Learning from the Ant

SERMON: 2012-07-01--pr0612--learning-from-the-ant SOURCE DURATION: 00:47:34.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 2 CONFIDENCE: 1.00 APPROVED: false REASON: The sermon begins immediately with speech content in segment [0]. The recording ends with a sustained acoustic music interval (00:46:56.320-00:47:34.320), which is authoritative evidence of the material boundary. Acoustic segmentation found sustained music at the start and end edge and moved the boundary to the adjacent transcript segment. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: 00:08:59.660-00:09:07.620, 00:09:16.560-00:09:21.880, 00:09:57.060-00:10:05.740, 00:42:56.620-00:43:22.120, 00:43:24.760-00:43:38.780, 00:43:47.840-00:43:57.720, 00:44:29.280-00:47:33.820 ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: yes ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: start, end Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:00:00.000; remove through 00:09:07.620] [CUT] There are many ways in life how God teaches us, obviously through his word and by his spirit and in many other ways, but one of the themes that you find happening in scripture fairly often is that the Lord points us to creation, because the same God who made us also made creation, and sometimes when we can't figure out what we ought to be doing, God points us to the animal world. And this morning, I want to share with you some thoughts about ants, fire ants in particular, and as a jumping off scripture, I want us to read together from the book of Proverbs the verses six, seven, and eight, it's a passage you know well, talks about lazy people, that's not my focus this morning, so relax, but it says, "Go to the ant you sluggard," that's a lovely word, isn't it, sluggard, "consider its ways and be wise. It has no commander, no overseer or ruler, yet it stores its provision in summer and gathers its food at harvest, and go to the ant, consider its ways and be wise." Ants, as I suppose can be said for all of God's creation, are rather interesting creatures, interesting because for one thing, there's a lot of them, and I don't mean just a lot numerically, but a lot of different ants, in fact, if you were to guess this morning how many different species of ants there are in the world, I think you'd be surprised, the figure top somewhere is around 22,000, and some of you are saying I think all of them are in my house. Of those 22,000, only about 12,000 have yet been identified, in fact, there was a story in the news just this past week that they discovered 40 additional species of ants in the Philippines, ants are not only numerous, but they occupy virtually natively every land mass in the world, the exceptions are the Antarctica, Greenland, Iceland, and a couple of isolated Pacific Islands, otherwise they are native everywhere, not only that, but they vary in size, the smallest ones are less than a millimeter in size, the biggest if you can believe, somewhere in the neighborhood of five centimeters, aren't you glad those are not native to your house. Planted to rescue two to know that ants are related to bees and wasps, they're part of the same family, and in some cultures, and this really came as quite a shock to me, in some cultures, ants are used as sutures in surgery, what they do is they take one of these big ants, they grab him by the tail, they hold him over the incision, and his jaws clamp shut, and then they cut off his body, and the jaws stay shut, and so there goes this patient walking around with this whole row of ant heads attached to his incision, that's kind of gross, but kind of interesting in its own right, I thought, but however the variety of ants, and however the differences between them, there are two things that virtually every ant colony in the world has in common, they are known to be industrious, and they are remarkable team players. Listen again to the verse that we read from the book of Proverbs, go to the ant you sluggard, consider its ways and be wise, it has no commander, no overseer or ruler, yet it stores its provision in summer and gathers its food at harvest. They work hard, not only, that's the model here, that the example they're being held up for against those who are lazy, but they do it in teamwork, and if you've ever seen a colony of ants working together, then it is astonishing how without any commander or overseer, they appear to know exactly what they want to be doing. Nowhere is this more clearly evident than with the Brazilian fire ant. As the name seems to imply, the Brazilian fire ant is native to South America, in fact native to much of the southern hemisphere, and only came to North America in the 1930s in the ballast of a ship that was moored at Mobile, Alabama. And since that time, they have spread extensively through the southern United States. Here's a map of how far they have spread. It's not likely they will come to where we are because, you know, we're close to Greenland and Iceland and all those places that are cold. But what's really interesting about the Brazilian fire ants is that they're nasty little critters, because not only do they have - you will notice there in the front they have a mouth that can bite you pretty nastily, but if you look closely at their tail end, you should be able to see there a stinger. That stinger can pump you full of very toxic poison. In fact, they are so toxic, they not only are