Make Room 2

The action and the movement of the kingdom of God on this earth takes place with a rhythm to which all other rhythms of God's universe point. The beating of the heart, expanding and contracting, expanding and contracting. Ninety-three years for Aunt Rose.

Keeps going all the time. The lungs, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. The tides, six hours up, six hours down, up and down.

Day and night, summer, winter. Now the rhythm of the kingdom of God is gather, sit. Gather, sit.

God gathers multitudes of people together into his kingdom, shows them what it is, and he sifts this thing down, ends up with a handful, which are the gold. And then he purifies the gold with fire until it's totally pure. Gathers some more and does it again.

We see this in the Gospels, Gospel of John, first five chapters. Jesus is gathering, gathering, gathering. Multitudes come.

Chapter six, he begins to speak words that are so hard, they begin to say, this is a hard thing. Who can bear it? And they turn away. It's the sifting.

And he gathers up some more, sifts them down. And the final sifting, of course, is the cross. And by the time Jesus hangs on the cross, only a handful is left.

We see this in the apostolic church, right off at the beginning. Pentecost, there is a gathering, a tremendous gathering on that very day. Multitudes come in under the power of the word, which Peter speaks.

And then, very shortly after this, there is a sifting. Persecution comes, difficulties, and the numbers dwindle. We've seen this over the years in the life of this flock.

We have times of gathering and times of sifting. Times when they just get scooped in, and then times when they get shaken down. And it's important for us to have a clear idea in our minds of which phase we're entering into.

If we aren't clear as we enter into a time of gathering, we miss the opportunities to assimilate and include and welcome the new people as they come. And if we miss the signals and the words from God, as we enter into a time of sifting, we get demoralized as we see them going this way and that and drifting away. And so, there is always a word.

Jesus always gives his people a word. Time of gathering, you know, lift up your eyes and see, the fields are white for harvest. Pray the Lord of the harvest to send forth laborers into his harvest.

And as they approach a time of sifting, behold, we go up to Jerusalem and all the things written in the prophets concerning the Son of Man will be accomplished. He'll be spit upon and maligned and abused and rejected. And so forth.

And they'll kill him. The third day he'll rise again. Now, over the last nine or ten months, and especially in the last few months, we have seen many, many very clear signals to show us that we're moving into a time again of gathering.

Perhaps a time of gathering beyond any kind of gathering this particular congregation has ever seen. And as we move towards this gathering and into it now, there is a word for us in Isaiah 54. First three verses.

Sing, O barren one who did not bear. Break forth into singing and cry aloud, you who have not been in travail. For the children of the desolate one will be more than the children of her who is married, says the Lord.

Enlarge the place of your tent. Let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out. Hold not back.

Lengthen your cords. Strengthen your stakes. For you will spread abroad to the right and to the left.

And your descendants will possess the nations and all people. And you will people the desolate cities. Now, this is a word, first of all, to Israel, but now to us.

And Israel is then presented as a widow who has no children. No husband, no children. And so she lives in a little teeny tiny tent.

That's all she needs. And she's desolate. Now God says, expand your tent.

Expand the place of your tent. Let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out. Lengthen your cords.

Strengthen your tent, your stakes, because you are going to have many children, far more children than her who has a husband, than she who has a husband. And this applies to us at this particular moment. When the time comes for sifting, there'll be another word.

But right now, we take this second verse. Enlarge the place of your tent. Let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out.

Hold not back. Lengthen your cords. Strengthen your stakes.

Make room. Make room for God. Make room for people.

Make room for change. Example, Moses. First 40 years of Moses' life, he lives, though he's a Hebrew, as an Egyptian prince.

He has everything. Then comes a crisis, and he has to move into exile. And he spends the next 40 years as a shepherd.

Very quiet, simple life. Not much happening. And then, suddenly, he meets God at the burning bush.

And he is told things that he's going to have to do and change. And the effect of what he's told at that burning bush is threefold. Make room for God.

Make room for people. Make room for change. Reading from Exodus chapter 3. Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian.

And he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in the midst of a flame of fire, in the midst of a bush. And he looked, and, lo, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed.

And Moses said, I will turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt. When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, Moses, Moses. And he said, here am I. Then he said, do not come near.

Put off your shoes from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground. And he said, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

Moses, make room for God. And Moses, make room for people. Then the Lord said, I have seen the affliction of my people in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters.

And I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey. Now, behold, the cry of the people of Israel has come to me, and I have seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppressed them. Come, I will send you to Pharaoh, that you may bring forth my people, the sons of Israel, out of Egypt.

