Living Hope in a Season of Despair

Jack Hibbs Presentation

Jack Hibbs: Hey everybody, Pastor Jack Hibbs here, and I am so, so sorry. I’ve got to tell you that I was so excited to be at the conference, and 35 years of pulpit ministry, I have never missed a commitment to speak as I did with you guys. So for me it was very, very much of a difficulty. And I’m sorry, but I leave it in the hands of the Lord. He had His reasons and I’m wondering what was said to you from one of the speakers that had to be said that maybe I would’ve gotten in the way of that. I don’t know, but I know that God redeems everything. So listen, sorry to have missed you. I leave it in the hands of God, as you will too, trusting that we’re going to see Him soon, either by a rapture or by rupture, by going up or by being translated into His presence by death. Either way. To be absent from the bodies, to be present in the Lord, and in the meantime, to live is Christ and to die is gain. And so we will look into that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Part 3

Nathan Jones: Well, as Jack said, “God had His reasons.” On Saturday morning, we kicked off with another wonderful message from Governor Mike Huckabee. Governor Huckabee had folks alternately laughing and pondering the power of God to orchestrate all the circumstances of our lives to our good and His glory.

Tim Moore: In 1996, I was stationed at Little Rock Air Force Base. That was the year former Pastor Mike Huckabee ascended to become Governor of Arkansas. When the man who had immediately succeeded Bill Clinton was caught up in a storm of scandal, surrounding the infamous Clinton Whitewater affair, I witnessed Mike Huckabee’s calm demeanor and unwavering leadership. First elected to statewide office as Lieutenant Governor, in 1993, Huckabee arrived at the capitol to discover that the door to his office had been nailed shut by Clinton operatives. His ability to overcome hostility with grace and good humor endeared him to the people of Arkansas. Mike Huckabee’s poignant message, along with his grace and good humor, will be a blessing to you today.

Mike Huckabee’s Presentation

Mike Huckabee: When Tim was talking about the nailing of my door, people really think that that’s an apocryphal story, that it didn’t happen, but it did. And it was kind of crazy because I don’t know what they thought that would do, but it didn’t do anything other than give me a platform, the likes of which I would’ve never had otherwise. And the very next year, because I won Lieutenant Governor’s race in a special election in 1993, in 1994, I had to run again because it was time for the regular election. And I barely won in ’93.

In ’94, I went and ran and won in a landslide, largely because even people that didn’t vote for me the first time were incensed at the treatment that I got down at the capitol. And it wasn’t just that, I’d get on an elevator and people would get off. They refused to ride the elevator with me. I’d walk down the hall, they’d turn to go the other way. And I told my little staff in the Lieutenant Governor’s office, I said, “Look, we’re outnumbered. I mean, I feel like Davey Crockett at the Alamo. We don’t even have Colonel Travis here, it’s that bad.”

And I said, “But here’s the only thing we can do, we can’t win if we fight their terms. So here’s the way we play, the meaner they get, the nicer we are, the more belligerent they are to us, the more cooperative we are to them, the more difficult, then the easier we play.” And I said, “Because that’s the only way that not only we can compete, but that we can overcome.” And I sometimes think that there’s a great irony in how God wires us to live.

Now, I don’t mean to tell you that in the realm of public affairs, and particularly in politics, that there’s not times that it’s nothing but just bare knuckle fighting. You know, I have people say, “I just wish politics wasn’t so mean.” Look, I wish NFL football didn’t hit so hard, but that’s the game. And I always tell people when they say, “I’m thinking about running for office, what do you think?” And my first question is, “What is your wife and spouse, maybe your husband, what do they think?” And well, “They’re not too fond of the idea.” I said, “Then don’t do it. It’s hard enough when your spouse is fully behind you. You try to do it without the full support of your family and close friends and it’s a kamikaze raid. Don’t even think about it. Help somebody else.”

But the other thing I always say to them after that, I say, “Here’s just a friendly piece of advice. Never run for something if you can’t stand the sight of your own blood, because you will shed some. And that’s just the reality of it. I’m not trying to be unkind and I’m not trying to paint an unfair picture, but this is a full contact sport, played without pads, and sooner or later, you’ll come off the field on a gurney. It’s inevitable.” So I tell people that you play within the rules, you play within the line, but this is like football, and hitting is involved.

