Overtime, Min. Elijah McDavid III

0:26 Not just meeting us here tonight, oh God, but all week long, all night and all day, grace and mercy have been stalking us down. Thank you, O God, that you never let us go, that your presence hovers over our lives consistently, and that we can feel your love through each and every twist and turn of life. God, in gratitude for all that you've done and all that you've been, we've come into your house to worship you in spirit and in truth. God, believing that in this sanctuary, amazing things begin to happen. So God, right now we ask that your Holy Spirit would saturate this house. Send a word, oh God, that won't entertain us, that won't prick our spirits, but send a word that will make us better tonight. God, we didn't come in here to play church, God. We came to be transformed.

1:18 So Holy Spirit, have thine own way. God, I thank you for the angel that I hold on my left and on my right. I may not know their name or their testimony, may not know their struggle, God, But right now, I squeeze their hand to simply remind them that they can do all things through Christ who strengthens them, God. I press into my neighbor's hands a little bit of extra strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow, God. I squeeze into my neighbor's hands some resilience to let them know that they can get back up no matter what knocked them down this week. God, bless my neighbor so much tonight that a little overflow would come and splash on me. Reign down in this place, Spirit of the living God. And as you move in this place, we'll be careful to give your name, all the glory, all the honor, and all the praise in Jesus' name. Come on, loose those hands, put yours together, and make a joyful noise to the Lord, all ye lambs. For indeed, this is the day that the Lord has made, and we've come to rejoice and be glad in it.

2:20 While you're yet celebrating, can you help me give God thanks for the gift of our amazing pastor in this season of Selah? Let's celebrate the gift of the Reverend Dr. Howard John Wesley. Indeed, to him, to Dr. Judy who labors in his absence, and to all of my ministerial colleagues and the leadership of this amazing church, I am always grateful and humbled by the privilege to stand behind this sacred and hollow desk. It's a beautiful night to be back in God's sanctuary. And one more time, won't you help me give God thanks for the brilliant musical gift of this amazing ensemble. Albert Street, won't you help me thank God for the Jeremy Winston Chorale. Thank you all for blessing us. There was a preacher I used to work for in Georgia. After hearing some good music like that, he'd say, no need for a sermon.

3:14 Y'all can roll me up out of here right now. That blessed my soul. That blessed my soul. To friends and family who I see scattered among us, thank you so much for arranging your schedule to be with me here tonight. Today is February 29th. Leap Day, as it is known, and I thought about that and I considered there's really only one text that's appropriate to lift up tonight, so I ask that you grab your Bibles and journey with me to the 10th chapter of the book of Joshua.

3:47 Joshua chapter 10. Dr. Judy, I didn't know how many times God will grant me the opportunity to preach on February 29th, so I said I might as well get this one up out of my system. Joshua chapter 10, and when you found the 10th chapter of Joshua, I invite you to meet me at the 12th verse. I encourage you to read this entire chapter when you get home, but for the purposes of preaching tonight, we'll just lift up a few verses. Beginning at verse 12, you'll find words similar to these.

4:18 On the day when the Lord gave the Amorites over to the Israelites, Joshua spoke to the Lord. And he said in the sight of Israel, sun, stand still at Gibeon, and moon in the valley of Ajalon. And the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, until the nation took vengeance on their enemies. Is this not written in the book of Jashar? The sun stopped in mid-heaven and did not hurry to set for about a whole day. There has been no day like it before or since when the Lord heeded a human voice, for the Lord fought for Israel. Sun stands still at Gibeon and moon in the valley of Ajalon. That's enough.

5:10 As you take your seats tonight, I want you to pray with me on the sermon subject, Overtime. Overtime. Beloved, of the many lessons God is teaching me this year, the one that intrigues me the most is that I'm learning we have to tap into different aspects of our faith at different points in our struggle. Yes, our faith rests in one ultimate promise, but depending on the season or circumstance, we might have to rely on a particular quality of our faith. When I'm entering a struggle, I may need to tap into the memory of my faith and be reminded of those survivors who came before me, and the pain they overcame helps me to put my struggle in proper perspective. When I'm in the middle of a struggle, I may need to tap into an unfailing endurance that will give me the patience to believe that better is on the way even when nothing around me is changing.

