TV Transcripts

Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1585 — taken from Closed Captioning Text

— Brother Phil Enlow: Well, praise the Lord! I’m just gonna try to share some thoughts that have come to me this week, and as so often is the case, they come from something you go through, something experiential. But if our faith is not related to things that happen in our lives, what is it? It’s just a bunch of theory, isn’t it?

And the Lord is so faithful to take us down the path that He’s designed for us, and to teach us along the way, if we’ll have ears to hear and a heart to listen. And I want to have that, don’t you? And, earlier in the week…you know, many times you come through a Sunday, particularly in my position, you put forth a lot of effort and you’re engaged in it and then it’s done and…

( exhaling ).

…You kind of sit back and coast a little bit. And, you know, the Devil has a way of taking advantage of that, if we’re not careful. There are times…you see cases in the scripture where an army would fight a battle, and then they’d win a great victory, they’d have a celebration, and all of a sudden, they’d be in a weak place and they’d get defeated.

Well, anyway, I just felt like I got in a place where I was feeling…and nobody else knew anything about this, to my knowledge at least. Just something very personal, very private, and I felt like a weakness was getting a hold of me and just…the Devil was oppressing, and I didn’t have any feelings, didn’t feel any strength and didn’t handle it as well as I should have. And, I felt like I knew the Lord was around, I knew He was faithful, because you know He is. There’s a certain faith that He implants, but still there are times you go through dry times of attack.

And, I know, any of you who have served the Lord any length of time, you know what I’m talking about. We go through all kinds of circumstances and sometimes they’re pleasant. You know, we sing the hymn, “God Leads Us Along.” Sometimes it’s through pleasant pastures, sometimes it’s through very dark places. But God knows how to lead us. He knows where He’s taking us. He knows what it takes to get there, doesn’t He?

And so, anyway, I kind of came through that, and just kind of pushed through. And then a phrase kept coming to me, and it’s from a very familiar passage in Ephesians 6. You know the passage about warfare. And the phrase was, “…the evil day.” (KJV). Now in the new NIV it’s, “…the day of evil.” (NIV). But, a lot of translations—several translations have it, “…the evil day…” and that makes a simpler title, doesn’t it?

But you know, I think, I have probably tended to see the evil day in more of a big picture kind of thing. It’s easy to do that. You think of the day in which we live and oh, there’s an evil day coming and God wants us to stand, and wants us to be ready to stand, and that’s true enough. But I began to see the evil day as something that could be anywhere from deeply personal, such as what I went through, to a bigger experience. I mean, it could happen at every level, basically.

‘Cause what you’re talking about is an incident, or something that happens, where the Lord allows Satan to attack, to work, allows him to have a certain amount of influence, and He desires that we handle it. And God knows that, He permits it, doesn’t He?

Now you know, we have the two…specific examples in scripture of how Satan had to get permission, didn’t he? We know God’s on the throne. We know He has known, from the beginning, everything that was gonna happen, and God has had a way of weaving together the moral choices of men and devils, men and angels, I guess they were, and bringing them together into a plan to bring a family together for eternity, things we’ve said many times. And God knows what’s happening.

But the Devil has no power against God’s power. If something happens that the Devil is allowed to do, it’s because God allowed it and God has a purpose. And the two specific examples we have in scripture are Job, certainly one of them, and we have the scene where the Devil actually is allowed to come before the Lord, and the Lord is the One who brings up Job.

It wasn’t like the Devil said, hey, there’s this guy, I’d like to get to him, let me at him. The Lord brought him up! Which means to me, the Lord had a purpose in that. He had somewhere where He was going. He allowed the Devil to do what he did, but God had a purpose to take Job to a better place.

That’s a good thing to remember, isn’t it? Whatever God allows in our lives is designed to ultimately bless and bring us to a better, stronger place, even when it involves failure. That’s a good thing to remember, isn’t it? Because we don’t tend to remember those things when we’re in the middle of them. But oh, I’ll tell you, we’ve got an awesome, faithful God.

Anyway, so the Devil says, oh yeah, you put a hedge around him. You won’t let me near him. So, the Lord says, go ahead and touch him, or touch everything around him. Leave him alone. And you know, we know how it unfolded. Ultimately, the Devil accused Job and said, basically, he’s only serving You because You blessed him, You protected him, and You let me at him physically and boy, he will curse You. And Job went through hell, didn’t he? And of course, he didn’t get any help from his supposed friends. They were giving out their standard theology that they’d learned in cemetery, I mean seminary.

( laughter ).

You know, their traditional knowledge of God, and they brought out all the stuff the textbook said and how it’s supposed to be. And they said there’s no way that you could be experiencing these things if God wasn’t judging you. If you hadn’t sinned, you’d be doing great. A very simplistic view of life.

My God, if something bad and difficult happens to you, does that mean you’ve sinned and God’s punishing you? See, that’s something we need to recognize, we need to learn. Yeah, God can allow us to go through things, but I’ll tell you, always when it comes to His people, His plan is redemptive. It’s to lift up. It’s to bring us to an ultimate end that He has foreseen and determined!

My God, what a faithful, merciful God we have! Thank God! I mean, how many times have we come through times when we have really not done very well, if we’re gonna be honest? And yet, we come out the other end and realize God hasn’t thrown us in the trash! What an awesome, amazing God this is that He could put up with somebody like us and love us anyway, and still want to bring us through!

Sometimes, the thing we need to experience is the failure itself! And you know, the other prime example we have…these things we’ve heard many times, but I just felt like there’s something fresh that the Lord wanted to say to me, certainly, if…you’re welcome to listen in, if you want. But anyway, obviously the other example is Peter…when Jesus said specifically, Satan has asked, “…that he may sift you as wheat.” (KJV).

I don’t have any doubt that Satan was aware of Peter’s zeal, Peter’s self-confidence. He saw weaknesses in Peter, and he felt like, boy, this is the leader. If I can take him down, man, I’m gonna do a whole lot of damage, and this whole kingdom thing is not going anywhere. And so, the Lord allowed that.

But even there, did He not say, “…I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not.” Isn’t that an awesome thing to realize, that in our weakest moment we have somebody in heaven praying for…not against us? Praying for us! Man, do I need that! Oh, praise God! There’s someone who sees past the weaknesses and the difficulties of the moment, the battles of the moment, and is able to look past all of that and see that there’s a…and see a purpose in it.

Now the Devil’s purpose, obviously, was to tear down what Jesus was building and to tear down the leader among these disciples, not just to take Jesus into the grave, but let’s make sure this thing is gone. I’m gonna take Peter down.

And the Lord even warned Peter! You need to pray. You know, your, “…spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” (NIV). You don’t know what you’re up against. How many of you have been in that place? You knew what you ought to do, but come time to do it, your nature just kind of cried out and wouldn’t let you.

Kind of what Paul experienced in Romans 7, when he thought that he could serve God by his own zeal and strength. And the Lord showed him that’s not what salvation is about. I’m so thankful that He can bring us to that place, but sometimes we have to learn the hard way. I suspect every person here has had to learn something the hard way. And cheer up, if you haven’t, you will!

But you know what God’s purpose was in this? First of all, it was to teach Peter the truth about himself, something we need to learn. If we don’t reckon on our own need, if we don’t understand our own need, do we really understand salvation? See, the knowledge of our need brings us to a place where we can truly understand and appreciate what the Lord has done for us and His willingness to help us in spite of the depth of that need! Praise God!

And so, Peter was allowed to go through something, but isn’t it interesting how Jesus framed this whole situation. The Devil…we knew what the Devil was trying to do. But Jesus said, “…when thou art converted…” (KJV). When you’re changed, when what I’ve brought you through produces the result that we want, “…strengthen your brothers.” (NIV).

Everything is redemptive! Everything that Peter became, as a minister, as an apostle of Jesus Christ, the leader of, certainly among the apostles, the one who stood up so boldly on the day of Pentecost just a few weeks later, the one who preached at the Temple, shortly after that, when they healed the lame man, and all the things that they went through.

And then the writer of the Gospel, the letters, 1st and 2nd Peter, the message that he puts forth is certainly not one of self-confidence, is it? He learned, didn’t he? He learned and he humbled himself to that truth.

Wasn’t he the one who wrote, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up…” at the proper time? Well, the Lord did that, didn’t He? He knew that from experience.

You know, I see what the Lord is seeking to do in a fresh way, I guess. It’s nothing new. But, like I say, if our salvation and our understanding of truth, Bible truth, is simply head knowledge, we haven’t got much.

