Wings

i was um called upon to teach or as brother williford says when i get up here it's treaching kind of a combination of things you know going on but i'm going to try i remember brother jonathan ershan with his gruff voice used to say you got to slow down and teach sometime and and sometimes you gotta slow down and teach so i'm gonna i'm gonna try as best i can to stay in my place you know stay in my lane be good and and try to uh get through this lesson if i don't get through it that's okay i'll just quit i'm looking at the clock right now and uh i'll just quit whenever the clock says i should quit how about that so when when i told uh lyndon gretchen i showed them my original title for this and and i saw their eyes roll back in their head i was going to call it the ornithological implications in messianic psalms and other biblical

references but instead i just settled on wings it's not a it's not a paul mccartney anthology tonight but i do want to talk about wings from psalm the 102nd chapter now i want you to put psalms 102 up there if you would and uh just keep in mind that when when the hebrew bible was written when they wrote the scriptures there first of all there were no vowels they were all consonants there were no punctuations so you can imagine the degree of difficulty of reading and why it was primarily a spoken language so when i do this i want to i want to point something out at the beginning when we go through this scripture it says i am like a pelican of the wilderness i'm like an owl of the desert i watch now to me the i watch part goes with the owl because the hebrew term means i lie awake or i stay awake and we know that owls stay awake right

so i'm like an owl of the desert i watch or i stay awake and and am a sparrow alone upon the house top so i want to talk about these things to uh tonight we pray prayers and and we talked a little bit about this in prayer meeting the other day but we pray prayers and sometimes we shape the vessel that we want god to fill we we we pray and then we build the structure in which we expect god to work and and we pray and we envision the answer that god uh we expect god to create for us we get preconceived ideas once we've got it figured out in our mind this is the way that god should operate and this is the way that god should work and answer my specific prayer do we not do this sometimes i'm guilty of it myself i pray but i've kind of got an idea of what i want god to do in in a

certain situation and and so it's it's possible i'm going to tell you this it's possible that we have prayed prayers and you may even now be currently involved in praying for something and god is already standing on the scene with your answer but you just haven't recognized what it is because it didn't fit into the mold that you created for the answer that you wanted god to fill and and so when when god condescended to speak to man he always came to him on terms in which man would understand and he used such simple examples uh as he began to speak to man and illustrate these eternal truth the bible uses these these very common common examples and in order to get us to understand some kind of spiritual truth that god's trying to communicate to us and and so uh we we understand when the bible uses some references to birds some 400 times 400 times it was it's something that's common to all

of us we we barely notice the birds that are around us especially some of the ones that i'm going to talk about tonight and and so biblically speaking we've all heard about the mother hen right jesus said how oft would i have gathered thee as a hen gathereth her chicks but you would not we understand the care and the concern the brooding caretaker and quality of the mother hen we we all shout about the eagle man i tell you back in the 80s in the ministry every pastor's office that you went into was filled with little porcelain eagles i remember brother manning probably had the biggest steagle in his office that i had ever seen because everybody was focused on eagles eagles are majestic you do realize that benjamin franklin's idea for the united states was not the eagle it was a turkey which would probably be much more appropriate in these times in which we live but the eagle everybody knows about the eagle

from the bible the bible they that wait upon the lord shall renew their strength they shall mount up it just wouldn't sound the same if we said they shall man up with wings of turkeys the eagle is majestic and and it represents a a majestic air transport the lord said i'll give you the wings of an eagle in revelation the the 12th chapter when he's talking about israel he said that he would give them the wings of an eagle and they would be carried away into a wilderness and and taken care of during that time of jacob's trouble and so we we shout about the eagle and we and we understand about the the brooding caretaker the hen but there are other less known birds that are also in the bible some of them that i just talked about the the first one that i want to talk about is is the pelican have you ever seen pelicans ever been to the coast or uh

somewhere maybe the zoo and and watched the pelicans there i'm going to tell you something the pelican it was an early christian symbol they there was a mythology that built up around pelicans because in the in the middle east and the pelicans uh that they saw there was a red tip on the uh the end of their beak and and they thought when they saw the little ones putting their heads into the pouch of the pelican they thought that the pelican had actually pierced her chest and blood was running out and they were drinking from the blood of the parent bird and so that became a it became a christian symbol of the sacrifice of the blood that would allow the children to be strengthened by the power of the blood now that was a myth because pelicans don't really do that but the pelicans are now the state bird of louisiana and i think you'll agree with me they are not the most beautiful

