Mt. Zion Church of the Holy Spirit - Sermons
Cultivating Faith in the Time of Famine
Amos 8:11, 12 — "Behold, the days come, saith the Lord GOD, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD: And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the LORD, and shall not find it."
Saints in Famine
Amos’ prophecy rings more true today than ever before; everywhere you turn you hear the cry of hungry saints of God agonizing over the condition of so many pulpits and houses of worship. I have personally spoken with many godly men and women, and their local church dilemma is almost always the same, "We are hungry for the Word. We attend church out of obedience to God’s Word, but the Word that is coming out from behind the pulpit is uninspired and stale. It lacks the true life and anointing of God’s Spirit."
Their complaint is legitimate and desperate. They have traveled as Amos said, from sea to sea, from the north to the east searching in vain for a true Word from God. I am not speaking here of those that are "sermon-tasters" or those who are caught up in the many “prophetic” movements that seem to be sweeping the Pentecostal and Charismatic circles worldwide. I am talking about the hungry souls of saints that desire true Christian fellowship and a Body that is walking in the light of God’s Word. I know families that have moved from one coast to another just to bring their family under the sound preaching of the Word and to have access to a Body that is in love with Jesus.
To compound the problem of spiritual famine, many saints find themselves in the hardest battles of their lives. From all corners of the country you hear the stories of saints that are suffering unimaginable pain and grief. Many are under such demonic oppression that every day is a fight for spiritual survival. If the Body ever needed hope, it is today. If we ever needed men and women that have touched heaven to bring God’s mind and understanding, it is now! The house of God should be a place of refuge and comfort, but for many it is an obsolete option for a source of healing.
Behind the Scenes
During these stress-filled days it is very easy to become cynical and negative towards the church, especially when you personally are facing the trials of a lifetime. We must remember that God has not forsaken His people nor has He forgotten about His beloved Bride. He will not leave His church in the hands of the despotic tyranny of the devil for too long nor will He allow spiritual famine to ravage His hungry saints’ hearts forever. We have the promise of Psalm 91:14-15 — “Because he hath set his love upon Me, therefore will I deliver him: I will set him on high, because he hath known My Name. He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him: I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and honor him.” In the furious storm of demonic warfare and spiritual pestilence that rages around us, God says He is working behind the scenes to bring us higher in Him to a place of honor and security. This seems so contrary to what we see going on at present. How do I know this to be true?
Throughout God’s Word we are reminded of the secret work of God, which many times is hidden from the devil and the saints. This is seen over and over again throughout Biblical history. We see this played out in the stories of Joseph, Job, Esther, and Daniel. At the time of their trials these saints could not see what was happening behind the scene. Joseph had no idea that he would be taken from a place of captivity to a place of honor and authority. God intentionally kept these dear saints in the place of simple, abiding faith.
The greatest example is most clearly demonstrated in Christ’s death on the cross. The devil was bewildered and hoodwinked by God the Father, and Satan played perfectly into the glorious plan of God. What the devil perceived as certain victory was his ultimate defeat and demise. The disciples were so disheartened when Jesus died on the cross, but the very cross that killed Jesus was the very instrument that was used to save their lives and work out God’s purposes. Without the dark nights after the cross there would have never been the words, "And when the day of Pentecost was fully come…" Acts 2:1.
These examples provide with a source of assurance that right now in our time of famine and hardship, God is at work. Romans 8:28 — “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose.” No trial is ever without eternal value and fruit when it concerns the child of God. I know that this is not a new or startling revelation, but it is plain, Gospel talk. It may not ease your current pain or lift one bad circumstance, but these promises do bring a source of hope that feeds us and sustains us in our times of famine. There will be an end to your famine.
In The Meantime
“But what happens in the meantime? How am I to respond to my situation? I am in the trial of my life, and I have no word from heaven. I do not want to move into spiritual complacency and watch my family or those around me lose heart and go the way of the world.” Until we come through this spiritual famine what should our response be? Let us turn our hearts to the Word of the Lord for help. I want to look at two men in the Word that had different responses to their famine experience. One reaped a bitter harvest, and the other reaped the blessing of God. Let us look at Abraham and Isaac.
Genesis 12:1-7a — "Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will show thee: And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed. So Abram departed, as the LORD had spoken unto him; …and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan; …And the LORD appeared unto Abram, and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land…"
Here we read of the departure of Abraham from his homeland. He has begun his faith journey. God has spoken to Abraham about His journey into a land that God would reveal as his inheritance. So Abraham strikes out following the Word of the Lord to a place that God would show Him. As Abraham moves south into the land of Canaan, the Lord appears to him and says, in essence, "This is it, strike your tent stakes here; in this place I will bless you. In this place I will increase you; in this place will I defend you, dare anyone lay a finger on you here."
