Richard Ellis Talks

Richard Ellis: Today on Richard Ellis Talks, you can't take suffering or abundance without him. You can't handle it at either end of the spectrum without him. Because the pain of suffering can crush us without his help, but also the abundance and the blessing of that is too much for a little human heart to take.

Guest (Male): You're listening to Richard Ellis Talks with Richard Ellis. We're so grateful you tuned into the program. Richard wants to share with you some encouragement, words of hope, and probably a laugh or two. And in today's complicated, busy life, that's exactly what's needed.

Richard's talks are always straight from the Bible, filled with truth. Now, you may not be able to hang out with us for the entire program, but you can always pick it back up at our website, richardellis.com. In fact, you can find all of Richard's talks right there waiting just for you, richardellis.com. So with today's topic, here's Richard Ellis.

Richard Ellis: The title of today's message is "Over the Top," Psalm 23. If you'll turn to Psalm 23, we're going to read a few of these verses and talk about this today. This is a Psalm of David. "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want." So it starts out with the fact that David is a shepherd, so he knows he takes care of his sheep. And he says the Lord is my shepherd. And if that's the case, if the Lord is your shepherd, as in the case of David, that's what he's saying, then the first verse alone should take care of you. I shall not want. You will be lacking for nothing when he is your shepherd.

You say, "Well, but I'm a Christian." There's a difference in knowing a shepherd and following a shepherd. So if he's your shepherd and you're part of a flock, then you are going to go where the shepherd leads you and he is going to take care of you. Where you get in trouble is running off from the shepherd. "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures." If you know anything about sheep, if they fall over, it's hard to get up. They got to be very, very, very, feel very, very safe in order to lie down. And this shepherd takes them not just to any old place to lie down, green pastures, plenty of food.

"He leads me beside the still waters," not tumultuous stuff where you can't even get a drink, still waters. "He restores my soul; He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You anoint my head with oil," and then this little phrase at the end of verse five, "my cup runs over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever."

For some reason, I've been chewing on that little phrase there in verse five, "my cup runs over." What does that mean? It's over the top. So if someone pours water into your glass and they get it about a fourth full, you say, "Well, that's not a glass of water." They get it half full, "That's not a glass of water." But if they get it near the top, you say thank you, that's considered a glass of water. But if they keep pouring, you almost get a little nervous. And I've done this deliberately to people for that purpose. They keep pouring and then you start going, "Whoa, whoa, whoa," because now you have a problem. Because if you poured and it gets right to the top, now you can't even pick it up to drink it.

So what does it mean that your cup, he's saying, my cup runs over? When God comes along and he is your shepherd and you trust him, you follow him, you let him lead and direct you and provide for you, he is not holding back. He is not skimping. And so when he fills your cup, it literally says that he fills it to overflowing. It will run over when he does it. Over the top.

Now, I don't know what kind of God you've got. If you're a Christian, we all got the same God, we got the same Jesus. But I don't think we understand who he is in the same way. Because it turns out I got saved at six years of age, but it took me a long time before I started understanding this kind of stuff. I thought I was just happy to get a cup. If I didn't get anything, it's probably what I deserved anyway. And yet he comes along and doesn't just, in the song said, "Fill my cup, Lord," it's more than that.

So where are you going with this? What do you think God wants to do for you? You say, "Oh, you're going to talk about prosperity and he wants me to be rich." You know, there are bigger deals than being rich monetarily. And if your cup is full of joy, of peace, of love, of all the fruit of the spirit, that's the stuff that makes a difference. Where your cup is full of gratitude and so much so that if anyone meets you, they realize, "Dude, you're overflowing. Whatever you got, it's literally over the top."

I've said to people, you say, "Why do you get emotional?" My personal opinion is that your eyeballs, this is the top. And you slowly get filled, you get filled, you get filled, and finally it gets to a level and it gets up here and you just can't take it anymore. And then you begin to feel things, to express them because you just can't contain it. And when we are living these kind of over-the-top lives, and I'm not saying am I going to be happy all the time, is everything going to go well for me? Your circumstances don't determine whether you can have joy and be happy or not.

