Russell, Humphreys, and Pilgrim go the Distance
THE THREE CABALLEROS
The September 24, 2016 worship service at Berean Seventh-day Adventist Church, Atlanta featured a sermon that was sequentially delivered by all three of the primary pastors: Fredrick Russell, Austin Humphreys, and Danielle Pilgrim. Here is a link to the ENTIRE SERVICE. The sermon was immediately preceded by a song that starts at time marker 1:24:03, “He Kept Me,” a 2004 composition by Kurt Carr. It was performed by the Berean choral ensemble “Open Praise” under the direction of David Trofort. A memorable riff on the organ provided a transition to the sermon. It can be heard, along with the sermon itself by accessing the linked YouTube video at time marker 1:29:35. Pastor Russell started out by staunchly reaffirming the message of “He Kept Me,” then invoked a brief reprise of the song from the choir. This coda was completed by time marker 1:30:55, and the sermon proper began.
THE SERMON: “THE STRETCH”
“The sermon today, by all three pastors, one sermon, is called ‘The Stretch.'” Pastor Fredrick Russell introduced the sermon, and provided the title. “Stretch” is a word that possesses multiple, but somewhat similar meanings. One of the these meanings is directly applicable to the structure of the sermon, and will now be illustrated by the image just below:
HUMPHREYS: “Our text for this morning… begins with a familiar passage in Genesis 22…” The subject of the first leg would be Abraham, and the providentially interrupted sacrifice of his beloved son Isaac. The theme word, “stretch,” will now be foreshadowed by the premature quotation of a relevant verse of Scripture, one describing a significant moment in the unfolding of the highly prophetic, but thankfully abbreviated sacrifice of Isaac by his father Abraham. It is Genesis 22:10, which will again make its appearance in its appropriate location:
“And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.”
Pastor Humphreys was off like a shot: “We know the story, choir, of Abraham. Abraham is to become the father of many nations… Firstly, Abraham is a man of God, and he’s on fire. He’s asking for a son. He’s asking for a child and God grants him this child…” The synopsis by Pastor Humphreys continued: “In our text God has now asked Abraham to sacrifice what He just promised him.” Abraham does not question God’s command, but journeys with young, yet strapping Isaac to the mountain, the “place God wants him to be,” the pastor noted.
The “Spirit of Prophecy” was referenced with regard to this separation. A work by Ellen White reveals that If the two servants of Abraham had been with him at the moment of the proposed sacrifice of his son, “they would have stopped him from doing what God had asked him to do” [The book by Ellen G. White, “Patriarchs and Prophets,” contains a chapter (13) titled ” The Test of Faith.” It describes the interrupted sacrifice of Isaac in an enlightening manner, but does not include the insight just mentioned by Pastor Humphreys. This data may be discovered on Page 81 of “The Story of Redemption” in a chapter (10) titled “Abraham and the Promised Seed“]. The pastor drew a lesson for his auditors from this inspired addenda of E.G. White: “The reality is that we must sometimes separate ourselves even from the people we care about.”
[Here is a link to an earlier Wednesday night “War Room” sermon by Pastor Humphreys titled “I’m Gonna Get it All Back.” It was a more extended analysis of Abraham’s projected sacrifice by Abraham of his son. You must scroll past the first lengthy segment of the post to access the sermon summary. When you have read the summary you are advised to scroll no further, unless you are a masochist.]
“And so he lets them know ‘I need you to stay here, but WE WILL BE BACK!'” This assurance by Abraham to his menservants was repeated by Pastor Humphreys. He mentioned Isaac’s question to his father, “but daddy, where is the sacrifice?” Abraham’s answer to his son is also a prophecy: “God will provide.”
“Not only will sacrifice require separation,” Pastor Humphreys continued, but “sacrifice will require trust.” The speaker noted the apparent contradiction between God’s promise to Abraham that he would be the “father of many nations” with the present requirement that he sacrifice his only son. God is incapable of lying, so there had to have been more to the story. The pastor expressed Abraham’s reaction to God’s illogical requirement as follows: “If God is asking me to kill my only son, then God must be getting ready to do something ridiculous!” Pastor Humphreys stated that Abraham, upon consideration of the paradox that confronted him, was fully anticipating that God was about to act in a manner that Paul would later describe as being “…exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think…” (Ephesians 3:20)
The methodical preparations that Abraham made at the site of the intended sacrifice were meticulously described by Pastor Humphreys. God allows Abraham to proceed as if no obstacle would retard the progress of this overwhelmingly significant enterprise. “God does not stop him when he puts the wood under his son, no. God does not stop him when he grabs the knife,” the pastor declared. But these procedures are dramatically interrupted by God at the “eleventh hour” (a World War One era expression) in the previously cited verse, Genesis 22:10. It will now make its promised reappearance:
“And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.”
