Richard Ellis Talks

Richard Ellis: Wherever there are newborn babies, there is going to be mess. There are going to be diapers to change, and that is just the deal. So they are sweeping and shoveling, and there are problems and more on the way. God help us keep our eyes and ears open and welcome those people and say, "You know what? We are a mess, we were a mess, but God is changing us. If He can change me, He can change you. Bring it on."

Guest (Male): You are listening to Richard Ellis Talks with Richard Ellis. Here we are in May already as schools are getting ready to finish the school year and summer vacations are being planned. At the same time, there are many right now who feel like their train came off the tracks. They are shooting up the prayer flares and hoping God is listening. Maybe that is you who is calling out, "Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!"

That is where we come in. We want to be that safe place of hope and encouragement to you. I will share more for you at the end of the program, but for now, let's jump right in with today's talk. Here is Richard Ellis.

Richard Ellis: The title of today's message is "Cribs." If you have watched any TV at all, MTV in particular, you know there has been a show on MTV for quite a while called "Cribs." They show celebrity homes. They are usually elaborate, elegant, exotic, and extravagant. One show showed Shaquille O'Neal's house. It was just this monstrosity with a full-on basketball court as part of the house and a guest house that would be nice for any of us to live in.

I am thinking his bed was like 30 or 40 feet across. It was round with a Superman bedspread on it. It was just massive. You could fit a couple of families on it. Snoop Dogg's house and Rod Stewart's house were part of it, a whopping 23,500 square feet with 11 bedrooms and 15 bathrooms. Missy Elliott's bed is a Ferrari. Ferrari made a real Ferrari body for her, and the inside of the body is her bed. She gets in a Ferrari at night to sleep.

There are rap artists, basketball players, and a little bit of everybody on this show. A real crib, if you go back even farther than MTV, was a little room in certain cultures that had a bed and a basin. It was a place where a prostitute did her work. That is where the term comes from. Then it was taken over by certain cultures to mean the place you live. In our case, we associate it with MTV. A crib is a pretty nice place.

Even in the Bible, if you go back to the Old Testament where it all began, if anybody had a crib and screwed it up, it was Adam and Eve. Talk about a perfect crib. They had God walking with them in the cool of the day. Everything was perfect and without sin, exactly the way God intended a place to live and exist. They got thrown out of this perfect garden over sin, and it has screwed it up for everybody since then.

Beyond them, there were some amazing cribs. In 1 Kings, one of the greatest cribs was for God Himself. David wanted to build it, and Solomon was able to build it. If you read the description of it, the masonry for the stones had to be exactly cut and perfected outside of the location. There was no hammering or chiseling. The construction site for God's crib on the planet was absolutely silent. There was reverence even in the construction.

When a stone came in, it got put into place without a sound and fit exactly. God's house got put together one piece at a time. The wood was put down, and then it started getting overlaid with gold. If you want to talk about gaudy, elaborate, elegant, and extravagant places on the planet, God's house was that. Parenthetically, some people try to take that and say we are going to build God a temple today in the New Testament. Millions of dollars are spent on architecture.

I am not against architecture and architects. There are some beautiful buildings we call churches. By the biblical definition of what a church is, it is impossible to go to church. One of the things that throws people about the way we do church is that we are in a convention center. People come in and say it is not a church. It may be more of a church than you have ever been in because church is not a place; it is a people.

You can go through Europe or Russia and see beautiful church buildings, but they are dead and empty because there is nobody in them. We are the church. We make up the church. In the Old Testament, God had this crib. In the New Testament, we are the cribs where God takes up His residence. We ought to be beautiful on the inside in a spiritual sense. We ought to be extravagant, elaborate, and holy.

When He moves in us, He says, "I am going to clean it up. Let's get it clean. I am going to stay here and never leave. This is where I am going to live." David had quite a palace, and Solomon did too. Go to Ecclesiastes chapter 2. If you don't even have a Bible, look around and make sure everyone has one who wants one. Look in the table of contents for chapter 2, verse 4.

This is Solomon, who built God a crib and built himself a few cribs. He had one in town and one out of town. Solomon says, "I made my works great. I built myself houses and planted myself vineyards. I made myself gardens and orchards, and I planted all kinds of fruit trees in them. I made myself water pools from which to water the growing trees of the grove. I acquired male and female servants, and had servants born in my house."