And this is part of what makes people drawn to us and try to figure out what's going on or not. I meet these people and I share these stories sometimes, I try to ask people if they're believers, but sometimes you just don't even have to ask. It's rolling off the top of the glass. You can just see by the joy in their eyes and then when you ask them about it, boom, you're going to hear about it. Jesus. They're going to talk to you.

So my question to you would be, does your cup run over? Or do you feel like that God, "Lord, just hold back, don't give me too much because we don't want to get carried away with this or anything." Go to Psalm 108. Before we read Psalm 108, let me go back to the cup. I don't know how many ounces spiritually my little cup can hold. But there are moments in my life, and if you have this happen, you'll know what I'm talking about, where your cup starts to get full and you know it's about to overflow and you almost say, "Lord, you got to stop pouring into my cup because I cannot take much more of this."

Now you say it sounds like what I'm describing is good stuff. Sometimes a human heart can only take so much good. Sometimes you get so overwhelmed with his mercy, with his grace, with his love, with his care, with his nurture, with his compassion, with all the things that he is and he just keeps, it's just continues to be over the top. He keeps bringing it and bringing it and bringing it and you're just like, "My heart is going to explode. You've got to stop."

Now sometimes we feel that way on the other end of the spectrum where heartache is so tremendous, so tremendous. A death, a sickness, a child, whatever it may be and we just think, "Lord, there's no way I can do this." You can't take suffering or abundance without him. You can't handle it at either end of the spectrum without him. Because the pain of suffering can crush us without his help, but also the abundance and the blessing of that is too much for a little human heart to take. If you've been there, you know what I'm talking about.

Psalm 108, verse four, "For Your mercy is great above the heavens, and Your truth reaches to the clouds." There is no end to this. We've talked about this before even in a message recently, where sin always takes more to satisfy it, but God always gives more. He doesn't take, he gives and he gives and he gives. And there is no end to this, we'll see in the scriptures here.

So when you sign up for sin, you're paying wages. The wages of sin is death. That's what you get paid: death of relationships and ultimately without Christ, you literally die. So the enemy's offer to you is, you choose sin, I'm going to take more and more and more away from you if that's what you're interested in. And then God comes along and says, "I'm not trying to take anything from you, I'm trying to give you everything you're missing and more and more and more."

Lamentations chapter three. I'm going to start up here in verse one to read down to a few of these verses. "I am the man who has seen affliction by the rod of His wrath. He has led me and made me walk in darkness and not in light. Surely He has turned His hand against me time and time again throughout the day." Now this is what he's describing here is over the top the other direction, like everything has gone wrong. "He has aged my flesh and my skin and broken my bones. He has besieged me and surrounded me with bitterness and woe. He has set me in dark places like the dead of long ago. He has hedged me in so that I cannot get out. I'm trapped. He has made my chain heavy. Even when I cry and shout, He shuts out my prayer."

"He has blocked my ways with hewn stone. He has made my paths crooked. He has been to me a bear lying in wait, like a lion in ambush. He has turned aside my ways and torn me in pieces. He has made me desolate. He has bent His bow and set me up as a target for the arrow. He has caused the arrows of His quiver to pierce my loins. I have become the ridicule of all my people, their taunting song all the day. He has filled me with bitterness. He has made me drink wormwood. He has also broken my teeth with gravel and covered me with ashes. You never moved my soul far from peace. I have forgotten prosperity and I said, 'My strength and hope have perished from the Lord.'"

Now, why would you read the Bible? Because a lot of people feel exactly that way at some point in your life. He's gone. "Remember my affliction and my roaring, the wormwood and the gall. My soul still remembers and sinks within me. This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope. This is why I have hope." And look at verse 22. "Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, says my soul, therefore I hope in Him. The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him. It is good that one should hope and wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord."

