S68E1 | God Math Part I | Pst. James Muchai

Good afternoon. My name is James Moshae for those of you who are new. I'm one of the pastors here at Nairobi Chapel on Gongrod. I serve in the discipleship ministry. I have the privilege of bringing to us God's Word today and unfortunately for some of us I'm going to start us off with a science lesson. Look at your neighbor. Tell them the Lord is with you. Do they look like they dropped science the first moment they had the opportunity to? So that the universe is governed by principles different laws different, you know realities that I believe God has put in place Excuse me There are principles that God has put in place that govern how nature Interacts and how different things interact in nature. There's a verse about this in Proverbs chapter 25 Proverbs 25 verse 2 says I'll read in the New Living Translation It is God's privilege to conceal things and the king's privilege to discover them It is God's privilege to conceal things and the king's privilege to discover them What this verse is saying is that there are things that God has hidden in creation and for those of us who are Believers and passionate about science and one of those people science then becomes an interrogation It's this you know It's a seeking of understanding that God has hidden within nature and so there are many people who are you know That becomes their engagement What all that's our Isaac Newton? Watched an apple fall from a tree. I don't know how true it is and he asked himself a critical question He asked why did the what defined the trajectory of the apple when it broke off from the twig? Why did it go down? Why didn't it go up? Why didn't it float and stay in the same at the same level where it was once that thing broke? Why is there a consistency that everything comes down unless it is supported by something and so he gets into that process of Interrogation a seeking of understanding and out of his interrogation We gained something with that that science called Newton's law of universal Gravitation I have an I have a tissue here. I Weed a tissue in my house. I a Soviet on a weighing scale and so one of those sensitive weighing scales That's my wife uses for baking and I found that as a severe couldn't even register on the weighing scale It was too light but as light as it is even this tissue is governed by that law of universal gravitation that when it isn't Supported it absolutely has to go down. Everything must comply To the law of gravity the law of gravity says that everything should be connected to the ground somehow But tell your neighbor, but So they said the largest that the largest most powerful aircraft ever built It was destroyed in Ukraine in the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine But that plane when fully loaded could fly with 640 tons You know the weight of the plane and the cargo that it was carrying and so as a viet that won't register on a weighing scale Must go down but that mammoth object that aeroplane fully loaded will somehow stay In the sky and the question is how I have a small illustration for us here You know, this is a pebble a small stone And if I put it in water whether I put it in this you know glass of water Whether I put in a big mass of water in a small mass of water There are laws that govern what happens when I do that and they guarantee that it must drop right to the bottom It's inevitable. It's a law that is baked into creation It's one of the things that God has ordained and there are things like density and gravity and they work together And they define that outcome Last year we are told that there's a record that was broken by a ship I think it's called the one innovation or something like that that carried and shipped 22,000 containers all the way from Singapore to England it floated all the way and So this small pebble cannot stay on top of the water But that mammoth thing that ship with all those containers and all the way it carried Estimated at about 200 tons was able to float from one side of the world to the other and the question is how You see there are laws that govern nature and God has ordained them. He's the creator. Those are laws like gravity But once in a while as we interrogate how nature works We can stumble upon other laws that can override on the existing laws And so in the case of you know in the case of gravity you find that everything must be earthbound That's what gravity guarantees But the innovators in Aviation discovered that if you shape an object the right way if you design it so that it has certain Dimensions if it moves at a certain speed a different law checks into motion That law is called lift or that force is called lift and it's a force that now demands the force of gravity and all of a sudden the thing can take off and we have aviation or we have flight and So the law of gravity is not a lie. It's real, but there is a law that can override it There is a superior law that you can engage It says that small objects that are dense however light they may be they're supposed to sink that is defined by things like You know density and so on like I said But then what people have found is that there are other laws laws like you know have to do with things like buoyancy Achimedes principle if you are paying attention in that class praise the Lord look at your neighbor Do they look like they owe their parents a refund? Could not what a pelika refund Yeah, and so there are laws which you if you engage them all of a sudden that Massive object of you know a massive heavy ship can now float and so all of a sudden Transportation across the oceans is possible So there are laws that we must abide by but sometimes we can come across a law that is a superior law Which if we engage it can override there? You know the existing or then or the other regular law. I want you to hold on to that thought and I want to talk about the message that we'll be getting into today What's starting a two-part someone series this afternoon called God math and we'll be talking about giving I? Love the enthusiasm You know, maybe you're here and this is your church. You've been coming here for a long time and And and and whether for a long time or you've joined us recently or whether you're watching us online or as a regular Attendant or not. I want you to know that I'm really glad that you're here I believe that you're in the right place and I trust that God has a word for you It's also possible that you're here and you're a first-time visitor I want you to know that we are really glad you're here. Maybe you're here for the first time Maybe it's your first time in church for a long