Smoothing Out The Rough Roads, Part 1

Today on Fellowship in the Word, Pastor Bill Gebhardt challenges you to become a fully functioning follower of Jesus Christ.

The question for all of us is, is that, how do you and I cope? And I think what's amazing, and sometimes Christians misunderstand this, but we always think that if we're right with God, our road will always be smooth. He'll just keep us on smooth roads, and there's nothing even a hint of that in the Word of God. But what God does tell us is, look, I will give you four shock absorbers, and if you put them between you and the road, you're going to ride along pretty smooth. That's what I'd like to talk about this morning, those shock absorbers. Thank you for joining us today on this edition of Fellowship in the Word with Pastor Bill Gebhardt. Fellowship in the Word is the radio ministry of Fellowship Bible Church located in Metairie, Louisiana.

Let's join Pastor Bill Gebhardt now as once again he shows us how God's Word meets our world. In the early 1900s, for the first time in our country, automobiles became the mode of transportation. And one of the great risks associated with this new pastime of driving your automobile was flat tires.

Lots of them. The reason is there were no real roads. The roads were just simply set for wagons, not necessarily for cars at all. And so and cars at that time when they first made had no spare tires. So a young entrepreneur named August F. Meyer, he decided that this would be a great opportunity. And so with all those flat tires, he decided that he would build tire pumps and sell tire pumps to people so they could put it in their car whenever they got a flat tire. He established the Brisk Blast Manufacturing Company in Monroe, Michigan. Soon, very soon, Brisk Blast, what a name, was producing more than 5000 tire pumps a week. In 1919, Brisk Blast changed its name, and I'm grateful for that. It changed its name to the Monroe Automobile Equipment Manufacturing Company. And soon after that, the company perfected the first self-oiled single barrel tire pump.

They sold more than two million pumps a year. But only for a couple of years, by the mid 1920s, two things changed completely. One was service stations started showing up all over the country and they gave free air. In those days, they gave free air as long as when you got gas there. Secondly, the automobile manufacturers started putting spare tires on their cars.

But instead of giving up, Meyer had an idea. He got his team together and he took the technology of this single barreled oiled tire pump and he decided there's something else I can do with it. I can actually smooth the ride for all of the American cars. And so in 1926, the very first Monroe shock absorbers, which is still with us today, was put on American cars. It was between the frame and the body. And so no matter how rough the road was, you didn't bounce up and down. The shock absorbers just simply took it away and he smoothed out the ride for each American in a car. Now, the reason that I love that story, it is a great invention. I mean, there's no doubt about it. Shock absorbers are something still with us today.

Monroe is still one of the biggest companies in the world with shock absorbers. But what a perfect picture of what the Christian life should be like. That's what I want to do this morning. I want to explain how can this be what the Christian life should be like? You see, God promises us that if we apply certain shock absorbers, no matter how rough the road is of our life, it will smooth out the ride. I want you to open your Bibles to Ecclesiastes chapter nine. Ecclesiastes chapter nine. Now, if you've been here a long time, you probably know this, but Ecclesiastes is my favorite book in the Old Testament. I just love the book. I preached through it a few times.

I'm always tempted to preach through it again. I just love the book. And the reason is, is that Solomon, as brilliant as he is, and he's very brilliant. He is really questioning the validity of life. And he really sets he really sets the stage for what is today modern existential thinking.

A lot of his conclusions, his conclusion was pretty much this. If God is not part of your life, there's no point in being alive. There's no purpose in life. And that's exactly what modern day existentialist will teach. And so Solomon then makes this great case. But in Ecclesiastes nine, he says this in verses one and two. He said, For I have taken all this to my heart and explain it that righteous men, wise men and their deeds are in the hand of God. Man does not know whether it'll be love or hatred. Anything awaits him.

It's all it's the same for everyone. There was one fate for the righteous and another for the wicked, for the good and for the clean and for the unclean, for the man who offers sacrifice and for the one who does not. He said, as good as man is, so is a sinner. As a swearer is, he said, is the one who is afraid to swear. Now, let me summarize what he means.

Life's a crapshoot. It really doesn't matter. It doesn't matter whether you're righteous or whether you're a sinner. It doesn't matter if you're rich or poor. It doesn't matter. In other words, if I was taking what I've already talked about, everybody is going to experience rough roads in life.

And it really doesn't matter who you are. And that's a very good point to make. Now, the question comes down to then is, how do you deal with the rough roads?

And I've got to be honest. If you look at our culture and most of the people in our world, we deal very poorly with rough roads. We're not sure at all how to deal with rough roads. The suicide rate in America every five years is climbing exponentially. It's just to me amazing how this just keeps rising and rising and rising. We don't know how to how to cope with it. And it really doesn't matter how gifted you are, how talented you are, how educated you are or how rich you are.

Once the road gets rough for a lot of us, we just begin to fall into pieces. Take someone like historic like Howard Hughes. Howard Hughes is about as talented, as brilliant, as successful and as famous and rich as a man could possibly be. When you read his biography, you find out that he had a weakness, though, in his weakness was he was an absolute control freak. He controlled everything. The problem was, as his empire got bigger and bigger, he started losing control.