And you talk about the evil day coming, and it’s coming, in one form or another. Whether it’s on that small scale, like I experienced this week, or whether it’s something larger or larger, or whether it’s the whole world. And we’re gonna see that. God wants a people who are ready and prepared to stand.

And I pray that God will help every one of us to begin to see, in a deeper way, what the Lord is doing in a day-to-day way in our lives, that there really, actually, is a reason, there really is a purpose in the things we experience and go through.

And oh, how the Devil loves to interpret every negative thing in a way that is totally contrary to God’s purpose! I just pray for God’s grace to stop listening. He will accuse, he will do everything in his power to frame what happens to us in the most negative way possible, to discourage, to do everything he can to turn us aside…even accuse God. You’ve been trusting in Him and look how He’s treating you.

But oh, I’ll tell you what, God has a purpose. There’s something that is very real about our having to live in this world. It’s very significant, I guess, is a better word. If God’s purpose were simply to gather a people and say, do you want to serve me, do you want to give me your life, just hand it over to Him and boom, He takes you out of the world, and we sit in a place of bliss, and go to seminars every day and learn all about it.

But God is producing His family in the context of a world that is absolutely opposed to God in every possible way. I don’t care what things look like, this world, as we well know, is in rebellion against God. It is a prison planet. It has…and people have no power, in themselves, to escape this, even if they wanted to, which they don’t. This is the context in which God is building His family.

And it’s bad enough to have to live in a place where you’re among evil people, and an evil system. The problem is, it’s in here. We’re still living in bodies that are in harmony with the world and the Devil! And so, God’s plan is to give us a brand-new heart and a new life, but we’re gonna have to overcome and make choices to follow Him and not the old nature. And so, everything the Lord…every battle that the Lord brings us through is designed to begin to teach us to make the right choices.

You know, there’s a scripture…I’ll just refer to it, quote it as best I can. It’s in Psalm 45, but it’s quoted in Hebrews chapter 1, where the Son of God…ultimately the…what David wrote, I believe, had a reference to him, in one sense, but in a larger sense, it was about the Son of God. “Your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever.” Okay?

But what drew me to that scripture was, “You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has…” anointed you with the oil of gladness, something to that effect. Anyway, there is very much a connection between what God was…God was seeking someone who would absolutely have a choice. Did He not have a choice? Was He not, “…tempted in every way, just as we are…”? But He made the right choice in every instance. He yielded to His Father. He made the choice to hate what was wrong, to choose what was right.

That’s what God is seeking for every one of us. And so, we are gonna be put in situations where every part of us will be tested. That sounds scary, doesn’t it? Was Jesus not tested? Is He not called the, “…tested stone…”? And now He’s, “…become the cornerstone…” and we’re part of a building that’s built on Him. You see what God is doing? He’s building a family, and you and I are going to have battles.

Notice, in this passage in Ephesians 6, it doesn’t say, ‘if’ the evil day comes. It says, “…when the day of evil comes.” Folks, it’s coming. It may well come in the form that it came to me this week. Am I the only one? Yeah, I know I’m not! That’s why the Lord allowed me to experience this, because folks, we are going to have to learn to make choices.

If we’re gonna stand on a day when the Devil has been allowed to take over the world system, and seemingly succeed in building his world empire, and here some of us are still gonna be here having to stand, in that hour, we better have some experience under our belt. You don’t just go to seminar after seminar after seminar and suddenly you step out into the arena and you’re ready for that.

And of course, the examples we’ve seen and used so many times, David was a man after God’s own heart. He needed a lot of training, didn’t he? Because the Lord knew he was gonna have some serious conflicts in his life. There were a lot of enemies that needed to be defeated.

And you remember how he was sent by his dad to take food to his brothers, who were engaged in the conflict with the Philistines? And he gets there and he discovers this giant, named Goliath. Still had giants in the world in those days. And he was…they had a system, I guess, where, to avoid general bloodshed, they would issue a challenge. Let’s bring this war down to one on one and whoever wins, that decides the battle.

Well, they sent this giant out. And by every natural measurement, Israel was in a world of hurt. They didn’t have anybody to send out. And so, David shows up and looks at that and says, what’s the problem? Now, how could a young man like that say such a thing? You know, he’s pictured as a boy. I expect he was an older teenager, I’m guessing. But whatever it was, he was somebody whose life had revolved around keeping sheep out in the meadow.

Now, how is that a way to learn how to fight a battle such as the one he faced? Well, in the first place, God allowed two things, that he mentions specifically, to happen to him. And one of them was a bear. A bear got hungry. I wonder how the bear got hungry like that. I wonder what was behind that.

You know, the things that happen in this world, we see the physical, we see the natural, we see the government, we see bad people, we need to see where it’s really coming from. Our warfare is, “…not against flesh and blood…” the passage that we started with, didn’t actually read it, but you remember it.

But here’s David…somehow, he recognizes, number one, I’m responsible. Number two, I’ve spent a lot of my time out here worshipping God. I’m gonna do what needs to be done. And somehow, God gave him the faith to take on that bear and win! And the Lord says, that’s great! That’s what I’m looking for. I’m gonna train this guy. But he needs another lesson.

You think any of us ever need another lesson? Let the lesson sink in a little deeper and become a little more real? So the Lord allowed a lion. Okay, a bear is one thing, but a lion? Seriously? But he did the same thing. The Lord gave him the victory.

But you know, there was another factor that came into play that was at the heart of the battle that he fought on that day. And it was this. This challenge that has come is not against us. He’s challenged God! This is a bigger battle than just men fighting, nations fighting. This is against God, and so, this is the Lord’s battle.

And so, when he went into the battle…you know, Saul wanted…said, okay, I’ll let you go, but here’s my armor. You’re gonna have…Saul had a natural idea about how battles are fought and won. Folks, if you and I are relying on natural means to try to deal with life, the Lord’s gonna have to show us. That’s not where the battle’s at. Because what Satan desires to accomplish cannot be defeated with human wisdom, and human energy, and human anything.

And here’s the other thing that we need to recognize, and the Devil will do everything in his power to undermine this, is that when the Devil comes against you and me, his assault is not just against us, it’s against the Lord Himself! Because when there is a relationship, when we are truly born into that kingdom and His Spirit comes to live on the inside, there is a living connection that is formed! We are not just scattered people here and there that all have this private relationship. But there is a relationship where we become a part of Him! There is a living connection. What did Paul…what did the Lord say to Saul, when he was traveling to Damascus to persecute Christians? Why are you persecuting…

( congregational response ).

…Me? He didn’t say my followers. Why are you persecuting Me? The Lord saw what the real battle was about! Wouldn’t it be good if we did? That when something comes against us, even if it’s just a private attack and an oppression, a circumstance, whatever it is in our lives, and we discern, and we have enough discernment to say Satan is behind this. The Devil will do everything in his power to separate you in your mind from God. But this is an attack upon Jesus, with whom we have been connected.

Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1581 — taken from Closed Captioning Text

— Brother Phil Enlow: God will do with His own whatever it takes to bring us to that place where we can say, oh God, I cannot possibly look at me, I cannot possibly begin to think of myself as adequate. But, oh God, the only thing that can possibly make me any different than anybody else on the face of this planet is You, and I want You.

See, this wasn’t just acknowledging a fact. This is, oh God, please come! I’ve got to have You! Do you ever feel that kind of a…almost a desperation? You’ve been in a situation where you just feel so desolate and so weak, you just cry, oh God, help me! By the way, didn’t Jesus do that? Ah! “…Strong crying and tears…” (KJV). He prayed and God heard Him.

You know, I believe with all my heart that’s what God is looking for from a lot of us. We, so easily, get complacent and even proud. And God wants to bring us to this place where He can come and just…He longs to take us in His arms and show us how incredible He is and what His purpose is for our existence! And we’re just so…things are cool, got my life, I know how to handle stuff.

Oh God, we need You! God, we need You! Come, do what only You have the power to do. There are situations that He’s the only one that can fix. And all we can do is just lift up our hands, and say, Lord, help us.

But what an expression of a heart here, that Moses just doesn’t say, come and take care of my problems, help me do my job. He says, show me Your ways. Lord, I want You to continue to be pleased with me and to find my service to You acceptable, but I can’t do that unless You teach me. Oh God, my ways are not right and I need You to deliver me from them. Oh God, come and help me, and bring me up short when I need to be brought up short, Lord, so that I can come.

Oh, I thank God that there’s a place when He does that that we can go. We don’t have to wallow and think we can win Him back by grovelling. We win Him back by confessing and saying, Lord, you see what I am, you see my need. But Lord, Jesus paid it all! Jesus went to the cross in my place.