וַיִּשְׁלַ֤ח אַבְרָהָם֙ אֶת־יָדֹ֔ו וַיִּקַּ֖ח אֶת־הַֽמַּאֲכֶ֑לֶת לִשְׁחֹ֖ט אֶת־בְּנֹֽו׃
[Don’t forget to read from right to left!]
“But that word ‘stretch’ is also the same word used when you stretch your hand in total praise,” the Pastor Humphreys added. This augmented level of praise is suitable for every occasion, and the pastor admonished every listener to “stretch your hand in the good times and in the bad times of life.” Pastor Humphrey’s leg of the race was almost run…
“Let me leave you with this: Usain Bolt, after he had won all these various medals… when they asked him about the relay races, they asked him ‘what do you practice the most?'” Pastor Humphreys now furnished Usain’s reply: “I’ve got the speed down pat, and the timing down pat, but you know in those races they’ve got to stretch to grab the baton… I’ve learned that we’ve got to practice the stretch.” The pastor was about to “pass the baton” himself, but just prior to doing so he revealed the compelling reason that had had motivated him carry this baton for the initial leg of this Sabbath’s rhetorical relay race:
“… I came by to let someone in here know today that if you would just practice the stretch, and let God know ‘Father, I stretch my hands to thee,’ no other help will I know. But I’ve got to learn to trust in the God that can keep me from falling!”
“We are introduced to Elijah, a prophet who was travelling to a land named Zerephath.” Pastor Pilgrim described Elijah’s predicament as an “interesting” one [I will paraphrase this predicament as being “out of the frying pan, and into the fire”]. “…There was famine in the land that he was travelling from, and there was also famine in the land where he was travelling to.” But Pastor Pilgrim noted that even though Elijah was leaving one bad situation for another, he neither “stressed nor worried, because he knew that the same God that fed him by ravens in the old famine land was the same God that would feed him in the new famine land.”
The relevance of this concept to our own lives was now described by the pastor: “…I know that right now, in this very room there are some of us experiencing famine in our lives…” Anaphora (repetition for artistic effect) was now employed by the speaker for the first, but not for the last time in the course of her segment of the relay:
“Some of us are experiencing famine in our finances, and famine on our jobs, and famine in our love life.”
[The quote by Ellen G. White that Pastor Pilgrim used can be found placed at the head of chapter 17 of a biography of the prophet by Herbert E. Douglass entitled “Messenger of the Lord.” This chapter is prosaically named “Organization, Unity, and Institutional Development.” The source of the quote is safely ensconced in chapter 31 of “Life Sketches of Ellen G. White,” a collection of autobiographical writings. This chapter is titled “Burden Bearers,” and the quote is on page 196. Here is the original: ” We have nothing to fear for the future, except as we shall forget the way the Lord has led us, and His teaching in our past history.”]
We must never lose sight of the fact that God is sovereign, the pastor emphasized. The spotlight was now redirected from the congregation and back toward Elijah: “And so we have Elijah travelling to the land of Zarephath. And the Bible says that as he enters the gate of Zarephath he meets this woman.” Although unnamed, this woman plays a leading role in the prophet’s affairs. The pastor noted that “he commands her to give him bread.” She clarified the nature of this command: “Now you must understand that the woman is not required to give Elijah any bread.” Pastor Pilgrim reminded everyone that the woman was a Gentile, a Phoenician, an enemy of the Israelites [as was the Samaritan “woman at the well” who Jesus addresses in John 4]. “Therefore,” the pastor revealed, “she was not required to follow the hospitality customs of the Israelites.” But even if she were, “You can’t get blood out of a turnip” [the summarizer’s goofy contribution]. “She simply had nothing to give,” Pastor Pilgrim more soberly stated.
“…As the Lord thy God liveth, I have not a cake, but an handful of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse: and, behold, I am gathering two sticks, that I may go in and dress it for me and my son, that we may eat it, and die.”
But the Phoenician widow nonetheless determined to heed the stranger’s instructions. Pastor Danielle Pilgrim continued: “The Bible says that she poured out her last bit of oil, and her last but of [meal] to make bread for a stranger she just met, because sacrifice demands unselfishness.” This assertion was repeated in an attempt to fix it in the minds of both the congregation and the online audience. “Here’s the beauty; it’s the correlation that this Gentile woman demonstrates the message of the Gospel… the message of the Cross.” Now a version of John 3:16 was most appropriately quoted:
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
“…Because sacrifice demands unselfishness!” A lesson about the happy aftermath of unselfishness was now drawn from the actions of the Phoenician woman by the second of the three preachers: “Here’s the gem of the text: the Bible says that after she fed Elijah, although her flour pot and oil jar were emptied, the text says that she kept on pouring.” This miracle is recorded in First Kings 17:16, just below the picture:
This transcendent miracle was highlighted by Pastor Pilgrim’s enthusiastic description of it. A final lesson was drawn: “… Sacrifice is always linked with a promise. And the good news is that when you put others first [and, alternately, “when you are unselfish”] then even when the jug is empty you can still keep pouring! Because the Bible says when you give, the Lord will give you ‘good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over.'” (Luke 6:38, partial) “So as long as you give,” the pastor promised, “you will have bread in your house!” This important information was repeated three times. The Psalm that bears directly on this topic was the last Scriptural citation of this second leg of the rhetorical relay race, Psalm 37:25:
“I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.”
