July 4 AM - Kevin Shepherd

Kevin Shepherd brings almost 30 years of pastoral experience, including twelve years as Lead Pastor of Glad Tidings Church in Burlington, Ontario, where he led significant growth through community engagement and leadership development. He currently serves as Chief Executive Officer of Crossroads Christian Communications and YES TV, using media to inspire spiritual transformation, cultural impact, and global outreach through faith-based storytelling and values-driven entertainment. Kevin also serves in leadership within the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada (PAOC) as a General Executive Member and Assistant Superintendent for the Western Ontario District, while remaining active in interdenominational initiatives across Canada. Kevin and his wife, Sherri, are proud parents of Caleb (married to Lauren) and Sadie.

Transcript

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All right, I want to jump into our memory verse. So uh we talked about last night that we were, if we could throw that up on the screen. And uh, you know, we we've talked about the fact that we um we tend to have kids memorize scripture, but it's actually really important for all of us to memorize scripture all the time. And so we're gonna do this each service. So hopefully you were thinking about it a little bit. I uh left some of the words on there for us. I'd give us a little bit of a little bit of cheat today, and uh tonight we'll take even more words off the screen. So uh let's do I don't know if you remember what it was, but we're gonna give it a whirl. Okay, ready? Here we go. There are many who say, Who will show us some good? Lift up the light of your face upon us, oh Lord. Okay, let's do one more time. There are many who say, Who will show us some good? Lift up the light of your face upon us, oh God. And then in the in 2nd uh Corinthians 4, verse 6, the New Testament kind of responds to that. Let's say this one together too. For God who said, Let light shine out of darkness, has shone in our hearts to give us the light of sorry, that's on me, has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Amen. All right. We've been standing up and sitting down and standing up and sitting down a lot today already. That was a fun game, actually, Marlo. Well done. Saw some pretty strong division in the crowd with the Coke Pepsi thing. I don't know. I don't know. But if you will, I I had this planned, I didn't know you were doing that. If you would all stand with me, I want to do something to start today. I didn't know you were doing this game, and so okay, here's what I'd like us to do to start today. I want you to stretch your arms out to the side and hold them there. So you're gonna have to kind of maybe some in front, some behind others is crowded house today. Do your best. Okay, hold them there while I kind of talk about triathlons. Now, how many know like triathlons are these things that people compete in where they actually on the granddaddy of all triathlons, the Iron Man in Hawaii, they actually run 26.2 miles, then they swim 2.4 miles, then they bike 112 miles to complete the triathlon. Keep those arms up, you're doing good hanging. We are in a Pentecostal camp, aren't we? So let's come on, you've got some endurance built up. I know you do. So, and that's what they need, right? They need endurance to do this. I've actually read that they will burn between 7,000 and 12,000 calories in one triathlon. That sounds like a pretty good diet program, actually, right? If you want to lose some weight, do a triathlon. But I actually don't recommend that you start your diet by doing a triathlon. Your arm's getting tired yet? Keep them up there, you can do it. Because they actually train, they train, they're disciplined, they train their endurance, they they train to, you know, they eat well, they work hard to make sure they do this. And here's the thing: winning a triathlon is not the only thing. It's enduring, it's hanging in there, it's actually because you want to know that you can finish right until the time when I say it's okay, you can sit down, which is not what I'm saying. What I want you to do now is just put your arm on the shoulder of somebody near you. Oh, doesn't that feel better? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that feels better, right? Oh yeah. How many know you could go a lot longer like that, right? Yeah. So the lesson is we need the body of Christ, right? We can go a lot further, farther together. Okay, you could give everybody a high five around you. Maybe a smack in the back of the head if they need one of those two. Just give them a how you doing in the back of the head. See if they're awake. Yeah, we need the body of Christ. Amen. We need one another. Paul actually talks about the body of Christ and uses the image as a body. Says this in fact, some parts of the body that seem weakest and least important are actually the most necessary, and the parts that we regard as less honorable are those we clothe with greatest care. So we carefully protect those parts that should not be seen, while the more honorable parts do not require this special care. So God has put the body together such that extra honor and care are given to those parts that have less dignity. This makes for harmony among the