Sermon Tone Analysis

Ministry of Failure

STRANGE MINISTERS

Ron Dunn

Deuteronomy 8:1-3

 

        Deuteronomy is a book of remembrances.

Moses is rehearsing with God's people all the

 

things that God has done for them and in them during the past years.

In Deuteronomy 8:1-3:

 

1All the commandments which I command thee this day shall ye observe to do, that ye may live, and multiply, and go in and possess the land which the LORD sware unto your fathers.

2And thou shalt remember all the way which the LORD thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no.  3And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live.

Then he goes on to describe what perhaps could happen to them after they have entered the land

 and have forgotten the goodness of the Lord.

14Then thine heart be lifted up, and thou forget the LORD thy God, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage;  15Who led thee through that great and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery serpents, and scorpions, and drought, where there was no water; who brought thee forth water out of the rock of flint;  16Who fed thee in the wilderness with manna, which thy fathers knew not, that he might humble thee, and that he might prove thee, to do thee good at thy latter end;

        Some time ago late on a Saturday night I needed to make a trip to the supermarket that stays open 24 hours a day.

I was a little hesitant to go because of the way I looked.

It was a Saturday and I had taken that day to catch up on all those handyman jobs I had let go around the house.

I hadn't shaved or combed my hair and had on some old dirty jeans, an old, leprous t-shirt, and some old soiled, crumbling tennis shoes.

I just didn't look like the respectable pastor of a local Baptist church.

I certainly didn't want to meet anybody in that condition, but I thought no decent person will be going to the grocery store at midnight so it won't hurt if I go and get a few things we are going to need in the morning.

You know how you will do in that situation—look straight ahead, neither to the left nor the right lest your eyes meet somebody that you don't want to meet.

I was standing at the check-out stand.

I was aware of somebody behind me but paid little attention to it.

When the lady finished ringing up my purchase and sacked it, she handed it to me.

I turned to walk out and standing behind me was one of the ladies in my church.

She looked at me for a minute—up and down.

She said, Bro.

Dunn, I didn't recognize you.

Then she made this very interesting statement:  you know, I have never seen you without a shirt and tie on.

I didn't recognize you without a suit.. 

I began thinking about that as soon as I could get away.

That lady has been in my church for seven or eight years, been there Sunday morning and Sunday night and a lot of times on Wednesday night.

Yet she didn't recognize me out of uniform.

I began to wonder what she had been looking at all those years as she came to church.

I don't suppose she ever looked at my face.

I guess she just looked at my suit or my tie.

I was wondering if some night she might be driving down the street and see one of my suits on the side of the road and say:  there is one of Bro.

Dunn's suits.

They do tell us that one of the best disguises a person can wear is a uniform because you have a tendency to notice the uniform rather than the face.

You don't recognize these people that you see in unexpected places because you are accustomed in seeing them in certain ways and certain places.

I was this woman's minister, and yet she failed to recognize me because I didn't look like a minister.

There are a lot of ministers that God sends our way to minister to us that we fail to recognize because they don't look like ministers are supposed to look.

There are many things that God uses to accomplish his purpose in my life.

Yet, many times I miss God in those situations.

I fail to recognize this situation as a minister of God because it doesn't look like I think a minister should look.

We have a tendency to believe that we can always correctly evaluate everything that happens to us.

We know a blessing when we see one.

We know a curse when we see one.

But I am finding, and perhaps you are as well, that kings come to my door dressed as beggars, and princes as paupers.

Many times blessings come wrapped in the rags of a curse.

Sometimes sorrow is the disguise that  real joy wears.

Many times you and I will miss the ministry of God in our lives because we are looking for God to minister to us in a certain, specified way.

I want to talk to you about one of these ministers that God sends our way to work his purpose in our lives, to bring us where he wants us to be.

I call it the ministry of failure.

I have no doubt that my message will be relevant because there is not a person here who has not experienced failure.

Every Christian experiences it sooner or later.

Some of us seem to live in the same house with failure all the days of our Christian life.

One of the most effective ministers that God has to work in your life and mine is the ministry of failure.

I'm going to make a statement and then we will look at the Scripture in a moment.

God not only allows us to fail, but there are times when the Lord actually maneuvers us into a situation of failure, when the Lord actually negotiates for our failure because that is the only way that he can teach us a lesson he has been trying to teach.

Have you ever found that the Lord adds some verses to the Bible that you just know weren't there before?

You just know the Lord inserted it while you were asleep.

That's the way I feel about Deuteronomy, chapter 8.

Not long ago I was reading this passage and I saw a phrase in verse 2 that I had never seen before.

Moses says, and thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led these forty years in the wilderness.

When we talk about the forty years of wilderness, I think of failure.

The people of Israel had come to Kadesh Barnea.

God had given them the promise that if they would just believe and obey him, they would cross over into Canaan.

Let me say that in the Bible, Canaan never represents physical death.

Notwithstanding the good old hymns that we sing, Canaan never represents heaven.

There were giants in Canaan; there were no giants in heaven.

There were battles to be fought in Canaan; there are no battles to be fought in heaven.

There was failure and sin in Canaan; there are no failure and sin in heaven.

Canaan, not representing physical death or heaven, represents what we might call heaven on earth.

Canaan represents everything that God saved us to be in this life.

Canaan does not refer to the sweet by and by; it refers to the sweet here and now.

That's where God expects us to live.

Moses says in Deuteronomy, chapter 6, that God brought them out of Egypt in order to bring them into Canaan.

The  reason that God led the people out of Egypt was not simply to get them out of Egypt.

It was to get them into the land of promise, into the land of fullness where they could live in the full promises of God and be everything that God wanted them to be.

Understand that when God saved you, he did not save you simply to get you out of hell, nor to get you into heaven; he saved you in order that you might experience in your everyday life everything that God wants you to be in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Moses says that he brought us out that he might bring us in.

But when the people had the opportunity to enter in, they made a mistake, disbelieved and disobeyed God.

You know the story.

For the next forty years they wandered in that wilderness.

I had always assumed those forty years were forty years of failure.

That is a right assumption.

I had also assumed those forty years were simply aimless wandering, wasted time and experience.

Notice the phrase that caught my attention:  Thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness.

Notice that he led them while they were in the wilderness.

In verse 15 he says that he led them through that wilderness and fed them while they were there.

In the latter part of very 16, he says that he did that to do thee good at thy latter end.

I like that.

That is the way you can sign everything that God lets come into your life--that he might do thee good.

God led them in that wilderness experience in order to accomplish something in their lives that he could not otherwise accomplish.

Suddenly, I began to realize that those forty years in the wilderness were not wasted years, aimless wanderings.

Even though they had failed at Kadesh Barnea, even though they had disobeyed and disbelieved God, yet God did not abandon them, nor did he give up on his purpose.

He continued to lead them those forty years in the wilderness in order to do them good, in order to accomplish in their lives something that he could not otherwise accomplish.

I know right now I am speaking to people who are living in the wilderness.

If you were honest, you would say:  Preacher, I am in the wilderness.

I have come to a point in my life where it looks as though I am aimlessly wandering.