of the birds they they just don't represent all the characteristic beauty that that some birds like the peacock they don't have that that beauty they're not the most attractive birds and so isaiah wrote of him in 53 and 2 and he said he hath no form nor comeliness and when we shall see him there is no beauty that we should desire him when when i make this parallel between this bird and the god that we serve the these birds uh they don't have a real attractive quality to them they don't have an affinity for human beings they just don't like to be around people and they prefer to nest in uninhabited places that's why he said i am like a pelican of the wilderness they they they make their nests in wilderness areas they make their nests on islands away from people isolated from people and when they build their nests they nourish their young in these uninhabited places and sometimes it's miles away from

the water in which they fish to get their food to take back to the nest so when the young feeds the parent bird goes and gathers and comes back to the nest and when you see the pelican feeding their young the young will have their heads in the pouch of the parent bird what this means is that nothing gets to my child that i haven't already tasted nothing will be passed on to my children according to the pelican symbolism that i have not chewed up and tasted for myself anything that they are subjected to i've already been through it the bible says in hebrews chapter 4 verse 15 for we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities but was in all points everybody say all points in all points he was tempted like as we are may i present to you tonight that there is not a temptation a test or a trial that will come to

you that he has not already tasted nothing will hit his children until it has gone through him first all points i used to try to figure out jesus didn't live in an age of technology he never knew what it was like to be driving down the road in a hot car with two infants in the back seat in car seats jesus could not have been tempted in all points like as we are see that's because we get hooked up in the details in the details god looks at things differently to god you're either sinner or saint you're either righteous or unrighteous and when he looked at these points of temptation he said really there's only three points that you will ever be tested on they are these from hebrews are from first john chapter 2 and verse 16. he said for all that is in the world the lust of the flesh everybody say lust of the flesh point number one point number two is

the lust of the eyes and point number three is the pride of life god knows that every temptation that you are tested with will fall into one of these three categories and so when he came into this world the first mission of jesus christ before he set out to preach the gospel of his messiah ship was this he went into the wilderness remember i am a pelican i'm like a pelican of the wilderness he was driven by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted on these three points the devil says turn the stones into bread and satisfy the lust of the flesh and jesus said no he said then i'll show you the kingdoms of the world the lust of the eyes i'll give you all these kingdoms if you'll fall down and worship me and jesus said no he said on the third point jump off the pinnacle of this temple and satisfy that pride that you know you have the pride that

says i can do anything by myself and jesus said no i'm telling you he was tempted in all points just like we are in the lust of the eye the lust of the flesh and the pride of life it did not stop there when satan came back at calvary at the very end of jesus life the same three temptations were presented to him again save yourself they said come down from the cross and save yourself and jesus said again no they said to him take the wine you know that you're thirsty and jesus said no i'm not going to numb the pain the bible says that they screamed at him if you're a king why don't your subjects fight for you and jesus said my kingdom is not of this world i refuse your offer satan once again and he cried out it is finished praise god may i present to you again that any temptation that we face in life he's already tasted it

chewed it up and spit it out he knows that what you're going through he's already gone through one of my favorite scriptures in the bible first corinthians chapter 10 verse 13 says i love this scripture there hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man but god is faithful who will not suffer you to be tempted but will with the temptation also make a way to escape that you might be able to bear it thank god for the pelican that's already tasted everything that i will face in life and he said you don't have to fear i have overcome the world hallelujah let's give him a handclap of praise right now the apostle paul listed in first corinth or second corinthians 11 chapter verses 23 to 28 and we won't take the time to to read all of this but he started making a list paul was a lister he made lists of things and and and this is another one of

his lists and you can almost you can almost hear him conveying to them a sense of look at my scars look at the things that i've been through and he tells them are they ministers of christ i'm more in labor's more abundant in stripes above measure in prisons more frequent and deaths off and he goes on and he lists a whole bunch of things he said in i've been beaten i've been imprisoned i've been clubbed i was stoned i've been shipwrecked i've been in storms i've been in perils uh in the wild i've been in perils on the waters i've been in perils of my own countrymen and he makes this long list of scars that he bears in his body but over here the reason paul could endure such things as that was because way back in isaiah chapter 53 there was talk about a messiah who would come who would it was said of him that he was wounded for our transgressions he

