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ATTN: VIDEO
Stories like this can perplex you if you think about them deeply enough.
Here is a missionary couple, devoted to Christ, who are captured while they are in the middle of serving the Lord.
I am sure that they had prayed for God to protect them.
I am sure that others, when they learned of their capture, prayed for their safe release as well.
I am sure that in that last gun battle, this precious believers prayed for deliverance and for protection, and yet, when the smoke cleared and the shooting stopped, one was alive and one was dead.
In such stories God’s deliverance seems mixed at best, and even cruel at worst.
This lady might have preferred death to the thoughts of having to watch her husband die and then having to live without him.
Skeptics might hear a story like this and say, “Where was God’s deliverance in all of this?”
ME
A few months after I moved to Wilson I developed a persistent nagging cough.
It was just there in the background literally for weeks, until I developed a fever and decided I’d better have it checked out.
It was my first visit to a Doctor in Wilson and it was unforgettable.
It was the weekend before my very first attempt at Directing Camp Lapihio and I could not believe that I was having to deal with a doctor’s visit at such a time.
I soon had my perspective restored.
The doctor took an x-ray and found a suspicious mass in a part of the lung that usually didn’t show pneumonia.
He sent me for a CAT scan and I received a suspicious diagnosis.
All of this happened within a 24 hour period.
One day I was worried about a nuisance visit to the doctor and the next I was worried about what would happen to me and my family if I had lung cancer.
I remember the church praying and I remember having a few heart to heart conversations with the Lord myself.
It turned out to be pneumonia and it was gone in time for me to be at camp by Monday night.
Of course, I was praising the Lord for my deliverance.
But I am aware that for every story of deliverance there are several where the diagnosis does not get better, it, in fact, gets worse!
How do you look at those situations?
How can you make sense of this unevenness when it comes to our relationship with the Lord?
HE
JUDAH NEEDED A MIGHTY DELIVERER
Well, if we want to get at some sort of answer to that question, we must begin where the Lord does and that is simply with this truth: You and I need to be delivered!
That’s right.
Though it may not be popular to admit weakness, when it comes to our spiritual well-being, we are not self-sufficient.
We need deliverance.
So did Judah.
Judah desperately needed some outside help for many reasons, not the least of which were the pathetic Kings who tried to lead her.
It had started with Rehoboam, the son of Solomon.
WE’re not sure if Solomon’s son just didn’t listen to his father or whether Solomon was just too taken with his 700 wives to pay attention.
What we do know is that Rehoboam tried to improve on what his father had done without the wisdom his father had.
While Rehoboam should have delivered Judah from a needless split with the rest of Israel, he failed.
And things didn’t get much better as time passed.
If you skipped ahead over 160 years you’d find another “mighty” King on the throne.
His name was Uzziah.
He started well, bringing reforms that could have saved the country.
He built the army and amassed an arsenal that raised a few eyebrows.
The Bible says in 2 Chronicles 26 that “his fame spread far and wide, for he was marvelously helped till he became strong.”
I’m sure many in Judah thought, “Finally!
A delieverer we can believe in.”
But it was not to be.
Uzziah began to read his own press clippings.
Lifted up in pride he presumed to burn incense in the temple, a job God had reserved for the Levites.
When he was corrected he reacted like any ten-horn dictator that’s big on ego and short on wisdom.
He got mad.
And immediately, the Bible says, he broke out in leprosy and spent the rest of his days in shame.
He could have been a deliverer, but he died alone.
He failed.
In the middle of all this failure, however, the promise remained.
God had a people and He had a plan.
Though man might fail, His plan could not, which is why, in Isaiah 6, it says.
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple.
This experience of God’s glory launched the career of Isaiah the prophet, a single light of hope in the middle of a dark, dark time.
Yet things still didn’t get much better.
Some 15 years later, in the prime of Isaiah’s ministry, Uzziah’s grandson, Ahaz, comes to the throne.
By that time, the problems that had troubled Uzziah are threatening Ahaz.
The Syrians are on the move in a big way and Ahaz realizes he’s not got anything that can stop them.
Isaiah, the prophet goes to him and encourages him to trust God and see His deliverance.
But Ahaz won’t buy it.
He turns instead to the very nation that threatens him and seeks to appease his enemy.
Ahaz actually makes a trip to Damascus, the capitol of Assyria.
While he’s there he sees an altar to one of the gods that the Assyrians worship.
He comes back and has the audacity to take down the old altar his great grand-dad, Solomon had made in the temple, and replaced it with an altar to this Assyrian god.
Rejecting the only One who could have truly helped Ahaz and Judah, the King yielded to the folly of Assyrian idolatry and trusted in a piece of wood or stone to deliver him.
And needless to say, he also failed.
And in the middle of this extreme darkness we have that wonderful prophecy of Isaiah in Isaiah 9:
The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; Those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, Upon them a light has shined.
For unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given; And the government will be upon His shoulder.
And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of His government and peace There will be no end, Upon the throne of David and over His kingdom, To order it and establish it with judgment and justice From that time forward, even forever.
The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this
JUDAH WAS PROMISED A MIGHTY DELIVERER
You see, not only did Judah need a mighty deliverer, a mighty God who would do for them what no earthly King could do, Judah was promised a mighty deliverer.
That’s what that second title means.
It says “And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, listen: Mighty God.
In Hebrew it is the name El Gibbor: El being shortened from Elohim which is God and Gibbor which literally means “hero” or deliverer.
This child who was coming would bring the power that Rehoboam squandered, he’d bring the humility that Uzziah lost, and He’d bring the courage that Ahaz never had.
He would be God, the Hero.
He would be the deliverer.
That was the promise Isaiah made through the Holy Spirit.
JUDAH RECEIVED A MIGHTY DELIVERER:
He delivered those that others ignored:
Explanation
And how did it turn out?
Was that Child a great deliverer?
O yes!
And in a surprising way!
He delivered the most unexpected people.
This Hero of a God delivered those that others ignored.
He reached out to the insignificant ones.
There’s old blind Bartimaeus.
He’s been sitting by the road begging for quarters so long that he’s blended into the roadside.
Like some billboard you see on 264 on your way to Raleigh, people had seen him so often that they didn’t hear him anymore.
But old Bartimaeus wasn’t so easy to ignore, especially the day that Jesus came walking by.
When someone told old Bart that Jesus, the mighty deliverer was coming, he started calling out: Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!
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