The Wrong Hand with the Right God

Hey church, thank you for being the church that you are—that you don’t mind talking to each other and loving up each other and hugging each other. That’s a—that’s a good thing. And I think that’s one of the great attributes of Sauldam Baptist Church is family. Okay. Well, we’re going to have to come to our time of—of—of praying now. And one of the things that I know Pastor Jeremy Simmons and I like too is the fact that we get to pray for other churches. Now, you might say, “Why—why do we want to do that?” Well, last time I checked, we’re all in the same army, God’s army. And, I know when I was in the military, if you’re ever on maneuvers or—and guys that actually have been to combat, that kind of thing, you want folks next to you. And so, that’s what we’re doing against—when we fight against spiritual warfare every day. And, so we want to pray for churches because God’s got His army everywhere. And so, here’s some of the list: Adams Run, Calvary, Charleston Baptist Association, First Baptist of Ravenel, Harbor City, down the road, Hopewell, and then Live—if you don’t know, Live Oak Fellowship is a kind of a church plant over on John’s Island. They meet in Angel Oak Elementary School, and so lift them up, too. But I want to add one to the list. On my way in this morning, I got a text from my next door neighbor, my one—well, actually the wife of my one—and my one is a guy named Jack Wagner. Jack does not—I don’t think—knows the Lord, and Jack was in a car accident yesterday and he is down at MUSC. I’m going to see him probably right after church. Has a brain bleed, is inoperable, and they don’t think he’s going to make it. And—and—and they don’t know how long. They don’t know anything right now. And I was praying and talking with his wife on the—in the car as I was coming here. So I want you to just lift him up. You know, God can do amazing things. And if it be His will that—that He would be healed and God would use this to bring not only him around but make him an incredible witness. Don’t know—don’t know what’s going to happen. Might be his time. But I have witnessed to him for over 15 years and u—and his boys, and I baptized his daughter. So I just want you to lift—lift him up in prayer, and I told his wife that I would mention that. So I want you to get in small groups as we normally do and lift up our churches that they would have an amazing Sunday today, that they—God would just work in them and through them. And then—and lift up Jack too, if you wouldn’t mind.

Father, thank you for just being you. Thank you for the fact that Sauldam Baptist Church does not have to do this alone. I thank you for your—your group of believers that are meeting all over this city and all other denominations and—and churches and maybe even in homes and—and schools and everywhere else. And Lord, I just—I just that they would lift up your name today. That people would be touched, people would be moved, hearts would be cleansed and—and minds changed for your kingdom. So I just lift them up and I lift you up. Lord, I want to lift up Jack and Becky, his wife, especially his two sons and daughter. Well, I can’t imagine what they’re going through right now. I can imagine the hopelessness that they feel somehow. Lord, reach down through them. Remind them that you love them, that you’re there, that you died for them, that put your arm around. May they know your presence and your love. Just do what you do. And thank you for being who you are. And the fact that we get to come to you and pray to you and love you because you loved us when we weren’t even thinking about loving you. And now guide our service. Lord, in your son’s name we pray. Amen.

Reason I’m preaching this morning is after I was scheduled to preach I guess a couple months ago and—and then it snowed. And so what we’re actually doing, I was going to preach on a—a particular judge and—well, actually two judges. One just kind of gets a small thing. And so I’m just kind of going back and kind of catching us up in the book of Judges. So, we’re actually In Judges chapter 3, if you got your Bibles and want to turn there. That weekend that that happened at Charleston Baptist Association was putting together a little something for pastors and wives, and they do this every year. We usually go up to Myrtle Beach and we stay out of Hampton up there, and they bring in a speaker, and we have like a little conference. Then we have a date night and all those kind of things. And they usually have some kind of a little art activity to start things off. And this is was the art activity that they had us do. It’s actually called Kentugi. It’s Japanese, which stands for golden joining. And what they do is they gave us all or couples by couples. They gave us my wife of course picked this one out. Can you tell why? And so they give they give you this in pieces. And then you got to put it back together again. And you got to put it back together with gold glue. So you got to mix gold and the glue and that kind of thing. And they actually use probably I think in Japan sometimes they use real gold. And the whole point is taking something that’s broken and putting it back together again. And and in fact they explain the Japanese kind of explain it this way. It’s the ancient Japanese practice that not only restores the functionality of the item, but adds a new layer of beauty and meaning. And this is the reason that they wanted to do it. Not just making functional again if you ever want to eat off of this, which I don’t, but it but it becomes a piece of art and beauty. By repairing broken objects with gold, Kentugi transforms flaws into features, reminding us that brokenness is a natural part of life and that healing can create something even more beautiful.

