Phil: I don’t know, I don’t have any as usual, I don’t have anything all that organized in my mind, but I’ve had thoughts that I want to try to trust the Lord to put in order.
You know, recently I had an article that I’ve used in the past and a message called, “Be Ready,” come back to my mind. And I’ve tried to go over it and update it a little bit, but it’s brought it back to my mind.
You know, the closer we get, the further along we get, the more we see the truths that I believe the Lord shared in that coming to pass. We’re seeing a world that is going in two directions. I get this sense all the time. You see people going this way and you see people going that way. And there is a tremendous separation in the Spirit that is going on. And my prayer is that God will pull his people together and bring us through. And I know he will. He is promised to, hasn’t he? So there’s a message of warning, there’s a message of encouragement that I believe the Lord has for his people.
And, you know, one of the... Well, I’ll say this first, a scripture that’s come to my mind and a truth that’s come to my mind many times recently, my mind will go to the letters to the churches in Revelation. And how does every one of them end? Let him that has ears, let the one who has ears to hear, let them hear. Now what does that imply?
[Congregation Member] Open your spiritual ears.
Yeah. There’s something deeper than just physical ears. And not everybody has the ability to hear and to understand what God is saying. And that is such a critical thing. You know, eyes and ears, we think of them in the physical sense. And I can see you, I can hear you, we can interact with each other in this physical realm.
But, folks, we are not just physical beings. It’s not just a matter of what we have in our bodies. These Paul calls tents, doesn’t he? A tent is a temporary dwelling. We’re only here for a little while, but there’s a real person on the inside that’s gonna stand before the Lord one day. And I’ll tell you what, the ears that you and I need to have are those kind of ears and those kind of eyes.
You remember Paul, in his prayer, I thought about this scripture too, where Paul in his prayer in chapter one of Ephesians wanted to see an increase in knowledge and wisdom and understanding. And he wanted to see the eyes of your heart. Isn’t that an interesting expression? The eyes of your heart enlightened. Oh, there’s so many people that think that since God wrote his word in human language, we can just sit there with our human minds and understand it. It doesn’t work. We need God to speak down into the depths of our hearts.
And you know, in thinking back about that Be Ready article, one of the key illustrations that Jesus used, examples is a better word, of what the end is going to be like, was what happened in Noah’s day, isn’t it? Not a new truth, but something that I think we can focus on, because we saw a prime example of people who went in two very, very different directions, had two very, very different ends. And what you’re seeing is something that unfolded.
But we see in that event, we see the culmination of that. And what we see, first of all, is a world that had reached the point where they not only were they unwilling to hear his God’s word, they were unable. That’s a scary thing. You know, one of the amazing things that Jesus said about what happened and what unfolded there when the flood came, he said, they didn’t know. They didn’t even know what was gonna happen.
Now think about that. Noah had been building an ark in front of them, had been preaching for however many years, and yet, when the time came, they didn’t know. Do you know there’s a place where people can get and that’s where this world is headed, where people have so shut their minds to the Word of God, that they lose the capacity even to know what He’s saying.
You know, we know that the Word of God is something that the only way you can understand it is for God to shine His light in the heart. Like I say, you can’t just take it and say, Oh wait, I can understand this ‘cause it’s human language. The Old Testament was human language. But Jesus prayed and prayed to the Father and said, I thank you, Father, what? That you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned. Learned means they were scholars. They were people who devoted their lives to learning and thinking and studying.
I’ll tell you, there was nobody that was any smarter. You think about the Pharisees and the scribes and all those that devoted their lives to the study of the word of God and the law of Moses. Oh my God, we got it. We got it. The devil was smarter than all of them. And he had no idea what was coming. God has so couched his truth that in spite of it being in human language, nobody can really understand His purposes unless He reveals it to the heart. My God, I want to have a heart that can hear, don’t you? Oh God. See, that’s what’s going on.
And you remember how when Jesus started preaching, started teaching the people and he gave them parables. Now, one of them, of course, was the parable of the four different types of soil, and it illustrates where the word of God comes. But his disciples asked him, said, Why are you talking to them in parables? And he said, It’s because it’s given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. It isn’t given to them.
And he goes on, describes from the words of the prophets what the problem was. The problem was that they had so resisted the word of God when it did come that they had reached a point, where it says, they have closed their eyes. This isn’t God just shutting them out arbitrarily. This is people who have closed their eyes to the word of God and reached the point where they had no capacity whatever to understand what Jesus was saying.
How many times did great crowds follow him? And then he would say just the right thing. And he would couch it in such language that they would say, This is a hard saying. Who could hear it? And they’d walk... What happened? They walked no more with him. Didn’t matter that he performed miracles. Man, this guy’s crazy. I can’t follow him.