This thing that I’ve just been wrestling with, this failure, whatever it is, this manifestation of human nature that I’ve encountered, I don’t have to sit here and wallow in that and try to convince You to be merciful to me. You already were merciful at the cross! So, I look away from that, I look to Him and I pin all of my hope in Him and I believe Your promise, that I can stand in your presence, right now, as if I had never sinned.

Do you think we need Him? Oh my, do we need Him! But how merciful, how amazing He is, knowing what we are, that He is willing to come down, right down to where we live, and love us.

So he says, “…teach me your ways so I may know you…” (NIV). There’s this cry! Don’t we hear that from the apostle Paul? Paul wasn’t just interested in correcting his theology. He wanted to know the One that he had encountered on that Damascus Road. Oh God, I want to know You! I want to get close to You. I want to….

I’ll tell you, God is gonna put us in situations where that’s the only answer. Where we’re going to either harden our hearts and push away and pull away or we’re gonna say, oh God, I surrender. God, I come. I need You right now.

I don’t who is here this morning that has that sense of need in your heart. I don’t even know how long this is gonna go on. Somebody else may need to jump in. But, I just had this sense…I mean, you could go all over the scripture with our need of His presence. That’s a given. You could easily write a sermon on that, but the Lord wouldn’t let me, thank God. Because you don’t need a sermon, you need His Word.

“…Teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you.” But look what he does next. How easily do we fall into the trap of thinking of our spiritual lives as all about me, and where I’m at, and what I’m experiencing? Do I feel like I’m on solid ground and things are going great and I’m happy, happy, and enjoying your presence?

Is your spiritual life wrapped up in you? Here is Moses praying, not just for himself, God help me, but God remember, this people is Your people! There’s a sense of urgency in praying for others. He’s not just content to say, oh God, I want to know You and I want to have this personal, private little thing…but, oh God, I’m not alone in this.

I’ll tell you, there are needs in our midst and we need to pray. There are needs in our midst that will not be met without the prayers of God’s people. We need to cry out. If you know about something, we need to lay hold of heaven and say, oh God, change the situation. We don’t need to go through a meeting, and walk through our traditions, and hug everybody that we haven’t seen, sing happy songs, hear truth we’re comfortable with, and then go on and feel like…

( snapping fingers ).

Man, that was a wonderful meeting…and nothing has really changed. Moses was looking for some real, something that was going to change the situation. And so how did the Lord answer this prayer? “…Teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you. Remember that this nation is your people.”

This is the cry of his heart. I don’t think these were casual words. I believe there was a…sense of desperation, don’t you? I mean, put this in the historical context. See what’s going on there. He’s just been on the mountain. He’s come down. The people are already going crazy. They wind up having to kill a bunch of them, and then the Lord said, I ain’t going with you. Now, he’s got to deal with this. Do you think maybe there was just a little bit of that sense of desperation? Oh God, what’s going on here? Oh God come.

And the Lord said, “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” I believe there are many of us that are in situations in our lives that we’re struggling with, there’s anxiety, there’s fear. But I believe with all my heart there’s a God who longs for us to come to Him, and to come to Him with a sense of urgency, and say, oh God, help me to come, help me to learn from this, help me to come into the center of your heart and your will in this situation!

It may be an internal need! It usually involves that. It may be a situation. It may be a loved one that just needs the Lord. But, oh God, come.

But you know, there has to come a time when we see in Him, Someone who’s not looking for us to qualify ourselves to get our prayers answered. Think about that one. You know, I made that point the other night when we were praying for people and Joel had read something. And you see the people in the first century praying and God answering a prayer, and how easy it is to read something like that, and sort of think that they’re different, there was a purity about them, there was this, there was that. I’m not like that. So, I can’t go to God and expect Him to do stuff.

Do you really, in your heart of hearts, or at least in your mind, do you really think that they were that different from us? Really? Seriously? Which is it? Every single child of God is a sinner saved by grace. These were ordinary people. They probably didn’t know half the stuff God has helped us to understand. But they went to God from their hearts and they cried out and God, in this case, Peter was delivered from prison.

But I believe that God wants us to come on the foundation, not of our ability, not on the foundation of anything that’s in us, but to come and say, oh God, cleanse me. But God, this isn’t just about me. Lord come in power and change hearts and change lives!

Do you really believe God is reluctant, that He’s holding out, or that we haven’t held our mouth right exactly when we prayed that? Or do we have the privilege of coming to Him in faith, knowing the kind of God, knowing that this is the very thing He wants? He’s not mad at us, trying to hold out on us and say…when you get it right.

This is a God who longs to be with His people. He longs for people who want to know Him and want to learn His ways! He knows that we’re not there! He knows everything that’s wrong with us, everything that’s lacking. But He also knows that He has everything that we need, that we have the right to come to Him and expect Him to answer the cries of our hearts.

This isn’t just about Moses. You know, in the Old Testament, God did work through special people. You had prophets, you had priests, you had people that, in a sense, stood between the people and God.

But we are living in a Covenant that has changed all of that! This covenant, the Lord said through the prophets…He looked ahead and said, I’m gonna make a New Covenant. It’s not like the covenant you have now. This is one where everybody’s gonna know me, from the least to the greatest! They will all know me!

Every single person in the Body of Christ is a priest. Every one of us can go to God on behalf of somebody else. Every one of us can come to Him on the basis of the cross, for ourselves, and cry out and say, oh God, I need Your presence right now in my life. I don’t want to do what I’m doing alone. In fact, I’m gonna say like Moses, God, if You don’t go with me, don’t make me go. I ain’t going.

I pray the Lord will answer this prayer, but I have prayed that many times about ministry. God, if You’re not gonna get up here, if You’re not gonna minister, don’t ask me to preach. I don’t have any special need to be up here. I would have gladly have sat there this morning and listened to someone else. That’s the truth. I argued with the Lord about it. Do you ever do that?

( laughter ).

Do you ever argue with the Lord? And He just keeps very patiently, making it evident that this is where you’re supposed to be, this is where you’re supposed to go. And you say, all right Lord, it’s on You. But you know, that’s what He wants. He doesn’t want us to have this kind of reluctant relationship with Him. He wants us to get to where we know His ways and we’re willing to stretch forth our hands, like He told Peter. “…When you are old…” when you’re more mature, “…you will stretch out your hands…” Another will gird you and carry you, where?

( congregational response )

“…Where you do not want to go.”

( laughing ).

Because if we went the way our human nature would take us, it wouldn’t be God’s way. But I’ll tell you, God calls us out of the path that the world is walking, He calls us to be somebody different. But what is it that makes us different? We have better traditions? We have a better history? We have better, what? There’s only one possible factor that could make us any different than anybody else in the world, and that’s when He’s here.

Do you think maybe we need to be crying out? Or should we just perhaps assume? Don’t we do that a lot? We just come and do the same things we’ve been doing and assume He’s going to show up? And how merciful He is.

But there is no substitute for a heart that reaches out and says, oh God, without You I can’t do anything. And I don’t want to be without You, Lord. I feel my need. I feel the desolation of my situation. You have allowed this, Lord, so I can know that I’m in need. It’s Your love that’s shown me my need, because You long to be the One to come and to fill it.

What an awesome promise that the Lord gave him. He just told him, I ain’t going with you. Now he says, “…My Presence will go with you….” He looked for a man out of that whole nation that really wanted to know Him.

You know, is it any wonder that David wrote in one of the Psalms, “He made known his ways to Moses…” But His acts, “…his deeds to the people of Israel”? They never understood His ways, remember that? It says that in the scriptures. The Israelites as a whole never understood what was going on. They never learned His ways.

And you think about what Moses was facing. He knew, he knew he had a bunch of people that just…here’s God who said, I’m not going with you, and we’re on our own, and we’re in a bunch of nations that have these supernatural powers! It’s not just that they’re giants, or they’re this or they’re that, but…we’re hopelessly surrounded by powers that are greater than we are. Does that not apply to us today? You and I live in a world that is rapidly being overtaken by darkness.

( congregational amens ).

And the spirit of the age will do everything in its power to bring us to a place where we just rock along, and don’t have this deep sense of, oh God, we’ve got to have Your presence! Lord, we will not…we won’t even come together if You don’t show up. We’re not interested in playing church. We’re not interested in anything except Your presence.

I don’t know what else to say…but do you not see what Moses’ heart was and how God brought him to that place and how this simple promise, “…My Presence will go with you, and I will give you…” What?

( congregational response ).