And I I remember when I we were doing this, I was coming home. I thought if there was ever a picture of the book of Judges, it’s this. Our pastor Jeremy couldn’t have named this study any better. Broken saviors. We’re all broken. And I’m gonna talk a lot about that this morning. And and in chapter three, I’mma I’mma break this in a second if I don’t put it down. And we got I think one of the weirdest stories in all of scripture. In fact, we’ve got a story. I remember when I did a series when I was pastoring at Pinerest and I had a youth guy and I and we would actually alternate weeks, and he kept looking at me going, “Al, how come I get all the good judges? I mean, I get you get all the good judges. You get Samson, you get Gideon, you get and I get Ahood, you know, and I get, you know, Shamgar, I get all these weird guys.” I said, “Well, I’m the pastor. And so I can get whoever I want to get.” And so so when I got Ahood, I I was thinking this is payback. This is payback for giving my my youth guy Matt all the all the crazy ones. It is a crazy story. In fact, I have almost heard when I was doing research, there were almost people that were almost apologizing for this story even even being in scripture. Now, I don’t think we should ever apologize for anything being in scripture, but this story is just it’s just strange. And so, somehow we’re going to try and unpack this story about Ahoo.

Let me just kind of catch this up about the judges since we’ve had Easter. And two verses to me really describe the book of Judges. One is 21:25 which says this. And in those days there was no king in Israel and everybody did what was right in their own eyes. That was this nation. And then in Judges 2:10 and 11 it says that whole generation was also gathered to their ancestors and after them another generation rose up who did not know the Lord or the works He had done for Israel. And the Israelites did what was evil in the Lord’s sight and they worshiped the bales, which was the other gods of the nations around them. That kind of describes the book of Judges. Israel wants to do everything but what God wants them to do. And I’m thinking, if that doesn’t describe our society and our culture today, I don’t know what does. I don’t know if there’s a book in scripture that describes our culture today like the book of Judges. There’s no centralized government and they decided that living in the culture was More acceptable than living for the Lord to the point where they forgot what the Lord had ever done for them. Now, whose fault is that? That’s that’s to me that’s that’s the adults, you know, they didn’t teach their kids.

There were 12 judges, crazy cast of characters, guys that that that we probably would never pick. You would probably never pick Ahud, who we’re going to pick to look at today, or Shamgar maybe even, but God picks them. They would live like this for almost 400 years. From the time that Joshua dies to the time that Saul becomes king is 400 years that they live like this. And they have a short memory.

And seven times in this book, there’s what I call the sin cycle. There’s rebellion where they just decide, you know what? I know what God wants. I know what scripture says. I just don’t want to do that. I want to do my own thing. Tell me that doesn’t sound like our culture today. To me, that sounds like the church today.

There’s retribution because they make that decision. There are consequences of that decision. I mean, you can choose to do whatever you want to do, but you don’t get sometimes get to choose the consequences. So there’s retribution. Then after a while they go, “Gosh, I got to get back with God because this is about to kill me.” So there’s repentance where they come and say, “Lord, help us. We don’t want to live like this no more.” And God being God comes through and He restores them.

And then there the is the last R which is repeat. It’s almost like again the shampoo sha chapter, you know, lather, rinse, repeat. Lather, rinse, repeat. This is the book of Judges. Rebellion, retribution, repentance, restoration, repeat.

And the Lord, it says, if if you’ll just look with me, I’m going to be looking at starting with verse 12. Let me just read just a couple there. It said the Israelites, listen to this, how just this wording again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. And He gave King Eglon of Moab power over Israel because they had done evil in the Lord’s sight.

I want to tell you, God’s still in charge. I mean, when I read this, I was going, why would God do that? God didn’t give Israel power. Who’d He give power to? He gives power to Eglon. He raises up the evil ruler to come in and take His people. He did the same thing in in you read the book of Jeremiah and Jeremiah struggling. God, why are You allowing Nebuchadnezzar of Babylons to come in and take care of us? He does that with Eglon here.

