You didn’t lose the blessing, the opportunity, the transformation, the resurrection. God just moved it to make room for the new in your life today. Are you ready to receive it?
So here’s the tension.
Okay?
We find these seasons in our life where we’re
trying to protect something, at the same time
we’re trying to accept something.
That’s the tension and we’re all there.
We’re all there.
It’s like we’re trying to receive what God
is doing.
This is what the church was doing.
They have just gotten used to the idea of
justification by faith, that was new.
They were no longer shedding the blood of
bulls and goats in the sacrificial system,
in order to atone for their sin.
They are now having to believe by faith what
they used to be able to touch.
They are having to learn an entirely new way
to relate to God.
They are having to take what was visible,
the circumcision and in an invisible covenant,
they are having to trust in an unseen God
and just about the time they’re getting the
hang of that, just about when they are getting
used to this new way of relating to God by
grace, just about the time they are getting
used to, it is not by the works of the law
that you are justified, that none are righteous,
no not one.
That the righteous requirements of the law
are fully met in Jesus.
And then through faith in him, we are made
right with God.
It is not our righteousness.
Our righteousness is like filthy rags.
You could not keep the law, you could not
get to God.
So grace came to you, just about the time
they’re getting used to grace, here come the
Gentiles.
Just about the time they’re learning how to
do with this way …
You will still be eating last year’s harvest
when you will have to move it out to make
room for the new.
Who am I preaching to?
God is moving stuff around in your life.
God is moving stuff around in your life.
I just learned how to use Instagram and now
everybody’s on TikTok.
It’s just stuff moves so fast and I can’t
dance.
Stuff moves too fast.
I don’t know.
I don’t know if you feel it too, but everything
is moving.
And when God speaks to Peter about this, it’s
really a message for us.
It’s really a message about how do we protect
what God did while accepting what he’s doing?
How do we not get stuck in a way of going,
man, I wish it could be like it was.
Well, it’s not.
Well, I wish God would give me an announcement
or make an appointment with me on my calendar.
Did you know that change never makes an appointment
with your calendar?
It just shows up when it wants to show up.
I think it’s so crazy how Peter was like,
look at how he responds to them.
Starting from the beginning, Peter told them
the whole story.
And let me give this to you from Acts chapter
five on and I’m going to do my best to just
be diligent and read the text and not comment
on it.
Will y’all pray for me?
I love this text so much.
I’m going to want to keep on saying stuff
about it, but I want to read this to you.
“I was in the city of Joppa praying and in
a trance I saw a vision.
I saw something like a large sheet being let
down from heaven by its four corners and it
came down to where I was.
And it came down to where I was.
And it came down to where I was.
And it came down to where I was.
And it came down to where I was.
God said, don’t chase it, chase me.”
I feel like a vinyl record that started skipping.
It came down to where I was.
It came down to where I was.
It came down to where I was.
It came down to where I was.
I wish it would shout real quick.
God’s going to bring it to me.
God’s going to bring it to me.
While so many people are out chasing stuff,
if I will stay stationed in the will of God,
in the peace of God and be planted by the
streams of living water, God’s going to bring
it to me.
Somebody shout, God’s going to bring it to
me.
See, heaven opened up and Jesus came down
to show us that God came to me.
Favor comes to me, blessings come to me.
Joy comes to me.
Peace comes to me.
The right people come to me.
The idea comes to me.
The wisdom comes to me.
All I got to do is ask God, stand still and
see the salvation of the Lord.
God said, I’m going to bring it.
I don’t care if you are contagious.
You got … Touch somebody real quick on their
shoulder and tell them real quick.
God’s going to bring it to me.
God’s going to bring it to me.
Somebody in the back that’s just sitting there.
The word of the Lord for you today is, if
you will stay in Joppa, if you will, stay
in Joppa.
When I studied the text, I found out that
God gave Peter an opportunity that he wasn’t
even praying for.
Joppa.
Joppa.
I was like, “Lord, what’s significant about
Joppa?
Why was he in Joppa praying when the gospel
went to the known world?”
This is a big deal.
This is a big deal Mr president, this is a
big deal, Peter, but he didn’t know it.
He went up on the roof to pray.
Let’s look at the story.
Can we look at the story?
All right.
Sit down.
He was in Joppa.
That’s what he said in verse five.
“I was in Joppa, not posting, praying.”
I was in Joppa.
Everybody say Joppa.
Come on, you got to say it out loud.
Not in your head.