And to him, that became a very rough road and he had no ability at all to figure out how do I how do I cope with this now that I can't control everything? And so he ended up sliding further and further and further down. And he finally got to the point where he rented a condo in Mexico, the top floor of a condo. He hired guards to guard him 24 hours a day, seven days a week. He became a total recluse. And he then started never cut his hair and never cut his fingernails or his toenails. And then he died alone and joyless. All because he couldn't cope at all with a rough road. I mean, that is an extreme. The question for all of us is, is that.

How do you and I cope? And I think what's amazing and sometimes Christians misunderstand this, but we always think that if we're right with God, our road will always be smooth. He'll just keep us on smooth roads.

And there's nothing even a hint of that in the word of God. But what God does tell us is, look, I will give you four shock absorbers. And if you put them between you and the road, you're going to ride along pretty smooth. That's what I'd like to talk about this morning. Those shock absorbers.

The first one is simply this. God offers us the shock absorber of his presence. And his promise, he said, this should help you go with me to Deuteronomy 31. Deuteronomy is the last book Moses wrote of the Pentateuch. And this chapter is Moses is an old dude. He's one hundred and twenty. And, you know, you've got to feel for him in this way. He at four, he spent his first 40 years as the prince of Egypt.

This looked like it was going to be good. Then everything kind of went south for him because he killed an Egyptian and all that. So he had to spend the next 40 years in the wilderness, a Midian by himself with sheep. And we know, as the story goes on, that he learned humility there.

Members, the prince of Egypt, he wouldn't have much of that. But what we just sometimes forget is he spent the next 40 years in the wilderness with Israel. And we learned in the men's study yesterday in Numbers Chapter 11, God said, I kept Israel in the wilderness for 40 years. So they'd learn humility. So Moses spent 80 years out of one hundred and twenty in the wilderness learning humility. And when you read the entire book, like of Numbers, the amount of stuff that guy had to deal with.

Listen, when you're meeting two and a half million people, especially two and a half million of God's people, you got nothing but trouble. And that's what Moses had. So Moses gets to this point. He says this. So Moses went and spoke these words to all Israel. And he said to them, I'm one hundred and twenty years old today.

I'm no longer able to come and go. And the Lord has said to me, you'll not cross this Jordan. It is the Lord your God who will cross ahead of you. He will destroy these nations before you and you shall dispossess them. He says Joshua is the one who will cross ahead of you, just as the Lord has spoken. The Lord will do to them just as he did to Sion and Og and the kings of the Amorites and in their land when he destroyed them. The Lord will deliver them up before you and you shall do to them according to all that I've commanded, all the commandments which I have commanded you.

And then this. He said, be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or tremble with them. For the Lord your God is the one who goes with you. He will not fail you.

He will not forsake you. Wow. What an amazing promise of the presence of God. You have to understand, these are two and a half million people who were slaves for 400 years. They don't know how to fight anybody. I mean, they're they're not an army. They're nothing even.

There's no training. And what we often forget is when you go into the promised land, it is filled with nothing but military like military like groups. All of them are called eights. You have Canaanites, you have Amorites, you have Jebusites, you have eights everywhere.

All of them are combative. So much so that the first time they got to the land 40 years earlier, they said, we can't go in and we can't do that. And God said, you know what the big mistake is you made?

I never thought you could do it. So God, this time, Moses re re re re reiterates this. He said, do not be afraid or tremble with them for the Lord your God. He goes with you and he will not fail or forsake you. Do you understand that when you're on a rough road? He says, I'm going to I will go with you and I will not fail and I will not forsake you. That's repeated in Hebrews Chapter 13 in the New Testament. I'll never leave you nor forsake you. The same thing out of Deuteronomy, because it's such an important thing. You see, where do we get our courage to go through the rough spots in life?

Not from us. We get it from him is from his own promise. Look, I will not fail you.

I can make this work for you. Let me show you how this applies and go with me now to Romans Chapter eight in the New Testament. Romans Chapter eight. You need to realize that when you're going through a really rough time, one of the things that's important is we always get sort of isolated and we think it's our problem and it's all. It's only how am I going to get myself through this no matter what I do? God keeps trying to tell you, I'm right here.

Think of the words that are used in scripture to describe your relationship with God and mine. He's called our fortress. I mean, he's called our shelter. He's he's called our hiding place.

He's called our anchor. Why is God keep telling us that? He's saying, I'm right here. No matter what it is you go through, I'm right here. I'm right with you.

I won't fail you. So you get to Romans eight twenty eight. And Paul says this. He said, We know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God and those who are called according to his purpose. That's one of those love hate verses. We love that it's in there and we want to believe it's true. But when we're on a rough road, we don't necessarily believe this because all we know is how rough the road is. What do you mean?

And notice he says it'll all work together for good. Every bit of it. And does that help you? Not much. Why?

Because there's one thing he doesn't tell us. When? When?

I'm in the middle of a rough road. When is it going to get better? Said it'll get better. Well, when? Sometimes right away.