Eglon is a Moabitete. We see here he also, you know, He raises up the Amorites and the Amalachites to join forces. They attack. They set up in what they call their headquarters in the city of palms. That would be Jericho and He just ravages Israel.

Now, why would God do that? Well, I think number one, God raised up nations to keep them trained in warfare. That makes sense. He does it because He because He wants to test them. You know, there’s a difference between trials and and testing. God tests us. Satan tempts us. God tests us. Why? Because He wants us to make the right decision. Why does Satan tempt you? Because he’s always looking for you to make the wrong decision.

But Eglon, you would think Eglon and the Moabites and the Ammonites and and and these folks would would get along with Israel. Why? Because well, Eglon and the Moabites are descendants of Lot as are the Ammonites. The Amalachites are descendants of Esau. So, they’re kind of distant cousins. You think they’d get along, but they don’t. They hate Israel. They’re jealous of Israel. They have set up their own worship spiritual system with their gods and and they’re jamming it down Israel. And Israel is receiving it.

But God is behind the scenes. As one person once said, there’s difference between factual and actual. Factual is the who, what, and when. The actual is why. And we’re going to understand why does God do this? Why does God put these people in in this? And the Bible says in these same books verses, if you start with let’s see, verse 15, the Israelites cried out to the Lord and He raised up Ahud, son of Gar, a left-handed Benjamite as a deliverer for them. And the Israelites sent him with a tribute for King Eglon of Moab.

So, who is Ahud? Well, first of all, he’s from the tribe of Benjamin, which is probably The smallest of all the tribes. So, I’m thinking most folks aren’t going to choose from that tribe anyway. Secondly, he’s left-handed. Now, left-handed may not be a big thing to you, but I want to tell you in the Near East, the Far East, it’s a big deal. Now, the Benjamites were known; they had a number of left-handed guys. They had 700 guys in their army that were incredible with a sling and were great warriors. And most, a lot of their warriors were ambidextrous. They could fight and hold swords and stuff, with either hand, but the left hand was something different. The left hand was thought of as the evil hand. This was the good hand. This was the evil hand. This is the hand that you did things like clean yourself with. This is a hand that if you just waved your left hand, it was like a dirty gesture coming at you. You didn’t shake anybody’s hand with your left hand. And yet this guy was left-handed. Anybody here left-handed? Well, I want to just share something with you in just a second because you can take good. See, only 10% of the population’s left-handed. Did you know that? Only 10%. But they’re said to be great music, more creative. They use their right side of the brain more. Look at this list of famous left-handers: Einstein, Isaac Newton, Da Vinci, by the way, Netanyahu, Oprah, Bill Gates. I mean, look at some of the things on here: Michael Jackson, LeBron James, Steve Jobs, Michelangelo, Tom Cruise, Henry Ford, Ronald. Pretty good list, isn’t it? Aren’t you glad you’re on that list now? But they wouldn’t have thought that wrong hand. But God chooses him. The rebellion, they did evil in the sight of the Lord. It’s actually mentioned twice in chapter three and the beginning of chapter four. They serve, they have retribution. They serve into their sin 18 years. Then they cry out to God. Let’s look at this story. I want to read it. Ehud gets the word from the Lord. He realizes there’s only one way I end this, and I’ve got to somehow figure out how to take Ehud out. I mean, Eglon out. But Eglon lives in a palace. Eglon’s got guards. Eglon’s got an army. But Eglon seems untouchable, but look at what he does. Verse 16: And Ehud made himself a double-edged sword 18 inches long. He strapped it to his right thigh under his clothes and brought the king the tribute to Eglon of Moab, who was an extremely fat man. Now, what in the world is that in scripture? Ain’t that a cra—I mean, what a crazy story. He straps to his right side. Why? Because under his garments he can hide it, and when he reaches with the left, he’ll be able to come up with it if they probably do a little frisk on him. They ain’t checking that side because they’re going to check this side. But he goes and he brings the tribute. Now the story is kind of interesting. In the story, he comes in with the folks. They bring tribute because Eglon was also the kind of guy that when he took over a nation, it’s got, okay, we’re gonna have some taxes and it’s going to benefit me and anything else that I want to do and my army and my palace, and so they would have to bring, every year they would bring tribute to him. So, he brings the tribute from his tribe and he brings these folks. He dumps it off and then he heads out. And the Bible says that he gets to the edge probably of the kingdom where all the statues and all the, you know, the idols are, and he sees all these things and he realizes really why he’s there. And they go on and he turns back and he heads back to the palace. And so he walks in the palace. He says he turns around at the graven image and then he goes up, verse 19, he says at the carved images near Gilgal he returned and said, “King Eglon, I have a secret message for you.” And the king said, “Silence!” And all his attendants left. And then Ehud approached him while he was sitting alone in his upstairs room where it was cool, and he said, “I have a message.” Listen to this. Now, a message from God for you. And the king stood up from his throne. Ehud reached with His left hand, took the sword from his right thigh, and plunged it into Eglon’s belly. Now, here’s here’s the picture. Even the handle went in after the blade, and Eglon’s fat closed in over it, so that Ehud did not withdraw the sword from the belly, and the waste came out.