said paul you want to talk about the things that you've gone through the reason that you can endure them is because i was already there i've been in prison i've been beaten so bloody that i was unrecognizable he was wounded for our transgressions and the reason folks that i know that the child of god in this age in which we live can endure anything that hell throws at us is because there's somebody who's already tasted it he's already tasted the worst that hell has and he came out victorious and said i've got the keys of death hell in the grave i have all authority in heaven and earth it belongs to me i can endure because he endured in every situation jesus says to us i'm like the pelican in the wilderness what you're feeding on right now i've already tasted it you don't have to worry about it it didn't kill me and it's not gonna kill you either praise god i hurry there

is the owl of the desert he said i'm like the owl of the desert i lie awake i i wake up when all the other predator birds are coming home to roost the owl just shakes himself and he begins to wake up when the sun begins to set when all the other birds have fled for the night the owl begins to wake up liam needs to be in here with me right now to keep me straight on this but there is a unique anatomy of the owl that makes it a perfect nocturnal predator owls don't have eyeballs and the eye comprises most of its head if you look at the owls what's unique about them is they have eyes the size of a man but they're not eyeballs they're elongated tubes which allow them to see perfectly in the dark they can't move those eyes from side to side they can't roll their eyes they can't do anything with their eyes they just look straight

ahead so god put it in them so that they have probably double the vertebra in their necks that humans have so that they can turn their necks on a swivel 270 degrees so looking this way i would be able to turn my head completely around and start staring at that wall over there without moving my eyes i've got to have some mechanism to be able to turn my head to see what's coming from that side now eagles are different because eagles can see forward and and peripherally at the same time but owls can only see straight ahead because their eyes are fixed and they don't move so so their heads rotate now the the beauty of this is they can see things coming at you in the night that you can't see they can spot small rodents their eyesight is so keen they can spot small rodents a half a mile away with those eyes that see in the night their ears on most species

of owls their ears are asymmetrical which means that one is higher than the other the beauty that god has created and then he said i'm like that their their faces if you notice are concave it's almost like a satellite dish so that when the sound waves hit their face it's deflected up into those asymmetrical ears and they can triangulate exactly where the attacker or the the prey is in the night can i tell you that the lord compared himself in this messianic psalm he compared himself to that owl that when all the other birds have roosted for the night he begins to wake up why because he does not want to leave his children alone and without protection in the night season when the owl when the when the darkness falls the owl begins to come to life he said i'm like an owl of the desert i'm going to tell you something having been in the desert there's a lot of things in the

desert that can kill you there's scorpions there's rattlesnakes there's gila monsters and believe it or not they got these uh javelina the the pigs you know i used to walk in arizona and i'd see these what we call bunny's ear cactus here they're prickly pears you know familiar what i'm talking about got long needles on them they go really big and i'd walk i'd be walking and i'd see these cactus with big chunks bitten out of them these feral pigs these javelina they eat those things their mouths are so tough they can just bite into a cactus needles and all and chew it up and digest it i don't want to mess with them i'll have to relate to you someday my my escapades in a in a cemetery i decided arizona's too hot to walk in daytime so i went walking at night time in the cemetery do not try this i'm a trained idiot and i found out that i probably should be

walking in the daytime instead of the nighttime because there were things in the night that i didn't want to see but thanks be to god when the darkness falls and the owl starts springing to life he says don't worry about anything this is why folks we can lay our heads on our pillow at night and begin to rest easy i don't have to worry about the things that are happening in the world around me i don't have to worry about their effect on me because there is one like the owl of the desert that says you can sleep in peace because i'm lying awake and if he's going to stay awake there is no reason for me to stay awake hallelujah i want to put somebody's mind to rest tonight you can rest easy in the fact that god sees what's been attacking you he sees the predator or the prey that's coming and the one that the enemy that's coming against you in the

