Wednesday Night Bible Study
by Dylan Hirsch
First Apostolic Church of Knoxville (Knoxville, TN)
Kind: sermon
Scripture: John 19:30, Ecclesiastes 3:11

Source: https://acts238.life/repository/sermons/dylan-hirsch--wednesday-night-bible-study-21
Published by Acts 2:38 Life from the sermon transcript on that page.
Free to copy and share with attribution.

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So now if everyone can just take a deep breath. I needed that just as much as you did. Thank you for doing that. Now start to move around a little bit. Get a little We're getting a little comfortable. I know it. Me too. Let's just move around a little bit. We're going to go into our word of encouragement. I want to encourage you a little bit with some of my testimony woven in. So I want to start by telling you, reminding you that our God always gets the glory. Always. Isn't that wonderful to know? Whatever situation you find yourself in, whatever scenario, whatever valley, whatever lion's den, whatever battlefield with a giant in front of you, whatever situation that you find yourself in, God always gets the glory. So I can find myself in the midst of a struggle with fear and know he will get the glory from it. I can find myself face to face with an idol and an oven and know God will get the glory from this situation. So having said that let's go to John 19 and30. John 19 and30. When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar he said it is finished. Can you say that little phrase with me? It is finished. Words are very important. It is finished. And he bowed his head and he gave up the ghost. Now, I know what you're thinking. I had thousands of scriptures that I could have chosen to encourage you that seem a lot better than this one. But then again, what did we start with? That God always gets the glory. He always gets the glory. So we can look at a situation that is bleeding, that is bruised, that is broken, battered, mocked, ridiculed, and we know that God will get the glory. So that phrase that you repeated with me, it is finished. It is in the Greek to say tetier, and I'm sure I nailed it. If we have any Greek scholars, you can correct me later. That phrase is used in various contexts at that time. And what it signified was that something had come to its final conclusion. Or we could say in layman's terms that it was part of the plan all along. Now you can picture the scene with me that Jesus is bruised. He's bleeding. He's battered. He's just got a couple breaths left. And in those final breaths, he said, "It is finished." This was part of the plan all along. This was the ultimate conclusion of this plan. As he looked throughout time and said, "I need a better covenant with my people so that I can be in them." He looked at the cross and he said, "It's worth it." He looked at my sin. He looked at the times that I would turn away from him. He looked at the times that I would doubt him. He looked at the times that we and all of our sin and he said, "It's worth it." What a beautiful promise that we have through such an ugly situation. What a beautiful thing we have to hang on to through something that looked so grim and so terrible. So now I want to put a pin there. We're going to come back to there and I want to share with you a little of my testimony. In 2012, I felt the Lord calling me to move from my hometown and to go to Madora, Indiana to study under Pastor Gil. And as I did that, now I'm going to be transparent with you, but as long as you make two promises with me. That you won't laugh like you can chuckle, but you won't belly laugh at me, and that you'll put yourself in the driver's seat with me here in just a few minutes. So, I thought at 19 years old in 2012, that as I follow the will of God, everything's going to be easier. Everything's going to be better. I'm gonna have more money. I'm just going to have peace all the time. I'm just gonna walk around on cloud. This is going to be great. God's going to make my path smooth and oh, it's going to be great. That's what I thought at 19. So, with that in mind, up to that point, most of my job experience was serving soft serve ice cream at an amusement park. So, I had basically zero job skills whatsoever. But I thought, "This is the will of God. He's going to part the Red Seas. He's going to give me a job that I don't deserve. He's going to do something amazing." So, I start applying at banks. I start applying at insurance agencies. I start applying at all these places. I don't even have any business being in their building, let alone working for them. So, unsurprisingly to you, every single door started shutting in my face. Not literally, but every door proverbly was shutting in my face. You don't have the experience we need. You don't have the knowledge we need. You don't have anything we need at all. We literally don't have ice cream machines. Why are you in our building? Stuff like that. So then I'm real confused. I'm thinking, God, I heard your voice and I know you needed me to go. I know you wanted me to come here, but now it's just not working out. Like, have y'all ever been there? You've been that situation before. Maybe not, you know, in in the exact same thing, but you've walked a mile in those shoes where you, you know, you heard the voice of God and you know God was working, but then it just don't look real good. It doesn't seem real good. So, I keep looking and then in the in the final hour, it felt like before everybody thought I was a bum, the Lord provided me a job. A gentleman from the church said, 'Hey, we got you a job. Come apply tomorrow. So, then I was thinking, where does Brother Bobby work? Is he a lawyer? Is he a doctor? What what's what's what's the Lord got in his store? It may not have happened in my time, but I had my vigor back real fast. I was ready. So, I go the next day to fill out my application at my lucrative, clean, comfortable, wonderful will of God miracle job. And it was at a chicken farm. I know you've been there before, haven't you? You've been praying. Maybe not the chicken farm, but you've been praying specifically. you've been following and you've been doing all this stuff and God opens the door and you're like, "No, I I didn't pray for that. I didn't want that. I I tell you one thing, of all the prayers I prayed for jobs, there wasn't a one of them that went up for a chicken farm." So then I'm real confused