members, so that all the members care for each other. If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it. And if one part is honored, all the parts are glad. All of you together are Christ's body, and each of you is part of it. All of us together. Paul is saying, all of us count one. Everyone matters as much as the other one. But this is not new information to us, is it? I mean, we know this is true. We know that this is the way the body of Christ should operate. Even people who are outside the church know that this is the way the church should operate. That everybody matters and everybody's important, and we should serve and support one another in every way. We feel this way about some people in the body of Christ. Right? We're very thankful for some people in the body of Christ. But what about those other people? Those other people in the body of Christ that kind of rub us the wrong way. The ones that we don't like very much, we don't agree with, they kind of. What do we do about those people? Like, sure, there's people in the body of Christ that, man, if they call us at three o'clock in the morning, we're up, we're there, we'll support, we'll do anything for them, we'll help. And we know that there's people in the body of Christ who are like that for us. But what about those other people? Those ones that we don't like that much. The ones that, what do we do about them? I'll tell you what we do about them. We complain about them. We talk about them to other people. We avoid them. Oh, we maybe say, God bless you. We really mean God blast you. Like, what about those people, right? And you say, Oh, it sounds so wrong for you to say that. I'm just saying out loud what a lot of people have thought inside. Right? Like, what about those people? Like, we wish we weren't part of the body of Christ. Ooh, that sounds harsh. Okay, we want them to be part of the body of Christ, but just not our part of the body of Christ. Go be part of another body of Christ. Go to another camp. What do we do about those people? How do we act and react and live with those people? We must remember that if one part suffers, the whole body suffers. I want to suggest to you that some of the greatest damage to the body of Christ comes from itself. In fact, I think the way that we talk about each other, the way that we act towards each other in the body of Christ, does more damage than we realize. It's more insidious than we'd like to admit. It's actually a disease. It's a disease that spreads far faster. It's far more virulent than we realize. It's a disease that I call comparisonitis. You won't find that in the medical textbook. But let me assure you, it's real. It's active as ever. It's widespread. We're gonna examine the way that we talk to ourselves and compare ourselves to others for the next few moments. If you turn with me in your Bibles to 1 Samuel chapter 17. Familiar story to many people, the story of David and Goliath. And as soon as I say that, some of us like, oh, I know this story. I've heard it a million times before. And we think we kind of got the story. We know what it's about, you know. We know it's if we say, what is this story about? We'd say it's you know defeating the giants in your life, or you know, trusting God to do supernatural things with our natural abilities, or uh, some would say it's about finding courage and strength in the Lord. And and it it is all those things, and that is true. But I hope to pull out uh some unique perspectives today to kind of help us see the bigger picture of what's going on and the bigger story that's happening within this story. That's the series we're working through in these four sermons about the bigger picture. If we could just understand God's big perspective, if we could just understand that in the midst of every circumstance, situation, challenge, opportunity, victory, whatever you are facing, there is a bigger picture that God is at work in the midst of it all. He's forming and shaping us. Uh last night we talked about how David was the youngest of eight boys in Jesse's family, and how God was sorry that he made King Saul king, and that he uh he regretted that and and actually anointed, uh called Samuel to go and anoint David as the next king of Israel. In the process of doing that, we look briefly at this verse uh when he was uh thinking that it was Eliab that was going to be the next king, and the Lord says, Don't judge him by his appearance or height, for I've rejected him. The Lord doesn't see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart. And man, we do this a lot. And there's always things that when we look at other people's lives, we think, man, I would like what they've got in their life in my life. I wish I had their opportunity, I wish I had their intelligence, I wish I had their looks, I wish I had whatever they have. You know, if the grass looks greener on the other side of the fence, maybe we haven't been feeding and watering our own lawn. I don't know. And I also will say this that even if you see things that you like in other people's lives, I guarantee you there's some things in their life that you wouldn't want in yours. This road of comparison is a is a desperately difficult road to walk, but it's actually affects us and infects us more than we recognize and more than we would like