“YOU GOT WHAT YOU WANTED,
BUT LOST WHAT YOU HAD”
GOD Knows What’s Best For Each Of Us
by Brother Johnny Campbell, B.A.D.F.
Please open your Bibles to Psalm 106:14-15 and notice, “GOD granted their request but sent leaness to their souls.”
I. Now please turn to Numbers 11:4-5-6 and notice they began to remember where they came from and lusted to go back. They said, “GOD, we did go back into the world, we had plenty of meat to eat, we are tired of your cooking, and it’s just angels’ food. Now on the count of you, GOD, our souls are drying up…”
Pitiful!! These have got to be Baptist…huh… whiners. I hear preachers say it all the time: “If I would not have gotten saved, I could be a wealthy man, or I could have gone to Nashville with my musical talent, but I gave it up to serve JESUS.” YOU’RE A LYING HOUND!! If you could have made it to Nashville with Johnny Trash and Tammy Whynot, Barf Brooks, or Reba Makinmire, you would be there now. You’re looking back. You ain’t fooling me!
Now look at verses 18-20. GOD said, “O.K. fellows, so you don’t like my cooking, huh? Oh, I will give you what you want, but your gonna lose what you got, and THAT’S ME, THE GOD OF GLORY. You accuse me, the one that delivered you out of bondage, that if you didn’t get what you wanted, your souls would dry up. But I’m promising you, if you get what you want, you will dry up.”
How many times do we beg GOD for things and he says, “No.” But we keep on and on with it. Then he says, “Well, go ahead then. What you get will be your own punishment.”
Like some say, “Oh GOD, I need a new car. All the other preachers got one.”
Then GOD says, “No, you don’t need it, but you just keep on.”
“Oh GOD, I would be happy if I had that new car.”
Then God replies, “If that’s what you want, you can have it, but you will lose what you got.” So, you got it now and you can’t pay the insurance or give special offerings or buy a whopper. Oh, you got what you wanted, but you lost what you had. So, GOD tells the children of Israel, “you got what you wanted, but you’re gonna lose what you got, and that’s me.”
A. They wanted the meat of Egypt. Numbers 11:4
B. They got it until it ran out of their nostrils. Vs. 16-20
C. They lost the manna of God that left them well nourished. Vs. 32
D. They became lean in their soul, and some died. Vs. 33
II. The children of God all over the country want GOD to let them have this or that. GOD says , “That’s not good for you, son, I know what’s best for you.”
A. They want luxuries and then cannot afford the simple joys of life.
B. John R. Rice GOT WHAT he wanted because of embarrassment. He asked GOD to take his tears. He got what he wanted, but lost his Power (“he that goeth forth weeping”) until he said, “GOD, please give my tears back to me.”
1. He lost tears and then lost his power
2. He lost his pride and regained his tears and power.
C. Preachers want big churches and leave God’s will, losing their fellowship with God and sometimes their families!
D. Many girls want some handsome lost boy and then they lose their spiritual joy and effectiveness for God!
E. The Church wants “proper” pastors and missionaries and often get only shells with no spiritual life or power.
F. Church members want happy children instead of holy children, so they call Pastors and Youth Directors that give their kids pizza, puppets and projectors, instead of truth and wonder why they lose them to the world!
III. The U.S.A. and Israel.
Please turn to 1 Samuel 8- Saul (pretty boy), “We want a mixer, we want a preacher like everybody else has.”
GOD told Samuel, “They have rejected me.” He gave them what they wanted, BUT they lost what they had, and that was GOD.
A. They wanted a king instead of the King of Kings! 1 Sam 8
B. They wanted a king like the other nations.
1. They lost their sons to work on Saul’s chariots.
2. They lost their daughters to be Saul’s bakers.
C. They forgot that even good leaders and men of God sin.
1. David wanted Bathsheba ( HE GOT WHAT HE WANTED BUT LOST WHAT HE had)
a. He lost his integrity.
b. He lost a loyal man.
c. He lost an infant child.
d. He lost his family
i. Tamar is raped by Ammon
ii. Ammon is killed by Absalom.
iii. Absalom is killed in his attempt to take his father’s throne.
e. He lost peace for the sword never departed from his house.
f. He lost the right to build the temple of the God He loved.
D. America wanted freedom from God.
1. They changed the truth of God into a lie. Romans 1:16-24
a. They kicked God out and put in humanism
b. They took out creation and put in evolution.
c. They want to do away with the prophets and put in psychiatrists.
d. They took out prayer and put in Liberal prattle.
2. America is paying for it.
a. We have murderers and rapists in the school.
b. We have ignorance instead of wisdom.
c. We have a nation on drugs, both legal and illegal.
d. We have men without character in the White House.
e. We have rampant immorality.
f. We have gays marching in the street!
g. We have a generation that does not know right
E. America wanted its women liberated! You women wanted your freedom, you wanted your blue jeans, and a hard hat. You leave your kids with some wimp and now you’re married so you can get out and make your own money. Some of these dumb men say, “Yes, we are married, but she didn’t want to take my name. She just wanted to be a liberated woman like Hillary and Reno.” Sir, you ought to sue your brain for non-support and put you on a dress. O.K., you got what you wanted, but lost what you had.
1. Now they have lost their home and children.
2. They are out of the house of safety and in the world of temptation where men lust over them.
3. Their successful bosses seduce them because they grow weary of their “loser” husbands.
4. They lose their chastity and purity.
IV. The Touch of God
A. The Folly of Losing It
1. People trade the reality of God for the flesh.
a. Pastor gets the woman and loses his church and family and eventually the woman he left his family for.
b. Jonah lost the desire to pray and preach over a gourd.
c. Children trade the loving authority of their parents for the authority of others who do not care. (gangs, military)
B. The Fruit of Keeping It.
1. You want the good and lose the bad.
2. You want to minister in power and you lose the flesh!
3. You may lose everything at Y2K, but you can’t lose your name out of the book of life. PRAISE GOD!!!!
I’m sorry to report about the times that I have seen where preachers leave a church, where GOD was blessing that man, but he had to get so big, he politicked to get him a big church, but he lost GOD in the process.
Oh, he got what he wanted but he lost what he had!