Phil Beach Jr. emphasizes the importance of prioritizing our relationship with God over our horizontal relationships, using the story of Lazarus to illustrate how Jesus often delayed responding to urgent requests to align with His Father's will. He warns against being driven by the demands of life and stresses the need for the church to seek God's counsel, as neglecting this leads to spiritual ruin. The sermon highlights that true devotion to God requires discernment and a commitment to love Him above all else, which in turn will restore the church and individual lives. Beach calls for a return to the cross, the Valley of Acre, as the source of healing and hope for the church in ruin.

Lazarus, okay, now listen carefully, listen carefully. Very close friend Lazarus. Lazarus became sick, didn't he, remember? He became ill. And Jesus was in Bethany at the time, wasn't he? He was in Bethany. And some of his friends came and said, Jesus, Lazarus is ill, come. What did Jesus do? I'll be right with you. Oh my, I better go, I'll be misunderstood if I'm not. What did Jesus do? The Bible said he stayed in Bethany two more days. What does that teach us about the Lord Jesus? And remember, Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forevermore. What is some things we can learn from that little story about Jesus and him not responding to what seemed to be a very reasonable request? I mean, don't we have a responsibility to our friends? Don't we? Yes, we do. Yes, we do. But where does our responsibility lie chiefly? In our phileo, in our brotherly love? No, where does it lie chiefly? In the Lord's interest, in hearing the Lord. And so what that may require from time to time, that may require from time to time that we, under the Lord's interest and the Lord's counsel, we overrule, listen, we overrule what seems to be a very reasonable request. So what do we learn from Jesus here? What do we learn? Number one, we learn that Jesus did not chiefly respond, oh, please listen. Now, what's vertical and horizontal? Vertical is up and down, and horizontal is what? All right, let's identify vertical and horizontal in this manner for the sake of this little lesson. Vertical would be our relational life with the Lord. Horizontal would be our relational life, one with another, okay? We learn from the story of Lazarus and many other stories in the New Testament and in the Old Testament that Jesus was not limited in his responses and in the making of plans and in his movements among men. He wasn't limited to purely responding to relational responsibility. He wasn't limited to it, but he continuously, listen carefully, he continuously was seeking to know the mind of his father, which oftentimes led him in a manner contrary to what the phileo, or brotherly love, relational leading would lead him in. Now, here's another example. You remember when Jesus was gathered together and he was teaching, and there was a big multitude, and there was word brought to him that his mother and brothers were outside, and they wanted to talk to him? How many remember that story? You know of that story? Well, maybe you're not familiar with it, but that's basically what it is. Jesus was ministering to, he was ministering the word of God is what he was doing, and people were hungry for the word of God, and he would be speaking, and all of a sudden, word was brought to him, Jesus, your mother and your brothers are out there. They want you, or are you going to go to them? Now, is it unreasonable to assume that if Jesus' mother and brothers were out there, that Jesus may have a desire to go talk to them and stop what he was doing? No, it's not unreasonable, but did he do it? Okay, what did Jesus say? Jesus, now this is Jesus' response now. This is his response, and it's very, very important for us to understand, this is his response to a relational pool, a pool. Something was pooling him. He had to discern what it was, okay? Now, here's what he said. He said, okay, I need to stop now, because my mother and my brothers and sisters want me. Is that what he said? No, he didn't. Boy, talk about being misunderstood. Talk about being judged wrongly. What did he say? He said, behold, and he pointed to his disciples, his pupils, those, listen, those who were sitting at his feet, loving his word, hungry for him, he said, behold, look, and he pointed to his disciples, behold, those who hear my word and love my word, they are my mother, my brother, my sisters. What was Jesus teaching there, waiting on God, discerning his mind, discerning his heart? Now, the natural impulse would be to what? Respond to the relational feel there. But Jesus taught the principle, the life, the fellowship of the kingdom, there's a higher responsibility that every true child of God has. And that's why it's imperative that we learn to wait on the Lord and to seek his counsel and not simply function out of response to relational responsibility. This is not a license for irresponsibility. This is not a license to be calloused or uncaring about people, but it's the word of God, simple and true. Our first and foremost responsibility as the followers of Jesus Christ, as the church of God, is to earnestly pray that God will give us a heart with the capacity to wait on him and to be able to sort through, listen, I'm wondering if this is touching our lives, to sort through the many demands in our life, the many responsibilities in our life, the many pools. How many of you have pools on every direction? Of course, how many? How many have pools on every direction? The longer you live, the more the pools are. The older your kids get, the more the pools are. You could end up going in a hundred directions every day easily and only deal with one-tenth of all the various different pools in your life. You know, and I know. Parents, you know this is true. And the Spirit of God this morning is giving us a loving but firm warning, a loving but firm warning. Remember what the series that God has been speaking to us about on, The House of God Lies in Ruin, The House of God Lies in Ruin. We borrowed that phrase from the book of Haggai, where the prophet Haggai scolded the people of God