known to kill small animals, but historically there are 80 documented cases of human beings being killed by these ants. And one of the reasons for that is that when they sting you, they let out a scent, pheromones it's called, that draws the rest of the ant world, and they all come piling on you, and if you don't get out of there real fast, down the tubes you go. They do a lot of damage, as you can appreciate. They build 18 inch mounds in fields, they cost agriculturally billions of dollars, and they have an interesting affinity to the power switch boxes of traffic lights in the southern United States. In fact, they cost the state of Texas $145 million every year in short-circuits. You say, how do they do that? Well, for a long time people thought that maybe they were drawn electromagnetically to electricity, but that doesn't appear to be the case. They just wander into these control boxes, and then they get carried away, they start stinging the wires. Very stupid thing to do in my book, because it doesn't get them anywhere, but what it does get is a lot of companions, because remember, they shed the scent, these pheromones. So all their cohorts come to their defense, and pretty soon there's so many ants in the box, the whole box short-circuits, kills a whole bunch of them, but destroys the electrical circuit. There's another outstanding quality of the red fire ants that's really the focus of our attention this particular morning, and that is their ability to weather adverse weather conditions. In times of drought, they dig their burrows so far down that they reach the water table, and so they're able to survive. But it's what happens when they get flooded out that is most fascinating, because when they get flooded out, what they do is they form a living life raft. They float on the water, and they stay floating on the water regardless of the conditions they experience, until they hit solid ground, and then they all scramble back on solid ground, and they rebuild their colony. Now just to show you what that looks like a little bit, I've got a short video clip from a BBC documentary that really describes this whole process. Take a look at it as we run it now. Creatures that were once living on the forest floor now need to find other ways of getting around during the flood. The busy life of a fire ant colony has to carry on regardless. By linking legs, the worker ants create a living raft, supported by the surface tension of [CUT] the water. Free now to move through the forest, these vicious stickers make the most [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:09:07.620; resume after this marked segment] of the flood. They use it to spread to other parts of the Amazon. On this lifeboat, the queen and her young need to be kept safely dry, but there's no getting away from hungry ants. Once in the open river, they are at the mercy of the current and unpredictable waters. If they are lucky enough to hit land, the soggy ants disentangle and disembark, unloading the family as they go. After a little towering off, the worker ants soldier on, carefully guiding their queen to safety. Isn't that fascinating? Any wonder the Lord says go to the ant and consider its ways and be wise. Don't you love the way they tow that queen off the float, up the incline? Some ant queens, by the way, live for 30 years and produce, I think, 200 eggs an hour for their lifetime. So it's no wonder they're kind of sluggish and just let all the workers do all the hard work. But there's a point to all of this, in case you're wondering, and that is the fact that there are some very significant lessons that I think we can learn from the life of the ant. And in the time that remains, three or four lessons that I want to walk us through. The first is, number one, storms and floods are an inevitable part of human life. The psalmist puts it this way, it calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls, all your waves and breakers have swept over me. Storms are a reality. Sometimes those are physical storms, just like we've heard in the news the past couple of days with storms coming through the United States. Three or four million people without electrical power in what is an incredible heat wave down there. Sometimes the storms are financial, as when you lose your job or your debt load becomes of such a nature that you can't deal with it. Sometimes the storms are health related, when you get that frightful diagnosis or when you know that your body isn't functioning the way that it ought to. Sometimes the storm is relational, as when your kid wanders away from you or from the faith or when your marriage gets stretched beyond understanding and comprehension. And sometimes the storm is a single flash flood, but often, and you know this as well as I do, as the saying goes, it never rains but it pours, more often than not storms come in multiples. They feel like a cloud burst. One of the books that I just picked up at Julie's bookstore this past week is a book by James McDonald, Always True, God's Five Promises When Life is Hard. And in the introduction to the book, he alludes to the fact that in the recent past, James McDonald, many of you will know him from the radio program, he is founding and senior pastor of the Harvest Bible Chapel in suburban Chicago with a weekend attendance of 13,000, more than 60 church plants across the nation and around the world. But he talks about