Hope with a Divine Plan

Introduction

Good morning, everyone. Jan and I are absolutely thrilled to be with you today. We are on a 6-day whirlwind trip visiting 7 corps and 3 service units. Today, we get to stop and worship with all of you, which we are truly thrilled about.

Knowing that we are on the cusp of the busy season for The Salvation Army, the time in which we get to shine the brightest, and knowing that the majority of you know very little about me, I thought I would try to harmonize my testimony with the true purpose of our very busy fall season. That just made good sense to me in preparing a sermon for today.

If I am being completely honest, until very recently I have only shared snippets of my testimony. One day after sharing a portion of it I could honestly sense God asking why I don’t tell the complete story of His goodness in my life. That was a sobering question, one that I could not really answer. So, this is an opportunity for me to honor Him today, because He has been very good to Peter Pemberton. But before we get into the message, let’s take a moment together before the throne of our King!

Historical Context

This may be news to some of you, but did you know that Ezekiel, Jeremiah and Daniel were all prophets of the One True God, all living within the same period of their nations darkest days, all prophesying a similar message? When reading, you can tell that they all have a different approach to their ministry, but the message is one that calls for repentance, casts hope and promises regeneration with purpose. Because of that, there are overlapping nuggets that can be taken from each. We are going to look at them today as I share with you my own relatable experiences. We are going to be looking primarily at texts involving Jeremiah 29 and Ezekiel 37, so you may want to just keep those two portions of scripture accessible.

Breaking Covenant

But first, listen to what God tells Jeremiah to initially prophesy in Jeremiah 2:4-5

Can you imagine hearing this from a God-appointed prophet? You might say, “but are we not His chosen people”. Fair enough, because God claims them as that several times throughout scripture. But a covenant is really an agreement, and every agreement requires something of each party. Trust me, as the DS I read a lot of agreements. In the case of covenants between God and man, it is always “if you have faith in me and obey my commands, then I will...” God had lived up to His side of covenant. He had brought them out of Egypt, sustained their stubborn lives for many years not even letting their sandals wear out, He provided food and sustenance for them, then He fought against any establishment that stood in the way of them receiving what He had promised. Israel, under God’s provision, realized a flourishing life in a land now all their own, yet they fail to remain obedient and faithful. They became unfaithful and began worshiping idols. They began to be disobedient except where it benefited them. They broke their side of the covenant relieving God of His promises, and without God’s protection, they were decimated, scattered, and taken by force. They were completely lost!

I can relate. In my teens, I knew that God was calling me to ministry. I even professed that God was going to use me when I was older. The crazy thing is that I wasn’t even living right when that word from God came to me. I was raised in church, so God was not a foreign concept to me. Yet, I was far from what you would consider a faithful servant. I had a foul mouth, a foul mind, and foul intentions in many things. But when I got back from serving oversees in Desert Storm, I met this young lady named Jan that tamed a pretty wild heart; at least for a while.

We started going to church and trying to live a God honoring life. We event started teaching Sunday school to children. We were in a good place. One day at home, I made the comment to my wife that I felt God calling me to ministry. So, I called our interim pastor, a gentleman that had been called out of retirement while we conducted a pastoral search, asked him if we could meet, and shared my feelings with him. Looking back, that ministry was not in God’s plan for us, so I now understand the divine intervention of his response, but the pastor shot me down. I was crushed!

It didn’t happen immediately, but soon after this, you could just tell that something changed in me. I quit spending time with God. After a few weeks, I stepped away from teaching Sunday school. Then my church attendance started to become sporadic until finally, it was nonexistent. God was no longer a priority in my life. I started looking for others ways to find peace. I started drinking quite a bit, even going for drinks during lunchtime from work. If I’m honest, I got to a place where I just didn’t trust Him anymore. I felt betrayed, like I let my guard down to a friend who later took advantage of it. As a result, I rejected God and embraced sin.

Death

Friends, there are consequences when you reject God! Israel didn’t learn from Adam and Eve when they rejected God by trading His truth for a lie, and I didn’t learn from Israel’s exile when they rejected Him and embraced idol worship. We started having serious money problems. Our marriage was okay, but certainly not thriving. My drinking continued and I ended up being arrested for driving under the influence. Everyone thought it was just a moment of poor decision, but it wasn’t. It was many moments of poor decision that led to a real problem with alcoholism.

During this whole time, I had been in a program at work taking college classes for industrial maintenance focusing on an electrician track. They stopped funding the program in it’s final phase. I remember being frustrated having put in all that work for nothing.

My best friend and I had started a small bathroom and kitchen renovation business. We both had significant investments in this side hustle, but because of a new job, he had to quit and we dissolved the business. Financially, we really needed that extra income. We were already struggling, and the union I was in just walked out on strike during wage negotiations. You talk about life spiraling downward. I was literally doing everything I could to get ahead, but everything was falling apart.

I’m sure many of you can relate to some of this. Probably all of us can remember a time when it just felt like life was tumbling out of control. For some, maybe It was just moments here and there. For others, maybe you were in a season of peril like I was. But for everyone who ever felt powerless in a moment of crisis, its just tough no matter how long it lasts, right!