It’s almost like, can you imagine if you lined up on the line of scrimmage in an NFL game? Let’s just use my favorite NFL team, the Dallas Cowboys. Oh, I see, we have a few. And then there’s some of you that… Look, I get it, I learned as a kid early on, I would never quarterback the Cowboys to a Super Bowl. I was not a great athlete. These days, I’m not sure anybody else ever will either, but I knew I wasn’t going to do it. But let’s just take the Cowboys, if they line up at the line of scrimmage, they don’t line up and look over the other side of the opposing and say, “I’m so sorry, but when that ball comes into the hands of the quarterback, I might bump into you, and I hope I don’t hit you real hard or hurt you.”

That’s not how it’s played. Ball goes into the hands of the quarterback and it’s everybody full speed. Hit as hard as you can. That’s the game. Now if you do that on the sidelines, or do it in the locker room, or do it in the parking lot, you got a problem. That’s a crime. In the arena, it’s the game. And sometimes people don’t understand that.

How can a Christian be in politics? Well, it’s like asking how can a Christian play hockey? I’m not sure one can, but that’s the answer right there. You know, there are so many times in our lives where we are headed in a particular direction. We think we know where we’re going. We think we know why. And then everything goes haywire. It’s not just that, in our country, we see some things going the wrong way. We see it in our individual lives.

My guess is that there’s not a person in this room for whom there have not been disappointments, hurts, even betrayals of people you thought were your friends. Sometimes the hurt comes from a close friend or a family member that you never thought would intentionally hurt you. And I’m not talking about the hurts that are unintentional, that are accidental, that are just things that happen that hurt us and no one knows that they delivered a sharp blow. I’m talking about when people know they’re going after us, and they do it intentionally.

And sometimes those wounds can be so deep and so harsh, it’s hard to get past them. So I speak today only to those people here who have experienced those moments when you felt things went the wrong way in your life. And maybe, deep down, you thought that what happened to you was even intentional. It could be financial, emotional, spiritual, lots of different ways in which you can feel that. But sometimes what we think is going on is not at all what is going on.

In March of the year 2002, I was just about to enter my second full year, or second full term as governor, and I was conducting a trade mission to India. And we had some businesses in Arkansas that we were trying to get connected with businesses in India, and I had a meeting with what was the equivalent of the Speaker of the House in the Indian Parliament. His name was G.M.C. Balayogi. He was the speaker. It would be the equivalent of a Mike Johnson today in our Congress. And we were to meet in this little village, called Bhimavaram in India, and we were going to meet there, see some work that was being done by some of the people in that village. Then we were to have dinner and get on helicopters and fly to another community where we were going to, hopefully, consummate a business arrangement that would be very good for the people of Arkansas and hopefully good for the people of India as well.

Before we could even start the dinner, Speaker Balayogi got word that an urgent issue had come up in the Capitol and that he would be required to leave immediately. I’ve got to tell you, I was just so frustrated. The brink of anger, because I mean, here we’d come halfway around the world, this was the centerpiece of the entire trip to have this meeting, to have the dinner, get on the helicopters, fly to the next village, that’s where we were going to finalize everything, and by him having to abruptly leave, take one of the helicopters, go back to the Capitol, leaving me and my team to just finish out a dinner without him and then figure out, okay, what do we do now? Basically the trip is ruined.

And I’ll be honest, it’s frustrating at a time like that, all that preparation, it’s gone. And in my frustration, disgust and disappointment, I’m sure I expressed to God how utterly discombobulated I was that this would’ve happened. And why, why Lord, would this take place like this? Well, we finished our dinner, we got on the helicopter we were on, we flew to the next village, and upon landing, we were told some news that turned out to be rather distressing.

Because when the Speaker Balayogi got on his helicopter with his team, it was the helicopter that he and I were to be on together to go to the next village after the dinner. Instead of my being on that helicopter with him, I took the second one. We found out that the one that he took that I was supposed to be in, had a mechanical problem and crashed, and everyone on that helicopter, including the Speaker, were all killed. I would have been on that helicopter. And suddenly, the broken down trade deal became a whole lot less important because I got to go home and I wouldn’t have.

In all of our lives, there are those moments when things go the opposite way, and I’ve got to tell you, that’s not just true for us in modern times. It’s a history of what God has done in the lives of His chosen. I want to ask you to just think with me. I’m not going to read the entire passage of Genesis 50, but it’s one of my favorite passages of Scripture because it’s the story of Joseph, and particularly of how, you remember Joseph as a kid, was a proud little guy, pretty arrogant. He was his father’s favorite.