the fact that there was a season not very long ago when it felt like the whole world was caving in on him. And in rapid succession, he says, here are some of the things that happened. A building program that he was, to a large degree, responsible for went over budget by so many millions that it looked like their church might not survive. As a result, there came conflict among church leadership, as you can appreciate. Then he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Then his eldest son was nearly killed in a car accident and I don't know if it's this son or another son, but I know one of them is prodigal and very, very hard on the parents. And during this time, his mother, to whom he was close, also died a painful and a lingering death. In his book, in his introduction, he describes it this way, he says, "Some reality hits like a hurricane. You board up the windows and hunker down trying to survive. You're not working out or thinking about nutrition. You're not trying to strengthen relationships. You're not thinking about your investments or your next career moves. You were just hoping the plywood you hastily hammered up holds the windows. You want to be alive and you want to see the sunshine again inside and out." And then he says, "Times like these come suddenly. You were going along doing all right, managing the ups and downs of your routine when, out of nowhere, to change the analogy, a boulder dropped from the sky and crash landed on your life. Hardly breathing under this sudden crushing weight, you were desperate for help to come or you weren't going to make it. That's the place in my life where the message of this book was born. My wife and I were confined into a living crucible of questions and events for more than two years. We didn't see it coming and once we were in the furnace, our regular resources for relief became totally inadequate. At times we didn't know if we would make it out. Some weeks I felt unable to stand up before our church family and preach another message. I didn't know if my ministry would end and some days I didn't care. We just wanted to survive." As perhaps you can imagine, I picked up the book because I feel some affinity with what James McDonald describes in his book. I sometimes have jokingly say that ever since I published my book Blessings and Curses, my life has been spiraling downward in some very obvious ways. It began quite a number of years ago, of course, when our second son Michael went through a recurring bout of life-threatening cancer. That was followed by business and financial pressures that, honestly, I would not want to wish on my worst enemy. In the middle of that, or throughout that course, I underwent two fairly major surgeries, endured a lawsuit that was close to a million, shared with many of you here, and then, of course, when it seemed that things were finally evening out a little bit, classes decides that I should be deposed for reasons that they have not been able to substantiate, and then now, as you know, a synod in its wisdom has decided, for a whole other set of reasons, interestingly enough, that I should be suspended for a season. I submit to their wisdom and to their counsel, but you can appreciate that does not make for easy times or easy living. Even as I share that with you today, I am so keenly aware that there are some of you here whose life has been that much more difficult than mine could ever imagine to be. I think of Aol and the cancer that he's been fighting for this past year. I think of Rhea and the fact that her husband Jake has been confined to a nursing home for many years now with incurable Huntingtons. I think of Maude, whose husband Bill is likewise confined to a nursing home for many, many years. And I think of Emmy and Ben who struggle with Parkinson's and all the implications. I think of some of you that have miscarried and lost babies or others of you that have lost loved ones. The reality is, in this world, there are storms that come, isn't that true? Sometimes they're caused by our own mistakes, and as you know, I have repeatedly, both privately and publicly, owned those, even though a lot of people don't seem to believe that. I have apologized and repented of as much as I know how. Sometimes it's caused by situations and circumstances that are outside of our control. Sometimes it's caused by others knowingly or unknowingly, willingly or unwillingly. But always we profess God is sovereign and who uses both the good and the bad times to work out his eternal purposes in our lives individually and collectively. You've often heard me quote Romans 8.28, "We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." God is in control. And as our catechism says, "He will either avert all evil or he will turn it to our good." And it's faith that says the good is coming even when sometimes in the middle of the storm, I cannot see it. Storms and floods, let me say it again, are an inevitable part of life. I think that's the first lesson that we can learn from the red fire ant. The second lesson that we can learn from the red fire ant is that the Lord has promised to be with us in the middle of the storms of life. I've quoted the book of Isaiah a lot in recent weeks because it is one of the most hopeful of all Old Testament promises and I love these verses in Isaiah 43, the verses 1, 2, and 3, "Fear not." This is the Lord speaking to Israel. "For I have redeemed