Oh, how many of you are candidates for some rest in your heart and your spirit this morning? Has He not promised “Take my yoke…learn from me…”? The same sense of the stuff I don’t know, I don’t know how to live. “…Learn from me…” And…I’ll give you rest. “Take my yoke…and learn from me…and you will find rest for your souls.”

There are two different things there. But I don’t know, I just feel like coming into a meeting we need the Lord in a way we perhaps haven’t. I’m so thankful for things that happened 50 plus years ago. That’s great! That was then. What about now? Do we not need the Lord now, to invade lives and to change hearts and change lives?

Are we just gonna come and say, that was wonderful, that’s great truth? You’re reiterating all the stuff that we know and we were encouraged by it. That’s wonderful! We need more than that. That’s the danger. You can go on in that kind of a form, and all it becomes is a dead form and the Lord’s not in it.

( congregational amens ).

We need Him! Do you sense that at all?

( congregational response ).

We need to cry out to the Lord. I don’t know what else to say. It may be just that we need to stop and pray, and ask the Lord to help us to pray, so it’s not just a little form we go through. Ask the Lord to bring something to your own needs to your mind. Ask Him to bring the needs for somebody that you’re concerned about…that God will just go before and break up soil and do whatever it takes to change someone’s heart and someone’s life.

How else is it gonna happen? Do we just come and think, oh, there’s anointed preaching here, it’ll take care of everything? That’s not how the Kingdom of God works! God works through every member, and prayer is the undergirding force that releases God’s power to actually work.

So, praise God! I’m thankful the Lord has just let me ramble on this morning. But, that’s all right. I believe there’s a burden. It’s not information you need today. It’s not information I need. These are the things we know. We need Him! But do you think if we ask Him, He’ll actually answer? Do we have to qualify ourselves or has Jesus already qualified us? So, what does the scripture say? “…Ye have not, because ye ask not.” (KJV). Well, how about let’s ask?

Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1580 — taken from Closed Captioning Text

— Brother Phil Enlow: Well, my mind has just kept going back over the last few days to something in Exodus chapter 33. And, every attempt on my part to try to pin it down and get it organized has met with resistance. So, praise God, that’s the way He wants it. That’s all right. So, Lord it’s on You. Just take control this morning.

But Moses was in a difficult place here. He had just spent 40 days up on Mount Sinai getting the tablets. And God had…I mean, 40 days, 40 nights, no food, no water. This is totally miraculous…in the presence of God. God writes with His finger His Laws, His Ten Commandments.

And he comes down, and what he finds is the people have suddenly gotten distracted from waiting. They’ve given up on waiting and he’s just gone, we’re on our own, so let’s make us gods and go back to Egypt. You know, so they make the golden calf and they dance and they have this pagan party. And now, Moses has to come down from the presence of God and that’s what he runs into.

And they have to deal with that. And, there’s a great judgment. There are a lot of people that die. I mean, this is no small thing. We just sort of read over this, like okay, there’s just a few verses, and…but I mean, this was a deep, difficult situation.

God had called this man to come and lead the people out of Egyptian bondage. He didn’t want to do it. You know, we’ve pointed out that many times, how many times he kept arguing with the Lord…send somebody else. I’m not your guy here. And the Lord wouldn’t listen and sent him anyway.

And then, against all the odds, we see the Lord sending plagues, we see them backed up to the Red Sea, we see every impossible situation that you could imagine arise. And there he is and then God does this incredible thing of opening the Red Sea, and they walked through with walls of water on both sides.

And they get to the other side, and oh my God, this is amazing. They have a dance. And of course, Pharaoh’s army is destroyed in the same water. And so, everything now…they’re brimming with confidence. I mean, they should be. And here’s Moses who has just come down from this incredible experience. And now, he has to deal with this.

On top of that, the Lord sends them a message and tells them to go on to Canaan, I’ll give it to you, but I ain’t going with you. That’s not exactly how it says it here, but anyway, that’s what He said. I ain’t going with you. I’ll send an angel. Go up, but I’m not gonna be there, because if I hung around with you guys, I might kill you…the kind of people you are! You’re a bunch of unbelievers, bunch of…so anyway…they’re…oh my God, they put off their ornaments and they’re…they’re just hanging their heads and wondering what’s going on here…what’s gonna happen?

And it makes the point…that Moses, during this time, there was…I guess, they were working on the Tabernacle. It was still to come…I’m trying to remember the timeline. But he had a, what they called a Tent of Meeting. And this was a tent that was outside the camp, and you remember that when they were going through the wilderness, there was a cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night. What did that represent? What was it, I mean? It was His presence. It was God’s presence.

And so, there they were, and so, he would go in there, and when he went in that pillar would come down right in front of the tent. Wouldn’t that be something to see? All of a sudden, you’ve got a cloud that descends and comes right down. And then it says, He talked with Moses as a man does his friend, face to face. This was…a pretty amazing position God had put Moses in.

And so, Moses is now meeting with the Lord. And then, now we come to the part in verse 12, when the Lord…when Moses begins to talk to the Lord! Think of the situation he’s in. You’ve put me in charge of a bunch of people who don’t have a clue what’s going on. If you back off a little bit, they’re gonna…all the heathen stuff in them is gonna come out, and You told me to lead them. We’ve just led them…I know what’s just happened, but I mean, this is…I’m feeling pretty…you ever been in situations where you just know what’s right to do and you feel extremely unable to do it, you feel inadequate? This means…yes.

( laughter ).

( laughing ).

Because I know we all get in places like that. But anyway, you can imagine what Moses was feeling. He’s got millions of people on his hands, and the Lord is saying, I’m not going with you.

So anyway, “Moses said to the Lord, You have been telling me, Lead these people, but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. You have said, I know you by name and you have found favor with me. If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you. Remember that this nation is your people.

“The Lord replied, My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest. Then Moses said to him, If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?” (NIV).

That’s the scripture that just kept coming back to me. What else? There’s only one thing that could possibly make us any different from anybody on the planet. Do you realize that? See…you remember how the Lord told Paul…said, not many of you are wise, not many of you are noble, influential and all of that? God’s called kind of the ordinary people because He wants to show who He is.

Folks, we need the Lord. I don’t care what’s happened in the past. I don’t care who we think we are. We are no different than anybody else on the planet unless the Lord is in our midst. That’s the only difference. I mean, what else will distinguish us?

And you think about Moses. I mean, the place he was in. Ancient…you remember how God scattered the nations, scattered the peoples of the earth at Babel? And, He scattered them all around the world. And every place you had a group of people…it would be a tribe, it would be a…they would form a city, they would form sometimes a kingdom. Every one of these wound up having their own sense of identity. Every one of them had their gods.

And I think what a lot of people don’t realize…those gods were real. Did you ever realize that? You’re not just talking about some imaginary thing that we’ve got to imagine something that’s with us. There were real powers involved. There were real fallen angels, I believe, who literally set themselves up as gods over different peoples.

So, when you’re dealing with the gods of Egypt, you’re dealing, not just with the Egyptians, you’re not just dealing with their armies, with their swords, with their chariots, you’re dealing with their gods. Man, you better have something on your side besides just you.

You think maybe in this world that we live in, we might need something besides us? “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” (KJV). That’s the world we live in. God has called us to live in this time, in this place, and there’s not one of us who is the least bit adequate to do anything that is of any real value.

You know, one of the worst things that you want to feel, from a natural standpoint, is to feel really, really small and helpless, and incapable of doing what you know you ought to do. But nobody here ever feels that way, right? But do you know that it’s God’s goodness that brings us to places like that, where we say, oh God, oh God!

How easy is it, how easy is it for us to just kind of rock along? We lean on our own understanding. We lean on our traditions and our habits as though, if I just keep doing…well, what I’ve been doing works. It might not be perfect, but it gets me through, so I will just lean on what I know and I will just keep doing it and God will show up.

How many of you think that’s the way it is? We’re gonna need…we need the Lord. We need Him every single moment of our lives. And I see, not only what the Lord was trying to do with the people in general, but God had brought Moses to a place, where…it’s like he’s standing there saying, God, I didn’t want to do this in the first place. Now, you’ve put me in this place, and then You tell me You’re not going with me! I mean, give me a break! How am I gonna do this? And there’s something…there’s a yearning that’s coming forth from his being, a sense, a feeling of his need!

Oh, how many of you know how wonderful and how blessed it is when we feel our need? You’ve got people who think they can handle life, and go through, and they’re gonna lean on their own understanding, they’re gonna lean on their own abilities! And Moses is saying, oh God, You told me to do all this. You’ve got me out here in the middle of the desert. What in the world am I gonna do? Now, You’re telling me You’re mad at the people and You aren’t going with them. Oh, God!