Make room for God. Make room for people. And Moses, make room for change.

But Moses said to God, who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the sons of Israel out of Egypt? I have no credentials. I have no experience. You got the wrong one.

Well, too bad. Things are going to change, Moses. Make room for change.

And he said, but I will be with you, and this shall be the sign for you that I have sent you. When you have brought forth the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God upon this mountain. Centuries pass.

The Messiah arrives. And he lays down his life and opens the door of the kingdom of heaven to all who will enter. Rises from the dead.

Tells his followers to wait in Jerusalem until they receive power from on high, and we see exactly the same pattern on the day of Pentecost. When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind.

And it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.

Make room for God. But also, make room for people. Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men, from every nation under heaven.

And at this sound the multitude came together and were bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in his own language. What's going on? These are Galileans. They're from the country.

How can we hear them each speaking in our own tongues the wonderful works of God? They must be drunk. No, they're not drunk. Says Peter as he stands up with the eleven and begins to speak.

This is the fulfillment of the prophecy of Joel. In the last days, says the Lord, I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh. Jesus of Nazareth, who came to you and healed your sick and fed you and gave you living bread from heaven and raised your dead, you killed.

But God raised him up, made him Lord in Christ, took him back to his throne at the headquarters of the universe. And what you now see is the outpouring of the Spirit resulting from that. And he calls them to repentance.

And the people say, well, what must we do? And he tells them, repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of your sins. And you remember how the story goes on. That day, three thousand peoples are entered into the kingdom of heaven.

Make room for God, make room for people, make room for change. And fear came upon every soul and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common.

That was a change. And they sold their possessions and goods and distributed them to all as any had need. That was a change.

And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes. They partook of food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day.

There was a time of gathering those who were being saved. Change, change, change. Now this applies to us at this time.

The word of God, I feel I'm sure most of you would find that true. Is that we are entering into a time of gathering and it's make room. Make room for God, for people, for change.

Enlarge the place of your tent. Let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out. Hold not back.

Lengthen your cords. Strengthen your stakes. First of all, make room for God in your inner life.

The significant thing about Moses' encounter with God at the burning bush was not that he saw a burning bush or that he took off his shoes or that he heard a voice. The significant thing was that out of this and in this, Moses' inmost heart is expanded a million times. All the narrowness that had come into him as he for 40 years walks around remembering the dirty deal.

He goes back in Egypt. All that is blown away. He comes home for dinner that night and Zipporah, his wife, says to him, Moses, are you alright? Yeah, I'm okay.

Moses, something happened to you. What is it? How can Moses explain to her that he has just received the fullness of God and that his inmost heart has just absolutely expanded? And Phil, he has made room for God in his inner life. And we have to do the same.

What has happened with most of us, if not all of us, is that we have become narrower and narrower the more religious we got. We have attitudes and opinions. We call them convictions but all too often they're just opinions.

We have all kinds of things crowding that inmost life so there's no room for the Lord. Now he says, make room. Get rid of those attitudes and those ambitions and that ego and that piqued pride and that critical spirit toward everybody else and let me in.

We also have to make room for God in our outer life. The way we spend our time, the way we handle our money, the way we relate to our families. Peter met God that day when the net came up loaded with fish, falls at Jesus' knees, depart from me, I'm a sinful man, oh Lord.

And when they brought their boats to land, they forsook everything and followed him. We don't even know what happened to the fish. Somebody had to take care of that too, I suppose.

But the symbol of what has happened now to Peter is the empty boat tied up on the shore. His outer life has now begun to make room for God. Peter's wife is waiting.

She's got lunch ready. The guy's been up all night. She's got a nice meal for him.

He doesn't come home. She goes down to the lake looking for her husband. All she can find is an empty boat.

She goes into the market in Capernaum and starts asking, have you seen my husband? Yes, he's behind that building under an olive tree with Jesus. And so she comes around the alley and, you know, Peter, what can he do? He has to get up and check in with his wife. Okay, Deborah.

You know, well, she says, look, this has never happened before. You've always been on time for lunch. How can Peter explain to his wife that he's now begun to make room in his outer life for God? This is just the beginning.

His business life, his personal life, his family life, the way he spends his time, the way he deals with people, everything now begins to make room for God. And we have to do the same. We have to absolutely, even if we do something that's a little nutty, better to do that than nothing, God will correct us, but we have to begin to make room, room for God in our daily outer life.