Death and Regeneration

A person can only take so much failure and heartache until it eventually affects you mentally. I remember this one really beautiful sunny day, my wife found me just sitting in a dark room staring at the floor. No TV or radio playing, just me and my failures, hating everything about life. And trust me, in my mind I was the victim of injustice. I was working as hard as I could at work, working nights in a side hustle, and trying to get an education. I had done every single thing the world said was right for success and still failed.

But that was my problem, wasn't it? I had rejected the voice of God and embraced everything that the world had to offer, and brought me to what seemed like complete ruin. I felt, in that moment, like one of the sets of old dry bones in the valley that we read about in Ezekiel 37. I was completely lost and pretty dead inside. As I sat in that dark room, my wife looked at me and said “I love you, and I hate seeing you like this. What can I do”?

Friends, I thank God for parents who raised me in a Christian household and for a praying wife that never gave up on me, because from somewhere in that dead cold darkness that was my life, I can’t explain how, but I sensed the presence of God. I looked at my wife and simply said, “I just need Jesus”!

Something happened right then and there. My very soul became resolute to go to church that Sunday. A friend had told me about a new church in a neighboring town, so we decided to go their. Upon arrival, we noticed running generators outside the front doors, and when we entered we discovered that this really was a new church. It was literally a metal sided shell on a concrete slab, no electrical, no plumbing, no carpet, and no drywall. What it did have was a Jesus-loving congregation and a preacher who spoke truth from the bible about forgiveness and regeneration, and at the end of that sermon I rededicated my life to Jesus. Friends, just like Ezekiel witnessed, them old bones came back together, muscles reattached, but more importantly, God blew life back into a once lifeless soul.

A Divine Plan

After church, the pastor invited us to go out to lunch with his family and some other folks from the congregation. He made sure that I sat next to him. While we were chatting, he casually said “I hear you’re an electrician”. I smiled and said, “no, but I did nearly complete a degree in electrical maintenance”. He went on, “well, you know, I’m sure you could see we’re getting ready to wire the church. We don’t really have the funds and I could use some guidance if you’d be willing”. So over the next few weeks, we wired the church together and put in an electrical service. All along, I talked to him about volts and watts, amperes and ohms, while he talked to me about things from the bible and basic theological principles. When we were about done, he said “I don’t suppose you know anything about hanging drywall and mudding do you”. I smiled and said, “yes, I could help with some of that”. So, for the next month or so, we met after work and we hung drywall, and I showed him some tricks of the trade and how to properly mud, while he talked to me about things from the bible and basic theological principles.We just about got done when he asked if I knew anything about trim and finish work.

Friends, this went on for over a year, and the entire time, God used those seemingly wasted moments of education and skills I learned in that side-hustle with my buddy, all of those things that I thought were failures in my life, God used them to bring me back to His Divine plan. You’ll remember that as a teen I professed God would use me for His service. You see, all of those skills I acquired that were meant for my own devices, He used them to build a church, and along the way used another man to build a pastor. At the end of all that work, when that church was done, I had been discipled and became that church’s youth minister. When we are aligned with God’s will, the things He can do with what see to be failures, it’s impressive!

Life went on and I’ve had rough moments, but God has been so very faithful. Along the way, I messed up my back at the gym and was bed ridden for nearly a year. I knew God was calling me to a deeper ministry, but how do you answer that call when you can barely walk. After months of being away from church because of this serious back issue, I hobbled to church and sat in the front row. During the sermon, I again felt God put on my heart this pursuit of full time ministry. I went to the altar and laid flat on the floor faced down and said “God, I know what you are calling me to, but I can’t do it, not like this”. At the end of that prayer, I stood up with no pain. None! I shifted my feet and my weight expecting to feel a sharp piercing pain at some point, but it never came. That was 15 years ago.

Friends, I share all of this with you today because my life is a Jeremiah 29:11 witness. Some might say that scripture is just relevant to the Israelites and their restoration. I won’t get into a debate about things like that with people. I’ll just say that what Ezekiel and Jeremiah present as a restorative process to a divine plan for the Israelites of the Old Testament is a pattern for what His people in Christ Jesus can expect today. 2 Chronicles 7:14 states it best, “If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and restore their land”.

So What

So friends, maybe you’re having a “so what” moment. “So what, Captain? That’s all fantastic, but what does that mean for me”? Well, we’re going through tough times in this world right now. There are political issues that have ripped us apart as a nation. There is social unrest and economic insecurity. There’s a virus that some people see as non-sense while others are living in absolute fear of it. One person gets it and it feels like nothing more than the common cold. Yet, others are laying loved ones in the grave over it.

Friends, I‘m going to be completely honest with you right now about my feelings. It’s a miserable world we live in right now, and if you’re like me, you feel it. I honestly want to hate the world right now, I really do! But dadburnit, John 3:16 won’t let me, because I guess that if God so loved the world, then Peter Pemberton probably should too! So, what do I do? Well, I get up every morning and read my devotions, I check out the news and eat a little breakfast, I go upstairs and put on some clothes, I brush my teeth and comb my hair, and for the cause of Christ, I head out into a world that makes no sense to me anymore so that lost, dead souls can see that these bones can live again!

Friends, that’s why we do what we do. That’s why we hand out gifts at Christmas, clothes throughout the year, why we ring a bell for four weeks raising funds to help us meet human need. It’s all for the sake of Jesus and his Great Commission , because if we don’t, then we are just hiding the cross from people who need it.