I just sense in my spirit, that the Lord is wanting to get us to, maybe shake off some of our complacency…and come to a place where we cry out and say, oh God, I don’t care what’s happened in the past. Thank You, for every time You’ve been among us. Thank You! But that isn’t what I need. I need You now! We need You this morning. We need You today.

You think of the situation that the Church in Laodicea got. The Lord didn’t say, you’ve gotten into error. You’re doing this, you’re doing that, you’re doing the other thing. What had happened, they had gotten so complacent, that Jesus was not really in the midst! He wasn’t active!

They were carrying out…they were saying the right words, doing the right things, going through their daily lives. We’re God’s people—we’re God’s people, and Jesus was outside. We need Him. Think about, especially going into a meeting. But it isn’t just for meetings. I feel my need. Anybody here feel your need?

( congregational response ).

Thank God that there’s a capacity to feel a need! But I believe with all my heart God wanted to do something for Moses that would enable him to handle the situation. But in order to get there, the only way was to come to this place of desolation!

And I want to tell you this morning, if you’re there, don’t you wallow in that and think, oh, poor me, I’m nothing, I’m no good, I’m this, I’m that! Of course, you’re no good! That’s why we need a Savior. You know, from heaven’s point of view, we aren’t! But I’m so thankful that’s irrelevant!

We sang so much about the cross this morning, and how Jesus paid it all, and with His dying breath said, it is finished! God wants us to learn how to rest in that, how to…for that to become the defining factor of our lives, that Jesus paid it all and He’s real, and He’s alive and He’s with us and He’s among us. Oh, how easy it is to descend into something else.

Folks, we need to be…we need to be crying out when we’re aware of it. But we need to be thankful when God brings us up short…and you can’t feel Him, you don’t know where He’s at, you don’t know what’s going on, you’re facing something that you can’t handle, because the truth is, we can’t, not God’s way.

I’m so blessed, and I believe the Lord was blessed, because Moses acknowledged what the Lord had said, but now he’s beginning to ask. So, what’s the content of his asking? Is he just saying, God bless me, go with us? He’s saying, first, teach me Your ways!

Do you know that’s at the heart of a relationship with God? How many people are there in the world who want God’s blessings, as they define blessings? I want a comfortable life. I want a better job, a better house, more money, perfect health. God, give me Your blessings! But here’s somebody who gets it, who understands this isn’t just about what God can do for me to make me feel better. This is, God, I want to know Your ways.

Do you see the difference? How many of us willing to cry out, oh God, I just…I’ve got my ways, I’ve learned how to face life in certain ways, and there are ways I think about things, and ways I look at people and situations, there’s a way I react. But God, I know that my ways aren’t Your ways.

The Lord said to the prophet, My ways are not your ways…as high as the heavens are above the earth. But you’ve got somebody that comes to this place where they’re someone after God’s own heart. They’re gonna be saying, God, I just don’t want you to be with me and make me feel good, I want to know You, and I want to know Your ways.

Do we not see that in others in the scriptures? David was a man after God’s own heart and you constantly have this sense…God, I want to get close to You. God, I want to know what You’re like. I want to become more like You. Oh God, help me.

You know, that comes from a heart that first of all is willing to take that low place, and say, oh God, I’m not as great as I would like to think of myself. I’m not this wonderful person I would like to think that I am. God, I’m a sinner. Left to myself, there’s not one good thing that I could do.

I don’t know if we realize…you know, again, Moses is thinking about a people, groups of people and all that, and says, what else is gonna distinguish us if You’re not with us. But he’s basically saying, we are basically like everybody else. But do you know that comes right down to individuals?

How many of you ever look at the news and you see some horrific situation, where wickedness just really comes out, and there’s some horrible crime, some horrible war, whatever it is…some event, and you see human nature at its worst come out…how many of you can look at that and say, there, but for the grace of God, go I?

You know, the Lord in His mercy has allowed most of us, I think, to be in situations where we were trained and taught, and we learned how to manage human nature, so that it doesn’t really come out in all its ugliness. Thank God! You wouldn’t have civilization! You wouldn’t have anything.

I mean, what do you think would happen if suddenly the power went out…society collapsed? What do you think would happen? It would be chaos! There would be armed gangs who would rape and pillage and kill and do whatever they wanted to do. It would be horrifying. Boy, I thank God for keeping the lid on!

But folks, God will do with His own whatever it takes to bring us to that place where we can say, oh God, I cannot possibly look at me, I cannot possibly begin to think of myself as adequate. But, oh God, the only thing that can possibly make me any different than anybody else on the face of this planet is You, and I want You.

See, this wasn’t just acknowledging a fact. This is, oh God, please come! I’ve got to have You! Do you ever feel that kind of a…almost a desperation? You’ve been in a situation where you just feel so desolate and so weak, you just cry, oh God, help me! By the way, didn’t Jesus do that? Ah! “…Strong crying and tears…” (KJV). He prayed and God heard Him.

You know, I believe with all my heart that’s what God is looking for from a lot of us. We, so easily, get complacent and even proud. And God wants to bring us to this place where He can come and just…He longs to take us in His arms and show us how incredible He is and what His purpose is for our existence! And we’re just so…things are cool, got my life, I know how to handle stuff. Oh God, we need You! God, we need You!

Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1577 — taken from Closed Captioning Text

— Brother Phil Enlow: Someone who is so great that He could breathe out galaxies was willing to come and show me what it means to be a son of God. You think of the humbling. This is not acting humble. This is genuinely coming to a place of rest in who I am and realizing there is a God. He does fill eternity, but He’s just not some sort of vague entity. He has a purpose. There is a divine purpose that was formed in His heart before everything else happened.

God knew the course this world would take when He created it, when His Son created it. He is spoken of as crucified for us before the foundation of the world. I mean, you see this, the outworking of something that was in the heart of God. God has a purpose!

And our problem is we’ve got our purposes, and they are at cross purposes with each other and with His. But here is Jesus…though He was all that He was, yet He was willing in the heart and the purpose of God to come down and simply be what it took to fulfill the heart and the purpose of God. And that was to make Himself nothing.

Oh, how we struggle with such simple things. And how the Lord would bring us to a place of rest and submission. When you think of trust…I think there’s a scripture…I haven’t looked up some of these, but there’s a scripture in Hebrews 2 that talks about Jesus having a trust in His Father.

I’m standing alongside my brothers, and my trust is in Him. Isn’t there a scripture along that line, showing that in so many ways He is not just up here, but He’s down here as a Brother? Now He’s the greatest Brother we’ll ever have, but nonetheless, He’s taken His place by our side in order to lift us up to what He wants.

But, think about the trust, the sense of, I’m willing to put My life in Your hands, to put everything, all of My purposes aside. Lord, it’s…I didn’t come to this world to do My own will. I came to do the will, He said, of My Father.

Isn’t that what the Lord wants to produce in our lives, where the ultimate value in our lives is to be found in being His child and being the object of His love, and having an actual place in a divine purpose for somebody that great…where He knows about us, He thinks about us, He plans for us?

Yeah, I know getting to where we’re going can lead us into some dark and difficult places. Look where it led Him. And the reality is His motive for doing that was not so I can be somebody. It was so that we could be somebody. You see how what Paul is telling the people there and exhorting them was literally demonstrated by our Savior.

If you want to know what it means to have divine life, my God, it’s not sitting around singing happy songs, and expecting God to pat us on the back for it. It’s not just having a happy service so we can go out and everybody feels good about themselves, and then they go off and live their lives. God is really…God is looking to produce a transformation in us that can only come as we will humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God and let Him do the lifting up.

But when He lifts us up, it won’t be an ego trip. It won’t be this sense of, okay, finally, I get to be who I really wanted to be in the first place. I hate the way it happened, but I’m here. Okay.

No. That will be gone! If we submit ourselves under His mighty hand, God’s gonna burn that stuff out. It won’t be about us anymore. It will be about Him. We’re gonna stand before Him one day, if He gives us any crowns, we’re gonna say, whoa, here’s where the crown belongs. I’m gonna cast it at His feet. He’s the one who did it all. He’s the one who earned it all for us. To Him be the glory forever and ever!

( congregational amens ).

This One who was willing to come to earth as He did, made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant. I mean, what were the values that He taught His followers? Do you want to be the greatest among your brothers? How do you do that? Be a servant. A servant is the greatest one in His economy. It’s exactly the inversion of human values.

And He didn’t come to be served but to serve. You think about the demonstration at the last supper, when He took off His outer garments, wrapped Himself with a towel. That was the garb of a servant. That was how they went around and did their thing. And He went around and washed their feet. You think of the humility that was demonstrated in that.