He had so many servants they were literally having babies in his house. "Yes, I had greater possessions of herds and flocks than all who were in Jerusalem before me. I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the special treasure of kings and of the provinces. I acquired male and female singers, the delights of the sons of men, and musical instruments of all kinds. So I became great and excelled more than all who were before me in Jerusalem. Also my wisdom remained with me."

Verse 10 says, "Whatever my eyes desired, I did not keep from them." What if you had so much money that if you walked into any store, you could say, "I'll take it. Ship it to my house." If your crib got too little, you just built another crib and kept filling it. Solomon was supposedly wise, but whatever he wanted, he could have. Does that work? I watch these people on "Cribs" and think about what is going on.

They have the Playboy mansion, the grotto, and all these beautiful things where people's lives are destroyed and people are taken advantage of. It is a waste. Having sex with a bunch of people in a pool might be something you tell your buddies about, but I end up in the room for those conversations about the shame. It is not a beautiful thing, and they feel dirty. It is not fun anymore. They have everything, and then they overdose on something and take their life.

Solomon was in this deal. He had hundreds of wives and hundreds of concubines. Sex and possessions were not the problem. Look how he closes out these verses in verse 10: "Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure, for my heart rejoiced in all my labor; and this was my reward from all my labor. Then I looked on all the works that my hands had done and on the labor in which I had toiled; and indeed all was vanity and grasping for the wind. There was no profit under the sun."

Vanity just evaporates. Whatever pleasure or gain he felt from all this meant nothing in the end. Go over to Isaiah chapter 1. A real crib is defined in the Old Testament as a manger or a feeding trough. It was where they put the food. In Isaiah 1:3, it says, "The ox knows its owner and the donkey its master's crib, but Israel does not know, my people do not consider."

I found a story about a Haifa policeman who knew his Bible and got on the trail of a gang of smugglers. They used a donkey-drawn caravan to escape. The policeman managed to capture some of the donkeys, though the smugglers got away. The clever officer let the beasts of burden go without food for several days and then turned them loose. The starving animals led the police directly to the smugglers' hideout.

Even a donkey as stubborn as it is knows where to go when it gets hungry. God was frustrated with His own people because they couldn't find His crib, the place where they belonged. Proverbs 14:4 says, "Where no oxen are, the crib is clean, but much increase comes by the strength of an ox." Matthew Henry in his commentary says, "Where no oxen are, there is nothing to be done at the ground, and then nothing to be had out of it. The crib indeed is clean from dung, which pleases the neat and nice. But then not only the labor, but even the dung of the ox is wanted."

If you don't have oxen, you don't have a mess. Oxen create waste. But if you don't have oxen, then you don't have work or a field to plow. In a church category, it is all about mess. You can't be plowing fields and reaching people and not have some mess. If there is no mess, it is not church. Yesterday, we went to drop off one of our girls at a birthday party. We are not normally in this part of town.

My wife is a thrift store person. She was on a hunt for something that only thrift stores have. If there is a place on the planet that I ask God I don't have to go to, it is a thrift store. Thrift stores are just glorified garage sales. They are retail junk. She knows I love her if I go in there, but usually, I sit in the car and watch out to make sure nothing happens.

We were going down this street, and off to the side, it said "Christian Hospitality Thrift Store." I thought it was going to be great. It was a dump, but sometimes there are deals in dumps. Mama went in while we stayed in the car. She went to the door, and there was some stuff written on it. After she was in there a little while, she came back out. The lady who runs the place grabbed her and asked if she had seen the sign at the door.

She took her outside to see a sign that said, "Proper Attire Required." My wife was wearing blue jeans. This woman told my wife that the church has grown lukewarm, and because my wife went into that hole-in-the-wall thrift store in blue jeans, she threw her out of the store. That is whacked. That lady might be well-meaning, but she is confused.

My wife told her the gospel is that Jesus died, was buried, and was raised from the dead. He doesn't care about what you have on; it is about what is in your heart. Security carried her out, and it was all okay after that. We have lost our minds. There are churches today that clean the place out because they have no problems and nobody who doesn't do things just like them. They have a clean crib just like they want it, but they are going to die that way.