you. I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters I will be with you and through the rivers they shall not overwhelm you. When you walk through the fire you shall not be burned and the flame shall not consume you for I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior." Fire and water in the Old Testament are instruments of divine judgment and they are a mark of whether God is with you or not and his promise is that in the middle of the fire, in the middle of the flame, in the middle of the flood, God has not abandoned us though sometimes that's what it feels like but he always reveals himself as a God who is there and who promises to redeem us. Now he does that and you know this as well as I do biblically in many different ways. One of the ways in which he does it is he limits what comes to us. That is to say he puts a wall of fire around us that he controls and where he limits it to what we can handle. A verse that is very instructive in that regard and one of the first verses again that I memorized early in my Christian life is 1 Corinthians 10 verse 13 where God's word says, "No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful and he will not let you be tempted or tried beyond your strength." Now it's perfectly well possible that you're sitting here this morning and you're saying to yourself I don't identify with the storms of life that other people talk about and it is also possible that in the middle of that you say to yourself well maybe that's because I'm living right or God just likes me better. That's a dangerous kind of assertion to make because the verse previous to this verse 12 puts it this way, "If you think you are standing firm be careful that you don't fall." Because take my word for it it's never because you're so godly or because you're so smart or you're so wise that trouble doesn't come your way. It's because God puts a hedge of protection around you. The enemy cannot get to you short of his permission. The story of Job is a powerful example of that. And so much of the time there is a lot going on behind the scenes and God assigns his angels to you and to me so that trouble doesn't come to our door. And if he allows trouble to come to our door for whatever reasons it is because he is in some way seeking to work out his redemptive purposes in our lives. So there is a divine wall of protection that God puts around us and he knows exactly how much we can handle because he doesn't want us to be destroyed. If the devil were to come at you and me with all his power with full permission I can guarantee you there isn't a one of us that would remain standing at the end of the day isn't that true? But God is with us and he limits what happens to us. Not only that but God gives us the ability to endure the storms and the floods of life. For notice how on Corinthians 10 13 goes on God is faithful he will not let you be tempted beyond your strength but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it. He provides a way of escape and one of the ways in which he provides that is by giving us through the Holy Spirit the kind of skills that are sometimes needed to make the right kind of decisions or to otherwise overcome the difficulties of life that we face. And that's where I find the red fire end such an instructive example of God's amazing grace. How does the fire end survive the flood? Well he has developed and evolutionists would say he has developed that by the process of evolution we would say God has planted that in the little critter given them an ability to latch together and to become this kind of life raft. And it's a fascinating thing that if you were to scoop up this life raft of ants let's say in a net what they do immediately is they form into a ball and then if you throw that back into the water within no time at all they spread out to become this life raft. And this life raft is amazingly resilient and amazingly waterproof. And I've got two little video clips to show you that illustrate that let's run those now. This is sped up about ten times. What really intrigues me is those two little ones that come down on the spike they're making out down below. I don't think they're going to survive very long under the water. But there you let's just run that again just so you see what happens if they start out as a ball thrown in that spike and then you see them all spread out. When they're all finished they are two and a half and layers thick. And when I first saw this I said to myself what keeps these poor little critters on the bottom from drowning? Haven't you wondered the same thing? If you haven't you should. Because all the rest of them are walking on top carrying on business as usual and these guys underneath are holding it all together right? Well as the first video showed us just in passing they walk on the surface tension of the water. They're very hairy in their legs, they trap air bubbles there and when they have made this mat they are virtually impervious to water. Watch what happens when a guy with tweezers is trying to squeeze them down under water. That's the next little clip that we've got here. The only way to get them wet is to push them down all the way and then they bob right back up and they go at it just business as usual. It's an amazing creator who put that kind of ability into that little animal. And to paraphrase the words of Jesus out of the Sermon of the Mount, "If your