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Our guest speaker this morning is Reverend Mike Higgins. He is the Dean of Students at our Denominational Seminary Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri. He holds a Master's Divinity, a Seminary degree from that institution. He was ordained in the, originally in the Church of God in Christ, served there for about 12 years. And then after his awarding of the degree at Covenant Theological Seminary, he matriculated into the PCA and was received as a teaching elder, a pastor there, in 1997. He was also a couple years later commissioned as an Army Chaplain representing the PCA. And he is now a colonel in the Chaplaincy. He is assigned to the Pentagon as a personnel manager for Army Reserve Chaplains. He has graduated from the Army Command and General Staff College and had special training in the Chaplaincy. He has been a church planter. He has been a pastor of the Redemption Fellowship of PCA Church in Fayetteville, Georgia. And he is now, as I mentioned, the Dean of Students at our Seminary, shepherding the young men and women through the Seminary programs that they are involved in in our denomination. Mary do his best rent for 31 years. He doesn't look old. He must have got Mary when he was five. But he has been married for 31 years. He has two grown daughters, one lives in Chattanooga, one in St. Louis. And he has little grandson whose name is Moses, what a name, what a name. Welcome, if you will, Mike, to our pulpit here this morning. Thank you, God. Amen. Let us pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for this church. We thank you for your son, Jesus. Thank you, Lord, that he that knew no sin was made to be sin for us, that we might be the righteousness of God through him. But I pray that you will send your word as a hammer that breaks rocks into pieces. O Lord, help us, and Lord, we thank you. We say thanks for being such a merciful, gracious and generous God, our cups always overflow, and help us to use it overflow, Lord, in a righteous and generous way. Thank you for these missionaries, and thank you, Lord, for the families that they represent. And we just pray, Lord, that you will give them continually the good success that you gave to Joshua. Help them to keep their word close. And O God, we just thank you for your presence in Christ's name, amen. And so how did I get to this place? First of all, I'm going to tell you, is that I'm from St. Louis. I was actually born with Tourette syndrome, which basically means that I have a neurological disorder. I have too much dopamine in my brainstem. And so as I sit on stages, as I pastor, as I've done a lot of things, I've always let folk know that I'm not too cold or I'm not falling asleep. I just tick. That's what I do. I respond to a stimulus that's not there. I mean, I jerk. I mean, and for some reason, God won't take it away. I think it's a reminder that whatever he can get done through my life, it's very easy for folk to give God the glory because Mike don't look like much. I grew up in St. Louis, my testimony in Pastor Michael, but I don't get thrown out of here. My testimony was, I'm in North St. Louis, which is pretty much an African American ghetto. I was with three other guys. We were trying to break into a place that had liquor in it. None of us drank, but if we could get the liquor out, the crates of liquor, we already had a guy who owned a liquor store who was going to buy the liquor from us. So here we were 19, 20-somethings, and we're breaking into a warehouse to get some liquor out. Well, while we're doing that, there's a St. Louis city cop who was sitting at a filling station lot, and he's just watching this drama play out. Well, he turns on his whoopi lights, and by the grace of God, guess who he follows? He follows me. We go four different ways, the cop is behind me, but what he doesn't understand is that I'm running behind the alley in my house, and so I know that there's a big garbage disposal like a dumpster. So I go, and I jump in the dumpster, and the police car, I mean, he just goes right by me. I mean, it was a pretty move, and in the dumpster is where I really believe that the Lord spoke to me. Now, you got to understand, I'm ex-Penocostal, so when I say the Lord spoke, I don't mean what you're thinking. In the dumpster, and you see, the Lord was using that moment to tell me that even though I might have thought that I was junk, I might have thought I was garbage, I wasn't garbage. And I'm gonna tell you, it doesn't make any difference who you are. God has to go in the dumpster to get you out. And I thank God that that day, I came out of that dumpster, I didn't know who Jesus was, I just knew I need to go to church. I was a young lady, because God knew that I liked young ladies, and she said, I don't date guys who are not Christians, so I said, how hard can it be? He just, what time does the church