Date: April 15, 2007

Bible Text: Deuteronomy 32:9-12 |

Series:

Turn in your Bibles, please, to Deuteronomy chapter 32.  We’ll be reading verses 9-12.  For the Lord’s portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.  He found him in a desert land and in a waste howling wilderness, he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye.  As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings.  Taketh them, beareth them on her wings, so the Lord alone did lead him and there was no strange god with him.

 

My text is found in verse 11.  As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth her wings.  Taketh them, veareth them on her wings, so the Lord alone did lead him.  In these passages, we see that the Lord dealt with Israel, with Jacob, as an eagle does her eaglets.  There are four things that we’re shown that God does that the eagle does with her young.  First of all, she stirs up the nest.  Secondly, she flutters over her young.  Then third, she spreads abroad her wings, and then she taketh them and beareth them on her wings.  AS we look at God’s word, we see where He is compared to an eagle many times, and we’re compared to an eagle’s babies.  He said, I bear you on eagles’ wings, I brought you to myself.  Isaiah wrote, They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings as eagles.  Wait upon the Lord, the Bible says, and you’ll gain power like an eagle.  He said, when a saint does that, he shall run and not be weary, and he’ll walk and not faint.  I’m sure that most of you know that when an eagle builds her nest, it’s not on the ground.  In fact, as I’ve been out west many times, you’ll see where the eagles’ nests are way up high in the mountains.  They like to build their nest above every place else.  And she starts with rough material:  limbs, branches, sticks.  She starts with a rough exterior and then comes in with straw, and then comes in more and more with soft materials—maybe an old rag, maybe the skin of some animal, maybe her own down.  But the eagle’s nest is taken from the outside as being very rough to the inside where it’s filled with downy soft material.  So when the eaglets are born, they are born into a very nice environment.  They’re born into this downy soft area, and I can just see them kind of bouncing around.  They open up their mouth, and their mother feeds them.  It’s like some of you; you love to just lay in bed and be taken care of.  They like it; they enjoy it.  And when comparing this to the Christian life, we can remember when we were saved, we liked everything about it.  I remember I was saved as a young boy, but it was just like taking a shower on the inside.  I just felt good all over.  I wanted to run around, as a couple have been preaching about that lately, I just wanted to tell everybody, isn’t that true?  When you accept the Lord as your Savior, you’re happy, you want to tell everybody, you feel good about everybody.  Believe it or not, I even liked my brothers for a while.  I just thought everything was real good.  I see people get saved, and you can just tell by their look out in the congregation they’re not deadpan like some of you.  I mean, they’re excited!  They just got saved!  They were going to Hell and now they’re going to Heaven.  They’re thrilled about it!  They like the singing, they like the special music.  They just talk about it.  Man, did you see this?  Did you hear that?  They like the training on the family, they like the school.  Just on and on, they don’t know how they got along without it.  And like I say, they want to tell everybody about it.  And they think anybody that doesn’t accept Christ is awful dumb.  They can’t understand why everybody doesn’t want to get saved.  Now, some preachers take advantage of this idea, and they’ll preach a sermon that says something like, ‘Get Saved, and You’ll Live Happily Ever After.’  ‘Get Saved, and Nothing Will Go Wrong.’  That’s not true.  You see, when we come into the spiritual realm, everything’s great, we’re bouncing in the down, we’re enjoying things.  But if we don’t show new Christians the other side of the coin, if we don’t show them that everything’s not going to be perfect, they’re going to be surprised someday, and they may just quit.  In fact, I think that happens often.  You know, when Paul was saved, Ananias was not sent to show him how happy, happy, happy everything was going to be, but Ananias was sent to show him what great things thou shalt suffer for my name’s sake.  And there’s some suffering to being a Christian.  Again I say, if we don’t understand it, we’ll throw the towel in, we’ll just think this Christianity doesn’t work.  So as a new Christian, we play around in the down.  We think we’ll never sin again.  We just love every Christian.  We think the preacher is the dumbest. . .the dumbest, that’s after you’re saved for a year.  We think the preacher is the smartest guy on earth when we’re first saved.  I mean, we just love everything about Christianity.  We just go around saying, “Amen, Hallelujah.  Life is great,” but it doesn’t keep up that way.  It’s not just a bed of roses.  It’s not just a nest of down.  That little eaglet wakes up one morning, and the Bible says that the mother stirs up the nest.  Just like a pot of spaghetti—stirs up the nest.  And that little eaglet all of the sudden says, “Oops, something is wrong; something is sticking me.  There’s a briar here.  I thought the whole nest was soft fur and down.  There’s a branch . . . oops, what’s wrong?  It’s not all bad, but it’s not all good.”  You see what that eagle is doing is stirring up the nest preparing the eaglets to get out.  The eaglet might ask, “What did I do wrong?  I must’ve displeased my mother,” but what the eaglet doesn’t know is that his mother has a plan.  She’s stirring up the nest in design.  Did you know that when most Christians start growing and God allows some problems to come into their life, they usually don’t know what is happening.  I mean, they just absolutely don’t know what’s happening.  All they can do is go to the Bible and quote.  “All things work together for good to them that love the Lord.”  But in reality they can’t say, “Well it’s happening because of this.”  And when they get alone they’re saying, “God, what’s wrong?”  They don’t’ understand that as a Christian, problems will come into our lives.  Briars will come into the nest.  The mother is God Who has something in mind, and that was bringing on rest.  If we could’ve seen that little eaglet we’d say, “What’s wrong?  You’ve lost your smile.”  Ever see a Christian, they’re not backslidden, and I don’t mean they’re living in sin, but you come across them and they really aren’t happy like they were, and they kind of have a question mark in their life.  They don’t really, just don’t comprehend what’s going on.  God’s stirring up the nest.