to admit. It's one of the things that actually grieved God about Saul and his leadership. It's one of the reasons why God removed Saul in the way that he did from leadership because Saul became so concerned and so consumed with the voices of the people that he lost the voice of God. Comparasinitis is a trap and a deadly disease. It's a disease that allows the outward to affect the inward. And the only way to inoculate ourselves against it is to allow the inward work of God to affect the outward. And what we see actually through the story of David and Goliath is that the people got infected with comparitonitis, and it prevented them from actually being able to see who they were in God. So when the Philistines and Israel faced each other on opposite sides of the valley, and the Philistines presented their greatest warrior Goliath, all of Israel became afraid. Now, understandably, there's no doubt that Goliath was an intimidating sight. Nine feet tall. Could you imagine? Nine feet tall, full chain male, a javelin with a tip that was 15 pounds on. We couldn't even hold our hands up without weights on the end of it. Could you imagine how intimidating that would be? It's understandable. But as he stood there trying to pick a fight and he stood there taunting the Israelites, he said this: I am the Philistine champion, but you are only the servants of Saul. But they weren't only the servants of Saul. They were children of God. But they believed him. I'm going to tell you a story actually of when I met was like a it was an intimidating person. It was like a real-life Goliath. So a number of years ago, um, my brother, my younger brother and I, we both needed a vehicle. And my dad uh had this acquaintance in Fort Myers, Florida. And so he had called him, and this guy is a used car dealer, and he had a couple of vehicles for us, and so we agreed to buy them sight unseen, and because we could get flights for myself and my brother and our two buddies, fly down there, drive them straight home, and we'd still get them here to Ontario to half the price of what the value would have been. And they wouldn't have had Canadian winters, they were like eight years old, whatever. So we're like, we're we're young and dumb, we're gonna do this. So we get the flights, we do the thing, we we wake up at three in the morning, we get to the airport, we fly to Fort Myers, and we we do this deal. We buy these cars. Now, when I was buying the cars from the guy, he said, uh, he's filling out the paperwork for the border, and he goes, So what price do you want me to put that you paid for the vehicle? And I said, Oh, like I was confused. I was like, write what I paid for the vehicle. He goes, No, no, no, you don't understand. He says, like, like whatever I write down here, you're gonna have to pay tax on that duty when you go across the border. So, like I can write anything on here, so what price do you want me to write on here? And I said, Oh, no, no, no, you don't understand. Just write what I paid for the vehicle. I have no problem paying the tax and the duty and and just write what I paid for it. He goes, No, dude, you're not getting it. I can write anything on here. Like, I can write a lower price on here and you'll pay less tax at the board. I'm like, no, dude, you're not getting it. My integrity is not for sale. I'm not gonna compromise myself for the sake of a little bit of tax savings. So write what I pay for it. He's like, you don't get it, you're an idiot. I'm like, whatever you think. So he walks into his office, does the paperwork, comes back out, gives it to me in a manila envelope. So does the same thing for my brother. So we get in the vehicles, away we go. We drive straight back, 24 hours, straight through the night. We're crazy, and we get to the border. So we get to the border, I take the envelope, I hand it to the border guard, and uh and he takes it, he looks at it, and he goes, Okay, can you pull over to the side? Which I knew we were gonna do because we're gonna have to go in and pay the tax. But instead of going into the area where you just pay, a guard meets me and takes myself and my brother into another area where they're interrogation rooms, sits us down, leaves us there, goes away, lets us sit there for about half an hour. I don't know what's going on. A guard comes in, says, You in here, takes me into this room, and he just starts grilling me. He's grilling me about where I got the car, who I bought it from, how much I paid for it. He's just like laying into me about it. And I'm just telling the truth. Like, well, my dad knows this car dealer in Florida. We flew down, we're picking up the car, cheap deal, driving back, here's how much I paid for it, the whole thing, telling the truth. He doesn't believe me. Takes me out to the car, completely tosses the car, looking for whatever, I don't know what he's looking for, comes back in, sits me down, then does the same thing with my brother, interrogates him, takes him out, tosses the car, brings me back, and then sits us side by side. And we're sitting there for about an hour. And I learned later they do this because they want you to kind of talk and you know, I don't know, whatever. So, like, I'm no criminal, okay? But you haven't met my younger brother. He is like the squeakiest clean person you've ever met