start? Where is it? So I'm going to just go to church, get my hand stamped, and now we can go out. I go to church, it's a storefront, Pentecostal church, you got incorrect. Now, I went to Missouri, I did the black fret thing, I parted hard, I had never been anywhere this loud. So I go into the church, the usher sees me, and brings me all the way up to the front seat. And this guy started preaching on Acts 9, the conversion of a guy named Saul of Tarsus. And he talked about all the stuff that Saul was responsible for, murdering the church, and all this other type of stuff, and Jesus saved him, and then they had an altar call. So I was sitting there, and I got up and went to the altar call, sit my little Lord, Lord saved me, because I know I'm a sinner, and I left the church, went back, tried to hang around my buddies, trying to be kind of an undercover Christian, they were partying and doing other things, and so eventually they got so tired of me reading my Bible in the parties, they asked me not to come back. So I had to find a new set of friends, and so I ended up going to church, ended up eventually becoming ordained as a pastor in the church of God and Christ. And I remember, after graduating from Missouri U, I had a commission as an infantry officer, which I was telling these brothers here from UNCC, I was commissioned infantry to army accidentally sent me to the artillery school, so I ended up as an artillery officer. For 10 years, I was in field artillery, had a couple of commands in Germany, and I started hanging around chaplains, and eventually one of the chaplains said, you know, Mike, you need to get, you should become a chaplain, and I said, well, how do you become a chaplain? And they said, well, you have to get out and go to seminary, and I said, well, you know, I'm married. They said, no, not monastery, seminary. So I can't do that. So I went back to St. Louis, and I resigned my commission, went back to St. Louis, and I was looking at seminaries, and I called one seminary to say, well, how long have you been Luther? And I said, we're on number and hung that up, and then I saw Covenant. So I said Covenant. This really sounds Jewish, but let's try, so, call Covenant seminary, and I got to understand why I grew up, and why Covenant is located, is like night and day. Covenant is in West County, which is like rich white suburban, and I grew up in the hood. So I'm out to Covenant, and I'm thinking, man, I got out there, folks were just really nice. I'm being folk like they rode out the red carpet, and come on, Mike, and let's go to classes and go to chapel and everything. So I went to Covenant. I was a Covenant for about 42 days, and I said I only have two questions. The first question is, where's all the black people at? And the second question is, who is John Calvin? I mean, I just, you know, and they were trying to explain to me, and you know how sometimes they do in these movies when folks, and you missionaries know if you don't understand folk, if you just say it's slower and louder, they will understand what you're saying. It's like, you know, John Calvin, and I was like, I got nothing, I just, I got nothing. So eventually I got through Covenant, learned about Calvin and tulips and stuff, and so I got named Jerome Bars, you know, he says Mike, I think you should think about coming into the PCA. I said, oh really, he said, yeah, man, the PCA, you know, we really need some African-American leadership. And I was like, well, you know, so I held Jerome off for about six months, then one day he said, do you like Italian food? And I said, yeah. So he took me out to this restaurant, and I'm paying the cost, so he says, and Dale, you know this story. I said, he says, do you, if you ever had Merlot, I said, I don't know what Merlot is, he said, oh, you should try. So go to the Italian restaurant with Jerome Bars, drink a big glass of Merlot in the empty stomach. Next thing you know, I'm in front of the Tennessee Valley Presbyteria, I mean, so that's, and that's basically my story. All right. Number 13. Okay. I hope I can come back again. Number 13, 25 through 33. And the scripture says, at the end of 40 days, they returned from spying out the land. And they came to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation of the people of Israel in the wilderness of Perron at Kedish. They brought back word to them and to all the congregation and showed them the fruit of the land. And they told them, we came to the land which you sent us. It flows with milk and honey and this is the fruit of it. But the people who dwell in the land are strong, the cities are fortified and very large. And besides, we saw the descendants of Annette there. The Amalakites dwell in the land of the Niger. The Hittites, the Jebusites and the Emirates dwell in the heel country. And the Canaanites dwell by the sea and along the Jordan. But Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, let