night season that you can't see for yourself nothing gets past him to get to you that's just how my god is built can you say amen psalm 91 beginning in verse 4 says he shall cover thee with his feathers and under his wings shalt thou trust everybody say i want to trust him come on i'm going to trust him in his wings thou shalt trust his truth shall be thy shield and buckler thou shalt not be afraid my god i feel this in my spirit somebody needs to get a hold of this message right here i will not thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night some of us have been walking in the darkness in the night and we can't seem to find the light of day and the bible is telling us there is one that's taken care of all of it he's staying awake and watching for the things that would attack you you don't have to be afraid for

the terror by night nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness my lord nothing will get past him to get to you he's got those kind of eyes and those kind of ears and those kind of abilities that will not allow anything to get past him to destroy you satan could not get past god to destroy job he couldn't get past god to destroy job even though he may want to god said no you can go this far but if you come any further i'm going to kill you god has this kind of power the bible says that there is no weapon that is formed against you that will prosper i like the word in the in the greek version rather than the hebrew because it more clarifies it it says no weapon that's formed against you shall succeed in reaching you no weapon that's formed against you shall succeed in weeping reaching you there you go they can form the weapons they can build

the weapons the enemy can come comprise the weapons he can he can conceive the weapons but the bible says when they come against you they're not going to succeed in reaching you why because there is an owl of the desert that takes care of the things that attack in the night time there are dark times that we all face i can tell you there have been times and maybe you can relate to this there have been times when i've come to church fulfilling my duty and my obligation didn't feel like it could barely get my hand up could barely croak out a hallelujah the times are dark and i know sometimes we as preachers we want that response but i've got to understand that some of you may be going through some dark times in your life some of you may be facing some hard trials in your life and you need to hear this we all face those dark times when we can barely

function it's difficult to to sing a song or to lift a praise or to clap your hands because of the terror of the darkness and we feel all alone and isolated in those times but i'm telling you that when all the others have fled there is one that shakes himself and wakes up in the dark times in the night seasons while the others have fled and gone their ways there is one who lies awakened and becomes our shield our buckler our protection i'm telling somebody tonight somebody's got to hear this that the devil cannot destroy you god will not allow him to destroy you there is somebody who watches for your soul in that desert time in that darkness god is with you and that brings me to my final point and that is the sparrow we've heard about the the pelican who is the provider and the owl who is the protector the sparrow the common sparrow we probably don't even notice sparrows right

he said i i am alone i watch emma i am a sparrow alone upon the house top we see sparrows so frequently they are so ubiquitous is the word they're they're omnipresent they're on every continent of the of the globe practically sparrows are everywhere we don't even notice them until like 150 of them light on our lawn right and they come and they flop around on the on the in the dirt and the grass and their sparrow is everywhere i want you to kind of relate what i'm talking about to the one who is everywhere he is omnipresent so he said i'm like that sparrow that's alone on the rooftop i'm i'm i'm everywhere i'm nondescript remember there's no beauty about him that you should desire him he said i'm nondescript a small insignificant bird look at that bird he's not beautiful like the bluebird or the hummingbird and he doesn't have the colors of the cardinal or the macaw or any of those look

at that bird he's he's so frail and fragile and and and he he uh he just is unnoticeable we can dismiss the sparrow we don't even see the sparrow anymore we've seen them so often my god that's why i wanted to start this off with a fresh appreciation of the place to which we've come because we can come so often that we don't even notice the sparrow in our midst anymore we don't even notice when he blows in here on the wings of the spirit and begins to stir things up i want us to have an appreciation of the presence not just the protection not just the provision but just the presence of the lord to stand in the presence of the lord hallelujah you with me small insignificant communal animals this is what's so striking about this verse he said i am alone you ever see a sparrow alone they're gangsters you don't see sparrows alone you you see sparrows in groups of 100

or more but you don't see you don't see sparrows sitting by themselves they're communal animals and and as a matter of fact they they appreciate human beings they like to live where people live sparrows like to live where people live because you can you can actually get sparrows to eat and out of your hand after a while they get they get people friendly not that i would do that but you can if you want i know sister amber she's a bird watcher she watches birds and and and keeps us on all up on that but but these i doubt that we watch sparrows too often do we sister amber not not really we don't watch sparrows so much we watch bluebirds and hummingbirds and cardinals and all those you know jaybirds anything that's that's beautiful and bright and flashy but but i want us to consider the sparrow the presence the presence that's ubiquitous it's everywhere he's with us and and and we can't shake