Say Joppa.
There it is.
Because that’s where some of y’all are right
now.
Peter went to Joppa because an E kids volunteer
in the church had just died.
Her name was Dorcas.
Dorcas.
How are you going to go all … Peter, how
are you going to go out of your way to check
on Dorcas?
She’s not famous.
She’s don’t have a lot of followers.
But Peter was in Lydda and he was preaching
the gospel, raising people from the dead and
stuff.
Just you know the things you do when you’re
Peter.
And when he went to Joppa to see all the people
who were discouraged in Joppa, when he got
there … Look at acts chapter nine, I’m all
over the scriptures today because this is
such a great, great, great passage of scripture
and the Lord just keeps unfolding it for me
even as I preach to you.
But give me Acts 9:40.
Peter sent them all out of the room because
Dorcas is dead and he went to comfort them.
But he sent them all out of the room.
He sent them all out of the room.
Y’all got to go.
Y’all got to get out of here real quick.
He sent them all out of the room, all out
of the room.
What did we come here to do today?
To make room for the new.
Now, he knew that if he keeps people in the
room who have an old mindset, old mindsets
cannot receive new miracles.
Preach the word verdict.
Old mindsets cannot receive new miracles.
So he said, “Y’all get out.
I love you, but get out.
I appreciate you but get out.”
Because there’s something new that God wants
to do and I need my faith focused right now.
I’m sorry, my phone was off.
Make room.
I’m sorry I didn’t respond to you.
Make room.
I’m sorry that I didn’t come crawling back
to you.
Make room.
I’m sorry, make room.
I’m sorry.
I was at church.
Make room.
I’m sorry I couldn’t gossip with you.
I had to walk away.
Make room.
Because if I allow an old mindset to crowd
the space of my heart, wow.
Peter’s like, y’all got to go for a minute.
Get out, get out.
And when he sent him out of the room, he got
down on his knees and prayed.
And turning toward the dead woman, he said,
“Tabitha, get up.”
One time Jesus went in a room and there was
a little girl who had died.
And the word for a little girl in Aramaic
is Talitha.
And he said, Talitha Koum.
And I looked back at the scripture again.
What Peter said was Tabitha, her name was
Dorcas in Greek, but the name that they would
have been familiar with was Tabitha.
It’s one letter different than Talitha, little
girl.
He is mimicking the miracle that he saw the
savior do.
He decided in this moment, I want to see if
resurrection power is real.
And when he said Tabitha, Tabitha Koum, Tabitha
Koum, little girl get up.
And I wonder what you need to say get up to
today, that is lying dead and dormant in your
spirit and in your life.
This message is not for everybody, but whoever
it’s for.
When he said, Tabitha, get up, Tabitha Koum,
Tabitha get up.
She opened her eyes and seeing Peter, she
sat up.
God said, make room for resurrection.
I know there are some things in your life
that you have given up on, but whoever this
is for today, make room for the new.
And the only thing that is blocking you from
receiving the grace of God is your unbelief.
So I want to take a minute and send an announcement
to unbelief.
Get out the room.
Resurrection is here.
Get out the room.
Grace is here.
Get out the room.
Jesus is in the house.
Come on, shout about, he says.
I’m preaching it to whoever he sent me for.
He said, make room for the new.
Make room.
Your mind is more crowded than your closet.
And people will apply this message so many
different ways.
It’s crazy.
They’ll be like, I heard the preacher say,
make room for the new.
I want to divorce.
I’m going to go tell my boss Monday, Leviticus
26:10, Ken Co … Somebody named Ken Coffee.
What was his name?
Ken Costa.
He told the preacher, he said, Leviticus 26:10,
I quit.
But I found out that the most crowded place
is not because of other people on my job or
even who is bringing me what I perceive to
be external conflict.
God needs to make room in me.
I’m the crowded one.
Joppa.
He was just hanging out in Joppa, raising
up dead ushers, greeters.
Dorcas would have been a volunteer at Elevation
Church.
She would’ve served at the Riverwalk campus.
She would have been there early, greeting
people, handing out breath mints in the bathroom
or something like that.
She did the little things and because Peter,
see, he did not categorize it as a little
thing to go to Joppa and when he was praying
on the roof, God said, are you open?
Are you open?
I thought it was significant that he was on
the roof when God showed him what he was doing.
I think a lot of times we get confined in
spaces where we think that’s all there could
ever be.
We begin to look at our family and what they’ve
done for an indication of what we can do.