us go up at once and occupy it. For we are well able to overcome it. Then the men who had gone up with him said, we are not able to go up against the people for they are stronger than we are. So they brought to the people of Israel a bad report of the land they have spied out saying the land through which we have gone to spy out is a land that devours its inhabitants. And all the people that we saw in it are of great height. And there we saw the Nifalam. And we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers. And so we seemed to them. In 1990, a man named John McTernan took a book written by a guy named Tom Clancy called The Hunt for Red October and turned it into a movie. In this movie, you got Sean Connery playing a guy named Marco Ramius who was a submarine captain. You got James Earl Jones playing the secretary of the Navy, Scott Glenn playing a guy named Bartman Q. So who was a U.S. sub captain, Courtney B. Vance who was playing Seaman Jones and Alec Baldwin who was playing a guy named Jack Ryan who was the key character in John Clancy's series. And you have The Red October. The Red October is a nuclear submarine. Now the unique thing about The Red October is that it has what you call a magneto hydrodynamic caterpillar hyperdrive which basically says that you cannot detect The Red October on sonar. It is a stealth bomber which cannot be detected on radar but it is a stealth bomber underwater which cannot be detected by sonar. It would be able to pull up to the east coast of the United States and sit there and shower its targets with nuclear warheads and we would never see. So because Captain Ramius played by Sean Connery does not want this weapon to be just out there, he plans to defect and give the boat The Red October to the U.S. Mike Baldwin who is playing Jack Ryan who studied Marco Ramius and studied the man and studied him. He figures out that this is what Ramius is trying to do to give this sub to the U.S. The problem is the Soviets have figured it out too so they send out a hunter killer team of submarines to stop Ramius. The key is how do you give a submarine the size of the Red October to the United States without the Russians knowing that we had. So they figure out this little plan, the Jack Ryan, Bartman, Q so they get off of the submarine the Dallas which is a Los Angeles class up. They hook up to the Red October like in a deep canyon in the sea, they got this portable sub, they hook on to it and the U.S. folk get in the sub with the Russian folk. And Sean Connery says, gentlemen, this is the Red October, you know they go through what we call the Hummer Hummer two step and then all of a sudden there is a torpedo in the water. Now Seaman Jones is like an expert and the guy says the U.S. are shooting at the Red October and Seaman Jones says no, the pitch of the torpedo is too high. It is a Russian torpedo, okay. So now we've got the Red October, we've got a Russian torpedo coming toward to blow it up. So Sean Connery with all his 007-ish stuff, I still look at him as James Bond, he tells Jack Ryan to sit at the controls of the sub and turn it to the heading 315. He does that and Scott Glean says, don't do that, he says if you turn it to 315 that means that you're actually heading into the torpedo. So Alec Baldwin is stuck between the U.S. guy and the Soviet guy and he looks at Captain Ramius and Ramius says 315. So he stares it to 315 right into the path of the torpedo and Seaman Jones who was on the head said he says torpedo 3,000 meters in closing awfully fast, 315, then there's a countdown. Impact of torpedo, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, what happens to torpedo hits the Red October and breaks into about 10 pieces. Jack Ryan looks up at Scott Glean who's playing Captain Mark Mankuso and he says what happened? The U.S. sub captain says combat tactics Mr. Ryan, the captain knew by turning into the path of the torpedo that he would actually destroy the torpedo before the torpedo could arm itself. Brothers and sisters, sometimes the Lord will tell you to set a course that looks suicidal but he really knows what he's doing. Why would Jack Ryan trust a sub captain from the Soviet Union and do something suicidal because he had studied the man, he knew the man and he knew that Ramius knew what he was doing. There's a bad report that comes out of this reconnaissance when Moses sends the 12 spies over to look at the land of King. It's all most one of those Presbyterian reports where you have a majority report and a minority report. Now 10 folks who say you know what, we went over there and the problem is when they addressed Moses they say the land that you sent us to spy on. What Moses's idea to go there? God had evicted these people in Genesis 15 and 16 because God tells Abraham he says you know what, as soon as the iniquities of the Amorites pretty much comes to a head, these folks are done. So their