 

When God first did that with me, I actually kind of got mad at God, and I think some of you do too.  I use illustrations over and over, but you know when I surrendered to preach.  Let me talk to some of you freshman or some of you college students.  When I surrendered to preach and went off to Bible college, I honestly thought, well I’ve given up, now God has to take care of me.  Boy, I had a rude awakening.  All of the sudden I found I had to take care of myself.  I had to get a job; I had to make money.  And even as I was making money sometimes, I couldn’t make ends meet.  I mean, things were rough, and I can remember saying, “God, what’s wrong?  You called me to preach, I answered the call, I’m working, you’ve got to take care of me.”  But as I look back, I know exactly what was happening—He was stirring up the nest.  Stirring up the nest.  And boy, one thing after another, especially being called to full-time service, one thing after another, boy when God led me out to Ebeneazar, out in the country out there, and I was supposed to be a youth pastor.  I showed up and the preacher gave me the church, and I was supposed to preach.  Whoah!  You talk about stirring up the nest.  I didn’t know how to preach.  I mean, I had taken some classes, but I had never preached.  All of the sudden.  Imagine, you don’t know how to preach; you’ve never preached before.  Next Sunday, you’re supposed to get up in front of a church.  I can remember saying, “Oh, God, what are you doing to me?”  He was stirring up the nest.  He was stirring up the nest.  When I went to Pennsylvania, the youth pastor and the pastor started a fight with the deacons, or they started a fight with them, and he finished it.  That’s the way it ought to be.  Uh, when they were fighting out there, and then the pastor left, and the people said, “You’re supposed to know what you’re doing.”  I mean, honestly, it’s one thing to hear a story, but it’s another thing. . . I can remember falling on my knees before God and crying and weeping, and saying, “Oh, God, what are you doing to me?  I can’t do this.”  But He was stirring up the nest.  When I went to visit the Chairman of the Deacon Board, and he pulled a shotgun on me, God was stirring up the nest, if you understand.  God was taking a fellow that kind of thought that the religion and the Christianity and the church was done by man’s strength and knocking him down and showing him that it was done by being on your knees and trusting in God and trusting in Him.  He was stirring up the nest.  Strirring up the nest.  Our problem is when God starts stirring up the nest, we get mad.  I mean, I don’t mean just mad, the problem is, we quit.  We’re too good.  We’re too valuable.  How can God do that to me?  How can it happen?  I see people fall into sin.  I see people get bad attitudes.  I see people grit their jaw against God, and God gets ahold of them and starts stirring up the nest.  Instead of saying, “Oh God, I’m sorry; forgive me,” we grit our jaw even more so, and we say, “You can’t do that to me.”  Oh yes He can.  Oh yes He can, and He’ll just keep on stirring until we get things right with Him.