We also have to learn to make room for God in our corporate life, together, our life together. Here were the 120 gathered in the upper room, and they were followers of Jesus, and they'd been taught by him for three and a half years. They knew a lot of things.

They could pray, they could worship. They did all kinds of things together. Now comes the Holy Spirit down upon them.

And suddenly they begin to have to make room for God in their corporate life to a degree they never imagined. And they begin to praise God in a way they never praised God before. And they begin to serve God in a way they never served him before.

They go out into the streets and proclaim the word of God with an effective power they never had before as they make room for him in their corporate life. Whatever changes have to come, will have to come. And this applies to us again.

We too, we pray, we love God. We're trying to serve God. We're learning and trying to learn how to function together, and what a time we have at this.

We haven't seen anything yet. As the Spirit comes upon us, if we yield to him, he's going to cause us and show us that we just have to make more room for God in our corporate life. And we'll be praising God in ways that none of us, I say none of us have understood or done.

And we'll be serving God and each other in the name of God and other people in the name of God in new ways. And we will also proclaim the word of God with a power that we never dreamed would come forth from our lips. We also have to make room for people.

That all is followed. Enlarge the place of your tent. Let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out.

Hold not back. Lengthen your cords. Strengthen your stakes so the tent doesn't fall down.

Make room. You know, got out of Egypt. Now he has a quiet life.

A wife, a couple sons, a father-in-law, and a bunch of sheep that aren't even his. Quiet days, blue sky overhead, a little bit of grass, peace and quiet. He can pray all day long if he wants to.

Now he meets God at the burning bush and what a change. From here on in, it's going to be people, people, people. And if that isn't going to be problems for Moses, from now on, he's going to be standing between those people and Pharaoh.

He's going to be standing between those Israelites and God. He's going to have people criticizing him, bugging him, confusing him, getting on him, crying out to him, complaining and murmuring. All the rest of his life is going to be people, people.

You're going to be catching not fish, but people. Same thing happens after the resurrection. We have a repetition of this miracle to remind Peter, you're not going back to fishing, you're fishing for men.

The net comes up loaded with fish. After breakfast, Jesus says to Peter, Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these stinking fish? Lord, you know that I love you. All right? Feed my sheep, my land, my people.

And from here on through, it's people bugging him, people crying out to him, hassling him, and he has to function without going crazy and without becoming cynical or self-righteous. And we know what happened on Pentecost. 120 saints gathered in that house.

Before the day is over, the number increases to 3,120. How are 120 going to assimilate 3,000? And counsel them and encourage them and guide them and nurture these people. But they do.

And you and I have had it pretty good. Apart from our jobs and our family obligations, most of us have been able to order our time pretty much to our own pleasure. But now the word of the Lord to us all is, make room for people.

Your phone's going to ring a little bit more. People will be coming to your door. And it won't all be a bowl of cherries.

There will be people who are very ungrateful and they're very critical and very hard and all this and all that. It's going to be people, people, people. Make room.

Finally. Make room for change. Enlarge the place of your tent.

Let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out. Hold not back. Lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes.

Make those stakes strong because the winds are going to begin to blow on that tent. And there will be changes. Again, in the case of Moses, he had a predictable life the first 40 years as an Egyptian prince.

Very predictable life the next 40 years as a shepherd. But now, nothing's predictable. Everything changes all the time.

He's going to be in different places eating different kinds of food, doing all kinds of different things for him. Make room for change, Moses. And for Peter.

I mean, he was just a fisherman living in Capernaum. He expected to, like all other fishermen, live and die in Capernaum. No way.

From here on through, it's going to be change after change. Peter's going to be all over the place walking on foot over much of the Roman Empire and sailing around not first class in some super liner but in rat-infested, dirty, smelly, slow-moving ships. It's going to be a difficult life.

He's going to end up dying for his Lord. And those people in Pentecost, same thing, change. Change in their ways of handling all kinds of things.

And for us, it's the same. Some of us, make room for change. Some of us are going to be in the same house and at the same job next year at this time.

But even though we have the same job and live in the same house, it'll be different. We'll see things differently, we'll experience different, we'll just see with new eyes and we'll respond in a new heart and a new attitude. It'll be different.

And many of us won't even be living in the same house or holding the same job next year at this time. Wherever we are, if we're obedient to the Lord's Spirit, it'll be change after change. And so as we stand on the threshold of a time of gathering I truly believe this flock has ever seen.

The word of the Lord to us is make room. Enlarge the place of your tent, let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out, hold not back, lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes. Make room for God in your inner life, in your outer life, in your corporate life.

Make room for change.