There was one problem though. The land of promise looked more like a wilderness than somewhere you would want to raise a family and claim as your own, because there was a grievous famine in the land. Genesis 12:10 — “And there was a famine in the land… for the famine was grievous in the land.” At this point and time Abraham was at a crossroads in His faith walk. How could he explain to those around him that he had heard from God, and this land that appeared so devoid of promise and life was the place that God had chosen for Him at this point of His journey? The Bible is silent concerning Abraham’s thoughts on this issue, but I am sure that he must have felt confused. “How could this be? God promised me life. He promised me blessing, and what I see right now is totally contradictory to His promise.”
Here is a man that risked the welfare of his family and all those that were in his household to follow God in this journey of faith. I am sure he must have thought about his wife, “What will she think?” and his nephew Lot, who had followed his uncle along as well, not to mention his own fears and regrets that probably flooded his heart and mind, “Did I hear God right? This land of promise looks more like the land of hopelessness.” I am sure that the enemy was there as well, pressing this man to the point of despair with venomous accusations, “You failed God; your family is going to starve all because of your silly notion that God has led you here!”
The position of Abraham’s tent reflected his current dilemma. Genesis 12:8 — "And he removed from thence unto a mountain on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, having Bethel on the west, and Hai on the east: and there he built an altar unto the LORD, and called upon the name of the LORD." On one side of his tent there is Bethel, and on the other there is the city of Ai. Both speak volumes into this man’s life’s journey. "Bethel" is called the House of God, the place where God reveals Himself to the believer. We see this later in Jacob’s life. In Genesis 28:12-17 we see that Bethel is where God meets with humanity; it is called the very doorway to God. Jacob sees the ladder upon which angels are descending and ascending. John 1:51 gives us the Biblical interpretation of the spiritual significance of Bethel. Jesus alludes to this very familiar Old Testament passage and tells Nathaniel that He was the doorway to heaven and that He was the ladder that Jacob saw.
Abraham has Bethel on the one side, a physical city that represents the presence of Christ and the promise of His fullness, and on the other side, he has "Ai", the city of ruins. Ai represents in some ways the condition and circumstances we find ourselves in. It is the place of wreckage and havoc, a city of ruin. In a very real sense, Abraham is between the Rock (Christ Jesus) and a hard place filled with ruin and destruction.
Abraham’s dilemma can be compared to many believers living in desperate times and hard circumstances. We see the promise of the supply of life in Christ on the one side, and on the other we see the ruin (hard circumstances) and famine (a place where there may be no outward appearance of God’s blessing). Now Abraham is faced with a decision. Stay in the land by faith until God fulfills His promise or move out in unbelief from this place of hardship and pain into an easier place. This does not mean that Abraham would altogether forget the promises of God, rather he would simply postpone them for sometime in the future.
This is the temptation of many today. The cares and burdens of life are so great that we feel we need to soothe our pains by yielding to a neutral place or a demilitarized zone. The temptation for Christians is to bail out of difficulty by not pressing the Lord on His promise to help and provide. Many are tempted to grow lax and complacent in the Lord just to ease the pain and soothe their spirit. Again, this does not mean forsaking God altogether; it just means that we will postpone the promises of God for a later time.
Abraham, like many battle-worn Christians today, made his decision, and he moved out of the land of promise and presence of God into the land of Egypt. Genesis 12:10 — “And there was a famine in the land: and Abram went down into Egypt to sojourn there...” Over and over again throughout scripture we find Egypt to be a type of man’s strength and wisdom, and we are warned not to trust in Egypt for help. Abraham left the land of promises and moved into Egypt to wait out the famine. Let me explain further the significance of Egypt. Egypt represented the soft place, the easy place. In the hard times we are constantly bombarded with the temptation for the easy way out of our trials. Many are taking that easy pathway. I know many who once had a zeal for Christ and a willingness to go wherever He leads, to face men and devils alike for their love of Christ, but now they have stopped the battle by settling for a comfortable place.
This is in no way condemning those who are facing this temptation or have succumbed to its lure. God sees the hardship, and he knows the pain that we face in such times. Jesus Himself faced this same temptation in the Garden of Gethsemane. The mental and physical stress was so great that He sweat great drops of blood. In our dilemma God has provided us with a great High Priest that knows and feels our pain. We do not have to be condemned even if we find ourselves in the “soft place”.