because first, all the doors are shutting, but then the one opens and I'm like, "That ain't that ain't right." But I needed a job. So I walk through it. I start working there. And what made matters worse now you have the wonderful benefit of hindsight tonight. You you can see exactly how God was doing it. But I didn't at that time. Not only was I in this stinky, nasty, ammonia fililled, inhaling chicken feathers everyday job, but also everybody I worked with was Hispanic. So now I couldn't talk to anybody. I felt alone. I felt like great. Now I'm alone in this chicken desert where I'm just walking loops in the pit. This is gross. This is disgusting. Why God have you brought me here? Whatever I did, I'm sorry. I repent. So, I decided I'm going to learn Spanish for for no reason whatsoever. I'm never going to use it. So, I start by learning how to say, "How do you say," which is And then I pointed about 3,000 times a day. Aua poina the whole thing day after day after day. Y'all been there too where you just feel like every day is just like what am I doing here? Just I don't see the purpose in this. I don't see how God can do anything in this nasty good for nothing chicken farm. What is he doing? So two years after I worked I worked there for two years grinding trying to learn the language and I learned I with some success I learned a lot. Then I went to work as an electrician and then I went to work as a plumber and then 10 years after I stepped foot on that nasty Did I mention it was gross that it stunk the Okay, I just it can't be overstated. I just want to make sure I don't overstate that but it can't be overstated. So 10 years after I stepped foot into that season, I didn't understand God got the glory because he began to say, "I want you in Latin America building churches." And then I'm like, he taught me two trades. He taught me culture. He taught me language. But it was in a way I didn't see it. It was a way I I looked at this season and said, "There's literally no way, God, that you could make this make me thankful for this someday." But I'll tell you, in 2022, I was very grateful for that nasty, uncomfortable seemingly insignificant, looked like it was worthless season that he walked me through. So then I want to go back to the scripture where God said on the cross, this was part of the plan all along. Isn't it beautiful that we get to serve a God that every single step you take, even the ones that are hard, >> even the ones that are painful, even the ones where your knee cranks a little when you walk, even the ones that you walk through and you don't understand what God's doing in your family, you don't understand what he's doing in your job, you don't understand what he's doing in this ministry, you don't understand what he's doing in this in anything. But if I I know if I can just hang on that these waters won't overtake me, that these flames won't burn me. That this thing I'm walking through won't destroy me. And this is not a season that will be wasted, but this is a season that God will get glory through some way somehow. He will do it. Now I want to bring with this scripture that we read earlier. it is finished with that Greek phrase tetier. Jesus said that this was part of the plan all along. Now the tense that he said that in is really important and I want to show you that. So he did not say that in the present tense otherwise he would have said it's finishing. He didn't say it in the past tense otherwise he would have said it's over. He also didn't say it in the future tense to say it will finish someday. And again, every word that we read in our Bible is very important. But he said this phrase in what we call or what the Greeks call rather the perfect tense. So what that means is that this action is finished but the implications the effects are ongoing and permanent. So what he was saying was right now this act is finished. The cross has been come to its final conclusion. But the effects of this cross are never going to end because that blood that flowed on Calvary. There's going to be about 200,000 souls in Ktown that need it. There's going to be 11 million souls in Honduras that need it. There's going to be countless billions that call on the name of Jesus to wipe their sins away as snow. And he says it will never have an end. The blood will never lose its power. The devil may have looked on that day and said, "It's over. It's finished. We finally shut up that Jesus of Nazareth. But then God got the glory. But then Jesus said, "It's finished. It's not over. This is only the beginning." So God can take in your season what looks like the end. What looks like it's over and dead and final. And there's nothing you can do. And he says, "I will always get the glory." So the effects of this season that you're walking in will continue to call you into purpose. So I want to encourage you. He always gets the glory. Can you stand with me please? I want to share one more verse about how our God always gets the glory. In Ecclesiastes 3 and verse 11 he says that he has made everything beautiful in his time. He did not say most things. He did not say nearly everything. He didn't say, "Well, you're going to have more good days than bad. I'm going to I'm going to hit more than I miss." But he said, "I will make everything beautiful in his time." And the previous verses, verses 1-8, talk us through seasons of life. Seasons that tell us there'll be a time to be born and a time to die. time to plant, to reap, to break down, to build up, so on and so forth. And it gives us these seasons that we find in life sometimes because sometimes there's going to be a season that we have to walk through that desert to get to the promised land. I want to encourage you if you find yourself in a season that just seems dark, in a season that seems painful, season that seems like you just don't know, God's picked up the pen and he stopped writing for a minute. I want to encourage you. He's still writing your story. He's still working. Each and every perceiving, seemingly ugly situation, God is making beautiful futures. So hang on. Hang on. FAC Knoxville. Each and every one of you have a beautiful purpose to reach this city. Each and every one of you have a beautiful purpose to continue to fulfill the calling to preach the gospel to each and every creature. God bless you. Thank you so much for the opportunity to come and share with you today