A Banquet Before My Enemies

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. This is the word of God. We're in the middle of this series called The Table in the Wilderness, and it comes from Psalm 78. I know, it's the second longest Psalm in the Old Testament, and yet most people don't realize that. And the longer the Psalm, the less likely you know it. This one today, Psalm 23, is probably, how many of you, this is your favorite Psalm? If you have one, yeah, yeah, it's a good one. But Psalm 78 says this, They spoke against God, saying, 'Can God spread a table in the wilderness?' That line is kind of the theme verse. What's happening is Israel's in the wilderness, and they're basically not believing God, and they say, Can God? How can God? They're challenging Him. They're misbelieving Him. Can God spread a table in the wilderness? And they were answering, no, it's not possible out here. And we know the answer actually was yes. Not only did he once, he did it twice, three times, and still three times right in the book of Exodus after they just crossed the Red Sea, and yet each time they complained. And then after that, continually he provides a table in the wilderness. 70% of the entire Torah, the first five books, are spent in the wilderness. It's fascinating how much time is spent by God's people in the wilderness. And it becomes one of the major themes in the Bible, the idea that God provides, God cares, God can. provide a table in the wilderness, but that God does provide a table in the wilderness. He's not simply almighty and canned, but he is all loving and does. And many stories in the Bible take this theme. I don't know if you realize this, it is not the Garden of Eden, it is the Garden in Eden. And Eden happens to be a wilderness. It's a desert, and in the middle of it, God provides. A Special Place. That's the first story about wilderness. And then you have all these stories about, well, I know, for better or worse, in the Old Testament, barrenness. The fact that a number of women could not have children and become the center of God's plan. Someone like Sarah or Hannah or Elizabeth in the New Testament. And then the barrenness, or the lack of armies that should be able to win a battle. And you can find again and again in the Book of Judges someone like Gideon, but also even David when he goes out. God continues to show he is a God who can and who does. And he happens to be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, which means he's the God of the weak and the wandering. and the wilderness people, the god of the widow and the orphan, the barren and the burdened. And that's a totally counterintuitive message. I don't know if you realize this, I'm learning it more and more, especially as I've been teaching certain classes at FGCU and I have to study all this stuff to make sure I know a little more than the students. You know, it's usually good if your professor knows a little more than the students, at least faking it. Okay, faking it. You learn how to fake it. And what has amazed me is that you start realizing the Bible should have never existed. And what do I mean by that is these were not the powerful and the scholarly and the most important people on earth. These were slaves. and Bedouins and little families that barely got by, in a sense, on the world stage, and yet they become the center of God's plan and the center of God's history. And I think that, I hope that speaks to you. I hope that tells you just how important you are. Okay? These stories should have been forgotten, except for God. These people should have been Just a remnant. We've got a lot of civilizations we know very little about in history. Why this group and why this people? Only because of God. That's why Abraham Heschel, he says this about the Bible itself. He says, Indeed, the nature of the Bible is precisely something which is not consistent with everything else we know about the historical circumstances under which it evolved. In other words, it shouldn't have happened or we shouldn't even have it. It would have been more consistent with our general understanding that had the great religious insights been given to the sages of Egypt or Athens, rather than to a homeless people roaming and starving in the wilderness of the Sinai Peninsula. The wonder of the Bible is against all human expectations. God does provid...