6:16 Reverend Mark, when I come to the end of a struggle, I need an overwhelmingly audacious confidence to flavor my faith in such a way that I believe I can cross the final barrier that stands between me and my breakthrough. At the end of a season of struggle, you need something more monumental than what you've been leaning on for the past several months of heartache. This may not be for everyone, but I want to humbly offer a prescription for those of us who are standing on the brink of something. Because too often we as believers allow past struggles to play a defining role in future outcomes. So when God brings us to the end of a chapter, we miss our opportunity to seize the next chapter because our minds have been conditioned to relive what we just came out of. Too many of us relive cycles instead of progressing towards the end of the journey.

7:12 Barbara, this is why I am fascinated by the journey of the children of Israel. Their journey of triumph and defeat, defeat and triumph, mirrors our own spiritual struggles. For 400 years, they lived in bondage under the whip and the wrath of Egyptian pharaohs. But the mighty hand of God and the courage of a stellar leader named Moses brought them up out of Egyptian captivity. God made a promise that God would bring them up out of the misery of Egypt and into the land of Canaan, a land flowing with milk and honey. So once God sets them free, they cross the Red Sea and they begin their journey. And the stories of Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy chronicle the 40-year journey it took for the children of Israel to get from Egypt to the land of Canaan.

8:06 Herein lies the problem. The journey should have only taken 11 days. An 11-day journey took 40 years. I don't have time to break down all of the reasons for that delay, but I will take a moment and suggest that a good prayer for every believer is, Lord, what part of me is delaying me from walking into my promise? if it's my attitude, I ask that you take it out right now. If it's my laziness, I rebuke that in the name of Jesus. If it's my immaturity, then Lord, pour out your wisdom on my life. I don't want to wait 40 years for something I can have in 11 days. They make a 40-year journey to Canaan. And after those 40 years, here in Joshua chapter 10, we see them standing on the brink of a promise they've been waiting on their entire lives.

9:06 By this time, they've defeated Ai, and the walls of Jericho have come tumbling down. But now they still have to face the combined forces of the five kings and armies of the Amorites. And as the fighting continues, as the wounds of war beat down on them, as the uncertainty of the outcomes begin to press on their spirits, in this moment, Joshua stands in front of Israel, looks up to heaven, and he speaks one of the most audacious prayers that we hear in all of Scripture. Sun stands still at Gibeon, and moon stands still in the valley of Ajalon. God, we need a little overtime. We've been fighting all day, climbing and marching all night. Can we just get a few more moments of daylight so that we might seize this final victory? The Bible says in verse 13 that the sun stopped and the moon stood still.

10:06 After 400 years of bondage and 40 years of wandering, the sun stopped and the moon stood still. God gave them overtime. My prayer tonight is simple. For those of us who have contemplated giving up, for those of us who have been frustrated and fatigued by the delays of life, for those of us who are uncertain if the promise God spoke back then is still relevant today, I pray that we might be able to see this leap year as a divine revelation. The great God of heaven gives us overtime. God squeezes time on the clock and days on the calendar to show us that we still have an opportunity to get it right. And the frustration of your yesterday ought to never compromise the promise that God has spoken over your tomorrow. I wish I had a witness in the building who was going to declare that I refuse to give up this close to the finish line.

11:04 I refuse to let go when victory is just over the horizon. The odds may be stacked against me, but I've been fighting for this victory for 40 long years, and I don't believe that he brought me this far to leave me. Very quickly, there are three things I want to teach you about this miracle that I believe are relevant insights for our lives as we walk into the promise God has for us. The first one is simple. Write this down. Your miracle will only be as great as what you make out of it. Your miracle will only be as great as what you make out of it. I love it, Kyle, because God doesn't give them the victory. God just makes the sun stand still. Sometimes we ask for the thing we want and then we expect God to hand us our desire. But God doesn't hand out desires, God hands out opportunities.

