Music
Handling God's Dark Room.
Dr. Ruth J. Simmons is the former president of Smith College.
The largest women's college in America.
She was president of Brown University,
and she's the immediate past president of
Pre-Review A&M University,
the oldest HBCU in Texas.
She was a former vice provost of Princeton University.
She earned her bachelor's degree from
Dillard University in New Orleans,
and her master's and her doctorate degrees
in romance languages and literatures from Harvard University.
The president of France named her Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor.
President Biden named her to the White House Historically Black College and
University Advisory Board.
She currently serves as
a distinguished presidential fellow at Rice University here in Houston.
But what you would not know from reading her
powerfully accomplished resume is that Dr. Simmons grew up
the 12th child of sharecroppers in East Texas,
in a home without running water,
electricity, or a single book to read except the Bible.
In her fascinating book that I just finished reading yesterday,
Up Home, One Girl's Journey,
she introduced me to a word that I had never seen,
much less knew its definition.
The word is perigranation,
perigranation and especially long and meandering journey.
Perigranation means to go a winding way,
to come through difficulty by meandering through a winding way.
Despite coming from the farmlands of East Texas,
to be raised in poverty in Houston's Fifth Ward,
or as she asserts,
because of the way she was raised,
Dr. Simmons has become one of America's preeminent educators.
If you resent God's dark room,
the consequence is depression.
If you resist God's dark room,
the consequence is despair.
But if you are patient in God's dark room,
the consequence is a maturity that leads to victory.
God had displayed his power by sending plagues upon Egypt
to break the will of Egypt's pharaoh.
He had manifested his grace by protecting the children of Israel
from the plagues that he put on Egypt,
by them sprinkling the blood of a lamb
on the doorposts and on the lentils.
Yet, even as they took their first steps toward freedom,
they knew the definition of Dr. Simmons' word perigranation.
They must have realized they were headed in a strange direction.
The journey of the sons of Jacob was circuitous.
Not only were they not permitted to go directly to their inheritance,
it was also not a way that they chose for themselves.
Now, brothers and sisters,
they could have marched to Canaan in eight or ten days.
But eight or ten days would have been too short a period
for the growth of character.
The brick yards of Egypt was not the school
that God wanted them to learn courage in.
God knew then, as he knows now,
that the best place to develop a believer
is in the barren desolation of the desert.
God knows it is the exclusive province of unerring wisdom
that by the discipline of long, slow-moving years,
the result of innumerable trials and temptations,
and the fruit of many painful circumstances,
can help us to recognize you can get to blessings too soon.
And so God often has to take you around the long way
to help you to appreciate.
And once God has taken you on the meandering, circuitous route,
you can testify with James in his epistle
when he writes, Count it all, Joy.
When you fall into diver's temptations,
knowing this, that the trying of your faith
will work its patience. But let patience have a perfect work,
that he may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.
Brothers and sisters, I think that many a time,
God has to disappoint us before he can save us.
God also has to take us through some things
that will keep us from being destroyed.
Because salvation is not always what God delivers us from.
More often than not is what God kept us from.
I still believe it. All things work together for good.
Amen, but love God and to those who are we called,
according to his purpose.
May I mention before exposing the text this morning,
brothers and sisters, that when Israel left Egypt,
they didn't know how to pack.
Let me run that by you one more time.
Israel left Egypt.
They didn't know how to pack.
They left some things they should have taken.
And they took some things they should have left.
Chapter 12 says that when they left Egypt,
they were joined by a mixed multitude.
Verses 38 and 39 of chapter 12,
when they left Egypt, they left Egypt with a mixed multitude.
Today, the Christians greatest danger lies with keeping company
with a mixed multitude.
There are some people who have no business in your life.
You got to get rid of that and mix them.
You got to unfriend them.
Talk back to me if you can.
There are some folk you're going to have to leave alone.
There are some people in your life just for a season.
And when that season is over, move on.
And here's when you know the season is over.
You don't enjoy that no more.
I wish I had somebody to help me preach it.
That don't mean you're mean.
That don't mean you're not a Christian.
You just don't feel like going out no more.
You don't feel like clubbing no more.
You're too old for that.
You are too mature for that.
You got too much going on in your life to hang around with people
you can't take to your promised land.