Now, does that sound like a little too much information? You ever wonder why God does stuff like this? Why God tells stories like this? I mean, the guy is so huge that he sticks his foot and a half sword complete up to the the handle into his belly. His belly absorbs all of it. His gastrointestinal ins, you know, basically all his insides explodes and all of a sudden everything goes everywhere. You talk about a backup. You talk about I mean and the situation becomes the situation becomes where he locks the doors and goes to escape. And the reason he’s able to escape because all his servants come up and they smell everything that’s going on in there. Can’t see it, but they’re thinking he’s got to be maybe using a restroom or something. And they don’t go in. They gave him time and it allows time for Ehud to escape.

Now I started thinking, Lord, why is that why is that story in scripture? Why the story is then why do you go to the detail? And I remember I prayed about this. I said, “Lord, give me give me something. You got to give me something for this.” Tell you what the Lord gave me. He gave me Philippians 3:8. Let me read that for you. But everything that was gained to me, I have considered to be a loss because of Christ. More than that, I also consider everything to be a loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. Because of Him I have suffered the loss of all things and consider them as dung so that I may again gain Christ.

You know, we have become such a society that just wants more and more and more and want to get bigger and bigger and bigger and we become and I want to tell you Eglon represents all that’s in our lives that’ll destroy us. Self-indulgence to the point of obesity. Always taking, never giving will destroy us. Surrounding ourselves with oppression and darkness. And that is a picture, a living picture by Eglon of what our society has become.

And Paul as he writes to this church at Philippi, a church that He loved, a church that in chapter one, He says, “I thank my my God for every time I remember you.” He writes to them and says, “Everything that I thought that I thought was important is gone. And I’m glad it’s gone because really what I need is you.” I’m reminded again of Matthew 6:33. You know, seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and then all these things shall be added unto you. Do you do you understand the principle? You get it. You get the top thing right. You get the major thing to be the major thing, and then God takes care of everything else after that. But He’s got to be number one. And He’s not going to fight you to be number one. He didn’t fight the Israelites to be number one. He loved them. He was there. He never left. But He wasn’t going to make them. And until they cried out to Him. Sometimes it took 18 years and then He came in. Now sometimes you’re about to destroy yourselves or the nation will be about to destroy itself, and God comes in and takes over. But I want to tell you something. There’s a problem here.

And and then He comes in and and and Ehud, he escapes. He He leaves. He sounds the horn. He raises a group as it says at the end of the chapter. And he takes and they they come from the mountain. They make him the leader, and he takes them to the fords of the the fords of the of the of the Jordan and and he and he takes care of about 10,000 of these guys and they rule over the Moabites. God raised up a savior.

There’s another savior comes in right after named Shamgar. Shamgar then got remember everything with Ehud is on the the eastern part of the of the nation. What about the western part? Let me tell how thorough God is. God raises up a guy over there named Shamgar. Now, how is he broken? You know, Ehud’s left-handed. How is how is Sham? Shamgar is a farmer. What does he know about fighting?

He doesn’t know anything. In fact, his only weapon is what’s called an ox goad. It’s basically a cattle prod. It may even say cattle prod in your translation. How do you fight with a cattle prod? But fighting with the cattle prod, he kills like 600 Philistines. I don’t know if he did it at one time or he did it over a period of time, but God can use anybody. But they’re still broken saviors. And when they die, you know what the nation of Israel does? They go back. You think they’d learn? No. Again, it’s a sin cycle. Repeat. They go back. Why do they go back? Let me give you four things real quick. Their savior wasn’t perfect. Their savior could only handle that emergency. He couldn’t handle every emergency. Their savior doesn’t live forever. They die. Their savior was powerful, but he wasn’t all powerful.