and said, you live in sealed houses. You live, you are caring for your interests and the house of God lies in ruin. The Hebrew word there for ruin literally means a waste place, a place of waste because of no moisture, no water. And one of the causes, the root causes of why the house of God is in such ruin today. It's because we as the church are acting like the world who lives their lives based on responding to the pools of horizontal relationships or internal interests. But the house of God, the church of Jesus Christ, you brother, you sister, if you are aspiring after God, if you're aspiring to know the Lord, to know him in his fullness, if you're aspiring for the Lord to make good in your life, the first and great commandment, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, mind, strength, and soul, and thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. If you're aspiring after the reality of this scripture, then it is needful. It becomes imperative that we are subject to the Lord in such a manner where we can begin to sort out and distinguish between the things that we should devote ourselves to and the things that we shouldn't devote ourselves to and it even gets as close as mother, father, brother, sister, husband, wife, and children, the great divide. Are you waiting? Are you praying? Are you learning a little bit here a little bit here about how to distinguish how to sort these things out how to devote yourself to the Lord and to seek his counsel. One of the controversies that God has with this this day the day that the church lives in today is seeking his counsel. Has become a forgotten lost art. We don't seek his counsel anymore. We don't seek to know his heart. We don't seek we don't spend time before God. Listen men husbands. Listen to me. Listen, listen, you are to be the interpreter in your home of what's going on. You're to interpret you you have a responsibility before God and this is what the responsibility is of true elders true leaders in the house of God. Why is the house of God in ruin? Because true leadership has failed their responsibility. They've dropped the ball the true responsibility of a husband a father and an elder a leader and overseer and under shepherd in the house of God. The true responsibility is to this is this is something God spoke through Jeremiah and Ezekiel. It is to arise in the spirit of God and to teach your family and to teach the children of God to distinguish between clean and unclean between the holy and the profane. Every father should be sitting down with his children saying my son my daughter. This is clean. This is unclean. This is the Lord's heart. This is not the Lord's heart every elder every under shepherd in the house of God should be exerting his or her influence in such a manner where every opportunity they have they should be saying brother sister in Christ brother and sister in Christ. We must not be tossed to and fro as children. We must not be governed by the same impulses that the world is governed by we must build an altar in our family. We must build an altar and lay down before it and pray and seek the counsel of Almighty God seek the counsel of God. We can't just feel and then move. There's too much. There's too much in the house of God and that's why it lies in ruin. There's too much of the horizontal response. Not only to a parent need but there's too much. Grasping because of something I want this is why the house of God is lying in ruin. And so the Lord would teach us brothers and sisters the need to seek his counsel and await on him and to pray and to get into the word and to be kept from the snare of getting so cocky and self-confident. I often think of the story Norman's not here, but we would often talk about this many years ago where Norman always perceived himself to be a geek or a nerd. He was perceived at least by others to be that because he didn't fit in. You know what our problem is brothers and sisters, you know what our problem is many of us come into the kingdom of God realizing that's all we are. We're just nothing but geeks and nerds. We don't fit in but God starts to bless us and we begin to think that we graduate from that status. And that we're something that we can handle this on our own and we begin to depart inwardly from a sense of recognizing our utter need for God our utter desperate need for God. We begin to depart from the truth that we can't even take one walk if it wasn't for the Lord enabling us. We begin to get confident in our prosperity or confident in the things that we learn. And we begin to believe what other people report about us. Don't ever believe your your publicity don't ever believe it. It's not true. One of the things A.W. Tozer prayed on the day of his former ordination was that when men began to praise him and speak highly of him he prayed oh God help me to always remember that I am nothing but an unworthy servant and help me to remember that if those people who are praising me knew me the way I knew me and knew me the way you knew me that they wouldn't bother saying a word to me. About how good they thought I was tell me where you're at today inwardly you feel like a cripple in need of God to empower you to take the next step you feel like a fool in need of God to give you wisdom or else you're not going to know what to do or are you coasting along pretty good got you got it down well everything's okay beware brothers and sisters beware. This is why God in his sovereignty and in his love. Allows us to go through things to remind us of our frailty to remind us that our feet smell and our wisdom is foolishness and our knowledge is perishable and that we're nothing more than a generation of geeks and weirdos and misfits if not for the grace of God if not for the grace of God you're not really where it's at brothers and sisters only the Lord in his mercy and in his grace that's why Peter had to deny the Lord three times because he had to come to realize that he forever had to stop trusting in himself and trusting in Peter Peter Peter Peter was infatuated with Peter he was loved by God but infatuated by Peter. I'm wondering if there's a little bit of self