But God said, make room for the new.
Because for some of you, you are a generational
blessing vessel.
God shows Peter to take the gospel to new
people and that will always require conflict.
You are going to have to confront your old
ways of dealing with people because if you
don’t, God can bring you new people.
But if you carry the same patterns from your
old relationships into the new ones, you didn’t
make room for them.
That’s why I was telling you this morning
when John Butler came, Graham said, how fast
did Elevation grow when we came in?
And there’s pictures on my wall of different
sizes of the church.
So I told him the John Butler story, when
he said came in and said, “Preacher, you’re
full.”
We had, I think that week, 1200 people in
church.
He said, “Your church is full.”
I said, “Praise God.”
He said, “That’s a problem.
You’re telling people to invite their friends.
Where are you going to put them?”
Where are you going to put it?
If your heart is full of bitterness, where
are you going to put love if God sends it?
May his favor be upon.
Where are you going to put it?
You can pray the prayer of Jabez all you want,
God bless me indeed, but if you don’t enlarge
your borders to receive it and sometimes that
means just changing your mind about what God
can use.
Joppa, Joppa, why does that sound familiar
to me?
Joppa, Joppa, Joppa, Joppa, Joppa.
It’s a port city.
It’s a Mediterranean … It’s on the coast,
Mediterranean, so they would send him.
I studied this, when Solomon built the temple
and when they built it after the Babylonian
exile, they got the wood sent to Joppa and
then took it to Jerusalem to build the temple.
So I was like, yeah, this is what God does
in Joppa.
He sends the raw materials and you decide
what to do with it.
That’s what Joppa is.
That’s what this season of your life is.
That’s what this moment in your mind, this
moment in time, you will still be eating last
year’s harvest when here comes the new, will
you make room for it?
Or are you going to sit around looking at
pictures of when your kids were cute?
Ma’am, he is 48.
He stopped being cute about 43 ago.
But can you now relate to this stage of your
life with faith?
Can you make room for the new job?
But Joppa, Joppa, Joppa chop.
Who was it that went to Joppa?
I asked the interns this week because we’ve
been doing this scripture with campus pastors.
We did it with interns.
I’ve just been stuck in this scripture.
I was like Joppa, Joppa.
Who went to Joppa?
And of course I knew, but I was just using
the technique.
I was like, who went to Joppa?
Do y’all know who went to Joppa?
They were saying every Bible character, just
a guessing game.
These interns, they love the Lord, but they
don’t know the Bible too good yet.
And they were like, “David?”
No.
“Goliath?”
No.
Everything.
Larry, Curly, Moe?
Every saying in the scripture.
Bartholomew, random characters.
Ruth, Naomi.
No.
Who went to Joppa?
Peter wasn’t the first one.
All right, let me get a few hands.
Water?
Fish.
Rhymes with Corona.
No, it’s not funny.
It’s not funny.
Jonah, Jonah chapter one, verse three.
But Jonah ran away from the Lord.
Peter went toward purpose from Joppa.
Jonah ran away from the Lord, went down to
Tarshish and went down to Joppa to get to
Tarshish, to run away from the purpose of
the Lord.
And I hear the Lord saying, what are you going
to do in Joppa?
You’re going to run toward and go with it
or run away?
Because Jonah still had to go to Nineveh.
You’ve still got to learn the lesson.
Look, if you don’t embrace change, it’s still
going to change.
You can go on protest about it.
Make a picket sign, change doesn’t care.
I remember when Christians were boycotting
Disney.
Yeah, that really hurt them.
Y’all remember that?
You can’t fight Disney with a picket sign
with some Elmer’s glue and a sharpie with
a sign.
You can’t fight God, you can’t fight change,
you can’t fight life.
I don’t pray for problems.
I don’t pray for things to die in my life.
I don’t pray for controversy and conflict
and I think you’re stupid if you do.
I think you’re stupid if you pray for patience.
What kind of dumb prayer is that?
Who taught you, Lord, we just pray.
I heard a God praying the other day, Lord
humble me.
I was like, Oh no, no, no, no.
I think life will humble me.
God will humble me.
My kids will humble me.
Five foot nine will humble me.
40 will humble me.
But when it comes, I almost called this message
the Joppatunity of a lifetime because I would
… I didn’t call it that.
I almost called it that.
Because I thought it’s what you do in Joppa.
Peter said, I was in Joppa praying.
So three things the Lord gave me, don’t get
nervous.