But it was more than humility. It was a care for somebody else. It wasn’t just, hey, I want to show you how humble I am. This is somebody who was so focused on them, and out of that experience He said I’m showing you how I want you to be toward one another. I want you to be about helping one another.

You’re gonna be down here in this world. There are gonna be a lot of ways in which this world is going to affect you and your walk in it. And I want you to be all about helping one another through, lifting one another up, helping one another with each burden, with each one’s burdens. What an amazing demonstration we see in our Lord. Praise God!

( congregational amens ).

Praise God! I got a little of my voice back. Praise the Lord! And so, all of this…and He goes through His whole life and comes down to the end, “…being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death.” (NIV).

Now, in the first place, this is a, this is the Spirit of One who, again, is not here to do His own will. There’s this obedience, this trust, this relationship with His heavenly Father, where…I know His heart.

See, we struggle with trust. Just be honest. We struggle with the very principle of trust. But think about this One who trusted His Father. Did He have a basis for trusting His Father? Yeah, He was there in the beginning. He was party to the plans that the Father had from the foundation of the world. He knew what His Father was like.

He could see what was going on in this ugly world. He was interacting with it through Israel. He saw it. He saw them rebel. He saw the constantly human nature rising up and corrupting everything! But He also knew His Father’s heart. And so, there was a 100 percent trust that enabled Him to obey.

Don’t we have a hymn that says something like that? “Trust and obey, for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus.” Kind of simple, isn’t it? But do we not see that demonstrated in our Savior? This was not an acting job. He came into the place of danger.

He had every opportunity, if you will, to exalt Himself in some way that was outside of God’s purpose. What was one of the devil’s temptations? Yeah, carry You up on to the high place of the temple. You say You’re the Son of God, throw Yourself down! Let’s let everybody see who You are. That wasn’t God’s way. That wasn’t God’s purpose, God’s heart.

And I’ll guarantee there were so many times during His life…I mean, we know He was tempted in every way such as we are. Isn’t that what the scripture says? Don’t you know there were voices trying to talk to Him and pull Him and push Him in every direction, but the simple path of obedience to His heavenly Father and trust.

But I’ll tell you, He relied completely on the grace of God. See, that’s another way He’s our example. He didn’t come here with His own strength. He emptied Himself. He became a man. He became as dependent upon the Father as we are.

But yet, for Him, that was not a resignation to something unwelcome, as we might think of it. This was, I see, I get it, I know the path of life. I get what’s wrong with this world. I know I cannot give vent to this body and the nature and so forth that I see around me, that I feel. God is gonna give Me the strength to get through.

God is gonna give us the strength to get through, if we will, because I don’t have it. I need God. If Jesus needed His Father, if He needed the grace of God to do what He did, do we not?

( congregational amens ).

Yeah! That’s God’s plan. But isn’t that part of humbling ourselves and taking that place that is only rightfully ours…one of rest and dependence and humility and faith and all these things that we don’t have to put on? We’re not trying to put on a religious cloak here and act a certain way. We’re saying, God, put this in here. Change the way I look at life and the world and myself.

But He didn’t just humble Himself in the events of His life. He humbled Himself to death. Now, think about what that represents. Now, I know He died because of my sin. He took to Himself the guilt of everything that I have ever done, every evil thought, every evil deed, and yours. And He took the guilt of that and received the punishment that was due to me.

But it represented something much deeper than just that. He just didn’t die ‘for’ sin. He died ‘to’ it. It represented the ultimate rejection of corrupted human nature, that virus, that spiritual virus, if you will, that has infected the human race beyond cure. There is only one remedy for sin, and that’s to kill it. He died to it.

He was completely willing to give up His life, because He knew there was something beyond. He had the promise of His heavenly Father. Oh, praise God! Do we have a ground to stand upon when we think about God’s purpose for us to follow in His steps?

( congregational response ).

You see the steps that He took to get to where He is now? That’s the path for us, too. Now I don’t have to die for the forgiveness of my sins, but God has called me to die to sin! That’s central to salvation!

But there was a way of looking at life and a way of looking at the world that He saw…He saw it for what it was, no illusions. This is a sin-blinded, cursed world. I reject it utterly. I am willing to lay this body down in death.

I started to say, do we have a ground for hope in that? What about Hebrews chapter 6? I’ll just refer to some of these. I’m not gonna turn to every scripture, but…we’re told, by the writer there, that we have two things that God wants us to find rest and hope in.

And those two things are unchangeable. That means you and I can’t change it. That means the Devil cannot change it, and that means God won’t! What are those two things?

One of them is the unchangeableness of His purpose! Now, that goes all the way back to the beginning. I guess for you, the beginning is down there, isn’t it? I keep forgetting which way you’re looking. We’re a left to right culture here.

So, all the way back there in the beginning, He had this purpose! This is not something where I’m going to try it, see how it works, and then, we’ll make it up as we go along. This was an immutable, unchangeable purpose! That’s part of the rock that He wants us to be able to step upon and find hope and comfort!

And all that Jesus did in coming into the world was an expression of the outworking of that purpose that He said was not going to change! Folks, you want something that you can put your hope and faith in, that will never change? God says, look to My purpose, submit to it, become a part of it, become an expression of My purpose not yours. You want hope that’s gonna go beyond the struggles and strivings of this life that’s gonna end? Yeah, you look to My purpose.

But He said there were two things that were unchangeable. What was the other one? His Word, His promise! He’s got this purpose. Now, He comes to a place of expressing that purpose and, by the way, God cannot lie. That kind of helps, doesn’t it? You’re talking about somebody who, not just doesn’t, He cannot! It’s not in His nature to lie!

So, He has an unchangeable purpose, and then, He expresses that in a promise. Folks, we have got a hope that goes beyond everything you know in this world, and it all was carried out through the life, and demonstrated in the life of His Son. Man, what a hope that we have today! Praise God!

( congregational amens ).

Praise the Lord! I hope that’s where your hope lies! God will make that real to you if you’ll let Him possess your heart, because that’s what it’s about. Jesus was completely obedient and humble, and had given everything into His Father’s hands, and think who He was, and think who you are.

Good grief, do we struggle and strive to be something in ourselves, and how vain and how empty it is. Here’s the Lord of Heaven, like I say, who spoke galaxies into existence, willing to come down here and live the way He lived among us, and demonstrate His life and His nature. My God!

But as I was thinking about some of this, what does this mean in our lives, becoming obedient to death? Is that not what the Lord does in our lives when He allows the challenges and the difficulties of life to arise in us? What does that tend to do to you when stuff happens? What does it bring out? Does it bring out your glorious divine nature?

( laughter ).

Not typically. God uses it to bring out the reality of stuff that’s buried in here, that needs to be changed!

( congregational amens ).

So, what do we do? Do we choose to cling this? That’s what…that’s me! You’re getting down too deep…or do we cover it all up and pretend it isn’t there? Or do we say, oh, Lord, give me grace to let this go and to die to it…to humble myself to die.

See, for us, it’s a very progressive kind of thing that goes until our toes turn up. For Him, it was an incredibly compact event that took place over hours. I can’t imagine. Only the grace of God and the perfect Lamb of God could go through such a thing for me. Praise God that He did!

( congregational amens ).

But oh, do we not see in Him, not only a demonstration of what it means to be His child, what He’s looking for from us, this faith, this trust, this surrender, this embracing of a new way of thinking, this humbling ourselves to die. Where is it leading?

Oh my! All we have to do is look at Him and see where this led. Because after, “He humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

Wow! Do you know what the name Jesus even means? It means God saves! It’s not just Savior, it’s God saves! In other words, this is…His Son was the very expression of God’s heart! This was His whole purpose in the beginning, was to have a people who would choose life, who would know what life and death was about and sin and all these things, but would choose to let Him remake them into people who could live with Him forever, be totally free from all of that.

Do you see the path that God has laid out for us? Do you see the demonstration of that path? Who do you think you are? Oh, do we jockey for position in life. Do we not, by nature, seek for our place and our…and chafe if somebody looks at us cross-eyed. We want people to notice if we do something. All these issues that just flow out of human nature without us even thinking about it…folks, do we need to be changed?

Do we just sit back and say well, thank You, Jesus, You’ve forgiven my sins, and now I get to go to heaven…and not understand what it’s about. But He means for us to learn to do exactly what He did, and say, Father, I’m in Your hands. I can’t fix what’s wrong with me. I need You to come into my heart. I need You to come into my life. I give You it in its brokenness.