He got the coat of many colors. His brothers just resented everything that Jacob did for Joseph because it was so much over the top in terms of favoritism. And I know, in every family, there’s always some child, true or not, the siblings say, “Oh, he’s the favorite, he’s the pet.” Were any of you the pet in your family? No, because you wouldn’t admit it even if you were, I know. But in every family, there’s this feeling that, yeah, he’s the favorite. Well, in this case, it was true, Joseph really was the favorite. And his brothers resented it so badly that they found an opportunity, they sold him off into slavery, left him for dead. They thought he was dead. And frankly they didn’t care. They went back and told Jacob, “Oh your son, he’s dead.” And Jacob was heartbroken. And it just about killed him.

Joseph ended up in slavery, and he was a slave for quite some time. Then he got falsely accused of an assault and he ended up in prison, and he would rot in there forever, but he interpreted a dream, and even in prison, the Lord found him and he ended up, through a series of nothing short of miracles, becoming second in command to the Pharaoh of Egypt.

In the meantime, there’s a famine of the land of Israel, and Joseph’s brothers are sent to Egypt to see if they could buy some grain because that was the only way they might be able to survive. So they go to Egypt to buy grain. As it turns out, they end up with an audience with a brother they thought was dead, and frankly always hoped that he was. Now they’re confronted with a brother who not only is alive, but he has the power, not just to give them grain, he has the power to take their lives. And he had every right to do so. It would’ve been, probably, if you just look at raw, human justice, a just thing. Certainly the eye for the eye and tooth for the tooth, and there would’ve been some eyes and teeth going on there.

But in a remarkable twist, while his brothers were begging for their lives, Joseph says something to them that is so powerful. Verse 18 of Genesis 50, “His brothers then came and they threw themselves down before him. ‘We are your slaves,’ they said. But Joseph said to them, ‘Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. So then don’t be afraid. I will provide for you and your children,’ and he reassured them and he spoke kindly to them.”

What they did to him, they intended for harm, but Joseph, after years of being mellowed out by the tough experiences of sold into slavery, being falsely imprisoned, and eventually rising up to be the second in command of Egypt, he looked upon his brothers differently than he would’ve many years before, and he said to them, “What you intended for harm, God has used for good, and for the saving of many lives.”

I want to tell you that sometimes we have detours in life, detours that we did not plan or expect. But have you ever realized that sometimes our detours are actually our destinations. And God took the things that we thought were the worst things that ever happened to us, and he used them for good. Jeremiah had a detour. He prophesied to the people of Israel. They didn’t repent. And in Chapter 7, God tells them, “Don’t even pray for these people. They’re not worth praying for, and I’m not listening anyway. You can pray, but there’s no point because I’ve already made my decision.” It’s cooked, it’s baked, it’s done. Even told him in Chapter 16, “Don’t marry. There’s no future.” That’s pretty tough.

Jonah had a detour. He was told to go to Nineveh. You know Jonah, he was not afraid of failure. God told him, “Go to Nineveh, preach repentance to these people.” And interestingly, Jonah didn’t want to go to Nineveh and preach repentance. He got on the boat and went to Tarsus, the other way, 360 degrees, the opposite direction. He didn’t go to Nineveh, not because he was afraid he would fail, he didn’t go to Nineveh because he was afraid he would succeed. God said, “Go preach repentance.” He said, “I don’t want to preach repentance. These people might repent. Then I’ll have to love them. I hate these people. I don’t want to go down there. I ain’t going,” and he turns, he goes the other way. God gave him a detour, in the belly of a big fish. That’s a detour, folks. He thought he was going one way, God sent him another.

A detour will help you see things that you never would’ve seen. It’ll take you to places you never would’ve gone. And it will make you go slower than you ever would’ve traveled. You’re on vacation and you’re driving along, and suddenly you see the traffic and it’s just turned into a parking lot, and then there’s a sign, that magic word, “Detour.” Don’t you love that? I mean, how many of you say, “Oh baby, look, we got a detour here. It’s going to be great. We’re supposed to be at grandma’s house for lunch. We ain’t gonna make it ’cause we got a detour. Praise God, a detour,” says no one. Because none of us are happy about it. None of us are thrilled when we have a detour. But in our spiritual lives, the detours are often the destinations because God knows that we would never go willingly and in a straight line. So He takes us the way that we don’t have a choice, so that in the process of getting to the real destination, He takes us on the detour.