12:03 And the question is, how are you going to make the most of the opportunity you've been given? I mean, you didn't deserve it, you didn't earn it, you surely didn't buy it, but somehow the sun is standing still. And God is asking in the face of overtime, will you seize this blessing or will you let it go to waste? Jessica, I believe that God is interested not just in our faith, but in our stewardship. For every resource, for every opportunity, for every gift and talent, God is looking for effective and efficient stewardship. I know you can pray for it, but can you be responsible with it? I know you can write the vision, but can you carry out the action items? I know you can imagine it, but can you sacrifice for it? What kind of steward are you? Because time might be the most precious gift God can give you. Here we stand on the 29th day of February, leap day. To the scientists in the room, this has little significance. It's a perfectly bland cosmological calculation.

13:12 The rotation of the earth around the sun takes 365.25 days, so every four years we add an extra day to the calendar to accurately reflect the solar year, which keeps the seasons from moving later in our calendar year. Teach Elijah. But to the believer, this is much more than calculations, equations, and rotations. Because when you know you didn't deserve a single one of those 365 days, and God gives you 366 days, you feel like leaping up out of your seat, opening up your mouth, and giving God a shout like the old saints. I thank God for one more day. One more day to experience brand new mercies. One more day to get it right. One more day to love my family.

14:04 One more day to walk into my purpose. One more day to dance with destiny. It may seem insignificant to you, but I thank God for one more day. Each day is a miracle and each miracle is an opportunity. Joshua, I'll make the sun stand still and the moon stop, but you and your army still have to fight for what's yours. I will not hand you what struggle can earn you. Let me see if I can make this plain. My friends who are here tonight, they know that seminary was a struggle for me. I was one of the bright kids in college, but to be honest, y'all, grad school tested my faith. God had to maneuver all types of miracles to get me up out of the Union Theological Seminary at Columbia University. The long papers, the dense readings, the all-nighters, they nearly took me out of here.

15:03 But I'm grateful because during my first semester there, I met an older PhD student who taught me a very important lesson. She taught me the art of how to ask for an extension. I learned how to walk into the right professor's office at the right time of day. You had to put the right expression on your face. It had to be the perfect mixture of weary, worn, and puppy dog sad. And then, Rashad, you had to tell a moving but not too long narrative about the weight and the stress of all of your other assignments and how your church job was wearing you down in the busy season. And if you succeeded in this production, the professor would give you an extension, an extra week or two to finish your assignment. Well, one day, Marcus, I was in dire need of one of these extensions. I had a 30-page paper that was wearing me out.

16:01 And because I have a life outside of school and work, there were some appointments that I wanted to get to that coming weekend. So I walked into my professor's office, put on my good face, told my good story, but I forgot that this professor taught psychology of religion, which means she had a special tool set to read through my little act. So she looked at me and she said, Elijah, you've got one more day. Because if I give you another week, the same habits that made you delay the assignment in the first place will only creep back up. So I'll give you one more day because I believe the imminence of the deadline will make you tap into a strength that you didn't know you had. I came to tell somebody that every day, God is crafting a supernatural opportunity for you to tap into a strength that you didn't know you possessed.

16:58 I don't know why God gave you an extra day this year, but I pray that you make the most of it. I don't know what vision or goal this extra day is attached to, but God gave you a dream for the new year and you ought not let any benefit God gives you go to waste. I don't know why God spared your life from the tragedies that have taken so many others up out of here, but since God gave you one more day, you ought to walk courageously in it. Somebody in this house tonight, you ought to be determined to make the most of your overtime. He didn't have to let me live, but I'm glad to be in the service one more time. Oh, God. You've got to make the most of your miracle. And then catch this second one. The height of your miracle will often be equal to the depth of your trauma.