 

Israel had favor in the eyes of the Pharaoh when Joseph was there.  Think about how Israel got down there.  Joseph saved Egypt from starvation, and they wanted him. . . they said, “Come on, bring your family down.”  Seventy in that family.  “Come on, bring them down.”  Boy, when they went down, they were treated like royalty.  Joseph was number two in the country.  They were given the finest of homes and the finest of food.  They were treated like kings.  But Joseph died, and that Pharaoh died.  Another Pharaoh died, and another Pharaoh died until Pharaohs came into power that could care less about Joseph.  And these people were nothing but foreigners.  As they were growing and growing and multiplying, they were nothing but a pesky. . . you see, they were nothing but people in their way.  So instead of being placed on a pedestal, instead of having the finest homes, they were treated like slaves.  They were made slaves.  They were beaten.  They were made to do the work that the Egyptians didn’t want to do.  And I’m sure these people of God said, “What’s wrong, God?  What’s wrong?  We’re your chosen people, God.  What’s wrong?”  I’ll tell you what’s wrong—God was stirring up the nest.  God didn’t want them to be too comfortable.  They may have stayed there forever.  God had plans for them.  We see this throughout the Bible.  When Peter got away from God in John chapter 21, he said, “I’m through preaching.”  He said, “I’m tired.”  He said, “I quit.”  And he gathered some of his friends and went down to fish.  Now Peter was an expert fisherman, he was a professional fisherman.  And he had caught many a fish with that boat and those nets.  But when he got his friends together and they went fishing, the Bible says they didn’t catch one.  I think it’s interesting—not one.  I doubt that that had ever happened to them before.  The Bible says that he fished all night and took absolutely nothing.  What was happening?  I’ll tell you what—God was stirring up the nest.  He didn’t want him to be a prosperous businessman.  He wanted him to be a successful preacher, you see.  He didn’t want to see him succeed in this way, He had visions of Peter someday preaching at Pentecost seeing 3,000 saved at one service.  So he had to get him to the shore where Jesus was broiling some fish and had to remind Peter, “Feed my sheep.  Forget the fish, I want you to be fishers of men.”  Are you thinking about your life?  As I’m giving these Bible illustrations, the sad thing again that when so many get their nests stirred up, when things aren’t as easy going, when they aren’t getting as much attention, the sad thing is, they run from God.  “God doesn’t love me.  What’s wrong with God?  I’ve given myself; I’ve tried, it doesn’t work.”  Why don’t you trust God?  Why don’t you quit turning on God?  I see some of you; it’s as though you’re mad at God because God doesn’t do everything your own way.  My friend, if God did it your way, this world would be an awful mess.  Don’t run from God.  In fact, that’s what normally happens.  People mess their lives up and the results come, and then they blame God.  You say, “I don’t feel the way I used to.”  Well, don’t travel on your feelings.  Travel by faith.  We ought to be like Job when he had those problems, he said, “Though he slay me, I will trust him.”  And then he went on and said, “And when he hath tried me, I will come forth as gold.”  You see, when problems come, and they will come, college students, they will come; when troubles come, teenagers, we ought not to run from those troubles.  Mom, Dad, we ought not to run from those troubles, we ought to be like A. J. Gordon.  I’ll never forget it.  He said, “Be thorough with me, Lord.  Be thorough.”  Do you believe in God?  Then the things you ought to do is say, “God, am I right with you?  Do I have sin in my life?”  You get that taken care of, “Be thorough with me, Lord.”  Don’t get mad at God.  We think we are so all-powerful and important, and God ought to take care of us at all costs.  Don’t get mad at God.  Ask God to be thorough.