I don’t know what the future of America is. I just don’t. I can’t tell you. I’d love to tell you it’s all going to be fine. I am an eternal optimist. I tend to believe that there will be a remnant and a revival. I want to believe that with my whole heart, and I’ll do everything I can to pray for and to seek God’s face so that He would shine again on this great country of ours and bring us back to Him and revive us. That’s my prayer. And I want that to happen. But I cannot guarantee that it will. We could fall as a nation because of our disobedience and our willful rebellion against the holiness of God who has been so good to us that we should at least serve Him with some level of humility and gratitude. I don’t see it a lot. But if you’re a believer, I do have the good news that no matter what happens to the culture or to the country, I know what’s going to happen to you because I did something that if you haven’t done it, you ought to. I actually read the end of The Book. And you know what? Folks, we win.

We win. It doesn’t mean that America will because America’s not mentioned in the Bible, and I can’t promise you that America will win. I can promise you that Israel will, and I would say to people who are attacking Israel, I’d get out of the way and don’t stand near a window because folks, God will do what He will with His people and His land, and He has made a promise and a commitment, and I don’t want to be on the wrong side of that one. That is for sure.

Conclusion

Tim Moore: Governor Huckabee’s discussion of detours reminded me of a lesson I learned from my friend, Erez bar David in Israel. Psalm 23, David’s wonderful depiction of the Lord as our Shepherd, says that, “He makes me lie down in green pastures and leads me beside quiet waters.” The text also says, “He restores my soul. He guides me in the paths of righteousness for His namesake.”

Erez pointed out the numerous sheep paths that line the hillsides and peaks throughout Israel. None of them are straight or ascend directly to the top of the mountains. They all follow circuitous roots as they climb to higher ground. My friend said that we need to understand Psalm 23 from that perspective. The sheep cannot always see where the shepherd is leading them. In fact, the path will often seem counterintuitive and convoluted. Wayward sheep may attempt to climb directly toward the peak they envision as their destination only to meet perils the shepherd knew to avoid, or to fall as the path grows too steep.

We could say the same of America today. By failing to follow the Good Shepherd, we are facing perils and falling in ways that He would’ve steered us around. What about you? Are you tired of blazing your own path through life? Are you weary and heavy laden? Let the Good Shepherd lead you in paths of righteousness. His detours will ensure that you arrive safely at your eternal destination, and provide goodness and sustenance all the days of this life.

In the words of “Higher Ground”, by Johnson Oatman:

Verse 4
“I want to scale the utmost height
and catch a gleam of glory bright;
But still I’ll pray ’til Heaven I’ve found,
‘Lord plant my feet on higher ground.’
Verse 5
Lord, lead me up the mountain side,
I dare not climb without my Guide;
And Heaven gained, I’ll gaze around
With a grateful heart from higher ground.
Chorus
Lord, lift me up and let me stand
By faith on Heaven’s table land,
A higher plane than I have found;
Lord, plant my feet on higher ground.”

Have you read the end of the book? So many people find solace in their favorite parts of the Bible and ignore the sections they find troubling, challenging, or hard to understand. Some followers of Christ declare that they are “New Testament Christians”- as if the Old Testament has no relevance to them. Others appreciate the stories of Noah and David and Elijah, or find solace in Psalms and Proverbs, but are quick to skip over Deuteronomy and Leviticus.

Nathan Jones: Even though we do focus on the end of the Book, Tim and I love the beginning as well. Genesis lays the foundation for everything that follows and previews God’s entire plan of salvation and is choosing of a single band who would become the father of many. But unless you read through to the end, you might become anxious as we witness our world descending into chaos and confusion. Or you might think that God has lost control, given the rebellion that is evident all around us. Well folks, nothing could be further from the truth.

Tim Moore: That’s right. As Governor Huckabee said, “We win!” Or to be more specific, Jesus Christ wins- and because we are on His team, we win too! Like Mike Huckabee, we don’t know what will happen to America in the years to come. We can’t even predict what will happen in the next presidential election. What we do know is that even as the nation’s rage, God is still in control. Let’s continue to remind each other of that wonderful truth even as we weather the election storm and wonder what lies ahead for our beloved nation.

Tim Moore: Next week we’re going to bring you portions of two timely messages. Nathan Shackelford will describe some of the ways First Liberty is protecting Religious Liberty in America. Many of the young people who attended our conference were particularly excited about engaging with his organization to stand up and speak out in such a time as this. And we’ll also share insights from Tommy Nelson, who addressed how the Church must be a beacon of light in a darkening world.

Nathan Jones: We’ll close by agreeing with Governor Huckabee. We also pray for God’s grace- His unmerited favor- to continue to fall on our land, and for many to come to salvation.

Tim Moore: That is our prayer for you. “May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all” (2 Corinthians 13:14).

If the Lord tarries, we’ll see you again next week for another episode of Christ and Prophecy. Godspeed!

End of Program