Sermon Tone Analysis

The Ministry of Failure

Ron Dunn

Deuteronomy 8

 

        The Book of Deuteronomy, as you know, is a book of remembrances...and Moses is rehearsing with God's people all the things that God has done for them and in them during the past years.

And he says,

 

"All 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 swear unto your fathers.

And 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 not.

And 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."

And 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.

He says in verse 14...

 

"Then 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; who 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; who 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 on a late Saturday night I needed to make a trip to the super market...it's one of these super markets that stays open twenty-four hours a day.

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

This was a Saturday and I had taken that day to catch up on all of those "handy-man" jobs that I'd been letting go around the house.

I hadn't shaved all day.

I hadn't combed my hair.

I had on some old dirty jeans and old leprous tee-shirt and some old soiled and crumbling tennis shoes and I just didn't look like the respectable pastor of the local Baptist church and I certainly didn't want to meet anybody in that condition.

But I thought that no decent person is going to be going to the grocery store at midnight and so it won't hurt if I run up there and pick up a few things that we're going to need in the morning.

So, I did.

And you know how you'll do in that situation.

You'll look straight ahead...neither to the left or to the right lest your eyes meet somebody that you don't want to meet.

Now, I was standing at the checkout stand and I was aware of somebody behind me but you know, I paid little attention to it and when the lady finished ringing up my purchase and sacked it and handed it to me and when I turned  to walk out, standing behind me was one of my members...one of the ladies in my church.

And she looked at me for a minute...she looked me up and down...and she said, "Bro.

Dunn!"

She said, "I didn't recognize you."

And then she made this very interesting statement...she said, "You know, I've never seen you without a shirt and tie on."

And she said, "I didn't recognize you without a suit on."

And I got to thinking about that after awhile...as soon as I could get away.

I thought, "Now that lady has been in our church for seven or eight years...been there Sunday morning, Sunday night, a lot of times on Wednesday night and yet, she didn't recognize me out of uniform."

I began to wonder what she'd been looking at all those years when 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 perhaps some night she might be just driving down the street and see one of my suits on the side of the road and say, "Well, there's one of Bro.

Dunn's suits."

But maybe she might meet me on down the road hitchhiking and wouldn't even recognize me.

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

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

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

And you know what?

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

Do you get what I'm saying?

There are a lot of things, a lot of ways, a lot of means that God uses to accomplish His purpose in my life, and yet, many a time I miss God in those situations.

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

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

I mean, we know a blessing when we see one.

And we know a curse when we see one.

But I'm finding, and I think perhaps you are too, that sometimes kings come to my door dressed as beggars and princes as paupers and many a time blessings come wrapped in the rags of a curse.

Sometimes sorrow is the disguise that a real joy wears.

And many times you and I will miss the ministry in our lives because we're looking for God to minister to us in a certain specified way.

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

I call it "the ministry of failure."

And I have no doubt that my message will be relevant because there's not a person here that 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.

But, I want you to know tonight that one of the most effective ministers that God has to work in your life is the minister of failure.

Now, I'm going to make a statement and I'm going to bring the Scripture out in a moment, but I want to make this statement... 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 He can teach us a lesson He's been trying to teach.

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

You know, you read the Bible, and you read it, and you read it, and you think you've read everything in it and one day you pick up a familiar passage of Scripture and you see something that's never been there before.

You just know the Lord's kind of inserted it while you were asleep.

Well, that's the way I feel about Deuteronomy 8.

And not long ago I was reading this passage and I saw a phrase in it that I'd never noticed before.

And it's the phrase found in verse 2...Moses says,

"And thou shalt remember all the way which the LORD thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness..."

 

Now, when you talk about the forty years of wilderness, you think of failure.

The people of Israel had come to Kadesh-Barnea.

God had given them the promise that if they would just believe Him and obey Him they would cross over into Canaan...and by the way, Canaan never represents physical death...notwithstanding the good old hymns that we sing.

Canaan in the Bible never represents heaven and Jordan never represents physical death.

Canaan in the Bible does not represent heaven.

There were giants in Canaan.

There are 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, does represents what we might say is heaven on earth.

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

Canaan does not refer to the sweet bye-and-bye...it refers to the sweet here and now.

That's where God expects us to live.

And Moses says in Deuteronomy 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, but 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, and I want you to understand tonight 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.

And Moses said, "He brought us out that He might bring us in"...but when the people had the opportunity to enter in they made a mistake.

They disbelieved God.

They disobeyed God.

And you know the story...for the next forty years, they wandered in that wilderness.

Now, I had always assumed that that forty years was forty years of failure and that's a right assumption.

But, I had also assumed that that forty years was simply aimless wandering and was wasted time and wasted experience.

But, I want you to notice the phrase that caught my attention.

Moses says, "Thou shalt remember all the way which the LORD thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness."

Notice, He led them while they were in the wilderness.

And in verse 15, he says He led them through that wilderness and fed them while they were in that wilderness.

And He did that Moses says in the latter part of verse 16..."to do thee good at thy latter end."

I like that!

And 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 He could not otherwise accomplish.

And suddenly I began to realize that those forty years in the wilderness were not wasted years...were not aimless wanderings...but that 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 in His purpose.

But 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 He could not otherwise accomplish.

And I know I'm speaking to people tonight perhaps right now that are living in the wilderness.

You'd have to, if you were honest, say, "Preacher, I'm in the wilderness.