Do you know that there are people that have no capacity, and there are others who just don’t understand. And part of what I wanted to say today is this, that God, well, lemme see if I can back up. I started to say, that nobody naturally has the power to understand the things of God. Okay? We understand that. It’s just not in our power to understand it. We have to hear God’s voice.
And remember the prophecy that Paul quotes in one place. And I better go ahead and turn to that. It’s in 2nd Corinthians, 1st Corinthians 2, I believe. I’m trying to quote all these or refer to all these scriptures, and I probably need to turn to some of ‘em so you’ll know where they’re at.
But this is Paul talking about his ministry and how it’s not designed by human wisdom. It’s not with human energy. This is something that he had to present himself to God, and God gave him something that could absolutely have power in it to change people’s hearts. But it wasn’t something that the natural mind could understand.
And he quotes down here in, is it chapter, verse nine. “However, as it is written, what no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, what no human mind has conceived, the things God has prepared for those who love him.” Now, most of the time people quote that and say, Oh, heaven’s gonna be wonderful. We can’t even conceive it. Well, that’s true, but that’s not what he’s talking about here. He’s talking about the very truths of the kingdom of God and salvation, those things that God has prepared. The human mind cannot conceive them unless God reveals it. Praise God!
Verse 14, it says, “the person without the Spirit,” talking about with God’s spirit, “the person without the spirit does not accept the things that come from the spirit of God, but considers them foolishness and cannot understand them because they’re discerned only through the Spirit.” Oh my God, we need to hear God when He speaks, don’t we? We need, if we’re gonna have ears to hear, that means we’re gonna have to listen when he says something. Praise God!
As a scripture that, I guess, I’ve referred to a number of times, and let’s see which one is appropriate right now. How about John 6? A wonderful promise. I think is what I’m thinking of. And yes, John 6, you remember how this is the passage where they, they stopped listening to him. But Jesus spoke about the fact that he says this, “All those the father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me, I will never drive away.” What an awesome promise. Praise God!
You see the hand of God. That’s where we get this saying that, I think, it has become current among us that God won’t lose any of His own. What a promise, that God has a knowledge of every person who will ever open their heart and receive His word, and God is absolutely tuned in to bring them all the way through.
Folks, it’s not a person here who has a heart at all toward God that needs to be afraid, as though God’s gonna get tired of you and throw you out. God is faithful to keep His word. He, which has begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. Praise God!
And when the Father presents someone to Jesus and says, Here’s someone who’s put their trust in you. They’ve repented their sins, they’ve put in their trust in you. And I’m entrusting you with their salvation. And I know you have the power and the authority to do it. All what you did on the cross is enough. The gift of the Spirit that comes in and changes their hearts is enough. And all the way you’re gonna be praying for them. Man, God’s gonna bring us through, isn’t he?
But who is it that the Father gives? ‘Cause later on He says, No one can come, verse 44, unless the Father who sent me draws them. So you see that the part of the process is God beginning to speak to people. It’s God reaching out in some fashion to draw somebody to Himself. He says, “as it is written in the prophets,” verse 45, “they will all be taught by God. Everyone who has heard the Father and learned from him comes to me.”
So you see a little bit of an explanation as to what it means about the Father drawing them. It’s God speaking to a heart. It’s that heart opening and learning from not just hearing that, but actually taking it in and believing it and going by that and allowing that to begin to define what’s, what their life is about.
Folks, we are either gonna receive what God has given to us and be part of His purpose, or we’re gonna perish with the world. That’s where this world, this planet is coming to. And it’s so every day, it gets stronger and stronger, you see the spirit of unbelief. But God wants his people to understand and to hear him and to walk with him. And you see what happened in Noah’s day.
Now when God said, My spirit will not always strive with men. What does that tell us? Had He just been letting men go? No, there had been an outreach. God’s heart had always, in every generation to every person, there was an outreach of God to try to bring them to a consciousness of God, their need of Him and the desire of His heart to have them walk with Him as Enoch did. Enoch walked with God. He stood out from his generation.
But the course of people was when God spoke, there was something in them that had control to the point where they believed and yielded to that instead of what God said. And there comes a time, this is something we’ve certainly said many times, there comes a time when God stops speaking to that individual heart because there’s no capacity. Their heart has been sealed.
There’s a word that’s used, I can’t remember what it is exactly, but it’s like you have a wound and there’s a sore place and it winds up getting all covered over, and there’s no more sensitivity to it. Well, the human heart, the spiritual heart, the inside heart can get that way with respect to God.
And I’ll tell you, that’s... Do you not see that happening in the world every day? You read the headlines, you read what’s going on and what people are embracing and how they’re trying to do their best to shut the word of God down. We’re gonna see it more and more as we go forward. God is not going to forever strive with men.