You got to lay aside.
I wish I had a Bible reader.
Every weight and every sin that's so easily beset you.
And every weight is not a sin.
Some people just starting to get on your nerve.
You too silly to be around me.
You talk too crazy to be around me.
That's all you got to talk about.
I wish I had somebody who can help me preach this morning.
There's some folk you got to get a real life because they are a mixed multitude.
Brothers and sisters more often than not the mixed multitude is not always outside us.
Sometimes we got some junk inside us.
There's a mixed multitude of pride.
There's a mixed multitude of envy.
There's a mixed multitude of gossip.
There's a mixed multitude of wickedness.
And we got to get that out of us so God can take us to our promised land.
Because if you get to Canaan before you got all that Egypt out of you,
you're going to bring Egypt in the Canaan.
That's why it took 40 years because God not only had to get Israel out of Egypt,
he had to get Egypt out of Israel.
He had to rid them of that slave mentality.
That slave mentality ain't gone, African Americans.
We still like crabs in a bucket.
Time one of us get almost out.
You don't want him to have no more than you so you pull him down.
Why don't you help him up so all of us can go up?
When I got to the end of Dr. Simmons book, it tickled me because her real name is Ruth Jean Stubblefield Simmons.
She married a man who was not her intellectual equal.
She loved him. He was a good man.
She said they had 10 mostly good years.
She realized that he wasn't going where she was going.
She loved him. She never let her children treat him.
She has two children with him. She never let them criticize him.
She said her father was not the man he should have been,
but her mother never let the children talk bad about their father.
The mother did everything she could to raise them in the fear and the admonition of God.
She knew when she married Simmons, he wasn't going where she was going.
She loved him. They had mostly good years, but there came a time when she had to go her way.
Because where she was going, he wasn't.
It was not according to a book. It was not a divorce. It was a deliverance.
Because there are some people you shouldn't have been with in the first place.
They're too small for you. They're too parochial for you.
They're too little for you. And you're trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.
The car says you got to get away from those people because they are a mixed multitude.
You met him with his clothes in a trash bag.
You met her with no hubcaps on her car.
And now she doesn't got her hair fixed. And she thinks she's all that.
Girl, please.
He doesn't bend to the gym and start lifting weights.
And now you can't talk to him because his head's so big.
There comes a time.
Dr. Simmons said it's 10 mostly good years.
But when it was time, it was time.
Because you can be in a mixed multitude.
And that's sometimes true in your family.
Everybody raised with you don't want to see you make it.
Everybody you went to high school with don't want to see you prosper.
But if God be far off.
Somebody ought to help me holler here.
Who can be against us?
The Lord is my light.
And my salvation.
Whom shall I fear?
Come on, you can help me say it.
The Lord is the strength of my life.
Of whom shall I be afraid?
When the wicked, even my enemies and my foes came upon me to eat up my flesh.
Just before they got to me.
They stumbled and they fell.
And no host should encamp against me.
And this will I be confident.
One thing have a desire of the Lord.
And that will I seek after that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life for in the time of trouble.
He shall hide me.
I wish I had two or three witnesses who can help me testify that your enemy is looking at you but they can't get to you.
They talking about you but they can't stop you.
They want to see you fire.
Oh but God is holding you up.
This business of being in a dark room is first of all to us a mystery.
God did not lead them this way. He led them that way.
But this way or that way the point is God was leading.
And it does not matter if God leads you this way or that way just make sure it's God who's leading.
I don't like this song that much but it goes good right here.
This and that this this and that.
And you know at our church we say this this this this this this this this this this and that whatever if God is leading you.
God is directing you it may take a while but he knows how to lead you.
There was no possibility of misreading the map or missing a turn for they were led by a pillar of cloud by day.
They're a pillar of fire by night.
We Christians do not have a cloud to lead us but we have the issue that the steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord.
We have the guarantee that he knows the end from the beginning and that he is working all things together according to the council of his own will.
Wherever we find ourselves we are there by his providence whatever we face it is a part of his plan.
Brothers and sisters God did not lead them through the Felistine camp because the noise of war would have turned them back because as yet they were still slaves and not soldiers.
The heart searching God knew their deficiencies and a variety of circumstances connected with their feeble faith determined him in his wisdom to direct their cause.
