406: Isaiah Small - Exhortation: Keep Ya Hands Up

Automatically transcribed. Accuracy is good but not perfect, and words are sometimes wrong. Trust the audio over the text.

1. 0:03

   Welcome to good Christophian talks. Thank you for joining us this week. On this podcast, we select one talk a week to help us get the Bible in our Daily News feed. Each week we post a talk that we previewed from suggestions sent in by listeners from around the world. Then we record a short intro beforehand as a personalized recommendation to you on why we are sharing the talk. And now let’s talk more about this week’s talk. Welcome to the good Chris Adelphian Talks podcast. This is brother Brian.

2. 0:38

   This week’s talk is a recent exhortation titled Keep Your Hands Up, given at the Marlton Ecclesia in New Jersey by very good friend of mine, brother Isaiah Small. I’m sure that you’re just like me and that when you think about the temptation of Christ and His test of will in the wilderness that you immediately are reminded of boxing, right?

3. 1:07

   Or vice versa. That 12 rounds of ducking, dodging, bobbing and weaving surely gets you amazed about the grace of our God and the dedication of His Son.

4. 1:21

   And if you’re not seeing that connection yet, then hopefully you will appreciate it after this talk. It was one of the funnest talks I’ve ever heard live in that it really took something so out of left field, which was brother Isaiah’s hobby of boxing training. And he placed it so perfectly as a metaphor for how the Lord Jesus overcame his temptations in the wilderness after 40 days of starvation and isolation, running on fumes in every way, and still he didn’t let his guard down for a second.

5. 2:12

   What a model for us, and what a humbling reminder that we need to brace ourselves for the danger of sin. And giving into temptation is not a haymaker that we see coming from a mile away. It’s a subtle love tap in the 12th round that can drop us to our knees.

6. 2:38

   And not because we aren’t trying to resist, as Brother Isaiah says, it’s not for a lack of character. We don’t fall because we aren’t convicted enough. We give in when we already are exhausted, when our buckets are empty, but thanks be to God that we are not meant to rely purely on our own limitations. The grace and the power of the peace and security that God provides us is more than enough to wipe the slate clean round after round.

7. 3:18

   Christ already has the victory. Your job? Well, you know the title by now. As always, we hope this strengthens your faith and brightens your day. Brother Isaiah Small, keep your hands up. So I titled this excitation Keep your hands Up and after I tell this story y’all will eventually come to see why.

8. 3:49

   So a couple of weeks ago my brother Ishmael gave an amazing excitation and he talked about picking up an old hobby again and the lessons he learned from paying what he calls wood tax at the roller skating rink. So after I heard his excitation, it actually inspired me to reflect on a hobby that I picked up and the spiritual lessons that I learned from that as well. So unlike my brother, I am not a roller skater. I don’t like it.

9. 4:23

   But my hobby came a little bit later in life. So after high school, after I had stopped doing a lot of sports, I decided that I wanted to try boxing. My grandfather used to coach it. He used to talk about it all the time and it interests me. So I was extremely excited to start. So, you know, it was always nice seeing the boxers on television and it inspired me to get in the gym and get started. But the one thing that I was looking forward to the most when it came to boxing, it was the pad work. And that’s what you see when all the boxes look their best. It’s when they stand across from their trainer and the trainer holds the pads up and they call out the combos and the boxer hits the pads and it looks nice.

10. 5:09

    It looks fast, it looks effortless. So I started in early 2020 at a local gym and by the summertime I had gotten cool with a professional coach and the coach’s name was Mr. Abdul. So in a beginner gym, usually the pad work comes at the beginning. So when you first walk into the gym, you stretch, you get your sip of water, and then they line everybody up and everybody does their own individual pad work with each of the individual coaches. So Mr. Abdul, because he was a professional coach, did things differently.

11. 5:52

    The pad work always came at the end of the workout. So I would go in, it’d be 20 minutes of jumping rope, 6 rounds of shadow boxing, heavy back for 45 minutes, speed back for 15 minutes, and then he lines you up to do the pad work. So the reason for that is that the most important part of pad work isn’t, you know, looking nice or how hard you can hit or how accurate you are. It’s about keeping your hands up. So in my case, it was towards the very end of my first workout and I was, it was a hot gym.

12. 6:30

    I’m drenched in sweat, like I’m I’m breathing heavy, I’m heaving. And he calls me up for the pad work and I’m standing from the side of the ring, my knees buckling, my shoulders burning, and he’s calling out the combos and I’m throwing the shots that I’m doing pretty good, at least I think so. And then he keeps constantly telling me he’s like, keep your hands up, stop dropping your hands, keep your hands up, stop dropping your hands.