This ought to be a mess that has to be cleaned up day after day because something is going on. This isn't about keeping it clean; that is God's problem. This is about working in people's hearts and lives. People get in trouble. They might make it three or four years and then fall off a wagon. It gets messy, and you have to go looking for them and praying for them.

I literally get phone calls from people who say they met someone and are going to send them to our church because they don't have oxen in their crib. They met someone who doesn't fit in their stalls, so they are going to dump them on us. Bring it on! But what are you doing in a church that you can't take these people to your own church? I could care less what you wear in here.

We have strippers who show up at our church. They are hurting. If you were making $1,000 a day, you might end up going back to stripping. We are not going to shoot them. They are struggling. It is about the heart. Even if you look and smell good, you might be a whitewashed tombstone. What is called "church" out there is often a beautiful building filled with beautiful people, but it is a mess that is all covered up.

I pray to God we never have anything but mess here. Wherever there are newborn babies, there is going to be crap. There are going to be diapers to change. If God can change me, He can change you. The ox may make trouble, but there is no increase without the ox. Luke chapter 2 tells us about the most famous crib in all of history. Verse 7 says, "And she brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths, and laid Him in a manger" because there was no room for them in the inn.

Verse 12 says, "You will find a Babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger." Jesse Jackson said, "We must not measure greatness from the mansion down, but from the manger up." In John chapter 14, it strikes me as fascinating that the Bread of Life started by being placed in a trough that was food for animals. Without Jesus, every one of us is just an animal.

The most expensive crib of all time is you, if Christ lives in you. It cost God His only Son to buy a place to live in you. Jesus was born, lived His life, died on a cross, and was raised from the dead. God did it all to buy Himself a crib: you and me. But you have to let Him in. As Christians, we are God's dwelling place.

John 14:15 says, "If you love Me, keep My commandments. And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever—the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you."

If you have never experienced that, I talked to a lady who is here today. A year ago, her boyfriend died. He came to this church out of a rough life. God began to change his life. He became a different man and impacted a lot of lives. He had invited her to church, but she never came. A year later, she is still grieving. She called me crying and said she needed to talk to somebody.

We sat down, and I asked her where she would go if she died. She wasn't sure. I explained to her that God wanted to take up residence in her. A grown woman prayed a simple prayer and reached out to accept the gift of forgiveness and eternal life. She changed in a moment. She was a mess, but God now lives in this woman and is not going to leave her alone, no matter how bad she screws up or how far she runs.

I have a buddy who is down right now. You can't make somebody do something they are not going to do. It is a mess. I pray to God he gets back up. When God moves into your crib, He is not going away. It cost Him too much to relinquish that house once He gets in. John 14:19 says, "Because I live, you will also live. At that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you."

1 Corinthians 3:16 says, "Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?" If you're a Christian, Jesus has a permanent place in your crib. If that is not the case for you, it is as simple as reaching out and saying, "God, I've screwed my life up, but I want You to come live in me and change me. I confess my sin. I see that Jesus died on the cross and was raised from the dead for the forgiveness of my sin. Come live in me and make me new."

Guest (Male): Thank you for listening to Richard Ellis Talks. We deeply appreciate you taking the time to be encouraged by Richard's unique way of challenging us to become more like Jesus every day. Here we are in the month of May, and we want to take a different kind of twist to these days. There is a common distress signal that is used for life-threatening emergencies where those who are facing dire circumstances declare "Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!" in hopes that someone will come to their rescue.

Even though it is primarily used for aviators and mariners, we know that some of you are going through some really hard times. We want to be a part of your buddy system that will support you in prayer and encouragement to help your heart land safely. So let me encourage you to go to our website, richardellis.com, and click on the prayer link under the more tab at the top. You will go directly to our prayer wall where you can share your prayer request and know that we will be praying for you.

And for those who want to pray as well, you can click on the pray tab at the bottom of the request. Because of a faithful donor, we have a substantial matching gift where your contribution will be doubled right now. Help us by becoming a prayer partner and by contributing to this ministry. Now is your turn to partner up with those in need through prayer and support.

Let's make this day a great day in someone else's life. Go to richardellis.com and support this ministry today. You can also send us your gift by calling 855-6-RICHARD. Thank you, and until next time, thank you for listening. We look forward to coming alongside you again for more Richard Ellis Talks.