time Maybe the reason you haven't been to church for so long in fact is that you felt churches are all about money And so you stopped going But your friend or your relative has been hounding you and telling you please come to church eventually You have yielded one of the things they said is Nairobi Chapel. We are not those kinds of people We are not always about asking for your money and then you visited today and lo and behold here we are I Want to let you know I am especially glad that you're here The person who invited you is probably texting you right now trying to tell you Akia is so I promise We are not like that. In fact, this guy is new. I don't even know where he came from But I'm really glad that you're here and in case it helps I am relatively new praise the Lord Your friend did not lie to you But at the end of this service is this if this is your first Sunday with us we'd love to connect with you briefly We have a Caribbean center like our service who said as you exit it's to your right It's clearly branded. Please join us for a few minutes so that we can get to know you a little bit But I'm saying this to say Wherever you're at. We are glad that you're here Whether you've been coming here for a long time whether you're visiting us for the first time You probably have some thoughts on this conversation on giving Maybe you don't quite get it. No one ever really explained it to you So, you know, it's a thing that happens in church, but you you know, you don't quite know about it Maybe you don't mind it. You don't have a specific issue with it But perhaps you feel you know church over does it a little bit. You're a little bit skeptical about it maybe You've been taken advantage of before or a loved one Someone you know has been taken over one advantage of before in regards to giving and you and you saw Never again and so every time you hear this kind of conversation in church You know, it sends a shiver down your spine and you're wondering what are they about this time? Maybe you're persuaded about giving but there's a bat in your life. You're persuaded about giving but you're in debt You're persuaded about giving but you have a construction project or your your job Your business is a startup and there are just some realities are with that without a season of life You're persuaded of about giving but you're in the middle of a construction project and everything is measured in bags of cement If your children want pizza, you're like, isn't this meeting happy? Yeah, or how many kgs of nails So you're persuaded you can't wait for when things will change because right now the realities aren't quite allowing you to Leave the way you would like and you're looking forward to that shift. My prayer is that Whatever your present reality or whatever it is that's happening in your life your level of persuasion My prayer is that as we get into this conversation that that you will Receive something that God has in store for you today And so I'm gonna lead us in a word of prayer and then we'll dive in to the scriptures Our Lord and our King we pray would you steal every distraction? Would you come every storm? Whatever it is that's been going on everything that could be a barrier to us receiving what you have in store for us Lord We pray that you would steal it. We pray that you would come it We pray that you would help us just enter into into the space that you want us to enter into And I pray that you will receive every blessing that you have in store for us now in Jesus name. We pray Amen a lot of life most of life is anchored on logic and reason and logic and reason makes sense That's why life is anchored on them But as we go through the scriptures every now and then we come across statements that are statements of wisdom that are statements of wisdom and sometimes Wisdom or rather that wisdom that we find in the scripture is what we've branded in this someone series and what we are calling God Math, that's what that that statement means We're talking about spiritual wisdom the things that we find in the scripture that seemed to be to us They seem to be the mind of God or revealing to us the mind of God as it were there are a revelation of his heart his posture And so on and in his perspective The Bible is a collection of books and the books can be broken down into different genres One of those genres is a several books that are called the wisdom books now Today and next Sunday we're gonna anchor our conversations in the book of Proverbs. It's one of the wisdom books next month Reverend Nick our senior person will be taking us through the book of Ecclesiastes Another book on wisdom and I'm really looking forward to that The book of Proverbs is parked with divine wisdom. It speaks on pretty much every area of your life It has something to say about marriage It has something to say about parenting about money about work about every area of your life Everything that is important and significant There's probably some biblical or spiritual truth that the book of Proverbs has to say about it God must be spiritual truth and the Proverbs are parked with it And I want us to talk about giving and I'll anchor our conversation today. I'll start us off from this question Why did God instruct his people in to give in the scriptures? When we read through the Old Testament as we look and interrogate the relationship between God and his people the children of Israel There are many clear instructions to worship him with different offering Sacrifices when they went to the place where they worship they were to come with something and there's a lot of detail in the scriptures about it And the question that I want us to ask ourselves this afternoon is why did God ask or instruct his children to give and To get into that conversation and try and answer that question. I'll read for us a verse in Proverbs chapter 11 We're gonna read it in the new living translation Proverbs 11 verse 24 Proverbs 11 verse 24 I want us to read it together. One two go God give freely and become aha be Unlose everything give freely and become more wealthy be stingy and Lose everything remember what I said most of life is anchored on logic and reason a Lot of life is founded on logic In fact the foundation for math is logic and this is what logic says Logic says of what I have if I give more I am left with less if I give less I am left with more and so if my objective is to remain with more. What do I need to do? I need to give I need to give less. It's simple math. That's grade one. We haven't entered multiplication division This is addition and subtraction. That's logic at its most basic But here we are