You say, "Well, I'm not even to the hope part yet." Hold on. The hope will come, and then the reality, why you have hope, that through the Lord's mercies we are not consumed. I actually along the way have some kind of duck moments. The older you get and the longer you live and the longer you walk with him, the more perplexing it is that you can go places, think things, say things, still be a person that you used to be in some ways. And I have moments where I go, "He's going to take me out." Anybody ever feel like he might take you out? Like he's going to get tired of this. He's going to say, "Look, you just don't get it. I've shown you so much, your cup does run over, I've blessed you and yet you still will deliberately think, say, do, whatever it is. What's it going to take? Am I just going to get my number pulled?"

And yet through the Lord's mercies I'm not consumed. I'm still here, there must be work to do. Because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. There was an old song I grew up singing, "Great Is Thy Faithfulness. No shadow of turning with thee. All I have needed thy hand has provided, great is thy faithfulness." So you're dealing with an over-the-top God in terms of filling your cup. It can work that way, but sometimes you feel like, okay, this is over the top, I can't take this much pain, I can't take this much suffering, this much sickness, this much uncertainty, job-wise, health-wise, whatever your category. And yet if you hang on, your hope comes and then things like this you remember.

Go to Malachi three. I'm going to read you this. Malachi three and verse seven. "Yet from the days of your fathers you have gone away from My ordinances and have not kept them. Return to Me, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts. But you said, 'In what way shall we return?' Like we didn't go anywhere, how are we going to return? And He says, 'Will a man rob God? Yet you have robbed Me!' But you say, 'In what way have we robbed You?'"

So they're totally unaware. And he says, "In tithes and offerings. You are cursed with a curse, for you have robbed Me, even this whole nation." So this is the nation of Israel he's talking about. "Bring all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be food in My house, and try Me now in this, says the Lord of hosts." See if it's not true. And then he says this. "If I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you such a blessing that there will not be room enough to receive it."

Now you say, "Well, I'm broke and I haven't done it God's way and I don't know what to do." The best way to get out of debt is to give your way out of debt. And one of the craziest things that ever happens in this church is when you get an envelope and a homeless person has given a buck or two. And you almost afraid to touch the money. You still going to make heaven, your life will never be the same, not what it could have been. Because once you get going, you want to keep going. And I'm not talking about just the giving part, I'm talking about the giving part.

Because you say, "Okay, Lord, this is yours," and then you get excited about what you're going to do with the rest of it, and how he's going to direct you to give it to other people. And then it's game on. Then you're trying to find ways where your right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. Like you're so careful to give it where nobody gets the credit but God. You have no idea how much fun that is. But it's hard to do broke. And it's hard to do broke if you're broke because you just won't give. Anytime the Lord says test me, I test him. Just to see the windows of heaven open. That's got to be something.

Luke chapter 11. Luke 11:13 says this. "If you then, being evil," like as parents, "know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!" He's not going to withhold it. Holy Spirit, take over my life, fill me to overflowing. Like, okay, let's go. I read a commentary and it was interesting what he said. He said it's hard to be filled with anything if part of, like if you have a cup that's half full of mud and then you put water in it, it's not filled with water. It's filled with mud and water. I highly recommend getting your cup clean so that he can come clean and fill it with just him. So how do you do that? You just say, "Lord, is there any sin in my life? Is this cup dirty? Please get it clean and then fill me with your Holy Spirit in such a way that I am over the top, overflowing with you and with him in such a way that no one can not know that it's not you."

I read this one all the time, quote this all the time. John 10:10. "The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy." And what's the second half of this? "I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly." That is not just enough, that is more than enough. Abundantly. Back to the giving thing, just ask yourself, am I giving in the same way that I want God to give to me? With the same attitude? Well, okay.

Ephesians 3:20. Now these are cool. If you don't see these verses in the Bible, you need to underline stuff like this. Ephesians 3:20 says this. "Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen." Exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think. So even what I come up with to ask him for or thinking about, he can go so much farther than that, according to the power that works in us.