And him and beloved the same is true for you and I he knows exactly how much strain our faith can take and he always guides us away from those situations where that critical limit will be exceeded.
God does not explain himself to them neither does he explain himself to us.
Let me let me hurry and make this point.
We are often running from what God wants to bless us through.
Here's the best part of this sermon.
If you forget everything else I've said here's the best part of this little sermon.
A woman was driving on a country road late at night.
That was an 18 wheeler behind her.
She slowed down to let the truck go around but he slowed down as well.
There's agony in this journey.
Sometimes what we think is an exit is a cul-de-sac.
Sometimes what we think is a way out is just a way through.
Sometimes a break up or a breakdown is a prerequisite for a breakthrough.
Let me see if I can make this make sense.
It was light on one side and darkness on the other side.
The pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night.
For the children of Israel it was light for them and darkness for the Egyptian.
For two reasons.
Come on ask me why.
Because God wanted to keep the enemy from getting to them and to keep them from going
back to the enemy.
Because you can't grow spiritually when it's convenient.
And you can get so comfortable with what you are used to that you give up and go back to
the mess you just left.
So God said you ain't going back there.
And to keep you from going back there I'm going to keep it so dark that they can't get
to you and I'm going to make sure you can't get to them.
I need somebody in here who can help me testify that there's been some sins that we walked
away from that ever in our land.
We are tempted to go back.
I wish I had one or two more crooks in here like myself.
There's some stuff we promised the Lord we would never do again.
Angry and plenty is in mercy.
We go back to the same stuff that we said we were never going back to.
But the Lord put that darkness between them and he would not let them go through it because
he said I know what the temptation is.
You want to go back to the same man who depressed you.
The same problem that had you about to commit suicide.
The same junk I delivered you from you're trying to go back to.
But I'm going to put a cloud between you.
Thank God for the Shackiner clock.
Thank God for Sunday morning because just about when I'm ready to go back he lets me
go to church.
And I hear the gospel.
I hear the music.
And I make up my mind all over again.
That I've decided to follow Jesus.
No turning back.
You can't make me doubt him because I know too much about him.
He brought me.
He kept me.
And sometimes what you go through in your agony is not for you.
God wants to use your testimony to get somebody else to face.
I can't tell you how many people have walked up to me and said to me, Reverend, when you
were going through your sickness, I couldn't understand it until I had to go through my
own stuff.
And I'm standing up today because I looked at how God brought you through.
I wish I had somebody here who got your own testimony.
You got your own story.
You got your own agonizing grief.
You got your own suffering.
You got your own testimony.
You got your own story of the stuff God brought you through.
And you don't know who's listening to your testimony.
Because without a test, there's no testimony.
I'm not talking to the children Christians in here.
I'm talking to some grown-up believer because you got to grow up to shout on this kind of
stuff.
Sometimes God takes a long time.
But my grandmother said, he may not come when you want to.
But he's always on time.
Sometimes God will keep you in your sickness to get glory out of your sickness.
Sometimes God will keep you in your situation so that he can get glory out of your situation.
Somebody ought to help me preach it.
God will let you go through some stuff and no matter how much you cry, no matter how
much you whine, no matter how much you pray, no matter how much you read the Bible, no
matter how much you call friends, no matter how you get your prayer partners to pray with
you, there's some stuff you're just going to have to go through.
But when you come out of it, I wish I had some noise here.
When you come on the other side of it, your soul don't have to look back and wonder.
You can testify.
It was nobody.
My mama couldn't do it.
My daddy couldn't do it.
It was nobody.
But Jesus.
Do you see you're laughing?
But you're laughing to keep from crying.
Do you see you're smiling and looking good?
A whole lot of people see, but a few people don't.
The mess you've been through.
God will help you to make you mess your message.
Have I got a witness here?
Not only is there mystery in this walk, not only is there agony in there meandering around,
there's victory in it.
Brothers and sisters, God led them through a winding meandering long road.
Had they not come by the roundabout way, the song of Moses would have been left unsung.
Had they not come the long way, Miriam's tambourine would have been left unplayed.
Had they not come the long way, Elam with its whales and palms would have been left
undiscovered.