infatuation going on in our lives you know there's a danger in looking too often in a mirror you might begin to believe that what you see has got it. I hope and pray that we could hear the Lord's heart this morning and that we can be made to see our need to seek the Lord I challenge I believe the Spirit of God is challenging every one of us and write this down in your heart or in your notes I believe the Spirit of God is challenging us to seek his counsel over the areas in our life that we are no longer seeking the counsel of God on and I and I and I challenge you to ask him and don't be surprised or amazed at how the Lord might begin to show you and I encourage you and exhort you to follow the Lord follow the Lord's leading because that's where the blessing will come you want the drought to end in your life. Repent of everything that God shows you is out of sync with his heart and his word and by the power of the Holy Spirit and by the cry of desperation seek to be brought into the place where you're living in accord to his word. And your passion is to love God with all your heart and to be to be devoted to the Lord's interest whatever they may be and you'll find the drought will end you'll find that you'll be a river you'll be a watered garden continuously and that there'll be joy evermore and your your circumstances won't affect you in them in a way where you'll be complaining and grumbling and and Oh God this and Oh God that you'll be so you'll be so preoccupied with the rock in the wilderness. You won't know about the wilderness. You'll be so engrossed with the provision in the wilderness. You won't notice the land is not bringing forth. Remember there's a rock in the wilderness. There's a man in the wilderness. There is a God who is in the wilderness. He wants us to see this. And so may the Lord help us along these lines. Now, as you know, we've been on this topic for many many weeks. We started out with repentance and we spent three weeks dealing with repentance. We learned that we needed to repent and we learned the true nature of repentance. Then we went to Mark chapter 12 verses 28 through 34. And there Jesus tells us the greatest commandment which I'd like to read brothers and sisters. We don't need to read books or volumes on how to understand what the problems are in our hearts in our families or in the church. All we have to do is go to one scripture. Matthew Mark. I'm sorry chapter 12 verse number 28 the latter part which is the first commandment and Jesus answered him Mark 12. The first of all the commandments is this here. Oh Israel the Lord our God is one Lord. And thou shalt love. The Lord by God with all thy heart with all thy strength with all thy soul and with all thy mind. This is the first commandment. This is the first commandment and the second is likened unto it namely thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There it is. Love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as as yourself. Now, we've mentioned it before we'll mention it again. The root cause the root cause behind the problems that's going on in families with husband and wife with relationship between children and parents and within the body of Christ the root problem the root cause can be traced right here to this scripture write it down brothers and sisters. I can't begin to mention the amount of husbands and wives that I've talked to over the years who were looking desperately for solution to their marital problems a solution to their marital problems. There's no solution in a book that you read. There's no solution in any seminar. The solution is for the Holy Spirit to rip that selfishness out of your life. That's what the problem is self me. I I'm the most important person. That's your problem. That's my problem. Selfishness thou shalt love God with all your heart when I don't love God with all my heart. Then there is an area of darkness in my life. That's just waiting to seduce me. If I don't love him with all my mind. There's an area of darkness of my mind. That's just waiting to devote itself to something other than God. If I don't love God with all my strength, there's something that I'm going to devote my strength to there's something that I'm going to devote my energy to and it's going to not it's going to lead me away from the Lord's interests. And I shall love thy neighbor as thyself. This simply means that when our hearts are right with God, we recognize listen that as the body of Christ, we are members one of another. And as members one of another. We are intricately related one to another and being related one to another. It necessitates showing care and concern for one another's interests laying our lives down for our brothers and sisters. And then this led us to Haggai. We're just doing a quick overview of what we've been ministering on this led us to the book of Haggai. You remember that's the Old Testament prophet. Right before right after Zephaniah in the Old Testament and right before Zechariah and we saw that this led us to the prophets. Words to Israel. That the house of God was lying in ruin because they were preoccupied with their own lives and were neglecting the work of the Lord neglecting the Lord. And then you remember last week. We still have on the board here that we looked at the true nature of what it means to be devoted to God and devoted to one another. So we have to sell everything. We have to leave nothing. We have to find the grace of God in the Spirit of God empowering us. To devote ourselves entirely to the Lord's interest into the Lord's Word into the Lord's heart. And so that's a brief overview. Of what we've been looking at in God's Word together. So what's the solution? What's the solution to this whole series this whole thought of God's house lying in ruin? What's the solution? What will we do with these things? What is God saying to us? How can we recover? How can we be healed? How can we be restored? How can we come back into a posture where things are are according to God's heart and according to God's thought? What's it going to require? What's it going to require brothers and sisters? Any comments? Just for a few moments. We're