 

That little eaglet goes, “What’s the matter with mama?  It’s just getting more and more uncomfortable.”  I’ll tell you what’s the matter with mama, she wanted them out of the nest.  She wanted them gone.  People get saved and they just sit around.  Oh, I like the preaching.  Man, I like that choir number; that skinny guy up there, man, he’s so good.  They think he’s great, they don’t know Brady.  He’s just great, man.  Man, that band is great.  And the Christians—isn’t it nice to have friends.  You see, everything just seems so good until the nest starts getting stirred up.  There’s a time, Christian, when you need to get out of the nest.  God never saved anybody to warm a pew.  He never, never saved somebody to sit around; you’re saved to serve.  And you come to the place where God said, “I want you in the bus ministry.  I want you in the bus ministry.”  You say, “Oh my, the bus ministry?  There goes my Saturdays, there goes my…I don’t want to be in the bus ministry.”  He starts stirring up the nest.  Get out of the nest!  You say, “I want things to be comfortable.”  Well God doesn’t want you to be comfortable.  God will say, “I want you to up your tithe.”  You say, “Stewardship is over.”  It’s never over.  “I want you to up your tithe.”  Now listen to me.  “I want you to up your tithe.”  “What is this church?  All they want is money, money, money.  All these Baptists want is money.”  No, no.  He’s trying to stir up your nest.  Let Him stir it up.  Be excited about Him stirring it up, you see.  “Get in the nursery.”  “Oh, I take care of my babies all of the time; let somebody else…”   No, mama, they’re your responsibility.  Get in the nursery.  Hey, whatever it is, get out of the pew.  Get out of the nest.  That’s what the Lord is trying to say, “Get out, and get going, man!”  You’ll die if you don’t.  Can you imagine an eaglet just sitting in the nest her whole life?  The early church of Jerusalem had it pretty easy.  You just read about them.  3,000 saved in one Sunday, 1,000 saved another Sunday, I mean, they were growing by leaps and bounds.  They really really were going to town until God started stirring up the nest.  They started getting locked up.  Peter was locked up in jail; they started getting stoned.  They started getting executed.  James was killed for the cause of Christ.  Now you think, to put it into a practical sense, you look at it and you think about it, how do you think they felt?  Here they were new Christians just saved following Jesus, man, look at the power of the Holy Spirit in our midst!  And all of the sudden, people’s heads were rolling!  All of the sudden, people were stoning them; all of the sudden people hated them.  They were the most hated group of people on earth.  They were hated.  God was just stirring up the nest.  God was saying, “I want you spread abroad.  I want you to win souls.  I want you to spread all over the world.  Go out into all the world and preach the Gospel.”  That’s all He was saying.  What He’s saying is, “You can’t be right with me and sit around.”  Got that?  “You can’t be right with me and sit around.”