eviction notice had been served 500 years over 500 years earlier so it wasn't like Israel had just decided to go and kick folks out of their land. The Bible says that the earth is the Lord. So pretty much he is the land Lord who can tell everybody what it is. Paul said in Acts 17 he is the one who determines what men should live. You don't live in your house because you know I got a real turn it was a nice deal and we got a truck. No you live what you live because this is where God wants you to live right now. So they go over they can come back with a bad report and basically it's almost like they're saying we went over to look at Canaan and it's just not enough room for all of us to fit into. I mean have you got a load of the inhabitants of Canaan and I mean if you just went home and just Googled a Wikipedia these tribes you would come up with some jacked up stuff. I don't know if jacked up is a good word but I mean I mean you got some really tough characters here but I like what Isaiah says in Isaiah 40 and 15 he says behold the nations are like a drop from a bucket and are counted as dust on the scales. He's basically saying look man if you put if you put God on one side and you put all of the nations and all of the armies and navies and whatever else if you put them on the other side to oppose God he said they wouldn't even register. He said that just dust. He says in verse 21 of that same Isaiah 40 he says do you not know? Do you not hear? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is he who sits above the circle of the earth and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers. So the people of God if we believe our own press and not believe what the word says we think we're the grasshoppers. We're not the grasshoppers. The grasshoppers are the folk who oppose what we're doing. They're the grasshoppers. But sent them over to that land, Caleb and Joshua they got it. They God asked a question in this chapter of number 13. He says when you go over there I want to ask you something. Tell me do the people live in tents or do they live in fortified cities. You see if you're not thinking like God you come up with the wrong answer. It's kind of like when you're going to mission field or you go into a neighborhood or whatever God wants you to know what God is saying tell me how do the people who live. Well the 10 spies came back said man these cities are so fortified and you know from Jericho the walls were so wide that you could put two chariots side by side. So the 10 said well yeah the cities are fortified but you see Caleb and Joshua got it cause when they saw the fortified cities fortified translates into terrified. It said that's why they're in fortified cities because they're gods or no gods at all. It's the same reason that you and I hate intimacy. It's why we hate being vulnerable. It's why we don't really want to expose ourselves to each other. That's why there's so many walls. It's just in the world but in the church that we will not tear down because we are comfortable in our own walls. If I have to live, break the in that doesn't mean I'm strong. That means I'm afraid. And we have places in the body of Christ where that's fortified cities. It's things that we have exalted way above Jesus. It could be race, it could be culture, it could be theology. All these things can be good things in a redemptive place but once they become bigger than God, it's not just really too big. In fear of getting out of our comfort zone. That is always, I love the city that I'm in. I told Covenant Seminary, I said, I was thinking about starting a religion called Mike Ism. The doctrine is really simple. Mike is always right. And everything that belongs to you is mine. Then I was on my way here and I realized, well, like this morning, I'm on the platform, there's three mics up here. I don't want to share my mic isn't with them because then I can't be God. It'd be some kind of strange trinity sitting up here. Doing the battle of the Bosch, right after the battle of the Bosch, General George S. Padden told his aide, Colonel Codman, he said, you know, I think I have a clear shock to Germany. This was like in February of 1945. He says, I think I have a clear shock to Germany. He says, I think I could be in Berlin in two months. And his aide said, well, sir, what about the fortifications at Metz and what about the Secretary line? And Padden says something that I think is very apropos. He said, fix fortifications or attribute to the stupidity of man. He said, if mountain ranges and oceans can be conquered, anything manmade can be overcome. The issue for us as the church is, do we believe we can overcome the fixed fortifications that we run into, whether it's on the mission field or whether it's your next door neighbor or whether it's trying to understand what other Christians who don't know what reformed is, but they probably are reformed. How do we get past the