There's a section of town in Dallas called Uptown. And if you go through Uptown, every once in a while you'll see like a Bugatti going up a street called McKinney Avenue. And when you really think about it, it's the dumbest thing in the world. What is a Bugatti going up and down McKinney Avenue, potholes at about ten miles, five, ten miles an hour? To be seen. That car was made to be driven. It's like God's going, "Dude, I live in you. Can we please get this out on some open road and open this thing up? Let's do some living. Exceedingly, abundantly. I didn't move into you to make a show, I moved in you to change the world. Let's change the world, right?"

I am not an Aggie fan, okay? I'm just going to tell a story, don't get all wound up. But they've got this thing, they save a lot of money on seats because I don't think they have to have seats because they stand up the whole game. And they beat Alabama at least once. There we go, finally somebody admits that's where they went. But they're about this 12th man thing. So let's say Jesus has died, he's been buried and raised from the dead, Judas has killed himself, and they're down to 11. And for all intents and purposes, you're in the stands and he says, "We need a replacement, we need a 12th man." How fast are you coming over the wall? "Put me in, coach. I'll be the 12th man. You down a man, you down a woman, I'll be that person." As nice as it is to sit in the stands and watch and enjoy the game, turns out this is not a game, it's a war. And you've got verses about armor and about fighting and standing and swinging a sword and holding a shield up. And you've got to make a decision. Either I'm going to sit here and be a citizen or I'm going to be a soldier and I'm going to fight. There's more.

So let me close with Matthew 26. Go back a few pages to the left and this is after they've done communion, basically what we would call communion, the last supper together. And they've gone out, sung a hymn, and Jesus takes them to the Garden of Gethsemane, the 11 that are there and he leaves eight and takes three of them—Peter and the two sons of Zebedee—and goes a little farther and he leaves them and he goes a little farther by himself.

In verse 36, "Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane, and said to the disciples, 'Sit here while I go and pray over there.' And He took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and He began to be sorrowful and deeply distressed. Then He said to them, 'My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death.'" You say, "Well, is he talking about dying on the cross?" No. "I am so overwhelmed with sorrow now that it could kill me, physically kill me. Stay here and watch with Me. I need you near me. I can't fix it, but I need you with me. Watch with Me. Keep your eyes open, pay attention, watch with Me."

He went a little farther and fell on his face and prayed, saying, "O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me." Turns out that this cup was over the top full of what? My sin. Your sin. Every sin from Adam, Eve all the way to the end of time in that cup. And the human side of Jesus knows what this is going to do, what it's going to cost. And I got to drink this. I got to take this on. "If it is possible, let this cup pass from Me." And what's interesting about this is as it turns out, there's no one else to hand the cup to. No one else can drink it and fix it.

"Nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will. Then He came to the disciples and found them asleep and said to Peter," specifically to Peter, "What?" And you say, where'd the what come from? I already told you I'm so overwhelmed with sorrow I could literally die. "What, could you not watch with Me one hour?" So Jesus has been talking to his dad for an hour going over this, if there's any way but not my will, your will be done.

Verse 41. "Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." And how true that is. And again, a second time, he went away and prayed, saying, "O My Father, if this cup cannot pass away from Me unless I drink it, Your will be done." So he's realizing there's no way around this. So if it cannot pass away from me unless I drink it, your will be done. And he came and found them asleep again, for their eyes were heavy. So he left them, went away again, and prayed the third time, saying the same words.

Then he came to the disciples and said to them, "Are you still sleeping and resting? Behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us be going. See, My betrayer is at hand." And Judas shows up and he's arrested and it unfolds. The reason my cup can run over is he drank from his cup. And whatever it is that he died to pay for that sin, be buried, raised from the dead, to conquer sin, the grave, death, the devil, conquered everything and said to us, "We are more than conquerors." It's not just that we won, it's beyond winning, way beyond just winning. And you say, well, I can't trust a God like that. Then who are you going to trust? You? Who are you going to turn to? You? And how's that worked out for you so far? Give him a chance. He's an over-the-top God and no one will ever love you like Jesus.

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