Pastor Pilgrim now proclaimed for an unprecedented fourth time the salient point that she was trying to drive home: “So as long as you give, you will always have bread in your house. But remember,” she added, “that while sacrifice requires trust, it also demands unselfishness!”
The baton now changed hands for the second time. Lead Pastor Fredrick Russell would traverse the third leg of the relay.
RUSSELL: “So it was the end of the movie, where the end of the movie is the beginning of the movie.”
This was a temporarily enigmatic and thought provoking introduction by Pastor Russell (although anyone who has seen the 1950 film noir classic “Sunset Boulevard” can immediately relate to this concept). In some movies the initially presented “end” of a story gets subsequently explained throughout the remainder of the feature.
A refined method of Scriptural analysis is to explain not only events that may occur within the separate “scenes” that make up the Bible, but to relate these scenes to nearby and adjacent occurrences. The Holy Spirit (who dictated the entire Biblical “screenplay” to holy men of God) frequently links the meanings of these scenes in order to create a kind of “meta-theme.” This is what Hollywood film editors are also known to do, should they have the right kind of raw footage to work with, and possess enough talent to creatively deal with it. Pastor Russell now explained to the congregation one of the many instances of “inspired” Scriptural juxtaposition that the Spirit (an extremely competent craftsman) has composed for our instruction and edification.
“Three days earlier, in Acts chapter 5, we begin with the end of the movie. What happens? You have a couple that have died, tragically, with… massive heart attacks in church. She [the wife] shows up, and her husband has died an hour or two earlier where he stood before the apostles… and he died. End of the movie!” The incident that the pastor related was by this point recognizable to anyone who had ever read Acts as the one concerning the confrontation between the apostle Peter, Ananias, and his wife Sapphira [this was the first time that the reclusive summarizer of these remarks had ever heard a preacher attempt to sermonize by referencing an episode that most “seeker sensitive” ministers would not want to touch with a ten-foot-pole].
But Ananias and Sapphira stood apart from this general spirit of generosity. They sold their properties for the sake of the church with the noblest of intentions, yet Satan slipped into their hearts when they were in fresh possession of a neat pile of highly negotiable lucre. “… They ended up getting way more money than they expected,” Pastor Russell revealed. “As opposed to a ‘few thousand of dollars,’ they ended up with ‘hundreds of thousands of dollars,’ and they began to say, ‘Hold on here!'” They jettisoned their original intent. The pastor imagined what kind of exchange of dialogue may have taken place between the colluding pair: “Ananias said, ‘Sapphira, do you see all this money? Do you see how much we’ve made here? Well, the church doesn’t deserve that much!” The upshot? “They both conspired to lie to God,” Pastor Russell stated.
“And Peter said to him, ‘you did not give everything. You lied. And not only did you lie, but you have lied to the Holy Spirit.'” The pastor affected the soft-spoken manner of Clint Eastwood in order to declaim Peter’s reply. This cool placidity is usually a harbinger of some spectacularly violent action in most of the movies that star Eastwood. Similarly explosive violence now struck Ananias. He died “on the spot,” the pastor related. “The young deacons came in and removed him.”
“‘Have you seen my husband? He was supposed to be back home, and he had no other errands to run.’ And Peter asks her, ‘I know you made a public display of sacrifice, and I know you’re a part of those believers that says in my life, anything God asks me to do, I’m willing to do it. But did you give all that you had?’ And she says, “Yea! We gave all that we had!’ And Peter says to her, ‘You lied to the Holy Spirit, and you have never come to the place where you have laid everything on the line, You’ve always held back.’ And he then says, ‘your husband is dead. And guess what? The men are here to take your body out as well.’ And she dies immediately with a massive heart attack. And here’s the point…”
“I can say to God I will sacrifice everything, as long as it demands of me nothing.” The pastor elaborated upon the all-too-prevalent attitude that he had just described: “I come to church and I say, ‘God, I’ll put everything on the line as long as it demands of me nothing that stretches me, and pushes me outside of my comfort zone!”
“Abraham put it all on the line, Pastor Humphreys said, for God; even his own kin.”
“Pastor Pilgrim said when it came to sacrifice, that woman who was about to die along with her son; when the prophet shows up and she shares her last meal with him she understood that it was not about her only.”