13. 7:00

    But because it was the end of the workout, I was really just trying to get through it all. Like I was, it was the last of it. I was ready to go home. So I was just kind of going through the motions somewhere in the middle of those combinations for like, I blinked a little too slow. I felt the side of the pad smacked me in my face and I was tired.

14. 7:20

    I was so tired. My knees like buckled and I fell to the ground a little bit. And I stood there for a little bit and I looked up and my coach, he was like, I told you to keep your hands up. So the most interesting about that, you know, my first workout, let me say Abdul, was that I didn’t really fall because he hit me hard enough to be knocked out. But it’s that my body was so tired that this little love tap from a cushion pad was enough to bring me to my knees. I feels like when you’re working for that long, you almost feel like now, but after a while, it feels like weights are tied to your elbows and keeping your hands up becomes the hardest thing in the world.

15. 8:06

    So that’s what I want to talk about today because the world and its way of thinking and its influence, it doesn’t wait for us to be energized and spiritually charged to come at us and influence us. It waits for when we’re tired. It waits for things like when the bills are piling up and you don’t have enough money to cover them all, or a waste.

16. 8:31

    For if you’re going through a rough passion, your relationship and walking away feels like the easiest thing to do in that moment when you’ve taken loss after loss and that breakthrough that you’ve just been waiting on, it just, it seems like it’s not coming fast enough and you start to get frustrated or stressed out with the process. The world waits for you to drop your hands. So the real question is, how can we keep our hands up? How can we stay spiritually sharp in a world that looks for the perfect moment of spiritual weakness and exhaustion to attack our character?

17. 9:14

    So I found the answer in Matthew chapter 4 in Jesus Christ. So 1 chapter before in Matthew chapter 3 we read about Christ being baptized by John the Baptist. And at the end of the chapter in the last two verses, verses 16 and 17, this is what it says. It says when he was baptized Jesus, he went up straight away out of the water and lo, the heavens were opened up to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting upon him.

18. 9:51

    And lo, a voice from heaven saying, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. So Christ was coming off of 1 of the highest spiritual moments in his life. But in the next chapter, in chapter 4, he wasn’t LED into comfort. He was led into the wilderness and a place of isolation, a place of hunger, a place of testing, and a place that exhausted him in every single aspect of life. And it was there when he was at his weakest that the temptation came.

19. 10:30

    And verse 4, it says then was Jesus LED up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted. And when he had fasted 40 days and 40 nights, he was afterward in 100. And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bred.

20. 10:51

    So when that temptation came to Christ, they didn’t come to him on day one. They didn’t come to him on day three or day 5 or not even week one. They didn’t come to him when everything was clear and when his mind was sharp and when his body still had. The strength came later, and came after the time had passed, after the days had turned into weeks and his body had been worn down little by little, day by day, and that strength was being chipped away, not all at once, not in one dramatic moment, but just quietly, Gradually. He was getting more and more hungry, at first, almost unnoticeably, but with each passing day, he’s getting more hungry.

21. 11:36

    He’s getting more drained, more exhausted and worn down from the fast. And by that time that the temptation came to him, he wasn’t at his peak anymore. He wasn’t operating at full strength. He was tired, his body was weak, his mind was under strain. After 40 days with no food, nothing to sustain his body, no strength left to rely on, he was running on empty.

22. 12:06

    Every part of him was worn down and his thoughts were under pressure. And something as simple as a pile of rocks draws his attention. Not because the stones had any value, but because in that moment, he knew that he had the means to end his hunger.

23. 12:27

    And in that moment, looking from the outside in, turning those stones into bread probably didn’t seem like a big deal. He was hungry. He had every reason to eat. And it would have been the most natural thing in the world. Would have been quick, would have been easy, would have satisfied exactly what his body was craving in that very moment.

24. 12:49

    But spiritually, that would have been the moment that he let his guard down. That would have been the moment that he stepped outside of discipline and the moment that he chose relief over obedience, not because he lacked character, but because he was worn down. And that’s what it means to drop your hands. It’s not some big obvious decision where you can clearly see that danger.

25. 13:18

    It’s always subtle. It’s something small and sometimes it even feels justified, something that seems reasonable in the moment. You always try to reason with yourself, but without realizing it, it creates an opening and it leaves you exposed to be hit. But listen to how Christ responds to his own thoughts. But he answered and said this is in verse 4. In Matthew 4 He answered and said, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

26. 13:54

    So even in that moment when he was hungry, when he was craving that relief, he chose not to give in. He chose not to allow his circumstances to control his response. He didn’t let his physical condition dictate his decisions. And instead, he actually leaned into his faith even more. And instead of trying to fight that battle on his own, he allowed his relationship with his father to alleviate the battle that was going on within his heart and in his head. So if we keep reading in Matthew, he gets tested again and he finds himself in Jerusalem, standing on the highest point of the temple.