Sometimes it takes months, sometimes years. Sometimes heaven. It'll all work, but it's up to God.

You see, that's the way this works. Think of the disciples in Mark, chapter four. They're fishermen. They go out to see a Galilee and the storm is unbelievable. They believe as fishermen, they're all going to perish. They're all going to die in the storm.

All right. And meanwhile, Jesus is in the stern underneath in the ship, little boat, and he's sound asleep. OK, now he's with them. You see, there's his presence that he promised them anything.

Yes. What do you say to him? We're going over to the other side. Now, when God incarnate says we're going over to the other side, where are we going?

But they don't believe that. So they wake him up and they say, don't you care that we're perishing? And he just looked at them and said, wow, you men of what? Little faith. And then he just looked at the sea and went.

Be still. Well, they find out that the road went from rough to smooth just like that. But they didn't pass the test.

They didn't do well with this at all. They they got preoccupied with the storm instead of preoccupied with the sleeping Lord you see in the boat. So that's ends up what's happening. God says, look, I want you to understand this. Look at verse 35 of Chapter eight.

Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Well, tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, the sword. By the way, those are all rough roads.

Every single one of those is a really, really rough road. He said, will that happen? He said, look, verse 37. In all these things, we overwhelmingly conquer through him who loved us. We will prevail.

He said, we overwhelmingly conquer. He said, I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things that come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any created thing will ever be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. What's Paul saying? I believe in the presence and the promise of God. You see, I believe in the presence and in the promise of God.

What's that create for Paul? Peace. That's peace. How much peace do you have in a rough road situation in your life? Because I'm telling you, if you don't have any peace, you don't believe this. You don't have any peace. He says, look, I'm right here. I can do this for you.

I can handle this for you. The second shock absorber is our our focus must be on our destination, not the trip or the rough road. We have to focus on the destination as believers. We see this over and over in the word of God. Look at Romans eight and verse 18. Notice what Paul says here. He said, I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. It's real simple to him. Now, watch, I consider that the sufferings, that's a rough road of this present time, are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is going to be revealed to us.

What's he doing? He said, I'm focused on the destination. Now, go with me to Second Corinthians, Chapter four, Second Corinthians four, and notice how he picks up the same idea and what he says.

He says, Therefore, verse 16, he says, Therefore, he said, We do not lose heart. By the way, what's one of the first things you do on a rough road? Lose heart. Oh, boy. What am I going to do?

How am I going to get out of this? You see, we lose heart. We're bouncing all around. You see, all we have is the body on the frame on an old dirt road. All we're doing is bouncing around. We don't even need dirt roads in New Orleans. The roads are bad enough here.

Just imagine what it'd be like to live in Lakeview without shock absorbers. He says, Therefore, we do not lose heart, but though the outer man is decaying, yet the inner man is being renewed day by day. Paul's a little bit further down in his life now, and he tells all of us something that until you get old enough, you won't understand.

But once you're old enough, this verse is true, isn't it? The outer man's decaying. You can't stop it. We call it aging.

There's nothing we can do. But notice what he says about the rough road for momentary light affliction is producing for us the eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison again. While we look not at the things which are seen, that's the rough road, but with the things are not seen. That's God for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things that are not seen are eternal. He said, I just focus on the destination.

When I was trying to think of how would be a good way to give a good illustration of this, here's what I think would work. Have you ever driven from New Orleans to Disney World with kids in your car? I mean, when you're gone, the kids are focused. You know, are we there yet? Are we there yet?

But the point is, it's there. We can't wait to get there. You know, once we're going to get when we're there, this is going to be great. We're Disney World. Now to drive home is something completely different.

But the drive there because they're so excited about the destination. Well, look, why aren't we? I mean, we're going to the real Magic Kingdom here. You see, why aren't we? You see, why aren't we?

To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. The worst thing that could happen to us can't happen to us. You see, I read the end of the book. We win.

All those things are the same thing. The destination, it will be worth it all when we see Jesus. Why isn't that our perspective when the road gets rough? Why aren't we focused on the destination?

That's the second thing that he tells us. The third shock absorber that he tells us is that we need to focus on all the good things and the blessings God has given us in this life. We need to think about all the good. You see, once the road gets rough, all we think about what's rough.

But we don't think about all the good things that God has for us. Again, I want to go back to Ecclesiastes chapter nine. Solomon again, back where we started Ecclesiastes nine, but this time in verse seven. See, what Solomon says is, I try to think about life and the big things of the meaning of life and how important it is and all that.

Now remember, Solomon is a guy that already knows that everything that everyone else says is important isn't. You see, he knows that. He's wealthy beyond belief. He's done all kinds of projects.

He has an amazing reputation with everybody. He's tried every pleasure that the world offers in spades. He has tried everything. He said all of it is vanity.

None of it produces what you should have. See, he realized that without God, nothing else matters. You've been listening to Pastor Bill Gebhardt on the Radio Ministry of Fellowship in the Word. If you ever miss one of our broadcasts, or maybe you would just like to listen to the message one more time, remember that you can go to a great website called oneplace.com. That's oneplace.com, and you can listen to Fellowship in the Word online.

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