Folks, we have broken saviors in our own world. Tell tell me if this doesn’t sound like a broken savior to you. If I just got the right job, if I just had a little bit more money, maybe if I just had the right companion. God, if you could just get me out of this mess. Lord, if I just had the the one the right success. Lord, if you fixed my kid or the kids, Lord, if you could fix my parents. Or maybe we even let’s go political. How about the White House? How about the state house? Just get the right guy in there or gal. How about the courthouse? Just the right judges. How about the schoolhouse? Just get the right teachers, the right administration. Folks, it’s not the White House, state house, courthouse, schoolhouse. It’s your house and it’s my house. We get your house right. We get my house right. It starts there.

See, the thing about broken saviors, they can help out. It’s always temporary. It reminds me of of a movie years ago that came out, remember a movie called City Slickers, that Jack Palance won the Academy Award for best actor. Billy Crystal. There’s a scene in the movie where they’re riding along and of course Billy Crystal’s in awe of Jack Palance. You that’s the that’s the most man I’ve ever seen in a man. And and so they’re talking and Billy Crystal goes, “How do you do it? I mean, what what’s the what’s the key? You seem to got it all. What’s the key to success?” Now, remember Jack Palance’s response. He looks at him and he goes, “Oh, that’s just like you city slickers. You get all tied up in a knot for 50 weeks and then you come to the place like this of dude ranch and for two weeks you want us to untie your knot. >> Do you know what the secret of life is? >> No. What? >> This >> your finger? >> One thing. Just one thing. >> That’s great. But what’s the one thing? >> That’s what you got to figure out.

Everybody in this room knows what the one thing is. The one thing is Jesus. You get Jesus right. You get Jesus right. You get the kingdom of God right. It all falls into place. You may it may be tough. I’m not saying it’s not tough. And that’s our job as adults is to is to figure it out so that we this doesn’t benefit us. It benefits those that come behind us. We are responsible for the next generation. See, we want to give our kids a home, family, education, prepare for them for a job. But if they don’t have Jesus, forget it. It’s all worthwhile. I mean, worthless. It’s not worthwhile. It’s all for nothing.

Look, I’ve been I’ve been working with youth. I’ve been working with youth for almost 50 years since I was in college. And And I’ve just seen a lot. I’ve just seen string sometimes. And I just want to talk to the parents and the adults for a moment. Kids need to see Jesus in your life. If He’s important to you, He’ll be important to them. They want to see church in your life. If it’s important to you, it’ll be important to them. Especially dads. It’s I always find it sad when mom is the spiritual giant in the family. When dad’s when you stand before the Lord one day, He’s not going to be looking at your spouse and saying, “What? How did you lead the kids?” He going to be looking at dad saying, “How how did you lead the kids?” But we got to show them the kids life choices that that are important and what God would do and what I mean how Would I love the WWJD? What would Jesus do? We got to make church important to them. We got things make things like camps important to them. You know, I’ve I’ve seen, you know, you don’t you don’t punish them by taking Jesus away sometimes. I remember I would back years ago I I had parents that you know would would put it because they knew they love church and love being around their kid their their friends.

Let me tell you some things too why why church what camps are important. Like in a couple weeks we’re going to be going to Muge. And let me tell you why Muge I like better than just camp. Muge is a mission trip they’re going to be doing for somebody else not just for them. That’s why I think that’s important. And I’m not saying things other things in life are important. I’m not saying work’s not important because it is. I’m not saying sports is not important because I love sportsman in my high school. I’m not saying all those things are not important. But when you go off together as a group and you you you travel together and you eat together and you do missions together and you talk about it and you get away from all your buddies and you get away from social media and you get away from and and God gets to work for about four or five days and it’s all about the Lord. It changes kids lives. They they get saved. They they surrender to ministry. They they some surrender to mission field. I’ve seen all kind of things happen. I’ve watched 70 I’ve watched 70 teenagers walk down an aisle and give their life to Christ at just camp. That’s why it’s important.