finding ourselves first with a scripture that seems to be saying Exactly the opposite of what logic says Here's what this verse is saying to me. I want to speak it to you in the context of luck LSEK luck This verse is saying to me that some people luck because they didn't receive enough to begin with but some people luck because They kept too much Allow me to say that again That it is true that some people luck because they didn't get enough But there are people who luck because they kept too much of what came their way. They retained too much the book of Proverbs is saying That if you give freely you it is possible to give freely and become more wealthy It is possible to be stingy and lose everything I want us to read this same verse But in the new international version because there's a detail that you catch there that wasn't explicit in the NLT If they can put that up for us, let's read it together again All right, let's go one two go freely yet gains even more another But comes to poverty one person gives freely yet gains even more another withholds and duly But comes to poverty. I don't know you if you caught the detail that wasn't quite there in NLT And it's captured in this word and duly And duly The understanding we draw from this scripture is that when we count everything we have earned all the wealth We have generated and created not everything is supposed to be mine to keep and to consume It is saying that there is such a thing as keeping and duly what came to me It has it is attached to me. It has my name on it It's in my bank account it the title deed is in my name But among the wealth of the things that God has allowed to come my way this this scripture is saying not everything Not a hundred percent was meant to be for me to keep And so it is possible for me to keep more than I ought to keep unduly what is unduly mine and There's an outcome. He says that car that that person comes to poverty life is built on logic and reason But once in a while you come across a scripture God math you come across Divine wisdom spiritual truth That's what you find in the scriptures and once in a while you come across something that says the opposite of what logic and reason is saying You started with a science lesson at the beginning there are laws that govern nature They define how things ought to interact but we say that there are other laws that can override the common laws We said that it is possible for you You know we use the example of gravity that gravity says I must be earthbound And it is it has it defines the reality for everyone and everything and we said that a good example is the the force called That it can be superimposed on gravity and now where I'm supposed to be earthbound where we are supposed to always be On the ground air travel becomes a possibility This is what I want to say about this scripture I want to say that logic is accurate my argument today is not that logic is inaccurate It isn't even that logic is foolish. I want to argue today that logic is inferior That if you find yourself in a place where logic is saying a different thing from what spiritual truth What divine wisdom is saying then one of those two is inferior to the other? It's not necessarily false, but it's not the superior authority God says to his children it is possible to keep more than you ought So this is a question that the children of Israel would have been faced with What do you do when this collision happens? What do you do when God math and regular math collide? What do you do when logic and reason collide with spiritual truth with divine wisdom? What will your response be? How will you proceed then you're about to make a decision and these two things are competing This is the decision that the children of Israel would have had to make remember our question Why did God invite his people his children to give? Why is that an instruction that we see over and over in the scriptures? In this place when they would have come across this instruction, they would have had to decide Am I persuaded about this because logic would have said to them the same thing it says to us keep more so that you Can have more But here the spiritual truth that is revealing to them is that some people release more and have more others keep more and have less And you have to decide what to do at that point Keep inside our question for today. What was the invitation about for God's people to give? And this is how I want to answer that question God invited his people to give because he wanted them to live under divine wisdom The invitation to give was an invitation to align their lives to something superior than what was common He was giving a blessing to his people and the people and the nations around them did not have it was the blessing of living Under laws that the nations did not have because they did not have this revelation The reason that God invited them to give is because the invitation to give was an invitation to live under divine wisdom Which is superior to logic and reason Allow me to talk a little bit about the logo scholarship fund to illustrate this a little further The invitation we have received today clearly from our service host is that we need to partner with the logo scholarship fund to sponsor students to school We have been given a specific figure 80,000 shillings that's what it takes to take a student a learner for a whole year through school What does the wisdom of God have to say about this? I'm gonna read this from Proverbs chapter 19 verse 17 I'll read it in the new living translation. This is what it says It says if you help the poor you are lending to the Lord Listen to this and he will repay you 80,000 shillings is not little money at least it's not for me Look at your neighbor. What has the Lord been doing in their life? I'm your moka Yeah, it's a lot of money for every Kenyan I suspect isn't it God is saying if 80,000 shillings leaves leaves your life this year to sponsor someone next year God is saying that he who gives to the poor lends to the Lord It is revealing to us the posture that God adopts as to someone who helps someone who has less than they do That if your heart goes out to the person who has who is less privileged than you and who has less than you do And your resources go in the direction of supporting that person God is saying that there's a posture. I then adopt toward you. I look at you as someone that I owe and I will repay you That's God man For you what it looks like or what logic will say is that I'm 80,000 short In that building project. I'm 80 bags of cement short That's reason and it's it's true. It's not a lie But in spiritual truth, I'm