Father who is in heaven knows how to look after the ants in that fashion, how much more will he look after you, O men and women of little faith." Isn't that amazing? That's our God. See and one of the ways in which he does that is in the midst of the trials he not only will demonstrate his presence sometimes, although often he feels like he's nowhere to be found, but what he does is he cultivates our skills to make us more like Jesus. And that's of course one of the reasons we go through the storms. His intention is that one day we're going to rule the universe with Jesus. And in order to qualify us for that position to rule the universe with Jesus, there are places in our character, there are places in our experience, there are places where our faith has to be established, there are places where we have to grow up in Christ. And part of that process then is the storms and the difficulties that he brings into life, not because we're necessarily worse than anybody else, although God knows we all have our sins and we all have our shortcomings, but because he is trying to reproduce in us the character of Jesus. I love the way James puts it. It is a far cry from being able to live this out fully in my own life, but these words consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking in anything. And then verse 12 of James 1, "Blessed is the man or the woman who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him." That's why we need to pray, Lord, hold on to us, help us to hold on to you in the middle of the storms, because tears may tarry for the night, and it may be a long night, but joy, says scripture, will always come in the morning. So God limits what comes to us. He gives us the ability to endure it. David says, "You train my hands for war and my fingers for battle." God brings out in us the strengths that are needed so that we can grow up in Christ, and of course not to forget that he promises to deliver us. Second Corinthians 1, 10, "He has delivered us from such a deadly peril." Paul here is talking about despairing of life itself. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. "On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us." Throughout scripture, God is known as a saving God. That is to say, he has compassion for our struggles, he has compassion for our difficulties, and his commitment to those of us who are in covenant relationship through faith in Jesus Christ is that he will deliver us from evil, and he will save us, in the words of the Apostle Paul, for his heavenly and his eternal kingdom. The ultimate fulfillment, as you know, lies in the age that is to come, and nobody who hopes in God will long term ever be disappointed. That's what has kept the saints and the martyrs going throughout the course of history. Not everybody gets redeemed, not every situation gets healed, not every sick person gets better, not every financial situation gets reversed, not every broken relationship gets restored, but one day it will. And in the meantime, God says, "I'm with you, and I will either surround you with protection, or I will give you the ability to survive it, or if he so pleases," he says, "I will come into your world when the time is right, and I will lift your burden, I will reverse your situations, and I will give you a reason to sing praises to God." And how many of us aren't here today who can testify to the fact that we cried to the Lord out of the deepest places of pain and suffering, and God heard our cry, and he picked our feet out of the miry clay, and he put us on the solid rock. I love what the psalmist says in Psalm 115, "The dead do not praise the Lord, nor do any that go down in silence." And if you read that in its context, what the psalmist is really saying, "Lord, there is no honor to your name if I go down in this storm. If you want credit in the world to see your presence, then come to me, and rescue me, and save me." God is a saving God. He limits what comes at us, he promises to be with us in the middle of the storm, and either in time or in eternity. He will redeem, and he will restore, and he will equip, and I think for all eternity we're going to sit around the throne of God swapping stories of how God was there, even when we didn't know it, or we couldn't see it. Because as I said earlier, "Tears may tarry for the night, but joy comes in the morning." Alright, one more lesson then that I think we can learn from the ant. Storms in life are inevitable. God is with us in the middle of the storm, and the third lesson that we learn from the red fire ant is I think the importance of community. And here's an interesting thing about those little ants. On their own, they don't do very well in the water. They splash, and they flounder, and they often end up drowning, but what keeps them alive is community. And it's taken researchers a while to figure out how they do it. In fact, one researcher had to take one of these floating islands of ants, and he flash froze them with nitrogen. And then he looked at them, and he discovered that they were not only linked leg to leg, but they were linked jaw to jaw. And if you remember that first video with the waves that were coming along, or the fish taking a bite or a hunk out of the end of it, they stuck together through thick and thin until they came to a new shore to begin a new reality. And I look at that and I say, "Oh Lord, what an example of biblical