Lay Down Your Mountain At His Feet

If you have your Bibles, if you'll take those, if you will please, and turn to the Book of Zechariah, the fourth chapter of the Book of Zechariah, one of the minor prophets and unfortunately, infrequently read by contemporary believers, which is unfortunate because it's a powerful little book filled with messianic prophecies and rich Hebrew. The language is. Is rich and the imagery is powerful.

I'm going to be reading from King James this morning, if you're following me in a modern translation. I'm not hung up on what version you read from. You don't have to have a King James Bible to go to heaven. One would be given you when you get there. But why stand in that long, embarrassing line?

I'm joking. I'm always afraid somebody will take me seriously. Amen. Amen. I grew up on the King James Bible.

It sounds right to me. You know, all the thees and thous, the flowery Shakespearean language that offends everybody else. I like it. I can't get used to Jesus walking down to the Sea of Galilee and saying to the disciples, it's happening, dudes.

Just me. Beyond that, the kids at the universities used to ask me all the time, why do you, Mr. President, why do you always read from the King James Bible? I'd tell them, well, part of it was loyalty. I went to high school with King James and Jimmy, we called him Jimmy. He wasn't a king in high school, you know.

But in this particular passage, there is a word, the Hebrew word kin. It means grace. It should be translated grace. And in kjv, it's translated grace, as it should be. In some of the modern translations, however, they inexplicably render the passage God bless it, which I do see, if God graces something, he blesses it.

But it's an odd translation, and for the purpose of this message, it doesn't work. So I'm going to read from kjv. You follow me in whatever cheap communist imitation you've got.

Oh, we're going to have a good time here. This is Zechariah 4, beginning with verse 6. Then he answered and spoke unto me, saying, this is the word of the Lord unto Zerubbabel. Zerubbabel is a type, an Old Testament type. The Prince of Restoration saying, not by might nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts.

Who art thou, O great mountain? Look at the word mountain. In prophetic writing, mountain may mean all kinds of things. What it almost never means is Mountain. It can mean a force, an agency of some kind, a geopolitical force of some kind.

Who art thou, O great mountain, before Zerubbabel? Thou shalt become a plain. Here's the revised Rutland translation of that. Who do you think you are, geopolitical forces of the present age? Who do you think you are?

Kings and armies and dynasties? When Jesus shows up, you'll be as flat as a tortilla. Thou shalt become a plain, and he shall bring forth the headstone thereof with shoutings crying, grace. Grace unto it. Moreover, the word of the Lord came unto me saying, the hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house.

His hands shall also finish it. Doesn't that sound New Testament? He who has begun a good work in you also shall perform it, shall complete it. His hands. Now put your hands on your Bible, and let's pray together.

Heavenly Father, with our hands upon the Word, and our hearts and minds as open as we know how to get them, we ask you to do all the rest. Come, Holy Spirit. And when we leave here today, we say one to another, surely the Lord has spoken unto us. In Jesus name, the strong Son of God. Amen.

Amen and amen.

One of the challenges with communication, even when we're all speaking the same language, is the transition of language, which used to happen over hundreds of years. Now that transition has been exacerbated by contemporary technology. Words which mean something in one generation mean a completely different thing in the next generation. I see some of the young people in the front row have a word of prophecy for you, and that is that when you are my age, if you should live so long and Jesus tarries, there are words that you will use. You use them now, you'll still use them, but they won't mean the same thing.

I went to preach not too long ago to a high school audience in California, which is evidently where the English language will be destroyed. And I was there, of course, recruiting for college and thousands of high school kids. And I don't know when I've ever preached to a congregation that was so with it. I mean, from the opening line of the sermon, they were with me, and it was so wonderful. And afterward I spoke to four boys right down here at the front.

The first boy walked up to me and he said, Dr. Mark, you are one bad preacher. In my lifetime, bad has come to mean good. The second boy said, you're not just bad. He said, you're the baddest preacher I've ever heard. I didn't have the Heart to tell him that baddest is not even a word in the English language.

The third boy said, you're not just bad. He said, you are one sick dude.

One can only sense my level of personal affirmation.

The fourth boy, not content with these low altitude compliments, said, you're not just bad, you're not just sick. He said, you are the OG of crunk.

I have no idea.

I teach the National Institute of Christian Leadership. And some years ago, a young man came through who now pastors a hip hop church, whatever that is. So I called him. I figured if anybody would know, he would. I said, somebody just told me that I was the OG of crunk.