This temptation is one of the most serious trials that a Christian can possibly face. Every child of God will be brought here at some point in their journey. In these times it is good to remember the reasons why we are allowed to pass through such awful times of heartache and testing. In Abraham’s life God had a plan and purpose for the famine and the hard place he was in, and in our lives we must remember God is at work.
What was God doing at this point in Abraham’s life? Abraham was called to bless the nations by a seed that God was going to supernaturally produce in Abraham’s life, that seed being the Lord Jesus Christ. This could only be done through a heart of faith. Abraham could not produce this in and of himself, just as we cannot produce such life on our own. God must produce this kind of faith in our lives by presenting us with situations and circumstances where we are forced to trust God.
You see, Abraham needed faith to produce the life of his son because Sarah was barren. God calls Abraham to a land that is stricken by famine so that he would begin to trust God for fruit in a barren land. The faith that was to be produced here would be the seed of faith necessary to produce his promise child. Abraham was to stay and abide in Canaan, sow in faith and watch God give the increase. Imagine what fruit would have been birthed in him and his family’s heart if they had stayed in Canaan and received a "miracle crop". Sarah would have seen that God truly was a God of miracles and supply, and she would have never tried to work things out on her own. Lot may have never left for Sodom if he could have seen this man abide in trust in God alone. We would be asking the question today, "Ishmael who?"
The Danger of Moving
How do I know that it was God’s will for Abraham to stay in Canaan and abide? There are three reasons in particular that I can see from scripture. The first is found in the outcome and fruit that was born from his trip into Egypt. Egypt had plenty and offered Abraham a safe haven from the famine. Other than lying about Sarah to Pharaoh, Abraham seemed to come away from Egypt unscathed and unharmed, richer than he was when he arrived. However upon further inspection of Abraham’s caravan you find an Egyptian slave that was given to Sarah as a gift from Pharaoh. Her name was Hagar, the same slave that was given to Abraham to produce Ishmael.
Abraham’s journey into an easy place set off a chain of history-altering events. The first was that his wife was now taken from a place of security to a place of vulnerability. She felt uncovered and uncertain about her future. This is played out later in the fact that she offers Hagar to Abraham as a surrogate mother for her to have a baby. Whenever we travel off the road of trust and dependency upon God we are heading into a realm of vulnerability and uncertainty.
Imagine what would have happened if Abraham would have sat his wife down before they left Canaan and spoken frankly and honestly with her, “Sarah, God called us into this place. I know right now it seems very difficult and barren, but God said Canaan is where He will bless us. Therefore it is here we will reside until God comes through.” Sarah would have had to face her own fears and come through to trusting God herself. She would have tasted the fruits of trust in God and learned the valuable lesson of God dependency, but instead she was led into a land of uncertainty and vulnerability.
In the same way when we leave the hard place in search of an easier way we are in actuality going into a place of uncertainty. As long as Abraham stayed in Canaan he could stand on God’s word of promise, “Here I will bless thee; here I will defend thee, and here I will make of thee a great nation.” When he left that place of abiding, he lost security and had to rely upon his own human ingenuity and ability to protect his family. God was faithful to Abraham in that He protected him in spite of himself, but one must question, was this God’s way? God’s will is for His people to sometimes stay in the hard place, to wait it out by faith.
The second was that Lot was taught that it is okay to take the easy way out, and by this he settled for the well-watered plains of Sodom. It is very interesting that Lot chose this just after his return from Egypt. What could have happened to this man and his family we may never know. There is a very real possibility that Lot could have learned the same faith lesson as Sarah. His uncle could have set an example of faith by not being moved by the temporal world that is seen. One cannot blame another wholly for one’s life choices; every man must give an account before God for his own actions. However, I wonder what would have been different about Lot’s life had Abraham stayed in Canaan.
The third and most tragic of all effects of Abraham’s misstep is found in the life of Ishmael. His life is one of the most tragic scenes of how a believer can negatively affect others. For a moment, let us forget the symbolism that Paul uses of Ishmael when he compared him with the Old Covenant. Look at him as a living, breathing human being brought into existence by another man’s disobedience to God. God prophesied before he was born that he would be an uncontrollable, angry and bitter man. Genesis 16:12a says, "He will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him..." The literal translation of wild man is “a person that is part beast, jack ass, and man”. Abraham produced one of the most bitter and angry individuals that has ever lived. When Abraham put this young man out from his house, he created a monster.