God has no saints that He doesn’t want to serve.  We at one time had an assistant pastor who liked to baby people.  And every time somebody’s nest got stirred up, they would run to that assistant pastor.  Ooooh, and that assistant pastor would burp them and change their diaper, and everything would be okay.  Let me say this—that was wrong.  You know, some people say, “What I want is a nice, soft pastor or assistant pastor to listen to my problems.”  None of them around.  We’re nest stirrers.  We love you, we want the best for you, but forget about this stuff of being babied.  That’s not what you need.  You see, that’s the problem.  People start growing, God starts throwing some problems in, people come running to get burped a little bit.  That’s not what you need!  What you need is to move forward.  What you need is to just keep on going for God.  You see, young Christians, they love it when they’re first saved.  Praise God for Old Joe.  Old Joe got saved.  Amen!  Old Joe got baptized.  Amen!  Old Joe joined the church.  Amen!  By the way, bus workers, you’re not doing your job because there weren’t enough people in that baptismal tank after church.  You say, “Praise God.  A whole family got saved.”  Then get a whole family in the tank.  It’s your job.  But we enjoy it, Christians, don’t we?  A guy gets saved, a guy gets baptized, man, the guy joins the church, the guy comes out faithfully, the guy starts tithing—wow!  This is great.  We love Old Joe.  But after a while, Old Joe is expected to become a working member of the church.  And after a while, he’s not going to be privileged anymore.  Everybody’s not going to be patting him on the back all of the time.  Then people say, “What happened?”  It’s time to get to work, that’s what’s happened.  It’s time to do something for God besides go to church picnics and sing songs.  It’s time to get to work.

 