going to begin the introduction here to this last. Few messages. In the house of God lies in ruin. And this is this is called the house of God lies in ruin. The recovery plan. The recovery plan. There's three places in the Bible. Where the Valley of Acre is mentioned. I'm going to give you the references. You're going to have to seek this out brothers and sisters three places. The first is Joshua chapter 7 verse number 24. Joshua chapter 7 verse number 24. The second place is Isaiah 65 10. Isaiah 65 10 and the third place is Hosea 215. Hosea 215. These are three places in the Bible where God refers to the Valley of Acre. This is the place. It was a literal place in the Old Testament a place where Joshua. Was brought. With the children of Israel when Achan sinned remember Achan sinned and they were brought to the Valley of Acre and there the Lord exposed Achan and what happened to Achan do you remember? He was stoned to death where at the Valley of Acre. He was stoned to death at the Valley of Acre. The second place. In Isaiah chapter 65 Isaiah chapter 65 verse number 9 Isaiah 65 and I will bring forth a seed out of Jacob and out of Judah and inheritor of my mountains and mine elect shall inherited and my servant shall dwell there now watch and Sharon shall be a fold of flocks and the Valley of Acre watch a place for the herds to lie down in for my people that have sought me. So in Joshua the Valley of Acre listen was a place of judgment. Now, this is the introduction. We keep we're not going to get into it. But this is where we're heading and it's going to it's going to change your life. If you have ears to hear. Remember this is the house of God lines and ruined the plan of recovery. What's the plan of recovery brothers and sisters? What's the hope the picture so bleak the hope is this? God's people must be brought back. To the spiritual meaning of what the Valley of Acre represents in Joshua the Valley of Acre was a place of judgment in Isaiah. It is a place for the herds to lie down in to feed that are seeking him. And lastly. Hosea Hosea chapter 2. I say yes. What is it? Joel Amos Hosea, right? Hosea before Amos. That's right. Hosea to listen. Listen. This is very important. This is talking about Israel in a backslidden state. Listen, this is talking about the house of God in ruin. Now watch God's solution. Here we go. Therefore. This is God's Word to his unfaithful people. Therefore behold, I will allure her and bring her into the wilderness and speak comfortably to her and I will give her her vineyards from fence. Listen. And the Valley of Acre for a door of hope. Oh my. And she shall sing there. As in the days of her youth and as in the day when she came up out of the land of Egypt. So let's gather this all together. As a foundation. All right. And then we'll leave it there and we'll get back to it next time. All right, the the recovery plan and I hope you guys do that some homework and research on the Valley of Acre. The recovery plan. The only solution to recover us out of the ruin is for the Holy Spirit to bring us back to the Valley of Acre the spiritual meaning the Valley of Acre simply represents Calvary. It represents the cross at the cross. Number one sin is dealt with. Akin touch the unclean thing. He took that which didn't belong to him and hit it and God judged him and stoned him at the Valley of Acre. So the plan of recovery the way the Lord is going to restore us back to where we are healthy vibrant people is we must come back to Calvary back to the Valley of Acre and we must once again rediscover the meaning of the cross as it relates to the place where God judges our sin the place where God frees us from our sin the place where our sin dies the place where we die the place where everything unclean dies the place where we come to say Lord it is no longer I it's no longer me, but it's you secondly in Isaiah chapter 65. The Valley of Acre becomes a place where the pastures what lie down the cross Calvary must not only be a place that we visit one time in the past and say, oh, thank God my sins are forgiven but it's a place where we lie down and we feed on Christ. And we continuously drink of the living water that gushers out from out from the meaning of what it means to be dead to ourselves number three a place where we are seeking the Lord seeking the Lord the Valley of Acre is a place where people can seek the Lord. We don't seek about the Lord. We don't seek things from the Lord. We seek the Lord and in Hosea all of these features all of these features the Lord's going to have to bring us into the good of and this will result in the healing that we need to have this will result in coming to where we can love God with all of our heart and in Isaiah or Hosea it speaks of number one a wilderness experience. We're going to have to know the wilderness experience to will hear the Lord speak comfortably to us in the wilderness experience. He'll come to us. Number three. I will give her her vineyards from there. We will learn to be fed in the wilderness experience as the Lord begins to reveal himself to us and number three the Valley of Acre for a door of hope. The Valley of Acre the message of the cross Calvary Christ crucified will become a door of hope for us in the midst of the wilderness in the midst of our despair. We will see the message of the cross as the means by which God will heal our heart and bring us in to this abundant life. That will result in singing. And she shall sing there as in the days of her youth the days of her youth indicates returning back to our first love. Where did Ephesus fall from their first love? And lastly turning back to her. We're turning back to her first love. As in the day when she came up out of the land of Egypt. Okay brothers and sisters, that's all. I trust that the Lord has filled your heart with a sense of understanding as to where he is leading us and those who are after him and I trust that as we continue to look into God's word the meaning of these things will just grip hold of us and change our heart and life and we can really come to know the Lord's heart regarding his burden. Let's just bow our hearts for a moment.