him he is there jehovah shama the lord is there that's all that's all he said about him is the lord is there what else can you say what else could you want then to say that the lord is there oh the greatest thing that could happen in this place tonight is for us when we leave here to say the lord he is there we know because we felt his presence and his spirit who this this sparrow is non-migratory the beauty of the sparrow is he don't leave when all the other birds leave he doesn't pack a suitcase for florida you know fall comes he feels a chill a winter gets his suitcase together i said i'm going to florida with the rest of the birds no the sparrow is non-migratory he stays you can see him in the dead of winter you look out when the snow's falling there's a sparrow the sparrow doesn't leave just because all the other birds left he stays his

presence is going to be there when everything else is gone and so and so no no no matter no matter where we are in life there is this god that came to this earth one of the unique things about sparrows is that you ever see them get i've got horseshoe pits in my backyard and i watch these sparrows they come down the only bird that i notice that does this they get in those horseshoe pits full of sand and they just flop around in the dust and get all dirty and i'm thinking who would leave the heavens and come to encase himself in dust the sparrow said i would to experience i would leave the glory and the majesty of heaven just to come in a the form of dust just to be with you so that you can experience my presence one of the most overlooked traits of him is simply his presence sometimes we forget that god is with us that he is

here that he is there if i go there the psalmist said in 139 whither shall i go from thy spirit or whither shall i flee from thy presence if i ascend up into heaven thou art there if i make my bed in hell behold thou art there if i take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea even there thy hand shall lead me and thy right hand shall hold me where can i go oh it wasn't that he wanted to escape he wanted to be aware of the presence of god no matter where he happened to be let's stand together paul in prison for the second time and now facing the death penalty wrote second timothy this letter that we know as second timothy i was reading it again it is the absolute darkest writings that paul ever pinned if you read that he begins to talk to timothy serious stuff now he says perilous times are going

to come timothy make sure that you've got a good grip on on the traditions and the the gospel and the message that we preach make sure because somebody's going to try to rip it out of your hands and you you can imagine in this in this mamma teen prison with the chill of autumn starting to settle in on the apostle paul he's pinning these words to his son in the gospel dark warnings lots of warnings perilous times hold to the doctrine but at the end of that letter chapter 4 verse 21. he says do thy diligence to come before winter why because winter is a time of desolation when everybody else has left winter is the time when you feel it the most when all your friends have gone and he even mentioned this a lot of the migratory birds they've gone he said demas has forsaken me crescens has gone to galatia titus has gone to dalmatia alexander the coppersmith he did me much

evil so timothy get here before winter sets in because i'm alone in this mamma teen prison this this hell hole connected to the sewer system it stinks and it's going to get very cold here and in 416 paul says as a matter of fact no man stood with me but oh man they forsook me you ever feel like that there's an old song that says no never alone he promised god you promised this was your greatest apostle to the gentiles and he's in a prison and he's facing death and he's alone and he says i have no body but then he heard the song and he looked over and a sparrow showed up in his prison cell and paul says notwithstanding the lord stood with me in the darkest time of his life if he was expecting an eagle friend he wasn't getting the eagle wings to get an airlift out of there but all that shows up is the presence the presence of god

in that jail cell and paul says i i can make it i am now ready to be offered the time of my departure is at hand i don't even have to fear death because the pelican already tasted it chewed it up and spit it out and now the sparrow shows up to say i'm right here with you and he said he straightened me he strengthened me just his presence oh somebody take it to heart tonight i'm telling somebody somebody needs to get this message you're in that same place maybe maybe your friends have gone and and society has dropped off and and left you and you feel so alone right now there is a presence that is with you nay even in you because he said i will not leave you comfortless i will come to you in your darkest time in your darkest hour his presence will be there for you he is i am wherever whenever and whatever we need we find in

him he is our provider he is our protector and he is our presence let's lift our hands and thank him for that tonight thank you lord god that you are with us in the dark times and the hours of despair you're with us lord god we thank you we thank you lord we thank you lord thank you jesus let's just do that a few more moments tonight we have time thank you jesus for your presence god that's here right now thank you lord for your protection god thank you for your word we can dive deep in it lord and see that you're there for us thank you jesus we worship you god we thank you for your presence your protection oh god