. This is not a sermon about don't drink, by the way, Okay, I said, I want you to get all nervous like that, like I'm one of those preachers, because I have noticed a lot of the preachers who preach don't drink or eighty pounds overweight. So apparently they skipped all the verses about gluttony and okay, okay, you didn't come for all that.
Let's get back to the scripture. Isaiah said that he will be.
Is anybody leaving, I can't see very well back here, I'll stay there, okay, okay, a source of strength to him who turns back the battle at the gate. In other words, God will strengthen the will of the one who makes the decision. It stops here. I'm taking my place in the gate to say that I cannot affect how the story started.
But my dad said, if.
You really want to be the first verdict to beat this, you got to beat it in your blood because if you taste it, you're gonna like it. So I want to challenge you, just don't ever fight it. He was trying to get me to see that sometimes the best place to fight the battle is before it ever begins. To draw a line and say, I'm not even going there. I'm not even playing with this. This is not going
to be a part of my children's legacy. I can't control what it's been until now, but from this stay forward. By the grace of God. I am a new creation in Christ, and I'm gonna beat it in the bloodline. I'm gonna make a stand for the next generation. There are going to be some changes at the gate.
The place to beat it.
Is before it begins, because if you let it in, you've already let it win.
It's like this in marriage.
By the time you let resentment in, you've already let bitterness win.
It's like this in our thought process.
By the time we let worry in, we've already let anxiety win. And this is the year we no longer fight the devil on his level, because Isaiah said, there is a strategy you can turn back.
The battle at the gate.
It's a powerful thought. Sometimes people make fun of me and we go out to eat. They say, oh, yeah, I forgot you don't drink. Yeah, fine, judging you drink what you want to drink. I drink fourteen diet Mountain News today. I got no judgment for your liquid consumption. I's got a different drug. What I'm saying is this is a decision I made. It is a standard that
I have set. And the problem in Isaiah is they is that the leaders who should have been setting the standard for the people have lowered the standard and left the people vulnerable.
This has no relevance to our modern day. Of course, the Bible is an ancient book.
In fact, Isaiah says he gives a picture of it. He says that the leaders who are supposed to be sitting in their seat of judgment rendering decisions of virtue and justice. Verse seven, He says, they stagger from wine and reel from beer, the priest and the prophets.
Wouldn't this make church more interesting?
The priests and the prophets stagger from beer and are befuddled with wine. Y'all, I have a hard enough time making sense when I'm up here sober. Can you imagine what I would sound like if I had of you?
He said.
They stagger when seeing visions. They cannot see correctly, so how can they leave correctly? They stumble when rendering decisions. They are the ones who are supposed to calibrate the calling of the nation, and yet they are so drunk. Maybe it's a metaphor. Maybe it's not just that they're
drunk on alcohol. Maybe they're drunk on pride. Maybe they're intoxicated with power, maybe a self aggrandizement that has caused the leaders of this day to begin to weigh self interest in a different scale than the best interests of the people.
And yet Isaiah says something.
That rings true today, that God will be a source of strength to those who turn back.
The battle at the gate. Notice, he says that no matter who sits in the gate.
God is still the source of strength to those who turn back the battle at the gate. It would be worth answering the question, who is the source of your strength? I haven't decided it by now. You need to decide it really quickly, because if the source of your strength is who you're sitting beside, you will live a very
disappointed life. If the source of your strength is a number at the bottom of your balance sheet, something will hit your life so hard that you can't buy your way out of it, and you will find out really quickly that net worth is a terrible place to put your sense of self value. If the source of your strength is how people look at you, or treat you, or think about you. If the source of your strength on any given day is the condition of your health,
you will always be susceptible to the elements. And so Isaiah says, he will be a spirit of justice to the one who sits in judgment, and a source of strength to those who turn back the battle at the gate. To make God the source of your strength means that you depend on him as one Psalmist said, you lift your eyes to the hills. From whence cometh your health. Your health cometh from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. And he will not suffer your foot to
be moved. The Lord which keepeth thee will not slumber nor sleep. The Lord is your keeper. The Lord is your shade upon your right hand. And the someone not smite thee by day nor.
The moon by night.
He will preserve your soul even Forevermore. To know that all your help comes from God, that all your hope is in Jesus. That all of your help comes not from the right, not from the left, not from the north, not from the south, not from the economy, not from the job touch. Somebody say not you, God is my source. Now go ahead and clap right now. If you know God's got your bet. In fact, stand up on your
feet and shout about it. If God is your source in every season of your life, in every famine, I have a friend named Jesus.
He is my source.
I am so tempted to preach on this part of the verse that I.
Almost forgot what came before it.
Isaiah said, in that day, the Lord Almighty will be a glorious crown, a beautiful wreath for the remnant of his people. Now, what is a wreath and God is a remnant besides a Christmas decoration. A wreath symbolizes victory, and he is preaching victory to.