What would that mean? He said, OG means the original gangster. So I said, he told me I'm the original gangster of crunk. He said, yes. I said, okay, see, that really didn't help me all that much.

What does it mean? He said, oh, it means you beat a mack daddy.

I said, tommy, what I'm after here would really fall along the lines of a definition. He said, Dr. Mark, I'm trying. He said, it means you be off the chain. I just decided to leave it alone.

Now, when any word evolves or devolves, there's a certain level of tragedy attached. But when it happens to our functional biblical vocabulary, when it happens to the words with which we think about God and therefore with which we speak to each other about God, it can cause our understanding of who God is to be warped around the misapprehension of the vocabulary. So here's a word which has come to mean almost everything, and therefore it's come to mean almost nothing. And that's grace. We use grace like agape, mayonnaise.

If you slop enough of it on anything, it can make rancid ham taste good.

But what does grace really mean? It's fascinating to me that in the entire Bible, one of the most graphic visual images of grace is here in this minor prophecy. I tend to think, don't you, of grace as a New Testament reality, maybe even exclusively New Testament, that the New Testament is about grace and the Old Testament is about law. So therefore, to find buried in this small book this powerful visual image of grace is fascinating to me. And the image is this.

It is of us on one side of a tall mountain, a rigid, unassailable escarpment. It can't be gotten over, it can't be drilled through, it can't be dug under. And we're on one side, and on the other side is our Savior. Even Jesus. We know that he's our Savior because we've received salvation by grace.

If there's any verse that is sacrosanct in modern evangelicalism, certainly it's this. No man is saved by works, lest any man should boast. We're saved by grace through faith, and that not of ourselves. Even the faith to get saved is a gift of grace. We know that.

We thank God for it. My name is in the Lamb's book. My sins are under the blood. I'm born again. If I was to die now, I'd go to heaven.

The problem is we understand grace as an historical operation. In that moment, I'm saved by grace. I've had grace. Everything else is my responsibility. And so I turn and Jesus my Savior, now retreats to the other side of this mountain.

And until this mountain is moved, he cannot build there the temple, the tabernacle, if you will, where, as Moses said, where he will meet with us. We want this face to face intimate relationship with Jesus. But until this mountain is gone, we can't have it. And we wrongfully jump to the conclusion that the mountain is our responsibility. He saved us.

We're born again. If we were to die now, we'd go to heaven. And he goes to the other side of the mountain and says, now move mountain and I'll lay the cornerstone of the tabernacle, of our intimacy. And so we spend the rest of our Christian walk shoulder to the wheel, nose to the grindstone. This year, I'll move that mountain if it kills me.

The only problem is what it'll kill you if it doesn't put you right in a religious loony bin, rocking back and forth in a straight jacket and humming Jesus Loves me because you will never move that mountain. Now. The mountain is different in every life. It can be habitual. Sin, bondage, hate, hurt, racial prejudice, fear.

Sin of every kind. The mountain is in every life. And we pound on it, we hack at it, we dig at it. And that's the point of frustration where many people, probably every one of you knows someone that has dropped out of, at least dropped out of church and maybe claims to have dropped out of the kingdom and faith altogether. And they have all kinds of excuses.

I don't go to church. I don't like the lights. I don't like the drummer so crazy you have to lock him up in a glass booth. I don't. Whatever it is, they always have some kind of excuse.

But the bottom line is they have a kind of twisted idealism. I won't go to church with that mountain in my life. The only problem is what? They stay home with the mountain in their lives, so nothing is resolved. Others take a different approach.

They drape the mountain in camouflage. They drag it behind them across the parking lot of spirit filled churches. Sunday after Sunday, this mountain of bondage drops draped in camo. And they meet other people dragging their mountains. And we enter into a mutually agreed upon covenant of suspended disbelief.

Do you see a mountain in my life? Nay, brother, thou hast no mountain.

What about me? No mountain there. Let's go to church. And so, in the spiritual realm, over our heads, a veritable sierra of unresolved issues. Most of us, and thank God it's most of us, deal with a different level.

We finally collapse in frustration at the foot of the mountain and cry out, lord, are you over there? Because this sucker won't budge. I quit. What do you have to say to that? I quit.