Let’s talk about the ultimate savior. Why? What is it about the ultimate savior that’s so important? Well, the ultimate savior is God Himself. The ultimate savior is two things. He’s perfect and He’s holy. The ultimate savior takes on the toughest foe. He didn’t take on the Moabites. He took off sin and death. The ultimate savior gave up His own life and then He rose again. You want power? I don’t know much more. And then the ultimate savior walks with you through the toughest times of life and brings you into His family for eternity. Broken saviors don’t do that. Jesus does that.

Let me kind of close things out with this story. You’ve probably never heard of this. I remember when I was preparing this one Sunday morning in Bethgo, she was listening to the radio and she was telling me about this story. It’s about a guy named Kevin Hines. And September 25th, the year 2000, Kevin Hines was 19 years old. And at the age of 19, he decided to end his life or try to end his life by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. I don’t even know much about the Golden Gate Bridge with folks back in those days that they tried, 99% succeeded in taking their life. 1% might survive. Now, how how would a guy do how does a 19-year-old want to jump off a bridge like that? Well, he was a native San Franciscan. He he was adopted, had a great childhood growing up, but at age 10, he has an epileptic attack. And so, they get him on medication. And this medication that he’s on is awesome for epilepsy. And so for the next six years, he doesn’t have another seizure. And so they take him off of the medication. The problem was that the medication kept his epilepsy under control. But the f it hid the fact that he also had another problem. He was bipolar. And that just caused even worse problem than his epilepsy could ever have. He had dramatic mood swings. He he had vision. He just had all kind of problems. And then at at 19, his girlfriend B breaks up him. And that that same week, his favorite teacher in school commits suicide. And he just the voices in his head were just getting worse and worse and worse to the point where he just heard things like, “You you just got to die. You you just got to end this.” And so he he plans to do that. He’s going to go and he’s going to jump off this the San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. He said he was actually happy that morning because he said, “All my pain is going to go away.” He goes down, he gets up that morning. He’s got to take two buses to get to the bridge. He goes down to Walgreens and he finds what he his favorite breakfast, which was A bag of Skittles and a Sunburst. He said, “I was just… He said, I was happy I was going to end this mess. It was a Monday, and even though the voices are there, he made a pact with himself that if anybody would come up to him and say, “Is something wrong with you, young man? Are you okay?” he would just spill his guts and ask for help. Actually, that doesn’t happen. He just kind of gets stared at on the buses. But he gets finally to the bridge, and he’s walking up onto the bridge, and all of a sudden this curly, blond-haired gal comes, and he’s going, “She’s going to say something to me.” And she does. She hands him a camera and says, “Will you take a picture of me on the bridge?” And that’s all she does. She smiles at him and then walks away.

He walks up on the bridge, and as he walks up on the bridge, he decides, “I’m just going to do it.” And he throws himself over the rail. I don’t know if you know much about the Golden Gate Bridge, but we’re talking 25 stories down to the water. You hit the water going 75 miles an hour, you might as well be hitting concrete. It’s going to take him about four seconds to do it. He goes over the rail, and as he goes over the rail, the thought comes into his mind: “What am I doing? I don’t want to do… I don’t want my life to end. What am I doing?” He’s 19 years old. “What am I doing?” Of course, he’s already over the rail. We’re taking four seconds to hit the water.

He hits the water and somehow manages to revolve his body where he goes in feet first because he was heading head first. He immediately snaps about three vertebrae in his back. He’s about an inch and a half from probably snapping his spinal cord, but that doesn’t happen. And when he hits the water and he goes down into the murky water, he just wants to survive, and he’s just, “God, help.” And he’s trying to get to the top, and he’s just grappling, just trying to swim and get to the top, and he knows something’s swirling around him, going, “Okay, that’s great. I’m not even going to drown. I’m going to get eaten by a shark in these waters.” And so he’s just praying that something will happen in his life.

Three miracles happened that day. Three miracles. As soon as he went over the rail, the car driving by, a woman saw him do it, picked up her phone, called 911. Well, no, no, she didn’t call 911. She called her boyfriend who was in the Coast Guard and said, “You’re not going to believe what I just saw. A guy just went over the rail on the Golden Gate Bridge.” Guess who was patrolling that day under the Golden Gate Bridge? Her boyfriend, the Coast Guard’s gift. Miracle number one.