“And in the final story, with Ananias and Sapphira, talking about sacrifice…”
“I will make a public declaration that I will put everything on the line for God as long as it makes no demands on me” [Pastor Russell had now placed himself in the position of a “stand-in.” The real culprits were probably hiding in their trailers, powdering their noses]. “And as a body of Christ, God today will make a brief, powerful demand of us.” Details would be forthcoming. But before the Lead Pastor’s leg of the race ended (as will the summarizer’s annoying cinematic allusions) the “grand unified field theory” of spiritual physics was introduced in order to firmly bind together the preceding three components of the sermon. This is, of course, Jesus Christ Himself, the ultimate sacrifice. Abraham and Isaac were a shadow and type of this sacrifice, and can stand a comparison to the outward form of the Cross. But the near-infinite suffering that Jesus endured when He “became sin for us” drives any sacrifice that we may be willing to offer into insignificance by comparison. Pastor Russell now unexpectedly passed the baton back to Pastor Humphreys.
The microphone was now physically handed to the man who had run the first leg of the relay. He had regained his wind by now, and was prepared for a sprint to the finish line.
HUMPHREYS: “When Abraham stretched his hand, the angel stepped in and called his name, ‘Abraham, Abraham.’ God told him ‘now I know that you fear God.’ As Abraham, whose hands happened to be shaking, the knife in his hand to do whatever it takes to sacrifice for God, the angel points and there’s a ram in the thicket” [This solemn declaration by Pastor Humphries assumed exceptional gravity by its contrast to his typically animated style of preaching. It was unmistakably a message of the utmost import]. “And while you’re going up the rough side of the mountain, your blessing is coming up the smooth side. And that day Isaac was willing to do whatever it took because he trusted the father.”
Pastor Humphries asked his listeners to imagine that long ago God had a conversation with His Son. “I need you to sacrifice yourself.” The pastor described Jesus’ reaction to this request: “There was no hesitation. There was ‘no questions asked.’ He gave His life freely. He came to this world, and in 33 years turned everything upside-down. Peoples’ lives were touched, healed, set free, raised from the dead. But He had to make an ultimate sacrifice.”
“He was tempted to back down, but He cared for your future.”
“And so all throughout these 33 years He courted us. He dated us. He took us out to make sure that everything was alright. And then on Gethsemane He knelt down and proposed to us. He let us know He’ll never leave us nor forsake us [Deuteronomy 31:6].” Pastor Humphreys now vividly described that fateful day on Calvary. He was preaching “the Blood,” which should be the foundation of every Christian homely. Paul once wrote to the body at Corinth about his recent visit to that ancient crossroads: “For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified” (First Corinthians 2:2).
“Right there on that cross He solidified His covenant with us and said ‘I do.'” He then gave up the ghost. Pastor Humphreys personalized this event for the congregation: “Don’t you know He would just do it for one of us? He made the ultimate sacrifice because YOU were worth it.”
The pastor declared that God often asks us to make sacrifices in our lives. They may not be “comfortable,” he said, “but we need to learn to trust the one that’s able to keep us from falling.” Pastor Humphrey now restated a Psalm that Pastor Pilgrim had quoted earlier, one that assures us that our personal sacrifices will not prove to be fatal (as did Christ’s). Here again is Psalm 37:25:
“I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.”
The race was now effectively over. It might be said that Christ Himself completed it when He spoke the words “It is finished.” The song was over, and Pastor Russell now urged that the members of Berean Seventh-day Adventist Church “go the distance” themselves.
RUSSELL: “OK everybody; one of the levels we’ve been trying to go to in this church of where we, as a people… first of all say to God, “God- all of my life, everything about me, God, I sacrifice for you my total life, withholding… choir?” The choir most certainly knew what it was that we are to withhold, as did many in the congregation. Pastor Russell himself provided the answer as to what exactly we are supposed to withhold: “Nothing.” He spoke of a projected “whole ‘nother level” that the church could ascend to if we (and he included himself as well) were to truly withhold “nothing.” It was all about sacrifice. The Biblical exemplar Pastor Humphreys had cited was referenced by Pastor Russell. He now furnished a model statement that everyone could make thier own: “God, like Abraham I sacrifice. I lay it all before you.”
Mark Twain once said, “I can afford to be generous with other people’s money.” Pastor Russell’s ironic assertion that “I can say to God I will sacrifice everything, as long as it demands of me nothing” is in the same vein as Twain’s, and was restated in the course of the closing prayer. As he had noted in a previous sermon, the pastor looked forward to whatever thrilling form God’s intervention in a climate of (deceptive) scarcity might assume. “To stretch. To do what we’ve not done on a regular basis,” he prayed. The lesson of the widow’s mite was cited. The prayer ended. “Father, Holy Spirit, move upon every heart right now, and God, we thank you for what you’re going to do. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”
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