community." Because when you and I are joined by faith to Jesus, we are not only joined to him, we're also joined to the rest of the family of God. We become brothers and sisters. And when trouble comes our way, it is not only to the Lord that we can look for help, it is also to each other, because one of the primary means that God uses to bring grace into your life and into my life is brothers and sisters in the family of God. Is that not true? For every divine intervention where it was just God, I bet you I can list ten where the favor of God came through the hands of other people. That is biblical community. And it is biblical community standing together that enables us to survive the storms of life and to bring us into a new reality. And I can tell you this morning, I would not be standing here with you sharing this message this day if it were not for your support, your love, your prayers, and your encouragement. Life, I don't need to tell you this, has been incredibly difficult on many fronts. And for any of us that find ourselves in situations like that, the big question sometimes is God, where are you? Is there an end to this? Am I going to survive it? Will our church community survive it? And I am fully confident in the Lord that even as I submit to discipline and absent myself at least from ministry, counsel has asked that I stay involved in terms of attendance in this community together with Michelle as much as we can. But I won't be providing any kind of leadership or any kind of upfront ministry or even ministry behind the scenes. I am fully confident that you will continue to stand together and will continue to support those who are on staff and those who are leaders so that we can survive even this dip of the wave as life goes on. Hebrews 13 verse 17, obey your leaders and submit to their authority. They keep watch over you as men who must give an account or women who must give an account, obey them so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no advantage to you. This is a time for each of you to ramp up your involvement in the life of this community. It's not my community. It's not the community of the elders. It's not the community of any given individual. It is God's community. But what an opportunity to show the reality of the love of Jesus in your life and in your heart as you link arms and you link jaws, if you will. That's quite a sight if you think of it. But you link arms together and you say God is with us and we have a calling and I will do whatever it is that I can do to keep the ship afloat. Did you see in that first video how busy they were tending to the pupa and to the, you know those little ants can carry 20 times their own way, and how they hovered around the queen in order to protect the safety of the queen on which hinge the future of their whole colony? And did you see how when they came to shore they scurried off and they were ready to start a new reality? What an incredible opportunity for each of you to say what can I contribute to the life of this community? How can I live in peace with my neighbor? How can I restore relationships that have been broken where they've been broken? How can I take my treasured time and talents, lay it out on the front knowing that God has called us together and that the best years of our life in God are still to come? Amen. Stand with me as we pray. Father we thank you so much that our faith is not simply in people but our faith is in you and what an opportunity in the life of this community for us to show the world around us that Christ lives in us and that we love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, strength and mind, that we love our neighbor even as we love ourselves and that we link arms and we stand together in the storms of life knowing that this too will pass and you will bring us into new life and new light and new reality. So Lord I pray for the rest of our staff as they take on extra burdens. I pray for our council and for others who will in due time be elected to join them and pray that you continue to refresh and to strengthen and to reward their faithfulness and their endurance. And then I pray Lord for each person in this room this day you know what lives in our hearts. You know those places of need but you also know those places of strength that you have put in our hearts and we pray that by the inspiration of your word and spirit you will stir our hearts to contribute time, talent and treasure. What an opportunity for the body to show that in Christ we can do all the things that you have called us to and we can not only weather the storms of life but we can come out on the other end stronger and better and more mature in you because Lord our times are not in the hands of people, our times are in your hands. And Lord I pray for Michelle and myself during this season that you will also hold on to us and that your encouragement and strength and healing will also bind up the places of woundedness that are the result of this whole journey. And all I can do Lord is pray and say let me finish the race that you have placed before me for your honor and for your glory. [PROPOSED CUT 2 START at 00:42:56.620; remove through 00:47:34.000] We pray it together in Jesus name and God's people said, Amen [CUT] and Amen. [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music [CUT]] [PROPOSED CUT 2 END at 00:47:34.000; resume after this marked segment]