And what we think is that from the other side of the mountain, we. We're gonna get a tongue lashing because we have projected onto Jesus the face, voice, and personality of our high school football coach. So we think he's gonna say, you big fat sissy, if you can't play with pain, you can't play on the Jesus team. Pull your socks up and hit that mountain again. I played, actually played high school football right at the end of the Civil War.

And it's rude to laugh at a guest speaker. Pastor, work with your people.

I played in the old days. I wonder if there's any old dudes here old enough to remember when we didn't have platoon football. You played offense and defense both ways. You had to. There were only 19 boys in the high school.

You just put your helmet on and play till you died. And I played quarterback on offense, but I played free safety on defense. I dreaded our inner squad scrimmages more than any game we played because the coach's son was our tailback and he was the most vicious and lethal runner that I've ever tried to tackle. If Bobby got through into the deep secondary, he came at you all helmet and knees and demons, and I was a gentleman. I didn't want to impede Bobby's path to glory.

I would have escorted him into the end zone, but Bobby was on a search and destroy mission. He would chase me.

And I finally said, what is up with you? You're not the biggest guy I've ever tackled. What is the deal? He said, you want to know the deal? Come home with me today after school.

I was Shocked at that. Nobody went home with Bobby. Not only was he a vicious and lethal runner, he was a vicious and lethal human being. We were all scared of him. I went home with him after school.

We went into the garage and he pulled the metal garage door down. And he said, there's your answer. And it looked like somebody had been hitting it with a sledgehammer. I said, what is it? What happened?

And he said, when I started the sixth grade, my football coach dad put a helmet on my head and made me bend over at the waist and run headfirst into that garage door. And he said, I've hit it every day. Birthday, Christmas, New Year's, Easter, no exception. Every day since the sixth grade. And any day I didn't hit it hard enough to please him, he would hit my legs with a braided whistle strap.

He said, you run into a metal garage door every day for six years. 165 pound safety just don't look like much. Well, no wonder he was a vicious runner. And no wonder he was a vicious human being. That is emotional child abuse of the worst order.

A father forcing his son to attempt something over and over again that they both know is impossible. No matter how he muscles up in the weight room, no matter with what ferocity he hits it, he'll never punch through that garage door. Is that your idea of Jesus? If that's your Jesus, your Jesus is my devil. Do you think he comes behind us with the braided whistle strap of Protestant works?

Righteousness lashing our legs? Pray more, be a better Christian, give more. And the ministry is not exempt either. There's more than one of us trying to preach our way out from under that lash. Build a bigger church.

That's not Jesus. That is the compulsion of a legalistic Christianity, which is contradictory to the fundamental issue, which is grace.

The liberal humanist will tell you that grace means God doesn't care about the mountain, that he nudges the angels in the ribs and winks and says, boys will be boys. But that condemns us to the destructiveness of the mountain. The legalist will tell you that grace means you'll finally get strong enough to overcome. But that condemns us to failure and frustration because the Bible says it's not by might nor by power. Grace.

Grace is God wants the mountain out of your life, but he wants to move it himself. So we fall at the foot of the mountain and we cry out, I quit. I quit. What do you say to that? And from the other side of the mountain comes words we never thought we'd Hear.

Good.

That's what I was waiting on. Now stand back. And it says, jesus shouts. It's a strange passage. Jesus shouts.

What does he shout? Do better. Work harder. Work. Get better.

No, he doesn't shout that. He doesn't shout at us at all. He shouts at the mountain. And what does he shout? Grace.

Grace. Jesus wants to grace the mountain out of our lives. When we yield the responsibility of the mountain to him, we begin the operation of redemptive grace. Not as an historical event for our salvation alone, but it's grace all the way. It's all grace.

Their entire denominational wars fought over how many works of grace are there? 2. 1, 2, 3. It is an asinine argument and one from which I have excused myself altogether. How many works of grace are there?

How many breaths have you breathed? How many morsels of food have you put in your mouth? How many times have you been saved from sure death by angelic presence that you weren't even aware of? It's all grace, friend. How many works of grace are there?

10 quadri billion. Countless works of grace in every life in this room. Now, the problem is this. While we hold possession and responsibility for the mountain, we can. I coined this phrase, we disgrace ourselves.

We become disgraceful because the operation of grace is eliminated by our assuming responsibility for the mountains. Therefore, it becomes our effort at Christianity. And I'm not saying those people, angry, hurt, budging on the mountain year after year. I'm not saying they won't go to heaven when they die. But the sooner the better.