17:53 Notice the peculiar positioning of this prayer. The Bible says that Joshua spoke to the Lord and said in the sight of Israel. He's not just asking God for a miracle. He's making a declaration in the presence of people who need God to help their unbelief. They have been battered, bruised, and broken. They've been waiting on this promise for 40 years, and the scars of 400 years of oppression are embedded in their DNA. The wealth and the economy of an entire nation was built on the backs of their labor, and they don't even have a land to call home. All of this troubles their psyche and their souls, and it affects their capacity to make the most of what God has given them. Hear me, somebody.

18:44 Joshua is not just a leader. Joshua is a leader of a traumatized people. And the question we ought to be asking is, what does it mean to lead a traumatized people into their promise? How do I speak to you when you've already given up on the thing God promised you? When you have waited and when you have wandered, when you have accepted settling for lesser, when you have been heartbroken, when you have made defeat your expectation and replace God's comma with a period, when you have lost the loved one that you thought you would spend the rest of your life with, how do I speak to you when you've already given up on the promise God has for you?

19:28 I ask God for overtime. I pray for something so absurdly radical that you'll know it was the work of God and God alone. Sun, stand still, and moon, stop. It's absurd. It's unbelievable. But sometimes the height of the miracle has to be equivalent to the depth of the trauma. God will do something so radical that it will shift your perspective on the pain that has cut you so deeply. God will show you how much God cares for you right in the moment when you stop believing in God's love. God will give you an extra day to show you that he's not finished with you yet. And then you'll look up at this radical blessing and you'll say, the sun that used to beat down on our backs in the fields is now illuminating the battlefield of our victory. We need a miracle so audacious that it reflects the inverse of the pain that has wounded us.

20:29 Son, stand still. It's an absurd request, but when life has been so absurdly cruel to you, you need something monumental to resurrect your faith. I don't know who this word is for tonight, but some of us have been broken, and some of us have been abandoned, and some of us have been molested, and some of us had to bury a dream and some of us had to file for bankruptcy. Have I gotten to you yet? Some of us have been lied about and some of us have been fired and some of us had to drop out of school. Have I gotten to you yet? Some of us have been evicted and some of us have contemplated suicide and some of us have been rejected. Have I gotten to you yet? Some of us aren't welcome home at Thanksgiving anymore and some of us get depressed when we look in the mirror and some of us cry more than we smile throughout the day. Have I gotten to you yet? And yet, in spite of all of this, we pressed our way into the house of God tonight, believing that God will give us a miracle that will make all of that mess worth the while.

21:31 I still believe in overtime. I believe that the hell I went through wasn't meaningless. I still believe that God's best miracles are in front of me and not behind me. I still believe that there's a balm in Gilead that can heal all of my wounded places. If you still believe in overtime, you ought to take 30 seconds and let the devil hear you. Praise God tonight. I wish I had a witness who can declare he's about to turn it around. He's getting ready to restore my joy. God's going to give me beauty for my ashes. I will not give up until the promise two months in to the new year. For those of you who are wondering why your neighbor's shouting and clapping, well, let me tell you why they're shouting and clapping. The Bible says that these are they who have come out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb and God's getting ready to wipe away every tear from their eyes.

22:31 Somebody needs to hear this. God will give you a leap year so full of blessings, it will make the pain of the last four years worthwhile. I'm done, but there's one more observation I need to lift up. Before I leave you tonight, church, we have to deal with what makes this passage so peculiar. It's not just the miracle of the Lord heeding Joshua's voice. Hope, what strikes me about this passage is when I read it from the perspective of the people Israel is fighting. What makes the nation of Israel so peculiar is not just that they are homeless refugees. What makes them unique is the fact that they are a monotheistic people. They believe in one God. And they are surrounded by a variety of cultures who primarily believe in multiple gods.

23:29 That the people Israel was fighting had a sun god and a moon god and a sea god. Could you imagine worshiping the sun your whole life and now you're at war with people who don't even believe in the power of the sun? And yet when they pray to their God, your son begins to heed the instructions of their God.