in your entire life. So he's sitting there, his face is forlord. He's like, like he we're going to jail forever, you know, like we don't even know what's happened. So then I'm sitting there, kind of, you know, with my elbows on my knees, and all of a sudden somebody walks in. I just I hear the door open, and then I just hear, you in here. And I look up, and it's the largest human I've ever seen in my entire life. And she says, I said in here. Said, okay. So I get up and she goes to take me into this other uh interrogation room where there was a swivel chair, a metal table, like a desk, metal desk, and then a wooden bench. And I wasn't thinking. And I walk in and I sit in the swivel chair. She goes, That's my seat. I said, Of course it is. I'm sorry. Get up, I go around, I sit on the wooden bench. And she just lays into me, she's accusing me of all kinds of stuff. She's just, and I'm just telling the truth. I'm telling the same story. At one point, she finally bang on the metal table and she goes, You're a liar. And I said, I respectfully disagree with you, ma'am. And I said the exact same story, and then she just changed, became the sweetest person you've ever met. She goes, Next time, because what had happened was the guy didn't write anything. The guy didn't put up, so they thought we were doing some sort of car smuggling ring or something. I don't know what they were thinking. I'm like, I'm a pastor, I'm not running cars. I mean, I'm just trying to get a deal because I don't have money. Okay? That's what's happening here. So she became the you know, stamp said, next time you, you know, come here, this is what you need to do. And so then I leave. I I was intimidated. I was afraid. I understand where they're coming from here. They're intimidated, they're afraid. They've got a real life threat. And it can be intimidating when someone else who has more authority than you, or more power than you, or more strength than you, seems to be attacking you. The Bible says as soon as the Israelite army saw him, they began to run away in fright. Have you seen the giant? The men asked. He comes out each day to defy Israel. The king has offered a huge reward to anyone who kills him. He will give that man one of his daughters for a wife, and the man's entire family will be exempted from paying taxes. Charlie Brown says, No problem facing our nation is so awesome, so complicated, or so fraught with danger that the average citizen can't run away from it. There is a threat that they're feeling and experiencing in this moment. And they're running from it. They're all asking the question that David asks is Psalm 4, verse 6: Who will show us some good? 40 days of fear, 40 days of uncertainty, 40 days of asking who will help us. Israel will Looking for a champion. They're looking horizontally. They're looking at Saul. They're looking at weapons. They're looking at strength. They're looking at size. And the story of David and Goliath is bigger than the story of David and Goliath. It's a story about a nation, children of God, who were running away from an outward appearance because they forgot the truth about who God had declared they were. They compared themselves to the Philistines. When they compared themselves to Goliath, they lost sight of who they were in God. When we compare ourselves to others, we usually do it in one or both of two ways. We either compare our strengths with their weaknesses or their strengths with our weaknesses. Take Eliab, for instance. Remember, we looked at Eliab last night. He and his brothers were on the battlefield, and their father Jesse sent David with some food to feed them. And when David got there, he asked some soldiers nearby, what does someone get for killing the Philistine? And they told him the same thing. And when David's oldest brother Eliab heard David talking to the men, he was angry. What are you doing around here anyway? He demanded. What about those few sheep you're supposed to be taking care of? I know about your pride and deceit. You just want to see the battle. Remember, we talked about the fact that the bigger picture of the story was that David was already anointed. The Spirit of God had come upon him. But what did he do next? He went back and started tending sheep. Because God was working formation in him. He didn't go straight from the barnyard to the courtyard. God was forming in him and he needed to be faithful in serving. So he was serving sheep. But here you hear Eliab, maybe even his jealousy coming out. Because Eliab was passed over. He was the oldest. He was the one who wanted to be king. And he was passed over, and actually it's his younger brother, youngest brother, that's anointed to become the king. You hear this come out in him. And when Eliab compared himself to David, he saw himself as bigger than he was. But when he compared himself to Goliath, he saw himself as smaller than he was. And in the midst of the comparison, he lost sight of who he was in God. We often receive the message in one way or another from different people in our lives. Differences can be exposed in our heart and in our mind. Maybe you experienced this as growing up. Maybe your parents, maybe they never said it out loud, but maybe you knew you weren't their favorite. Maybe it was a school teacher that made you feel that way. Maybe