27. 14:39

    And another thought comes into his mind. If you’re the Son of God, throw yourself down. Jump. And even Scripture is brought into this line of thinking because it says that angels will catch him and keep him from harm. And this is where the temptation becomes subtle, because it’s not about the physical need, it’s about reasoning.

28. 15:07

    It’s about a way of thinking that begins to justify itself, a thought that sounds right on the surface. It uses Scripture, but it ultimately leads in the wrong direction because at its core, it’s about testing God. It’s about acting on impulse, putting himself in a situation and expecting God to respond. And when you’re tired, those intrusive thoughts feel convincing and it can feel reasonable in that moment. But once again, he doesn’t accept that line of reasoning. He doesn’t act on impulse.

29. 15:46

    He doesn’t try to prove anything. Instead he responds with clarity. Once again he grounds himself in the word. It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. And in that moment he keeps his thinking a line. He leans on the word again to maintain his focus. And he refused to let the pressure of that moment dictate what he did yet again. And we come to the final example later on in the chapter and verses 8 to 10.

30. 16:21

    Christ goes high up on the mountain top and he sees all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And the final thought is presented to him. All of this can be yours. You can have this if you bow down. And this temptation wasn’t about any type of physical hunger like the first.

31. 16:42

    It wasn’t about any type of mental intrusive thoughts like the second This temptation attacks him on a spiritual level because everything that was being offered to him in that moment on top of that mountain, it was already in God’s plan for him to have it. But here he’s provided with a shortcut, an elevator to success, a way to achieve everything that he already knows will be his.

32. 17:16

    But not like this, not without obedience, not without going through the process that God set before him. And in a situation like this, it’s where the reasoning becomes dangerous. It’s where that thought can sound justified because anybody could say, well, why go through all of this when there’s an easier way? It’s in the palm of my hand right here.

33. 17:49

    Why endure when the outcome is already guaranteed? When you’re tired, that thinking sounds like fact. The long road feels heavier, the hard path, the stairway to success feels unnecessary, and the shortcuts feel reasonable. But once again, Christ keeps his hands up. He doesn’t allow that thinking to take root in his mind. It’s written, thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. He stays grounded.

34. 18:31

    He stays disciplined. He chooses obedience over convenience, even when the easier option is sitting right there in front of him. So when we bring this chapter together, this story together, this lesson becomes real for us. Because just like Christ was tested physically, mentally, and spiritually, we’re going to be tested the same way in our daily lives. We get physically tired from work clocking in, going in every day, and lack of rest.

35. 19:07

    We can get mentally worn down when our thinking becomes more reactive instead of more reflective, and we face those moments where sometimes shortcuts and the easier options just seem like they’re the right path to go on.

36. 19:27

    And the truth is that most of the time, we don’t fall when we’re at our strongest. We slip when we’re tired, when our guard is already low, and when we don’t even realize how close we are to compromise. But what’s important to understand is that Christ didn’t just rely on his own strength to keep himself steady. He didn’t simply just try harder to keep his hands up and those moments of pressure.

37. 20:02

    Instead, he leaned on his father. He grounded himself in his Father’s word. When he was physically drained, mentally strained, and emotionally under pressure, he didn’t depend on his own exhausted strength. He depended on God to sustain him. And it was God’s word that held him steady when his human strength would have failed him, and in the moments when dropping his guard would have been the easiest, chose to lean on his father instead of relying on himself. When we take all of this and bringing it to our own lives brings us right to the table of the Lord. Because at the end of the day, it’s not just about boxing and it isn’t just about discipline, It’s about dependence. Just like Christ didn’t rely on his own strength in the wilderness, we are not meant to rely on our own strength either. He leaned on his Father, and that’s what carried him through when he would have failed.

38. 21:07

    And in the same way, when we come to this table, we’re reminded that we are not strong enough on our own. We are not meant to keep our hands up by ourselves. We are meant to be sustained by our God, by His Word and the sacrifice that was made for us. So we take this bread and this cup. Let’s be reminded of the One who never dropped his guard, even when he was tired, when he was tested, and even when he was under pressure.

39. 21:46

    Let’s be reminded that our strength doesn’t only come from within ourselves, but from what God has already provided for us through His Son. Thank you for listening to the Good Christadelphian Talks podcast. We hope this talk helped you in your walk and brightened your day. If you would like to hear more, please subscribe for new episodes.

40. 22:21

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41. 23:03

    God bless and talk to you next week.