You know, one of the brothers a few weeks ago quoted or referred to that scripture in Revelation. And I believe that’s a prophecy, a prophetic word that will happen at the right point in history. He that is vile, let him be vile still. And I don’t remember the whole scripture, but he that is righteous, let him be righteous still. So God is basically saying, your condition is determined, it’s over now. I’m not speaking to people anymore. I’m working with the ones that are mine. And that’s how it is going forward.
And you know, I thought about this. This is not just a warning or just information to tell us what’s going on in the world. I believe at this moment God still is speaking. And the question is, what do we do with it? And Jesus warned, I’m gonna go over and read one of my favorite scriptures in Luke 8, because Jesus tells us how this works.
And basically I’m back in eight. All right. Verse 18 is the one I’m thinking of. And this is also, after he’d given this particular parable about the sower, he says, Therefore consider carefully, so this is something Jesus wants us to pay close attention to. Consider carefully, what? How you listen. Okay. “Whoever has, will be given more, whoever does not have, even what they think they have will be taken from them.”
Boy, it’s an important thing when God speaks. And what happens with human nature is that God will shine a light on areas we don’t want shined on by nature. And if we’re gonna listen to God and hear what He has to say, we’re gonna have to humble ourselves to the truth. And so what I would say, what I believe the Lord would say to somebody, there may be somebody here, or there may be somebody who will hear this later, and you don’t really understand what I’m talking about. There’s a lack of understanding, of trying to lay hold to what’s He talking about? What is all this about? I don’t quite get it. Well, God wants you to get it.
And I would say this, if there is somebody who is in that place where they need to listen and they haven’t quite arrived at that yet, my prayer is that you will, if there’s a desire in you, you have every right to go to God and say, God, I don’t understand, but I want to. Do you think God is gonna turn somebody aside like that? One of the first things He seeks to do when He speaks to a heart is to create a need. But outta that need, where’s He trying to go with that? Just make a feel bad? No, he is trying to say, God’s trying to say, Come to me.
Jesus said, Come to me all where weary and burdened. There’s this reaching out of the heart of God to everyone that will listen. You think about Jesus and the things that he said about the people of his day. He saw, they were living in a world like ours. So many people had so shut their minds that they had no capacity. Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who killed the prophets. You stoned them that I sent to you. And all he’s talking about what was gonna happen to them.
But he also says, how often, how often would I have gathered you as a hen gathers her chickens? But what was the problem? You were not willing. Oh, I’ll tell you, if God is convicting, if there’s a sense of need, if you see at all what we’re talking about this morning, about the world coming to two different destinies, I just pray that you will so cry out to God until He hears your cry and opens your heart and gives you the light you need.
I mean, you talk about the wise and the prudent not understanding. How about Saul? He studied diligently under one of the greatest, most storied teachers in Judas, Judaic history, Gamaliel. He was familiar with the Old Testament. He could quote it. He knew the scriptures. He was zealous in what he understood for God, but he was blind as a bat. Blind as a bat.
What did it take? It took God penetrating his defenses and revealing himself. And then it took Paul surrendering to that. He didn’t resist and argue and come back and say, No, my way is right. There was a humbling, and God transformed a life.
God still transforms lives. Time is running out. Time is getting late. We’re gonna get to where the day that they went into the ark and it was over and the door was shut, that day will come. But God’s heart is always for anyone that will listen. If there is the smallest desire in anybody’s heart toward God, you cry out to Him and you take comfort and hope in that you wouldn’t have that if God weren’t reaching, it wouldn’t be there. Praise God for his mercy!
And when Jesus was said all those things about his generation, he wasn’t mocking, he was weeping. That’s God’s heart. And God’s heart of Noah’s day was full of pain and distress at what was going on. He wasn’t happy about it. He wasn’t looking forward to having to judge. But what could He do? They had their opportunity.
Oh, I’ll tell you. God is calling His own, but He calls by speaking to the heart and the ears of the heart need to be open and willing to receive. And I’ll tell you, wherever that happens, God will always give more. God always wants to bring His people through.
And I’ll tell you, when God’s looking around to see who belongs to Him, those are the ones He’s looking for. It’s not the smart, it’s not the wise, it’s not the great people of the world. It’s sinners who need a savior. But He’s got everything we need, everything we need to stand there one day. Everything. Oh, praise God!
Well, what did Jesus say about his sheep? What do they do? My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me. And what’s the result of that? I give them eternal life and they will never perish. No one can pluck them out of my hand. My Father who gave them to me, you see that dynamic going on? My father gave them to me? He’s greater than all. No one can pluck them out of his hand.
Oh, I’ll tell you what a hope we have in this broken world, we see things going the wrong way. And I’ll tell you, God has a people. Things were really going sideways pretty badly in Noah’s day, but there was one man who walked with God. And when God spoke, he listened.