you felt like you were the last to pick, be picked for the team. Maybe you didn't have as much as someone else had. And what we can end up doing is we start labeling ourselves with these ideas and these identities about who we are. And it can affect how we relate to other people. How we see ourselves in Christ. People who are insecure often try to control externally what they fear internally. When we feel this way towards other people, we we end up not supporting them like we're called to. We even sometimes try to sabotage them. Try to talk down about them to other people, try to undermine them. You do not know the purposes of God for their life. I think we have to be very careful. My grandpa used to say, I was a very competitive when I was younger. My grandpa used to say to me, Kevin, be very careful how you treat other people. Because what you do to someone else, God takes personally. So because David was not comparing himself with Goliath or Eliad, but seeing God's call in his life, he wasn't afraid. So he says, Don't worry about this Philistine, David sold Saul. I'll go fight him. Everyone sees the giant as a threat, as a problem. David sees God's presence. David sees God's promise, God's perspective. The difference wasn't that David had less information. The difference was that David had a bigger picture. Everyone else was asking, who will show us some good? And David believed that God already had because God had revealed himself. Saul's comparisonitis. So Saul says, don't be ridiculous. There's no way you can fight this Philistine and probably win. You're only a possibly win. You're only a boy, and he's a man of war since his youth. But David persisted. And he talked about how the Lord had helped him while he was tending his sheep, killing a lion and a bear with a club. And he says, The Lord who rescued me from the claws of the lion and the bear will rescue me from this Philistine. I like what Max Locato said. There are certain things anyone knows not to do. You don't fight a lion with a toothpick, you don't sneeze into the wind, you don't go bear hunting with a cork gun. And you don't send a shepherd boy to battle a giant. You don't unless you're out of options. And Saul felt like he was out of options because Saul lost who he was in God. You see? He lost the big picture, he lost the perspective. And so then he he actually agrees to do this. And Saul did come quite naturally to many of us. Our temptation, he tries to put his armor on to David. Our temptation is to put someone's armor on someone else. We want our new pastor to be like our old pastor. We want our friend to treat us like our other friend. We want our relationships to be so we put things on people. We have to be careful when we put those expectations on other people. Disappointment comes from unmet expectations. Saul tries to give David his armor. Didn't fit him. David says, I can't fight in these. We know the rest of the story, though. David marched out against Goliath, armed it seemed only with a sling and some stones, but he was armed with more than that. Goliath walked out towards David with his shield-bearer ahead of him, sneering in contempt at his ruddy-faced boy. Am I a dog? He roared at David. You come at me with a stick. And he cursed David by the names of his gods. Come over here, and I'll give your flesh to the birds and the wild animals, Goliath yelled. David replied to the Philistine, You come to me with a sword, a spear, and a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of heaven's armies, the God of the armies of Israel whom you have defied. Today, the Lord will conquer you, and I will kill you and cut off your head. And then I will give the dead bodies of your men to the birds and the wild animals, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel. And everyone assembled here will know that the Lord rescues his people, but not with a sword and a spear. This is the Lord's battle, and he will give it to you to us. There's so much we could talk about there, and I know we don't love the militaristic language here, but I want us to just realize something that jumped out at me as I was studying this passage for this service. He says, Today the Lord will conquer you, and I will cut off, I will kill you and cut off your head. You know what jumped out at me that I'd never seen before? David didn't have a sword. He didn't have a sword. Where was the sword? It was in Goliath's hands. He knew he was going to use the very weapon that was set against him to defeat the enemy that was against him. Come on, get that in your spirit. I don't know what enemy you're facing. I don't know what challenge you're going on, but sometimes you have a vision when you don't even have the tools to accomplish the victory. But you know you have a God that's given you something that's beyond your own capacity. And sometimes the very thing that seems like it's against you is the very thing that God is using to form and shape his victory in your life. See, here's the thing: in God's big picture, we don't ask for the lion, the bear, and the giant. But those obstacles are part of the formation process of God for what he wants to do in our life. When God wanted to build dependence in David, he gave him a field and sheep. When God wanted to build courage in David, he gave him a lion and