People who are about to experience defeat.
He's preaching, of course, about the impending as Syrian evasion to the to the northern territory of Samaria, the crown jewel of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, set on a ferral valley.
He's speaking to them about their potential, and he's.
Telling them how their protection is gone, and so now they're going to face a season of defeat. And in the same breath that he promises to be a source of strength, he warns them of a coming defeat. But yet he speaks about victory in the context of defeat. He says, in that day, the Lord Almighty will be a glorious crown, a beautiful wreath for the remnant of his people. God said he will be a wreath for the remnant. The wreath symbolizes victory. The remnant represents what's left.
God always has a remnant, no matter what you've lost in your life or who walked away from you. God always leaves a remnant. No matter how wicked this world gets or how dark the times that we live in may seem to be. God always has a remnant in every office. God has a remnant in every church. God has a remnant in every city, and every generation. God has a remnant. God always has a remnant. There's always a little bit of oil in the house, even if
you feel like you're starving to death. God always has a remnant. There's always a little boy with a lunch. If you call him forward and put it in the hands of the Master, it will multiply. Because God always has a remnant. No matter how many leave Gideot, there will always be three hundred. And God is able to win with the remnant. God said, I'm gonna bless what's left. I will not be limited by what you lost. I will be a wreath for the remnant. I'm gonna bless
what's left. I'm gonna bless what's left. Stop weeping over what's lost. I'm gonna bless what's left. I want you to shout right now over what you've gotten left.
I want you to shout right now over the gift you have the strength you have, the friends you have, the opportunities you have, the time you have.
God said, I'm gonna bless what you got left. If you will not stay stuck in what walked away, I'm gonna bless what you got left. You can win with what you got left. I feel like preaching. I feel like preaching to the remnant. Where's the remnant at where? Who wants who went through the fire and came out of boud.
Go to bless what's left.
No matter what happens at the leadership level, I'm looking for someone who will turn back the battle at the gate. And in that day the Lord Almighty will be a glorious crown of beautiful wreath for the remnant of his people.
And then he mentions two different spirits. Watch this in verse six. Can we study the Bible.
He will be a spirit of justice to the one who sits in judgment, that's the first one, and a source of strength to those who turn back the battle at the gate. So you've got the spirit of justice to the one who sits in judgment and the source of strength to those who turned back the battle at the gate. Study that text all week, and I thought, I was talking about two different things. But the more I read it, the more I realized that this is two functions of the same spirit.
He will be a spirit of justice to the one who sits.
In judgment, a source of strength to those who turn back the battle at the gate. The first part of the verse is about standards. He will be a spirit of justice. He will decide what is wrong and right to the one who sits in judgment. Will be a spirit of justice and a source of strength to the one who turns back the battle at the gate.
So the same God that.
Is the source of our strength is to also be the source of our standers. And here's the question that I came to ask today. How can I expect God's strength if I do not embrace God's standers. I'm about to throw this my brother. See, how can I call God the source of my strength if I have not made him the source of my standers. He will be a spirit of justice to the one who sits in judgment.
Now, if I have let that seat open, and I have left culture.
To tell me what's right and wrong, how can I look to culture for my standards and then look to God.
For my strength? How can I look for the world to.
Tell me how to live, and then expect God to give me strength for a standard that was not his. How can I call God the source of my strength if he is not the source of my standards? How can I expect his strength and resist his standards?
It's good right.
That's why I feel weak sometimes because I'm asking God.
To strengthen me.
But I have given away my strength because I have lowered my standard. And then the enemy comes in like a flood. But I don't have a standard. And then I ask God to give me joy. You know, and your present foods the joy?
Joy? The Lord is my strength, and I want his strength. I want his joy.
But if I have not applied his standard to my thought life, and I let my mind think whatever it wants to think, and I go to God for strength, but I did not go to him for standards.
I am asking him to.
Violate the very nature of our relationship. How can he be the source of my strength if I won't let him be the source of my standards? Who set your standards? Who set your standards? Was it.
Was it God that set your standards?
I was talking to one guy the other day it became very apparent to me pretty quickly that he sets his own standards for right and wrong. And I admire him for that because I don't trust myself that much. I mean, he must be really perfect to have his own standard for right and wrong.
See, I need a God.
I need a God who's bigger than me, wiser than me, who's been around longer than me. I need a God who can see around the next corner and know how this decision is going to affect my destiny.
I don't want to occupy that seat. I need a God.
And sometimes we're so crazy as Christians. We will allow the world to set our standards as a church and tell us what the church ought to be and not be, and put us in a box and call us by a denomination. But I will not be standardized by a dysfunctional world. I have a higher standard. We are chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, to declare the praises of Him who called us out of darkness.
Like preaching. I'm preaching like this might be my last time.