This is the conclusion part one, Joppa.
Three things the Lord gave me and we’ll go,
that he gave Peter.
When Peter was praying in Joppa, not looking
for something new, not chasing something new,
not quitting jobs and leaving marriages, but
just staying.
The Lord showed him four corners.
It was a vision that God showed him.
The vision came to him.
God, what do I do?
You fulfill God’s purpose and you pray and
you be who God has called you to be.
And the sheet came down from heaven.
Heaven comes to you.
You don’t climb to God.
This is the new covenant.
This is the new way of relating to God.
God comes to you.
While he’s praying, the sheet came down from
heaven and he said, “It came down to where
I was.”
Verse six, “I looked into it and saw four
footed animals of the earth, wild beasts,
reptiles, and birds.”
Next verse, “And I heard a voice telling me,
get up Peter, kill and eat.”
And watch Peter resist the tension.
I thought it was this way, but maybe it’s
that way.
I thought God was going to do this.
Maybe he’s going to do that.
I thought this was who God was going to use,
but maybe he’s going to use somebody different.
I thought God gave me this opportunity, but
maybe he’s opening a door.
I thought God had opened that door, but then
it closed.
Maybe God closed that door to show me another
door that I wouldn’t have seen if the one
that I wanted to walk through hadn’t closed.
Who is this for?
And Peter said, “Surely not Lord.
I don’t like it.
I don’t want to make room for it.
I like last year’s harvest.
I like the way it was.
I like the tabernacle.
I liked the old way.
I like fighting.
I like that.
Surely not Lord.
Nothing impure or unclean has ever entered
my mouth.”
And the voice spoke from heaven a second time
saying, “Do not call anything impure that
God has made clean.”
So he went to Cornelius and gave him the gospel
and the Gentile world opened up to the purpose
of Jesus Christ because of what happened in
Joppa.
I wonder what’s at stake in this Joppa moment
of your life.
And if I could give you three things before
I send you out, it would be one, don’t be
limited by a label.
God said, don’t call stuff what I didn’t call
it.
You keep calling it impure or unclean.
You have your categories for life.
You have your categories for people.
You think you know what a blessing is and
what a blessing isn’t.
I read a proverb from a Japanese proverb from
a long time ago that said, one day a farmer
had a horse that ran off and the neighbors
came around later that night and said, “We’re
so sorry for your loss.
That’s horrible.”
He said, “Maybe.”
Next day the horse came back with two other
horses.
The neighbors came around and said, “Congratulations.
That’s wonderful.
You have two new horses.”
He said, “Maybe.”
The next day his son was out trying to train
one of the two new horses or one of the horses.
I don’t know which one.
It didn’t say in the parable, but he fell
off and broke his arm.
The neighbors came around and said, “That’s
horrible that your son broke his arm.”
He said, “Maybe.”
The next day the army recruiters were coming
by to draft somebody to fight in the war,
but the son had the broken arm.
The neighbors came around that night and said,
that’s wonderful.
Your son doesn’t have to go to war.”
He said, “Maybe.”
Oh, that’s the end.
Y’all waiting on the punchline.
That’s where we have to live church.
We have to live in the space called, Maybe.
This is the tension of the mystery of the
gospel of Jesus Christ.
What a blessing?
Maybe.
What a burden?
Maybe.
What if they’re the same thing?
Maybe.
Maybe.
Maybe.
Maybe.
I don’t want a maybe, I want a miracle.
The miracle is in the maybe.
I’ve got to close.
Take the mic.
I can’t stop preaching this because God said
make room.
Make room.
Stop being so closed minded about who God
can use.
God might use somebody you don’t even like
to bless your life.
What a word.
What a word.
This is a daylight savings time anointing.
This is a one hour early word.
This is a word for people who know you cannot
limit yourself with a label.
And number two, don’t be loyal to a lie.
Some of us will hold on to something that
is old because it feels comfortable like sweat
pants with holes all up in them.
You wear it because it feels good, but you
look stupid wearing something you should have
thrown out a long time ago.
Some of us would rather believe what people
said about us because it’s what we got used
to believing than stepping into who we really
are.
So don’t be loyal to a lie.
And as you stand to your feet, I want to tell
you something that I’m going to tell the whole
next service.
Don’t be late.
Don’t be late.
You will still be eating last year’s harvest
when you will have to move it out to make
room for the new.
So the prophetic declaration goes like this.
You didn’t lose it.
God moved it.