They just become angry and frustrated and legalistic and disgraceful. We disgrace our churches. There are churches that are disgraceful because the operation of grace has been self eliminated. I came out. I pastored a large church in Orlando many years ago, and I came out into the lobby after the service, and this man came up.

He was so angry he could hardly talk. He said, well, I'm leaving the church. I said, why? He said, because of the lie that you told in the pulpit this morning. I said, what are you talking about?

Oh, he said, nobody else may have heard you, but I heard you. He said, you talked about that battle that happened in World War I, and you said, that battle happened in 1918. He said, I happen to be an expert in American military history, and I know that that battle happened in late 1917. He said, A man that'd lie about that would lie about anything. And he said, I can't attend a church where there's a liar in the pulpit.

I said, well, bye.

No, I Mean, adios. I cannot help you with that. That is disgraceful. But there was another.

Don't worry. It's just Covid. It's all right.

There was another man in the same church, an attorney who's still my friend after all these years. And after every sermon I preach, every sermon, morning, night, Wednesday, all the years I was there, after every sermon, he'd come up to me and say, Dr. Uhlan, that's the greatest sermon I've ever heard in my life. Now, look, I was born at night, but I wasn't born last night. I know at a cognitive level, nobody can preach the definitive Christian masterpiece week after week after week after week. I know that.

But I like that lawyer lying to me. When I came out of the pulpit, I was looking for grace.

We disgrace our churches. We disgrace our preachers. I know what you're thinking. We can't pump Pastor Jay Z. Go up like that.

Come to him and tell him how great he is all the time. His ego. You go on and pump, there'll be some mean old lady in the lobby with a pen. She'll pop him.

After 50 years in the ministry, I've decided that the entire race of Christianity is actually divided into only two tribes, pumpers and poppers.

I believe the eyes of God move to and fro through the earth looking for a church full of pumpers on which to pour out his grace. He wants grace filled, not disbursement. Disgraceful churches. We disgrace our families. We pick and pry and nitpick at our parents and our children, and we disgrace them.

I was the president of a university in the Midwest one time. One day, a man came to see me about his son. I had thousands of students. I didn't know them all, but he said his son's name. And I happened to know this kid.

I said, oh, I know your son. What a wonderful boy. He's in one of our worship teams. He's an RA in one of the dorms. He's a great kid.

He said, no, I know all that. That's not why I'm here. I said, well, why are you here? He said, it's that earring. He said, I want you to make him take that earring out.

I can't even see him. Every time I look at him, all I see is that earring. I wanted to say, sir, you had him 19 years. I've had him three semesters. Why is this my job?

But, you know, I felt he wasn't in a place to hear that line of reasoning. So the next day I called the boy in my office. I said, do you know who was in my office yesterday? He said, oh, yeah, and I know why he was here. He wants you to make me take his earring out.

I said, son, your dad is a piece of work. He said, Dr. Rutland, he is allowing this earring to ruin our relationship. Isn't that stupid? I said, it is stupid. He said, it's just immature and selfish to let an earring stand between you and somebody that you love.

I said, that's just inexcusable. He said, imagine that, letting an earring. He said, oh, I know what you're doing.

I said, look, son, one of you is going to have to be an adult. And I met your dad.

He said, you know, I never thought of it that way. He said, I always was seeing it from my side. He said, I can't believe I've done this. I've never been so proud of a college boy in my life. He took that earring out, laid it on my coffee table.

He said, my dad will never see that earring again as long as I live. That's grace. That's grace. Now we also disgrace our spouses. We disgrace our spouses griping and bickering over stupid stuff that doesn't matter.

Where are the married men in the room? Where are they? Oh, I'm going to help you boys. Stay with me. This is gonna change your life right here.

When your wife walks out with that dress that she bought at the shopping mall. She's wearing that dress. She's modeling it for you. She's modeling. She doesn't want you to peer over the top of the sports page.

How many say, that? Set me back. I'm gonna confiscate your credit card. She's modeling that dress for you. She says, look what I bought at the mall today.

You throw that newspaper aside and jump to your feet. You. Whoa, whoa, woman. Mm. Get you.

You wear that on Wednesday night, and we're gonna be late to prayer meeting. Now, that's grace. That's grace.

Where are the married girls? Let me say, where are the women? Here we are. Oh, this is why you came right here.

Your husband is like God in one way. I saw one woman in the back say, this I've gotta hear. No, no. The Bible says that God has numbered the hairs on your husband's head. So has your husband.