First of all, the Bible says God stirs up the nest.  And secondly, the Bible says the eagle fluttereth over her young.  You know, if that eaglet doesn’t get out of the nest, it’ll wake up some morning, and there will be nothing much left of that nest but what it’s sitting in.   The mother will actually tear the nest apart.  That old eaglet is sitting down there on a couple of briars, and he can see, he looks down, just picture it on the ledge of a mountain, and that old little eaglet sitting there kind of looks down, and then looks up, and there’s it’s mother—14 foot wing span fluttering up above.  What it’s mother is saying is, “Look up here.  Look up here!  Look up.”  That’s what God wants us to do.  Look up; don’t look down.  Look up!  You know, about a little over a year ago, some of us went mountain climbing.  I couldn’t help thinking about this.  I thought, when we were near the top, I don’t know, about 13,000 feet, and we were on an inch or so hanging on the side like this here, and the guy said, “You just gotta kind of move over here slowly and then you jump three feet.”  And he said, “I’ll just tell you over on the other side there’s a  hand hold.  And over on the other side there’s a black rock about this side.  Just jump.”  And then he said I’ll never forget, he said, “Do you want a thrill?  Look down when you jump.”  3,000 feet straight down.  Do you think I looked down?  I didn’t look down.  I never looked down.  I couldn’t help but think of that, I never look down.  When I was in climbing school,  I looked down when we were about 1,000 feet and it scared me to death.  I looked down and went, “Huh…”  Look down?  I’m not going to look down.  I’m going to look up.  Again, as I was climbing, there’s something else we learned.  Once you pass a certain point, you’re not going to climb down.  Pastor DeLong is laughing a little bit there.  I got him to go up about ten feet.  About ten feet, it’s harder to go down, isn’t it?  I had to take his feet and place them on it, do you understand it?  You don’t come down.  It’s destruction if you come down.  You see, and that’s how it is in our Christian life.  And that’s where so many of you ruin your lives, and ruin your families.  God starts stirring up the nest, and He’s fluttering, and He’s saying, “Look up, look up!”  And you’re looking down.  You’re going to fall.  You will fall.  You start trying to climb down.  You can’t see your feet; you can’t go down.  You’ve got to go up!  You’re going to kill yourself.  Look up.  One of the best pieces of advice I could ever give you as a Christian is to look up.  One of the best pieces of advice I could ever give you is to look to Jesus.  Look to Jesus.  The rougher it gets, the more you need to look to God.  II Chronicles 7:14 says, If my people which are called by my name shall humble themselves and pray and seek my face.  Seek my face, seek my face…  John 20:20 reads, Then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord.  When were they glad?  When they saw each other?  When they saw Peter?  No.  When they saw James?  No.  When they saw John?  No!  Then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord.  Hebrews 12:1-2  Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us.  Looking unto Jesus,  do you understand?  Looking unto Jesus, not to each other.  Oh, we get awful disappointed when we look to each other.  I get so sad sometime when I see the way Christians act in front of each other.  I was talking to the teachers.  There was one teacher that we had that liked to complain to the other teachers.  And what that teacher would say was somewhat true.  But as the other teachers listened, what do you think happened?  Do you think it edified their life?  No.  It just tore them down.  And I look at the teenagers, and, listen to me, teenagers.  I hear the teenagers are always complaining, let’s say, about the candy sale.  Oh, no, don’t talk to me about the candy sale.  The candy sale is going to start in a month?  Why don’t you just stay home if it’s so bad?  Huh, teenagers?  Why don’t you not go to Michigan, if it’s so bad?  Why don’t you just stay home?  Amen?  If we were to all of the sudden say, “There is no candy sale!”  You’d say, “Oh my, all the fun we’ve had, all the enjoyment we’ve had!  Man, we’re going to have to go to school instead of going on the candy sale!”  But it’s in vogue to complain, so you do it.  That’s sin.  It’s rotten, dirty sin.  And it seems in Christianity, in college, I mean, I haven’t heard you, but I know what’s in vogue in college.  “Man, the food isn’t that good.”  You didn’t eat that good at home.  You say, “There’s something I don’t like.”  Shut up!  Shut up!  Somebody is slaving in the kitchen for you.  You see, what I’m saying is it seems to me that in Christianity today we think we’re better if we’re complaining.  “Man, that teacher.  He’s a good guy, but he doesn’t know how to teach.”  Shut up!  We were looking in our devotions yesterday at Hebrews 3:13.  But exhort one another daily while it is called today, lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.  Isn’t the food good?  I think it’s great food.  It’s such great food that it puts all kinds of pounds on me just going in the kitchen.  I just, man, I can’t stay away from it.  That tapioca pudding and those peaches—I didn’t eat it, kids.  I’ve got to pay my kids if I eat it.  I didn’t eat it, but boy, man, that beef and the potatoes, the chicken last night.  I ate the chicken last night.  I don’t know how many legs I had.  It’s good!  How many kids, honestly, how many high school kids would like it if your parents said, “You cannot go on the candy sale?  It’s over; it’s done with.”  How many of you would like it?  Now, I know you like it, don’t you?  How many honestly like it?  How many like going to Detroit?  How many like going with your friends?  How many like it?  Now how about asking yourself why you complain about it.  I’ll tell you why.  The Devil gets to you.  The Devil wants to have a bad attitude.  “Man, if we could only have our finances taken care of.”  Forget that.  Just give what you’re supposed to give.  “Man, we’re working so hard.  Man, we’re over there working.  Why isn’t Joe here working?”  Shut up about Joe; do what you ought to do!  But that’s why, that’s why God says look to Him.  Look up.  So many Christians look like they suck on 15 lemons to get ready for their day.  They look like they just fell off the back end of a hurse.  I mean it.  And what they’ll say is, “That is balance.”  No it’s not—that is backslidden.  Don’t look to others.  Though we ought to be helping others, we ought to be doing anything we can do to uplift one another, but you look to others, you’ll fall.  You will fall hard.  I would’ve quit a long time ago if I was looking at others.  I would’ve thrown the towel in a long time ago.  You look at Moses.  The Bible says he endured seeing him who was invisible.  Amen.  You look at Moses and the congregation he had.  What a bunch of murmurers.  What a bunch of complainers.  “You took us out here to kill us!  Oh, Moses, we can’t even have our leaks and onions anymore.”  I like to read about Moses because it reminds me of my congregation.  “Here are we are going to the Promise Land, but we can’t have our leaks and onions.  You’re going to kill us out here.”  But he just kept on looking at Him.  He kept on looking at Him.  I say again, when God stirs up the nest, He flutters over us and He says, “Look up here.”  Don’t look at the church.  Don’t look at circumstances.  Don’t look at others.  Look at Him.  Remember when there were 5,000 to be fed?  And one disciple said, “Let’s look at money.  Three hundred pennyworth isn’t enough.”  He looked at money.  Another one looked at the things.  Another one said, “All we have is five loaves and two fishes.  What are they among so many?”  Not one person looked to Jesus.  But who was the answer?  Jesus.  He can supply anything.  Don’t look down.  Don’t look around.  Don’t look at others.  Isaiah said In the day that Uziah died, I saw the Lord high and lifted up.  And I’ll tell you what, if you want to look for God, look high and lifted up.  People that look at circumstances and tragedies and failures, they fall.  I know I’m just like you.  Sometimes I feel like that little eaglet.  And more than once I just kind feel like I’m up on a little ledge.  Just like I’m up there.  Oh, how did I get up here?  If you’ve been living for God, God put you there, you see.  If you’ve gotten yourself in trouble, then for sure you need to turn to God, but if you’re living for God, He’ll put you up there.  God wants you up there, you see.  What do you want to be, down in the valley?  What happened?  You know God will do a lot of things to get you to look up.  He’ll bring tragedy in your life.  I mean tragedy—terrible tragedy, I’ve seen it.  And where a person couldn’t look to God at all, that tragedy comes, and they look up.   Thank God for that tragedy if it gets you to look up.  He’ll use sermons sometime.  Boy, I don’t have it as much anymore, but through the years, hundreds of times people have said, “Boy, you were preaching right at me.  What were you doing?  Were you reading my mail?  Were you listening to my phone conversations?  You were preaching right at me.”  I heard an old preacher say, “You throw a rock into a pack of dogs,” now this is profound, that’s why Pastor DeLong likes it, “You throw a rock into a pack of dogs, and the one that squeals is the one you hit.”  And I’ll tell you what, when you preach and you preach up a storm, and people say, and I’ve had them say it, “Who told you about me?  Who told you?”  All I did was throw a rock into a pack of dogs, that’s all.  “You tapping my phone?”  No, the throne, you see, the throne of God.  Now, what’s happening is, God’s trying to get your attention.  He’s trying to get your attention when you’ve got problems in your family and in the church, or whatever it might be.  When all the bills are paid for and we’re sitting here in padded pews and the buses are no problem, I’ll tell you what we’re going to do, we’re going to backslide.  That’s when we start looking horizontally.  That’s when we start looking around ourselves instead of looking up.  And when your family is perfectly happy and all the bills are paid and you have all the leisure time you need and you’re settled and relaxed, God’s going to have to stir up the nest and He’s going to have to flutter.  And when He does, you ought to thank God for it.  You look up and thank God.