presumptions, the pretensions, because the weapons of our warfare are not cornered, but they're made mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds, pretentious thinking, bad assumptions. It's my personal fortification to protect myself from you. I've been married, and actually I'm going on 33 years, and ever so often, I feel that I've been married 32 and a half years, and I still feel the need to protect myself from my wife because I know that women can outthink me. A man, I put like this, I was telling the brothers last night, a woman's brain because you guys can navigate across your hemisphere so quick, you could be informational and emotional at the same time. Men can only deal with information or emotion, but you go back and forth. A woman's brain is like 4G, and a man's brain is like dial up. See that's when all the women's folks get up and say, praise my, I feel the need to have a fortification around me even with my wife. It's going to bring Israel into Canaan. God is going to be faithful, but it's going to take about 39 years from where we are here to get from here to Joshua chapter 6. Brothers and sisters, I don't want you to say, you know what, I don't believe God is faithful and then actually have to wait 39 years for what God wants to do with you now. They're going to go across Caleb and Joshua are going to be there and they're going to see God displaced people, not with the power of an army or a navy or a boat like the red October. They're going to see God displaced people because God is sovereign. And all they're going to do, that's going to be some fighting done because I mean when God makes a promise, it usually comes with some human struggle. But for the most part, the bottom line is they win because God has already won. I remember coming to my church and as we say, the pinnacle of church, I'm really closing this time. I remember going to my church in Atlanta, Georgia, truly in anomaly, a press material in church in America with 300 black folk. I mean, I was waiting on applause, but that's okay. Thank you, brothers working up in Canada, 300 black folk, even though sometimes we would have in a new member's class, they would say, we thought this was the pinnacle of church in America. But when I first went there in 2000, it wasn't good. I was on loan from a place called New City Fellowship in Chattanooga where I entered into the PCA with Randy neighbors and guys like that. So the pastor at this church had to basically be deposed and he's a friend of mine and back in ministry now. But when I went down there, I thought I was the hero. Well I'm on loan from another church because I'm going to go down there and pull this church together because I'm a bad dude. I mean, you know, so I went down there and sometimes the Lord will let you go somewhere and even though he's protecting you, he's kind of stepping back because you don't really need him, you know, because, you know, I got binkism to fall back on, you know. So I go down there and let me tell you, I remember getting a phone call when I thought I was doing so great and so well and somebody said, you know what, you're just some Negro that the PCA sent down here. We went on our pastor back. I told my wife, I said, I'm done, I'm done. And it was my wife, you know, the 4G lady. It was my wife who said, you know what, she said, why are you done, because I just got insulted on the phone and don't nobody talk to me like that. I mean nobody. And my wife Renee, she said, that's not how we fight. She said, you're fighting people, matter of fact, you're fighting people in pain, matter of fact, you're fighting people who fear that you're just not what you say you are. She said, you know what, we need to pray. She said, if you want to fight, pray. If you want to fight, preach the gospel. This is my wife talking to me. I mean, I'm the one with the degree. She said, but if you want to fight, you need to ask the Lord to tell you what to preach. And brothers and sisters, I ended up just setting the course for 315, facing into the torpedo, which I would advise you to do, because let me tell you, if you have an issue going on in your life, if you do not close the distance on that torpedo, it's going to arm itself. It's going to blow you to pieces. It may be redeemed to pieces, but you don't need to go to pieces. If you know a torpedo's coming, face it. So you won't have to be avoiding it and having it control you. The Lord said, just preach through Romans, I preach through Romans. It took me a year and a half to preach to the book of Romans and God was faithful. I ended up sending that church 11 years. I love that church. They just installed in the guy who would replace me right now. And I can tell you that God may put you in a place that looks totally suicidal. But if you go in the direction he tells you to, you're going to be fine, because God is faithful. Amen. Thank y'all God bless you. Thank you, Mark.