a bear. And when God wanted to reveal David to a nation, he gave him a giant. And we often don't ask God for the obstacles. We pray for God to remove all the obstacles in our life. And it's not wrong to pray that. We can bring all our requests to God and make them known. But what I am suggesting is if we see God's bigger picture, if we trust and understand that he's at work in ways we don't fully comprehend or understand, and sometimes the very obstacles that are present in your life are the very things he's using to form and shape strengthen you, so you will have what you need to accomplish the thing that he's calling you to become. God is forming something in David, and he's forming something in the people that the people don't see because they're living in the moment instead of trusting in God's perspective for the future. And you can trust in God's perspective for the future. Because here's the thing: Jesus is the true and better David. And what they didn't even fully understand in that moment, as David was anointed to become the king of Israel, Samuel actually said, There will be one come after you, and the throne of his kingdom will reign forever and ever. There was no natural king who could fulfill that. That was a foreshadowing of the coming of the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. It was the coming of Jesus. See, Jesus is the true and better David. And while Israel had an enemy that they couldn't defeat, we had an enemy that we couldn't defeat in sin and death. And yet Jesus came and he did what we could never do. And he defeated sin and death, and he rose victoriously over the grave. And through faith in him, he lives resident within us. And as 2 Corinthians says, his light has shone in our hearts to give us the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. You do not walk alone. You walk in the strength of who God has called you to be. And as the people of God, we don't walk in this nation alone. And I know it looks like there's many threats, and it looks like there's many things that are coming against us, but we cannot forget who we are. We are the children of God, equipped and anointed for his purpose. And the way that we defeat the battle, the way we defeat the enemies in our life and in this world, is not by self-confidence. It's by God confidence. Knowing who we are in Him, knowing He has called every single one of us for His purpose, knowing that everyone matters. We are in the body of Christ together, and together we can become who God has created us to become, to see His kingdom established in this earth, His will be done forever and ever in Jesus' name. Amen. Would you bow with me and close your eyes for a moment? As I just pray for us all briefly, just a moment of reflection. Yesterday we prayed that God would help us see the big picture. Today we're we're praying that God would help us see ourselves in the way that He sees us. And I want to pray in a moment. You know, some here you may have spent years comparing yourself to someone else, maybe believing a lie that you're not enough. Maybe you've been trying to wear someone else's armor. I'm just gonna pray in the next moment that there will just be a revealing of who you really are in God. Who he says you are. We're so grateful. That you see what we don't see, and that we can trust you. That you're always at work and you're forming and shaping in our lives, and we thank you for the story of David's life that you've placed in your word so we can see the way in which you've called us to live boldly and confidently in who you've called us to be. Lord, we need unity in the body of Christ. We need unity in the body of Christ across our nation. It seems to me like we've we need it more now than we've ever needed it before. We pray for our country. But disunity comparison, it robs us, it steals from us who you're calling us and creating us to be. Lord, I pray that there would be the courage for forgiveness, the courage for reconciliation that we will see in our lives, in our families, and those around us, the restoration that can only happen from your spirit. I pray that you will free people today from trying to be someone else, and that we will just become who you've created us to be, fulfilling your purpose for our lives. Lord, I thank you. I thank you that you have anointed each of us here for your purpose, for your calling, for your will to be done in our lives. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. I would just like to finish really quickly today, and I just wrote a very brief blessing, kind of a benediction blessing, that um I just feel like I wrote it this morning that I just feel like I should uh recite over you as we as we wrap up today. So maybe would you stand with me as I just say this and declare it uh over you and to you? And I I just pray that you receive this wherever you're at, whatever you've gone through, whatever people have said about you, whatever you've been saying to yourself, that you just receive this today. May God free you from the burden of becoming someone he never asked you to be. May he give you joy in the gifts he's trusted to you. May he help you celebrate the success of others without diminishing the call on your own life. And may you become everything Christ has redeemed you to be. Go in his peace. Amen.