I’m not gonna try to come and deserve this, because I don’t, nothing I could do. It’s just as I am. I come, and I give myself to You, Lord, and I’m looking to You to reproduce Your nature in me. Help me to humble myself and to put my trust, because I know there are gonna be times, I know there are gonna be times when it’s not gonna look good, it’s not gonna feel good. It didn’t for Jesus, did it? But there was this sense of looking to His Father.

Think of how He learned obedience. How did He learn obedience? By the things He suffered! Yeah, the things He went through taught Him what obedience was, because obedience has to happen in the context where something is pulling you the other way. Otherwise, you’re just going with the flow.

See, here He was with the things that would pull Him the wrong way and yet, here’s God’s will, and I choose that. Not only do I choose it, I recognize I don’t have the strength I need to do that. And so, in every sense, I am submitted to Him, I’m willing to take my place in that great plan that He had in His heart before the foundation of the world.

( laughing ).

Get the direction right again. Folks, do you want to be in your place? Do you want to find your place? I’ll tell you, we’re gonna discover that it’s an awesome thing. We don’t have to worry about who we are, what people think about us. I don’t know how else to express it, but I just sense…I mean, isn’t there something deeper in this than we’ve typically tended to read?

Is this not relevant to the day and the time and the season that we’re talking about? This is why He came. I thank God for the angels and the shepherds and the wise men and all of that, but what did it mean? He didn’t come to give us a behavior example, on a superficial level. It’s not the ‘what would Jesus do?’ kind of thing. He didn’t come to bring peace on earth. He came to bring judgement to this earth, but to rescue a people out of it, purely by grace through divine power.

Thank God! I want to walk in the steps that He laid down, and find grace in His sight to humble myself. I know there’s a lot of work He’s got to do. The more I learn, the more I say, oh God, You’re the only One that could be up to this. I see the depth more and more of what I am, but I know Your promise. I know Your purpose. That’s where my hope lies. And if they put a gun to my head and said, will you deny Jesus, may God give me the grace to say, He is Lord. Thank God!

If they do that, all they’re doing is threatening us with heaven. You know, how can we lose if put our hope in the One that’s eternal. I’ll tell you, every other philosophy is just about lifting up human nature and trying to make it something it isn’t. This is the one Savior who’s come into the world and tells us the unvarnished truth, and loves us in a self-sacrificial way to lift us up. I want to be like Him, don’t you? Praise God! To Him be the honor and the glory!

( congregational amens ).

Praise the Lord!

Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1576 — taken from Closed Captioning Text

— Brother Phil Enlow: Well, praise the Lord! Good to see everybody this morning. This is the season when the world is focused, in some measure, upon what we’ve come to call Christmas. And, I know for many it’s just a holiday, it’s sentiment, it’s family, it’s gift giving and partying and all of that. I believe there’s a remnant of people though, that understand, in some measure, what it really is about.

And, I appreciate the Lord emphasizing this morning some of the truths respect to His coming. I found, as I’ve been thinking about the service today, my mind going to an unusual scripture, at least unusual to preach on an occasion like this, and that’s from Philippians chapter 2.

You know, Paul, when he talked about the coming of the Lord into the world, he didn’t spend his time talking about angels and shepherds and mangers and wise men and all those kinds of things, and I’m thankful that we have the record of all those events, but Paul was much more focused on the significance of it. And, one of the things you’ll find throughout his writings, in one form or another is Jesus being held up as our example. And so, Paul is exhorting the Philippian believers and he’s talking about what it means to be the church.

You know, we’ve talked about that lately. It’s not…we’ve made passing reference, I guess, many times to the fact God has not called us to a religion. It’s not a matter of learning how to do church and how to…this is how we do stuff. This is what we say, this is how we…and all those kinds of things. We can package what we think we know spiritually into a whole bunch of externals, and think we’ve got it.

And we can get to a point where we have nothing, because that’s not what it’s about! There is a living presence of Christ in His people! And there are changes that come, not from the outward, but from the inward. And so, Paul is talking about a real…what it means to be followers of Jesus, what His coming is meant to demonstrate to us. Thank God for what He accomplished, but there is a living demonstration that I pray that God will help me to understand in a deeper way.

And so, his exhortation to the believers that sets up this is, “If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit…” (NIV). And that’s a fellowship based upon the Spirit. This is the fellowship of a shared life. This is you and me, as fellow believers in Christ, being literally connected as the parts of a tree are connected one to another. They don’t just have a common denominator, they share a life. Or as a body, my right hand and my left hand share the same life, and hopefully, the same intelligence behind them, and so it doesn’t make any sense for them to be at odds, does it?

( congregational response ).

Okay, so if this exists, if this relationship exists with God and with us, okay, “…if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded….” Now there is a…this word…this ‘minded’…there’s a certain word in the original that occurs two or three times in this passage and you see it through the New Testament. And it has to do with a way of looking at life.

See, this is how we look at life, how do we see ourselves, how do we think about the world and about our place in it and who God is and who we are and what life is about? See, there has got to come, there’s got to be produced in us a like-mindedness, not just a collection of ideas we agree on, but a…something more fundamental than that.

What is it that really drives us? In other words, every one of us could profess to believe ‘this or that,’ in terms of our doctrine and ideas that we sort of ascribe to, but if that isn’t what literally drives our life and controls how we act and react…see, that happens on a deeper level, then what good is this out here and on this superficial level if something hasn’t happened here to change us so that we automatically, almost, act and react the way we’re supposed to?

You see the connection between this and what we’ve read so many times in Romans, chapter 12…that we’ve been called to present ourselves to Him as a living sacrifice. There’s a death that has died, there is a presentation, there is a submission to the Divine will, and for what purpose? How are we transformed?

( congregational response ).

There’s a renewing of the mind and it’s not simply, again, pouring new doctrines in the place of old ones, this has got to be…this is way down deep! Every one of us is driven and controlled in the way we act and react because of a body of ideas that have imbedded themselves in our psyche, and I’ll tell you, we need some deep healing!

( congregational amens ).

We need some things that are beyond just, hey, ‘go by the word.’ I’ve heard that expression. Well, Praise God, it takes more than just an acknowledgement of something that is true, if down in here it isn’t true to us. See, we need something that really happens down in the depths of our soul.

But what he’s talking about the…what is needed to truly represent Him and to truly follow His example, there has got to come a like-mindedness. It doesn’t make any sense for one to be pulling in one direction and another another, and is claimed to be having fellowship with Him. That’s not coming from Him, is it? Okay?

So, he’s saying, “…make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love….” Where’s that gonna come from? Huh? See, all of this has got to come from Him. And as we read this, it’s almost going to sound like Paul is saying this is how you’re supposed to be, go for it, do it…like, do it in your own strength.

But you have to see this in the context of what salvation is about in the rest of scripture. Nothing that God encourages us to do, instructs us to do is ever meant to be done in the strength of human nature. It’s impossible! Always there is this underlying sense that salvation is about giving ourselves to God as hopeless sinners who cannot fix ourselves, and God must do it, or it won’t be done.

So, get that. I mean, don’t anybody think of this as, oh, my God, I’ve got to be this, I’ve got to try to do this. This is not that at all! This is simply a description of what it means, where God is going with what He’s doing in us. Praise God!

All right, so, “…having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose.” And, if you go back to the original and some of the other translations, that word ‘mind’ occurs there again. You’re gonna have the same mind, okay? Being one in mind. Boy, that’s a tall order. I mean, there’s no way you can bring people together that way, in the natural. God has got to do this—God has got to do it. Okay?

Now, he describes, a little bit what that means. He says, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit….” I don’t have it in front of me. I think the NLT says something like, “Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others.” I think that’s a pretty good way to put it. Is that right, Carl? Hey, I actually remembered something. This is scary. Praise God!

But is that not a description of human nature? I mean, we are, fundamentally, all about self and we tend to bring that self-centeredness into our Christian life. It just kind of comes along for the ride! And that’s why we need to be transformed by the renewing of our mind, ‘cause it ain’t natural!

( congregational amens ).

I have got to have some major help! And you see it everywhere in religion how people are bringing ego and self and self-seeking into the church, and right into what they call the church, at least.

And God is wanting us to get to a point where it’s just not about that at all! It’s not about who I am. I don’t have to impress anybody. I don’t have to do anything of that nature. I mean…we are all about our self-image. How do people see me?

I mean, you think about the battles that kids fight, and we all fought when we were in school. I mean, what is your life about at that point? Oh, I want to be ‘accepted.’ Well, what is the price of acceptance? It’s going along with the crowd. Well, where’s the crowd going?

( congregation response ).