Miracle number two, remember I told you there was something gray kind of going around him? Wasn’t a shark. It was a sea cow. It was like a walrus that was there, and it started using him like they was pushing a ball. So it started pushing him up to the surface of the water because he was having trouble getting up there, and the sea lion just kept pushing him up and pushing him up and pushing him to the… and kept him up there for seven seconds. Seven full seconds so that the Coast Guard could yank him into the boat and start trying to administer first aid to him. Miracle number three.

They take him to Hines Hospital in downtown San Francisco. He gets there. Guess who happens to be in the hospital? A world-renowned back surgeon who just happened to be there at that time. He comes in, the surgeon checks him in, and he goes into a 10-and-a-half-hour surgery. It was one of the most foremost black surgeons. A 10-and-a-half-hour back surgery to replace his shattered three vertebrae with titanium. He and his team had no margin for error. In fact, Kevin would say, “I was at their mercy.” He says, “Just one mistake. The negative possibilities were endless. Instead, he not only saved my ability to stand, he saved my ability to walk and eventually run.” Kevin Hines is…

Now a Christian. He went to talk to his pastor. His pastor, “You got to tell your story, buddy.” He go, “Tell my story? I don’t—I can’t get in front of folk tell them this.” And that’s what he tours the world. He’s on more psychological councils for the prevention of suicide than you can imagine. His message is this: Today is not tomorrow. Today is a gift. Maybe that’s why they call it the present. He says, “I hold this one notion to be true. It’s not about what happens to you. It’s about how you react to what happens to you. My faith strengthens in hard times because I know that God is not punishing me with hard times. He’s building me.” He can let our pain defeat or destroy us. We can choose to let it build us brick by brick from the ground up. And he says, “And that’s what I choose.”

What you do or do not change—that’s your choice. You want to change it. You want to change your life. I love 2 Corinthians 12:9 and 10. “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfected in weakness. Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly in my weaknesses.” Ain’t that the book of Corinthians, ladies and gentlemen? “So that the power of Christ may rest on me. That—that is why, for the sake of Christ, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I’m really strong.”

So what do we learn about broken people? Let me just quickly give you four things. And I think that story just illustrates all this because let me tell you something about Kevin Hines. He’s still broken, ladies and gentlemen. He still has the bipolar situation. He still got to deal with his back even though it’s got titanium in it. He now has a wife and a family. He loves the Lord. He talks to people. He tries to help people. Broken people can be used by God. Broken people can be made whole. Broken people need someone to put them together. But it all comes down to this: Broken people need to realize that they’re broken. Ladies and gentlemen, Al Smith’s broken, man. A person in this room is not broken. The Israelites realized they forgot they were broken. It was all about them, and they forgot about the one who could fix them. Sometimes it was 18 years. Sometimes it was 10 years. Folks, you don’t need to go through that mess in your life.

You know what’s neat is when God restores this nation. Do you know how long they have peace? It’s the longest period in the entire book of Judges. It’s not 40 years, which is pretty much the average. It’s 80 years. When you get things right with God, God kind of comes alongside you. And I’m not saying life’s easy. I’m not saying that there are not tough times. I’m not saying that you won’t go through struggles and trials and testing, but what I’m saying is that when you go through, you can have some peace because the God who loves broken people allowed Himself to be broken on a cross and die for you. And just because you’re a Christian does not mean you’re not broken. Okay? We all got something that we need to take to the one who makes us whole, who is perfect. I just think you do what you need to do to just get back with Him. Get right with Him.

Jeremy and I are going to be up here in just a second. You need someone to pray with you. If you need someone to talk with you, if you don’t know Him and you’re broken and you don’t want to live like that anymore, maybe it’s time like the nation of Israel would do every once in a while: “God, I screwed up. I messed up. I’m sorry. Would You come and take care of me? I’m broken. I want to go to the one who’s perfect.”

Let’s pray. Father, thank You. Thank You for saving a guy like Kevin Hines who now preaches You just as much as He preaches the wholeness of just getting your mind together. But Lord, we’re all broken. We all got something to put at the foot of the cross. We all came in here with baggage. We all got stuff going on in our lives. But Lord, what we need to do is come to You. Last time I checked, You never move. You’re always there. You’re always listening. Prayer is just communication, talking with You, and You’re always there.

And you’re all—you’re always there ready to restore us, even though sometimes we sure don’t deserve it. Thank you for loving us. Help us, Lord, this morning to make the decision that we need to make. In Your Son’s name we pray. Amen.