Had they not come the long way, Mount Sinai with its laws and words would not have been
known.
If they had not come the long way, the cloud would have been left unseen.
If they had not come the long way, the manor never would have been tasted.
If they had not come the long way, fresh water from a rock would never have been sweet.
Sometimes God has to take you the long way so he can develop your testimony.
You're going to help me close this, won't you?
It was God who took Joseph from a prisoner to a prime minister.
You remember Joseph was sold by his own brothers and wound up in an Ishmaelite caravan.
The caravan took him all the way to Egypt.
When he got to Egypt, he wound up a servant in Potiphar's house.
Potiphar's wife tried to seduce him and Joseph wound up in the dungeon.
While in the dungeon, he met a butler and a baker.
While he met a butler and a baker, he was still interpreting dreams.
They both started dreaming one night and Joseph was able to interpret their dreams.
He told the baker by this time tomorrow they're going to cut your head off.
But he told the butler by this time tomorrow you'll be back in the king's palace.
And when you get back before the king, remember who interpreted your dream.
Two years had gone by and Joseph was still in prison.
God arranged for Pharaoh to start dreaming.
And when Pharaoh dreamed, nobody was able to interpret his dreams.
The butler remembered there was a boy from Israel who was able to interpret dreams.
Pharaoh said, call him up from the dungeon.
Let me tell him what my dream is.
They called Joseph from the dungeon.
And Pharaoh told him I dreamed about some fat cows and some lean cows.
Joseph said, you're going to have seven years of plenty and seven years of famine.
Put up the grain in the seven years of plenty so that everybody will have to come to Egypt
to buy some grain.
Look how God worked in Joseph's life.
If his father had never loved him, his brothers never would have hated him.
If his brothers had never hated him, they never would have sold him in the slavery.
If they had never sold him in the slavery, he never would have wound up in Egypt.
If he had never wound up in Egypt, he never would have wound up in Potiphar's house.
If he had never wound up in Potiphar's house, Potiphar's wife never would have tried to
seduce him.
If Mrs. Potiphar had never tried to seduce him, he never would have ran from the seduction.
If he had never run from the seduction, she never would have lied on him.
If she had never lied on him, he never would have wound up in the dungeon.
If he had never wound up in the dungeon, he never would have met a butler and a baker.
If he had never met a butler and a baker, he never would have been able to tell them
their dream.
If he had never told them their dream, he never would have been able to tell Pharaoh
his dream. If he had never told
Pharaoh his dream that never
would have been grain in
Egypt and famine in Gosha. If
there was no famine in Gosha,
his father never would have
sent his brothers to Egypt to
buy some grain. If his brothers
had never gone to Egypt to buy
some grain, Joseph never would
have made this for even.
But God, I wish I had
somebody to help me close. But
God, made it for good. You
know David's story, don't you?
David was just a shepherd boy
but there was a giant nine feet
tall by the name of Goliath.
With nothing but a sling shot.
Goliath said, am I a dog that
you send this little boy to
fight me? He said, David, I'm
gonna take your little body and
throw it up in the air and let
the birds feed on you. David
said, Mr. Goliath, I got a word
for you today. I'm gonna cut
it down so that everybody will
know. There's a god in the
Israel. You know the story of
Jericho. There were some
impregnable walls but the lord
told them march around the
walls of Jericho and on the
seventh day, shout and the
walls will come tumbling down
the walls. I don't want to talk
about David. I don't want to
talk about Jericho. One Friday
God took a cross and turned it
into a one Friday on a hill
called Calvary. God took a
cross, turned it into a
one Sunday morning.
But Sunday morning, God raised
him from the dead. Why don't
you tell somebody? Sit next to
you. Tell him when you're
preaching false. Come on, use
your preaching false. Tell him
when you're preaching false.
Turn it around.
Come on. Say it like you mean
it. God will.
Yes, sir. You do it.
Yes, you will.
Yes, we will. Yes, we will.
I've seen the lightning flash.
I've heard the thunder roll.
I felt sin breakers dashing.
I've heard. I said, I heard the voice of Jesus beating me.
Still fighting. He promised.
He promised. Why don't you grab somebody?
Why don't you hug somebody?
Tell him he promised. He promised.
He promised. I know he's alright.