And he does not need you to remind him that the number is diminishing annually.

We've been married this summer 58 years. 58 years.

And after all that time I'm traveling all the time, leaving, going off to some godforsaken foreign country, Michigan or someplace, and my little wife will put her hands on my face and she says, oh, Mark, after all these years, you're still the sexiest, handsomest man I've ever met. Look, look up here.

I live in the real world. But a lawyer and a wife who will both lie to you, that's grace.

We need to learn to grace each other, to grace life. The worst thing is we disgrace ourselves. We disgrace ourselves. We live in constant levels of self judgment over all kinds of things. Sometimes it's superficial, cosmetic things.

We stare into the full length mirror and evaluate ourselves and despise what we see. We say, look at you. What happened to you? Where did your hair go? And whence cometh this fat?

We live in condemnation over cosmetic superficialities that have nothing to do with the real you. It's disgraceful. It's disgraceful. We not only disgrace ourselves at a cosmetic level, we do it spiritually. Here's a phrase I bet you've heard, and if you've ever heard it, now you'll have the answer.

And if you've ever said it, I know you'll never say it again. And here's the phrase, I know God has forgiven me, but I can't forgive myself. You ever hear that? I know God has forgiven me, but I can't forgive myself. Here's the kind of high tone theological response to that.

Are you ready? Here it is. Who do you think you are? Who do you think you are? The God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel.

The God who spoke light into existence says, there is therefore now no condemnation. And you say, yes, there is. That is presumptuous arrogance to deny the grace of God. Forgiven means forgiven. Grace means grace.

Receive, accept, stand, walk in, live in the grace of Almighty God to receive his grace.

Let's suppose somebody came in here this morning and they don't know anything about Christianity. Sit through the service, they say to Pastor J or me or somebody, I don't understand Christianity. How can I by? We say, oh, take this Bible, take this Bible and begin to read. Just start with Genesis and read straight through and it'll come clear to you.

And they begin to read. Faith begins to build, hope. Life begins to build. They get finished and they come to the last sentence in the Bible. The last thing anybody says to you is important.

I've been doing a little study on famous last words. I've been thinking about writing a book on the famous last words.

The last thing somebody says to you is significant John Wilkes Booth, who murdered Abraham Lincoln, as he lay dying from the wound of the soldiers who killed him, he lifted his hand up that had held the gun in front of his face and he said, useless. And he died. What a pathetic, tragic last word. John Wesley, as he lay dying, said, the best part is God is with us. What a triumphant word of grace.

So what is God's last word? What is God's last word on the subject? What if we got to the end of the Bible, we read the whole thing, and faith just begins to rise in us and hope, and we come to the last sentence and the Bible should end. What if it says this, I was joking about everything. I hate all of you.

Is it just me? That'd be a little discouraging. Or what if it says, I'm gonna let some of you go to heaven, the rest go to hell, And I'm not gonna tell you the basis on which I decide, well, that's terrifying, isn't it? But you come to the end of the whole Bible and it's as though God says, I've said this over and over and over again. I said it in creation.

I said it in the Garden of Eden. I've said it through the prophets. I've said it law, I've said it through my son. I said it in the resurrection, I said it in the Ascension. I've said it through the apostolic era.

I've said it on every page of the Bible, and you won't hear me. So I'm going to say it one last time. And God says, at the last of the whole Bible, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all, all the way, all the time. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Look, when we receive that grace and walk in that grace, that grace pours out of us onto the people around us. There may be people around you that are starving, longing, longing for grace, longing for compliments, longing for hope, longing for love, Longing. But you can't give away what you don't have.

If the reservoir of grace in your life has run dry, people around you have run dry, longing for grace. So we say, oh, God, replenish the grace in my life. Grace me. Grace this mountain out. Grace the tabernacle of your presence in and grace the reservoir of grace in my life.

Grace me again. Grace me that I may be a fountain of grace in the lives of those around me. Fill me with grace.

So that's how the Bible ends, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. But it doesn't just mean for salvation. It means be with you all, all the way, all the time. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you in hardship. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you in blessing.

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you in the vicissitudes of life. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you on your deathbed. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you as you step through the veil into the presence of God. It's all grace, don't you see? It's all grace all the way.

It's all grace. When we receive his grace into our lives and we become a conduit, the effluence of grace from us touches the lives of those around us. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Thus saith the Lord.