 

But then thirdly, as an eagle stirs up her nest and fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings.  Like I say, some of those eagles, they spread their wings and they’ve got 14 feet from wing tip to wing tip.  Now, I don’t know about you, I’ve had little birds bomb me as I’m walking around and they scare me.  Can you imagine?  I’m about 5’ 10”.  14 feet wing span.  The Bible says she spreadeth her wings abroad.  And that little eaglet’s eyes get real big, and that little eaglet says, “Mommy, you sure are big.  Mommy, I never saw you like this before.  You sure are big, you sure are powerful.”  And that’s what God wants to do.  You have money problems, He brings money problems into your life, He wants to show you how big and powerful He is.  You have health problems come into your life, He wants to show you how big and powerful He is.  Man, sometime a mate gets all jealous because her husband is doing all this at church, and you start having problems between husband and wife, look up!  You’ll see how big and powerful He is.  Listen to me, God is all the security that you need.  He’s everything that you’ll ever need.  We looked at Peter, he fished all night and he took nothing.  But after he went in with Jesus, Jesus said, “Cast your net on the other side.”  And then the nets were so full that they needed another boat to come out and all their nets brake, and the two boats started to sink.  Amen?  What God was doing there is He was spreading His wings abroad.  He was saying, “Look, Peter.  Look.  You don’t want to run from me.  There’ll be some problems, there’ll be some stirring up of the nest, but don’t run from me.  Run to me.  Look to me.”  Boy, the few, but wonderful times that God spread His wings.

Topics: ,,