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God's Angry Man

Dr. Gene Scott's Nitro Pill Series

Valley of Weeping
VF - 736
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Dr. Gene Scott Ph.D
Stanford University

 

 

 

Now this is the part of the message I hate.  You that have listened for 15 years, you know I used to go through this part real fast.  I would quote Dr. Tozer: “Christianity is a journey, not a destination.”  I’d point out how so much of Christianity aims toward that one goal—come down to the altar, recite some little routine speech, you’re safe, slap them on the back, and send them out.  That’s it—eternally secure!  “Do whatever you want!  You’ve made it, man!  You’ve paid a one-time premium on your eternal insurance policy—you’re in!  Now get on out of here, till I make room for the next one.  You’re a scalp on my belt!” 

The Pentecostals went a little further, and the Second Definite Work of Grace people went further and they had a second experience that people had—and when you got it, man, you waved the rest of them on so that they could get—and when you got it, you’re better than the rest and you don’t have anything else to get.  I’ve told you I was a teenager in a Pentecostal Church background, going to camp meetings madder than hell because the rest of the kids ‘had it’ and were out playing football and they were still trying to give it to me there in the sawdust of the tent.  I wanted not God so much, as to get this thing over with so I could go play football.

Destinations!  As Reinhold Niebuhr has said, the tragedy of the Pentecostal experience and the Second Definite Work of Grace people—the Nazarenes and those who have understood there is an experience beyond the starting point—is that the experience that should have produced a greater degree of sinlessness became a vehicle for the worst kind of sin: spiritual pride.  And they just camped there and waved everybody else on.  There is no stopping point.  That’s why we are just starting anew with this Ministry.  Everything has been preparation.  Everything has been training.  Everything was getting us

 


ready to make the world our parish.  Truly, as we take on a new step of Faith, we recognize that we’re pilgrims down here.  We’re on a journey, and this verse, consistent with that truth, says this blessed man, this individual who’s separated from the crowd who has a state of blessing on his life that never leaves, is on a journey, constantly changing. 

The next phrase says “Who passing through the valley of Baca.”  You know what baca means?  Let me hear it!  Baca translates ‘weeping.’  Now it’s even worse than what I said—not only constant change, the life is that of someone on a journey in that change and on that trip….  And I remind us this Easter 1991, as we look forward to another year, part of the trip through which the blessed man goes is the ‘valley of weeping.’  So often we let the illusion creep into Christianity that if you’re really in God’s will you won’t have these valleys of weeping.  My Bible says blessed men, while in the state of blessing, no qualities of which in the blessing state are changing, go through valleys of weeping. 

I’m right where I was last Sunday when I preached from Isaiah “Who is among you that feareth the Lord, obeyeth the voice of his servant, but walketh in darkness, and hath no light?”  I am tired of this gingerbread religion that creates, I repeat, the illusion that when you find yourself smack-dab in the middle of a valley of weeping it means that you have somehow forsaken God or God has forsaken you.  Part of the trip!  Through the mid-week right now I’m preaching or teaching on Exodus, that Old Testament congregation that God led into the Wilderness, Deuteronomy says, to see what was in their heart and to prove them.  And during this past week we’ve marched them from the victory of the Red Sea where God had done everything.  All they had to do was “Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord.” 

 
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