23:52 Here's why I want you to be excited about your new season. There are people who have labeled you as strange and stupid your whole life. And this is the season where they're about to find out that you're anointed. Here's where we shout. Everybody who called you incompetent is going to learn something in this season. Everybody who said you're unqualified is going to eat their words in this season. Everybody who turns you down is going to regret that in this season. The people who tried to crush you are about to learn that there's a power above you that's looking out for you. Every person who caused you hurt and pain is going to have to look up in shock and wonder at your success. And you want to know why? Here's my last point. It's because your miracle won't just bless you, it'll teach your enemies. Your miracle won't just bless you, it will teach your enemy something. The beauty of a good miracle is not just what it does for you, but what it teaches the people around you.

24:54 I'm excited not just because it's Leap Day, but also because it's the eve of our Seek 2020 church-wide fast. Tomorrow, 2,000 of us will begin our 31-day journey of seeking the voice and the will of God. And all week I've been excited for Steve. Y'all know how it is, you know, whenever you get excited about something, all the naysayers show up. Whenever you get joy about something, all the pessimistic folks seem to find their way to your doorstep. And yes, they showed up this week. They said, Elijah, you're a foodie. You're really going to be able to go vegan for 31 whole days? They said, you know, maybe last year was just a fluke. You all might not be able to raise all that money and had that impact again. I heard the naysayers this week, but here's what I know about God. The miracles God performs in my life don't just bless me. They're also intended to teach the people around me just how amazing my God is. So I'm going to get blessed and you're going to get a new understanding. I get healed and your faith gets enlarged. I get a promotion and my family starts coming back to church. The miracle isn't just blessing me, it's teaching people around me how my God is able. Some of us haven't seen our best miracle because we've been asking for selfish stuff. But when you grow in your faith, you'll start praying for stuff that's going to inspire everybody around you. All throughout the book of Joshua, we see one lesson repeated over and over again. The Israelites didn't win because of military might. The only reason they won is because they recognized there was a strength that was higher than theirs. And every time they turned around, God kept showing up and making a way out of no way. And every time God made a way, somebody became a student of the awesome and miraculous, wonder-working power of our God.

26:53 And I'm just believing that God's going to do something in your life this month that's going to show people in your circle how amazing God is. And you're going to come back at the end of this month with the testimony that my God was able to transform not just my heart, but the hearts of my co-workers, the hearts of my neighbors, the hearts of my family and my friends. You ought to touch your neighbor and say, neighbor, it's time to grab a pen and some paper because my miracle is about to teach you something. My miracle is about to teach somebody that no weapon formed against me shall prosper. My miracle is about to teach somebody that all things work together for my good. My miracle is about to teach somebody that my God is able to do exceedingly, abundantly, above all that we could ask or think. Watch the sun stand still and watch me seize my victory in overtime. The sun stood still, and the moon stopped.

27:54 And the story closes by saying that there has been no day like it before or since. And yes, from the perspective of the Deuteronomistic writer, this may be true. The person who wrote Joshua would not know of another day like this. But I'm so glad tonight that I know of another day. didn't stop performing miracles in Joshua's day, but I heard of a day, one day way back when, when the sun heeded the voice of another person who was one of God's children here on this earth. I heard about one Friday afternoon. I heard about how an innocent black man was convicted in a faulty trial. I heard about how they placed a cross on his shoulders as they hauled this innocent man up Golgotha's hill. I heard how they nailed him up on that old rugged cross. And on that day, the sun didn't refuse to shine, but my Bible, the sun didn't stand still, but my Bible says that the sun refused to shine. For three hours in the middle of the day, the sun said, I'm not shedding light on this.

28:59 And when one of the soldiers who was watching the cross looked up and saw that the S-U-N wasn't shining, he looked up and said, this must be the S-O-N, the Son of God. And that son of God died on that cross that day. And they laid him in a borrowed tomb.