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We’ve been on a series of “The Jigsaw Puzzle”, that speaks to our everyday living. To make it sensible, to take it from the bible, and apply it to our everyday lives. It’s like a puzzle, putting the pieces altogether. I hope at the end of all this, we have a better way to put together all these “jigsaw” pieces, so we can construct a life that is based on biblical doctrine. That’s our purpose for this series. It doesn’t always tie together real neat and tidy, but life is that way. I’d like us to consider a subject that is often on my heart and mind which poses a question. I’ve chosen to title it, “Escape Velocity.” Escape velocity is that speed in aeronautical terms, is that speed we need to get to, to overcome gravity that other forces prevent you from leaving the earth. It’s what a rocket needs to do to launch into orbit. Astronauts have to get to a certain velocity that overcomes all these other forces that work against that effort. To me there’s a direct corollary, a direct relationship, of this idea of a rocket leaving earth to space, and to a person leaving the gravity of sin, earthliness, to get to a place that God has desired for us, not for just after we die, but here on earth while we live, spiritually speaking. So it’s the idea of escaping an earthly existence or connection, escaping that to a kind of heavenly connection, beyond the pull and drag of this life. What must it be like to escape this mental earthliness, and ascend even during this life! We’re not just talking about passing on in this life, but what must it be like to reach that kind of experience with God? I believe God has that in mind, and by design, and that the bible doctrinally requires it. God’s Word offers that to every person! A kind of relationship which has escaped the gravity of this existence. And especially the gravity of what the bible calls sin. That escape is the privilege, and what the Lord desires for us.
Along with this idea of escaping the gravity of this life, both this morning and perhaps next Sunday, Lord willing, we’ll speak about another idea connected to that called “failure to launch.” That’s a phrase also to describe children, adolescents, that come to a phase in life when an individual fails to progress into a new phase of life, and ultimately into adulthood Though “adulthood” normally happens, so many times today, it doesn’t. Sometimes, especially today, “something” prevents that. Failure to launch is what they call it. Well you can apply that spiritually as well. You can apply that as how the Lord really wants us to “lift off,” but for some reason we get so far, that we fall back and we never leave the “launch pad.” That idea, I call failure to launch, and escaped velocity. That we need to get to a place that we keep going and to not fall back. What has to happen for us to launch, to continue to accelerate with God, what has to happen to break the connection to break the connection of the gravity of this life and to be in heavenly places with Christ Jesus? Why is it so many getting in a place in life, and for whatever reason fail to launch, to lift off, why does their vessel stop moving forward? Start to accelerate and then fall back? Why is that? If we knew the answers to those questions, we would be much more successful to those questions, and witnessing to what we have….people would believe it. Today there’s such unbelief in the world, and even in the church. The devil wants you to fail to launch, or if you have, he wants to pull you back to this gravity of earthiness. We must not be okay with that. God wants us to launch “into orbit and beyond.” We will speak about 1) The pull of spiritual gravity, 2) What does the bible say about this velocity that’s needed to accelerate into this spiritual condition. And then we’ll ask, 3) Have I lifted off? Psalms 40 was written with this in mind. A person found themselves trapped in the earthly condition that confronts us all until we “lift off.”
TEXT: PSALMS 40:1-3
1 I waited patiently for the LORD; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry.
2 He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings.
3 And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God: many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the LORD.
The miry clay is a symbolic reference to the condition of earthliness. If you think about walking through a really sticky place, ankle deep or more, and have difficulty pulling your feet out of that, and make forward progress. It holds us back, and down, into an earthly condition, which are in opposition to God. They result from conditions we experience. Before the Lord gets out of this pit, we have to understand what they are. It’s the heartache, sometimes despair, that can hold us down into this earthly condition. And earthly condition is one that holds us down in opposition to God. They result in the things we experience before the Lord gets us out of this pit, we understand what they are. It’s the heartache, of sometimes despair, just the routine of life without God. An absurd existence of waking up everyday with no hope in this life and no hope in the next. That’s the miry clay! And it’s caused by a conscious decision not to get out of the miry clay! That’s what it is! And that conscious decision to not escape this, the bible calls sin. When we know we’re living contrary to the will of God, and yet we do it anyway. The “horrible pit” is noisy and confusing! Complete disconnection from heaven! This writer found himself in this place and cried out! “and he inclined unto me.” “The cry” the bible also calls repentance. He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock /the New Testament in Christ. Once we’re on that solid rock, there’s a place that we can lift off! You can’t lift off from a miry existence! Because it pulls us down! In order for God to lift us off, we have to get on the launch pad. He sets us on the rock, so we can lift off. this is the beginning of it. In verse 6 Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire; mine ears hast thou opened: burnt offering and sin offering hast thou not required. 7 Then said I, Lo I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me,
The Lord doesn’t want us to simply make excuses and ask Him to forgive us for our many sins and wait until they happen again tomorrow and yet have this roller coaster life. That is yet founded in a miry place, which the bible tells us has no foundation, but endless. God has something better for us! In this Old Testament metaphor, He’s not asking that from us. He can get that all day long. What He wants from us is something different. Verse 16 “Let all those that seek thee rejoice and be glad in thee: let such as love thy salvation say continually, The LORD be magnified.” This is the kind of sacrifice He wants! 17 But I am poor and needy; yet the Lord thinketh upon me: thou art my help and my deliverer; make no tarrying, O my God. This person realizes the condition they are in, and didn’t want a temporary solution, or a kind of mercy based on humanity, but rather permanent solution, that they’re pulled out of this condition! God wants to get us out of the “drowning condition,” and into His boat! A velocity to escape earthliness, launch and ascend into His heavenly connection.
Escape Velocity