Yeah! It’s not a good place. My God, we are gonna have to get our sense of identity from someplace other than the crowd. I mean, and we’re gonna have to be willing to stand against the spirit of the world. We don’t have to do it in a bad spirited way, but we’re gonna have to stand for something that’s different.

And we’re gonna have to get our sense of self-value and worth…I mean, how many people are just consumed with me and my place? In a way, I’m getting ahead of myself here, but this will become a little more plain in a minute because of how he develops this. But my God, don’t we just try so hard to put on a front and try to cause people to think of us in a certain way—a certain favorable way.

You know, I was thinking about…there are cultures in the world…I was thinking about this particularly in the Orient, and almost the highest cultural value is ‘saving face.’ How many of you’ve ever heard of that? Yeah, it’s like my image before everybody else. My sense of identity, my sense of worth in the eyes of others is the highest value and my God, if I get caught…I mean, how many people have been caught in something shameful and have lost face and the result is so critical to them, they take their own life over it?

But we’re not so free from that here! This is so intrinsic to human nature that we need a Divine Savior to set us free from self-seeking in any form. I mean, I don’t care if you’re up here or out there or wherever you are, my God, it’s how did I look today? How do people think of me? God, I can’t be who I really am because then they’ll think bad of me. And God wants to get us down to where there’s a freedom to be ourselves and to look to Him.

But you know, even in that, you can be so obsessed with self in a different way that you’re still…it’s all about you! Me and how I feel and how I look. I mean, you can almost make a prideful thing out of being humble. You know, am I projecting the right humbleness here? And where’s the focus when we’re doing any of that? It’s on us!

I’ll tell you, God has a way of bringing us to a place where we have an identity in Him, that is not founded upon who we are in human society. It’s completely free from that. And that’s where God…where Paul is actually going with some of this.

“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit…” (NIV). And this is again…we’re thinking something of ourselves that doesn’t make any sense in the light of eternity. We have an opinion about who we are and what we’re about and our worth and our value and all of that. My God! If we could see and understand and see our place in the grand scheme of things, it wouldn’t be about that—it wouldn’t be about that. Praise God!

But anyway, but in humility…now what do we do in contrast to that? “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.” So, there is a focus in the purpose and plan of God where our focus shifts from me to you.

Somehow, as inconceivable as it seems, the focus of God’s nature is not on God. Now, yes, it’s appropriate that we should worship Him and praise Him and fall at His feet and give Him glory and all of that, but for us, we would tend to think of someone who would feel that that’s the right thing to do as, oh, that’s an ego trip! But it ain’t an ego trip with God. It’s the reality of who He is and we would…and we need to glory in Him because of the expression of His nature, which is entirely focused on our welfare!

( congregational amens ).

The spirit of love…excuse me, my voice is going away here. I guess I’m gonna have to not shout at you today, and that’s probably a good thing. But anyway, His nature is so other-centered that that’s all that matters to Him and that’s what He seeks to impart to us so that we get our highest joy out of giving to somebody else and lifting them up and seeing them be blessed and strengthened.

( congregational amens ).

My God! Does that come naturally to anybody here? Oh my, do we need help and we need deliverance and we need strength. So, “Each of you…” in light of that, “…should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.”

Now, he comes back to the same Greek word in this next verse. He says, “Your attitude…” And, like-minded, the purpose, one in purpose, the attitude, they’re all the same original word, and they all have to do with the same thing. This is the way I see myself. This is the way I see my world. This is how I fit in it. This is my purpose. And so, this governs how I react and how I relate to people and to life, itself.

And I’ll tell you, what we are going to see, in Paul’s words, is how does Divine nature live in a broken world? Because, is that not what we’re called to do? We’re called to be transformed so that our nature is that of Him and not of us, but we’re called to live it out in a broken world. How do you do that?

All right, this is where the example comes in. This is where we have to have the same…he calls upon us to have the same attitude, the same way of looking at everything that Jesus did. Now, “Who, being in very nature God….” And how easy is it to just blow right over that? I mean, here we’re talking about somebody who is the Son of God. We’re talking about somebody who is the highest! Under the Father Himself, but apart from that, He is the highest and it just talks about His deity as though, okay, we just blow right on by that because we believe that, that’s a doctrine we accept. It’s wonderful. He was up there.

Do you ever really stop to meditate on who He really was? My God! Because, the measure of what He did, is really defined by who He is. You remember what He prayed, in John chapter 17? Part of His prayer was this, “…Father, glorify me…” With what? “…The glory I had with you before the world began.”

Now, I don’t know how to explain this, and I’m not even gonna try, but there was a time, for lack of a better word, before the world…he says it that way, anyway, when there was just the Father and the Son. I mean, this was a glorious, powerful, unimaginably great Being! Do you know…do you ever stop to realize who He was? How did God create the world?

( congregational response ).

Yeah! Who was the One who actually did it?

( congregational response ).

It was the Son of God! Now this One we’re talking about coming as a babe in a manger was back out there speaking out galaxies! The stuff that the scientists…their minds are blown with the incredible vastness of the universe, here’s somebody who was there who made it happen! That’s incredible! Everything was made by Him! Nothing was made without Him!

And we see that in several places. When you talk about the Creator, He’s the Creator. He’s the One who was there. He was the One who was glorious! I mean, even the devils that Jesus encountered in His earthly journey, recognized this. They would speak up and say, I know who You are. You’re the Holy One of God! He said, be quiet. Are you come, “…to torment us before the time?” (KJV).

I mean, they recognized who He was. This is the One who created me. Oh, my God! He may be in flesh right now, He may be in a humble place, but I know who He is! You know, there are several places in the Old Testament where we see visual revelations, if you will, of God. Now, we talk about the time when Isaiah was caught up and saw the Lord, “…high and lifted up.” Who did he see?

( congregational response ).

Yeah. How do you know that? Because no one has ever seen God, no one ever will see God. I mean, it’s plain in the teaching of the New Testament. God is a Spirit who inhabits Eternity. He is…there’s no place where He is not, is a simple way to put it. He’s not a being. He’s not an old man sitting in a chair somewhere, hurling thunderbolts and doing this and playing games, like they show on the cartoons. My God, He is a Spirit that inhabits Eternity.

So how does He make Himself known to a creation where we are individual beings in His image? There’s enough likeness to Him that He can call us being created in His image. But how does He relate to somebody like that? When He’s some…we’ll never see Him, like seeing some figure somewhere, because it’s the Son of God who has made Him known!

He is the exact image, the exact representation, in this translation here in one place, of His being. He is God, focused in an individual, to where we can see all of the Divine power and the Divine attributes in this one being. That’s how I know that the One Isaiah saw is the One who later came to be known as Jesus.

What about when the seventy elders of Israel, at Sinai, were called to go up into the mountain, and they were called to see the God of Israel? And they saw a visual representation. I don’t know what in the world it was, but it was visual. It says they saw the God of Israel, And there was something like clear pavement under His feet. I don’t know what they saw or how…anyway, God revealed Himself. Who was that? See, that was Jesus!

What about when Moses said Lord, “…Show me your glory.” (NIV). I’ll tell you, the representation of glory was so great on that occasion that Jesus said…that God said you can’t see my face and live, but I’ll show you my back parts. I’ll put you in the cleft of the rock. You know, the line on the hymn comes from that. I’ll cover you there with my hand and then when I get to a certain point I’ll let you see the back parts. You’re gonna see some of My glory, but I can’t…you just can’t take it.

I mean, you talk about somebody who ‘is’ somebody, doesn’t have to try to pretend, doesn’t have to lord it over anybody, because He is something great! I mean, isn’t that the problem with human nature? If you get somebody who is great, how do they use their greatness? They tend to use it selfishly! They tend to acquire power and then use it in a corrupt way to oppress others and impress others. This is the world we’ve been called out of.

But you know, when we think about Him coming into the world, think about who He was. Think about how people reacted when they saw Him. Every time there was this incredible…when they saw anything of the Divine, there was this incredible sense of, oh, my God! He is so beyond anything I could ever imagine. This is not just like some great human being. This is oh, wow!

And in the light of that, suddenly we begin to get a sense of our place in the scheme of things and realize who this One is. So this is somebody who didn’t have to toot His own horn, didn’t have to impress everybody. And yet, you think about how He was willing to leave that behind and to come into this broken world.

At one point, He was a single cell in His mother’s body. The One who spoke galaxies into existence and there He was. He just willingly came down to that level. And then grew as an embryo and came to the point where, yes, He was born, and obviously He wasn’t born in a palace, was He? But all of that was just meant to demonstrate Divine nature in a broken world.