It is no secret and it is no coincidence that the Islamic religion traces their roots to Ishmael — a religion filled with wrath, anger, murder, and rejection. They are under the same spirit that motivated Ishmael to mock and disdain Isaac — the spirit of jealousy, rage, envy, and hatred. Where did this begin? The answer is when Abraham began his journey to Egypt. With every footstep away from the place of Canaan, Abraham was getting closer and closer to producing Ishmael. What do I mean?
When we step out of the presence of Christ and abiding in the Word of God by faith we are in danger of a root of bitterness springing up to defile our hearts. Unbelief in the heart is the seed of bitterness. Our hearts become fertile ground when we begin to walk out of God’s presence and dwell in unbelief and fear. This bitter root in Abraham’s family was produced by fear and unbelief. We must be careful in hard times to keep our hearts free of bitterness. Many Christians blame God for their trial and become bitter, and the testimony of Christ is spoiled through the bitterness in their hearts. Had Abraham embraced God in the midst of his most trying time instead of moving outside of the place of provision, his household would have been spared an awful root of bitterness. In the same way, if we as Christians find God in our bitter times we will not become bitter.
Called to Abide in the Land of Promise
Isaac faced the same situation and received a Word from God to stay and plant in the time of famine. Isaac did as he was commanded and reaped a great harvest. Genesis 26:1-4 — "And there was a famine in the land, besides the first famine that was in the days of Abraham. And Isaac went unto Abimelech king of the Philistines unto Gerar. And the LORD appeared unto him, and said, Go not down into Egypt; dwell in the land which I shall tell thee of: Sojourn in this land, and I will be with thee, and will bless thee; for unto thee, and unto thy seed, I will give all these countries, and I will perform the oath which I swore unto Abraham thy father." Genesis 26:12-13 — "Then Isaac sowed in that land, and received in the same year a hundredfold: and the LORD blessed him. And the man waxed great, and went forward, and grew until he became very great."
Isaac did not go one step out of Canaan. He stayed in the most difficult place for he and his family. The Bible says that he stayed in "Gerar", which in the Hebrew means lodging place. He lodged in the land of famine, and that same year he received a 100-fold harvest. When everyone else’s harvest was withering Isaac grew a bumper crop. How? He did not move from the place of obedience to God’s Word to him. How difficult that must have been. How extremely testing and trying. At this point in his life he had a wife and two children.
Impossible circumstances and hard trials are facets in our journey of faith that can never be taken away or misunderstood. Faith must be faced with impossibility to produce fruit or life; it can be no other way. The fruit that God wants to produce can only come by way of faith in the most horrendous places. There is absolutely no way around it. As Christians we must learn this lesson and arm ourselves with this knowledge. This knowledge alone is not our source, only God is, but it helps us to fix our hearts upon God in the land of famine. Isaac had a fixed heart on God and His Word.
Beloved, whatever you are facing right now, you must know that God’s position towards you has not changed. His promises are sure. He will deliver, defend, and provide for His own. Though you may be moved inwardly at times into doubt and fear, keep calling on the Lord. He hears even the silent cries that no one else can hear. Do not move into the easy place to ease your pain. Run to God. He is a helper in time of need, and He will help you in your time of intense temptation to move into the easy place. God is not angry at you for your struggle. He stands ready to succor you because He knows the intense turmoil you face. Hebrews 2:17-18 — "Wherefore in all things it behooved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people. For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succor them that are tempted." The Greek meaning of the word "succor" is to give aid to and to relieve. Jesus stands ready to pour in the healing balm of His presence, to heal you, and to relieve your troubled mind.
Run to Him, and as you do you will find a harvest of life beginning to grow in you heart. Though circumstances around you seem hopeless, you will have a song and a joy that is unexplainable. Like Isaac, do not move from His presence in Canaan or cease hearing His Word that will sustain you through your famine.
If you have run into Egypt you must know that God wants you to come to Him. If you have ever heard from God or been touched by God you know that you are not satisfied in Egypt. Get up, turn your heart towards Him and get back into the promises of God. He will renew you and bless you. He will take away all bitterness and melt your heart again. He is not angry with you, but He says you must move back into His presence. If you are bitter at God, turn your heart to Him. He has not allowed this famine in order to kill you but to drive you to Him. It is time, like Abraham, to put Ishmael out of your tent, or put bitterness out of your heart. Like Isaac, as you sow to your spirit in the hard times you will find God’s grace is sufficient to help you in the time of trouble. Won’t you come and let Him touch you in your famine?